A NUDIST resort wants to bring back swingers and sex parties in a bid to boost sagging tourism figures, The Courier-Mail reports. The White Cockatoo resort in Mossman, near Port Douglas, north Queensland, is promoting an adults-only "anything goes" month of hedonism for March next year.
Owner of the White Cockatoo Tony Fox yesterday said it was time to lift a self-imposed swinger ban. "Tough economic times call for stiff measures," Mr Fox said. "We've taken the bull by the horns and it's going nuts; we're close to fully booked.
"It will be a hedonism resort, where anything goes for a month. We're not using the words sex or swingers, but it doesn't take rocket science to work out what it means."
Three years ago the controversial resort, once billed as the nation's top group-sex hotspot for swingers, hit the headlines when it closed its doors to partner-swapping. The ban followed a series of out-of-control sex parties and orgies where, in one case, police were called to evict six swingers after a free-for-all sex romp in a chalet.
In another, a naked husband-and-wife in their mid-50s upset others with a rowdy display of balcony sex before breakfast. Other guests complained of being propositioned for group sex by a stranger in her 30s.
Mr Fox said he had since imposed a strict set of rules for the ordinary nudist season.
Cairns Catholic Bishop James Foley warned: "It might only end up cheapening the whole resort operation for a short term gain. Anyone who goes to a hedonist's party goes at their own risk. You've got to wonder what sort of people go and why. Where is the moral code of behaviour and how do you stop jealousies and fights?"
But Cairns Regional Mayor Val Schier said she was not opposed to the "month of hedonism".
"People in tropical north Queensland are extraordinarily creative," Ms Schier said. "And if they can create a business opportunity that does not offend any neighbours or harm anybody that is fine. It is tough economic times and as long as it is with consenting adults, then there is no problem."
And local tourism chief Doug Ryan said: "As long as whatever they do stays within the law then good on them."
Gregg Easterbrook, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" He's commenting about the TV series Friday Night Lights, but I think the observation also goes a long way toward explaining the disdain of elites toward Sarah Palin.
A defect of much American fiction and filmmaking, often produced by people who live in tenured pleasantness in academia or luxury in Los Angeles, is to depict the rustic town as a dreadful place. Small towns are -- what's the word I am looking for -- small! There will always be a lot less happening on the Texas plain than in San Francisco, Manhattan or Cambridge. If people were not willing to live in rural small towns to farm, mine and maintain rail and power lines, luxurious life in Hollywood would pretty quickly fall to pieces. Plus, if you hate small-town life, you can always -- what's the word I am looking for -- leave. Some people live in little or rustic towns because they like them, an idea that almost never appears in American fiction or filmmaking.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008
17:19 ||
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I live in the big city because I have to, not because I want to. On the other hand, my kids threatened to kill me if I landed them in some "nature-infested place".
An American journalist was kidnapped by Taliban militants in the Afghan province of Logar, located 60 kilometres south of the capital Kabul.
David Rohde, a journalist working for the US daily The New York Times, was abducted along with his driver and interpreter by a Taliban group known as Siraj Haqqani and has been taken to eastern Afghanistan, sources told Adnkronos International Maybe those Taliban are NYT shareholders.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 20:08
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#15
LOL, AP! Or, of course, each and every proposed rescue had to be called off due to "media leaks"? Heh heh
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 20:20
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#16
Sorry, the money for the NYT reporter extraction birds was just spent on the General Motors bailouts. We'll see if we can get it into next years budget mark-up.
#17
I hear the Taliban are offering NATO cash to take him off their hands, but NATO has told them to piss off.
"Siraj Haqqani" ... those aren't "unnamed militants". Those are the people we have been hammering with Predator strikes in Pakistan for the past several weeks.
Sending Krugman and Dowd would be toxic warfare. Kind of like giving the Indians blankets infected with smallpox.
That's clearly snark of the week material.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2008 21:53
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Well, contrarian I may be, but I am sympathetic. I would not want even a NYT (gag) reporter to fall into the hands of these barbarous, illiterate, bloodthirsty, superstitious power-worshipers. And the reporter's driver and interpreter are probably dead men walking, or dead already. And I bet it was painful and slow.
May the reporter and his comrades return safe, and the rabid excuse for humans end up in the unmarked graves they so richly deserve.
#23
Well, contrarian I may be, but I am sympathetic... May the reporter and his comrades return safe, and the rabid excuse for humans end up in the unmarked graves they so richly deserve.
I'm not sympathetic to the reporter, consdering how many times his employer has jeopardized the safety of my troops. But I know if there's a chance these three can be rescued, it will be done.
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) _ Workers at a recycling plant found a man's body inside a 1,500-pound bale of paper, and investigators are trying to find out his identity and how he got there. Obviously a member of the press...
The body was found at Hamilton Manufacturing Inc. in Twin Falls, but investigators said the paper bale came from the Boise area, more than 100 miles northwest. Boise mob's version of sleep with the fishes?
"The employees were shocked," Twin Falls police Capt. Matt Hicks said. "This is about the last thing in the world they expected to find at their job." "Hey, Joe, there's a stiff in this bale."
"Sheesh, not again. Call the coroner."
Police Sgt. Abe Blount in Garden City, near Boise, said the male victim is likely in his 50s and was wearing clothing consistent with a homeless person. There's a uniform? I should think that anyone would look a little disheveled after being bundled up and shipped 100 miles. Oh, and being dead and all.
"We are fairly certain the bundle came from here, but the problem is (recycling center employees) pick up newspapers from a lot of different places all over," Blount said.
DNC voter registration booth?
The Ada County coroner's office in Boise scheduled an autopsy Wednesday. Coroner Erwin Sonnenberg said that due to the unknown factors of the case, investigators are treating it like a homicide and are preserving forensic evidence. They suspect it may be suspicious? What was the clue?
Police say they are checking missing person databases, and may use circulate a composite sketch to try to identify the man. "We will leave no page unturned."
"It is just kind of a mystery to everyone right now," said Rick Gillihan, general manager of Western Recycling, the company contracted to operate Boise recycling programs. It's one for the books.
Each day, the Boise center churns out dozens of the one-ton bales of recycled paper, collected from bins scattered around the county. It also receives large amounts of newspapers from commercial compactors. At last, a socially redeeming use for the New York Slimes (and possibly its staff).
#1
Dammit! I was all set to say it's prolly a NYT reporter but that last inline comment beat me to it;)
This might be how the NYT mafia gets rid of bodies. Course, personally I'd be more likely to believe them to be cannibals and just eat people they need to get rid of.
#3
Compa4re wid WORLD MIL FORUM > CHINA SHOULD EMBRACE THE NEW CHANGES IN THE USA [POTUS-elect Obama], BUT REMAIN VIGILANT, despite any DESIRE OR AMBITION FOR CHINA TO AMEND THE WORLD ORDER AFTER YEAR 2010 DUE TO THE US FINANCIAL CRISIS + CHINESE STRENGTH VEE CONTROL OF US FOREXES. In 12 Years = circa 2020, Ordinary Chinese may have or more extensive democratic rights-priveleges than experien in the present. IRONY > AS CHINA EVOLS, MODERNIZES AND IMPROVES, AND SEEMINGLY BECOMES MORE DEMOCRATIC IN THE WESTERN = NEAR-WESTERN MODEL, THE USA PER SE MAY DEVOLVE AND BECOME MORE COLD WAR, RED-CHINESE/COMMIE-STYLE SOCIALIST AND TOTALITARIANIST???
Sharia not looking so good today, doc?
CAIRO, Egypt Demonstrators in Cairo demanded Tuesday that Saudi Arabia release an Egyptian doctor sentenced to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes after he was convicted of malpractice reportedly after treating a Saudi princess. Oh-oooooh...
His wife said she feared the punishment would kill him. Insh'allah...
Raouf Amin el-Arabi, a doctor who has been serving the Saudi royal family for about 20 years, was convicted last year of giving a patient the wrong medication. Egyptian newspapers reported that he was accused of driving a Saudi princess "to addiction." The Saudi government has refrained from comment but Egyptian newspapers report that el-Arabi was treating a female member of the royal family when he was accused of "driving a patient to addiction." The newspapers identified the princess as one of the wives of Abdullah's nephews. Oh-oooooh...
He initially was sentenced to seven years in prison and 700 lashes, but when he appealed two months ago, the judge not only upheld the conviction, but more than doubled the penalty to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes. Ummmmm...how about a do over judgey?
Family members, friends and colleagues gathered at the headquarters of Egypt's doctors' union in downtown Cairo and urged Saudi King Abdullah to pardon el-Arabi. "My children want their father to return swiftly and safely," the doctor's wife Fathiya el-Hindawi told the Associated Press. "I hope the king will give them back their smiles." Awwwwwwwwwww...
She maintained her 53-year-old husband was innocent and feared he would die if given the full penalty. "1,500 lashes is unprecedented in the history of Islam," read one banners carried by protesters. "Who is responsible for the humiliation of our doctors abroad?" read another. Wow. A new Islamic record. Most lashes in the history of Islam. Will this get him in the Muslim Hall of Fame?
The case has drawn nationwide criticism in Egypt and local human rights groups have demanded that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who maintains close ties with the Saudi royal family, intervene to free el-Arabi.
Saudi Justice Ministry officials did not answer the phone on Tuesday to comment on the case. Spy phone's a great invention ain't it guys?
Egypt's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that diplomatic and political efforts are under way to resolve the problem, but warned that relations between the two countries should not be affected. "The ministry is very much concerned with this case," said Ahmed Rizq, a ministry official, in a statement. "However, the Saudi judicial and political system should be respected." As should Saudi money...
Egypt's state-owned Middle East News Agency later reported that Cairo's ambassador to Riyadh, Mahmoud Auf, met with the powerful mayor of Riyadh, Prince Salman, to discuss "the status of Egyptian expatriates in the kingdom." NO OIL FOR YOU!
El-Arabi is in a jail in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah and is believed to have received at least one of his weekly installments of 70 lashes so far. Okay, doc. Time for your lashes...
#1
Maybe we could learn from this appeals court: if'n a bad guy wants to 'appeal' his sentence using some stupid trumped up rationale, he should go 'double or nothing' against the (original) judge. bet it would cut the backlog in the courts way down when a few of these perps lose....
Civil-liberties groups were among those outraged that the White House sanctioned the use of harsh intelligence techniques -- which some consider torture -- by the Central Intelligence Agency, and expanded domestic spy powers. These groups are demanding quick action to reverse these policies.
Mr. Obama is being advised largely by a group of intelligence professionals, including some who have supported Republicans, and centrist former officials in the Clinton administration. They say he is likely to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists.
H/t Instapundit, who reports taht over at the Huffasnuffaluffagus Post, they've reprinted the WSJ article, but comments are "closed." Is that being done to prevent the moonbats regular readers from blaspheming The One expressing their outrage at Obama's apparent betrayal of disinterest in one of their pet causes?
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008
15:34 ||
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However, since "The One" is without Original Sin, he can not be criticised.
(Original Sin = loving America and wanting it to be successful)
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/11/2008 16:44
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It's not torture now. It's an in depth interview regarding minority religious viewpoints. Get with the program, guys.l
We also will not call it intelligence gathering/spying. It is mere data collection. Who could possibly be against that, when it's purpose is to add to the vast knowledge of The One?
#9
OTOH RUMORMILLNEWS > YOUTUBE > FOX BUSINESS + Guest Gerard Calente - US FACES GREATEST DEPRESSION EVER KNOWN, FOOD RIOTS, REVOLUTION [armed], STREET MARCHES. By Year 2012 the US may be a "Undeveloped" Country as infrastrucrure degrades and national development grinds to a halt due to seemingly everending, cascading US Financial-Econ Crises - FOOD INSTEAD OF GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS AS NATIONAL RETAIL DIES OFF - LOCAL FOOD MARKETS, INDEPENDENT VENDORS TO THRIVE???
BEIJING: China on Tuesday took a hard stand on the Arunachal Pradesh issue indicating it is not likely to change its stand for the sake of reaching a settlement over border demarcation.
The Chinese foreign ministry challenged a statement made by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee saying that Arunachal was an integral part of India.
"We deeply regret the Indian side's remarks that take no regard of the historical facts. China and India have never officially settled demarcation of borders, and China's stance on the eastern section of China-India borders is consistent and clear-cut," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a press conference on Tuesday.
Qin's statement is in direct contrast with the views of Indian officials including foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, who have maintained that the issue of Tawang, leave aside the whole of Arunachal Pradesh, is out of the range of border negotiations. The spokesman was replying to a question by the official Xinhua news agency seeking his reaction to Mukherjee's statement. This makes it different from a situation where an official spokesperson is responding to a query from a foreign journalist. It is one of the strongest statements to emanate from China on the issue since India raised objection to the former Chinese foreign minister India strongly protested against an oblique reference to it by former Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing at an international forum in early 2007.
With the Chinese government challenging Mukherjee's stance on Arunachal, it is apparent that years of effort at resolving the border problem has come under a cloud. Qin said both the present and past governments in China have never recognized the "illegal" McMahon Line, Qin said. The Indian side know this very well, he said.
At the same time, China is willing to find a solution that is fair, reasonable and acceptable to both sides with the help of peaceful and friendly negotiations conducted in a spirit of mutual understanding and adjustment, he said.
Mukherjee, who was visiting a 400-year old monastery in Tawang in Arunachal, said on Saturday that China was "fully aware" that the state is an integral part of India. China had earlier claimed Tawang on the plea that it is the birth place of the sixth Dalai Lama before changing its stance to demand the whole of Arunachal Pradesh.
"China is often making claims on Arunachal Pradesh, but Arunachal Pradesh has a special place in our heart," Mukherjee said.
"People of Arunachal Pradesh regularly elect two representatives to the Lok Sabha and there is an elected state assembly carrying out the responsibility of administration like any of other 27 states. The question of parting company of Arunachal or any of its part does not arise," he said.
The external affairs minister spoke nearly the same words as the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman when he said that both countries were keen to find a "fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable" solution to the boundary question.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008
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WORLD MIL FORUM [China/paraph = GOOGLE Chinglish translation] > TIBET DALAI LAMA SUPORTS INDIAN SOVEREIGNTY CLAIMS OVER TAWANG REGION; + CHINA BASES 10 DF-21's MISSLES NEAR SOUTHWEST TIBET-INDIA-MYANMAT BORDER. China is believed to have 50 DF-21's gross, wid remaining 40 targeted agz RUSSIA + JAPAN.
* INDIAN MILITARY CONFERENCE > indics that CHINA is DIGGING SERIOUS UNDERGROUND TUNNELS ALONGST TIBET "LINE OF DIRECT/ACTUAL CONTROL" VEE INDIA, to which Indian's mil favors India digging SIMILAR COUNTER-TUNNELS ALONGST SAME???
Also from WMF > US CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE > VIETNAM: CHINA IS THE FOOSTEPS OF OUR TERROR/DESPITE INCREASES IN MUTUAL TRADE AND PRESENCE OF LOCAL CHINESE TRADE GROUPS, MAJOR COUNTRIES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA REMAIN WARY OF CHINESE INFLUENCE AND INTENTIONS [Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, Singapore, etc.]. Prefer US/US-WESTERN CENTRIC STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP + COOPER???
HOUSTON (AP) - Retail gasoline prices dipped for a 17th week since July 4, falling below $2 a gallon in a number of states and approaching $1.50 at some service stations.
While consumers, worried about a weak job market and slumping investments, are grateful for the price relief, economic reports increasingly suggest they're hanging onto whatever savings they see at the pump.
Oil prices hit a 20-month low Tuesday as Wall Street offered yet more evidence that consumers have gone into hiding.
Retail gasoline prices fell overnight to a national average of $2.22 a gallon, dragged down by the falling price of crude, which now costs 60 percent less per barrel than it did in mid-July. The average price for regular unleaded gasoline has fallen nearly 32 percent in the last month.
Light, sweet crude for December delivery fell $3.01 to $59.40 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In earlier electronic trading, crude fell to $58.32, its lowest point since March 2007.
The latest decline in crude prices comes two days ahead of a report from the International Energy Agency, which some analysts expect will cut its 2009 oil demand forecast for the third consecutive month.
Sharp swings in crude prices are taking place almost daily on the New York trading floor. While the Nymex contract is now trading near first-half 2007 prices, the difference then between daily highs and lows was around $1.50 a barrel. Now, the average daily range is around $5.50 a barrel, with recent daily peaks at $9.50, said analyst Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix in Switzerland.
The overall trend for oil and gasoline prices, at least for now, is down. Investors have grown increasingly leery about the swooning U.S. economy, which faces its worst recession in decades.
Industry analysts had expected China and India to continue buying crude if the U.S. and other western nations went into recession, but the booming economies of Asia have begun to show signs of fatigue. Some forecasts had called for China's gross domestic product to grow 10 percent next year. More recent forecasts have it closer to 6 percent, the firm Cameron Hanover said in a report Tuesday.
A $586 billion stimulus package in China boosted markets globally early Monday, but those gains fizzled quickly and a sell-off that began in the U.S. continued in Asia and Europe.
On Tuesday, the Dow sank more than 250 points after homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. and Starbucks Corp. gave investors more evidence the housing market and consumer spending are getting weaker. Toll Brothers said fourth-quarter revenue fell 41 percent from the year-ago period, while Starbucks reported lower sales across the coffee chain, leading to profits that fell below analysts' expectations.
Gasoline fell again overnight, dipping 2 cents to a national average of $2.22 for a gallon of regular unleaded, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. The average price could be headed to $2 a gallon nationally by year's end, AAA has said.
The price already has fallen well below $2 in some places. In Missouri, the Web site GasBuddy.com, where consumers post prices they spot, said a few stations in the Kansas City area were charging $1.61 for regular. Drivers were paying only slightly higher in parts of Oklahoma, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.
Oil prices fell despite signs that OPEC members are going ahead with production cuts agreed to at an emergency meeting in Vienna, Austria, last month. Many analysts are expecting another cut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which will meet on Dec. 17 in Oran, Algeria.
The prime minister of Qatar said Tuesday that "fair" oil prices of between $70 to $90 per barrel would ensure that expensive oil exploration could continue, avoiding rapid price surges in the future.
Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani said that while oil prices below $70 a barrel may seem like a gift to consumers, it could trigger price spikes in the near future when demand picks up. But for now it is waning energy demand, not the supply controlled by OPEC, that is dominating crude prices.
Events that earlier this year threatened to cut off supply in oil producing nations no longer appear to have the power to send prices upward. Prices this week fell even as militants in Nigeria resumed attacks on the country's oil installations. The military said it killed eight people while guarding a facility in the oil-rich south of the country.
Militants frequently attack oil facilities, seeking to hobble Africa's biggest petroleum industry and force Nigeria's federal government to send more oil funds to the southern states where the crude is pumped.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures fell 7.56 cents to $1.93 a gallon, while gasoline prices dropped 5.89 cents to $1.309 a gallon. Natural gas for December delivery tumbled 53.4 cents to $6.71 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, December Brent crude tumbled more than percent, or $3.30 to $55.78 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
#1
Hanging onto the savings from the pump... to pay off debt, hopefully.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
11/11/2008 15:36
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prime minister of Qatar said Tuesday that "fair" oil prices of between $70 to $90 per barrel would ensure that expensive oil exploration could continue, avoiding rapid price surges in the future.
#3
Well, there's your GM bailout. With gas prices under $2 a gallon, people should be back to buying real cars again ... and feeling pretty stupid for buying that silly little "smart" car.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exclusive ski and golf community Yellowstone Club, in Montana, has filed for bankruptcy protection, a sign that the financial crisis roiling the real estate and leisure industries is not limited to the low end of the market.
The club, in the pristine mountain area around Big Sky, Montana, not far from Yellowstone National Park, is part resort and part residential community for the super-rich.
It advertises housing lots on the sides of its ski slopes and golf course at prices ranging from $2 million to more than $6 million.
In a filing made in federal bankruptcy court in Montana on Monday, Yellowstone Mountain Club LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing assets and liabilities in the range of $100 million to $500 million.
The filing was signed by owner and developer Edra Blixseth, who started the business in 2000 along with former husband Tim Blixseth.
The company, which plans to carry on doing business, asked for an expedited hearing so it can secure financing.
#4
she should've not given an interview to MSNBC the same as she would to the DNC. Same thing. They long ago lost their objectivity license, and are in FEC-contribution-limits territory. Plus, they suck donkey balls as a network
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 19:50
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#5
OMG!
"one thing you didn't mention in that laundry list was that you didn't talk about the strength of Senator Obama, I mean it turned out that he was a remarkable candidate in these times"
WELL DUH! There's a reason she didn't say those things
(the strength of BO and a remarkable candidate? says who, you? Certainly not me assH***)
He sure had an agenda, I lost count of how many times he interupted her, good on Palin for putting up with his crap.
Posted by: Jan ||
11/11/2008 20:34
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#6
The reporter hates her and is still on the "discredit conservativism through Sarah Palin by trying to make her look at stupid as possible while being intolerably condescending toward her" routine.
#7
Continually interuppting whenever it appeared the answer was not going his way? I agree w/ Jan, while not a hit piece it certainly is not a 'fair' piece.
We did indeed screw the pooch by not electing her...
Kurt Volker, the US ambassador to NATO, on Tuesday suggested Germany could use a Boeing military transport plane to solve its heavy lift needs instead of the troubled A400M programme.
"The American C-17 programme is open to all nations," Volker said in Berlin, referring to Boeing's Globemaster cargo aircraft.
European aviation company EADS in September was forced to postpone the maiden flight for the A400M indefinitely due to technical problems. The C-17 can carry double the load than the A400M, but it also costs twice as much as the European plane.
However, Volker said "a rather creative way" for Berlin to finance the craft would be for Germany to opt to lease the Boeing planes instead of purchasing them outright.
The German military currently is taking part in the NATO programme SALIS (Strategic Air Lift Interim Solution) until the A400M is ready for takeoff. SALIS has two Russian-made Antonov AN 124-100 cargo planes stationed at an airstrip near Leipzig that are ready for use within 72 hours for any of the countries participating in the programme.
