Clark Howard talks about this problem frequently on his radio show. Very informative article.
'Zombie Debt' Comes Back to Haunt Consumers
June 25, 2006
by Harriet Johnson Brackey
Sun-Sentinel
"Latoya Gibson thought debt collectors were never again going to bother her, after she went through bankruptcy several years ago.
But the 30-year-old Fort Lauderdale public housing counselor had the kind of debt that never dies. It just keeps popping back up on your credit report.
Zombie debt, some call it. It happens when your credit-card company sells off its bad debts. The buyer pays pennies for every dollar you owe and tries to turn that investment into a few nickels. They track you down and demand payment.
Often, bad debt buyers or their collection agencies will do one more thing that is especially harmful to your credit rating. It often happens in secret. And it's illegal.
They re-age the debt, as they did with Gibson. That is, they report the old debt to the credit bureau as a new obligation.
South Florida consumer advocates, attorneys and debt counselors say re-aging happens all the time. And it happens to people who are late with their accounts, not just those who are delinquent or in bankruptcy.
But the credit reporting system is supposed to offer consumers, even those who left their bills unpaid, better protection than that.
Negative marks such as bad debts must be dropped from your credit report after seven years. If the debt is re-aged, the seven-year clock starts again.
"I was so upset I was shaking," Gibson said. She became aware of the re-aging only when the debt collector filed a lawsuit against her. The old debt was back on her credit report, even though it had been discharged through bankruptcy. Gibson went to a lawyer who quickly told the debt collector to erase it and to leave Gibson alone.
Re-aging hurts any consumer trying to buy a house or a car or get a new credit card. As long as a negative mark is on your credit report, it will lower your credit score. This can add hundreds of dollars a month to your mortgage interest bill or force you to pay a higher interest rate than you should for a credit card.
A zombie debt can even prevent you from buying a house until the creditor is satisfied.
Marilyn Gallington, a title company marketing representative in Fort Lauderdale who has experienced re-aging on her own credit record, says the practice has blindsided her low-income customers who are first-time homebuyers.
"It's usually a week or so before closing. These people have been going through the qualifying process for three or four months. Then my company will run a final check," she said. "That's when a debt will turn up and the client will say that he paid it off five or six years ago. But they put it back on to the credit report with a new date."
That buyer's closing won't happen in a week. First, the debt has to be cleared.
Re-aging was prohibited in 2003 through amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The practice "is illegal," says Clarke Brinckerhoff, an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.
"That's the law. It doesn't make any difference when the credit or debt collection agency reports the account," he said.
But that doesn't keep it from happening.
"Re-aging is widespread in the debt collection industry. Some companies do it as part of their business model," said Robert W. Murphy, a consumer lawyer in Fort Lauderdale. "They may or may not ever even communicate with the consumer."
He says a lot of families are getting hurt, because debt buyers aren't getting caught. They only back off if the consumer threatens to sue. "These bottom-feeders often really have no clue about a debt, when it's from. They're not really worried about the specifics," said Jon Sheldon, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.
To be sure, some are worried about the accuracy of the information on a debt that they buy. When a debt moves from the creditor to a third party, there's a big possibility for errors or problems, said Robert Sherman, vice president at Vengroff, Williams & Associates, a Sarasota third-party collector that is one of the nation's largest. His firm rarely reports to credit bureaus, because of that margin of error.
But as Americans pile on credit-card debt, credit-card companies are pushing bad debt out the door at a rapid pace. Cell-phone bills and medical bills are being sold in bulk, too.
That includes bills the consumer just didn't pay as well as ones that he may have disputed, such as whether it's covered by health insurance.
"It's a huge, huge issue," said Geri Detweiler, a Sarasota consumer debt expert and author. "I hear the complaints. But even if you know your rights, it's very difficult dealing with debt collectors."
Q: What is the debt buying industry?
A: The Nilson Report, an industry newsletter that tracks the credit industry, says credit-card companies increasingly are not even trying to collect old debts. Instead they sell them -- as soon as when the debt is only 90 days past due and before it's been charged off as a loss, which usually happens after six months.
By selling the bad debt, credit-card companies recoup more than they would after paying a collector. And they get their payoff quickly.
The volume of all bad debts sold grew more than sixfold in the last decade to more than $77 billion last year. That includes utility, medical and cell-phone bills as well as credit cards.
Q: What is re-aging?
A: When a debt becomes delinquent, that date is usually reported to a credit bureau. That date cannot change, under federal law. Consumers are saying, however, that debt buyers and collectors are taking the old debt and reporting it to the credit bureau with a new date.
Q: Why does it matter?
A: Federal law says a bad debt can only stay on your credit report for seven years. Bad debts on your report lower your credit score. Lenders will charge you more interest on loans and credit cards if you have a low score.
Q: Isn't anyone telling the government about this?
A: The Federal Trade Commission doesn't keep statistics on re-aging by itself, but the FTC was swamped last year with a 70 percent increase in complaints about third-party debt collectors. They harassed debtors, failed to check to see if the debt was valid, kept calling when told not to do so, told neighbors and employers about the bad debt and other violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. A total of 58,687 complaints were filed.
Q: How long can a debt be collected?
A: Under Florida law, up to five years from the date of delinquency for anything covered by a written contract, such as a credit card.
Q: How do you know re-aging has happened to you?
A: Check your credit report. If an old debt doesn't seem to have the right date on it, that may be it.
Q: What should you do if you notice it?
Write a letter disputing the debt to the credit bureau that provided you with the report. Also write to the creditor and ask for verification of the debt. Both must investigate your dispute and the credit bureau has to notify you of the results. If the creditor -- whoever gave you credit or now owns your debt -- has reported incorrect information to the credit bureau, then the creditor can correct it. You will find the creditor's contact information on your credit report.
To learn how to dispute errors in your credit report, go to www.ftc.gov and enter "How to Dispute Credit Report Errors" into the search box. "
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-sbharriet25jun25,0,6419398.story
http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/06_Money/060630.zombie.debt.html
Private property rights have been under assault from the left for years ... eminent domain, wealth redistribution through forced taxation, estate tax, capital gains tax.
Excellent article pointing out what's real about humans, that we like to enjoy what we've worked for, accumulated, paid taxes on while doing so .... and should have the right to dispose of it as we see fit WITHOUT further social engineering taxation.
Emphasis added mine.
"While no political thinker worth his salt underestimates the importance of private property, Machiavelli cut to the heart of the matter most succinctly. A prince, he wrote, "must not touch the property of others, because men sooner forget the killing of a father than the loss of their patrimony."
James Madison's analysis, while a bit more high-minded, amounts to nearly the same thing. He asserted in Federalist 10 that "The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate" will always lead to divergent interests within society. Men will, he held, invariably exhibit different abilities and inclinations. Some will be smarter, more industrious, even luckier than others, and in a condition of general equality these differences will lead inexorably to economic inequality. Government must be up to the task of protecting the gains of the few against the many if need be. Indeed, he said, "The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."
And few have been more protected than Warren Buffett. He is without question the most successful investor of the second half of the 20th century, and he is poised to become one of the greatest philanthropists of all time with his pledge of more than $37 billion to various charities, most notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
While the gift makes Buffett look like the capitalist with a heart of gold, the timing of his announcement might have more to do with recent legislative machinations over the estate tax, not to mention his apparent faith in social engineering. The House, after all, sent an estate tax reduction bill to the Senate on Friday. By Monday Buffett was monopolizing the air waves with his divestiture. The terms of the legislative debate, if there was even to be a debate in the Senate, have been indelibly redefined by the so-called "Oracle of Omaha."
Coincidence? Not likely.
The estate tax, or death tax as it is more commonly known, was targeted for extinction in the first round of President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and has long been an object of Republican scorn. Continued resistance in the Senate has made repeal impossible, but an impending election cycle has put the issue back into play. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist asked for and received a watered-down bill, a bill which passed the House in a 269-156 vote and has a fighting chance at getting the 60 votes needed to conduct business in the Senate. If the bill becomes law, estates worth up to $5 million for individuals and $10 million for couples would escape taxation entirely beginning in 2010. After the exemptions, estates worth up to $25 million would be subject to rates equal to those on capital gains, rates which are now 15% but are scheduled to increase to 20% in 2011. The remainder of estates which exceed the $25 million limit would be taxed at 30% until the capital gains rate hike in 2011, at which point they would be taxed at 40%. Some estimates hold that the number of estates subject to the tax will decrease from 30,000, which was the number for 2004, the last year for which data is available, to only 5,100 when the law takes full effect in 2011.
In the press conference announcing his gift to the Gates Foundation, Buffett addressed the tax explicitly. "It's a very equitable tax," he said, urging Congress to maintain the status quo. "It's in keeping with the idea of equality of opportunity in this country, not giving incredible head starts to certain people who were very selective about the womb from which they emerged."
