Thursday, January 22, 2009
Only Fox News Aired Bush's Texas Homecoming Ceremony Tuesday
It seems inaugural attendees weren't the only ones cheerful about George W. Bush's departure from Washington, D.C., Tuesday, for only the Fox News Channel aired a live broadcast of the homecoming ceremony held in Midland, Texas, for our 43rd President.
As the Los Angeles Times reported:
The rest of the networks, however, did not see the Bush address as news fit to broadcast.
Too bad, for it might have been one of his finest speeches ever (video embedded below the fold):
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Obama Should Emulate Ronald Reagan, Voters Tell Pollster
Americans would like to see incoming President Barack Obama use Ronald Reagan as a role model. 
When given the choice of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, JFK, Dwight Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan – registered voters overwhelmingly said they want the new Democratic president to emulate the late conservative Republican president, who held office in the 1980’s.
Reagan got the highest support of any president overall, regardless of party affiliation, at 26 percent -- followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt at 18 percent. JFK was third (17 percent) and Abraham Lincoln fourth (13 percent.)
Peter Schram, director of the Ashbrook Center for Public Policy at Ashland University, wasn’t at all surprised that Americans would choose The Gipper.
“Of the recent presidents, I think the one that has been most successful in the public imagination has been Ronald Reagan. I think that is probably historically accurate as well.
“He stood for certain things with a kind of clarity and seemed to – and in fact, did – carry on an eight-year long administration with those principles in mind.”
Reagan’s popularity goes far beyond the Republican tent, however, Kengor told CNSNews.com.
“People on the far left – and I emphasize ‘far’ left – who are critical of Reagan, don’t realize how extreme they are [media]. The vast majority of Americans like Reagan – and a very large majority of that adores Reagan."
The nationwide telephone survey was conducted Jan. 13-18, among a random, representative sample of 1,000 registered voters.
[We want a president that emulates Reagan - so we elected... .......... ohnevermind.]
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9/11 Families Outraged by Obama Call to Suspend Guantanamo War Crimes Trials
Family members of people killed on September 11, 2001, and in other terror attacks say they are outraged by President Obama's draft order calling for the suspension of war crimes trials of prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay."To me it's beyond comprehension that they would take the side of the terrorists, Many of these people have been released and been right back killing, right back at their terrorist work again"
said Peter Gadiel, whose son, James, was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. [snip]"There is no need to suspend [the military tribunals]. There is no reason why [Obama] can't conduct a concurrent review at the same time that the military commission process is moving forward to render justice for the terrorists that have murdered thousands of people,"
said former Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who lost 17 sailors during a suicide bombing attack on the USS Cole in 2000. A suspect in the case is being held at Guantanamo.
"It demeans their deaths because we seem to be more concerned with the rights of detainees than we are with the justice that is being denied to my sailors that were killed,"Lippold told FOXNews.com
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Same as it ever was...
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Hamas reasserts control in Gaza rounds up 'collaborators'
The Islamist Palestinian group Hamas said on Wednesday it had begun reasserting control in the Gaza Strip and rounding up suspected collaborators with Israel, drawing accusations from the rival Fatah group that its members were being targeted. ''The internal security service was instructed to track collaborators and hit them hard,''
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Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels operating despite IDF offensive
Smuggling into Gaza from Egypt is underway again, only days after the end of the IDF operation against Hamas. AP Television News footage showed Palestinian smugglers Wednesday filling a fuel truck with petrol that came through a cross-border tunnel from Egypt.
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[when you don't finish the job, you have to come back:
FLASHBACK: 'Israel won, but could have gone deeper'
............"Israel did not want to destroy Hamas. I believe you should have."
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Muslims wary of Obama pledge
[HT:KE]
Jakarta - Muslim leaders on Wednesday cautiously welcomed President Barack Obama's promise of a fresh start to US relations with the Islamic world and moves to halt "war on terror" trials at Guantanamo Bay. (Snip) ''It is very good that Obama wants to find a 'new way forward' with the Muslim world but first he has to change US policy over Israel and the Palestinian conflict,'' he told AFP.
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The winner of the Battle of Gaza is ...
What took place in Gaza and Israel over the past three weeks was not a war -- it was one battle in a war. Or, to be more precise, it was one battle in what the soldier/scholar John Nagl has described as a "global insurgency" aimed at overthrowing the existing order, what we used to call -- in a more confident era -- the Free World."Yes, Allah is greater than America." Hamas supreme leader Khaled Mashaal said. "Allah is greater than the superpowers. We say to this West: By Allah you will be defeated."
Too many people refuse to understand: Hamas is not fighting for a Palestinian state. Hamas is fighting for the annihilation of Israel, which it would replace with an Islamic emirate. Not the same thing at all...
