A Minneapolis police lieutenant faces an internal investigation into recent comments that fellow officers say implied that U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison is a terrorist.
The comments allegedly were made during a required police ethics training class this week by Lt. Bob Kroll, according to Mayor R.T. Rybak. In a highly unusual move, Chief Tim Dolan sent an e-mail to all employees saying the comments were unacceptable and unflattering to the department. Dolan also issued a public apology to Ellison, a Democrat from Minneapolis and the first Muslim elected to Congress.
Kroll, an officer with Minneapolis for 18 years and vice president of the Police Federation, denied Thursday that he called Ellison a terrorist or that he even mentioned him by name during the class. Kroll will remain on duty during the internal investigation. But no investigation regarding Ellison's connection to the Muslim terrorist group (and one of his funders CAIR)
Ron Edwards, co-chair of the Police Community Relations Council, said the recently promoted lieutenant "has been out of control for a long time ... and he's been rewarded with promotions time and time again." Cause he get's it?? I wrote to Don Shelby at WCCO and asked him when they were going to investgate the Ellison CAIR connection. As you can imagine Shelby never wrote back
Chief Tim Dolan issued a public apology to Ellison, a Democrat from Minneapolis and the first Muslim elected to Congress. And in an e-mail to employees, he called Kroll's comments unacceptable. And 9-11 donations were diverted by Quakers to Hamas, not CAIR.
Ellison said he was grateful to mayor Rybak and police chief Dolan for "setting the right tone."
"The alleged comments don't reflect the diversity of our city, or the warm embracing attitudes of those who live in the Fifth District," he said. "The alleged comments don't reflect the Minneapolis Police Department, who I respect as well." Translation, welcome to Dhimmitude and if you light up a cigar I'll call the cops.
#3
Must be. I read Power Line on a regular basis and the Strib, as they call the local fish wrap, sounds like it's written by some folks far to the left of Cindy Nutball. If it's staying in business it must be because some misguided fools are buying their garbage, which means what you said. Oh, and the election of the Muzzy terrorist to Congress.
Posted by: mac ||
03/02/2007 19:06 Comments ||
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Even Chavez's own energy officials are getting nervous about the dictator's new bid to start a confrontation with the U.S. through its oil firms.
Last week, for the 10th time, Chavez announced his plan to confiscate four Orinoco Belt extra-heavy-oil projects run by six Western companies Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the U.K.'s BP, France's Total and Norway's Statoil.
"We are taking back our country," he thundered to the political peanut gallery, preposterously claiming that Venezuela is going to be a sovereign state again.
One of the targets is the vast Cerro Negro project, a joint venture of Exxon and BP with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. It extracts otherwise useless tar sands and converts them into high-grade synthetic petroleum.
It's a "designer" project because it requires lots of high technology as well as high oil prices to produce enough to turn a profit. It's also integrated, and if any stage in the production chain extraction, upgrading or refining and marketing is taken out, the economics become questionable.
Exxon insisted Chavez's plan was old news and sent the following statement to IBD: "We confirmed last year that the government had informed the Cerro Negro partners of its intent to migrate to a 'mixed enterprise' structure."
That might be because most of the best cards are on the side of the oil companies.
With a market cap of $414 billion, Exxon is four times the size of the Venezuelan economy. It's famous for its by-the-books corporate style and adherence to contracts. It has vast operations worldwide.
It won't willingly give up 41,000 barrels of oil a day, but it knows that if contracts are breached in one country, its operations in other places may face similar actions. For Exxon, a contract is always a contract. Industry sources say Exxon has never changed a long-standing contract.
Rather than allow Chavez's state oil company to become the majority partner in its investment, Exxon could sell its stake to another partner, such as BP, but only if BP is willing. It did this two years ago in another confiscation.
But it could also just walk away a possibility that's keeping Venezuelan energy officials up at night.
#1
There are some American corporations that are amazingly hard-assed about their business dealings.
Many insist on totally transparent and honest contracts, and if anything happens, they have a walk away clause. But they will never, ever do business again with that other company, individual or nation. They don't care if it costs them much more to do it their way.
If Chavez decides to wholeheartedly rip off Exxon, then Exxon is under no obligation to play nice with Venezuelan oil. They might even rig the markets so that the value of Venezuelan oil drops to zero, because the price is far more than anyone wants to pay.
Venezuela might sell its oil at $5bbl, but by the time it reaches the spot market, it could be priced at $75bbl, and V could do nothing about it.
You might not have noticed, but we broke another space record last month when astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria logged 67 hours of spacewalking. If you consider that the equivalent of the Guinness record for pogo-stick bouncing (23.11 miles in 12 hours and 27 minutes) -- amazing but pointless -- I agree with you. There's nothing quite as beautiful as the space station and the shuttle that services it, and nothing quite as useless.
