Al Gore said in San Jose Saturday that the climate crisis deserves the same type of attention and money from Washington that the financial meltdown is getting.
"Instead of a focus only on a bailout, we need to bail in renewable energy," Gore said during a 50-minute speech at the Civic Auditorium. Remember to wear your hip waders when bailing. And bring a shovel.
The U.S. Mint is temporarily halting sales of its American Buffalo 24-karat gold coins because it can't keep up with soaring demand as investors seek the safety of gold amid economic turbulence. The 1-ounce coin has a face value of $50 but is priced for sale according to the fluctuating value of gold.
#4
It seems like all the coin folks I know are deeply in love with the Saint Gaudens Double Eagle, to exclusion of all else. I have to confess I wasn't even aware there IS a gold Buffalo....
#5
I just figured out how this is a bad sign. And it's worse than bad, it's... it's.. horrific!
These things never get spent, so they're pure profit for the Treasury. without all the profit they get from these coins, they'll never be able to fund the bailout!!! OH NOES!!!
Time to ad some more states so we can sell more quarters!!! But that's inflationary! Argghh!!!!
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/27/2008 22:50
Comments ||
Top||
#5
It made the Drudge Report with two headlines. It no longer matters that the mainstream/legacy media no longer report things; Drudge had 29,698,368 visits in the last 24 hours. Even though I'm sure there are a significant number of repeat visits within that number, nowadays Drudge is as consulted (or possibly more) than the New York Times. Even Senator McCain checks the site daily.
#7
Gov. Blunt has been criticized about cutting government spending and "email gate." The latter by none other than the current attorney general (a Dem running for Gov.) This statement is a good thing. Unfortunately, he is not running for reelection.
#8
Expect more of these Gestapo-like tactics of Obamessiah is elected. If you think the Clintons were bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
If Obamessiah is elected there will be goon squads, truth squads, enforcement of his holy word and suppression of free speech like nothing this country has ever seen before.
#11
When this mess is over, it will be time to discuss with the Democrap the limits of the use of intimidation, and the dangers involved in such acts. If they won't listen to words, the discussion will necessarily escalate to whatever it take to get and keep their attention. Obama has overstepped the bounds of political propriety on many, many occasions, and needs to be held accountable for each of them.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/27/2008 23:53
Comments ||
Top||
Young people think a steady stream of immigrants is eroding Britain's national identity and threatening jobs, a survey said today.
Almost two-thirds (60%) of the young people surveyed in the poll by the British Council thought the presence of foreign immigrants was "diluting" their sense of national identity.
A quarter said immigrants posed a threat to British workers' jobs and 12% said they thought the influx of people from abroad was a risk to security and public order.
Two thousand people aged between 18 and 35 were asked about their attitude towards immigration and their sense of national identity.
The survey comes as shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve warned that multiculturalism in the UK has left a "terrible" legacy, creating a vacuum that has been filled by extremists.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Grieve said: "We've actually done something terrible to ourselves in Britain. In the name of trying to prepare people for some new multicultural society we've encouraged people, particularly the sort of long-term inhabitants, to say 'well your cultural background isn't really very important'."
He told the newspaper that long-term inhabitants have been left fearful, while second- and third-generation immigrants have felt alienated and unsure what British values stand for.
Both the survey and Grieve's comments come on the eve of the Conservative Party conference.
The British Council said the results of this week's survey were "worrying".
"This study throws up some interesting reflections, and also some rather worrying results," said Paul Docherty, the director of the British Council in Italy.
"Although there are many areas where British and Italian young people have a positive outlook, it is clear that there are stark challenges facing our societies in staying in touch with our younger generation and addressing some of their fears."
The survey was split between young people in Italy and the UK and was commissioned by the British Council ahead of its annual Anglo-Italian conference to discuss how political establishments can stay in touch with young people's fears and ambitions.
In spite of greater European integration since the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, just 7% of Britons surveyed said they felt like a European citizen, while 40% considered themselves to be British.
But, while some young people said they felt detached from Europe, over half said they thought the EU helped defend citizen's rights, and 38% said it had a positive influence over the economy.
"The study was commissioned to inform debate at the Anglo-Italian conference held every year, but I am sure that the results will provide a useful point of reference for a number of other programmes in Europe and beyond," Mr Docherty said.
Between the prayers that fill the holy month of Ramadan, during the long fasts that stretch from dawn to dusk, Muslims have been meeting to discuss the disappearance of Salman Ibrahim.
The respected businessman persuaded up to 200 Pakistani and Indian immigrants to contribute their savings and mortgage their homes to finance real estate deals. But Ibrahim vanished in August, leaving his investors with losses that could total $50 million - in some cases their life's savings.
"The scale of impact that this stands to have on a lot of people in the South Asian and Muslim communities is potentially very drastic," said attorney Salman Azam, who filed a petition last week to force Ibrahim's company, Sunrise Equities Inc., into bankruptcy. "There are a lot of very, very sad stories and dire financial situations."
Continued on Page 49
#1
a muslim shakedown artist from Chicago, ya say?......
hey! I know a similar flimflam guy....
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:42
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Allen giveth, and Allen taketh away.
See you in the funny papers, suckers.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 18:11
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Perhaps most significant to investors: Ibrahim was a member of the Shariah Board of America, a Devon-based group of Islamic clerics who advise Muslim investors. The board certified Sunrise as conforming to an Islamic law, or Shariah, that prohibits Muslims from earning interest on investments.
Oh please tell me it is so!! LOL! The Shariah imbued Muslim Asses got Conned by one of their own..
>:)
Oh how I wish it was one of us who bagged their Pious pile!! LOL, They can Piss Off and Cry all the way back to the old country!!
A Texas jury acquitted a man accused of killing a boy who broke into his home looking for a snack - a case that sparked outrage in this border city, where many thought the man should not have even been charged. It took the jury of eight men and four women three hours Friday to find Jose Luis Gonzalez, 63, not guilty of murdering Francisco Anguiano, who was 13 when he and three friends broke into Gonzalez's trailer to rummage for snacks and soda one night in July 2007.
"I thank God and my attorney, the jury and the judge," Gonzalez said in Spanish after the verdict. "It was a case where it was my life or theirs, and it's a very good thing that they (the jurors) decided in my favor."
Gonzalez said he was sorry for Anguiano's death, but "it was a situation in which I feared for my life."
Texas law allows homeowners to use deadly force to protect themselves and their property. In June, a grand jury in Houston cleared a homeowner who shot and killed two burglars outside his neighbor's house despite the dispatcher's repeated request that he stay inside his own home.
"I feel vindicated for Mr. Gonzalez and his family and for all of the homeowners and all of the seniors in Laredo," said Isidro "Chilo" Alaniz, Gonzalez's attorney. "This case has huge implications across the board. We always, always believed in Mr. Gonzalez's right to defend his life and his property."
Alaniz is running uncontested for Webb County district attorney in November.
However, Assistant District Attorney Uriel Druker maintained during his closing arguments that the case was not about homeowners' right to protect their property, but about when a person is justified in using deadly force to do so. "What really took place here was a case of vigilantism," he said after the verdict. "A 13-year-old boy was killed because a man was enraged."
Anguiano's aunt, who asked not to be named, said in Saturday's editions of the Laredo Morning Times that she was disappointed with the verdict. "The state fought the case the way it should have," she said. "There was a sufficient amount of evidence, and I thought that some of the jurors would be a father or a mother, and perhaps they would think about this happening to them."
Gonzalez had endured several break-ins at his trailer when the four boys, ranging in age from 11 to 15, broke in. Gonzalez, who was in a nearby building at the time, went into the trailer and confronted the boys with a 16-gauge shotgun. Then he forced the boys, who were unarmed, to their knees, attorneys on both sides say. The boys say they were begging for forgiveness when Gonzalez hit them with the barrel of the shotgun and kicked them repeatedly. Then, the medical examiner testified, Anguiano was shot in the back at close range. Two mashed Twinkies and some cookies were stuffed in the pockets of his shorts.
Another boy, Jesus Soto Jr., now 16, testified that Gonzalez ordered them at gunpoint to take Anguiano's body outside.
Gonzalez said he thought Anguiano was lunging at him when he fired the shotgun.
Many people in Laredo - a town just across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where drug violence runs rampant - defended Gonzalez's actions. In online responses to articles published by the Morning Times, comments included statements such as "The kid got what he deserved" and calls to "stop the unfair prosecution."
#1
Okay, I suppose I'll swim against the tide: if the boys were on their knees, unarmed, and no threat to the man, and the boy was shot in the back, then it was murder (or at the least manslaughter) and not self-defense.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 16:36
Comments ||
Top||
#2
However, Assistant District Attorney Uriel Druker maintained during his closing arguments that the case was not about homeowners' right to protect their property, but about when a person is justified in using deadly force to do so
If the state demonstrated that it was serious about crime rather than doing 'just enough' to keep the unwashed masses in place and storming their governmental offices, you might make that point. When government spends far too much time and resources on behalf of sociopathic and destructive members of our society who carry out the death penalty in our homes, streets, neighborhoods, business and even schools without due process and without appeal and then government spits in the face of the families and love ones saying 'we must adhere to the process of the law', you're going to get this response. Law, which is an extension of government, derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. It's apparent a large body of the legal fraternity doesn't grasp that fundamental point. It's not a game. Don't talk, do. Then you'll change the attitude.
#3
These were children. They were not a threat to Mr. Gonzalez. For goodness sake, Mr. Gonzalez shot the boy in the back while he was on his knees and apologizing. The jury was wrong to acquit.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 16:56
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Gonzalez is obviously a racist
/sarc
Given that the guys 63, been repeatedly robbed/vandalized, and a 13 yr old punk is equally capable of killing you, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on his fear of being attacked by the "lunging" yout. The best way to avoid this consequence? Don't burglarize other people's residences. Not that hard, is it? The fact that all he got was snacks is irrelevant. If next month's $1000 mortgage or rental payment was on the counter, is there any doubt this punk wouldn't have taken it? F*ck him and his atty
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:13
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Although I lament the death of a child, he made his decisions. Can he be held accountable, at 13, for bad judgement? Yes. If you don't want to get into trouble, don't do anything to get INTO trouble. At 13 he knew right from wrong.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 17:17
Comments ||
Top||
#6
who was 13 when he and three friends broke into Gonzalez's trailer to rummage for snacks and soda one night
Four teen aged boys broke in at night to rummage? In Texas?? Four teen aged boys engaged in mischief make up a small mob, as difficult to control as a herd of rampaging cats. They're lucky only one got killed. Perhaps the aunt would have been happier had the old man only knee-capped each one by way of a lesson to respect others' property, and to keep them waiting nicely until the police arrived, instead.
#7
Ed, I usually agree with you in most of your posts. This time you're wrong. Those punks are lucky only one of them is dead. They put their lives on the line when they left the public sidewalk and walked on to that man's property, much less broke into his home. THEY MADE THE DECISION TO PUT THEIR LIVES AT RISK. No one forced them to do that and the fellow who shot them acted in a very rational fashion. Four teen boys can be just as deadly as a pack of wolves. Witness the number of people who have been kicked to death in the U.K. recently by packs of young people.
Moreover, who's to say what would have happened if they had broken into a different home. If they get away with it this time, there's a good reason to assume there will be a next time. Maybe next time they break into a home with a young woman there. What do you think they would do with her? Maybe you think they'd have done nothing. I think it would be a case of multiple rape and possible murder.
No sympathy here for these boys. In fact, I'm grateful to Mr. Gonzales for removing one thug and seriously intimidating the others. They, at least, will think twice before they pull that stunt again and one of them never will. Maybe that will educate a few other would-be criminals as well. Crime SHOULD be a high-risk endeavor.
One last comment, on an unrelated issue. Last week you completely and unequivocally tore General_Comment a new one on the issue of the SU 30's. That pro-Russian troll had it coming and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing that. Well done, and thanks.
#8
I confess that at the age of 13, I was incapable of knowingly putting my life at risk. I did some stupid things (though I never broke the law), but if at age 13 you would have tried to explain this to me, Jolutch, I don't think I would have gotten it.
Because I was a KID.
This was manslaughter. At least.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 19:45
Comments ||
Top||
#9
This was manslaughter. At least.
Theoretically. Practically, it's anarchy. In all respects.
#10
I was a kid. At 13, I knew that breaking into someone's house was wrong, always has been. This punk obviously thought it wasn't. He and his thug friends (gang?) didn't care and at least only one paid the price. If they were in my abode, the 12 gauge wouldn't discriminate, and I'd be deliberate about phoning it in. I'm an asshole, I guess, SW, but I know what's right and wrong
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 20:07
Comments ||
Top||
#11
Hang on a second, someone broke into this guys house, so he shoots the intruder. Where's the problem?
Whomever brought this man up on charges, should be brought up on charges.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/27/2008 20:38
Comments ||
Top||
Bulgaria's transport minister says a Ukrainian ship has sunk in the Black Sea and rescuers are searching for survivors.
Petar Mutafchiev says the Ukrainian ship Tolstoy, sailing under the North Korean flag, sank 15 miles off Bulgaria's coast. It disappeared from radars at 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Saturday and all crew were missing.
He said that the boat did not give a distress signal and there was no information about the number of crew on board.
Bulgarian air force choppers were searching the area. Military and commercial ships have joined a rescue operation complicated by strong winds.
Bulgarian port officials said the 5,000-ton Tolstoy was carrying a cargo of scrap metal to the Turkish port of Nemrut.
#4
Those ships are really decrepit and way overloaded. Any water entry and they will go down very quickly.
I know one Ukrainian sailor who captained a Greek scrap iron carrier. It sank very quickly when caught in a sudden storm. The crew barely made it off.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 17:01
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Maybe the owners will take a write off for an future archaeological treasure.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 17:24
Comments ||
Top||
#6
There's a real simple answer to whether this was an accident or a military endeavor. Find out which Class Society classed this ship. If it was Lloyd's Register, Det Norske Veritas or ABS, it was military. If it was someone else, there's a good chance it was an accident or mechanical/structural failure.
The three Class Societies I mentioned above check their ships very well using honest, knowledgeable, competent, conscientious inspectors. Other Class Societies are, shall we say, a bit less stringent about their inspections. Some, the bottom of the barrel, inspect only the brown envelope and its financial contents before certifying a vessel as safe. Those Class Societies tend to have a LOT of problems with their ships...
Long but everything you need to know about the situation with the Ukrainian ship Faina.
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- A U.S. destroyer off the coast of Somalia closed in Saturday on a hijacked Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and ammunition, watching it to ensure the pirates who seized it do not try to remove any cargo or crew.
As Russian and American ships pursued the hijackers of the Ukrainian vessel, pirates seized another ship off Somalia's coast, an international anti-piracy group said. The Greek tanker with a crew of 19 is carrying refined petroleum from Europe to the Middle East. It was ambushed Friday in the Gulf of Aden, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center based in Malaysia. He said pirates chased and fired at the ship before boarding it.
In Somalia, a man claiming to be spokesman of the pirates holding the Ukrainian ship said the hijackers want $35 million to release the vessel. But there was no way to immediately verify his claim that he represented the pirates.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008
15:47 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
On the recording, a man who identified himself as first mate Viktor Nikolsky said the hijackers were asking for a ransom but he did not know how much.I>
The United States Congress also hijacks merchant vessels? Who knew?
CAIRO, Sept. 27 -- A car carrying more than 400 pounds of explosives blew up in Syria's capital on Saturday, killing 17 people in at least the third deadly attack this year in the tightly policed Arab country.
Interior Minister Bassim Abdel Majid said "terrorists" were responsible for Saturday's attack but told state television that officials did not know who carried it out. "We cannot blame any party," he said.
