El Cid

2011-12-29T23:45:00.000-05:00

Read The Whole Thing (to borrow a phrase)..

#WORDPRESSFAIL: WordPress Takes Down “Bare Naked Islam” Blog After Threats From CAIR.

via http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/134392/

Terrific News for Israel..

2011-06-15T20:51:00.000-04:00

Look out, Saudis: Israel is sitting on huge oil shale deposits

Tomorrow is Flag Day. Honor our flag, unlike some we know..

2011-06-13T17:22:00.000-04:00

Indeed, A Noble Vow. Why don't you try getting rid of your pirates, OR are they the same damn thing?

2011-06-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

Somalia vows to defeat Qaeda after killing Mohammed

"It was very inspiring to see how much she had recovered in 4 1/2 months. I was excited to see her and to see her smile."

2011-06-12T08:44:00.000-04:00

One Remarkable Individual

Lovely Smile

Jew Made Me Love You, I Didn't Want to Do It..

2011-06-11T18:10:00.001-04:00

LA Times Won't Release Obama-Khalidi Tape But Posts 24,000 Sarah Palin Emails

Jim Hoft / The Gateway Pundit:

In 2008 The LA Times withheld a video that contained footage of Barack Obama celebrating with a group of Palestinians who were openly hostile towards Israel. Barack Obama reportedly even gave a toast to a former PLO operative, Rashid Khalidi, at this celebration. This was something the LA Times hid from the American public before the election. The media refused to release the video.

It Sure Does..

2011-06-11T12:25:00.000-04:00

A few choice words from Lorena Bobbit and she DID!

2011-06-11T11:15:00.001-04:00

PELOSI: WEINER CAN STAY

Yahoo News via Drudge Report

Correct me if I err, but Mother Nature doesn't seem pleased with inhabitants on the orb..

2011-06-11T05:42:00.000-04:00

Fire Causes Serious Health Concerns

Well Knock My Ass Over With A Feather. I'm Shocked I Tells Ya..

2011-06-10T17:47:00.000-04:00

Report: Iran Sent Weapons to Mideast Terrorists

Leftist or Failure? I vote for both..

2011-06-10T17:17:00.001-04:00

NRO Digest

June 10, 2011

Today on National Review Online . . .

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Should Republicans run against Obama's hyper-liberalism or his abysmal economic stewardship? Is It Incompetence or Ideology?

RICH LOWRY: For the long-term unemployed, it's worse than the Great Depression. A Jobs Catastrophe.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Simplicity won't solve our economic woes. Simply Madness.

FRANK MINITER: To Obama's chagrin, Rep. Darrell Issa won't back off his probe of "Project Gunrunner." Issa Investigates.

MONA CHAREN: Anthony Weiner has revived sexual morality. The End of the Clinton Era.

JASON RICHWINE: Let's control the voyeurism behind the release of Palin's personal e-mails.Palin E-Mail Ground Rules.

By the way Good Luck with that last one, Jason Richwine. Not going to happen

Holy Cow!

2011-05-31T16:55:00.000-04:00

US Soldier In Afghanistan Survives With Unexploded Bomb Inside His Stomach

Hey Weiner,try that crap again and..

2011-05-31T13:07:00.000-04:00

Woman Takes Attacker's Penis To Police...

via Drudge Report

Yes sir, this here Egyptian thingy is going just fine, correct Obama?

2011-05-31T06:46:00.000-04:00

Egyptian general admits 'virginity checks'

Feds Ask for Vigilance on Trains Based on Info from Bin Laden Compound

2011-05-05T18:53:00.001-04:00

Terror alert issued based on cache from bin Laden compound...

Aww damn, Joe. Barack gave you a lemon on the "bullet" train stuff and you bit..Sour, ain't it?

Obama, 9/11 ADVOCATE DEBRA BURLINGAME ON OBAMA MEETING: ‘HE TURNED AROUND AND WALKED AWAY’. Obama what a guy, huh?

2011-05-05T17:07:00.000-04:00

Hits the trail, just like horse shit does..

2011-01-26T05:17:00.000-05:00

After Address, Obama Hits 2012 Trail

Giffords in Good Condition, Headed to Rehab. The Lady Is Amazing..

2011-01-26T04:51:00.002-05:00

HOUSTON -- U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will be moved to a rehabilitation facility Wednesday morning after doctors upgraded her condition from serious to good, according to the hospital overseeing the Arizona congresswoman's recovery.

Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center Hospital said her doctors have determined she is ready to move to TIRR Memorial Hermann, another facility at the hospital where her rehabilitation will begin. That transfer was scheduled for sometime Wednesday morning, pending a review of her condition, according to a statement posted Tuesday night on the hospital's website.

Report: Taliban, Afghan govt in talks to end war

2010-10-06T15:21:00.000-04:00

The Taliban

End it. Kill each other. Kill everyone in Pakistan, as well. You have had your chance at the soon to be 21st Century, if you choose not to partake...Screw It!

U.S. Slams Pakistani Effort Against Militants

2010-10-06T01:46:00.001-04:00

Pakistani officials have said they don't lack the will and that they have generally stepped up their efforts in response to U.S. requests, getting too little credit for it. But they say their army is already stretched thin—a problem exacerbated when soldiers were diverted to respond this summer to the worst flooding in the country's history.

"The Pakistan military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or Al Qaeda forces in North Waziristan," the White House concludes, referring to the Pakistani tribal region that U.S. officials say is being used as a staging ground for attacks on troops in Afghanistan, as well as to plot attacks on targets in Europe.

Continue reading at The Wall Street Journal

Oh come on now! Why blame Pakistan? Just because they formed the Taliban and protected Al Qaeda. Phfflltt!

FOOLS

Presidential seal falls off podium as Obama speaks

2010-10-05T22:11:00.000-04:00

Next up, the seal bounces obama on its nose..

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial Will Be a Three-Ring Circus

2009-11-15T09:30:00.004-05:00

Isn't planning a show trial in a New York courtroom the same kind of mistake that led to 9/11?

Years after the circus-like trials of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Attorney General Eric Holder, acting for the president, has asked for a repeat performance. He is ordering trials in New York of five men who finally succeeded in the original plan to bring down those towers and, in the process, kill almost 3,000 civilians.

There is every reason to believe that in these trials the government may face even more substantial Sixth Amendment hurdles than it did in the original World Trade Center case — hurdles relating to the defendants’ rights to counsel, to subpoena witnesses, and to obtain access to classified information regarding the detention abroad of terrorists. Then there is their treatment while in detention and the names of states and state actors who assisted us in bringing to heel those who murder us here and abroad.

Holder announced on Friday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks on the United States will be tried in a New York courtroom. They are not the only detainees at Guantanamo whom the government intends to try, nor the only detainees that the government intends to try in the United States:

Of the 215 detainees who remain at Guantanamo Bay, nearly 90 have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in third countries, according to an administration official. But more than 30 of those are Yemeni, and the administration is reluctant to send them home to a country plagued by a resurgent al-Qaeda and civil strife. A deal to send some Yemenis to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation is all but dead, the official said. Other detainees are resisting repatriation, and the administration’s special envoy, Daniel Fried, is still searching for enough countries to resettle the rest.

As many as 40 detainees could ultimately be brought to trial — some in federal court and some in military commissions. Both federal and military prosecutors have also been discussing plea agreements with lawyers for detainees, according to sources who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Excluding those detainees destined for transfer or trial still leaves as many as 75 inmates who will probably be held in some form of prolonged detention because they are too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted — a sizable category not anticipated by some in the administration until they started to read classified files, a number of government officials said privately.

The stated reason for trying the 9/11 plotters here, while the five detained USS Cole attackers will face a military tribunal, is that the 9/11 plotters attacked civilians and the Cole plotters attacked the military. It seems a flaccid argument to me. It does, as well, to the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, who concludes:

[T]he administration is conducting a limited number of civilian trials of high-profile terrorists for show, so as to win “credibility” with the international left. These trials will differ from an ordinary show trial in that the process will be fair even though the verdict is predetermined. But people who wrongly think that either military commissions or detention without trial are unjust will not be satisfied with some detainees getting civilian trials–unless, of course, they are simply eager to be impressed by Barack Obama.

(Here is a study of civilian trials and military tribunals. PDF)

While there is ample reason to believe that these will be show trials, I believe, along with others, the show trials will inure more to the benefit of the jihadists. I think they are neither designed for the purpose nor likely to achieve the aim of persuading the Muslim world or anyone else that we are so fair we are willing to sacrifice our best interests for the world’s pat on the head. They are a naked appeal to the left here and abroad who insist on treating war as a criminal act and jihadists as individual felons not worthy of concerted military responses.

The trials will also surely be used as a platform from which to attack the Bush administration’s militant response to terrorism, which included the waterboarding of KSM. Those in the defense and intelligence communities and prior administration officials who have saved us from further outrages will surely be the targets of the defendants on a world stage. The defendants will be allowed to broadcast freely throughout the world by a press generally unsympathetic to those who nabbed these monsters and brought them to account.

To paraphrase an old friend, this would be a first: the victor dragging himself off in chains.

As Congressman Pete Hoekstra reminds us:

KSM has already confessed to being not only the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, but also to planning multiple additional attacks on Americans. He is already being held in the best possible security at Guantanamo Bay, and he has already been charged for his crimes in a military commission process where he faces the death penalty.

What possible benefit is there to bringing him into the United States for trial? There is absolutely none for the American people, but there is every benefit to KSM and al-Qaeda propagandists, who will use it as a platform to put the United States on trial and broadcast their propaganda and jihadist ideology to the world. After the Fort Hood shootings, is this propaganda really what we need on television day after day after day to incite more violence?

Rep. Hoekstra is referring to the military court proceedings at Guantanamo initiated in 2008, in which KSM refused counsel (and was joined in this refusal by his co-defendants). He stated at the time that he believed only in Sharia law and asked to be martyred by being sentenced to death. The decision to transfer the case to a civilian court begins his legal proceedings anew. It will take some time to go to trial, of course. He hasn’t even been indicted by a civilian jury yet, nor has Congress even received the requisite notice of any transfer of these men to U.S. soil.

Aside from the obvious problems of giving these thugs a world stage on which to prance and encourage more jihadists to follow them, aside from the security problems this trial will pose, and aside from the evidentiary problems in managing to keep classified information under wraps, the trial venue has a truly insidious effect. It makes us forget that we are at war with enemies who are looking for every means to breach our defenses and harm us. As Tom Maguire observes, the press is already referring to the defendants as “suspects” and KSM as “accused 9/11 mastermind,” as if they were individual bad guys, like burglars or serial murderers, and not an armed and dangerous force to be defeated on a field of battle.

Going back to this 9/10 mentality may not be so acceptable to voters these days, especially considering that we just saw where that kind of thinking can lead at Fort Hood.

Taser Cam: Speeding Grandma Tased Twice by Texas Police Officer. To protect, serve and taze..Your momma should real proud of you, son.

2009-11-14T21:41:00.001-05:00

Give up on the Global Warming thingy, Al? Uhh, Say, how's that other thing YOU invented going. You know, the Internet?

2009-11-14T21:32:00.001-05:00

And he wonders why he lost. Simple Al...'You're a simpleton...nuff said'

Pakistani Pop Musicians Propel Anti-American Conspiracy Theories

2009-11-14T21:22:00.000-05:00

White House: IL prison eyed for Guantanamo inmates

2009-11-14T19:57:00.001-05:00

CHICAGO – The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural northwestern Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday.