Now, that can be said of many things: a balance-beam dismount, a Shakespeare sonnet, a chess problem by Nabokov. But none of these is financed by taxpayers and none makes a claim to utility. They are there for reasons of aesthetics, and perhaps amusement. You cannot justify a $17 billion NASA budget or $6 billion spent on manned exploration on such grounds. There has to be more than that, and the space shuttle never was. It will be remembered as one of the most elegant, most misbegotten detours in the history of technology. It was our Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' gigantic, eight-engine plane that flew only once.
But the Spruce Goose didn't cost $4 billion in taxpayer money to operate. Which is why the coming retirement of the shuttle is so welcome. Even more welcome was the Bush administration's decision to redirect the entire manned space effort to establishing a moon base. Not until about 2020, mind you, half a century since we first reached the moon. Future generations will have a hard time understanding the hiatus. But for two sets of critics -- the Luddite left and the science purists -- 50 years is not nearly long enough. They would not build a moon base at all.
The Luddites have long opposed manned exploration as a waste of resources when, as the mantra goes, we have so many problems here on earth. I find this objection incomprehensible. When will we stop having problems here on earth? In a fallen world of endless troubles, that does not stop us from allocating resources to endeavors we find beautiful, exciting and elevating -- opera, alpine skiing, feature films -- yet solve no social problems.
Moreover, the moon base is not pointless. The shuttles were on an endless trip to the nowhere of low Earth orbit. The moon is a destination. The idea this time is not to go plant a flag, take a golf shot and leave, but to stay and form a real self-sustaining, extraterrestrial human colony.
Sure, Mars would be better. It holds open the possibility of life and might even have water on its surface today. But the best should not be the enemy of the good. Mars is simply too far, too dangerous, too difficult, too expensive. We won't go there for a hundred years. Nor is it true that there is nothing of use or even of interest on the moon. There are all kinds of materials to be exploited, observations of the cosmos to be made, and knowledge to be gained on how best to live off the land away from Earth.
A century ago there seemed to be nothing in Antarctica too. We went there first for adventure, then for discovery. The concrete scientific advances Antarctica has yielded (regarding climate change and the ozone layer, for example) have been as important as they were unexpected.
A more serious critique of returning to the moon comes not from the Luddites but the purists. They want science, and they are right that robotic exploration is a more cost-effective way to get it. The science yielded by unmanned vehicles, such as past and future probes of the ice surface of Europa and the hydrocarbon lakes of Titan, is indeed thrilling. And pound for pound, dollar for dollar, manned exploration does bring back less science than robots.
But it still brings back science. Humans can discover things through intuition and pattern recognition that machines thinking in algorithms cannot. Imagine the scientific possibilities if today we had humans patrolling Mars rather than the brilliantly programmed but still limited golf carts now roaming the surface.
And then there's the glory. If you find any value, any lift of the spirit in a beautiful mathematical proof, in an elegant balletic turn, in any of the myriad human endeavors that have no utility but only breathtaking beauty, then you should feel something when our little species succeeds in establishing new life in a void that for all eternity had been the province of the gods. If you don't feel that, you are -- don't take this personally -- deaf to the music of our time.
#2
g: I wonder if Krauthammer watches satellite TV. Or has Teflon pans in his kitchen.
The airplane, the submarine and the steam engine were all invented without the benefit of tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. The space programs are neat, but they will have to be justified on grounds other than immediate utility. I think even the bit about mining is a little spurious. As Steve Den Beste wrote a while back, the big problem with extracting resources from anyplace other than earth is water - there's a lot of it in liquid form here, and very little elsewhere in the solar system. No (cheap and plentiful) water, no mining.
#3
A moon base will be built. It's a question of who and when, not if.
A NASA bent on getting the best people and getting the job done rather than protecting their own income stream and dealing with ridiculous hyperregulation, politicizing, and affirmative action quotas would be required to do so.
In other words, the NASA that brought back a damaged Apollo mission, not the NASA of today.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/02/2007 6:29 Comments ||
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#4
The submarine and steam engine may have been invented without government funds, but the railroads would never have been built as they were without them or government land.
#5
Also for the airplane, US Mail routes are the only reason that national airlines exist : the way they paid the bills to build the airlines in the early days. Plus, all major airports are taxpayer-funded, at least during the construction phase. However, the Moon base may not be built by public money if NASA waits too long : lots of people are interested in LEO shots and are paying Virgin to reserve tickets on the commercial spaceflights. And there are a couple of very rich Japanese syndicates talking about a private space station, and then a private Moon base, all in a timeframe that may beat NASA to the punch.
#6
Zhang Fei without WWI & WWII (and tens of billions of taxpayers dollars, rubles, pounds and marks) the top speed of a present day airplane would'be 50 mph. And it's range would be 100 miles.
