Thursday, October 2, 2008
ABC Highlights 'Palin Problem;' Has Ignored Biden Gaffes
"Good Morning America" reporter David Wright on Monday highlighted the specter of the "Palin Problem" for John McCain and asserted that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's advisors "are trying to lower expectations. But even among some conservatives, expectations couldn't be any lower."
Yet, while the ABC morning show mentioned the supposed struggles of the Republican vice presidential candidate, the program has ignored embarrassing gaffes from Senator Joe Biden.
[what bias?]
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Moderator debate
Can Gwen Ifill be impartial???
Her book about Barack Obama is scheduled to be released on the day of the next Presidential inaugural. If McCain wins, her book will go over like a fart in church. If Barack wins, she has won the lottery. Clearly she has a huge financial stake in Obama winning.
Why should we trust her? It is not like she disclosed to the debate commission that she was writing this book.
Oops. I forgot she is part of the 'mainstream' media so we are supposed to look the other way.
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‘Most Iraqi People Say President Bush Is a Hero,’ Immigrant Says
Benny Aldosakee left Iraq five months ago, after getting special immigration status through a federal law that allows some translators who worked with the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan to come to America. Aldosakee said that most Iraqis are grateful to President Bush and the U.S. military for removing dictator Saddam Hussein and that the many in the major media, here and abroad, are misinforming people about Iraq and the Middle East.
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Nuclear Terrorism Is No. 1 Threat, ElBaradei Says
Vienna - The likelihood that terrorists will detonate a nuclear weapon poses the greatest risk to world security, surpassing proliferation threats from Iran and North Korea, United Nations atomic chief Mohamed ElBaradei said. ''There is a lot of interest on the part of extremist groups to obtain nuclear material,''.
The IAEA, established in 1956 under the slogan ''Atoms for Peace,'' said it's becoming easier for groups and countries to access nuclear secrets...
[which they'll just walk across our open border. GWOT will be won or lost on the intelligence needed to interdict a WMD attach - with it we'll likely win, without it we could lose.]
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Islam convert gets 35 years in plot to attack mall
Chicago - A 24-year-old convert to Islam has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for plotting to blow off hand grenades in a crowded shopping mall during the Christmas season. Derrick Shareef must serve 30 of those years - with five off for good behavior - unless he can get an appeals court to reduce the sentence. He was arrested in 2006 on charges of scheming to use weapons of mass destruction
[GWOT]
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Shut up, Arab style
Not since the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s has free speech been as endangered as it is today. Firebombing publishers, murdering filmmakers, issuing death threats against writers and cartoonists, suing researchers, restricting freedom of expression through the U.N. -- these are some of the ways militant Islamists, their enablers and apologists, are seeking to silence their critics.
Intimidation is another. It operates on campuses and within the Foreign Policy Establishment. A recent experience may be instructive...[snip]
Is there a threat to free speech in their acquiescence to the charge that it is not "legitimate" to criticize the hate speech emanating from Saudi Arabia - a country whose oil-rich citizens continue to fund terrorism around that world? You're entitled to make up your own mind -- for now at least.
[Recommended > ]
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The Washington Post's double standard on religious cartoons
The Washington Post ran this Oliphant cartoon, insulting to Pentecostals (and Palin):
Some time ago when asked why the paper refused to print the Mohammed cartoons the paper responded:
"It would violate our standards for taste to publish them. We keep many things out of the paper on those grounds, including gratuitous nudity, violence, obscenity and racial, ethnic and religious slurs."Do you suppose Pentecostals would fare better if they threaten to behead the Post's editors. Just asking.
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College bans 'Christmas' and 'Easter' from calendar for fear of offending ethnic students
[HT:MD]
A college has renamed the traditional Christmas and Easter breaks in a bid to avoid offending students from other religions. The college's new calendar shows that both of the traditional holiday periods have now been re-branded as 'end of term breaks'.
