.
This Week, the United States Senate will begin debate on America's Climate Security Act (S. 2191), sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA). The Lieberman-Warner bill (LW) would restrict energy use to combat global warming. Like global warming itself, the bill has been the subject of considerable hype and little hard-nosed analysis. For this reason, there are several myths about it that need to be dispelled.
Myth #1: LW would not be expensive.
Fact: Simply put, LW works like a massive energy tax. By restricting carbon dioxide emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas--with a freeze at 2005 levels beginning in 2012, to a 70 percent reduction in 2050--the bill forces down supply and thus boosts the price of energy. In fact, if energy prices did not go up, then the targets in the bill would not be met. As energy is the economy's lifeblood, and 85 percent of it comes from these fossil fuels, the impact will be substantial. Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030, according to an analysis conducted by the Heritage Foundation. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Environmental Protection Agency, Charles River Associates, and the National Association of Manufacturers have all conducted studies predicting significant economic burdens on consumers should the bill be enacted.
Myth #2: The costs fall on industry, not consumers.
Fact: Virtually all the burden imposed by LW falls upon consumers. The bill will spur net job losses well into the hundreds of thousands, and possibly nearing one million. Particularly hard hit is the manufacturing sector where over one million jobs will be lost by 2022 and two million by 2027. The losses in household incomes could reach $1,026 per year by 2015. Annual household energy-price increases could hit $1,000 by 2030, including a 29 percent increase in the price of gasoline from 2008 levels.
Myth #3: Global warming is a crisis that must be addressed at all costs.
Fact: Global warming is a concern, not a crisis. Both the seriousness and the imminence of the threat are overstated. For example, the recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report estimates 7 to 23 inches of sea level rise by the end of the century--far less than the widely popularized claims of 18 to 20 feet and little more than ongoing trends over the past several centuries. The attempt to link Hurricane Katrina with climate change is directly contradicted by the World Meteorological Organization and many scientists. Overall, current and expected future temperatures are far from unprecedented, and are highly unlikely to lead to catastrophes.
Myth #4: LW effectively addresses the threat of climate change.
Fact: Even assuming the worst of global warming, LW reduces the threat by a minuscule amount. The bill reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the United States only. China has overtaken America as the world's largest emitter, and its emissions growth is several times greater than that of the U.S. India and other fast-developing nations are on a similar trajectory. Thus, the unilateral impact of the bill on global emissions would be inconsequential. At most, it would reduce the earth's future temperature by one or two tenths of a degree Celsius--too small to even verify. In other words, LW is all economic pain for no environmental gain.
Myth #5: LW's cap-and-trade approach is a proven success.
Fact: Critics of the cap-and-trade approach in LW, in which emissions are capped and regulated entities may trade their rights to emit, point to the European Union's substantial difficulties since initiating its own cap-and-trade program in 2005. Most E.U. nations [13 of 15] are not on track to meet their targets, and many are seeing their emissions rise faster than those in the U.S. The program is furthermore plagued by accusations of fraud and unfairness. LW essentially adopts the European approach wholesale.
Conclusion
Overall, the Lieberman-Warner bill promises substantial hardship for the economy overall, for jobs, and for energy costs. Given current economic concerns and energy prices, this is the last thing the American people need. At the same time, the environmental benefits would likely be small to nonexistent. The Lieberman-Warner bill fails any reasonable cost-benefit test.
SOURCE
Senate Bill 2191: "America's Climate Security Act"
President Bush: president@whitehouse.gov Barbara Boxer: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm?CFID=9716973&CFTOKEN=89336911 Dianne Feinstein:
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMeYOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
About That Global Warming Bill....
Al Qaeda on the Run
A year ago in July, a National Intelligence Estimate warned that al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability," meaning it could be poised to strike America again. The political reaction was instantaneous and damning. "This clearly says al Qaeda is not beaten," said Michael Scheuer, the former CIA spook turned antiterror scold. What a difference 10 months – and a surge – make...
[Recommended > ]
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Iraqis Fear Rapid US Withdrawal Would Cause 'Chaos and Anarchy,'
Most Iraqis support the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and think a rapid withdrawal would lead to ''chaos and anarchy,'' said Adnan Pachachi, a member of the National Assembly of Iraq and a former president of Iraq's Governing Council (IGC), on Friday. (Snip) McCain has said that America should maintain its current policy in Iraq while Obama has said he supports a fairly rapid and scheduled withdrawal.
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Teacher tortures, kills boy
[HT:JB]
A blind seven-year-old student at an Islamic school in eastern Pakistan has died after his teacher punished him for not learning the Qu'ran, police said on Friday. Muhammad Atif was hung upside down from a ceiling fan and severely beaten by his teacher, Qari Ziauddin, at the madrassa in Vihari, near Lahore on Thursday.
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EU Approves Talks With Russia
European Union foreign ministers on Monday approved much delayed plans to begin talks with Russia aimed at forging a new "strategic partnership."
Rupel hoped that Russian and European negotiators could agree on a far-reaching pact to widen economic and political ties in a year's time. A new agreement, outlining closer cooperation, would replace a 1997 deal with Moscow.
Efforts to begin talks last year also faltered over a now-resolved trade dispute between Poland and Russia over meat exports.
The delays have irked Moscow. Medvedev's trip to China last week, his first trip abroad as Russia's new president, was seen as a slap to Russia's western neighbors.
Most EU nations are eager to get closer ties with Moscow back on track, notably to secure more stable oil and gas supplies amid rising energy prices and supply concerns.
[another consequence of ignoring our energy reserves: empowering despots]
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Getting off Hugo Chavez's payroll
Among the more shameful political episodes in local American and British politics of the last few years, the accepting of subsidized oil from Marxist dictator-wannabe Hugo Chavez ranks among the most obvious. The new mayor of London, Boris Johnson has enough courage to tell his constituents that accepting bribes from an enemy of freedom is not a good idea. From the Wall Street Journal Europe:
New London Mayor Boris Johnson [Yank] wasted no time in taking his city off Hugo Chávez's PR payroll.American Thinker has written before about some Democratic Congressmen having close ties to Chavez-those ties include the subsidizing of oil for their constituents. This is a shameful practice, for Chavez is an enemy of freedom.
