. . . Bloggers have connected the handle of the poster, "Rubico," to an e-mail address, and tentatively identified the owner as a college student in Tennessee.
Threat Level was unable to reach the student by phone because his number is unlisted. A person who identified himself as the student's father, when reached at home, said he could not talk about the matter and would have no comment. The father is a Democratic state representative in Tennessee. Threat Level is not identifying them by name because authorities have not identified any suspects in the case, and the link to the student so far is tenuous. . . .
(Boldface emphasis added.) Verrry intereeesting, as they say.
Also interesting is this quote from "Rubico" (boldface emphasis added):
The hacker said that he read all of the e-mails in the Palin account and found "nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped. All I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor . And pictures of her family."
Whether this is just a Kos Kiddie off on his own hook, or someone put him up to it, remains to be seen.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/18/2008
17:14 ||
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#1
Remember, if you are caught or killed, the nominee will disavow any knowledge of your actions....
While the political and news world was focused on the glitzy Hollywood haul of money by the Obama campaign's Brinks trucks Tuesday night, it turns out lesser-light Sarah Palin was gathering in a good deal more than a million bucks at three separate fundraisers back in Ohio.
She did a country club event in Canton that raked in more than $1 million by itself Monday night, a Dayton breakfast and a $2,500-per-plate luncheon in Cincinnati.
Once totaled, the 18-hour sum will exceed the entire $1.35 million Palin spent on her successful insurgent gubernatorial general election campaign in Alaska two years ago.
So keen a new draw is the 44-year-old mother of five, that party officials estimate she'll probably do three dozen more fundraisers in the 48 days remaining in this campaign.
Because John McCain is taking $84 million in federal funds, the money she raises is split between national and state parties, which are ...
... trying to keep up with the Obama donation juggernaut that changed its mind and rejected federal money.
"What we've seen over the past 17 days or so is nothing short of amazing when it comes to grass-roots response," said Kevin DeWine, deputy chairman of the Republican Party of Ohio, a must-win state for GOP White House hopes since 1916.
Palin's fresh-faced, down-to-earth appeal has even spread to Western states. Organizers of a Sept. 24 fundraiser in Wyoming featuring Palin report ticket sales to people from as far away as Idaho and Montana.
"We're really talking about a regional type of excitement," Maggie Scarlett, McCain's Wyoming co-finance chair, told Erika Bolstad of the Anchorage Daily News.
This success doesn't surprise David Dittman, a consultant to Palin's 2006 campaign. "She connects with people," he says.
Outraised by her well-known Democratic opponent in 2006, Dittman noted, "She didn't have the support of the party. She did not have the support of labor unions, environmentalists, the oil industry. She did it all by herself."
The media is turning the news into a presidential video game. "Hurricane Ike" or "Wall Street Meltdown" appears onscreen, and the media boots up Barack Obama and John McCain to see how well they talk the problem. Mostly they are speaking gobbledygook about things they barely understand. Whatever a credit default swap is, I'm against it. The public is left to wonder if they are voting for a commentator in chief or commander in chief.
Rather than be dragged into the path of the financial storm, the McCain campaign especially needs to refocus on its postconvention momentum. It needs to worry about wasting the political capital Gov. Sarah Palin deposited in the Bank of McCain three weeks ago.
Once Mr. McCain picked Mrs. Palin as his running mate, he demoted "experience" and elevated a government "reform" message. It was the right thing to do. Presidential voters are ambivalent about Beltway-marinated senators like Mr. McCain and Joe Biden. John McCain's edge is his famous reputation as a reform maverick. So far, though, he is not casting his reform message in large enough terms.
Washington is arguably at its lowest ebb in the public mind since before World War II. Join that fact to Sarah Palin's personally gutsy and professionally strong reform credentials, and Mr. McCain has the chance to offer voters a reform presidency in historic terms.
Yes, the Obama campaign is trying to hang the Bush presidency around his neck. Mr. McCain knows -- and should give -- the answer to that: Voter disgust with Washington goes far beyond George W. Bush.
In the 2006 off-year election, voters threw out the Republican bums and turned over control of Congress to the Democrats. In an odd thank-you, the Democratic Congress earned the lowest approval ratings ever recorded in opinion polls.
This decline is not part of the normal ebb and flow of politics. The fall, the malfeasance, is deeper. It's bipartisan. It's endemic. The most acute comment on what Washington has become -- and what the American public knows it has become -- was a federal judge's Sept. 4 sentencing statement for convicted Beltway favor-meister Jack Abramoff.
Standing before federal Judge Ellen Huvelle, Abramoff said, "So much that happens in Washington stretches the envelope, skirts the spirit of the law and lives in loopholes." Agreed, said Judge Huvelle, who hammered Abramoff with an additional 48-month sentence, more than prosecutors had asked. She said simply: "The true victims are members of the public who lost their trust in government."
Forget the Tina Fey SNL mockery and all the marginalia being written about Sarah Palin now. She did four real things in Alaska that make her fit for anyone interested in a reform presidency.
She took on: her party's state chairman, her party's state attorney general, GOP Gov. Frank Murkowski's tainted gas pipeline project, and then she supported a GOP candidate who ran against Alaska's "untouchable" GOP congressional earmarker, Don Young.
One way or another, each episode involved severing the sleazy ties that bind public officials to grasping commercial interests, something even the Democratic left purports to favor.
It isn't just Washington and Juneau. You could open the nozzle on the same reform fire hose to wash the public-private slime out of the capital hallways of New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois and onward.
You say Sarah Palin doesn't have enough "experience" to run Washington? Washington is barely fit to be run.
The problem isn't standard political corruption. The problem is that the $2.8 trillion federal budget is a vast ocean of Beltway pilot fish feeding off scraps from the whale -- lawyers, lobbyists, ex-Members of Congress. No one runs the Sea of Washington. It's too big, too deep.
Barack Obama wants to dig a deeper hole. John McCain should ask the American people if they want this to go on, because it's nonsense to vote for government to do "more" and then whine when it doesn't work or degrades into sweetheart-deal hell.
Unfocused "reform" rhetoric from Mr. McCain isn't enough. The public has been there, heard that. Sen. McCain should talk about what he knows -- fat Fannie and Freddie, farm-bill bloat, the ethanol subsidy fiasco, the federal procurement mess. Show people Gov. Palin's 18 single-spaced pages of 2007 vetoes. Then identify Congress's bipartisan supporters of the Legislative Line-Item Veto Act and ask the voters' support. Appear with GOP congressman from Sarah's new generation who want to help -- Eric Cantor of Virginia, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Kevin McCarthy of California. There are others.
Promise to spend the first two years on this historic political reform effort, and if a Democratic Congress laughs, promise to barnstorm in 2010 for a Congress willing to act, from any party.
One hears talk of John McCain's temper. My guess is voters want someone to lose it with Washington, big time. Oh, and he should ask what's the difference between a reformist pit bull and a six-term senator. It isn't lipstick.
#2
Mainly knee deep in the Culture of Corruption(c). The pit pull hasn't had enough time to be bought.
Posted by Procopius2k
This is my main concern. I recall a freshman Congress (staring Fred) that was all full of piss and vinegar. Anyone recall what, if anything, they actually acomplished?
I'm all in favor of turning Sarahcuddah lose inside the beltway. I have some vague hopes that her faith as an Evangelical will keep her focused that God is indeed watching her and He doesn't compromise.
But people, all people, can be corrupted if you know what their price is. The only real question is does Washington have Sarah Palin's price? I don't think they do, they don't deal in that type of "currency".
#3
McCain needs to hammer the "culture of corrution and self-dealing". Given that 2 of Obama's closest advisors profited millions by running Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac into the ground, and OIbama was taking tons of money form their lobbyists, MCCain was trying to pass laws to regulate them better, and was stopped by - Harry Reid and Obama.
That's a very good big stiick with which to beat Obama, and he needs to hurry it up and put that out there, something along this theme:
WHile John McCain was trying to reform how Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae did their business, Barak Obama was taking large amounts of money form their lobbiests, and Obama, wiht Harry Reid and the Dem senta blocked these reforms. Now 2 former heads of these failed agencies, whoi profited with millions while americans are losign their homes, are now Obama's top advisors.
Obama's and his advisors profited, while McCain fought them in an attempt to reform. Now the taxpayers are stuck with the bill while Obama and his advisors go home to their mansions.
#8
We may say that he "married up." Of course, the fact that McMansions technically belong to his wife, makes it legally distinguishable from his ownership. Buddy, you are right on that one.
One thing though, how come we so carefully splitting hair here, but God forbid we make meaninful distinctions in case of Obama?
#9
O'Bamas corruption is really in a different class - namely Chicago machine politics. Aside from Rezko, which is small potatos in Chicagoland, Obama's career is wholly tied to Cook county machine - one party, one rule no matter how clean and articulate the package looks.
McCain and Palin have plenty to dsitinguish themselves from that, and even Sen. Biden (D-MBNA) is comparatively far more rounded.
As I foresee it, we'll learn all about Ayers and Rezko, along with Gov. Blag's and assorted others local pols, throughout late October.
Keep in mind that between them, Sen's Obama and Biden have had only one close election race, and that was Biden's first run in the early 70's. It will be interesting to see if a non-Clinton machine can hold it together nationally own the stretch, if it remains close.
#10
No matter Obama's political origins, I don;t thinks he could have possibly had it any other way. You know, one of the reasons Italians formed an Italian mafia, was b/c they had no other way to survive. Irish - same. It all got cleaned up and laundered eventially, but . . .
SEOUL, South Korea - Kim Jong Il's companion and former secretary is emerging as a key player in the communist nation after the autocratic leader's stroke.
South Korean officials are keeping a close eye on Kim Ok amid some intelligence reports that she's not only nursing the ailing leader but also is signing official documents on his behalf. Experts believe the communist leader is retaining a firm grip on power, running the nation from his bed with the help of military and communist party chiefs in line with the nation's "songun," or military first, policy. But they are not discounting the role of the woman who is seen by some as the de-facto first lady. "She is the closest person personally to Kim Jong Il," said Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. "In some ways, she's the one guarding the bedroom or hospital door. She would be in a position to convey his preferences."
Kim, 66, reportedly suffered a stroke last month and is recuperating following emergency brain surgery -- though North Korean officials deny the communist leader, who was last seen in public more than a month ago, is ill. He has three sons -- Jong Nam, Jong Chul and Jong Un -- but does not appear to have anointed any of them as his heir-apparent.
Continued on Page 49
Wall Street surged higher Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrials up more than 400 points after a report that the federal government is considering creation of a repository for banks' bad debt.
CNBC said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is considering creation of an entity like the Resolution Trust Corp. that was formed after the failure of savings and loan banks in the 1980s.
Investors were cheered by the notion of a huge federal intervention like the establishment of RTC to acquire the real estate debt that has hobbled financial institutions and led to the intense volatility in the markets this week.
If there's an RTC-like entity, "it's going to take a lot of the bad debt off the balance sheets of these companies," said Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York. That would alleviate many of the pressures causing the credit crisis, he said, and open up the credit markets again.
However, Fullman added, "the devil's in the details."
In late afternoon trading, the Dow soared 406.29, or 3.83 percent, to 11,015.95.
Broader stock indicators also jumped. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 41.54, or 3.59 percent, to 1,197.93, and the Nasdaq composite index advanced 76.52, or 3.65 percent, to 2,175.37.
#2
McCain wanted this regulatory entity built in ***2006*** to supervise Fanny May and Freddie Mac. Obama did nto stand up and pass it - he instead took lobby money - and his economic advisors now awarded themselves 10's of millions in bonuses while they let FM/FM into collapse.
Someone has to pin Obama to the wall for his people screwing us, the taxpayers, while they got rich and funded Obama's campaign.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reviewing complaints from both Americans and Canadians about a Web site columnist who recently described Sarah Palin's supporters as "white trash," compared the vice presidential candidate to a "porn actress" and called her daughter's boyfriend a "redneck" and "ratboy."
Isn't that 'hate speech' to be punished by the Canadian Human Rights Commissions? Perhaps the provincial one in Prince Edward Island?
The incendiary column by Toronto-based writer Heather Mallick appeared on the CBC News site on Sept. 5, after the close of the Republican National Convention. On the same day, Britain's Guardian newspaper published another column by Mallick in which she trashed Palin's home state of Alaska as a "frontier state full of drunks and crazy people."
In the CBC story, Mallick wrote that John McCain's running mate "added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote."
She proceeded to write that the Alaska governor "has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favored by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression."
She also questioned why the Palins were allowing Levi Johnston -- 17-year-old Bristol Palin's boyfriend and father of her unborn baby -- into the family.
"What normal father would want Levi 'I'm a f---n' redneck' Johnson prodding his daughter?" Mallick asked. "I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. ... Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am."
CBC Ombudsman Vince Carlin told FOXNews.com that he has gotten "quite a few complaints about [the column], both from Canada and the U.S," and said he's reviewing its contents to see if it meets CBC's journalistic standards and practices.
Asked if Mallick's column represented the views of CBC or the Canadian government, which owns CBC, Mallick suggested it did not and questioned whether commentators on FOX News represent the views of all Americans. "I don't think so," he answered.
As for Mallick, he said, "She's a columnist not a journalist."
Mallick also wrote on the CBC Web site that Republican men, whom she called "sexual inadequates," must think that women would vote for Palin just because she's a woman.
In her Guardian column, Mallick claimed her own small-town credentials are just as solid as Palin's, writing "Palin cannot out-hick me."
I'm sure she can't ...
But she said Palin should have stayed in her hometown of Wasilla, writing, "Small towns are places that smart people escape from, for privacy, for variety, for intellect, for survival. Palin should have stayed home."
Mallick also blasted Alaska as Canada's ugly stepchild. "We love our own north to the point of covering our eyes and humming as it melts ... but Alaska is different from our north," she wrote. "We share a 1,500-mile border with a frontier state full of drunks and crazy people, of the blight that cheap-built structures bring to a glorious landscape.
"Alaska is our redneck cousin, our Yukon territory forms a blessed buffer zone, and thank God he never visits. Alaska is the end of the line."
#1
Lady, buzz off. You don't have n dog in this fight, being Canadian and all. I'll back a team of our white trash against Canada's finest elites anyday.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 15:13
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#2
Well nobody's gonna mistake her for no p0rn actress...
#3
Elites don't change behavior because of nationality. It's a very common affliction. I wonder if the Canadian Human Rights Commission will review this 'hate' communication like Mr. Steyn's recently before them.
A (future ex-) friend forwarded to me an email purportedly from some woman in Alaska named "Jackie" railing against Palin. The intro was something like "First of all, she's a redneck and her husband actually races snow mobiles!". Thinking this was actually damning rather than praise, she went on with all the usual talking points we've heard for the past few weeks. Being a Yankee redneck by upbringing I found this moderately insulting.
Same "friend" sent me another email supposedly from the woman who wrote the "Vagina Dialogues...."
(An aside here, to steal a riff from George Carlin, if I were double-jointed enough to have a dialogue with my privates, I'd never leave the house)*rimshot*.
Her main point was that Palin was responsible for all the polar bears drowning because of her "Drill drill, drill!" thing. And she liked polar bears because they were so pretty and white....
It's a whole different mind set - Klingons if you will. I despair of a rational discourse because there seems to be no common underpinning in worldview.
#10
There's a bunch of us Canucks who have about had it up to HERE with Heather Mallick and her crappy hit pieces - all of which are paid for out of tax money taken from us rubes.
Many letters have been written about this twit and her tax supported garbage writing to Members of Parliament, all of whom are struggling to be reelected right now. Written letters have a lot of punch.
Wait for the results of our Federal election to see what changes result in the CBC and the way they represent Canadians.
#11
Compare wid WND > HOW THE DETROIT LIONS [NFL] SYMBOLIZE THEIR HOST CITY. Detroit in perennial Crises in parallel wid the time the NFL Lions last won a Championship. *ALTERNATE TITLE = HOW DEMOCRATS DESTROYED DETROIT AND TURNED THE MIGHTY LIONS INTO [Chicago] CUBS???
#13
Hunting, fishing, snowmobiling... Palin's more canadian than the clowns in Ottawa. Mallick is just another Eastern snob that got the Conservatives in power in the first place. Let her keep spouting off, it'll just help Harper get the majority. The Liberal leader can barely speak english. With friends like Mallick, it should be an easy win.
He stopped being funny around 1980. Or maybe I just grew up.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/18/2008 15:25
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#2
He quit being funny when he stopped ridiculing everyone and went after only the Republicans.
When he got really partisan, he lost his sense of humor.
Have you noticed that the really strident lefties have no sense of humor?
Posted by: James Carville ||
09/18/2008 15:37
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#3
They also tend to be far more unhappy with life as well. Thus their - misery love company approach to politics and why socialism appeals to them. Instead of celebrating how far we've come, they'd rather dwell upon the failure to achieve perfection [as though the human species can attain perfection].
#4
What I find funny is how many of them would seem to be happy in the world of Brazil, assuming they were the beurocrats in charge and their enemies in the torture room.
The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way.
Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments -- Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven't ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.
One reason, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday, is that ``no one knows what to do'' at the moment.
Continued on Page 49
#1
"We want the power and all the trappings, but we don't want the responsibility. Though we were more than happy to unrelentingly blame the Republicans when they were in the same seat." - Reid-Pelosi Inc.
#2
For once, I agree with Harry. Congress can only muck it up more right now. So, they are going home and about their business. Good advice for us, too. Let the market take care of itself. It can do it better than we.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 12:52
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#3
Can we add a graphic of the three 'see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil' monkeys too?
#5
GWB made a point to stay in DC while this is going on for the expressed purpose of meeting with economic advisers... you lose, Congress!
Posted by: Chris W. ||
09/18/2008 13:49
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#6
But, Obama knows exactly what to do & he's a member of Congress, let him put up his solutions on the floor of the Senate now, not after 4 more months of economic crisis.
At least 25 terrorists with suspected links to al-Qaida have been arrested in connection with the deadly attack on the US Embassy in the Yemeni capital, a senior security official said Thursday. The Yemeni official said the 25 have been rounded up from various parts of Yemen over the past 24 hours and were being questioned by Yemeni and US investigators.
Meanwhile, the US State Department on Thursday confirmed that a young American woman and her Yemeni husband were killed in the terrorist attack. A spokesman said officials had verified reports the family of Susan Elbaneh that the 18-year-old was among the victims of Wednesday's attack. Elbaneh, who was recently wed in Yemen in an arranged marriage, was outside the embassy with her husband apparently waiting to complete paperwork, according to her brother. Elbaneh, a high school senior, was among eight children in the family, which her brother described as "huge and close-knit." Ahmed Elbaneh said she planned to return to New York with her new husband, finish school and become a nurse. She had been in Yemen for a month for the marriage on Aug. 25.
Barack Obama sharpened his attacks on John McCain and mocked the Republican's recent calls for reform in two stops in Nevada on Wednesday after days of listening to nervous supporters fret about the Democrat's chances of taking the White House.
"Sen. McCain bragged about how as chairman of the Commerce Committee in the Senate, he had oversight of every part of the economy. Well, all I can say to Sen. McCain is, 'Nice job. Nice job,'" Obama said at a rally at a baseball stadium in Las Vegas. "Where is he getting these lines? The lobbyists running his campaign?"
Obama later added: "I'm not making this up, you can't make this up. It's like a 'Saturday Night Live' routine."
Continued on Page 49
#2
Any one of you libs get in my face and you'll be having your teeth for lunch.
"I want you to argue with them and get in their face". This is considered 'discourse' from a Presidential candidate? How can anyone take this man seriously?
Posted by: Chris W. ||
09/18/2008 12:24
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#3
I want you to argue with them and get in their face
And what are you going to tell me? That it's bushcheneymcpalin's fault and that the messiah will heal the sick financials by rubbing mud in their eyes?
I would ask them about Andrew Cuomo, a Clinton appointee for HUD from 1997 to 2001. "Junior" made a series of bad decisions such as allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to move into the sub-prime markets without any regulatory mechanism. And he allowed the FHA to give out $0 down loans. He legalized brokers receiving kickbacks for these loans which led to predatory lending. Then Andy decided to provide unrealistic flexible loans to low-income families and minorities with little to no money down.
If you want to scream in my face about bushcheneymcpalin's responsibility...place partial blame on Clinton and the donks.
#4
Do that with 2nd amendment folks and things could get interesting. I don't see how this tactic is going to win over any voters. Seems more like the words of a desparate man. Metro man just looks silly when he tries to sound tough.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 12:38
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#5
It all goes back to that traitor "Carter" not supporting the Shah - resulting in the whole militant islam thingy...
#7
Obama says this stuff like the Dems haven't controlled Congress the last two years. Like he hasn't accepted money from Fannie Mae or whatever the hell it's called.
You know, if I were running for office and my supporters had done all the sorts of things that Obama's army of flying monkeys had done, the LAST thing I would be doing would be saying that they need to get in more people's faces.
I thank GOD ALMIGHTY that I'm not one of these liberals who believe conservatives have engineered the war, are killing people for the fun of it, etc., etc., because if I were, I'd be looking out at my party having become the party that makes fun of families with disabled children... and I'd go into the booth and pull the lever for John "Meatgrinder" McCain.
I think it was in 1803 or thereabouts that the US Congress passed a law making duelling illegal, and ever since, the level of discourse in America has declined. Still having some epee skills, I'd be more than willing to risk the penalties to help raise the politeness quotient in the polity.
Was it Heinlein who wrote "An armed society is a polite society"?
#10
I doubt Congress passed a law in 1803 except for DC. In July 1804 Hamilton and Burr dueled in Weehawken NJ, because it was illegal to duel in NY. The last duel in Weehawken was in 1845 according to Wikipedia.
#11
"...if he's president he'll take on -- and I quote -- 'the old boys network in Washington.' I'm not making this up," Obama said. "This is somebody who's been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign. And now he tells us that he's the one who's going to take on the old boys network," Obama said. "The old boys network. In the McCain campaign that's called a staff meeting. Come on."