The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has not been made.

President Barack Obama wants detainees from the controversial military-run detention center in Cuba to be transferred to U.S. soil so they can be prosecuted for their suspected crimes.

It is unclear how many Guantanamo detainees — alleged terrorism suspects, many held without charges since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan — might be transferred to Illinois or when. Obama initially planned to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has been hinting at a possible new use for Thomson, and he issued a statement saying he would hold a news conference Sunday to outline those plans.

Quinn's spokeswoman Marlena Jentz did not return a phone message from the AP Saturday.

Thomson was built by the state in 2001 with 1,600 cells, but budget problems prevented it from fully opening, and it now houses about 200 minimum-security inmates.

If the Federal Bureau of Prisons buys the facility, it would be run primarily as a federal prison, but a portion would be leased to the Defense Department to house a limited number of Guantanamo detainees, the White House official said. Perimeter security at the site would be increased to surpass that at the nation's only Supermax prison, in Florence, Colo., the official said.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the House's second-highest-ranking Democrat, said in a statement Saturday he would support the plan. He said the prison would house fewer than 100 Guantanamo detainees and would have a "significant positive impact on the local economy" by generating more than 3,000 jobs.

Thomson Village President Jerry Hebeler said the move would generate desperately needed revenue for the town of about 500 residents near the Mississippi River.

"It's been sitting there for eight to nine years and our town is like a ghost town," Hebeler said of the prison, adding that a tavern recently closed and a planned housing development fell through. "Everybody moved or got different jobs."

Some lawmakers opposed the idea of terrorism suspects being brought to Illinois.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Northbrook Republican running for Obama's old Senate seat, circulated a letter among elected officials asking them to write to Obama opposing the plan, saying bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the state would make it a target for terrorist attacks.

But Catch this act:

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat, said Kirk was "pandering to irrational fears" and that closing the Guantanamo Bay facility would strengthen national security because al-Qaida used it as a recruiting tool.

What does this dumb bitch Democrat think this NEW facilty would do or be...NOT a recruiting tool?

I tell ya' the Dems have some real jewels...lol.

Thomson is not the only U.S. town that had hoped to lure Guantanamo detainees. Officials in Marion, Ill., Hardin, Mont., and Florence, Colo., also have said they would welcome the jobs that would be generated

Look New York Times, It's Father Christmas. Have you been good boys and girls?

2009-11-14T19:11:00.002-05:00

Eric Holder's decision to move a trial on war crimes to American soil is morally confused, dangerous and political to a fault.

Disabled Woman Describes Violent Confrontation With ACORN Group at Town Hall

2009-08-16T13:16:00.003-04:00

"Right out of Alinsky's playbook."

Brashly shouting out his lyrics in crowded, smoky clubs, Alexei Nikonov zeroes in on provocative themes that most musicians here ignore -- authoritari

2009-08-16T12:47:00.001-04:00

Russian punk rockers rage against the Putin machine...Howz' about we swap. You take Obama, we'll take Putin....

White House Appears Ready to Drop 'Public Option'...

2009-08-16T12:40:00.003-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's administration signaled on Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run health insurance as part of his ambitious health care proposal.

Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives. Such a concession is likely to enrage his liberal supporters but could deliver Obama a much-needed win on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers.

Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess.

Obama has been pressing for the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation's almost 50 million uninsured, but Republicans remain steadfast in arguing against it.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that government alternative to private health insurance is "not the essential element" of the administration's health care overhaul. The White House would be open to co-ops, she said, a sign that Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory on the showdown.

"I think there will be a competitor to private insurers," Sebelius said. "That's really the essential part, is you don't turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing."

Obama's top spokesman refused to say a public option was a make-or-break choice for the administration.

"What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate's budget committee, pushed the co-op model as an alternative.

"It's not government-run and government-controlled," he said. "It's membership-run and membership-controlled. But it does provide a nonprofit competitor for the for-profit insurance companies, and that's why it has appeal on both sides."

As proposed by Conrad, the co-ops would receive federal startup money, but then would operate independently of the government. They would have to maintain the same financial reserves that private companies are required to keep to handle unexpectedly high claims.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said Obama's team is making a political calculation and embracing the co-op alternative as "a step away from the government takeover of the health care system" that the GOP has pummeled.

"I don't know if it will do everything people want, but we ought to look at it. I think it's a far cry from the original proposals," he said.

Republicans say a public option would have unfair advantages that would drive private insurers out of business. Critics say co-ops would not be genuine public options for health insurance.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, said it would be difficult to pass any legislation through the Democratic-controlled Congress without the promised public plan.

"We'll have the same number of people uninsured," she said. "If the insurance companies wanted to insure these people now, they'd be insured."

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said the Democrats' option would force individuals from their private plans to a government-run plan, a claim that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office supports.

"There is a way to get folks insured without having the government option," he said.
Obama, writing an opinion piece in Sunday's New York Times, said political maneuvers should be excluded from the debate.

"In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain," he wrote. "But for all the scare tactics out there, what's truly scary—truly risky—is the prospect of doing nothing."

Congress' proposals, however, seemed likely to strike end-of-life counseling sessions. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has called the session "death panels," a label that has drawn rebuke from her fellow Republicans as well as Democrats.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, declined to criticize Palin's comments and said Obama wants to create a government-run panel to advise what types of care would be available to citizens.
"In all honesty, I don't want a bunch of nameless, faceless bureaucrats setting health care for my aged citizens in Utah," Hatch said.

Sebelius said the end-of-life proposal was likely to be dropped from the final bill.
"We wanted to make sure doctors were reimbursed for that very important consultation if family members chose to make it, and instead it's been turned into this scare tactic and probably will be off the table," she said.

Sebelius spoke on CNN's "State of the Union" and ABC's "This Week." Gibbs appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation." Conrad and Shelby appeared on "Fox News Sunday." Johnson and Price spoke with "State of the Union." Hatch was interviewed on "This Week."

Iran: Arrested U.S. Hikers are CIA Agents. So is Rafsanjani, you dopes.

2009-08-03T14:05:00.001-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Kid Rock All Summer Long

2009-08-02T22:11:00.003-04:00

AP sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed...This Obama Regime Is As Sharp as a Bowling Ball.

2009-08-02T21:14:00.002-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The officials outlined the plans - the latest effort to comply with President Barack Obama's order to close the prison camp by Jan. 22, 2010, and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil - on condition of anonymity because the options are under review.

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

Scott Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, called the proposal "totally unprecedented" and said he doubts the plan would work without Congress' involvement because new laws probably would be needed. Otherwise, "we gain nothing - all we do is create a Guantanamo in Kansas or wherever," Silliman said.

Read more of this ingenious plan, at the link.

4,500-Year-Old Skeleton Found on Italian Beach...I thought Jimmy Hoffa was younger then that.

2009-08-02T20:54:00.001-04:00

A well-preserved 4,500-year-old skeleton of a man was found on a beach south of Rome, Italian police told Reuters.

The man is believed to be a warrior killed by an arrow in the chest, Reuters reported.

Six small vases were also found buried near the man.

"We thought it was that of a Roman solider, but then the experts identified it as dating back to the third millennium B.C.," said Raffaele Mancino, an official who oversees Italy's cultural heritage.

The skeleton was discovered during a routine air patrol of areas of archaeological interest.

Top 10 Military Guns...Military.Com Video

2009-08-02T20:19:00.001-04:00

The Creeping Homegrown Threat...by Steve Emerson

2009-08-02T17:37:00.003-04:00

The arrest of seven North Carolinians on conspiracy charges shows, says Steve Emerson, how the U.S. is becoming like Europe, where homegrown terror plots get stopped—or not—seemingly every week.
This week’s arrest of seven North Carolina residents, including Daniel Boyd and his two sons, on charges of supporting terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder abroad, showed how the problem of homegrown Islamic terrorism is far more rampant than the media or the public is aware of. Just look at the major cases in the past year alone:

The convert from Long Island who joined al Qaeda (disclosed this past week) and gave the group information about Long Island trains and New York City’s subways.
The plot to blow up two synagogues and a National Guard plane in upstate New York by prison converts (scheduled to go to trial).
The plot to kill hundreds of soldiers at Fort Dix by assimilated American Muslims living here 25 years (all convicted).
The plot to operate a terrorist training camp in Oregon (pleaded guilty).
The plot to blow up buildings by the Liberty City 7 (all convicted).

The sweeping conviction of Hamas officials for conspiring to support terrorism overseas.
The cases of young Somali teenagers raised in the U.S. going overseas to become suicide bombers.

The Boyd case in North Carolina proves that radical Islamic ideology transcends economic class problems as has been claimed by pointy-headed sociologists. The Boyd family was white, had a middle-class existence, and had the economic opportunities afforded all Americans—just like most of the terrorists cited above—and yet chose to engage in jihad to the point that Daniel Boyd was willing to send his two kids on suicide missions to Israel.

more on Page 2...

It’s All Relative: The Obama/HuffPo Connection Tightens

2009-08-02T14:30:00.002-04:00

Obama's banging Arianna? WOW!

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned American know-how, pulling yourself up from the bootstraps, proving to the world you have the mettle to succeed on your own raw talent? If you’re Paris Hilton or, say, the Huffington Post — none of those good ol’ values amount to a hill of beans! The Huffington Post, the website famous for slapping left-wing bias on mainstream news, recently hired Ethan Axelrod — you may have heard of his dad, David Axelrod: the celebrated image-maker of the Obama campaign. Given the Huffington Post is all snuggles with the Obama Administration, the news might come as no surprise.

Lefty-types are always making room for their own, so long as you have a famous last name or a privileged pedigree. For a bunch that loves to push for “universalizing” and “leveling the playing field,” they sure are elitist! This is the world where Anderson Cooper, scion of Gloria Vanderbilt, is handed the keys to CNN. Al Gore’s daughter Kristin nabs a dream job writing for Matt Groening’s “Futurama” straight out of college. Oh sure, it helped that Poppa Gore agreed to guest star twice (but only if his young daughter could direct). Gore went on to appear as a disembodied head (yes, the show ‘jumped the shark’). Is Huffington Post banking on access to daddy Axelrod’s head, too? ‘Wink, wink,’ welcome aboard Ethan…

While most twenty-somethings are scratching heads struggling to pay student loans, or dulling the pain of graduating smack in the middle of one of the worst economies in a generation, Axelrod’s lad and many more celebuspawn have found a gravy train over at the Huffington Post… “Ethan, let us introduce you to Nicholas Graham (of the Washington Post Grahams), Elyssa Spitzer (you remember her famous dad Eliot) — oh, and here’s Tom Hanks’ daughter Liz!” Sure is cozy.

Let’s be clear: being born to the rich, famous or powerful is great — more power to you! In fact, without nepotism we may never have had Liza Minelli, George Clooney, Drew Barrymore or Hank Williams Jr. But you wonder: does the Axelrod hire make the Huffington Post an adjunct arm of the Obama 2012 re-election campaign? After all, it is worth noting he is to be the Editor of the Huffington Post’s Colorado edition. Heady stuff for a fresh-faced college kid — what qualifies him to be editor anyway? Yearbook experience? A cool Facebook page? Oh yeah, I keep forgetting — his dad runs Obama’s campaigns.