Elected earlier this month, Mr. Johnson has announced that the city won't renew a deal with the Venezuelan strongman to get cheap oil to subsidize bus fares for London residents. "I think many Londoners felt uncomfortable about the bus operation of one of the world's financial powerhouses being funded by . . . a country where many people live in extreme poverty," the Conservative Mayor explained Sunday.
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Man threatened with arrest at Heathrow for wearing Transformers T-shirt
Brad Jayakody wearing the Transformers T-shift which caused offense at HeathrowAn airline passenger claimed that a security guard threatened to arrest him because he was wearing a T-shirt showing a cartoon robot with a gun.
Brad Jayakody, 30, from London, said he was stopped from passing through security at Heathrow's Terminal 5 after his Transformers T-shirt was deemed 'offensive.'
The IT consultant was set to fly off on a business trip to Dusseldorf in Germany when he was pulled to one side.
Mr Jayakody said the first guard started joking with him about the Transformers character depicted on his French Connection T-shirt.
'"Then he explains that since Megatron is holding a gun, I'm not allowed to fly,' he said.
'It's a 40ft tall cartoon robot with a gun as an arm. There is no way this shirt is offensive in any way, and what I'm going to use the shirt to pretend I have a gun?
He was cooperative with the supervisor and took off the the 'offensive' T-shirt, replacing it with another shirt in his carry on luggage.
[this is government. health care anyone?]
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Baby, Baby It’s a Cold World
Explaining global warming to Congress.
Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy adviser to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, was recently referenced by senior climate-science authority Fred Singer as saying: “Global warming stopped ten years ago; it hasn't gotten warmer since 1998. . . . . And in fact in the last seven years, there has been a downturn in global temperatures equivalent on average to about [or] very close to one degree Fahrenheit per decade. We're actually in a period . . . of global cooling.”
This is what the temperature data shows. Indeed, even global-warming advocates are now saying there won’t be any actual global warming for the next ten years or so. You can interpret that to mean the budding cooling trend will continue.
So what is all the hysteria about? The answer is very simple, and very obvious once pointed out.
Global warming has nothing to do with climate or science. What it is all about is the great, historic class struggle between working people and the ruling classes.
Global warming is a great excuse for a massive expansion of government power. That, not science, is why the overlords, from the New York Times to the United Nations to Al Gore, so heartily embrace it.
The U.N. thinks global warming is a perfect reason for the U.N. to be transformed into a world government. So how long do you think it took for the world-class bureaucrats at Turtle Bay to conclude that global warming was real and caused by humans?
Which is why it was always so foolish to leave study of the problem to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientists on the panel actually keep writing reports that say maybe yes and maybe no. But the U.N. press office keeps issuing summaries of the reports that say “submit or die.”
[Recommended > ]
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The Environmental Benefits of Offshore Drilling
Louisiana produces almost 30 per cent of America's commercial fisheries. Only Alaska (ten times the size of the Bayou state) produces slightly more. So obviously, Louisiana's coastal waters are immensely rich and prolific in seafood.
These same coastal waters contain 3,200 of the roughly 3,700 offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. From these, Louisiana also produces 25 per cent of America's domestic oil, and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast. So for those interested in evidence over hysterics, by simply looking bayou-ward, a lesson in the “environmental perils” of offshore oil drilling presents itself very clearly.
Fashionable Florida, on the other hand, which zealously prohibits offshore oil drilling, had its gorgeous "Emerald Coast" panhandle beaches soiled by an ugly oil spill in 1976. This spill, as almost all oil spills, resulted from the transportation of oil – not from the extraction of oil... [snip]
An environmental study (by apparently honest scientists) revealed that urban runoff and treated sewage dump 12 times the amount of petroleum into the Gulf than those thousands of oil production platforms [snip]
In 1986 Louisiana started the Rigs to Reef program, a cooperative effort by oil companies, the feds and the state. This program literally pays the oil companies to keep the platforms in the Gulf. Now some platforms are simply cut off at the bottom and toppled over as artificial reefs; over 60 have been toppled thus far.... [snip]
America desperately needs more domestic oil. In the process of producing it, we'd also get dynamite fishing, dynamite diving, and a cheaper tab for broiled red snapper with shrimp topping.
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Guns to go: Mo. car dealer offers something extra
Butler, Mo. - Salesmen at one Missouri car dealership aren't just kicking in a free CD player or factory air: They're offering a free handgun with every purchase. Through the end of the month, car buyers at Max Motors in Butler will have a choice — $250 toward either a gun purchase or gasoline. General manager Walter Moore said that so far, most buyers have chosen the gun, adding that he suggests they opt for a semiautomatic model "because it holds more rounds."
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Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Carbon Curtain Begins to Fall
This week, the Senate is going to take up the America's Climate Security Act, a cleverly titled assault on both our freedoms and our economy offered up by Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner. The bill essentially limits how much gasoline and other fossil fuels Americans can use, "in the name of the planet."
The Heritage Foundation says the bill would raise gasoline prices by $1.10 per gallon and "represents an extraordinary level of economic interference by the federal government" that "promises extraordinary perils for the American economy."
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Senate Bill 2191: "America's Climate Security Act"President Bush: president@whitehouse.gov Barbara Boxer: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm?CFID=9716973&CFTOKEN=89336911 Dianne Feinstein:
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMeYOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Carbon's Power Brokers
An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system to ration carbon emissions. [snip]
"Cap-and-trade" comes cloaked in reassuring rhetoric about the government merely creating a market, but government actually would create a scarcity so that government could sell what it had made scarce. [snip]
Businesses with unused emission allowances could sell their surpluses to businesses that exceed their allowances. The more expensive and constraining the allowances, the more money government would gain...
[to the tune of 7 trillion dollars - no conflict of interests here...]
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Beating Al-Qaida
Before the surge, the CIA said the Iraq War was boosting al-Qaida globally. Now it finds the group is beaten in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and is losing elsewhere. Imagine if we'd surrendered in Iraq. In a Washington Post interview last week to mark his two years as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden rattled off a [longish, global] list of accomplishments...
[and our 'professional' media? McClellan, McClellan, McClellan, ... ]
[Recommended > ]
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Pelosi Says Iranians, Not Troops, Make Surge Success
... Deep in an interview the House Speaker granted to the editorial board of the hometown San Francisco Chronicle, Abe Greenwald found this eyebrow-raising passage:
"Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians -- they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities -- the Iranians."
