In Wednesday's off-lead story by Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter, the New York Times found both McCain and Obama retreating to home base when it comes to economic solutions. But the Times' unconscious embrace of liberal conventional wisdom was evident in how it treated much-argued political terms like "windfall profits", "the death tax," and even "victory" in Iraq.
And look how the Times used quotation marks as warning flares or to suggest a conservative position was dubious. While "victory" and "death tax" were seen as partisan Republican terms and secured in protective quotes, Democrat-loaded terms like "windfall profits of oil companies" weren't put in quotes but stood unencumbered and presented as fact, even though the phrase "windfall" is calculated to make it appear oil company profits are somehow unjust or unearned...
[minor but legitimate: quotes in this context are used to convey dubiousness, or alleged, claimed etc. Conversely, their lack implies a phrase is ordinary, mainstream, accepted (often factually). Play along: note how quotes are/aren't used in this fashion when you read - the prevalence of this {sophomoric} tactic will surprise you {or not}]
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
NYT Double Standard Alert: GOP 'Death Tax' in Quotes, Dem 'Windfall Profits' Not
UNHEALTHY SITUATION
California
One of Sacramento's great laments is the number of Californians without health insurance. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators ought to look eastward to find a solution. Not to Massachusetts, where government-imposed, so-called universal health care has increased costs and taxes, is running at a deficit, doesn't cover everyone as promised, and imposes fines on anyone who won't buy state-mandated coverage.
Instead, Sacramento should look to Florida and even New Jersey, which point the way to substantially reducing health insurance costs with a more market-based approach.
In Florida:
• The legislature unanimously approved allowing insurance companies to sell stripped-down, no-frills policies, exempted from more than 50 state-imposed mandates.
• Floridians now can shop cafeteria-style, picking and paying for only the coverage they desire, trimming their costs dramatically and getting only what they deem necessary.
In New Jersey:
• A family's annual health care policy costs $10,398, compared with the national average of $5,799.
• Responding to this exorbitant cost, a New Jersey Republican assemblyman is introducing a reasonable remedy, which would permit New Jersey residents to buy low-cost health insurance from any registered policy in any of the 50 states.
• Allowing purchases across state lines gives buyers alternatives to New Jersey's expensive coverage, inflated by multiple mandates on in-state insurance sellers.
Knocking down the props that hold up prices can be done in California without adding a dime to anyone's tax burden or policy premiums. If more-affordable coverage really is what the Legislature and governor want to accomplish, Florida and New Jersey point the way...
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When I Was a Boy, America Was a Better Place
When I was a boy, America was a freer society than it is today. If Americans had been told the extent and number of laws that would govern their speech and behavior within one generation, they would have been certain that they were being told about some dictatorship, not the Land of the Free. Today, people at work, to cite but one example, are far less free to speak naturally. Every word, gesture and look, even one's illustrated calendar, is now monitored lest a fellow employee feel offended and bring charges of sexual harassment or creating a "hostile work environment" or being racially, religiously or ethnically insensitive, or insensitive to another's sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, all employers in California are now prohibited by law from firing a man who has decided to cross-dress at work. And needless to say, no fellow worker can say to that man, "Hey, Jack, why not wear the dress at home and men's clothes to work?" An employer interviewing a prospective employee is not free to ask the most natural human questions: Are you married? Do you have a child? How old are you? Soon "How are you?" will be banned lest one discriminate on the basis of health... [snip]
One might argue that these are the same laments that every previous older generation has expressed -- "Ah, when I was young" But in America, that has not been the case. In America, the older generations used to say the opposite -- "When I was a kid, things were worse."
Can we return to the America of my youth? No. Can we return to the best values of that time? Yes.
But not if both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court move the country even further leftward. If that happens, many of the above noted changes will simply be accelerated: More laws restricting "offensive" speech will be enacted; litigation will increase and trial lawyers will gain more power; the American military will be less valued; trees will gradually replace the flag as our most venerated symbol; schools will teach even less as they concentrate even more on diversity, sexuality and the environment; teenage sex will be increasingly accepted; American identity will continue to be replaced by ethnic, racial, gender or "world citizen" identity; and the power of the state will expand further as the power of the individual inevitably contracts.
It's hard to believe most Americans really want that...
[...but silence will be interpreted as consent - if we don't manage our government, the special interests extremists will][Recommended > ]
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Life Expectancy Hits Record High in United States
Americans' life expectancy reached a record high of 78.1 years in 2006, with disparities among ethnic groups and between the sexes generally narrowing, according to government data released yesterday. The death rates from most diseases went down, with influenza mortality falling steeply and AIDS mortality marking its 10th straight year of decline. Infant mortality in 2006 also fell from the previous year, continuing a trend stretching back nearly 50 years.
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Colorado to Offer 'Sniff Lottery' Scratch Tickets
Denver - When is a lottery scratch ticket not just a scratch ticket? When it's a scratch, and sniff, ticket. Starting Monday, the Colorado Lottery will begin selling $3 Scented Crossword tickets through lottery retailers statewide. They're available in three varieties: Crossword Bouquet, Chocolate Crossword and Coffee Crossword. Lottery officials say the scents are activated when players scratch off the latex on the tickets' play area
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Al-Qaida's Vietnam
CIA Director Michael Hayden says the terror group has suffered "near-strategic defeat" in Iraq. It has been routed from Anbar, Diyala and Baghdad provinces, and now is getting a beating in its last stronghold of Mosul, in the north. It is reviled by the Iraqi populace, and its downward trajectory began with indigenous uprisings at its expense.
When the United States lost Vietnam, it lost credibility and saw an emboldened Marxist-Leninist offensive around the Third World. Al-Qaida is a global insurgency and not a nation-state -- and thus its circumstances are radically different from ours 40 years ago -- but it has suffered a similar reputational loss.
The Iraq War had been a powerful recruiting tool for al-Qaida when it was winning. No more. Osama bin Laden rendered what is called the "bandwagon effect" in international relations -- the tendency of states to go along with the dominant power -- in his homespun Arabic analogy of people liking the strong horse over the weak horse. In Iraq, al-Qaida's proverbial horse is a broken-down nag... [snip]
Lately, the Iraq War has looked more and more like another Vietnam -- not for us, but for al-Qaida...
