“Hi, I’m Bob and I’m an e-mail abuser.”
“Hi, Bob.”
Those of us active on blogs and the net are over-whelmed with e-mail. Many days I get over 300 on my three addresses, as I subscribe to feeds and searches to feed my blog, and have a lot of professional and personal correspondents. Here are some tips that will help you—and those you send to—be less frustrated with e-mail. And make you a better person, or at least better liked.
Before forwarding an e-mail, try to check out if it’s legitimate. Some of the ways you can spot the hoaxes that clutter our in-boxes:
1. If it tells you to forward it to everyone, be suspicious. Virus hoaxes and political hoaxes often start out this way. And, chances are, everyone doesn’t want it! ALL CAPS WITH LOTS OF!!!!!! are another huge red flag. It’s like the cowboys firing their guns in the air and shouting to stampede the herd. Don’t be part of the herd.
2. If it tells you that something good or bad will happen to you if you forward or don’t forward, delete it. And, no, there’s no way to track e-mail forwards so someone can give you money or save a child’s life.
3. If is sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true. Duh. Conversely, if it sounds really horrible, but you haven’t seen it on any legitimate news or websites that you trust, chances are you are forwarding a lie. Which makes you part of the lie, and thus tarnishes your reputation for integrity. If you have one.
4. Does it come with a link to a reputable news or Internet site? Is it signed by a real person? If you can’t trace it, there’s a good chance you are forwarding a lie.
5. Google the title or key words. Can you find a link to a reputable site? And not just to blogs that uncritically post every e-mail they get that supports their viewpoint.
6. Remember there are a lot of people on the Internet, left and right, with the ethics of slugs, and that a talented Photoshop artist can put you in a picture with Stalin and make people think you were there. Forwarding fake copies of Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate or Palin’s bad high school report card makes you look like a slug too, and actually helps the cause you oppose by discrediting your side, just as the forgeries about George Bush that Dan Rather put on TV helped Bush in 2004.
7. Check the hoax sites like snopes.com, truthorfiction.com, urbanlegends.about.com and urbanlegensonline.com, or factchecker.org or www.politifact.com. Yes, I’ve read the e-mails saying that Snopes or FactCheck are leftwing front groups. No site is perfect, but Snopes exposed the fake Palin report cards and FactCheck just slammed a Democrat senate candidate for something said about her Republican opponent. So I keep an open mind, but find them useful.
8. Don’t be gullible. I got a report this week from a friend that quoted Russian sources about something terrible Obama was doing. Apparently none of the Republican congressmen fighting Obama, the many conservative columnists attacking him or the hundreds of bloggers hitting him had noticed, but the Russians did!
9. Never give out personal info, especially SS numbers or Credit Card numbers. Any e-mail asking for these is a Phishing scam. Period.
Here are some other tips to make you more popular.
1. When you send to a group of people, put their e-mail addresses in the BBC line. They won’t then clutter your e-mail, and you won’t be distributing your friends’ addresses around the net for Spammers or Phishers. Likewise, when you forward an e-mail, it’s only polite to highlight and delete the address of the person it came from and other e-mail addresses as well if the sender(s) didn’t follow the BCC courtesy0 rule. It makes your message easier to read (thus more likely to be read), and is the polite thing to do. It also means people sending flaming e-mails back to you don’t hit everyone.
2.I get those patriotic/military e-mails that say, “I’m not breaking this one if I have to forward it 1,000 times.” Forwarding anything 1,000 times makes you an idiot, period, though the threshold for feeble-minded is much lower. If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it. Most of us are seeing things like this dozens of times from different sources. Yes, we all forget and forward things more than once, but don’t do it dilibertly.
3. Likewise, see if something has a date when first forwarded. If it looks like it’s been forwarded a lot of times, there’s a good chance your friends have seen it several times and will groan when your e-mail hits their box. You may be at the far e-end of the e-mail chain.
4. The friends I really appreciate are finding new stuff on news sites and opinion sites like American Thinker, and forwarding to me. Even if I already saw it myself, or got it from another correspondent, at least it’s new. (Hat tip to Del, Larry W, Ron P and Dave H who send me several new things to feed my blog every day.) Then there are the folks who are at the end of the food chain, who only seem to get stuff that’s been out on the net for weeks, months or years. Yes, there are some friends whose e-mails I just delete, because I know with 99% certainty I’ve seen it before.
5. Don’t send links to videos or articles without telling something about them. I and most of your friends have limited time. Before I invest the time to open a video, I want to know if I’ve seen it, if it’s something new, and if it’s something I’m interested in. Some days I have time for looking at funny or cute videos, some days not. If you tell me nothing, I assume it’s not worth my time and delete it.
6. It is not necessary to comment on or say thanks for every e-mail you get. That only leads to clutter.
Below is an article I wrote a few years ago, that was published in a number of newsletters, on managing e-mail. It may help you control this time-eater better.
Twelve Tips to Tame the E-mail Tiger
Robert A. Hall, CAE
When you picked it up, it was a cute little kitten, fun, friendly, and no trouble. Now it’s grown into a tiger, devouring large chucks of your day, clawing you from time to time, and hard to control.
It’s the E-mail Tiger. Remember when technology was going to save us time? Add that to, “The Check’s in the Mail” as one of the great lies.
Yes, E-mail is a wonderful tool. So is a chainsaw. Both require careful handling. Below are twelve tips for turning e-mail from a bad master into a good servant.
1. Remember that e-mail creates a trail and a record. It can be traced back to you. It can be forwarded by the recipient, accidentally or maliciously. Because of the ease of copying and forwarding, it’s much more likely than a letter to be seen by eyes it was not intended for. If you wouldn’t put a thought into a letter, don’t put it in e-mail. Think, “Would I be comfortable if this e-mail message was passed around my next board or staff meeting?” If the answer is no, think twice. “E-slander” is as actionable as any other kind.
2. Establish separate business and personal e-mail addresses. Especially, try to keep your business address from your joke-sending friends. It’s too easy for that off-color or ethnic joke, which you didn’t originate and maybe didn’t even like, to slip into the business system if it’s on your work computer. Almost all jokes offend someone, or can be used by folks who want to appear to have been offended. Keep the personal at home. You may also wish to create different screen names for web surfing, as “spammers” harvest e-mail addresses from visited websites.
3. Remember that e-mail can be edited. The e-mail you send saying, “My boss is a great guy” can be changed to “My boss is a fat Twinkie” and forwarded. There’s not much you can do about a sociopath who totally changes your message or creates a new one over your name, except to try to catch up with the lie. But much more common is the taking of key remarks out of context and responding to them. The recipient may not think that this is wrong, and often it’s not. But quoting only part of an e-mail message, especially in a dispute, can’t help but put a “spin” on the context. Is there something in the message that, if quoted out of context and responded to, would do harm? Think a third time.
4. Use the “Reply” and “Reply all” buttons carefully. Is your response something that everyone on the list should see? Hit “Reply All,” as this will save the recipient the trouble of forwarding it, and eliminate the danger of selective forwarding.
Conversely, is this a reply just to the sender, which will only be clutter to the other recipients? Hit “Reply.” More importantly, is your reply confidential? Hit “Reply.” Or, worse, is it insulting to someone on the list? See tip number one! Always check the “To” list on the message before you hit “Send.” Someday that habit will save you embarrassment—or perhaps your job.
5. Make a hard copy, when needed. E-mail on your computer will eventually be deleted, and will certainly become hard to find in the clutter. I once had a staff member who printed and filed every e-mail message. She was a hard worker in many other unproductive ways as well. But paper copies of some e-mail messages should be in your files. Copy messages such as instructions to do something that might be controversial, your response to hot political issues, or notes of praise for your personnel file. Almost every week I find myself searching for, and often not finding, an e-mail message from a few weeks or months back. Save paper copies of those that really matter.
6. Create folders. Don’t let your incoming messages pile up in your in-box. Create perhaps one folder for board members’ messages, one for items to be permanently saved, one for staff messages, one for each of a few special topics or programs (such as a political issue), and one for general mail. Also create a “personal” box, for those personal messages that slip through, despite your compartmentalized social and professional addresses. Clean this file out regularly. Leave only current messages still requiring answers or action in your in-box. Delete those immediately that you know you’ll not need, and drag the rest to the proper folder. You wouldn’t leave every piece of paper that came in for a year piled on your desk, would you?
7. Clean out the folders. Except for the “Save Permanently” file, I try to clean out all messages over six months old once a month. Yes, I’ve wished I had messages I deleted. But it also means I can find the more current ones a lot faster. (Thank goodness for the “Find” feature in Outlook, or I’d never locate older messages.)
8. Respond promptly. People expect faster replies to e-mail messages than to letters or even phone calls. If you can’t get them the info or take the action they want right away, let then know you are working on it. Use the “auto-reply” feature when you are going to be out of the office for more than a day. And check your business e-mail more than once a day, but don’t drive yourself nuts interrupting your other work every time “you’ve got mail” dings.
9. Put an automatic signature on every e-mail message you send. It’s a mark of courtesy and courage to sign your correspondence. It also helps people who get a forwarded message to know from whom it came. If I signed my messages “Bob,” someone down the line might, just possibly, know another “Bob.”
A signature also lets you put your mission statement, conference dates or other note on the bottom of your messages. At home, I’ve created several signatures with pithy quotes after my contact info.
10. Create a letterhead in your word processing program. That allows you to send professional-looking letters as attachments, with your scanned-in signature as well. It’s a great convenience.
11. Think about the subject line. For something not very important, I add “FYI” before the subject. I also use “PLEASE RESPOND” and “CONFIDENTIAL” after typing in the subjects, to alert my recipients to what I need from them.
12. Those guys in Nigeria? They don’t really have THIRTY TWO MILLION US DOLLARS in TRAPPED FUNDS they want to share with you.
*****
Robert A. Hall, MEd, CAE, has been an association executive since 1982. Prior to entering the profession, he served five terms in the Massachusetts state senate.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Political Digest June 2, 2010
I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with them. I have to say all this to give some of my critics the benefit of the doubt, assuming they are thick, rather than deliberately taking things the wrong way.
Feel Good Story of the Day
Al-Qaeda No. 3 Yazid reported killed by U.S. drone
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060100466.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
Ackmed, alert the Virgins! Excerpt: Al-Qaeda's third-ranking operative, an Egyptian who was a founding member of the terrorist network and a key conduit to Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Pakistan, according to a statement Monday from al-Qaeda that U.S. intelligence officials believe is accurate. A U.S. official said there is "strong reason" to believe that Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, known as Sheik Saeed al-Masri, apparently was killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt within the past two weeks.
Obama administration moves to distance itself from BP on oil spill response
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/31/AR2010053103511.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
What’s Holder going to do? Move the spill to NYC? Excerpt: Struggling to convey command of the worsening Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Obama administration is taking steps to distance itself from BP and is dispatching Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to the Gulf Coast to meet with federal and state prosecutors. The Holder trip could signal that the environmental calamity might become the subject of a criminal investigation.
Court: Suspects must say they want to be silent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060101378.html?hpid=topnews
Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants' rights "upside down." A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said in a 5-4 decision that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
The electability argument and the California Senate race
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/electability-and-the-californi.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: One week from the Republican primary fight for the right take on California Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), a fight over electability has broken out. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, who has run twice unsuccessfully for Senate seized on a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California poll that showed him leading Boxer by seven -- while former HP executive Carly Fiorina (R) trailed the Democratic incumbent by six. "I can win if I have the resources to communicate in these final 9 days," Campbell wrote in a blog post aimed at narrowing the self-funding Fiorina's financial edge. "If I don't, we will not win -- and Boxer will breathe a huge sigh of relief." Fiorina's campaign quickly struck back with a memo to reporters arguing that it is Campbell, not their candidate, who would jeopardize Republican chances against Boxer.
The Realities Behind The Immigration Debate
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19401&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Worth reading, though unlikely to happen. Excerpt: Most of the debate on illegal immigration involves wishful thinking. The reality is that only four policies can significantly reduce illegal immigration, says Jeffrey Miron, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.
When Will China Join the Also Rans?
http://whatpaulgregoryisthinkingabout.blogspot.com/2010/03/when-will-china-join-also-rans.html
Excerpt: We better foresee small than big changes. Transitory fads and group think divert us from recognizing obvious signs. In the 1930s, we -- mired in the Great Depression -- were taken in by “heroic” successes of Stalin’s five year plans. In the 1950s, we were alarmed by Sputnik and Nikita Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” boasts. In the 1960s, we dispatched congressional delegations to learn from Germany’s consensus economy and France’s Planification. The 1980s saw the glorification of Japan’s unerring industrial policy and its lifetime labor contracts. In each case, the model which we worried would bury us or admired returned to earth. The Soviet Union is gone after an extended “period of stagnation.” Congress had to form special committees to explain why so few saw this coming. Germany and France are plagued by stagnant growth and high unemployment. Japan has experienced economic stagnation for more than two decades and sees no end in sight. We now admire the Chinese model. We are told that its technocratic monopoly party makes rational decisions that guide it unscathed through storms of financial crisis and recession. Unlike the clumsy west, it knows how to build roads, whole new cities and stage Olympics – no dithering around with messy democratic decision making. We are now recycling calculations of when our rival will overtake us – only this time round it is China and not Russia.
Our Unsustainable Debt
America is on the verge of financial disaster.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/our-unsustainable-debt
Have I mentioned that a collapse is coming? Excerpt: America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade. While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009 America’s public debt reached $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP, the highest it has been in 50 years. In 2010 the debt will cross the 60 percent threshold, a level at which many economists believe a country is putting itself in financial peril. And the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Figure 1 compares the CBO’s long-term public debt projections from 2010 with long-term projections calculated in 2007. Three years ago, the CBO projected that the debt held by the public would not surpass 60 percent until 2023. What’s more, with the impending entitlement crisis requiring more future borrowing, the national debt could grow faster than the economy. In 2020, if current trends continue, the country will owe more than $20 trillion, or 85 percent of GDP. There are six reasons why these deficits matter. First, debt is very expensive. The more we borrow, the higher the cost of borrowing. By 2020 the federal government will spend a projected $900 billion each year just to pay interest on our debt. That’s more than what the U.S. spends right now on two wars, plus the Departments of Defense, Education, Energy, and Homeland Security combined.