The bomb exploded Saturday morning in a neighborhood around the capital's Sayida Zaineb shrine, ripping the fronts off buildings and shattering car windows. The shrine attracts Shiite pilgrims in the majority Sunni Muslim nation. The apartments lining the crowded streets around the mosque are home to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees, many of them poor, unemployed and undocumented.
News reports from Syria said the bombing occurred near a state security post. There were conflicting reports as to the nature of the post, with one opposition web site saying it was no more than a car park used by state security services.
Police barred all journalists except state television crews from the scene. Syrian television said all of those killed were civilians.
The attack follows a car bombing in February that killed Imad Mugniyeh, a security chief for Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based armed political movement that the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization. Last month, a gunman shot to death a Syrian general who the Syrian opposition and Israeli officials said had been a top liaison between Syria and Hezbollah. Syria has not announced any arrests in those killings, and the identity of the killers and their motives remain a mystery.
Syria, under President Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, and his son and successor Bashar al-Assad, has built one of the world's most extensive internal security systems.
Which apparently isn't working so well ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008
15:37 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Bashar al-Assad should stuck with dentistry. Well maybe not. How about goat tender? Syria seems to be at the confluence of some kind of cosmic payback.
#3
Forget the goat tender comment. Don't want to be unkind to goats and besides PETA is a little over-committed with trying to get mother's milk to replace cow's milk in ice cream.
North Korea covertly supplied Syria with nuclear reactor technology and a facility that was bombed by Israel, CIA Director Michael Hayden last week confirmed.
Israeli planes bombed the North Korean structure at Al-Kibar alongside the Euphrates River last September. However, Damascus refused to acknowledge the facility was a nuclear reactor. "We have nothing to say about it."
Following the raid, “The Syrians immediately cleared away the rubble and every trace of the building, stonewalling the IAEA when asked to explain," Hayden told a forum in Los Angeles. Which is easy to do to a lap watchdog organization such as the IAEA.
"Their cover-up only underlined the intense secrecy of this project and the danger it had posed to a volatile region.”
The CIA formed a “group of officers who started working overtime on this issue in April 2007 and kept at it for months,” he said.
“Virtually every form of intelligence -- imagery, signals, human source, you name it -- informed their assessments, so that they were never completely dependent on any single channel," he said.
Hayden said a report from a foreign partner initially identified the structure as a nuclear reactor similar to one in North Korea. U.S. officials have said Israel supplied the information, including photographs.
"But even without that piece of the puzzle ... we had previously identified the facility on imagery as a suspicious target," Hayden said. "When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor." Hey, it's a water treatment plant.
Yeah, but the discharge goes back into the river.
Well, that's it. A reactor. Just playin' the devil's advocate and seeing if you guys were on yer toes, heh.
Hayden denied Pyongyang sought to use the reactor as a replacement for Yongbyon. “We took that hypothesis and worked very hard on it, but the mainstream theory held sway," he said. It was just the Norks and Syria's version of globalization economics.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008
15:02 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Well done, CIA!
/yes, it feels good to be able to say that. I hope there are lots of other little projects they're working on that we'll find out about afterward.
#1
"There's going to be a civil war, " said Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National party, which runs the provincial government in NWFP. "It will be the people versus the Taliban."
How civil war? I thought the Taliban now contain so many foreigners and Punjabis that they are no longer truly part of the local people. And surely the provincial government, as an arm of Islamabad, doesn't exactly count as local people either. Or am I wrong?
#1
When will the MSM start holding him accountable - whre other peopel can see it?
THAT is the major problem, our media has become an advocate and is MAL-informing tha nation so as to induce a result they, the lefty liberals, want in the election, regardless of the truth.
These press people should be executed en masse if they bring about this huge betrayal of our democracy.
#2
Noticed that flip-flop, did you? I about fell out of my chair when he said it. It's been one of the key issues for the authoritarian liberal Left. When they couldn't say 'no' outright, they'd always weasel about not wanting it until it was 'proven' -- and then always vote no on further research and development.
Sure wish McCain would have clobbered Obama on the spot when he said it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 14:40
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Obama doesn't mean it. Standard tactic of the left. Say anything to get in power.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 14:47
Comments ||
Top||
UNDERHILL, Vt. (AP) — Could climate change dull the blazing palette of New England's fall foliage? Underhill. Isn't that where Bilbo Baggins lived? Or was it Winnie ther Pooh? It's a fary tale anywhoo.
The answer could have serious implications for one of the region's signature attractions, which draws thousands of "leaf peepers" every autumn. Leaf Peepers? Sounds Kinky.
Biologists at the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center will do some leaf peeping of their own to find out — studying how temperature affects the development of autumn colors and whether the warming climate could mute them, prolong the foliage viewing season or delay it. Warming isn't prolonged here. It's normal.
Using a three-year, $45,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, they're planning to measure the color pigments in leaves exposed to varying temperatures in hopes of finding a pattern. The study starts next month, although some experiments are already under way. They only got 45 Grand? Pikers!
"It is getting warmer, No it isn't and people want to know how that's going to affect this big process that's so important to us," said research associate Abby van den Berg. When I was working in Cambridge, Mass back in '92 I was showing some fall pictures of East Tennessee to a young Engineering graduate. She said, "These pictures are in Tennessee?". I said yes. She then said, "I thought New England was the only place the leaves changed color in the fall".
The three-week period of peak foliage color — usually from the end of September to mid-October — is among the busiest of the year for Vermont tourism, bringing in an estimated $364 million, according to state officials. It's also an important time for tourism in the other New England states. It's all about the money.
"It's a critical season for us," said Allison Truckle, owner of Tucker Hill Inn, in Waitsfield, which does about 40 percent of its business in autumn. It's a myth that the leaves are prettier in New England.
Many variables go into triggering leaf color, but for now the research will focus on temperature. The experiment is starting with the researchers' assumption that the brilliant colors are promoted by cold nights followed by warm, sunny days. My observations of foliage color change in South Alabama are not scientific but it can be 90 degress in October and the leaves still change color. I think it has more to do with moisture content.
"Do cold nighttime temperatures affect and promote fall coloration? And specifically, we're really looking at anthocyanin synthesis, the red pigments that are created at that time," van den Berg said.
The study also will look at whether cold daytime weather plays a role.
In the fall, chlorophyll — the green pigment in leaves — breaks down in response to decreasing day length, revealing the yellow to orange anthocyanin pigment.
In preliminary experiments so far this year, van den Berg has been subjecting groups of sugar and red maple saplings to a range of temperatures. Some of the test subjects are kept in a constantly refrigerated box with a window to let in sunlight, some potted saplings spend their days outdoors and then are moved into a cooler at night, and some just remain outdoors with no artificially altered temperature.
Every few days, she tests the leaves with handheld meters to measure their chlorophyll and anthocyanin content.
So far, it's too early to tell what effect temperature is having, but the researchers expect to have results before the three years is up.
The study is unique in investigating how climate change might affect the timing and color of fall foliage, said Jake Weltzin, head of the USA National Phenology Network, which has started its own volunteer effort to track how climate change affects certain plants.
In previous years, the University of Vermont research center found a link between the amount of stress on sugar maples during the growing season — marked by a lower level of nitrogen in leaves — and the onset and amount of red in the leaves.
"So trees that were experiencing a little more stress tended to start turning color a little earlier and making more red," van den Berg said.
Van den Berg says she's noticed that in warmer autumns, brilliance is muted in some places. But she tries not to put too much stock in what she sees from place to place.
"It's always great. ... It can be peak in different places at the same time so you just drive around and you hit all these different pockets of the landscape, so it's always fabulous," she said.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008
14:21 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"So trees that were experiencing a little more stress tended to start turning color a little earlier and making more red," van den Berg said.
The key to a brilliant fall - Hire drill instructors to yell at the trees. Now where's my $45K?
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 15:30
Comments ||
Top||
#2
1. 20th century warming wasn't due to rising CO2, something else is. Most likely changes in the sun.
2. Increased atmospheric CO2 should REDUCE stress on plants and trees.
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
09/27/2008 15:53
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Colour change? Due mostly to the length of daylight, is my understanding. The relative brilliance isrelated to moisture and nutrition stress on the trees. Red is only one of the colours, and I believe sugar maples are the most common red-leaved trees up there in leaf peeper country; yellow another. I have native spice bushes in my back yard, and they should turn the most amazing clear, bright yellow soon. Autumnal colours are much bolder here than in Europe, in my experience. At least in Germany, where the trees in the woods near my house turned only subtle shades of dull yellow and brown.
#4
tw, do you make Spice Bush Tea? The dried berries are an excellant substitution for allspice.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 16:32
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Yeah, things are sure getting dull. Here is a dull picture of a rainbow and fall foliage on Eagle River Road, north of Anchorage. It was taken by my friend Jacqueline in a moment of bordom, heh. GWMA:
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 16:35
Comments ||
Top||
#6
here in San Diego, some of our hottest months are September/October. No wonder our fall foliage isn't turning colors
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:06
Comments ||
Top||
#7
$45,000 -- just another reminder of why we need to clean house in Washington.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 19:10
Comments ||
Top||
#10
tw, the small leaves in the Spring are best for Spice Bush Tea. It doesn't take many.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 19:27
Comments ||
Top||
#11
Here in Colorado, we see a very systemic change of fall colors from our aspens. The higher the elevation, the earlier the trees change color. As the weeks progress, the color becomes more pronounced on lower and lower slopes, until even the aspens in town change. FWIW, the change started about a week EARLY this year...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/27/2008 21:21
Comments ||
Top||
#3
"I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore"
Put these sleezeballs in jail. It was bad enough when Enron wiped out the savings of millions of employees, these people are taking down an economic system.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 15:19
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Though she had no training or experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earnedwas paid over $26 million.
Fixed it for 'em. There's a huge difference between being paid and having earned.
#6
Gorelick and Clinton/Gore Campaign cash from foreign sources In case anyone was in doubt, Janet Reno herself affirmed the policy several months later in a July 19, 1995, memo that we have unearthed. In it, the then-Attorney General instructs all U.S. Attorneys about avoiding "the appearance" of overlap between intelligence-related activities and law-enforcement operations. Recall, too, that during the time of Ms. Gorelick's 1995 memo, the issue causing the most tension between the Reno-Gorelick Justice Department and Director Freeh's FBI was not counterterrorism but widely reported allegations of contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign from foreign sources, involving the likes of John Huang and Charlie Trie. Mr. Trie later told investigators that between 1994 and 1996 he raised some $1.2 million, much of it from foreign sources, whose identities were hidden by straw donors. Ms. Gorelick resigned as deputy attorney general in 1997 to become vice chairman of Fannie Mae.
And I thought this comment from that site was of interest: Ms. Gorelick has written numerous scholarly articles and is the co-author of a leading treatise on the maintenance of corporate documents, Destruction of Evidence (Wiley 1983)"
Sounds like Duke got sound advice when they hired her. She's a specialist in what to destroy and how to get away with it. Comes from working for the Clintons I guess.
Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street's five biggest firms paid more than $3 billion in the last five years to their top executives, while they presided over the packaging and sale of loans that helped bring down the investment-banking system.
Merrill Lynch & Co. paid its chief executives the most, with Stanley O'Neal taking in $172 million from 2003 to 2007 and John Thain getting $86 million, including a signing bonus, after beginning work in December. The company agreed to be acquired by Bank of America Corp. for about $50 billion on Sept. 15. Bear Stearns Cos.'s James ``Jimmy'' Cayne made $161 million before the company collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in June.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress are demanding that limits be placed on executive pay as part of the $700 billion financial rescue plan proposed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO, who received about $111 million between 2003 and 2006, said in testimony to Congress on Sept. 24 that he would accept such limits as part of the plan, after initially opposing them.
The $3.1 billion paid to the top five executives at the firms between 2003 and 2007 was about three times what JPMorgan spent to buy Bear Stearns. Goldman Sachs had the highest total, with $859 million, followed by Bear Stearns at $609 million. CEO pay at the five firms increased each year, doubling to $253 million in 2007, according to data compiled from company filings.
Executive-compensation figures include salary, bonuses, stock and stock options, some awarded for past performance. The options were valued at a third of the fair-market price of the stock at the time the options were granted, a method recommended by Graef Crystal, a compensation specialist and author of the Crystal Report on Executive Compensation, an online newsletter. The companies value the options using different methods.
Some of these CEOs presided over the collapse of their companies and then received millions in compensation for separation packages when they left their failed companies. It is unfathomable that anyone is worth as much as some of these MBA-educated company looters. What the heck were the Boards of Directors doing? Where were the stockholders and bond holders of these companies? No wonder the FBI is investigating some of these companies. It remains to be seen whether anything comes of such investigations. What ever happened to “pay for performance?” Where can I sign on as the CEO for a company and then get compensated millions when I leave? I assure you, I will leave for a lot less than any of these guys did. Does anyone know the politics of some of the CEOs mentioned in this article and what their linkages might have been to such entities as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and such luminaries as Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and others related to the subprime mortgage mess?
#1
the execs are paid this money to keep their mouths shut. Ultimately the BOD is responsible for the actions of the CEO and they can be sued by the stockholders.
#2
I believe the solution to America's predicament lies in Wall Street's most successful business strategy to date. Yes, I'm talking about outsourcing. Why pay traders $5 Mil/year (and the bosses $50 Mil/year) when a Chinese worker would jump at the chance to do the work for $5000/year. And work harder and longer in the process. Besides, that's where all the US dollars are anyway. What Indian Dell tech support worker isn't silently screaming to let out his/her inner bond trader?
Because these new investment bankers work for less money, previously untapped markets (because they were not worth the time for a $2500/hour worker Goldman-Sachs bees), can be exploited for all they're worth. The NKor kimchee market or rat meat futures have hardly begun to be exploited. Multi thousand dollar loans on Communist era apartments or grass thatched bungalows are the new El Dorado for mortgage bankers. Our new small market outsourced workers will lose a lot less money and make a profit doing it.
Of course we can't just allow these neophyte Masters of the Universe to trade without training. Therefore H1-B visas must to expanded to bring in these workers and get them trained. The few remaining traders who still have their jobs will be required to train their replacements before being riffed. But to give the trainers an incentive, a $5000 bonus will be given upon success training of their replacements. What the hell, make it $10,000. I'm feeling generous.
A decade or two of this outsourcing and America will be able to afford to splurge at Mickey D's once again. Of course there will some losers. For instance Manhattan cocaine dealers and high dollar strippers. But you can't make an omelet without breaking a $100 into a pile of ones.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 16:23
Comments ||
Top||
#3
They should have hired me. I would have tanked their companies for $2 Billion.
The BOD's of these companies generally consist of extremely well-educated and successful people. That sounds like a fine idea, but my theory is that it leads to groupthink of the worst sort. After all, if you've got a PhD from Hahvard, you really don't want to raise your hand and let the other Hahvard PhD's know that you don't understand management's latest hare-brained scheme.
So my corrective proposal would be (a) to require that the board of every publicly traded company include at least one plumber, welder, electrician's helper or other person with demonstrable common sense and (b) that no action could be taken by the board unless and until the action had been explained to that guy in such a way that he could pass a multiple choice test on it.
CEO: "And so, management is proposing that the company commit $850 million dollars to the second tranche of Lehman's new debt offering, the security for which will consist of 150 popsicle sticks that have been determined by application of a Monte Carlo Simulation and the Black Scholes Option Pricing Model to have a value of eleventy jillion dollars. Any questions?"
Plumber: "Yeah, I got a question. Are you guys out of your friggin' minds?"