Like all good nanny-state proponents, Buffett would use tax policy as a blunt-force tool to achieve his social preferences while simultaneously closing the door on dissenting views. The real problem, after all, isn't that Buffett is disposing of his assets according to his own wishes, it is that he would deny others the same level of self-determination given half a chance.
When asked how his children took the news of his impending liquidation, Buffett said, "My kids were elated when I told them. They knew my views on inherited wealth and shared them. I believe in equality of opportunity...They should not inherit my position in society..." Warren Buffett's position in society is not up for grabs though, and he knows as much. The only thing that his children could have inherited was the accumulated result of a lifetime of impressive work. And why shouldn't this be an option? How is wealth given to a foundation qualitatively different from wealth given to sons and daughters? In a 2001 New York Times interview Buffett offered his answer, saying, "We have come closer to a true meritocracy than anywhere else around the world. You have mobility so people with talents can be put to the best use. Without the estate tax, you in effect will have an aristocracy of wealth, which means you pass down the ability to command the resources of the nation based on heredity rather than merit."
But the "resources of the nation" are not at issue; and this was no slip of the tongue. Private resources are at issue, and they have been taxed already -- multiple times in many cases. Also on display is his raw paternalism. Someone might inform Mr. Buffett that "people with talents" are not "put to the best use" in a free society. They choose their own paths, just as he has always done. And in a free society the purpose of taxes is to raise revenue, not remake society in the image of an enlightened investor.
Buffett often claims that he believes in equality of opportunity. Without the ability to enjoy the spoils of success, though, equality of opportunity is a meaningless term. The means by which one can enjoy the fruits of his own labors is a decidedly personal matter, and the "pursuit of happiness," to borrow a phrase, is invariably a self-defined endeavor. Neither Warren Buffett nor the United States Congress can change this by fiat, no matter how well-intentioned.
Warren Buffett can dispose of his own property any way that he wants, but nothing gives him the right to interfere with others as they do the same. He should be lauded for his gift, and if others choose to follow his lead, that is their prerogative. If they choose to follow their own path, he should respectfully withhold comment.
Madison would have said as much. He also would have advised the Senate to ignore Buffett's grandstanding and follow the House's lead. In a perfect world the death tax would be eliminated entirely and immediately, but in a perfect world 41 Senators, aided, abetted, and goaded by Warren Buffett would not have the ability to stifle the popular will. Passing the compromise tax cut now will make eliminating the tax easier later, and it will strike a blow against would-be social engineers, both public and private. It's hard to say which of these two eventualities would have a more salutary effect over the long term.
James R. Harrigan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=062806E
Guess we're beginning to grow up.
"Illegal Alien Employers Will Face Lawsuits for Unfair Business Practices
June 27, 2006
Vox Populi, Jim Kouri
by Jim Kouri, CPP
With the federal government's failure to curtail the onslaught of illegal aliens into the United States, coupled with the inaction of lawmakers in Washington, DC to pass real immigration reform, some Americans are looking at legal alternatives to thwart illegal immigration and those who facilitate it.
In addition, more and more Americans are recognizing that state governments aren't doing anything to curb illegal immigration, and, in fact, several states even aid illegal aliens or provide incentives. Also employers who hire illegal aliens create the driving force for illegals to enter the US in order to secure gainful employment.
For years, employers in California have known that they could hire illegal aliens without having to worry very much about as far as being prosecuted for breaking the law. Soon, however, they may have something serious to worry about: their competitors taking legal action against them.
According to legal experts, a Californian civil law includes a provision for a company that knowingly employs illegal aliens to be sued by competitors who have suffered economic damages as a result of such an illegal practice. When a construction company, for instance, uses minimum wage workers who are illegal aliens to underbid competitors in order to secure work contracts, those companies who hire Americans and legal "green card" immigrants and pay fair wages will be able to sue the illegal aliens' employer in a court of law.
As a result, dozens of scofflaw employers may soon find themselves in court as defendants. David Klehm, an Orange County attorney and founder of the IllegalEmployers.org website, together with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), a Washington, DC-based public interest law center affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), are planning to file lawsuits against companies that knowingly hire illegal aliens. The lawsuits will be brought against businesses that hire illegals by a battery of lawyers who can best be described as Minutemen of the courts.
The suits - some to be filed as early as this summer - will seek restitution, damages and market protections on behalf of law-abiding small and medium-sized business owners who obey the law and use due diligence to identify illegal aliens who submit phony identification documents. Also, while the plaintiffs may be small to medium-sized companies, the defendents in these suits may be large corporations.
"Honest business owners and hardworking Americans are the forgotten victims of unenforced laws against illegal immigration," said Klehm.
"Since setting up IllegalEmployers.org I have received numerous requests for assistance from law-abiding employers who are struggling to stay in business because they face unfair competition from other companies who hire illegal aliens at lower wages, without benefits, and who often get away without contributing to the worker's compensation fund. The employers we represent are not asking for any special breaks; they just want to be able to compete for business on a level playing field," the experienced attorney wrote in a statement.
The Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement (FIRE) group, creator of the WeHireAliens.com website, has also played a crucial role in identifying scofflaw employers.
"Our alliance seeks companies that have lost business as the result of the illegal hiring practices of their competitors," explained Mike Hethmon, an attorney for IRLI.
"We are working with David Klehm because we believe that removing the economic incentives to hire illegal aliens is a key to solving this national crisis. We see this alliance as a model for cooperation between citizens concerned about illegal immigration and the
majority of American businesses that are concerned about the effects of illegal immigration on the US economy," he said.
IRLI, which was founded as a legal advocacy group dedicated to representing the interests of American citizens in immigration law, has helped employers and legal workers recover damages using federal RICO statutes (Racketeering Influence and Criminal Organization Act).
"Even though the federal government is refusing to protect honest employers by enforcing laws against hiring illegal aliens, California law provides those employers a mechanism to defend themselves. This is the first time these state laws have been used to fight the effects of illegal immigration, but it won't be the last," noted Hethmon.
There are other states that have laws that may provide remedies to unfair business practices such as hiring illegal aliens at lower wages. Attorneys working for nonprofit, public interest organizations will be closely watching and studying the upcoming California cases
According to Klehm, honest businesses in the Golden State have lost billions of dollars over the years as a result of being undercut by competitors who employ illegal aliens. Under the law, they are entitled to compensation.
"For some of our clients, their only choice is to file a lawsuit or file bankruptcy papers," said Klehm.
"It is a choice that unfortunately been forced on them by the government's failure to enforce explicit laws against hiring illegal aliens. People who obey the law should not be forced into bankruptcy by those who don't."
The idea is simple: make hiring illegal aliens so costly that companies will find it in their best interest to avoid hiring illegal aliens. If there are no jobs for illegals, then the number of people sneaking into the US will dwindle, making US borders easier to protect against criminal aliens, drug and human traffickers, and terrorists. "
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He's a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com. He's also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he's syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. "
Believe it was Putin who said to the effect "We don't negotiate with terrorists, we crush them."
Don't believe they tolerate all the PC we have to slog through in the US.
"Putin orders probe into hostages' deaths
7 minutes ago
MOSCOW - President
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian special services to try to find and eliminate the killers of four Russian hostages in
Iraq, news agencies reported Wednesday.
"The president has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals who killed Russian diplomats in Iraq," news agencies cited the Kremlin press service as saying."
This is a SATIRE so requires a sense of humor. 
However, since there are so many new categories being created to buy votes it may be nearer than we might care to believe.
If unions have their way it will become law.
"AMERICANS WITH NO ABILITIES ACT
email from Washington, DC
WASHINGTON, DC - Congress is considering sweeping legislation, which provides new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislation by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they do a better job, or have some idea of what they are doing."
The President pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack job skills, making this agency the single largest US employer of Persons of Inability.
Private sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%),and home improvement "warehouse" stores (65%) The DMV also has a great record of hiring Persons of Inability. (63%)
Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million "middle man" positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given, to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees.
The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations which maintain a significant level of Persons of Inability in middle positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning discriminatory interview questions such as "Do you have any goals for the future?? or "Do you have any skills or experience which relate to this job?"
"As a Nonabled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, MI due to her lack of notable job skills. "This new law should really help people like me." With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
"It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation," said Senator Ted Kennedy. "
Typical socialist strategy .... confiscate guns from law abiding so that they can not protect themselves from criminals who DO possess firearms and YES have a solid history of using them.
One of the strategies used by Mao in the genocidal communist conquest of China. Read if you don't believe it.
The review conference’s backers blame the National Rifle Association, whose executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, came out recently with a book entitled "The Global War on Your Guns", for inflaming passions by distorting what the review conference is intended to accomplish. Unfortunately for American citizens, however, the NRA is right. The United Nations and its well-heeled backers are playing word games to cover their true intentions, as they always do. This is the typical ‘stealth’ strategy that I discuss at length in my book, “Global Deception.” Here we find Chairman Kariyawasam, and the gun prohibitionist crowd who are pulling the strings for the review conference from behind the scenes, caught in a web of deception of their own making.