Regulators’ Budget Rising
http://www.gwu.edu/~regstudies/20100518_Dudley_Warren_Regulators_Budget.pdf
Excerpt: The “Regulators’ Budget” is the portion of the fiscal budget devoted to developing and enforcing federal regulations. While these on-budget costs of regulation represent a small fraction of the full burden of regulations to society (and do not provide information on regulations’ benefits) the data presented in the report offer useful insights into the growth and composition of regulation over the last fifty years, from 1960 to the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2011. The President’s budget request calls for fiscal regulatory expenditures of over $59 billion in 2011, and a staff of almost 284,000. The allocation of regulatory outlays among the different departments and agencies reflects continued national concerns about homeland security, housing and financial markets, and corporate governance. The requested Regulators’ Budget of $59.4 billion in 2011 is 4.1 percent larger in real terms than appropriated outlays of $56.3 billion in 2010. Appropriated outlays in FY 2010 were 8.9 percent higher than in 2009.1 Over the last decade, between 2000 and 2010, annual budget outlays for regulatory activities increased 75.5 percent in real terms, for a real dollar increase of $21.7 billion. While the growth in the Regulators’ Budget was larger in percentage terms during the 1960s and 1970s, the growth in dollar terms over the last ten years is more than double that of any previous decade.
Government: The Next Bubble to Burst
http://www.aei.org/article/102080
Excerpt: The Bank of England recently warned that the U.S. is on the road to the same fiscal failure as Greece, and the Obama administration's insistence on massive public spending and increasing deficits is the reason. At this rate, the U.S. government will be the next economic bubble to burst. We've seen similar downturns: the information technology bubble in 2000, housing in 2007 and Wall Street in 2008. If unchecked, America's government bubble will depress our economy with higher interest rates and defaulting state and local governments. Federal spending alone this year accounts for 25% of our nation's gross domestic product. If you add state and local spending, the number is closer to 50%. No economy can thrive when nearly half of all economic output is directed by politicians rather than entrepreneurs and small businesses. After big government spending, government employee unions pose a serious threat to America's fiscal health. Over the past 30 years, union membership has declined significantly, from 23% of all workers in 1980 to about 12% today. But the percentage of union members working for government has soared: Over 50% of all union workers in the U.S. are employed by the government compared with only 17% in 1980.
Five Ways to Keep America From Turning Into Greece
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/06/01/five_ways_to_keep_america_from_turning_into_greece
The problem is that fixing the problem will be very politically painful, so politicians of both parties are likely to keep kicking the can down the road until it becomes unfixable. Then comes the collapse. My motto is: “Vote Republican. They are ruining the country, but at a slower rate. Excerpt: "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher Guess what, folks? "Eventually" is here for Greece and it may soon be for Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy as well. So, when does "eventually" come for us? Last week, congressman Mike Pence told me that unless something changes, "eventually" may only be a decade away, Does that sound like grim news? Well, it may be optimistic. Last week in a teleconference, Senator Tom Coburn told us he thinks it may only take four years for us to end up in the same situation as Greece. If the United States can't finance its debt, the government would be unable to pay its bills; we could see runaway inflation, a worldwide economic crisis, a new "Great Depression" -- and unlike Greece, there is no nation or collection of nations big enough to bail us out. Compounding the problem is the fact that while both political parties have helped get us into this situation, the Democratic Party is run by people every bit as blind to reality as the Greeks who are protesting attempts by their government to control spending. Their country is broke and living on the charity of other nations and their response is to throw Molotov cocktails and riot. Expect to see the same attitude from Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Barack Obama, the SEIU, MoveOn, the Daily Kos, and the rest of the gang that's driving this country's future off a cliff right now.
The European Union Will Come Apart
http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2010/05/31/the_european_union_will_come_apart
The collapse of the EC can be predicted by anyone who can do math, using the entitlement and birthrate numbers. But we won’t have long to laugh. Excerpt: The inevitable outcome of the Greek financial crisis - soon to be followed by comparable events in Portugal, Spain and probably Italy - will be the collapse of the Euro and a sharp halt in the momentum for European integration. Ultimately, there is only one nation in Europe that investors trust - Germany. And they will only support the Euro and treat the southern European nations (now called Club Med) as credit-worthy if Germany backs up the debt. The current $1 trillion fund is a palliative that will not satisfy the market once the larger obligations of Spain ($1.6 trillion) and Italy ($2 trillion) come into question. Germany will have to buy the southern European debts and assume national responsibility for their repayment. But while her leaders may be willing to do it, I doubt that her voters will acquiesce. German nationalism - the force that dominated Europe for one hundred years - will not take kindly to paying the bills for their profligate neighbors to the south.
The Real Public Service—Classic Thomas Sowell
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/06/01/the_real_public_service
Excerpt: Every year about this time, big-government liberals stand up in front of college commencement crowds across the country and urge the graduates to do the noblest thing possible-- become big-government liberals. That isn't how they phrase it, of course. Commencement speakers express great reverence for "public service," as distinguished from narrow private "greed." There is usually not the slightest sign of embarrassment at this self-serving celebration of the kinds of careers they have chosen-- over and above the careers of others who merely provide us with the food we eat, the homes we live in, the clothes we wear and the medical care that saves our health and our lives. What I would like to see is someone with the guts to tell those students: Do you want to be of some use and service to your fellow human beings? Then let your fellow human beings tell you what they want-- not with words, but by putting their money where their mouth is.
Time to Change Course in the Middle East
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/01/morning-bell-time-to-change-course-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: Early Monday morning in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, helicopters lowered Israeli Commandos onto a Turkish-flagged ferry carrying 600 passengers determined to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Beset by activists armed with poles, knives and guns, the Israelis defended themselves, and the resulting violence left at least nine dead. Hours later, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report claiming that Iran now has enough nuclear fuel, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons. These two stories are not unrelated. And they ought to serve as a signal to the Obama administration that it is time to change its approach to the region.
Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist
http://israelseen.com/2009/12/30/pilar-rahola-is-a-spanish-politician-journalist-and-activist/
Why? Because the left always supports the enemies of freedom. Excerpt: Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam? Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan? Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel? Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism? Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist? Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism? An finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.
Ankara ambushes Israel at sea
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/turkish_blood_bath_Jean7yjj5Salz75brRSsMJ
Europe may wring its hands and condemn Israel, but I guarantee, Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union are as dead as the terrorists on the boat. Excerpt: Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel. It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East. Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians. And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated. The lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, just happened to have an al-Jazeera TV crew on board to film Israel's response. Ironically, the early videos would've been counterproductive, had world leaders and journalists not been programmed to blame everything on Israel. Those videos showed Israeli commandos rappelling onto the ship with both hands on the rope (making it rather hard to use a weapon), yet activists claimed the Israelis opened fire as they descended. Purely by coincidence, dozens of "peace activists" waited with sharpened iron bars, clubs, slingshots -- and rifles. Of course, the nine dead in the melee were all Israel's victims.
Supply of weapons discovered on board the Mavi Marmara
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/05/3106.htm
Excerpt: After IDF soldiers succeeded in stopping the attack against them by passengers on board the Mavi Marmara ship, the ship was brought to the Ashdod port and arrived in the late hours of Monday evening (May 31). Flotilla participants were brought off the ship and taken for questioning. Once the activists left the ship, security forces began a thorough search and found a supply of weapons, including knives, Molotov cocktails, detonators, wood and metal clubs, slingshots and rocks, large hammers and sharp metal objects. In addition, gas masks were found, pointing to the prior intention of the ship’s passengers to use violence against IDF soldiers who would then be forced to use riot dispersal methods. The Mavi Marmara was the last among the flotilla ships to arrive on Monday to Ashdod. Beforehand, the other five ships participating in the flotilla arrived. Unlike the Mavi Marmara, passengers on board the other ships cooperated with the security forces. The removal of passengers from the ships was secured by Israeli Police special forces, headed by the Yamam Special Police Unit, in addition to Military Policemen and naval officers who assisted in escorting the passengers to the security examination site set up in the Ashdod port. (The leftists saying, “End the Gaza blockade” want a war in Gaza. If the blockade is ended, the Muslims will send in rockets to bombard Israeli schools, etc. Israel will have to send in its forces to stop the attacks, and civilians will be killed. But the left will wash its hands of the blood, as it always does.)
'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush
http://is.gd/cxGgl
Excerpt: As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse. Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’. And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem. The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not. And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today -- and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.
Round up the usual traitors
Son of Brewster man aboard ship raided by Israeli commandos
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/son_of_brewster.html
Of course the Videos don’t show the Israelis shooting as they landed, but the big lie is still a tactic of choice by the enemies of freedom. Excerpt: A Brewster resident whose son was on board one of a flotilla of ships raided by the Israeli Navy today said his son does not appear to be among the nine people believed killed and that messages posted on a Facebook page indicate the attack was unprovoked, contrary to Israeli statements on the raid. Joseph Bangert said he believed his son, Fiachra Ó Luain (left), was "awake and alert" when Israeli helicopters and boats approached the flotilla, which had pro-Palestinian activists aboard and was attempting to bring aid to the Gaza strip. Bangert said Israeli commandos stormed the lead ship and began firing without provocation. "They evidently just hit the deck shooting," Bangert said. "All they had on that vessel were wheelchairs, medical equipment, and construction supplies. I'm very, very upset."
And who is Joseph Bangert?
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=26415
Excerpt: A John Kerry veterans' organizer lived in Hanoi for five years in the 1990s, testified that American troops skinned and crucified Vietnamese in the 1960s and joined the presidential candidate at an infamous 1971 meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War executive committee in which the assassination of U.S. senators was debated, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reports. Joe Bangert, a Massachusetts English teacher and longtime friend of the junior senator, has campaigned with Kerry in several states and serves the campaign as a veterans' organizer. (The survival of father and son is to be regretted by free peoples.)
Flotillas and Falsehoods: Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZWI3Y2E0YTE3ZDlkY2JhYzdhNzQ5NmRkMWM5YmMyMmM=
Resent it? They are proud to be on the anti-freedom team. Excerpt: The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to “wipe Israel off the map” marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called “international community.” It was the propaganda arm that staged the “Freedom Flotilla.” But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged “death” of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the “massacre” at Jenin, and the “war crimes” in Gaza. In each and every case, the “news” of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations such as Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.
Live Oak Prosecutor Fired for Speaking to Tea Party
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/live-oak-prosecutor-fired-for
Will the ACLU be on the case? Excerpt: An assistant state attorney in Live Oak was fired Monday after she refused to stop speaking to tea party rallies and other groups, her boss said. Prosecutor KrisAnne Hall asked a federal judge Friday for a ruling that would have allowed her to keep speaking and prevented her boss, State Attorney Skip Jarvis, from following through on threats to fire her if she didn’t stop. Courtroom arguments on that request hadn’t been scheduled by Monday afternoon, when Jarvis said he fired Hall shortly after receiving a copy of her federal complaint.
GOP sees a way to revive old debate
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37990.html
To be fair, if our cancer survival rates dropped to what they are in Britain, it would greatly reduce healthcare costs and the dead folk’s carbon footprints. Excerpt: President Barack Obama spent the last year insisting he doesn’t want to turn the American health care system into a carbon copy of the government-run British system. But Obama’s pick to run Medicaid and Medicare — Donald Berwick — is a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed “love” of the British system. Berwick has called Britain’s National Health Service “one of the greatest health care institutions in human history” and “a global treasure.” He once said it sets an “example” for the United States to follow. And his decade-long efforts to improve the NHS were so well-regarded that Queen Elizabeth granted him an honorary knighthood in 2005.
Obama’s Potemkin Presidency
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2010/05/29/obamas-potemkin-presidency/
Excerpt: It is becoming increasingly clear that neither Obama nor his administration nor the Democrat Congress are up to the task of governance. Yesterday we chronicled the shouting match between former MMS director Liz Birnbaum and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that resulted in her being fired shortly before she was scheduled to testify before a Congressional subcommittee headed by the corrupt Jim Moran on the lackadaisical efforts of the administration to ameliorate the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The ineffectualness of the administration was on display for all to see this week. Over a month after the spill began, Obama was able to take time away from his busy schedule of back to back vacations to visit the Gulf. He was there for about three hours — which would equate to about nine holes of golf — gave an insipid speech and left. And then there was this: Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn’t look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national news crews following him.
Bam's border bungle
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/bam_border_bungle_t6n3P5zrfeMeIZaBqPSwCJ
Excerpt: I fully agree with Ralph Peters' perception that this administration's strategy remains stagnant ("Security Charade," PostOpinion, May 28). At best, President Obama offers virtually useless gestures, as he has with regard to directing trained warriors to be stationed behind desks. There is a war on our southern border, and it's not with a neighboring nation but with criminals who have murdered both Mexicans and Americans. It will only escalate should we hide behind the rhetoric of political correctness. Laws need to be honored, because without the rule of law, society erodes.
Al and Tipper Gore to separate after 40 years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_re_us/us_gore_separation
Signs of Global Cooling. She’s be fine, with her half of the $100M Al made off his GW scam.
Obama blasts BP: 'We will bring those responsible to justice'
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/100809-obama-my-solemn-pledge-is-to-bring-these-people-to-justice-
Difference between the oil spill and Katrina is there is a scapegoat available.