[i.e., 'GW Of T']
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It's OK to hit your wife, says Melbourne Islamic cleric Samir Abu Hamza
A Melbourne Islamic cleric has told his male followers they can force their wives to have sex and hit them if they are disobedient. Coburg's self-styled cleric Samir Abu Hamza said despite Australian rape laws it was impossible for a man to rape his wife even if she refused to have sex with him (Snip) In a recorded lecture entitled ''The Keys to a Successful Marriage''...
[almost went in the 'funny' section for the title - but it's not.
And the women's rights groups condemning Islam are - where?]
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Guns From Londonistan
"Londonistan" is the nickname given to the UK capitol in 1995 by France's counterterrorism service, partly out of frustration over the safe haven that the city offers to radical Islamist groups that have been exiled from their home countries and/or other EU nations. The year 2009 began with a story that offers a whole new dimension as to how that nickname fits better than most of us would have imagined.
This past week one of the major UK banks, Lloyds TBS Group, paid $350 million to New York State and U.S. Federal authorities in an out-of-court settlement. The fine was paid over charges that Lloyds obscured the fact that billions of dollars that had passed from its office and then through U..S banks and finally on to other foreign destinations had originated in Iran, Libya, and Sudan in violation of U.S. sanctions on those nations. It is the largest fine ever paid in the history of the Manhattan DA's office.
At first glance this subterfuge appears to be a one-off set of incidents, but there are nine other banks being investigated for engaging in similar transactions. Officials in the DA's office talk of a "systemic, wide-ranging scheme"...
But the persistent uncovering of UK entities willing to provide the mullahs with what they need to keep missiles in development, nuclear enrichment facilities humming, and Iranian military aircraft supplied with spares is more than troubling. Add this to the 2007 scandal surrounding BAE Systems and the accusations of a slush fund of more than $100 million that supplied kickbacks to Saudi Arabia and one begins to develop troubling conclusions about the influence oil-rich Middle Eastern states exert on major British institutions...
[none of which would have been caught if not for W's anti-terror inititives re: funding - Recommended > ]
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China: US arms sales to Taiwan 'harm' to relations
Beijing - China made a rare appeal for cooperation between its normally secretive military and Washington on Tuesday but said U.S. arms sales to Taiwan remain a ''serious harm to Sino-U.S. relations.'' The statements came as China issued a major policy paper on national defense that said blocking formal Taiwanese independence remains the chief concern for one of the world's fastest-growing armed forces.
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FLASHBACK:
CHINESE ARMS EXPORTS TO IRAN
"China's arms trade with Iran has presented very serious obstacles to improved U.S.-China relations..."
.
No more beef if Britain hopes to cut carbon emissions
ROAST beef and diary products may have to disappear from the British diet if the country is to meet its pledge to cut carbon emissions by 80%, a government report has warned. It found that the greenhouse gases generated by agriculture, and especially by Britain's 10.5m cows, will seriously undermine any attempt to meet the targets.
[that's no bull]
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Bill's mission
EVERYONE can do their bit to put a stop to global warming, Bill Clinton insists today.
The former US President urges rich and poor, young and old to play their part in the greatest challenge of the 21st century... [ not terrorists with WMD, not starvation due to a global recession - AGW.]
... He wants kids to talk to teachers about making schools more energy-efficient. And Mr Clinton pleads with parents to write to MPs and MEPs to heap pressure on them to act.
Mr Clinton warns that the signs of pending doom are already there — as water and food supplies are hit, sea levels rise and ice sheets melt. [not really]
His Clinton Foundation is working with 40 of the world’s largest cities to cut their greenhouse gas emissions...
[Hmm - sounds like there's a lot of money involved. What does it say when his propaganda drive focuses on kids instead of thinking adults?]
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The Warmist Shamans
Shaman James Hansen has proclaimed that we only have four years left before the world falls into climate catastrophy. The oceans will rise, species will die, the gates of hell will open, and general wailing and gnashing of teeth will prevail over mankind. Dr. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is the world's leading witch doctor crusading against manmade global warming. He has taken this title away from Bigfoot Al, who is increasingly reticent in discussing his own giant carbon footprint in public.
The question arises as to why the George Soros-funded scientist has demanded this time-horizon (President Obama's first term) for decisive action to thwart armagedden. In the immediate future, we are going to hear increasingly desperate pleas from the true believers of Climatotholicism that the end is near. We must act now, or be lost forever. This is the start of a phenomenon I am calling the Shaman Shamboozle... [snip]
Dr. Hansen and his fellow witch doctors must act fast. Using the principle of the Shaman Shamboozle, the evil global warming spirits must be chased away before it is obvious to the tribal masses that the climate is actually getting cooler. In doing so, the shaman ecologists can claim that President Obama's "green initiatives", i.e., taxing anything that emits carbon dioxide, were successful. At that point their political power over the tribe will be complete and irreversable. Let the dance commence before the eclipse begins to wane!