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Foe, Not Friend
[HT:RS]
The United States is in mortal peril from a false friend: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The peril emanates from the totalitarian legal-religious-military-political code the Saudis call Shariah and their assiduous efforts to impose it worldwide. The danger is enormously exacerbated by the almost-complete failure of American officials at every level of government to acknowledge, let alone act to prevent, the Saudis’ true agenda. [snip]
A recent expose by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon of congressional and independent investigations of the murderous September 11, 2001 attacks describes evidence of financial, logistical and other material support by Saudi government personnel...
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A Terrifying Decision
Remarkably, a court recently upheld a jury verdict that found the owners of buildings that were terrorized more culpable than the terrorists.
A New York state appeals court upheld the jury's allocation of 68 percent of the blame for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the buildings. Citing the jury's finding that several explicit warnings were provided to the Port Authority by credible sources, including Scotland Yard, the majority of the blame (and corresponding damages) was placed on the Port Authority. Moreover, the court cited precedent that holds that an owner's negligence can be at least 50 percent to blame for harm even when the harm was caused by another party's deliberate actions.
"Defendant's negligence had been extraordinarily conducive of the terrorists' conduct -- so much so that the fulfilment [sic] of the terrorists' plot and the ensuing harm could with clear justification have been understood as primarily attributable to that negligence," the court ruled. "The intentional act [of the terrorists] causally did little more than bring the incipient catastrophic potential of the negligence to terrible fruition."
[we've a legal system broken at every level]
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Muslim children in Britain 'brought up to hate their homeland'
Radical British Muslims have formed chatrooms to discuss adopting orphans and bringing up children to be Islamic fighters, a study has found. Discussions on a number of radical websites have asked how children should be brought up to be "mujahideen" and whether they should be pulled out of mainstream schools...
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Russia rebuilding superpower military
Gen. Nikolai Makarov has replaced tough, old Gen. Yury Baluyevsky as the chief of staff of Russia's armed forces and has been tasked with rapidly modernizing them. Despite all the stories of a run-down and demoralized military that regularly appear in the Western media, Russia's armed forces remain the most powerful and effective land force across all of Eurasia...
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Why Irish Voters Rejected the Lisbon Treaty
Irish voters on June 12 said ‘No' to the superpower ambitions of European political elites, who want all 27 member-states of the European Union to ratify the 269-page (about 3000 pages with annexes) Lisbon Treaty that would turn the EU into a bureaucratic superstate.
Ireland was the only country to submit the "Reform Treaty" to a popular vote; all other member states of the EU intend to ratify the document through 'parliamentary procedures' [i.e., the very same bureaucrats who's power and job security will be enhanced by its passage][snip]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "There will be no treaty at all if we had a referendum in France."
D'Estaing said: The approach "is to keep a part of the innovations of the constitutional treaty and to split them into several texts in order to make them less visible. The most innovative dispositions would pass as simple amendments of the Maastricht and Nice treaties. The technical improvements would be gathered in an innocuous treaty. The whole would be addressed to Parliaments, which would decide with separate votes. The public opinion would therefore unknowingly adopt the dispositions that it would not accept if presented directly."
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said that it did not matter if people had not read the treaty (he had not read it either, he admitted) and did not understand it because they should trust their elected leaders. [snip]
Although by EU law the Irish vote (53.4 percent said ‘No' and 46.6 percent said ‘Yes') should kill the treaty (because it requires unanimous approval to come into effect), European politicians will almost certainly find a way to keep it alive.
[you gotta read this thing -- how do you say "jaw-dropping-chutzpah" in european? and evidently no one is threatening to hang them, {an aspect also addressed, in part} -- Highly Recommended > ]
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Dirty US Media Secret: 'Rest of the World' Rebels Against Climate Taxes
The supposedly surprising rejection of the Lieberman-Warner climate bill last week had an element that Old Media in the US hasn't covered, but is very relevant.
While the press is ever eager to jump on politicians who fly in the face of supposed "world opinion" when it goes against US positions and traditions, it has been virtually silent over how "the rest of the world" has been rejecting the true linchpin of government climate policies: supposedly climate change-related higher taxes and fees. Consider the following:
• Germany -- "German Car Tax Plan to Be Delayed: Government."
• In Canada, a sympathetic columnist cautions the Liberal Party, which seems to think that the road back into power is through green taxes, about "The Suicidal Allure of a Carbon Tax."
• Australia -- "The Sun Sets on Rudd’s Climate Change Credibility."
• New Zealand -- "Emissions Bill Hanging by Thread"
Each story is about how a government or party is finding that citizens/voters are not at all keen on reducing their living standards in the name of supposed environmental purity.
The biggest media blackout is over the political situation in Great Britain, where Tony Blair's successor Gordon Brown hangs by a thread, largely because of his radical environmental initiatives... [snip]
If most of all of this is news to you, it's because the US press is studiously ignoring it. New York Times stories about Brown's situation on May 14 and May 23 have not a word about the Green Road Tax, even though many Labour MPs have been calling it a "ticking time bomb" for several weeks...
[the most pervasive spin: story 'selection' (omission)]
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"SPLASH AND DASH" BIOFUEL SCAM COSTS AMERICANS MILLIONS
U.S. taxpayers are being bilked to the tune of millions of dollars by a biofuel subsidy that helps to lower gas prices - in Europe. The scam is known as "splash and dash." Here's how it works:
• The scam stems from an existing $1 subsidy for every gallon of biodiesel fuel blended with regular diesel in the United States.
• Biodiesel is produced abroad using South American sugar cane or Asian palm oil and shipped to the United States, where it's blended with just a "splash" of regular diesel.
• A typical tanker-load of about 9 million gallons of biodiesel requires just 9,000 gallons of American diesel to make it qualify for the subsidy.
• The ship then makes a "dash" for Europe, where its fuel is sold below market rates; that means each tanker-load that makes the dash nets importers about $9 million dollars in tax credits from the IRS.
• In 2007 this subsidy cost the American taxpayers $300 million; it's projected to cost them $600 million next year.
And while Congress and the National Biodiesel Board say they know the loophole is being exploited -- as America is exporting much more biofuel than it is producing -- they can't identify the guilty companies that continue to profit from this scam due to IRS rules...
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Judicial temperament?