No Time For Snorin’ In The Sonoran
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2010/06/01/no-time-for-snorin%E2%80%99-in-the-sonoran/
Excerpt: Gunfights in the area between police and lawbreakers are increasing in frequency, cops there agree. It’s largely involving criminals from south of the border. The Sinaloa Cartel and Zeta Cartel are fed up with their drug shipments being confiscated by gringo cops, and some informants say cartel leaders have told the drug mules that if they allow the dope to be snagged by Yank LEOs, they can expect reprisals upon their loved ones and death for themselves. This has upped the likelihood of homicidal armed resistance by drug runners stopped by our police. Cartel-sponsored dopers are also believed to have been behind the recent murder of an Arizona rancher who tipped the local law to one of their drug caches. In Pinal County, Arizona recently, a deputy sheriff came under heavy weapons fire when he interdicted some drug smugglers. He was severely wounded, but returned a barrage of gunfire that sent his assailants running, one or more of them leaving blood trails. The officer has survived and is expected to recover. No word on his assailants, who may already have given their all to feed desert wildlife on one side or the other of the US/Mexican border. Border Patrol Agent Matthew Boyd, a firearms instructor for his agency, told me that each agent has an AR-platform rifle and an ample supply of Winchester 62 grain softpoints, and a Remington 870 pump shotgun well supplied with 12-gauge buckshot and slugs, to back up their issue HK P2000 .40 caliber pistols. I saw USBP personnel wearing four spare pistol magazines, two being the mandatory minimum. (guy has an impressive resume. If half true, I’d be very polite to him. http://www.ayoob.com/AboutMas.html)
Treasury and CSIRO both have breached trust
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/treasury-and-csiro-both-have-breached-trust/story-e6frg9if-1225872732507
Excerpt: The Treasury building in Canberra houses the greatest collection of economic analytical and policymaking brainpower in Australia. The same, in the fields of science, goes for the CSIRO in Melbourne. Together they should form the rock-solid foundation of policymaking in Australia. We need to be able to trust Treasury to advise the government based on the best possible economic analysis. Arguably its most important task is to deploy its economic heft against usually well-intentioned "good ideas at the time", or failing that to at least limit their damage. From the CSIRO we need, very simply, good science. As its own strategic plan puts it: "We are committed to scientific excellence and working ethically and with integrity in everything we do." Both have, in their separate ways, breached that trust. This is a very serious matter for the governance of Australia. If we can't trust Treasury to give us rational economics and we can't trust the CSIRO to give us good, or even just honest, science -- as in both cases they have generally done for a good three-quarters of a century or more -- we are adrift in a sea of irrationalism….. But as one of the peskier of them, Tom Quirk -- our version of Canada's even peskier Stephen McIntyre -- discovered, there was a very curious omission in one of the CSIRO graphs. It showed the rise and rise of concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and its fellow greenhouse gas methane. It was an almost perfect replica of the infamous (Michael) Mann Hockey Stick. After being virtually stable for 900 years, concentrations of both CO2 and methane went almost vertical through the 20th century. But as the eagle-eyed Quirk noticed and wrote about on Quadrant Online, methane was plotted only up to 1990, while the plots for CO2 continued to 2000.Why so, when the CSIRO measures methane concentrations and has data up to last year? Did the answer lie in the inconvenient truth that methane concentrations have plateaued since the mid-1990s? Yet here is the CSIRO, the organisation dedicated to scientific truth, pretending -- even stating -- that they're still going up, Climategate style. This is bad enough, but just as with Treasury, real policies are built on this sort of "analysis". The first version of the so-called carbon pollution reduction scheme included farming to address the methane question. But as Quirk has shown in a peer-reviewed paper, atmospheric methane is driven by a combination of volcanos, El Ninos and pipeline (mostly dodgy old Soviet) leakage. ("When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all." Yes. Are political words or real science to be master?)
The Smallest President
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_smallest_president_1.html
Excerpt: Identity politics is where grievance-mongering and class resentment intersect with entitlement agitation and representational profiling. Those who use the currency of identity politics appeal to the ideals of justice and fair distribution of resources and outcomes. But in reality they prey on those who are underprivileged and dependent, making claims of dispossession against those who have enjoyed success and independence derived from their own sweat, equity, and competence. Leaders who devote all of their energy and emotional capital to identity politics instead of creating a competent, skills-based organization soon discover that when critical decisions need to be made and highly skilled resources need to be mobilized, nobody is around who knows how to do it. Such leaders, eventually tuned out and abandoned by even their former acolytes, become irrelevant, easily overwhelmed by events and rivals, taking their organizations -- even a nation -- down with them. Obama's presidency is finished because identity trumped competency. And without competency, his big government is dysfunctional and destructive. So what's the alternative? Simple. The ideology of limited government. Why? Because limited government is the antithesis of identity politics. The ideology of limited government wouldn't need to rely on overextended organization competencies to manage vast and complex bureaucracies because those bureaucracies would be unnecessary and wouldn't exist. Without identity politics, people who actually know what they're doing could occupy key jobs.
U.N. Says Iran Has Fuel for 2 Nuclear Weapons
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01nuke.html?hp
Need three for NYC, DC and Tel Aviv. Excerpt: In their last report before the United Nations Security Council votes on sanctions against Iran, international nuclear inspectors declared Monday that Iran has now produced a stockpile of nuclear fuel that experts say would be enough, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons. The report, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a branch of the United Nations, appears likely to bolster the Obama administration’s case for a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran and further diminish its interest in a deal, recently revived by Turkey and Brazil, in which Iran would send a portion of its nuclear stockpile out of the country. When Iran tentatively agreed eight months ago to ship some of its nuclear material out of the country, the White House said the deal would temporarily deprive Iran of enough fuel to make even a single weapon. But Iran delayed for months, and the figures contained in the inspectors’ report on Monday indicated that even if Iran now shipped the agreed-upon amount of nuclear material out of the country, it would retain enough for a single weapon, undercutting the American rationale for the deal.
Reading is not a strength for the Robin Carnahan campaign
http://www.redstate.com/bs/2010/05/30/reading-is-not-a-strength-for-the-robin-carnahan-campaign/
Excerpt: This past week, the campaign for Democrat Senate candidate Robin Carnahan released a hit video criticizing Republican Senate candidate Rep. Roy Blunt about his response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The video claims that “BP’s Bill for Cleanup is only $75M” and that supposedly, Blunt is OK with that. One problem: current law does NOT cap cleanup costs at $75M. It clearly states that the violator (BP, in this case), must pay the ENTIRE cost for spill cleanup, plus $75M. BP has already committed to reimbursing any legitimate claims for financial impact, and has even appointed an independent mediator to intervene for disputed claims. You would think that Carnahan’s campaign consultants would have at least read the law before creating their hit vid - but you would be wrong. As the KC Star points out, the wording is crystal clear:
Authorities identify man taken off Mexico-bound plane
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20100531/mexico-plane-immigration-100531/
Probably going to Mexico because of their large Muslim population. Or maybe their long, open border. Excerpt: A man considered too dangerous to fly over the United States is facing deportation from Canada after his transatlantic flight was forced to land in Montreal. Abdirahman Ali Gaal was identified on Monday as the suspect arrested by a team of police officers when they boarded a flight from Paris to Mexico City that made a sudden stop at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport over the weekend. Gaal was the subject of an outstanding warrant, according to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
What Our Media Taught Me
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/what-our-media-taught-me/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: I’ve been over here in Europe for about ten days, getting a different perspective on our illustrious media and how it is handling the various Obama “troubles.” Perspective and distance are sometime valuable. I used to think, given the enormous size of the bureaucracy and the tragic nature of the human condition, that from time to time disasters would overwhelm us — and there would be not much the president of the United States could do about them. But after Katrina, the media taught me that neither the mayor nor the governor nor the Army Corps of Engineers nor the people of New Orleans were at fault for either the vulnerability to the chance of a catastrophic Katrina or the response after its arrival. No, you see, the commander in chief is the ultimate arbiter of successful or unsuccessful reactions to all such disasters. OK, so be it. So while I am not inclined to blame Barack Obama for the scandalous federal laxity in the now polluted Gulf, the media long ago taught me that I most certainly should. I don’t play golf. Never have swung a club. But in the spirit of live and let live, I also never cared much for deconstructing the game in terms of culture and sociology. The media, however, in 2002, taught met that I should in the case of George Bush — that his swing and even his use of a golf cart reflected a certain class disdain for us, or at least a frat-boy frivolity at a time of two ongoing wars. So while I would like to give our present president a pass on his obsession with playing golf at a frequency far in excess to poor George Bush’s, I cannot. I am conditioned now to grasp that Obama’s golf craze is a sort of self-indulgence reflective of a disturbing narcissist who entertains a shocking indifference toward the rest of us. Press conferences were always painful to watch. Finger in the wind pundits try to one up their commander in chief, who, in turn, is always one slip of the tongue away from global scandal. But the press during the Bush administration also taught me that we need these feeding frenzies frequently, and must demand that our executives prove to be both eloquent and veracious. So while I don’t much care whether Obama stutters off the teleprompter, or idiotically says things like “corpse-man,” or misleads us on matters of fact, or even grossly says things such as the beheading of Daniel Pearl “captured the world’s imagination,” the media lectured me that I very much should care — namely, that President Obama almost never gives a press conference, and on the rare occasions when he does, we know why he was wise not to have done so in the past.
White House can't get its Sestak story straight
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/White-House-can_t-get-its-Sestak-story-straight-95277519.html
But Sestak won’t rock the boat with the truth now. Excerpt: Did you hear the one about how President Obama got Slick Willie Clinton to offer second-term Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak an unpaid appointment to an obscure White House advisory panel in return for dropping his primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter? Obama and his Chicago boys are still guffawing over how all the chumps in the media reported that one with a straight face. Hey, it's a just another reason why running a gangster government is nothing but laughs for the Obama crew in the White House. The reality is that nobody outside the White House gang and its congressional confederates is laughing about this one. It is simply illegal to offer a job to anybody in return for doing something designed to influence a congressional election, so the White House story fails both the legal and the giggle test. In the first place, nobody can seriously believe that a wizened con man like Bill Clinton would agree to offer such rotten bait to a deep-water fish like Sestak, a former three-star admiral. When the job offer was originally made to Sestak in February, it was done because he clearly represented a serious threat to Specter's bid for the Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial primary less than a year after turncoat Arlen bolted the Republican Party. It is ludicrous to believe that the prospect of a presidential appointment to an unpaid federal advisory panel of little stature and less consequence would persuade Sestak to give up his dream of moving up from the House to the Senate. Clinton must have known this beforehand.
Obama Makes Little Headway Among Arabic-Speaking Muslims
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTRmMTZkNmU4YmU2MDA0OGMwMWQ0ZmEzMzdmNzRlMzU=
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, we will cut off all your heads until you convert to the religion of peace or pay the jizya like good dhimmis! Excerpt: Gallup’s results show something of a wash: Obama does distinctly better than George W. Bush in Mauritania (going from 44 to 69 percent) and Egypt (6 to 19 percent). He improves on Bush just over the margin of error in Algeria (going from 25 to 30 percent). He improves on Bush within the margin of error in the Palestinian Territories (from 13 to 16 percent). The two are tied in Lebanon (at 25 percent). And Obama does worse than Bush in Iraq (going from 35 to 30 percent). Also noteworthy is that Obama’s current standing has declined among all six of the populations from what it was in mid-2009. The smallest drop (3 percent) was in Iraq and the largest (18 percent) in Egypt. Comments: (1) These polls register a highly unimpressive showing for someone who placed so much emphasis on improving U.S. standing among Muslims. (2) The graph of Arabic-speakers’ attitudes toward Obama differs from that of Americans’ views: The former went up and then down, while the latter went down and then flattened out. That said, both at present show a downward trend
Venezuela's Chavez backing leftist guerrillas in Mexico
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/Venezuela_s-Chavez-backing-leftist-guerrillas-in-Mexico-95280089.html
Coming soon to an open border near you. Excerpt: A leftist guerrilla movement responsible for many kidnappings and attacks inside Mexico is secretly receiving funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, U.S. and Mexican intelligence officials told The Washington Examiner. The group, called the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), is "a terrorist organization bent on destabilizing Mexico. ... Splinters of the group are also adding to the problem," said a Mexican official who requested anonymity. The group, which announced its existence in 1996, claimed responsibility for the 2007 bombings of the Mexican government's Pemex oil pipelines, along with several other bombing attempts of a bank and Sears department stores in cities throughout Mexico. "Chavez has been funding groups like these in Mexico and throughout Latin America," said a U.S. official with knowledge of the group and its operations. "These groups are nothing more than terrorist organizations and members have connected to other narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, creating a very dangerous matrix."
Good Article: An Ode to Citizen Journalists
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/an_ode_to_citizen_journalists.html
Excerpt: Why are newspapers published? Simple question, right? But there is one group of (theoretically) educated people who, when asked, find themselves at a loss. I know what I'm talking about: During my thirty years in journalism, I've interviewed dozens of candidates who were hoping to be hired as a reporter or editor. I asked each one: Why are newspapers published? In thirty years, no recent graduate of a journalism school has known the answer. This isn't a trick question. Candidates coming in from other fields mostly knew the answer, though they sometimes hedged their bets, trying to guess what I wanted to hear. But those who had been formally, laboriously studying the industry were simply baffled.
Sarah Palin: Is It Any Wonder Why We Call Them “Lame”?
http://palintwibe.blogspot.com/2010/06/sarah-palin-is-it-any-wonder-why-we.html
Excerpt: It may seem like a small thing, considering the state of the union and international issues of the day, but let me share some facts surrounding a most recent illustration of the untrustworthiness of America’s mainstream media. Yesterday, Todd and I spent our Memorial Day evening exchanging emails with NBC in regards to the interview they conducted this morning with our new neighbor. As you’ll recall, the “journalist” Joe McGinniss moved all the way from Massachusetts to Wasilla – literally right next door to our home – after tracking us down in various forums this past year, so that he could be close to his “subject matter” while he writes his book about me. When NBC asked to interview me for this story, I politely declined. NBC then asked for a statement from us and promised to run it as a full screen graphic during their interview with McGinniss. We were glad to provide a statement and appreciated NBC’s promise to run it. Todd and I both crafted the statement very carefully because our new neighbor has taken to accusing us of “inciting hatred” – a charge which we obviously take very seriously. We knew that he would make more accusations like this, and we felt very strongly that such comments should not go unanswered. So, we emailed NBC the following statements: “McGinniss has followed us for some time now, from showing up on our doorstep last winter, bidding over $60,000 for a military charity auction dinner with me, writing the hit pieces, attending at least one Outside book event, etc. He has a right to pursue his subject, I suppose, and certainly has a right to live wherever he wants, but my family also has a right to expect privacy, and hopefully to enjoy peace this summer. Good fences do make for good neighbors. The fence is now up, and I hope that we can enjoy peace. The media sensationalizes the recent McGinniss’ tactic so the public will tune in to whatever the latest episode is, always with ratings in mind, and that’s unfortunate.” - Sarah Palin
But He Still Has the AP: If Obama's lost Frank Rich, he's lost Middle America.
https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/128f54f473572766
Excerpt: Remember "accountability journalism"? As we noted in 2007, this was an Associated Press innovation designed "to report whether government officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the promises they make." It started in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, and was exemplified by stories like these:
A Hole in the Fence of Immigration Reform
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/a_hole_in_the_fence_of_immigra.html
Excerpt: Graglia opined that the framers of the 14th Amendment "could not have considered the question of granting birthright citizenship to children of illegal aliens because ... there were no illegal aliens in 1868 ... because there were no restrictions on immigration. It is hard to believe, moreover, that if they had considered it, they would have intended to provide that violators of United States immigration law be given the award of American citizenship for their children[.]" [George] Will highlighted some breathtaking statistics: "[M]ore than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally." Graglia added: "Nearly half of illegal-immigrant households are couples with children, 73% of which have an American-citizen child. Illegal immigrant parents also benefit ... from the welfare and other benefits to which their citizen child is entitled."