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Separatist Passions Heating Up in Russia's North Caucasus
While Georgia's separatist enclaves Abkhazia and South Ossetia celebrate formal recognition of their independence by Russia, hardly a day goes by without bloodshed in North Caucasus regions Ingushetia and Dagestan. Since the murder of Ingush opposition journalist Magomed Yevloyev in August, calls to break away from Russia have grown louder in Ingushetia.
"We must ask Europe or the US to separate us from Russia," Khasbiyev told the liberal Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy. "If we aren't acceptable to this country, we don't know what else we should do."The situation in the North Caucasus republics has became greatly more agitated since the war between Russia and Georgia in the South Caucasus.
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Bush assures Lithuania on NATO commitments
Washington - President Bush assured Lithuania on Monday that the United States will stand by its NATO commitments to Baltic countries at a time of rising tensions with Russia. In an appearance with Bush at the White House, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus thanked him for U.S. support and said he would like a more visible U.S. presence in the Baltics.
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UK SEEKING CO2 TRADING INCREASE
The United Kingdom wants the rights to buy its way out of half its CO2 reduction targets, and they are not alone. Other European Union (EU) nations believe they should be allowed to trade away 50 percent of their emissions reductions -- up from the 30 percent currently allowed, says the BBC News. [snip]
The dispute centers on the credibility of the system used for trading international carbon permits -- the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) -- arranged under the Kyoto Protocol, which allows rich countries to offset some of their emissions reductions by purchasing carbon credits which backer claim help developing countries get clean technology.
However, CDM is under fire because some investors are obtaining credits for projects in countries where they would have been built anyway, meaning that no CO2 is saved. Various reports suggest that up to 60 percent of CDM projects do not save additional CO2.
[so if it's not saving on dreaded CO2, why do it? A: the (huge, huge sums of) money. This thing is a scam from back to front - and coming to a United State near you soon...]
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Governor signs anti-sprawl bill
California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark bill Tuesday to discourage sprawl in future decades, completing a deal among environmentalists, homebuilders and local governments on the final day of bill signing.
Senate Bill 375, by Democratic Sen. Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, will push California communities to consider climate change impacts of development in regional planning, with an emphasis on reducing car travel.
The bill requires the California Air Resources Board [CARB - Lord save us] to set regional targets by September 2010 for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The state will use its annual $5 billion pot of transportation money to 'encourage' regions to embrace compact residential development.
[standard of living? not a factor. the scam grows...]
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Act hastily, roo the scare tactics
I don't want to eat kangaroo. Ever. It's dark, chewy, gamey and smelly. But, says Ross Garnaut, the Government's economics guru on climate change, kangaroo is what we will all have to eat in a few years. Beef and lamb will be reserved only for the very wealthy in the brave new future he envisages, in which Australia leads the world on tackling climate change.
[a mechanism for controlling everything]
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GETTING OIL FROM A STONE
Exxon Mobil's CEO Rex Tillerson says his energy company's "corporate social responsibility" is to produce more energy. While Congress wants to tax oil profits, he wants to spend them to find more oil. It is irresponsible to ignore the growing energy requirements of the U.S. and world economy, hoping they will be met by 'alternative' sources. Instead, the United States should focus on developing its existing oil deposits, currently trapped in oil sands and shale rock. There are many such locations:
- Exxon is spending $8 billion of its profits on the Kearl oil sands project in Alberta, Canada, an area with an estimated 173 million barrels of crude oil; this project alone is aimed at recovering between 4.5 and 6.5 billion barrels of oil.
- Oil is also trapped in the shale in the Bakken Formation, straddling western North Dakota and Montana; the Bakken Formation holds an estimated 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to Leigh Price, a scientist with the U.S. geological survey.
- A Rand Corporation study says the Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude; roughly triple Saudi Arabia's current known reserves.
- According to the Institute for Energy Research, the United States has 2 trillion barrels of oil shale; this is more than 7 times the amount of crude oil reserves found in Saudi Arabia, and is enough to meet current U.S. demand for over 250 years.
[ALL put permanently off limits in Congress' latest 'energy' bill {stalled, but not dead}]
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Good news {kind of} and bad news...
