Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Feinstein seeks probe into Bush detainee tactics
[HT:SN]
The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called for a full congressional inquiry to move forward on controversial George W. Bush-era interrogation and detention methods.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, speaking Sunday on CNN's ''State of the Union,'' said she hopes that public outrage regarding the memos will soon subside so that Congress can calmly and fully investigate the issue.
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Boehner wants CIA to release Pelosi notes
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is upping the ante on Speaker Nancy Pelosi — asking the Obama administration to release CIA notes taken during a 2002 briefing session with Pelosi and other Congressional leaders.
Boehner is backing efforts by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, to release agency's records of meetings with Congressional members from both parties...
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LA Times Leaves Out That Waterboarding Helped Thwart Terror Attack... on Los Angeles
Say you're the editor of a major U.S. city's newspaper and that sources in the national security community have informed your reporters that waterboarding was a crucial tactic in making a terrorist detainee spill his guts with information that, when followed up by authorities, thwarted a planned terrorist attack on same major U.S. city.
You would probably run the story on the front page with a banner headline to that effect, but at the very least you'd make sure that fact was reported in your paper's coverage.
That is, of course, unless you're the ideologically leftward, politically correct editors at the Los Angeles Times...
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The U.N. Steps up to the Plate
.
An Austrian, Manfred Nowak, who serves as something called a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, is now warning the United States that former Bush administration officials should be tried and prosecuted for torture, including the lawyers who gave advice about statutes on interrogation.
Three notes:
1) The U.N. special rappoteur, like most transnational officials that have no accountability, is cowardly; Mr. Nowak knows that he can gain publicity by trashing the U.S. — and, especially in the present politicized climate, the former administration. He also knows from past experience, that if he were to dare to go to Russia, China, or, in fact, almost any country on any U.N. commission connected to civil rights and press his case, he would probably either be ignored (no headlines, some danger in reporting that China tortures dissidents) or, who knows in the case of Iran, Libya, Cuba, etc., be himself tortured.
2) He is hypocritical. If he is really worried about serious transgressions of human rights, perhaps he could simply stay home and investigate his own country's quite amoral policy of shipping everything from sniper rifles to nuclear technology to human-rights-violating regimes like Iran. Or, better yet, he could use his U.N. dais to go after the growing Austrian neo-Nazi movement.
3) The current Third-world practice in the U.S. of serially trashing an outgoing administration, whether by demonizing it abroad or seeking to try its former officials, is already bearing fruit, as it brings the likes of Professor Nowak out of the woodwork. Soon, when the Obama administration releases pictures, more memos, etc. (of course, prepped by the now mandatory denials on the Sunday-morning talk shows that it would ever do this, and the now mandatory postfacto "anguished" pep talk to the particular intelligence agency in question), we will see even sharper reactions from our enemies.
And if we are going to go down this Orwellian route, then let us at least be consistent, and call in the U.N. to find out who gave the "order" to blow apart the heads of the negotiating Somali teen pirates (no habeas corpus there), and the Predator "execution" of "suspected" Wazirstan purveyors of man-made catastophe, and perhaps even those in the media who not all that long ago falsely reported that U.S. guards had "flushed" Korans at Gitmo — all the latter are not matters of supposed torture, but had consequences that led to death.
Do we really wish to turn our country into something like this?
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Israel's Arab cheerleaders
In spite of the Obama administration's warning that Israel can only expect Egypt to support its position that Iran must be denied nuclear weapons if it gives Jerusalem to the PLO, last week's visit by Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman clearly demonstrated that Egypt wishes to work with the government on a whole host of issues. Coming as it did on the heels of Egypt's revelation that Iranian-controlled Hizbullah agents were arrested for planning strategic attacks against it, Suleiman's visit was a clear sign that Egypt is as keen as Israel to neutralize Iranian power in the region by preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
And Egypt and Jordan are not alone in supporting Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. American and other Western sources who have visited the Persian Gulf in recent months report that leaders of the Gulf states from Bahrain - which Iran refers to as its 14th province - to Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and, of course, to Iraq - are praying for Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities and only complain that it has waited so long to attack them.