The Terror Finance Flotilla
http://schanzer.pundicity.com/7539/the-terror-finance-flotilla
Excerpt: The Turkish organizers of the Gaza Strip-bound flotilla that was boarded this morning by Israeli commandos knew well in advance that their vessels would never reach Israeli waters. That's because the organizers belong to a nonprofit that was banned by the Israeli government in July 2008 for its ties to terrorism finance. The Turkish IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi in Turkish) was founded in 1992, and reportedly popped up on the CIA's radar in 1996 for its radical Islamist leanings. Like many other Islamist charities, the IHH has a record of providing relief to areas where disaster has struck in the Muslim world.
Illegal to be illegal?
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/06/illegal-to-be-illegal-shameful.html
Shameful. Trying to make criminals into criminals.
Feel Good Story of the Day
Al-Qaeda No. 3 Yazid reported killed by U.S. drone
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060100466.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
Ackmed, alert the Virgins! Excerpt: Al-Qaeda's third-ranking operative, an Egyptian who was a founding member of the terrorist network and a key conduit to Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Pakistan, according to a statement Monday from al-Qaeda that U.S. intelligence officials believe is accurate. A U.S. official said there is "strong reason" to believe that Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, known as Sheik Saeed al-Masri, apparently was killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt within the past two weeks.
Obama administration moves to distance itself from BP on oil spill response
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/31/AR2010053103511.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
What’s Holder going to do? Move the spill to NYC? Excerpt: Struggling to convey command of the worsening Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Obama administration is taking steps to distance itself from BP and is dispatching Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to the Gulf Coast to meet with federal and state prosecutors. The Holder trip could signal that the environmental calamity might become the subject of a criminal investigation.
Court: Suspects must say they want to be silent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060101378.html?hpid=topnews
Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants' rights "upside down." A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said in a 5-4 decision that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
The electability argument and the California Senate race
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/electability-and-the-californi.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: One week from the Republican primary fight for the right take on California Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), a fight over electability has broken out. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, who has run twice unsuccessfully for Senate seized on a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California poll that showed him leading Boxer by seven -- while former HP executive Carly Fiorina (R) trailed the Democratic incumbent by six. "I can win if I have the resources to communicate in these final 9 days," Campbell wrote in a blog post aimed at narrowing the self-funding Fiorina's financial edge. "If I don't, we will not win -- and Boxer will breathe a huge sigh of relief." Fiorina's campaign quickly struck back with a memo to reporters arguing that it is Campbell, not their candidate, who would jeopardize Republican chances against Boxer.
The Realities Behind The Immigration Debate
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19401&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Worth reading, though unlikely to happen. Excerpt: Most of the debate on illegal immigration involves wishful thinking. The reality is that only four policies can significantly reduce illegal immigration, says Jeffrey Miron, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.
When Will China Join the Also Rans?
http://whatpaulgregoryisthinkingabout.blogspot.com/2010/03/when-will-china-join-also-rans.html
Excerpt: We better foresee small than big changes. Transitory fads and group think divert us from recognizing obvious signs. In the 1930s, we -- mired in the Great Depression -- were taken in by “heroic” successes of Stalin’s five year plans. In the 1950s, we were alarmed by Sputnik and Nikita Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” boasts. In the 1960s, we dispatched congressional delegations to learn from Germany’s consensus economy and France’s Planification. The 1980s saw the glorification of Japan’s unerring industrial policy and its lifetime labor contracts. In each case, the model which we worried would bury us or admired returned to earth. The Soviet Union is gone after an extended “period of stagnation.” Congress had to form special committees to explain why so few saw this coming. Germany and France are plagued by stagnant growth and high unemployment. Japan has experienced economic stagnation for more than two decades and sees no end in sight. We now admire the Chinese model. We are told that its technocratic monopoly party makes rational decisions that guide it unscathed through storms of financial crisis and recession. Unlike the clumsy west, it knows how to build roads, whole new cities and stage Olympics – no dithering around with messy democratic decision making. We are now recycling calculations of when our rival will overtake us – only this time round it is China and not Russia.
Our Unsustainable Debt
America is on the verge of financial disaster.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/our-unsustainable-debt
Have I mentioned that a collapse is coming? Excerpt: America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade. While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009 America’s public debt reached $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP, the highest it has been in 50 years. In 2010 the debt will cross the 60 percent threshold, a level at which many economists believe a country is putting itself in financial peril. And the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Figure 1 compares the CBO’s long-term public debt projections from 2010 with long-term projections calculated in 2007. Three years ago, the CBO projected that the debt held by the public would not surpass 60 percent until 2023. What’s more, with the impending entitlement crisis requiring more future borrowing, the national debt could grow faster than the economy. In 2020, if current trends continue, the country will owe more than $20 trillion, or 85 percent of GDP. There are six reasons why these deficits matter. First, debt is very expensive. The more we borrow, the higher the cost of borrowing. By 2020 the federal government will spend a projected $900 billion each year just to pay interest on our debt. That’s more than what the U.S. spends right now on two wars, plus the Departments of Defense, Education, Energy, and Homeland Security combined.
Regulators’ Budget Rising
http://www.gwu.edu/~regstudies/20100518_Dudley_Warren_Regulators_Budget.pdf
Excerpt: The “Regulators’ Budget” is the portion of the fiscal budget devoted to developing and enforcing federal regulations. While these on-budget costs of regulation represent a small fraction of the full burden of regulations to society (and do not provide information on regulations’ benefits) the data presented in the report offer useful insights into the growth and composition of regulation over the last fifty years, from 1960 to the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2011. The President’s budget request calls for fiscal regulatory expenditures of over $59 billion in 2011, and a staff of almost 284,000. The allocation of regulatory outlays among the different departments and agencies reflects continued national concerns about homeland security, housing and financial markets, and corporate governance. The requested Regulators’ Budget of $59.4 billion in 2011 is 4.1 percent larger in real terms than appropriated outlays of $56.3 billion in 2010. Appropriated outlays in FY 2010 were 8.9 percent higher than in 2009.1 Over the last decade, between 2000 and 2010, annual budget outlays for regulatory activities increased 75.5 percent in real terms, for a real dollar increase of $21.7 billion. While the growth in the Regulators’ Budget was larger in percentage terms during the 1960s and 1970s, the growth in dollar terms over the last ten years is more than double that of any previous decade.
Government: The Next Bubble to Burst
http://www.aei.org/article/102080
Excerpt: The Bank of England recently warned that the U.S. is on the road to the same fiscal failure as Greece, and the Obama administration's insistence on massive public spending and increasing deficits is the reason. At this rate, the U.S. government will be the next economic bubble to burst. We've seen similar downturns: the information technology bubble in 2000, housing in 2007 and Wall Street in 2008. If unchecked, America's government bubble will depress our economy with higher interest rates and defaulting state and local governments. Federal spending alone this year accounts for 25% of our nation's gross domestic product. If you add state and local spending, the number is closer to 50%. No economy can thrive when nearly half of all economic output is directed by politicians rather than entrepreneurs and small businesses. After big government spending, government employee unions pose a serious threat to America's fiscal health. Over the past 30 years, union membership has declined significantly, from 23% of all workers in 1980 to about 12% today. But the percentage of union members working for government has soared: Over 50% of all union workers in the U.S. are employed by the government compared with only 17% in 1980.
Five Ways to Keep America From Turning Into Greece
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/06/01/five_ways_to_keep_america_from_turning_into_greece
The problem is that fixing the problem will be very politically painful, so politicians of both parties are likely to keep kicking the can down the road until it becomes unfixable. Then comes the collapse. My motto is: “Vote Republican. They are ruining the country, but at a slower rate. Excerpt: "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher Guess what, folks? "Eventually" is here for Greece and it may soon be for Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy as well. So, when does "eventually" come for us? Last week, congressman Mike Pence told me that unless something changes, "eventually" may only be a decade away, Does that sound like grim news? Well, it may be optimistic. Last week in a teleconference, Senator Tom Coburn told us he thinks it may only take four years for us to end up in the same situation as Greece. If the United States can't finance its debt, the government would be unable to pay its bills; we could see runaway inflation, a worldwide economic crisis, a new "Great Depression" -- and unlike Greece, there is no nation or collection of nations big enough to bail us out. Compounding the problem is the fact that while both political parties have helped get us into this situation, the Democratic Party is run by people every bit as blind to reality as the Greeks who are protesting attempts by their government to control spending. Their country is broke and living on the charity of other nations and their response is to throw Molotov cocktails and riot. Expect to see the same attitude from Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Barack Obama, the SEIU, MoveOn, the Daily Kos, and the rest of the gang that's driving this country's future off a cliff right now.
The European Union Will Come Apart
http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2010/05/31/the_european_union_will_come_apart
The collapse of the EC can be predicted by anyone who can do math, using the entitlement and birthrate numbers. But we won’t have long to laugh. Excerpt: The inevitable outcome of the Greek financial crisis - soon to be followed by comparable events in Portugal, Spain and probably Italy - will be the collapse of the Euro and a sharp halt in the momentum for European integration. Ultimately, there is only one nation in Europe that investors trust - Germany. And they will only support the Euro and treat the southern European nations (now called Club Med) as credit-worthy if Germany backs up the debt. The current $1 trillion fund is a palliative that will not satisfy the market once the larger obligations of Spain ($1.6 trillion) and Italy ($2 trillion) come into question. Germany will have to buy the southern European debts and assume national responsibility for their repayment. But while her leaders may be willing to do it, I doubt that her voters will acquiesce. German nationalism - the force that dominated Europe for one hundred years - will not take kindly to paying the bills for their profligate neighbors to the south.
The Real Public Service—Classic Thomas Sowell
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/06/01/the_real_public_service
Excerpt: Every year about this time, big-government liberals stand up in front of college commencement crowds across the country and urge the graduates to do the noblest thing possible-- become big-government liberals. That isn't how they phrase it, of course. Commencement speakers express great reverence for "public service," as distinguished from narrow private "greed." There is usually not the slightest sign of embarrassment at this self-serving celebration of the kinds of careers they have chosen-- over and above the careers of others who merely provide us with the food we eat, the homes we live in, the clothes we wear and the medical care that saves our health and our lives. What I would like to see is someone with the guts to tell those students: Do you want to be of some use and service to your fellow human beings? Then let your fellow human beings tell you what they want-- not with words, but by putting their money where their mouth is.
Time to Change Course in the Middle East
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/01/morning-bell-time-to-change-course-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: Early Monday morning in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, helicopters lowered Israeli Commandos onto a Turkish-flagged ferry carrying 600 passengers determined to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Beset by activists armed with poles, knives and guns, the Israelis defended themselves, and the resulting violence left at least nine dead. Hours later, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report claiming that Iran now has enough nuclear fuel, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons. These two stories are not unrelated. And they ought to serve as a signal to the Obama administration that it is time to change its approach to the region.
Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist
http://israelseen.com/2009/12/30/pilar-rahola-is-a-spanish-politician-journalist-and-activist/
Why? Because the left always supports the enemies of freedom. Excerpt: Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam? Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan? Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel? Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism? Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist? Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism? An finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.
Ankara ambushes Israel at sea
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/turkish_blood_bath_Jean7yjj5Salz75brRSsMJ
Europe may wring its hands and condemn Israel, but I guarantee, Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union are as dead as the terrorists on the boat. Excerpt: Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel. It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East. Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians. And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated. The lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, just happened to have an al-Jazeera TV crew on board to film Israel's response. Ironically, the early videos would've been counterproductive, had world leaders and journalists not been programmed to blame everything on Israel. Those videos showed Israeli commandos rappelling onto the ship with both hands on the rope (making it rather hard to use a weapon), yet activists claimed the Israelis opened fire as they descended. Purely by coincidence, dozens of "peace activists" waited with sharpened iron bars, clubs, slingshots -- and rifles. Of course, the nine dead in the melee were all Israel's victims.
Supply of weapons discovered on board the Mavi Marmara
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/05/3106.htm
Excerpt: After IDF soldiers succeeded in stopping the attack against them by passengers on board the Mavi Marmara ship, the ship was brought to the Ashdod port and arrived in the late hours of Monday evening (May 31). Flotilla participants were brought off the ship and taken for questioning. Once the activists left the ship, security forces began a thorough search and found a supply of weapons, including knives, Molotov cocktails, detonators, wood and metal clubs, slingshots and rocks, large hammers and sharp metal objects. In addition, gas masks were found, pointing to the prior intention of the ship’s passengers to use violence against IDF soldiers who would then be forced to use riot dispersal methods. The Mavi Marmara was the last among the flotilla ships to arrive on Monday to Ashdod. Beforehand, the other five ships participating in the flotilla arrived. Unlike the Mavi Marmara, passengers on board the other ships cooperated with the security forces. The removal of passengers from the ships was secured by Israeli Police special forces, headed by the Yamam Special Police Unit, in addition to Military Policemen and naval officers who assisted in escorting the passengers to the security examination site set up in the Ashdod port. (The leftists saying, “End the Gaza blockade” want a war in Gaza. If the blockade is ended, the Muslims will send in rockets to bombard Israeli schools, etc. Israel will have to send in its forces to stop the attacks, and civilians will be killed. But the left will wash its hands of the blood, as it always does.)
'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush
http://is.gd/cxGgl
Excerpt: As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse. Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’. And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem. The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not. And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today -- and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.
Round up the usual traitors
Son of Brewster man aboard ship raided by Israeli commandos
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/son_of_brewster.html
Of course the Videos don’t show the Israelis shooting as they landed, but the big lie is still a tactic of choice by the enemies of freedom. Excerpt: A Brewster resident whose son was on board one of a flotilla of ships raided by the Israeli Navy today said his son does not appear to be among the nine people believed killed and that messages posted on a Facebook page indicate the attack was unprovoked, contrary to Israeli statements on the raid. Joseph Bangert said he believed his son, Fiachra Ó Luain (left), was "awake and alert" when Israeli helicopters and boats approached the flotilla, which had pro-Palestinian activists aboard and was attempting to bring aid to the Gaza strip. Bangert said Israeli commandos stormed the lead ship and began firing without provocation. "They evidently just hit the deck shooting," Bangert said. "All they had on that vessel were wheelchairs, medical equipment, and construction supplies. I'm very, very upset."
And who is Joseph Bangert?
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=26415
Excerpt: A John Kerry veterans' organizer lived in Hanoi for five years in the 1990s, testified that American troops skinned and crucified Vietnamese in the 1960s and joined the presidential candidate at an infamous 1971 meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War executive committee in which the assassination of U.S. senators was debated, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reports. Joe Bangert, a Massachusetts English teacher and longtime friend of the junior senator, has campaigned with Kerry in several states and serves the campaign as a veterans' organizer. (The survival of father and son is to be regretted by free peoples.)