In his so-called “non-paper for informal consultation purposes” dated May 18, 2006 (yes folks, only the United Nations can call a document of 10 pages of recommendations a ‘non-paper’), Chairman Kariyawasam recommended as one concrete measure that “States that have not already done so” should “adopt adequate laws, regulations and administrative procedures to regulate the possession of small arms and light weapons.” This ‘non-paper’ is intended to serve as the basis for an eventual ‘Outcome Document’ approved by the review committee. The Outcome Document, in turn, will no doubt be characterized as the UN’s official implementing interpretation of the Programme of Action. Note that the reference to the regulation of the possession of small arms had been proposed and rejected when the Programme of Action itself was adopted in 2001, but its backers are seeking to restore the idea through the back door of the review conference’s Outcome Document.
Predictably, the anti-gun possession fanatic Rebecca Peters, who is Director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) - a network of more than 700 non-governmental organizations working in 100 countries against the individual’s right to bear arms – has seized on this opening. IANSA is the official coordinator of non-governmental organizations’ involvement in the UN small arms process. Its sources of funding include the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. IANSA is already guaranteed to have a seat at the table, but it is pressing for a fuller partnership with the member state delegations in the review conference’s deliberations.
In her response to Chairman Kariyawasam’s ‘non-paper’, Peters wrote that IANSA welcomed “the reference to regulating the possession of small arms and light weapons” but urged that it be expanded. She also raised the gun prohibition specter explicitly, recommending the outright prohibition of semi-automatic and automatic rifles and declaring that “(M)any States already prohibit the civilian possession of light weapons, and this should be recognised in the paragraph devoted to light weapons control.”
Peters knows that the United States will block any legally binding treaty that contains a reference to regulation of possession of small arms. However, she is doing all that she can to get a UN-sponsored international norm against individual gun possession on the record somehow – what IANSA in the past has referred to as “norms of non-possession.” She claims that many member states are calling for the review conference's Outcome Document to recognize the critical importance of national gun laws and to suggest guidelines or standards for such laws. Indeed, IANSA has the backing of an inter-governmental organization known as The Parliamentary Forum on Small Arms and Light Weapons which, according to its website, was created to serve as an international platform for parliamentarians interested in small arms related work, to contribute to the advancement of the small arms agenda, and “to provide space for parliamentarians and civil society to meet and join forces”. The Parliamentary Forum is in complete synch with Rebecca Peters’ IANSA agenda. It proposed a ‘Model Parliamentary Resolution on Small Arms and Light Weapons’ that resolved to “strongly recommend that governments prohibit the civilian possession and use of all light weapons and automatic and semi-automatic rifles and machine guns.”
Peters’ strategy, with the help of the chairman of the UN review conference and the Parliamentary Forum, is to enshrine international norms against civilian gun possession in an interpretive document that gun prohibitionists can label ‘customary international law.’ Such a document would legitimize Peters’ dogma that “gun ownership is not a right but a privilege.” IANSA can then use the international norms in our own courts to attack the notion that an individual right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment. They are counting on sympathetic federal judges, right up to the Supreme Court, to interpret the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections by deferring to ‘international norms’ against individual gun possession. In short, the stealth strategy here is for IANSA to drive the UN review conference’s agenda, obtain the wording they seek on curtailing private gun possession in the review conference’s official Outcome Document that they can point to as an ‘international norm’, and then argue that this ‘international norm’ should be incorporated into our courts’ interpretation of the Second Amendment -- converting a constitutionally protected individual right into a government-bestowed privilege.
Ironically, IANSA is headquartered in London. One of its UK-based member organizations called International Alert showed no compunction at all in boldly declaring that “the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee individuals the right to possess or carry guns.” Apparently some British folks have forgotten from whom we won our freedom -and why we sought it in the first place. We should as a nation celebrate our Declaration of Independence by telling the gun prohibitionists who are assembling in New York from all over the world during our Independence Day holiday to either stay out of our business or stay out of our country.
"Routine Evil
By Ralph Kinney Bennett
Source TechCentralStation
"There was an awful inevitability to what happened to those two American soldiers.
Did anyone believe for one moment that they would be treated with respect according to the Geneva Convention?
Only the fact that these fanatics have been on the run prevented a more spectacular staging of their deaths.
This brutal murder brings revulsion but not surprise.
This is the routine evil of those worse than beasts.
This is the routine evil that beheaded Daniel Pearl, and Nick Berg; that left Van Gogh dead on a street in Holland.
This is the routine evil that still wraps itself in the garb of a religion while leaving young students bound and shot beside their bus and innocent women and children blown to bits in the market place.
The routine evil that draws comfort from the ignorant maunderings of a Murtha or a Sheehan; that somehow escapes the diligent moral radar of Human Rights Watch.
The routine evil that finds shelter in partisan "talking points" about the war and the shameless babble of armchair thumbsuckers about "reciprocity" with Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.
The routine evil of men with a vision of a world of subjugated women and mindless children, ignorant of all but blood and suicide and revenge.
This is the routine evil that dreams of cyanide gas in subways and thirsts for a nuclear weapon.
This is the routine evil that some still think can be embraced into civility, "brought into government," tamed away from its loathsome imperatives.
This is the routine evil that will not be ignored and must be exterminated. "
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=062106D
Ralph Kinney Bennett is a TCS contributing editor. "
At heart of socialist agenda is asset re-distribution (yes forcibly taking what you have through taxation out the waz ... and giving it to someone else), plus NO private property rights via the same process, I find his a relief given recent Supreme Court rulings about eminent domain.
"Executive Order: Protecting the Property Rights of the American People
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to strengthen the rights of the American people against the taking of their private property, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect the rights of Americans to their private property, including by limiting the taking of private property by the Federal Government to situations in which the taking is for public use, with just compensation, and for the purpose of benefiting the general public and not merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken.
Sec. 2. Implementation. (a) The Attorney General shall:
(i) issue instructions to the heads of departments and agencies to implement the policy set forth in section 1 of this order; and
(ii) monitor takings by departments and agencies for compliance with the policy set forth in section 1 of this order.
(b) Heads of departments and agencies shall, to the extent permitted by law:
(i) comply with instructions issued under subsection (a)(i); and
(ii) provide to the Attorney General such information as the Attorney General determines necessary to carry out subsection (a)(ii).
Sec. 3. Specific Exclusions. Nothing in this order shall be construed to prohibit a taking of private property by the Federal Government, that otherwise complies with applicable law, for the purpose of:
(a) public ownership or exclusive use of the property by the public, such as for a public medical facility, roadway, park, forest, governmental office building, or military reservation;
(b) projects designated for public, common carrier, public transportation, or public utility use, including those for which a fee is assessed, that serve the general public and are subject to regulation by a governmental entity;
c) conveying the property to a nongovernmental entity, such as a telecommunications or transportation common carrier, that makes the property available for use by the general public as of right;
(d) preventing or mitigating a harmful use of land that constitutes a threat to public health, safety, or the environment;
(e) acquiring abandoned property;
(f) quieting title to real property;
(g) acquiring ownership or use by a public utility;
(h) facilitating the disposal or exchange of Federal property; or
(i) meeting military, law enforcement, public safety, public transportation, or public health emergencies.
Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) authority granted by law to a department or agency or the head thereof; or
(ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budget, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(c) This order shall be implemented in a manner consistent with Executive Order 12630 of March 15, 1988.
(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 23, 2006.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060623-10.htmlEarlier in this century there were more trees shading, cooling the earth because development had not encroached on forested areas, clear-cutting many.
Ever felt a breeze flow out from a shaded area on a hot day????
Much cooler than one blowing across an exposed lawn or bare land.
Obviously global warming Chicken-Littles want to leave their imprint on history through engineering fear ....... when simple logic works much better. It's far easier to manipulate the media for a humanitarian-environmental gold star than it is to stay behind a national tree planting project applicable to area climates. Looks like another way for the MSM to award itself and science to support itself on government grants which furnish crumbs of validity so small they wouldn't feed an ant.
Trees, maybe not the whole answer but IMHO a very big part of helping alleviate "heat-island effect" many areas are experiencing where it's simply not cool enough to condense rain from water rich clouds.
"EARTH HOTTEST IT'S BEEN IN 2,000 YEARS
"
The headlines are screaming today that thanks to global warming, the Earth is now hotter than it's been in 2,000 years! Boy, we've really screwed up the planet, haven't we? It's now supposedly warmer than it was when Jesus was hanging around. According to something called "The National Academy of Sciences," using climate data for the last 200 years they have decided that humans are responsible for making the Earth hotter than it's been in the last 2,000 years.