#1
What ever happened to the C-5's? I lived near Travis Air Force Base when I was a kid and remember going on a school field trip to see one. It looked like a cavern inside the fuselage. They were driving trucks up in it like they were matchbox cars. Probably takes a pretty serious runway to land one though, don't know how many 3rd world dumpholes could manage one.
#2
C-5 old,big. In the end i bet US will use A-400 (it already use tiny italian C-27 which eventually will be the next Gunship) and Euros the C-17. It is the only thing that makes sense. C-130 is too old concept and not big enough for armored vehicles in 20-30t range that will make the bulk of future armies.
since it is a basis for the Northrop Grumman EADS USAF tanker proposal, the ideas of commonality will play heavy on the USAF. and you know globalbambi will practically give EADS the deal. BCAC and BMAC are phuqued for the next 4 years.
#6
The A-400M is a larger scale C-130, it is not the basis for the new tanker that Northrup/EADs proposed that particular tanker was derived from an A-330-200 variant. As far as the A400M goes, on paper and in theory its a sound plane. Getting from paper to actual manufacture and finally flying is the problem, nonetheless for many needs the C-17 actually exceeds greatly the capability of any A-400M and is in service already which makes it an attractive offer.
#7
Thank you Valentine for the correction; I don't know what i was thinking, yes the A-330 is the eads tanker bird. (i really knew that, but has a stupid attack.)
A behind-the-scenes battle to take the reins of the Republican National Committee is taking off between former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.
Neither man will acknowledge his interest in the post, but Republicans close to each are burning up the phone lines and firing off e-mails to fellow party members in an effort to oust RNC Chairman Mike Duncan in the wake of the second consecutive drubbing of Republican candidates at the polls.
A bevy of backers for each man, neither of whom is an RNC member, say the committee needs a leader who can formulate a counter-agenda to President-elect Barack Obama's administration and articulate it on the national stage.
"The Republican National Committee has to ask itself if it wants someone who has successfully led a revolution," Randy Evans, Gingrich confidant and personal attorney based in Atlanta, told The Washington Times on Monday. "If it does, Newt's the one."
Former California Republican Party Chairman Shawn Steel told The Times that Mr. Steele, chairman of GOPAC, a national organization once headed by Mr. Gingrich, "wants to be Republican national chairman."
#1
From what little I know of Steele I'd like to see him advance BUT I also like Gingrich and would like to see the two of them working together, each one concentrating on their strength.
#3
Gingrich successfully led a revolution in 1994. After he was drummed out of the House on trumped up charges the Trunks pissed away all his gains.
He is not electable but he sure is a great strategist and could draw some decent candidates into the mix. The Trunks need new blood, not a bunch of hacks claiming to carry the Reagan mantle.
#6
GBUSMC has it right. Gingrich isn't highly electable but is a smart guy. He should get the nod, and Steele, who is way more electable, should run for something.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/11/2008 17:36
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#7
Well, he's an incredibly bad alt. history writer...
#8
Steele would be better, with Newt a hired gun/strategist. He's toxic as a figurehead, but an incredibly smart strategy/history/platform guy. He's just not likeable for personal history/ name his parents gave him/media perception reasons
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 20:01
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#9
Funny, I sent the GOP an email 2 days after the election suggesting that Newt take over. Doubt it got to anyone, but its obvious I wasn't the only one thinking it.
Hadn't thought about Steele. I had always thought of him as an in front of the camera guy, not a backroom guy.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/11/2008 20:04
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#10
What do you guys think?
Steele. So he can tell the Blacks they need to Cowboy up and get off the gubbmint tit! Newt as a hired gun and adviser.
Minnesota is becoming to 2008 politics what Florida was in 2000 or Washington State in 2004 -- a real mess. The outcome will determine whether Democrats get 58 members of the U.S. Senate, giving them an effective filibuster-proof vote on many issues.
When voters woke up on Wednesday morning after the election, Senator Norm Coleman led Al Franken by what seemed like a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 221 -- a total change over 4 days of 504 votes.
Amazingly, this all has occurred even though there hasn't even yet been a recount. Just local election officials correcting claimed typos in how the numbers were reported. Counties will certify their results today, and their final results will be sent to the secretary of state by Friday. The actual recount won't even start until November 19.
Correcting these typos was claimed to add 435 votes to Franken and take 69 votes from Coleman. Corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate. The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state House races.
Virtually all of Franken's new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior -- a heavily Democratic precinct where Obama received 64 percent of the vote. None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct.
To put this change in perspective, that single precinct's corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.
The two other precincts (Mountain Iron in St. Louis county and Partridge Township in Pine county) accounted for another 100 votes each. The change in each precinct was half as large as the pickup for Obama from the corrections for the entire state.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed these types of mistakes to "exhausted county officials," and that indeed might be true, but the sizes of the errors in these three precincts are surprisingly large.
Indeed, the 504 total new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482). It was also true that precincts that gave Obama a larger percentage of the vote were statistically more likely to make a correction that helped Franken.
The recent Washington State 2006 gubernatorial recount is probably most famous for the discovery of ballots in heavily Democratic areas that had somehow missed being counted the first and even second time around. Minnesota is already copying that, though thus far on a much smaller scale, with 32 absentee ballots being discovered in Democratic Hennepin County after all the votes had already been counted. When those votes are added in, they seemed destined to cut Coleman's lead further.
Indeed, it is probably through the discovery of new votes that Franken has his best shot of picking up new votes. Despite the press pushing a possible replay of election judges divining voters' intentions by looking at "hanging chads" to see if voters meant to punch a hole, that shouldn't be an issue in Minnesota. The reason is simple: optical scan vote counting machines return ballots to voters if no vote is recorded for a contested race.
The Associated Press piece with the title "Most Minn. Senate 'undervotes' are from Obama turf" misinformed readers about what undervotes really imply. The Minneapolis Star Tribune headline similarly claimed "An analysis of ballots that had a vote for president but no vote for U.S. senator could have recount implications."
Voters themselves insert their ballot into the machine that reads and records their votes, and if the machine finds that a vote isn't recorded, voters can either mark the race that they forgot to mark or didn't mark clearly. Or if voters "overvoted" and accidentally marked too many candidates, voters can also get a fresh ballot. There should be no role to divine voters' intentions. If a voter wanted a vote recorded for a particular race, the machine tells him whether his vote in all the races was counted.
But voters also have the right not to vote in particular races. In this election, 0.4 percent of Minnesotans didn't want to vote for president. The number for the Senate race was only slightly higher at 0.8 percent. For congressional and state House races, the rates were 3 and 3.5 percent.
This pattern of fewer people voting in less important elections has been observed as long as people have studied elections. There are always at least a few people who don't vote for even the most closely contested races at the top of the ballot and fewer people follow and vote for races the farther down the ballot that you go. But this is not evidence of mistakes, quite the contrary.
With ACORN filing more than 43,000 registration forms this year, 75 percent of all new registrations in the state, Minnesota was facing vote fraud problems even before the election. Even a small percentage of those registrations resulting in fraudulent votes could tip this election.
To many, it just seems like too much of a coincidence that Minnesota's one tight race just happens to be the race with the most "corrected" votes by far. But the real travesty will be to start letting election officials divine voter's intent. If you want to discourage people from voting, election fraud is one sure way of doing it.
#3
exactly. There has to be costs for tampering with the election process. Hard time for the bastards that steal votes paid for with blood, sweat and tears. I'm all or ID checks at vote booths, pen-time for those tampering with votes, disenfranchising honest Americans. Perhaps RICO act violations for campaigns and pen-time for the ACORN assholes as well.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 19:14
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#4
Take them out and shoot them - or at least give them some serious hard time (10+ years hard labor). I am sick and tired of having our election process compromised over and over and having them get away with it.
The punishment behind a law tells people how important you think it is. Letting these people get off scott free is just eroding our election process because we, in fact, do not give a damn about the integrity of the process.
People have sacrificed their lives so that we can have a free society and allowing these creatins to compromise that makes their sacrifice cheap. We shouldn't stand for it as a nation.
#5
One or two corrupt officials end up in a ditch and the rest learn the lesson. This would be atrocious obviously, an act of murder. But I fear that is the way things are headed if the people decide they can no longer trust the law to be enforced.
Oil prices sank under 55 dollars a barrel on Tuesday to strike a 21-month low as frresh recession worries sparked fresh fears about slowing global energy demand, traders said.
On London's InterContinental Exchange (ICE), Brent North Sea crude for delivery in December plunged 4.16 dollars to 54.92 dollars per barrel -- a level last seen on Janury 30, 2007.
At the same time, on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), light sweet crude for December tumbled 4.09 dollars to 58.32 dollars, the lowest level since March 21, 2007.
"The short-term focus continues to be on weak demand," Barclays Capital analysts wrote in a research note to clients.
Oil prices extended earlier losses on Tuesday after Wall Street skidded lower in opening trade, with investor sentiment unsettled by fears about a collapse of General Motors and more poor corporate news amid the credit crisis.
The market was also undermined by the strengthening dollar which tends to dampen oil demand because dollar-priced crude becomes more expensive for buyers holding weaker currencies.
#6
"I'm wondering where the bottom is. That the price is still falling says the recession will get significantly worse."
How do you figure? That the price is falling on "fears of declining demand" is something the news made up. The major reason the price is falling in dollars is because the dollar is rising to record levels against other currencies. When the dollar rises, the price of oil in dollars falls.
The price of oil is climbing for people in Europe, not falling.
Markets don't so much change prices on what might happen as they change prices according to what IS happening. For example, the large financial houses had bought huge amounts of oil. Lehman Brothers bought an entire oil tank farm. All that oil is being sold off at fire sale prices, dumped onto the market.
Gold traded at around $875 an ounce on 10/1, it is trading now at about $735 an ounce for the same reason ... a much stronger dollar.
Don't believe the crap you hear on the news. The nincompoop reading that stuff knows less about markets than your dog does.
#7
IIRC, Iran needs 90/bbl to break even, Saudis 47/bbl to break even, Chavez needs 80/bbl to break even. Saudis and a few others are prepared with enough reserves to weather the dip. The rest are cash flow morons.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 21:58
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#8
Uh, no. Saudi Arabia can make money on $10 oil. Their production cost of oil was about $2 a barrel in August.
Last year oil minister Ali Al-Naimi told reporters that the average barrel of Saudi oil costs just $2 to produce. It sells for $130.
Since the world seems to lack refining capacity, Saudi has been building huge refineries and will be shipping more finished product in the form of fuels, lubricants, and plastics in the future. That will increase their margin even more.
A SUICIDE bomber blew himself up at a packed sports stadium in northwestern Peshawar city today, killing two people and wounding five others, police said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, but several other attacks in past months have been blamed on pro-Taliban militants with links to al-Qaeda.
The bombing took place at the closing ceremony of a sports event attended by senior government officials including the provincial governor, police said.
"We have received two dead bodies and five injured people," police official, Khan Abbas, said at Peshawar's main Lady Readings Hospital.
"The bomber was stopped by the police and when he failed to enter the stadium he blew himself up at the gate," provincial police chief Malik Naveed said. "We had some intelligence and took precautionary measures, that's why he could not enter the stadium," he said.
He said it was difficult to say who was behind the bombing, but that it "could be linked to the unrest in the tribal areas" bordering Afghanistan.
Brilliant, chief, brilliant ...
The attack took place after a ceremony marking the end of the week-long national games, local administration chief Sahabzada Anis said. Up to 30,000 people including hundreds of sportsmen from across the country had taken part in the games, he said.
Most of the spectators had left but several ministers and senior officials were on their way out of the venue when the bomber blew himself up.
"Provincial Governor Owais Ghani had left the stadium moments ago," police officer Pervez Khan said, adding that at least six vehicles parked outside the gate were also damaged.
#5
As President, he has to make decisions. Not his thing. (If the White House has more than 1 bathroom, Obama's pants may be in for frequent laundering.)
As soon as he does, his adoring and raptured fans will be brought back to earth. Some of them may never vote again.
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
11/11/2008 18:05
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#6
Never forget the faith of marxists.
If socialism isn't working, then try more socialism.
#8
He'll be unavailable for vetoes/vote proposals beyond "present/pocket veto" in Feb 2010 due to "being on the campaign trail", given his history. Should lead to cost reductions in the archives section, tho'
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 19:30
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#9
Well, we know he's at least thinking about 10 years. We heard him say as much.
#11
It was the liberal's certainty that W was a one termer, snapping after the realization of his post-sept 11 popularity, that led to the Bush Derangement Syndrom.
I believe it is likely he'll be a one termer but I wouldnt count on it.
Here is remarkable raw footage of combat over and across the French and German countryside during World War II following the D-Day Invasion in June 1944. The film was shot by Albert Fagler who lived through those days as an Army Combat Photographer.
The film was found by his grandchildren in the basement of his home in Colorado following his recent death. The film is silent but dramatic as it shows a taste of what those brave Americans experienced to preserve freedom for our nation, and give freedom to millions in Europe. Air combat footage begins at about 10:00
Tony Dow, best known as the actor who portrayed The Beav's big brother, Wally, in the '50s TV series "Leave It to Beaver," will have one of his abstract sculptures on display at the Louvre. Several sculptors from the Karen Lynne Gallery including Dow will have their works shown at the historic art museum in Paris as part of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition.
"Having something shown at the Louvre is about as good as you can get," said Dow, who lives in Los Angeles, "especially when it's a juried show like this where there's a panel of judges who pick the pieces to be in the exhibition. I'm a little humbled by the whole thing but grateful nonetheless."
Dow, who has also worked as a director and visual effects producer on several TV shows, has been painting and sculpting since he was a teenager. The 63-year-old artist's sculpture that will be shown at the Louvre from Dec. 11 to Dec. 14 is titled "Unarmed Warrior," and is a bronze figure of a woman holding a shield.
"Of course, I'm really proud of 'Leave It to Beaver' and my directing career in television," said Dow. "Those are great accomplishments. I'm really proud of them, but this is interesting because I don't think they know anything about that at the Louvre."
#3
Whoa, this artic got me wondering now about DOBIE GILLIS and many other TV Teens from the late 1950's thru late 1960's, + HIGH CHAPARRAL, BIG VALLEY, LANCER, MEDICAL CENTER, THIS IS "THE THE FBI", CHIPS, ETC.
D *** NG IT, its "a Quinn Martin Production" "starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.???
#3
In any event, we here at Climate Audit are always eager to assist NASA. On earlier occasions, we helped identify the lost city of Wellington, New Zealand, where NASA has been unable to locate climate records for nearly 30 years
Heh.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
11/11/2008 15:44
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#6
The climate is in a cooling trend, which puts the heat on warmists like NASA. They were probably so excited about the October results they posted them immediately to shut the deniers up.
#9
It wasn't NASA's fault that the data were wrong. It is NASA's fault, though, that they didn't catch such a glaring anomaly and look into it before they published their graph showing this October to be the hottest month in eleventy billion years.
The data are provided by NOAA. NOAA's raw data files are good, they don't have any errors in the daily temperatures. The data are then fed into a program that calculates a monthly mean for each station. Somehow during that process, some stations retained their September values for October. NOAA didn't catch it, I am guessing because they hadn't tried to use that data for anything yet.
Hansen, over at NASA, grabbed that bad data and fed it into his temperature adjuster. Out popped "unprecedented" October warming and he ran with it posting the graphics and the data on the website (with a measure of glee, probably).
It isn't just Russian temperatures that this happened to. Some areas of Eastern Europe and Ireland also saw September values where there should have been October values.
What is surprising is that he wouldn't have said to himself "hmm, something must be wrong here". Since the data validated his belief that we are going to burn ourselves up with CO2 (notwithstanding the fact that there hasn't been any recorded warming in 10 years) they published it.
They have since taken the data off the site but the graphics remain. It will be interesting to see how many newspapers carry the story of how hot October was.
#10
REDDIT > NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC = THE END OF NIGHT?; versus BIBLE's "END OF DAYS" + FATIMA'S
"DANCE/MIRACLE OF THE SUN" [Earth knocked out of normal orbit away from Sun]???
#1
Political Correctness kills, you could find the eye hair and skin colour, rough height, build and relatedness from the DNA very quickly.
The Germans are idiots. The danger is in profiling EVERYONE (like the idiotically dangerous Brownistan regime is planning), not in profiling single criminal suspects.
#2
HMMMMM > Ukrainian BOND GIRL declared traitor, POSH SPICE, CHINESE BABE also declared traitor for accepting Singaporean citizenship, now GERMAN "NO-FACE" KILLER BABE.
Plus, MAN EATEN BY LIONS on Net Video.
YEP, EVERYTHING's AND NOSTRADAMUS' IN ORDER, MULDOON!
THE United Nations food aid agency has cut the amount of food it hands out to hungry Zimbabweans as it lacks the cash to keep up with the worsening crisis, it said on Tuesday.
The World Food Programme (WFP) fed 2 million people in October, the first month of a large-scale aid project. That will double this month and rise to 5.1 million - almost half the population - by early 2009.
"There is currently no food in the pipeline for distributions in January and February - just when the crisis is reaching its peak," the agency said in a statement in which it called for $140 million in additional funds to secure its Zimbabwe operations until the end of March.
A harvest the WFP described as "disastrous" has pushed millions of people into hunger. WFP said it had cut cereal rations per person to 10kg per month from 12kg and cut the pulse ration to 1kg from 1.8kg.
Zimbabwe has been grappling with food shortages since 2001. Opponents of President Robert Mugabe say his policy of forcing white farmers off their land has exacerbated the problem in a country where hyper-inflation has crippled the economy.
#3
TU, Farmin B. Hard would do well if he were allowed to actually FARM, but Mugabe doesn't want any white to actually succeed in his country. Too bad there's going to be an epidemic or three over the next several months as his people begin to starve, all due to Bob's actions. Unfortunately, Zim-bob-we hasn't hit bottom yet, but they're not far off.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 15:33
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Venezuela's increasingly bellicose President Hugo Chavez warned that he may put tanks on the streets if a former television star running for his Socialist Party loses a state election this month.
Chavez is expected to lose control of some key states and cities in the November 23 nationwide elections for governors and mayors. In Carabobo, where a Chavez loyalist and former late-night talk show host risks losing the governorship, Chavez told party activists he might use the tanks to "defend the people."
"If you let the oligarchy return to government then maybe I'll end up sending the tanks of the armoured brigade out to defend the revolutionary government," he said late on Saturday.
In recent weeks the former tank officer also has threatened to jail the country's top opposition leader, Manuel Rosales, whom he accuses of corruption and of plotting to kill him. Chavez frequently uses polarizing rhetoric as a campaign tactic to mobilise party activists to vote, but rarely carries through on his threats.
On October 9, 1918, an HMV sound engineer named Will Gaisberg set up a primitive piece of recording equipment immediately behind a unit of the Royal Garrison Artillery stationed outside Lille and recorded a British gas-shell bombardment. His purpose in doing so was to preserve the sounds of war before the coming armistice caused them to vanish forever from the face of the earth.
According to HMV's catalogue, the recording, which was commercially released, consisted of
the actual reproduction of the screaming and whistling of the shells previous to the entry of the British troops into Lille. It is not an imitation but was recorded on the battlefront. The report of the guns and the whistling of the shells is the actual sound of the Royal Garrison Artillery in action on October 9th, 1918. No book or picture can ever visualise the reality of modern warfare just the way this record has done...it would require only the slightest imagination for one, by means of this record, to be projected into the past, and feel that he is really present on the battlefield witnessing this historic chapter of the war.
You can listen to the two-minute-long recording by going here, and it can also be downloaded from iTunes by searching for "Gas Shells Bombardment." . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008
10:50 ||
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#1
I'll pass. I prefer to listen to the battery fire from our battleships Iowa, Missouri, and New Jersey. That sends a tingle down my leg. Unlike Chrissy Mathews, who wets himself every time Obambi opens his loud mouth.
#1
They're comfortable with ceding power to the Judiciary on a regular basis, so why not? Just watch them go moonbat again when someone else gets their hands on more power they allow to be concentrated in such an Executive.
Military advisers to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama favor taking a regional approach to the war in Afghanistan, including engaging Iran, sources say.
Obama's advisers, in a sharp break with the policies of President George Bush, advocate dropping ideological barriers to talking to Iran about Afghanistan, which neither country wants to see controlled by the Sunni Arab extremists of the Taliban, unnamed transition team officials told The Washington Post.
And in an idea advocated by many of the United States' NATO allies, Obama's military aides also reportedly look favorably on opening a dialogue with "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban.
The Post's sources also indicated Obama is planning on increasing troop levels in Afghanistan even as he puts a renewed emphasis on targeting al-Qaida both there and in the neighboring tribal areas of Pakistan.
The newspaper said Obama's Afghanistan approach would mark a sharp contrast to the Bush administration by dropping its "unrealistic commitment" of building a modern democracy around the President Hamid Karzai and focus instead on maintaining stability.
NATO allies also seem more likely to be willing to put troops into combat under an Obama administration, sources told the Post.
#5
Afghanistan is a waste of our men, our money and our equipment. There is no way that this is a sustainable operation, given that we have to resupply through enemy-held Pakistan.
The society is far removed from anything we would consider modern. The geography inhibits the development of a national conciousness, but instead maintains the local tribal focus.
Our Europena allies are going to be little help, with the exception of a few. They don't want to waste their resources on this country either.
Sadly, Afghanistan itself may be worth saving. The tribal belt of Pakistan, not so much. But it is that tribal belt that is the most significant impediment to our success in A-stan.
If we need to negotiate with the Talib, so be it. Likewise with the Iranians. Lets leave with the very clear message that if anyone decides to attempt to extend their influence beyond the dirt hole in which they live, then we will come back with aircraft only...lots of them.
#6
Looks like OBambi has fallen for his own rhetoric. He's in for a very rude awakening. I curse those members of the military that support such a surrender as Obambi advocates.
As for NATO, I think it's time to leave, and this just strengthens those views. If the other members of NATO cannot accept working with our president just because he's a conservative, there's no reason for our continued involvement. This needs to be #1 on the conservative agenda for the future, with leaving the UN (and the UN leaving NY City) #2.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 14:11
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#7
The purpose for being in Afghanistan is to limit the expansion / influence of Iran and Pakistan.
