Monday, December 15, 2008
Army veteran presented with new home
During his decade in the Army — more than a year of it spent in Iraq — Army Staff Sgt. Rene Fernandez built a sterling military record. The Baytown soldier led more than 300 combat missions, trained in excess of 33,000 troops. For his diligence, he amassed a bulging duffel bag of honors.
In or out of the military, Fernandez's future seemed golden. Then in April 2004, Fernandez's Humvee detonated a roadside bomb. The officer's body absorbed most of the blast, leaving him with brain injuries that, though not fatal, ensured a life of diminished ability and pain.
Thursday morning, Lake Houston-area residents showed Fernandez their appreciation...
[the American model of 'socialism']
READ MORE
Al Qaeda On the Run
[HT:YP]
Last month an audio recording appeared on militant Web sites in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group's main ideologue, warned the president-elect against pursuing military actions in Muslim countries. While the tape was supposedly about Obama, it was actually much more revealing about the current state of Al Qaeda. Above all, it revealed how defensive the group has become. [snip]
By attempting to move the epicenter of jihad eastward after its failure to establish an Islamic state in Iraq, and by trying to bring India into the battle, the extremists are challenging Obama's goal of stamping out terror along the Afghan border and in Pakistan's tribal zones. But the power of Al Qaeda and LeT will be seriously diminished if the United States continues to pursue them militarily in the tribal zones.
The terrorists have now shown—twice—that they are desperate. The coming months may represent the final lap in the race against them. So the stakes could not be higher as Obama begins his presidency.
READ MORE
Hugo’s Hezbollah
For years, the U.S. State Department has stated its concern that Hezbollah raises funds “among the sizable Muslim communities” the South America, and that weak rule of law could “tempt terrorist groups to seek to establish safe havens” in the tri-border area between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Indeed, with the aid of Iranian embassies, the area was believed to be a staging ground for Hezbollah’s 1992 and 1994 bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
It was the U.S. Treasury Department, however, that provided recent evidence that Hezbollah had found a safe haven in Venezuela. In January 2008, Treasury’s Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed two Venezuelans—including one prominent diplomat—on its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, for providing financial support to Hezbollah. Adam Szubin, director of OFAC, noted that the Venezuelan regime was “employing and providing safe harbor for Hezbollah facilitators and fundraisers.” [snip]
The U.S. Treasury should be commended for designating Venezuelan individuals and entities that support Hezbollah. Effective sanctions against the Venezuelan government, however, will be impossible to implement until the United States breaks its reliance on Venezuelan oil. Until that day comes, Washington should strengthen its alliances with Venezuela’s neighbors in an effort to weaken Chavez’s power. Congress can assist by passing a free trade agreement with Colombia, a staunch anti-Chavez ally. Failure to take these and other important steps will only encourage Hezbollah to expand in America’s backyard.
[Recommended > ]
READ MORE
Bush's Newest Iraq Visit Already Drawing Media Swipes
The country awoke to surprising news that President George W. Bush had flown off to visit Iraq in a sort of farewell tour of the place that drove his presidency. With an early report, Reuters gave a few backhanded slaps at Bush that we are sure to see grow throughout the Old Media as the day progresses. [snip]
Next, Reuters unleashes what is not quite a truthful exposition of the facts.
"It will now be left to Obama, a Democrat and early opponent of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, to sort out an exit strategy after he takes office on January 20."This is not necessarily so. Obama could easily simply allow the already agreed upon withdrawal to occur and do nothing else. Obama need not 'figure out' how to remove U.S. troops from Iraq because there is already an agreement between the U.S. and Iraq in place.
READ MORE
War crimes trial for Bush?
It's not that long now until we have a new president, and many on the left and some others are salivating because here's their chance to get George W. Bush, to put him on trial for war crimes, and if doing so tears this nation apart, so what? That's what justice demands, they say. But of course it's not what justice demands, just what their hatred demands.
READ MORE
‘Narcissistic Sovereignty’ Has Kept U.S. from Ratifying U.N. Treaty on Children’s Rights
Advocates for a United Nations treaty on children’s rights blamed American arrogance for it not being ratified by the United States, but critics charge signing onto the Convention on the Rights of the Child could mean international law trumping U.S. state and federal laws and the rights of parents to make decisions about raising and educating their children
“This would be one of the most invasive things we could do as far as the sovereignty of our nation,” Michael Smith, president of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, told CNSNews.com.
