Friday, April 24, 2009
Congress Knew About the Interrogations
Obama should release the memo on the attacks
George Tenet, who served as CIA director under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, believes the enhanced interrogations program saved lives. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" in April 2007:
"I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.
It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002.
We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses... [snip]
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair got it right last week when he noted how easy it is to condemn the enhanced interrogation program "on a bright sunny day in April 2009," and how the current situation demonstrates how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation.
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FLASHBACK > CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles
Prosecuting Heroes
National Security: The Justice Department may launch a witch hunt against those who organized the enhanced interrogation of terrorists. That's no way to treat people who saved so many lives.
The American public has just seen how policy based on campaign rhetoric can come crashing into the reality of a successful past policy...
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58% Say Release of CIA Memos Endangers National Security
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 28% believe the release of the memos helps America’s image abroad.
But fifty-eight percent (58%) believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States.
Only 28% of U.S. voters think the Obama administration should do any further investigating of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects. Fifty-eight percent (58%) are opposed.
Democrats are evenly divided over whether further investigation is necessary. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans and 62% of voters not affiliated with either major party are against more investigating.
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Ideology versus Competence
Sorry Canada, its going to be a long four years. In an article called "The Border for Dummies" Canada's National Post asks a salient question:"Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job?"
I think I can offer some enlightenment. You see, Janet is an ideologue. She is the kind of person who will pursue ideological goals without regard for truth, a person who can be expected to reinvent reality to fit the ideological vision of the administration, which she does with abandon.
When asked about Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio's policy of actually enforcing immigration laws she had this to say:"And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil..."
Since when is it not a crime to illegally enter the US?
Sheriff Arpaio, by all accounts an effective and popular law enforcement officer, is ignoring more serious crimes to pursue illegals? A national cabinet member criticizing an honorable local law enforcement official and accusing him of criminal dereliction of duty is stunning.
Incredible comments, incomprehensible logic, borne of the talking points from the Obama-La Raza disinformation machine.
It gets worse...
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Epically Inept
[HT:BS]
Well, it didn’t take long for the Obama administration to demonstrate who would be the “instant fail” appointee. Admittedly, it was a tough competition, but the winner has to be Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
First up, her department issued a report on the dangers of right-wing extremism that mainly served to smear and anger many veterans. Just as the furor of that began to die out, the FBI decided to add, for the first time, a domestic terrorist to its 10 Most Wanted terrorists list.
Then Ms. Napolitano decided that it was incumbent upon her to discuss border security. This should have been her forte; after all, she had been the governor of Arizona, and that state is having huge problems with Mexican drug gangs. If anyone ought to know about the problems with our borders, it should be her.
Whoops.
She demostrated that she knows almost nothing about the history of terrorism in the United States, saying (falsely) that the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. through Canada. Canada is understandably irritated at this slur.
Napolitano holds an incredibly sensitive and important position, and has yet to show even the slightest competence at it. She should never have been put up for the position, and needs to be replaced by someone who actually understands the job...
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Appreciation Finds No Language Barriers During Continuing Promise
With nine years as a Navy ophthalmic technician and a current assignment at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Martinez has conducted more eye exams than he can count. But rarely, he said, is the need as great -- or the service as welcomed -- as by patients like Alexis receiving medical and dental care during Continuing Promise 2009.
Volunteer interpreters abound here during Continuing Promise, clearly identified by the bright yellow T-shirts they wear both on the USNS Comfort hospital ship and at medical clinics and other operations providing services ashore. But as the Comfort crew and Haitian patients alike are coming to realize, appreciation has a universal language all its own.
“The best part of it is when all of a sudden, you put glasses on someone and they start looking all over the place with a big smile,” he said. “It’s really wonderful, and it makes you feel great.”
After leaving here April 19, Comfort and its crew will visit Antigua, Barbuda, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama, before returning to the United States.
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China shows off its expanding navy
- China celebrated its military confidence at sea on Thursday, when anniversary celebrations for the founding of its navy climaxed with a show of the warships and submarines projecting its spreading power.