Obama's surrendering to Iran on both the Iraq & Afghan fronts. That will cost use big time in the future.
#8
"This needs to be #1 on the conservative agenda for the future, with leaving the UN (and the UN leaving NY City) #2."
I can't agree with that, OP.
Kicking out, and getting out of, the UN is definitely #1.
"NATO allies also seem more likely to be willing to put troops into combat under an Obama administration"
What troops? What combat? We don't have any combat that stops as 5 pm on weekdays and takes weekends and holidays off. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/11/2008 14:49
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#9
lotp, limit the expansion of Iran and Pakistan??? Iran's Shia government would have only limited influence inside Afghanistan. As soon as they stepped in, they would be stepping in muck up to their necks (and they wouldn't have those necks for too long).
As for Pakistan, they can't even extend control over their own territory. Sure, the ISI will re-install some puppet Taliban government next door, but wouldn't that just further weaken Islamabad's already non-existent/tenuous grasp on the tribal belt? Things have changed a whole lot in the last 10 years, and not to the good for Islamabad.
And I think the Paks would know only too well that if Al Q set up shop in Afghanistan again and created a narco terror state there, we would glass the place should they ever hit us again. Probably hit the tribal areas too. Neither would be good for the Paks.
#10
"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate."
George W. Bush, Statement To Joint Session Of Congress September 20th 2001
Surrender in Afghanistan, and that's what Obama is doing if that report is correct, will set a dangerous precedent:
An attack on the continental US is not a deadly mistake but a winning move. American threats are just words.
The next 4 years will be interesting indeed.
As for combat troops from allies:
I'm a German living in Germany. Merkel is spending considerable political capital merely maintaining the token Bundeswehr presence. A large majority of Germans (left, right and centrist) is against any form of engagement.
I predict a substantial, perhaps total withdrawal of these forces before the German elections in September 09. Combat troops from Germany is something that just won't happen.
#13
We can do what we need to do in Afghanistan and the tribal belt using airpower and a whole lot of iron bombs. That will make the point rather eloquently. Using ground troops there is a waste.
#15
What is the real issue of Afghanistan? We went in there to destroy and deny a base to Al Q. The taliban and a whole bunch of tribes got big money to host Binny and his Merry Men. Now they are doing the same thing in the frontier provinces. In the meantime, Pakistan is trying to find its schitzophrentic way. Basically we want to deny the enemy a base. The only reason that we are playing footsie with the Paks is for Afghanistan logistics and to keep Pak nukes from falling into the wrong hands.
I see nation building a great thing on a local basis, but nationally, this is a tribal society, based on alliances, kinship, you know Anthropology 101. We have not the resources for nation building. We are fighting our wars on borrowed money from our adversaries.
So the issue boils down to denying the enemy a base and Pak nukes. That means that achieve those goals is the one to go for.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 21:49
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#16
"Afghanistan is a waste of our men, our money and our equipment. There is no way that this is a sustainable operation, given that we have to resupply through enemy-held Pakistan."
Just hours after President Bush and President-elect Obama met in the Oval Office of the White House, details of their confidential conversation began leaking out to the press, igniting anger from the president, sources claim.
"Senator Obama would be wise to keep close counsel," a top Bush source warned.
"BUSH AND OBAMA AT ODDS OVER AID FOR AUTO INDUSTRY," splashed the NEW YORK TIMES in an exclusive Monday evening, quoting "people familiar with the discussion."
The two met at the White House in private, without staff.
"Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Obama and congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia," claimed the TIMES.
The ASSOCIATED PRESS quickly followed with details of the conversation, citing "aides who described the discussion on grounds of anonymity, citing the private nature of the meeting."
Bush advisers view the leaks as an effort to undermine the president's remaining days in office. "Senator Obama may not be familiar with a long-standing tradition of presidents holding their private conversations, private," a senior adviser explained to the DRUDGE REPORT. Beautiful!
#3
The ASSOCIATED PRESS quickly followed with details of the conversation, citing "aides who described the discussion on grounds of anonymity, citing the private nature of the meeting."
I love granting anonymity because they were disclosing confidential stuff.
I also wonder if Obama was on board with the leaks or if he was surprised.
#4
Obama knows to whom he confided, revealing the source of the leak to the NYT's. If he had any integrity, they would be ex-aides, ending this before it starts after inauguration. Since he doesn't, maybe the Bush Administration should make good use of the Patriot Act to protect us from these treasonous idiots while they can.
#5
When you guys gonna get your heads around what kind of man Bammo is? He will do whatever he damn well pleases and ruthlessly prosecute those who aren't in lock step. If he wants to leak, he'll leak. If you try to leak on him, you'll do hard time or worse.
I predict the left will suddenly get really enthusiastic about punishing "treason."
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 17:08
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#11
Again, "W" would have been smart to not have anything to do with the SOB.
Proving YET again, that Conservatives cannot be nice to these parasites. We need an end to bipartisanship, and we need to jettison some of our high ideals and fatal desire for fairness.
ALL is fair in Love and War! When will the Repubs wake up and realize this is war? [/rhetorical]
Armed Bedouin attacked a security checkpoint Tuesday in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and seized 11 policemen in a restive area near the border with Israel, an Egyptian security official said.
The Bedouin tribesmen were angered by a police shooting a day earlier that killed a suspected Bedouin smuggler in the area. Smugglers use the border area to send weapons, drugs and other items into the Gaza Strip, often through underground tunnels. Traffickers also ferry African migrants seeking to enter Israel.
The Bedouin tribesmen raided a security checkpoint Tuesday and dragged the 10 policemen and a senior officer into getaway cars in a town six miles (10 kilometers) from the Israeli border, the security official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media.
In the incident a day earlier, police were chasing two Bedouin smugglers in a car and shot and killed one of them, he said. The other man was injured. Tribesman Moussa Abu Freh said Bedouin had taken over several other checkpoints near the Egyptian-Israel border.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008
10:32 ||
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#1
CAIRO (AFP)--Bedouin tribesmen released 25 Egyptian policemen whom they kidnapped Tuesday in the northern Sinai in protest at the killing of one of their number, a security official said. "The Bedouin freed them in a mountainous area near the Israeli border," the official said.
The release came several hours after the police were seized by armed Bedouin in protest at the killing of an alleged drug smuggler in a police shootout.
The map tells a war story of its own. Sketched by a Taleban commander, it is of a stretch of territory fought over in Bajaur between the Pakistani Army and the insurgents. The ground has been neatly divided into specific areas of responsibility for different Taleban units.
Weapons caches, assembly areas and rendezvous points have been carefully marked and coded. This is not the work of a renegade gunman resistant to central authority; it is the assessment of a skilled and experienced fighter, and begins to explain how more than 400 Pakistani soldiers have been killed or wounded since August in Bajaur, the tribal district agency that is said to be the haunt of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Discovered along with the map in a series of recently captured tunnel complexes are other documents - radio frequency lists, guerrilla warfare manuals, students' notes, jihadist propaganda and bombmaking instructions - that provide further evidence of the Taleban's organisation and training. They prove that the Taleban in Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), were planning not only to fight, but also to disseminate their fighting knowledge. They were training people here, Colonel Javed Baluch, whose troops seized the village of Tang Khata in an early stage of the autumn fighting, said, as he thumbed through the captured literature. This was one of their centres. There were students here taking notes on bombmaking and guerrilla warfare. They were well trained and well organised.
But training whom and to do what? Despite the documentary evidence in Bajaur, the Taleban's ultimate aims - and the nature of their relationship with al-Qaeda - remain contentious issues.
America and Britain claim that the terrorist network and affiliated organisations are being hosted by the Taleban in the tribal areas, which they use as a base for training camps, refuge and recruitment. This, they say, extends the threat from the tribal agencies to the rest of the world. If I were going to pick the next attack to hit the United States, it would come out of Fata, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently. A Western diplomat in Islamabad claimed last month that among those killed by a Predator drone strike in the tribal area - there have been at least 18 drone attacks there in the past 12 weeks - were members of a terrorist cell planning an attack on Britain.
One eminent Pakistani political figure, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that al-Qaeda and the Taleban had set up a joint headquarters in 2004 as an Islamic emirate in North Waziristan, headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taleban commander. (His father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against the Soviet Union, was funded by the CIA 30 years ago and was once fêted at the White House by Ronald Reagan.) Sirajuddin ... connects the Taleban with al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taleban with the Afghan Taleban, the source said. It basically runs the war and has made Fata today the same as Afghanistan was before September 11 - controlled by foreign and local militants who fight a war on both sides of the border.
Such claims, which have been circulated widely in Pakistan, are denied strongly by the military. Many officers describe the Taleban in Fata as a disparate group of home-grown militants with little vision beyond the affairs of their own district, and claim that al-Qaeda's involvement is negligible. There was an al-Qaeda presence here but it didn't include their training bases or headquarters, Colonel Nauman Saeed, commander of the Frontier Corps garrison in Khar, Bajaur's capital, said. They [al-Qaeda] were as a pinch of salt in the flour.
General Tariq Khan, the officer commanding the Bajaur operation, said: I do not see a coherent stategy in any of these militants. I don't see any Islamic movement of Waziristan or an Islamic emirate ... I think that everyone is in it for himself.
The Pakistani military claims to have killed more than 1,500 insurgents in Bajaur, and General Khan admits that many foreign fighters - Uzbeks, Chechens, Turkmen, some Afghans - have been among them. Of al-Qaeda's top leadership, however, not a trace has been found. We've hit some Arab leadership there but not of a very high level, he said. It could be that the leaders have withdrawn to the two valley strongholds still held by the Taleban in Bajaur, or that they have escaped to Afghanistan or to a neighbouring tribal area.
Or were they ever in Bajaur at all? Shafirullah Khan is the savvy political agent in the area, himself a Pashtun and a long-term veteran of tribal affairs. At first I would never have believed that al-Zawahiri was here, he said of the rumours that bin Laden's deputy had been a visitor. But now that I have seen those tunnels and hidden shelters, I am not so sure.
#2
"I do not see a coherent stategy in any of these militants.
Willard: "They said that you had gone insane, and that your methods were unsound..."
Kurtz: "Are my methods unsound?"
Willard: "I don't see any method at all..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/11/2008 14:43
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ISI? Likely. More likely it's significant help from ex-Soviet Army muslims and fighters from other wars (Lebanon and Bosnia, for example). A percentage of mercenaries as well.
This morning, from a cave somewhere in Pakistan, Taliban Minister of Migration Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that if military actions against Iraq continues, Taliban authorities intend to cut off America 's supply of Convenience Store Managers and possibly Motel 6 Managers. And if this action does not yield sufficient results, Cab Drivers will be next, followed by DELL and AOL Customer Service Reps. Finally, if all else fails, they have threatened to send us no more candidates for President of the United States !
It's gonna get ugly!!!
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 15:01
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Holy cow Jim. Could mysterious presidential candidates with strange sounding names be next?
ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq The two sides squared off in a brightly patterned tent big enough to hold about 100 angry Sunni Muslim clan chiefs, the Shiite Muslim police chief, two Shiite government officials and overseeing all one frustrated senior U.S. Army officer.
In the Arab world, such tents are put up for weddings, wakes or tribal gatherings where the local sheik hears grievances. The "sheik" in this case is Lt. Col. Michael Getchell, and the tent is the new battleground for American troops given the job of nation-building, city by city, in an Iraq battered by five years of violence.
It's uncharted territory for U.S. commanders. Instead of going into battle, they are dishing out cash to businesses to generate jobs, listening to pleas to free relatives in American custody and trying to settle bitter rivalries between Shiites and Sunnis as Getchell was doing in that tent on the edge of Iskandariyah, a mixed-population city with a complex tribal structure.
"Four or five years ago, we did not know any of this," said Capt. Michael Penney, 34, a soft-spoken Texan under Getchell's command who is on his second tour in Iraq. "It's challenging to adjust. Last time I was here, it was strictly security, chasing the enemy, but the way things are now, I had to adjust or risk failure."
To see how the U.S. military is handling its new duties, The Associated Press embedded this reporter three times in recent months with a unit that shared a downtown post with Iraqi police in this city of 150,000 people along a busy highway 30 miles south of Baghdad.
Iskandariyah was once one of the country's bloodiest warfronts. But the violence began to wane in mid-2007 after the U.S. troop surge and the decision by some tribal leaders and insurgents to cooperate with the Americans. For the past year, Getchell's troops from Fort Campbell, Ky., have struggled to hold the fragile peace together.
So far it's working, despite occasional flare-ups. But American involvement in almost every aspect of daily life has expanded the vacuum to be filled when U.S. forces leave.
Most of the American troops based here have moved to the edge of the city, and the last soldiers will leave Iskandariyah to head home next month. Some U.S. officers express confidence the calm will survive their departure, but the city's Sunni and Shiite sheiks are far more nervous.
The opposite views are no surprise. While the Iraqis and Americans speak of each other as friends, and exchange hugs and kisses in Arab fashion, they often seem to be talking past each other. The U.S. officers are all about team spirit and getting down to business, while the Iraqis take tribal perspectives, tend to wander around the subject, and can be loose with the truth to smear a rival or gain advantage for their clan. Rest at link
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008
10:27 ||
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#1
... the Iraqis take tribal perspectives, tend to wander around the subject, and can be loose with the truth to smear a rival or gain advantage for their clan.
Since this is what the Donks in Da Capital do daily, maybe we should move them to Iskandriyah to do the work. They know the game.
When nothing happens to them, why not? JUST days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced tough new measures to name and shame foreign-based extremists and prevent them coming from abroad to stir up hatred in the UK, firebrand preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad cocked a snook at her new initiative, the Evening Standard can reveal.
More than 200 Muslims at a packed public meeting in Tower Hamlets were told by organiser Anjem Choudary: "We have a special surprise, a special treat for you. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad will be joining us on a live feed from Lebanon."
Continued on Page 49
Radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada has been arrested after allegedly attempting to flee the country.
Qatada, described as Osama bin Laden's "right-hand man in Europe", is under strict bail conditions following an earlier Court of Appeal decision to refuse his deportation. After being freed from HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire in June, he was ordered to spend at least 22 hours a day confined to his West London home, wearing an electronic tag.
However, according to The Sun newspaper, Qatada, 47, has been arrested after allegedly breaching his bail. The newspaper reported that the UK Borders Agency received a tip-off that he was planning to leave Britain. A tip-off? Interesting. Maybe his frends aren't as friendly as he thinks? Or his place is wired up the ying-yang...
A spokeswoman for the Home Office confirmed reports that he had been arrested but would not comment further. She said: "We do not comment on individuals." Scotland Yard refused to comment and referred all inquiries to the Home Office.
Back in June, the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said she was "extremely disappointed" at the court's decision to bail Qatada, while the Conservatives branded the decision "offensive". The Home Office had pledged to deport Qatada to Jordan to face terror charges.
Qatada has been accused of helping to inspire the September 11 attacks after videos of his sermons were found in the flat used by three of the hijackers, including their leader Mohammed Atta. He is wanted in his native Jordan for allegedly plotting a series of bomb attacks in Amman in 1998 and for providing finance and advice to terrorists planning a series of explosions there on Millennium night. Here's an idea. Send him to Jordan. I'm sure they'd love to see him. He gets to leave, you get rid of him, maybe the Jordanians put him up against a wall. Win-win-win.
Tickets! Who needs tickets! 50 grand get's ya two ! Right in front!
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Interest in President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration is running so high that one ticket broker is asking $20,095 for a single ticket.
Entry to the biggest event in Washington is free if your congressman or senator grants your request, but with demand outpacing supply a traditional giveaway has turned into a thriving online marketplace.
Legitimate ticket brokers -- the same companies that peddle tickets to rock concerts and NASCAR races -- are selling tickets to the swearing-in of Barack Obama for thousands of dollars, even for standing-room areas on the National Mall. Organizers of the inauguration say it violates the spirit of the event and could spell disappointment for people who buy tickets for the January 20 ceremony.
"We think it's absolutely insane to be selling those tickets. We understand some people want to make a buck, but for those people thinking of buying tickets, it's buyer beware," warned Howard Gantman, staff director of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. The government has printed 250,000 tickets so far, holding them in a secure location. Probably the trunk of Rahm Emanuel's car...
Ticket brokers act as middlemen, selling inaugural tickets they say they purchase from Capitol Hill employees and people who get them from members of Congress. Since the government releases tickets at the last minute -- less than a week before the inauguration -- ticket brokers cannot ensure they will receive enough tickets to cover their orders. Web sites promise a full refund if tickets are not secured to buyers, but that offer may be little consolation to people who invest in a trip to Washington to see the inauguration.
Since tickets do not have attendees' names on them, Gantman said it's inevitable some will be sold. "Some will be distributed this way. It happens with baseball games and concerts. But we are going to take every step we can to make sure these tickets get into the hands of those who themselves intend to attend this event."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the inauguration committee, said Monday she she was prepared to ask Congress to make it a crime to scalp inauguration tickets. "We have heard reports that there are people trying to scalp Inaugural tickets for more than $40,000 each. This is unconscionable and must not be allowed," Feinstein said in a statement. "This inauguration will be the major civic event of our time, and these tickets are supposed to be free for the people. Nobody should have to pay for their tickets," she added. For "the people"!
The inaugural committee is alerting lawmakers that it is a violation of Congress' code of ethics for members or staff to sell their tickets. Oh, no! Not that!!
#6
Pelosi was quoted on FOX radio yesterday saying the tickets were supposed to be free, but that there is no law to prevent the sale. She went on to say legislation is being drafted to prohibit such sales 'in the future,' but not for the upcoming coronation (spit).
Starting last Wednesday, they've adopted a new strategy to sneak in past the spam filters. The spam carries the subject line Michelle Obama nude photos.
That is a mental picture I! Do! Not! Need!
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008
09:17 ||
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I has a can of SPAM in me desk drawer at work, I make samiches with mustard
#3
Being a Hawaiin, I wouldnt be surprised to see Obama really pushing Spam as the next big thing, a re-import from da islands bra.
Posted by: the earl of sandwich ||
11/11/2008 10:27
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#4
I really think hackers should set up some fake spam for awhile. Basically it looks like typical spam but when you click through it tells you how you are dumb, your personal information could have been compromised and you are screwing up the internet and to stop.
Maybe if some people got that kind of message they'd think twice.
That and we should cut off entire countries from the internet if they don't go after their home-grown spammers (Yeah Nigeria, I'm talking to you).
#5
5mt I agree with you, spam sandwiches are one of my favorite "Quick foods (Viena sausages is the other) and are great also sliced thin and fried as an "Other breakfast meat.)instead of sausage or bacon.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 14:20
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I gots recipes for Spam Fajitas amd Gingered Spam Salad.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/11/2008 14:59
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I was out of the country last year. Dusting off my stand, I'll be Spam hunting again soon. Lots of rain, we should have a good harvest in Ga. this season.
#10
Beavis- oh yes, you can definitely find Spam in Muslim countries. The one I was in certainly had it everywhere. People would buy it for me as a "treat" when I would visit their homes....nasty stuff.
I never said a word about pork in it though, mostly because I'm fairly certain it isn't meat.
#12
my polynesian neighbors are big advocates of SPAM, but the constant barrages of email that I have substandard "junk" leads me to believe someone intimate may be talking.....oops
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 19:54
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Up here in Anchorage, the Fly By Night Club used to feature Mr. Whitekeys (the owner)and the fabulous Spamtones music group. You had a choice of many beers on tap. There was a 50c tax on beers like Bud, and they featured Spam on their pub grub dishes.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 20:13
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I got spam sandwich once at the Groot Alaskan Bush Co. a few years back Paul. Can't remember a thing about it, the sandwich that is. Is that ..... resturant still there?
Samples taken from a Syrian site bombed by Israel on suspicion it was a covert nuclear reactor contained traces of uranium combined with other elements that merit further investigation, diplomats said Monday.
The diplomats - who demanded anonymity because their information was confidential - said the uranium was processed and not in raw form, suggesting some kind of nuclear link.
But one of the diplomats said the uranium finding itself was significant only in the context of other traces found in the oil or air samples taken by International Atomic Energy Agency experts during their visit to the site in June.
Syria has a rudimentary declared nuclear program revolving around research and the production of isotopes for medical and agricultural uses, using a small, 27-kilowatt reactor, and the uranium traces might have originated from there and inadvertently been carried to the bombed site. But taken together, the uranium and the other components found on the environmental swipes "tell a story" worth investigating, said the diplomat.
The second diplomat said the findings would figure in a report on Syria that will be presented to the IAEA's 35-nation board next week ahead of a scheduled two-day board meeting starting Nov. 24.
Attempts to reach IAEA spokespeople after office hours for comment were unsuccessful.
Diplomats already told The Associated Press late last month that air and soil samples taken at the site bombed last year by Israeli warplanes had turned up traces of elements that the agency felt needed to be followed up.
The findings are important after months of uncertainty about the status of the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Preliminary results of the environmental samples collected from the site by an IAEA team were inconclusive, adding weight to Syrian assertions that no trips beyond the initial IAEA visit in June were necessary.
The U.S. says the facility hit by Israeli warplanes more than a year ago was a nearly completed reactor that - when on line - could produce plutonium, a pathway to nuclear arms.
But Damascus denies running a covert program.
Ibrahim Othman, Syria's nuclear chief, has said his country would wait for final environmental results before deciding how to respond to repeated IAEA requests for follow-up visits to the one in June, when the samples were collected
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia A maritime official says pirates have hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew members near Somalia.
Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau says the ship was heading to Asia when it was seized Monday in the Gulf of Aden by pirates armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. This brought the number of attacks this year in the African waters to 83, with 33 ships hijacked. Choong says 12 remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 200 crew members.
The attack comes despite increased international cooperation to crack down on pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Looks like the plan neeeds work...