OODA again. Candidate Obama's VP choice has been there as long, is as old, and did nothing toward reforming his colleagues. I thought Obama was supposed to be so very intelligent...
#12
On every news show I've seen during the last few days, Obama supporters have shouted down opposing points of view, talked over the host and used any question to give long harrangues stating his talking points, no matter what the question - and kept doing it even when the hosts tried to stop them.
#14
lotp, I've noticed that on the radio, also. It's an interesting tactic because I've also noticed the media types trying to overtalk them. Both are demeaned by the failure to extend mutual civility in my mind, even though the Obamanista initiated it. Does The One really want to demean the MSM?
#17
I think not, rj, merely correcting my bad history. A search does indicate that apparently duelling was common up into the 1840's and not as a sneak out behind the barn thing, but pretty public. I was basing the earlier date on a story I had heard, perhaps an early urban legend, about two congressmen. One 6'7" and the other 5'2" The little one challenged the big one. The big one had the choice of weapons, and not really being interested chose 16 pound sledgehammers in 5'6" of water. Duel never came off. The story as told to me indicated the challenge was in violation of the recent law outlawing dueling.
#18
Hysterical, shrieking of obiden talking points - simply crass. What's a tad worrisome, all you web monkeys should look into this: astroturfing. Just when you thought this cycle could not get anymore Orwellian.
HA! In my face? Better think about where you're gonna wake up mfer.
#20
'He believes in the Second Amendment.' If they tell you, 'Well, he's going to raise your taxes,' you say, 'No, he's not, he's going lower them
In other words he want his acolytes to start arguments based on lies Obma tells them.
ANyoeh that has tried those thing on my has been stopped DEAD by me asking simple questions:
Why did he vote and verbally commit to oulawing handguns in Illinois?
How is he going to cut taxes when he wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire and greatly increase taxes?
Then I point out that what he says is different than what he does - he is a liar, even to his own side - the surveillance act he talked big about opposing for the crowds? He voted for it. Same thing with gun laws - he voted for restrictions and bans.
I then point out the "lies of omission" - According to the campaign (.pdf), Obama "will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns for the purposes of hunting and target shooting." Notice how it does not mention self-defense purposes.
He talks the talk but does not walk the walk - he is a convincing liar with no record of accomplishment in defending taxpayers or gun owners.
#21
On every news show I've seen during the last few days, Obama supporters have shouted down opposing points of view, talked over the host and used any question to give long harrangues stating his talking points, no matter what the question - and kept doing it even when the hosts tried to stop them.
In other words, lotp, they are acting like fascists. Or fanatics a'la Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell's zombies.
#22
Ah, go ahead and get in my face. I gave parking tickets for a living once....and I'm sure I've seen better and more coherent rants from people ticked off about getting caught in a handicapped spot.
#24
On every news show I've seen during the last few days, Obama supporters have shouted down opposing points of view, talked over the host and used any question to give long harrangues stating his talking points, no matter what the question - and kept doing it even when the hosts tried to stop them.
Didn't we see this movie before. Like in the late 1930's/early 40's in Germany.
I was switching channels the other day and caught a few seconds old Olbermann's monologue. I couldn't believe the amount of pure hatred being spewed by him on our airwaves. Its not anger, its not 'rage', its not 'righteous indignation', its plan old hatred. Hatred of Bush, hatred of Conservatives, and just hatred of anything outside of his narrow band of 'truth'.
#27
via Ace of Spades, it usually starts out "I'm a Concerned Christian Conservative, but lately I've been dismayed by John McCain, and taken another look at Barack Obama, who has some interesting ideas...."
usually the name will be single: Jim, Tim, John, Suzy...
Axelrod's firm is a master at this shit, and when you see it, call em out. They don't stay long, or respond to intellectual challenges, because they're going from a script. They actually have no idea what a real Christian Conservative would think
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2008 19:46
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#28
"Argue with your friends and neighbors, 'get in their face'"
If you are Obamaniacally confronted, the best yak-repelling tactic is to whip out the best Dirty Harry line ever, "You're mouthwash ain't cuttin' it."
WASHINGTON - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. In a new TV ad that repeats widely debunked claims about the Democratic tax plan, the Republican campaign calls Obama's tax increases "painful."
Under the economic plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes while those earning less the vast majority of American taxpayers would receive a tax cut.
Although Republican John McCain claims that Obama would raise taxes, the independent Tax Policy Center and other groups conclude that four out of five U.S. households would receive tax cuts under Obama's proposals.
"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
McCain released a television ad Thursday charging that Obama would increase the size of the federal government amid an economic crisis. Contending that "a big government casts a big shadow on us all," the ad features the image of a shadow slowly covering a sleeping baby as a narrator misstates the reach of the Obama tax proposal.
"Obama and his liberal congressional allies want a massive government, billions in spending increases, wasteful pork," the ad says. "And we would pay painful income taxes, skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity and home heating oil. Can your family afford that?"
The McCain campaign said the ad is set to run nationally.
#4
Didn't we fight a revolution against higher taxes some 230ish years ago?
So ... it would be better argued that it is more patriotic to fight against high taxes. Or revolt against them.
Geeze the dhimocrats are full going for pure socialism this year.
#6
"It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
-in other words, it's time to punish you for being good at what you do and for continually making good decisions in your life. You need to buck up and shoulder those who don't.
WASHINGTON -- Wall Street as we know it is kaput. It is not just that Merrill Lynch agreed to be purchased by Bank of America or that the legendary investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy or that the insurance giant AIG is floundering. It is not even that these events followed the failure of the investment bank Bear Stearns or the government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest mortgage lenders. What's really happened is that Wall Street's business model has collapsed.
Greed and fear, which routinely govern financial markets, have seeded this global crisis. Just when it will end isn't clear. What is clear is that its origins lie in the ways that Wall Street -- the giant investment houses, brokerage firms, hedge funds and "private equity" firms -- has changed since 1980. Its present business model has three basic components.
First, financial firms have moved beyond their traditional roles as advisers and intermediaries. Once, major investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman worked mainly for their clients. They traded stocks and bonds for major institutional investors (insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds). They raised capital for companies by underwriting -- selling -- new stocks and bonds for the firms. They provided advice to corporate clients on mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs. All these services earned fees.
Now, most financial firms also invest for themselves. They use partners' or shareholders' money to place bets on stocks, bonds and other securities -- so-called "principal transactions." Merrill and other retail brokers, which once served individual clients, have ventured into investment banking. So have some commercial banks that were barred from doing so until the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
Second, Wall Street's compensation is heavily skewed toward annual bonuses, reflecting the profits traders and managers earned in the year. Despite lavish base salaries, bonuses dominate. Managing directors with 15 years' experience can receive bonuses five to 10 times their base salaries of $200,000 to $300,000.
Finally, investment banks rely heavily on borrowed money, called "leverage" in financial lingo. Lehman was typical. In late 2007, it held almost $700 billion in stocks, bonds and other securities. Meanwhile, its shareholders' investment (equity) was about $23 billion. All the rest was supported by borrowings. The "leverage ratio" was 30 to 1.
Leverage can create huge windfalls. Suppose you buy a stock for $100. It goes to $110. You made 10 percent, a decent return. Now suppose you borrowed $90 of the $100. If the price rises to $101, you've made 10 percent on your $10 investment. (Technically, the price has to exceed $101 slightly to cover interest payments.) If it goes to $110, you've doubled your money. Wow.
Once assembled, these components created a manic machine for gambling. Traders and money managers had huge incentives to do whatever would increase short-term profits. Dubious mortgages were packaged into bonds, sold and traded. Investment houses had huge incentives to increase leverage. While the boom continued, government remained aloof. Congress resisted tougher regulation for Fannie and Freddie and permitted them to run leverage ratios that, by plausible calculations, exceeded 60 to 1.
It wasn't that Wall Street's leaders deceived customers or lenders into taking risks that were known to be hazardous. Instead, they concluded that risks were low or nonexistent. They fooled themselves, because the short-term rewards blinded them to the long-term dangers. Inevitably, these surfaced. Mortgages went bad. The powerful logic of high leverage went into reverse. Losses eroded firms' tiny capital bases, raising doubts about their survival. This year, Lehman lost nearly $8 billion in "principal transactions." Otherwise, it was profitable.
How Wall Street restructures itself is as yet unclear. Companies need more capital. Merrill went to Bank of America because commercial banks have lower leverage (about 10 to 1). It seems likely that many thinly capitalized hedge funds will be forced to reduce leverage. Ditto for "private equity" firms. In time, all this may prove beneficial. Financial firms may take fewer stupid and wasteful risks -- at least for a while. Talented and ambitious people may move from finance, where they were attracted by exorbitant pay, into more productive industries.
But the immediate effect may be to damage the rest of the economy. People have already lost their jobs. States and localities, particularly New York City and New Jersey, that depend on Wall Street's profits and payrolls will face further spending cuts. Banks and investment banks may tighten lending standards again and impede any economic recovery. The stock market's swoon may deepen consumers' pessimism, fear and reluctance to spend. There may be more failures of financial firms. It's hard to know, because financial crises resemble wars in one crucial respect: They result from miscalculation.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2008
11:14 ||
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#1
What we are seeing is the deleveraging of Wll Street, du to the failures of the derivative markets.
What it means is that banks are going to be overly-tight with money, which will lead to less money available, therefore less demand for goods, and eventually less goods produced. Its called a deflationary spiral, and can lead to an economic depression if the hoarding of capital and resultant lack of demand (due to lack of cash) eats into production capability.
Basically, a lot of the derivative markets and futures, etc that sprung up in the 90's have demolished the banks because they lent those hedge fund investment fat-cats tons of money that has now vaporized.
#3
So how about mandatory financial institutional collapse insurance 'tax' upon the players/firms for in the future. Since they're getting us to pay, in devalued inflated spending dollars with the Fed pumping billzions into the market, maybe its time the players fork over sums to finance future cyclic debacles like this. The level of the tax to be graduated by the riskiness of the activity pursued. Since no one 'in charge' is willing anymore to tell them to suck it up and die [because of 'ramifications' or other rationalization], time to get some control on the process.
Talented and ambitious people may move from finance, where they were attracted by exorbitant pay, into more productive industries.
#5
The problem is that they separated the risk from the profit and loss. They made money on origination fees on mortgages and then sold the junk to others. Those who made the loans did not lose the money, they made it and cared not a whip what happened either to the homebuyer or the loan. It was one big Ponzi scheme with the American public left holding the bag.
I borrowed money for my house (still paying) and my car (paid off early). I "borrow" money with my credit card each month merely for convenience - I have the money already and the bill gets paid as soon as it comes in - no interest paid.
I don't borrow money to buy intangibles, such as a vacation. And I don't borrow money to buy stocks - otherwise known as buying on margin.
I'll never be Donald Trump (thank heavens!), but I'll also never cost normal people billions of dollars and damage the country's economy by playing fast and loose with other people's money.
**Spit**
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/18/2008 15:45
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#8
Ebbang, I don't see any jumping this time. Perhaps many of them need to be pushed instead, sine they have no honor nor any integrity to make good the results of their dereliction of duty. Defenestration woudl be a proper punishment of the fat cats who demolished the economy.
#11
ION CNN + FOX AM > seems Wall Street stocks have REBOUNDED APPROXI 410 POINTS + is anticipated to still rise slighlty further as financial markets stabilize???
#12
Nothing wrong with leverage in and of itself. Lending is a neccessary tool for growth.
Problem was, money was so cheap that a ton of that leverage went to bad investments because there wasn't enough good ones to keep up with all the money.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/18/2008 21:22
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#13
BArb: I always thought that Trump was a true American Hero. And today on Larry King, he endorsed McCain. What's your problem? Don't you love McCain?
#14
Correct Mike N., which is why the situation south of the border is fascinating. Some countries are screaming buys needing investment, after centuries of abuse (Brazil/Chile/Peru/Columbia) while others are headed the wrong way in a hurry (Bolivia/Chavezville).
A shame if they get shorted in the fallout, but Brazil is likely finally big enough to thrive regardless, and could drag the other well-behaved types along with it.
AoS: put source html into the 'source' box of the poster, NOT in the article.
I don't believe the Georgian side of things has been adequately addressed. The media has been horribly biased, printing & believing every word of propaganda uttered by the Russians.
Saakashvili's statements here are striking. It astounds me that it took me over a month to find a Georgian account of what happened.
The Central Intelligence Agency is using strikes against enemy targets to learn how the groups respond when attacked, the agency's director said Wednesday.
Speaking at the Air Force Association's annual conference, Michael Hayden said the clandestine agency is trying to "tickle" enemy groups to provoke a reaction, often with missile strikes targeting just an individual. "We use military operations to excite the enemy, prompting him to respond. In that response we learn so much," said Hayden, a retired Air Force general who has led the CIA since 2006.
Hayden said the CIA is working closely with the military in places such as Iraq's Anbar province, where American troops have fought Sunni insurgents. That experience helped CIA officers develop a strategy to engage Sunni tribal leaders, which Hayden said has contributed to a recent drop in violence in Iraq. The agency "picked up insights we would not have had" by working with American forces, Hayden said.
Hayden's speech came on the final day of the Air Force conference, an annual gathering of mostly Air Force officials and defense contractors that supply the service. Hayden retired in July from the Air Force, where he had been head of the service's intelligence office before leading the National Security Agency for a six-year run that ended in April 2005.
The CIA flies Predator drones, unmanned planes that can hover for hours and carry missiles for precision strikes. While not confirming those tactics, Hayden said that U.S. forces are now able to make pinpoint attacks against specific targets. "Our pilots are targeting not structures, but individuals," Hayden said.
Many of those strikes are now conducted along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where U.S. forces are hunting insurgents and terrorist groups that are believed to be using the loosely governed area as a base. For example, a suspected missile attack from a drone Wednesday in Pakistan killed at least six people.
Hayden said the CIA also was focusing more on sending agents to immerse themselves overseas in duty locations for longer periods of time. More than half of agency analysts have been hired since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the U.S. education system has not responded to the latest threats in the way that it focused on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Hayden said the agency needs more experts in non-Western cultures and languages. "We have not seen the shift in academia for the current war that we saw for the previous war," he said.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2008
10:32 ||
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#1
Goading the enemy into doing what you want them to do. Love it! Sun Tzu would be proud.
#4
There is a reason that the military has specialty schools. No one should count on colleges to provide knowledge as required by the military, CIA, ect. If instructors are needed, vet them and hire them & then stick them into the organizational education system as required.
#5
Outside of langauages (and even then), military schools set their curriculum based on what the military needs at the moment. And they are specialty schools. What an intel specialist may need about a Pakistani valley or tribal interactions, for examples, might be found in a 19th century account by a British surveyor or in the mind of an anthroplogy professor.
Thing is, that kind of needed information and knowledge is usually found only in academia, and is readily available (even the obscure material). For the CIA to replicate it would be staggering in time and money.
OK, I'll put it in Home Front Politix, but I want it in writing, I think they've crossed the line into both Lurid Crime Tales and Short Attention Span Theater
Here's how it works. A message goes out over Barack Obama's Web site with the names, phone numbers and e-mails of editors and producers foolish enough to host Obama critics. With Mr. Obama's extensive digital following, and his extensive fund-raising and contact lists, shutting up the Democratic nominee's critics with a fraction of Mr. Obama's millions of supporters is relatively simple. The digital legions plug phone lines, crash servers and intimidate the advertisers of these media outlets. This must be another instance of the "new" politics that Mr. Obama frequently talks about.
"This is not free speech. This is not "people expressing their opinion." This is people expressing Obama's opinion. This is a powerful politician arrogantly abusing his power to try to silence his critics, without even bothering to hide behind Media Matters or Kos, because he knows he can get away with it. This is wrong."
McCain may not be perfect, but he's preferable to Obama, who has allowed his mask to slip a bit in the last few weeks. He's a typical machine politician who seems far too comfortable shutting down speech he doesn't like. Is encouraging such thuggery an example of the "community organizing" of which Obama is so proud?
One of the great ironies of this election is that liberals are worshiping a guy who embodies everything they claim to hate about the Bush administration. Add into this that he has a bunch of flying monkeys who will try to break into your email without him having to say anything and things look much worse than outlined above. It's starting to look less like a political campaign and more like the mafia.
It's a beautiful plot. There's no coordination. There doesn't have to be. It's a self-organizing phenomenon. One we not only don't have a decent strategy of fighting, but one we're too hung up on morals to fight. We think of ourselves as too decent for this sort of thing.
Perhaps in 2012 we'll look back at our present selves and think we were retarded for believing in anything other than power. Welcome to the race to the bottom.
#1
I won't play, not like that.
Nobody should, shit like that won't affect the election one little bit. If you don't know who you are going to vote for by now you are one fickle SOB.
If you change your mind twice a week after see a few news clips of the candidates then your vote is not worth going after, don't flatter yourself.
I saw this article and wondered, 'How did Russia transport the Israeli UAV components from Georgia?'
An Aeroflot Boeing-737 jet crashed Sunday on the outskirts of Perm in Russia's Ural mountains killing all 88 passengers and crew on board, the airline said. Perm, Russia is home to Perm Motors, JSC, a major Russian manufacturer of the 4th generation PS-90A engine which successfully competes with the best engines in this class and in particular with Pratt & Whitney's PW2000 and Rolls-Royce's RB211.
At least 20 foreigners and seven children were on the plane which witnesses said burst into flames as it prepared to land on a flight from Moscow. The wreckage cut off a stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway.
"It was burning while still in the sky and it looked like a falling comet," one female witness told Russia's Vesti-24 television. Do Israeli UAVs have self-destruct?
Aeroflot said controllers lost radio contact with the plane shortly after 5:20 am (2320 GMT Saturday), moments before it came down just a few hundred metres (yards) from a main residential area.
Aeroflot confirmed there were no survivors and said the dead included nine people from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine and one each from France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Switzerland, and Turkey. One passenger was also said to be American but US officials were reportedly checking that information.
Among the victims was General Gennady Troshev, a former top commander of Russia's war in Chechnya and advisor to ex-president Vladimir Putin, Interfax news agency reported, citing Russia's transport ministry.
Aeroflot chief executive Valery Okulov refused to answer whether it could have been a terrorist attack and said that was a matter for the investigating commission. "We should wait for the official results," he said.
"As the plane was coming in for landing, it lost communication at the height of 1,100 metres and air controllers lost its blip," an Aeroflot statement said. "The airplane was found within Perm's city limits completely destroyed and on fire," it added.
One witness described seeing the plane pass over his house before watching in horror as it exploded and sent massive chunks of burning wreckage flying to the ground. "The plane was flying over our building, falling, and it hit the ground about 200 metres (650 feet) away and broke up," a local resident, who only gave his name as Maxim, told AFP. "It blew up in the air, the pieces fell on the ground. The main part containing the passengers fell in a dacha (country house) area with gardens. It didn't hit the main residential area."
Vesti-24 showed smoking hot metal strewn across a wooded area and investigators combing through the dark with flashlights. Later pictures showed clothes and other possessions scattered far and wide.
The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, though a source quoted by RIA Novosti suggested that an engine failure could have sparked flames on board and led to the crash. Both black box flight recorders were found in the wreckage, Interfax news agency reported, citing investigators.
Aeroflot spokesman Lev Koshlyakov told journalists the plane had been given "a full technical inspection" early this year and was judged to be in a "proper condition."
It was the worst air disaster involving a Russian airliner since a Tupolev-154 flying to Saint Petersburg went down near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk in August 2006 killing all 170 passengers on board.
Plane wreckage on the tracks led to the closure of a stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway between Perm and Yekaterinburg, police said.
The plane had been leased by Aeroflot from a Dublin-based company Pinewatch Limited in July until March 2013, the airline said. It was not clear how old it was.
The crash will doubtless raise renewed concerns about the safety of air travel in Russia where experts have pointed to major faults in the training of crews as well as Russia's ageing fleet of passenger jets. An air safety commission announced in January that the average age of the country's international airliners was 18 years, and its regional jets 30 years. CCTV video of crash
#1
Caught fire and exploded on approach, at relatively low altitude.
Barometric pressure controlled bomb in the hold?
Stinger type missile?
Or just a mechanical/maintenance issue? Seems less than likely, as it is not a high mechanical stress part of a flight.
#3
Mr. Wife was never keen to go flying about Russia, as the maintenance for internal flights was considerably worse than those that went internationally. However, there being no options, there was nothing to be done but trust in God and statistics to get him home safely again. As far as I know he hasn't gone back since 1996, so I assume there's considerably more chewing gum and baling wire now than then.
#4
"I hate warriors, too narrow-minded. I'll tell you what I do like though: a killer, a dyed-in-the-wool killer. Cold blooded, clean, methodical and thorough. Now a real killer, when he picked up the ZF-1, would've immediately asked about the little red button on the bottom of the gun."
Posted by: bruce ||
09/18/2008 21:42
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#5
Did you know that those Boeings are registered in Bermuda? And that a bermudan inspector supposedly checks them? Of course they never do.
#2
Putin and his buddies have been getting rich off of Russia's pretend capitalism. They're learning that it has it's downside, too. The more graft, the bigger the fall. Enjoy the ride, Putin.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 11:29
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#3
Don't worry, I'm sure George Bush and the Fed are putting together a bailout package as we speak.
#4
You know Putie, even the Czar sold Alaska when the price was right. If things get tough you might even convince the Euros to put together a package to 'buy back' those Georgian provinces. Cheaper than fighting and not as obvious awkward in appearance. It seems to work for the freebooters around Somalia and the ship traffic.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/18/2008 17:45
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#7
BS article. First, russian stock market does not play the same role as the stock market plays here in the U.S.: it is still primarily speculative. So when speculators pull out, the market drops, but it is not that detrimental for the overall ecomony. Second, the author is enamored with the notion that Russia needs to join the WTO. BS again. Russia actually does not need WTO that much and it surely won't die if it does not join.
Third, while Russia may be authoritatian, I would not compare it with China. The latter comparison just shows the author's ignorance and desire to lump up things which are different, but in his mind "all the same." Actually, I am surprized that The Wall Street Journal published this crap. They usually do better.