A poster of Che Guevara hangs on the wall of a judge who found Ohio's death penalty law constitutionally lacking. But his idol Che was not very respectful of the niceties of justice, and loved to watch firing squads at work. Che once said:
"Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. We execute from revolutionary conviction."Judge James Burge, whose wall is graced by Fidel, and Barack too, just declared that Ohio must change its lethal injection death penalty procedure because the current method is not quick and painless enough.
Leaving aside the irony of admiring a ruthless butcher while being perhaps a bit prissy about executions, how is it consistent with a judicial temperament to revere a butcher like Che?
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MEAN TO TEENS
The hike in the minimum wage passed by the Democratic majority in Congress last year is a big reason teen joblessness is at its highest level in 60 years. Americans are now finding [again] out the true cost of the minimum wage increases.
Wall Street wasn't stunned when the U.S. jobless rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May from 5 percent in April. It expected a repeat of past arbitrary price hikes have had on hundreds of thousands of youths looking for summer jobs. Many, if not most, won't find jobs because they've been priced out of the market:
• The minimum wage was hiked 14 percent to $5.85 an hour last July.If that sounds like a lot, the actual cost is much higher after you fold in taxes, benefits and Social Security that businesses pay on behalf of young workers. Economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, has found a 10 percent minimum wage hike cuts employment of young, unskilled workers by 8.5 percent. [historically, every 10% increase in the mandated wage has been followed by a ~2% decrease in entry-level jobs]
• Next month, it will go up an additional 12 percent to $6.55 an hour.
• In July 2009, it's slated to rise 10.7 percent to $7.25 an hour.
Employers forced to shell out an added 40 percent over three years to employ the least educated, least trained and overall least productive workers are finding a good reason not to do so. Young people should get paid more only after they work a while, gain some experience and actually become valuable to their employer -- rather than having higher pay mandated by the federal government.
[so why do they do it time and again if it hurts our lowest income earners the most? A: Government labor unions, virtually all of which have hard-wired their cost of living increases not just to inflation but also what the minimum wage is. It goes up, their pay goes up. sweet]
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Violent Attacks from Mexico on the Rise
Attacks against agents of the U.S. Border Patrol and tourists are on the rise.
“This fiscal year 744 incidents of violence have been perpetrated against Border Patrol agents, a 26 percent increase over the same time last year,” reported Department of Homeland Security Secretary Micheal Chertoff in his third “State of Immigration Address” Monday. [snip]
While DHS has witnessed more attacks on their staff, other government agencies have shown concern about attacks on U.S. tourists traveling in Mexico. Earlier this year, the State Department issued a travel alert to caution U.S. tourists against increasing violence in Mexico that will be in effect through the summer.
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Hunting Season for Whites
Between the night of May 31 and the wee hours of the morning of June 1, 2008, between 20 and 30 black teenagers formed a mob to terrorize the citizens of Mount Clemens, Michigan. These hoodlums robbed people of cell phones and wallets, threw a brick through the window of a moving car, and beat up their victims so badly that at least one of their targets was hospitalized with a fractured skull. In an article in the Macomb Daily entitled “Mob, Carnival Attacks May Be Linked” (6/5/2008), the mother of one of the victims told police that “her son was on the ground trying to fend off the attackers who were ‘about ready to kick his head in’ when deputies arrived.”
The horror of what transpired was articulated in another article in the Macomb Daily entitled “Mob of Young Men Attacks” (6/2/2008)... [see article, snip]
In every single article about the mob incident in which 20 to 30 black teenagers terrorized Mount Clemens, the journalists of the Macomb Daily, Detroit Free Press, and Detroit News neglected to mention the race of the perpetrators of this horrific crime spree. or that of their targeted victims... [snip]
When Beckmann inquired as to whether or not there is a “law to charge them with some kind of hate crime,” Hackel [the Sheriff] answered, “Well, that’s questionable. I don’t know if it applies to an unprotected class, and I don’t know if whites are part of that. I’m not sure.”
Beckmann was shocked to hear Hackel suggest that whites are not entitled to equal protection under the law. A taken aback Beckmann asked:
“You mentioned ‘unprotected class.’ You mean white people are not protected by hate crime legislation?”
Hackel answered that question by saying, “It doesn’t appear as such at this point and time that there is something that would qualify.”
Even though a horde of black thugs beat to the point of unconsciousness one innocent white man who was reported to have a fractured skull, threw a brick at a car that was driven by an innocent white woman, and beat up an innocent white man at a gas station to the point where employees had to clean up the bloody mess the following day, it is unlikely that the thugs will be charged with committing hate crimes, because the criminals were black and the victims were white.
Because of this simple fact, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did not seemingly arrive in Mount Clemens the very next day after the altercation to protest “racism,” and there is no “Million Man March” scheduled to protest the black-on-white crimes that occurred.
If a mob of whites were to do to innocent black victims what the black mob did to innocent white victims, the American people would not hear the end of it...
[which is where the media, again, plays a part. Heard about this on TV? Any doubts had the races been reversed you would have? {think: Jena, Louisiana}. Worse than the media's duplicity is the fact that we, today, in America, have laws on the books literally establishing special 'protected classes' based on race {as well as sexual orientation}. What would Dr. King make of this? How much longer will we tolerate it? It matters who you elect.]
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Brown Comes through...
[credit where due;]
There were questions surrounding Gordon Brown when he became Great Britain's Prime Minister. Taking office with echoes of "lap dog" following his predecessor Tony Blair, many wondered just how committed Brown would be to the "Special Relationship" between the US and Great Britain and whether he would initiate a more independent course in foreign affairs.
Brown may yet eschew supporting the US on many issues. But on increasing sanctions on Iran and sending additional troops to Afghanistan - two things the US devoutly wished Brown would accede to - the British Prime Minister has come through.
Brown has also promised to stick with Bush on Iraq - something of a surprise but perhaps a little dose of reality about the situation there, and the consequences of failure, added some 'clarity'...
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Monday, June 16, 2008
Odierno Tells Senate U.S. Military Headed in Right Direction in Iraq
The United States “is not out of the woods yet” in Iraq, but the nation is headed in the right direction, the man nominated to be the next Multinational Force Iraq commander said today.
Odierno, who served as Multinational Corps Iraq commander until October 2007, said Iraq has made significant progress, specifically over the past 18 months. “I believe a self-reliant government of Iraq that is stable, one that is committed to governance and protecting its own people and serving all its people, a place that's denied as a safe haven for terrorists and extremists and one that is integrated into the international community and a partner of the war on terror is absolutely possible in Iraq,” he said. “And I think it's closer today than it has been.”