#1
The "plan" needs an ARCLIGHT strike down through the center of one of the major pirate ports, with word that a second one will follow the first if all crewmembers aren't released and all piracy stopped. Unfortunately, that will never happen under an OBambi administration, and Bush is just plain tired out.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 15:29
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We'll find out tonight, when the Arizona Republican appears on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. In the week since the election, Mr. McCain's campaign team has leaked some nasty stuff about Sarah Palin. These leaks are personal, and they speak more to the character of Mr. McCain and the leakers than they do to Mrs. Palin. So it will be telling if Mr. McCain stands up for his partner and says how offended he has been by what some of his staffers have done to her.
Two weeks or so before the campaign was over, the first round of McCain campaign rumors alleged that Mrs. Palin was a "whack job," and characterized her clothes-shopping as "hillbillies looting Neiman-Marcus from coast to coast." More recently, she has been alleged to know as little about geography as Barack Obama knows about the number of states in the union (at one point, he put it at 57).
The unmistakable message here has nothing to do with Africa, the North American Free Trade Agreement or bathrobes. It is the campaign team's cry, "It's not our fault. How could we ever win with this woman on the ticket?"
The first point to make here is the most obvious: This is the language of losers. . . . The apparent eagerness of Team McCain to indulge in this kind of fingerpointing is similarly unprofessional, and it raises an interesting question.
We are asked to believe that Mrs. Palin was not ready for a national campaign. On what evidence from any part of this election are we to conclude that anyone on the McCain campaign team was ready for a national campaign? . . .
Yet there are other, more salient points. In the treatment of Mrs. Palin by some of the McCain staff, there is the clear whiff of condescension. That's something a sitting American governor might understandably find hard to stomach coming from a bunch of young professional Republicans who have never themselves run for office.
Ultimately, of course, this will all pass. And if Mrs. Palin goes back and continues to do a good job as governor of Alaska, these attacks will likely only reinforce her outside-the-Beltway credentials to rank-and-file Republicans.
Let's remember too that the only time Mr. McCain surged ahead -- in the polls, in the volunteers, in the mojo -- was when he picked Mrs. Palin. Before that he and his staff had been flying solo, and they were losing. When the contest returned to the top of the ticket, as presidential campaigns inevitably do, Mr. McCain and his team drove their lead into the ground.
It wasn't Mrs. Palin who dramatically flew to Washington promising a legislative answer to the most important economic issue of our day -- and then, in the words of a New York Times campaign profile, "came off more like a stymied bystander than a leader who could make a difference."
And what does it say when the campaign team of a man who has spent decades in the U.S. Senate cannot agree on (much less present) a coherent answer to why he should be elected president of the United States -- except that he's not Barack Obama?
In Mr. McCain's moving concession speech, he wished "godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president." He asked his fellow Americans to join him in helping President-elect Obama bridge our differences and build a better, more hopeful nation.
It will be instructive to see whether Mr. McCain will now extend the same level of graciousness to Mrs. Palin that he has to Mr. Obama, by giving a public slapdown to the very public smears emanating from his own campaign team. We have no idea what Mr. McCain will do when he sits down with Mr. Leno tonight.
But there's no doubt what a man of honor would do.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008
08:11 ||
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#4
I knew theis was not going to end well when I heard McCain supporting leftist eco-causes. He doesn't have to sink Sarah too. Man up, I know you can do it.
#7
I have worn a copper McCain "POW" bracelet all throught the campaign in a v-e-r-y hostile environment. If he wimps out on Ms. Palin, the only reason he wasn't doing a post-election "Mondale Dance", I shall return it to him......
#8
McCain is not the graceful old grandpa type. Hes about McCain and only McCain. What kind of primadona needs to keep working and getting press at 74 yrs old? What kind of primadona trys running for pres 3 times? What kind of primadona has to mutter "My Friends" in every other sentence.
Where were all the veteran organizations supporting McCain during the campaign? They know what he is made of and they stayed away from him.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
11/11/2008 11:13
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#9
We have no idea what Mr. McCain will do when he sits down with Mr. Leno tonight.
But there's no doubt what a man of honor would do.
I think I know what a man of honor would do. I'd like to think a man of honor would have done it long before now.
#10
These leaks ... speak more to the character of Mr. McCain and the leakers than they do to Mrs. Palin. Amen. McCain would have had one less vote and a few less dollars if it hadn't been for Gov. Palin on the ticket.
#11
I was convinced a long time ago that John "Where's the camera" McCain was a publicity freak. Maybe his ego is bent because Sarah drew bigger crowds than McCain. He had to keep bringing her back for joint appearances so the contrast of his crowds to hers when she went solo didn't look so bad.
I got tired of hearing him say "reaching across the aisle" ad nauseum. How about a hand for someone on the same side of the aisle.
I hope I'm wrong and he'll do the right thing by Sarah. He's already left her twisting in the wind too long.
But I kept getting the feeling during the campaign that McCain knew he was toast and didn't want to say anything that could spoil his bipartisan image.
The Arab daily Al-Hayat on Tuesday quoted a senior Hamas official as saying that United States President-elect Barack Obama's advisors met with members of the Palestinian militant group before the U.S. presidential election.
Ahmed Yusuf, a political advisor to Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh, reportedly told the London-based paper that, "The connection was made via email and after that we met with them in Gaza."
Al-Hayat reported that Yusuf also said the relations were maintained after Obama's electoral victory last Tuesday. He said the president-elect's advisors requested that the relations be kept secret so as not to aid his rival, Senator John McCain.
#3
Any chance of this beeing played up by the network news? During the campaign the media downplayed and ridiculed McCain's accusations that Obama's folks were talking with Hamas. Seems they did more than just talk.
The only reference of CBS news wesite, buried in another story about a chat w/ the Russians: On another international matter, Obama's office had little to say in response to a statement by Khaled Mashaal, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, that he is ready to talk to Obama "with an open mind." The exiled militant leader told Sky News from Damascus, Syria, that the election of an American president with African roots is "a big change."
McDonough said, "President-elect Obama said throughout the campaign that he will only talk with Hamas if it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist, and agrees to abide by past agreements."
That's one campaign promise already broke to hell.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 8:00
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#4
Aren't there laws to prevent this kind of stuff from happening? I mean it sounds like his aides were conducting foreign policy to a certain degree without the approval and authority of the POTUS. What's up with that?
#5
C'mon, eltoroverde, you know The One doesn't have to abide by US laws. He's a DEMOCRAT, for crying out loud. Anything goes for Democrats. Just look at all the voter fraud they've committed over the last 20 years, and still engage in.
(May all guilty parties rot in Hell for 10 eons, THEN let the Devil get mean with them.)
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 15:21
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#6
IIRC, FOX NEWS > ISLAMISTS [Osama BIn Laden?] MAY BE PLANNING FOR NEW ATTACK(S) ON USA "BIGGER" THAN 9-11.
Five men accused of plotting a terrorist attack went on trial Tuesday with prosecutors alleging that the men were Islamic extremists who stockpiled weapons and explosive chemicals in a plan to wage violent jihad against non-Muslims.
After eight months of pretrial arguments and closed-door hearings, federal prosecutors began laying out their case against the five men, aged 24 to 43, before the New South Wales Supreme Court in western Sydney amid strict security. Khaled Cheikho, Moustafa Cheikho, Mohamed Ali Elomar, Abdul Rakib Hasan and Mohammed Omar Jamal were arrested in November 2005 and charged with conspiring to commit acts in preparation for a terrorist act, or acts. They have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutor Richard Maidment told the jury that the men were Islamic radicals who had obtained or sought to obtain large quantities of household and industrial chemicals that could be used to make explosives, and had also stockpiled guns and ammunition in preparation for the alleged attack, which was intended partly as retaliation for Australias support of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police raids on the mens homes had also uncovered a substantial cache of extremist material, Mr. Maidment said, including bombmaking instructions, graphic videos of ritual beheadings and images of the hijacked planes smashing into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The men possessed large quantities of literature which supported indiscriminate killing, mass murder and martyrdom in pursuit of violent jihad, and which apparently sought to provide religious justification for conduct of that nature, Mr. Maidment said, according to local media at the court.
The men, who face possible life sentences if convicted, are accused of launching the conspiracy between July 2004 and their arrests in November 2005. Specific details of the alleged plot or potential targets have not been released. Details of the case have been shrouded in secrecy. In the months leading up to Tuesdays opening, presiding Justice Anthony Whealy issued some 65 written judgments, all but two of which - one on the location of the trial and the other on the configuration of the courtroom - were suppressed.
In his instructions to the jury, the judge said that although the five men were being tried together, jurors would have to weigh the circumstantial case presented by the prosecution to reach individual verdicts for each defendant. He also warned the jurors not to prejudge the defendants because of their religion or appearance. You must take prejudice and bias out of this trial altogether, the judge said. Its an obvious truism for me to tell you that the Muslim religion is not on trial here.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008
05:30 ||
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#1
Good on them, but the only way this nonsense is going to stop is to either blow them out of the water or capture them and make it a point to turn them over to nasty countries who torture and execute prisoners.
#2
agreed, shoot first.... shipping them to places that will torture and execute them might just work out the opposite way as they could be recruited and further trained by some other, even worse bunch of "bad guys"
#3
The only way to reduce piracy is to kill the pirates and sink their vessels. Why isn't the Iwo Jima there, complete with a complement of Cobra helicopters and AV-8B Harrier aircraft?
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 12:28
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#4
In a swift action, warship INS Tabar intervened to thwart two near-simultaneous attacks by pirates on an Indian cargo vessel MV Jag Arnav and a Saudi flag carrier MV NCC Thihama within 25 nautical miles of each otheron Tuesday morning.
The Indian warship, which was deployed in the region on October 23 in the wake of rising attacks by pirates on merchant vessels, received an SOS from the Saudi ship at around 1000 hours after a group of pirates surrounded it.
Marine commandos on board INS Tabar flew out in an armed helicopter and launched an assault on the attackers, who were in five speed boats, forcing them to flee into the Somali waters.
Even as this operation was on, the warship received a panic call from MV Jag Arnav, a merchant vessel owned by Mumbai-based Great Eastern Shipping Company, with about 20 crew members on board.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008 13:28
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Why isn't the Iwo Jima there, complete with a complement of Cobra helicopters and AV-8B Harrier aircraft?
Because this piracy is not currently affecting US interests, it would be a waste of assets, the ships that have been captured are not US flagged ships and the Iwo Jima is busy heading up the Expeditionary Strike group.
The following ships are in the 5th fleet area of operations and are more then capable of policing the area if their governments decide to act. Let them step up to the plate and do something. I'm glad to see India taking a lead and protecting her own kind.
HDMS Absalon (L16)
RFS Neustrashimyy (712)
RSS Resolution (L 208)
HMCS Ville de Quebec (FFH 332)
FS Courbet (F712)
FS Commandant Birot (F796)
FS Floreal (F730)
FS Nivôse (F732)
FS La Boudeuse (P683)
HMS Lancaster (F229)
HMS Northumberland (F238)
HMAS Parramatta (FFH 154)
HNLMS De Ruyte (F804)
KD Sri Inderapura (L 1505)
INS Tabar (F44)
INS Ganga (F22)
HMS Ramsay (M 110)
HMS Blyth (M 111)
HMS Atherstone (M38)
HMS Chiddingfold (M37)
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
11/11/2008 13:35
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Why isn't the Iwo Jima there, complete with a complement of Cobra helicopters and AV-8B Harrier aircraft?
You have to find them first. It's not like they fly the skull-and-bones.
The motherships are fishing vessels or small cargo craft. There are no especially significant markings.
The ships are either stolen or purchased elsewhere (similar to how the Tamils get their arms-supply vessels). Again there are no pirate flags, no loudspeakers broadcasting 'Yo Ho Ho', guys with eyepatches lounging around on deck. There isn't any visible armament. They look like any other fishing or small cargo vessel.
SOP is to hide among fishing boats or cruise within the usual shipping lanes for coastal craft. If they do fly a flag, it's likely Yemeni, or UAE, or any other other Red Sea/African Horn countries.
So you have three options:
1. Tie up assets searching every fishing vessel and small cargo craft.
2. Sink every boat or small ship you see. I know you perked right up at that one - that's also great way to end up with the proverbial testicles-in-a-vise.
3. Develop intel sources, press for more aggressive ROEs and additional assets from other countries. More time consuming, but you won't f*ck up as much.
#8
Don't we have satelites capable of picturing a pack of cigarettes?
Why not simply picture the surrounding area(Say 30 square miles) and see what vessels repeatedly are near at each "Boarding"?
Seems simple to me, the ships that keep showing up are probably the motherships, board and "Inspect" them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 19:55
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Yep, they can actually see the humps on a pack of Camels, and an RJ can hear them passing gas and pinpoint placement in the herd. Technology is wonnerful.
#10
Again, RJ - that will take time. It means moving valuable satellite assets. It also means that there has to be real-time coordination to know where and when a ship has been boarded.
Not saying it can't be done. It's a great idea. But it means a hell of a lot better coordination than there is now and some way to free up assets to do the job..
Islamabad, Nov 11 (PTI) Slain former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto's niece Fatima, a bitter critic of President Asif Ali Zardari, has compared Pakistan with Zimbabwe and said the present government is the "first in the world headed by two former convicts." "The country's newly elected government, the first in the world headed by two former convicts (between them the president and prime minister have served time on charges of corruption, narcotics, extortion and murder, no less)" Fatima wrote in an opinion piece titled "Texts, lies and Zardari-gate" for a Britain-based newspaper.
Fatima compared Pakistan, whose economy has hit "rock bottom", with Zimbabwe. "Eight months into the new government's post-Musharraf rule, Pakistan's economy, sovereignty and freedoms have been considerably eroded. Think Zimbabwe, minus the good governance," wrote the 26-year-old fiery niece of the slain former premier.
Rechristening the ruling Pakistan People's Party as the "Permanent Plunder Party", she wrote, "On the war-on-terror front, Pakistan's new government is proving to be a most gracious ally. The country's borders have been opened to unmanned drones that fly over parts of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province when and as they please, hitting various targets.
"So, no, Pakistan is not a failed state. It's the country's leaders that are failures. In the 21st century, Pakistan remains a rich and diverse country held hostage to a government chock full of ill-equipped and unqualified carpetbaggers," she wrote.
Fatima, who stopped writing her weekly column for The News daily some months ago, will now be regularly contributing for The New Statesman
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008
05:18 ||
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#1
Think Zimbabwe, minus the good governance," wrote the 26-year-old fiery niece of the slain former premier.
#2
..."first in the world headed by two former convicts."
Well, it appears that even with the great effort put in by the Donks here, the Paks beat them to that unique distinction. Don't hold yourself back, there's always second place.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
From "For The Fallen" - Laurence Binyon
This verse is recited every night in Returned Services clubs across Australia. At 11AM on the 11th day of the 11th Month, many Australians observe a minute silence.
Personaly, the verse makes me think of two of my father's uncles. They were Lighthorsemen, (horse mounted infantry) killed in Palestine in WW1. However, our military history doesn't record the battles they were in. Two are listed as dying from wounds, and one from illness.
Other than the brief record that they died, the only surviving information we can access are their charge sheets. So, we know that one died in Damascus, from wounds, but only after he had been "fizzed" for "loss of a bandolier".
#1
Expect a good, consistent friend like Australia to get the shitty end of the stick from the Democrats. That's cooperation and support that will surely drift towards dubious and untoward countries instead.
A POLICE chief in a remote county of southwestern China has taken down 48 of his relatives for various crimes including brothers, cousins and a number of his wife's family, local media said today. Laobulaluo, a police chief in Heizhugou township, Sichuan province, had seen 25 relatives either jailed, sent for "re-education through labour", or punished in other ways, according to a report posted on a state news website.
The police chief, who is in his 30s, is a member of China's Yi ethnic minority. Over a 10-year career, he had personally arrested a brother and two cousins after finding they had beaten local teachers at a primary school while drunk. Other family members were arrested after stealing a woman's handbag.
The policeman's sense of duty had inflamed his relatives, some of whom had taken turns threatening his parents, and had "even secretly cut off the tails and slashed the legs of their cows," the report said.
"In the first few years, I did not dare head back to my hometown to pass the New Year holiday, but now it's all right. Everyone understands and supports what I was doing at the time," the report quoted him as saying.
#4
Sounds like a guy who hates his relatives, actually. A couple, or even a half-dozen, I could write up to stern sense of duty, or cracking down on good-for-nothing family trying to trade in on their connections. A couple of dozen? I don't think so.
Boy hates his family.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/11/2008 14:25
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There go my fellow conservatives, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I'm virtually euphoric. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled with America's flirtation with neosocialism. But there's a massive silver lining in the magical clouds that lofted Barack Obama to the presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America:
The Era of White Guilt is over.
This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn't give a fluff about skin color and enthusiastically pulled the voting lever for a black man. Not just any black man. A very liberal black man who spent his early career race-hustling banks, praying in a racist church for 20 years, and actively working with America-hating domestic terrorists. Yet white Americans made Barack Obama their leader. Therefore, as of Nov. 4, 2008, white guilt is dead.
So today, I'm feeling a little "uppity," if you will. For more than a century, the millstone of white guilt hung around our necks, retribution for slave-owning predecessors. In the 1960s, American liberals began yanking that millstone while sticking a fork in the eye of black Americans, exacerbating the racial divide to extort a socialist solution to the country's problems. But if a black man can become president, exactly what significant barrier is left? The election of Barack Obama destroys the validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.
So today, I'm feeling a little "uppity," if you will. From this day forward, my tolerance level for having my skin color hustled is exactly ZERO. No more Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "God Damn America," Al Sharpton's Church of Perpetual Victimization, or Jesse Jackson's rainbow racism. Cornel West? You're a fraud. All those "black studies" programs must now teach kids to thank Whitey. And I want that on the final.
Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.)? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. To those Eurosnots who forged careers hating America? I'm still waiting for the first black French president.
No more quotas. No more handouts. No more complaining that "the man" is keeping you down. "The man" is now black.
It's time to toss that massive, obsolete race-hustle machine upon the heap of the other stupid '60s ideas. Drag it over there, right between free love and cop-killing. Careful, don't trip on streaking. Just dump it. And then wash your hands. It's filthy.
Obama's ascension also creates another gargantuan irony. How can liberals sell American racism, class envy and unfairness when our new black president and his wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and are now moving to the White House? How unfair is that? Now, like a delicious O. Henry tale, Obama's spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by its own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama's election has validated American conservatism.
So ... Wham!!!
That's the sound of my foot kicking the door shut on the era of white guilt. The rites have been muttered, the carcass lowered, dirt shoveled, and tombstone erected. Dead and buried.
#1
Equality is something that blacks passed like a speed bump. They're looking for superiority. If you don't think so, look at the unveiled threat of riots in most major cities if Bama didn't win. People who are afraid don't do stuff like that. Bullies do.
#2
I'd rather say that white guilt was instrumental in obama getting so far.
Plus, one of the heads of the leftist hydra that dominates the cultural norm is "anti-racism"... that is, the notion that whites are inherently racist, imperialist, chauvinistical, violent, repressive,... so, guilt has to be shoved down their collective throat, so they can accept, in no particular order):
- having institutionalized anti-white racism (aka affirmative action);
- being blackmailed by minorities race-baiters;
- agreeing to pretend not to notice the anti-white agenda from public education, entertainment, msm, corporations;
- agreeing to pretend not to notice unpleasant stuff like the "color of crime";
Plus probably other items that I can't think of right now. So, no, IMHO, it's not the end of white guilt, as white guilt is an essential pillar of leftist ideology, and leftist ideology has entrenched itself in academai, entertainment, msm,... what could happen if the Zero actually worsen race relations through his term (just like he did during his candidacy, and with his election, just see yesterday article about his supporters celebrating, this is the tip of the iceberg), is a backlash from the white population, who would disenfranchise itself from that "other" America dominated by that racism - lack of trust in the msm would be a start, for example.
Anyway, race is going to be a very big issue for you, or for europeans in the near future, as mass immigration from the third world is even as I type (with two hands, why do you ask?) changing the ethnic compostion of once homogenous or almost (USA) homogenous countries. When California will relatively soon have european whites as the largest minority after latinos, do you think that once Republican State will ever again vote for a non-Democrat?
#3
Anyway, the Zero win boils down to two items :
- it's perfectly ok or a black (or supposed so) to be an anti-white racism... do you think Palin would have gotten away with attending for 20 years a white-supremacist church, which by the way happens to the the largest one in her neck of the woods?
- the Enlightened Elites covered and protected and shielded The Zero in large part because he was black (or supposedly so); had he been white, he wouldn't have gotten such a cult-like following, both from blacks and anti-white racism/white guilt-intoxicated whites (his zombie followers, from the crowd to the press).
#4
JM, you got it right about superiority. an attitude of equality would look a lot different than what we're seeing.
This attitude amongst blacks was preceded by some years among women regarding feminism. Feminism may have initially been about equality but it VERY rapidly became about women being superior to men.
Don't believe me?
Ask a feminist the following question.
"Do you believe that a woman can do anything as well as man can do it, but there are certain things that women can do better than men?"
Based upon their rhetoric, the feminist, if honest, will be obliged to answer yes. A similarly structured question can be asked of race baiters.
It logically follows that if there are things at which women/blacks are better than men/whites, but not vice versa, then women/blacks are superior to men/whites. Such is the perception of vast swaths of this country, many of whom hold bully pulpit positions in education, entertainment, and the MSM.
This attitude is gaining ground fairly rapidly amonst those who have bought into the radical gay agenda, as well.
Make no mistake, folks. This "civil rights" business and empty talk about equality is a smokescreen for an attitude of superiority.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/11/2008 5:54
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#5
IIUC, "Feminism" or "gay rights" are leftist ideologies with roots in marxist subversion (no, don't laugh), exactly as similar "rights" orgs in the 60's were motivated by revolutionary marxism, and admittedly so.
And, again, anti-white racism is a big issue for them, well, at least for "feminism" (not sure for "gay rights", though in France, such orgs definitvely are anti-Christian, for example), which identifies the ennemy as the White Man, that's absolutely obvious.