You remember Colorado - the Red State Obama is turning Blue — dumping millions of dollars there for a win in 2008 (well done Poppa Axelrod!). No doubt, Ethan’s role as Editor will establish a liberal media bulkhead right in the heart of Denver. Ethan told the Washington Post, “I’ve been interested in journalism for a while.” Really — who knew there were journalists at Huffington Post?! I know, I know, the kid is green… not to pick on his poor choice of words, but he IS going to be editing for one of the largest outlets for commentary in the nation. So, let’s at least get the job description straight, shall we? I think it reads something like this: Wanted — Editor for Obama’s stealthy online and messaging arm in a 2012 battleground state — relatives who run Obama’s re-election campaign a plus.

As for the untold countless others out there cashing in on moms, dads, aunts and uncles — c’est la vie. Who can blame them in today’s tough times? Like Ethan Axelrod so honestly said of snagging the Huffington Post gig, “I heard through my father that they were expanding, so I applied for it.” Calls to David Axelrod and Arianna Huffington from media organizations curious about motives and favoritism in hiring were not returned.

But an echo could be heard from a distant ivory tower: “Let them eat cake!”
One would have to make the assumption that "cake" isn't the ONLY thing eaten, if you catch my drift.

China bans bad breath in space: report...What About Farts??

2009-08-02T14:24:00.003-04:00

Bad breath is enough to fail the test to enter China's manned space programme, state media said Sunday -- but the final green light for blast-off is given by the hopeful astronaut's wife.

China only wants to send the best of the best into orbit, meaning unfortunate personal smell is sufficient reason to get disqualified right away, the Sina.com website reported.

"Bad body odour will affect the colleagues in the narrow confines of a space shuttle," said Shi Binbin, a doctor with the 454th Air Force Hospital in the east Chinese city of Nanjing.

A runny nose is also a definite obstacle to joining China's space race for much the same reason, according to the report.

The hospital recently completed a rigorous first screening of candidates, who had to satisfy 100 requirements, to eliminate those obviously unfit to serve China in space.

But the battery of tests were only the first of three aimed at selecting China's new breed of astronauts that will pick up from the pioneers chosen in 1997.

Discarded early in the process were those with scars -- as they may burst open in the extreme conditions in space, the report said. And candidates must also show they have no family history of serious illnesses going back three generations.

But the biggest hurdle may yet lie ahead - as any prospective astronaut's wife will have the final say.

If she does not like the idea of her husband going into space, he will not be allowed to enter the programme -- no matter how he has performed up until then, the report added.
China became the third nation to put a man in space when Yang Liwei piloted the one-man Shenzhou-5 space mission in 2003.

Last September, the Shenzhou-7, piloted by three "taikonauts" or astronauts, carried out China's first space walk.

China will launch a space module next year and carry out the nation's first space docking in 2011 as a step towards its goal of building a space station, state media said earlier.

To those NEW to E-blogger....

2009-08-02T14:19:00.001-04:00

....clicking on the TITLE of the post, links directly to the source...Well, except for this one, naturally...GEEZ!

Hugo Chavez Pulls 34 Radio Stations Off the Air

2009-08-02T14:10:00.002-04:00

Say, isn't Hugo a 'Friend of Obama's'? Gosh, the smear attacks on people such as Limbaugh, Palin and Fox News, NOW seem to have a portend of things to come HERE.

Similar to muzzling of the GOP representatives...Hmmm. Good luck, peoples.

Remains of U.S. Pilot Missing 18 Years in Iraq Found

2009-08-02T14:04:00.002-04:00

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has positively identified the remains of Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher, whose disappearance has bedeviled investigators since his jet was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the 1991 war.

Rest in Peace, Michael "Scott" Speicher.

Shuttered factories, shattered lives in US rust belt

2009-08-02T04:41:00.002-04:00

Weeds have not had time to overtake factories shuttered in the wake of recent bankruptcies at General Motors, Chrysler and a host of suppliers, but the signs of shattered lives are spreading as the economically devastated region, dubbed "the rust belt" after its steel industry, fails to absorb the collapse of the auto industry.

Long lines at the unemployment offices. Empty shelves at the food banks. Boarded up businesses. Homes lost to foreclosure, their contents strewn on the street.

Well now, you people must really adore Obama and what he has accomplished for you, right Carl Levin?

Dems Censor GOP Lawmakers on What They Can, Can’t Say on Health Care

2009-08-02T03:38:00.002-04:00

Surely you jest? No, really this is a joke, correct?

Three Soldiers Killed: Is US Losing Intelligence War in Afghanistan?

2009-08-02T03:28:00.002-04:00

What "intelligence"? Remember this is Team Obama, what "intelligence"?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Over-compensating...by Mark Steyn

2009-08-01T23:21:00.001-04:00

What's a columnist to do? It's getting a little old to blame Bush for the horrors of the Bush presidency. So why not blame Bush for the horrors of the Obama presidency? As a sympathetic Jacob Weisberg sees it, the understandable urge to be the unBush has sent the Obama pendulum swinging way off the charts:

Obama, who did not have much global expertise before coming to office, molded his approach around his predecessor's errors. Bush's naive idealism and unilateralism encouraged Obama's realism and multilateralism. Bush's boycott of North Korea, Cuba, and Iran fed Obama's eagerness to engage pragmatically with those tyrannies...

In so doing, Obama now faces an inverted set of hazards: getting overcommitted in Afghanistan, putting too much faith in the United Nations, accommodating dictators instead of standing up to them. Most alarmingly, given all that his predecessor did to discredit them, Obama has failed to stand up for the broader ideas of democracy promotion and humanitarian intervention. Surely if not for Bush, Obama's instinct after the Iranian election would have been to identify with those risking their lives to free their country, not to get back to his attempt at dialogue with Ahmadinejad.

So Bush is to blame for Obama kissing up to the mullahs? Brilliant! Who knew such a sober foreign-policy "realist" surrounded by the brightest minds of his generation could be so easily unhinged?

The question remains, will Obama EVER do anything wrong?

Raul Castro warns US, EU he will defend Cuba socialism

2009-08-01T23:10:00.001-04:00

Cuban President Raul Castro warned the United States and the European Union that the country's socialist political system was non-negotiable, adding he would not "restore capitalism" in Cuba.

Raul, have no fear, neither will Barack.

STARCHILD-Level 42

2009-08-01T14:10:00.000-04:00

Level 42...Something About You

2009-08-01T13:55:00.000-04:00

Recent Rise In International Disputes Traced Back To Cute U.N. Tour Guide

2009-07-31T23:20:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK—A recent spate of diplomatic conflicts around the globe has been linked to the hiring of an attractive tour guide by the United Nations, sources at the international organization's headquarters reported Monday.

Rachel Proxmire, an attractive blonde with a nice smile, has caused an estimated six civil wars.
Distractions caused by the cute, perky guide, 23-year-old Northwestern University graduate Rachel Proxmire, have been blamed for escalating tensions between Turkey and Armenia, Israel and Jordan, and the United States and North Korea, as well as for civil unrest in Honduras, Iran, and China.

"It's embarrassing," Turkish diplomat Hamit Ozan said. "One minute, I'm calmly explaining to the General Assembly our position on the alleged Armenian genocide, and the next, I see Rachel come in with a tour group and I get all flustered trying to think of something to say to get her to notice me. Before I know it, I've inadvertently acknowledged crimes my country has been denying for decades, and it's all over the news."
Added Ozan, "God, she's so pretty."

In March of this year, when Proxmire began her employment with the U.N., officials at the organization immediately noticed a lightened mood in the assembly hall, with many delegates smiling more and humming contentedly to themselves. Within a few weeks, though, the number and intensity of geopolitical disputes began to increase.

"She was…wow," Saudi delegate Ahmad Khouri said. "The first time I saw her, I was in the middle of speaking out on the deplorable treatment of the Palestinian people, and suddenly she caught my eye. I just completely lost my train of thought. She has that creamy, smooth skin—and that laugh! It's like music."

Perhaps most significantly, North Korea's increasingly hostile global relations have been traced to the tour guide, who was wearing a skirt when the Security Council placed sanctions on the country for a nuclear test it carried out in May.

"The North Korean representative was so busy staring at her that he just nodded in agreement when the council condemned his nation's weapons program and voted to freeze its assets," Eritrean diplomat Berihu Alazar said. "Then the guys from South Korea and Japan started razzing him about it, trying to look cool in front of her. He turned bright red all of a sudden and threatened to wipe everybody off the face of the earth."

"Whatever. Like any of those losers have a chance with Rachel," Alazar continued.
Proxmire's influence on international policy has not been entirely negative. In April, when it came to light that she was concerned about global warming, seven separate resolutions to limit carbon emissions were passed by an overwhelming majority. And earlier this month, delegates from all nations strengthened their ties by working jointly on an initiative to surprise the spritely blonde with cupcakes on her birthday.

"I'm completely smitten," said U.S. delegate Tony Gilbertson, smiling as he turned his gaze toward Proxmire. "I'd do anything for her."
Gilbertson later missed a crucial vote on a resolution that would have allowed the U.S. military to pursue Taliban militants into Pakistan, because he was in his office practicing the song he wrote for Rachel on his acoustic guitar.

According to U.N. sources, no diplomat has spoken directly with Proxmire at any length. The closest contact reportedly occurred when the French delegate asked her if he could borrow a pen, then ran away before she could respond.

"This is preposterous," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "The member nations of this organization send their representatives here to make the world a better, safer place. We can no longer endure the consequences of…oh God, there she is! How do I look? How do I look?"
At press time, Proxmire remained oblivious to the worldwide discord she was sowing.
"Everyone here is so nice," she said. "They may be too busy to talk, but they'll go out of their way to hold the door for me, even if they have to run across the room. And if someone on the tour has a question I can't answer, there are usually a few delegates tagging along who are eager to chime in."

"All my friends wish they had this job," Proxmire added. "Even my boyfriend's thinks it's cool, and he's a musician in this really awesome indie rock band."

Sarkozy: Burqas ‘Not Welcome’ in France

2009-06-22T17:16:00.000-04:00

Obama, Siding With the Regime…By Robert Kagan

2009-06-17T19:37:00.002-04:00

more at The Washington Post
The turmoil in Iran since last week’s election has confused the foreign policy debate here in the United States in interesting ways. Supporters of President Obama, who until very recently had railed against the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda” and who insisted on a new “realism,” have suddenly found themselves rooting for freedom and democracy in Iran. And in their desire to attribute all good things to the work of President Obama, they have even suggested that the ferment in Iran is due to Obama’s public appeals to Iranians and Muslims.
If so, this will be one of those great ironies of history. For, in fact, Obama never meant to spark political upheaval in Iran, much less encourage the Iranian people to take to the streets. That they are doing so is not good news for the president but, rather, an unwelcome complication in his strategy of engaging and seeking rapprochement with the Iranian government on nuclear issues.
One of the great innovations in the Obama administration’s approach to Iran, after all, was supposed to be its deliberate embrace of the Tehran rulers’ legitimacy. In his opening diplomatic gambit, his statement to Iran on the Persian new year in March, Obama went out of his way to speak directly to Iran’s rulers, a notable departure from George W. Bush’s habit of speaking to the Iranian people over their leaders’ heads. As former Clinton official Martin Indyk put it at the time, the wording was carefully designed “to demonstrate acceptance of the government of Iran.”

Cross Posted @ http://elcampeador.com/

Sexiest Woman, I’ve seen in a damn long time…Completely clothed.