As one American who recently met with Persian Gulf leaders explained last week,"As far as the Gulf leaders are concerned, Israel cannot attack Iran fast enough. They understand what the stakes are."
UNFORTUNATELY, THE nature of those stakes has clearly eluded the Obama administration...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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Banks May Need $1 Trillion After U.S. Tests, KBW Says
New York - U.S. lenders including Wells Fargo & Co. may need another $1 trillion in capital to cushion losses as unemployment rises and borrowers fall behind on payments, KBW Inc. analysts said today. The estimate is based on KBW’s own ''stress test''of the strength of top U.S. lenders,
Bankers may get their first look tomorrow at results of the tests, which are being conducted on 19 of the biggest U.S. financial companies...
[Conned again. The FDIC already monitors metrics on bank 'health'. Obama's 'stress test' is a mechanism to garner yet more government control over the banks - nothing more.]
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Support for Free Market Economy Up Seven Points Since December
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of U.S. voters say that they prefer a free market economy over a government-managed economy. That’s up seven points since December.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey also found that just 11% now prefer a government-run economy, down from 15% four months ago.
Free markets are preferred by 94% of Republicans, 64% of Democrats and 78% of those not affiliated with either major party. Adults under 30 favor free markets by a 79% to eight percent (8%) margin.
Support for free markets does not equal support for a purely laissez faire approach, however. Voters are evenly divided over the need for more government regulation of big business: 46% support the idea, and 43% are opposed.
But in December, 52% favored more regulation, and only 35% were opposed.
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Geithner: The Fox Guarding the Henhouse?
What is going on in this country? The government is about to take over GM in a plan that completely screws private bondholders and favors the unions.
Get this: The GM bondholders own $27 billion and they’re getting 10 percent of the common stock in an expected exchange. And the UAW owns $10 billion of the bonds and they’re getting 40 percent of the stock.
Huh? Did I miss something here?
[Does anyone think the government's take over of the car companies has anything to do with business? It's all for the unions. And what of Ford? Is it now to compete with companies owned by the government and which therefore pay no taxes? Some 'reward' for trying not to need government help.]
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[US government takes over Harley Davidson]
85% Say Government Has Too Much Power, Too Much Money
Sixty percent (60%) of all Americans say the federal government has too much power and too much money, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Just nine percent (9%) say the government has too little power and money. Twenty-four percent (24%) believe the government has about the right amount of both.
Not surprisingly, the Political Class sees things a lot differently. While 85% of Mainstream Americans say the government has too much power and money, just two percent (2%) of the Political Class agree.
Nearly one-our-of-four members (24%) of the Political Class, in fact, believe the government has too little money and power, but 68% say it has about the right amount of each.
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NUMBER OF FEDERAL SUBSIDY PROGRAMS TOPS 1,800
[HT:WR]
Federal spending is growing by leaps and bounds. The budget hit $3.9 trillion this year, double the level of spending just eight years ago. The government is also increasing the scope of its activities, intervening in many areas that used to be left to state and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals. For example:
- By 2008, there were 1,804 different subsidy programs in the federal budget.
- Hundreds of programs were added this decade -- ranging from a $62 billion prescription drug plan to a $1 million anti-drug education grant -- and the recent stimulus bill added even more.
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Public Sector Waste Is Driving Us to the Brink of Disaster
Labour's grotesque mismanagement of public finances has brought the country to the brink of ruin. (snip) Officialdom is now filled with endless tiers of management and sprawling empires of red tape, all devoted to the single purpose of squandering taxpayers’ money.
The public sector has become a vast job-creation racket for armies of penpushers who meet no genuine need but swallow a fortune in their generous salaries, working conditions and pensions...
[Do you really think ours would work any better?]