That's right...the temperature data barely goes back 200 years...and now they know how hot the Earth was 2,000 years ago? That's strike one. Supposedly they used data gathered from tree rings, lake sediments and so forth to determine how hot it was all that time ago. But that is an educated guess and not fact. And by the way, buried at the end of the news story is a fact the global warming fanatics don't want you to know.
The overall temperature of the Northern Hemisphere only rose 1 degree in the 20th century. 1 degree! That's some global warming. "
http://boortz.com/nuze/200606/06232006.html#hothothot
Hmmmmm, no wonder China is becoming so technically advanced so quickly.
Clinton tied our intellingence into hard knots to prevent it from discovering he was filling his pockets with illegal campaign contributions from China in exchange for declassifying top secret dual use technonogy which was sold to China by Loral Corp and others.
At least intelligence was keeping an eye on him during Bush 41 before it was totally decimated.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 23, 2006
<excerpt>
A former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst has pleaded guilty to illegally holding classified documents and admitted in a plea agreement to passing "top secret" information to Chinese intelligence officials.
Ronald N. Montaperto, the former analyst who held a security clearance as a China specialist at a U.S. Pacific Command research center until 2004, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court papers and law officials familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"Montaperto admitted to verbally providing [Chinese military] attaches a considerable amount of information that was useful to them, including classified information," according to a statement of facts submitted in the case.
Montaperto told investigators he could not recall specific information he gave Chinese attaches Col. Yang Qiming, Col. Yu Zhenghe and other Chinese officers during his 22-year career in government. But the statement said it included both "secret" and "top secret" data. It also said he had close unauthorized relationships with the two officers.
The guilty plea was part of an agreement reached Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The conviction can carry fines of up to $250,000 and a prison term of up to 10 years. Sentencing is set for Sept. 8.
A Pentagon official said Montaperto's value to China included both the secrets he shared and his role facilitating Chinese deception of U.S. intelligence by providing feedback on how those efforts were working.
A senior U.S. intelligence official bluntly stated, "He was a spy for China." .....
......"Montaperto, 66, joined the DIA in 1981 and eight years later sought a post at the CIA that eventually led to suspicions he was a spy for China. An investigation of his links to Chinese intelligence in 1991 was dropped for lack of evidence."....
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060623-120347-7268r.htm
Picked this link up from another site. Same site also provides information about the following chemical agents:
Sarin gas was on full-scale production during that period time when Adolf Hitler was in power in Nazi Germany.Up to 10 tons of the gas was produced by the end of WWII.Latest use of Sarin was in the nerve gas attack of a Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in 1995.
Obviously, its roots can be traced back to fact that Nazi Germany and Japan were in the Axis alliance during world war two, yet Japan never seemed to go ahead with the industrial synthesis of Sarin.
The infamous Sarin gas possesses a variety of names but it was entitled after its four pioneers namely Schrader,Ambros,Rudriger and van der LINde.Being classified as a toxic organophosphorus compound, Sarin like most other nerve agents,is colorless,odorless,tasteless and diffuses very rapidly into the human skin due to its high volatility.
Moreover, due to its high density, Sarin gas tends to drift above the ground for weeks if not months, depending on how much is used.Just for the record, Sarin is known to vapourise 36 times more rapidly than Tabun, is 26 times more deadly than cyanide, 21 times more lethal than potassium cyanide and all it takes is 0.01 mg for every 1kg of body mass for it to be fatal for a human." ............
Note: article continues for 2 more pages
http://library.thinkquest.org/27393/dreamwvr/agents/sarin1.htm
Last night Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-MI, released the declassified overview of a report produced by the National Ground Intelligence Center, the group that has searched Iraq for Saddam Hussein’s WMDs since 2004. Its stunning revelation: there were WMDs, after all.
Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions, which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf war chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf war chemical munitions are assessed to still exist. That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-MI, noted this is significant, since “the impression that the Iraqi Survey Group left with the American people was they didn't find anything.”
The report further justified President Bush’s rationale for toppling Saddam: he had WMDs that he may have transferred to terrorists.
All of which makes the anti-Bush, antiwar Left’s rhetoric sound more shrill and opportunistic than it did at the time:
These rhetorical assaults made against a sitting president during a time of war would be somewhat less vicious, egregious, or gratuitous were they born of heartfelt conviction. However, yesterday’s disclosure was not exactly news. For one thing, many of the “Bush lied”/”Saddam never had WMDs” brigade had thundered that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons before, during, and after the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Only after the Soros-funded "base" of their party made a pro-war stance political suicide did most of today's critics turn against the president, the war, and the mission they had sent more than 100,000 American troops to die achieving.
Then the president’s harshest detractors turned a blind eye to proof of Saddam’s verboten cache.
A few have responded. The Daily Kos featured the headline “PA-Sen: Santorum Makes Up.” To justify its profane assertion, it cites all the inspectors who didn’t find WMDs – which is rather like the defense calling witnesses who had not see the accused commit the murder.
Even as incontrovertible proof exonerated the president, Gucci Marxist and ignoramus Robert Scheer told MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson last night, “We’re talking about whether it’s right to lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction…so I want a candidate that will tell the truth about the lies of this administration.”
As the weeks unfold, the Democratic Party’s base will likely adopt Scheer’s m.o. as their own: after all, the Big Lie tactic has proven successful elsewhere. The Left’s hardcore activists, invested in American defeat in Iraq and Republican defeat in ’06 and ’08, will not refrain from calling President Bush a lying Nazi even if Saddam, in a fit of hunger-induced insanity, admitted every sin and dark machination lurking in his evil heart.
But their continuing to do so should underscore their idiocy and mendacity."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=23059
Live embedded links.
"Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq
Source FoxNews.com
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
<excerpt>
"WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.
"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.
Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."
• Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.
He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.
"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the document. .....................Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified document proves is untrue.
"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.
As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction." ........
Another email treasure. Have never seen a comparison like this. Amazing, very humbling!!
Given the sun's size and scientific proof of it YES burning hotter, looks like that could have an effect on earth's temperature without fossil fuel being in the picture.
Came in email .... utterly amazing.
Two US soldiers kidnapped in Iraq have been found: Bodies of missing U.S. soldiers recovered.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of two U.S. soldiers reported captured last week have been recovered, and an Iraqi official said Tuesday the men were “killed in a barbaric way.” Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers, and said the successor to slain terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had “slaughtered” them, according to a Web statement that could not be authenticated.
The language in the statement suggested the men had been beheaded.
The sick freaks at Daily Kos are gloating: Daily Kos: So our boys were tortured - how quaint.
The bodies of the two captured U.S. soldiers were found in Iraq - bearing signs of “barbaric torture.”
How quaint.
I hope Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo will sleep well tonight, with visions of those boys’ bodies and the horrible barbarities inflicted upon them dancing in their heads. Perhaps Gonzales, and Yoo, and Rumsfeld and Bush will be able to envision the same inhumanities being visited upon their family members and loved ones as they drift off to peaceful slumber.
This cannot stand. We cannot allow this administration and its incomprehensible defense of and support for torture in violation of the “quaint” Geneva Conventions to remain.
The chickens have come home to roost. As ye sew, so shall ye reap.
I weep for my country, and for the families and loved ones of those in Iraq and Afghanistan, those yet living and those already dead.
Peace. "
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21135_Daily_Kos-_How_Quaint&only
UPDATE: I wrote this diary early this morning, in haste. I was so upset when I heard the news about our soldiers having been tortured that I could barely contain my anger.
I posted it quickly, knowing that I had meetings to attend off and on throughout the day. It moved to the Recommended list, but I was unable to attend to it full-time; additionally, the !@#$%@#! server errors made it extremely difficult to move through the comments.
Based on many of the comments, I thought it would be best if I were to clarify some of my statements above.
My heart is broken by the brutal and senseless murder of these two young men. The fact that they were tortured makes the grief all the more grievous. I have not a shred of doubt that the barbarians who did this to them - who alone among all humans, are 100% responsible for their actions - will pay the price for their heinous acts, whether in this life or the next. In the meantime, I pray for the souls of those killed and for the comfort of those who loved them, and for all who care about their fate.
I wrote this diary because I was enraged that our government - my government - could have taken - and repeatedly defended - a position that the provisions of the Geneva Conventions - provisions written with the understanding that war is a brutal and savage activity at its core, and that humans engaged in war often are prone to brutal and savage behaviors - are merely "quaint" anachronisms, no longer applicable to our current world situation, and that torture is an acceptable practice for our society.
Such a position is a disgrace to the people, history and ideals of the United States of America, and especially to those who have risked or sacrificed their lives to defend those people and ideals. That is not what we stand for, nor is it what our men and women put their lives on the line - and sometimes die - for. We as a country are better than that. I am angry that my country no longer can claim the moral high ground when an atrocity such as the torture and murder of these young men occurs at the hands of barbarians.