Flotillas and Falsehoods: Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZWI3Y2E0YTE3ZDlkY2JhYzdhNzQ5NmRkMWM5YmMyMmM=
Resent it? They are proud to be on the anti-freedom team. Excerpt: The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to “wipe Israel off the map” marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called “international community.” It was the propaganda arm that staged the “Freedom Flotilla.” But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged “death” of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the “massacre” at Jenin, and the “war crimes” in Gaza. In each and every case, the “news” of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations such as Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.
Live Oak Prosecutor Fired for Speaking to Tea Party
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/live-oak-prosecutor-fired-for
Will the ACLU be on the case? Excerpt: An assistant state attorney in Live Oak was fired Monday after she refused to stop speaking to tea party rallies and other groups, her boss said. Prosecutor KrisAnne Hall asked a federal judge Friday for a ruling that would have allowed her to keep speaking and prevented her boss, State Attorney Skip Jarvis, from following through on threats to fire her if she didn’t stop. Courtroom arguments on that request hadn’t been scheduled by Monday afternoon, when Jarvis said he fired Hall shortly after receiving a copy of her federal complaint.
GOP sees a way to revive old debate
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37990.html
To be fair, if our cancer survival rates dropped to what they are in Britain, it would greatly reduce healthcare costs and the dead folk’s carbon footprints. Excerpt: President Barack Obama spent the last year insisting he doesn’t want to turn the American health care system into a carbon copy of the government-run British system. But Obama’s pick to run Medicaid and Medicare — Donald Berwick — is a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed “love” of the British system. Berwick has called Britain’s National Health Service “one of the greatest health care institutions in human history” and “a global treasure.” He once said it sets an “example” for the United States to follow. And his decade-long efforts to improve the NHS were so well-regarded that Queen Elizabeth granted him an honorary knighthood in 2005.
Obama’s Potemkin Presidency
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2010/05/29/obamas-potemkin-presidency/
Excerpt: It is becoming increasingly clear that neither Obama nor his administration nor the Democrat Congress are up to the task of governance. Yesterday we chronicled the shouting match between former MMS director Liz Birnbaum and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that resulted in her being fired shortly before she was scheduled to testify before a Congressional subcommittee headed by the corrupt Jim Moran on the lackadaisical efforts of the administration to ameliorate the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The ineffectualness of the administration was on display for all to see this week. Over a month after the spill began, Obama was able to take time away from his busy schedule of back to back vacations to visit the Gulf. He was there for about three hours — which would equate to about nine holes of golf — gave an insipid speech and left. And then there was this: Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn’t look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national news crews following him.
Bam's border bungle
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/bam_border_bungle_t6n3P5zrfeMeIZaBqPSwCJ
Excerpt: I fully agree with Ralph Peters' perception that this administration's strategy remains stagnant ("Security Charade," PostOpinion, May 28). At best, President Obama offers virtually useless gestures, as he has with regard to directing trained warriors to be stationed behind desks. There is a war on our southern border, and it's not with a neighboring nation but with criminals who have murdered both Mexicans and Americans. It will only escalate should we hide behind the rhetoric of political correctness. Laws need to be honored, because without the rule of law, society erodes.
Al and Tipper Gore to separate after 40 years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_re_us/us_gore_separation
Signs of Global Cooling. She’s be fine, with her half of the $100M Al made off his GW scam.
Obama blasts BP: 'We will bring those responsible to justice'
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/100809-obama-my-solemn-pledge-is-to-bring-these-people-to-justice-
Difference between the oil spill and Katrina is there is a scapegoat available.
No Time For Snorin’ In The Sonoran
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2010/06/01/no-time-for-snorin%E2%80%99-in-the-sonoran/
Excerpt: Gunfights in the area between police and lawbreakers are increasing in frequency, cops there agree. It’s largely involving criminals from south of the border. The Sinaloa Cartel and Zeta Cartel are fed up with their drug shipments being confiscated by gringo cops, and some informants say cartel leaders have told the drug mules that if they allow the dope to be snagged by Yank LEOs, they can expect reprisals upon their loved ones and death for themselves. This has upped the likelihood of homicidal armed resistance by drug runners stopped by our police. Cartel-sponsored dopers are also believed to have been behind the recent murder of an Arizona rancher who tipped the local law to one of their drug caches. In Pinal County, Arizona recently, a deputy sheriff came under heavy weapons fire when he interdicted some drug smugglers. He was severely wounded, but returned a barrage of gunfire that sent his assailants running, one or more of them leaving blood trails. The officer has survived and is expected to recover. No word on his assailants, who may already have given their all to feed desert wildlife on one side or the other of the US/Mexican border. Border Patrol Agent Matthew Boyd, a firearms instructor for his agency, told me that each agent has an AR-platform rifle and an ample supply of Winchester 62 grain softpoints, and a Remington 870 pump shotgun well supplied with 12-gauge buckshot and slugs, to back up their issue HK P2000 .40 caliber pistols. I saw USBP personnel wearing four spare pistol magazines, two being the mandatory minimum. (guy has an impressive resume. If half true, I’d be very polite to him. http://www.ayoob.com/AboutMas.html)
Treasury and CSIRO both have breached trust
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/treasury-and-csiro-both-have-breached-trust/story-e6frg9if-1225872732507
Excerpt: The Treasury building in Canberra houses the greatest collection of economic analytical and policymaking brainpower in Australia. The same, in the fields of science, goes for the CSIRO in Melbourne. Together they should form the rock-solid foundation of policymaking in Australia. We need to be able to trust Treasury to advise the government based on the best possible economic analysis. Arguably its most important task is to deploy its economic heft against usually well-intentioned "good ideas at the time", or failing that to at least limit their damage. From the CSIRO we need, very simply, good science. As its own strategic plan puts it: "We are committed to scientific excellence and working ethically and with integrity in everything we do." Both have, in their separate ways, breached that trust. This is a very serious matter for the governance of Australia. If we can't trust Treasury to give us rational economics and we can't trust the CSIRO to give us good, or even just honest, science -- as in both cases they have generally done for a good three-quarters of a century or more -- we are adrift in a sea of irrationalism….. But as one of the peskier of them, Tom Quirk -- our version of Canada's even peskier Stephen McIntyre -- discovered, there was a very curious omission in one of the CSIRO graphs. It showed the rise and rise of concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and its fellow greenhouse gas methane. It was an almost perfect replica of the infamous (Michael) Mann Hockey Stick. After being virtually stable for 900 years, concentrations of both CO2 and methane went almost vertical through the 20th century. But as the eagle-eyed Quirk noticed and wrote about on Quadrant Online, methane was plotted only up to 1990, while the plots for CO2 continued to 2000.Why so, when the CSIRO measures methane concentrations and has data up to last year? Did the answer lie in the inconvenient truth that methane concentrations have plateaued since the mid-1990s? Yet here is the CSIRO, the organisation dedicated to scientific truth, pretending -- even stating -- that they're still going up, Climategate style. This is bad enough, but just as with Treasury, real policies are built on this sort of "analysis". The first version of the so-called carbon pollution reduction scheme included farming to address the methane question. But as Quirk has shown in a peer-reviewed paper, atmospheric methane is driven by a combination of volcanos, El Ninos and pipeline (mostly dodgy old Soviet) leakage. ("When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all." Yes. Are political words or real science to be master?)
The Smallest President
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_smallest_president_1.html
Excerpt: Identity politics is where grievance-mongering and class resentment intersect with entitlement agitation and representational profiling. Those who use the currency of identity politics appeal to the ideals of justice and fair distribution of resources and outcomes. But in reality they prey on those who are underprivileged and dependent, making claims of dispossession against those who have enjoyed success and independence derived from their own sweat, equity, and competence. Leaders who devote all of their energy and emotional capital to identity politics instead of creating a competent, skills-based organization soon discover that when critical decisions need to be made and highly skilled resources need to be mobilized, nobody is around who knows how to do it. Such leaders, eventually tuned out and abandoned by even their former acolytes, become irrelevant, easily overwhelmed by events and rivals, taking their organizations -- even a nation -- down with them. Obama's presidency is finished because identity trumped competency. And without competency, his big government is dysfunctional and destructive. So what's the alternative? Simple. The ideology of limited government. Why? Because limited government is the antithesis of identity politics. The ideology of limited government wouldn't need to rely on overextended organization competencies to manage vast and complex bureaucracies because those bureaucracies would be unnecessary and wouldn't exist. Without identity politics, people who actually know what they're doing could occupy key jobs.
U.N. Says Iran Has Fuel for 2 Nuclear Weapons
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01nuke.html?hp
Need three for NYC, DC and Tel Aviv. Excerpt: In their last report before the United Nations Security Council votes on sanctions against Iran, international nuclear inspectors declared Monday that Iran has now produced a stockpile of nuclear fuel that experts say would be enough, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons. The report, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a branch of the United Nations, appears likely to bolster the Obama administration’s case for a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran and further diminish its interest in a deal, recently revived by Turkey and Brazil, in which Iran would send a portion of its nuclear stockpile out of the country. When Iran tentatively agreed eight months ago to ship some of its nuclear material out of the country, the White House said the deal would temporarily deprive Iran of enough fuel to make even a single weapon. But Iran delayed for months, and the figures contained in the inspectors’ report on Monday indicated that even if Iran now shipped the agreed-upon amount of nuclear material out of the country, it would retain enough for a single weapon, undercutting the American rationale for the deal.
Reading is not a strength for the Robin Carnahan campaign
http://www.redstate.com/bs/2010/05/30/reading-is-not-a-strength-for-the-robin-carnahan-campaign/
Excerpt: This past week, the campaign for Democrat Senate candidate Robin Carnahan released a hit video criticizing Republican Senate candidate Rep. Roy Blunt about his response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The video claims that “BP’s Bill for Cleanup is only $75M” and that supposedly, Blunt is OK with that. One problem: current law does NOT cap cleanup costs at $75M. It clearly states that the violator (BP, in this case), must pay the ENTIRE cost for spill cleanup, plus $75M. BP has already committed to reimbursing any legitimate claims for financial impact, and has even appointed an independent mediator to intervene for disputed claims. You would think that Carnahan’s campaign consultants would have at least read the law before creating their hit vid - but you would be wrong. As the KC Star points out, the wording is crystal clear:
Authorities identify man taken off Mexico-bound plane
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20100531/mexico-plane-immigration-100531/
Probably going to Mexico because of their large Muslim population. Or maybe their long, open border. Excerpt: A man considered too dangerous to fly over the United States is facing deportation from Canada after his transatlantic flight was forced to land in Montreal. Abdirahman Ali Gaal was identified on Monday as the suspect arrested by a team of police officers when they boarded a flight from Paris to Mexico City that made a sudden stop at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport over the weekend. Gaal was the subject of an outstanding warrant, according to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
What Our Media Taught Me
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/what-our-media-taught-me/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: I’ve been over here in Europe for about ten days, getting a different perspective on our illustrious media and how it is handling the various Obama “troubles.” Perspective and distance are sometime valuable. I used to think, given the enormous size of the bureaucracy and the tragic nature of the human condition, that from time to time disasters would overwhelm us — and there would be not much the president of the United States could do about them. But after Katrina, the media taught me that neither the mayor nor the governor nor the Army Corps of Engineers nor the people of New Orleans were at fault for either the vulnerability to the chance of a catastrophic Katrina or the response after its arrival. No, you see, the commander in chief is the ultimate arbiter of successful or unsuccessful reactions to all such disasters. OK, so be it. So while I am not inclined to blame Barack Obama for the scandalous federal laxity in the now polluted Gulf, the media long ago taught me that I most certainly should. I don’t play golf. Never have swung a club. But in the spirit of live and let live, I also never cared much for deconstructing the game in terms of culture and sociology. The media, however, in 2002, taught met that I should in the case of George Bush — that his swing and even his use of a golf cart reflected a certain class disdain for us, or at least a frat-boy frivolity at a time of two ongoing wars. So while I would like to give our present president a pass on his obsession with playing golf at a frequency far in excess to poor George Bush’s, I cannot. I am conditioned now to grasp that Obama’s golf craze is a sort of self-indulgence reflective of a disturbing narcissist who entertains a shocking indifference toward the rest of us. Press conferences were always painful to watch. Finger in the wind pundits try to one up their commander in chief, who, in turn, is always one slip of the tongue away from global scandal. But the press during the Bush administration also taught me that we need these feeding frenzies frequently, and must demand that our executives prove to be both eloquent and veracious. So while I don’t much care whether Obama stutters off the teleprompter, or idiotically says things like “corpse-man,” or misleads us on matters of fact, or even grossly says things such as the beheading of Daniel Pearl “captured the world’s imagination,” the media lectured me that I very much should care — namely, that President Obama almost never gives a press conference, and on the rare occasions when he does, we know why he was wise not to have done so in the past.
White House can't get its Sestak story straight
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/White-House-can_t-get-its-Sestak-story-straight-95277519.html
But Sestak won’t rock the boat with the truth now. Excerpt: Did you hear the one about how President Obama got Slick Willie Clinton to offer second-term Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak an unpaid appointment to an obscure White House advisory panel in return for dropping his primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter? Obama and his Chicago boys are still guffawing over how all the chumps in the media reported that one with a straight face. Hey, it's a just another reason why running a gangster government is nothing but laughs for the Obama crew in the White House. The reality is that nobody outside the White House gang and its congressional confederates is laughing about this one. It is simply illegal to offer a job to anybody in return for doing something designed to influence a congressional election, so the White House story fails both the legal and the giggle test. In the first place, nobody can seriously believe that a wizened con man like Bill Clinton would agree to offer such rotten bait to a deep-water fish like Sestak, a former three-star admiral. When the job offer was originally made to Sestak in February, it was done because he clearly represented a serious threat to Specter's bid for the Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial primary less than a year after turncoat Arlen bolted the Republican Party. It is ludicrous to believe that the prospect of a presidential appointment to an unpaid federal advisory panel of little stature and less consequence would persuade Sestak to give up his dream of moving up from the House to the Senate. Clinton must have known this beforehand.