Anyway, in a larger scope, all of leftism, with all of its "pseudopods" aimed at redefinign society, defines The White Man as the ennemy... just think of mike moore being delighted telling in an interview that whites soon will be a minority in the USA, or blaming *white fear* of blacks (and before that injuns) for the supposedly inherent violent nature of the US Bully in "guns for columbine" (and totally whitewashing minorities of any kind of gun violence).
#6
People speak about the 95% of black people for Obama -- but of course black people had in the past gone at percentages of 94% for a white Democrat too: Lyndon Johnson.
Black and Hispanic communities are largely socially conservatives. They'd be obvious recruitment targets for the Republican party, if the party took active steps to disabuse them of the notion that it is meant for white people only.
The repetitions of "Hussein" and bashing Obama for attending the biggest black church at his neck of the woods didn't help convince black people of your lack of racism, neither did the anti-immigrant rhetoric convince Hispanics they're welcome.
And McCain really ought have picked Condi Rice for his VP. (And if Bush had picked Powell in 2004, Powell would be in a good position to be the first black president in 2008 btw)
And I'm guessing the current rhetoric about how "the blacks" want to dominate white people, isn't really working to take black people to your side either.
The party could attempt to partly rectify these blunders in 2012 with Bobby Jindal, but he'd be a disaster in other respects: he's so anti-female for example as to believe that abortion should never be allowed not even to save the life of the mother. Good luck with that - see atleast 70% of women of all races voting Democrat if the Republican Party picks him.
So the question becomes: Do you want black people and Hispanics supporting the Republicans, or don't you? And if so, what are you prepared to give them that the Democratic party doesn't?
#9
One of my biggest problems with Obama was his "post-racial" posturing while not saying one word about ending Affirmative Action (which is nothing but institutionalized racism against White people, and to a lesser degree Asians). What's the timetable? The need for Affirmative Action is obviously over, so when do the entitlements end?? I need to know the date! Preferential treatment is inherently unfair, and a Black President (if he is not a racist) should address the issue.
But during a 2 year presidential campaign Barak Hussein Obama never did.
#10
Do you want black people and Hispanics supporting the Republicans, or don't you? And if so, what are you prepared to give them that the Democratic party doesn't?
You assume these people support Republicans. If McCain hadn't pick Palin I suspect a good number of the posters here would have sat out the Presidential vote. If 'appealing' to any group means giving up fundamental principles, then you might was well join the other party since they stand for attaining POWER in any way necessary. The Donks give minorities inferior education systems that forfeit the future of their children and confine them to recipients rather than productive citizens. That's because the various Teachers Union have far more power within that party than the minorities you cite. Its right there for everyone to see, but the minorities blindly pull the level for the Donks. That's their free will choice in face of demonstrating that the only viable reform possible is to remove the power of the school system from the 'professionals' and back into the hands of the parents. If they're willing to forfeit their children's future what do you thing the Trunks have to offer that doesn't just make the Trunks Donklite?
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." - Alexander Fraser Tytler
3)The current rhetoric about how "the blacks" want to dominate white people is far end nuttery.
4)Jindal/Palin is WAY to hardline conservative to win enven in Saudi Arabia.
5)Do you want black people and Hispanics supporting the Republicans? Yes, if they believe that conservative values make a better framework to govern the country by- Otherwise they can piss off.
6)What are you prepared to give them that the Democratic party doesn't? What has the democratic party given them in the last 40 years?
#12
You know, Slim, you're coming at this all wrong. I don't want the government to give me a damned thing except honest administration and a reasonble justification for spending my tax dollars. That is all ANYONE, of any color, SHOULD want from government. It's not your father or Santa Claus, and anything it gives to one person it has to take from another. As George Washington said, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
You just saw the Dems in NOLA renominate "Cold Cash" Jefferson despite the fact that he's guilty as Hell of accepting bribes. Same for Alcee Hastings. We could go with Marion "Crack Pipe" Barry, or Kwame Kilpatrick, or Ray Nagin, or The One, or any number of other crooked black politicians as examples that would tend to disprove your contention that all the black folks out there want honest government. The reality is that if they did they wouldn't vote for these crooks, as they do in overwhelming numbers. If white Republican pols did the stuff in white areas that black Dem pols routinely do in black areas, they wouldn't have a hope of being elected. Can you imagine a white mayor of any city in America saying he wanted a "vanilla city?" Right.
If pandering is what it takes to get elected, then I've no use for any party that does it. What the Republicans are on the record as providing is more honest government than the Dems. Bush wasn't caught with his hand in the till or screwing interns; Cheney didn't have $95,000 in his freezer. I don't recall any Bush cabinet members convicted of stealing documents from the National Archives like Sandy Burglar. Do you want to discuss ACORN, or the fundraising for the Bama campaign? I'd be real interested in having you explain how those were just honest attempts to sway the electorate.
The Dems love their criminals and hug them close. So does the black community. When they decide to stop doing that, they'll appreciate Republican government. Until then, they won't. If they never do, it won't surprise me.
There is a HUGE difference between the standards of the two sides, and that difference is that the Republicans won't tolerate what the Dems take for granted. If the Republicans have to become the Dems to beat the Dems, then they've lost before they started--and so has everyone else who believes in and hopes for honest government.
If the blacks are really social conservatives, they wouldn't vote for the crooks they vote for. Therefore, your question about what the Republicans can offer them is answered by saying that if it is honest government, it's something their voting patterns show they apparently don't want. You can argue that point if you like but the facts won't support your contention.
#13
So the question becomes: Do you want black people and Hispanics supporting the Republicans, or don't you? And if so, what are you prepared to give them that the Democratic party doesn't? Posted by Slim6443
Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. Therein lies the problem. And, the "social conservative" claim. How can anyone in all honesty say something as rediculous as that?
#15
Now 'zerker there's many a thing that can be made that can't be sold on the open market. I expect this might be a strange concept to you but in fact it's possible.
I sense you've been working for the government for some time. So the concept might be somewhat alien to you.
#16
Yeah .5, but I gotta hunch that we're talkin about people that don't have much interest in 'intrinsic' rewards. They said 'show me the money', and Hussein did.
#18
Yes, .5 I 'gave' at the office until a few years back. I started giving when I hadn't yet reached my 19th birtday and made a whopping
$ 91.00 per month. Nothing special, my decision with a little encourage from the local draft board. I 'gave' like a lot of others so that our children and neighbors could live in freedom. I didn't 'give' for a handout, special treatment, affirmative action, VIP loans, Fannie/Freddie, gay rights, abortion, or so that a communist and cocain user could be appointed president by rich, New York and Chicago temple money handlers.
#19
Another RBee more Patriot than thou, excellent. You got an extra vote for that did 'ya?
Or just a writ to bitch and moan and remember the good 'ole days in the 'SAR? Hummm.....? Damn near every comment you make on this board carries the stench of Afrikans Fuck-Up. Did you inherit it or did you copy it?
#23
"Blak Supremacy" is happening now, A friend rports a black woman cut in front of her at line in Wal Mart, when she complained the cashier (Also black female) said "We're in charge NOW.
Read yesterdays report of a black female slapping a white cop as he sat in his patrol car, and saying "You can't arrest me, we're in charge now". (She's in jail)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 11:40
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#25
anonymous5089 - California is already a Majority-Minority state. European whites make up just 42% of the population and Hispanics have grown to 37%.(Not counting Illegals) Between 1980 and 2004 the Hispanic population in California grew by over 8 million. In 2004 the white European population was slightly larger than 1980 but actually decreased from the 1990 census.
In 1980 California had a 58% white European population. Reagan carried the state by 1.5 million votes. He won all but three of 58 counties, SF, Alameda and Yolo (Scratomato). In 1984 he again won by 1.5 million votes but lost two additional counties, Marin (Limousine Liberal Heaven) and Santa Cruz (Home of UC Angela Davis).
Now being a Majority-Minority State in 2004 Kerry carried California by 1.2 million votes and in 2008 Obama carried the state by 2.5 million votes.
Obama carried 33 of 58 counties which included every large county except Orange County where McCain squeaked out a 36,000 vote majority. Reagan won Orange County by a 3-1 margin.
Dick Morris had a theory early this year that Hillary would win 2008, screw up and the last Republican President, ever, would be elected in 2012. His theory was that demographics do not favor Republicans.
Morris picked the wrong Donk but his theory is sound. For the 2012 last shot for Republicans, Obama will have to worse than former California Donk Governor Gray Davis, and he was really bad.
Conservatives have to come to terms with the reality that they are swimming against a demographic riptide. Count on the Donks giving the illegals amnesty. The riptide will become a demographic Tsunami.
#26
joseph conrad...The State of Alaska rejected a donk whom the national party supported with millions of dollars. Unlike the idiots of Minnesota who apparently elected a lying, foul-mouthed, hate-filled lunatic, the State of Alaska re-elected a man who they felt received an unfair trial in a partisan environment.
#27
"Bobby Jindal, but he'd be a disaster in other respects: he's so anti-female for example as to believe that abortion should never be allowed not even to save the life of the mother."
The American people have spoken, and whatever our personal preferences, our duty as citizens is to support our next president. And he's going to need support: The international vultures are already circling.
Immediately upon his inauguration, President Obama will have to demonstrate to allies and enemies alike that he won't be a pushover. Justified or not, the international perception of Obama is that he'll be both passive and a pacifist.
He's going to have to show some Southside Chicago street grit. Fast.
Our enemies haven't wasted any time. The day after our election, President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia, speaking for Vladimir Putin, gave a Gucci-loafer version of Premier Nikita Krushchev's shoe-heel-on-the-podium rant of a half-century ago.
In a direct challenge to our president-elect, Medvedev announced that Russia would deploy its latest-generation battlefield missiles to the Kaliningrad exclave between Lithuania and Poland. The Russian president made it clear that the target would be the US ballistic-missile interceptors to be based on Polish soil.
Medvedev's speech then elaborated on the Putin Doctrine: Russia will do what it wants, when it wants, where it wants in the territories that once belonged to the czars.
A day later, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran played good cop to the Russian bad cop, inviting the new US administration to enter direct talks with Tehran. Now, negotiations can be useful - but only when conducted from a position of strength. Unfortunately, the Iranians view our election results as reflecting a greatly weakened American will.
They assess Obama as the perfect patsy, a man who believes in his own powers of persuasion. Drawing out fruitless talks year after year has been Iran's primary technique to protect its pursuit of nukes. Persians are brilliant negotiators. Their position is always, "Well, we might sleep with you . . . next time . . . if you just give us one more present . . ."
And we rush off to Tiffany & Co.
Only the Chinese come close to the Iranian genius for castrating opponents under the negotiating table. Of course, our European allies show up already missing key parts.
By the end of last week, even the Iraqis had swooped down for a bite of roadkill. Brushing President Bush aside (as the Russians, Iranians, Venezuelans and others already have done), Iraqi representatives working on the status-of-forces agreement for our troop presence balked at the previously agreed terms, expecting a better deal from an Obama administration.
#1
Color me unimpressed. You bastards that elected this jerk, you support him. I'm on vacation for the next four years. If we get hit by terrorist enemies, the people who should be punished are the damned fools that voted for a man who couldn't get a low-level security clearance. They're the ones who put us in this situation.
#2
OH!
Now it's our duty as citizens to support the president. For the last 8 years it has been our duty to fecklessly whine and cry about every move the president has made, to reveal classified plans, to protest outside his ranch, to do all sorts of asinine things. But now its time to support him, yeah, sure.
I was hoping the cult of adulation would melt away once he was elected, but I can see that it still lives. Someone please cut off its head and bury it in the back yard.
#3
The non-stop media circle-jerk ever since the election is a clue of what to expect for the next 4 to 8 years. I don't see any reason to give this 21st-century Chauncey Gardener my unconditional support. I plan to begin my subscription to the position that vocal, insulting, and unreasoning dissent is the most patriotic activity possible. "Our new president-elect is a miserable idiotic racist! Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!"
Get back to me in a few months with how well supporting The One is working out for you. I'll be on vacation but I'll drop in here to find out how you're doing. I'll wish you good luck in your effort; I strongly suspect you'll need it to avoid an ulcer.
#7
Unlike Michael Moore or Harry Reid and the rest of the motherfucking Democrat Party, I'm not about to side with my country's enemies against my domestic political opponents. In any conflict between the USA and China or Russia or Iran, I have no problem being on the side of the USA, no matter who's president.
On the other hand, Obama has not earned my trust. If he gets something right, I'll give him credit for it; but when he gets things wroing, I'll not withhold my critique for the sake of "national unity."
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008 8:19
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#8
Good point Mike.
I do however see the point of the early posters. Now we're supposed to offer bi-partisan support to our President? After the past eight years, that's asking a lot.
#9
As should be American tadition for every American, if Americans come under threat or attack, the president will have my support for anything short of 'piece in our time' diplomacy.
On the domestic side though, ima suspect I'll largely be siding with his opposition.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/11/2008 9:15
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#10
I haven't read any articles from anyone suggesting that we not support him. The 'riots in the streets' threats were coming from rabid liberal personas and anarchist types (nuts). To be tepid in your support is one thing, to actively subvert the president is quite another. Like, say, going to Hamas or Syria or Iraq and meeting with their leaders, making promises and statements counter to the administration's policy.
Those weren't conservatives doing that, or exposing secret govt. anti-terror ops. So up to now I don't see any reason to point the finger at conservatives, they have been nothing but gracious in their defeat so far.
#11
There's a difference between loyal opposition and insane ranting. We've had 8 years of the latter, shall we prove ourselves no better than the Democrats? I hope not. I'm not going to be a hypocrite. I'll wait until he doesn't something stupid and I will absolutely point it out to everyone I can, until then, stop acting like spoiled brat democrats.
#12
The One has not done anything (yet) to cause me to take up my Second Amendment arms and attempt to overthrow the government. Until that time, I shall support my country (AND its feckless leadership on the vital stuff) to the best of my ability. While The One may not have campaigned legally it seems like he did really get elected (unlike Franken), and 'in a Democracy you get the government you deserve.' We have created two generations of uneducated and 'needy' Americans who now have the numbers to call the shots. I don't see that changing until the house of cards collapses and we start over - at which time the weak (weak-willed, stupid, lazy, etc.) won't survive.
#13
This is B.S. It is not our duty to to support the president. Its our duty to support the country.
The concept of "supporting the president" conflicts with constitutional separation of powers. The congress is responsible for evaluating and passing laws, not rubber stamping presidential requests. The senate advices and consents (or not) to key appointments and to international treaties. It is their duty to questions the president and independently determine whether or not his decisions are to be supported.
The citizenry respects the outcomes of elections, obeys laws and supports the government, or dissents from the government, each according to their own beliefs and interests.
#14
I have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution "from all enemies, foreign and domestic". I have always considered that socialists, Marxists, progressives, etc. were the domestic enemies of the Constitution and therefore, the country.
I fear that this election has installed a domestic enemy as POTUS. He will not receive any support from me until he proves otherwise.
#15
Politics *should* end at the water's edge. Of course, that always applied to Republican politics, as the Democratic piranhas like Teddy Kennedy, Kerry, and Biden did whatever the hell they felt like without much in the way of consequences.
But... "I am good to those who are good. I am also good to those who are not good." Just because liberal asshole Democrats fail to be good Americans is no reason for conservative nominal Democrats like yours truly or upright, conservative Republicans to fail to provide the full measure of patriotic support required by our principles.
Inside the water's edge? Serve 'em their own livers back to them on a skewer - no quarter on domestic or economic issues.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/11/2008 14:02
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#17
I will be against Obama on probably every decision he makes. I will point out his failings. But I will not be like the idiotic and infantile democrats that have surrounded me the past 8 years (I live in Marin County...nutso world). They are like little kids stamping their feet. I won't go to that level. But if he goes off the rails, then I will be very vocal in my opposition.
#20
Barrack Hussein Obama is my President. He wasn't elected by me, or by most of my friends, but he's President of the United States, effective Jan 20, 2009. He will remain my president as long as he supports, protects, and promotes the Constitution of the United States, and the laws enacted by Congress and signed by the President - ALL of them, since 1790 and later, unless they have been rescinded. HOWEVER:
the first time he steps on that Constitution, or tries to do something diametrically opposed to it, he switches from being my President to being my Enemy, and will be treated as such. I'm keeping my eye on him. "Pinch" Sulzburger and several others (Dan Blather, Nancy Pillousi, Harry "Weak" Reid, Chucky Schumer, etc.) have already made that list.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 17:49
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#21
OP and USMC sum it up.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 19:06
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#22
Politics *should* end at the water's edge
If that were true, Teddy Kennedy could have been President.
#23
Restrain any comment that puts our troops in harm's way directly (not a problem in the R'burg), but the trickier thing is to question Admin forign policy, and that will surely come up. As I remember, dissent is the highest form of patriotism (per the seditionist left), but keep your judgement intact (I will have to do the same)
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/11/2008 19:20
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#24
Yeah, but where's the birth certificate and what does it say? And what about the campaign finance fraud? And what about his advisers going over to talk to Hamas before the election? What other stuff is this questionable character covering up?
He's not my president. He's president of the country. He's not ready. He'll do whatever he thinks fits his political plan, rather do what's good for us, or he'll do some good things so that when the "plan" comes out, everyone will "trust" him.
I have a friend who grew up in Indonesia who says he makes Bashir look like a boyscout. And no one can read him because of the Indonesian cultural norms that Americans can't decipher.
We'll see what happens.
Oh, and why was it, do you think, that Iran was so vocal in its support of D'oh-bama? OF COURSE they see him as weak and as a pushover, or as a partner (which to them would be the same thing). They are LOVIN' it. Trust me.
WASHINGTON (AP) A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may may not, I hope not but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.
Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.
"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."
Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.
#1
I look forward to reading right-wing lunacy across the internet for the next four years, will be a refreshing change from the left-wing variety of the past eight.
#2
We'll see, let's not start jumping out of windows yet.
He'll say ANYTHING to get elected, but I have a feeling he's going to screw each and every one of his hard left support groups in turn. Starting with the anti-war bunch. He's already trying to ease them into the idea of being in Afghanistan for a while.
#5
The difference between this and left wing lunacy is that George W. Bush had friends in university, university transcripts, medical records, and a birth certificate whereas he did not have friends and mentors in the Communist party, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the Nation of Islam, etc. etc. etc.
#7
We'll see. Bambi said things and congress is gearing up to do things that seem really tyrannical to me. However, like all first term presidents, what they really want is a second term. So I don't see any major screwing with things for the first 4 years. Lots of screwing up though. We'll see if he makes it through the next round of presidential elections.
#8
We'll see what happens with the Dems. planned show trials of the administration. When they move to charge Cheyney, Bush, Rumsfeld, et al with crimes you can bet which road they're on.
Add in gun control and forced service and children spying on parents, all of which have been proposed n some way or other and then you'll know.
Re: second term.......this is the philosophy that coined "one man, one vote, once"
My expectation is disasterous incompetence on the Carter model, but then I'm an optimist.
#10
Ya knw the more I learn about Obama and what he "Plans" to do after he is in office, I tend to think of him moving towards being a dictator. First off he wants the government to take over as much as they can. Second he stated he was going to use "Executive Orders" to streamline getting some things done immediately. And finaly he wants this national force of what? I am not a nut job but combined this sounds very very dictator-like to me. My only question is if the conservatives (not Republicans) in the Senate will scutinize this? I have no faith in the house because Pelosi will have that all sewn up.
#11
Last night Tom Browkaw said, "Wht is Obama's World View? We don't know."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/11/2008 12:08
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#12
#6: Rightys need a catchy name for Barry like the lefties had Bushitler. Obamalini? Obamahito? Obamastalin?
President Zero, works for me.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 12:11
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#13
Maobama.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/11/2008 12:34
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#14
Now, now. We're still working our way through Obama's "Shrub" period. They didn't start calling GWB "Bushitler" until about a week or two after 9/11.
"Bambi" works for now.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/11/2008 14:31
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#15
"We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Right wing nuttiness or not, the Big O is the one that proposed it. The whole idea creeps me out.
#16
The difference between this and left wing lunacy is the bulk of the right has the common sense to be embarrassed by this nonsense. It may make the left uncomfortable but it makes the right look looney and unelectable.
H/T: Commenter "Tantor" at Blackfive.net. This guy gets it - good stuff, so I've pasted the comment here in its entirety.
What looks like strength today will be seen as weakness tomorrow. The irrational admiration for Obama can not last. It is a fad like the latest song or hairstyle or teen idol. It will pass. The cult of Obama is a balloon waiting to be popped. We should give thanks that liberals are so foolish as to vote their emotions rather than their minds to present such a weak leader. How has wild-eyed fanatic devotion to a leader worked for the Iranians or Al Qaeda? Why do you think it would work for the Democrats?
Stop wailing about what a disaster this is and start arming yourself for the fight to come. Read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers so that you know why the Founding Fathers organized the government the way it is. Arm yourself with arguments for the coming assault on the Bill of Rights. Obama will want to reduce the military, raise taxes, mandate volunteers, ban guns, muzzle talk radio, and super-size the government. These are happy fights which we will win.
While it is alarming to see ignorance in such great numbers and on the march, our ideas are better and will come to be accepted because they work and theirs don't. The coming year will be the intellectual equivalent of Rorke's Drift. Dang...wish I'd come up with that last line myself. That one belongs in the national media.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
11/11/2008
01:18 ||
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#1
He could turn out to be a moderate or a mixed bag. He's putting out conflicting signals. Some moves are quite curious, like the Emanuel Pick, many more surprises to come no doubt.
#2
Emmanuel was picked because he's a consummate political infighter. The Chief of Staff runs the administration, handles the President, etc. The 'Israel' bullet on his c.v. doesn't mean much in this case; the Chief of Staff has very little input into foreign policy.
More telling is the supposed 'non-staffer' who's been talking to Hamas all these months and is now the more-or-less official link to them, Syria and Egypt.
#4
My wife works with a PHD Chemist from Caracas, Venezuela.
He tells me that it used to be just as civil and structured as the US, before that pig Chavez got elected. If you want to brush up on your Spanish curse words, mention Chavez around him. You'll hear swears you've never heard before. Something about his mother and a baseball bat, I don't know.