I do not wish ill to Messrs. Gonzales, Yoo, Bush or Rumfeld, nor to any members of their families. I was writing out of anger, and what I wrote in that paragraph was wrong. I apologize for having written it. I cannot pretend that I did not write it, but I do not wish to perpetuate what I wrote. I have changed the offending sentences.
I am heartsick today. I am sorry for causing misunderstanding. - OH"
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/20/101853/419
Source Real Clear Politics
" Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this?
After all, if the science is as conclusive as Al Gore, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and virtually every other spokesman of the Left says it is, conservatives are just as likely to be scorched and drowned and otherwise done in by global warming as liberals will. So why aren't non-leftists nearly as exercised as leftists are? Do conservatives handle heat better? Are libertarians better swimmers? Do religious people love their children less?
The usual liberal responses -- to label a conservative position racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic or the like -- obviously don't apply here. So, liberals would have to fall back on the one remaining all-purpose liberal explanation: "big business." They might therefore explain the conservative-liberal divide over global warming thus: Conservatives don't care about global warming because they prefer corporate profits to saving the planet.
But such an explanation could not explain the vast majority of conservatives who are not in any way tied into the corporate world (like this writer, who has no stocks and who, moreover, regards big business as amoral as leftists do).
No, the usual liberal dismissals of conservatives and their positions just don't explain this particularly illuminating difference between liberals and conservatives.
Here are six more likely explanations:
-- The Left is prone to hysteria. The belief that global warming will destroy the world is but one of many hysterical notions held on the Left. As noted in a previous column devoted to the Left and hysteria, many on the Left have been hysterical about the dangers of the PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance of phone numbers (incipient fascism); secondhand smoke (killing vast numbers of people); drilling in the remotest area of Alaska (major environmental despoliation); and opposition to same-sex marriage (imminent Christian theocracy).
-- The Left believes that if The New York Times and other liberal news sources report something, it is true. If the cover of Time magazine says, "Global Warming: Be Worried, Very Worried," liberals get worried, very worried, about global warming.
It is noteworthy that liberals, one of whose mottos is "question authority," so rarely question the authority of the mainstream media. Now, of course, conservatives, too, often believe mainstream media. But conservatives have other sources of news that enable them to achieve the liberal ideal of questioning authority. Whereas few liberals ever read non-liberal sources of information or listen to conservative talk radio, the great majority of conservatives are regularly exposed to liberal news, liberal editorials and liberal films, and they have also received many years of liberal education.
-- The Left believes in experts. Of course, every rational person, liberal or conservative, trusts the expertise of experts -- such as when experts in biology explain the workings of mitochondria, or when experts in astronomy describe the moons of Jupiter. But for liberals, "expert" has come to mean far more than greater knowledge in a given area. It now means two additional things: One is that non-experts should defer to experts not only on matters of knowledge, but on matters of policy, as well. The second is that experts possess greater wisdom about life, not merely greater knowledge in their area of expertise.
That is why liberals are far more likely to be impressed when a Nobel Prize winner in, let us say, physics signs an ad against war or against capital punishment. The liberal is bowled over by the title "Nobel laureate." The conservative is more likely to wonder why a Nobel laureate in physics has anything more meaningful to say about war than, let us say, a taxi driver.
-- People who don't confront the greatest evils will confront far lesser ones. Most humans know the world is morally disordered -- and socially conscious humans therefore try to fight what they deem to be most responsible for that disorder. The Right tends to fight human evil such as communism and Islamic totalitarianism. The Left avoids confronting such evils and concentrates its attention instead on socioeconomic inequality, environmental problems and capitalism. Global warming meets all three of these criteria of evil. By burning fossil fuels, rich countries pollute more, the environment is being despoiled and big business increases its profits.
-- The Left is far more likely to revere, even worship, nature. A threat to the environment is regarded by many on the Left as a threat to what is most sacred to them, and therefore deemed to be the greatest threat humanity faces. The cover of Vanity Fair's recent "Special Green Issue" declared: "A Graver Threat Than Terrorism: Global Warming." Conservatives, more concerned with human evil, hold the very opposite view: Islamic terror is a far graver threat than global warming.
-- Leftists tend to fear dying more. That is one reason they are more exercised about our waging war against evil than about the evils committed by those we fight. The number of Iraqis and others Saddam Hussein murdered troubles the Left considerably less than even the remote possibility than they may one day die of global warming (or secondhand smoke).
One day, our grandchildren may ask us what we did when Islamic fascism threatened the free world. Some of us will say we were preoccupied with fighting that threat wherever possible; others will be able to say they fought carbon dioxide emissions. One of us will look bad."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/06/why_liberals_fear_global_warmi.htmlBe warned that if you have a weak stomach or are not grounded enough to see what Saddam left behind, DON'T CLICK THE LINK.
saddam leaves indelible mark on Iraq Original Caption: Skeletons and clothes of people allegedly executed during the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lie in a mass grave after they were unearthed by forensic experts in a remote desert south of Baghdad. (Getty Images) |
Boortz has said repeatedly if the hospitality mat is withdrawn they will leave. Statement only logical, like the source or not.
Since the feds especially pantywaists in the Senate have shown they don't "want to hurt the invader's feelings" then responsibility to do something falls further down the food chain.
HAZLETON, Pa. - With tensions rising and its police department and municipal budget stretched thin, this small northeastern Pennsylvania city is about to begin what the mayor calls one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal immigrants in the United States.
"Illegal immigrants are destroying the city," said Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican. "I don't want them here, period."
Last week Barletta introduced, and the City Council tentatively approved, a measure that would revoke the business licenses of companies that employ illegal immigrants; impose $1,000 fines on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants; and make English the city's official language.
As Congress debates changes to the nation's immigration policy, some cities are taking matters into their own hands, saying they have no choice but to crack down on illegal immigrants themselves. "
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060620/ap_on_re_us/illegal_immigrants_crackdown_4
One terrorist cell at a time globally and perhaps they'll begin to get the message it's not a good profession to be in.
Amazing ...MSM runs with the story when Russians kill an Islamic terrorist, but side with defeatists when we're obviously succeeding globally.
......In remarks posted on a separatist Web site last week, Mr. Saidullayev offered to negotiate peace but vowed to continue struggling for independence, a goal that seems farther away than ever. He said that as long as Russian forces killed women and children in Chechnya, he could not order a halt to attacks like that at Beslan. "Was it not this callous indifference to the killing of our children that made Beslan and things that happened before it possible?" he said, in remarks published in a Bulgarian news weekly, Politika, as transcribed by the BBC. "
This link came in email. Have your speakers on and enjoy!!
This disgusting tactic should be ousted on the front pages of every newspaper across the nation, yet you've heard nary a word about it.
Here are the specs:
A number of months ago, as first reported by yours truly, Superintendent Paul Ash decided to have his second grade teachers begin reading "fairy-tale" about two princes getting it on homosexual style to be read in the classrooms under his direction. The book was called "King and King."
In reaction parents from the Estabrook School decided to plead with Ash as to whether this book should be allowed. The all powerful Ash laughed and went on his way.
Somewhat disheartened by this response the parents then made the completely over-the-top request of being notified when such material would be presented in the classroom - especially if it knowingly violated their conscience and their religious convictions.
Growing somewhat angry the all powerful Ash shot the parents a verbal middle finger by retorting, "Estabrook has no legal obligation to notify parents about the book. We couldn't run a public school system if every parent who feels some topic is objectionable to them for moral or religious reasons decides their child should be removed. Lexington is committed to teaching children about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal."
This profane sort of arrogance didn't sit well with one of the parents by name of David Parker. He went to the school to discuss it directly with Ash. When Parker refused to leave without being heard by the all powerful Ash he was arrested. Remember Parker's only request was to be notified when homosexuality or transgenderism was to be discussed.
Word spread amongst the liberal activist groups around the area. Nasty letters began to be written to local newspapers in an effort to get Parker to back down. When that didn't work a nasty web-site was created to spread the anti-Parker venom via the internet and rally the call to other activist groups nationwide. On the day of Parker's hearing the Ash/Nasty coalition turned out dozens of adults to demonstrate hate-filled nastiness against Parker as he entered and exited the courthouse. All in an attempt to get him to shut up. The nasties even convinced the school district to post anti-Parker newspaper stories on the bulletin boards throughout the schools as another means of intimidation.
None of it worked!
Instead on April 27 Parker and another family from the school district filed a federal civil rights suit against the school district. This made Ash and the other nasties even angrier and some of them decided to get even.
At the courthouse hearings and many of the protests outside Parker's home the nasties had used children to hold up hateful signs and demonstrate alongside their nasty parents. They also recruited young children to participate in angry anti-Parker demonstrations outside the school and to engage in letter writing campaigns.
But on May 17 they crossed the line.