Obama Makes Little Headway Among Arabic-Speaking Muslims
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTRmMTZkNmU4YmU2MDA0OGMwMWQ0ZmEzMzdmNzRlMzU=
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, we will cut off all your heads until you convert to the religion of peace or pay the jizya like good dhimmis! Excerpt: Gallup’s results show something of a wash: Obama does distinctly better than George W. Bush in Mauritania (going from 44 to 69 percent) and Egypt (6 to 19 percent). He improves on Bush just over the margin of error in Algeria (going from 25 to 30 percent). He improves on Bush within the margin of error in the Palestinian Territories (from 13 to 16 percent). The two are tied in Lebanon (at 25 percent). And Obama does worse than Bush in Iraq (going from 35 to 30 percent). Also noteworthy is that Obama’s current standing has declined among all six of the populations from what it was in mid-2009. The smallest drop (3 percent) was in Iraq and the largest (18 percent) in Egypt. Comments: (1) These polls register a highly unimpressive showing for someone who placed so much emphasis on improving U.S. standing among Muslims. (2) The graph of Arabic-speakers’ attitudes toward Obama differs from that of Americans’ views: The former went up and then down, while the latter went down and then flattened out. That said, both at present show a downward trend
Venezuela's Chavez backing leftist guerrillas in Mexico
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/Venezuela_s-Chavez-backing-leftist-guerrillas-in-Mexico-95280089.html
Coming soon to an open border near you. Excerpt: A leftist guerrilla movement responsible for many kidnappings and attacks inside Mexico is secretly receiving funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, U.S. and Mexican intelligence officials told The Washington Examiner. The group, called the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), is "a terrorist organization bent on destabilizing Mexico. ... Splinters of the group are also adding to the problem," said a Mexican official who requested anonymity. The group, which announced its existence in 1996, claimed responsibility for the 2007 bombings of the Mexican government's Pemex oil pipelines, along with several other bombing attempts of a bank and Sears department stores in cities throughout Mexico. "Chavez has been funding groups like these in Mexico and throughout Latin America," said a U.S. official with knowledge of the group and its operations. "These groups are nothing more than terrorist organizations and members have connected to other narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, creating a very dangerous matrix."
Good Article: An Ode to Citizen Journalists
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/an_ode_to_citizen_journalists.html
Excerpt: Why are newspapers published? Simple question, right? But there is one group of (theoretically) educated people who, when asked, find themselves at a loss. I know what I'm talking about: During my thirty years in journalism, I've interviewed dozens of candidates who were hoping to be hired as a reporter or editor. I asked each one: Why are newspapers published? In thirty years, no recent graduate of a journalism school has known the answer. This isn't a trick question. Candidates coming in from other fields mostly knew the answer, though they sometimes hedged their bets, trying to guess what I wanted to hear. But those who had been formally, laboriously studying the industry were simply baffled.
Sarah Palin: Is It Any Wonder Why We Call Them “Lame”?
http://palintwibe.blogspot.com/2010/06/sarah-palin-is-it-any-wonder-why-we.html
Excerpt: It may seem like a small thing, considering the state of the union and international issues of the day, but let me share some facts surrounding a most recent illustration of the untrustworthiness of America’s mainstream media. Yesterday, Todd and I spent our Memorial Day evening exchanging emails with NBC in regards to the interview they conducted this morning with our new neighbor. As you’ll recall, the “journalist” Joe McGinniss moved all the way from Massachusetts to Wasilla – literally right next door to our home – after tracking us down in various forums this past year, so that he could be close to his “subject matter” while he writes his book about me. When NBC asked to interview me for this story, I politely declined. NBC then asked for a statement from us and promised to run it as a full screen graphic during their interview with McGinniss. We were glad to provide a statement and appreciated NBC’s promise to run it. Todd and I both crafted the statement very carefully because our new neighbor has taken to accusing us of “inciting hatred” – a charge which we obviously take very seriously. We knew that he would make more accusations like this, and we felt very strongly that such comments should not go unanswered. So, we emailed NBC the following statements: “McGinniss has followed us for some time now, from showing up on our doorstep last winter, bidding over $60,000 for a military charity auction dinner with me, writing the hit pieces, attending at least one Outside book event, etc. He has a right to pursue his subject, I suppose, and certainly has a right to live wherever he wants, but my family also has a right to expect privacy, and hopefully to enjoy peace this summer. Good fences do make for good neighbors. The fence is now up, and I hope that we can enjoy peace. The media sensationalizes the recent McGinniss’ tactic so the public will tune in to whatever the latest episode is, always with ratings in mind, and that’s unfortunate.” - Sarah Palin
But He Still Has the AP: If Obama's lost Frank Rich, he's lost Middle America.
https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/128f54f473572766
Excerpt: Remember "accountability journalism"? As we noted in 2007, this was an Associated Press innovation designed "to report whether government officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the promises they make." It started in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, and was exemplified by stories like these:
A Hole in the Fence of Immigration Reform
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/a_hole_in_the_fence_of_immigra.html
Excerpt: Graglia opined that the framers of the 14th Amendment "could not have considered the question of granting birthright citizenship to children of illegal aliens because ... there were no illegal aliens in 1868 ... because there were no restrictions on immigration. It is hard to believe, moreover, that if they had considered it, they would have intended to provide that violators of United States immigration law be given the award of American citizenship for their children[.]" [George] Will highlighted some breathtaking statistics: "[M]ore than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally." Graglia added: "Nearly half of illegal-immigrant households are couples with children, 73% of which have an American-citizen child. Illegal immigrant parents also benefit ... from the welfare and other benefits to which their citizen child is entitled."
The Terror Finance Flotilla
http://schanzer.pundicity.com/7539/the-terror-finance-flotilla
Excerpt: The Turkish organizers of the Gaza Strip-bound flotilla that was boarded this morning by Israeli commandos knew well in advance that their vessels would never reach Israeli waters. That's because the organizers belong to a nonprofit that was banned by the Israeli government in July 2008 for its ties to terrorism finance. The Turkish IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi in Turkish) was founded in 1992, and reportedly popped up on the CIA's radar in 1996 for its radical Islamist leanings. Like many other Islamist charities, the IHH has a record of providing relief to areas where disaster has struck in the Muslim world.
Illegal to be illegal?
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/06/illegal-to-be-illegal-shameful.html
Shameful. Trying to make criminals into criminals.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Comcast Strikes Again
We've got Comcast telephone along with TV and Internet. Got home today and my phone was blinking. So we dialed the message number. No "Push 1 for your messages." It's now offering us 2 (leave a message) or 4 (change options), or # (exit). I love monopolies. So if you left me a message today, I didn't get it.
Assume after Obama digests the auto, banking and healthcare industry, he'll want the government to take over communications. I can hardly wait to see how much worse it will get.
Assume after Obama digests the auto, banking and healthcare industry, he'll want the government to take over communications. I can hardly wait to see how much worse it will get.
Illegal to be illegal? Shameful!
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Political Digest June 1, 2010
I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Nor that I disagree with them, of course.
Going Galt: When Will Surgeons Say Enough is Enough?
http://www.vimeo.com/11378278
Worth watching. Long but powerful video by a surgeon, suggesting that there will be a backlash to ObamaCare that was not anticipated. Details concerns from the medical profession about ObamaCare.
Paperwork results in wasted work for doctors, insurers and patients
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/05/paperwork-results-wasted-work-doctors-insurers-patients.html#more-44214
Excerpt: Yet I readily admit I’m hard put to figure out what’s been done to whom. And a good part of the reason is that the insurers and the HRA do not report services or payments — mine or theirs — using the same terminology. Nor do they always reflect the terminology used on the billing forms my doctors use. I’ve got to believe that simplification would help. Other people believe the same thing. We published an article last week about a study that detailed the monetary savings that could accrue by using a standardized claim form and a single set of submission and payment rules for all health plans. The number: $7 billion. And that doesn’t count the psychic savings. Two sentences in that report stood out in my mind: “For non-Medicare payers, 12.6% of billed charges were denied on initial submission. After appeals, 81% of initial denials were eventually paid.” Think of all the wasted work implied by those numbers — for all parties in the equation.
In Afghan region, U.S. spreads the cash to fight the Taliban
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003722.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: In this patch of southern Afghanistan, the U.S. strategy to keep the Taliban at bay involves an economic stimulus. Thousands of men, wielding hoes and standing in knee-deep muck, are getting paid to clean reed-infested irrigation canals. Farmers are receiving seeds and fertilizer for a fraction of their retail cost, and many are riding around on shiny new red tractors. Over the summer, dozens of gravel roads and grain-storage facilities will be constructed -- all of it funded by the U.S. government. Pumping reconstruction dollars into war zones has long been part of the U.S. counterinsurgency playbook, but the carpet bombing of Nawa with cash has resulted in far more money getting into local hands, far more quickly, than in any other part of Afghanistan. The U.S. Agency for International Development's agriculture program aims to spend upward of $30 million within nine months in this rural district of mud-walled homes and small farms. Other U.S. initiatives aim to bring millions more dollars to the area over the next year.
New records show some lobbyists are top fundraisers for political candidates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003471.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: For more than a decade, Brian L. Wolff was the quintessential Washington insider, serving as one of Rep. Nancy Pelosi's closest aides as she rose through the House and helping to raise millions as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But the fundraising didn't stop once he left the DCCC. As a top lobbyist at the Edison Electric Institute, which represents major power companies in the climate debate, Wolff has bundled together more than $600,000 in contributions for the DCCC within the past year -- and he hopes to raise $2 million more for the committee by November. "It's my night job," Wolff said of his fundraising efforts. "It's something that's an investment for me and that's something I want to be able to help with. . . . I know the national base of the party, and they know me." Wolff is among nearly 160 registered lobbyists who have raised at least $9 million for political parties and federal candidates over the past year, according to a Washington Post analysis of records filed under new Federal Election Commission requirements.
Tea party could add to Republicans' numbers in Congress but shake up their unity http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003682.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: What we know: If any or all of the tea party candidates are elected this fall, they will join a broadened group of Republican senators. Currently holding 41 seats, the GOP is well positioned to win seats being vacated by Democrats in North Dakota, Delaware, Illinois and Indiana. Most neutral observers expect the GOP to gain at least four seats in November; eight seats is generally regarded as the ceiling. Those likely gains would seem to be good news for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.). But the prospects of Paul, Angle and other "true believers" in the Senate will almost certainly make it more difficult for McConnell to assert the rigid voting discipline that GOP strategists credit with bringing Republicans back from the brink of political extinction over the past 18 months. "It's hard to imagine, if elected, they could be 'controlled' by Mitch McConnell or anyone else," Republican strategist John Weaver said of the tea party candidates. "And perhaps that isn't a bad thing. Control and moving away from party orthodoxy on spending issues and competence is what gave impetus to the tea party movement."
Euro falls as Spain’s credit rating plunges
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?=14967
I anticipated and have been predicting the economic collapse of socialist Europe. But I didn’t anticipate it this soon, or that it would drag us into the abyss with it. Excerpt: The euro plunged and US stock markets dived last night after Spain was stripped of its top-level credit rating by a leading rating agency over concerns about its economic growth. In the latest blow to the eurozone, which is struggling to cope with the fallout from the Greek fiscal crisis, Fitch Ratings downgraded Spain’s sovereign credit rating — a measure of how easily it can meet the interest payment on its debt — by a notch from the top AAA rating to AA+. Standard & Poor’s, another ratings agency, downgraded Spain’s rating for the second time to AA last month but Moody’s, the other leading agency, has maintained the rating at AAA. Any downgrade in a sovereign credit rating will push up the interest that a country must pay on its debts. Brian Coulton, Fitch’s head of EMEA sovereign ratings, said that the process of cutting the country’s debt could slow economic growth.
What the MSM Didn’t Tell You About Holder and the Police Chiefs
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=14965
Excerpt: As if we needed one, here’s another item showing bias in the way the mainstream media covers the controversial Arizona illegal immigration law. Many major news organizations, including, MSNBC, CNN, and USA Today for example, covered a story about a group of Police Chiefs who met with A.G. Eric Holder to register their objections to the Arizona law……At first glance this all seems like a perfectly normal news story, but there was a very important piece of information left out: the meeting was arraigned by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and the police chiefs attending the meeting were members of PERF. (Holder is an “old friend of PERF, he addressed their convention in April) . In the rare cases where a news organization mentioned the PERF connection (the NPR story referenced above is the only one I could find) they neglected to mention that PERF is an organization that objects to any enforcement of immigration laws directed at the illegal alien (as opposed to an employer who hires illegals). The Forum describes itself as a “national organization of progressive police executives.”
University shields climate scientist with legal delay tactic
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23696
Excerpt: The legal ramifications from Climategate rumble on. As expected, the university accused of shielding a climate scientist from a fraud probe finally shows its legal cards. Accused by climate skeptics as apologists for scientific misconduct the University of Virginia’s (UVA) petition has been duly served on Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli. The writ is to protect discredited climate scientist, Michael Mann from a possible fraud prosecution. Naturally, the legal writ opposes Cuccinelli’s demand for disclosure of what may be important hidden climate data withheld by that once impeachable institution. But buried within the legal papers is a potentially cynical delay tactic. Filed on May 27, 2010, UVA’s attorneys make a thin case; they cite little or no legal precedents; hardly surprising when there are few, if any similar cases in the annals of Virginia’s case law.
16 killed as Israel storms Gaza aid boat
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/suddenly_chic_RFySb7KZobSLe6g2LyT8vI
Excerpt: As many as 16 people were killed today when the Israeli navy intercepted a convoy of aid ships bound for Gaza. Up to 50 were wounded. Gaza's Al-Aqsa television showed footage of Israeli commandos descending from helicopters and clashing with activists, as well as images of wounded people lying on the deck of one of the six vessels carrying supplies for the blockaded Hamas-controlled territory. Israeli Trade and Industry Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer expressed sorrow over the deaths, saying, "The images are certainly not pleasant. I can only voice regret at all the fatalities." The reports of the incident aboard the Turkish vessel set off protests in Ankara, where mobs of stone-throwing demonstrators tried to storm the Israeli Consulate.
Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100531_flotillas_and_wars_public_opinion?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100531&utm_content=readmore&elq=a929a0c5213e456cb0b9d1960952f8a5
Excerpt: On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel. A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.
PM Netanyahu Expresses Full Backing for the IDF
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=48216
Our troops must envy the support the IDF gets from their leaders. Excerpt: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Monday), 31.5.10, spoke by telephone with the relevant security ministers and officials, and was updated on the action and subsequent developments. In his discussions with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Minister Moshe Yaalon, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi and ISA Director Yuval Diskin, the Prime Minister issued security, diplomatic and information directives, reiterated his full backing for the IDF and inquired about the well-being of the wounded.
Close Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjkLUcbJWo
Excerpt: Video taken by IDF naval boat shows the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the 'Free Gaza' Flotilla, violently attacking IDF soldiers who were trying to board the ship after having sent repeated requests for the boat to change course. Large groups of passengers surrounded soldiers and beat them with metal poles and chairs, and threw one soldier over the side of the ship. Some passengers grabbed pistols from the IDF soldiers and opened fire. As a result of the attacks, seven IDF soldiers were injured, and nine of the passengers were killed. The 'Free Gaza' Flotilla had publicly insisted on their non-violent intentions, however their violent attack on the IDF soldiers was clearly premeditated. They had knives, metal rods, firebombs and other items ready to use.