#13
I've been thinkin' - I know, a bad habit. But if Russia's in financial trouble, maybe Putin will sell us Siberia. We'll even let 'em keep the port of Vladivostok and a rail corridor to and from there to central Russia. Offer them $1 trillion over a 20-year period for everything east of 110 degrees, including Sakalain Island and the Kuriles, minus a two-mile wide rail/road corridor to Vlad. I'm sure it'll get nowhere, fast, but it will certainly stir up the Russian minorities who would much rather be American citizens than Russian citizens.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/18/2008 19:40
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#15
Also, not so sure that being an american citizen is a dream for a russian minorities. There, they are much better integrated, here they will be treated like crap.
#22
"Ovaltine, a registered trademark of Associated British Foods, is made by Wander AG, a subsidiary of Twinings which acquired the brand from Novartis in 2003."
Ovaltine: Drink it, eat it, gnaw on it.
Fascinating . . . . BTW, it is not even american.
#23
See TOPIX > CONDOLEEZA RICE: RUSSIA ON THE WRONG PATH TOWARDS ISOLATIONISM, IRRELEVANCE.
Again, RUSSIA's Euro-centricity/focii is well known and recognized - CHINA, however, is the opposite. MANY CHIN NETTERS BELIEVE THE US WILL BE RISKING A DIRECT MILPOL CONFRONTATION + WAR WID NUCLEAR CHINA IFF THE US INVADES CHINA-ALLY PAKISTAN, and where CHINA = NOKOR + TAIWAN, etc. ISSUES.
#25
Ovaltine: Drink it, eat it, gnaw on it.
Fascinating. . . . BTW, it is not even american.
Neither is Nestle', you know. I learnt about Ovaltine when my German immigrant mother stocked up on it because my German immigrant grandmother came to live with us. I don't recall either teething biscuits or cookies with the Ovaltine brand in any of the countries in which I've shopped, but the powder was always next to Nestle' chocolate powder, also for stirring into milk.
#26
ok, I am not a fan of the dry milk/substitute products, so don't have anything further to contribute to this discussion turned gastronomical . . . .
The SEC allowed five firms the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults.
Making matters worse, according to Mr. Pickard, who helped write the original rule in 1975 as director of the SEC's trading and markets division, is a move by the SEC this month to further erode the restraints on surviving broker-dealers by withdrawing requirements that they maintain a certain level of rating from the ratings agencies.
The so-called net capital rule was created in 1975 to allow the SEC to oversee broker-dealers, or companies that trade securities for customers as well as their own accounts. It requires that firms value all of their tradable assets at market prices, and then it applies a haircut, or a discount, to account for the assets' market risk. So equities, for example, have a haircut of 15%, while a 30-year Treasury bill, because it is less risky, has a 6% haircut.
The net capital rule also requires that broker dealers limit their debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1, although they must issue an early warning if they begin approaching this limit, and are forced to stop trading if they exceed it, so broker dealers often keep their debt-to-net capital ratios much lower.
In 2004, the European Union passed a rule allowing the SEC's European counterpart to manage the risk both of broker dealers and their investment banking holding companies. In response, the SEC instituted a similar, voluntary program for broker dealers with capital of at least $5 billion, enabling the agency to oversee both the broker dealers and the holding companies.
This alternative approach, which all five broker-dealers that qualified Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley voluntarily joined, altered the way the SEC measured their capital. Using computerized models, the SEC, under its new Consolidated Supervised Entities program, allowed the broker dealers to increase their debt-to-net-capital ratios, sometimes, as in the case of Merrill Lynch, to as high as 40-to-1. It also removed the method for applying haircuts, relying instead on another math-based model for calculating risk that led to a much smaller discount.
The SEC justified the less stringent capital requirements by arguing it was now able to manage the consolidated entity of the broker dealer and the holding company, which would ensure it could better manage the risk.
The chief participants in this debateall Iraq War veteransfixate on two large questions. First, why, after its promising start, did Operation Iraqi Freedom go so badly wrong? Second, how should the hard-earned lessons of Iraq inform future policy? Hovering in the background of this Iraq-centered debate is another war that none of the debaters experienced personallynamely, Vietnam.
The protagonists fall into two camps: Crusaders and Conservatives.
The Crusaders consist of officers who see the Armys problems in Iraq as self-inflicted. According to members of this camp, things went awry because rigidly conventional senior commanders, determined never again to see the Army sucked into a Vietnam-like quagmire, had largely ignored unconventional warfare and were therefore prepared poorly for it. Typical of this generation is Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, once the top U.S. commander in Baghdad, who in late 2003 was still describing the brewing insurgency as strategically and operationally insignificant, when the lowliest buck sergeant knew otherwise.
Younger officers critical of Sanchez are also committed to the slogan Never again, but with a different twist: never again should the officer corps fall prey to the willful amnesia to which the Army succumbed after Vietnam, when it turned its back on that war.
To Nagl, the lessons of the recent past are self-evident. The events of 9/11, he writes, conclusively demonstrated that instability anywhere can be a real threat to the American people here at home. For the foreseeable future, political conditions abroad rather than specific military threats will pose the greatest danger to the United States.
War in this context implies not only coercion but also social engineering. As Nagl puts it, the security challenges of the 21st century will require the U.S. military not just to dominate land operations, but to change entire societies.
Nagls line of argument has not gone unchallenged. Its opponents, the Conservatives, reject the revisionist interpretation of Vietnam and dispute the freshly enshrined conventional narrative on Iraq. Above all, they question whether Iraq represents a harbinger of things to come.
A leading voice in the Conservative camp is Colonel Gian Gentile, a Berkeley graduate with a doctorate in history from Stanford, who currently teaches at West Point. Gentile has two tours in Iraq under his belt. During the second, just before the Petraeus era, he commanded a battalion in Baghdad.
Writing in the journal World Affairs, Gentile dismisses as a self-serving fiction the notion that Abrams in 1968 put the United States on the road to victory in Vietnam; the war, he says, was unwinnable, given the perseverance, cohesion, indigenous support, and sheer determination of the other side, coupled with the absence of any of those things on the American side. Furthermore, according to Gentile, the post-Vietnam officer corps did not turn its back on that war in a fit of pique; it correctly assessed that the mechanized formations of the Warsaw Pact deserved greater attention than pajama-clad guerrillas in Southeast Asia.
Gentile also takes issue with the triumphal depiction of the Petraeus era, attributing security improvements achieved during Petraeuss tenure less to new techniques than to a cash-for-cooperation policy that put nearly 100,000 Sunnis, many of them former insurgents, on the U.S. government payroll. According to Gentile, in Iraq as in Vietnam, tactics alone cannot explain the overall course of events.
All of this forms a backdrop to Gentiles core concern: that an infatuation with stability operations will lead the Army to reinvent itself as a constabulary, adept perhaps at nation-building but shorn of adequate capacity for conventional war-fighting.
The biggest question of all, Gentile writes, is Who gets to decide this? Absent a comparably searching Great Debate among the civilians vying to direct U.S. policyand the prospects that either Senator McCain or Senator Obama will advocate alternatives to the Long War appear slightthe power of decision may well devolve by default upon soldiers. Gentile insistsrightlythat the choice should not be the Armys to make.
Both sides have good arguments and neither is exclusively right. But the problem is how to divide limited resources. The big loser, it seems to me, is the USMC which could have carved out a niche much as it did with amphibious operations before WWII. There's lots more at the link.
#1
The big loser, it seems to me, is the USMC which could have carved out a niche much as it did with amphibious operations before WWII.
To discuss this aspect would likely take up most of Rantburg. But some reasons for not being able to carve a niche is a) the emphasis on joint operations, 2)a serious blurring of interservice missions/interoperability (particularly SPECOPS), 3) the 'heavy-ing' of the USMC.
#2
...the (Viet Nam) war, he says, was unwinnable, given the "perseverance, cohesion, indigenous support, and sheer determination of the other side, coupled with the absence of any of those things on the American side.
Bull feathers. When we went to the Paris Peace Talks the NV diplomats started arguing about the shape of the table, etc and wouldn't talk about anything of substance. So we fired up the USAF and commenced to turn Hanoi into a field of smoking craters. The NV diplos rushed back to the table and started talking peace loud and clear.
My point? While we were not permitted to invade N. Viet Nam, We had other options to make Viet Nam winnable.
#3
Being an artillery troop (Fire Direction Control) in the late '70s I can testify how quickly the skills for a competent artillery unit can vanish, with deadly consequence. The same is true for all conventional forces.
Like the close air support we so appreciate requires first that air supremacy be obtained so too is the ability to control the battlefield required before the techniques of the "long war" can be applied.
As in a proper diet, a little of everything is required. Don't fight the last war, including this one. Try to be flexible enough to fight the NEXT one, whatever it may be.
#4
It seems to me that this is mostly a training question. The low-tech, social engineering phase of a war can only come after a certain level of stability has been achieved. That stability can only come when the enemy has been degraded significantly. The degradation comes about through the use of traditional force application (both tools and techniques).
That said, do we gear-up for a war with China or do we gear-up for a prolonged Afghan-type operation. I guess this is a "how heavy" question. But I don't see a prolonged conflict with China on the horizon.
#5
Do not look at the direct situation. Usually when these guys are rabble rousing, they are planning something else completely. When the big boys there get together, they usually want to discuss business. Not so much borders. Chess.
#1
Yep, they've shifted in the last 5 years to the left talking points memos on 'science'. Should'a seen their issue on the End of Oil[tm]. They acknowledged in the piece that there had been End of Oil[tm] panics before but this TIME[tm] it's different, it's really really true. Sad to watch another old school pub descend into the dinosaur pool [pun intended].
#2
I remember in the last election they came out about this time and went into the tank for the democrats. I've always loved the National Geographic and I was so sad to realize they were no longer a reliable source of info.
#3
They lost me in the months after Sept 11 when I read their article on Islam and it talked about the vile crusades but forgot to mention how Islam somehow found itself fighting in France and at the gates of Constantinople and washing up in Indonesia in the century or two prior. Yeah they were just praying and playing chess when the big-bad Europeans picked a fight with them.
#4
Evidence is slowly accumulating that we may be going into an extended sunspot nadar. That means significantly lower temps for awhile, a few years to a few decades. The politicans can just manufactor some new talking points and lie their way out of the global warming craze., but what will the scientists do? It wont be so easy for them to reverse an academic position that was not securely based in science and may prove to be false, precisely because of their failure to follow good science methodology. Retire quietly is my suggestion.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 12:47
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#5
Global warming may be our only chance against the sunspot draught. Everybody, to your SUV's. It's for the EARTH!
#7
Arctic Ice in "Death Spiral," Is Near Record Low
Except the record low occurred 29 years ago. Was the planet warmer in 1979 than now? Maybe. I remember it being plenty hotter when I was younger... but then I spent the mid to late 80s in air conditioning, so what does my "recollection" matter?
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
09/18/2008 16:52
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#8
Respectfully disagree with Remoteman. Please see the May 2008 issue on China and the article on soil conservation in the Sept. issue.
A Marine sergeant singled out by President Bush for throwing his body on a grenade to save his comrades in Iraq will receive the prestigious Navy Cross rather than the nation's highest military award, military officials said.
The family of Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who was posthumously nominated for the nation's highest military honor, told the North County Times of Escondido, Calif., they were disappointed he was not receiving the Medal of Honor. "I don't understand why if the president has been talking about him," his mother, Rosa Peralta, told the newspaper, which was the first to report the bestowing of the Navy Cross.
Rosa Peralta said she was informed during a meeting with Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Richard Natonski that a committee could not agree on awarding the Medal of Honor to her son, who Marine Corps officials say was first wounded by friendly fire. She said the general mentioned the friendly fire aspect as part of her son's death during the discussion.
Marine Corps spokesman Mike Alvarez confirmed the meeting, saying only that it was a personal briefing between Natonski and Rosa Peralta to inform her that the secretary of the Navy would award the Navy Cross posthumously for extraordinary heroism. The Navy Cross is the second highest honor for combat heroism a Marine can receive.
The secretary of the Navy's public affairs office in Washington, D.C., did not immediately return an after-hours telephone call Wednesday seeking comment.
Headquarters Marine Corps spokesman Maj. David Nevers told The Associated Press that the Navy Cross for Peralta "is not bestowed lightly." Nevers said only 23 sailors and Marines out of the thousands who have served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have received the Navy Cross. "The awarding of a medals of valor is a methodical process and carefully conducted to ensure the sacrifice and service of our Marines and sailors is appropriately honored," he said.
Peralta was shot several times in the face and body during a house-to-house search in Fallujah on Nov. 15, 2004, during some of the fiercest fighting of the war. According to a report by a Marine combat photographer who witnessed the act, Peralta lay wounded on the floor of a house and grabbed a grenade that had been lobbed by an insurgent. He absorbed the blast with his body, dying instantly.
In 2005, Natonski, then-commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, ordered an investigation to determine the source of a bullet fragment recovered from Peralta's body. "Following multiple and exhaustive reviews, the evidence supports the finding that Peralta was likely hit by 'friendly fire,'" the Marine Corps said Wednesday in a press release. "This finding had no bearing on the decision to award the Navy Cross medal."
Bush cited Peralta's heroism in a Memorial Day speech in 2005, saying the Marine "understood that America faces dangerous enemies, and he knew the sacrifices required to defeat them."
Peralta, who was assigned to Hawaii's 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, moved to San Diego from Tijuana as a teenager. He was 25.
#1
I am actually glad of this. While he deserves credit for his act of self sacrifice, there is realistically almost no reason to ever throw yourself on a hand grenade, and grenade instructors have long fought against Hollywood depictions of jumping on hand grenades.
Under most circumstances, it is just an act of suicide based on ignorance of how grenades function and explode.
#2
Disagree; but if the MoH disqualifier was the 'friendly fire' fragment, then i think somebody should rethink this; he could have 'retreated' to have his first wounds looked at, and who knows how many the full force of the grenade would have affected.
GWB, override this decision. Please.
#3
USN: it is a combination of probabilities and physics.
Grenades that land on the ground (disregarding airburst and burst as soon as they hit), have a probable time window for detonation of between one and three seconds.
Unless you are already prone and immediately roll on the grenade, it will take you at least a second to a second and a half to get down on top of it. However a stoop-grab-grounder toss can be done in less than a second. Advantage goes to tossing.
You can test this one yourself.
In the open, when a grenade on the ground explodes, the vast majority of the blast and frag go in an upward 90 degree cone. If you can get out of that cone, both blast and frag injuries are significantly lower.
Even a one-step-away-and down effort will give perhaps a ruptured ear drum and lesser frag injuries. Distances more than that are inverse square in severity, except for the "lucky frag" injuries in the maximum hazard area.
#4
It removes nothing from the Love this man had for his friends. It is impossible to do the two second thing from a turret all geared up. I stood there before. You assume the windows in the cab are open? It is not a pick and flick. It is a warn and dive or a go down on it decision.
In circumspect, Those who get that medal usually have a tinge more done.
#5
Just saw this article (posted @ 7:41 Seattle time): his Mother is going to Congress to try to get the MoH.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/379738_hero19.html
If the Capri/Thai processes are successful then Canada's oilsands, other oilsands and heavy oil deposits around the world will have higher recovery rates using a more economic process and the oil will be upgrading in the ground to a higher and more valuable quality......In the THAI system, an air pressure-driven combustion front loosens heavy oil as it slowly works its way forward, and the freed oil flows under gravity through slots in horizontal collector pipes, then is gas-lifted to surface processing systems....
[more at link; in addition to the quantity increase the quality of the recovered product is also expected to increase]
and drugs - HT to AOSHQ. 7 paragraph story, but no party ID necessary, huh?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2008
07:15 ||
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#1
The denizens of the MSM are just blindly following precedent: Pravda didnt have to mention Stalins party affiliation every time they wrote about him, after all.
#2
Interesting to note that the Dems were going to throw him under the bus anyway.
From Democrats.com: On 5/10/07, Rep. Allen Boyd betrayed the voters and troops of Florida's 2nd Congressional District by voting to continue George Bush's disastrous Iraq War forever.
Democrats.com is looking for an "aggressive progressive" Democrat who will challenge Boyd in a Democratic primary in 2008.
Read our Candidate Guide.
If you are interested in running against Boyd, or know a good candidate who could run against Boyd, post a comment below.
#3
As I understand it, Boyd's a blue dog and not one of Nancy's pets. Still, there is nothing in this story to hang on him. I hope his constituents vote on his merits and demerits and not his wayward son's. Sonny charged $15,000 to bring 5 people in. A motive may be the meth found in his pickup truck. We will see, as time goes by.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 12:28
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#4
The service probably included filling out voter registration cards for our new guests as well.
#5
He's a Comb-Over BlueDawg. His district includes Leon County (hai!) and 2 old black belt counties. He has to walk a delicate balance between TLH and Madison.
So... he's good on guns and peanut subsidies and votes for Nancy. Also sucks down a fair amount of farm dough his own self.
In addition, his enthusiastic supporters (with or without official encouragement) have hacked Governor Palin's e-mail. This reminds me more than a little of what President Nixon's enthusiastic supporters did (with or without official encouragement) 36 years ago. So far as I know, Obama has not condemned this action.
So what is a concerned citizen such as yourself to do? (I mean besides registering to vote, voting for McCain, volunteering, putting up yard signs and all that.) I have a suggestion.
Call Senator Obama's campaign headquarters ((866) 675-2008) or his Senate office in Washington ((202) 224-2854) or Chicago ((312) 886-3506) or the DNC main office in Washington (202-863-8000). When you get to a live person, express your disgust. Keep the following guidelines in mind:
* Whoever you are talking to is a worker bee, not Barack Obama. (They're probably getting minimum wage and no benefits.) You're not angry at them, you're angry at the thugs they work for. Don't make it personal.
* Do not cuss. You are not a Kos Kiddie. You are better than that. Show it.
* Do make your points forcefully.
* If the worker bee protests that Barack didn't approve of this or that offense, remind him/her that Barack approved his commercials (and even says so in his own voice) and his speeches, and he hasn't officially disapproved of anything his enthusiastic supporters have done.
Every call which criticizes Obama ties up the phone line for a while, absorbs staff time, and gets counted--organizations like this, if they are at all smart, track what people are calling them about. You may persuade the worker bee that the people he/she is working for are not the wonderful folks they thought they were. You may affect office morale. Every little bit counts.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/18/2008
07:06 ||
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Anything in the Sarah-Palin-is-the-fifth-horsewoman-of-the-apocalypse-and-hence-rides-sidesaddle department? Well, there's this from the New Yorker:
There are two kinds of folks: Élites and Regulars. Why people love Sarah Palin is, she is a Regular. . .
Where was I? Ah, ye: I hate Élites. Which is why, whenever I am having brain surgery, or eye surgery, which is sometimes necessary due to all my non-blinking, I always hire some random Regular guy, with shaking hands if possible, who is also a drunk, scared of the sight of blood, and harbors a secret dislike for me.
#4
The New Yorker writer is dishonest cause he plays a game with the usage of the word elite intentionally confusing the use as a descriptive of functionality than respond to it as a descriptive of political identification. In the political environment elite has nothing to do with quality as with perception.
Elites believe theyâre entitled to power. Regulars believe power is a responsibility.
Elites believe that theyâre exempted from the laws and principles they believe should be impose upon other [âfor their own goodâ]. Regulars actually buy into the concept of equality before the law, that no citizen is fundamentally better than another unless that individual demonstrates by his/her own actions that they should not be.
Elites believe that position, birth, or other descriptive entitle them to privilege. Regulars believe you earn your position in life regardless of circumstances that put you there.
Elites believe that education is triumphant. Regulars believe that there are just as many SOBs with degrees as there are without them.
No where in this descriptive is there any mention of social economic geographic color race or creed as an adjectival modifier.
#5
He's a brilliant writer but he insists on writing about quirky food and nostalgic stuff. Come on James. Edit and retask some old articles into a book. You'd compete with Dave Barry if you did that.
REDDING, Calif. -- Redding, Calif. police say a grease rustler was caught in the act Monday morning, siphoning used kitchen oil from a tank owned by a rival firm.
Joshua Lee Phelps, 27, was detained, cited on suspicion of petty theft, and released after a driver from North State Rendering Co. spotted him sucking grease from one of the Chico, Calif. company's tanks behind a restaurant, Cpl. Eric Niver said.
But Phelps' employer said the incident was "a big fat misunderstanding" and nothing more than strong-arm tactics by rival North State Rendering in an effort to quash new competition. The pickup Phelps was driving was equipped with a pump, tank and hose small enough to suck the grease through the theft-prevention grates on North State's tanks, Ottone said.
Discovered on the WaPo editorial page, from yesterday.
Seldom has there been a larger contrast between the style of a candidate and the strategy of his campaign. Barack Obama is cool, firm and permanently unruffled. It is precisely this quality of steadiness that has made him seem a credible prospective president with the thinnest of résumés. So THAT's what it was!
But Obama's campaign is rootless, reactive and panicky. At every stage since securing the nomination, it has seemed fearful of missteps and unsure of its own organizing principle. So it has invariably adopted the Democratic drool conventional wisdom of the moment.
Obama's first major decision was his running mate. He could have reinforced a message of change and moderation with a Democratic governor who wins in a Republican state, or reached for history by selecting Hillary Clinton. But his choice came soon after Russia invaded Georgia, and the conventional wisdom demanded an old hand who knew his way around Tbilisi. When the Georgia crisis faded, Obama was left with a partisan, undisciplined, congressional liberal at his side. This has served to undermine Obama's message of change - and has allowed Sarah Palin to pilfer a portion of that appeal. The nerve!
Obama's second decision concerned the tone and content of his convention. Here the Democratic conventional wisdom was nearly unanimous. Obama should shelve his highfalutin rhetoric and talk like a real Democrat. Go after McCain. Talk about "bread and butter" issues - code words for class-warfare attacks on consumers of blinis and caviar.