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UK: Citizens get legal right to defend themselves
Citizens have for the first time been given the legal right to defend themselves against burglars and muggers free from fear of prosecution.
.....They will be able to use force against criminals who break into their homes or attack them in the street without worrying that "heat of the moment” misjudgements could see them brought before the courts.
.....The new laws follow a growing public campaign for people to be given the right to defend themselves and their own homes in the wake of a number of high profile cases...
[given the legal right to defend themselves?]
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Brits Urged to Leave Sheds Open for Thieves
London – Bristol City Council is urging people to leave their sheds open because padlocks could lead to thieves forcing their way through doors and windows of the council-owned sheds to steal garden equipment. The council said that its new initiative could save taxpayers' money because fewer sheds would have to be repaired or replaced.
[it's called capitulation]
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Obama, Not Bush, The Quasi-Fascist On Free Speech
Barack Obama poses as a champion of true American values. He sees himself as "a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." In reality, though, Barack Obama is just another in a long line of Chicago-style, free speech-squelching political thugs springing from the festering pit of Democratic machine politics.
His supporters run roughshod over legitimate criticisms of Obama. "I want you to argue with them and get in their face," Obama tells his backers. In August, Obama encouraged his followers to shut down the WGN Chicago radio with David Freddoso, author of "The Case Against Barack Obama." Spurred to action by a mass e-mail from the Obama campaign the Obama supporters jammed the WGN phone lines, forcing the show to a standstill.
Most importantly, though, his legal team threatens anyone who doesn't support the One with lawsuits and prosecution...[snip]
This week, two state prosecutors in Missouri proclaimed that they were joining an Obama "truth squad." Jennifer Joyce and Bob McCulloch, the top prosecutors in St. Louis, city and county, respectively, announced that they would "respond immediately to any misleading advertisements and statements that might violate Missouri ethics law."
[no mention of slanders against McCain - just Obama]
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Obama Pressures Stations to Drop NRA Spot
The Obama campaign’s effort to pressure TV stations in Pennsylvania and Ohio to stop airing a National Rifle Association ad is ''frightening'' and ''dangerous,'' a campaign expert said.
''When a candidate threatens a broadcaster with government sanction over the content of an ad, it is very worrisome to the First Amendment and the guarantee of free political debate,''said Sean Parnell, president of the Center for Competitive Campaigns
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THE TORT BAR'S COMEBACK
After 20 years of state and federal efforts to reform a runaway legal system, the trial bar is reviving the monster, says the Wall Street Journal.
At the federal level, lawyers and law firms invested in 2006 more than $85 million to get pro-lawsuit Democrats elected. Congress's new leadership has begun a political repayment plan -- packing legislation with provisions to increase the number and size of lawsuits.
The trial barons are making more progress at the state level, as described in a report by the American Tort Reform Association.
- In last year's legislative session, Michigan lawmakers proposed repealing safeguards for prescription drug providers.
- The trial bar's big coup was in Colorado, where Democratic Governor Bill Ritter signed a law increasing previous limits on noneconomic damages.
- Last year, Alabama saw legislation that would allow a tort claim to continue even after a plaintiff had died, while California proposed authorizing lawsuits for any violation of privacy.
- New Mexico and New Jersey passed laws authorizing citizens to file "false claims" suits on behalf of the state -- in effect turning private individuals into state bounty hunters.
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BUT SHALL IT PREVAIL?
Unless we curb present levels of mass immigration, Americans are likely to live in a more conflict-ridden, less cooperative, less advanced, more unequal, higher-taxed, and more government-heavy society, says author Mark Krikorian, in his new book, "The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal."
These effects are fundamental:
- Mass immigration -- because it is, in effect, a policy of importing poverty -- overstrains government services from Medicare to education even as it hikes the tax burden.
- Innumerable studies show, for instance, that immigrants and their children account for most of the rise in those lacking health insurance.
- Hospitals across America have been closing their accident and emergency departments in order to avoid the bankruptcy caused by having to treat such patients; hence one result of mass immigration will likely be some form of socialized medicine.