2009-05-26T21:21:00.003-04:00

Panetta to CIA employees: We told Pelosi the truth

2009-05-15T15:51:00.004-04:00

CIA Director Leon Panetta just sent a stern message to his employees defending the agency against Speaker Nancy Pelosi's criticisms.

His message: We didn't mislead Congress; stay focused on your job.

Panetta's note was sent to reporters via the CIA press office. Here's the key graph:
"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened."

Message from the Director:
Turning Down the Volume ...

There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress. Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened. My advice—indeed, my direction—to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country. We are an Agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is—even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.

By Martin Kady II 02:09 PM

Resign Pelosi.

Scared Somalis running out of food as battles rage...

2009-05-15T10:20:00.002-04:00

Suggestion. Check with your "pirates", they have plenty of money to buy you food. Other then that...can't help you.

The "Title" IS the link to THE article...people.

Word of the Day, for Pelosi: ESTROGEN. Dosage: MAX.

2009-05-15T09:08:00.000-04:00

The Final Solution by Melanie Phillips

2009-05-15T07:23:00.002-04:00

From the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah which, as we all know, unlike Hamas is the ‘moderate’ party which will deliver a two-state solution and peace with Israel:
Therefore, it is high time that we found a final, comprehensive solution...With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made – just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.
... The use of weapons alone will not bring results, and the use of politics without weapons will not bring results. We act on the basis of our extensive experience. We analyze our situation carefully. We know what climate leads to victory and what climate leads to suicide. We talk politics, but our principles are clear. It was our pioneering leader, Yasser Arafat, who persevered with this revolution, when empires collapsed. Our armed struggle has been going on for 43 years, and the political struggle, on all levels, has been going on for 50 years. We harvest U.N. resolutions, and we shame the world so that it doesn't gang up on us, because the world is led by people who have given their brains a vacation – the American administration and the neocons.
The P.L.O. is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota. In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the P.L.O. proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine.
This is what the American, British and EU governments are attempting to force Israel to accept. As the man says, it’s not a rwo-state solution -- it's a final solution.

Aerosmith...Dude Looks Like A Lady

2008-12-24T22:30:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving in Unhappy Times...Roger L. Simon

2008-11-28T09:03:00.000-05:00

With the economy imploding and jihadist bombs exploding, I can’t remember a more depressing Thanksgiving in my increasingly long life. Still we have some things to be happy for. The “British Curry King” made it out alive.
Okay. Bad joke.
But we do really have things to be happy for, even in the darkest times - our families, our friends, our health, that John Kerry didn’t become Secretary of State. [I thought you were going to stay away from the gallows humor.-ed. Sorry, it's in the DNA.]
Okay, okay, there is something truly serious and possibly positive in all this - the bleakest moments can bring us together. When families gather around the Thanksgiving table today, one thing should be clear to the lefties and the righties in everybody’s mishpocheh (sorry for the Yiddish term, but I didn’t want to repeat families, and you know what I mean): The brutal events in Mumbai remind us all that the War on Terror is the real deal - not a police action, as the aforementioned Mr. Kerry once said - that will doubtless be with us for the rest of our lives. And that may include the young children at the table.
So what do we do now? Well, as I recall, we just had an election. Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Obama. You wanted to be President? Well, now you are. Democratic Congress, your turn too.
For the moment, I am happy about this. It has long been my contention that the War on Terror (War on Islamofascism) will only be won if the Democratic Party owns it as well as the Republicans. Now that can happen, for better or worse. So, dear readers of this blog, when you gather around your tables today, love that family member who voted for the other side. You’re going to need him or her and he or she is going to need you. We’re all in this together.
Happy Thanksgiving!

VP Debate Moderator Releasing Pro-Obama Book on Inauguration Day

2008-10-01T01:30:00.001-04:00

This should be unbiased, correct?

Obama’s Scorched Earth Policy...Team Obama seeks to muzzle critics through smears, intimidation, and censorship.

2008-09-30T08:32:00.003-04:00

No words better sum up the fashion by which Barack Obama’s campaign handles criticism than “the politics of personal destruction.” Although popularized by Bill Clinton, the phrase embodies the political left’s timeless approach to securing victory in elections. Destroy your foe and hope that his ideas never become the issue, as ideological debate is not something at which they excel. Yet this year was supposed to be different. The junior senator from Illinois promised an end to divisiveness, partisanship, and “politics as usual.” Recent events illustrate the emptiness of these platitudes. Since August, Team Obama has fought a covert war against their opposition and muzzled them by any means available.

Legal methods appear to be their response of choice. When a commercial from the American Issues Project linked Obama to former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the campaign filed a complaint with the Department of Justice requesting that the 527 be criminally investigated. Simultaneously, they contacted “stations running American Issues Project’s ad in an unsuccessful attempt to compel them to pull the spot.” The same tactic was used in the primaries in regard to Hillary Clinton. Luckily, the Department of Justice does not — as of yet — deem the free expression of speech a felony or a misdemeanor.

More licit chicanery ensued with John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin. Rather than combat her popularity with disputation, the man who lauds himself a catalyst for hope and change “airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators, and opposition researchers into Anchorage, the state capital Juneau, and Mrs. Palin’s hometown of Wasilla to dig into her record and background.” What they will turn up is unknown but largely irrelevant. Quixotic endeavors and profligate spending are integral to Obama’s maneuvers. The same is true of ad hominem argumentation.

Indeed, the bombarding of faultfinders has become a cause célèbre this year.
Attempts to critique Obama are met with vitriol from partisan loyalists and members of the mainstream media. Respecting diversity is anathema to his legionnaires. The arguer, rather than the argument, becomes the focus for their irrational blowback. In their minds, the only acceptable way to describe the Democratic nominee is as the savior of our polity. Deconstructing his associations is forbidden. That Obama knows more radicals than moderates is blatantly obvious, but bringing it up is an act of hate. This practice showcases how rooted in emotion the political left is. Their willful abandonment of logic is perplexing until one contemplates how much their hysterics confuse independents.

The Obama campaign is aware of this eventuality and has created a site called “Fight the Smears.” It sends out emails via a “live action wire,” a tocsin alerting the faithful that someone somewhere has besmirched the name of The One. Like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, their wrath is terrible and their retribution swift. Soon after their leader is challenged or merely inconvenienced, all contentions which contradict him are systematically recast as “smears” or personal assaults.

I personally witnessed this transpire upon the release of Dr. Jerome Corsi’s The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. Operatives sent out a “Push Back Now” component wherein supporters initiated a nefarious attempt to damper the author’s legitimacy and sales. They derided Corsi as a “vile smear-peddler” who published “a book of lies.” The senator’s sycophants were so terrified of its contents that they put together a 41-page pamphlet purporting to refute it. Corsi counterattacked with a rejoinder of his own and elucidated those positions that the campaign conceded.
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Time is Running Out...Victor Davis Hanson

2008-09-30T07:43:00.007-04:00

The Debate

Obama’s constant deference to McCain as in “John is right…”; the worried side-looks over at McCain, who, in contrast, addressed the audience; and the desire for false intimacy (employing “John” instead of “Sen. McCain”) reflected the relative lack of gravitas on Obama’s part—something that transcends education, eloquence, and youthful vigor.

Did the McCain debate victory matter? Yes, it helped, but time is running out and the economy is trumping the campaign battlefield. It matters little that Chris Dodd in disgraceful fashion took $165,000 from the miscreants at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, or that Barney Frank’s vehement opposition to reform of those institutions empowered their near-criminal leveraging.
Instead, the incumbent administration and its party in general get blamed or credited for the current economy. Moreover Wall Street as right-wing free-market sewer is a far better known talking point than the more complex corruption of hyper-liberal legislators legitimizing their own dishonesty and graft through calls to help the poor and minorities get loans and be relieved of their debts.

In the next two debates, McCain has to hit Obama harder on his past and rattle him. Or barring that, the proposed settlement will have to improve markets and stop talks of the Great Depression. The voters want to tilt McCain, but the last 10 days have been framed (in part accurately) as hyper-capitalism, greed, and wildly unregulated free markets hurt Middle America–and that narrative has cost (unfairly) McCain, who wanted to regulate Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac more than did any Senate Democrat, in aggregate about six points in the polls.

The irony is that the basics of the US economy–demography, productivity, innovation, infrastructure, legal structures, and higher education–are, as McCain said, sound. They are in far better shape than anywhere abroad (look at a shrinking Europe, or disgraced industries in China, or Indian fervor and unrest, or Russian criminality.) In that regard, if I had capital (I don’t, so easy to speculate), I would buy houses in good locations, and the stocks of well-run companies since they are at historic lows, will rebound, and their value won’t tank since the US won’t tank.

I think the bail-out will end up making rather than losing money, and by 2009 the economy will be back to near normal. Indicators as diverse as GDP, inflation, unemployment, and deficits as a percentage of GDP are not as disturbing as in our recent past.

The Obama Two Step

The truth is that we have an election between a moderate Republican whose centrist positions worry conservatives, who is pitted against a fringe-hyper-liberal candidate who must somehow assure the voters he is merely liberal. Never in recent history, have Republicans nominated one so moderate, never Democrats one so hard left. Yet we are not getting from a proud and unapologetic Obama “My left-wing views have at last proven prescient and arrived, and McCain’s namby-pamby moderation is not what these crisis times call for.”

Instead, it is dissumaltion all the time, as Obama (for now) essentially has refuted most of his prior positions on the major issues. Even his tax-and-spend plans are now on hold, pending the Wall Street uncertainty. We know nothing really of his background between Columbia and Harvard Law School. Few can figure out exactly what he and Ayers were trying to do with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge other than to give someone else’s millions to further the hard-left agendas of a number of cronies whose efforts did not result in any marginal improvement in the Chicago schools.

In other words, the most liberal presidential candidate in our memory is suddenly posing as a moderate centrist not much different from McCain (e.g., “I agree with John…” ad nauseam). And McCain thus far has not been able to scratch the thin veneer. Had Palin once worked in community organizing with a Timothy McVeigh, or had McCain been the member of a white supremacist church for 20 years, or had McCain been judged the most conservative member of the Senate, the McCain-Palin ticket would have long ago imploded.
How did Obama so successfully metamorphosize?

The Strategy of Preemption

Note what’s behind the recent efforts of St. Obama to threaten to go to the courts after the NRA ads, to swarm Milt Rosenberg’s radio station in Chicago to badger guest Stanley Kurtz, or to unleash Missouri law-enforcement on McCain’s campaign ads.
Partly this hardball is a sort of determination not to play Democratic softie again, since a liberal myth has arisen that Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, et al. lost elections only because of unfair hit ads rather than their own hard-left agendas. In that regard, Obama has prepped the battlefield well.
First, by playing the race card, all criticism can be couched in advance as racist in origin, and much of it has.

Second, by playing the no-more-swift-boat card, all campaign ads (compare the Limbaugh smears, or the third-party [cf. the role of Howard Dean’s brother] attacks on McCain’s health) are always to be seen as retaliatory and contextualized as defensive.

Third, Obama wants to “get in their face” and show that he’s “tough” and not another wilted-flower Dukakis. So he preens that he will bring a gun to a knife fight, and is going to “go after” John McCain. Because we are so prepped that this is not Obama’s natural inclination, we are to show forbearance that he is “forced” to go negative.

Fourth, we are seeing a traditional ‘noble ends, justify crude means’ campaign of the left, in which the annointed often excuse transitory street tactics for the sake of the greater good. Threatening to sue, or to intimidate guests, or to “get in their faces” are legitimate tactics because we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to obtain the “change we are waiting for,” in a “vero possumus” messianic figure who will stop the seas from rising, and the planet from heating—if we just accept his divinity.