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Global Warmists' Sly Polar Disorder
Back in 2005, NASA attempted to excuse the failure of their climate models to predict continued southern ice expansion as an omission of the “snow-to-ice conversion” process in their programming. Once that algorithm was incorporated, they insisted, their models properly recognized the phenomena as completely consistent with warming predictions. Two years later, alarmists everywhere were screaming about what horrors the opening of the Northwest Passage would portend.
But as I pointed out then, while it was true that satellite photos had found an ice-free corridor along Canada, Alaska and Greenland and Northern Hemisphere ice at its lowest level since such images were taken in 1978, it was also true that Antarctic ice levels (Southern Hemisphere) were at record highs for that same period. And that fact was being completely ignored in the headlines.
Consequently -- all eyes were directed to the catastrophe looming in our northern waters.
Fortunately for realists, since the Northwest Passage hysteria of 2007, Arctic ice has made a rapid comeback, as you can see from this DMI Centre for Ocean and Ice graph, constructed from Ocean and Sea Ice, Satellite Application Facility data. In fact, the 2009 Arctic ice extent appears to be well on track to exceed the previous four years.
So why do we continue to hear warnings about receding Arctic ice? How is that possible when the extent is quickly approaching its 1979-2000 mean? Simple -- the rules have changed - again. It’s no longer the area of the ice that counts, but rather the volume. You see, thicker winter ice is better able to survive the summer and in turn help cool the planet while reflecting sunlight back into space. And, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), “This year, ice older than two years accounted for less than 10% of the ice cover at the end of February.”
So there’s a new metric in town -- The ice that has been forming at a record pace since the 2007 record low simply doesn’t count because it’s not yet as thick and “effective” as older ice.
And that nonsense somehow gives cover to a mainstream media (MSM) that, despite continually expanding ice, dutifully repeat the retrofitted analysis in headlines the likes of Arctic ice is thinner than ever according to new evidence from explorers and Arctic ice continues to shrink and thin and of course Arctic will be ice-free within a decade.
Pretty slick, huh?
[Again and again; lie, when time (and data) shows it to be so, change the story (lie) and run with that for another few years. It's a shell game of untruths, but when the major media supports it...]
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Do not read this column ....
Today's column is written as a public service to all my readers who think everything they need to know about global warming they learned from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and who demand I stop attacking that nice man, David Suzuki.
I implore you, I beg you, I beseech, you -- STOP READING THIS COLUMN.
I can barely keep up with my correspondence from readers who have intelligent things to say. To all those described above -- who don't understand the difference between weather and climate or how cap-and-trade works, although you always think you do -- please, go buy a book on climate change, sit down, read, learn.
Then maybe we can have a rational discussion. Look, I'll help you... [snip]
But the problem, if you only read books of this type, is that you don't come to understand that Kyoto wasn't an environmental agreement at all, but an economic one, primarily designed to hobble the U.S. economy and that far from lowering global greenhouse gas emissions, it guaranteed they would rise.
You don't understand how a toxic combination of UN bureaucrats, opportunistic politicians, special interests, rent-seekers and scientists-turned-ideologues, has oversold not the reality of anthropogenic climate change, but the certainty about what's going to happen, where, when, how severe and most important, what we should do...
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Deeper In Red From Going Green
Recession: The administration tells the country it can revive the economy with a "green" stimulus. But, like government-provided universal health care, where it's been tried in another nation, it hasn't worked. [snip]
"An examination of Europe's experience" in trying to green the economy, which dates back to 1997, "reveals these policies to be terribly economically counterproductive."
That the European experience has been economically counterproductive should be no mystery. Creating jobs through government dictate always carries cost. Since there is little market for the green programs that are supposed to pull us out of our economic tailspin, those jobs have to be financed by taking money out of the private sector, where it could be used for genuine investments that would generate honest, not taxpayer-subsidized, jobs.
Spain is to the proponents of a green economy what Britain and Canada are to the supporters of state-provided universal health care: a model that the U.S. should follow. The president himself has brought up Spain as an example of the value of government promoting renewable energy.