#5
Obama is worse than anyone can imagine. It takes an Indonesian or someone who grew up there to be able to read him. He is very angry, and has evil plans. His "blank slate" stuff (a kind of exterior "cultural politeness") is something he borrowed from Indonesia and then twisted to serve him here. He's not the creature he has created.
Iraq's government spokesman said Monday the proposed U.S. changes to a draft security agreement were "not enough" and asked Washington to offer new amendments if it wants the pact to win parliamentary approval.
The comments by spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh were the first by the Iraqis since the U.S. submitted a response last week to an Iraqi request for changes in the draft agreement, which would keep U.S. troops here until 2012 and give Iraq a greater role in the management of the U.S. mission. Al-Dabbagh said his remarks constituted the government response, but it had not been officially conveyed to the Americans.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood declined to comment on Al-Dabbagh's remark except to say: "We have not received any official response from the Iraqi government." U.S. officials had described the latest draft submitted to the Iraqis as the "final text."
Privately, however, some U.S. officials have said they expect protracted haggling over the agreement, with the Iraqis pressing for more concessions until the last minute.
"The American answer is not enough for the government to accept it in its current form," al-Dabbagh told The Associated Press. "There are still some points in which we have not reached a bilateral understanding." Al-Dabbagh said the government was inviting the U.S. "to give answers that are suitable to the Iraqis."
The agreement must be approved by parliament before the Dec. 31 expiration of the U.N. mandate that allows U.S. troops to operate legally. Without an agreement or a new U.N. mandate, U.S. military operations would have to stop as of Jan. 1.
Al-Dabbagh did not spell out in detail what points the Iraqis still find unacceptable, but they probably include Baghdad's demand for expanded legal jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers.
The current draft allows Iraqi courts to prosecute soldiers accused of major, premeditated crimes allegedly committed off post and off duty. The Iraqis had asked for elaboration on those charges and a greater role in determining whether specific cases met the criteria for trial in their courts.
But the agreement faces strong opposition, especially within the majority Shiite community which is the base of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's political support.
Several influential Shiite clerics have spoken out against the deal, and radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has vowed to oppose it. In addition, the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, has called for a national referendum a move that would effectively kill the deal because it would be impossible to arrange a vote before the mandate expires. Iraq's neighbors Syria and Iran have urged the Iraqis to reject the deal.
Among other things, the latest U.S. proposals remove language authorizing Iraq to ask U.S. soldiers to stay beyond 2011 and ban cross-border attacks from Iraqi soil, according to a copy of the draft obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
The latest U.S. draft also strengthens language regarding Iraqi sovereignty but does not appear to make significant changes in the limited legal authority granted to Iraq to prosecute U.S. soldiers.
Al-Maliki plans to show the draft to President Jalal Talabani and the two vice presidents shortly. Later, he will submit it to the Cabinet and if the ministers agree, he will forward it to parliament for a final decision. However, al-Dabbagh's comments indicate that al-Maliki is not ready to ask for Cabinet approval.
The latest draft states that U.S. troops must vacate Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 and leave the country entirely by Dec. 31, 2011. The previous draft authorized the Iraqi government to ask U.S. troops to stay beyond that for training and other assistance.
But the current draft states simply that "United States forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than Dec. 31, 2011." The draft also recognizes the right of each country to remove U.S. troops before that deadline. It also returns control of airspace to the Iraqis but provides that the government may ask the U.S. to provide "temporary support" in surveillance and air control.
The draft also gives Iraq the right to inspect and verify names of all U.S. service members and contractors entering and leaving the country and provides for the U.S. to take "appropriate measures" to deal with any threat to Iraq or its "democratic system and elected institutions."
President-elect Barack Obama pledged during the campaign to bring all combat troops home within 16 months of his inauguration Jan. 20. An Iraqi official said Obama had been briefed on the current draft.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is sensitive.
The draft agreement 24 pages in the English version also states that "Iraqi land, sea and air shall not be used as a launching or transit point for attacks against other countries." Iraq insisted on the addition after last month's U.S. raid into neighboring Syria and in a bid to ease fears in Iran, which strongly opposes the deal.
As a further assurance, the deal is now officially an agreement "on the withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq" and the "organization of their activities during their temporary presence."
The deal had been envisioned as establishing a long-term security relationship when it was first discussed between al-Maliki and President Bush last year.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008
01:04 ||
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#1
Nothing is going to be enough for the Iraqis, so nothing will be what they get. Bring the troops home now. Bama and the Dems won't support them anyway so we might as well get them out of harm's way while we still can. Same goes for Afghanistan.
#3
Iran is pulling out all the stops to derail this treaty. I do not expect a treaty to be signed until after the Jan. 2009 elections. If the Iraqis can pull it off (they've already been posponed several times), the Iranian proxies will probably be creamed. At that point the ground will be cleared for a prosperous and peaceful Iraq.
The Iraqis know how valuable the Americans are. So do the Iranians. Unfortunately the two nations have diametrically opposed objectives.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/11/2008 11:28
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General Motors has once again approached the federal government with its hand out. It should not be forgotten that in September of 2008, Congress gave the "big three" automakers a loan totaling $25 billion. Now they are back. This time they say that with a mere $50 billion they can turn things around and become profitable in the future. The management of GM and Ford as well as the UAW have been meeting with Nancy Pelosi to arrange a deal. GM claims that if the government does not give them the money they demand it will spell doom for the company and thus the entire US economy.
Let's consider the impact of GM ceasing to exist highly unlikely even if they declare bankruptcy. Hypothetically, GM would close its doors and all 266,000 workers would be unemployed, never to find work again, or so GM would have the public believe. GM maintains that it is really in the best interest of the country and economy to continue to support their failing business model. After all, in what kind of a world would the government allow a company that employs 266,000 workers to fail?
Descending into an abstract economics lesson about shifting resources to marginally more productive activities may be ineffective; therefore, I will approach this issue from a more philosophical angle.
The basis of GM's claim is essentially that they are too big or too important to fail due to their massive labor force. But how massive is their labor force relative to other American companies? It may be surprising that the following companies employ a larger number of workers than GM: Target, AT&T, GE, IBM, McDonalds, Citigroup, Kroger, Sears, and Wal-Mart. It is also worth noting that Home Depot, United Technologies, and Verizon all employ nearly as many workers as GM.
The question must be posed: Should the government bail out all 12 of these companies and, if so, at what cost? I doubt that if Wal-Mart, with their 2.1 million employees, went to the government or the American people and demanded a bailout that they would receive much sympathy, let alone money. But if we are going to base worthiness of bailout on number of employees alone, then Wal-Mart is almost 7 times more worthy than GM.
(I have largely neglected Ford, whose executives are also demanding a bailout. I believe that it is enough to simply state that Abercrombie & Fitch employs almost 7,000 more workers than does Ford. Would the failure of Abercrombie & Fitch's threaten the economy? I think not.)
It is unethical to force taxpayers to pay billions of dollars in order to bail out a company with a failing business model. After all, they cannot even claim, as banks did, that it is an industry-wide problem. Because if it were industry-wide, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. would all be joining their American counterparts on Capitol Hill with their collective hands out.
For years GM and Ford have produced a product that consumers do not value as much as the product provided by their competitors. Rather than changing their products or business model, they instead spent small fortunes on lobbyists. If the government does bail out GM, rest assured that this will not be the last time. But even if the government gives GM a check every week, there will come a time when no amount of government money will be enough to save them.
What is the best solution? In a word, bankruptcy. By filing for bankruptcy protection, GM can escape the death grip the UAW has on the business. Bankruptcy would allow for restructuring on an unprecedented scale. There is a good chance that a highly competitive company could rise from the ashes of what we today call GM. Even if GM itself was unable to survive bankruptcy, the resources freed from its grasp could be hugely beneficial to other automotive companies that make products that American consumers value more. As taxpayers, we have a right to object to this misuse of our money.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - General Motors Corp said on Monday it will cut production in North America due to declining demand through the first quarter of 2009. Highlights:
* Says production cuts to result in idling of 5,500 hourly employees
* Says to record a charge of at least $300 million in Q4, 2008, for capacity
actions
* Says have started providing materials for the Strasbourg transmission plant
to interested parties
* Says GMAC will cease wholesale originations to dealers in Australia, New
Zealand by December 31 and transition out of business
* Expects $1.4 billion cash expenditures for 2008 capacity reductions in U.S.,
Canada of which $0.1 billion to be spent in 2008, $0.6 billion in 2009, $0.7
#4
Because we're all wrapped up in 'measuring'. Someone can tag a 'car'[unit] to a sale. If there is no sale then the need for a unit is not there. Thus the resources needed to produce such a unit no longer exits. However, if you're a manager it magically becomes iffy nebulous as to how it is tied to each unit. While they can tie whole blocks of management by divisions [that produce or not produce] those working inside are able to a greater degree fudge their accountability to the unit. So, you kill whole divisions [but the fraternity of good o'boy managers is reluctant to cut off whole limbs of like minded fellow travelers - thus GM maintaining duplicate production lines and divisions for decades]. The organization has failed because it couldn't do that for so long. Time for it to die as a whole.
#9
There will plenty of Gov money when all income tax rates goes up including the top rate to 39.6% in 2001 w/ the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. In Jan 2009, capital gains tax goes from 10% to 20%, though it looks like few will have any to report. In addition the Marxists Obamists is already letting the word out of another 5% surcharge for a max rate of 44.6%. Why the fuck w/ property, sales, FICA, Medicare taxes a high earner wants to give away 60% of his earnings is beyond me. Better to take it easy, earn a few bucks less, and spend more time on holiday.
And it you are going to die, do it before 2011 when the estate tax goes back up to 60% and $1 million.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 8:11
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#10
top rate to 39.6% in 2011
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 8:11
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#11
I guess the marginal tax rate would go up to 70% in states w/ income tax, like California.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 8:18
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#12
Like I said yesterday, what's the UAW giving up to save their jobs?
#13
Should We Really Bail Out the Big Three Automakers with $73.20 Per Hour Labor?
Even though this article is anti big three auto, the first chart explains why having a domestic auto industry is important. It's important at even 1/2 the hourly wage, esp now that high school graduates are limited to working for Walmart wages. For the health of the economy, bring auto production back home.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 9:14
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#14
No big deal. We can just triple the minimum wage.
#15
Or jobs disappear and wages go so low that the gov can't cut your pension check each month.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 10:07
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#16
Let 'em fail. When the plants fall idle, someone can buy them for pennies on the dollar and start a new car company from scratch that is both viable and efficient. And one that preferably keeps the unions out. That's how the market's supposed to work, right??
#18
.5MT: It was Vega sheet metal with Monza badging. That which we call a Vega, by any other name, is just as craptacular.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/11/2008 10:44
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#19
The single best thing for GM, and Ford, is to take the bankruptcy tack. They then abort, with a judge's orders, their existing union agreements. Cleans the slate with regard to wages, health benefits, retirement benefits, contractual agreements with suppliers, et al. However, management still fears this route, cause the same judge could dump their dumb asses, force sales of all corporate assets both domestic and worldwide. So the Top Monkeys try to hold on, riding the backs of taxpayers. Either route places a tremendous burden on taxpayers. The next large injection of billions to the auto industry ought to be reserved for development towars enabling electrical plug-ins, dooming the shieks to camel f**king for the remainder of their days. Combined with the capital needed to upgrade electrical power infrastructure, this will require a coupla trillions. We need nukes and a superconducting power grid to support an electric auto transition. But at least we would be energy independent.
#20
Seriously, I'm no fan of Managment, but they're NOT responsable for crappy design,just responsible for putting it together as well as possible. As well as the design allows.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 11:45
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#23
3, some other company will get that debt and it will be owed to the new company.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/11/2008 13:14
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#24
Obamalada (note Land of Lincoln plates) - if you have to ask how much it costs, you won't be able to afford it. Pictured is the 2010 thru 2020 model with windsheild and side window cracker redneck see-thru model with standard equipment redneck fat tires.
#25
GM really screwed the pooch when they killed Oldsmobile and continued to keep nursing the Buick along. If Ransom E. were alive today he would be rolling over in his grave.....
General Motors plans to suspend production at its factories in South Korea for about two weeks starting next month in one of the strongest signs yet that the crisis in carmaking has spread to Asia.
The shutdown will take effect from late December and affect all five of GMâs Korean plants formerly owned by Daewoo, which form one of the loss making US carmakerâs best-performing business units.
âThe economic crisis is truly global,â Jay Cooney, GM Daewooâs vice-president, said. âWhat weâre beginning to see here in Asia is no different from what is going on in Europe and what has already happened in the US.â
Company officials said the temporary closure in Korea stemmed from slowing demand and GMâs need to manage production and rising inventories rather than a shortage of cash.
GM said last week it had burned through $6.9bn of cash in the third quarter, and warned it might reach the minimum amount of money needed to stay in business by next year unless it received financial aid or car markets improved.
However, slowing business at GMâs formerly money-spinning Asian arm will add to mounting troubles at GM, which is lobbying US lawmakers for funds to rescue it from financial failure.
Separately PSA Peugeot Citroën on Tuesday confirmed it had dismissed about 1,000 temporary workers in China at its joint venture with local carmaker Dongfeng because of slower sales. The layoffs will reduce the headcount from 9,000 to about 8,000, a spokesman said.
#4
Meanwhile the Al Franken vote grooooooows. Some absentee ballots votes found in the trunk of a car. Some were "remembered" and then counted days later by a fatigued election board member. Voting maps? Who needs stinking voting maps? It is as the Obamessiah wills.
#5
California is already a Majority-Minority state. European whites make up just 42% of the population and Hispanics have grown to 37%.(Not counting Illegals) Between 1980 and 2004 the Hispanic population in California grew by over 8 million. In 2004 the white European population was slightly larger than 1980 but actually decreased from the 1990 census.
In 1980 California had a 58% white European population. Reagan carried the state by 1.5 million votes. He won all but three of 58 counties, SF, Alameda and Yolo (Scratomato). In 1984 he again won by 1.5 million votes but lost two additional counties, Marin (Limousine Liberal Heaven) and Santa Cruz (Home of UC Angela Davis).
Now being a Majority-Minority State in 2004 Kerry carried California by 1.2 million votes and in 2008 Obama carried the state by 2.5 million votes.
Obama carried 33 of 58 counties which included every large county except Orange County where McCain squeaked out a 36,000 vote majority. Reagan won Orange County by a 3-1 margin.
Dick Morris had a theory early this year that Hillary would win 2008, screw up and the last Republican President, ever, would be elected in 2012. His theory was that demographics do not favor Republicans.
Morris picked the wrong Donk but his theory is sound. For the 2012 last shot for Republicans, Obama will have to worse than former California Donk Governor Gray Davis, and he was really bad.
Conservatives have to come to terms with the reality that they are swimming against a demographic riptide. Count on the Donks giving the illegals amnesty. The riptide will become a demographic Tsunami.
This story did not run in English, but did run in French, and in light of the submarine accident is one worth thinking about. Ilya Kramnik has long been in touch with the state of Russian shipbuilding, so he does know enough to know whether this is necessary or not. The headline: Ð ÑÑÑкОй авОаМПÑÐµÑ Ñ ÑÑаМÑÑзÑкОЌ акÑеМÑПЌ or Un porte-avions russe à l'accent français, translated as A Russian Aircraft Carrier with a French Accent.
The international exhibition of naval defense and maritime safety EURONAVAL 2008, which was not initially expected to result in much news, has a chance to make history. The commander of the Russian navy, Admiral Vladimir Vyssotski, who is visiting the exhibition, has shown a keen interest in the potential of the French group Thales in the construction of aircraft carriers.
The article goes on to note that the Russian Navy has a history of buying ships built by foreign countries, and that the current state of Russian shipbuilding is at a point where this makes sense. The article notes that disruption and delays for several ships under construction highlight the real difficulty Russia faces building ships today, and that working with Thales offers promise.
The idea being floated is that all indications are Russia would like to build 6 aircraft carriers similar to the 60-70 thousand ton CVF design being developed for the British and French Navies. Ilya Kramnik's idea is to build the lead ship in France with foreign assistance, including some experience for Russian shipbuilders, then do follow on serial construction of the rest of the class in Russia.
It is impossible to believe this would ever happen, mostly because of the technology transfer issues. Thales is building the CVF with the assistance of the United States, and it is hard to believe the US would allow Thales to help the Russians build aircraft carriers without violating some sort of export agreement that protects shared technologies. Much more at link including poaching missing pieces of carrier design
#1
France has always had a penchant for dealing with nefarious characters. And even though it was for Israel, they are a nuclear proliferator. They were also squalling pretty loud when we invaded Iraq, I wouldn't doubt that they had a hand in helping Hussein (Iraq's, not ours) with his arsenals.
#3
Isn't going to much of a carrier w/o catapults and arresting gear.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 10:09
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#4
The U.S. should encourage this. Russia can ill afford the cost of buying and maintaining an aircraft carrier fleet and the battle groups required to make them effective. Let Putin's ambitions bleed his country.
#5
#3: Isn't going to much of a carrier w/o catapults and arresting gear.
Helicopters need neither.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 11:25
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#6
Bigjim:
France did supply Iraq with nuclear technology way back in the 80's. Chirac helped build the reactor the Israelis took out. And wasn't it French and German intelligence that helped supply the diagrams for Powell's presentation to the UN? You know, those reinforced underground enclaves, mobile WMD factories, and even Saddam's submarine.Thales was involved in the Oil-for-Food scandal, willing to supply anything to the highest bidder. No wonder Europe is celebrating an Obama victory--Bush rained on their party.
#7
A very basic question:
If Russia is busy selling its existing carriers, why would it buy carriers from a foreigner? Wouldn't it be easier to modernize one of its unused carriers?
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/11/2008 14:00
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#8
Let 'em buy from the French; they'll spend a fortune on replacement propellors....
#10
If Russia is busy selling its existing carriers, why would it buy carriers from a foreigner? Wouldn't it be easier to modernize one of its unused carriers?
First of all, you have to have a ship worth modernizing. The Russian aircraft carriers are more than 2/3 cruisers, with huge stockpiles of offensive and defensive missiles and launchers. The electronics are mid-70's to early 80's technology - huge, bulky, and cumbersome to upgrade. They don't have a tradition of carrier-launched aircraft, and have to start from scratch building one. The primary Russian shipyard for building aircraft carriers, in Sevastopol, is now nominally on Ukranian territory. The Russians have a major problem, and getting the French to help them out would be a Godsend for them.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 15:43
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#11
If it is not better than the Charles de Gaulle then no need to worry.
#12
Besides #9 + #10,+ wid the USN becom more focused on dev the OWG-NWO "1000-Flags/Nations" GLOBAL TASK FORCE for international humanitarian, peacekeeping, rapid reax, + police actions; + 3-4D BATTLESPACE MANAGEMENT = VIRUAL REALITY already becom steadily archaic, THE RUSSIAN, etc CARRIER [read, CHINA PLAN] COULD BE OBSOLETE BEFORE ITS EVEN DEPLOYED. ALL USN WARSHIPS, as for the other US Services, ARE OSTENSIBLY OCEAN-BASED, PROTO-"MOTHER SHIPS" TO UVS,GMD-TMD + SPAWAR TECHS.
#14
ION RUSSIAN NAVY > WORLD MIL FORUM = OVERCREWING, LARGE NUMBER OF UNTRAINED NAVAL PERSONNEL, AND POOR SHIPBOARD SMOKING DISCIPLINE MAY HAD CONTRIBUTED TO RUSSIAN "NERPA" DEATHS.
SONg - Truly BLINDED [themselves] WID [Naval] SCIENCE!?
A babysitter's parrot is being credited with helping save the life of a 2-year-old girl who was choking Friday at a Denver area home while the sitter was in the bathroom.
"While I was in the bathroom, Willie (the parrot) started screaming like I'd never heard him scream before and he started flapping his wings," said Meagan, the babysitter. "Then he started saying 'mama baby' over and over and over again until I came out and looked at Hannah and Hannah's face was turning blue because she was choking on her pop tart."
Meagan performed the Heimlich maneuver on Hannah, which stopped the choking.
"If (Willie) wouldn't have warned me, I probably wouldn't have come out of the bathroom in time because she was already turning blue, her lips were blue and everything," Meagan said. "If anything happened to her, I don't know what I would do," said Samantha Kuusk, Hannah's mother. "I'm very grateful for the both of them because they both saved her."
Willie didn't say much when CBS4 visited on Sunday. Meagan said he is usually pretty talkative. "He says 'I love you' and he says 'mama' and he says 'step up' and some other words that aren't so nice," she said.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008
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#1
Some birds are smart. Parrots are very smart... crows too.
#2
Late one night, a burglar broke into a house he thought was empty.
He tiptoed through the living room but suddenly he froze in his tracks
when he heard a loud voice say: "Jesus is watching you!"
Silence returned to the house, so the burglar crept forward again.
"Jesus is watching you," the voice boomed again.
The burglar stopped dead again. He was frightened. Frantically, he
looked all around. In a dark corner, he spotted a bird cage and in
the cage was a parrot.
He asked the parrot: "Was that you who said Jesus is watching me?"
"Yes", said the parrot.
The burglar breathed a sigh of relief, and asked the parrot:
"What's your name?" "Clarence," said the bird.
"That's a dumb name for a parrot,"sneered the burglar.
"What idiot named you Clarence?"
The parrot said, "The same idiot who named the Rottweiller Jesus."
#4
My favorite is "Don't talk to the Parrot"
A plumber was called to repair a kitchen sink drain, the owner waned him "Whatever he says, DO NOT TALK TO THE PARROT I also have a bulldog, but he won't hurt you.
The plumber arrived, a really fierce bulldog met him at the door, stared at him, but did not bark or growl, he proceded to fix the drain, the parrot started screaming cuss words, and other vile things at the plumber nonstop, remembering the owner's caution he didn't respond, when through he finaly gave in to the parrot's vile speech and said "Shut the fuck up." the parrot instantly screamed "GET HIM SPIKE."