Obama took this advice to the letter - at the cost of his political identity. In his Denver speech, it seemed that every American home was on the auction block, every car stalled for lack of gasoline, every credit card bill past due, every worker treated like a Russian serf. And John McCain? He was out of touch, with flawed "judgment." His life devoted to serving oil companies and big corporations. And, by the way, he didn't have the courage to follow Osama bin Laden "to the cave where he lives." In obedience to the best Democratic advice, Obama managed to be conventional, bitter and graceless.
Now Obama has made his third major campaign decision - to finally for the last time get really tough on McCain. In response to attacks and dropping polls, the Democratic wisdom is once again nearly uniform: Democrats lose because they are not vicious enough. And once again, the Obama campaign has taken this advice without hesitation. "We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain's attacks, and we will take the fight to him," says Obama's campaign manager.
Obama feels provoked - and he has been. There is no evidence that Obama supported explicit sex education for kindergarteners, as a McCain ad implied. Having already accused McCain of being a cowardly corporate tool who is disconnected from reality, escalation is not an easy task for Obama. But he has managed. In one recent commercial, McCain is clearly mocked for his age - compared to a disco ball and a 10-pound cellphone. Another ad uses the word "dishonorable" next to a photo of McCain - an attack from a candidate who has little practical familiarity with the cost of honor. Ouch! Too bad many readers will have no idea what this means, 1972 being sooo long ago!
Who is hurt most by this race to the bottom? McCain, by the evidence of his own convention, wants to be a viewed as a fighter - which a fight does little to undermine. Obama was introduced to America as a different and better kind of politician - an image now in tatters.
Even worse for Obama, all these shifts to catch the prevailing winds confirm the most serious concerns about his political character. As a senator, he has almost never opposed the ideological consensus of his party. (The ethics reform he often cites as his profile in courage eventually passed the Senate 96 to 2.) And now as a presidential candidate, Obama has run his campaign with all the constancy of a skittish sailboat on an erratic ocean.
Here is a different strategy. Obama could attempt to "beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism." He could try to build a coalition that "stretches through red states and blue states." He could reject "the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up."
The candidate who said those words the night he won the Iowa caucuses did pretty well. But whatever the outcome of this presidential election, that candidate is no longer in the race.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2008
05:58 ||
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#1
Is this the WaPo getting ready to throw Obama under the bus?
#2
Can change what he can't see. This happens when someone lives in a different time and spacial universe from the real people of America, aka 'the little' people, the one's THEY claim they represent as they aggrandize more power to lord over them.
#5
It's not Obama's fault. He's cool. It's his campaign's fault, the democratic party's fault, and McCain's fault.
oh ...but wait!! .... Even worse for Obama, all these shifts to catch the prevailing winds confirm the most serious concerns about his political character. As a senator, he has almost never opposed the ideological consensus of his party. (The ethics reform he often cites as his profile in courage eventually passed the Senate 96 to 2.) And now as a presidential candidate, Obama has run his campaign with all the constancy of a skittish sailboat on an erratic ocean.
#6
I'd begin to really wonder if the Obama campaign is loosing them in droves. My own daughter voted for him in the primary - she's any 'anyone but Hillary' voter, and if anything was apolitical when she was in the Marines.
Now, she is just so revolted about the Obamanauts going after Sarah Palin's family, and the sheer floods of vicious misinformation being poured onto various newsgroups that she follows that that she's going to vote McCain with a vengeance. It's only anecdotal... but still you have to wonder. The more she find out about Obama and his happy little band, the more she dislikes them all, and regrets taking him at all seriously earlier this year.
#8
sgt mom, wake up calls are sweet. With the slanted MSM it's amazing anyone can see the light. It's actually alot of work finding the truth, I pass it on freely to my friends and co-workers.
Posted by: Jan ||
09/18/2008 11:33
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#9
The only reason for Obama to really panic is if he runs out of buses. Otherwise, he can dance from one Democratic conventional wisdom to another, well for just about forever. If he loses in November, he can draw on vast Democrat supplies of sour grapes.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 11:34
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#10
Obama could attempt to "beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism." He could try to build a coalition that "stretches through red states and blue states." He could reject "the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up."
Fat chance. Obama's primary campaign was run on Axelrod's usual campaign' model, where the emphasis is placed on wooing African Americans in urban, already Democrat-heavy, environments. Hence the emphasis on showmanship; the secular-preacher mode, the 'hip urban jerks', and the general bypassing of traditional Democrat demographic groups in favor of a selective campaign machine. There is no consensus-building.
(the only thing different was the campaign using a strategy similar to Clinton's 1992 campaign, but for the primaries rather than the general election.)
Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used for official business as Alaska's governor, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate.
"This is a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them," the McCain campaign said in a statement.
The Secret Service contacted The Associated Press on Wednesday and asked for copies of the leaked e-mails, which circulated widely on the Internet. The AP did not comply.
The disclosure Wednesday raises new questions about the propriety of the Palin administration's use of nongovernment e-mail accounts to conduct state business. The practice was revealed months ago - prior to Palin's selection as a vice presidential candidate - after political critics obtained internal e-mails documenting the practice by some aides.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2008
05:54 ||
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#1
so there are two options:
1) (unlikely) they guessed her password
2) they work for YAHOO.
#7
This was pulled of by an Anonynous from 4chans /b/. The password recovery answers were guessed. No hidden "state business" was found in the account. Nothing here to see here. This is why you don't use weak passwords. They are easy to "guess"
The /b/tards were greatly disappointed as they are going down on Obama. I have a tip for them "Lurk Moar."
#8
I highly recommend to all parties involved to get your lawyer(s) on the job as quickly as possible. It's going to be a long one, so you'd better be setting up a 'defense fund' now to start to get the means to pay for the legal help now and during the appeals process. And for the privacy wonks, this will make you or break you as 'elites' - one set of rules for me and a separate set of rules for thee. Out go the principles.
#9
If the leftoweenies are this pissed that she might have used her personal email for government business what would they do if she used her government email for personal business?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/18/2008 10:23
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#10
But don't forget...it's the evil Bushitler who's violating our privacy!!
#16
4chan retards did this. Obama camp had nothing to do with it.
Dude, Obama has enthusiastic retards like those at 4chan going mad on the internet in an orgy of slime. And all he does is stand up at his little teleprompter podium and say he wants his followers to get in people's faces like good little ****ing Nazis.
#17
Are you sure that Obama's official campaign had nothing to do with this?
So far, there's no evidence, for or against the proposition. I know, presumption of innocence and all that, but . . . is it not odd that Obama has not issued a statement denouncing the breach of privacy? If we take the most favorable interpretation of events--that is, the Obama campaign had nothing to do with the hacking--it's stupid of them not to come out against it because it gives people room to imagine that they're in favor of it.
I remember the last time a presidential candidate's overly-enthusiastic supporters (with or without official encouragement) did something like this. It happened 36 years ago.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/18/2008 14:28
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#18
4chan retards did this. Nothing shows that Obama camp had nothing anything to do with it.
#19
Laying this on Obama after finding out it was 4chan is very weak IMHO. Had it been a lefty blogger or a lefty newsdump claiming to have done this, then yeah, point that finger at the DNC.
4chan is a cesspool first and... well, I was going to say 'political' or 'activist' second but neither one would be true. 4chan is a cesspool period.
That's why I think this is a random jackass or two who happens to liek Obama because everyone else on teh intertubez seems to liek him too and it's kewl to screw with teh evul Republicans.
I'll give Barry's camp a pass on this... but I DON'T give them a pass on failing to condemn this behavior.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
09/18/2008 16:36
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Interesting thing about the proxies likely used for the Palin email break in. The actual proxies are located in Chicago, ILL of all places:
network:OrgName:FDCservers.net LLC
network:OrgID;I:JCLARKKENT2005-GMAILCOM
network:Address:141 West Jackson Blvd, Suite 1135
network:City:Chicago
network:StateProv:N/A
network:PostalCode:60604
network:Country:US
Gee, less than a mile from BO HQ...
The son of state Rep. Mike Kernell has been contacted by authorities in connection with a probe into the hacking of personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Kernell told The Tennessean.
Pic courtesy of My Pet Jawa
Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, said his 20-year-old son David had been contacted by authorities investigating the hacking of Palins personal e-mail account, the newspaper reported on its Web site this afternoon.
The FBI and the Secret Service started a formal investigation Wednesday into the hacking, according to the Associated Press.
In recent days, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have reinforced the security details around their top leaders in Damascus out of fear that they will be targeted for assassination by Israel, according to Arab media reports. The reports say Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal and Islamic Jihad secretary general Ramadan Shallah have altered their security routines.
Last week, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition group said that Meshal's secretary was shot and killed in broad daylight in the city of Homs in Syria. According to an article that appeared on the website of the Reform Party of Syria on Monday, Meshal's secretary Hisham al-Labadani was dragged from his car and shot to death, in what the party says some are calling a message from the regime of Syrian President Basher Assad for Hamas to halt cooperation with Iran. The article says the shooting was kept under wraps by the Assad regime for 4 days, out of fears that if it came to light it would ignite tensions with the pro-Iranian camp inside Assad's regime.
According to the Reform Party of Syria, many Mideast observers believe that Iranian influence has become so entrenched in Syria that continued bloodshed should be expected as Assad's regime attempts to dislodge them from a position of influence.
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported in early September that Meshal left Damascus to live in Sudan at Syria's request, in a move stemming from Syria's desire to advance indirect peace talks with Israel. The paper quoted Palestinian sources stating that the move was part of a secret deal between Meshal and the Syrian authorities. Meshal has been based in Damascus since his expulsion from Jordan some ten years ago. Hamas denied the report, saying "media reports that Hamas' politburo chief, Khaled Meshal, and other members will move to Sudan are false."
#1
Maybe if they released a kidnapped soldier, quit shooting rockets into Israel and quit sending mental cases on terror missions they wouldn't have anything to fear?
#1
Amateur hour at Windows media encoding. Gadahn's definitely toes-up. These are dumb errors, made by people who don't understand what they're doing. It's like renovating a restaurant and only using finishing nails to hold everything together...only someone who didn't know any better would do it.
#3
I'm thinking of a blatant and supposedly silly PSYOP piece created by an "anonymous" Internet individual, certainly *not* the CIA, and spread virally.
Using medium grade makeup, dress up some actor to look like Osama bin Laden, who just coincidentally speaks Saudi with the correct accent. Then have him call for an end to violence, which he personally has renounced, prior to his conversion. He has become a Jew after renouncing Islam.
Ludicrous, except for its timetable. Because it is released *not for* the Internet, but for the ignorant masses that do not have the Internet. And this is where nonsense suddenly becomes deadly serious.
The timetable is critical. First it is announced, even before it is posted, as just a bin Laden message. This gets everyone's attention. Then immediately, in a screaming attack from (subverted) traditional Jihadist media, it is denounced as "Lies! And even if it is not a lie, it should be banned! And Osama should be deposed!" That is, shrieking, irrational and hysterical.
Then a very LQ version leaks out. It sort of looks like Osama, but his speaking is voice over in some other language at higher volume, along with very inaccurate subtitles in a third language.
At the same time rumors of several kinds are spread in Muslim countries. That the video is true, that it is not true, that Osama has been captured and brainwashed, that he has been assassinated or replaced by a double, etc.
Then release an old Osama video, which is completely voice over by someone else to "show" that Osama is still in charge. They say things as if he is saying them, but that don't match his lips.
Why go through this idiocy? To start with, their communications system is in disarray right now, so getting the word out is very hard. Second, Osama will have to denounce the tape as a lie, and quickly, which may give strong clues as to his whereabouts. Third, once the rumor mill gets going, it will get a life of its own, and create a lot of bad feeling among al-Qaeda and Muslims in general.
Donald Trump, the flamboyant New York magnate, said on CNNs Larry King Live on Wednesday night that he is supporting Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president.
Trump, never shy with his opinions, went on to say that McCain appears to be winning, and that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) should have chosen Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as his running mate.
I know John McCain, and John McCain's a great guy, a tremendous guy, Trump told King. I've known him for a long time. And I'm with him, and I'm with him based on the fact that I have great knowledge of John McCain. Also, this is not the right time for tax increases. And Obama wants to increase your taxes drastically.
Well, maybe not your taxes. But certainly The Donalds: Obama would repeal President Bush tax cuts for households making more than $250,000.
During the Democratic primaries, Trump donated to Hillary Clinton, according to records posted by the Center for Responsive Politics. Trump donated to McCain in May, according to the records.
I don't understand why Hillary wasn't chosen [for vice president], Trump said. She was really winning. I have a friend that came to this country and was here for the last four weeks of that whole election. He said: How did she lose? She won every primary? He didn't understand it.
The fact is, that Obama went limping across the finish line. He should have chosen Hillary, It would have been a much different race, I believe. Right now, it looks to me like McCain is probably winning.
This summer, foreign troop deaths have exceeded those of U.S. forces in Iraq. 'We feel that things are going very, very well for us,' one Taliban fighter says.
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A summer of heavy fighting during which Western military leaders had hoped to seize the initiative from Islamic militants has instead revealed an insurgency capable of employing complex new tactics and fighting across a broad swath of Afghanistan.
Over the last three months, insurgents have exacted the most punishing casualty tolls on Western forces since the Afghan war began nearly seven years ago. Numbers of foreign troops killed have exceeded U.S. military deaths in Iraq.
As Washington prepares to increase troop levels and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates paid a visit, militants have created a palpable sense of encirclement in Kabul with a series of small but highly symbolic attacks near the capital. They have reaped a propaganda bonanza from accidental killings of civilians by foreign forces and undercut reconstruction efforts by targeting aid workers.
Meanwhile, the vast narcotics empire presided over by the Taliban has continued to flourish, its profits helping to ensure a flow of cash and weaponry. "In all, we feel that things are going very, very well for us," said a Taliban field commander in Kandahar province whose men fought hit-and-run battles with Canadian and British forces during the summer, the season when fighting is most intense. "And what is more, time is on our side."
insurgency capable of employing complex new tactics
punishing casualty tolls on Western forces
a palpable sense of encirclement in Kabul
reaped a propaganda bonanza from gullible and or dishonest and/or approving Western media accidental killings of civilians by Coalition foreign forces
demonstrated new strength, sophistication and ambition
defied expectations
jarring setbacks
orchestrated a spectacular prison break here that set hundreds of insurgents free , who were tracked into the hills by unmanned drones and, possibly coincidentally, have never been heard or seen since
Oh, and by the way: hundreds of insurgents [and d]ozens of veteran mid-level commanders have been arrested or killed
#2
All the propaganda you can use from the LA Times. I think I would have any of these reporters covered so tight we would know when they fahrt, let alone contact the Taliban for stories. I would like to think anyone they were to contact would have a very short "shelf life" thereafter (unless they were contributing GREAT intel).
#3
Numbers of foreign troops killed have exceeded U.S. military deaths in Iraq.
Absolutely brilliant - this sentence needs an award. Instead of "Iraq casualties plummeting" it's "Afghan casualties rising, everybody panic!" And journalists wonder why nobody trusts them. I bet if you confronted the writer of this sentence, he'd deny until his dying breath that it was biased - and in his own little world, he'd be right.
#5
The problem is that the enemy are able to attack from safe havens - either in Pakistan or among civilians - and counterattacks routinely generate damaging negative public relations (any recent corpse in the area is called an innocent civilian casualty).
#6
In June, the Taliban orchestrated a spectacular prison break here that set hundreds of insurgents free.
Knock 'em out and install a GPS device in their remaining tooth. When they are sprung, the network rollup begins.
#7
Well it does seem clear that the tempo of attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan is increasing, in some areas significantly. We don't have enough assets in the country right now and some of our allies are going wobbly (wotta suprise). Karzai's government is either toothless or corrupt (most likely both and in the narco trade up to their eyeballs). Our supply lines run through enemy territory, which, coincidentally provide a safe haven for our enemies. Things are not trending to the positive at present.
I am pessimistic on Afghanistan. I don't see how we are going to take the tribal savages accurately shown in the photo into the modern world. Cripes, I don't care about taking them there. I just want to make it clear, using a mighty big stick, that if trouble comes our way from this area, we are going to flatten it without remorse using technology, not our guys on the ground.
MOST of what we are presented with are pure leftist wishes ie. shit sandwiches, That are slopped up into the shape of pretend newspaper articles and served up as real...
Cheer UPPPP! :)
~:)
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
09/18/2008 21:00
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BAGHDAD -- An American Chinook helicopter made a "hard landing" early today in southern Iraq and five U.S. soldiers were killed, the military said.
A U.S. statement said the CH-47 Chinook was setting down shortly after midnight about 60 miles west of Basra when the incident occurred. The chopper was a part of an aerial convoy flying from Kuwait to the U.S. military base at Balad just north of Baghdad. The statement said the incident was under investigation but did not provide any more details.
Separately, a U.S. soldier died of noncombat-related causes on Wednesday, and an investigation into the cause of death was under way, the military said.
Second part of the news item, totally unrelated to the first:
On Wednesday, gunmen killed a Sunni assistant to the governor of one of Iraq's most volatile provinces, the latest in a series of attacks that have marred the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in Iraq. Shamil Younis, an engineer who handled technical affairs for Gov. Duraid Kashmola, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he was walking home after finishing prayers at a nearby mosque in Mosul, police said. The attack occurred after iftar, the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast.
The governor, also a Sunni, confirmed the slaying and promised an investigation. He called it "a brutal crime against this innocent, good man."
#5
Illustration was for the second part of the story (MSM loves to glue stories together like that). However, I've removed it. AoS.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/18/2008 13:22
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#6
This probably could have happened anywhere. The men and women in the military do dangerous work all the time, whether in combat or not. My condolences and prayers to their families and brothers in arms and my endless thanks for their brave service to our country.
Reading ``The Forever War,'' Dexter Filkins's totally addictive account of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, is like making your way into a labyrinth. It keeps getting darker and, in fact, there's no exit, just an ending -- for the reader, with the last page; for too many people in those wrecked countries, with a bullet or a bomb.
Filkins was in Afghanistan before and after Sept. 11, and in Iraq from the beginning of the American invasion in March 2003, first as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and then for the New York Times. His focus is the human cost of the wars; he isn't out to lambaste U.S. policy or strategy (except implicitly), and so readers anywhere on the political spectrum can respond to his writing.
``The Forever War'' suffers a bit from unshapeliness. A long and affecting opening section on Afghanistan precedes (and has little to do with) the meat of the book, the reporting on the ghastly war in Iraq. Even within these separate sections, the chapters fall together only loosely.
What Filkins has to offer is stories, dozens of them. He's a master of the moment, of the concrete, of texture; where others try to explain, he wants you to know what being there feels like. He fell in love with Afghanistan, and he depicts the drawn-out conflict between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance as a strangely gentle war in which soldiers would blithely switch sides when they sensed a shift in the winds of power: ```Yesterday, my enemy,' one soldier said, `today, my brother.'''
Sweetness and Brutality
Their sweetness didn't prepare him for the brutality he was to come up against in Iraq, and even the severity of his first years there didn't steel him for the full-blown insanity of the civil war:
``Electric drills were a Shiite obsession. When you found a guy with drill marks in his legs, he was almost certainly a Sunni, and he was almost certainly killed by a Shiite. The Sunnis preferred to behead, or to kill themselves while killing others. By and large, the Shiites didn't behead, didn't blow themselves up. The derangements were mutually exclusive.''
The wonder is that Filkins's tone never loses its warmth. He is a war reporter who has finally freed himself from the long shadow of Michael Herr, the reporter who covered the Vietnam War for Esquire and published the now classic ``Dispatches'' in 1977. Herr's voice was so strong -- pitch-black and disgusted -- that it has colored practically all war reporting since then.
Filkins's personality is very different. In his writing you sense a man striving to hold onto his decency in the midst of a slaughter that would drive most of us deep into cynicism. Maybe that's why he can connect with so many of the run-of-the-mill Iraqis who are trying to do the same thing.
Trained Killers
He's even better on the American soldiers. Not that he's soft on them. ``There wasn't any point in sentimentalizing the kids; they were trained killers, after all. They could hit a guy at 500 yards or cut his throat from ear-to-ear. And they didn't ask a lot of questions ... sometimes I wished they asked more questions.''
Filkins asked. He knew how to get people to talk -- and talk and talk. He put his life on the line and came close to losing it often enough that he has a hard time explaining, even to himself, why he stayed.
There were soldiers, too, who went through the worst and then re-upped. Herr wrote about the same phenomenon -- getting hooked on war. It makes sense to me, though I can't explain it, and it probably has something to do with why I couldn't put this book down.
#2
Yup, even the Mexican Police have their trademark tortures they use when interrogating. Shooting a well shaken bottle of 7-Up up your nose until it comes foaming out your mouth is one of their favorites. I sounds laughable, but I bet it hurts like hell.
#2
Well at least we know know the REAL reson why he watned to be the supreme leader. Wanna bet what percentage of that was truly willing, what percentae was following orders or looking to advance thier career, and what percentage was forced?
#3
Fidel is 82 years old. I figure his studliness may have gotten off to a slow start and his sexual activities have probably slowed the last 10 years or so. So, let's give him 60 years of prime, to be generous. That comes out to 583 and 1/3 per year. Not quite 2 new women per day. No wonder he had to conquer a nation, he needed a big population of women to draw from. I wonder how many of them would describe the sex as good for them, too? Of course you'll need to wait until he croaks to get honest responses from many of them.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 4:14
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#4
Fidel as a superstud? sure - just like the guy who was boasting in the bar last weekend. LOL
Read the biography of Mao published a few years back. He had lots of STDs, but never received treatment, either because his doctors wouldn't tell him, or because he refused treatment. His poor partners, though....
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
09/18/2008 20:29
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For those of you who still cling to the fantasy that Barack Obama is "about change," you should note how he, or his minions, want nothing to do with reforming politics in Illinois, perhaps the most corrupt state in the Union.
"Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has fought for open and honest government," proclaims his campaign Web site. Apparently, no longer. When the Democratic presidential candidate--now his party's industrial-strength voice for our deliverance from political corruption everywhere--was asked by a reformer if he would help get his political mentor back home to get off the dime and move the most minimal of state ethics legislation toward passage, the Obama campaign sent word back that amounted to a "no."
State Sen. Emil Jones (D-Chicago) is the Chicago machine politician who might have been most instrumental in jump-starting Obama's political career. Now, as Illinois Senate president, Jones is the one sitting on the reform legislation, refusing to call it for an expected favorable vote before it officially dies of neglect.
Jones is the pal of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, no friend of reform, who used his amendatory veto power to change the legislation after it passed both houses so that Jones would get another chance to kill it.
If all that's confusing, welcome to Illinois politics, where intricacy is the best camouflage for chicanery. Suffice to say, neither Blagojevich nor Jones is working for reform.
So, along comes Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, thinking that now might be a good time for Obama to parlay his friendship with Jones to do a good deed: Won't you intervene with Jones and try to get him to call the Senate back into session to get this law passed? "[T]his is a place [Obama] could come in and quickly clean up some of the damage and serve his state," she told the Chicago Sun-Times. After all, her group and Obama worked together during those halcyon days when he actually supported reform in Illinois, so maybe he'll be receptive to a plea to intervene on behalf of Illinois folks who have been getting gouged for years by the likes of Jones. "A 30-second phone call to the Illinois Senate president could yield huge dividends to this state," she said.
In response, Obama's campaign issued an oozy statement reaffirming Obama's alleged commitment to reform, while getting no more specific than urging everyone to get together and love one another right now. What Canary was asking Obama for wasn't all that much. Maybe a 30-second phone call to back up his usual pap of, "Look, ah, I've, ah, always been for, ah, reform." For most people, the reform that we're talking about is so basic that they might ask, "You mean it's not illegal already?"
The legislation would make illegal the widespread abuse called pay-to-play politics, by which companies doing business with the state contribute to the state official in charge of ladling out contracts. The new law wouldn't let you do it if you have more than $50,000 in state contracts, which, even at that, leaves open a nice loophole. In Illinois, this is a huge leap forward from how things are done. Blagojevich, who has reaped bundles of cash from state contractors, could be one of the pols most jolted by the prohibition. That explains why he rewrote the legislation in a way that would make it ineffective and why the House overwhelmingly rejected his changes.
Jones now is the only one standing in the way of the reform, with Obama abetting.
Here's another example of how Obama has revealed himself to be a creature of the Chicago machine. Who can forget his silence when he could have affirmed his reformer credentials by endorsing Democrat Forrest Claypool over machine creature Todd Stroger as Cook County Board president? When things got too hot, Obama severed his ties from his racially inflammatory pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. That's not too hard; you can always find another pastor.
But betraying your political godfather(s) in Chicago and Illinois is an entirely different matter. Especially if you lose the presidential election and return to being just another senator from Illinois. Cutting his ties with the corrupt Chicago machine is one bridge you will not see Obama burn. Not now, not ever.
#1
BO's "about change" slogan is pure BS. Change is inevitable. Not all change is desirable. Some changes are preferable to others. One of the reasons we elect political leaders is for them to handle unforeseen and unforeseable changes.
Notice how the MSM is repeating BO's slogans word for word in their news coverage.
#2
If you want to understand Obama, you've got to understand Illinois politics. Bryne (along with John Kass, also of the Chicago Tribune) understands. It's all one big, happy squabbling family (as in crime family). The only change Obambi represents in a change from a white crook to a black crook.
FYI, I'm sitting here in downtown Chicago as I write. I think I can hear Da Mayor laughing.
#3
Remember those old camera ads with some tennis star - Agassi, I think. the slogan was "Image is Everything". Obama's striving for the image of another Jack Kennedy, supercharged with the "I'm black but still white enough not to be scary" meme. Trying to find a slogan that will resonate with the Camelot crowd and carry him to victory. Looking for the soundbite that will be remembered like "Ask not.." (apparently stolen from Cicero, I never knew until recently) or "I have a dream...". Trouble is the chosen slogan "Hope & Change" is at odds with his personal reality and it's beginning to wear badly with nothing concrete to back it up.
#4
my mom was all for the O-man... "he is promising some change" she would say. when I asked what kind of change? she said "it doesn't matter, it is such a mess it just needs changed."
she got mad after I pointed out that Dachau was 'change' for the Jews, and that details matter quite a bit.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
09/18/2008 22:31
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#6
Cold war oddities, completely worthless in today's high-tech battlefield. Also, crap performance due to the heavy shoulders of the "swing wing" configuration (ever wonder why we never built many B-1's?). Expected lifetime in a conflict situation: about 15 minutes.
#8
The TU-160 is a much faster and much bigger vopy. It can reeach over Mach2, menaing that it is faster than most fighters and can probably stay far longder at that speed. I don't know about its low altitude capabilities and how good are he ECMs. I don't know how good she would be in battlefield or against a carrier (specilayy now that the Navy has only F16s who are mediocre in the interceptor role) but she can wreak havoc on soft targets like Miami or the oil platforms in the Mexico Gulf.
#9
A few typos in the preceeding post. Here is the debugged version:
#8 The TU-160 is a much faster and much bigger clone of the B2. It can reeach over Mach2, meaning that it is faster than most fighters and can probably stay far longer at that speed. I don't know about its low altitude capabilities and how good are her ECMs. I don't know how good she would be in battlefield or against a carrier (specially now that the Navy has only F18s who are mediocre in the interceptor role) but she can wreak havoc on soft targets like Miami or the oil platforms in the Mexico Gulf.
#11
Actually, Tu-160 is not a relic. Also, it's totally different from B-1B. It is more similar to the ambitious and cancelled program of the original B-1. It's a Mach 2 bomber. Carries 12-16 (I forget now) nuclear tipped cruise missiles with a range of about 3,000 km. Also can carry conventional cruise missiles. Good for preventive strikes and for picking residual targets after a nuke strike.
Rush Limbaugh, featured in a new, Spanish-language Barack Obama ad, says the commercial distorts his past statements and amounts to "race-baiting" by the Democratic nominee. The commercial, to air in Limbaugh's home state of Florida as well as Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, features a picture of the conservative talk show host and shows his words on the screen: "Mexicans are stupid and unqualified" and "Shut your mouth or get out." It was first reported by the Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe.
"Obama is now stoking racism in the country," Limbaugh wrote in an email. "Obama is a disgrace - he wants the public to think he is Mr. Nice Guy while his thugs are in Alaska looking for dirt on Palin and he runs race-baiting ads and lies about what he has done and what McCain has done."
As for the quotes, Limbaugh said they were taken out of context. The first, "stupid and unqualified," was from the NAFTA debate of the mid-90s, he recalled. Limbaugh, a NAFTA proponent, said in the fall of 1993 he got a call from a listener who was upset at the potential loss of American jobs.
In response he said, "If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people--I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs, let the kinds of jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do--let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."
Explaining his comments, Limbaugh writes: "I was referring to jobs in MEXICO. I was not discussing immigrants, illegal or otherwise."
On "shut your mouth," Limbaugh produced an April 2006 transcript from what he described as a parody of Mexican immigration laws. The talk show host read a list of stringent rules, adding "shut your mouth and get out," before revealing to listeners that the guidelines were those set by the Mexican government for immigrants.
McCain launched his own Spanish-language ad last week blaming Obama for the collapse of immigration reform last week, striking a more moderate tone on the issue than his border security-focused stance in the GOP primary. Polls show Obama leading among Hispanic voters, but McCain is making an aggressive push for their support as they represent a key constituency in key states such as Florida and the competitive states in the intterior west.
Rush Limbaugh, April 6, 2006:
Everybody's making immigration proposals these days. Let me add mine to the mix. Call it The Limbaugh Laws: First: If you immigrate to our country, you have to speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor; no unskilled workers allowed. Also, there will be no special bilingual programs in the schools with the Limbaugh Laws. No special ballots for elections. No government business will be conducted in your language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote -- or hold political office.
If you're in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled to welfare, food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here: an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If not, stay home. But if you want to buy land, it'll be restricted. No waterfront, for instance. As a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to the property.
And another thing. You don't have the right to protest. You're allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our President or his policies. You're a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you're going to jail.
You think the Limbaugh Laws are harsh? Well, every one of the laws I just mentioned are actual laws of Mexico today! That's how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country. Yet Mexicans come here illegally and protest in our streets!
How do you say "double standard" in Spanish? How about: "No mas!"
#6
My point was that turning America into Mexico would NOT be an improvement -- and yet that's exactly what Limbaugh admits of supporting.
I heard that entire segment yesterday; you must not listen to Rush very much. I would be hard pressed to find in that, or any other segment, where Rush supports turning the USA into Mexico.
#7
An interesting personality that keeps returning where it's clearly been indicated it's not welcome. Just making work for Mods. What does he have against them? Is there no place other than Rantburg that can give this waif the attention he so pathetically craves? No wonder Greece has so many problems.
#12
For those do not know [vice those who really don't care], here's Article 33 of the Mexican Constitution -
"Of Foreigners
Article 33 - Foreigners are those who do not possess the qualities determined in Article 30. They have the right to the guarantees of Chapter I of the first title of this Constitution, but the Executive of the Union has the exclusive right to expel from the national territory, immediately and without necessity of judicial proceedings, all foreigners whose stay it judges inconvenient. Foreigners may not, in any manner, involve themselves in the political affairs of the country."
Note well the last sentence which Rush's comment is based upon.
They've had campaign ads in Espanol for the last several elections. These ads won't fly in south Florida; Cuban immigrants are conservative all the way.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
09/18/2008 10:40
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#15
The only people talking about race is ....
Dhimocrats.
They are the only ones "Stoking Racism". They want class war and class envy. It is the only way they can get their communist ideas to pass.
#17
They are the only ones "Stoking Racism". They want class war and class envy. It is the only way they can get their communist ideas to pass.
Posted by DarthVader
Divide and Conquer is a valid strategy. Our national motto, United We Stand, even warns us against it.
And this is what all politics has become, marketing to different "member bases" or whatever you want to call it. It's crap. We need leaders who can lead by example, which is WHY Gov. Palin is causing such a stir.
#18
Since I'm not allowed to respond to you, "DarthVader", what's the point? I've proven that he wants America to turn into Mexico where issues of immigration are concerned: Quoted him exactly when he makes the recommendations, quoted where he admits that they are carbon-copies of the Mexican immigration law. Been specific with my questions and points I raise -- but my comments are always removed, as any attempt at actual discussion is in this forum.
People keep forgetting that the reason I was banned was not because I was a troll, or my manners, or whatever, but rather because I had half dozen regulars trailing me all over the forum, not actually responding to anything I said but rather merely saying things like "Aris the Gay Greek Geek, what a goatfucking cunt he is"
So instead of banning half a dozen regulars, they decided to ban me instead. That's pretty much the reason I don't respect my ban: Because I've not violated a single guideline of this forum -- it's the other people that have.
#20
Yes, Nimble, I'm sure that's exactly the reason that even the most polite post of mine is removed, while even the posts by the people that call me a goatfucking cunt are retained.
Give examples with sources (sorry, the DU and KOSkiddies are NOT a source). Give a line by line comparison. Prove your point with facts. The only thing I have seen from you is crying.
And I have watched you prance around slamming everything the US does with little to no facts in your arguments. That is why people don't like you. I don't agree much with LiberalHawk, but he backs up his arguments with facts and even though I don't agree with this conclusion of the data, I respect the fact he is willing to debate his conclusions with mine.
You on the other had, just whine. And bitch. And blame the US.
So, post some facts. Give sources. Give dates. Treat your argument as a research paper. Then, we will give much credence to your conclusions. Otherwise, you are just another anti-american EU stooge that can be banned and mocked/ignored.
#23
DarthVader, the source is the exact article linked above.
He gives his own desired recommendations to what should become American immigration law, then says "You think the Limbaugh Laws are harsh? Well, every one of the laws I just mentioned are actual laws of Mexico today! That's how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country."
Is that a good enough quote for you? He HIMSELF SAYS that America ought mimic Mexico where the issue of immigration is concerned.
"And I have watched you prance around slamming everything the US does with little to no facts in your arguments."
I've always given links and always gone to the source (instead of relying on half-assed impressions). If there's any fact that's missing to my claims you're always free to ask for it -- though of course any comment of mine is deleted, as soon as I provide any annoying fact.
#28
Aris, Limbaugh is just trying to agitate the masses and strengthen their position against illegal immigration. Limbaugh pushes no plans of his own, but exposes the hypocracy of the left and other anti-American positions. His Limbaugh Laws are part of his schtick. I am a regular listener of his, and he spends most time poking and prodding the enemy, socialism (democrats).
#30
Used to be. Somewhere around McGovern the socialist coopted the classical liberal tag and have been sinking the term since. Note their current attempts to steal old Teddy Roosevelt's 'progressive' tag. Shows how much the term liberal in American parlance has devalued that even they are running from it.
#31
lollypop, if people say that Mexico is worse-off than America in pretty much everything, and that's why they don't support efforts to emulate Mexico on the matter of immigration, then why are they being hypocrites or anti-American?
I'm somehow an anti-American or a hypocrite because I say that Mexico is worse in its laws than USA? Where's the hypocrisy or the anti-Americanism here?
You see another amusing facet of my presence here is that in many MANY issues I support America far more than you people do. If I was bashing America for e.g. Roe vs Wade, and praising it for Iraq, I'd be right at home. But since I praise it for Roe vs Wade (or its gay rights, or its wall of separation between church and state, or its intervention in Bosnia, and many other issues), and bash it for Iraq, I'm considered an anti-American.
So it's not my manners *OR* my supposed anti-Americanism. It's merely my specific positions, which are opposed to Bush. There's simply never been allowed anyone here who was liberal. Liberalhawk has only lasted as long as he did, by simply never speaking about his liberal positions.
And Nimble, I was completely proven correct, wasn't I? All my own comments are removed, but yours remain, and so are some person's with kindergartener insults like changing my name to "Anus" -- as were all you people's comments about goatfucking, cunts, gay greek geeks and so forth.
(By the way I use "you people" as a courtesy to Frank, who sometimes keeps thinking that my preferred "y'all" is meant as mockery or something)
Anyway, yeah, you people have REALLY convinced me that it's my manners that are somehow at fault -- when your own level of discouse is synopsised with "Anus".
About 400 workers walked off the job Wednesday at JBS Swift in Grand Island. But this time it wasn't Muslims protesting for prayer like the last two days.
Hispanic, white, and Sudanese JBS Swift workers watched their Muslim peers walk out on work. Now they say, it's their turn. "Two days they haven't came to work. Everybody's saying they got paid. OK, how about they work without us or minorities and they work there by themselves and we get paid for not doing nothing? That's not fair," said Veronica Yabra, a JBS Swift employee.
Union leaders say Muslims did not get paid after they walked out, but the rumors were enough to spark the protest.
Protesters are also upset about a break that has been moved on B shift to accommodate prayer time, they say, cutting their hours and forcing them to work on Saturday to get 40 hours a week. "We don't need to work 7.7 hours. We need to go 8.2 hours," said JBS Swift employee Maria Yabra.
Employee Doug Brandt added, "We shouldn't have to take money out of our pockets and time away from our families so they can get their way. They should be like everybody else."
And they say, everybody should have the same rules. "I understand they want to stick up for themselves. That's their right in America, but you have to remember this is America. It's equal playing field. Equal. And the company's not making us equal," said employee Nabomi Jakubowski. "If you're going to accommodate them and their religion, you have to accommodate everybody's religion," said Brandt.
Swift executives appeared to the crowd, and union leaders say talks between all parties will continue. The protest comes just two days after about 400 Muslim Somalians walked off the job.
Another thirty protested Tuesday in an effort to gain a break during their sunset prayer time for Ramadan.
#2
Employee Doug Brandt added, "We shouldn't have to take money out of our pockets and time away from our families so they can get their way. They should be like everybody else."
#4
the Muzzies at Swift should notice they're pissing off the other workers, who have knives and other cutting instruments, and work in close proximity. Just saying....
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2008 8:16
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#5
Bring in the Mexicans. See if they want to talk reasonable then.
#7
Bring in the INS and ship these Muzzies back. AMF, Muzzies. Don't bother to write; we don't give a damn what happens to you after you're out. Just don't come back.
Then grab the stupid bastards who let them in and throw them in PMITA jail for DECADES!
#1
It's interesting that Iran imports gasoline not because it doesn't have refining capability. It's that the refineries don't produce gasoline because the price doesn't even come close to the cost of production.
(AKI) - A roadside bomb killed four soldiers from the multinational coalition force and an Afghan national in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the US military said. The military did not identify the victims, but most foreign troops serving under coalition force in eastern Afghanistan are Americans.
It was the latest attack since the Taliban stepped up their campaign of suicide attacks and roadside bomb blasts against the government and foreign troops in recent weeks.
At least 194 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in 2008, the deadliest year for foreign forces since US-led troops removed the Taliban from power in 2001.
The number of attacks on American forces in eastern Afghanistan has risen by around 30 percent this year compared with 2007.
The coalition did not say where Wednesday's attack took place or provide any other details.
The deaths occurred as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates had meetings in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai and other officials.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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By Robert Baer
As Wall Street collapsed with a bang, almost no one noticed that we're on the brink of war with Pakistan. People who don't read Rantburg didn't notice. We just talked about it a day or two ago.
And, unfortunately, that's not too much of an exaggeration. On Tuesday, the Pakistan's military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. That statement was likely for internal consumption and they're probably chagrined that it made the internationals. Yesterday there was another dronezap of a training camp and it was played up as "cooperation" with us. There's a lot of money coming into Pakistain from the U.S., and they don't call him Mr. Ten Percent for nothing.
The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty. The Paks are violating Afghan sovreignty as well, and they're sending Pak trained and financed bad turbans to try and kill Americans.
You have to wonder whether the Bush administration understands what it is getting into. Since Bush has been dealing with the Paks since the afternoon of 9/11/2001, I'd say he probably has a pretty good handle on them by now.
In case anyone has forgotten, Pakistan has a hundred plus nuclear weapons. I'd heard it was a couple dozen deliverable. I'd guess the Indians know exactly how many are operational and probably where they're located.
It's a country on the edge of civil war. It's been a country on the edge of civil war almost since its founding, and the process has been accelerating almost exponentially since Zia ul-Haq. The Paks are now, at this moment, in the midst of an undeclared civil war, no longer on the edge but rocketing down the slippery slope. Being Paks, they're hollering "wheee!" and enjoying the ride to oblivion.
Its political leadership is bitterly divided. In other words, it's the perfect recipe for a catastrophe. That's why we call it a "failed state." Despite its elections and even in spite of its free press, Pak is actually worse off that Bangla this year, though that says nothing about where either country will be next year. It's like saying that someone with terminal cancer is better off than somebody with terminal mutating fungus.
All of which begs the question, "Oh, please, Mr. Question!"
is it worth the ghost hunt we've been on since September 11? In a word, yes.
There has not been a credible sighting of Osama bin Laden since he escaped from Tora Bora in October 2001. Except on tape. As for al-Qaeda, there are few signs it's even still alive, other than a dispersed leadership taking refuge with the Taliban. Al-Qaeda is alive and well, with branches all over the world, many of them operating under the al-Qaeda brand, like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (formerly GSPC) and al-Qaeda in Yemen (formerly the Islamic Army of Aden) and al-Qaeda in Turkey (formerly the Great Eastern Raiders of Islam or some such gradiose name). There is an al-Qaeda in Britain that's distict from al-Qaeda in Europe, and both are loosely controlled by al-Qaeda headquarters in Pakistain. Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is mostly distinct from al-Qaeda in Pakistain and both have distinct chains of command leading back to Chitral, where Binny lives.
Al-Qaeda couldn't even manage to post a statement on the Internet marking September 11, let alone set off a bomb. That's because Azzam al-Marini was either zapped by a Hellfire in Damadola or some such steenking border ville or drowned in his hot tub. That would seem to validate our habit of zapping the occasional turban regardless of which side of the border he's on.
U.S. forces have been entering Pakistan for the last six years. But it was always very quietly, usually no more than a hundred yards in, and usually to meet a friendly tribal chieftain. Who would later end up with his head chopped off, in many cases...
Pakistan knew about these crossings, but it turned a blind eye because it was never splashed across the front page of the country's newspapers. It kept the deniability plausible...
This has all changed in the last month, as the Administration stepped up Predator missile attacks. And then, after the New York Times ran an article that U.S. forces were officially given the go-ahead to enter Pakistan without prior Pakistani permission, Pakistan had no choice but to react. Thankew, Noo Yawk Times... Actually, the Paks could have officially not noticed the article. What set them off was the fact that we were zapping protected jihadi camps, and probably frying precious ISI agents in the process.
On another level the Bush Administration's decision to step up attacks in Pakistan is fatally reckless, because the cross-border operations' chances of capturing or killing al Qaeda's leadership are slim. Depends on the intel they're getting. Fashions change in the intel world almost as fast as they do in fashionable but Gay Paree, and the current fashion sez there's nothing like HUMINT, the guy on the ground who's seen it with his own eyes and reported it to his controller. I lean more toward the SIGINT side of the house, myself, since it's more difficult to tell your handler what he/she/it wants to hear when you don't know you're being handled. A telephone call saying "I'll meet you at Mahmoud's house in Damadola on the 26th at 5 in the morning" with an imagery confirm of truck stopping at a house in Damadola at 4.45 am is better intel than "Screech is gonna be in Damadola on the 26th."
American intelligence isn't good enough for precision raids like this. Actually it is. That's why they take place.
Pakistan's tribal regions are a black hole that even Pakistani operatives can't enter and come back alive. They do it all the time. They just don't want to admit it. ISI has worked with these goobers for years.
Overhead surveillance and intercepts do little good in tracking down people in a backward, rural part of the world like this. I just gave an example of how they do. Throw in modern RDF systems and ground-based sensors and my guess is that we've got a pretty good handle on things. I've been out of the business for a long time, but I saw the birth pangs of lots of those systems and participated in a few. This is 20 years later. The ones that weren't stillborn or smothered in their cribs are grownup now, and I'll bet they're better than I'd have imagined when I met the early ones in 1968.