[that's the beauty of this scam: once they enact 'solutions' and voila: nothing happens - they'll then hail themselves as having acted just in time. I say we wait a decade to decide - that would accelerate the data gathering proving catastrophic global warming at which point we could bet the farm on 'fixing' it a.s.a.p.. (or, maybe, perhaps, learn the whole thing's been a scam)
Time is not on their side: the screeching will get worse - much worse.]
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GREEN JOBS: FACT OR FICTION?
n their new study, Robert Michaels and Robert P. Murphy of the Institute for Energy Research examined four studies on the alleged benefits of government programs to foster green job creation and found a common characteristic: they all rest on incomplete economic analysis consequently overstating the net benefits of their policy recommendations. Below is a summary of the general problems: [factoids - snip]
With no standardized definitions of the renewable and energy efficiency industries, authors of these reports have a wide range of plausible choices. But the larger the percentage of the workforce engaged in producing renewable power and efficiency, the smaller the output of other goods, say Michaels and Murphy.
The fact that building and operating renewable power generators requires more labor time than for conventional generators is a signal that the nation should not rush toward renewable. The public is worse off because it sacrifices the outputs that those workers could have produced had they been employed elsewhere, says Michaels and Murphy.
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LEAVE THE NEW DEAL IN THE HISTORY BOOKS
Barack Obama's policy plans are driven by the belief that New Deal economic programs ended the Great Depression. Not so. In fact, thanks to New Deal policies and programs, the U.S. economy faltered for years longer than it might otherwise have done, says Mark Levey, senior managing director at Lotsoff Capital Management in Chicago. [snip]
The problem was that neither Roosevelt nor Hoover grasped the essential nature of the crisis, which was not the stock-market crash, but global deflation. The same perils are now confronting Obama, as the risk of deflation casts a long shadow over the economy.
Yet, the quickest way to strengthen the credit system and begin the end of this crisis is to get money into the economy for true job creation, and not into government work programs. The way to do this is to slash taxes.
The U.S. corporate tax rate, currently the highest in the world, should be cut to zero; the capital-gains tax should be cut further. If the United States is to lead the international economic community out of this crisis, this is the place to start, says Levey.
[those familiar with history know that cutting tax rates is the key to recovery: it's worked every time. So what's the problem? It doesn't expand government power - and that's the real agenda behind all spending stimuluses (or they'd leave the money in your pocket)]
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FLASHBACK: Don't Repeat Errors of New Deal
THE historical model that the Democrats are choosing to hold up as they ponder our financial crisis isn't Harry Truman's Fair Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It is Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
At least three economic reforms under discussion now were also central in the New Deal package. Trouble is, these reforms didn't necessarily work well when they were first tried - and some failed outright...
NBC Stars Insist Obama Needs to Make Americans 'Sacrifice'
NBC News personalities were clear on Sunday’s Meet the Press that Barack Obama needs to bring the fiscal "pain" and sacrifice to the voters with higher taxes. In his interview with incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, host David Gregory suggested Obama’s middle-class tax cut promises should be abandoned in the current state of affairs:
"Is that the responsible thing to do on top of the debt burden that we talked about, on top of the deficit I just outlined?"
In the roundtable segment, Tom Brokaw agreed it was time for "pain" and time for an end to "ideological food fights" with Obama now that "even Republicans are cheering him on." New White House reporter Chuck Todd added that Obama’s latest speech on a stimulus plan was dry and weak, since "it didn't ask for any sacrifice from the country."
[ever notice how 'the people' need sacrifice but the government just keeps spending? Why isn't the government reduced by the amount the economy contracts?]
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BEWARE OF THE BIG-GOVERNMENT TIPPING POINT
We will soon shift from a market-based economy to a political one in which the government picks winners and losers and extends its reach and power in unprecedented ways. This shift is exemplified by the desire of Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress to push us toward government-run health care:
• For all his talk of allowing consumers to select their own health-care coverage, Obama's proposal, as he laid it out in his campaign, will provide strong financial incentives for employers to sign up with a new, Medicare-style government plan for their workers.
• This plan will almost certainly use a price-control system similar to the one in place for Medicare, allowing it to charge artificially low premiums by paying fees well below private rates.
• These low premiums will serve as a magnet for enrollment and will devastate the private companies trying to compete in the health-insurance market.
The result will be the nationalization of the health-care sector, which today accounts for 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
Nationalizing health care will put America on a glide path toward European-style socialism. We need only look to Great Britain and elsewhere to see the effects of socialized health care on the broader economy. Once a large number of citizens get their health care from the state, it dramatically alters their attachment to government.