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 12:04
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A female suicide bomber detonated explosives in the emergency room of a hospital near Fallujah on Sunday in one of several violent incidents in Iraq that left at least 10 people dead over the weekend, Iraqi officials said.
The woman apparently targeted armed guards who were being treated for wounds suffered Sunday during another bombing, said Capt. Mohammed al-Dulaimy, a spokesman for the Fallujah police department. Two physicians, Harith al-Ani and his wife, Salwa al-Dulaimy, were among three people killed in the attack at Amriyah Hospital, south of Fallujah, Capt. Dulaimy said.
A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed five people and wounded nine at a checkpoint near Ramadi manned by police officers and female guards hired to search women, an official at Ramadi Hospital said.
Both attacks took place in Anbar province. The U.S. military turned over primary responsibility for security in Anbar to provincial officials two months ago. Security in the province, once among the most volatile in Iraq, has improved markedly in recent months, prompting U.S. Marines to downscale their presence there.
Violence in Iraq has dropped to a four-year low. But extremist groups continue to carry out attacks, often targeting Iraqi security forces.
In Diyala province, north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb at a market in the town of Khalis killed at least two people, according to Col. Raghib Radhi al-Omairi of the Diyala police. Four policemen were among 13 people wounded in the attack, he said.
Meanwhile, in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, three policemen were wounded when a gunman opened fire on their checkpoint, said a police source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad criticized a yet-to-be-ratified agreement that would allow U.S. troops to remain in Iraq when the United Nations mandate that sanctions their presence expires at the end of the year.
"The Americans say that their withdrawal from Iraq would create chaos," he said in a speech in Damascus, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency. "This is unacceptable. . . . It aims at suggesting that the Iraqi people are unable to govern themselves and administer their own affairs. It aims to keep the occupation in place."
Iranian officials have also spoken out against the agreement, which has been the subject of drawn-out negotiations. Washington accuses both Iran and Syria of exacerbating violence in Iraq.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
It aims at suggesting that the Iraqi people are unable to govern themselves and administer their own affairs
See ER incident described above...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/11/2008 9:40
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#2
I guess she became irate over being asked for her insurance card.
US forces in Afghanistan say they have killed 14 people during a shoot-out in the south-eastern Khost province. Those killed were suspected militants who opened fire after troops stopped their vehicle, a spokesman said.
But Khost Governor Arsallah Jamal said those killed were working for a private security firm and were not militants.
And no explanation from the Gov as to why workers for a private security firm would open fire on US forces ...
Separately, pro-Taleban militants in Afghanistan say seven of their fighters have died in an air attack by the US-led forces based in Afghanistan. A spokesman for the militants told the BBC the raid happened in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2008
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NEW DELHI - India has struck a defense agreement with Qatar which includes the possibilities of stationing Indian troops in the Arab country, sources in the Indian Defence Ministry said. The cooperation agreement was inked during the ongoing visit to the Arab world by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The two countries also have joined in a maritime security arrangement, which will be extended to other countries, a senior Indian Defence Ministry official said.
India and Qatar had agreed in June 2007 to jointly produce weapons and equipment. An agreement to this effect was reached during the visit of then-Indian Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt and senior Qatari defense officials.
The defense cooperation pact signed during Singh's visit also will pave the way for joint production of weaponry at Indian facilities.
Indian Defence Ministry sources said Qatar is keen to collaborate with Indian private and state-owned defense companies, which in turn have entered into some sort of a tie-up with American companies for weapon and equipment production
Before his arrival in Qatar, Singh discussed areas of defense cooperation with Oman. Currently, India and Oman's defense cooperation is limited to training of Oman personnel at Indian facilities and joint naval exercises.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008
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#1
Hedging their bets in case the USA leaves. It makes sense as India is the local superpower and they are a better option than China.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
Pretty sad day; here in France, 11th of november is WWI armistice day. A day to remember those who fell, 1.5 milliosn killed (out of a slightly less than 40 million population), millions upon millions wounded, and even more than that who never were born (french demographic winter started right after WWI)... if you look a bit at the ramping up to WWI, at its unfolding, and at what it led to, you really can't help being saddened at this waste, and angered by the legacy of those who led to this waste, and still leading the show (and, no, G(r)om, I'm not talking about the joooos or something).
#3
Long line of those who served with my name. I'm the latest, but not the last - two cousins have children who joined this past month. Freedom isn't free - it has a terribly high cost only something as valuable as it is could continue to extract. Bless those now serving - their burden is about to become even greater. Pray for them daily.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 12:13
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#4
I'm wearing my flag pins today, American Left collar (Nearest the heart) Confederate right collar.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 12:21
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#5
In 1914 the French Army went to battle with bright red trousers. It went to battle with an officer corps who in name of "laicité" (not to mix with American "secularity") had has its church or temple-going elements (that is 75%) bypassed for promotion or downright purged. End result was that Joffre had to fire one general in two before the end of war for gross incompetence after having gained their stars not through professional merits but for politic/religious motives. End result was hundreds of thousand French soldiers needlessly dying victims of their absurd uniforms (1) and the political toadies they had in guise of officers.
(1) It would have had a pass if, like the American Civil War generals using Napoleonic-like tactics in the era of the Minnie bullet, the French command had been surprised by the lethality of a new weapon, but already during the Boer War that is over ten years earlier it had been evident, even to the obtuse British who dropped their red uniforms for kaki ones, that you couldn't go to battle dressed like a practice target.
#7
JFM, tell folks why the pants were red! It wasn't just the generals' idea, apparently. You'd tell your own story better than I would.
Ninety years ago this morning, my grandfather and thousands of other gobs crowded the rails of the USS Arkansas and other British and American ships based in Scapa Flow. They passed binoculars around (and dropped a few in the ocean), all trying to see the German admiral in his launch hand his sword over to the British admiral.
The Grand Fleet had kept the Kaiser's fleet bottled up in the Baltic for most of the war.
Today I'd like to honor our friend Art, who served a year commanding a construction battalion in Iraq. They built schools, roads, communities and public order.
The pants were tainted in red because government had tried to subsidize the farmers who produced the plant (garance in French) for tainting them. My guess is that the use of this plant was being phased out with the introduction of syntethic taintings. My other guess is that some influent politicians depended on those famers for reelection or, that given the electoral system the shifting of just a dozen constituencies could tumble the government.
Also in case the red trouser was not visble enough, the jacket was the kind of blue used in the Grande Armee. And French soldiers had no helmets. It took several months and hundreds of thousands dead before they got the horizon blue uniforms (since this ws France uniforms had to be blue) and helmets made from third rate steel.
a "hoeizon b
#20
My father-in-law died this summer. A veteran, age 84. As the procession left the funeral home for the church it drove past a day care center. Some wonderful soul had all those little children out on the lawn waving little American flags and clapping as the hearse passed. Small town America!
#21
I have long thought that WWI was a stupid, stupid war.
It started stupid because Archduke Ferdinand was stupid to go to Serbia, practically daring the nationalists to assassinate him. After that, the entangling alliances forced countries to fight each other who might not have fought.
It was fought stupidly - sending men in a massive charge across no man's land against entrenched machine guns guaranteed massive casualties. Generals who refused to change their strategy despite massive evidence that it wasn't working
It was stupid for America to become involved. We did not have a dog in that fight, as they say. We were suckered in by the British, and somewhat the French, who had been bled white over the years.
After the war, the Allies demanded war reparations that bankrupted Germany thinking that it would keep Germany down forever. Instead, it fostered resentment among the Germans that allowed Hitler to take over and start WWII.
Oh, and as a "consolation prize", Britain won a lot of the MidEast from Turkey, and along with President Wilson, carved it up into the mess we have today.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/11/2008 20:19
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#22
If I make it to 84 I hope somebody does the same for me. I'd be most honored.
#24
I served in the US Navy, and was mostly bored to death.
Sometimes I wish I had been bored.
Looks like I'll be making a trip back East before the end of the month to make a final visit to my 'second Dad'. Landed at Normandy on his 19th birthday; lasted three days before getting shot in the throat among the hedgerows. Recovered, married the nurse who tended him, went to law school at the Univ of Virginia, and retired as a judge.
#25
I took the Purple Heart, that my Cousin and best frien growing up was awarded when he was killed in action in Vietnam, to work today with his name, Lance Corporal William Clyde Northington attached. Only 2 people in an office of 123 knew what it was. One thought it was the Medal of Honour. Sad.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/11/2008 21:44
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Lebanese authorities have arrested five militants suspected of involvement in attacks in Syria and Lebanon and of belonging to an Al Qaeda-inspired group, security sources said on Monday.
The Lebanese army confirmed in a statement it had detained five people who "are involved in terrorist acts". Army troops and security men made the arrests in the past four days in the northern city of Tripoli and the nearby Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi. They coordinated with the Palestinian Fatah faction, which captured and handed over a suspect in the southern camp of Ain al-Hilweh, the sources said.
All the militants are said to belong to Fatah al-Islam, a group crushed by the army last year in a 15-week battle in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon. At least 430 people were killed, including 170 soldiers and 220 militants. Syrian state television last week showed 12 alleged members of Fatah al-Islam confessing that they helped plan a suicide car bombing in Damascus that killed 17 people in September.
Ahmed Khaled al-Itr, a known militant, was arrested after his name came up in the confessions. Fatah al-Islam sympathisers were linked to attacks on the Lebanese army earlier this year. The militant arrested in Ain al-Hilweh was directly linked to Al Qaeda, the security sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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India is negotiating a deal with Israel to purchase four intelligence and early warning planes at a cost of USD 1.5 billion, a media report said on Monday.
Indian Defence Secretary Vijay Singh is leading a delegation to Israel this week to discuss the purchase of the planes and missiles from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), daily Ha'aretz reported. The Indian delegation will also discuss cooperation with Israel on intelligence matters and in the war on terror, sources close to the Israeli defense industries reportedly told the daily.
Negotiations over the new deal is said to have started a few months ago. India has also made other big deals with Israel recently involving a $640 million sea-to-sea missile project and a $260 million purchase of anti-aircraft missiles.
The Indian delegation includes senior officials from the Defense Ministry, high ranking officers from the army and air force, as well as officials involved in military research and development, the report said.
Earlier, India had bought Phalcon AWACS plane radars from IAI for $1.1 billion, a deal that has been delayed but likely to come through by early 2010. A source close to the IAI told the daily that the first Phalcon AWACS will be delivered to India in the next few weeks. The delay stems from problems discovered during test flights, which have since been corrected.
The visit comes in the shadow of an investigation being carried out by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)into alleged kickbacks in previous deals between the two countries, including those with IAI and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/11/2008
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A few kilometres from the North Korean border, there is a flurry of last-minute activity and a loud rustling noise as handfuls of waterproof leaflets are stuffed into sacks. There are 10,000 in each bundle, all destined for one of the most information-starved countries on the planet.
They will get there with the help of helium gas, pumped from cylinders to fill giant plastic balloons, the vehicles for this exercise in paper bombardment. Each bag of leaflets has its own timing mechanism, readied to burst open at different intervals and scatter the cargo over a wide area.
With a loud cheer, the first of the balloons rises up into the bright blue sky of the Korean autumn. The wind is blowing gently from the south, and it should be over North Korea in a matter of minutes.
"North Korea is a feudal dictatorship hidden behind an iron curtain," says Park Sang-hak, a human rights activist who defected from North Korea in 1999. "We're sending these flyers across the border to let the people in the North know about the concept of freedom, and to provide factual information about their leader," he says.
"You can see it's effective because of the way North Korea is responding... if we stop, we'd be giving in to their blackmail"
Park Sang-hak, North Korea defector and human rights activist
The leaflets repeat the claims made in recent news reports that Kim Jong-il is in poor health as the result of a stroke he suffered in August. It is a highly taboo subject inside the country over which Mr Kim's family has exercised absolute authority for 60 years.
Professor Brian Myers, from South Korea's Dongseo University, believes the personal nature of the leaflets could be one reason why the North is so angry. "If Kim Jong-il really is incapacitated then the last thing North Korea wants is its people getting the impression that the country is considered weak," he tells me. "Whether it is smuggled DVDs or music cassettes, they see it all as an effort to undermine the moral fibre of the nation, so when you get direct propaganda making aspersions about Kim Jong-il personally, they react even more allergically to it."
The North is certainly furious.
Oh, wotta surprise ...
It has called the leaflet campaign "psychological warfare" and says that it risks provoking military confrontation.
The propaganda war itself is nothing new, but it was meant to have been brought to an end, at least officially. For decades the two countries used to bombard each other with messages broadcast from giant loudspeakers facing each other along the length of the fortified border. But they agreed to stop the angry war of words a few years ago, and the loudspeakers fell silent.
The efforts of private citizens in South Korea, however, have continued, and the balloons have been a commonly used method to try to break North Korea's self-imposed information embargo. But this latest leaflet campaign seems to have touched a particularly raw nerve.
And now the South Korean government, concerned about the rising tension, has asked the activists to stop. It is a request that is being given short shrift.
"Our leaflets tell North Koreans about some basic and private aspects of the life of Kim Jong-il," Mr Park says. "You can see it's effective because of the way North Korea is responding... if we stop, we'd be giving in to their blackmail."
It is difficult to know what any authority, in the North or South, can do to stop their campaign.
The South Korean activists are taking advantage of rights of freedoms of movement and expression denied on the other side of the border. They can launch their balloons from anywhere - all they need is a southerly breeze. But the more they send, the higher the tension is likely to rise.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2008
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#2
And you wondered why I put ballons on the shopping list. Fergot the helium, though.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/11/2008 7:48
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#3
Get balloons filled with hydrogen and launch 10 million cliff bars. More nutrition than a greeting card in a waterproof pouch.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 13:14
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#4
We need to try this with some of the "blue" states - especially the northeast.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 14:17
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#5
TOPIX/WAFF > NORTH KOREA WARNS IT WILL TAKE ULTRA-HARDLINE STEPS IFF JAPAN IMPOSES NEW SANCTIONS; + NORTH KOREA'S KIM JONG-IL MAY HAD SUFFERED A SECOND STROKE?
The European Union formally launched on Monday an anti-piracy security operation off the coast of Somalia - its first ever naval mission - the EU's French presidency said. Yeah, yeah. They keep "launching" these missions, but nothing ever seems to take off. Put them under the command of the Puntland Coast Guard or the French Navy and maybe something would actually get done.
Dubbed Operation Atalanta, the mission was endorsed by the bloc's defence ministers at talks in Brussels. EU ships will also help protect UN and other vulnerable vessels seeking to transport aid into strife-torn Somalia. "I hope that it will be in place by December," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, as the bloc's defence and foreign ministers held talks in Brussels. The so-called EUNAVOR operation will be made up of at least seven ships, including three frigates and a supply vessel. It will also be backed by surveillance aircraft. The mission will be run from a headquarters at Northwood, north of London, with contributions from France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and Spain, with Portugal, Sweden and non-EU nation Norway also likely to take part. "Our participation in the Somalia project is an important one," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters. "This is obviously a very challenging project but one that European leaders are approaching with real humility as well as determination," he said. The EU initiative was taken after Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed urged Somalis and the international community to combat rising piracy off the lawless nation's waters.
Last month, a maritime watchdog said Somali pirates were now responsible for nearly a third of all reported attacks on ships, often using violence and taking hostages. On Friday, heavily-armed Somali pirates seized a Danish-managed cargo ship with 13 crew. NATO warships recently arrived in the region in a bid to secure the maritime delivery of food aid to the civilian population of Somalia, where a deadly civil conflict continues to rage. India and Russia have also sent ships to the area on anti-piracy duties. The International Maritime Bureau said 63 of the 199 piracy incidents recorded worldwide in the first nine months of this year occurred in the waters off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden. The Somalian figure is almost double that of the same period last year.
Somalia's well-organised pirates prey on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which some 30 percent of the world's oil is transported. The pirates operate high-powered speedboats and are heavily armed, sometimes holding ships for weeks until they are released for large ransoms paid by governments or owners.
France, which has a major military base in neighbouring Djibouti, is so far the only country to have used its firepower against the pirates, in April and September operations following hostage-takings. Under the mission's rules of engagement, EU nations that capture any pirates will not be allowed to hand them over to a state where suspects could face the death penalty, torture or degrading treatment.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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Under the mission's rules of engagement, EU nations that capture any pirates will not be allowed to hand them over to a state where suspects could face the death penalty, torture or degrading treatment.
Crippled before it could even begin.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 12:22
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#2
Mission planning for failure is part of the EU strategy.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 13:01
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#3
Rules written by fools who are too arrogant or stupid to think they will ever be threatened. They prefer to live in their theoretical world with a time horizon that doesn;t stretch much past their front door. A weak, soft society too far removed from the reality of survival.
Thirteen Taliban fighters were killed and several others injured in the army operation in Swat and Bajaur on Monday.
According to the army media centre in Mingora, five of the Taliban, including a local commander, were killed in clashes in Moragai and Shalkho areas of Matta tehsil, while another two were killed in a separate clash in Swat's Kabal tehsil.
AFP quoted officials as saying that the remaining six were killed in Bajaur's Sewai and Damadola areas when jets bombarded Taliban hideouts. "The bombing destroyed their underground hideouts, and so far six deaths have been confirmed," local administration official Jamil Khan told AFP.
In a separate development, 12 Taliban commanders surrendered to the political administration, at a jirga of Otmankhel tribes in Bajaur Agency on Monday, officials and locals told Daily Times. Frontier Constabulary officials said the commanders had assured the jirga and the political authorities that they would not side with the Taliban in future. Locals said the jirga was held in Khar, where tribal elders handed over the 12 wanted individuals to the political authorities. Salarzai and Mamoond tribes also held separate anti-Taliban jirgas in Bajaur on Monday.
APP reported that security forces also targetted Taliban positions in Zorbandar and Sabagi areas of Khar, but there were no casualties. Security in Khar has been put on red alert following reports that suicide bombers have entered the headquarters of Bajaur, NNI reported.
Blasts: Separately in Salarzai area of Bajaur, a bomb blast killed one man and destroyed a guest house; while in Mamoond tehsil, a remote-controlled bomb injured four people.
Free Taliban: Meanwhile, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said an abducted Chinese engineer would be set free when the authorities released all 50 militants on a list given to Malakand DIG Tanveerul Haq Sipra. He also demanded the release of another 25 Taliban in exchange for three kidnapped policemen.
Also, an ISPR spokesman has denied media reports that US jets bombed Tirah Valley on Sunday.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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More than 100 Somali parliamentarians have been unable to afford their trips back to their homeland following a regional summit in Kenya. 10 days after attending a meeting sponsored by the Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the lawmakers still failed to return to Somalia, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The meeting was formed to evaluate the performance of Somalia's transitional federal government, which is struggling in the face of gaping differences within the Somali factions and the country's runaway insurgency.
The MPs blame the organizers of the summit for refusing to cover their travel costs as well the expenses they incurred during their stay. IGAD has disclaimed responsibility saying the Kenyan government had been in charge of the matter on the European Union's behalf.
Some MPs, though, have flown back to Somalia, but the issue has been a cause for controversy. The UN Development Program (UNDP) is as well said to have footed the flight expenses. The organization's officials likewise deny any involvement in the issue.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
I think I'd run out of money too, so I wouldn't have to go back to Somalia.
Pakistani security forces on Monday retrieved 15 trucks that had been hijacked by the Taliban earlier in the day en route to Afghanistan to deliver goods to US-led coalition forces, AFP quoted an official as saying. Sources said that 13 of the trucks contained wheat and two were carrying military vehicles. The trucks were seized at four places along a road leading to the Afghan border.
"About 60 masked gunmen popped up on the road and took away the trucks. Not a single shot was fired," Reuters quoted another official as saying.
A military offensive followed the hijacking, with two gunship helicopters targetting Godar, Saurkamar and Varmado Mela areas of Jamrud.
AFP reported that at least two Taliban fighters were killed in the operation. "We have successfully recovered all the trucks ... two militants were killed and five wounded in the operation," the agency quoted official Rahat Khan as saying.
But doctors told Daily Times that those killed in the operation were civilians -- including a 12-year-old boy. They said that six civilians had also been injured, and most of them were children.
Meanwhile, Khyber Agency Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mustafa Kamal has warned that the group would attack the Peshawar airport if the military operation is not stopped. He said his group would not 'forgive' the assistant political agents of Khyber Agency and Jamrud for ordering 'the killings of innocent people'.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
those killed in the operation were civilians
Maybe so - civilians can hijack trucks. Since the trucks were recovered it is reasonable to expect the people they were recovered from were the hijackers.
(AKI) - A radical Islamic group, Majelis Mujahideen Indonesia has claimed that one of the Bali bombers executed at the weekend had asked the group to be collaborate on the 2002 bomb attacks. "Amrozi had asked us to collaborate on the Bali bomb attacks," said Muhammad Bachroni, a spokesman for MMI, in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).
He was referring to Amrozi Nurhasyim, one of the three Bali bombers executed on Sunday. "We said no, because our way of fighting for (Islamic) Sharia law does not include violence," said Bachroni.
Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron (Mukhlas) were executed by firing squad at the island prison of Nusakambangan off southern Java on Sunday, government officials said. The three, who belonged to Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, were found guilty of planning the twin attacks on nightclubs at the resort of Kuta on the island of Bali in October 2002. A total of 202 people died in the attacks, most of them foreigners.
Responding to the executions on Sunday, Bachroni said they were rushed and unfair. "The attack in Bali was carried out with a small nuclear bomb made in Israel. Amrozi and the others were co-opted in participating in the attack organised by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)," Bachroni told AKI. "There needed to be more time to discover the other perpetrators," told Bachroni to AKI.
MMI is an Islamist organisation considered close to JI which aims at turning Indonesia into an Islamic state. Until last July, MMI was led by Abu Bakar Bashir, a radical cleric considered the spiritual leader of JI. Bashir has since formed another group called Jemaah Anshori Tauhid or defender of believing in one and only God teaching.
JI is widely considered south-east Asia's most dangerous terrorist organisation and was believed to be behind the bloodiest attacks in Indonesia. Intelligence agencies claim Bashir is the spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiyah and has links with Al-Qaeda.