That was the day that 10 of these thug-kins grabbed David Parker's 7 year old son, dragged him behind the corner of the school, well out of sight from the school officials, and proceeded to punch him in the groin, stomach, and chest, before he dropped to the ground when they then kicked and stomped on him. Several of the alleged thug-kins were children of the adults who had been protesting Parker, several of them - not even in the same class as Parker's child. It also needs to be pointed out that May 17 was a targeted date because that is the anniversary of changing the marriage definitions in the state of Massachusetts to include homosexual unions. Emotions among many activists were running very high on this day.
The school district "investigated" and did determine that the attack was pre-meditated. Shockingly they decided no punishment necessary for the 10 thug-kins who were serving as political hit men for the activists in Lexington.
All of this happening because one father wished to reserve the right to teach his own family's faith-based views on sexuality.
I support the lawsuit that David Parker is bringing against Ash, and the Estabrook School District. Standing up is always the right thing to do. His legal fees are growing ..... <snip>...... I would also encourage you to drop an e-mail to Paul Ash or place a phone call - either way it is obvious that Ash believes that he is unaccountable to the parents of his district. Here's Paul Ash's e-mail address: [email protected]. His phone number at the school is (781) 861-2550. His home number is (617) 244-9622.
It's also very sad that Ash's compadres have sunk to the level of assaulting the seven year old child of David Parker in their attempts to shut him up.
But then again liberals don't believe in absolutes, morality, or the law - so why should we be surprised? "
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/KevinMcCullough/2006/06/18/201655.html
Top clip, Rather is retiring .... hate Bush came back home and bit him.
Next clips and links outline who/what brought him down which came down to typewriter fonts, mono vs. proportional spacing noted by "Buckhead" (Freeper name) an Atlanta attorney who caught the forgery and ran with it.
Third link came from a search which gives a rough synopsis with links.
Embedded live links.
It's over.
After 44 years, Dan Rather will leave CBS by the end of the month, at the latest, industry sources said Friday. His departure could come as early as next week.
Rather, 74, whose contract runs until late November, is working out the final details of his exit agreement, the sources say. .....
...... Anchor of CBS Evening News for a record 24 years until being forced out in March '05 by the Memogate scandal, Rather was fighting to stay at the network in some "meaningful" capacity. It was clear that the network wanted him gone. ...
......Many inside CBS feel that Rather triggered his own demise by vigorously defending his flawed 60 Minutes II report in September '04 that questioned President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, even after the authenticity of the documents used in the piece could not be proved. ......."
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/14836522.htm
Having heard the story about President Bush's needling of the vision-impaired reporter for wearing sunglasses as he asked a question during yesterday'a press conference, I sympathized with President Bush and admired the reporter for making nothing of it. Today I was shocked to learn that the reporter was Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times. I have had the occasion to speak with Peter in his professional capacity by telephone on several occasions and always been impressed both by his doggedness and his fairness.
Peter was the reporter, for example, who discovered and broke the story that "Buckhead" -- Rathergate's Paul Revere or Deep Throat -- was Atlanta attorney Harry McDougald. See our posts "Hurricane Dan: Get serious"
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007808.php
and "Meet Buckhead."
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007876.php
In any event, I want to take the opportunity to salute Peter publicly by name for his class and for the example he has set.
Posted by Scott at 06:10 PM
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014410.php
“Buckhead” vs. Dan Rather: Internet David Slays Media Goliath
September 26, 2004
by Nicholas Stix
“Buckhead” and Post #47
As soon as CBS put the “documents,” or rather photocopies of them on its Web site, a FReeper (denizen of the conservative/Republican Web site, FreeRepublic with the username “Buckhead,” almost immediately showed that the “documents” were likely forgeries. In his now legendary post 47, Buckhead argued,
“Howlin [another FReeper’s username], every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
“In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
“The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
“I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
“This should be pursued aggressively.”
That was the first blow, from which all the others followed. Several FReepers in the “Pajama Posse” researched the matter further on a series of threads that night, to be joined by a number of bloggers, among them Ratherbiased.com, PowerLineBlog.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com and Instapundit.com. (The term “blog” derives from “Web log.” I believe “Pajama Posse” is a facetious reference to FReepers who do research on the Internet while in their pajamas. While some FReepers are lawyers and current or former journalists -- the late Barbara Olson was a FReeper, though not an active one -- many of its best researchers are simply bright, hard-nosed civilians with a modem and a large library.)
Actually, the typewriter fonts used in the CBS documents existed at the time, but were not commonly used, and certainly not by the Texas Air National Guard, much less by Col Killian, who did not type memos.
Only when the “blogosphere” lit up with activity, did the socialist mainstream media (SMSM) grudgingly pick up the story, and eventually kick into high gear, even as their members refused to credit the Web world. “Buckhead” was identified by the Los Angeles Times as 46-year-old, conservative activist Atlanta attorney Harry W. McDougald (“Buckhead” is a tony Atlanta neighborhood).
When I reached McDougald, he said, “Well, I’m not doing interviews, Nicholas, so I’m not going to be able to help you. I’m sorry.”
Oh, that’s a shame!
“Yes, but that’s what I’m doing and I’ve done that consistently, and that’s where I’m going to stick.”
Polite, but firm.
The refusal by most of the SMSM, when the Memogate hoax was exposed, to credit McDougald/Buckhead and his FReeper compatriots is typical of the vanity and arrogance of that media subculture, whose partisans still believe that they have a monopoly on describing social reality and prescribing political action, and that civilians have merely to accept what they dish out, and follow their marching orders. (Politically correct “journalistic ethics authority” Jim Romenesko of the Poynter Institute, also refused to discuss Memogate until everyone and his Aunt Ida already had, which led Washington Dispatch editor C.K. Rairden to skewer Romenesko, along with CBS. Romenesko’s views are pretty much representative of the dominant talking points in university journalism programs.)
Eventually, it came out that some of CBS’ own document experts had had grave misgivings about the authenticity of the documents; people whom Rather claimed had vouchsafed the documents’ authenticity had never seen them, but only had their contents read to them over the telephone, or only seen photocopies; and that Rather had ignored the insistence of Col. Killian’s wife and son, that the memos could not have been from him. And even after the hoax was exposed, Rather was caught presenting a former typewriter repairman as a document expert." .......
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/s/stix/2004/stix092604.htm
From Powerlineblog.com Live links.
"That's the title of this StrategyPage analysis of the blows that have been struck against al Qaeda in Iraq in recent days. Some excerpts:
Al Qaeda in Iraq has been virtually wiped out by the loss of an address book. The death of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was not as important as the capture of his address book and other planning documents in the wake of the June 7th bombing.Nearly a thousand terrorist suspects have been killed or captured. The amount of information captured has overwhelmed intelligence organizations in Iraq, and more translators and analysts are assisting, via satellite link, from the United States and other locations.
Perhaps the most valuable finds have been al Qaeda planning documents confirming what has been suspected of terrorist strategy. Also valuable have been the al Qaeda assessment of their situation in Iraq. The terrorist strategy is one of desperation.
Other documents stressed the need to manipulate Moslem and Western media. This was to be done by starting rumors of American atrocities, and feeding the media plausible supporting material. Al Qaeda's attitude was that if they could not win in reality, they could at least win imaginary battles via the media.
[T]there are far fewer foreign Arabs in Iraq fighting for al Qaeda. The terrorist organization has basically been taken over anti-government Sunni Arabs. That made the capture of Zarqawi even more valuable, as his address book contained a who's who of the anti-government Sunni Arab forces. This group has been hurt badly by last week's raids.
In this morning's New York Post, Ralph Peters writes on "Terrorist Defeatism." Drawing on captured al Qaeda documents, Peters exposes the closely-guarded secret (closely guarded by the western media, anyway) that we are winning in Iraq, where al Qaeda says its situation is "bleak." And that was before its leader was killed, and nearly 1,000 more killed or rounded up.
If you haven't already read it, the text of the document recovered from Zarqawi's hideout that Peters mostly refers to is here.
Via Power Line News.
Where are the "greens" when the world needs them???????????
There was some sort of chemical spill in a major river back in the winter which bubbled up past their news blackout, plus coal mine explosions.
Hmmm, perhaps they need some of our greenie environmental regulations to bring their economy to a grinding hault.
Also bet our drive by media doesn't mention this because anything a Marxist government does is perfect in their eyes.
| "China Builds 51 Dams to Slow Toxic Spill Jun 16 10:26 AM US/Eastern |
BEIJING
<excerpt>
The spill of 60 tons of coal tar into the Dasha river in north China's Shanxi province was the latest in a series of mishaps fouling the country's already polluted waterways. Officials said there have been at least 76 water pollution accidents in the last six months.
A villager who lives along the river described seeing dozens of dead fish floating in the water.