Every time a tax cut is proposed, the guardians of the new medical-welfare state will argue that tax cuts would come at the expense of health care -- an argument that would resonate with middle-class families entirely dependent on the government for access to doctors and hospitals.
[I.e., it's how control is gained.]
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Teach the pleasure of gay sex to five-year-olds
Children as young as five should be taught to understand the pleasures of gay sex, according to leaders of a taxpayer-funded education project. Heads of the project have set themselves a goal of'creating primary classrooms where queer sexualities are affirmed and celebrated'
The stated purpose of the project - which is operating in 14 primary schools - is to stop bullying and prejudice aimed at homosexuals.
However, at a seminar at Exeter University tomorrow, supporters of the group will go beyond the anti-bullying agenda and discuss 'pleasure and desire in educational contexts' During the project, the seminar paper says, its members have 'challenged each other to go beyond imagined possibilities into queer practice'
[universal vouchers]
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Senate Democrats move toward seating Franken
Washington - It's no joke: Senate Democrats are moving toward letting comedian Al Franken join the chamber while Republican Norm Coleman's election lawsuit is pending. ''We're going to try to seat Al Franken,'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters on Wednesday, a few hours before he posed with Franken for photos just off the Senate floor.
[the most ethical congress in history]
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Free the California 52,000?
California
A panel of three federal judges is holding a trial to determine whether to free 52,000 of California's 172,000 prison inmates to alleviate overcrowding. You might be asking yourself: Who elected these guys to run California?
One of the three judges, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, determined in 2005 that California's prison health care system is so bad that it's unconstitutional. He put the system in receivership and appointed law professor Clark Kelso to oversee prison health care.
Now Kelso is demanding $8 billion to renovate the system — even though the state is spending about $14,000 on health care per inmate... [snip]
Here's the unfunny funny part: Criminal Justice Legal Foundation President Michael Rushford recently figured out that inmates live longer on the inside than on the outside, and they live longer on the inside than outsiders live. [snip]
Corrections spokesman Seth Unger explained what that difference would be:"Releasing 50,000 inmates would be the equivalent of emptying 10 prisons onto the streets."
Pity no one seems worried what the effect on the general public's 'health' might be...
[we've a serious problem with our black-robe society; it needs be reigned in]
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Name That Party: Gay Portland Mayor Lied About Sex With Teen
Associated Press and The Oregonian in Portland both completely flunked the party-ID test on Portland's brand-new openly gay Democratic mayor having a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old man and lying about it.
Readers who weren't familiar with Adams could have been confused, since a Republican label later surfaced in the story:
Adams met Beau Breedlove in April 2005. Breedlove, then 17, was an intern at the Oregon Legislature for then-Rep. Kim Thatcher, R-Keizer.
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Time Skips Holder Controversy, But Implied Ashcroft Was Unfit in 2001 Cover Story
Time magazine hasn’t devoted a single article to Attorney General nominee Eric Holder yet. (He’s drawn one short mention since being nominated.) This is a big change from eight years ago, when Time had a blazing cover story on George Bush nominee John Ashcroft. With a close-up of Ashcroft’s half-darkened face peering out with a one-eyed Cheneyesque glare, Time asked
SHOULD THIS MAN BE ATTORNEY GENERAL?
Sure, news magazines telling the American people you're historically ugly will have no impact on their memory. Gibbs and Duffy saw only poisonous discord in the making, as they unloaded their discordant anti-Bush editorializing: [snip]
By contrast, while Time went on to cast Ashcroft as a fervent religious conservative seen by his allies as "St. John the Divine," Time’s glancing mention of Eric Holder cast him as a moderate that disturbes the ACLU in an article in the December 8 print edition entitled "Closing Down the Dark Side"...
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Dems want apology from Lieberman 
WASHINGTON -- A day after Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation's 44th President, the Connecticut Democratic State Central Committee called on Sen. Joe Lieberman to apologize to him for having backed his Republican opponent in the 2008 campaign.
[no, it's not a joke. Is this what we've come to? Apologize for choosing who you'd like to support? And if your side had won? They're to apologize for having been ont he 'wrong' side? How bad is our education system that grown adults don't realize how anathema this is to our very concepts of democracy?]
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Bush's humanitarian triumph
George Bush as president was a brutal war-monger who cared not a whit about the poor, it's said by some, and you wonder what they are going to do with a fact that shines so large and bright that to ignore it is to admit their own ugly bias.
It is simply this - that Bush did more humanitarian good for the world's poorest, most diseased people than any of his predecessors as much as dreamed of. The instruments were, first off, the Global Fund, an international group fighting AIDS, malaria and TB that he helped start, and then the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that does its work in Africa, where people absolutely cheer him loudly.
Here's the lowdown on why. It has saved millions of lives...
[Recommended > ]
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