On top of it, is al-Qaeda worth the candle? If you have to ask the question you shouldn't be in the business.
Yes, some deadender in New York or London could blow himself up in the subway and leave behind a video claiming the attack in the name of al-Qaeda. But our going into Pakistan, risking a full-fledged war with a nuclear power, isn't going to stop him. Allow me to direct your attention to Chechnya. That's not a place I'd like to live, mind you, but things are much more calm and peaceful than they were in the heyday of Shamil Basayev. The Russers kept banging mastermind after mastermind: Khattab, Abu Walid, even Maskhadov himself. But once they hit Shamil the Chechen insurgency was toast. They have to rebuild from the ground up, and it's doubtful they'll find a guy combining the right proportions of military and poltical skills with outright lunacy to make a go of it. The same applies to Iraq, where we're now winning and have almost won. That wasn't the case in the heyday of Zarqawi. Most of these operations are very much personality-dependant, and they burst like bubbles once that personality is spread over a 600x600 meter patch of ground.
Finally, there is Pakistan itself, a country that truly is on the edge of civil war. You're repeating yourself, bub. And they're in the middle of it, not on the edge.
Should we be adding to the force of chaos? I vote "yes." I think it's to our advantage to stir the Pakistaini political pot and bring it to a boil. I'll tell you why in a paragraph or two...
By indiscriminately bombing the tribal areas along the Afghan border, we in effect are going to war with Pakistan's ethnic Pashtuns. That statement might have some validity if we were in fact bombing "indiscriminately." But if it was indiscriminate, we'd be hitting patches of bare ground, or maybe downtown Peshawar. Instead, we're hitting madrassahs and occasionally somebody's house. Women, kiddies, puppies, kittens, baby ducks and fluffy bunnies are minced along with a few bodyguard bad turbans, but the real targets are the Qaeda bigs or the big cheeses in the various Taliban factions. These are fair game whether they're alone or in the bosoms of their families. If you need somebody to drop a 500 pound bomb on a convent full of nuns and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, sign me up. The nuns are toast, or maybe strawberry jam, as it were.
And then there's the question of why it's okay for the Pashtuns of Pashtunistan to make war on us, which they're doing -- just ask Baitullah Mehsud -- but not okay for us to make war on certain segments of Pashtunistan. Why is the obligation upon us to turn the other cheek, but not upon them?
They make up 15% of Pakistan's 167 million people. They are well armed and among the most fierce and xenophobic people in the world. Yes, yes. They'll tell you all about it in a flash. Pashtuns make up a reputed 40% of the population of Afghanistan, and it's the Pashtun areas that are full of gunfire and explosions. The Uzbeks, Tadjiks, Hazaras, Turkmen, and what have you manage to get along okay except for a few fist fights and the occasional stolen cow. The Pashtuns consider ignorance a virtue, they're fond of rolling their eyes, waving guns, and bragging, and they're the neighbors nobody wants. Fact is, the Pak Punjabis thing they're "controlling" those nutjobs, even while meeting with the Arab Qaeda hard boyz and "controlling" them.
It is not beyond their military capabilities to cross the Indus and take Islamabad. He says that like it's a bad thing...
Before it is too late, someone needs to sit the President down and give him the bad news that Pakistan is a bridge too far in the "war on terror." I think Bush has sat down and studied the situation. I hope he's decided to stir that pot, tossing great handsful of seasoning into it to keep it good and spicy, the while pretending nothing's happening. Just like the Paks do with Afghanistan. Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down.
Posted by: john frum ||
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#1
A few questions:
They make up 15% of Pakistan's 167 million people. They are well armed and among the most fierce and xenophobic people in the world. It is not beyond their military capabilities to cross the Indus and take Islamabad.
If this is the case, what are the other 85% of the populace doing? If it's a civil war, who's on the other side? Would the Pashtuns rather be Afghan nationals, Pakistani nationals, or both?
Would Pakistan rather fight battles across the Afghan border, or war to the east?
Why does Pakistan exist? What does it mean? What does it signify? Is it a nation? What is its sovreignity? How does it view itself?
#2
VARIOUS MIL FORUM POSTERS > a US invasion of PAKLAND RISKS DIRECT MILPOL CONFRONTATION WID PAKI ALLY CHINA [+ per NK-Taiwan issues]???
Many ordinary Chin + BEIJING already twiddling their fingers over the ISLAMIST THREAT TO WESTERN CHINA [Uighurs], CENTRAL ASIA vee RUSSIA-FORMER SSRS, + NORTH ASIA.
#4
If war breaks out with Pakistan, who has the most to lose? Is it 'lame duck Bush"? The 15% of wild hellions in west Pakistan? IOr is it the powers that be in Islamabad? The government in Islamabad is my pick. Then you has the most to gain? An exiting American president? A Pak goverment that, at best, has a very tenacious grip on power? Or the Pashtuns in the west? Peace will only come to the regoion when the Pashtuns need it more than the other players there. Look at Iraq as an example of how this problem may be approached.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 4:26
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#5
The only thing worse than total bullshit is moth-eaten discredited total bullshit.
We heard quite enough about the invincible 10-foot-tall Pashtun mountain-men in the few short weeks between 9-11 and the complete rout of the Taliban late in 2001.
#6
Our intel is MUCH better than this wanker pretends, not all the Pashtuns like the Talibuggers after all.
Beyond that, I hear vague but persistent muttering about a spectacular technological breakthrough that has been applied in Iraq and that will soon be having major effect in Afghanistan. The delay may be related to priorities and the great value, cost, and limited supply of this particular asset, or it may involve the technology itself and the greater suitability of initial versions for the tactical and logistical environment in Iraq.
Sources range from Bob Woodward, who teases about a development whose impact is comparable to the Manhattan Project in World War, to my own contacts in-theater. Something is up, but I don't have a clue what it is and wouldn't say if I did.
#11
You have to put on your Wellies to wade through all the bullshit in this article. Looks like a pre-emptive dem talking point designed to constrain Bush from doing anything about the Pashtun irritant in the tribal belt. But as I've posted elsewhere today, what the heck can we really do with these savages? Cripes, they can't even get along with their neighbors/cousins let alone the rest of the world.
Pakistan is swirling the toilet bowl right now. I see no reason, other than our maintaining a logistics corridor, to not let them get flushed.
#12
I like to think of it as "Pakistan is Risking War with Biggest, Baddest Military Power on Earth", but whatever. Go ahead, start some shit. See what that gets ya.
The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas group on Wednesday urged militants in the West Bank to use force if security men loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction try to arrest them.
Iz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, Hamas' armed wing, issued the call after it said Fatah security forces had detained two of its gunmen in the West Bank city of Hebron. "We call upon our people and the [fighters] to defend themselves by all available means against any attempt to arrest them by [Fatah security] services, which are now working as a unit of the Zionist army," the brigades said in a statement.
The statement could raise tensions in the West Bank, where Fatah - whose forces lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas fighters in June 2007 - holds sway and is engaged in a U.S.-backed security campaign.
In the West Bank, Palestinian police spokesman Adnan Damiri said: "These are irresponsible words and they know their actions fuel sedition and attack the legitimate authority."
Hamas said some 300 of its members had been detained by Fatah in the West Bank over the past year, and about half remained in custody. Fatah says Hamas has arrested several hundred of its men in the Gaza Strip since the takeover, and at least 150 are still in jail.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
"you guys over there, you should fight to the death. We will have felafal in your honor over here"
(AKI/DAWN) - Britain's Justice Secretary Jack Straw has stressed the need for respecting Pakistan's territorial sovereignty and said that foreign incursions would be counter-productive.
After a meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in Islamabad on Tuesday, Straw also said Pakistan had made many sacrifices in the fight against terrorism. He expressed the hope that Pakistan would continue to allow NATO supply convoys through its territory on their way to Afghanistan.
Straw spoke about territorial sovereignty after several controversial incursions by US forces in recent weeks and the news that US President George W. Bush personally endorsed the attacks from Afghanistan.
Gillani called for an immediate end to violation of Pakistan's territory by the US and NATO forces and vowed that the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be protected at all costs. He said Pakistani armed forces were capable of handling any eventuality.
Reiterating his government's resolve to combat terrorism, Gillani urged the international community to remove the root causes of terrorism -- socio-economic disparity and unresolved political disputes. Reiterating his government's multi-pronged strategy, he criticised the previous government's policies.
The prime minister expressed Pakistan's desire to maintain friendly relations with all its neighbours and said that a stable and prosperous Afghanistan was in the country's interest.
The prime minister briefed Straw on the issue of reinstatement of the deposed judges and vowed to work towards an independent judiciary.
In a meeting with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Straw acknowledged Pakistan's contributions in efforts to promote stability in Afghanistan and peace in the region. He also praised Pakistan's support for Afghan refugees. The two sides reviewed bilateral relations, discussed the situation in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism strategy.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#3
Britain's Justice Secretary Jack Straw has stressed the need for respecting Pakistan's territorial sovereignty and said that foreign incursions would be counter-productive.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the leaders of Georgia's breakaway regions -- S Ossetia and Abkhazia -- signed treaties of friendship, co-op and mutual assistance.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
Compare wid TOPIX > MOSCOW TIMES OP-ED - TURNING RUSSIA INTO A TERRORIST ENCLAVE. HAMAS + HIZB suppor for Russia may backfire on Russia, as World Govts seemingly do better agz specific or isolated, always-on-the-move Militant-Terror Groups, NOT WHOLE ENCLAVES = MILIT-TERROR DOMIN LOCAL GOVTS-SOCIETIES. RUSSIA MAY BE PUTTING ITSELF IN REAL DANGER OF TERR DESTABILIZATIONS, AND ULTIMATELY DEVOL INTO A TERROR ENCLAVE/HAVEN ITSELF???
Also from TOPIX + MOSCOW TIMES > THE TOP TEN REASONS WHY THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY WILL FALTER.
#2
TOPIX > RUSSIA's PRESIDENT MEDVEDEV THREATENS ARCTIC ANNEXATION [Extension of Russ borderlines to Arctic area]. Medvey claims the ARCTIC must be RUSSIA'S "RESOURCE BASE" FOR THE 21st CENTURY.
Former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon on Tuesday issued a harsh criticism of the Israel Air Force's operations during the Second Lebanon War, claiming it failed in its mission.
During statements he made Tuesday at a military and security conference at the Armored Corps Museum in Latrun Ya'alon said "There was an air agenda and a dictatorial way of thinking, and after this way failed, there were those who placed the blame on others," he said.
This is not the first time that Ya'alon has attacked the military leadership during the July 2006 war. "If they had determined the right objectives, the war could have been finished from the air within five days."
"An air agenda was part of the decision-making process," Ya'alon added. "The air force leadership thought that this was their opportunity to put on a show. After the war, they pushed their responsibility onto their inferiors."
The former chief of staff compared the government decision-making process prior to the war with the process that lead to operation 'Grapes of Wrath' in 1996 which attempted to end the shelling of northern Israel by Hezbollah, saying "Many discussions were held prior to the Grapes of Wrath operation whereas before the Second Lebanon war, there was a two and a half hour talk which did not define any military goals." "It was decided to carry out a retaliatory mission which wasn't even called a war."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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(Xinhua) -- At least seven people died and 80 were injured during two explosions at the celebration of the Independence Day in a square of the city of Morelia in the Mexican state of Michoacan, authorities said on Tuesday.
The attacks occurred Monday night and these are the first attacks addressed against civilians inside the violence wave in the country. Morelia is capital of Michoacan and is located 242 kilometers from Mexico City, Michoacan is one of the states most devastated by the drug trafficking and kidnapping.
The Justice Prosecutor Office of Michoacan said on Tuesday that nobody has adjudged the attacks. The explosions occurred when Michoacan's governor Leonel Godoy was heading the local celebration of Mexican Independence Day.
Meanwhile, Mexican President Felipe Calderon expressed his repudiation to the attacks on Morelia. he wave violence in Mexico linked to the organized crime has killed at least 3,000 people during this year. When Calderon took office in Dec. 2006, he declared war on drug trafficking in Mexico, but also the drug trafficking groups declared war against the government.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
I hate to see this happen, it's a major turning point in their society. If this keeps up it will be Columbia style drug wars in the streets and a severe hurt to the tourist trade. Not to mention making it a less desirable destination for retiring baby-boomers. Better button this shit down and fast.
Officials from the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS) on Wednesday said that the Japanese vessel MT Stolt Valor, that had been hijacked near the Gulf of Aden on Monday with 22 crew, including 18 Indians, on board, was safe.
Also, officials from the Mumbai-based recruitment agents, Ebony Ship Management, confirmed that contact with the missing vessel had been established. "The hijackers allowed 2-3 members of the crew to talk to the office of the managers and it has been confirmed that 22 seafarers are safe and the vessel is at present heading towards Somalia," Captain Sanjeev Dutt, from Andheri-based Ebony, told TOI. He also said the hijackers had made no demands as yet.
The Coast Guard's Mumbai-based Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre said 15 Somali pirates had boarded the vessel. Coast Guard spokesman Commandant Kulpreet Yadav too confirmed the safety of those on board.
This is the second time in recent months of a hijacking of a ship with Indians on board. In a letter a month ago to the defence ministry, the Navy had sought authorisation for Indian warships to go after pirates. The Navy said the decision to deploy warships for such missions should be left to the Navy chief. This would help prompt action by Indian warships if it was required, the Navy argued. But the defence ministry, despite being reminded by the Navy a couple of days ago, is yet to respond to the request, sources said.
The number of hijack attempts by pirates has been the rise in the area. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB)'s piracy reporting center had issued an advisory in August warning ships sailing through the area.
According to IMB, in September alone, more than six piracy attempts had been made on merchant ships. "Once the attack is successful and the vessel hijacked, the pirates sail towards the Somali coast and thereafter demand a ransom for the release," said the IMB report.
The Stolt Valor, with a crew that included one Bangladeshi, two Filipinos and one Russian, was reportedly hijacked about 38 nautical miles from the coast of Yemen on Monday.
Families of the Indian crew on board are mostly from Mumbai, Patna and Dehra-dun. Wadala resident Rosary Fernando, whose brother-in-law Pani Asaphlobo boarded the ill-fated MT Stolt Valor in February, says he heard the news
three days ago and then informed Pani's immediate family living in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. "Since he would have to board vessels from Mumbai itself, he would spend a couple of days here before," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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(SomaliNet) Chinese authorities said on Wednesday that a third child has died and 6,244 infants have fallen sick from ingesting toxic milk.
China's Health Minister Chen Zhu told a televised news conference that the number of infants diagnosed with "acute kidney failure" had risen to 158.
According to sources, the Chinese government has sacked four officials in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province where dairy company Sanlu Group is based. The sackings included the vice mayor in charge of agriculture, Zhang Fawang, and the director of the city's food and drug watchdog, Zhang Yi, as well as chief officials for animal husbandry and quality inspection. Chairwoman and general manager of Sanlu, Tian Wenhua, was also dismissed.
Posted by: Fred ||
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(PTI) A small party in Malaysia's ruling coalition pulled out today, compounding the problems of beleaguered premier Abdullah Badawi amid a bid by the resurgent opposition to topple his government.
The Sabah Progressive Party, having two members in Parliament, quit the 14-party Barisan Nasional coalition after weeks of dithering, citing dissatisfaction with BN leadership. Party chief Yong Teck Lee said SAPP will remain independent but will work with anyone and be in consultation with various parties including the opposition alliance. He also launched a scathing attack on the BN, saying it had "lost its moral authority to rule".
With the SAPP's withdrawal, Barisan will have a majority of 56 in Parliament. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is planning a bid to seize power, has claimed that 31 MPs had agreed to cross over to the opposition. He, however, did not name the 'defectors'.
In March elections, the coalition won 140 seats and the opposition claimed 82.
Meanwhile, the country's Anti-Corruption Agency has opened a file to investigate claims by Barisan MPs that they are being offered money by the opposition alliance to join them. ACA director-general Ahmad Said said this was part of a proactive measure by the agency to investigate such reports of corruption. "We are currently monitoring the situation. We have several reports already of MPs who have claimed to be offered money to cross over to the Opposition," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
[online poker has been pooplisted.]
Posted by: online poker ||
09/18/2008 12:55
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A coalition of Nigerian human rights groups has mobilized 86 lawyers to defend the country's most married man, currently detained for unlawful marriages and inciting contempt of Islamic religious laws, an activist said Wednesday.
Masaba came to the limelight two months ago when he admitted in the media to having 86 wives and 170 children, insisting that his marriages did not contravene Islam which allows a man to get married to up to four wives.
"The coalition of 27 human rights groups in the north has mobilized 86 lawyers to defend Bello Masaba against the charges brought against him and the threat of banishment," Shehu Sani, a human rights activist and playwright, told AFP in a telephone interview. "It is our determination to protect his fundamental human rights as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution and international law," Sani added.
Sani is the director of Civil Rights Congress, a rights group based in the northern city of Kaduna and a member of the coalition. He said the identities of the defense lawyers would not be disclosed for fear of blackmail and intimidation, adding that the coalition "will go to any length to defend Masaba whom we believe is a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience".
Masaba, 84, was whisked away from his home town Bidda by police and arraigned before an Upper Sharia court in the state capital Minna "for incendiary contempt of religious laws and contracting unlawful marriage to 86 wives", a court clerk told AFP.
The news about Masaba attracted sharp criticism and indignation from all over the north, particularly from Islamic clerics, with the Jama'atu Nasril Islam (JNI), the Nigerian Muslim umbrella body slamming a death sentence on him. Two weeks ago, Masama agreed to divorce 82 of the wives and keep four, the maximum Islam allows, following a two-day ultimatum issued to him by the influential traditional chief of Bidda to either choose four among the 86 wives or leave the town.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Iff he wasn't before, he's definitely a Goner now!
A startling admission from Ben Bernanke
From TFA:
"Ben, you are playing a very unique role in world economic history," Hale recalled telling Bernanke, an expert in the Great Depression. "You are the first central bank governor of the United States to preside over a recession with no decline in commodity prices."
Bernanke could hypothetically limit inflation in commodities by raising interest rates, a policy that would restrict the flow of money but potentially lead to an avalanche of bank failures. At a financial conference in Florida on Tuesday, Hale, a Chicago-based economist for investment managers, hedge funds and multinational companies, paraphrased the Fed chairman's response.
"We have lost control," said Hale, quoting Bernanke. "We cannot stabilize the dollar. We cannot control commodity prices."
#1
We were pretty much saying that months ago here at the Rantburg U Econ 301 classes.
THey left credit too easy for too long, and to raise it sufficiently to bring sense back to the banking sector woudl collapse the hosuing market further, and trash the stock market, as well as likely triggering a deflationary spiral; that is prices drop because consumption has dropped, and companies get squeezed by falling profits and higher credit requirements.
Its a nasty spiral, and cutting rates to help economic activity risks igniting inflation of the teyp we saw in the 70's under Carter - 10% inflation with 10% unemployment.
The only thign to do is regulate the hell out of the hedge funds that have been acting as locusts and distorting & destroying markets segments (and have now moved from the finance industy into commodities).
Either that or start handing out high explosives and rifles to the normal citizens and declaring open season on Soros and other manipualtive bankers and malinvetors.
#5
Either that or start handing out high explosives and rifles to the normal citizens and declaring open season on Soros and other manipualtive bankers and malinvetors.
#6
If housing prices "firm up" at their still unaffordable levels, this will guarantee the US malaise will continue for years a la Japan. The solution for the real estate crisis is for home prices to again fall within historical ranges of affordability.
The dollar will suffer. Better that than 25% unemployment.
#7
One factor in all this has been the massive rise in war-related spending. In wars like WWII, a large percentage of that spending went to pay and personnel, both military and especially for factory workers. In that sense it was productive for our economy, so we could weather the deficit spending and stabilize the economy when the fighting stopped.
That's far less true for our spending in the GWOT which, in any case, is going to go on for years. Add in the much more reactive global markets, including 24 hr computerized trading and the derivative financial instruments that enables, and we've got a system that is to previous economies what a Ferrari is to a Ford Focus. Unfortunately, this Ferrari has the braking and steering system of the Ford .... And the GWOT, our reliance on foreign oil and outsourced maufacturing etc. are the winding road we've got to travel.
#8
OS is right on the money (pun intended). He, myself, and others have been pointing out the fact that interest rates were held at levels far below the actual cost of borrowing money for so long that the value of money has been altered for a few years at minimum. Better to let the rates go up and suffer those consequences he describes than go back to stagflation and/or the type of stagnation suffered by Japan (ht: AH) when they pursued a policy of prolonged years of zero interest/zero money to lend.
Further, everyone except the super rich is going to have to get used to the fact that income stream security and continually rising standard of living being guaranteed by some agency outside one's self are now going to largely disappear. Expectations of material living standards are returning to pre-New Deal levels, and it's about time. It will cause a lot of psychological hurt to a lot of workers who grew comfortable with these things, particularly in the post WWII era, but there isn't anything now which can stop a return to more historically accurate lifestyle expectations for a given amount/type of work from happening and simultaneously leave that which is authentically American about our economy intact.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/18/2008 6:16
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#9
The two biggest factors in the current crisis are (1) the housing mania, now dying a well-deserved death, and (2) "financial weapons of mass destruction," first described as such by Warren Buffetover five years ago. These WMDs are commonly called "derivatives", now amount to $50-60 trillion, although the exact amount is unknown at present. At that time Buffet said the rapidly growing trade in derivatives poses a "mega-catastrophic risk" for the economy. Some derivatives contracts, Mr Buffett said, appear to have been devised by "madmen".
Buffet's warnings were politely ignored by the Masters of the Universe and their sycophants. This week AIG was brought low by derivatives more than any other factor.
#10
housing mania, now dying a well-deserved death"
Can somebody give me an AMEN!