In such a context, worry about the past of Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, or Jeremiah Wright, or concern about flops on campaign finance, town hall debating, FISA, NAFTA, guns, abortion, capital punishment, drilling, Iran, the surge, or Jerusalem, or fear of a high-tax more entitlements agenda, consistent with Obama’s most liberal Senate voting record, and lavish distribution of grant funds when working as a Chicago organizer and Ayers sidekick on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge—yes, all that legitimate worry must instead be seen as racist, or Rovian, or more of Bush/Cheney polarization.

Race, race again everywhere

The most brilliant prepping has been an anticipatory demonization of the white working class in an effort through shame, fear, or pity to sway them to vote Obama. The narrative advanced is that if McCain wins, the real reason is because working-class Democrats—once they collectively get into the privacy of the voting booth—sighed and voted against Obama because he is of half-African ancestry, despite telling pollsters they would not.

In the last two weeks I think I have read at least 20 op-eds with one of the following three premises: (1) warning: Many Americans are racists, and the election will thus hinge on race, so you have one last chance to get it right; (2) shame: The world is watching, and will either like or dislike us, depending on our support for Obama; (3) fear: If Obama loses, expect furor or even near riots.

Enough already

So will the white working class take into consideration race? I don’t think so if one defines race as skin color, or larger cultural issues of black versus white. After all, Americans have never voiced an iota of racism about eight years of African-American Secretaries of State, who were the most visible representations of US foreign policy.

Most conservative Democrats’ worries about Obama have nothing to do with race per se, but center solely around five other issues:

(1) his judgment and the degree to which he felt comfortable with an array of disreputable figures, whether Chicago racketeers like Tony Rezko, radicals like Ayers, or racists like Pfleger and Wright;

(2) perceived elitism that transcends arugula riffs, such as his Pennsylvania clingers speech; his oceans rise/planet cools egomania; ‘we are the change . . .’ hubris; his silly new presidential seal; the Berlin second coming and Greek temple backdrops; Michelle’s rants about being suddenly proud of the US; and the worship from the hip and smug elite like a Barbara Streisand, Woody Allen, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, etc. The net result of this is a certain “I can save you all from your natural Neanderthal tendencies of voting for those who really don’t know how to help you like I do.”

(3) his ultra-liberal Senate voting record, especially on matters of defense, abortion on demand, education, and taxes, and subsequent flops and flips to disguise this record; most voters don’t want higher taxes, don’t think government has all the answers to our current problems, are tired of identity politics, and think the world abroad and the UN are mostly unstable if not scary;

(4) his flippant, instinctual riffs that reveal occasional ignorance—confusion over how many states, the location of Kentucky, the liberation of Auschwitz, tire pressure over oil drilling, etc;

(5) the degree to which his supporters have resorted to thuggery: photo-shopping John McCain’s Atlantic Magazine picture; hacking into Palin’s email; swarming talk radio stations when guests question Obama’s integrity; media seen in the tank while posing as objective journalists; trafficking in rumors about her Down syndrome pregnancy; daily Hollywood moronic outbursts; threatened law-suits, etc.

Don’t Tread on Them

The white working class is tiring of the constant sermons on race, either chauvinism or veiled threats or overt insults. Obama’s supporters really need to cool it, and stop suggesting that at each dip in his polls, Americans are proving less than noble people. The only thing that will really lose them the working-class vote is the gun-to-the-head, you’d better vote this way or else attitude.

I grew up among the Democratic working classes, and I can vouch for one eternal truth about them: anyone who lectures them about what they “must” do—or else—will simply achieve the opposite result, every time. Time might be better spent making the very difficult argument that 60% of the white vote going for McCain, not 95% of the African-American vote going for Obama, is in some way proof of America’s unhealthy racial chauvinism.

Obama, after all, at some point in his career made the political decision not to become a public figure in the manner of a Colin Powell. From the beginning he should have said something to the effect that African-Americans have always voted for white candidates that they agreed with, and whites in turn will do the same when the opportunity arises to vote for African-Americans—and then left it at that.

Instead, from the very beginning of his political career, he chose to talk about “transcending race” to gullible liberals while seeking black nationalist credentials to solidify his Chicago base. As I have worried earlier—Obama, I think, has set back racial relations a number of years by caricaturing the white working classes, legitimizing nuts like Wright and Pfleger, warning that votes against him arise from racial fears, and talking loosely about “reparations,” racial-identity charter schools, and the need for “oppression studies”.

A Condoleeza Rice made a number of statements about race, but none of them were polarizing or suggested racial identification was central rather than incidental to her character. We will look back at Obama as a racial polarizer of the first order, despite the utopian rhetoric of racial transcendence and the daily op-eds from his supporters accusing America of being racially intolerant by passing on the Obama Sermon on the Mount.

For Sale: Used Spy Camera With Top Secret Terror Records

2008-09-30T06:58:00.002-04:00

LONDON — A second-hand camera sold on eBay by a top MI6 agent held secret records used in the fight against Al Qaeda terrorists. Names, snaps, fingerprints and suspects’ academic records were found in the memory of the digital device.

Alongside them were photos of rocket launchers and missiles which spooks believe Iran is supplying to Usama Bin Laden’s henchmen in Iraq.

And a hand-drawn graphic revealed links between active Al Qaeda cells — with terrorists’ names and occupations.

Meanwhile a document marked "top secret" detailed the encrypted computer system used by real-life James Bonds working away from MI6’s London HQ.

Among those named in the material was 46-year-old Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who was captured by the CIA in 2007.

The fanatical Iraqi Kurd, one of Al Qaeda’s highest-ranking lieutenants, is being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay.

The Nikon Coolpix camera was snapped up for just $31 on the auction website by an innocent 28-year-old deliveryman who lives with his mum.

He discovered the secret material as he downloaded pictures from a U.S. vacation at his home in Hemel Hempstead, Herts.

Not only do they divulge secrets about operations, operating systems and previously unheard-of MI6 departments, but they could put lives at risk."

Special Branch were last night trying to trace the bungling M16 officer, who lives in the Home Counties. He faces the sack.

A Hertfordshire Police spokesman said: “We can confirm we seized a camera after a member of the public reported it. Intelligence officers are investigating.”

Top brass at MI6 and MI5 were rocked by the incident — the latest in a string of security lapses.

A government employee who left sensitive documents on a train in June is expected to be charged under the Official Secrets Act. The Cabinet Office official was suspended and interviewed by police after the papers, relating to Al Qaeda and the Iraq war, were handed to the BBC.

They were left in an envelope on the train bound for Surrey from London.

Click to read the exclusive report at The Sun

An ACORN Falls from the Tree..A congressional outrage. Meet Mr. Blackwell…

2008-09-30T00:49:00.003-04:00

Cross posted from El Campeador

Obama's Friends

2008-09-29T22:30:00.002-04:00

DiscoverTheNetworks.org provides a comprehensive look into “Barack’s World”: his Radical and Socialist Influences; Political Allies and Advisors; Religious Affiliations; Organizational Affiliations; Academic Affiliations; Foundations; Money Scandals; Family.

A damn fantastic post by

Sooshi Soo

Taking a gun, to a knife fight, she did...Sarah Palin

2008-09-04T11:02:00.004-04:00

IEA eases fears of crude supply disruptions

2008-08-29T10:25:00.003-04:00

The bigger of the"fears" are known as Democrats. Headed by an airhead named Pelosi, who says NO to drilling and exploration of known fields in and around the U.S. with the tired old "it will take 10 to 20 years".

"Save the planet" is another bullshit response. Nuclear power is a no-no, why? I have no damn idea, especially since this planet gets bombarded with radiation, every single day the sun shines.

Correct me if I err, but melanoma has as a buliding base for its spread, THE SUN not nuclear power plants.

Bob Herbert on Morning Joe Part 1

2008-08-05T21:00:00.002-04:00

Obama Shill

Former Presidential Candidate Urges Crowd to Stalk Federal Prosecutor

2008-08-05T20:14:00.002-04:00

Former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel was caught on tape last week telling a crowd in Washington, D.C., that they should harass a federal prosecutor who helped bring criminal contempt charges against a Palestinian activist.

In the tape, Gravel can be heard telling people to pressure Gordon Kromberg, an assistant U.S. attorney in the eastern district of Virginia, to drop the charges against Sami Al-Arian.

“Find out where he lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is, picket him all the time,” Gravel said, in an audio tape obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and provided to FOX News.

“Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the time.”

Al-Arian is a former Florida professor who in 2006 pleaded guilty to providing goods and services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Prosecutors had tried him on more serious charges, but that ended in a hung jury, so Al-Arian took a plea.

He later was charged with contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Virginia.

Gravel told FOX News that he doesn’t want people to break the law and that he personally wouldn’t do the things he’s recommended — but that it could be an effective way to change the behavior of U.S. officials.

“How do you deal with this kind of an injustice? I wouldn’t protest. I don’t believe in protesting. I think it demonstrates the failure of representative government. My answer to that problem is, I want to empower you as a lawmaker. … Don’t rely on your elected officials,” the former senator said.

Some terror analysts don’t buy that explanation.

“The question is whether he crossed the line in saying ‘find out where his kids go to school,’” said counter-terrorism expert Steve Emerson. “That to my mind and to government officials including those in the FBI crosses the line into a direct veiled threat.”

He said the evidence at the Al-Arian trial “overwhelming showed and incontrovertibly demonstrated that he was head of the Islamic Jihad network in the United States.”

Kromberg’s boss, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, wouldn’t comment on Gravel’s statement, but he lauded Kromberg’s record in a statement.

“Gordon Kromberg is a dedicated, talented and scrupulously fair prosecutor. Further, when we decide to prosecute an individual, that decision is based strictly on the facts and the law, and in the pursuit of justice, period,” he said.

Al-Arian is still sitting in a Virginia jail. He’s also been ordered deported, but the United States still is searching for a country that will take him.

Yep...To borrow from Shakespeare...“First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” [Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II, IV, ii]

We should say that about, Democrats.

Obama Heckled Over Pledge of Allegiance at Ohio Town Hall Meeting

2008-08-05T20:05:00.002-04:00

Breitbart Video

Obama reverses...Political expediency? Nah, he always changes postions

2008-08-04T22:56:00.003-04:00

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Barack Obama put forward a broad energy plan Monday designed to end U.S. reliance on imported oil within 10 years and shore up his standing amid a tightening White House race and high anxiety over gas prices.

Obama’s proposal, though, includes two significant reversals of past positions: He had steadfastly fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and had been against tapping the nation’s emergency oil stockpile to relieve pump prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon.

Ahhh yes, political expediency, this definition;
Adherence to self-serving means: an ambitious politician, guided by expediency rather than principle, at its finest.

Running out of fuel for the Dumbo Jet, Obama?

Breitbart

Report: Al Qaeda No. 2 Zawahiri Injured, Possibly Killed

2008-08-01T22:09:00.003-04:00

Al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be injured or even dead, according to a CBS News report based on an intercepted letter that urgently requests a doctor to treat Zawahiri.

CBS News says it obtained a copy of the letter from sources in Pakistan, where Zawahiri, second only to Usama bin Laden, is thought to be hiding.

The letter, reportedly written by a local Taliban leader and dated Tuesday, says Zawahiri is in "severe pain" and his "injuries are infected," according to the report.