In March 2005, Bashir was found guilty of conspiracy over the 2002 attacks. He was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment. In December 2006, Bashir's conviction was overturned by Indonesia's Supreme Court.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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Jamaat-e-Islami has alleged that its Ameer Matiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid were sent to jail yesterday as part of the government's move to keep the BNP-led four-party alliance off the coming elections.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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The High Court (HC) yesterday granted bail for three months to former BNP state minister Aman Ullah Aman and former Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) lawmaker Mufti Shahidul Islam in two cases filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on charges of amassing illegal wealth and concealing information about it.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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Indian troops killed nine suspected militants in shootouts across Kashmir, police said on Monday, a week before local elections in the disputed region that are being boycotted by the 'rebels'.
"Security forces have fought pitched battles with militants at several places during the past two days," a police spokesman said. "An army officer was wounded and nine militants were killed in the fights." Officials said that clashes between Indian troops and militants in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) had intensified as militants descend on to the plains to avoid the icy winters of the Himalayan mountain tops.
Multi-stage elections are due to start from November 17 in IHK, which has recently witnessed some of the biggest anti-India protests since a separatist revolt against New Delhi's rule broke out in the region in 1989.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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A special court yesterday sent BNP leader M Saifur Rahman, Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Matiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid to jail in Barapukuria coalmine graft case.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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Since 2004, the Pentagon has used broad, secret authority to carry out about 12 attacks against al-Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, the New York Times reported on its website Sunday.
Quoting what it said were more than six unnamed military and intelligence officials and senior Bush administration policy makers, the newspaper said the military operations were authorized by a classified order signed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the approval of President George W. Bush.
The order gave the military permission to attack al-Qaeda and other hostile targets anywhere in the world, even in countries not at war with the United States, without any additional approval, the report said. Despite the order, each mission required high-level government approval, the Times reported.
The order identified 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, where Qaeda militants were believed to be operating or to have sought sanctuary, a senior administration official told the newspaper.
A former top CIA official told the newspaper that one of the operations included the raid of a suspected militant compound in the Bajuar region of Pakistan. What's more, military planners were able to watch the entire attack "live" at CIA headquarters in Virginia through a video camera installed on a Predator aircraft that was sent to the area, the paper said.
Is there nothing the NYT won't print when it comes to hitting our enemies?
There is no information about the remaining secret military strikes, but officials made clear the list of targets did not include Iran, the Times pointed out.
The paper said, however, that U.S. forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.
Senior military officials told the paper that as many as a dozen additional missions were scrapped because senior administration officials decided they were too dangerous, diplomatically problematic or relied on insufficient evidence.
Before the 2004 order, the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days, the paper noted. But Rumsfeld was not satisfied with the status-quo and pressed hard for permission to use military power automatically outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Times.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#3
Time to try out the Sedition Act on a few of these guys. Any half-assed prosecutor from the bottom half of his law class could show that they are undermining the security of the U.S.
#5
The Times is so precictably treasonous that it would be the perfect vehicle for a disinformation campaign. Like leaking that we have moles highly placed in the Iranian theocracy (on the assumption we don't.) It would be fun watching them accuse and torture each other trying to find them.
#6
Well you know that won't be happening for at least the next four years. A friendly phone call from Barry to Pinchy and they'll sit on whatever he wants.
#9
All this leaking classified information will come haunt us. I have a bad feeling that we will take a hit in the future, because we are shackled from doing what needs to be done to prevent attacks.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 13:18
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#10
Lets say we do get a major attack in the next four years. I'm talking something an order of magnitude greater than 9/11...ie 30 - 50,000 US citizens killed.
Does this cause everyone to focus and realize the threat, then go after it with ruthless efficiency (screw the puppies & baby ducks) or does it give Barry the opportunity to make a serious extra-Constitutional power grab?
#11
If the Times is endangering our operators, then environment exists for some of our operators to endanger the Times. Most of these stories are attributed to a reporter. We know who the editors are. Where is Mitch Rapp (rhyms with bi+ch slap) these days? I for one, while not condoning the punishment of americans by Americans, could not generate much sympathy for libtards suffering "at home" accidental drownings, electrocutions, hangings and piercings.
The UK lifts a ban on exporting high-technology nuclear items to India at a time the US has signed a controversial nuclear deal with New Delhi.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
They'll do better with UK and US tech than that Russian made crap they have had to use before. Plus we put a little coin in our pockets for a change.
The president-elect of the Maldives, a nation of 1,200 low islands in the Indian Ocean, is planning to establish an investment fund with some of its earnings from tourism so it can buy a haven for its citizens should global warming raise sea levels at a dangerous pace, according to several news reports.
Mohamed Nasheed, a former political prisoner who will be sworn in Tuesday as the countrys first democratically elected president, named Sri Lanka and India as possible spots for a refuge, according to the BBC.
Mr. Nasheeds spokesman, Ibrahim Hussein Zaki, said that the new government had to take action. Global warming and environmental issues are issues of major concern to the Maldivian people, he said on the BBCs World Today program. We are just about three feet above sea level. So any sea level rise could have a devastating effect on the people of the Maldives and their very survival.
The Maldives, south of India, is known as a tourist destination and has received much news coverage as a place that is likely to be overwhelmed by the effects of climate change.
In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations projected that sea levels worldwide could rise up to two feet by 2100 as ice sheets eroded and warming seawater expanded. And the panel and independent climate specialists said centuries of rising seas could follow if warming persisted.
The country was one of the founding members of the Alliance of Small Island States, which since 1992 has pressed the worlds industrialized countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to rising temperatures.
The Maldives is particularly vulnerable to flooding because its population has surged to nearly 400,000 from 200,000 in 20 years. Malé, the crowded one-square-mile capital, is ringed by sea walls, built with assistance from Japan. Many of the islands were submerged as the waves of the 2004 Asian tsunami surged by.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/11/2008
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#2
So an ex-con wants to establish a MASSIVE fund that wont be used for a long, long time and will be no-doubt overseen by him.
Not bad work if you can get it.
#4
Go ahead and buy some moutain that won't flood, go live above the snow line (Where it's safe) and freeze your nuts off waiting for the flood that never comes.
Idiots.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 12:38
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#5
Buying a barge would make more sense.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 13:29
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#6
AP, I see you've seen "Waterworld" good pic, but not possible.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/11/2008 14:25
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#7
i understand there is a mountain resort available in montana, cheep like.
I did not see waterworld pic, but I suggested putting one of our schools on a barge in NW Alaska, that was subjected to storm surges in the Chukchi Sea.
Doubling population in 20 years, ya say? That's 3.5% per year population increase. Well, what do you do on a low altitude set of small islands besides fish and barbeque?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 18:48
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#9
Learn to tread water. Or stop believing everything you read. Either works for me.
Financial leaders from 20 of the world's largest economies delivered a message Sunday that governments need to act faster and be ready to cut interest rates or increase spending in order to fortify ailing world markets. Governments need to hunt down and jail the Malefactors of Great Wealth, not grow more of them.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
Indeed, a good ol' fashioned witch hunt with torches and pitchforks and whatnot.
#2
Governments which allow regulators to avoid regulating and other government officials in interfering with the operation of markets need to hammer such miscreants as an example for others.
#3
Since these are all allegedly sovereign states delivering this vague message, my first response would be, 'you first'.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/11/2008 13:25
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#4
CHINESE MIL FORUM Poster Thread > WILL THE US FALL/PULL BACK FROM THEIR 700-PLUS OVERSEAS BASES [US Financial Crisis]. Poster broadly or approxi summarizes US Debts as including:
* $700.OBilyuhn for BAILOUT
* $40.0Bilyuhn for AIG on top of prior $80.0
Bilyuhn [$120.0Bilyuhn total]
* $50.0Bilyuhn for US Auto Industry
* $15.0Bilyuhn for California + Governator
* $2-3.0Trilyuhn for Middle East [e.g. Iraq,
Afghanistan, etc.
* $1.-1.5Trilyuhn for US Debt Interest alone
* $9.0Trilyuhn for International Debts, which over 4-5 yaers could rise toas much as $14-15Trilyuhn, i.e. GREATER/MORE THAN US GDP???
All Poster denominations in CARL SAGAN-esque = 1980's BLOOM COUNTY USD???
Two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad on Monday and a suicide bomber blew himself up among police and civilians who rushed to help the wounded, a triple strike that killed 28 people and wounded 68.
In another attack, in Baquba, capital of volatile northern Diyala province, a female suicide bomber killed five U.S.-backed security patrolmen and wounded 11 other people, the U.S. military said.
Police said the bomber was a girl of 13.
Police said the bomber was a girl of 13.
The triple attack in Baghdad, one of the deadliest incidents in Iraq for months, took place in the Kasra neighborhood on the east bank of the Tigris River in a bustling area of tea shops and restaurants near a fine arts institute.
Male and female students, many of whom were having breakfast at the time of the strike, were among the dead and wounded, as were Iraqi soldiers and police who had rushed to the scene.
Such coordinated and massive strikes have become rare but steady reminders of the capacity of militants to unleash mayhem in Iraq, even though they no longer control whole swathes of towns and villages and violence overall has fallen sharply.
The attack by a female suicide bomber in Baquba is part of a trend that has increased this year. U.S. forces say al-Qaeda Sunni Islamist militants are increasingly recruiting female bombers -- often teenage girls -- to thwart security checks.
Many of the female bombers have lost male relatives and are seen as psychologically vulnerable to recruitment for suicide missions.
Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups have been driven out of many parts of Iraq after local Sunni Arab tribesmen turned against them, but they are making a stand in northern areas such as the rural groves near Baquba.
They often target the mainly Sunni U.S.-backed security patrols, whom they call collaborators.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
Police said the bomber was a girl of 13.
This behavior is often seen in a transitional society that doesn't value old maids.
#3
Omeregum, I sense that too. And not just Baghdad. But it seems mainly suicide bombers - perhaps they now have more guidance systems available than they have explosives, so they use the boomer-babes because they get more murders per pound of explosive that way.
Jamaat-e-Islami brought out processions across the country yesterday in violation of the Emergency Power Rules (EPR) to protest the jailing of three leaders of Jamaat and BNP.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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The jail authorities yesterday stripped detained former BNP lawmaker Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu of division status in confinement and brought him back to Dhaka Central Jail from the prison cell of BSMMU after Pintu assaulted a deputy jailer.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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Sri Lanka's government rejected the latest Tamil Tiger truce offer out of hand on Monday, again demanding the separatist rebels surrender or be destroyed by a military offensive rapidly gaining ground. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE) at the weekend reiterated what they say is a long-standing desire for a truce in the 25-year-old war, one of Asia's longest insurgencies. The government has previously called such offers disingenuous.
The military said troops on Monday captured the north-western Kiranchi area and were crossing the marshes surrounding Pooneryn, a strategic spit of land from where LTTE artillery fires to stops troops from coming south from the Jaffna peninsula. The seizure of Kiranchi came after a day of heavy clashes that the military said was leading toward taking control of an important road and opening up a land route to Jaffna for the first time in two decades. No casualty figures were available.
In parliament, Agriculture Minister Maithripala Sirisena repeated President Mahinda Rajapaksa's stance, which has been in place since the government scrapped a 2002 ceasefire in January after accusing the LTTE of using the truce to rearm. "The government will not go for a ceasefire with the LTTE. We will not have any form of discussion with the LTTE. We have already told them to lay down arms and there is no change in our stand," Sirisena told the legislature on Monday. Sirisena is the latest government official targeted by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber. He escaped unhurt from an October 9 blast that hit his convoy in Colombo, killing one and wounding five including his deputy.
Diplomats and analysts say the government has little incentive to negotiate now because their military offensive since January appears to have put the rebels on their heels as it nears the LTTE's headquarters town of Kilinochchi. "Why would the government want to stop riding this wave now? It is making progress in terms of territory gains," said John Drake, an analyst with the AKE Group risk consultancy. He said the government and Sri Lankan public are "very much aware that the LTTE is not a trustworthy organisation that would lay down its arms and honour agreements".
The Tigers have less diplomatic traction in the post-Sept. 11 world since they are on US, EU and Indian terrorism lists after carrying out suicide bombings and assassinations for years, a point Sri Lanka has increasingly made in its foreign relations.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Bangladesh and Myanmar continue to mobilise troops along the border although the tension over Myanmar's attempt to explore oil and gas in Bangladesh waters in the Bay of Bengal seems to be dying down.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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In the meantime, Sunni militias which have played a key role in driving al-Qaeda fighters from Baghdad began receiving pay cheques on Monday from the Iraqi government that has long eyed them with suspicion.
Up to 60 stations were open throughout the Iraqi capital to pay some 54,000 members of the U.S.-allied so-called Awakening Councils or Sahwas which used to receive their monthly salaries from the U.S. military.
"This is really a tremendously important day and a manifestation of the reconciliation process that is happening in Iraq," U.S. Army Brigadier General Robin Swan told AFP. "The real proof of the pudding is in the payday."
The Iraqi government has always been wary of the groups which formed in 2007 largely made up of fighters that once battled U.S. and Iraqi forces, and its bid to bring them into the security forces could test Baghdad's fragile calm.
The Sahwas say their relations with the Iraqi army under which they serve have improved, but they fear that over the long term the government is determined to sideline them.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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A documentary about the life of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of modern Turkey, is causing controversy with its revelations about his depression, fondness of women and heavy drinking.
The film, entitled "Father of the Turks", was released late last month to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish republic, largely thanks to a man who transformed a Muslim nation into a secular state.
Directed by journalist Can Dundar the film records his authoritarian nature, military genius and his reforming and visionary energy in building a new and modern state on the ruins of the Ottoman empire. But it also portrays him frankly as a three-packets-a-day heavy smoker, a heavy drinker whose fondness for alcohol caused cirrhosis of the liver and his death at the age of 58, his deep depression in his final days when he sought solace in female company.
The film has already been seen by half a million Turks. A 1993 film by the same director on the last year of Ataturk's life won wide acclaim and was distributed to schools. This time, though, the reaction has been more mixed.
In Turkey Ataturk enjoys a heroic status, with statues and memorials to be found everywhere. Every school has a bust of him and millions of devoted Turks visit his mausoleum each year. It is an offence to denigrate his memory.
The film has attracted violent criticism in some quarters.
'He is a human being like everyone else'
"Do not go and see this documentary, persuade those who want to see it not to," wrote Yigit Bulut in a column in the newspaper Vatan. He said that the film "diminishes the image of Ataturk in the minds of young Turks" and could only serve the interests of Islamists at a time when there is still tension between secularists and backers of the ruling Islamist-rooted conservative government.
"This film depicts a sincere and tender leader," said Dundar. "It is my Ataturk," he said on television, adding that he regretted that in the whole of Turkey there was not a single museum devoted to its founder.
He criticized the exploitation of the personality cult of the "Great Savior" particularly during the third and most recent of the country's military coups in 1980. The effect had been to diminish his philosophy by turning into a dogma, so making it harder to understand: even making it look ridiculous.
Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay brushed aside criticism, saying that some people wanted to portray Ataturk as a superman without any flaw. "Naturally he is a human being like everyone else, who has his hopes, his disappointments, his rages and his moments of happiness."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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(AKI) - Renewed clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces on Monday have left the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip without access to fuel to generate electricity and all its crossing points remain closed for the sixth-day. "Cause, meet effect. Effect, Cause."
"Pleased to meetcha!"
"Howya doin'? Have we met before?"
"Not around here."
Israeli authorities have prevented the shipment of food, fuel and gas supplies to Gaza, Palestinian news agency Maan reported on Monday.
Early on Monday, militants in Gaza fired a home-made Qassam rocket aimed at Israel's western Negev desert, but instead the rocket exploded in Palestinian territory, causing no injuries.
Crossing points have been closed since last Wednesday after Palestinian militants launched rockets against Israeli towns following an Israeli air strike last Tuesday.
The Israeli air strike last Tuesday killed six Palestinians from the Islamist Hamas movement's al-Qassam Brigades. Four Palestinian civilians were also injured in the attack.
Palestinian militants responded by launching a barrage of rockets that hit Israel's western Negev desert and the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Since then, at least 70 rockets have been launched at Israeli territory during intermittent clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces.
On Sunday, the al-Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of the ruling Fatah movement claimed responsibility for the launching of a rocket against the southern Israeli town of Kfar Aza.
A statement by al-Aqsa Brigades quoted by Maan said the attack "...came in retaliation for Israeli aggression and to affirm our choice of resistance."
Israel and Hamas have both breached a shaky ceasefire that has technically been in place since June.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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[12 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#2
It's because the Israelis are not giving it to them.
Posted by: ed ||
11/11/2008 8:30
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#3
JERUSALEM (AFP) Israel on Tuesday reopened the terminal that handles all fuel supplies to Gaza to allow delivery of diesel to the Palestinian territory's sole power plant one day after it shuddered to a halt.
The Nahal Oz terminal used for oil deliveries "opened at 8:30 am (0630 GMT) for the transfer of the diesel for the power station," said military spokesman Peter Lerner.
An official of the Palestinian energy authority in Gaza confirmed that Israel resumed the fuel shipments and said the power plant should restart later in the day.
The plant had ground to a halt on Monday evening after Israel stopped the flow of fuel to the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire by Palestinian militants in the besieged enclave.
Late on Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said "minimal quantities" of fuel would be sent to Gaza, at the request of Mideast envoy Tony Blair, who represents the Middle East diplomatic Quartet made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and United States. "We will be reassessing the situation during the day, and of course if rockets continue to be fired during the day we will take the necessary steps for tomorrow," Lerner said.
Ya wanna shoot rockets, you're gonna shoot them in the dark...
#5
Why is that power plant still in existence? The Israelis are slipping.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/11/2008 15:24
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#6
Shut off the power plant and get a gazillion carbon credits. The EUniks will have a tough choice to make. Support going green or support a bunch of rowdies.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/11/2008 21:52
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With the money-laundering scam being linked to financing of terrorism, moneychangers are gripped with fear and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is chalking out a strategy for a major clampdown, sources privy to the matter told Daily Times. Haji Masood Parekh, a major moneychanger would be among those whom the FIA would investigate, a source said.
Sources said FIA was also eyeing two other big names, Shakeel Raj and Mehboob Kapadia, but both of them are abroad at the moment and Interpol help might be sought for their return.
Answering a question about moneychangers' links with terrorists or the underworld, FIA Deputy Director for Law Israr Ahmed told Daily Times, "It would be premature to say anything until the investigation is finalised."
A number of moneychangers allegedly involved in money laundering and terrorism-financing are either hiding in the country or have fled abroad.
This article starring:
Haji Masood Parekh
Mehboob Kapadia
Shakeel Raj
Posted by: Fred ||
11/11/2008
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#1
I feel sorry for your reporters as they said FIA would investigate HAJI MASOOD PAREKH, because this news is wrong and DIRECTOR FIA MEER ZUBAIR also admits that.
Once again, Mehboob Kapadia is in Karachi and their sources said He's abroad.
They must raise the standard of their news,
Kashif batwa wala.
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.
HOUSTON (AP) - Retail gasoline prices dipped for a 17th week since July 4, falling below $2 a gallon in a number of states and approaching $1.50 at some service stations. 
A behind-the-scenes battle to take the reins of the Republican National Committee is taking off between former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele. 
Minnesota is becoming to 2008 politics what Florida was in 2000 or Washington State in 2004 -- a real mess. The outcome will determine whether Democrats get 58 members of the U.S. Senate, giving them an effective filibuster-proof vote on many issues.
Oil prices sank under 55 dollars a barrel on Tuesday to strike a 21-month low as frresh recession worries sparked fresh fears about slowing global energy demand, traders said. 
JUST days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced tough new measures to name and shame foreign-based extremists and prevent them coming from abroad to stir up hatred in the UK, firebrand preacher Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad cocked a snook at her new initiative, the Evening Standard can reveal. 
by Mike, special to Rantburg
Wall Street Journal
Ultimately, of course, this will all pass. And if Mrs. Palin goes back and continues to do a good job as governor of Alaska, these attacks will likely only reinforce her outside-the-Beltway credentials to rank-and-file Republicans.
Tom Smith, The Right Coast
There go my fellow conservatives, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I'm virtually euphoric. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled with America's flirtation with neosocialism. But there's a massive silver lining in the magical clouds that lofted Barack Obama to the presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America:
The American people have spoken, and whatever our personal preferences, our duty as citizens is to support our next president. And he's going to need support: The international vultures are already circling. 
WASHINGTON (AP) A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
A female suicide bomber detonated explosives in the emergency room of a hospital near Fallujah on Sunday in one of several violent incidents in Iraq that left at least 10 people dead over the weekend, Iraqi officials said. 
Lebanese authorities have arrested five militants suspected of involvement in attacks in Syria and Lebanon and of belonging to an Al Qaeda-inspired group, security sources said on Monday. 
The European Union formally launched on Monday an anti-piracy security operation off the coast of Somalia - its first ever naval mission - the EU's French presidency said.
The High Court (HC) yesterday granted bail for three months to former BNP state minister Aman Ullah Aman and former Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) lawmaker Mufti Shahidul Islam in two cases filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on charges of amassing illegal wealth and concealing information about it.
Indian troops killed nine suspected militants in shootouts across Kashmir, police said on Monday, a week before local elections in the disputed region that are being boycotted by the 'rebels'. 
A special court yesterday sent BNP leader M Saifur Rahman, Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Matiur Rahman Nizami and Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid to jail in Barapukuria coalmine graft case.
Since 2004, the Pentagon has used broad, secret authority to carry out about 12 attacks against al-Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, the New York Times reported on its website Sunday.
Financial leaders from 20 of the world's largest economies delivered a message Sunday that governments need to act faster and be ready to cut interest rates or increase spending in order to fortify ailing world markets. 
The jail authorities yesterday stripped detained former BNP lawmaker Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu of division status in confinement and brought him back to Dhaka Central Jail from the prison cell of BSMMU after Pintu assaulted a deputy jailer.
Bangladesh and Myanmar continue to mobilise troops along the border although the tension over Myanmar's attempt to explore oil and gas in Bangladesh waters in the Bay of Bengal seems to be dying down.