These remarks were not apparently included in the Chronicle itself, but were found on a Chronicle podcast of the interview. We didn't find any mainstream-media notice of this on Thursday or Friday.
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Iran says its right to enrichment is non-negotiable
TEHRAN - Iran will not give up its right to enrich uranium, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday, days before major powers submit an upgraded package of incentives to try to coax Tehran into halting the work. "Suspending enrichment is not negotiable ... Depriving Iran of its right cannot be on offer," Gholamhossein Elham, the government spokesman, told a weekly news conference.
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You Can't Appease Everybody
After decades of comparing Nixon to Hitler, Reagan to Hitler and Bush to Hitler, liberals have finally decided it is wrong to make comparisons to Hitler. But the only leader to whom they have applied their newfound rule of thumb is: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While Ahmadinejad has not done anything as starkly evil as cut the capital gains tax, he does deny the Holocaust, call for the destruction of Israel, deny the existence of gays in Iran and refuses to abandon his nuclear program despite protests from the United Nations. [snip]
There are reasons to meet with a tyrant, but none apply to Ahmadinejad. We're not looking for an imperfect ally against some other dictatorship, as Nixon was with China. And we aren't in a Mexican stand-off with a nuclear power, as Reagan was with the USSR. Mutually Assured Destruction was bad enough with the Evil Empire, but something you definitely want to avoid with lunatics who are willing to commit suicide in order to destroy the enemies of Islam.
What possible reason is there to meet with Ahmadinejad? To win a $20 bar bet as to whether or not the man actually owns a necktie?
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International
Russia Warns U.S. On Missile Defense
Moscow - A top Russian general warned on Tuesday that the military will respond to U.S. missile defense plans with countermeasures, and said Washington's trust-building proposals have bogged down in diplomatic arguments. Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Buzhinsky told reporters that Russia was thinking about ''asymmetrical'' steps if the United States deploys missile defense elements in Europe. He said Moscow has no intention of building a similar missile shield, but refused to elaborate on what specific measures the military might take...
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US probes whether laptop copied on China trip
WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers, officials and industry experts told The Associated Press.
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Scientists sign petition denying man-made global warming
More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming. The academics, including 9,000 with PhDs, claim that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are actually beneficial for the environment.The petition was created in 1998 by an American physicist, the late Frederick Seitz, in response to the Kyoto Protocol a year earlier.
[it's making the rounds - slowly - but why has it taken 10 years to get noticed?]
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WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HIGH PRICE OF GAS?
datums:
• Over the last 28 years, Congress has again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) when we knew it contained at least 10 billion barrels of oil we could be using now.
• During the past 31 years, Congress repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries that we now badly need.
• More recently, congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea 100 miles out.
• Since the 1980s Congress has continually stopped all building of nuclear power plants while France, Germany and, yes, Japan, plus 12 other major nations, did build plants and get 20 percent to 80 percent of their energy.
Does Congress really think Middle America's voters are so gullible that they will believe that its latest answer to increasing our supply of oil and gas is to slap a 25 percent windfall penalty tax on oil companies and remove all other incentives for oil companies to drill and explore for oil?
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Twofer
Boy Scouts sue Phila. to stay in headquarters
The Boy Scouts of America's Philadelphia chapter has sued the City of Philadelphia in federal court to block the city's May 31 deadline for the scouts to open membership to gays and atheists, or vacate their historic 1928 headquarters off Logan Square. The civil rights lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Center City, contends that the city's ultimatum violates the scouts' rights under the U.S. and Pennsylvania Constitutions.
[evidently 'tolerance' of others' beliefs only applies to the state's view of things]
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The Scouts show some moxie
SO MICHAEL Nutter is "astounded" that the Boy Scouts had the "audacity" to file a lawsuit against the city. Join the club, Mayor. I'm also astounded. And elated. And I'm definitely not alone. It finally looks as if the local Cradle of Liberty chapter has stopped playing by the Marquis of Queensbury rules, and is taking on the municipal bullies who've been persecuting them...
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WHEN TAXPAYERS IGNORE LESS VISIBLE TAXES
Shoppers are inattentive to taxes, say the authors of a National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper. To prove this, the authors partnered with a supermarket chain to conduct an experiment in one of its stores:
For taxable items, like cosmetics and other non-food products, stores customarily do not include the sales tax in the price tags on the shelves, but rather have them rung up at the register, making them less salient to the consumer.The result was a decline in sales of those items by 6 to 8 percent; reminding shoppers of the tax at the time of purchase made for more cautious consumers, suggesting that most of them do not normally take into account the sales tax on such products.
In the targeted store, the researchers adjusted the price tags to display prices including the 7.375 percent sales tax.
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Media Coverage Was More Upbeat at Start of the Great Depression
The news media have covered recent economic trials with four times as much negativity as they covered the worst economic period in the nation's history - the Great Depression - a new study from the Business & Media Institute shows.
"They were four times more negative during the Bear Stearns buyout than the worst economic couple days in our country's history," BMI Vice President Dan Gainor said, announcing the release of the new study, "The Great Media Depression." [snip]
"The economic impact both Neil Cavuto here and Maria Bartiromo on CNBC have warned [is] that we're kind of talking ourselves into a recession," Gainor said. "The political impact of that is this is the No. 1 issue for Americans and we're in danger of going back to 1992, when the media didn't tell us the economy had rebounded and that had a huge impact on the election."
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Court: Sect children should be returned to parents
AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that children taken from a polygamist sect's ranch should be returned to their parents, saying child welfare officials overstepped their authority. The high court on Thursday affirmed a decision last week by an appeals court that said Child Protective Services failed to show an immediate danger to the more than 400 children swept up from the Yearning For Zion Ranch nearly two months ago...
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Illinois says less roadkill to be picked up from state highways this summer Carbondale, Ill. - The view along Illinois highways this summer should be beautiful - for the turkey vultures. The state's transportation department says it won't be picking up as much roadkill left along roads because it spent too much of its budget during the winter...
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Friday, May 30, 2008
World praises progress in Iraq
STOCKHOLM — World leaders, including UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on Thursday hailed Baghdad's progress in combatting violence and stabilising Iraq. A declaration adopted by 100 delegations at a Stockholm conference said the participants "recognised the important efforts made by the (Iraqi) government to improve security and public order and combat terrorism and sectarian violence across Iraq."