Posted by: Matt ||
09/27/2008 18:05
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Matt, you're cruel. You know Professor Walter E. Williams is the only one who could explain it... possibly the good doctor Isaac Asimov, but he's been dead for awhile.
#7
Seems like stockholders should have more say on executive compensation to me. $172 million is a lot of money, even for the big banks. That should have been voted on, or the board should have been voted out, either way it looks like a couple hundred people walked away with a whole country's banking system's money. And they wont do a damned thing to them.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 11:20
Comments ||
Top||
#3
..He was a class act, in public and in private. Not only that, but I always loved his comment on why he never stepped out on his wife of more than fifty years:
"I get steak at home - why should I go out for hamburger?"
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/27/2008 11:26
Comments ||
Top||
#6
class act - a liberal, but he put his money (all Newman's Own profits to charity - can you imagine Al Gore doing that?) where his mouth was. A happily married guy and great actor. I don't support his politics, but support the man. RIP
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 16:59
Comments ||
Top||
#7
I agree, Frank G. I don't agree with his politics but he was an honorable man. RIP, Paul.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 17:13
Comments ||
Top||
#9
In one of William Goldman's books he talked about various Hollywood personalities he dealt with during his career as a screenwriter. Mostly negative stuff because of the types of personalities in Hollywood. The one that stood out was Paul Newman. Paul Newman walked on water as far as Goldman was concerned. Sounded like the greatest guy. Of course that's just one guys opinon but still.
Police in London say they have arrested three men under the Terrorism Act, according to the Associated Press. Police told AP they are questioning three men aged 22, 30 and 40. The men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
Police said they were searching four properties in London, but did not give immediate details on what the men were suspected of doing.
AP reports that two of the men were stopped in the street by armed officers in Lonsdale Square, north London, and that a small fire at a property in the square was related to the arrest, police said. The third arrest was made near a subway station in the Islington district of north London. The arrests were intelligence-led, police said.
#1
More Police arrested three men on Saturday in connection with a fire at the offices of the publisher of a book about the Prophet Mohammed and his child bride.
#2
From tipper's article: Britain's domestic Press Association news agency said some residents, whom it did not identify, reported that the incident may have involved a petrol bomb being pushed through the firm's letterbox.
I read elsewhere that the police/Scotland Yard/MI-? had been watching the gentlemen for some time, followed them to the house, watched them push a flaming petrol bomb through the mail slot in the door, then arrested them while the firemen broke down the door to put out the fire. It seems the neighbors are just now discovering how much they dislike having a terror magnet in their midst.
#1
wow. That's one for a bookmark. One silver lining is that we are starting to see that a very small group of traitors have really managed to do serious damage in their attempts to bring down our government. I can see why they are pulling out all the stops on this election. While they are very powerful, they are very small in numbers and support. Since the 60's they have relied on the media to cover for them and to advance only their agenda. Their heyday is over if they don't win this election.
Hard to believe that such a small group of traitors can do so much damage to a society.
#4
A pity they'll have to die unsatisfied, then. Even if Candidate Obama wins, he won't be able to put in place the pieces they want; we aren't Europeans to allow our rulers to do wholly as they please.
#5
After clicking on Berndine/Bernadette Dohrn, Bill Ayre's wife and finding her Wikipedia entry that led to Kathy Boudine who did time for taking part in a bank robbery that resulted in the killing of three people and then that led to SDS and Tom Hayden who was married to Jane Fonda and was a Congressman from California and at that point my head began to spin and my eyes rolled around in my head and I started to tilt.
It seems that BO had more than a "I might have met Bill Ayres one time. He was just a guy in the neighborhood." It seems that Ayes was fairly involved in BOs community organizing.
Why is it that the trangressions of this group of radicals seems to be relatively easily forgiven for some serious criminal activity. Many of these people have fairly good jobs in our universities and in other parts of our society. I read where a guy that steals a car, or steals some copper wire, or runs a moonshine still, or smokes some pot gets more in the way of time than this group of American grown terrorists.
When Sen. Barack Obama was given the floor to speak during White House negotiations, according to White House aides, he did so raising concerns about a House Republican alternative to the Paulson/Bernanke $700 billion bailout. But those concerns weren't necessarily his, as he was not aware of the GOP plan before reviewing notes provided him by Paulson loyalists in Treasury prior to entering the meeting.
According to an Obama campaign source, the notes were passed to Obama via senior aides traveling with him, who had been emailed the document via a current Goldman Sachs employee and Wall Street fundraiser for the Obama campaign. "It was made clear that the memo was from ‘friends' and was reliable," says the campaign source.
The memo allowed Obama and his fellow Democrats to box in Republican attendees and essentially took what President Bush had billed as a negotiating meeting off the rails.
"Paulson and his team have not acted in good faith for this President or the administration for which they serve," says a House Republican leader who was not present at the White House meeting, but who instead is part of the team hammering out the House GOP alternative. "We keep hearing about how Secretary Paulson is working with Democrats on this or that, yet he never seems to consider working with the party that essentially hired him. Perhaps he's auditioning for a Democratic administration job. Our proposal didn't just spring forth fully formed; we've been working on this for several days, and Treasury staff has known about it."
#1
According to other sources, when Senator Obama was given the floor he commenced shouting at the Republicans, presumably his version of persuasion. (Why was he given the floor, anyway? He's been busy campaigning, not working on a plan to fix this thing.) However, it is good to know that his actions are being guided, rather than him being permitted to fly solo... given his understanding of things.
#2
Paulson is not part of the solution. He is part of the deomcratic cover up. Dodd and Franks should go to prison for their lack of action and fraud. They have cost the american taxpayer billions of dollars in order to put non income producing citizens and illegals into cheap housing.
#6
In all seriousness, I think this was written to make papa seem a sympathetic figure.
She was always self-conscious about her size and managed to convince him she should have it done. “She played the daddy’s girl and said it would make her feel more of a mother when she was breast feeding her children.
I realize that the situation is still very damaging to him, but I suspect that this is a PR piece and that good money was paid to come up with the line that he made a mistake by wanting to help her be a better mother and it backfired because her new found confidence caused her to want to flaunt her body.
I suspect that they were getting out ahead of the bombshell that he went with her to get the boobs done and paid cash. Given that many strippers are sexually abused, it makes me wonder if he sexually molested her.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 18:09
Comments ||
Top||
#10
the end product was tangible though, although I demand a personal examination.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 18:10
Comments ||
Top||
#11
Commodore Frank, round trip to London from LA is $907. We will pass the hat at Rantburg and get you a ticket. All we need is a type written double spaced report with pictures that we can post it on the Burg under Terror Networks.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 18:15
Comments ||
Top||
#12
guaran-damn-teed!!!
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 18:17
Comments ||
Top||
#13
Yeah, Frank, we want pictures documenting a "close-up and personal" investigation! Looks like you might have your hands full on this one though...
Oh, BTW, should you be killed, captured or die of a heart attack from excessive enthusiasm, Fred and the Rantburg Sec/State (lotp) will disavow any knowledge of your actions!
THE discovery of "potentially dangerous" chemicals after a fire at a unit block in Sydney's eastern suburbs has raised fears of a home-made bomb and forced the evacuation of residents.
Bomb squad officers were called to the unit on the corner of Edgecliff Road and Wallis Street in Woollahra shortly after firefighters discovered chemicals while extinguishing a blaze in a unit about 7am (AEST) today. Police have evacuated residents from nearby units until forensic examinations can determine the precise makeup of the chemicals.
Specialist resources were deployed, including the rescue and bomb disposal unit, police said.
Firefighters earlier pulled a 54-year-old man from the unit suffering burns and has been placed under police guard at St Vincent's Hospital. The man pulled from the blaze has minor burns and smoke inhalation.
Inspector John Maricic, crime manager of Rose Bay Local Area Command, told reporters the fire was likely caused by an electrical fault. He would not reveal whether the chemicals were explosives until forensic examinations were completed. ''(The chemicals) could be considered dangerous and hence we've evacuated the area.
"Obviously our concern to the safety of residents is of paramount importance and obviously we've put road closures in place to prevent any incidents before the examinations have been conducted.''
There was no one else on the premises at the time of the fire, police said, and there were reports the man's partner was at work at the time. The fire left one room of the fourth floor unit considerably damaged and smoke damaged surrounding units, police said.
He said that evacuated residents were being looked after. "We're obviously feeding (the residents) and looking after their welfare and obviously as soon as we can conduct the examination of the scene, the quicker we can get the residents back in,'' he said. "Hopefully today, but we've still got work to do.''
For the past six weeks Pakistani troops supported by helicopter gunships, tanks and heavy artillery have begun to drive Taliban militants out of the tribal area of Bajaur.
The action was visible as Cobra helicopters pounded positions outside the village of Tang Khatta, a short distance from Khar, Bajaur's main town, and ground troops fought an hour-long gun battle. Militants have regularly attacked the village compounds with rockets since they were pushed out two weeks ago.
The sound of explosions and machine guns were audible from behind Tang Khatta's thick mud walls as soldiers traded fire with the Taliban across fields hemmed in by barren mountains. The army claims it has killed over 1,000 militants in Bajaur, a place described by commanders as the "centre of gravity of the insurgency".
"The threat from Bajaur radiates in all directions," said Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commanding officer of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force engaged in the bulk of counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas. "If we dismantle this here and destroy its leadership then 65 percent of militancy will be controlled. If they lose this, they lose everything."
Khar and its surroundings are deserted. Soldiers have taken over the area's numerous schools and nearly a third of Bajaur's one million people have fled the fighting. At Tang Khatta militants took cover in fields of half-harvested maize, caves and dried-up ravines a mile away.
"I wish I could take you there but they are in the nullahs [ravines]," Colonel Javaid Baloch told a group of journalists taken to the village on a visit organised by the military.
But fighting did not all go the army's way. Three officers - one of whom lost both his legs - were seriously injured.
The battle for Bajaur began only after 2,000-3,000 militants overran a paramilitary post at Loi Sam, which the military has not yet retaken. "It was like putting your hand into a wasp's hive," said Maj Gen Khan.
Militants have dug into areas with fox-holes, tunnels and trenches and over 65 troops were killed and 200 wounded. The Taliban have gathered reinforcements from the Waziristan tribal areas. Others are coming from Afghanistan. "We caught 200 crossing the border with rocket launchers from Afghanistan," said Maj Gen Khan, who appeared angry at America's failure to control the frontier. "But there is no such effort to stop them".
It's your frontier. Why don't you control it?
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008
00:36 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I'll wait to pass judgment on the troop transport trucks, it's those two on point that are not instilling any confidence - is that a bicycle built for two?
#3
Months???? Huh? - They've had 721 months and haven't made visible progress, not that the British did all that much better in roughly two centuries before them, Sir Charles Napier excepted.
Took a few centuries to close the frontier in North America, if Mexico is considered "closed".
#5
"We caught 200 crossing the border with rocket launchers from Afghanistan," said Maj Gen Khan, who appeared angry at America's failure to control the frontier. "But there is no such effort to stop them".
well, since they were returning home, don't you Paks think you have a responsibility here?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 10:08
Comments ||
Top||
#6
As Fred has pointed out, while the various players are members of different  tribes and thus hate each other, they're in agreement on the broad principles of Pakistain: 1) Hindus are evil and must be put down 2) Sharia is the only natural law 3) Afghanistan is the preserve and pasture of Pakistain and 4) everyone is out to get them. The only questions are how much Sharia and who gets to wear the bejeweled turban.Â
So of course the Pak army doesn't want to fight the rubes frontier people. They're cousins. Close cousins.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 11:38
Comments ||
Top||
#7
Counterinsurgency wars are not easy. By this time our military knows quite a bit about successful counterinsurgency efforts from both training and experience. Aghanistan and Pakistan are bundled together. We don't win in Aghanistan unless we control things in Pakistan. That means having the support of the larger population and government of Pakistan, having good intelligence, and isolating the militants (terrorists) from the larger population. This is a tall order. Whether Pakistan is up to the task is a big, big question mark. The Pakistan military shooting at our helicopters is not a good sign of their willingness to do something about their terrorist problems.
To win in Afghanistan and Pakistan, our military has to have the support of our government. Many in our Congress and the main stream media torpedoed the war effort in Vietnam and they would like to torpedo the effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We cannot win in these hostile areas if we can't win the hostile areas in the U.S. I remember seeing patent hostility that some of our Democratic Senators showed when they questioned General Petraeus when he testified before Congress. I remember, the moonbat left Soros-backed MoveOn.org referring to General Petraeus as General Betrayus. That is very sad, treacherous, and downright evil. I will remember this traitorous behavior when I vote in the upcoming Presidential election. Despite what BO says, I don't believe that he is ready, able, or has the willingness to address our terrorism problems. So in order to win in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we must win two wars. I never, ever want to see our buildings toppling and our skyline on fire and 3000 of our citizens murdered before our eyes on television.
#8
Whether Pakistan is up to the task is a big, big question mark.
Sadly, Pakistan will not begin to be up to the task until as a society they decide that it is not only worth doing, but that they themselves must do it, not us as their servants/dupes. They are not anywhere near that point, even if a few of the intelligencia are willing to say that the jihadis are now attempting to conquer Punjabi Pakistan as well as the tribal territories and Afghanistan. I've no idea how to square that circle with the fact that for the nonce we need the transport corridor to Afghanistan even more now that the fight is moving there from Iraq.
After Orissa, Karnataka and Kerala, attacks on churches have spread to Tamil Nadu, with suspected Hindu activists damaging a statue of Baby Jesus in Dharmapuram town in Erode district in the southern part of the state.
The attack in Erode came as fresh instances of desecration of church property were reported from neighbouring Kerala. Glass panes of a holy wayside cupola at Harippad in Kerala's Alleppey district were found broken on Friday.
The panes of the cupola were smashed with a stone, police said, adding that the glass on a portrait of apostle St Thomas placed inside it was also found broken. The place of worship belongs to the Karthigappally St Thomas Orthodox Cathedral, which falls under the Malankara Orthodox Church.
As in Orissa and Karnataka, where ire against conversions was directed wantonly against all orders and churches belonging to denominations which had traditionally not been involved in conversion, Hindu activists in Kerala have also expanded the violence to include Catholic churches.
The attacks have continued despite assurances from authorities on protection of churches and Christian property. After the Tamil Nadu attack on Friday, tension gripped Dharmapuram. Police beefed up security at churches, mosques and temples in the district after the attack.
In Tamil Nadu, it was the fourth attack on church property. It came barely a day after a statue of Virgin Mary was damaged in Karavalai in Nagercoil. On Tuesday, unidentified people damaged an idol at St Joseph's Church in Arapalayam in Madurai. Last week, two Hindu Munnani members were arrested for pelting stones at a church in Namakkal.
TN chief minister M Karunanidhi warned that strict action would be taken against the attackers. Friday's incident in Kerala was also the fourth such in the state in two weeks and the second in Alappuzha district. On Wednesday, glass panes of a chapel in Purakkod district were found broken. Those behind the desecration are yet to be booked.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A good thing the Tamil war machine is almost finally defeated, it seems.
A Mulagoori tribe lashker foiled a Taliban bid to kidnap a prayer leader from a local mosque late on Friday. The lashker captured 11 Taliban after an exchange of fire. The tribesmen intercepted the Taliban taking prayer leader Omer Gul to the Khyber Sheikhwal area. Three Taliban were injured during the clash, and have been handed over to the political administration. The remaining eight Taliban are still being held by the lashker. The tribesmen said they would decide about the remaining Taliban's fate following consultations. One Taliban was killed in a brief clash outside the mosque as the prayer leader was hauled into a Taliban vehicle.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
The former Secretary of State says he does not support direct talks with Ahmadinejad. “Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level.”