The fleet parade off the mist-shrouded eastern port city of Qingdao marks 60 years since the founding of the People's Liberation Army Navy, long the somewhat neglected arm of China's military forces.
The spectacle included two of China's nuclear-powered Long March submarines, vessels capable of firing ballistic missiles far from the country's shores, the China Daily reported.
State television showed President Hu Jintao, decked out in white gloves and a dark suit, standing on a Chinese warship waving to the passing fleet as it paraded past on calm seas.
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A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.
Nobu Su, head of Taiwan's TMT group, which ships commodities to China, said Beijing is trying to extricate itself from dollar dependency as fast as it can.
"China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources. They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings."
One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds.
[The point: Obama's policies, in particular spending money we do not have, isn't fooling anyone but American's who get their 'news' from TV. It's devaluing the dollar which will lead to hyper inflation - if we're lucky. If unlucky... did you see the movie 'Rollover'? Think global...]
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Next Bernie Madoff? Emissions Cap-and-Trade Aids the Corrupt, Hurts the Little Guy
The American people have had enough of convoluted, indecipherable financial schemes and the opportunists who exploit them. The public is understandably angry about Wall Street's exploitation of Main Street, and yet our political leaders are setting the stage for another complex trading market, ripe for corruption. The future Enrons and Bernie Madoffs of the world would like nothing better than to see the U.S. impose a new market for carbon emission trading. [snip]
European governments and industries, in an attempt to stave off the economic impact of cap-and-trade, have found plenty of ways to game the system. Governments have freely handed out emissions allowances. Meanwhile, European consumers have suffered as energy rates have increased. In contrast to the burdens borne by European households, traders have been reaping the benefits of emissions trading with little regard for the environmental concerns cap-and-trade is supposed to address.
The emissions permit market has constantly fluctuated. With the price of carbon up or down by an average of 17.5 percent per month and with daily price shifts as great as 70 percent, European companies have been left to simply guess at how much their environmental compliance costs might be each month. Consequently, investors have been reluctant to invest in these businesses and there is little incentive to invest in new technologies.
As a result, UNCCC data show that the European emissions rate under cap-and-trade increased by 3.5 percent from 2000 to 2006 while U.S. emissions increased by only 0.7 percent.
The cap-and-trade system being touted on Capitol Hill would create a multibillion-dollar playground that would, once again, create a group of wealthy traders benefiting at the expense of millions of average families—middle to low-income households that would end up paying more for food, energy, and almost everything else they buy...
[We've been warned.]
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Lost jobs, big hikes in your bills -- that's cap-and-trade
President Obama has repeatedly said he will not raise taxes on low- and middle-income families, yet his policies do not match his rhetoric. Take for instance, a new tax he has proposed on the use of energy. It's called cap-and-trade or, more appropriately, cap-and-tax. The tax would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases.
The Democrats need the revenue this will generate to pay for their expensive agenda. But getting it this way would be shortsighted because it will cost far more in the long run than it will bring in. While the president originally estimated that implementing this plan would cost $646 billion over eight years, his deputy director for the National Economic Council, Jason Furman, recently stated that it could cost up to three times that -- bringing the cost closer to $2 trillion.
Any way you look at it, it's low- and middle-income Americans who will pay dearly for this. Using an analysis by Peter Orszag, President Obama's budget director, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by nearly $4,000 a year...
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Hate Crimes Legislation Draws Criticism from Christian Groups
The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday is expected to pass federal hate-crimes legislation, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federally protected classes.
Thanks to hate-crimes laws in Canada and in the European Union, Christian groups have already become targets for hate-speech prosecution...
[We need repeal all 'hate crime' legislation - the government has no business trying to interpret the intent behind free speech. If your words cause harm, you should (and can be) held accountable, but this special-class 'protection' business is impossible and unAmerican.]
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Columnist Will correct that initial TARP money did not buy toxic assets
.Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets."