Before mentioning Spain, or any other nation, again — and certainly before he proposes any further green initiatives — he should read Alvarez's report. He would need to go no further into the paper than the third of Alvarez's 24 salient points:
"While it is not possible to directly translate Spain's experience with exactitude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million 'green jobs' . . . the study clearly reveals the tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome."
Alvarez said in an interview that the job losses "could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices," which companies have done.
Facts, as has been said, are stubborn things. But they are scarcely more stubborn than most minds on the political left that ignore immutable economic laws and well-documented economic history.
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11% of all born in Mexico live in U.S.
Recast statistics on Mexican immigrants by the Pew Hispanic Center show that nearly 11 percent of the people born in Mexico live in the United States.
A record 12.7 million Mexican immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2008, a 17-fold increase since 1970, according to the center.
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Children of illegal aliens cost county welfare $44 million in March
[HT:LK]
LOS ANGELES COUNTY - Figures from the Department of Public Social Services show that children of illegal aliens in Los Angeles County collected over $21 million in welfare and over $22 million in food stamps in March 2009 -- an increase of $1 million from the previous month, announced Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.
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California counties cut healthcare to illegal immigrants
Forced to slash their budgets, some California counties are eliminating nonemergency health services for illegal immigrants -- a move that officials acknowledge could backfire by shifting the financial burden to emergency rooms.
Sacramento County voted in February to bar illegal immigrants from county clinics at an estimated savings of $2.4 million. Contra Costa County followed last month and Yolo County is voting on a similar change next month...
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PRINCIPAL A KING IN QUEENS
For the first time, Queens Principal Anthony Lombardi has become a real school leader.
Lombardi, who has been the principal for 12 years, has more control over hiring his staff. He said eliminating the rule in the union contract that allowed tenured teachers -- some of whom were considered incompetent -- to use their seniority to "bump" their way into his school has been a big plus.
"I'm able to keep the teachers I interviewed and trained. The elimination of transfers and bumping stabilizes a school's organization,"
Before mayoral control, PS 49 went through a stormy period as Lombardi sought to force out low-performing teachers under cumbersome union rules, which caused a war among his staff. Mary Shannon, a literacy coach and teacher at the school for 18 years, recalled,
"It was ugly for a long time. There were divided camps: who was with Mr. Lombardi and who wasn't. But it had to be done. We had to clean house. It's about the kids,"
The results?
Math and reading scores are up 14 percent since 2003, and PS 49 received a solid B on its school report card last year. In 2007, the state Education Department honored PS 49 for high performance and for closing the achievement gap for minority students. More parents are clamoring to get their kids into the school, which is adding two kindergarten classes next fall and is expanding from K-to-5 to K-to-8.
Parents are thrilled with the changes.
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Democrats and Poor Kids
Sitting on evidence of voucher success, and the battle of New York.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan did a public service last week when he visited New York City and spoke up for charter schools and mayoral control of education. That was the reformer talking. The status quo Mr. Duncan was on display last month when he let Congress kill a District of Columbia voucher program even as he was sitting on evidence of its success.
Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.
Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids."
Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions...
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PUT GUNS ON CAMPUS
Mass public shootings are a horrific feature of modern life. Many of the bloodiest examples of this scourge have occurred on college campuses. Professors are particularly sensitive to this danger, say Theodore Day, a professor of finance, and Stan Liebowitz, the Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics, both at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Craig Pirrong, a professor of finance at the University of Houston.
All support a bill currently pending in the Texas Legislature that would permit the concealed carrying of firearms on college and university campuses in the state by holders of concealed-handgun permits. According to the professors, any public policy involving matters of life and death should be decided only after weighing carefully the competing risks.
For example, examining the relevant facts and data indicates that permitting Texas permit holders to carry weapons on college campuses would improve safety because:
- The best available empirical evidence shows that concealed-carry laws reduce the incidence of mass public shootings.
- Mass public shootings occur almost exclusively in places -- like universities -- where concealed carry is proscribed.
- There are numerous examples of firearms owners acting to disarm would-be mass murderers, thereby saving lives.
- Concealed-handgun-permit holders are overwhelmingly law-abiding individuals.