A missile strike Monday in Pakistan’s tribal areas reportedly killed Al Qaeda operative Abu Khabab al-Masri, considered a "Top Ten" target as the terrorist organization’s top expert on chemical and biological weapons.

That strike also killed five others, though it isn’t clear whether Zawahiri was at the scene or in the area.

What a God damn shame, huh? Roast in hell you filthy bastard.

How to kill yourself like a man.

2008-08-01T22:01:00.001-04:00

I was applying for a job to become a suicide prevention counselor the other day, when the guy interviewing me started bitching about how boring his job had become. The only people he ever hears from anymore are 14 year old girls who try to overdose on Tylenol. YAWN. How about killing yourself with some style? How about killing yourself like a man? Here are some manly ways to shove off this mortal coil, along with ratings for each category from 1 to 10:

Read it all here

Study identifies DNA changes in major depression, suicide

2008-07-30T22:20:00.001-04:00

Autopsies usually point to a cause of death, but now a study of brain tissue collected during these procedures may explain an underlying cause of major depression and suicide, according to University of Western Ontario researcher.

Led by Michael O. Poulter, a professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and scientist at Robarts Research Institute, the international research group also includes Hymie Anisman of the Neuroscience Research Institute at Carleton University.

This international study is the first to show that proteins that modify DNA directly are more highly expressed in the brains of people who commit suicide. These proteins are involved in chemically modifying DNA in a process called epigenomic regulation. The paper is published in Biological Psychiatry.

The researchers compared the brains of people who committed suicide with those of a control group who died suddenly, from heart attacks and other causes.

They found that the genome in depressed people who had committed suicide was chemically modified by a process that is normally involved in regulating the essential characteristics of all cells in the body.

“We have about 40,000 genes in every cell and the main reason a brain cell is a brain cell is because only a small fraction of the genes are turned on,” says Poulter. “The remaining genes that are not expressed are shut down by an epigenetic process called DNA methylation.”

The rate of methylation in the suicide brains was found to be much greater than that of the control group. Importantly, one of the genes they studied was shown to be heavily chemically modified and its expression was reduced. This particular gene plays a major role in regulating brain activity.

“Interestingly enough, adds Poulter, the nature of this chemical modification is long term and hard to reverse, and this fits with depression.

“The whole idea that the genome is so malleable in the brain is surprising. Finding that epigenetic mechanisms continue to influence gene expression is pretty unusual,” says Poulter. "These observations open an entirely new avenue of research and potential therapeutic interventions."

CAPTURING THE NANOSECOND. Courtesy, a friend

2008-07-30T20:52:00.007-04:00

ONE FINGER SALUTE! America, HELL, YA! Courtesy, a friend

2008-07-28T23:56:00.005-04:00

Leading the fight is Gunnery Sgt Michael Burghardt, known as 'Iron Mike' or just 'Gunny'. He is on his third tour in Iraq. He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour.

Then, on September 19, he got blown up. He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US soldiers. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. 'You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-vision,' he explains. So, protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term 'the longest walk', stepping gingerly into a 5 foot deep and 8foot wide crater.

The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from it. He cut the wire and used his 7 inch knife to probe the ground. 'I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs,' he says. 'That's when I knew I was screwed.'

Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant's feet. 'A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded,' he recalls. 'As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me.' I was just ticked off they were able to do it. Then I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down.'

His colleagues cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could believe his legs were still there. 'My dad's a Vietnam vet who's paralyzed from the waist down,' says Sgt Burghardt. 'I was lying there thinking I didn't want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.' 'As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. 'I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher.' He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. 'I flipped them one. It was like, 'OK, I lost that round but I'll be back next week'.'

Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit.

Sgt Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home. But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of killing Americans.

Barack Obama: we will lead, not alienate the world

2008-07-15T23:50:00.002-04:00

Barack Obama declared yesterday that he would shift “the central front in the War on Terror” from Iraq to Afghanistan, promising a “new era of international co-operation” in which America would once more lead — rather than alienate — the rest of the world.

THEN THIS

Mr Obama said yesterday that he wanted to secure the border, adding: “We need more troops, more helicopters, more satellites, more Predator drones.” He reiterated that the US forces should be ready to cross into Pakistan without permission “to take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights”.

not alienate the world

You merge those two quotes, I can't

Happy Independence Day

2008-07-04T09:14:00.001-04:00

Watermelon has effect similar to Viagra

2008-07-04T07:18:00.002-04:00

A slice of cool, fresh watermelon has effects similar to the impotence drug Viagra, researchers say.

Watermelons contain an ingredient called citrulline that can trigger production of a compound that helps relax the body's blood vessels, similar to what happens when a man takes Viagra, said scientists in Texas, one of the United States' top producers of the seedless variety.

Found in the flesh and rind of watermelons, citrulline reacts with the body's enzymes when consumed in large quantities and is changed into arginine, an amino acid that benefits the heart and the circulatory and immune systems.

"Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it," said Bhimu Patil, a researcher and director of Texas A&M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Centre. "Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra, but it's a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side effects."

Todd Wehner, who studies watermelon breeding at North Carolina State University, said anyone taking Viagra shouldn't expect the same result from watermelon.

"It sounds like it would be an effect that would be interesting but not a substitute for any medical treatment," Wehner said.

Americans agree on answer to gas prices: Drill now

2008-06-18T03:51:00.002-04:00

Two-wife Muslim may have to quit Denmark

2008-06-16T20:44:00.005-04:00

Aren't they lovely?

Sunken British Warship From American Revolution Found in Lake Ontario

2008-06-14T21:36:00.007-04:00

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the "Holy Grail" shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water, explorers announced Friday.

Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

The 80-foot sloop of war is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes, Scoville and Kennard said.

"To have a Revolutionary War vessel that's practically intact is unbelievable. It's an archaeological miracle," said Canadian author Arthur Britton Smith, who chronicled the history of the HMS Ontario in a 1997 book, "The Legend of the Lake."

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Archaeology Center.

The finders of the wreck said they regard it as a war grave and have no plans to raise it or remove any of its artifacts. They said the ship is still considered the property of the British Admiralty.

The sloop was discovered resting partially on its side, with two masts extending more than 70 feet above the lake bottom.

"Usually when ships go down in big storms, they get beat up quite a bit. They don't sink nice and square. This went down in a huge storm, and it still managed to stay intact," Scoville said. "There are even two windows that aren't broken. Just going down, the pressure difference, can break the windows. It's a beautiful ship."

Smith, who was shown underwater video of the find, said: "If it wasn't for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week."

The dark, cold fresh water acts as a perfect preservative, Smith said. At that depth, there is no light and no oxygen to hasten decomposition, and little marine life to feed on the wood.

The Ontario went down on Oct. 31, 1780, with a garrison of 60 British soldiers, a crew of about 40, mostly Canadians, and possibly about 30 American war prisoners.

The warship had been launched only five months earlier and was used to ferry troops and supplies along upstate New York's frontier. Although it was the biggest British ship on the Great Lakes at the time, it never saw battle, Smith said.

After the ship disappeared, the British conducted a sweeping search but tried to keep the sinking secret from Gen. George Washington's troops because of the blow to the British defenses.

Hatchway gratings, the binnacle, compasses and several hats and blankets drifted ashore the next day. A few days later the ship's sails were found adrift in the lake. In 1781, six bodies from the Ontario were found near Wilson, N.Y. For the next two centuries, there were no other traces of the ship.

Explorers have been searching for the Ontario for decades, and there have been numerous false finds over the years, said Eric Bloomquist, interpretative programs manager at Old Fort Niagara.

Kennard, an electrical engineer who has been diving for nearly 40 years and has found more than 200 wrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, began searching for the Ontario 35 years ago but quit after several frustrating and fruitless years.

Six years ago, he teamed up with Scoville, a diver who developed the remote-controlled submersible with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Since then, the pair have found seven ships in the lake.

Over the years, Kennard obtained documents from British and Canadian archives on the Ontario, including the ship's design plans. Even then, it took the pair three years of searching more than 200 square miles before they found the vessel earlier this month.

After locating the wreck with the sonar, the explorers used the submersible to confirm their find, documenting their discovery with more than 80 minutes of underwater video.

"Certainly it is one of the earliest discovered shipwrecks, if not the earliest," said Carrie Sowden, archaeological director of the Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Center of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermillion, Ohio. "And if it's in the condition they say, it's quite significant."

A rare feature that helped identify the ship: the two crow's nests on each mast. Another was the decoratively carved scroll bow stem. The explorers also found two cannons, two anchors and the ship's bell.

Fox News

I think this pretty much hits the nail on the head, don't you??? ;-)...Courtesy a friend..

2008-06-10T08:28:00.003-04:00

Subject: California

So as not to be outdone by all the redneck, hillbilly, and Texan jokes, you know you're from California if:

1. Your coworker has 8 body piercings and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can't afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Your child's 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.

5. You can't remember . . is pot illegal?

6. You've been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can't remember . . . is pot illegal?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can't remember . . .is pot illegal?

14. It's barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news station: 'STORM WATCH.'

15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

17. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists.

19. The Terminator is your governor.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver's license. If you're here illegally, they want to give you one.

Gazprom predicts oil will reach $250

2008-06-10T08:14:00.003-04:00

Gazprom, Russia’s gas monopoly, on Tuesday predicted oil prices would reach $250 a barrel in 2009.

The prediction came as the developed world’s energy watchdog warned that record high oil prices were needed to choke off demand in order to balance the oil market

The statement is the International Energy Agency’s most candid admission that oil supply is struggling to catch up with relentless Asian demand for oil and last week’s jump. The price of oil rose $16.24 in less than 36 hours to a record $139.12 a barrel by Friday.

Speaking at a strategy presentation in Deauville, Alexey Miller, Gazprom chief executive, said: “Today we witness a very great change for hydrocarbons, the level is very high and we think it [the price of oil] will reach $250 a barrel.”

A company spokesman specified that Gazprom believed that level would be hit in 2009.

The prediction is substantially higher than those being made by analysts, who see oil prices in 2009 ranging between $100 and $200 a barrel.

Financial Times

I have a slightly different view as to who, what, where how and why: high oil prices were needed to choke off demand in order to balance the oil market.

The "choke off" should be applied to oil cartels, oil manipulators, oil companies and all that are laughing their asses off...Spending OUR monies, while enjoying their paid girlfriends at the beach resorts, while gulping down their margaritas.

AP Clueless About Economic News

2008-06-10T07:49:00.002-04:00

Associated Press reporters insist that American jobs are "disappearing into thin air." What's really disappearing is the AP's credibility in analyzing economic data.

Last week’s economic news started off on a pretty good note.

Many key reports — Monday’s Manufacturing Index from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM); Tuesday’s Orders Report from the government; and Wednesday’s Non-Manufacturing Index from ISM, to name just three — beat expectations. But Friday’s Employment Situation Report left us right where we had started.

The Associated Press’s economic reporting last week was another matter.

The wire service’s coverage contained clear errors of fact and obvious misunderstandings of the underlying data — enough of them to make it reasonable to wonder if the business reporters working at the self-described “Essential Global News Network” are up to their assigned tasks.

Pajamas Media

Dead Voters Still Showing Up on Election Records, Puzzling Officials

2008-06-10T06:36:00.001-04:00

Jane Drury voted last year in an election in Stonington, Conn. The only problem is, she died eight years ago.

Her daughter, Jane Gumpel, thought someone must have goofed.