George Will on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 in a column published by the Washington Post and other news organizations.
The $325 billion cited by Will comes from the March 11 testimony by Neel Kashkari, the interim assistant secretary for financial stability who directs the TARP, before the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
And at that point, none of the money had been spent on buying toxic assets, according to the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan congressional research group, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent group tracking spending on TARP and other stimulus programs on its site Stimulus Watch.
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TARP, the Criminal Enterprise?
[HT:JM]
Is the whole TARP plan a criminal enterprise? Sounds farfetched, I suppose. But after reading about Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky’s report, it may well be that TARP is just one big criminal problem.
Listen to this: Barofsky’s investigators reported Monday that they have opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax-law violations, insider-trading, and mortgage-modification fraud related to TARP.
Yup, those are criminal probes...
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What's the Benefit?
Global warming realists (that is, those who don't buy the Al Gore-like catastrophism because they see the earth is no warmer than it was 12 years ago) often argue against various forms of energy taxes, but too many stop short of asking alarmists, "What's the benefit?"
Those in conservative talk radio and punditry often don't go far enough, because telling the cost side tells only half. Listeners and readers are left with the impression that "yeah, it costs a fortune." But then you can hear their Gore-pressed consciences wonder, "but don't we still have to do something?"
This leads to the next (should be) obvious question -- one the alarmists never have to answer -- which is, "If we do what you are proposing we should do, what will we (or the Earth) get in exchange for what we spend?"
But instead of boldly proclaiming the great thermostatic results their policies will produce, they run away from the science they so adamantly claim that they stand behind. How? Because they cannot explain how much greenhouse gas reduction will cause global temperatures to change.
For all their jargon-filled technological conversations about how to "solve the problem," they only measure their goals in terms of emissions averted or reduced -- usually quantified in "million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent," or MMtCO2e. How's that for an absurd acronym?
So it's easy to stump the alarmists when you ask: What will the climate do when we lower MMtCO2e's? Can you doomsayers who so haughtily and demandingly chant "Science! Science! Science!" tell us how your plans will lower temps, save sea levels, and spare species?
They never answer in terms of degrees, so you can conclude that the "benefit" side of the ledger is zero.
Sound like a deal you'd want in on?
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The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem (Rep. Nita Lowey)
[Meanwhile, from our congressional 'leaders'...]
In the past month, the House Minority Leader called the idea that carbon dioxide - a greenhouse gas and known carcinogen - is dangerous “almost comical,” and members of his party suggested that the planet is actually cooling and “carbon-starved” and invited a global warming denier as a public witness to a Congressional hearing on the topic.
As anyone with experience with recovery knows, the first step in addressing a crisis is to admit that you have a problem. Unfortunately, these displays and others make it increasingly clear that, despite conclusive scientific evidence on the existence of global warming and the human role, some elected officials refuse to take Step 1.
Today - Earth Day - I introduced a resolution that says three very simple things critical to a constructive dialogue on global warming:
- The Earth is warming;
- Human activity plays large role in that warming;
- Congress can mitigate the risks through legislation...
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Thought Police Muscle Up in Britain
Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalize politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you."
Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!"
Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed... [snip]
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children... [snip]
[And on and on...]
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors,* more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
[You know, like school systems. It's happening here as well, we're but a few years 'behind' them...]
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Is Your Minister a 'Hate Crime' Peddler?
The George Orwell congress resumed its session yesterday. Not content to attempt to end the secret ballot by the “Employee Free Choice Act,” the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up and pass the equally-Orwellian “Hate Crimes” bill, HR 1913.
The “Hate Crimes” bill wants to criminalize speech that insults politically-fashionable minorities... [snip]
Rather than offering protection to a class of Americans, the effect of enacting HR 1913 into law will be to create a new persecuted class in order to correct these imaginary crime waves against the richest and most politically active part of the Democratic Party’s and President Obama’s base.