Odierno told the senators that he would not make sweeping pronouncements about Iraq, but he did say that, generally, the increased capability of the Iraqi security forces has been extremely important to progress here.
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The Airline Bomb Plot
[that was so nearly the 'Airline Bomb-ing']
...Here's another hypothetical: Would this conversation be different today if in August 2006 seven airliners had taken off from Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, bound for the U.S. and Canada and each carrying about 250 passengers, and then blew up over the Atlantic Ocean? [snip]
The view that 9/11 "changed everything" did not hold up under the weight of our politics. Divisions re-emerged between Democrats and Republicans, in office and on the streets. These fights reignited over the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and the warrantless wiretap bill (or "FISA" revision). These arguers stopped to stare momentarily at their televisions when Islamic terrorists succeeded in mass murder in the 2004 Madrid train bombing and the 2005 London subway bombing, but quickly returned to partisan grandstanding... [snip]
The arrests of the men [before they could execute their crime {suicide bombers are not deterable, they must be interdicted}] was the result of broad and prolonged surveillance. For months, the suspects were bugged, photographed and wiretapped. Here in the U.S., our politics has spent much of the year unable to vote into law the wiretap bill, which is bogged down, incredibly, over giving retrospective legal immunity to telecom companies that helped the government monitor calls - originating overseas...[snip]
Philip Bobbitt, author of the just released and thought-provoking book, "Terror and Consent," has written that court warrants are "a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities."
Planning atrocities is precisely the point.
[Recommended >]
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Canada's 'Human Rights' Inquisition Comes After Stein
Typically one does not associate the word inquisition with our neighbors up north in Canada, and yet that is pretty much what is going on there to conservative author and columnist Mark Steyn. Minus the violence, Steyn is being subjected to a twisted court system that always finds defendants guilty and conducts itself in an utterly capricious way.
Steyn's crime? Daring to criticize radical Islam. For his temerity, Steyn and the Canadian magazine Maclean's (which printed Steyn's essay, an excerpt from his book) are being put on trial by the "human rights commission" of British Columbia, one of several such bodies both Steyn and Maclean's have been forced to deal with by the Canadian Islamic Congress.
What to do about this outrage? The editors at National Review have a few suggestions...
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NBC Claimed Bush Allowed Al-Qaeda in Iraq Before War, Media Now Ignore Pre-War Presence
[HT:MS]
While it is currently conventional wisdom in the media that there was no Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, as evidenced by the media's failure to correct Barack Obama's recent claim that "there was no such thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."
In fact, four years ago, the NBC Nightly News claimed not only that there was an Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion, busy plotting attacks against Europe, but that the Bush administration intentionally "passed up several opportunities" to attack terrorist bases in Iraq "long before the war" in 2002 because of fear it would "undercut its case" for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (Transcripts follow)
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Irish voters reject EU power grab
The Treaty of Lisbon, in effect a new constitution for the European Union intended to add to the power of EU bureaucrats at the expense of democratically elected national governments, was rejected by Irish voters yesterday. Predictably, the New York Times is disappointed. [snip]
"I think the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, will have to explain himself at the summit." [?]
The arguments used to advocate the treaty to Irish voters betray a mentality common to welfare states: we subsidized you, so now give us political power... [snip]
In fact, as many observers have noted, the key to Ireland's stunning economic growth the last two decades was not EU subsidies (handed out to countries that are poorer than the EU average - welfare, in other words), but rather radical tax cuts and deregulation, which ignited the "Celtic tiger" phenomenon, propelling the Irish to genuine prosperity. Benjamin Powell of the Goldwater Institute explains: [see piece for list of impressive stats > ][snip]
Apparently the Irish voters, having learned from their experience with a low taxes and reasonable regulation, are not anxious to return to a system premised on the notion that bureaucrats must regulate everything in detail, and taxes must be high.
Needless to say, the EU will press on with its power grab, regardless of voters' wishes...
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Thabo Mbeki blocks UN Zimbabwe agenda
Harare - The horrors of Zimbabwe's political violence will not feature on the agenda of the UN Security Council meeting overnight after South African President Thabo Mbeki blocked an attempt to put the crisis on the program.
The Security Council will now discuss only the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, separating it from the ongoing political violence in the lead-up to the presidential runoff. (Snip) The US and Britain were furious with South Africa's block at the UN, achieved with Russia's help...
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Study: UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles
"These dire predictions are not the result of scientific forecasting," said J. Scott Armstrong, an internationally known expert in forecasting methods from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the NCPA study. "Rather, they are opinions derived from a political process."The most accepted forecasting methods were determined by internationally-known experts and expert reviewers and are available in the Principles of Forecasting handbook. These principles were designed to be applicable to making forecasts about diverse physical, social and economic phenomena. The NCPA study applied these forecasting principles to audit 2007's Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted big increases in average world temperature by 2100. The audit found that:
• Out of 140 forecasting principles, 127 are relevant to the procedures used to arrive at the climate projections in the IPCC report;
• Of these, the IPCC report clearly violated almost half (60);
• An additional 12 forecasting principles appear to be violated, and there is insufficient information in the report to assess the use of 38 others; therefore
• Only 17 out of 127 applicable forecasting principles can be shown to have been followed by the IPCC.
The authors also note that the IPCC forecasters themselves are part of the unreliability problem, as political considerations influenced all stages of the IPCC process, including writing the final version expressly to reflect the language negotiated by the political appointees to the IPCC.
"As a result of these violations of forecasting principles, the forecasts in the IPCC report are invalid," says Armstrong. "There is no scientific forecast supporting the widespread belief in dangerous human-caused ‘global warming.' In fact, it has yet to be demonstrated that long-term forecasting of climate is possible at all."READ MORE
Oil companies spend more on taxes than on oil supply development
... Over the last several the major oil companies have been driven away from investing money in future exploration and production. The so-called Supermajors, Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron. Conoco, and Total have paid more in taxes than they have invested in the oil business. For the three year period, 2005 to 2007 these companies have paid $292 billion in taxes and invested $265 billion in capital projects... [snip]
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Sarkozy proposes EU cut in fuel tax
[HT:PS]
Paris - President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Tuesday proposed cutting fuel taxes Europe-wide, responding to economic discontent that has prompted French fishermen to mount protests now spreading to other European shores and sectors. Sarkozy urged the European Union to suspend part of the value-added tax on fuel to counter rising crude oil prices that have risen repeatedly to new highs in recent weeks. For more than two weeks, angry fishermen have blocked ports across France to protest rising fuel prices...
