Empty Promises Revealed

“This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Nov. 16, 2006

That was then, in the wake of midterm elections, before $4-plus gasoline. It was before high energy costs helped drive our consumer-based economy into a tailspin. But most importantly, before the American people lifted their voices in outrage over the recklessness of an ironclad Democrat policy that willingly outsources our energy needs to the whims of foreign oil producers.

So what does “the most open” House majority of all time do when a fair and honest debate over drilling doesn’t exactly help their party ambitions?

They dodge the debate for weeks. They disingenuously lead the American people to believe that oil and gas won’t necessarily be a part of our energy needs in the future. They schedule votes on feckless energy legislation – see “use it or lose it” and oil speculation. They justify their stonewalling as an effort to “save the planet,” impervious to the fact that other countries with far worse environmental track records will only intensify their drilling efforts.

But worst of all, they skip out of town for five-weeks without allowing a single vote that would meaningfully alter the imbalance of supply and demand that has triggered the spike in oil prices. This is a dereliction of duty of the gravest magnitude...

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Enemy of the State

Since his Oscar-winning turn in the 1978 antiwar film "Coming Home," the venerable actor Jon Voight has come to the conclusion that he and many in the "so-called peace movement" were manipulated by Marxist propaganda.

"The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away," he wrote in an article titled "My Concerns for America."

Mr. Voight is not the first to connect these dots. But he is certainly the biggest Hollywood star associated with the anti-Vietnam War movement to do so. In his newfound voice, Mr. Voight also boldly warns of the consequences of electing the current antiwar candidate:

"If, God forbid, we live to see [Barack] Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way."

[snip] The Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly and People magazine alum Jeffrey Wells led the charge. At his influential Web site Hollywood- Elsewhere .com, Mr. Wells wrote,

"If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn't ticked me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, 'Voight? Let him eat cake."

[liberal 'tolerance' - aka 'blue McCarthyism']

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Germany Still Won't Fight

Germany will deploy around 200 combat soldiers in northern Afghanistan, but will not move its 'troops' to the country's more violent south, German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said on Wednesday, Feb. 6. German troops will be sent to replace the Norwegian contingent scheduled to leave Afghanistan this summer.

[with 'allies' like this...]

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Japan to Test Missile Interceptor in U.S.

Japan will conduct its first test-firing of a land-to-air missile interceptor in the United States in September to ensure that a missile shield for the Japanese capital will function properly if it falls under attack... [snip]

The planned test "aims to confirm the functions of the Patriot system that has been upgraded with ballistic missile defense capabilities," the ministry said.

The test comes as Japan and the U.S. accelerate their joint missile defense program following North Korea's missile and nuclear tests in 2006.

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The Third Lebanon War

There is something to be learned from the frenzied love-fest given in Beirut in mid-July to the most notorious of the Lebanese prisoners released by Israel. Samir Kuntar was sentenced to 542 years in prison for killing four people during a raid in 1979. Kuntar executed a father (Danny Haran) in front of his 4-year-old daughter, then killed the little girl by smashing her head against a rock with a rifle butt. But to the Lebanese, Kuntar is a returning hero... [snip]

Barry Rubin of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel has observed:

"What horrifies me most are not radicals cheering terrorist Samir Kuntar, but that most relative moderates feel compelled to do so. At the airport to greet him were leaders of Lebanon's anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian Druze and Christian groups as well as the ambassadors from Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Morocco. To avoid being discredited, relative moderates must affirm that anyone who murders Israeli children is a hero."

The massive support shown for Kuntar throughout Lebanon, if taken at face value, has effectively re-defined the status of the Lebanese government (and, by extension, the Lebanese people) as the enemy of Israel. Giora Eiland, the former chief of Israel's National Security Council noted in Ynet News:

"The only way to prevent another war is to make it clear that should war break out, Lebanon may be razed to the ground. Not only will the Lebanese government fear it, so would Hezb'allah . . . This will deter the group, if it realizes that aggression on its part would result in destruction that would outrage the population and turn it against Hezb'allah."

In effect, in the event of a Third Lebanon War, a vast array of strategic targets throughout Lebanon would no longer be immune from Israeli retaliation. By making common cause with Hezb'allah, the Lebanese stand to reap the whirlwind.

[bit it's Israel which will be vilified in the press - despite the foreknowledge that it will be Lebanon-Hezballah which starts it - again]

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Venezuela's Chavez Makes More Anti-Democracy Moves

[HT:DG]
Caracas, Venezuela - Venezuela President Hugo Chavez plans to set up neighborhood-based militias, move toward a socialist economy, and increase state control over agriculture under a package of laws enacted by presidential decree.