HR 1913 targets mainstream religious people for prosecution because their sincerely-held religious beliefs and centuries of theology inform them that homosexuality is a disordered behavior and a sin. Just expressing that belief will amount to a crime under this bill and pastors across America will be risking their freedom to quote certain passages of the Bible from their pulpits...
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Then > 
"OPPOSE HR 1913"
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...
.
Miss California's Competitors From Gay Marriage States Say She Needed to Be PC
Meowww. The claws are coming out. The Miss USA contestants from the four states that allow same-sex marriage say Miss California should have been more politically correct* when she was asked for her thoughts on the issue during the nationally televised pageant...
[*Memo: "politically correct" is a derogatory phrase, not a literal political ideal.]
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It's Alternative Media That's Cooling Global Warming Hysteria
The latest Rasmussen poll reports that the lowest number of voters ever polled -- one-in-three -- believe that global warming is caused by human activity. That’s an astonishing figure, especially considering the all-out green propaganda assault the mainstream media (MSM) exposes the public to on a daily basis.
After all, it’s become nearly impossible to open a magazine, unfold a newspaper or turn on the television without being scolded about the selfishness of your energy consumption and the damage your unworthy existence does to the planet. And yet, Friday’s Rasmussen found that forty-eight percent of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, not their so-called carbon-footprint. That’s up 4% in less than three months.
Aided by an all-too-eager MSM, policy makers speak of manmade climate change as “settled science” and perpetrate the lie that only a few “fringe” scientists question its tenets. Nevertheless, the latest Gallup Poll reports that 41% of Americans consider global warming to be an exaggeration. That’s up 11% in just 3 years.
So despite a MSM that spoon feeds its audience the latest alarmist crap about how manmade CO2 kills polar bears, threatens coastal cities and islands, incubates all manner of pestilence and so on and so on, the number of people actually buying into their still-unsubstantiated carbo-chondria continues to shrink... [snip]
“Every opinion poll--even those conducted by the bed-wetters themselves – shows that global public opinion is cooling as fast as the global climate. In one recent survey, ‘global warming’ came at the very bottom of a list of political and environmental concerns, immediately behind the need to clean up dog-poop on the streets. Why? Because dog-poop is a real environmental problem and ‘Global warming’ is not. The correct policy response to the non-problem of climate change is to have the courage to do nothing.”
Indeed, the latest Gallup poll concurs. Global warming ranked last in public concern among eight specific environmental issues. Dead last. And I doubt it would have fared any better had dog crap been a menu item. [snip]
But if you weren’t a consumer of the New Media (ezines, blogs, etc.), you wouldn’t know that, would you? You’d likely continue to believe the lame MSM warnings that we’re running out of time to save the planet. And given the acute rise in public skepticism that one monster of a winter energized, just imagine the panic the specter of decades of cooling stirs in those whose dreams of controlling our energy consumption – and thereby our lives -- depend entirely upon an alarmed populace.
You see, it’s actually climate alarmists that are running out of time -- and they know it.
Policy makers know very well that time grows short to implement their carbon control schemes. And the media face a similar problem. Sure, today NBC launches yet another of their excruciatingly silly “Green is Universal” weeks to celebrate this year’s Earth Day on Wednesday. And once again they’ll sully their often worthwhile conservation tips by spreading carbon phobia and climate alarmism throughout their broadcast and myriad cable networks.
But these recent public opinion shifts suggest that more and more people will be turned off by such counterfeit tactics, and will in turn turn off their TVs and head for the internet...
[One can hope. And BTW; got a friend who could use a 'subscription' {same low price} to NNB? Don't forget you can 'push' them - anonymously - to try it (left side bar).]
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PETA protesting chicken dance at NASCAR
PETA is pecking away at NASCAR fans doing the chicken dance. (snip)KFC was the sponsor of the record attempt and PETA charges the Colonel is cruel to chickens. A KFC spokesman denies the allegations.
[Exactly how many chickens were offended?
You can't make this stuff up.]
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