#8
In a fallen world of endless troubles, that does not stop us from allocating resources to endeavors we find beautiful, exciting and elevating -- opera, alpine skiing, feature films -- yet solve no social problems.
I'm sure the Film Actors Guild would strenuously object to the inclusion of feature films on the list of things that solve no social problems. I mean, just ask them.
#9
How you build a Moonbase is as important as why.
A pre-fab base on the surface is problematic. It has to be small, like the ISS. It also has to block both cosmic and induced radiation. It has to have considerable heating and cooling energy use, and most of all, it must minimize moving parts. This is because Lunar dust is terribly abrasive.
However, if you build your Moonbase below the surface, in tunnels out of rock, most of your problems become a lot easier. The rock is far less radioactive and insulates against temperature variations, protects against vacuum and can be cleaned of that dust.
To do this, it would be best to use a tunneling robot, mining a horizontal shaft into the rock wall of a mountain.
It would be powered by a small nuclear reactor, which could be very light, not needing much shielding. The Lunar lander that brought it could be cannibalized for pressure doors, flooring and other parts.
The robot would not have to be fast, perhaps only cutting an inch a day. The broken rock would drop in front of it to be scooped up and removed from the cave through a "tail". At intervals, advanced lightweight ceramic reinforcing rod would be inserted to stabilize the ceiling. And finally a sealant liquid would be sprayed to fill micro fissures.
Such a robot could operate independently, needing only periodic instruction from Earth. And even once astronauts arrived, it would continue to dig tunnel, to improve the Moonbase.
By doing it this way, when the astronauts arrived, they would need far less habitation material, weight and space that could be used by other things.
#12
Radiative cooling. Take a look at space based reactors like the SP-100.
Posted by: ed ||
03/02/2007 10:46 Comments ||
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#13
The first reactor at Oak Ridge was air-cooled. It put out more energy in winter than summer as a result.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/02/2007 11:20 Comments ||
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#14
The Luddites have long opposed manned exploration as a waste of resources when, as the mantra goes, we have so many problems here on earth.
Bah. I'd say they created a good many of those same problems themselves.
Now, that can be said of many things: a balance-beam dismount, a Shakespeare sonnet, a chess problem by Nabokov. But none of these is financed by taxpayers and none makes a claim to utility. They are there for reasons of aesthetics, and perhaps amusement. You cannot justify a $17 billion NASA budget or $6 billion spent on manned exploration on such grounds. There has to be more than that, and the space shuttle never was.
Sometimes, reinvigorating the imagination is worth $30 billion.
#15
If you find any value, any lift of the spirit in a beautiful mathematical proof, in an elegant balletic turn, in any of the myriad human endeavors that have no utility but only breathtaking beauty, then you should feel something when our little species succeeds in establishing new life in a void that for all eternity had been the province of the gods. If you don't feel that, you are -- don't take this personally -- deaf to the music of our time.
Now that is one of the sweetest pairs of sentences I have ever read. Lovely turn of phrase.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/02/2007 13:38 Comments ||
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#16
Some bashing of Krauthammer here as if he was against a moon mission but reading his post I'm not getting that impression at all.
Forget teflon, NASA technology gave us the tippy-cup.
#18
Teflon is a flourine compound. The reason stuff doesn't stick is because flourine doesn't share electrons easily, it's stingy. The trick was getting the teflon to stick to the frying pan. That's why one must take extreme care to not use abrasives when cleaning or using metal utinsals while cooking.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/02/2007 21:01 Comments ||
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#19
I'm not convinced the Space Shuttle program will be so much "retired" as de-prioritized - IMO it is still more costs-effective, even in space, to use modes that can transport large quantities of cargo despite slow speeds; as opposed to using smaller faster modes that can carry only lite cargoes.
#20
I'd have to look into it in detail, but there are mining macvhines available that could probably be robotized and computerized fairly easily.
As to the nuclear reactor cooling issue, well, the moon doesn't have much of an atmosphere to hold heat so heat would tend to dissipate very rapidly.
Rather than using an air-or water-cooled reactor you could use liquid sodium or some other fairly volatile (in an atmosphere) liquid.
And, if you're worried about that heat - put it to use! Melt those tunnels using the waste heat from the reactor.
Plans are already on the table for all of the above ideas I believe (see the Planet Society, or any of about a hundred Science Fact articles from Analog Magazine over the last 25+ years).
WASHINGTON. Die omgewingsaktivis Al Gore moet self begin toepas wat hy predik, word hier geëis nadat dit aan die lig gekom het hy gebruik 20 keer meer elektrisiteit as die deursnee-Amerikaner.
The environmental activist Al Gore must begin to practice what he preaches, word here comes to light he use 20 times more electricity as the average American.