“I was surprised because this is not possible,” she said.

But it did happen. The town clerk’s record clearly shows Drury’s vote, marked by a horizontal line poll workers put next to her name. And it turns out Drury isn’t the only voter who apparently cast a ballot from the grave.

The issue of dead voters showing up on ballot records continues to be a problem for election administrators across the country.

Journalism professor Marcel Dufresne of the University of Connecticut led a class investigation into dead voters and said his group of 11 students discovered 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls. They said more than 300 of them appeared somehow to have cast ballots after they died.

“We have one person who appeared to have voted 17 times since he died,” Dufresne told FOX News.

Dufresne said there is no evidence of any election fraud, but the number of dead voters “shows the system is vulnerable, and it shows that people who are clever and have a little cooperation in the town level, you could use this and get people to vote for people who died.”

Yet Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz is adamant that “actually no dead people voted.”

“I want to be very clear about that,” she said, explaining that while votes were cast and counted in the names of the dead, “there was no voter fraud at all in the state of Connecticut.”

“Did we have clerical errors where the wrong voter was crossed off? Yes,” she said.

But ballots cast in the names of the dead were counted in her state and in others. In the 2004 governor’s race in Washington state, officials confirmed 19 votes were cast by people who were dead. Republican Dino Rossi lost that election by only 133 votes.

“It was the closest governor’s race in U.S. history. After the fact we found a number of dead people voted. I don’t know how they voted — you have to talk to Shirley MacLaine about that,” Rossi said.

While in Connecticut, officials say poll workers confused the names of dead people with real voters, some of the dead votes were absentee ballots apparently filled out illegally by relatives.

Removing the names of the deceased from voter rolls could solve the problem of post-mortem voting, but local election officials like registrar Andrea Eppling say that’s not as easy as it might appear.

“The reason why is that if you go into a nursing home in the next town and you die there — we’re not going to find out.” Eppling said that such information isn’t shared by towns and among the states — something Connecticut’s top election official Secretary Bysiewicz says is changing.

“It’s critical that we have clean and accurate voting lists especially as we go into this very high turnout in November,” Bysiewicz said.

Connecticut removed 5,000 of the deceased from its voter rolls in the last two months.
And since the last presidential election, more than 2 million dead people have been identified, and dropped, from the nation’s voting rolls.

Presumably, Jane Drury won’t be voting again, even as her daughter remains stumped that a ballot was cast in her mother’s name in the first place.

“I couldn’t imagine because I didn’t think she voted — it was an impossible situation to me,” she said.

Officials say when it comes to dead voters, most of the problems are simply mistakes, not political corruption. But they admit that as long as the deceased remain registered to vote, the potential for fraud is alive and well.

Yeah Right...Uh Huh

Fox News

Sen. Byrd to Stay Hospitalized

2008-06-03T18:24:00.003-04:00

Should have happened long time ago. Thanks for all the PORK you gave West "by God" Virginia...it didn't Bobbie.

How do ya' like wearin' them white sheets again, Bobbie?

A few 'toons...courtesy, a friend

2008-06-02T22:58:00.004-04:00

For the Golfers among us

2008-06-02T16:18:00.001-04:00

The Parrot

It's barely dawn and the telephone rings:

'Hello, Senor Rod? This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house.'

'Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?'

'Um, I am just calling to advise you, Senor Rod, that your parrot, he is dead'

'My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?'

'Si, Senor, that's the one.'

'Damn! That's a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?'

'From eating the rotten meat, Senor Rod.'

'Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?'

'Nobody, Senor. He ate the meat of the dead horse.'

'Dead horse? What dead horse?'

'The thoroughbred, Senor Rod.'

'My prize thoroughbred is dead?'

'Yes Senor Rod, he died from all that work pulling the water cart.'

'Are you insane?? What water cart?'

'The one we used to put out the fire, Senor.'

'Good Lord!! What fire are you talking about, man?'

'The one at your house, Senor! A candle fell and the curtains caught onfire.'

'What the hell?? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a candle?'

'Yes, Senor Rod.'

'But there's electricity at the house! What was the candle for?'

'For the funeral, Senor Rod.'

'WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL?'

'Your wife's, Senor Rod', she showed up very late one night and I thought she was a thief, so I hit her with your new Taylor Made Super Quad 460 golf club.'

SILENCE . . . . . . . . . . .

LONG SILENCE . . . . . . . . . .

'Ernesto, if you broke that driver, you're in deep shit!'

Should've Walked Before They Made Him Run

2008-06-01T23:46:00.001-04:00

Obama finally resigns from Trinity Church.

Check Karl at Team Protein.

Here is Trinity as described in Obama's race speech:

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

I continue to doubt his church is (now, was) all that typical.

So, when does the racial reconciliation begin - Obama promises to sprinkle his pixie dust and bring this nation together while taking his kids to a church where they are taught to hate whitey. And the two angriest, most unreconciled people we have met in this campaign are Obama's wife and minister. Maybe he could spare some pixie dust for them.

Annulment of Muslim Marriage Over False Virginity Claim Sparks Outrage in France

2008-05-31T17:55:00.002-04:00

The annulment of a young Muslim couple’s marriage because the bride was not a virgin has caused anger in France, prompting President Sarkozy’s party to call for a change in the law.

The decision by a court in Lille was condemned by the government, media, feminists and civil rights organizations after it was reported in a legal journal on Thursday.

The case, which had previously gone unreported, involved an engineer in his 30s, named only as "Mr. X," who married "Ms. Y," a student nurse in her 20s, in 2006.

The wedding night party was still under way at the family’s home in Roubaix when the groom came down from the bedroom complaining that his bride was not a virgin. He could not display the blood-stained sheet that is traditionally exhibited as proof of the bride’s “purity.”

The husband went to court the following morning and was granted an annulment on the grounds that his bride had deceived him on “one of the essential elements” of the marriage. The woman then acknowledged that she had led her groom to believe that she was a virgin when she had already had sexual intercourse. She did not oppose the annulment.

Critics ran out of superlatives to condemn what they depicted as a dangerous aberration. Valérie Létard, Minister for Women’s Rights, said that she was “shocked to see that today in France the civil law can be used to diminish the status of women”.

Requests for annulments have risen sharply to nearly 2,000 a year in France, but experts could recall no case involving non-virginity.

Fox News

Click here for the full story from the Times of London.

Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Republican. Possible McCain V.P. Rhodes Scholar

2008-05-29T07:49:00.006-04:00

Fox News

Palestinians pin biz hopes on high-tech industry

2008-05-28T22:44:00.003-04:00

Well, I'll be damned...It seems as though they CAN get along.

Bits:

One challenge Palestinians face is an apparent reluctance by firms in Israel to form business partnerships with them, but Israeli software entrepreneur Zvi Schreiber is trying to break that mold.

Two years ago, he found Palestinian partners and formed a new company, G.ho.st (Global hosted operating system), which is developing an expanded version of a Web-based program that makes the desktop system accessible from nearly any location.

From the Palestinian prime minister to an Israeli venture capitalist, there's agreement on the growth potential of Palestinian high-tech.

"I definitely see an opportunity there," said an Israeli, Yadin Kaufmann, who has been investing in Israeli startups for the past 20 years and is now in discussions with potential Palestinian partners.

Breitbart/AP

Did you know (I didn't, just found out) that if you look up the word "prick" in the dictionary, this is the picture next to it...

2008-05-28T21:09:00.004-04:00

James Webb, (D) U.S. Senator Virginia.

Bits:

Webb: Affirmative Action Behind Obama WoesABC News

"When I hear people say this is racism, it gets my back up a little bit because that's my cultural group," said Webb. "This isn't Selma, 1965."

Sayafiyah Celebrates Change. Yep, us nasty bastard American's and our Allies

2008-05-28T16:26:00.006-04:00

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — After nearly three months of reconstruction, Sayafiyah residents celebrated the simultaneous openings of the Sayafiyah Governance Center, Veterinary Clinic and Health Clinic on May 20.

“This is their day,” said Capt. Joe Johnson, commander of Company C, 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, currently attached to 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division.

All three of the projects were a result of teamwork between Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), and the civilian population.

“They are great people down here who want to help themselves,” said Sgt. Jeremy Johnson, a medic with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1-187th Inf. Regt. “They put a lot of hard work into this,” he said, pointing to the restored health center. “Before, it was just rubble.”

Like the buildings, the community itself had been in dire straits. Once a safe haven for al-Qaida in Iraq, the community was held in bondage out of fear, said Lt. Col. R.J. Lillibridge, 1-187th Inf. Regt. commander.

The tide turned for the better with the arrival of the 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division in January.

With the support of this unit, the beginnings of a Sons of Iraq program took shape. However, due to the end of their deployment, the 5-7th Cav. Regt. could not pursue any long-term reconstruction efforts in the area before handing responsibility over to the 1-187th Inf. Regt.

When the 1-187th Inf. Regt. first arrived, Capt. Johnson said his unit began to strengthen the recently-risen SoI program and assess the area’s needs. Those needs, in addition to the health and vet clinic, included restoring two water pump stations, two water treatment plants and two schools, he said.

But most importantly was the need to establish a government structure in the area.

“We want to see Iraqi people taking care of Iraqis, and the Iraqi government facilitating the needs of their representatives,” said Capt. Johnson, of Baton Rouge, La.

Achieving this required the creation of a city council and linking them with higher government organizations, he said.

Currently, Sayafiyah has an 11-member city council, with the council head reporting to the Rasheed Nahia council. From there, concerns are sent to the Mahmudiyah Qada and finally to the central government, Lillibridge said.

“It’s little government reaching up to big government,” said Lillibridge, a native of Smithfield, R.I. “It is a positive sign. Before we solved all their problems, now we’re letting them solve their own.”

The work has begun to pay off, and the yield is shown by recent Government of Iraq involvement. The GoI rural service committee chairman, Mr. Mashadanni, has visited the area, as well as members of the Ministry of Education, Lillibridge said.

Besides instilling confidence in the people about their government, these commitments pave the way for considerable relief to American taxpayer involvement. Originally, projects such as the building of the health clinic, vet clinic and governance center were funded by Commander’s Emergency Relief Program funds, Lillibridge said. More than $3 million was invested into the area.

Now that Sayafiyah has a voice in the GoI, Iraqi money is starting to make its way into the rural agriculture-based society. The Sayafiyah council has already requested funds to restore seven additional area schools.

The funds will come from $8 million pledged to the Mahmudiyah Qada, Lillibridge said.

With the GoI finally making an investment into the area, it now works to protect that investment. Because none of the day’s events or other improvements could have happened without security established, GoI officials are sending troops into the area to help maintain security goals and keep al-Qaida out.

In the next 30 days, a company of Iraqi army soldiers will take up residence with the 1-187th Inf. Regt. at Combat Outpost Meade, one of several bases manned by the Soldiers in Sayafiyah. A second IA company will follow sometime in the next three months, settling in at Patrol Base Vanderhorn, Lillibridge said.

“It makes our job easier,” said Sgt. Johnson, an Aiken, S.C. native, of the Iraqi involvement.

Such ease will help both the coalition forces operating in the area and IA joining them, since much work still needs to be done in the community to improve standards of living, said Col. Terry Ferrell, commander of 2nd BCT, 3rd Inf. Div. But for now, he said it is important to celebrate the progress evident in the new buildings.

“There’s work to be done, but not today,” said Ferrell, of Huntington, W.Va. “Today we celebrate and tomorrow we get back to work improving the community.”