Smith said that if Congress ratifies the treaty, it would give the United Nations authority to object to federal and state laws that it thinks violate the treaty – a fact advocates do not deny.
But Austin Ruse, president of the United Nations watchdog group Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, told CNSNews.com that the conventions reflect a worldview that rejects the idea of sovereign nations.
“They no longer want independent nations deciding what to do, but good citizens in a new international order,” ...“It states explicitly that nations must not only actively protect children from discrimination, but they also must refrain from actions that may have a discrimination effect on some children.”Ruse said the United States does not need to be regulated by the U.N. on how it deals with its children. [snip]
Groups at the press conference expressed optimism about the new administration, noting President-elect Barack Obama expressed a willingness to consider sending the treaty to Congress for ratification.
READ MORE
Brussels must learn to take 'no' for an answer
MOST electorates in the Western world now regard their political class with loathing and contempt; but few have more reason to do so than the people of Ireland, who have been humiliated on the international stage by their politicians.
Ireland defeated the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum last June, by 53.4% to 46.6% – identical percentages to the original referendum that had rejected Nice. There was chaos in Brussels, disarray within the ranks of the Irish government. What was to be done? The answer came as early as August 26, when a familiar voice was raised – that of the high-minded Dick Roche – to propose a solution: a second referendum to reverse the outcome of the first. [snip]
That the government of the Irish Republic, abetted by the main opposition parties, has been complicit with the EU nomenklatura in frustrating the clearly expressed wishes of their countrymen and coercing them into a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is shameful.
What kind of democracy is this? Would they demand a rerun of a general election if the result were unsatisfactory? Yet this manoeuvre is even more reprehensible, since it is being executed at the behest of a cartel of foreign powers inimical to the wishes of Irish voters.
That is normally called treason... [snip]
Brown, Cowen, Martin, Roche, Sarkozy, Barroso, Merkel – we have seen the future and it stinks.
[polls indicate that all 27 EU member states want referendums - and that 15 of them would reject it for sure. Which is why 'their'(?) governments have stripped them all, except Ireland {assumed to be a done deal} of a vote on the matter after France and the Netherlands voted no. If the don't revolt, and unfortunately Brussels has proved that's what it now will take, they will be subsumed by the swamp that is the EU collective - yet they do nothing]
READ MORE
Pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today. How and why we are told otherwise?
.
How many failed predictions, discredited assumptions and evidence of incorrect data are required before an idea loses credibility?
CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. It is not a toxic substance or a pollutant. Despite this President Elect Obama met with Al Gore on December 9 no doubt to plan a climate change strategy based on these 'problems'. [snip]
Proponents of human induced warming and climate change told us that an increase in CO2 precedes and causes temperature increases. They were wrong. They told us the late 20th century was the warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us, using the infamous “hockey stick” graph, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. They were wrong. They told us global temperatures would increase through 2008 as CO2 increased. They were wrong. They told us Arctic ice would continue to decrease in area through 2008. They were wrong. They told us October 2008 was the second warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us 1998 was the warmest year on record in the US. They were wrong. They told us current atmospheric levels of CO2 are the highest on record. They were wrong. They told us pre-industrial atmospheric levels of CO2 were approximately 100 parts per million (ppm) lower than the present 385 ppm. They were wrong.
This last is critical because the claim is basic to the argument that humans are causing warming and climate change by increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2 and have throughout the Industrial era. In fact, pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today, but how did they conclude they were lower? [snip]"The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies [i.e., objective evidence], is false.”
[Highly Recommended > ]
READ MORE
CHINA, REALITY SINK NEW KYOTO
[HT:BV]
China has now destroyed Western hopes for a new global warming agreement, just weeks before global talks in Poland aimed at writing a successor for the Kyoto Protocol. China has attached a ransom note to its Polish meeting RSVP: They might go along with a new warming pact if the rich countries agree to hand over $300 billion - per year - to finance the required non-fossil, higher-cost energy systems the West wants.
Don't spend much of your "worry time" on a new climate treaty however, global temperatures tell us that CO2 isn't very important after all:
- Global thermometers stubbornly refused to rise after 1998, and have plummeted in the past two years by more than 0.5 degree C.