Obama said during the debate that Kissinger, a McCain adviser, supports presidential talks with the Iranian president.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
You mean Obamalamadingdong LIED?
I for one am just shocked(or will be if that's the only lie he told).
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/27/2008 0:28
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Let the senators for Kansas and North Dakota go right when the wheat starts getting there.
#4
Senior McCain carries the big stick of experience and whacks junior Obama with it like a senior weilding a cane.
At only 47 years of age Obama failed to show he has the experience it takes to lead a country in the midst of economic crisis and in the midst of global military challenges.
McCain and Petraeus are right.
We must win in Iraq first and translate that strategy to winning in Afganistan and Pakistan.
Obama was on the defensive having to expain his choices, strategies and policies as he was obvious coached by his advisors beforehand.
Obama was unable to think on his feet and to cull from his experience as John McCain was able to do.
Obama is too dependant on anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq and anti-americanism and resurgance of terrorism in Pakistan with no real foundation of his own to stand upon, that would connect with mainstream Americans.
McCain's (Bush's and Petraeus') strategy is working and winning in Iraq.
So now the terrorists have all but given up, fled, left Iraq and gone back to back to attacking the weaker countries of Pakistan and Afganistan using the Hindu cush mountains and untamed tribal frontier as their fortress stronghold.
Obama's strategy is no more sophisticated than than any of the other military strategies of pure brute force that have failed in that region since Alexander the Great.
We must elect someone like McCain who will give Petraeus the opportunity to work out a winning strategy in the tribal frontier where al quaeda and the taliban have as their only safe refuge.
Working to be liked more by our so called allies is not a winning strategy.
The President as the CEO of the United States (POTUS) must put America first and not sell us out to the competition and cut deals with out enemies.
Obama has yet to prove where his allegiance really lies.
America is the only nation that has truly taken on terrorism and freedom from oppressive governments (with the exception of Tony Blair).
What is Barack smoking to say we need to look to other countries or leaders to show us how to fight for truth and freedom.
I believe Americans will see through Obama's disingenuous play on words that hides his anti-american sympathies,
but will vote for the true pro-american John McCain.
#5
I napped during the debate so this is hearsay BUT bho said we need to project our power? Then ticked off several geographical locales where we opened fronts in the GWOT as far back as '02? This is information that has escaped his perusal? Ya don't know what ya don't know but that's a tad too deficient in a very important area.
#6
East to armchair qtrback, but I think Mac played slow pitch the entire night. I hope the fighter pilot comes out in him in the next one. Obama was on the ropes time and time again. Mac missed an opportunity when The One mention money for education kindergarten sex ed. He also missed an opportunity when asked, "how did all of this happen?" He should have asked The One to have his campaign advisor Jim Johnson give a full report. Failing to look at Obama robbed Mac of a chance to see how nervous and agitated Obama was getting. He needs to LOOK at the target!
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
09/27/2008 2:15
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Beautiful.
I would like to mention that Mr. Raines did lower his handicap to the single digits while he was out of work. C'mon, that's gotta count for something, no?
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/27/2008 12:19
Comments ||
Top||
#8
Wolf Dog,
Please watch the video. It shows Bush tried to fix the problem early on. Senator Dodd was a major culprit and Barak Obama esq. was a major litigant in making the problem worse.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/27/2008 12:22
Comments ||
Top||
#12
Maybe I'm cynical but it seems more and more like the risky, no money down, full price house financing loans was a largely Democratic plan to buy low income votes (Dodd, Franks, Obama, and others) and to get kickbacks campaign fund donations from Fannie and Freddie.
#13
JQC, I do believe you are right. That and allowing certain Congresscritters and CEOs to make a killin'.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 20:31
Comments ||
Top||
#14
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has demanded the Fidayeen-e-Islam, a militant outfit that has claimed responsibility for the September 20 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, change its name, the BBC Urdu reported.
Taliban spokesman Zulfikar Mehsud told BBC from an undisclosed location that the TTP already had an organised subsidiary branch with the name of Fidayeen-e-Islam, which he said had nothing to do with the Marriott bombing, and it would be better for the group, calling itself Fidayeen-e-Islam, to use another name. According to BBC, the TTP announced the establishment of Fidayeen-e-Islam -- a group consisting of would-be suicide bombers -- in February 2007. The organisation was, however, not heard of following the announcement.
This article starring:
ZULFIKAR MEHSUD
TTP
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
A mirror image of Kirkuk, the Kurdish town of Khanaqin, near the border with Iran, that holds sizeable oil reserves is being exposed to ethnic tensions and rival territorial claims. Local Kurdish political leaders warn that the area could see an explosion in ethnic violence, as they call for Khanaqin to join the adjoining autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq.
"What we are telling the government is simple. Implement the constitutional provision for a referendum for people in Khanaqin to decide their future," said Mala Bakhtyar, a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdish political party of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani. "If they don't do that, then there will be political trouble and military trouble. Yes, there will be an explosion of violence," he told an AFP journalist touring the town in Diyala province.
Along the 170-kilometer road from Baghdad to Khanaqin there are grim reminders of trouble. The bombed wreckage of cars and trucks and a smoldering pile of debris were seen on Wednesday during a drive along what is considered one of the most dangerous highways in Iraq.
Despite regular checkpoints manned by the Iraqi security forces and police, attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda fighters take place on a regular basis.
However, Khanaqin itself has no Iraqi forces. Iraq's flag is flown by the Kurdish peshmerga fighters alongside their own flags at checkpoints and outside mini-camps. All government buildings and private homes fly the Kurdish flag. The Kurdish tricolor - red, green and white, with a rising star in the middle - is also seen outside most homes along the main highway to Khanaqin.
Talks are under way between the PUK, a key coalition partner in the KRG, and the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to end the simmering tension between federal forces and Kurdish peshmerga troops.
The Kurds in Khanaqin are mainly Shiite Muslims.
A peshmerga field commander, Bakhtyar, led Kurdish fighters to take control over this town after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. "When the peshmerga arrived here there were no Iraqi forces," he told AFP in an interview at his tightly guarded single-storey office located along the main road. "There were only 36 coalition [US] troops at the time. I came with 4,000 to 5,000 of our troops," he said. He contended that his men maintain better security in Khanaqin, part of the Arab-dominated Diyala, than is provided elsewhere in Iraq.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
In a bid to expand four-party alliance ahead of the parliamentary election, BNP leadership has started talking to some of their former colleagues who are leading other political parties now after leaving their old party.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
(AKI) - Iraq no longer poses a threat to international peace and security and has successfully promoted reconciliation, strengthened security and improved relations with its neighbours, President Jalal Talabani said late on Thursday.
"The initiative of reconciliation and national dialogue launched by the Iraqi Government draws its strength from the heritage of the Iraqi people which rendered great services to humanity," said Talabani. He was addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
National reconciliation has halted sectarian killings, security has improved across the country, thousands of displaced families have returned to their homes and building and infrastructure projects are underway, Taliban said. Importantly, Iraqi troops have also been replacing multinational forces in many parts of Iraq, most recently in Anbar province, he noted.
The Iraqi government acknowledges that much work remains to be done, Talabani said, urging continued support for the war-torn nation, especially from neighbouring countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
#1
BIGNEWSNETWORK > IRAQ FEARS WITHDRAWAL OF US FORCES [not unlike SOUTH KOREA]; + TOPIX > AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN IS THE CENTRAL FRONT IN GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR [IMO read - US-NATO in SOUTH ASIA, despite PCorrectness].
#2
Indeed, JosephM. It's amazing how the central front moves around as conditions are changed. I'm sure the Marines and Special Forces guys will enjoy the target practice. Happy hunting, y'all!
French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned Europe on Thursday that it cannot escape shock waves from the U.S. financial crisis and that to protect its future, it must take the initiative in rewriting worldwide banking rules to end the "folly" of an under-regulated system he said is now "finished."
Sarkozy, who also holds the European Union's rotating presidency, said he would propose swift action by the 27-nation bloc at its next meeting to tighten controls over European banks. But beyond Europe, he said, the leaders of all the world's major industrial powers should gather at a special summit before the end of the year and start to construct from scratch a new financial and monetary framework to replace the U.S.-dominated system set up at Bretton Woods, N.H., in 1944.
"We can no longer manage the economy of the 21st century with the instruments of the economy of the 20th century," he declared. The U.S.-inspired lack of regulation in recent years, he added, "was a folly whose price is being paid today."
Sarkozy's speech was described by aides as an attempt to reassure the French and other Europeans in the face of the sudden financial instability that threatens to aggravate an already bleak economic picture. In a recent survey by France's IFOP polling agency, 83 percent of those queried said they believed the U.S. crisis will hurt French people by tightening credit and reducing growth even below the 1 percent forecast for 2008.
The hour-long address, to a receptive audience of political supporters in this Mediterranean seaport, also seemed designed to project Sarkozy as an innovator taking the initiative with fellow world leaders rather than submitting to a crisis that he said originated on Wall Street and unfurled across the Atlantic because of inadequate government regulation. Throughout his career, Sarkozy has sought to portray himself as a bold leader ready to take initiatives where others hesitate -- a trait his detractors have sometimes denounced as impetuosity or overreaching.
"My dear countrymen, amid these difficulties we must lead the march of the world and not follow it," he said.
In decrying the lack of government regulation, Sarkozy joined a broad spectrum of European leaders and commentators who have interpreted the financial crisis as a death knell for the current financial markets and banking systems. Their comments sometimes have betrayed an "I told you so" sentiment, after years during which U.S. officials suggested that many of Europe's economic problems stemmed from an excess of regulation and government intervention.
French banks, in particular, have less to worry about than their U.S. counterparts, French officials have said, in part because regulatory powers are stronger in Europe than in the United States and the banks are less exposed to bad loans. The appropriate degree of state intervention in banking and financial dealings also has been a frequent subject of disagreement within the European Union. Those advocating more controls clearly have gained the upper hand for the time being.
"Self-regulation to solve all problems, it's finished," Sarkozy said. "Laissez-faire, it's finished. The all-powerful market that is always right, it's finished. . . . Self-regulation is sometimes insufficient. The market is sometimes wrong. Competition is sometimes ineffective or disloyal. It is necessary then for the state to intervene."
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, usually a stalwart ally of President Bush, also has derided the lack of regulation that, in her view, allowed the financial crisis to erupt in the United States and seep toward Europe. She and her deputies have repeatedly reminded the German public in recent days that the United States and Britain rejected her proposals last year for regulating international hedge funds and bond rating agencies.
"It was said for a long time, 'Let the markets take care of themselves,' " Merkel said during a visit to Austria on Saturday. Now, she added, "even America and Britain are saying, 'Yes, we need more transparency, we need better standards.' "
Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck, said Thursday that the "Anglo-Saxon" capitalist system had run its course and that "new rules of the road" are needed, including greater global regulation of capital markets.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
You knew this was coming. The Euro elites have been quietly gloating over our mess, convinced that this is the time to bury free market, democratic capitalism. Their friends in the Democratic party here at home agree. Particularly if Senator Obama wins the election, you can kiss free capital markets good-bye.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 11:31
Comments ||
Top||
#2
On an aside, I hope this is informative for all those who might have been duped by the msm image of sarko being a "reformer" and a "Reagan rethread".
#4
Exactly the wrong solution, but it's the only solution they know. Example, in the Great Depression in the US, it wasn't the market to blame, it was the ability to leverage the market with margin sales.
In this case, the fault is not in the self-regulated market, but in the unregulated market, again the leverage market. Today, to a great extent, we regulate margin sales in the market, but we neglected the extremely leveraged credit market.
This means that in the future, with some additional regulation, the bottom line will be that credit *at all levels* will have to be regulated. This means individuals and corporations and the US government itself.
As the saying used to go, "You can't have credit unless you don't need it." This literally means that in the future, the US government will only be able to borrow with 100% collateral of tax revenues already in hand. If they want $1M, then they must already have $1M plus interest. So there is no reason for them to bother taking debt in the first place.
The noose was further tightened around top SIMI leader Safdar Nagori and alleged brain behind Indian Mujahideen(IM) Abdul Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer with Andhra Pradesh filing cases against them and eight others on the charge of conspiring to wage a war against the state by planning terror camps.
The case was registered based on the confessions of suspected SIMI activist Mohammed Jaber who was arrested by city police earlier this month, officials of the Central Crime Station (CCS) said.
Police claimed Jaber, who also figures in the case, told investigation officers that Nagori, during a visit to Hyderabad in May 2007, had inquired about a location on the city outskirts to set up a terrorist training camp on the lines of a terror camp unearthed at Kalaghatgi forest area in Dharwad district of Karnataka early this year.
Jaber, currently in police custody, told the officials Nagori and two other top SIMI functionaries stayed at his residence here and planned a terror training camp in forest area of Anantagiri Hills in neighbouring Ranga Reddy district.
The proposed camp was aimed at recruiting youths from neighbouring states to train in jihadi and sabotage activities, a CCS official said.
Nagori, who is in custody of Gujarat Police, was arrested from Indore in March this year.
The other accused in the case include Abu Basher, alleged mastermind of Ahmedabad blasts, another top SIMI functionary Qamaruddin Nagori, Muqeemuddin Yasir and Raziuddin Nasir - sons of Moulana Naseeruddin, a city resident accused in the assassination of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya, and Motasim Billah, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: SIMI
(AKI) - Israel has signed a multi-million dollar weapons deal with predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan. Israel will sell the former Soviet country ammunition, mortars and radio equipment, after agreements signed by Israel's Defence Ministry and the government of Azerbaijan, reported Israeli daily Haaretz on Friday.
Azerbaijan's secular government has recently expressed concern over the influence of its more religiously austere neighbour, Iran.
Meanwhile, an Azerbaijani news agency, Trend News, said on Friday 20 members of an Islamist party protested on Friday in front of the Israeli embassy and shouted anti-Israel slogans. The demonstration was reportedly to show solidarity with the Palestinians on what Muslims call 'Jerusalem Day', commemorated on the final Friday of the Muslim-holy month of Ramadan, to oppose Israel's capture of the holy city in 1967.
The protesters were arrested for violating public order and holding an illegal demonstration, reported Azerbaijani news agency Trend News.
Israel and Azerbaijan established diplomatic relations in 1991.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
(PTI) At least 20 LTTE cadres were killed in fierce clashes in the restive northern Sri Lanka where fighter jets attacked a Sea Tiger base in Jaffna peninsula, the military said today.
Sri Lankan Air Force MI-24 helicopters attacked a Sea Tiger gathering point in Pooneryn in Jaffna late last night, the defence ministry said. Air force confirmed that the strike caused heavy damages to the outfit, it said.
"Security forces personnel engaged in Wanni liberating operation in Mullaittivu front are on the eve of another significant victory against LTTE cadres as the troops of 57 Division advanced into the Kokkavil general area this afternoon," the Defence Ministry said.
Reports of fighting have increased in recent months amid government's declaration to crush the group by the end of the year. Fighting, which has escalated in the past two years, further flared after the government in January pulled out of the 2002 cease-fire pact with the rebels.
According to the latest information received from the front, the troops of 57 Division are in close vicinity to the Kokkavil railway station complex, it said.
Elsewhere, troops killed four LTTE cadres during a confrontation in Akkarayankulam in Kilinochchi yesterday, the military said, adding two militants were killed earlier in the area during an attack on the Tamil Tiger bunker in the area on Thursday.
Separately, one rebel was shot dead in Akkarayankulam in Kilinochchi yesterday, the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) said. It said troops captured two trench lines in Kokkavil in Kilinochchi after heavy clashes yesterday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's purported decision comes after his failed attempt to travel to New York.