In a separate incident Thursday, a series of explosions rocked the Longxin Chemical Plant in the city of Longquan, Zhejiang province, destroying two factories and threatening to contaminate the Oujiang river, which empties into the East China Sea, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
"http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/16/D8I9BVQO0.html
| Yeas | Nays | PRES | NV | |
| Republican | 214 | 3 | 2 | 12 |
| Democratic | 42 | 149 | 3 | 7 |
| Independent | 1 | |||
| TOTALS | 256 | 153 | 5 | 19 |
| Aderholt Akin Alexander Baker Barrett (SC) Barrow Bartlett (MD) Barton (TX) Bass Bean Beauprez Berman Berry Biggert Bilbray Bilirakis Bishop (GA) Blackburn Blunt Boehlert Boehner Bonilla Bonner Bono Boozman Boren Boswell Boucher Boustany Bradley (NH) Brady (TX) Brown (SC) Brown-Waite, Ginny Burgess Buyer Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cantor Capito Cardoza Case Castle Chabot Chandler Chocola Coble Cole (OK) Conaway Cooper Costa Costello Cramer Crenshaw Cubin Cuellar Culberson Davis (KY) Davis (TN) Davis, Jo Ann Davis, Tom Deal (GA) Dent Diaz-Balart, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Doolittle Drake Dreier Edwards Ehlers Emerson English (PA) Etheridge Everett Feeney Ferguson Fitzpatrick (PA) Flake Foley Forbes Fortenberry Fossella Foxx Franks (AZ) Frelinghuysen Gallegly | Garrett (NJ) Gerlach Gibbons Gilchrest Gillmor Gingrey Gohmert Goode Goodlatte Gordon Granger Graves Green (WI) Green, Gene Gutknecht Hall Harris Hart Hastert Hastings (WA) Hayes Hayworth Hefley Hensarling Herger Herseth Higgins Hobson Hoekstra Holden Hostettler Hulshof Hunter Hyde Inglis (SC) Issa Istook Jenkins Jindal Johnson (CT) Johnson (IL) Keller Kelly Kennedy (MN) Kind King (IA) King (NY) Kingston Kirk Kline Knollenberg Kolbe Kuhl (NY) LaHood Larsen (WA) Latham LaTourette Lewis (KY) Linder Lipinski LoBiondo Lucas Lungren, Daniel E. Lynch Mack Manzullo Marchant Marshall Matheson McCarthy McCaul (TX) McCrery McHenry McHugh McIntyre McKeon McMorris Melancon Mica Miller (FL) Miller (MI) Miller, Gary Moore (KS) Moran (KS) Murphy Musgrave | Myrick Neugebauer Ney Northup Norwood Nunes Osborne Otter Oxley Pearce Pence Peterson (MN) Peterson (PA) Petri Pickering Pitts Platts Poe Pombo Porter Price (GA) Pryce (OH) Putnam Radanovich Ramstad Regula Rehberg Renzi Reynolds Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rogers (MI) Rohrabacher Ros-Lehtinen Ross Royce Ryan (WI) Ryun (KS) Salazar Saxton Schmidt Schwarz (MI) Shadegg Shaw Shays Sherwood Shimkus Shuster Simmons Simpson Smith (NJ) Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Snyder Sodrel Souder Spratt Stearns Sullivan Sweeney Tancredo Taylor (MS) Taylor (NC) Terry Thomas Thompson (MS) Thornberry Tiahrt Tiberi Turner Upton Walden (OR) Walsh Wamp Weldon (FL) Weldon (PA) Weller Westmoreland Whitfield Wicker Wilson (SC) Wolf Young (AK) Young (FL) |
| Abercrombie Ackerman Allen Andrews Baca Baird Baldwin Becerra Berkley Blumenauer Brady (PA) Brown (OH) Brown, Corrine Butterfield Capps Capuano Cardin Carnahan Carson Clay Clyburn Conyers Crowley Cummings Davis (AL) Davis (CA) Davis (FL) Davis (IL) DeFazio DeGette Delahunt DeLauro Dicks Doggett Doyle Duncan Emanuel Engel Eshoo Farr Fattah Filner Ford Frank (MA) Gonzalez Green, Al Grijalva Harman Hastings (FL) Hinchey Hinojosa | Holt Honda Hooley Hoyer Inslee Israel Jackson (IL) Jackson-Lee (TX) Jefferson Johnson, E. B. Jones (OH) Kanjorski Kaptur Kennedy (RI) Kildee Kucinich Langevin Lantos Larson (CT) Leach Lee Levin Lewis (GA) Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Maloney Markey Matsui McCollum (MN) McDermott McGovern McKinney McNulty Meehan Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Michaud Millender-McDonald Miller, George Mollohan Moore (WI) Moran (VA) Murtha Nadler Napolitano Neal (MA) Oberstar Obey Olver Ortiz Owens | Pallone Pascrell Pastor Paul Payne Pelosi Pomeroy Price (NC) Rahall Rangel Reyes Rothman Roybal-Allard Ruppersberger Rush Ryan (OH) Sabo Sánchez, Linda T. Sanchez, Loretta Sanders Schakowsky Schiff Schwartz (PA) Scott (GA) Scott (VA) Serrano Skelton Slaughter Solis Stark Strickland Stupak Tanner Tauscher Thompson (CA) Tierney Towns Udall (CO) Udall (NM) Van Hollen Velázquez Visclosky Wasserman Schultz Waters Watson Watt Weiner Wexler Woolsey Wu Wynn |
| Boyd Jones (NC) | McCotter Miller (NC) | Sherman |
| Bachus Bishop (NY) Bishop (UT) Burton (IN) Cannon Carter Cleaver | Dingell Evans Gutierrez Johnson, Sam Kilpatrick (MI) Lewis (CA) Nussle | Reichert Sensenbrenner Sessions Waxman Wilson (NM) |
From Powerlineblog.com concerning media leaks of top secret information. Looks like they've waded into deep stink they may not be able to backstroke out of.
First link, Professor John Eastman's testimony is very complete and worth the time to read.
Yesterday OpinionJournal posted Professor John Eastman's testimony
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110008511 .
before a hearing conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In his testimony Professor Eastman addressed the media's criminal liability under the espionage laws for publishing classified information. It's a subject that's close to my heart; I devoted the Standard column "Exposure"
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/631lksqg.asp
to it. Professor Eastman's testimony is consistent with, though more expansive than, my analysis. Professor Eastman comments on the
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008320
by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller defending the Times's exposure of the NSA monitoring program. As Professor Eastman addresses Keller's letter, the baloney meets the grinder. (Thanks to Hugh Hewitt.) http://hughhewitt.com/
Posted by Scott at 07:07 AM
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014406.php
Today, the Left is looking for a new champion to “contain” the United States, and, if possible, impose such a major defeat on America that a crisis of legitimacy will pave the way for revolution. It was, after all, Russia’s debacle in World War I that brought down the Romanov dynasty. And aging New Leftists still revel in how much the anti-war movement during Vietnam changed America, even if the desire to “turn the guns around” and “bring the war home” did not pan out. The attempt to recreate the 1970s mood of national decline by reviving a mass post-9/11 anti-war movement has fallen flat because Islamic fanaticism is a tough sell, even when dressed up in the rhetoric about Third World resistance to Western aggression. Islam has some charm, in that it has long been the main enemy of Christendom, but leftists are rooted in the atheistic materialism of Marx which rejects all religions.
Terrorism, of course, appeals to the romantic nature of the Left. But even they know that al-Qaeda is far too weak to pose a real global threat to U.S. hegemony. What they want is the rise of a new superpower to replace the USSR, and many seem to have found it in the People’s Republic of China. Beijing may not be as attractive as it was during the reign of Chairman Mao, when his “little red book” was all the rage, but China is still ruled by a Communist dictatorship and its “market socialism” and five year plans can still offer the “alternative model of development” that Singer called for in 1989 as the Soviet model disappeared in Europe.
It should not be surprising then, that some of the harshest critics of the Bush administration’s military campaigns in the Middle East are shifting their focus to bolstering China’s position in Asia. One of the most prominent organizations of this sort is the Japan Policy Research Institute (JPRI). It was founded in 1994 by Chalmers Johnson and Steve Clemons, who with Johnson’s wife Sheila, are the only officers.
Chalmers Johnson served as chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Since the invasion of Iraq, he has published two books in a proposed trilogy which he calls “the American Empire project.” The second book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004), argues that since 9/11, the United States has “undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible.” U.S. policy is based on “the use or threat of force rather than negotiations, commerce, or cultural interaction” and Johnson claims “a revolution would be required to bring the Pentagon back under democratic control.”
It is the first book of the set, Blowback : The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2003), that shows the link between his interests in China and Japan. It is a polemic history of U.S. imperialism in Asia, where Washington’s misguided opposition to communism in China, Korea and Vietnam blends with stories of crimes committed by American Marines against civilians on Okinawa. Indeed, the JPRI trumpets every alleged incident on Okinawa in an attempt to promote ill-will between Japanese and Americans. In exchange for a tax deductible contribution, the JPRI will provide a DVD about Okinawa that “vividly portrays the dangers and miseries of having Fatenma airbase in their midst.”
