[almost forgot: 'happy' tax day...]
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Iraq Violence Peaked Just Before U.S. Election, Data Shows
Data from the Defense Intelligence Agency indicates that enemy-initiated attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians peaked in October 2006, the month leading up to the U.S. midterm elections.
At the time, Vice President Dick Cheney said the insurgents were "very sensitive to the fact that we've got an election scheduled" and were trying to "break the will of the American people."
The DIA-reported data was published in a bar graph printed by the Government Accountability Office in written testimony presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 11.
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The Dead Speak
The toll of the Khmer Rouge's brief but fatal reign of terror in Cambodia (1975-78) is uncertain - a million, two? The numbers can only be estimated, but the pictures of pyramids of skulls are well known. They've become emblematic of that bloody time.
It wasn't supposed to happen that way, not according to the sophisticates who were advocating an American withdrawal from Indochina in the 1970s. They blithely dismissed all the warnings that a bloodbath would follow once the United States abandoned its allies in Southeast Asia:
"Some will find the whole bloodbath debate unreal. What future possibility could be more terrible than the reality of what is happening in Cambodia now?" -Anthony Lewis in the New York Times, March 17, 1975.
"The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." -U.S. Rep. (now Sen.) Chris Dodd of Connecticut, March 12, 1975.
"Indochina Without Americans/For Most, A Better Life," -headline in the New York Times, April 13, 1975. [snip]
Now, once again, the sophisticates are urging Americans to abandon an ally, this time beleaguered Iraq. The leading Democratic presidential candidates speak glibly of pulling out of that country as if there would be no ill effects.
As in Cambodia?
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Walters Denies Surge Success
"View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck touted the success of the surge before "objective" journalist Barbara Walters dismissed it.
Hasselbeck then pulled some numbers noting the Iraqis "met 12 of the 18 benchmarks" and "90,000 of the Sunnis have decided to join U.S. forces."
Walters responded by dismissing those figures adding "darling you can get all of the statistics you want, but you’ve had more violence than you’ve had in months."
The entire transcript is below.
[I see - for months as the violence kept falling the mantra was "so what? it was all about political benchmarks". Now that the benchmarks are happening, we're back to violence as the yardstick. a yardstick of a few weeks...]
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Denmark charges two with plotting bomb attack
Copenhagen - Danish state prosecutors on Tuesday formally charged two men with plotting a bomb attack, saying they had manufactured and tested explosives. (Snip) The Danish Security and Intelligence service described the men as militant Islamists with international connections. They ranged in age from 19 to 29, and came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Turkey. Six of them are Danish citizens.
[GWOT.]
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State Dept to Jimmy Carter: Don't Meet with Hamas
You know Jimmy Carter’s gone a little too far when even the State Department disapproves: State Department: Carter should not meet Hamas chief.
It’s just pathetic he should even need to be told.
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Lest we forget;
Jimmy Carter is the man who gave us Jihadist Iran.
Jimmy Carter is the man who gave us a Nuclear North Korea.
Jimmy Carter is the man who gave us the fraudulent Chavez election.
Carter buddies are the worlds most evil butchers; Nicolae Ceausescu, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Kin Jong il and the list goes on.
People always write Carter off as naive or stupid but it is beyond curious just what sort of people he is most comfortable around and whose causes he works tirelessly to help.
Thirty years ago he didn’t get the chance to “serve” America in a second term but in the four short years he had, he caused so much damage that just the lingering remains are still the most pressing and challenging issues of our time.
Jimmy Carter is the last person on the planet who should be listened to on anything.
.
Venezuela's navy plans to build torpedoes, mines
Venezuela plans to build its own torpedoes to arm submarines and frigates, the navy on Monday, the latest move by President Hugo Chavez to modernize the military. Chavez, a relentless critic of the United States, rattled nerves earlier this month when he briefly ordered tank battalions to the border in a spat with Colombia during a diplomatic crisis.
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Intimidation and censorship are no answer to this inflammatory film
Too many Dutch and international leaders have leapt to deplore Wilders' film without first excoriating those who threaten him with death. Particularly egregious is a statement by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, which, in explicitly condemning the film (but not the death threats), actually says "the right of free expression is not at stake here".
That's a truly idiotic claim. Mr Ban has no right to make it on our behalf.
The second question is whether Fitna should be banned by law, as the ambassadors of 26 Islamic countries have recently demanded the Dutch government to do. Unlike the murder issue, I accept that this is a matter for legitimate debate in a democracy, but my answer remains an unequivocal "no". The film is inflammatory but not, I think, across the line to incitement... [snip]
The Dutch politician's alarmist anti-Islam polemic needs to be taken apart and calmly answered...