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A Supreme Error
Upon reading the opinion in Boumediene v Bush, one must conclude that the majority knew where they wanted to go and simply had to figure out how to get there. The trip was not a pretty one.
How could it be when the justices seemingly wrote a map based on ideas cherry picked from over 400 years of established law and backfilled with justifications to create a new right for alien combatants that Americans themselves do not enjoy?
...as Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent – they for the first time in our nation’s history, conferred a Constitutional right of habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war – a broader right than has been given to our own citizens. The court majority did so acknowledging that they could find no precedent to confer such a right to alien enemies not within sovereign U.S. territory...
...It is truly stunning that this court has seen fit to arrogate unto itself a role in the most important issue facing any country, self-defense, in a case in which Congress has in fact repeatedly acted. This was not a case where Congress did not set the rules; it did. But the court still decided – in the face of overwhelming precedent to the contrary – to intervene...
I also find it just a tad ironic that in a case involving habeas corpus, which literally means that one must produce a body (or person) before a court to explain the basis on which that person is being detained, the decision of this court may mean more fallen bodies in the defense of a Constitution some of these justices ignored...
People can disagree over whether Congress got it right, but at least members have to face the voters. What remedy do people have now if they don’t like the court’s decision? None. If that thought is not enough to cause concerned citizens to turn out on Election Day to elect a new president, then I don’t know what will be.
[we've a legal-system crisis in this country that must be addressed]
[Recommended > ]
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Let’s Get Something Straight
[HT:MN]
I liked Tim Russert, even though I thought his BS gotcha nonsense was thorough idiocy and not helping the debate at all. He was a likable guy- friendly, always smiling. I understand it is a loss for the beltway folks, and he had a lot of really good friends and meant a lot to people, and I would be dishonest if I failed to mention that I feel sad by his passing.
But let’s get something straight- what I am watching right now on the cable news shows is indicative of the problem- no clearer demonstration of the fact that they consider themselves to be players and the insiders and, well, part of the village, is needed. This is precisely the problem. They have walked the corridors of power so long that they honestly think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days.
Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.
*** Update ***
This post was not an attack on Russert, someone I have said I liked and will miss. It is a sad situation- he was clearly widely loved, and his death is a terrible loss for his family and friends. But that is beside the point, as this post was a commentary on the coverage of his passing, which seems to me, at least, to be indicative of a larger problem.
On the upside of the coverage, though, is this observation that at least MSNBC will not be running prison reality shows all weekend.
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America's generosity is unmatched
[a recent topic of discussion]
... a publication called the Index of Global Philanthropy, which is produced annually by the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute in Washington. This is the just released third annual edition of this index. It produces a unique snapshot portraying the full extent of American generosity to developing countries, by amount and by source.
Usually when the question of aid to the developing world arises, we think of government funds. But this index shows that, whereas it may be the rule in the rest of the industrialized world that most aid is government aid, in our country this isn't the case. Most of the contributions that Americans make abroad are private and voluntary. And they are large.
In 2006, the latest year for which data is available, the index reports that Americans contributed privately and voluntarily $34.8 billion to individuals and organizations in developing countries.
Of particular interest in this year's index is the $8.8 billion reported from religious organizations. [snip] The average contribution of congregations was $10,700. To put this in some kind of perspective, the $8.8 billion in giving from American religious institutions [alone] to developing countries was $1.5 billion more than the total giving from all private sources in 30 of the world's major industrialized democratic countries - combined...
[about once a year we'll get some media-hyped story about a prominent European stating how selfish Americans are - sighting government foreign aid as a % of GDP - without ever mentioning that government philanthropy isn't the American model (as it is Europe's). Next time someone tries to pull this stunt might I suggest you ask to compare private donate rates: Americans routinely embarrass all other governments - to say noting of those nations' private giving (why should they? that's what their governments are for...}]
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Friday, June 13, 2008
Stalled in the USA: Europe's Small Cars
When automakers reported how many cars they moved in the U.S. in May, small fuel-sippers were the clear favorites. Ford Motor (F) sold 53% more Focus compacts than it did a year ago, while Nissan's (NSANY) tiny Versa sold 15% more. And Volvo (F), Volkswagen (VLKAY), and BMW? All sold fewer of their small models.
A head-scratcher, that. European carmakers should be cleaning up. After all, small cars rule the road on the Continent, where the ancient horse and buggy infrastructure virtually requires smaller cars. But here's the dirty secret: Volvo, VW, BMW, and their peers are limiting the supply of some of their cars in the U.S. because they aren't profitable.
Earl J. Hesterberg, chief executive of Group 1 Automotive (GPI), a Houston megadealer with two Volvo stores, says he could sell 5 to 10 times as many S40 compact sedans if Volvo reinstated a lease deal it dropped in March to suppress sales. But "there isn't a scenario where we can sell cars under $30,000 at a profit," says Volvo Cars of North America President Doug Speck. [snip]
While a 13% dollar to euro exchange rate shift hasn't helped, it's high labor costs that are the primary culprit: in Europe unions remain powerful...
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MOVIN' TO MEXICO
[HT:SF]
U.S. automakers are closing plants and slashing jobs in Michigan, Ohio and other U.S. union havens, in favor of non-union, foreign places, like Mexico and China. Past deals with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union have saddled U.S. companies with such high costs that they can no longer make cars here and compete on a global market:
• U.S. carmakers pay their workers an average of about $73 an hour in wages and benefits -- way more than others.
• According to the Center for Automotive Research, there's a $16.15 per hour gap between what Detroit's Big 3 pay workers and what Toyota pays workers in the United States.
• Add to that a $5 billion a year difference in health care and other retirement costs, totaling thousands of dollars in extra costs on every car sold, and U.S. automakers operate at about a $12 billion a year disadvantage.
• From 1999 to 2007 alone, the United States lost 281,500 auto-related jobs, or 25 percent of the total.
Though little noted, last year was a watershed for U.S. carmakers:
• For the first time, foreign producers in the United States made more cars -- 54 percent of the total -- than the former Big Three.
• As recently as the 1980s, Ford, Chrysler and GM made 73 percent of all cars here.