- The world is now colder than in 1940, when the Post-WWOII Industrial Revolution started in earnest.
READ MORE
Critics Pan 'Day the Earth Stood Still' Remake With Global Warming Theme
Klaatu barada nikto!
The reviews are in for the environmentally themed "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake and the results are more devastating than any destruction that Gort could do to our planet.
Over at Rotten Tomatoes, this remake received a lowly 24% on the Tomatometer. This lousy reception to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake was fairly predictable. Back in April, Newsbusters writer Warner Todd Huston discussed the reasons why this movie remake would have problems:
READ MORE[FLASHBACK NNBrief 080417: Hollywood Agenda:’ Day The Earth Stood Still’ Remake Is All About?
READ MORE"... No, the important message that the Keanu Klaatu wants to bring us, the message that will warn us of an apocalyptic impending alien police action is….
Global warming."
Blame me for job losses
[notes from the real world]
It is no secret that owners circulated endless emails leading up to election day discussing lay off plans were Obama to win. Entrepreneurs instinctively understand the danger posed by larger liberal majorities in power. The risk-reward equation and fierce independence spirit of start up businesses are anathema to the class warfare, equality of outcome and spread the wealth mentality of the left.
The fact that Obama is not in office yet is irrelevant. Businesses must see "around the corner" and plan accordingly. Rightly or wrongly, business owners see a huge anti-business shift in motion and they are making preparations NOW. We do not want to have business illiterates like Chris Dodd dictate our decisions from the comfort of his home made possible by a quid pro quo Countrywide mortgage. [snip]
We learned just this week that getting out of business is harder than we thought. Take Republic Windows & Doors of Chicago, where being out of money and out of paying customers apparently does not give a business the right to shut down. Nor does it give that business' bank the right to withhold credit. According to the unions, Jesse Jackson and the Governor of Illinois (yes, THAT governor), this company must continue to pay its employees salaries and benefits.
But pay them with WHAT? Liberals seem to be clueless as to where "the money" comes from. They love to tax, regulate and redistribute wealth -- all the while decrying the very profit motive that created it -- something they do not understand. If they did, they would not naively insist that a business that is out of money, out of customers and out of credit stay open so as to pay employees. [snip]
For nearly 30 years, I have been one of these business people. It was an amazing journey and literally involved blood, sweat and tears. But now I am done. This election screams that we are going to see a deterioration of the risk-reward equation and the ability to be left alone. Apparently, any appreciation of our crucial place in the economy is lost on over 50% of the voters as well as those they elected.
READ MORE
Enviro Economics
Despite all their promise, green companies are awash in red ink.
First there was the dotcom bust of the late 1990s, then came the real-estate bubble that's deflating before our eyes. Next up: the green bubble. Alternative energy ventures have received a lot of great press, heavy investment and lip service from politicians in the last couple of years, but many of the nascent green industry's balance sheets are beginning to bleed red.
Among the hardest hit is T. Boone Pickens and his alternative energy hedge fund BP Capital, which has reportedly lost some $2 billion. The Oklahoma oil tycoon who leased hundreds of thousands of acres in West Texas for a giant wind farm, has put that project on hold, saying he'll have to wait for fossil-fuel prices to rise again in order to make the project economically viable.
Another canary in the coal mine: the once soaring market for carbon credits in Europe has tanked, as manufacturing firms worldwide slow production. Even the once promising sector of corn ethanol has gone bust, with the American company VeraSun declaring bankruptcy in October and other publicly held ethanol companies reduced to penny stocks...
[object lesson: watch government's response - it will be that we need spend more money on these 'developing technologies'... Read what your money is going to be paying for, Recommended > ]
READ MORE
Pelosi sees bigger, greener stimulus
[meanwhile, in OZ...]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has increased the size of the economic stimulus package she will support when Congress reconvenes next month, saying it will need to be $500 billion to $600 billion. That’s up from the $400 billion to $500 billion that House Democrats had been expecting
Pelosi said the package would not be like “a 1930s public works project” but instead would have such modern components as greener forms of energy. She echoed the number of jobs and the components that President-elect Obama unveiled just before Thanksgiving.“I hear people say, ‘Oh, they want a 1930s public works project.’ No. It’s about a smart, modern grid to be able to transmit the new, renewable energy – wind, solar, biofuels and the rest."