Sources inside the presidential palace, Villa Somalia, claimed that President Abdullahi Yusuf had informed his confidants of his decision to resign in the coming days, a Press TV correspondent reported. Abdullahi Yusuf announced the imminent move in a meeting with his close relatives, citing his failed trip to New York as a contributing factor.
The trip was scuttled due to a blockade imposed by Al-Shabaab fighters which banned all flights to or from Mogadishu's International Airport, Aden Adde. The fighters launched mortar attack on the soldiers, belonging to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), who had violated the ban. Over 170 civilians were killed after AMISOM's Ugandan and Burundi troops and gunmen from the president's clan, Hawiye, began shelling Mogadishu's civilian neighborhoods while responding to the fighters' attacks.
No amount of effort on the part of either his fellow clansmen, the Ethiopian forces in the country or the AMISOM troops could salvage the trip, the president was quoted as saying.
He was also said to have contrasted the failure with the trouble-free landing of Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein's flight on Thursday. The Somali prime minister was returning to the country from a trip to Djibouti where he had attended talks over programs, appealing all opposition groups to join the peace talks with the government.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, describing the need for more troops in Afghanistan, said the United States has achieved "victory" in Iraq.
It was an apparent misstep in Palin's third interview since agreeing to become Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate nearly one month ago. These encounters have garnered enormous interest because Palin has largely walled herself off from journalists amid growing criticism that a vice presidential nominee should be more accessible. In an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll this week, 57 percent of those surveyed agreed that "Sarah Palin does not have enough experience and understanding of foreign and military issues to be president."
Palin told CBS's Katie Couric that "a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq," adding that "we cannot afford to retreat, to withdraw in Iraq."
Palin struggled at times and appeared less comfortable than in her earlier sit-down with ABC's Charles Gibson. When Couric asked why she cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of her foreign policy experience, Palin said: "It's funny that a comment like that was kinda made to . . . I don't know, you know . . . reporters -- "
"Mocked?" Couric asked.
"Mocked, yeah I guess that's the word, mocked."
Pressed on why her location enhanced her foreign policy experience, Palin said: "Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of." She added that when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin "rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska."
Asked whether her lack of a passport until last year indicated a lack of curiosity about the world, Palin said she was not one of those "kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say, 'Go off and travel the world.' No, I've worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids." She said she learned about the world through education and books.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
#1
That was the clumsiest interview I've seen in years. She was trying to say that her neighbor Russia was a state that she is in charge of? She was so loose lipped I was expecting her to say anything.
I would have been like yes, Russia is right next door and as a state bordering the former soviet union, we take security very seriously, period.
#2
To save my gastric acids and digestive tract this Fall I've made it a POINT to avoid watching ANY of the Biased TeeWee Clowns yapping about the Election.
WHY not watch any?
Because the MSM is on a mission this year to get BooB-Bama elected, just ask Hitlery Clintoon.
I doubt if Sarah Palin will ever do a good Socialist-Sound-Bite to please the MSM's talking heads, or is so Politically Correct that she passes quietly away by pleasing the MSMs talking heads so their dog wins this race.
But the more the MSM disrespects Sarah Palin the more I love her, she is Tops in my book.
[ima prejudice, my Girl kilt herself a Moose and a Bar up in Alaska!]
She is honest, intelligent, haz more native abilities than, BOOB-BAMA or his VP running mate, GAS-BAG HAIR-PLUGS!
She's also a quicker study and has more character than almost every other demoC'rap & Rethuglican that has run for the President in the last 6 elections.
Sarah's has lots of other great assets... Right off the top she's is one of us, NOT THEM. for instance:
1) The treasonous MSM hates SARAH, LOL!
That's right the crooked MSM wants BOOB-BAMA ladies and gentlemen, and that is one hell of an asset for both you and me and Sarah Palin if we use it!
2) Another great asset of hers is most qualifying..
SARAH PALIN hasn't been corrupted by Washington DCs. excesses and horrible habits, like spending our money like it was hers!
And she is GOOD LOOKING LOL, Hey she is!!
~:)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
Have you asked yourself why the MSM NEVER digs up the REAL connection between the Daley Machine and BOOB-BAMA in Chicago?
It's the SAME MOB CONNECTION the Kennedy Klan has used for 100 or so years.
Did you guys notice how Ted Kennedy had organized and was ready to take on the Clintons 3 years ago?
#3
If it's any comfort, Tarzan Angeter7567, Ms. Couric's editors as deliberately butchered Governor Palin's interview as Charlie Gibson's editors did the last time. See here.
#4
Yes they did, but she still didn't do well (and I like her, and I intend to vote for Mac). Part of the game is understanding how the reporter can butcher your quotes and thus speaking in a way that they can't do it, or at least do it well.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2008 11:36
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Part of the game is understanding how the reporter can butcher your quotes and thus speaking in a way that they can't do it, or at least do it well.
If the producers/editors figure they can get get away with it, they will dowdify the most erudite and circumspect conservative's quote and characterize him/her as a complete loon. CBS also leaked a live, raw newsfeed of McCain getting prepped for an interview to David Letterman for the usual purpose.
I've had personal experience with reporters (local rags during the 2nd Amendment battles which took place in the 90s) completely re-writing my quotes. One "journalist" called me asking for a statement on an issue. I replied "Not a problem as long as you spell my name right and quote me accurately." And so both my name and quote were butchered in the article, which, I suppose, wasn't the worst-case scenario :)
#8
part of the (new) game is making your own recording of teh interview, so when the Donk Media tries to cut/edit , you have the raw footage to slam their credibility
/shouldn't be necessary, but the MSM makes it so
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:15
Comments ||
Top||
#9
I've learned through bitter experience that most journalists come to a story with a preconceived line and it almost takes dynamite to change that mindset. Far too many of them are lefty-lib liars who haven't the slightest qualm about changing what was actually said into what they wanted to hear, and embellishing from whole cloth if they feel it necessary. I generally despise the lot of them.
Here's the acid test: if you've ever been involved with an issue you knew intimately that received press coverage, ask yourself how close the press came to actually covering the story accurately. If your experience is like mine the answer to that question is "not very close." Then ask yourself why, if they didn't cover your relatively simple domestic issue accurately, you should expect that they'll do better on bigger, more complicated issues.
Good press coverage on anything is rare as hen's teeth and unicorns. Good analytical press coverage is even more rare. It's not a surprise that of all the reporting done by all the reporters in Iraq from 2001 to now the only one I've any real faith in is Michael Yon.
The real surprise is that there's even one good reporter, and most of the credit for that goes to Yon's military background and personal qualities. Even with those assets, if he wasn't an independent reporter with his own blog his POV would not be available. If he wrote for any of the MSM they would have spiked the majority of his stories.
As for Governor Palin, here's a secondhand story for you. I was coming across the Pacific last week, sitting next to a U.S. Army LTC who had served several years in Alaska and knew Sarah Palin personally. She had come to his base more than once to meet his troops. He said she's a wonderful woman, a straight shooter who's not afraid to look a difficult problem in the eye, flies coach on Alaska Airlines everywhere she can, carries her own bags when she flies, and goes to the airport (driving herself) EVERY TIME Alaska National Guardsmen leave or return from Iraq or Afghanistan. According to him, she wants them to know that their state appreciates and honors their service and that it's her job, as Alaska's top elected official, to be the symbol of that appreciation.
I don't know what that does for you guys but it makes me wish I had a governor like Sarah Palin. It certainly makes me understand why so many Alaskans love her. It also makes me want to grab low-life lying slimeballs like Gibson and Couric by the neck and shake them.
The press: at their best they're deserving of great respect but far too often, in fact in the majority of cases, they're reincarnations of Grima Wormtongue. Go farther to the left--Herbert, Dowd, Krugman, etc. and you've got the Mouth of Sauron. The real clue to the depth of their ignorance is that the vast majority of journos don't even understand why most thinking people despise and deeply distrust them.
#10
I once did a 15 minute interview about a politically-important project. 10 seconds of it made the local news, and I didn't look good in it. Word to the wise.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:25
Comments ||
Top||
#11
I was interviewed last Friday by a German Television crew ( I forgot to ask which one)at the 145th Anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga Creek. The first question I was asked was, "What do you think of Obama?". I told them I didn't want to discuss politics at an event of like this but he persisted. The next question was, "Do you think a Black man can be elected President?" so I decided to answer. I told him I belived it was possible depending on who was the nominee. Most people will decide on the basis of the qualifications and positions of the candidate. We are not nearly as divided as most European media think. The "common" people are pretty much the same wherever one goes in the US. We may have different local cultures but we are Americans and will come to one another's aid if necessary. We don't care about one's skin color or gender, for the most part. We talked a bit more but the bottom line is he said he was surprised to find an understanding of US and foreign interests in a Confederate Civil War reenactor. I think the MSM is doing the US a huge disservice in portraying Americans as "Backwoodsmen".
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 17:42
Comments ||
Top||
#12
Ima thinkrn Michael Steele as a good first black POTUS - the guy's sharp
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:43
Comments ||
Top||
#13
I gotta agree, Frank G.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/27/2008 17:45
Comments ||
Top||
#14
another point: since the MSM, Dem Party play the Identity Politics/Grievance Party aspect so hard, is it any wonder then that the majority Caucasians vote for their own? After all, isn't that what the Oppo's expect and advocate for all Diversity groups?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 17:46
Comments ||
Top||
#15
Hell, put Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele on the ballot for POTUS and I'll RUN to the box to vote for them. It's not the color of the skin but the contents of the brain that matter. Lefty-lib fools peddling failed socialist redistributionism/grievance politics need not waste their time applying for my vote. That means YOU, Dems.
#16
The MSM's editors are doing a good job of defining expectations for Palin down before the debate with bin Biden. She was heavily over exposed aor the trunk convention. Having stayed out of the lime light and having been edited down, she should be in a good position to tangle with Biden should she have it in her. The pressure will be on.
#17
I have total confidence in Joe to blow it. He'll be so over-prepped by nervous Obama consultants that he's likely to tank just on the prep-overflow alone. Given his propensity to fantabulize and outright fabricate shit (and plagiarize, but I bet he's been warned off that shit), he's a muzzled cannon, and the blowoff should be both entertaining and informative. Kinda like having a Tourette's syndrome patient as your PR arm
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/27/2008 18:09
Comments ||
Top||
#18
Useful story, Jolutch Mussolini7800. Always a pleasure when I can be helpful, Mercutio dear. :-)
Lots of Republican possibilities for 2012. That will be a fun primary!
The Meghalaya police on Friday produced before court Mominul Hoque, a third year student of Shillong Law College, who was arrested on Thursday night after he had allegedly confessed to having sent an e-mail warning suicide attack on senior BJP leader L.K. Advani.
The court remanded him to 14 days in police custody. The student is a resident of the Laban locality of Shillong.
The police also picked up seven others for questioning. The police said they were trying to ascertain if the student had any link with the Indian Mujahideen. Several newspapers of Meghalaya on Wednesday received an e-mail purportedly sent by the Indian Mujahideen, threatening to carry out a suicide attack on Mr. Advani during his visit to Shillong on September 29.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Indian Mujahideen
A former Iranian president warned the West Friday that its support for Israel would backfire as hundreds of thousands of people staged rallies in support of Palestinian and Muslim claims to the holy city of Jerusalem. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is still considered influential in Iranian politics, said the US, Britain and France's backing of Israel is dangerous.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Didn't he mean would blowup? Too close to him? That's where the danger is.
#1
Now we know why Hillary decided not to go the Jewish groups anti-Iranian rally outside the UN when she found out she would have to stand along side of Sarah Palin.
The side by side photograph would not help the Democratic cause so Obama axed it.
Posted by: Ouch that hurt my eyes ||
09/27/2008 0:13
Comments ||
Top||
Last week Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official charged with negotiating the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, visited Cairo to be briefed by Egyptian officials on their proposal for a prisoner exchange with Hamas.
Thursday, a ministerial committee headed by Vice Premier Haim Ramon agreed to draw up a new list of 450 Palestinian prisoners that Israel would be willing to release in the exchange. The new list will include 250 of the approximately 350 prisoners whose inclusion in the deal Hamas has demanded.
Ostensibly, differences between Hamas and Israel on this issue have never been smaller. However, Egypt's insistence on a broader package deal, whose details were published in the daily Maariv Thursday, may yet thwart the exchange.
Egypt wants to combine Shalit's release, for which Israel would pay by freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, with an agreement between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah over the formation of a new coalition government. Egypt's plan would require Hamas to relinquish sole control of the Gaza Strip and agree to allow a peacekeeping force comprised of Arab soldiers to be stationed there, while Israel would have to allow the border crossings into Gaza to reopen. Thus Egypt's proposal would turn Shalit into a pawn in talks aimed at reaching an internal Palestinian reconciliation whose chances of success are slim.
Egyptian officials are certain that Hamas would be willing to relinquish its control over Gaza and form a coalition with Fatah if the price were not too high, and that it would then agree to a deal for Shalit's release. But Cairo may have misjudged the change that the Hamas leadership has undergone in the past months, which greatly diminishes the chances of forming a coalition government.
The group's overseas leadership, headed by Khaled Meshal, has been losing control, while the power held by the Islamic group's young activists in Gaza has grown. Members of the group's military wing have infiltrated its "politburo" in Gaza and have seized authority from senior officials who were considered to be relative pragmatists. Officials like Razi Hamed and Ahmed Yousef have been sidelined. Nowadays, Hamas officials are more likely to march to the tune of the military wing, which instigated the violent takeover of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in June 2007.
New members of Hamas' leadership who are not part of the military wing are also far from providing a moderating influence. Nizar Riyan, for instance, has seen his power increase because of his extremism and his hatred for the PA leadership in the West Bank.
In sum, it is difficult to imagine the radicals in Hamas giving up their complete control of Gaza in order to create a coalition government.
The military wing is also morphing. It is no longer a hierarchal entity headed by a "chief of staff," Ahmed al-Jabari. Instead, it has fragmented into sectors whose commanders govern like little emirs. These commanders have the authority to forge alliances, political and military, in order to solidify Hamas' control of the Strip and reduce friction with other military groups. However, some of them have used their increased autonomy to make alliances with organizations like al-Qaida, the Army of Islam and the People's Army.
Last week, Hamas killed seven members of the Army of Islam, but it has refrained from confiscating the weapons of factions identified with al-Qaida. So long as these factions do not threaten Hamas, they are allowed to keep their weapons and train their forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Egypt's plan would require Hamas to relinquish sole control of the Gaza Strip and agree to allow a peacekeeping force comprised of Arab soldiers to be stationed there,
This could be an interesting proposal. The US can airlift over a hand picked Iraqi division.
Hezbollah seeks to support the Lebanese government not to compete with it, says the movement's Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem. One's master is not one's rival.
Resistance is an independence-seeking standpoint that nullified all custodianship, emancipated the Lebanese soil and defended the country and is not a mere military force Sheikh Qassem said, a Press TV correspondent reported from Beirut.
Hezbollah's deputy leader dismissed any intention of gaining power through use of military force inside Lebanon and said it had never lobbied in favor of or against certain parties during the election time.
"The reason we have resorted to armed resistance is for the government to be strong," he said, highlighting the need for a powerful administration and that the Islamic party gave its full support to such a government.
Qassem referred to the reconciliation between the Lebanese parties and said the recent compromise is to settle political differences and prevent the disputes from turning into street clashes.
Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has warned Israel is in the process of obtaining sophisticated weapons while Lebanon is prevented from acquiring night visual equipment for its army.
He said Lebanon would succeed in adopting a defense strategy in cooperation between the people, the army and the country's resistance forces.