Ford's recent investment of $3 billion in two auto plants near Mexico City is the largest foreign company investment ever in Mexico. Ford's move to Mexico should be a warning to the UAW, which has seen its membership shrink from 1.5 million in 1979 to about 500,000 today. The decline of Ford, GM or Chrysler is bad news for the United States -- and the UAW has played a major part in it.
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The Threat to the Car
Recent evidence that automobile use is declining in America and that some Americans are making significant -- and in some cases not readily reversible -- changes in their lives because of escalating gas prices should be worrisome signs for those who love liberty. (Snip)
Methods governments can use to do this include placing constraints on parking availability, forbidding taxpayers from using certain lanes of the highway (or even certain highways) unless they agree to carpool or ride a bus, and imposing excessive gas taxes or road tolls...
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Trip home highlights changes brought by illegal immigration
Two weekends ago I was excited about attending my nephew's high school graduation in my hometown of El Paso, Texas, just across the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico.
Things have changed a lot.
The decision to allow students from Juarez had changed the standards and academic pride of the school, explained my nephew sadly. English is no longer the primary spoken or preferred language in El Paso, Texas. At the graduation ceremony for the class of 2008, one of the opening announcements was that specific parts of the ceremony would be in Spanish only... [snip]
The Boy Scouts paraded in with the flag. Guests were asked to stand. My family and I placed our hands over our heart to recite the Pledge to the Flag, as we had done so many times during our school years. However, many people in front and all around us refused to stand and continued to talk and conducted themselves with complete disrespect for the flag and the Pledge that only American citizens understand and appreciate.
It was then that I understood my nephew's sadness regarding the erosion of his rights as a citizen when the overwhelming majority of his classmates were not U.S. citizens...
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Chrysler Building on the Block
The latest Big Apple trophy being coveted by oil-rich sovereign wealth funds is the landmark Chrysler Building. Sources say the super-rich Abu Dhabi Investment Council is negotiating an $800 million deal for a 75 percent stake in the Art Deco treasure that has defined the Midtown skyline since 1930. (Snip) The deal follows last month's sale of the GM Building and three other Macklowe/Equity Portfolio properties for $3.95 billion to a group of investors including the wealth funds of Kuwait and Qatar...
[the bright side? we're getting our money back...]
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Sex ed planned for fourth graders
The Springfield School District plans to introduce sex education to fourth-graders next school year, a grade younger than its current practice. “Kids are developing a little more rapidly,” said Kathy Hulcher, who oversees health education for the district and helped lead a committee that re-evaluated the sex education curriculum.
[universal vouchers]
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Africentric school to open in 2009
After years of debate that has divided communities of every colour, Toronto's public school board voted tonight to open an Africentric alternative school in September 2009. The junior kindergarten to Grade 5 school – believed to be a first in Canada – is expected to help tackle a 40 per cent dropout rate among black students. Approved by a 13-8 vote after a heated debate in which one trustee called another a racist, the school will be located in an empty wing of Sheppard Public School...
[segregation - how progressive]
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PUTTING CHILDREN LAST
[HT:JK]
Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate: the four-year-old Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Consider:
• The Opportunity Scholarship Program provides vouchers to about 2,000 low-income children so they can attend religious or other private schools.
• More than 80 percent of the voucher recipients are black and most of the rest Hispanic; their average income is about $23,000 a year.
• The budget for the experimental program is $18 million, or about what the U.S. Department of Education spends every hour and a half.
•The $18 million allocated to the program does not come out of the District school budget; Congress appropriates extra money for the vouchers.
Also:
• The $7,500 voucher per child is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50 percent more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools.
• D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation; in 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
• More than 90 percent of the families express high satisfaction with the program, according to researchers at Georgetown University.
The fight to eliminate this program has nothing to do with saving money, but a lot to do with election year politics. The teachers unions have put out the word to Congress that they want all vouchers for private schools that compete with their monopoly system shut down. Unions are afraid the voucher program will succeed, and show that there is a genuine alternative to the national scandal that are most inner-city public schools.
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Media Ignore That Gagging Sound from Canada
Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent.
Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal.
The evidence? A 5,000-word excerpt of Steyn’s book America Alone that was carried as an article.
His crime? Spreading “hatred”...
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Celebrate Radio Independence Day
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), Congressmen Mike Pence (R-IN), Greg Walden (R-OR) and Trent Franks (R-AZ), syndicated radio talk show host Laura Ingraham and President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist in declaring this July 4th to be Radio Independence Day, and called for Congress to allow a full up or down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA).
The BFA will kill once and for all the Fairness Doctrine, the onerous governmental policy that served to stifle free speech on the radio airwaves for four decades. Twenty-one years since its repeal, radio has flourished on the air, but some in Congress have been seeking to again reinstatement the restrictions of the Fairness Doctrine.The BFA is currently stuck in committee. A discharge petition has been started to allow it to the floor for a full vote, but it has only 194 of the needed 218 signatures.
'Allow a full up or down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act'Your Congressman > https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
Be sure to also check out the MRC's Culture and Media Institute study, "Unmasking the Myths Behind the Fairness Doctrine"
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ABCNews.com: Republicans 'Fueling Anger' with Blockage of New Oil Tax
Blame do-nothing Republicans for high gas prices. That was the impression visitors to ABCNews.com got this afternoon.
Among the "top headlines" lineup Web site editors included a story on "Fueling Anger" with the teaser headline: "Rejected! Big Oil Tax Gets Shelved." [see related post about CBSNews.com's bias here]
The accompanying caption to the ABC photo illustration read, "With prices soaring, GOP halts Democrats' wide-ranging energy plan."
The article itself, by writer Z. Byron Wolf, was front-loaded with bias, slamming Republicans for their filibuster of a new windfall profits tax measure while dismissing the GOP's energy production plan as 'ineffective'...
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LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL
What do the farm bill, the cap-and-trade global warming bill, the clean water bill, the housing bailout bill and the school construction bill all have in common? In each one and countless others the Democratic majority in Congress has inserted "prevailing-wage" requirements that amount to a super-minimum wage, says the Wall Street Journal.
We're speaking of Davis-Bacon, the 1931 law that set a floor on wages in part to price black and Mexican workers out of the work. Today, its main impact is to require de facto union wages. For example:
• A Heritage Foundation analysis of wage data reports that in many cities the mandated Davis-Bacon wage is twice as high as the market wage.