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Al-Qaeda's vision of a America after nuclear attack
The computer-generated image below was posted on an Islamic extremists' website yesterday.
This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb. [snip]
Al Sahab puts out more than 80 'officially sanctioned' videos a year to keep up the propaganda on the West. And the Internet shows how easy it is to stir up militancy. One message with the Washington picture said: 'The next strike's in the heart of America. When? When? When? And How?'
Last night FBI sources said Al Qaeda was desperate to get its hands on a weapon of mass destruction, be it nuclear, chemical, or biological. So far that is only a dream... or, as this picture suggests, a nightmare.
[Scare mongering? : the consequence of a WMD attack on this nation are hard to overestimate, and we've every right to aggressively defend ourselves against such monstrous threats. Our best chance of preventing such an attack is a) using every intelligence means possible to monitor and interdict them, and b) staying on offense and denying them a stable base of operations from which to organize and project themselves - such as we'd be handing them if we abandoned Iraq]
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Exclusive: Iran in Secret Talks With al Qaeda, U.S. Officials Say
Senior U.S. officials tell ABC News that in recent months there have been secret contacts between the Iranian government and the leadership of al Qaeda. It's a development that has caught the attention of top officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community. (Snip) the contacts are on the status of high-level al Qaeda operatives, including two of Osama Bin Laden's sons, who have been under house arrest in Iran since 2003.
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What’s behind the “appeasement” kefluffel?
Democrats outraged by the remarks of President George W. Bush “appeasement” when he said, “America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. And America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations... [snip]
Obama wants talks with Iran without preconditions and Bush/McCain are totally against such talks. But in point of fact, Bush is already talking to Iran at a lower level. The real issue is not whether to talk but whether to appease...
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Sharia-compliant financing must stop
Turn your clock back 70 years. Imagine that Wall Street banks and brokerages sold Nuremberg-compliant bonds and stock funds in 1938. American Nazi sympathizers bought financial instruments certified by Berlin-based advisors as free of "Jewish profits" from, say, Salomon Brothers and Bloomingdale's. In turn, a percentage of such funds' gains underwrote pro-Nazi charities, like the German-American Bund, and similar organizations in the Fatherland, like the Hitler Youth.
Seventy years hence, an analogous outrage grows on Wall Street, only this time for real.
Sharia-compliant finance (SCF) is expanding among banks and securities houses eager to absorb the hundreds of billions of petrodollars cascading into the Middle East, thanks to $100-per-barrel oil. To lure this cash, financial companies increasingly offer vehicles that don't involve or benefit from anything considered "haram" or "un-kosher" in Islam - and SCF is not limited to the bond market. SCF also goes far beyond 'marketing' to Muslims and Middle Easterners. IIFM lists "wider sharia acceptance" among its goals..
Selling sharia-compliant investments legitimizes a barbaric theocratic orthodoxy that should be defeated, not promoted.
[Recommended]
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Sarkozy says EU should cap sales tax on fuel
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, responded to growing public anger over surging oil prices by proposing to use windfall tax receipts generated by higher energy prices to subsidise the worst-hit people. As in other countries, high oil prices are a hot political issue in France as household budgets and businesses have been squeezed.
["windfall tax receipts" - priceless]
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A Bleak Future
Imagine an America where the government decides what profits are acceptable. Imagine our country with the oil industry nationalized. Impossible? Not with Democrats in control of Washington. One California Democrat, saying out loud what many on her side of the aisle have been thinking for some time, has threatened to seize the oil industry....
[for anyone who missed it, Ms. Waters faux pas during the oil inquisition where she state that "this liberal intends to socialize --- ", and then froze and took the better part of a minute trying to reword he Freudian slip was laugh-out-loud funny - except for her word's meaning...]
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DOCTORS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
The cost of cutting greenhouse gas emissions would certainly have a serious negative effect on human health, says the Fraser Institute's Philip Stevens. A new global treaty that claims would stabilize the climate at today's temperatures would cost a total of $18-20 trillion (U.S.) -- or 45 percent of the world's current annual economic output.
Such a treaty would create a massive drag on economic growth, which brings with it the resources that can be used to tackle the most significant causes of death in developing countries - all a direct result of poverty. The elimination of malaria in European and North America was a clear by-product of increasing prosperity:
• Exposure to mosquitoes decreased once people could afford windows for their houses and separate barns for cattle.Mandatory caps on carbon emissions would be a betrayal of the sick in the world's poorest regions because such regulations would undermine the one mechanism -- economic growth -- which allows people to move beyond the primitive living conditions that encourage the spread of such diseases. Restraining economic growth with the hope of staving off hypothetical threats to humanity will almost certainly reduce our ability to deal with today's genuine health problems.
• Farmers adopted practices such as tillage and field drainage which deprived the mosquitoes of feeding and breeding opportunities.
• In other wealthy countries such as the United States, public authorities were able to combine this with the mass spraying of the pesticide DDT to effectively eradicate the disease.
• It is no coincidence that malaria is currently confined to the poorest parts of the world, because these areas are the least able to afford such changes.
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Durable goods dip but many sectors show strength
Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods fell by a smaller-than-anticipated amount in April with many sectors outside of transportation showing unexpected strength. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that orders for durable goods dropped 0.5 percent, dragged down by big declines in demand for commercial aircraft and autos [you know, the energy users]
The decline, however, was just one-third of what experts expected. Take out the volatile transportation sector and orders rose 2.5 percent, the largest gain in nine months. This reflected strength in areas ranging from heavy machinery and primary metals such as steel, and to a record surge in demand for electrical equipment and appliances.
Economists said this indicated the economy was entering the April-through-June period with some momentum...
[few things are more frustrating than an unreliable recession]
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Democrats Unaware of US Warning About Border Violence
Three Democratic lawmakers who spoke Wednesday about alleged anti-immigrant coverage by conservative media outlets were not aware of a recent State Department travel alert warning Americans about military-like ''combat'' along the southern U.S. border in Mexico, where Americans are being kidnapped and murdered. (Snip) When asked about the alert after the briefing, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) told Cybercast News Service: ''I haven't heard about the report specifically,''
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The Blitzkrieg in the Kulturkampf Western Civilization Faces
At Michigan State University, I served on student government until a horde of leftist students organized a successful recall election. On the very same day that I took part in a public debate over the issue of affirmative action with a candidate for state representative, the vote was held in which I was recalled by approximately 93 percent to 7 percent (225 voted to recall while 18 voted to allow me to remain).