Useful Idiots Condemn Israel
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/05/useful-idiots-condemn-israel.html
Excerpt: The flotilla was organized by the Islamist government in Turkey to aid Hamas with the goal of opening up shipping channels for Turkey's new friend, Iran, to ship more and better weapons as it is doing to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran is busy turning Lebanon and Syria into one large missile launching pad against Israel, and a southern base in Gaza will complete the encirclement of Israel for the coming crisis over Iran's nuclear program. The Europeans on the ships were cover, and the placement of an 18-month old child on these ships was the utmost cynical use of a human shield. If getting humanitarian supplies to Gaza really was the goal, this flotilla was not necessary. The supplies would have been off-loaded in Eqypt or Israel and then shipped in by land after being checked for hidden weapons. And that is the rub, only sea-based shipping would provide Iran with the mechanism for almost unlimited armament of Hamas. There is a limit to the quantity and size of missiles and other armaments which can be smuggled through tunnels from Egypt. That is why the sea blockade must be broken for Iran to get what it wants.
Israel to deploy nuclear-armed submarines off Iran coast
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-israel-to-deploy-nuclear-armed-submarines-off-iran-coast-1.293005
Excerpt: Israel is to deploy three submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday. According to the Times report, one submarine had been sent over Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, and in the possession of Syria and Hezbollah, could be used to hit strategic sites within Israel, such as air bases and missile launchers. Dolphin, Tekuma, and Leviathan, all German-made Dolphin class submarines of the 7th navy Flotilla, have been reported as frequenting the Gulf in the past, however, according to the Sunday Times report, this new deployment is meant to ensure a permanent naval presence near the Iranian coastline. (If dealing with a rational opponent, this could be a very smart move. The Israelis obviously want the Iranians to be aware they are present, as they could have snuck around Africa and entered the Red Sea covertly. Only problem is, Iran may not be rational. Pray this is not a miscalculation of epic proportions. -Ron P.)
U.S. to Aid South Korea With Naval Defense Plan
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/world/asia/31koreanavy.html?om_rid=Mqh-D0&om_mid=_BMA7D0B8Krq1QL&
Excerpt: The discovery of the weaknesses in South Korea caught officials in both countries off guard. As South Korea has rocketed into the ranks of the world’s top economies, it has invested billions of dollars to bolster its defenses and to help refine one of the oldest war plans in the Pentagon’s library: a joint strategy with the United States to repel and defeat a North Korean invasion. But the shallow waters where the attack occurred are patrolled only by South Korea’s navy, and South Korean officials confirmed in interviews that the sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors, revealed a gap that the American military must help address. The United States — pledged to defend its ally but stretched thin by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — would be drawn into any conflict. But it has been able to reduce its forces on the Korean Peninsula by relying on South Korea’s increased military spending. Senior Pentagon officials stress that firepower sent to the region by warplanes and warships would more than compensate for the drop in American troop levels there in the event of war. But the attack was evidence, the officials say, of how North Korea has compensated for the fact that it is so bankrupt that it can no longer train its troops or buy the technology needed to fight a conventional war. So it has instead invested heavily in stealthy, hard-to-detect technologies that can inflict significant damage, even if it could not win a sustained conflict.
Seeing a fallen soldier home: Gratitude should be foremost in American hearts and minds
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/28/seeing-a-fallen-soldier-home/
Excerpt: His name was Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Wilson - although I did not know it when his life brushed mine on March 25 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Lance Cpl. Wilson was not there in the terminal that afternoon; at age 24 and newly married, he had been killed in Afghanistan on March 22 by a roadside bomb. A coincidence of overbooked flights led our lives to intersect for perhaps an hour, one I will never forget. I did not meet his family that day at the airport, either, although we were there together that evening at the gate, among the crowd hoping to board the oversold flight. I did not know that I had a boarding pass and they did not. I did not know they were trying to get home to hold his funeral, having journeyed to Dover, Del., to meet his casket upon its arrival from Afghanistan. I also did not know that they already had been stuck for most of the day in another airport because of other oversold flights. But I did not need to know this to realize what they were going through as the event unfolded and to understand the larger cause for it. No matter how we as a nation have relearned the lesson forgotten during Vietnam - that our military men and women and their families deserve all the support we can give them - despite our nation's fighting two wars in this decade, it is all too easy for most of us to live our lives without having the very great human cost of those wars ever intrude. But it did intrude heartbreakingly that day at the airport gate. It began simply enough, with the usual call for volunteers: Anyone willing to take a later flight would receive a $500 flight voucher. Then came the announcement none of us was prepared to hear. There was, the airline representative said, a family on their way home from meeting their son's body as it returned from Afghanistan, and they needed seats on the flight. And there they were, standing beside her, looking at us, waiting to see what we would decide. It wasn't a hard decision for me; my plans were easily adjusted. I volunteered, as did two women whom I later learned sacrificed important personal plans. But we three were not enough: Six were needed. So we stood there watching the family - dignified and mute, weighed with grief and fatigue - as the airline representative repeatedly called for assistance for this dead soldier's family. No one else stepped forward. The calls for volunteers may have lasted only 20 or 30 minutes, but it seemed hours. It was almost unbearable to watch, yet to look away was to see the more than 100 other witnesses to this tragedy who were not moved to help. Then it did become unbearable when, in a voice laced with desperation and tears, the airline representative pleaded, "This young man gave his life for our country, can't any of you give your seats so his family can get home?" Those words hung in the air. Finally, enough volunteers stepped forward. I had trouble sleeping that night; I could not get out of my mind the image of the family or the voice pleading for them. When I met my fellow volunteers the next morning at the airport, I found I was not alone. One had gone home and cried, and another had awakened at 3 a.m.; all of us were angry and ashamed that our fellow passengers had not rushed to aid this soldier's family and consequently had forced them to be on public display in their grief. We worried that this indifference to their son's sacrifice added to their sorrow.
Rebel Against COIN
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1412/Admiral-Olson-Rebel-against-COIN.aspx
Excerpt: Finally, some high-ranking, active-duty, public pushback against the Petraeus-McChrystal-Mullen-Gates-Kilcullen-Bush-Obama world of COIN. From Defense News:
The U.S. military's counterinsurgency tactics increasingly place too much emphasis on protecting local peoples and not enough on fighting enemy forces, said U.S. Special Operations Command chief Adm. Eric Olson. While the U.S. military has adopted a population-focused strategy in Afghanistan, Olson said May 26 he "fears counterinsurgency has become a euphemism for nonkinetic activities." The term is now to often used to describe efforts aimed at "protecting populations," Olson said during a conference in Arlington, Va. The military's top special operator, in a shot across the bow of modern-day counterinsurgency doctrine proponents, then added: "Counterinsurgency should involve countering the insurgents." Olson also made clear he thinks U.S. laws give him the authority to craft and implement doctrine for America's special operators. Olson said doctrine is important for fighting wars, and "should be carefully written - but we should not fall in love with it." In a blunt statement, Olson called "COIN doctrine an oxymoron."
Obama: incompetent and ideological
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_incompetent_and_ideological_xhY0m0S1zSF7YyLaK8WttJ
Not sure BO is to blame for all this, but karma for his blaming Bush for Katrina. Excerpt: 'Obama Struggling to Show He's in Control," reads the headline on The Washington Post's story on Barack Obama's Thursday press conference, where most of the questions were about the Gulf oil spill. "Defensive, unauthoritative and equivocal," wrote Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford of Obama's performance. "He came across as a beleaguered bureaucrat in damage control." Uh-oh. People, even people in the Obama-friendly press, are beginning to say that the oil spill is Obama's Katrina. That it destroys his reputation for competence.
Stories that could rock the summer
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37963.html
Excerpt: While voters may not completely tune in to the midterm election until after the Labor Day holiday, here are eight possible issues this summer that could play a role in reshaping the November landscape:
Immigrants and Socialists March Against SB 1070 in Phoenix
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/immigrants-and-socialists-march-against.html
Excerpt: This is why I covered it. Reading the morning newspapers on yesterday's illegal immigrant march in Phoenix, you'd think it was just a nice outing for families to stand up against Arizona's SB 1070. But this was no weekend picnic. The event was more about revolution and reconquista than about "immigration reform." The Arizona Republic, CNN, and the New York Times all published blasé reports, riddled with inaccuracies and omissions. And check the screencap at yesterday's Los Angeles Times below. It's hard to find a better image that captures the media's pro-illegal immigration reporting: "A girl waits to join the march through downtown Phoenix." See how seemingly normal things appear. The editorial choices made by MSM functionaries are staggering sometimes:
When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/when_masculine_virtues_go_out.html
Excerpt: The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition. John Wayne epitomized the rugged individual who was committed to fighting "the bad guy," but he was only one of a whole host of competing figures cut out of the same cloth. What happened? (....) Edward Gibbon chronicles the increasing femininity of the Roman Empire in his six-volume work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He catalogues the progressive decadence that rendered the once-proud republic into spoils for barbarian hordes. The consuls in the early republic, who were warrior-generals adhering to a strict code of honor, gradually gave way to the backroom emperors who were no more than brazen criminals and thugs. It is the same script in all noble human enterprise: The fabric which bred success is torn apart by the complacency of the successful. When warfare is demonized as violence and negotiation is raised to an art, the end is near. Today, we are there. (Heinlein wrote: “No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Later on this custom declined. So did Rome.” –Ron P.)
Never Give Up Your Weapons
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/never_give_up_your_weapons.html
Excerpt: History demonstrates that destruction awaits those who attempt to placate their enemies by surrendering their weapons. In 149 BC, half a million citizens of Carthage tried to appease Rome by turning over their armaments. But instead of buying peace, they only facilitated their own destruction. Ninety percent of the Carthaginians were killed, and the city of Carthage was razed. Those who survived were sold into slavery, and Carthaginian civilization was forever wiped from the face of the earth.... Between 264 and 146 BC, Rome and Carthage fought three Punic Wars for control of the Mediterranean. The Romans were victorious in both the First and Second Punic Wars. At the close of the Second Punic War in 202 BC, Carthage was forced to pay Rome 200 talents of silver a year for fifty years. An additional term of peace was that Carthage was forbidden from waging war without Rome's permission. Consequently, Numidians in North Africa began to raid Carthage without fear of reprisal. When the Carthaginians begged Rome for permission to defend themselves, they were refused.
An American Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRRXjk0mvcs
Going Galt: When Will Surgeons Say Enough is Enough?
http://www.vimeo.com/11378278
Worth watching. Long but powerful video by a surgeon, suggesting that there will be a backlash to ObamaCare that was not anticipated. Details concerns from the medical profession about ObamaCare.
Paperwork results in wasted work for doctors, insurers and patients
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/05/paperwork-results-wasted-work-doctors-insurers-patients.html#more-44214
Excerpt: Yet I readily admit I’m hard put to figure out what’s been done to whom. And a good part of the reason is that the insurers and the HRA do not report services or payments — mine or theirs — using the same terminology. Nor do they always reflect the terminology used on the billing forms my doctors use. I’ve got to believe that simplification would help. Other people believe the same thing. We published an article last week about a study that detailed the monetary savings that could accrue by using a standardized claim form and a single set of submission and payment rules for all health plans. The number: $7 billion. And that doesn’t count the psychic savings. Two sentences in that report stood out in my mind: “For non-Medicare payers, 12.6% of billed charges were denied on initial submission. After appeals, 81% of initial denials were eventually paid.” Think of all the wasted work implied by those numbers — for all parties in the equation.
In Afghan region, U.S. spreads the cash to fight the Taliban
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003722.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: In this patch of southern Afghanistan, the U.S. strategy to keep the Taliban at bay involves an economic stimulus. Thousands of men, wielding hoes and standing in knee-deep muck, are getting paid to clean reed-infested irrigation canals. Farmers are receiving seeds and fertilizer for a fraction of their retail cost, and many are riding around on shiny new red tractors. Over the summer, dozens of gravel roads and grain-storage facilities will be constructed -- all of it funded by the U.S. government. Pumping reconstruction dollars into war zones has long been part of the U.S. counterinsurgency playbook, but the carpet bombing of Nawa with cash has resulted in far more money getting into local hands, far more quickly, than in any other part of Afghanistan. The U.S. Agency for International Development's agriculture program aims to spend upward of $30 million within nine months in this rural district of mud-walled homes and small farms. Other U.S. initiatives aim to bring millions more dollars to the area over the next year.
New records show some lobbyists are top fundraisers for political candidates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003471.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: For more than a decade, Brian L. Wolff was the quintessential Washington insider, serving as one of Rep. Nancy Pelosi's closest aides as she rose through the House and helping to raise millions as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But the fundraising didn't stop once he left the DCCC. As a top lobbyist at the Edison Electric Institute, which represents major power companies in the climate debate, Wolff has bundled together more than $600,000 in contributions for the DCCC within the past year -- and he hopes to raise $2 million more for the committee by November. "It's my night job," Wolff said of his fundraising efforts. "It's something that's an investment for me and that's something I want to be able to help with. . . . I know the national base of the party, and they know me." Wolff is among nearly 160 registered lobbyists who have raised at least $9 million for political parties and federal candidates over the past year, according to a Washington Post analysis of records filed under new Federal Election Commission requirements.
Tea party could add to Republicans' numbers in Congress but shake up their unity http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003682.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
Excerpt: What we know: If any or all of the tea party candidates are elected this fall, they will join a broadened group of Republican senators. Currently holding 41 seats, the GOP is well positioned to win seats being vacated by Democrats in North Dakota, Delaware, Illinois and Indiana. Most neutral observers expect the GOP to gain at least four seats in November; eight seats is generally regarded as the ceiling. Those likely gains would seem to be good news for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.). But the prospects of Paul, Angle and other "true believers" in the Senate will almost certainly make it more difficult for McConnell to assert the rigid voting discipline that GOP strategists credit with bringing Republicans back from the brink of political extinction over the past 18 months. "It's hard to imagine, if elected, they could be 'controlled' by Mitch McConnell or anyone else," Republican strategist John Weaver said of the tea party candidates. "And perhaps that isn't a bad thing. Control and moving away from party orthodoxy on spending issues and competence is what gave impetus to the tea party movement."