- But the additional taxation paid by immigrant workers will not equal the costs they impose for about 300 years.
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[which shows that illegals will self-deport when the financial attraction {employment} is removed]
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Teachers asked to remove Obama buttons in class
California
SOQUEL -- Teachers at Soquel High School have agreed not to wear "Educators for Obama" buttons in the classroom after a parent complained that educators were attempting to politically influence his daughter and other students. John Hadley, an importer of South African goods, called the school to complain Friday after his 16-year daughter Teegan returned home and reported that she had seen several teachers wearing the buttons.
[what has happened to our education system that teachers have to be told it's inappropriate to wear political buttons to class?]
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A maligned law that's working
Guess what? Because of the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law, fewer children are being left behind in America's public schools, and you can thank the even more maligned president of the United States for that. George Bush, after all, was the prime proponent of this idea of holding schools accountable through testing students, and pursued its implementation in a bipartisan spirit.
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Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.
Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: "Put him in touch with me, and I'll send him a reading list."
[we're not insular - we're just American first, and that's not European enough for , well, Europeans {remember: when EUNuchs say 'international' or 'world' or 'global' they mean 'like Europe'. Who's insular?}
Besides: Stan Lee is American.]
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[NOTE: all Policy Position comparisons can be found by going HERE - or by typing "policy positions" {in quotes!} in the Search Blog box in the upper left corner of page.]
Policy Positions Re: IMMIGRATION
How do Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) differ on immigration? The National Journal compared and contrasted the two presidential candidates.
OBAMA ON IMMIGRATION
Border security:
- Obama supports providing more personnel along the U.S. border.
- He would also increase physical barriers, technology and real-time intelligence along U.S. borders and at ports of entry.
- Obama would require illegal immigrants with clean criminal records who want to become citizens to pay a fine and back taxes, learn English and go to the back of the line behind immigrants who came into this country legally.
- He would not require the borders to be secured before illegal immigrants could seek citizenship.
- Obama would also increase the number of legal immigrants.
- Obama supports the current system of giving preference to family members of U.S. citizens and legal residents in allocating green cards, and opposes moving to a merit-based point system that would favor potential immigrants with higher-education levels or needed job skills.
- He is open to experimenting with a point system for skills and education that does not reduce the number of family visas now available.
- Supports the creation of a new guest-worker program to meet employers' needs for temporary workers.
- Stipulates that the program must contain protections against driving down American workers' wages and must provide temporary workers with labor rights and give those who meet certain criteria the opportunity to eventually become citizens.
- Would require all employers to use a new electronic system to verify whether newly hired employees are eligible to work in the United States and would allow the social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the Homeland Security Department to share information about eligibility.
- He would impose stiff penalties on employers who knowingly hire or exploit illegal workers.
For text:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php
MCCAIN ON IMMIGRATION
Border security:
- In the interest of national security, McCain first wants to secure the nation's borders, ports and other entry points, and to require border-state governors to certify that their borders are secure.
- He then would pursue other reforms, such as allowing illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.
- McCain has called for deploying additional personnel, physical and high-tech barriers and surveillance equipment on the borders and for more-effective screening of cargo entering the country.
- McCain has called for the immediate roundup and deportation of the estimated two million illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds.
- He would allow the remaining 10 million illegal immigrants to earn citizenship if they pay a "substantial" fine and back taxes, learn English and "get to the back of the (citizenship) line behind everybody else" with legal status.
- McCain voted for comprehensive bills that would have increased legal immigration and would have revised the system of allocating green cards to give priority to immigrants' education and job skills over family ties.
- He also voted for comprehensive bills that would have created an expanded program used for computer registry to match foreign workers with businesses that need temporary help.
- A new program remains high on his agenda.
- Would require employers to use a new electronic employment verification system to certify that all employees are legal.
- Workers would need "tamper-proof, biometric" identification cards.
- Employers who knowingly hire illegal workers would "be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
For text:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20080830_3632.php
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