Wahhahahaa... even Die Burger has his number. Balance at the link!
#2
No, no, don't you get it, he's Al Gore, the Inventor of the Internet, the romantic hero of Love Story, true 43rd president of the United States, and just in general a higher being than youse peons. Now you just do as your told and park that SUV and pull the main breaker in your fusebox and get down to subsistence farming like a good peasant.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/02/2007 17:23 Comments ||
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#3
the romantic hero of Love Story,
LOL! I'd forgotten that deal. I will allow however that he may have been the hero of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.
Lordy which brings up the nasty question...
LS or JLS? Which was the worst writing of the century?
Opinion piece by Representive [Baghdad] Jim McDermott D-Al-Qaeda Washington in the Seattle Times
This idiot is on the ways and means comitee.
Jim's Dream ------------->>
In a world torn by conflict, I can't think of a better time, or a greater need, for America to act as a force for good at home and around the world.
A bill recently was reintroduced in Congress that will go a long way toward bringing peace both at home and abroad. The measure would create a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.
The proposed department will give voice to the latest research and expertise on peaceful efforts in many areas from safe schools to international arms control.
The legislation, which I am co-sponsoring, would fund, support and coordinate programs already in existence in schools, prisons, police departments, educational institutions, charitable organizations and elsewhere that are proven to reduce domestic and international violence and enhance the security and health of all Americans.
I believe a Department of Peace represents the ideals on which this country was founded. Our legislation, HR 808, embodies the dreams and aspirations of Americans to live in a nation that uses its great strength to support the cooperative efforts of people throughout the world to create peace.
In my years as a congressman and as a physician in the U.S. military, I have recognized repeatedly that the interests of the one cannot triumph over the interests of the many; that the security concerns of the United States are best served by diplomacy and cooperation rather than brute force.
A Department of Peace won't be just another top-heavy bureaucratic organization. Much like the Environmental Protection Agency, it will provide a uniting framework for existing organizations scattered throughout the U.S. currently working to bring peace to our communities and the world.
The department will research, propose and facilitate practical, field-tested solutions to reduce conflict, providing financial and institutional heft to our current ineffectual efforts to deal with all forms of domestic and international violence and discord. And it will help develop curricula to educate students in grades K-12 on how to resolve conflict peacefully.
Internationally, a Department of Peace will advise the president and Congress on the most innovative techniques to establish and promote peace among nations, and will research and analyze the root causes of war to help prevent conflicts from escalating to the point of violence. by bending over and kissing your soon-to-be-reamed ass goodbye.... It will create a Peace Academy, on par with the Military Service Academies, to train civilian peacekeepers and the military in the latest nonviolent conflict-resolution strategies and approaches. And it will provide a direct voice at the president's table to offer peaceful solutions to conflicts before they disintegrate into violence. Translation: They will suggest surrender at every opprotunity....
The president's recently proposed federal budget would allocate more than $439 billion to our military, an increase of more than 5 percent. A Department of Peace will cost a small fraction of that, or approximately $8 billion a year. That amount is less than we currently spend each month for the war in Iraq.
Clearly, a Department of Peace will be a bargain and, it will be money well spent. It will save dollars and, more importantly, it will save lives.
As the globe shrinks, as the peoples and countries of the world become more entwined in both commerce and security, our consciousness has expanded.
I've learned there's something about the human spirit, about the spirit of Americans everywhere, that strives for cooperation rather than domination. We all yearn for peace, and for the prosperity that peace brings. We all yearn for a better world for our children and our children's children. We want for them the best education possible; health care that encompasses and embraces everyone; a retirement secure from the plagues and worries that come with inadequate income and support; a healthy environment; and a world freed from the horrors of war.
By reducing the immense costs of violence both domestically and internationally, a U.S. Department of Peace will help secure these essentials. It will demonstrate to our citizens and to the world that the United States is committed to using its great strength in partnership with all peoples to work for, and champion, peace. And, it will provide a beacon of hope for everyone that the peace we yearn for is not an unachievable dream, but an obtainable reality.
As President Bush correctly noted, Americans are a peace-loving people. Now is the time to put these words into action.
#2
The U.N. was set up, on American soil, as a place where peace was to be made, a kind of world department of peace. We organized it, we set it up, we pay for a lot of it, put up with the corruption, put up with the thugs and spies, and we put up with the diplomats soliciting prostitutes. Jim McD, we have already tried the Department of Peace, organized along as a world department of peace. Why don't we get the first department of peace working before we set up another one? Won't we be talking to the same guys on the other side of the table at the Dept of Peace as at the U.N.?
#4
Dumbass. We alreadey have a Department of Peace, It's called the Department of Defense. Remember "Peace through superior firepower". This guy must have some great ganja.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