Changes in areas from the military to small business loans were pushed through by the president in 26 laws released Monday in the official gazette. Chavez approved them on the final day of an 18-month period...

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Hawaii Man Accused of Helping China Design Missile

Prosecutors say Noshir Gowadia used Maui as a base to design a stealth cruise missile for China. He was indicted on 21 counts of conspiracy, money-laundering and falsifying tax returns. The case comes amid growing U.S. concern about Chinese spying and enhanced prosecution efforts across the country.

Last year, a jury convicted Chi Mak, an engineer for a California-based defense contractor, of conspiring to export U.S. submarine propulsion technology to China. He was sentenced to 24 1/2 years in prison. In June, a Chinese national with Canadian citizenship was sentenced to 24 months for selling fighter pilot training software to the Chinese navy.

Dan Blumenthal, a former China country director at the Pentagon and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Beijing is after technologies that would help it 'counter' the U.S.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, the case has received scant public attention.

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Never forget

Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern and Central Europe, five nations remain "captive" to communism -- China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos.

Amid all the hoopla about the Beijing Olympics and the "ohs" and "ahs" over the dozens of skyscrapers soaring above the Chinese capital, we must keep in mind that China is also a land of forced labor camps...

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The Post-National Candidate

Jeffrey Kuhner of the Washington Times has a particularly incisive op-ed in today's edition focusing on Obama's standing as a "post national" candidate for president.

In effect, Obama would be the first president ever elected who has championed the idea of subsuming American interests to the will of the international community - specifically, the Europeans who themselves are seeking to wipe out national boundaries in favor of a continental super state.

Indeed, Obama makes no bones about his agenda...

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Global Warming as Mass Neurosis

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

But mother nature has opinions of her own.

NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question:

If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming?

What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science...

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Doctors: Third babies are the same as patio heaters

[UK]
A pair of doctors have said that British parents should have fewer children, because kids cause carbon emissions and climate change. The two medics suggest that choosing to have a third child is the same as buying a patio heater or driving a gas-guzzling car, and that GPs should advise their patients against it. Writing in the British Medical Journal, John Guillebaud (emeritus professor of of family planning at UCL)...

[another professor. When government 'pays' for health care, 'medicine' becomes politics]

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China Oilfield Plans $2.5 Billion Offer for Awilco

Hong Kong - China Oilfield Services Ltd., a unit of the nation's third-biggest oil producer, plans to offer $2.5 billion for Norwegian oil and gas drilling contractor Awilco Offshore ASA, said two people familiar with the matter.

The cash bid values Awilco at 81 percent more than its market value.

(Snip) China Oilfield is targeting acquisitions of overseas petroleum drillers as the world's second-biggest energy- consuming nation searches for oil and gas beneath its coastal waters...

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Iran discovers billion-barrel oil field

Tehran- Iran says it has discovered a new oil field containing more than one billion barrels of crude. Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said the oil field held 1.1 billion barrels of sweet crude oil, of which 233 million coudl be recovered...

[peanuts; we've over 7 Trillion barrels worth in Rocky's shale alone. Oops, forgot: Pelosi said no.]

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Nothing uncool about patriotism

A Dallas area columnist recently wrote that we should all just shut up about patriotism because it’s a word that’s overused and “kinda uncool.” She went on to add that patriotism

“is a kind of dusty holiday decoration that gets pulled out of the attic and displayed on the porch for the Fourth of July. It's a topic for kids' essay contests or the old codgers down at the VFW, not something you talk much about around the office.”

It is very sad to read this ungrateful commentary from someone too young and too spoiled to recognize how effete and impudent she sounds with her juvenile criticism of the sacrifices made by millions. A line from King Lear comes to mind: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

These are the same people who wake up every day in a comfortable home and sit down to a healthy, robust breakfast before enjoying a refreshing shower and a selection of smartly tailored clothing. They slide behind the wheel of their late model, shiny automobile and head for the steady job that keeps their families well-fed and secure. During the evenings and weekends they gather with friends over cocktails and hors de oeuvres as they pontificate about the evils of the country that provides their affluent lifestyle.

Compare that attitude with millions of immigrants, many of whom, when arriving on American soil, get down on their knees and tearfully kiss the ground to show their gratitude. The difference between them and the snooty native born malcontents is that the latter has no frame of reference... [snip]

Yet, I suppose it’s about what we can expect from a generation that has reached adulthood with an attitude that has been spoon-fed to them by liberal elitists [the highest concentration of which is in our school systems] who proudly put their hate-America slogans on parade...

[Recommended > ]

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Man calls 911 after Subway left sauce off sandwich

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Jacksonville police say Reginald Peterson needs to learn that 911 is not the appropriate place to complain that Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

Police said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub made correctly.

The second call was to complain that officers weren't arriving fast enough.

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