[fair enough, let's do that. And while we're at it, might not we include as public a review and condamnation of extemist Islamic speech which clearly is intended to 'incite'? {or are we to ignore that half of this equation - again}]
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>> VIEW VIDEO HERE
SEEDING THE FOOD CRISIS
The United States has long prided itself in being the breadbasket of the world and Americans have traditionally paid a smaller share of their income on food than citizens of other developed countries. But the days of cheap milk, bread, beef and poultry may well be over -- and Uncle Sam is partly to blame:
- In 2007, the cost of a gallon of milk increased 26 percent; eggs went up 40 percent; and a loaf of white bread went from $1.05 to $1.28 from 2006 to 2008.
- Steep increases in the price of oil have contributed to these higher costs, but the federal government has played a pernicious role as well.
- By mandating that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol they blend with gasoline, the government has not only artificially increased the cost of corn, which is what most U.S. ethanol is made of, but has driven up the cost of other grains as well.
Source: Linda Chavez, "Seeding the Food Crisis," Washington Post, April 1, 2008.
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UNITED STATES MUST CLEAR A PATH FOR OIL SANDS USE
For national security as well as economic reasons, the US must make use of a vast, secure and reliable supply of fuel from Canada's oil sands, says Mark J. Perry, professor of Finance and Economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan:
• The tar sands hold an estimated 174 billion barrels of crude oil, making Canada's oil-sands deposits second only to Saudi Arabia in global reserves.Unbelievably, greenhouse gas issues seem to be overshadowing all other considerations, and Congress recently blocked any additional importation of Canadian Oil Sands petroleum by classifying it as an 'alternative' energy source, which requires carbon emission levels the petroleum product simply can't meet.
• The United States currently obtains 1 million barrels a day from Canada's tar sands, but with planned investments, the daily supply could exceed 3 million barrels by 2015.
The irony is that countries with fast-growing economies like those in China, Brazil and India are accelerating energy resource development, while resource-rich North America is becoming captive to environmental extremism and continues to restrict access to oil supplies.
This situation points to an inescapable imperative, says Perry: Congress needs to address the matter and it should take action to ensure the civilian and military use of Canadian tar sands oil. Our economic and national security depends on it.
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RED TAPE RISING
George Mason University's Mercatus Center reveals in a soon-to-be released study that every measure of regulatory activity is up in recent years -- agency staffing, budgets, pages of rule making and compliance costs. Those numbers contradict the stream of attacks against this Administration for "weakening" federal consumer and environmental protections.
• Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new ozone rules for the first time in 10 years; the cost in lost economic output from this new more stringent rule is estimated at $6 billion a year.
• Last year Bush rule-making agencies imposed $11 billion of net new economy-wide regulatory costs (mostly in the environmental area); the cost of new regulations has increased every year on Bush's watch, but last year was by far the highest.
• The Small Business Administration (SBA) calculates that the total cost in 2005 of complying with 145,000 pages of federal rules and procedures was $1.1 trillion; this is the rough economic equivalent of imposing a second federal income tax on the economy.
Excluding homeland security regulations, the budgets of Uncle Sam's 50 largest agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Products Safety Commission, are up almost one-third since 2001. There are now some 200,000 full-time government employees writing and enforcing federal commandments.
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Hispanic Leaders Fear Patrols Will Spark Violence
Hispanic leaders are calling for an immediate end to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's illegal immigrants' patrols, claiming they are dividing the community and could lead to violence. "As a community, we see him going out setting up his troops and stopping people at random -- racial profiling," said Hector Yturralde, president of We Are America. "After they find out they can't speak English or they have no identification, then they stop them for immigration."
[the whole article is little more than the sloppy double speak evident in the first paragraph - re-read it: police officers are 'troops'?, they're being 'profiled' while stopped at random, then they're being 'stopped' for immigrating... vs. checked for immigration status only after they can't speak the language nor have any identification. And the cops have been doing this free of incident for some time now, so who exactly is 'We Are America' worried about becoming violent?
It's called rule of law, and it's critical to any society. I'd invite this 'tyrannical' sheriff up here but somehow I don't think he'll relocate to the San Francisco bay area {call it intuition}]
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Starbucks and 'Laissez Faire'
Laissez-faire. It's a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don't try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card.
The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers' tastes and uniqueness. But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company's Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase "Laissez Faire" be printed on his card.
A few days later he was informed that the company couldn't issue such a card because the wording violated company policy. [snip](such as threatening remarks, derogatory terms, or overtly political commentary)
And so, at my suggestion, my friend went back to the Web site and asked that his card be issued with the phrase "People Not Profits." Bingo! Starbucks had no problem with that phrase, and the card arrived in a few days.
I wondered just what the company's standards were. If "laissez-faire" is unacceptably political, how could the socialist slogan "people not profits" be acceptable?
So we tried another foreign phrase – "Si Se Puede," or "Yes we can." It's the United Farm Workers slogan, now adopted by Barack Obama's presidential campaign. That sailed right through. The senator's political campaign slogan was acceptable...
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