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/18/2008 6:27
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#11
Expectations of material living standards are returning to pre-New Deal levels I agree that living standards will be dropping. I don't know about pre-New Deal levels, when many Americans lacked indoor plumbing & electricity. Frustrating these expectations will likely result in a lot of anger in the electorate.
#12
I should have clarified better what I meant to say AH.
Given changes in technology - we will probably not go back to no indoor plumbing, electricity, etc.
I meant to refer to income stream security and disposable income, and the "stuff" these allow people to "afford".
No new cars every three years. Ditto the newest television technology, leisure travel, etc.
Not everyone will live in an owned house, even some people with decent jobs. Not everyone will automatically send their kids to college, especially private ones.
It may take some time and pain, but people will need to derive satisfaction in life more from community, church, and family, because easy access to cash to purchase "happiness" in the form of a mcmansion or a cruise or a wide screen flat panel TV will simply not exist.
There will be anger at first. But in the end, don't you think people will actually be better off, where it counts?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/18/2008 7:00
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#13
There will be anger at first. But in the end, don't you think people will actually be better off, where it counts?
No. I am perfectly capable of getting on with friends, family and my church while also making a decent living and hoping to provide for my children. Poverty is not a reward.
#15
Trying it shorter...
Let's tattoo or brand the MARK of CAIN on these ingrates who put the screws on the population and then put us in the situation where we have to bail out their sorry asses.
They should have to see it every day in the mirror for the rest of their lives.
#17
I don't know what to make of this, from Bloomberg:
"The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way...Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday...``no one knows what to do'' at the moment."
But somehow Obama knows what to do. Right.
"Still, the Democrats opened themselves up for attack with Reid's comments. The Republican National Committee pounced on the Nevada lawmaker for his ``despair,'' and Senator Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican, said his remarks are ``not a way to inspire confidence or begin to turn the tide.''...Senator Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican active on housing issues, scoffed at suggestions that lawmakers postpone adjournment to rewrite laws governing the financial markets.
``The last thing you need,'' he said, ``are 535 people, not many of whom are that well-versed in financial markets, trying to do quick fixes to a market correction that's one of the more significant that we've ever seen.'' "
Maybe our esteemed representatives could crack the books & spend a few weeks studying what's been going on these last 10 years, that might help a bit. The horse ran out of the burning barn last year anyway.
This week I have been noticing on the MSM many questions about whether or not the FDIC might run out of money should several large banks fail (as is likely). Sheila Bair, FDIC chairman, has been on radio & TV multiple times a day, attempting to reassure the public. One thing Congress & the President could do before adjournment is a massive show of support for the FDIC -- increase its funding/reserves/whatever-you-call-it-to-support-its-protection-of-depositors by 10 x in order to put out the fires of doubt as to whether this key part of the US financial system is really supported or not. The last thing we need are runs on bank deposits. Of course bank depositors are not a voting bloc (yet). This level of support is certainly within the ability of Congress to do before they go home for the elections.
#18
What a stupid thing to say. There are some things that, even if true, you just don't say. I wonder if Bernanke tells his wife she looks fat in that dress. Bernanke is the last Ph. D. to hold the job. He should resign now before he makes Greenspan look even better. I hate to say it, but Clinton had a great Treasury Secretary in Robert Rubin. He should be at Fed, not this pipe smoker.
#19
I studied the Great Depression intensively in graduate school under a Nobel laureate. What I came away with was the absolute conviction that what was most important in that debacle was the lack of confidence in both the markets and the currencies. Bernanke should never have said such a thing even if he believed it. However, I do think we'll come through this economic downturn without another Great Depression simply because world governments won't make the same mistakes they made in the 30's about tariffs and the consequent restriction of international trade.
Whoever gets elected in November would do well to brush up on FDR's fireside chat technique. I think, however, that McCain is far better suited to be the person trying to restore and maintain confidence in government than Obama. Elect Obama and there could be some serious damage done to the economy by people with money and resources fleeing the U.S. in fear of draconian tax rises.
#21
This looks like hearsay to my uneducated eye. What proof is there that Fed. Chairman Bernanke actually said any such thing? For that matter, who is Economist Hale, and what agenda does he please by telling this tale of a private conversation between what one presumes were friends?
#22
Either that or start handing out high explosives and rifles to the normal citizens and declaring open season on Soros and other manipulative bankers and malinvestors.
This would be my choice, and, I think it is going to come to that. When it does, Soros won't be the only one on the hit list.
#24
There are five critical things the government should do right now, based on the possibility of an international credit collapse. The axiom MUST be accepted as a possibility, because inherent to it is the idea that *neither* inflation or growth, the two standard economic solutions, will work at all.
1) Immediately balance the federal budget through cuts. As much as 25% of the federal government could be shut down, leaving a huge amount of money to protect the economy.
2) Constitutional amendments for a balanced budget with no off-budget items, and a line-item veto for the POTUS, "in consultation with congress".
3) Since the US Mint is at 100% capacity printing our paper money, the Mint should be directed to print a run of very high denomination ($100k to $10M) bills, until we have a paper backed economy. That is, a 1:1 ratio for all outstanding US money. This would stop any catastrophic currency deflation.
While these high denomination bills would be only for the use of *domestic only* financial institutions and corporations, with the movement of every bill tracked and authorized by the government, they would represent a "token" of the *only* money protected by the "full faith and credit" of the US government.
Vast amounts of leveraged, virtual money could disappear, but physical possession of paper meant that it was "yours", and could not be taken from you except by court order. There would be no obligation to trade it for virtual money.
It would be to a great extent protected from speculation, and represent "real", not leveraged, collateral. Credit could be offered *only* to the amount of paper you had on hand, that is, 100% collateral.
4) Because there is no way the US mint can produce enough lower denomination paper money for ordinary transactions, the government should issue high security blank debit cards to financial institutions. Secured by both fingerprint and retinal scan, these would be issued if the credit card companies had to invalidate all credit cards.
All transactions with these cards would be processed through the credit card companies, which would keep them in operation during the credit collapse.
5) All US exports would have to be paid for in US currency, or in exchange for relieving the foreign portion of the US national debt. That is, a bushel of wheat would cost either $10 in paper dollars, or $100 in debt relief.
This would have the double effect of first making the dollar extremely strong in international markets, and radically lowering our national debt.
Hale is a masters-degreed economist who leveraged a job with Zurich Financial Services Group into a consultancy for himself as a global econ advisor. He has a reputation as a name dropper who never tells a story without making himself seem like an insider who knows all the key players. Whether or not his advice is all that useful is a separate matter though ....
#29
What difference, with respect to what he may have said, does it make whether he said it in private conversation, the confidentiality of which was betrayed, or in a public address?
#30
Nimble Spemble: Yes, I know. I use "US Mint" as a shorthand for "the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (B.E.P.)", both because most people don't distinguish the two, and because I don't want them distracted from the main point.
AllahHateMe: normally yes, but the essence of a credit collapse is that there is no credit available to anyone, from nations and corporations, to individuals.
This means that you need some *other* means than a credit card, to take money "from the bank" to go shopping with. It sounds almost asinine, but you could have $100k in the bank and not be able to spend it.
Most people immediately say "What about bank checks?" Again, normally, yes. But for a large percentage of people, credit cards are used because they do not have the money in the bank, except for a brief time after they're paid.
This means if suddenly "no credit cards", their inclination would be to overdraft their checks. And while checks are not a credit instrument, trying at a grand scale to force them to be would force the banks to suspend checking as well.
This leaves debit cards and cash. Perhaps only 5% of our economy right now is backed with paper cash. And the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (B.E.P.) is printing cash at 100% production. If suddenly we need vast amounts of paper money to make transactions, we instantly have astounding levels of *deflation*.
Which is why the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (B.E.P.) needs to start printing huge amounts of very high denomination bills, so that certain companies won't suck all the small denomination currency we have out of the economy.
This can happen, BTW. Once there was a breakdown in the process for AT&T to return all the coins used in public telephones, and in less than two weeks, the entire State of California was stripped of its coinage.
Even with the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (B.E.P.) printing enormous amounts of high denomination bills, there is still going to be impressive cash deflation at the consumer level.
Ironically, something that costs a dollar may still cost a dollar via debit card, but if you pay cash, it may only be a dime. For the simple reason that nobody has any dimes.
Massive deflation happened during the Great Depression, too. A pound of hamburger to feed the dog only cost a nickel. But nobody had nickels.
But both political party candidates have it wrong. One side wants to cut taxes to increase growth, so that we can "grow our way out of the problem", and the other side wants to raise taxes and cause inflation while enlarging the federal debt.
Both of these are the solutions that have worked since WWII, but they won't work any more. The problem is both too great, and that there was an inherent flaw in the post-WWII easy credit economy.
#31
If we are sitting on the edge of a deflationary spiral, then we need somethgin to provide the bankers with a reason (liek a gun ot the head type reason) to put their money to work instead of sitting on it in fear -- and (again gun to the head) NOT in derivitives, but in loans to small business and individuals.
The confiscatory tax policy of Obama will suck money out of the system, and hasten it into a depression spiral, backed by federal malinvestment due to cronyism and self-dealing that inevitably happens when Congress tries to involve itself in the market: c.f. Fannie & Freddie, or fails to properly restrict derivatives.
I think step one is to require much higher margins, and that a majority of traders bwe directly representing suppliers and consumers in the futures market for given commodities. This reduces volatility while still allowing a few brokers to provide liquidity. And simply outloaw many of the derivatives that have led this mad destruction of capital, a destrution that is robbing the economy of capital formation capabilitythat is needed to sustain growth.
This prevents the collapse of the markets by forcing them into sanity.
A second would be to increase federal guarantees for small business loans and individual loans to be wider spread (possibly even providing a point based interest subsidy for given classes of smaller loans), and at the same time, reduce Fed backing (or eliminate it entirely) for speculative large investments or loan to hedge funds (and things of that nature).
This prevents banks from being destroyed by their conduct in loaning large amounts to unstable high-risk hthigns liek hedge funds, and reqarding them for putting the money to work in loans that provide economic growth and stability (individuals and small business).
Teh third part would be to put some real teeth into the investment and banking laws. Make naked shorting illegal, and othr securiteis related crims felonies, and a bar to employment in any financial ro investment field. Then make violation of those securities laws to include penalties such as civil forfeiture of ALL personal and corporate property, ultimately resultgin in mandatory dissolution of all assets via CH7 style "forced bankruptcy" with punative seizure of assets as part of that process (the creditors get paid, and the Fed gets the rest to put into a restitution fund, the criminal gets NOTHING) -- and no home exemptions, etc. I want these guys going to PMITA prison, and coming out with homeless and utterly broke.
I want THIS to be their last words from the judge, just before the guards haul them off to prison:
Not sure why that thought occurred to you. Perhaps projection?;)
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/18/2008 15:46
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#33
To your point, Excalibur.....
I didn't mean to imply that you can't have a good spiritual and community life AND make money and avoid poverty; that is the goal, after all, to do well in all areas.
It is also a fact that pretty good numbers of people in the U.S. have substituted the material end for the nonmaterial entirely simply because it has been easier to do so, and that is far more corrosive and far less desirable than having the community/family/church thing maximized at the expense of a little bit of material wealth, if the choice must be made (and sadly, some folks seem to be incapable of achieving both). In the absence of easy wealth to "purchase" happiness, people will be obliged to look for joy elsewhere. Not everyone is the sort who naturally recognize that the nonmaterial is really the better source of joy and fulfillment. Obviously you have figured out that that is the case, and good for you, but just as obviously millions have not.
I think the history of the last 60 or so years bears this out.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/18/2008 15:59
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#34
Thought it might be short for "No more Urology".... and yes, at my age it does prey on one's mind...... 8p
#35
I'd comment but I'm too disgusted with the whole mess that's been created. If we ran our households like Washington politicians run our government, we would be in prison.
#36
In the absence of easy wealth to "purchase" happiness, people will be obliged to look for joy elsewhere. Not everyone is the sort who naturally recognize that the nonmaterial is really the better source of joy and fulfillment.
#37
1) This guy is talking about something Bernanke said months ago and the comment doesn't make any sense to me. The Fed Freakin Chairman!!! knows well that he can't 'control' commodity prices. Commodities are subject to supply and demand, just like money.
Which brings us to the dollar. Supply and demand. That's it. The Dollar was way too cheap so the supply was higher than demand.
The cheap rates are the cause of the current problems. Not big, bad, rich white guys, not naked shorts (those are generally used against weak companies anyway. I like to think of it as the market thinning out the herd.), absurd housing prices, no complicated 'paper', not anything else we complain about.
Bad Fed policy. There was more money than there was good places too put it (because it was cheap), so the money made it's way to bad investments.
I expect us to be at the end of an era. The time of uber cheap short rates is coming to an end. When growth comes back, rates will come up.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/18/2008 21:17
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The U.S. State Department declined on Tuesday to confirm the report that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted missile engine test several months ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
TOPIX > NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR: POST-KIM NORTH KOREAN MILITARY TAKEOVER IS UNLIKELY.
CHINA'S GOVT has long contnually managed/mentored KIM JONG NAM, KIM JONG-IL's "HEIR APPARENT"???
Pakistani fighter jets have bombarded militants' hideouts in a tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan killing 19 insurgents.
The incident happened Wednesday in the rugged Bajaur region, where Pakistani army launched a major offensive against al-Qaeda and Taliban linked militants last month.
"Fighter jets bombarded militant hideouts Wednesday, killing 19 rebels and wounding 16 others," a security official said, adding that "helicopter gunships also shelled bunkers dug up by militants in Rashakai, Zarmandi, Kossar and Banda areas".
The operation has left more than 800 people dead, mostly militants, and also left 260,000 people displaced, local media reports say.
The killings also coincide with US Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen's unannounced trip to Islamabad amid tensions over US raids on tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
US and Afghan officials allege that militants use the mountainous region to launch cross-border attacks on US-led troops based in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's tribal regions have been wracked by violence since thousands of rebels sneaked into the country after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
Pakistan has suffered a wave of violence, and hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in suicide and bomb attacks across the country since former President Pervez Musharraf joined the US so-called 'war on terror' following the 9/11 attacks.
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09/18/2008
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British Muslims need to overcome their "victim mentality" and focus more on improving their lives than protesting about issues like Iraq, a Muslim lawmaker and junior government member said Wednesday.
Sadiq Khan, one of four Muslim members of parliament, said Muslims need to do more to integrate into British society, for example by learning English, denouncing sexism, and condemning forced marriages. "We need to take responsibility for our own lives," he said in a booklet for the Fabian Society, a leading left-of-centre think-tank, adding: "Muslims need to recognize childcare is as important as Kashmir."
"We need to take more responsibility for our own families, ignore those who propagate conspiracy theories, and above all we need to leave behind our victim mentality," he said.
Mohammed Shafiq, head of Muslim youth organization the Ramadhan Foundation, said Khan was out of touch with ordinary Muslims. "To suggest we are obsessed with foreign policy, when Muslims are being killed around the world, when over a million people have been killed in Iraq ... that's an obsession I'm proud of.
"I think any Muslim would be proud of it too," he added, saying: "It's time for the government and ministers like Mr. Khan to really address the real failure of 10 years of missed opportunity."
Khan, a lawmaker representing the south London constituency of Tooting and an assistant government whip -- a junior member of the government -- said Muslims should not let concern over British foreign policy deter them from seeking to improve their everyday lives. "I challenge British Muslims to accept that, as strongly as they feel about Iraq or counter-terrorism measures, poverty and inequality... do most damage to life chances and prevent potential being fulfilled," he said.
And he added: "Even if your passion is foreign policy, your ability to help people thousands of miles away is made much greater if you are an active citizen and player at home in the UK."
In the 80-page booklet, Khan said all mosques in Britain should consider letting women in, urged Muslims who do not speak English to learn it, and called on them to condemn forced marriages and honor killings. "We must all agree that honor killings are murder and forced marriages are kidnapping. These traditions have no place here or anywhere," he said in the booklet, entitled "Fairness, Not Favours."
He added: "The requirement to learn English is not colonial. English is a passport to participation in mainstream society -- jobs, education and even being able to use health services."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
I wish more Muslims would think and talk along the same lines!!!!
Posted by: Paul ||
09/18/2008 7:30
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#2
I would be just as happy for them to continue speaking whatever language they like so long as they do it somewhere else.
#3
This guy has figured it out, unfortunately I think he's one in a thousand.
Posted by: Titus Jeanter4551 ||
09/18/2008 8:31
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#4
Muslims are much like the typical defeated, mean people. They bow and grovel to everyone they think better than themselves, but they take it out on the weak and helpless, by forcing them to bow and grovel to the Muslim.
They are stuck in the paradigm. When no longer oppressed themselves, all their energies are turned to oppressing others. The end result is the crude, dog-like behavior: "if you can't eat it or fornicate with it, then piss on it to deny it to others."
#5
The Fabian Society? I'd no idea those idealistic socialists were still around. The playwright, pamphleteer, and critic George Bernard Shaw was a member back in the early part of the last century.
#7
"UK Muslims suffer from 'victim mentality': MP"
Was asserting that the Muslims are victims of this victimhood in the article title meant to be ironic on the part of the author? Somehow, I don't think so.
(AKI) - Egyptian police arrested 31 members of the banned Sunni Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday. Most of those arrested were university students from Cairo's al-Azhar University. Nineteen of the men were arrested in the Nile Delta area in northern Egypt, a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed by the Egyptian government, which accuses the group of encouraging violence in order to establish an Islamic state. The students were accused of belonging to an illegal organisation and of being in possession of literature deemed illegal.
The organisation is considered the most powerful opposition group in Egypt even though it has been banned since 1954. In some cases, its members have won parliamentary seats as independents in recent elections.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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(AKI) - At least five people were killed and 20 others wounded on Wednesday in a car bomb attack in western Baghdad, according to the news agency, Voices of Iraq. "Two cars rigged with explosives went off near al-Jibji hospital in al-Harithiya region in western Baghdad, killing five persons and injuring 20," a police source told VOI.
It was one of two bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday. In an attack on the east side of the Iraqi capital, a policeman was killed and five others were injured when a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Zaiyouna.
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Recently released BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia yesterday demanded release of all detained political leaders particularly the leaders of her party saying people had already raised their voices in regard to the release of BNP leaders.
Posted by: Fred ||
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KOLKATA: Bangladesh is all set to build its own missile arsenal. The caretaker government in Dhaka is in the process of clinching a deal with an integrated European company MBDA for buying OTOMAT MK-II surface-to-air missiles and five launch systems. These missiles can carry a payload of 210 kg and can hit targets 180 km away.
In addition, highly-placed intelligence sources say, the Bangladesh Air Force is negotiating with Turkish arms dealer ASELSAN to buy Shorad (Short Range Air Defence) system and 3D air defence radars during the current financial year.
Bangladesh has already set up a missile launch pad near the Chittagong Port with assistance from China. Breaking protocol, it did not bother to inform India about its missile tests. Bangladesh's missile programme is a recent one. Its maiden missile test was conducted on May 12, with active participation of a group of Chinese experts. It successfully test-fired land attack anti-ship cruise missile C-802A with a strike range of 120 km from the frigate BNS Osman near Kutubdia Island in the Bay of Bengal.
The frigate, commissioned by the Bangladesh Navy in 1989, is a 1500-ton Chinese built Jianghu class warship, and the C-802A missile, according to experts, is a modified version of Chinese Ying Ji-802 (western version SACCADE) with weight reduced from 815-715 kg to increase strike range from 42-120 km. It is this enhanced strike radius that has left Indian security agencies worried.
The radar-equipped missile can carry a 165-kg warhead. Since its guidance equipment has strong anti-jamming capability, the ships it targets have a very low success rate in intercepting the missile. The hit probability of the Ying Ji-802 is rated as 98%. It can be launched from aircraft, ships, submarines and even land-based vehicles, and is considered to be at par with the US Harpoon, the best anti-ship missiles of the present day missile system.
Posted by: john frum ||
09/18/2008
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#1
Shouldn't Bangladesh be spending their money on more productive things? Like maybe wells that don't poison you with Arsenic? Food? Agricultural equipment and training?
The United States said Wednesday that a vicious attack on its embassy in the Yemeni capital earlier in the day was a failed attempt to breach the compound's walls.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that the embassy's security upgrades, combined with the response of security officials, were effective in stopping attackers armed with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and at least one suicide car bomb.
Officials say sixteen people were killed, including six assailants. McCormack said that no Americans were hurt, but that a U.S. embassy guard from Yemen was killed, along with several Yemeni security officials and some terrorists.
The assault bore all the hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack, he said. A group calling itself Islamic Jihad in Yemen claimed responsibility for the bombing, which it said was a suicide attack. The group threatened attacks on embassies of other nations, including those of Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
It had threatened in a previous statement Tuesday to launch a series of attacks unless the Yemeni government met its demands for the release of several of its members from jail. "We, the organization of Islamic Jihad in Yemen declare our responsibility for the suicide attack on the American embassy in Sanaa," the statement read. "We will carry out the rest of the series of attacks on the other embassies that were declared previously, until our demands are met by the Yemeni government."
TV news networks Al-Jazeera of Qatar and Al-Arabiya of Saudi Arabia reported a car bomb explosion outside the embassy and an exchange of gunfire between guards and unidentified assailants. A second car carrying gunmen in police uniforms arrived at the scene soon after the car bomb exploded, they said, adding that the gunmen had immediately begun firing at the embassy's guards.
A fire also broke out in one of the embassy's buildings, the two stations reported.
A medical official said at least seven Yemeni nationals were wounded and taken to the city's Republican hospital. They are residents of a housing compound near the embassy and included children, he said. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said ambulance cars were rushing to the area and that hundreds of heavily armed security forces were deployed around the embassy. Police kept reporters well away from the immediate vicinity of the embassy, he said.
The embassy has repeatedly been the target of attacks. In March, three mortar rounds targeting the American mission crashed into a high school for girls next door, killing a Yemeni security guard and wounding more than a dozen girls.
In 2006, a gunman opened fire outside the embassy but was shot and arrested by Yemeni guards. The gunman, armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, claimed he wanted to kill Americans.