Why was I recalled? Because I proposed, among other things, that a United States flag be displayed in every room and lecture hall on campus, and that since black students, Muslim students, international students, and homosexual students get automatic representation on student government, it would only be fair if white students, Christian students, nationalist students, and heterosexual students get automatic representation as well. This did not bode well with my leftist peers, so they removed me from the low-level elected position that I held.
The leftists will allow no threat to their ideology to materialize. The seeds of discontent cannot be allowed to grow...
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Newsweek Poll Creates 'Racial Resentment Index' for Whites Not Blacks
Apparently, it's only important to Newsweek to identify if racism is a factor in why whites prefer Republican presidential candidate John McCain and not if racism is a factor in why blacks support Obama.
Such can be read between the lines in the article published Friday entitled "The White Stuff: A new NEWSWEEK Poll underscores Obama's racial challenge" (emphasis added, picture courtesy Getty Images): [snip]
[meanwhile, Obama enjoys a ninety-percent support rate of black Americans with nary a word in the press...]
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[addendum]
Will Voters Go for the One Like Them?
For whom do voters vote? What motivates them? The ethnic group to which they belong, and the one to which the candidate belongs are factors, no doubt. A voter generally looks for one of his own, or at least someone from the neighborhood. It appears that 95 percent of African-American voters will vote for Barack Obama...
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Reality check re: American 'racism','xenophobia'
To the Left, America is irredeemably racist, and those who want our border protected are xenophobes. The insanity of these claims is evidenced by what real racism and xenophobia look like. In black-led South Africa, a country that is held to be the embodiment of the triumph of a victory over racism, no less.
We have already covered the horrific racial violence (black on black) directed toward South African immigrants, but after almost two weeks running, it is spreading, according to this report from AFP:
[8 paragraphs of violence][snip]
That is what real xenophobia and racism look like. Demands for protection of our sovereign borders are not xenophobia. America actually gives racial preferences to minorities and welfare payments to immigrants, for better or worse.
Time to ash-can the defamation of America as a racist country, and go counsel Nelson Mandela about the racism of blacks in his country. Any leftists who denounces America as a racist country only demonstrates his hatred of America.
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Thursday, May 29, 2008
The caption reads:
"Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas embraces Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke during a Veterans Day commemoration in Dallas yesterday.
Graunke lost a hand, a leg and an eye when he defused a bomb in Iraq last year.
This week's images of U.S. troops in combat in Fallujah deepened the day's significance for many who attended tributes held in San Diego and across the nation."
Associated Press
'It opened my eyes' -- Tuberville touched by troops' commitment
Tommy Tuber ville didn't expect a weeklong goodwill trip through the Mid dle East to affect him like it did -- profoundly.
Tuberville discovered an un paralleled commitment by American soldiers, many barely out of their teens, and even those severely wounded in bat tle.
"It opened my eyes. I thought people went over there, dreaded going over there and couldn't wait to get back," ... "The leaders over there, this is their fourth or fifth or sixth..."The emotional peak for Tub erville came at a hospital when he and Weis approached a sol dier with severe injuries to both legs. Tuberville anticipated bit terness.
The soldier was anything but bitter...
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When Success Is the Orphan
[Recommended]
Recent studies showing a decline in global incidents of Islamic terror have been interpreted as solely a Middle-East intramural affair. Sometimes the good news is said to be a naturally occurring phenomenon. We are supposed to believe that American policies of counter-terrorism at home have been of little value, if not McCarthyesque. Beefed-up security, the fight against the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the cultural creation of a repugnance — and penalty — for jihadism (as in contrast to the 1990s), have likewise supposedly played no role.
But surely the catalyst for the decline in terrorist incidents worldwide was the radically different response of the U.S. to terrorism and 9/11 that finally brought jihadism into an open-shooting war against the West (e.g., cf. the Left’s “creating terrorists”), in which the terrorists are losing the battle-space, along with the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East — as their own websites and cries of anguish attest. [snip]
By the same token, the rise of governments that are sympathetic to the U.S. in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe is never associated with a shared and growing worry over Islamic radicalism — or a grudging, often private acknowledgment of the U.S. role abroad in beating back jihadism. How surreal to see a constitutional government in Iraq, with broad popular support, fighting and defeating terrorists and insurgents of both the Wahhabi and Iranian brand — at a time when the charge is that Iraq only made terrorism much worse. As we’ve seen from recent events, there are many governments abroad that deserve criticism, whether in China, the Sudan, or Burma -- but Iraq is not one of them.
So these are upside-down times when facts and events on the ground simply do not support the general pessimism of the Western media, the serial publication of gloomy he-did-it,-not-me memoirs about the post-9/11 supposed failures, and the shrill rhetoric of the Democratic primaries. [snip]
We have not won the war on terror, but we are starting to see how the combination of domestic security, international cooperation, military action, cultural ostracism of those who condone terrorism, and promotion of constitutional government in the Middle East can, and will, marginalize and eventually defeat the jihadists...
[Recommended > ]
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The Palestinians' Self-Made Naqba
It’s become fashionable [in the media] to match celebration of Israel ’s founding (though part of the media can’t even admit Israelis are celebrating) with Palestinian marking of their 1948 “nakba” catastrophe. Yet whose fault is it that they didn’t use those six decades constructively? And who killed the independent Palestinian state alongside Israel that was part of the partition plan? Answer: The Arab states and Palestinian leadership themselves...
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China's All-Seeing Eye
Many of the big American players have set up shop in Shenzhen, but they look singularly unimpressive next to their Chinese competitors. The research complex for China's telecom giant Huawei, for instance, is so large that it has its own highway exit, while its workers ride home on their own bus line. Pressed up against Shenzhen's disco shopping centers, Wal-Mart superstores — of which there are nine in the city — look like dreary corner stores. (China almost seems to be mocking us: "You call that a superstore?") McDonald's and KFC appear every few blocks, but they seem almost retro next to the Real Kung Fu fast-food chain, whose mascot is a stylized Bruce Lee.
American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" — a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism...