Sadly, the exact opposite is true. All multiple-victim public shootings in the United States with more than three fatalities have occurred where concealed handguns are prohibited.
Moreover, the worst primary and secondary school shootings have occurred in Europe, despite its draconian gun laws, say the professors.
[I.e., 'gun laws' DON'T effect criminals - they ONLY disarm the law abiding. How many more deaths must occur before we admit this?]
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CASH-STRAPPED CITIES TRY PRIVATE GUARDS OVER POLICE
CALIFORNIA
Facing pressure to crack down on crime amid a record budget deficit, Oakland is joining other U.S. cities that are turning over more law-enforcement duties to private armed guards.
The City Council recently voted to hire International Services Inc., a private security agency, to patrol crime-plagued districts. While a few Oakland retail districts have pooled cash to pay for unarmed security services, using public funds to pay for armed guards would mark a first for the city.
Yet, hiring private guards is less expensive than hiring new officers:
- Oakland -- facing an $80 million budget shortfall -- spends 65 percent of its budget for police and fire services.
- In contrast, for about $200,000 a year the city can contract to hire 4 private guards to patrol the troubled East Oakland district where 4 on-duty police officers were killed in March.
- Districts in downtown Los Angeles with guards register significantly less crime than areas without them.
- Some areas of New Orleans have used armed private patrols since 1997 and neighborhood committees are seeking to expand special tax incentives to pay for private security for neighborhood patrols.
A: Union first {citizen safety second}.]
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The Media Elite's Secret Dinners
Last Tuesday evening, Rahm Emanuel quietly slipped into an eighth-floor office at the Watergate.
For more than a year, David Bradley, the Atlantic's soft-spoken owner, has hosted these off-the-record dinners at a specially built table in his glass-enclosed office overlooking the Potomac. And the guests, from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to Jordan's King Abdullah II, are as A-list as they come.
Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.
"It's just a joy for me," Bradley says. "These are reflective, considered conversations, which is hard to do when you're going after headlines for the next day's publication." While the guests seem quite open, says the businessman who bought Atlantic a decade ago, he is new enough to journalism "that I can't tell the difference between genuine candor and deeply rehearsed candor"...
[Terrific]
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Sacramento flood agency considers huge salary hikes
Despite the economic crisis that has spurred drastic cuts in state and local government spending, the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency plans to boost salaries for professional employees by up to 127 percent in the coming fiscal year.
Executive Director Stein M. Buer called his proposed changes essential to 'fair' treatment of employees ...
[And what, exactly, is 'fair' about private sector layoffs? Isn't it nice that regardless of the economy government employees have the luxury of worrying about childish notions of 'fairness'.]
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Dogs from military base in Afghanistan find new home
Bear and Hutch, two of the United States’ newest immigrants,
are settling into their new home in North Buffalo.
are settling into their new home in North Buffalo.
Saturday afternoon, the mixed-breed dogs from Afghanistan flew on Pakistan International Airlines into John F. Kennedy International Airport, where they were met by William “Craig” Macy, a 28-year-old staff sergeant with the New York Army National Guard who first befriended the dogs when they were puppies, in September 2008.
“They were pretty happy. They were happy to get out of their cages more than anything,” Macy said of the dogs’ reaction upon seeing him. “It was pretty exciting to know the dogs made this crazy, long journey from the other side of the world. . . . You get really attached to them.”
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What did it say?
[HT:LC]
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls Rush Limbaugh and tells him, "Rush, I had a wonderful dream last night. I could see America, the whole country, and on each house I saw a banner."
"What did it say on the banners?" Rush asks.
Mahmoud replies, "UNITED STATES OF IRAN."
Rush says, "You know, Mahmoud, I am really happy you called, because believe it or not, last night I had a similar dream. I could see all of Tehran, and it was more beautiful than ever, and on each house flew an enormous banner."
"What did it say on the banners?" Mahmoud asks.
Rush replies, "I don't know. I can't read Hebrew."
[I just post 'em]
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