• In Nassau-Suffolk in New York, for example, Davis-Bacon requires a minimum wage for brickmasons of $49.67 an hour, though the more common area wage for that work is $25.50.
• Many reputable studies have estimated that Davis-Bacon inflates federal construction costs by anywhere from 5 percent to 39 percent.
• America could be building about 25 percent more bridges and roads by repealing Davis-Bacon.
• A 2001 study by economists Daniel Kessler of Stanford and Lawrence Katz of Harvard found that when states repeal their Davis-Bacon laws, it is followed by an appreciable narrowing of the black/nonblack wage differential for construction workers.
Barack Obama has proposed a new taxpayer-supported $60 billion infrastructure bank that would siphon billions off to his union friends by mandating Davis-Bacon. That's "change," -- right out of taxpayer pockets, says the Journal.
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Tribune Co. Plans Sharp Cutbacks at Papers
[HT:MC]
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Tribune Company newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune will quickly cut costs - by printing fewer papers and employing fewer journalists - top company executives said on Thursday.
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Picking Judges
If you ask Americans what issues matter most to them in choosing a president, the candidate's judicial philosophy is not likely to make it into the top 10. But a president's power to nominate judges is, in fact, one of his most powerful tools -- and often leaves a legacy that lasts far longer than any policy initiative. President Dwight Eisenhower was no liberal activist, but his appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically shifted the nation leftward for decades on everything from criminal justice to separation of church and state..
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Media Should Think ‘Maybe We’re Just Doing This Wrong’
Media coverage of the economy in recent months should make journalists wonder what kind of job they're doing, according to Business & Media Institute Vice President Dan Gainor.
"‘If it bleeds it leads' has always been one theory. That only works up to a point," Gainor told Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto June 2. "When you are actually spinning the results so much so that they're more negative than the worst economic time period in American history, well then you really have to sit back and think, ‘Maybe we're just doing this wrong.'"
"The media coverage [of] Bear Stearns [was] more than four times more negative than when the stock market lost 30 percent in six days," Gainor said, referring to findings published in a new BMI report, "The Great Media Depression."
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Warning issued for West Nile virus
California
Summer is almost here, and with the arrival of warm weather comes the potential for West Nile virus. California's Department of Public Health has issued a warning urging people to protect themselves from the mosquito bites that transmit West Nile by ...
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PG&E to offset state Dems' emissions
Sacramento - California Democrats have recruited Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to offset carbon emissions related to the national party convention this summer. The state's largest utility will buy $8,440 worth of carbon credits that will come from a Northern California redwood forest. (Snip) California's is the first Democratic delegation to announce such an arrangement as part of a national push by the Democratic Party to reduce or offset carbon output at its convention...
[the religion spreads...]
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Losing the Information War with Amendment 56
The Democrats are angry.
Despite investing enormous effort undermining the military, things are going fairly well in Iraq. The anti-Bush themes of an "Iraqi quagmire" and "surge failure" were premature, and all the congressional show hearings, the choreographed Code Pink performance art and the MoveOn.org smears were for naught. The president and the military [eventually] did it right, and the Democrats got it wrong.
Time for a little vengeance on the Pentagon.
The House passed Amendment 56 to the Defense Authorization Act for FY 2009, prohibiting the Department of Defense from engaging in "publicity" programs, banning funding for such programs and calling for an investigation by the Government Accounting Office.
The three sponsors of the Bill, Representatives Hodes, DeFazio and DeLauro, vote along party lines. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, they hold to their perspective that Iraq is a failure and the American people and the media have been deceived. [snip]
In the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people, the Democrats work hard to silence information that undermines their agenda and they are winning. While the military fights for victory, Democrats plot their defeat, not on the battlefield, but in the minds of the very citizens they serve. In this, they diminish us as a nation and inch us ever closer to defeat.
The political fight for America's access to the truth, whatever the source, is one battle the military cannot fight for us. They must remain apolitical. This is a fight we, the people, must win for them.
[long, but Highly Recommended as an example of the depths politicians will stoop to acquire power > ]
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Dems Use Edgy Films to Rally Youth Voters
[HT:MN]
A stunning 20-something woman hooks up with a seemingly innocent guy at a rowdy singles bar. Hot foreplay starts on the cab ride home and progresses into the bedroom. That is until, while searching for a condom in the bedside table, she sees a photo signed "Thanks for your support!" from Republican candidate John McCain. Horrified, she bolts, dropping her bag and spilling a campaign button on the sidewalk: "I only sleep with Democrats."
[the party of tolerance and inclusion]
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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Face of Defense: Wounded Warrior Leads Medical Battalion
When Army Cmmand Sgt. Maj. Mark Cornejo was wounded in Iraq, he had to return stateside for medical treatment, reluctantly leaving his comrades and mission behind.
But one thing that never left him was his desire to serve.
After three months of in-patient treatment and more than five months in rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center here, Cornejo assumed responsibility for 187th Medical Battalion from Army Master Sgt. Dwight Wafford during a May 13 ceremony at the battalion headquarters here.
“Giving up never entered my thought process,” Cornejo said, speaking of his recovery. “It wasn’t ‘if,’ it was ‘when’ I was going to get back. I just wanted to know how fast I could get fixed so I could get back.”
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Taliban bombed 'to brink of defeat'
[HT:SK]
Kabul - Missions by coalition forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have ''decapitated'' the Taliban and brought the terror movement to the brink of defeat in Afghanistan, military leaders said yesterday. The commander of British forces in Afghanistan told London's Daily Telegraph that new ''precise, surgical'' tactics had killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to operate...
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France offers Iraq rebuilding aid
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is in Iraq to offer help in rebuilding the country and promoting national reconciliation. Mr Kouchner, whose visit began in the southern city of Nasiriya, is holding talks with senior officials. France was one of the fiercest critics of the 2003 US-led invasion, and this is Mr Kouchner's second visit to Iraq in less than a year.
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Islamists charged over plots
Madrid - A Spanish court charged 11 Islamists today with offences related to suicide bombings which it said they had been planning in Barcelona and Germany. A High Court document said 10 of the men had been on the brink of carrying out suicide bombings on public transport in Barcelona when they were arrested in Spain's second-largest city in January.
[G.W.O.T.]