[as a fellow politico told me over a year ago: "China is something new" in its mixing of capitalism with totalitarianism - not a good thing. Not only does it stand to eat our lunch given our current rapid retreat from capitalism ourselves, but its successful model is rapidly being adopted by other nations - all of 'em despots, most notably Russia]
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Georgia demands Russian compensation for shot-down reconnaissance drone
Tbilisi, Georgia - Georgia demanded Tuesday that Russia pay for a reconnaissance airplane that U.N. observers say was shot down by a Russian fighter jet. Russia criticized a U.N. report, expressing doubt about the video footage that was a prominent piece of evidence. (Snip) ''Russia initiates military actions against the country where it pretends to be a peacekeeper,'' Saakashvili told a government session.
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IAEA Takes Iran to the Woodshed over Nuke Program
Note to Iran apologists: Even the United Nations nuclear watchdog - a notoriously anti-American group and obsessively non-confrontational - isn't satisfied with Iranian explanations about its nuclear enrichment activities:
The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran's suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained "a matter of serious concern" and that Iran continued to owe the agency "substantial explanations." [snip]Why would the military have "played a role" in "parts of their nuclear program?" They're kidding, right?
"There are certain parts of their nuclear program where the military seems to have played a role," said one senior official close to the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic constraints. He added, "We want to understand why."
Sadly, no. This clueless group of bureaucrats is so concerned about telling the United Nations that Iran may be trying to build nukes that they usually praise the Iranians for their "cooperation" rather than confront them over technologies and hardware that have "dual use" capabilities.
The head of the IAEA Moahammed Elbaradei has even said he doesn't want to be responsible for starting a war between Iran and the US so he usually tempers his reports with so many caveats they are useless. As a document upon which the UN will take action, the report is a non-starter. There may be another round of watered down sanctions but that's it as far as the UN is concerned. Unless China and Russia suddenly change their minds, meaningful sanctions are out of the question.
Somewhere in Israel and probably in Washington, a clock is ticking and a countdown has begun. The world is running out of time to stop Iran from developing the capability to build nuclear weapons. Within a matter of months, they will have industrialized their enrichment capabilities. From there, it is another matter of months before they could enrich uranium to high enough levels to build a bomb.
Israel and America have said they will not allow that to happen. What the world will do to help still isn't clear.
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Western Climate Initiative: Stakeholders discuss cap-and-trade plan
You can buy and sell world currencies on a trading floor. And you can pick up produce at a neighborhood marketplace. But how do you construct a market for climate change pollution? (Snip) The latest public meeting of the Western Climate Initiative brought government together with the companies, students, labor unions, industry groups and environmental organizations eager to have a hand in shaping a cap-and-trade market for the West.
[read the paragraph again, re: who was 'brought together'. Excepting the student (being young they're supposed to be foolish), we're talking special interests front-to-back. The article speaks of capital-financiers and marketing pros and assuring all have 'a seat at the table'. Subject matter scientists are never mentioned. This is a boondoggle - what's being served 'at the table' is the American taxpayer]
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Russians snub offer to help cut emissions
The metals plant [photo at left] is the largest source of sulphur dioxide emissions in Europe. It annually emits around 100,000 tons into the atmosphere, 4.2 times higher than Norway's total emissions. Never before has it released such high emissions, and never before has it earned so much money. Forbes Magazine estimated their wealth at about USD 45 billion.
Norway, which shares a border with Russia that adjoins the Kola Peninsula, has long been concerned about the plant's emissions. The Norwegian government has for years pledged NOK 270 million (USD 54 million) to help the plant cut emissions, but so far, nothing has happened...
[tell me again what our trillions spent on Kyoto would buy us? Russia and China aren't having any of it - but will make the occassional noise to see if the rest of us are foolish enough to cut our own economic throats with it]
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China emissions to swamp Kyoto reductions by 2010
Within two years, Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases will have vastly outstripped the reductions achieved by all the countries that have signed up to the Kyoto protocol combined. Using data provided by the Chinese government, researchers at the University of California have calculated that China's emissions by 2010 will be at least 600 million metric tonnes greater than they were in 2000. But the most likely outcome will be emissions of twice that figure.
[but we've florescent light bulbs forced upon us]
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Group will sue to list walrus as threatened
[meanwhile, in America...]
A conservation group gave notice Tuesday that it will sue to force federal action on a petition to list the Pacific walrus as a threatened species because of threats from global warming and offshore petroleum development. The deadline was May 8 for an initial 90-day review of the petition by the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to Center for Biological Diversity attorney Brendan Cummings.
[yes, these are the polar bear people, who have already stated that they intend to go right down the list of any & all potentially effected species with the goal of stopping all energy resource retrieval. The country does indeed need 'change']
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Americans Get The Judiciary We Pay For
We have Alexander Hamilton's assurances, from Federalist 78, that the judiciary is "the least dangerous" branch of government. Having "neither force nor will, but merely judgment," it "has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever."
Few passages from the Federalist seem as anachronistic today. Almost all social controversies seem to lead to the judiciary, and often up to the Supreme Court. So Roberts' report on the condition of the judiciary should interest a country selecting its next president, who, if he or she serves two terms, will fill about half the 875 seats on the federal bench. Now more than ever, but probably less today than tomorrow, the judicial branch is central to governance...
[the country needs 'change' indeed]
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Texas town's immigrant-renting rule is struck down
A Dallas suburb's ban on apartment rentals to illegal immigrants, an ordinance passed by city leaders and later endorsed in a vote by its residents, is unconstitutional, a federal judge found Wednesday.
Only the federal government can regulate immigration, U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay concluded in his decision.
The city didn't defer to the federal government on the matter, violating the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which allows for the federal government to pre-empt local laws, Lindsay said.
[ok, ignoring the abysmal job the feds are doing, there's some logic there. So, what will be done about the 'sanctuary cities' violating the supremacy clause in the other direction?]
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Man jailed after daughter fails exam
A father who was ordered by a judge to keep a close eye on his daughter's education has been jailed for six months after she failed a maths exam. Brian Gegner, of Fairfield, Ohio, was sentenced to 180 days in prison for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor". His daughter, Brittany, now 18, had a history of school truancy and a judge warned her father to make sure she passed her General Educational Development tests.
[sounds like a lousy father, but is this right? Are we ceeding to the state the right to subsume parentship based on arbitrary criteria? in attempting to prevent all harm of bad parents we're turning the government into ours]
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good news
Retirement-Fund Suits Allowed by U.S. Supreme Court
Participants in 401(k) and other retirement plans can file lawsuits claiming their individual accounts were mishandled, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a decision that bolsters the legal rights of 70 million people.