Euro falls as Spain’s credit rating plunges
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?=14967
I anticipated and have been predicting the economic collapse of socialist Europe. But I didn’t anticipate it this soon, or that it would drag us into the abyss with it. Excerpt: The euro plunged and US stock markets dived last night after Spain was stripped of its top-level credit rating by a leading rating agency over concerns about its economic growth. In the latest blow to the eurozone, which is struggling to cope with the fallout from the Greek fiscal crisis, Fitch Ratings downgraded Spain’s sovereign credit rating — a measure of how easily it can meet the interest payment on its debt — by a notch from the top AAA rating to AA+. Standard & Poor’s, another ratings agency, downgraded Spain’s rating for the second time to AA last month but Moody’s, the other leading agency, has maintained the rating at AAA. Any downgrade in a sovereign credit rating will push up the interest that a country must pay on its debts. Brian Coulton, Fitch’s head of EMEA sovereign ratings, said that the process of cutting the country’s debt could slow economic growth.
What the MSM Didn’t Tell You About Holder and the Police Chiefs
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=14965
Excerpt: As if we needed one, here’s another item showing bias in the way the mainstream media covers the controversial Arizona illegal immigration law. Many major news organizations, including, MSNBC, CNN, and USA Today for example, covered a story about a group of Police Chiefs who met with A.G. Eric Holder to register their objections to the Arizona law……At first glance this all seems like a perfectly normal news story, but there was a very important piece of information left out: the meeting was arraigned by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and the police chiefs attending the meeting were members of PERF. (Holder is an “old friend of PERF, he addressed their convention in April) . In the rare cases where a news organization mentioned the PERF connection (the NPR story referenced above is the only one I could find) they neglected to mention that PERF is an organization that objects to any enforcement of immigration laws directed at the illegal alien (as opposed to an employer who hires illegals). The Forum describes itself as a “national organization of progressive police executives.”
University shields climate scientist with legal delay tactic
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23696
Excerpt: The legal ramifications from Climategate rumble on. As expected, the university accused of shielding a climate scientist from a fraud probe finally shows its legal cards. Accused by climate skeptics as apologists for scientific misconduct the University of Virginia’s (UVA) petition has been duly served on Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli. The writ is to protect discredited climate scientist, Michael Mann from a possible fraud prosecution. Naturally, the legal writ opposes Cuccinelli’s demand for disclosure of what may be important hidden climate data withheld by that once impeachable institution. But buried within the legal papers is a potentially cynical delay tactic. Filed on May 27, 2010, UVA’s attorneys make a thin case; they cite little or no legal precedents; hardly surprising when there are few, if any similar cases in the annals of Virginia’s case law.
16 killed as Israel storms Gaza aid boat
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/suddenly_chic_RFySb7KZobSLe6g2LyT8vI
Excerpt: As many as 16 people were killed today when the Israeli navy intercepted a convoy of aid ships bound for Gaza. Up to 50 were wounded. Gaza's Al-Aqsa television showed footage of Israeli commandos descending from helicopters and clashing with activists, as well as images of wounded people lying on the deck of one of the six vessels carrying supplies for the blockaded Hamas-controlled territory. Israeli Trade and Industry Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer expressed sorrow over the deaths, saying, "The images are certainly not pleasant. I can only voice regret at all the fatalities." The reports of the incident aboard the Turkish vessel set off protests in Ankara, where mobs of stone-throwing demonstrators tried to storm the Israeli Consulate.
Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100531_flotillas_and_wars_public_opinion?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100531&utm_content=readmore&elq=a929a0c5213e456cb0b9d1960952f8a5
Excerpt: On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel. A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.
PM Netanyahu Expresses Full Backing for the IDF
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=48216
Our troops must envy the support the IDF gets from their leaders. Excerpt: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Monday), 31.5.10, spoke by telephone with the relevant security ministers and officials, and was updated on the action and subsequent developments. In his discussions with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Minister Moshe Yaalon, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi and ISA Director Yuval Diskin, the Prime Minister issued security, diplomatic and information directives, reiterated his full backing for the IDF and inquired about the well-being of the wounded.
Close Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjkLUcbJWo
Excerpt: Video taken by IDF naval boat shows the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the 'Free Gaza' Flotilla, violently attacking IDF soldiers who were trying to board the ship after having sent repeated requests for the boat to change course. Large groups of passengers surrounded soldiers and beat them with metal poles and chairs, and threw one soldier over the side of the ship. Some passengers grabbed pistols from the IDF soldiers and opened fire. As a result of the attacks, seven IDF soldiers were injured, and nine of the passengers were killed. The 'Free Gaza' Flotilla had publicly insisted on their non-violent intentions, however their violent attack on the IDF soldiers was clearly premeditated. They had knives, metal rods, firebombs and other items ready to use.
Useful Idiots Condemn Israel
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/05/useful-idiots-condemn-israel.html
Excerpt: The flotilla was organized by the Islamist government in Turkey to aid Hamas with the goal of opening up shipping channels for Turkey's new friend, Iran, to ship more and better weapons as it is doing to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran is busy turning Lebanon and Syria into one large missile launching pad against Israel, and a southern base in Gaza will complete the encirclement of Israel for the coming crisis over Iran's nuclear program. The Europeans on the ships were cover, and the placement of an 18-month old child on these ships was the utmost cynical use of a human shield. If getting humanitarian supplies to Gaza really was the goal, this flotilla was not necessary. The supplies would have been off-loaded in Eqypt or Israel and then shipped in by land after being checked for hidden weapons. And that is the rub, only sea-based shipping would provide Iran with the mechanism for almost unlimited armament of Hamas. There is a limit to the quantity and size of missiles and other armaments which can be smuggled through tunnels from Egypt. That is why the sea blockade must be broken for Iran to get what it wants.
Israel to deploy nuclear-armed submarines off Iran coast
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-israel-to-deploy-nuclear-armed-submarines-off-iran-coast-1.293005
Excerpt: Israel is to deploy three submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday. According to the Times report, one submarine had been sent over Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, and in the possession of Syria and Hezbollah, could be used to hit strategic sites within Israel, such as air bases and missile launchers. Dolphin, Tekuma, and Leviathan, all German-made Dolphin class submarines of the 7th navy Flotilla, have been reported as frequenting the Gulf in the past, however, according to the Sunday Times report, this new deployment is meant to ensure a permanent naval presence near the Iranian coastline. (If dealing with a rational opponent, this could be a very smart move. The Israelis obviously want the Iranians to be aware they are present, as they could have snuck around Africa and entered the Red Sea covertly. Only problem is, Iran may not be rational. Pray this is not a miscalculation of epic proportions. -Ron P.)
U.S. to Aid South Korea With Naval Defense Plan
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/world/asia/31koreanavy.html?om_rid=Mqh-D0&om_mid=_BMA7D0B8Krq1QL&
Excerpt: The discovery of the weaknesses in South Korea caught officials in both countries off guard. As South Korea has rocketed into the ranks of the world’s top economies, it has invested billions of dollars to bolster its defenses and to help refine one of the oldest war plans in the Pentagon’s library: a joint strategy with the United States to repel and defeat a North Korean invasion. But the shallow waters where the attack occurred are patrolled only by South Korea’s navy, and South Korean officials confirmed in interviews that the sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors, revealed a gap that the American military must help address. The United States — pledged to defend its ally but stretched thin by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — would be drawn into any conflict. But it has been able to reduce its forces on the Korean Peninsula by relying on South Korea’s increased military spending. Senior Pentagon officials stress that firepower sent to the region by warplanes and warships would more than compensate for the drop in American troop levels there in the event of war. But the attack was evidence, the officials say, of how North Korea has compensated for the fact that it is so bankrupt that it can no longer train its troops or buy the technology needed to fight a conventional war. So it has instead invested heavily in stealthy, hard-to-detect technologies that can inflict significant damage, even if it could not win a sustained conflict.
Seeing a fallen soldier home: Gratitude should be foremost in American hearts and minds
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/28/seeing-a-fallen-soldier-home/
Excerpt: His name was Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Wilson - although I did not know it when his life brushed mine on March 25 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Lance Cpl. Wilson was not there in the terminal that afternoon; at age 24 and newly married, he had been killed in Afghanistan on March 22 by a roadside bomb. A coincidence of overbooked flights led our lives to intersect for perhaps an hour, one I will never forget. I did not meet his family that day at the airport, either, although we were there together that evening at the gate, among the crowd hoping to board the oversold flight. I did not know that I had a boarding pass and they did not. I did not know they were trying to get home to hold his funeral, having journeyed to Dover, Del., to meet his casket upon its arrival from Afghanistan. I also did not know that they already had been stuck for most of the day in another airport because of other oversold flights. But I did not need to know this to realize what they were going through as the event unfolded and to understand the larger cause for it. No matter how we as a nation have relearned the lesson forgotten during Vietnam - that our military men and women and their families deserve all the support we can give them - despite our nation's fighting two wars in this decade, it is all too easy for most of us to live our lives without having the very great human cost of those wars ever intrude. But it did intrude heartbreakingly that day at the airport gate. It began simply enough, with the usual call for volunteers: Anyone willing to take a later flight would receive a $500 flight voucher. Then came the announcement none of us was prepared to hear. There was, the airline representative said, a family on their way home from meeting their son's body as it returned from Afghanistan, and they needed seats on the flight. And there they were, standing beside her, looking at us, waiting to see what we would decide. It wasn't a hard decision for me; my plans were easily adjusted. I volunteered, as did two women whom I later learned sacrificed important personal plans. But we three were not enough: Six were needed. So we stood there watching the family - dignified and mute, weighed with grief and fatigue - as the airline representative repeatedly called for assistance for this dead soldier's family. No one else stepped forward. The calls for volunteers may have lasted only 20 or 30 minutes, but it seemed hours. It was almost unbearable to watch, yet to look away was to see the more than 100 other witnesses to this tragedy who were not moved to help. Then it did become unbearable when, in a voice laced with desperation and tears, the airline representative pleaded, "This young man gave his life for our country, can't any of you give your seats so his family can get home?" Those words hung in the air. Finally, enough volunteers stepped forward. I had trouble sleeping that night; I could not get out of my mind the image of the family or the voice pleading for them. When I met my fellow volunteers the next morning at the airport, I found I was not alone. One had gone home and cried, and another had awakened at 3 a.m.; all of us were angry and ashamed that our fellow passengers had not rushed to aid this soldier's family and consequently had forced them to be on public display in their grief. We worried that this indifference to their son's sacrifice added to their sorrow.
Rebel Against COIN
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/1412/Admiral-Olson-Rebel-against-COIN.aspx
Excerpt: Finally, some high-ranking, active-duty, public pushback against the Petraeus-McChrystal-Mullen-Gates-Kilcullen-Bush-Obama world of COIN. From Defense News:
The U.S. military's counterinsurgency tactics increasingly place too much emphasis on protecting local peoples and not enough on fighting enemy forces, said U.S. Special Operations Command chief Adm. Eric Olson. While the U.S. military has adopted a population-focused strategy in Afghanistan, Olson said May 26 he "fears counterinsurgency has become a euphemism for nonkinetic activities." The term is now to often used to describe efforts aimed at "protecting populations," Olson said during a conference in Arlington, Va. The military's top special operator, in a shot across the bow of modern-day counterinsurgency doctrine proponents, then added: "Counterinsurgency should involve countering the insurgents." Olson also made clear he thinks U.S. laws give him the authority to craft and implement doctrine for America's special operators. Olson said doctrine is important for fighting wars, and "should be carefully written - but we should not fall in love with it." In a blunt statement, Olson called "COIN doctrine an oxymoron."
Obama: incompetent and ideological
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_incompetent_and_ideological_xhY0m0S1zSF7YyLaK8WttJ
Not sure BO is to blame for all this, but karma for his blaming Bush for Katrina. Excerpt: 'Obama Struggling to Show He's in Control," reads the headline on The Washington Post's story on Barack Obama's Thursday press conference, where most of the questions were about the Gulf oil spill. "Defensive, unauthoritative and equivocal," wrote Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford of Obama's performance. "He came across as a beleaguered bureaucrat in damage control." Uh-oh. People, even people in the Obama-friendly press, are beginning to say that the oil spill is Obama's Katrina. That it destroys his reputation for competence.
Stories that could rock the summer
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37963.html
Excerpt: While voters may not completely tune in to the midterm election until after the Labor Day holiday, here are eight possible issues this summer that could play a role in reshaping the November landscape:
Immigrants and Socialists March Against SB 1070 in Phoenix
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/immigrants-and-socialists-march-against.html
Excerpt: This is why I covered it. Reading the morning newspapers on yesterday's illegal immigrant march in Phoenix, you'd think it was just a nice outing for families to stand up against Arizona's SB 1070. But this was no weekend picnic. The event was more about revolution and reconquista than about "immigration reform." The Arizona Republic, CNN, and the New York Times all published blasé reports, riddled with inaccuracies and omissions. And check the screencap at yesterday's Los Angeles Times below. It's hard to find a better image that captures the media's pro-illegal immigration reporting: "A girl waits to join the march through downtown Phoenix." See how seemingly normal things appear. The editorial choices made by MSM functionaries are staggering sometimes:
When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/when_masculine_virtues_go_out.html
Excerpt: The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition. John Wayne epitomized the rugged individual who was committed to fighting "the bad guy," but he was only one of a whole host of competing figures cut out of the same cloth. What happened? (....) Edward Gibbon chronicles the increasing femininity of the Roman Empire in his six-volume work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He catalogues the progressive decadence that rendered the once-proud republic into spoils for barbarian hordes. The consuls in the early republic, who were warrior-generals adhering to a strict code of honor, gradually gave way to the backroom emperors who were no more than brazen criminals and thugs. It is the same script in all noble human enterprise: The fabric which bred success is torn apart by the complacency of the successful. When warfare is demonized as violence and negotiation is raised to an art, the end is near. Today, we are there. (Heinlein wrote: “No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Later on this custom declined. So did Rome.” –Ron P.)
Never Give Up Your Weapons
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/never_give_up_your_weapons.html
Excerpt: History demonstrates that destruction awaits those who attempt to placate their enemies by surrendering their weapons. In 149 BC, half a million citizens of Carthage tried to appease Rome by turning over their armaments. But instead of buying peace, they only facilitated their own destruction. Ninety percent of the Carthaginians were killed, and the city of Carthage was razed. Those who survived were sold into slavery, and Carthaginian civilization was forever wiped from the face of the earth.... Between 264 and 146 BC, Rome and Carthage fought three Punic Wars for control of the Mediterranean. The Romans were victorious in both the First and Second Punic Wars. At the close of the Second Punic War in 202 BC, Carthage was forced to pay Rome 200 talents of silver a year for fifty years. An additional term of peace was that Carthage was forbidden from waging war without Rome's permission. Consequently, Numidians in North Africa began to raid Carthage without fear of reprisal. When the Carthaginians begged Rome for permission to defend themselves, they were refused.
An American Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRRXjk0mvcs
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