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Chinese hack computers at congressman's office
WASHINGTON — A Virginia congressman said today the FBI has found that four of his government computers have been hacked by sources working out of China. In remarks prepared for delivery this afternoon, Rep. Frank Wolf says he has been told by the FBI that four computers in his personal office were compromised. The Virginia Republican says that similar incidents — also originating from China — have taken place on computers of other members of Congress and at least one House committee...
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For the Record: The U.N. Partners With Terror
Two English language Arab news outlets reported this week that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has partnered with the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). [snip]
"The IIRO-PHL is a source of funding for the al Qaida-affiliated ASG. IIRO-PHL has served as a liaison for the ASG with other Islamic extremist groups. A former ASG member in the Philippines familiar with IIRO operations in the country reported that a limited amount of foreign IIRO funding goes to legitimate projects and the rest is directed to terrorist operations. These terrorist groups are also on the United Nations 1267 Committee's consolidated list of individuals and entities associated with the Taliban, al Qaida and/or Usama Bin Ladin."IPT readers should recall that stateside, the self-proclaimed prominent Islamic "civil rights" group, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), also has a history of "partnering" with IIRO, receiving close to $30,000 from the terrorist-linked entity.
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NYT 1993: ' Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate'
Written by Walter Sullivan, "Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate" addressed findings that suggest "the period of stable climate in which human civilization has flourished might be unusual, and that the current climate may get either warmer or colder much more quickly than had been believed -- in spans of decades or even less."
Doesn't sound like today's hysterical press claims concerning global warming, does it? Neither does this:
The new studies found that the average global temperature can change as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit in a couple of decades during interglacial periods, [Dr. J. W. C. White of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research of the University of Colorado] said. The current average global temperature is 59 degrees Fahrenheit.You mean natural forces -- i.e. unrelated to anything done by man -- can create temperature swings of 18 degrees in a couple of decades? And folks like Nobel Laureate Al Gore, along with most in the media and an overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress are advocating economically destabilizing legislation all because temperatures have risen about one degree in the past 150 years?
But there was more...
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Energy
.
Free the offshore drillers
Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) has introduced an amendment to s spending bill that would free up offshore drilling more than 50 miles off our coast, enabling American companies to drill in waters already being exploited by the Chinese, among others.
"For 27 years, Congress has deliberately locked up vast offshore oil and natural gas reserves," Peterson said, according to USA Today. "With the price at the pump increasing daily - with no end in sight - and the cost of natural gas trading at record levels, Congress needs to unlock these reserves."Let us watch very carefully for those who vote to restrict oil supplies (and thereby continue raising prices). We have an election coming up and gasoline prices are an issue, in case you haven't noticed.
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House Subcommittee Rejects Plan to Open U.S. Waters to More Oil Exploration
Washington - A House subcommittee has rejected a Republican-led effort to open up more U.S. coastal waters to oil exploration. Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., spearheaded the effort. His proposal would open up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left alone. But the plan failed Wednesday on a 9-6, party-line vote...
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[meanwhile...]
China's Drilling for Oil in America's Backyard
House Republicans want the American people to know that right now -- around 60 miles off the coast of Key West, Fla. -- China is drilling for oil, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba. But 1,200 miles north of Key West, Democrats in Washington are blocking the United States from conducting its own environmentally-safe oil and gas exploration in similar U.S. coastal areas (Snip)
"Do congressional Democrats actually believe China has more ingenuity and more concern for the environment than the United States?"READ MORE
CBS Blames Gas Prices In GM Closures, Disregards Expensive Union Labor
High gas prices strike again, says the "CBS Evening News."
The "Evening News" blamed surging gas prices and General Motors reluctance to produce "more fuel-efficient vehicles" for closure of several plants, including one in Janesville, Wisc.
But Bowers omitted one detail: GM (NYSE:GM), Ford (NYSE:F) and Chrysler all have ties to the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which forces those manufacturers into collective bargaining agreements with very expensive labor costs.
And, the foreign automakers that sell "more fuel-efficient vehicles" - which include Toyota (NYSE:TM) (opening a plant in Tupelo, Miss.), Honda (NYSE:HMC) (Greensburg, Ind.), Volkswagen (FRA:VOW) (tAlabama) and KIA (SEO:000270) (West Point, Ga.) - are building their new plants in places where the UAW doesn't have a presence and won't make them less competitive by raising overhead costs.
As an August 2007 Investor's Business Daily editorial pointed out, unions are a principal reason many Americans have lost jobs. "[I]t's hard to fathom how a middle class could be created by an institution that has ... forced many Americans out of the labor force because of the high wages it has compelled businesses, through the power of its government protection, to pay," the editorial said.
[the only arena labor unions don't spell the death of organizations is where there's no competition - say, like government]
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Newsweek shills for Obama
Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain granted an interview to Newsweek’s Jon Meacham and Holly Bailey, and in the first sign of a long, uphill campaign with the media, McCain was asked how he could defeat such a "hugely gifted politician"?
[what bias?]
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MSNBC: 'Old-Fashioned' McCain vs. 'Centrist' Obama 'Helping People'
Mitchell cast the battle of the candidates' tax plans as McCain's "old-fashioned" [?] supply-side economics [ah, I believe it's Keynsian economics that's considered old, which supply-side has displaced - close though Andria] versus Obama's [ironically, Keynsian] "mainstream [?], centrist"[??] plans that "do help people" while responsibly "paying for everything."[??? !][layer upon layer...]
View video here.
[View new MSNBC logo here:
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.
Chicago Daily Herald: Vote for Obama or You're a Racist
The Daily Herald, a Chicago area paper, waxed triumphant over the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the assumed position as the Democratic Party nominee for the presidency today. (Snip) Of course, the Herald's piece is centered on America's past as a pretext to say that Obama might somehow deserve to become president because of our past history of oppression.
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La. governor stirs GOP imaginations
Give Bobby Jindal some dap.
Asked what color he is he says, "Red, white and blue."
[anyone unfamiliar, note the name - you'll be hearing it in the future]
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Personal carbon credits: the trick
[UK]
Get out your gas masks and tin hats. We are under attack from a noxious army of doom-troopers demanding that we treat climate change as a rerun of the Second World War. In the latest move to militarise everyday life, the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs has seriously proposed energy rationing, aka “personal carbon credits”. What next? Little (green) Hitlers patrolling the streets yelling “Put that high-energy light out!”?
[yes]
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