The court today unanimously allowed a suit by a man who says he lost almost $100,000 because his employer didn't make investment changes he requested. The court rejected business contentions that participants can sue only to enforce the rights of the entire plan, not to recover losses incurred by a single account.
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lite
Bloggers 'Nitwits Who Think They're Part of the News Media'
You pathetic little people of the blogosphere. You're nothing more than "nitwits at home with [your] computers" who've deluded yourselves into imagining you're "part of the news media." Just ask Mike Barnicle. The former Boston Globe columnist broke the tough truth to us on today's Morning Joe. WaPo editorial writer Jonathan Capehart was "so glad" to agree.
[typical: the 'professional' journo begins his piece with a blatant error: find a blogger that would claim any association with the media. they're really having trouble coping with the loss of their monopoly. aren't there 12-step programs for that kind of thing?]
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
NASA Hits Mars Bullseye
In a jaw dropping feat of engineering and technical wizardry, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the surface of the Red Planet at 7:53 EDT last night after a journey of 9 months and more than 440 million miles:
The accuracy of landing exactly where they expected and wanted to is unreal. It was explained as firing an arrow from the pitchers mound at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles and hitting home plate at Wrigley Field in Chicago. But the course was so accurate that the scientists didn't need to make a last course correction that was scheduled for yesterday morning.
I wrote a background piece on the mission here.
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'Terror On Wane,' 'Al-Qaida On Run' And Other Headlines You Won't See
From the deserts of Iraq to the villages of Spain to the jungles of Colombia, these victories against terrorist groups are all linked. They are the result of using proven tactics, holding together resolutely, cooperating with other nations to share and deliver intelligence, and forming united fronts. When this happens, terrorists cannot flourish. Recent successes show that these wars are winnable.
They are winning against all odds, overcoming not just terrorists, but other obstacles such as a lumbering Pentagon bureaucracy and weak-kneed Western intelligentsia whose media toadies trump every military error and harp on every isolated bad deed.
Now proven wrong, these same critics retaliate by ignoring what is a very big story...
[Recommended > ]
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How Defense Research Is Making Troops More Effective in Wartime
When Army patrol leaders in Iraq prepare to go out on missions in Baghdad, their last stop at headquarters is a computerized map on which they outline the area where they will operate. Then they watch as icons emerge, showing, in grim detail, the lurking dangers. By clicking on those, they can bring up not only sites of past hostile action but also photos and background on local leaders -- some to see and others to avoid -- videos of hostile and safe places, and reports from previous patrols..
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The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism
Enormous consequences in store as the idea of renunciation of terrorism takes hold.
... Fadl’s fax confirmed rumors that imprisoned leaders of Al Jihad were part of a trend in which former terrorists renounced violence. His defection posed a terrible threat to the radical Islamists, because he directly challenged their authority. “There is a form of obedience that is greater than the obedience accorded to any leader, namely, obedience to God and His Messenger,” Fadl wrote, claiming that hundreds of Egyptian jihadists from various factions had endorsed his position. [snip]
Although the debate between Fadl and Zawahiri was esoteric and bitterly personal, its ramifications for the West were potentially enormous. Other Islamist organizations had gone through violent phases before deciding that such actions led to a dead end. Was this happening to Al Jihad? Could it happen even to Al Qaeda?
[again: contrary to media know-nothings, time is not on the side of extremists - provided they don't acquire WMD...]
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One Step Closer . . .
Since Iran’s nuclear program was exposed in August 2002, Tehran has protested its innocence and claimed its nuclear program has only civilian purposes. The IAEA has just produced its latest report and it is not expressing confidence in Iran’s version of the facts. The IAEA pressing Iran on a number of findings about clandestine military activities–a diagram for an underground testing arrangement, the testing of explosive bridgewire detonators normally used for nuclear weapons, and documents about modifying the Iranian Shahab-3 missile...
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Europe Shall Bleed, Once Again
Civilized peoples’ idea of the “other” is the exact opposite of that of Muslims. All over Europe, for one, people have been singing the praises of multiculturalism; the idea that everybody should bend over backwards to accommodate the different in society. However, the different in this case are the hordes of invasive Muslims, with their rigid medieval ideas about every aspect of private and public life.
Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother, and my cousin against the other. This is an old Muslim saying and Muslims live by this motto. To be sure the people of the "religion of peace" find the world full of “other,” to oppress and kill, both within as well as without the Islamic Ummah.
To [fundamentalist] Muslims, anyone who doesn’t toe the line of Islam, as each sect defines it, is the “other” and fair game as kafir (blasphemous; unbeliever in Allah). The “other” covers a broad spectrum: the six billion or so people of the world who are not Muslims, including the Jews and Christians who are considered Dhimmis. Every one of the numerous sects and sub-sects of Islam consider every other sect and sub-sect as “other” to be punished and even eliminated... [snip]
Here are some of the statistics:
Marseilles – 25% (200,000 of 800,000)
Malmö - ~25% (67,000 of 270,000
Amsterdam – 24% (180,000 of 750,000)
Stockholm – 20% (>155,000 of 771,038)
Brussels - ~20% (some say 33%)
Moscow - 16-20% (2 million of 10-12 million)
London – 17% (1.3 million of 7.5 million)
Luton - 14.6% (26,963)
Birmingham 14.3% (139,771)
The Hague - 14.2% (67,896 of 475,580)
Utrecht - 13.2% (38,300 of 289,000)
Rotterdam – 13% (80,000 of 600,000)
Copenhagen - 12.6% (63,000 of 500,000)
Leicester – 11% (>30,000 of 280,000)
Aarhus - ~10%
Zaan district (Netherlands) - 8.8 percent
Paris - 7.38% (155,000 of 2.1 million)
Antwerp- 6.7% (>30,000 of >450,000)
Hamburg - 6.4% (>110,000 of 1.73 million)
Berlin - 5.9% (~200,000 of 3.40 million)
In the West, an unholy coalition of mentally-deranged suicidal-liberals; together with self-selling Islamic apologists; are doing their level best to assist the Islamists in the destruction of the existing order of freedom and liberty. [snip] Many affluent Europeans who see the handwriting on the wall are packing and moving to North America, Australia, and other seemingly safe lands...