Despite opposition from the majority bloc in the Lebanese parliament which demands the government should take control of all weapons, Hezbollah refuses to disarm, arguing that it needs its weapons to defend the country's sovereignty against Israel.
In July 2006, the Israeli regime launched a 33-day offensive against Lebanon, imposing an aerial and naval blockade on the country and razing villages in the south.
The Lebanese army did not intervene during the conflict in which the lives of more than 1,100 Lebanese civilians were lost.
However, it deployed forces to southern parts of the country on August 17, three days after the war came to an end, with the Israeli blockade lifted no sooner than September 8.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
Global stock prices crumbled Friday and investor anxiety mounted as another big US bank collapsed and political wrangling blocked a deal to save the beleaguered US financial sector.
With talks on a $700 billion rescue package at an impasse in Congress, President George W. Bush issued another plea to fractious lawmakers to come together and approve a plan that would restore confidence and calm frazzled markets. "We've got a big problem ... we need a rescue plan," Bush said in televised remarks minutes after Wall Street shares plummeted in line with Asia and Europe and as central banks again injected tens of billions of dollars to avert seizure on inter-bank lending markets.
After a rescue for American savings giant Washington Mutual by JP Morgan Chase in the biggest-ever US banking failure, shock waves hit European financial markets.
Belgian-Dutch financial group Fortis struggled to dispel liquidity concerns hammering its shares, insisting there was "not a single chance" of failure. The bank announced an emergency asset sale to raise 5.0-10 billion euros (up to $14 billion). Fortis closed with a loss of nearly 21 percent at 5.18 euros, its lowest reading in 15 years.
Wall Street shares lost ground Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.71 percent at 10,943.77 at mid-day. The tech-heavy Nasdaq shed 1.63 percent to reach 2,150.93.
"The markets had known that Washington Mutual was not financially sound, but they were holding out hope that the government would act [on a rescue plan] before regulators had to step in," said Nathan Topper at Economy.com. "If factions in Congress and the Bush administration do not agree today on a bank rescue package, markets could sell off further," he added.
European exchanges also took a pounding on Friday. The London FTSE 100 index fell 2.09 percent to close at 5,088.47 points while in Paris the CAC 40 lost 1.50 percent to finish at 4,163.38. The Frankfurt Dax gave up 1.77 percent to finish at 6,063.50. Asian exchanges earlier in the day also closed in negative territory, with Tokyo shedding 0.94 percent and Hong Kong 1.3 percent.
"Confidence is swinging like a seesaw at the moment," said Joshua Raymond, a market strategist at City Index. "We can ill afford to drag this out longer than the weekend. It's increasingly looking like the bailout plan lacks the substance to get it through Congress, which would be devastating to markets."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
From TFA:
We can ill afford to drag this out longer than the weekend.
Why not? This has been brewing since September 2007
It's increasingly looking like the bailout plan lacks the substance to get it through Congress, which would be devastating to markets.
Actually, markets will do just fine as they always have as they always will. It's the players chin deep in crummy paper who will get hit.
#2
Yes, markets will survive any crisis. The question is how many viable businesses will go bankrupt due to lack of credit, how many employees will lose their jobs, and how many creditors will lose money they would otherwise have received -- these factors are the elements of old-fashioned, 19th-century-type Panics.
The question is how many viable businesses will go bankrupt due to lack of credit,..
..a Bank of the United States would provide the mechanism to insure that credit is available to viable businesses. It would also cut out the middlemen who add inefficiency and costs to the process. Independent 'Lending Institutions' would have to meet or beat the terms the line of credit extended by a BotUS or take on risks that the Bank would not.
#4
--- Another element at stake that hasn't been mentioned on Rantburg so far: Pensions. If financial institutions supporting them collapse, the holdings that generate pension income will crash, pension payments will stop; government bailouts (PBGC) are already wired into the system, and will very likely cost more than what's needed now.
--- That horse isn't dead yet. Most of the electorate is still clueless as to what is at stake -- their jobs, or their pensions if they have any.
--- We need to focus exclusively on freeing up the credit markets and lessening the impact of bankruptcies. Saving people from foreclosure, keeping housing values absurdly high, and sweetheart deals need to be removed from the process. A "Bank of the United States" does not need to be created to do this. There is enough vagueness in the debated Treasury proposal to allow this credit market/bankruptcy relief to be the principal thrust of federal efforts, but it is vague. Jerry Pournelle on his blog gave this prognostication on the MOAB: " There will be literally millions of transactions, all conducted by a vast bureaucracy composed largely (I would guess) of laid off Wall Street employees. Who else will they hire to do this? There will be mistakes. There will be cronyism and favoritism. There will be deliberate frauds both by bureaucrats and those seeking relief. There will be misvalued mortgage papers. There will certainly be overvalued mortgage papers. There will be no time for slow study and evaluation because the success of the bailout depends entirely on acting swiftly and finally and introducing some certainty back into the situation." A Bank of the United States would most likely operate under these exact same conditions.
#5
Yes, but the Bank removes at least one if not more levels of misrepresentation, cronyism, and fraud from the process. It also moves such behaviors from stockholder civil suits to direct criminal activity with the existing penalties being the forfeiture of monies and jail that brokers, corporate executives and boards so far have avoided.
#6
I agree with the advantages you give for a Bank of the US. I do not think we have the time necessary (probably months) to set up such an entity. The credit markets typically move immense amounts of money around daily -- they will not wait much longer.
#7
That's why instead of selling another failing bank off to another institution, the government just assumes the entire structure [without the senior leadership who drove it to the brink]. You get the basics right in place, just a change of management and direct access to the Treasury to start fueling the credit market.
#8
You will not really address the crisis until the congress is dealt with, because their enabling legislation was the big cause of the irresponsible financial orgy that caused the credit crisis that we find ourselves in now.
THE STILL IN THE CHICKENHOUSE >>>>D******NG IT!!!! AND THE BETTYCROCKERCRATS ALL HAVE A FINANCIAL Y***T INF***ION.
/CHANNELING JOE
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 15:32
Comments ||
Top||
#9
pimf-----
THE FOX IS STILL IN THE CHICKENHOUSE >>>>D******NG IT!!!! AND THE BETTYCROCKERCRATS ALL HAVE A FINANCIAL Y***T INF***ION.
/CHANNELING JOE
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008 15:33
Comments ||
Top||
#10
Y***T INF***ION? Usually I'm pretty good at JosephM shorthand, but that one is beyond me, Alaska Paul.
#11
That's why instead of selling another failing bank off to another institution, the government just assumes the entire structure [without the senior leadership who drove it to the brink]. You get the basics right in place, just a change of management and direct access to the Treasury to start fueling the credit market.
That would stil leave us with the problem of too many banks. With the shrinking quantity of loans (home loans especially) the quantity of banks needs to shrink also. There's now less loans and of better quality than a two years ago, so it stands to reason we require less banks and of better quality than there was two years ago.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/27/2008 19:51
Comments ||
Top||
Whereas the BotUS becomes the First Leander(c) it forces efficiencies on the market. It would be like WallyMart showing up in a town full of mom and pop shops that have been less efficient in delivering the goods to the community. We've seen where that ends. The squeeze on operating costs (because they carry major overhead and commitments) would close many by itself. The 'numerous' banks/lending institutions that aren't efficient would basically be reduced to the corner Payday Loan office playing the high risk niche or disappearing.
#14
It would be nothing like Walmart showing up. Walmart is a business, run by peole who want to make money. BoUS would be a government tool run by politicians who want to buy votes.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/27/2008 20:46
Comments ||
Top||
(AKI) - Israel has granted amnesty to 10 members of Fatah's military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, according to a prominent Israeli daily. According to a report by Yedioth Ahronoth, the 10 will be pardoned as part of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to mark the Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that ends Ramadan, the holy Muslim fasting month.
The pardon follows reports that Israel handed over a list of 49 wanted men to be granted amnesty after a three-month probationary period. Twenty-two of them are currently in Palestinian Authority prisons, reported Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
The amnesty is being described as an act of goodwill to the PA to mark the end of Ramadan which occurs on 1 October in most of the Muslim world.
In October 2007, Israel and the PA endorsed an agreement that gave al-Aqsa Brigades militants amnesty if they were willing to lay down their arms. The amnesty was offered to men who refrained from terrorist acts and abided by an agreement to disarm.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Fatah
WASHINGTON -- Iran has significantly enhanced its gas centrifuge fleet, despite mass cases of western denial assertions to the contrary, according to a new report.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security stated that Teheran has resolved many of the technical flaws in its 4,000 centrifuges being used in Iran's uranium enrichment program. The institute, headed by former United Nations nuclear inspector David Albright, said Teheran was enriching uranium at a rate that would enable nuclear weapons capacity by March 2009.
"The centrifuges now appear to be running at approximately 85 percent of their stated target capacity, a significant increase over previous rates," the report said.
The report, released on Sept. 15, was based on information by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In early 2008, the agency indicated that Iran was operating its centrifuge fleet at 50 percent capacity.
Titled "Centrifuge Operation Significantly Improving," the U.S. institute said Iran has now intensified uranium enrichment. The institute cited an IAEA finding that from May 7 to Aug. 30, 2008, Iran fed 3,630 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride into the cascades at the Natanz plant, "a significant increase over previous rates."
"Whatever the actual amount of LEU [low-enriched uranium], Iran is progressing toward this [nuclear weapons] capability and can be expected to reach it in six months to two years," the report said.
The institute's assessment appeared to differ with that of IAEA. On Sept. 15, an agency briefer told the board of governors that Iran was operating much of its centrifuge fleet at 20 percent capacity.
But Albright, along with report co-authors Jacqueline Shire and Paul Brannan, determined that Iran has overcome difficulties in operating its P-1 centrifuge cascades. The researchers said that until mid-2008 Iran lost a significant amount of uranium because of breakdowns in Pakistani-designed P-1 centrifuges.
"This latest [IAEA] report, however, shows that Iran has largely overcome these problems, which is reflected in the increased feed rates and LEU production," the institute said. "One official close to the agency stated that Iran may have reached a point where its cascades are operating in a stable manner, noting that fewer centrifuges are breaking."
The institute said Iran has assembled 18 cascades that comprise 3,000 P-1 centrifuges. At the same time, Iran was installing a second module of 3,000 centrifuges.
Iran has also been accelerating tests of its advanced IR-2 centrifuge. The institute said Iran has installed two or three models of what was termed "next-generation" centrifuges, including IR-2, IR-3 and "possibly a longer centrifuge."
"During this reporting [May to August 2008] period, Iran has significantly increased the feed rate into its IR-2 centrifuges," the report said. "This development appears to reflect Iran's goal of developing a more advanced centrifuge that can be deployed in the FEP [fuel enrichment plant] instead of its P1 centrifuges. It is unknown how long Iran intends to test these new designs or when they could be deployed in large numbers in the underground halls."
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[13 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ION KOMMERSANT > RUSSIA HAS ENOUGH URANIUM FOR 60 YEARS. Milyuhns and Zilyuhns of MARVIN MARTIAN'S ANTI-US PU-286 EXPLOSIVE SPACE MODULATOR-R-R-S are NOT at risk???
Yet anuther reason, Virginia, as to why the NEW US-ISLAMIST WAR FOR CONTROL OF THE ASIAN MAINLAND,
aka the "8-8-8" RUSSO-GEORGIAN CONFLICT-WAR.
#4
I have pretty well reached the conclusion that the US is very relaxed about this whole deal for a very good reason: our 300+ anti-missile missiles in the region are no longer the first line of defense.
That is, we have fielded several effective airborne anti-missile lasers, as well as AESA radar that can effectively jam missile and warhead electronics.
Together, it has raised the overkill ratio that Iran would have to accomplish to so far beyond their capabilities that only a fraction of a percent of their missiles have a chance of even leaving Iranian airspace.
Add this to other weapons systems like conventional cruise missiles and multiple independently targeted SDBs dropped from a high altitude bomber, heavily degrading their capability, and Iran's offensive ability is reduced to zero.
From that point, the US could systematically eliminate any medium or high altitude AAA threat, then use bunker busters to eliminate every known underground installation.
#5
That's very comforting, Anonymoose, but does that mean Israel no longer need worry about a single missile getting through and killing one sixth of her population?
#7
That's where the Somali pirates come to play. Little do they know they have been working for the Great Satan all this time.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 15:18
Comments ||
Top||
#8
trailing wife: actually yes. Since Israel can both act on its own, and has sufficient nuclear weaponry to take out most of the Muslim world, the US would have to spend a substantial amount of time convincing the Israelis that the numbers don't lie.
I know that we have intensively worked with them both on the ARROW and THAAD systems, and also keep them abreast of our laser work. Their boffins can do the math as well. America has spent decades refining overkill theory for just such reasons.
And the bottom line is even if we are wrong, it changes nothing. Israel still has full retaliatory capability, and understands that sooner or later it will be the target.
So the one big question still remaining is who will be elected US president. If it is McCain, the Iranians had best be prepared to have the poop kicked out of them.
Update from Reuters: apparently he had a seizure, for which he was treated and then released.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I found it interesting that McCain mentioned this at the debate and Obama did not. I wonder if the Kennedys told McCain before it was press released.
The headline makes it sound like he was freed because he "humiliated" Erdogan, not that he was arrested because he did.
A Turkish court on Thursday acquitted a British artist who risked up to two years in jail for his collage depicting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a dog, a report said. The court ruled that the work by Michael Dickinson was a "political warning and criticism delivered through art... even though it had insulting and humiliating elements," the Anatolia news agency said. I believe the original bit of "art" is on display at the website or linked to it. It's another sophomoric "political statement" that states that its designer is... ummm... sophomoric.
Dickinson, a long-time resident of Istanbul, displayed the collage -- showing Erdogan as a dog receiving a prize in a pet show from U.S. President George W. Bush -- at a 2006 exhibition here dedicated to peace. As a matter of principle I'm against censorship. But deep down, I don't disagree with him being jugged -- for drooly bad taste.
Turkey is under pressure to improve freedom of expression as it negotiates membership of the European Union, but a series of legal moves against intellectuals in recent years have raised concerns over Ankara's commitment to improve democratic standards. It actually doesn't take much intellect to design something that stoopid. But the point has to be that in a free society you're allowed to be just as stoopid as you like as long as it doesn't involve murder, rape, robbery, battery or kidnapping. Once you start down the slippery slope of "infliction of emotional distress" nobody has any rights. Your own rights end where someone else's ephemerae begin.
Erdogan himself has come under intense criticism after his lawyers pursued court cases against journalists for allegedly insulting him. The courts have rejected cases against two cartoonists and a weekly humor magazine for depicting Erdogan as various animals.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I think the best resolution would be to declare political "art" to be political commentary, not art.
As such, the "artist" comes under the same rules as a journalist.
This doesn't mean that he gets any more punishment, in fact he might even get more legal protection. But what it *does* mean is that the court has him declared as "not an artist, just a political hack".
And that may be a worse punishment, because it strips him of any pretense that art was involved, that he is no more an artist than a KOS kiddy, ranting against Bush.
#3
It seems that political cartoons are verboten in Turkey. The only thing worse is blaspheming Mohammed. Then there is much rioting, seething, boom-booms, and tooth gnashing.
Russia and the United States have reached a deal to seek a new U.N. resolution on Iran, Britain's U.N. ambassador said Friday. Ambassador John Sawers spoke before heading into a high-level meeting at U.N. headquarters of nations concerned with events in Pakistan.
After the meeting, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the resolution will be introduced in the Security Council on Friday.
Western diplomats said the resolution would reaffirm three rounds of earlier U.N. sanctions to make clear that the process has not been dropped and that the council wants Iran to comply. The United States, Britain and France have been pressing for a new round of sanctions to step up pressure against Iran for its continuing refusal to suspend uranium enrichment as a prelude to talks on its nuclear program. But Russia and China objected to new sanctions.