Freedom Facts ::
The Iraqi Ministry of Health is being provided $12 million for health-care training to ensure medical personnel have the knowledge to properly work the new equipment that the U.S. Government has funded. In addition, the MoH also has been provided with $12 million worth of 50 maintenance vans and medical repair tools for maintenance teams, and a one-year maintenance support contract for the Provincial Health Clinics. This will ensure that Ministry has the tools and expertise needed to keep the hospitals and healthcare centers up-and-running.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Obama’s Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome

2008-05-28T12:33:00.003-04:00

Barack Obama's verbal gaffes are becoming more frequent as the campaign goes along. But do the voters really care?

Is it my imagination, or is it true that the closer Barack Obama gets to sewing up the Democratic nomination for president, the more outrageous his gaffes and misstatements of fact become?

For an answer, I turned to the fairest, most practical, most logical person I know: my girlfriend Zsusanna. Now my Zsu Zsu is not a political junkie by any means. But she keeps up with things — if only to have something to talk to me about besides the weather and our never ending battle over whose turn it is to clean the litter box.

In fact, some campaign would do well to hire her on as the perfect bellwether of what Americans are thinking about when it comes to politics. She’d do better than any poll they could run as far as telling them what voters were thinking and feeling about a candidate and the issues. She has an unerring sense of what people find important and what they could care less about.

So I asked her about all these gaffes Obama had been making recently.

SHE: Gaffes?

ME: Yeah, you know. Like when Obama said his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz even though it was Russian troops who did it.

SHE: Why would he say something like that?

ME: Apparently, his campaign says he misspoke.

SHE: (Snort).

ME: No, it’s true. His uncle helped liberate some other camp, not Auschwitz.

SHE: And this is what you do all day, what you write about? What’s this got to do with the price of gas? Gimme another.

ME: How about yesterday when he told a Memorial Day crowd he saw “fallen heroes” in the audience — dead people.

SHE: And?

ME: Don’t you find that disturbing?

SHE: Not as disturbing as a near doubling in egg prices recently.

Leave it to my Zsu Zsu to get to the nub of what’s important to the American people in this election.

The fact is, Obama can make one gaffe after another, but unless he is caught in an outright lie — as Hillary was with her death-defying Tuzla sniper run — most of the voters who haven’t really made up their minds yet are very forgiving.

Of course, it might be different if the press covered Obama’s misstatements of facts and other campaign blunders the same way the cover, let’s say, Republican faux pas. PJM’s special DC correspondent Jennifer Rubin in Commentary:

Isn’t Obama supposed to be highly educated, sophisticated, a great intellect? Shouldn’t the media’s bar be higher for this brilliant leader of the new age of politics? Had it been Hillary Clinton or Al Gore who made all these errors, we would have heard by now that the candidate was a fabulist. Had it been John McCain it would have been a sign of senility. Had it been George W. Bush . . . oh, you can imagine. So maybe Obama’s gaffes are a sign of inexperience and shallow knowledge? Nah, couldn’t be.

More questions along that line from NRO’s Campaign Spot, where Jim Geraghty wonders about poor Dan Quayle’s “potato” problem and President Bush’s classic “Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” Why did the press have a feeding frenzy when those gaffes occurred but not for any of Obama’s eye-poppers?

If the MSM would either A) be more forgiving of Republican officials who they don’t like or B) be a little tougher on Democratic officials they do like, the world would be a better place. In this case, I don’t think Barack Obama is deliberately lying, or trying to pull a fast one. It sounds like a family “legend” in which the specific horrors of war witnessed by his uncle are mistaken as the years go by. It happens, and Obama only deserves the lightest of metaphorical slaps on the wrist for it. But it would help if his fans in the press actually paid attention to what he says.

It’s not like the press hasn’t had opportunities. As far back as last year — when Obama made mention of how his parents met as a result of the Kennedy Administration sponsoring Kenyan students to come to America to study, only to have it come out a little later that the program was not a government-run operation and that it began before Kennedy was even elected — has it become obvious that Obama gaffes were going to be treated just a little bit differently than those made by Republican candidates.

Michelle Malkin compiled a list of some of the candidate’s more outrageous misstatements including a couple of really ignorant spewings:

* Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

* Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.

* [Last] weekend in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multibillion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear-waste cleanup: “Here’s something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I’m not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I’ll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport.”

I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he’s voted on at least one defense-authorization bill that addressed the “costs, schedules, and technical issues” dealing with the nation’s most contaminated nuclear-waste site.

So I believe my Zsu Zsu when she tells me that the average voter doesn’t care if Obama thinks there are 57 states in the union or that he voted in total ignorance on an issue of vital importance to a whole lot of people. Taken separately, they don’t amount to much — perhaps a tired candidate whose mouth gets ahead of his brain or a faulty memory about events in the distant past made even more difficult to recall under the pressures of a presidential campaign.

The big question is: if the press cared a little more, would that change the minds of some voters?

Pajamas Media

British Teen Suffers Painful Shark Attack in His Bedroom

2008-05-27T21:42:00.001-04:00

One unlucky British teen suffered a painful shark attack without ever going near the water. In fact, he was bitten in the face by one of the sharp-fanged animals in his own bedroom, Metro.co.uk reported.

The “attack” happened at 14-year-old Sam Hawthorne’s home in Dudley, England.

Hawthorne was sleepwalking when the teeth of a dead souvenir shark from a family vacation, that hangs on the wall of his nautical-themed bedroom, became embedded in his face.

The teeth left blood pouring from the teen’s face, his mother, Susan, told Metro.co.uk.

“It was like something out of a horror film,” she said. “The shark must have been embedded in Sam's cheek for about 15 minutes and he was in a lot of pain.”

In the end, Hawthorne came away with only a small scar. “It was the most frightening experience of my life,” he told Metro.co.uk.

Click here for more on this story from Metro.co.uk.

Recollection of Obama Uncle’s War Service Missing Key Details

2008-05-27T17:43:00.001-04:00

Barack Obama is getting called out again for his knowledge of history, including his own family’s, after declaring to veterans on Memorial Day that his uncle helped liberate the Auschwitz death camp at the end of World War II.

Two problems with the tale: Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army, and Obama’s American mother was an only child.

“I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps and the story in our family is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months, right. Now obviously something had really affected him deeply but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” he said.

However, a quick check on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site shows that Soviet forces were the first to approach Auschwitz, which was in Poland.

“On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners,” the site reads.

The rest of ANOTHER...Episode of Tall Tales of Hussein at Fox News

Memorial Day..for American Fallen Heros. Past, Present

2008-05-26T11:32:00.002-04:00

Big Brown Foot Injury

2008-05-25T22:18:00.002-04:00

Will Obama Free Cuba?

2008-05-25T17:42:00.002-04:00

Barack Obama's new Cuba policy may be based on "libertad," but it's unlikely to lead to freedom for the island nation's people.

Barack Obama addressed the once powerful Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) on May 23. His Miami speech is still reverberating in the news media and across the Internet.

“Obama toughens stance on Cuba,” proclaimed one British headline. “Obama says his Cuba policy is based on ‘Libertad,’” announced the Associated Press.

But what did he really say that has the media and the pundits all atwitter?

Obama rightly pointed out that Latin America is a mess, but he wrongly blamed President Bush for this fact. For example, about Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Obama had this to say:

Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.

No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum. His predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy offers the same false promise as the tried and failed ideologies of the past.

Perhaps one of Obama’s aides should remind him that Chavez was elected in Venezuela in 1998, more than two years before George W. Bush took office.

Unfortunately, demagoguery and anti-Americanism in Latin America predates President Bush by several decades. Citizens of Latin American countries have an uncanny penchant for electing or otherwise backing anti-American caudillos (strong men). This has been exacerbated by Chavez’s use of Venezuelan petrodollars to buy influence in the region. In the last several years we have witnessed the democratic election of anti-American despots in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. How Obama would make it so that these candidates are less appealing to their respective electorates is not immediately clear, particularly when he has opposed free trade agreements with the few allies we have in the region.

It seems to me that Obama does, in fact, believe in his ability to convince murderers and tyrants of the error of their ways with his silver tongue and flowery rhetoric — as President Bush recently described past appeasers. I’m not so sure.

What is really striking about Obama’s CANF speech is how he characterized other political candidates as guilty of visiting Miami every four years, talking tough, and then going back to Washington while nothing changes in Cuba. Obama emphasized that he is different. His policy will be based on “libertad” (liberty). But the details of how he will achieve this elusive libertad for Cuba were conspicuous in their absence.

Presidential candidate Obama now claims he would not lift the embargo, a position that contradicts Illinois state senator Obama’s position in 2004. Yet it’s the embargo that is the greatest point of difference between most Republicans and most Democrats. Instead, Obama offers this minor modification to the embargo:

…I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island. It’s time to let Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It’s time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime.

Under current law Cuban-Americans can send immediate family $300 per quarter and visit immediate family in Cuba once every three years. To put that into perspective, the average Cuban earns less than $20 per month at his job working for the state. Under current policy they can receive five times that amount each month from relatives abroad. Theoretically, such Cubans can afford to quit their jobs and simply live off remittances, even under the current policy which is unfairly characterized by some as “draconian.”

If the goal is to make families “less dependent on the Castro regime,” I’d say we’re achieving that now. If remittances that amount to five times the typical monthly wage aren’t enough for the average Cuban then perhaps they should look to their “uncle Raul” in Havana rather than their aunt Juanita in Miami.

But would this policy tweak really bring libertad to Cuba? The current rules regarding remittances and travel restrictions were implemented in 2004, so in a sense Obama is advocating for a more permissive policy regarding remittances and travel to Cuba — one we’ve had before. Remarkably, that policy didn’t have the desired effect of Cuban libertad either.

As a matter of fact, the travel and remittance restrictions are easily bypassed by those who have true humanitarian intentions. Cuban-Americans can send unlimited sums of money to relatives in Cuba through Canadian companies that do business on the web, and travel to Cuba through places like the Bahamas or Cancun is relatively easy. Additionally, I’ve not heard of a single Cuban-American being fined by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (the government agency that enforces the commercial embargo on Cuba) for making a legitimate family visit because it didn’t technically meet the requirements dictated by current policy. In other words, the idea that the tightened restrictions cause undue hardships is a canard that is being used for political purposes in an election year. Isn’t this the kind of cynicism that Obama is supposed to be campaigning against?

Senator Obama claims to believe that going back to a more liberal travel and remittance policy — like the one in place before 2004 — is just the thing to free the political prisoners and bring justice to Cuba, but he doesn’t really explain why this time will be different. I guess it’s his confidence in that silver tongue again.

The reality is that Raul Castro will not implement important political and economic reforms willingly. If they are to happen at all he must be pressured into them, and the pressure needs to come from both inside and outside of Cuba. The president of the United States can use his bully pulpit to bring attention to the cause of the political opposition in Cuba and the prisoners of conscience. He can also use his influence with other heads of state to keep Cuba on the front burner. President Bush has done this consistently throughout his two terms. While it has not brought libertad to Cuba, today more people are aware of Cubans like the Afro-Cuban prisoner of conscience Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet. They also know more about the reality of Cuban communism than ever before.

In essence, with his flip-flopping on the embargo Obama is guilty of what he is preaching against, namely pandering. His innovative strategy is nothing more than a minor modification to an existing policy wrapped in grandiose rhetoric: libertad!

Pajamas Media

Can this guy...EVER...EVER get A fact straight?