[this is the perennial blindness of the West - Recommended > ]
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Tutu asks Hamas to halt rocket fire
Gaza City - Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu urged a senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip overnight to put an end to rocket attacks by militant groups against Israel. Archbishop Tutu, who leads a UN fact-finding mission to Hamas-run Gaza, also said he was moved to tears by the ''unacceptable'' situation in the Palestinian territory that is under a tight Israeli blockade[?]. (Snip) The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town was in Gaza on a UN fact-finding mission into the killing of 19 Palestinian civilians in a 2006 Israeli artillery attack.
[ 'asks' Hamas to stop the daily firing of rockets at civilians? -- Correction: Israel isn't blockading Gaza, but defending it's own borders from suicide TRUCKS loaded with TONS of explosives; Gaza is free to import all the assistance it chooses from Egypt -- if their fellow Arabs chose to help them, but they decline: there wouldn't be a "unacceptable situation" for the UN to complain about if the vast, rich, Arab nations pooled resources to help their 'brothers'. Q: when is there going to be a UN 'fact finding mission' into Palestinians' daily assault on Israel? UNsalvagable - worse than useless - this is how the situation has festered for over 70 years...]
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UN’s IPCC preying on people’s ignorance
In previous parts of this series (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), I identified the deliberate process by which climate science was hijacked to establish a political agenda of undermining developed industrialized nations.
Maurice Strong and then others used UN agencies to control the science and the politics by proving the byproduct of those nation’s industries, specifically CO2, was causing catastrophic global warming and climate change. The urgent need throughout was not to understand climate but to find a clear human signal in the scientific data.
While the political and propaganda campaigns were successful, the science continued to prove defiant. But that wasn’t a concern for the cabal functioning through the IPCC because they knew the public didn’t understand the science. Now the exploitation of lack of knowledge could proceed...
[ DAVE T.: you wanted a 'concise-comprehensive' (cute) primer on global warming, this serves nicely in total (i.e., other 7 parts linked at bottom of article cover the full gambit of the issue. Recommended > ]
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Putin Cuts Taxes To Boost Oil Industry
Russia’s government took its first steps on Monday towards $4bn of tax cuts to boost investment in the oil industry. Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, told a cabinet session the proposed cuts to the mineral extraction tax would be fast-tracked for parliamentary review this week in order to increase oil production and boost refining. [snip]
Industry executives have blamed Russia’s tax regime for putting the brakes on investment just as fields in western Siberia start to peter out and additional funds are needed to tap more remote regions.
Mr Weafer said a second phase of tax cuts toadjust for inflation and the rouble’s appreciation was in the pipeline and could free up as much as $20bn for the industry, while a further $5bn to $10bn could come from changes to export tariffs.
Analysts said the further cuts were being discussed by the government and the oil lobby and could be forwarded to parliament in late June, in time to amend next year’s budget.
With oil prices at record levels of up to $130, Russia’s government could afford to give money back to the oil industry, Mr Weafer said. An average oil price of $110 per barrel this year would, he estimated, give the government $60bn to $70bn more than the revenues it was currently projecting.
[everyone the world over - but us]
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DANGEROUS TRADE GAMES
By killing "fast track" procedures that guarantee a yes-or-no vote on trade agreements within 90 days, Democratic lawmakers in Washington have destroyed the credibility of the United States as a reliable trading partner, says C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. [snip]
• The United States has been effectively removed from any significant international trade negotiations for the foreseeable future.Peterson Institute studies show that the U.S. economy is $1 trillion per year richer as a result of trade liberalization, and that America would gain another $500 billion per year if the world could move to totally free trade.
• Current and former chief trade officials of three of the world's largest trading entities have indicated that, since the House action, the U.S. has lost all credibility.
The European Union, and the large and dynamic economies of Asia, will now strike trade compacts among themselves that discriminate against America rather than attempt deals with her. The United States will lose billions of dollars worth of exports and the associated high-paying jobs -- just at a time when improvements in our trade balance, fortified by continuing growth abroad and a highly competitive dollar, are cushioning our slowdown.
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'Sharing' Social Security Numbers w/ 'Undocumented Workers'
But if you're the Web editor for MSNBC.com, stolen Social Security numbers are merely "shared" with "undocumented workers" stuck in a web of "federal employment laws."
From the subheadline for the front page tease to the May 27 edition of "Red Tape Chronicles" (see screencap above at right):
Millions of Americans find themselves sharing Social Security identies with others, mostly undocumented workers looking to get around federal employment laws.Of course, you're lucky if just one person is "sharing" your Social Security Number (SSN). MSNBC.com blogger Bob Sullivan noted one Chicago woman who had 37 other people fraudulently claiming her number. Yet at no point in his 33-paragraph post did Sullivan describe the claiming of other people's SSNs as "fraud." What's more [you knew it was coming], Sullivan turned to an "immigration rights advocate" who painted the illegal immigrant fraudsters themselves as victims: [...]
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All Wet: P.C. in the heartland.
It’s springtime, and political correctness is blooming in Iowa. It takes the form of new Core Curriculum “standards” proposed by the Iowa Department of Education which misinform and manipulate kids. Standard course requirements for schools are not intrinsically bad... (Snip) A more egregious example is Application B on the same page, which instructs students to use what they’ve been taught “and other research, [to] write a letter to your legislator arguing against the sale of DDT to Third World countries when it is banned in the U.S.”
[not arguing the student's position pro or con, but the school's predetermined stance. how does 'indoctrination' not apply?]
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Little Annie to rescue, in a big way
LAKE OSWEGO -- Pam Fischer usually wags a finger and says "hush" when her little dachshund, Annie, starts barking. But now, she's glad her 91/2-pound friend has such a big mouth.
Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, police responded to a complaint about a barking dog waking residents in the Lake Grove neighborhood. Sgt. John Brent expected to find a giant, frothing canine. Instead, he was confronted by a very small, very agitated dachshund that was so aggressive it blocked Brent's patrol car.
At first Brent, who heads Lake Oswego's police canine unit, tried to catch Annie -- formally named Annabelle -- but that only made things worse. Not only did the dog keep barking with unwavering ferocity, she wouldn't let Brent pass and stopped him when he tried to leave in the other direction.
That's when the officer heard a faint cry for help...
[good doggie]
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