The proposed new resolution appears to be a compromise _ no new sanctions but a tough statement to Iran that Security Council resolutions are legally binding and must be carried out.
So all this talk and heat has been about nothing. Figures, it's the U.N. ...
Russia on Tuesday had scuttled high-level talks on imposing new sanctions on Iran that had been set for Thursday between the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, the key players in seeking an agreement with Iran. Even sanctions opponent China had agreed to the meeting.
U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, sought to downplay the move, saying the time wasn't right for the session. But they had previously said such a gathering would be useful and necessary to get a fourth Security Council sanctions resolution on Iran.
Iran insists its nuclear program is purely peaceful and designed to produce nuclear energy, but the U.S. and Europeans suspect Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that Tehran needs the ability to produce nuclear fuel because it cannot rely on other nations to supply enriched uranium to the Islamic regime's planned reactors.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
(AKI) - President Asif Ali Zardari has strongly condemned the bomb blast that struck a train near Bahawalpur in eastern Pakistan on Friday. He hd three choices: He could ignore it -- not a good choice, since everybody else'd noticed it; He could approve it, declaring himself on the side of the bad guyz -- not a good choice, since he'd then have to rationalize their behavior some way or other; Or he could condemn it. Condeming it was simplest, since he's now on record and he can forget about it, like he seems to have forgotten about his wife's departure from the gene pool.
Zardari said such acts would not deter the government's resolve to fight terrorism and extremism and the perpetrators of such heinous crime would be brought to justice.
In a major address to the United Nations in New York on Thursday, Zardari said Pakistan's stability was crucial for world security. He said terrorists strike at all nations and called for countries to unite in the battle against extremists. "We must draw a line on their rampage,'" Zardari told the United Nations General Assembly. "We must draw that line in Pakistan.''
"We may be the targets of international terrorism, but we will never succumb to it. Toward that end, we reach out to you and to the entire civilised world."
He said terrorism cannot be fought by military means alone. "Fighting it requires political will, popular mobilisation, and a socio-economic strategy that wins the hearts and minds of nations afflicted by it," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
More than 190,000 Muslims prayed in Jerusalem's flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque on the last Friday of Ramadan amid tightened security in the Holy City, Israeli police said.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said there had been no major incidents but that security forces would remain on high alert for Lailat al-Qadr (Night of Revelation), a Muslim holiday in which many believers pray through the night.
The holiday is celebrated near the end of the holy month of Ramadan, during which devout Muslims all over the world fast from dawn to dusk.
Al-Aqsa mosque - - Islam's third holiest site - has been a major flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was the site of the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
A spokesman for the family members of terrorism victims in Iran says the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is a modern version of al-Qaeda.
Iraj Moradi, the spokesman for the Edaalat Society, which represents over 12,000 relatives of Iranian victims of terrorism, said the MKO and al-Qaeda use the same methods to lure their members into carrying out terrorist attacks. Iraj is the son of Ebrahim Moradi, a blacksmith who was assassinated by the MKO in June 1984.
The Mujahedin Khalq Organization is a terrorist group banned by many countries including the US. It has claimed responsibility for numerous terror attacks inside Iran and Iraq since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
At a recent UN human rights conference in Geneva, Edaalat Society revealed documents highlighting the extent of MKO activities in Iran as well as the group's cooperation with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The MKO has long been charged with assisting Saddam in the massacre of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
A British envoy, who has received the documents, asked the delegation to shed light on MKO crimes in a visit to the UK - where a British court has dropped the MKO from its blacklist of terrorist organizations.
"Edaalat Society does not seek revenge," said Sepehri, the daughter of another Iranian victim. "Branding some terrorists 'good' and some 'bad' would legitimize their actions and provide a pretext for their existence," she said referring to the recent UK court ruling.
She added that is why the MKO has continued its existence.
According to Sepehri who is the official spokesman for the Edaalat Society, terrorists are patients who are suffering from hallucination due to cult-like structure of terrorist organizations and they could be cured if they got rid of mind-control tactics of their leaders.
A delegation of the Edaalat (Justice) Society has recently visited Geneva to attend the UN human rights summit and meet NGOs and rights groups.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
(Xinhua) -- A suicide attacker exploded himself near the vehicle of intelligent service members in eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing two intelligent agents and two civilians on Friday morning, said a police official. Abdul Qayum Baqizai, the provincial police chief told Xinua that it occurred at 10 a.m. (GMT 0530) in the Jaji Maidan district when a suicide bomber with explosive material strapped to his body exploded himself next to the vehicle of Afghan intelligent service member killing two agents and two civilian passers-by. "Seven more were injured in the blast including a former senior intelligence official named General Azizullah," Baqizai said.
No one or individuals have yet to claimed responsibility. Taliban militants have carried out several similar attacks against interests of government and international troops. Conflicts and spiraling insurgency have claimed the lives of over 4,000 people mostly militants so far this year in the war-torn country.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
...killing two intelligent agents and two civilians...
(AKI) - Police in the southern Italian province of Caserta on Friday arrested four alleged Mafia members suspected of the brutal murder of six African immigrants.
One suspect was arrested by police earlier this week and another remains at large.
The gang is believed to have been operating the Mafia or Camorra's extortion racket in the province of Caserta, just north of Naples.
The Italian government on Tuesday announced it would send 500 soldiers to the area to help fight organised crime after the immigrants were shot dead outside a tailor's shop by Kalashnikov-wielding hitmen.
The massacre occurred in the town of Castelvolturno which has a large number of immigrants and may have been part of a local turf war caused by African drug pushers muscling in on Mafia territory. There were also suggestions that they had refused to pay 'protection money' to their Mafia godfathers.
Hitmen shot dead gambling arcade owner, Antonio Celiento, in the nearby coastal resort of Baia Verde in the same province on the same day as the massacre, after he refused to pay 'protection money' to the Camorra.
Police arrested Camorra-linked suspect Alfonso Cesarano in Baia Verde on Monday in connection with the Castelvolturno massacre.
Cesarano was under house arrest at his parents' home at the time, Italy's Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, said.
Cesarano has a police record for drugs and has strong ties to the Camorra, for whom he has done several jobs, the head of police in Caserta, Carmelo Casabona, told journalists on Monday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
Turkish warplanes crossed the border into northern Iraqi airspace to bomb 16 Kurdish rebel sites, a spokesman for Turkey's military said Friday. There were no reports of any deaths in the air attacks, which occurred late Thursday night.
The airstrikes targeted Kurdish rebel positions on Qandil mountain, at Iraq's border with Iran, Brig. Gen. Metin Gurak told reporters in Ankara, Turkey's capital.
Ahmed Deniz, a spokesman for Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, told wire services the airstrikes targeted areas that already were largely abandoned, owing to earlier attacks from neighboring Iran. The raids injured one rebel and two civilians, Deniz said.
Turkish leaders say intelligence shared by the U.S. military has helped Turkey better target the rebel bases. In New York on Friday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul praised what he called the strategic partnership between Turkey and the United States, and called it vital to regional and global security.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Russia warns Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili could return chaos to the Caucasus, following his recent order to attack the region.
In a warning message, addressed to the EU, the Russian foreign ministry noted that 'Saakashvili's habit of breaking promises' continued to constitute a threat to the region, the northern parts of which came under attack on August 7, by the Georgian army in an attempt to retake the independence-leaning republic of South Ossetia.
"We hope that the European Union, which pledged to guarantee the non-use of force principle, will take into account Saakashvili's habit of breaking promises," Ria Novosti reported quoting the contents of the ministry's statement.
An EU mission is expected in the region by October 1st, to guarantee observation of a French brokered cessation agreement on the issue.
The statement echoes Russian officials raising similar concerns. Last month, Russia's Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn said that "we have registered an increase in [Georgia's] reconnaissance activities and preparations for armed actions in the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict zone".
Russia had repeatedly cautioned Tbilisi against manhandling the situation in the region after suspecting Georgia of being behind uncalled-for armed movements and reconnaissance flights in the republic.
Georgia, however, conducted the attack eliciting an armed response from Russia. Moscow, as well, accuses Tbilisi of acting on US' orders. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told the country's NTV television last month that "it is hard to imagine that Saakashvili embarked on this risky venture without some sort of approval from the side of the United States."
"Mikheil Saakashvili, who is a war criminal, was used by crazy radicals from Washington, usually neocons headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney," State Duma Deputy Sergei Markov told Press TV earlier in the month.
Georgia, on the other hand, alleges that Russia is seeking 'acquisitive interests' in moving closer to the republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia which, on August 26, were recognized by Moscow as independent states. "The Russian Federation's actions are an attempt to militarily annex a sovereign state - the nation of Georgia," Saakashvili said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
TOPIX > CZECH, RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE QUARREL OVER US MISSLE SHIELD. Russ INTEL Agents working hard for mainstream Czechs + Govt. to fell the NYET over GMD-BMD MisBases in Czech land.
The situation in Bajaur Agency will be stabilised within two months, the Frontier Corps (FC) chief in the region said on Friday. "My timeframe for Bajaur is anything from between one-and-a-half to two months to bring about stability," FC Inspector General Maj Gen Tariq Khan told reporters on an army-organised trip to Bajaur.
Taliban killed: Khan said troops had killed more than 1,000 Taliban and injured 2,000 others since the offensive began in early August. Khan said five top Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders were among those killed in the month-long operation. He said they included four foreigners. They were Egyptian Abu Saeed Al-Masri, Arab Abu Suleiman, Uzbek Mullah Mansoor, and an Afghan commander called Manaras.
The fifth was a son of Faqir Mohammad, the top Taliban commander in the region. Faqir himself was believed to be injured. Some 63 troops had died and 212 were injured in the operation so far, Khan said.
65 percent: Khan estimated 65 percent of the Taliban problem would be eliminated if they were defeated in Bajaur, describing the region as a 'centre of gravity' for the Taliban. "If they lose here, they've lost almost everything," he said.
Military officials paraded 10 blindfolded and handcuffed men said to be Taliban fighters -- arrested during the operation -- before the reporters who joined the trip.
Khan also showed reporters photos of tunnel systems and trenches, suggesting the Taliban were well established in the region that is considered a likely hiding place for top Al Qaeda leaders including Osama Bin Laden. He put the Taliban's strength at around 2,000, including Afghans, Uzbeks and Arabs as well as Pakistani Taliban. He said the Taliban's fighting strength had not gone down appreciably despite heavy casualties due to reinforcements coming in from the northwest as well as Afghanistan. "I personally feel that trained squads have been moved in," Khan said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Taliban publicly executed a man after finding him 'guilty' of charges of murder, robbery and theft in Swat's Speenpura area on Friday. The Taliban brought the man to Speenpura after an 'Islamic court's verdict' and killed him in front of hundreds of people. Meanwhile, a woman and her son were killed when a mortar shell hit their house in Madian. Two policemen were injured in firing by the Taliban in the district's Barikot Bazaar. Meanwhile, Swat police have issued shoot-at-sight orders for any masked individual in the district, Samaa TV reported. The Swat DPO also ordered police action against vehicles with tinted glasses.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
Three would-be suicide bombers were killed along with a handcuffed hostage when one of the bombers blew himself up following a police raid on a house early on Friday, police said. They were believed to be members of terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. ... which is now an element of al-Qaeda in Pakistain.
Police raided the house in Baldia Town following information from an activist of the group arrested on Thursday, AP reported. "Ow! Ow! Ow! I'll talk! I'll talk! Just put them back!"
They hurled five hand grenades at the police before one of them blew himself up, Karachi Police Chief Wasim Ahmed said, adding terrorist leader Raheemullah was arrested from the house.
Target: "We have saved Karachi from death and destruction. We know [about their identities and intended targets], but we cannot disclose them immediately," Sindh Police Chief Babar Khattak said, adding the terrorists were suspected of planning an attack on a 'high-profile' target in Karachi.
The handcuffed hostage was identified as Shaukat Afridi, a transport worker who supplied fuel to the US-led forces in Afghanistan. He was kidnapped five months ago for a ransom of five million dollars.
Raheem allegedly masterminded the April 2006 Nishtar Park suicide attack, the killing of Allama Hassan Turabi in July 2006 and the October 18, 2007, twin blasts at Karsaz. The police also seized explosives, hand grenades and rifles from the house.
This article starring:
Allama Hassan Turabi
Karachi Police Chief Wasim Ahmed
Raheemullah
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Sindh Police Chief Babar Khattak
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
(AKI) - The terror suspects arrested by German police at Cologne airport on Friday were planning to go to Pakistan, a German daily has claimed. It's the Promised Land for turbans...
Citing unnamed security officials, the Berlin newspaper, Tagesspiegel, said both suspects were en route to Pakistan via Amsterdam and Uganda.
The two suspects were arrested after a special commando unit stormed a KLM airliner on the tarmac of Cologne-Bonn Airport before it took off. A 23-year-old Somali national and a 24-year-old German citizen born in Somalia were arrested after months of surveillance by police who feared they would carry out suicide attacks.
Police are reported to have found farewell letters in the apartment of the two suspected terrorists saying they wanted to die for 'jihad' or holy war.
According to KLM, the Dutch airline, the plane had already received clearance for take off but permission to depart was later revoked and commandos raided the aircraft. Following the arrest of the suspects, the remaining 48 passengers aboard KLM Flight 1804 left the aircraft and all luggage was checked.
The passengers later continued on the flight, which landed in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport after a one hour of delay.
Both suspects apparently did not live in Cologne.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Europe
Authorities in Morocco have shut down around 60 Quranic schools belonging to a Muslim cleric who argues that girls as young as nine can marry, officials said Thursday.
The authorities also plan to close down the Internet site on which Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman al-Maghraoui decreed earlier this month that the marriage of nine-year-old girls is allowed by Islam. The sheikh said his decree was based on the fact that the Prophet Mohammed consummated his marriage to his wife Aisha when she was that age.
Lawyers, the media, and finally Muslim scholars rounded on Maghraoui for effectively seeking to legalize pedophilia. The authorities finally took action on Wednesday, shutting down his headquarters in Marrakesh and dozens of his small Quranic schools dotted around the country. "The Internet site 'Maghrawi.net' is going to be closed, while the headquarters of the Mohamed Maghraoui association in Marrakesh and his 'Quranic Houses' have already been closed," a security official told AFP.
Sheikh Maghraoui's 'fatwa' or religious decree was condemned on Sunday by Morocco's top body of Islamic scholars. The High Council of Ulemas, which is presided over by Morocco's King Mohammed VI, labeled the sheikh an "agitator" and denounced his "utilization of religion to legitimize the marriage of nine-year-old girls."
Rabat-based lawyer Mourad Bekkouri filed a complaint against Maghraoui and his fatwa earlier this month in which he said the decree damaged children's rights by increasing the risk of rape. He told AFP the cleric is undermining Islam and its followers and that he had requested the state prosecutor to speed up the case.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Why not? Their prophet did.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/27/2008 0:30
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Lawyers, the media, and finally Muslim scholars rounded on Maghraoui
It is difficult for the ulemma to go against such a sterling example of perfect manhood, even in these changed times. Perhaps they should look at the fact that their prophet's first wife was considerably older than he, rather than that his nth was taken from her dolls to his bed, and follow that example: no child wives until a man has conquered 1/3rd of the known world for his god.
#4
And now some geneticists are claiming we carry Neanderthal DNA as well -- critical bits like speech and planning abilities. It seems we breeders are important, after all. ;-)
The credit crunch has been with us for more than a year. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) started cutting rates on Sept. 18, 2007, and fiscal stimulus provided a boost to second- and third-quarter gross domestic product, yet there are few signs that the combined efforts of the U.S. Fed and Treasury are making headway at putting the credit crunch to rest.