READ MORE
DREAM: Illegal Alien Student Amnesty Awakens
Even as the illegal alien advocacy lobby is frantically trying to spin the election of Barack Obama as a mandate for a sweeping amnesty, they have all but conceded that the economic crisis and worsening unemployment have probably doomed their efforts. They’ve set their sights on the more modest goals of achieving amnesty for segments of the illegal alien population and using those to leverage further concessions down the road.
Advocates for illegal aliens believe that the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act offers them their best hope to enact a mini-amnesty. The DREAM Act would confer amnesty on most illegal alien youths and just about anyone who could vaguely be described as a student, and guarantee them subsidized in-state tuition rates in their states of residence on the premise that as children, they are not responsible for being in the country illegally. It would also result in a de facto amnesty for many parents, and entitle these kids to sponsor other relatives in the future...
A wrongheaded idea even under the best economic circumstances, amnesty for illegal aliens – in one all encompassing bill, or piecemeal – would be a disastrous misstep for the fledgling Obama administration. An idea that was flatly rejected by the American public during a period of relative prosperity and low unemployment makes even less sense in a bad economy and governments at just about every level facing record shortfalls and deficits.
"Oppose Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act "
CA Governor: http://gov.ca.gov/interact governor@governor.ca.gov
CA State Legislature = http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
CA Senate Email list pg. = http://www.sen.ca.gov/~newsen/senators/senemail.htp
.
Guns don't kill people, terrorists do
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month claimed some 500 casualties, dead and injured. Among the many questions raised by the outrage, there was a purely practical one: Why was the attack so successful? How could so few terrorists claim so many victims?
One obvious answer is firepower. Guns were illegal in the hands of both the terrorists and the victims.
The victims obeyed the laws, the terrorists didn’t.
READ MORE
If each of us carried a gun . . .
The firearms massacres that have periodically caused shock and horror around the world have been dwarfed by the Mumbai shootings, in which a handful of gunmen left some 500 people killed or wounded. For anybody who still believed in it, the Mumbai shootings exposed the myth of “gun control”.
READ MORE
Inauguration donor info released
President-elect Barack Obama has already raised nearly $10 million in donations for next month’s inauguration, according to figures released by the transition Friday. But very few of the donations are coming in small dollar amounts.
Of the 244 names disclosed Friday, 168 donors have given the maximum amount of $50,000. By contrast, only 10 people contributed between $200 and $1000.
[party of the little guy]
READ MORE
School choir forced to pull out of Christmas concert as carols were 'too religious'
A school choir was forced to withdraw from a Christmas event because organisers branded its carols 'too religious'. Around 60 children aged between seven and 11 had spent six weeks practising favourites including Once In Royal David's City and Silent Night for the Corringham Winter Festival.
READ MORE
Judge to S.C.: Stop making religous car tags
Columbia, South Carolina - A federal judge says South Carolina must stop marketing and making license plates that feature the image of a cross and the words ''I Believe.'' The judge issued a temporary injunction during a court hearing Thursday after opponents said the specialty plates violate the separation of church and state.
READ MORE
Marjorie Christofferson's Courage
[HT:YR] California
Marjorie Christofferson is — or was — the manager of El Coyote a restaurant in LA founded by her Aunt.
She gave $100 to Prop 8.
Today Lisa Derrick of the Huffington Post is reporting she has resigned in the face of an ongoing onslaught of threats against the restaurant, which had nothing to do with her personal donation.
READ MORE
Woman returns $100,000 found at Cracker Barrel
A Murfreesboro woman chose not to follow the old saying ''Finders keepers, losers weepers'' when she discovered nearly $100,000 in a bag at the Cracker Barrel on Church Street in Murfreesboro last week. But it wasn't that the thought didn't cross her mind. ''Satan will tempt you. I have been having real bad teeth problems,'' said Billie Watts, 75.(snip) But she ultimately decided to return the money she found hanging in a bag in the women's restroom to its rightful owner...
READ MORE
Women who cut out carbohydrates 'could lose their memory'
Cutting out bread and pasta may be an easy way to shed a few pounds, but it may not be quite so good for your memory, according to a new study. Researchers found that going on a low carbohydrate regime can cause memory loss. They found dieters who cut out high energy foods such as pasta, bread and potatoes could end up starving their brain of the fuel it needs to function properly.
[clinical proof I was right]
READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