In March 2003, two people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured when police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy when tens of thousands rallied against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Almost exactly one year earlier, a Yemeni man lobbed a sound grenade into the embassy grounds a day after Vice President Dick Cheney made a stop for talks with officials at Sanaa airport. The attacker, who allegedly sought to retaliate against what he called American bias toward Israel, was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was later reduced to seven years.
Al-Qaida has an active presence in Yemen despite government efforts to destroy it. The group was blamed for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole destroyer in the Yemeni port of Aden that killed 17 American sailors and an attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person two years later.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
One report says an American citizen was killed: "Family members say a Lackawanna newlywed and her husband were among victims of Wednesday's attack on the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital.
Susan Elbaneh, an 18-year-old senior at Lackawanna High School near Buffalo, had gone to Yemen to get married last month and the couple were planning on returning to New York to live, her brother Ahmed Elbaneh said...Susan Elbaneh was related to a seventh alleged member of the ["Lackawanna Six"], Jaber Elbaneh, who faces U.S. charges of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
Relatives, however, stressed that has nothing to do with Susan, an innocent victim. They said neither she nor they have had any contact with Jaber Elbaneh, who was convicted in Yemen for planning attacks on oil installations and is in Yemeni custody.
A product of two cultures, Susan Elbaneh was born and raised in western New York, attended public schools with American friends and was planning a nursing career following her Aug. 25 arranged marriage.
Ahmed Elbaneh said his younger sister was not concerned about terrorism or violence before traveling to Yemen." Unfortunately, it appears she should have been very concerned about terrorism back in the Old Country.
#7
Got to see her perform in Gypsy as the lead's mother character in the summer of '72 before I had to leave at intermission to head back to training camp. Yowza, she still had those legs that were able to reach the floor.
Israel's governing Kadima party was voting for a new leader on Wednesday, with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni favoured by opinion polls to replace scandal-plagued Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
But whether Tzipi Livni or fellow cabinet minister Shaul Mofaz secures the support of a majority of the 74,000 members of the centrist Kadima party, Olmert may stay on as caretaker premier for weeks or months -- and Israel's fractious coalition politics could yet mean an early parliamentary election.
"At some moment in the near future, I will decide what to do with the rest of my life," Olmert, facing possible indictment in a corruption investigation, told community service volunteers in southern Israel.
After what many had thought might be his last such meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, Olmert vowed to carry on with their peace negotiations -- a sign he aims to exercise his right to continue as prime minister while his successor as party leader tries to form a new government.
Polls show Foreign Minister Livni well ahead of Mofaz, the transport minister and a former general, in her bid to become Israel's first woman leader since Golda Meir in the 1970s. But despite Livni's commanding lead, Mofaz remained upbeat. "I stand behind my belief that I am going to win," he said after voting near Tel Aviv.
Whoever succeeds Olmert, many see a parliamentary election in months. Kadima, founded in 2005 by Ariel Sharon, has just a quarter of the seats in the Knesset. Rivals, some within Olmert's coalition, are preparing for a national battle that polls show may favour Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud.
Posted by: Fred ||
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(AKI) - Clashes between rival Christian factions in northern Lebanon on Wednesday left two people dead and injured three others. The clashes took place between the pro-Syrian Marada group and the anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces factions in the northern Lebanese village of Bsarma, 74 kilometres from Beirut. A member of each rival faction was killed, while a policeman and two members of the Lebanese Forces were injured. The clashes began after Marada tried to prevent the rival group from hanging a banner commemorating the Lebanese Forces.
Last week, a pro-Syrian politician was killed in a car bomb, while on Monday one person was killed after rival Palestinian factions clashed in Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country.
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The NATO secretary-general renewed his support for Georgia's bid to join the military bloc in a speech to students at Tbilisi State University on the second day of his visit to the Caucasus nation, but he offered no timetable for Georgia's NATO membership.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
MOUD + IRAN is weighing in and warning NATO agz interference in GEORGIA and the CAUCASUS.
HMMMMM, personally I'm reading MOUD's WARNING as more to RUSSIA, NOT TO NATO???
#2
If I were a Georgian, I wouldn't get my hopes up. NATO is a largely ineffective force against Russia and Russia knows it it. In a stand off, it will be a repeat of historical confrontations. Not good for Georgia. Still, what other cards do they have to play?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/18/2008 4:42
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#3
Rember Poland in 1939? The allies gaved her a guarantee (despite Poland having taken part in the rape of Czachoslowakia) that because of geography they couldn't enforce. This was juts enticing Hitler to call the bluff.
Now, look where is Georgia.
Nato could/should accept Ukraine and evoid touching Georgia with a ten foot pole.
#6
REDDIT BREAKING > SECRETARY OF DEFENSE GATES WARNS THAT ONCE GEORGIA JOINS NATO, ANY SECOND RUSSIAN ATTACK AGZ IT WILL BE MET BY AMERICAN ARMED RESPONSE, as per NATO Charter.
#8
The deal for Georgia entering NATO is not primarily for the US - we may be useful in appearing to lead, but it's real a decision for Turkey, Armenia and the Azeris to make. Curiously, and barely reported, the ice seems to be breaking that way - vis the Turk PM's recent football visit to Yerevan, and renewed Armenian/Azeri talks.
A lot is probably going on behind the scenes, but a lot more probably has to be done, but if Georgia can gain any strategic depth, it could fit into NATO with Turkey's backstopping.
The $$$$$ to do this come from the oil/gas transit fees from the Caspian - and there should be enough to cover everyone, even if Russia tries everything short of war to stop it.
The less the US says anything about this, the more likely it's happening, particularly if nothing is said in the upcoming debates or in any detail on the sunday talkies.
#10
The deal for Georgia entering NATO is not primarily for the US
Well, if U.S. were to mind its own security within or close to its borders, or at least in the western hemisphere, we would not have all these problems, would we?
#11
Yes, why should we care that terrorists trained halfway round in a barbarian wasteland to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers? Or that countries which spent their own citizens and tax funds to help us put an end to terror aimed at the world are under attack for it?
On the other hand, jihadi terrorists have crossed our borders from Canada and Mexico. Perhaps we should take care of those nearby problems instead.
#12
"terrorists trained halfway round in a barbarian wasteland to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers?"
TW, you've got to be joking! Let's start with the "terrorists": that would be 19 citizens of South Arabia - a U.S. ally in the Middle East. Next, "barbarian wasteland" - that would be Iraq and Iran - the cradle of the human civilization, and the inventors of the arabic numerals: 1, 2, 3 etc. Finally, where is that evidence that Iraq ever trained those 19 South Arabians or any other terrorists???
#13
GC - your first comment is on target, particularly since Russia retains substantial combat forces in Armenia - that alone makes the change scenario very unlikely, and is simply the current proof of the historic lineup of the region.
All that said though, if Turkey leads, particularly if Iraq and the Kurds are remotely calm, it could happen.
Armenia is clearly its own nation now, and in a position to make a deal for itself.
Still doubtful, but it could happen.
As for the remaining comments, we could keep our interest commercial (i.e. energy related) but still have the security interests TW notes. None of these nations are quite the non-sovereign areas as the FATA/pre-war Afghanistan, but they all have issues.
#15
"but still have the security interests TW notes"
A: Security interests are just that security interests. Instead U.S. wants: (i) NATO expansion, (ii) Missile Defense in every bordering state, and (iii) station its own troops there.
(AKI/Jakarta Post) - The local government in Indonesia's Muslim-devout province of Aceh announced it is inviting former GAM separatist rebel leader Hasan Tiro to celebrate the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
"From our meeting with Deputy Governor Muhammad Nazar, we have agreed to invite Hasan Tiro to Aceh," said a legislative council member, Mukhlis Mukhtar.
Mukhtar said it would mean a lot for the people of Aceh to celebrate together with with local hero Hasan the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr - which marks the end of Ramadan. Hasan has lived in Stockholm, Sweden, for 25 years, from where he led the separatist GAM (Free Aceh) movement in exile.
GAM and the Indonesian government signed in August 2005 a landmark peace accord in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, which ended a 29-year conflict in which an estimated 15,000 people died.
Hasan has not yet returned to Indonesia.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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Thai lawmakers yesterday turned to the brother-in-law of deposed leader Thaksin Shinawatra to be the new prime minister, setting up a showdown with protesters determined to tear down his political legacy. Ohfergawdsake.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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A Briton who sparked a bomb alert on an Emirates flight from Manchester to Dubai in July while he was drunk was sentenced to four months in prison in the Gulf emirate on Wednesday. Mark Winterbottom, 37, will be deported after serving his sentence and has also been fined 1,000 dirhams.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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(PTI) Amid a raging row with Pakistan over incursions into its territory, the US today vowed to respect Islamabad's sovereignty, seeking to ease the tension that has brought their troops in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation along the porous Afghan border. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, who arrived here on an unannounced visit, handed out the assurance during meetings with his Pakistani counterpart General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, a US embassy statement said. "The conversations were extremely frank, positive, and constructive," it said. That mans we started sentences with "Looky here, Bub!"
The US military chief, on his fifth trip to the country since October, met top commanders a day after Pakistan army said its forces have been given orders to fire on US troops if they launch cross-borders attacks on militants inside Pakistan.
The embassy said Mullen resolved "to develop further US-Pakistani cooperation and coordination on these critical issues that challenge the security and well-being of the people of both the countries." "The Pakistani leaders reviewed the progress of Pakistan's efforts to combat militancy, violence, and terrorism," it said.
Mullen appreciated the positive role that Pakistan is playing in the war on terror and pledged continued US support to Islamabad, the statement said.
The visit assumed significance in the wake of Pakistani forces and US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan coming to almost confrontation on the mountainous Pak-Afghan border, where Washington suspects elusive al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri were hiding.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
Diplomacy often means saying "Nice Doggie!" while reaching for a rock.
#4
Yeah, just too bad about their stock market isn't it. Yep, nobody rushing to help them out. Gosh, wonder why??? I thought they were all capitalists now and a chummy member of the world community. Have they done something recently to indicate otherwise??? Hmmmmmm, lemme think...
#5
hey "remote": we ARE capitalists now. Parts of RTS already began trading again. RTS will begin trading tomorrow. And no, we don't need anybody's "help," that's not how it works, you idiot.
Washington will work with Islamabad to address the problem of Taliban safe havens in the Tribal Areas, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters at the Bagram Air Base, Gates said he was encouraged by recent Pakistani military operations against the Taliban. Gates voiced "sincere condolences ... over the recent loss of innocent lives in coalition airstrikes", and announced a joint probe with Afghanistan into civilian deaths in a recent airstrike.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
'US to work with Pakistan against Taliban sanctuaries'
Whether Pakistan wants to or not.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/18/2008 17:57
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The Taliban on Wednesday vacated the Kooza Bandai area of Kabal tehsil after negotiations with local elders. Representatives of the peace jirga in Kanjoo had been holding talks with the Taliban for the last three days. Locals said they agreed to vacate the area after the jirga assured them that security forces would not enter it. Three teams of nine people each have been formed by the local elders and the security forces to comb the area for landmines and other arsenal. Meanwhile, three civilians were killed in the forces' shelling in Kabal. Security forces arrested four men from Kahwazakhela district during a search operation. Official sources said the men were suspected of having blown up a bridge.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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Israeli Foreign minister Tzipi Livni has been elected as the leader of the ruling Kadima Party to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, exit polls suggest.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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(AKI) -- Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been arming Taliban groups in western Afghanistan for the past year, an independent journalist has told Adnkronos International (AKI).
"The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have regularly been supplying arms to Taliban groups operating in the province of Herat," the journalist, A.B., told AKI from Zahedan, the capital of Beluchistan province in southeastern Iran. "The Revolutionary Guards actually sell the weapons to the Taliban, who apparently pay for them in drugs, not cash," A.B. added.
"Besides sub-machine guns that can also fire grenades, the Afghan rebels are also interested in anti-tank mines manufactured in Iran," he said.
Iranian officials deny these claims, which have previously been made by the Afghan government and by ISAF, the NATO-led security and development mission in Afghanistan.
"Lies! All lies!"
But a Taliban commander confirmed in a recent interview with BBC that Afghan rebel forces have received Iranian arms. "We are especially interested in Iranian Egdeha mines, which can destroy military tanks," the commander told BBC.
An unnamed British military source confirmed that "a limited quantity" of Iranian arms have been sold to the Taliban. There was no evidence that the Iranian government has approved such sales, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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#1
"But that is imposssible Hitler is far right and Stalin is far left."
"But that is impossible Saddam is secular and bin Laden an islamist"
"But that is impossible Taliban are sunni and Iranian Mullahs shiah"
(SomaliNet) Being the second member of the contingent to be killed in the Somali capital in three days, a Ugandan peacekeeper was killed on Monday in a roadside bomb explosion in Mogadishu.
Monday's incident took place in the southern Mogadishu neighbourhood of Afisiyone and came a day after another Ugandan member of the African Union force was killed in an attack by suspected Islamist insurgents on Saturday. ''We have so far lost two soldiers and four others have been injured,'' Amisom Forces spokesman Maj. Barigye Ba-hoku said from Mogadishu last evening. ''Our soldiers went to an observation post outside our defence positions when an explosive device planted by the roadside went off, killing one of our soldiers and wounding two others.''
Witnesses said the AU peacekeepers' vehicle was destroyed by the roadside bomb and several of the soldiers retrieved from the wreckage, before the area was sealed off. The explosives were hidden in sand dunes. As is the practice in the military the identities of the dead cannot be released until their relatives have been notified.
Since March 2007, a total of eight African Union peacekeepers have been killed in Somalia. A Ugandan soldier serving with the African Union in Somalia was on August 1 killed by a roadside bomb in Mogadishu.
The incident followed another similar attack in which three others were killed. ''Amisom once again condemns these acts of violence that undermine the efforts of attaining peace through dialogue,'' Maj. Ba-Hoku said. ''Amisom will not be deterred from fulfilling their mandate by these callous attacks.''
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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(AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Pakistan's ongoing support for America's fight against terrorism has dissolved ideological differences among Islamic militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan and they have united in a dangerous new militia war.
Under President Pervez Musharraf, a former general, the country's military leadership had incongruous dealings with different players and lines between friends and foes were often blurred.
Those who supported a strict enforcement of Islamic law, like Afghan Taliban leaders Mullah Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud were called flagrant ideologues, while indigenous zealots like Haji Nazeer or Jalaluddin Haqqani were seen as good sons of the soil.
But the victory of secular democratic forces in Pakistan in February this year and the success of General David Patraeus' strategy against Al-Qaeda in Iraq marked the end of Musharraf's covert regional strategic agendas.
Now there are fresh battles ahead as NATO and Pakistani security forces have a single regional strategic agenda, while all Taliban groups and Al-Qaeda stand united under one policy of regional war.
In a recent controversial US drone attack, several missiles were fired at an Islamic madrassa (seminary) and the house of powerful Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Dandi Darpa Khail in the North Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border.
Jalaluddin, spiritual leader of the Haqqani network and a legendary figure in the Afghan mujahadeen, and his son, Sirajuddin, operational head of the most powerful component of the present Afghan resistance, were not there.
Most of those killed were women and children from the families of the Haqqanis and the attack provoked a fierce reaction in Pakistan.
In the last week in August, fighters loyal to commander Haji Nazeer attacked Pakistani security forces in South Waziristan. Haji Nazeer operates the biggest Taliban network in the neighboring Afghan province of Paktika.
This is the same good old friend of the Pakistani establishment who conducted the massacre of Uzbeks in January 2007 at the instigation of Pakistani security forces.
Haji Nazeer along with Hafiz Gulbadur, another Wazir from North Waziristan, recently tried to join forces with slain tribal chief Haji Namdar in Khyber Agency, to challenge the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban's network.
Early September saw three strikes, two on South Waziristan and one on North Waziristan, Haji Nazeer's area of command.
"The recent drone attacks in South Waziristan specifically aimed at Haji Nazeer's areas changed the mindset of Haji Nazeer," a Pakstani Al-Qaeda militant told Adnkronos International (AKI) on condition of anonymity.
"The shura (consultation) discussed the issue and concluded that those attacks were not possible without Pakistan's help and therefore it was decided to warn the security forces to leave South Waziristan or face the music."
According to senior American officials, US President George W. Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government.
There have been at least five attacks inside Pakistan either by US drones or by US special forces in September and this clearly indicates that the US has already opened up a war theatre in Pakistan.
The assassination of Haji Namdar, a loyalist of Mullah Omar and the Pakistani security forces, has also increased the Taliban's activities under the Ustad Yasir in the Khyber Agency.
There are now fears that the militia war could lead the country into deeper chaos like that seen during the Lebanese Civil War, several African countries and in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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Top|| File under: TTP
#1
We didn't train them or support them for 30 years, so play nice with your friends boys!
Posted by: Titus Jeanter4551 ||
09/18/2008 8:26
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(AKI) - Suspected United States drones fired four missiles on Wednesday in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border killing seven people and injuring at least six, according to officials. "Four missiles were fired by suspected U.S. drones in the area of Baghar Cheena village in the restive South Waziristan on Wednesday evening," said a senior security official, quoted by Pakistan's Geo News TV channel.
The missiles were reported to have struck a militant training camp and a house occupied by militants. "There are a few militant training camps in the area and no civilian population around the site of strikes," another official said, cited by Geo News.
The attack was at least the fifth such strike inside Pakistan this month and came came hours after U.S. military chief Admiral Michael Mullen reiterated Washington's respect for the sovereignty of Pakistan. Mullen, who flew to Islamabad on an unannounced trip late onTuesday, met Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in a bid to calm anger over US raids on tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in so-called hot pursuit of militants.
The attack may be an indication that the Americans have told Pakistan there will be no more ground assaults, but that drone attacks are to continue. According to senior American officials, U.S. President George W. Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allowed American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia
#1
One hand isn't talking to the other: They didn't leave time to plant the bodies of women & children before the report.
#2
I don't know what they are complaining about. The drone was in Afghanistan when it launched the missiles........I mean its not OUR fault the missiles landed in Pak.
Posted by: James Carville ||
09/18/2008 10:27
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#4
Phakestan STILL needs to experience an ARCLIGHT strike. It might just give them enough of an insight to actually DO something about terrorists. Especially it it would somehow "leak" that one of the targets for further strikes is Rawalpindi/Islamabad.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/18/2008 16:51
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#5
[online poker has been pooplisted.]
Posted by: online poker ||
09/18/2008 20:08
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#6
Speaking of DRONE, WAFF > DEFENSETECH.org - ROBOT PLANE CAN CARRY TROOPS/FIRM BUILDING MAN-CARRYING VTOL DRONE [armed].
Also from WAFF > CHINA'S NAVAL AMBITIONS: A SECOND CHANCE AT COMMAND OF THE OCEANS [hence achieving DESIRED GLOBAL POWER/SUPERPOWER STATUS].
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.
While the political and news world was focused on the glitzy Hollywood haul of money by the Obama campaign's Brinks trucks Tuesday night, it turns out lesser-light Sarah Palin was gathering in a good deal more than a million bucks at three separate fundraisers back in Ohio.
The media is turning the news into a presidential video game. "Hurricane Ike" or "Wall Street Meltdown" appears onscreen, and the media boots up Barack Obama and John McCain to see how well they talk the problem. Mostly they are speaking gobbledygook about things they barely understand. Whatever a credit default swap is, I'm against it. The public is left to wonder if they are voting for a commentator in chief or commander in chief.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reviewing complaints from both Americans and Canadians about a Web site columnist who recently described Sarah Palin's supporters as "white trash," compared the vice presidential candidate to a "porn actress" and called her daughter's boyfriend a "redneck" and "ratboy."
The Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn't equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can't agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way. 
Barack Obama sharpened his attacks on John McCain and mocked the Republican's recent calls for reform in two stops in Nevada on Wednesday after days of listening to nervous supporters fret about the Democrat's chances of taking the White House.
WASHINGTON - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. In a new TV ad that repeats widely debunked claims about the Democratic tax plan, the Republican campaign calls Obama's tax increases "painful." 
The Central Intelligence Agency is using strikes against enemy targets to learn how the groups respond when attacked, the agency's director said Wednesday. 
Chief Hamas aide assassinated in Syria last week?
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A summer of heavy fighting during which Western military leaders had hoped to seize the initiative from Islamic militants has instead revealed an insurgency capable of employing complex new tactics and fighting across a broad swath of Afghanistan.
``Electric drills were a Shiite obsession. When you found a guy with drill marks in his legs, he was almost certainly a Sunni, and he was almost certainly killed by a Shiite. The Sunnis preferred to behead, or to kill themselves while killing others. By and large, the Shiites didn't behead, didn't blow themselves up. The derangements were mutually exclusive.'' 
As for al-Qaeda, there are few signs it's even still alive, other than a dispersed leadership taking refuge with the Taliban. 
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the leaders of Georgia's breakaway regions -- S Ossetia and Abkhazia -- signed treaties of friendship, co-op and mutual assistance.
Officials from the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS) on Wednesday said that the Japanese vessel MT Stolt Valor, that had been hijacked near the Gulf of Aden on Monday with 22 crew, including 18 Indians, on board, was safe. 
Pakistani fighter jets have bombarded militants' hideouts in a tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan killing 19 insurgents. 
(AKI) - Clashes between rival Christian factions in northern Lebanon on Wednesday left two people dead and injured three others. The clashes took place between the pro-Syrian Marada group and the anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces factions in the northern Lebanese village of Bsarma, 74 kilometres from Beirut. A member of each rival faction was killed, while a policeman and two members of the Lebanese Forces were injured. The clashes began after Marada tried to prevent the rival group from hanging a banner commemorating the Lebanese Forces.
(AKI) - Suspected United States drones fired four missiles on Wednesday in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border killing seven people and injuring at least six, according to officials. "Four missiles were fired by suspected U.S. drones in the area of Baghar Cheena village in the restive South Waziristan on Wednesday evening," said a senior security official, quoted by Pakistan's Geo News TV channel. 