Financial market participants are still waiting for clear signs that monetary and fiscal policy stimuli have established an environment where the U.S. economy can grow its way out of its housing and credit problems. Furthermore, there are scant signs that the stimuli now in place will enable the economy to avoid a recession that would further complicate the dynamics of credit crunch and contagion.
What handful of key economic and market variables can be tracked over the next 6 to 12 months to best help us gauge whether or not U.S. policymakers are winning the war against the credit crunch?
Standard & Poor's Market, Credit and Risk Strategies (MCRS) has created a short checklist of economic and market variables and identified the general developments to track. We will continue to monitor and report on these crucial metrics in the months to come:
1. Real estate values -- must stabilize or edge higher
2. The rate of existing and new home sales -- must rebound
3. Credit conditions -- must ease up substantially
4. Crude oil prices -- must continue to decline, and then stabilize
How are things tracking now?
1. Real estate values: encouraging
2. The rate of existing and new home sales: less encouraging
3. Credit conditions: discouraging
4. Crude oil prices -- encouraging Some positive signs; some negative signs. So what if the bailout plan collapsed because of voter outrage? What's the hurry in ramming this plan through Congress? It took awhile to get to this "financial emergency?
#1
3. Credit conditions are the key thing to follow. 4. Crude oil prices vary with the value of the dollar plus worldwide supply & demand. I don't see how federal policies will change this in the next 1-2 years. #1 & #2 are almost the same thing. As I have posted before, housing prices have gone far beyond an affordable range in much of the USA & must fall far enough so that credit-worthy buyers can afford them. The rate of house sales depends on affordability, credit availability & household income.
#2
Low Property Affordability is NOT a good thing.
I personally favour an LVT so interest rates can be lower without causing a house affordability to fall. As the Land Value Tax acts like a whole market higher interest rate.
#3
One thing to watch for is fewer buyers buying up multiple homes and turning them into rental units. I suspect that there will be a lot of this happening as housing prices bottom out, investors look for places to put their money, and the notion that everyone MUST live in a house they own instead of rent remains one worthy of derision.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/27/2008 7:01
Comments ||
Top||
#4
One real and usually overlooked value in renting is job mobility. Renters have a much easier time pulling up stakes & moving to another location for work, i.e., they don't have to worry about selling house #1 to move into house #2.
#5
The argument about housing prices is a hot one. Many stakeholders to consider in the mix. People who have paid for overpriced houses don't want to see the market prices to go down, their wealth dribbling away the whole time, and I can't blame them for that. But remember way back (80's) when a responsible mortgage was 3-4 years salary? Well that's still the responsible thing to do. But in places like California you can't touch a house for less than 350K. So, unless you make 115K a year, you shouldn't really be a homeowner in CA.
Does that sound realistic? Does that sound like the American Dream? Real Estate values need to come down, a lot, in my opinion.
#6
So, unless you make 115K a year, you shouldn't really be a homeowner in CA.
Does that sound realistic? Does that sound like the American Dream? That cutoff sounds quite realistic for would-be homeowners in CA. I think a big chunk of all losses in mortgage loans will materialize in that state, over & above its population & income levels. Florida will be another major contributor (As Groucho Marx once said, you can get stucco there. Oh, can you get stucco!) The American Dream is what individual Americans make of it, there's nothing written in stone saying any given percentage of Americans must be homeowners.
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." - Charles Dickens, from David Copperfield.
The banks and lenders drove the price up by making the 'paper' available. If they wouldn't finance at 350K but at 150K, the builders and developers would make 150K homes. They wouldn't be fancy HGTV spotlights, but they'd be practical and functional. Overprice housing is the market's way of saying time to move on to over there ->, not 'let's dream up a financial ponzi scheme'. There's still a lot of affordable housing out there, just not in the spots where a million or more people want to live. If your 'dream' is to own a home, then you need to adjust where you want your dream to be. If your dream is to be 'someplace' then it many not be to own a home. It's an old story.
#8
The dog and the bone story. The dog saw his reflection in the water and wanted the bone he saw in the water as well as his own. There is an aspect of illusion in that story as well as the fiscal mess in D.C. Yup, and if Washington doesn't listen to voter and taxpayer anger, we will end up getting "boned. again in this bailout.
After the debates last night, the talking heads were saying they thought BO won. I'm not so sure he won. Drudge had a different take this morning. I heard a typical old style big spending, big government Democrat talking about his big give-away programs he is going to have when he is elected.
I listened to the Fox panel of non-committed voters late night after the debate express how they were influenced by the debates. One women said she would not vote for McCain because he's so old and so rooted in the past. So much for the experiences that shape a person's life and character. There were a few others that expressed similar views. If I were running for office, I seriously would not curry the favor of these voters who don't have an opinion prior to the debate; haven't researched the candidates in any serious way, and vote on the basis of superficial appearances.
#9
Oh Procopius - God bless Wilkins Micawber! - Of course he fled debtors prison to lead a successful life as a respected politician in Australia! Would that we could reverse the process with some of our "leaders".
#10
I totally agree 100%, the market would compensate if it weren't impaired by bad legislation, greedy real estate agents, predatory lenders and ignorant buyers. I just think its unfortunate that what was once the achievable for the average worker is now out of reach for all but the best paid. Like I quoted above, 350K is nothing for a house in CA, the average house in Alameda county is $515,000. If you were a responsible buyer, you would have 20% down and no more than 4 years salary. That means you'd have to have $103,000 down and make 104,000 a year, or preferably $137,300 a year. Thats for the AVERAGE house in Alameda county, and thats nothing compared to Marin County. So you're right, but I think its a shameful state.
Russia's navy has sent a warship to Somalia's coast to combat pirates and will mount regular anti-piracy patrols in the area, a navy spokesman told Russian state television on Friday. "In the future the Russian navy will send its ships on a regular basis to zones where there is a danger from maritime piracy," navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told the Vesti-24 television station. "There's no need to fear!
The Russian navy is here!"
He said one Russian warship left its base on the Baltic Sea on September 24 heading for the area off Somalia's coast to tackle pirates operating there. The ship is equipped for a crew of around 200 and is armed with torpedoes, missiles, artillery and mines.
A Ukrainian freighter was seized by pirates on Thursday with tanks and other military hardware aboard. The Belize-flagged Faina with a crew of 21, including three Russians, was hijacked while on its way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, reportedly with a cargo including 30 T-70 battle tanks and armored vehicle spares.
Dozens of ships, mainly merchant vessels, have been seized off Somalia's 3,700-kilometre coastline in recent years, despite the presence of Western navies deployed in the region to fight terrorism.
The pirates travel in speedboats and are armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. They sometimes hold ships for weeks until ransoms are paid by governments or owners.
In recent months, a multinational taskforce based in Djibouti has been patrolling parts of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, where a pirate mother ship is believed to be operating.
You'd think that if we wanted to find the mother ship, we'd find the mother ship.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"He said one Russian warship left its base on the Baltic Sea on September 24 heading for the area off Somalia's coast to tackle pirates operating there."
Don't they have any ships in the Indian Ocean? The timeline for their response is a week?
#4
Russia on its way to Somalia to defeat pirates and release booty?
Stalin and the Russian army was on its way to Berlin to defeat Hitler and appropriate booty.
The rest is history.
#5
If the Russian cruiser were to say, hit a WWII era mine in the middle of the Indian ocean on the way to fight pirates off Somalia, well,
that would be an interesting history lesson.
Anyone with a WWII era mine laying around for an interesting object lesson.
#7
Laugh all you want. It could just be that the clumsy, heavy handed approach of the Russians is exactly what is needed here. No more surgical strikes. No more finesse. No more worry about collateral damage. Just blast away.
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
09/27/2008 16:04
Comments ||
Top||
#8
The problem is that Russian anti terrorist ops have killed many more Russians than the bad guys. Budyonnovsk, Nord Ost and Beslan come to mind. On the other hand, there are few Russian civilians in Somalia.
Posted by: ed ||
09/27/2008 17:11
Comments ||
Top||
#9
My understanding is that there is a US warship 1000 yds from where it's ancored to prevent any off loading. So we gonna have a jurisdictional dispute when the Lone Rangerski shows up?
#10
EB- They have a couple of days to think about it. My question is whether the Ruski Air Force is showing up for this. They can land in Kenya for refueling/emergency overhaul.
Sucks not having any decent UAV capability either.
Police on Friday arrested a terrorist carrying explosives and a kalashnikov from Mohib Shah Road in Jampur. The terrorist, Abdur Rahman Khetran, was wanted by the Rajanpur police in a number of terrorism cases. However, Khetran's accomplice Huzoor Bakhsh Lund managed to escape, Jampur Deputy Superintendent Police Shah Alam Gashkori told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
(AKI) - At least six people were killed and several others were wounded in a bomb attack on a train in eastern Pakistan near the Indian border on Friday. More than 15 people were injured in the explosion which occurred near the city of Bahawalpur in the eastern province of Punjab.
It was the second major incident in Pakistan on Friday. Three suspected militants blew themselves in the southern port city of Karachi after police stormed their hideout reportedly thwarting a major attack
According to a report on Pakistan's Geo News, two train carriages were derailed following the blast in Bahawalpur, killing at least six people including a woman and three children. Sources said that many of the injured were in a critical condition and were rushed to Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur while rescue teams were sent to the scene of the accident.
According to police, several people were still trapped in the wreckage.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
The descendants of Captain Hardy and Admiral Nelson are due to launch a series of projects to help fight the decline in the Royal Navy. This could include a "buy out" package for HMS Victory and commissioning experts to look into the sorry state of "Nelson's Navy".
The grandson of Captain Hardy warned the MoD that they had "awoken a dragon" and would do everything in their power to turn around the Navy's terminal decline. He also promised to keep the public involved and informed while drawing together consensus amongst naval campaigners. The families are known for controversy clashing with the recently formed UKNDA and causing discomfort at the Admiralty as they declared "The covenant between Nelson and Hardy's descendants and the MoD as "null and void".
The Nelson and Hardy families have been becoming more public in their stance since the Trafalgar 200 celebrations in 2005 and have consulted experts in naval preservation, naval architects and top naval historians.
#1
The English government has abrogated the responsibility of a national defense.
If there is any claim to legitimacy by a government, it is that they provide for their nation's national defense. Otherwise, they cease to be a government.
Therefore, the English, and hopefully the royal family, will take it upon themselves to form a "de facto" government-in-exile, whose purpose is to create and maintain a national army and navy for the protection of England.
While the "de jure" government continues its mismanagement of England, it will not be interfered with, but if England's sovereignty is threatened, or a hostile military seeks to invade England, this army and navy will repel them.
Under such circumstances, the royal family will depart England to safety, and place a Lord Protector in charge of the military to restore order by the means at his disposal. As his first act, Parliament will be dissolved and England placed under martial law.
A martial law tribunal will be established to mete out judgment to those determined to have contributed to, or engaged in activities detrimental to the nation.
#2
Who will pay for that, Anonymoose? Armies are expensive, navies even more so. That's why governments with taxing ability have historically handled such things. Too, private armies are frowned upon nowadays.
Well, now that you mention it, that's how the big dust up started between King and Parliament leading to the English Civil War. Maybe James was right given how the Parlies have bulloxed it. :)
The United States has suspended visa services at consular offices in Pakistan following a bloody terror attack in the capital of the country, the State Department said Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2008
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
There goes the walkin' around $$$ courtesy of DoS.
#3
The United States has suspended visa services at consular offices in Pakistan following a bloody terror attack in the capital of the country, the State Department said Thursday.
About fuxking time!@
Cancel Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, ...... SHIT CANCEL EVERY ISLAMIC COUNTRY STARTING CLEAR BACK TO FORGOTTEN YESTER-YEARS OR SOONER.
WHY do "OUR" unelected immigration apparatchiks think our Beautiful nation is is immune to Damage, Treachery or plain EVIL??
I fear we lost some very good folks due to the "bloody terror attack".
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.
CAIRO, Sept. 27 -- A car carrying more than 400 pounds of explosives blew up in Syria's capital on Saturday, killing 17 people in at least the third deadly attack this year in the tightly policed Arab country.
Police in London say they have arrested three men under the Terrorism Act, according to the Associated Press. Police told AP they are questioning three men aged 22, 30 and 40. The men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
A Mulagoori tribe lashker foiled a Taliban bid to kidnap a prayer leader from a local mosque late on Friday. The lashker captured 11 Taliban after an exchange of fire. The tribesmen intercepted the Taliban taking prayer leader Omer Gul to the Khyber Sheikhwal area. Three Taliban were injured during the clash, and have been handed over to the political administration. The remaining eight Taliban are still being held by the lashker. The tribesmen said they would decide about the remaining Taliban's fate following consultations. One Taliban was killed in a brief clash outside the mosque as the prayer leader was hauled into a Taliban vehicle.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, describing the need for more troops in Afghanistan, said the United States has achieved "victory" in Iraq. 
Last week Ofer Dekel, the Israeli official charged with negotiating the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, visited Cairo to be briefed by Egyptian officials on their proposal for a prisoner exchange with Hamas. 
Global stock prices crumbled Friday and investor anxiety mounted as another big US bank collapsed and political wrangling blocked a deal to save the beleaguered US financial sector.
WASHINGTON -- Iran has significantly enhanced its gas centrifuge fleet, despite 
Russia and the United States have reached a deal to seek a new U.N. resolution on Iran, Britain's U.N. ambassador said Friday. Ambassador John Sawers spoke before heading into a high-level meeting at U.N. headquarters of nations concerned with events in Pakistan. 
(AKI) - President Asif Ali Zardari has strongly condemned the bomb blast that struck a train near Bahawalpur in eastern Pakistan on Friday. 
(Xinhua) -- A suicide attacker exploded himself near the vehicle of intelligent service members in eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing two intelligent agents and two civilians on Friday morning, said a police official. Abdul Qayum Baqizai, the provincial police chief told Xinua that it occurred at 10 a.m. (GMT 0530) in the Jaji Maidan district when a suicide bomber with explosive material strapped to his body exploded himself next to the vehicle of Afghan intelligent service member killing two agents and two civilian passers-by. "Seven more were injured in the blast including a former senior intelligence official named General Azizullah," Baqizai said. 
(AKI) - Police in the southern Italian province of Caserta on Friday arrested four alleged Mafia members suspected of the brutal murder of six African immigrants.
Turkish warplanes crossed the border into northern Iraqi airspace to bomb 16 Kurdish rebel sites, a spokesman for Turkey's military said Friday. There were no reports of any deaths in the air attacks, which occurred late Thursday night. 
Three would-be suicide bombers were killed along with a handcuffed hostage when one of the bombers blew himself up following a police raid on a house early on Friday, police said. They were believed to be members of terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. 
(AKI) - The terror suspects arrested by German police at Cologne airport on Friday were planning to go to Pakistan, a German daily has claimed.
Authorities in Morocco have shut down around 60 Quranic schools belonging to a Muslim cleric who argues that girls as young as nine can marry, officials said Thursday. 
Russia's navy has sent a warship to Somalia's coast to combat pirates and will mount regular anti-piracy patrols in the area, a navy spokesman told Russian state television on Friday. "In the future the Russian navy will send its ships on a regular basis to zones where there is a danger from maritime piracy," navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told the Vesti-24 television station. 
The descendants of Captain Hardy and Admiral Nelson are due to launch a series of projects to help fight the decline in the Royal Navy. This could include a "buy out" package for HMS Victory and commissioning experts to look into the sorry state of "Nelson's Navy".