On May 1 of this year, the United States and Japan finalized plans to consolidate the 50,000 American troops in Japan as part of a broader realignment of the U.S. forces in Asia. The plan will transfer 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014, and relocate helicopters from Futenma to Nago. Japan will pay $6 billion towards relocating the Marines. But this is not the sign of flagging U.S.-Japanese cooperation that critics have wanted. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the plan will “create a stronger, sustainable alliance that demonstrates our global partnership and that is one that pushed us forward into the 21st century.”
Steven Clemons’ blog daily pounds the Bush administration from any angle he can find, but weakening American resolve and engineering an immediate withdrawal from Iraq are his central themes. Clemons is also the director of the American Strategy program at the New America Foundation (NAF), whose goal is to create a “new” America in the image of “old” social democratic Europe. NAF recently gave a forum to Cem Oezdemir, a Green Party member of the European Parliament and Vice President for the Temporary Committee on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Transport and Illegal Detention of Prisoners. His mission to Washington was to advance the case for more limits on CIA operations, using European and international law to protect the rights of suspected terrorists.
Clemons and Oezdemir are old comrades. They co-authored an article published November 13, 2003 in China Economic Times which described the Department of Defense as “clearly the world’s biggest and richest institutional relic.... suffering from the failure to dismantle its empire superstructure after the Soviet empire collapsed.” They argued against missile defense and called for “the realignment and withdrawal from parts of the globe where American presence may actually be a greater source of instability than stability.” Disarmament and global retreat were pitched as the way to better tailor forces to fight terrorism. Yet, now when the CIA conducts operations against terrorists, they also complain. It is clear their focus is not anti-terrorism, but anti-imperialism.
It is also clear why China Economic Times, an official publication of the Beijing regime, would want to promote a call by an American and a European for the downsizing of the Pentagon. Halting the U.S. missile defense program is a top Chinese priority, especially as it has the potential for linking the United States, Japan and other Asian states into an integrated, regional network.
A major funder of the New America Foundation is Bernard L. Schwartz, Chairman and CEO of Loral Space & Communications Inc. In 2002, Loral finally settled the case brought against it for providing China [my note: verifiably done during Clinton years ] with technology that increased the reliability of its space-launch boosters, which are identical to the long-range nuclear missiles built by the same state-run firm. Loral agreed to pay $14 million in civil fines, but never admitted wrong doing. Schwartz and other Loran officials are not stupid. They had to know they were helping China’s nuclear weapons program, but they did not care. They wanted to hire China as a cheap, reliable satellite launcher to boost their corporate profits. Schwartz was the largest single contributor to President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and has lobbied hard to loosen export controls on technology sales to China.
China’s rise has raised alarms in both Washington and Tokyo, drawing the two long-time democratic allies even closer together. And it is this alliance which the Japan Policy Research Institute is trying to undermine. In a March 2005 JPRI Working Paper “No Longer the ‘Lone’ Superpower: Coming to Terms with China” Johnson attacks the Bush administration for “doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.” He argued that “Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict that the United States would almost surely lose.”
Johnson argues for a policy of appeasement towards China, based on the failure of the United States and Great Britain to sufficiently appease the Axis and Communist powers in the 20th century. He revisionist history goes like this, “the most salient characteristic of international relations during the last century was the inability of the rich, established powers - Great Britain and the United States -- to adjust peacefully to the emergence of new centers of power in Germany, Japan, and Russia. The result was two exceedingly bloody world wars, a forty-five-year-long Cold War between Russia and the ‘West,’ and innumerable wars of national liberation (such as the quarter-century long one in Vietnam) against the arrogance and racism of European, American, and Japanese imperialism and colonialism.”
The structure of his last sentence seems to imply it was wrong to oppose Japanese “imperialism and colonialism” in the past when Tokyo was a “new center of power” challenging the West, but that Tokyo is a source of “arrogance and racism” today because it is allied with the United States. He also seems to forget that both world wars and the Cold War were started when the “new centers” tried to expand by armed force.
He continues this error when discussing Taiwan. “The American government and Japanese followers of George W. Bush insult China in every way they can, particularly over the status of China's breakaway province, the island of Taiwan.” asserts Johnson, claiming “in light of the Bush administration's Alice-in-Wonderland war in Iraq, the acute anti-Americanism it has generated globally, and the politicization of America's intelligence services, it seems possible that the U.S. and Japan might actually precipitate a war with China over Taiwan.”
Japan did join the U.S. for the first time last year in declaring that “peace” in and around Taiwan is a “common security goal.” This is based on the assumption that Taiwan can only be united with the PRC against its will by military aggression from the mainland. Peace maintains the status quo of Taiwan as a self-governing democracy. In contrast, Johnson echoes Beijing’s propaganda by arguing that it is the attempt to deter an attack on Taiwan that is the threat to peace. In should be noted that the U.S.-Japan declaration was a reaction to Beijing’s passage of an “Anti-Secession Law” that reiterated its right to attack the island.
Nancy Soderberg, a senior National Security Council staffer during the Clinton administration blames the Bush administration not only for provoking China over Taiwan, but for overreacting when Americans are threatened as well. A Chinese fighter rammed a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance aircraft on April 1, 2001 and the plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island. In her book The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might, Soderberg claims “the administration immediately escalated the incident to the Oval Office, rather than giving quiet diplomacy a chance.”
There was nothing quiet about the violent interception, which Soderberg acknowledges was over international waters. Besides the issue of the American crew being held captive and their high-tech aircraft being stripped of its equipment, there was another overarching issue at stake which Soderberg completely ignored: China’s push to extend its claims to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea in violation of international law. By accepting Beijing’s line that the crisis was the result not of the collision, but of the crippled plane entering Chinese airspace to land, Soderberg shifts the blame to the U.S. while blurring the definition of what constitutes China’s borders in a way that hems in future American action.
Soderberg is now vice president of the International Crisis Group headquartered in Brussels. The main theme of her book is American unilateralism, which does not mean acting without allies; but acting boldly in its own interests. Those who do become allies are to be attacked for cooperating with Washington.
This is the mission of the JPRI , which wages a smear campaign against Tokyo. A JPRI Critique published in January 2006 sought to explain “Why the Chinese are so Anti-Japanese.” It starts with the claim that “the single most important fact is that WWII is only one of many episodes of Japanese aggression.” It then moves on argue “many Chinese regard Japanese as ingrates. Historically, Japan borrowed much from Chinese civilization, including institutions, its written language, architecture, and even clothing.... Japan, as a student nation, seems never to have missed an opportunity for harassing, bullying, and invading China.” The article was written by Shaohua Hu, a former fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Science now teaching at Wagner College in New York.
Any attempt by Japan to act like a normal country is denounced. For example, JPRI board member Kozy K. Amemiya, writing in the September 1999 JPRI Critique, denounced an overwhelming vote in the Diet legally recognizing the Japanese flag and national anthem as an act of “blind patriotism” that will “turn Japan further to the right.”
In “Koizumi’s Coup” Gavan McCormack, a frequent contributor to JPRI publications, attacked Japan’s electoral system in the September-October issue of New Left Review. He argued for reforms that would give not only give the left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan more seats in the Diet, but also the further left Social Democratic and Communist parties. McCormack did not like the fact that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s Liberal Democrats and its coalition partner the Buddhist Komeito (Clean Government) Party, had increased their parliamentary majority in the 2005 election. In an earlier column for Japan Focus, McCormack voiced his dislike for Koizumi’s “deeply embedded convention of simply following the U.S.” and would prefer that the Japanese Prime Minister follow an “autonomous, Asia-oriented foreign policy” that would, among other things, abandon support for the American opposition to North Korea’s nuclear program.
McCormack is an Australian academic whose 2004 book Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe blames Washington and Tokyo for backing Pyongyang into a corner where deploying nuclear weapons is its only “realist”option. It was the product of The Nation’s publishing house, Nation Books.
The road on the Left starts in Iraq and leads to Beijing, but it is a two-way street. Masaru Tamamoto, editor of the Japan Institute of International Affairs journal Commentary, wrote in the April 26, 2006 issue, “the bulk and core of the Japanese foreign policy establishment sees no wisdom in imagining a world without American protection. The current dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq as part of the American ‘coalition of the willing’-Japan's first military venture abroad since 1945 without United Nations cover-is not unrelated to the Japanese calculation of the rise of China; the American insurance premium has gone up.” He goes on to note that “it is only recently that those [Japanese] trained in strategy, mostly at American and British graduate schools, are beginning to find university and think tank jobs. They are on the whole injecting the realist assumption of conflict into Japanese discourse, introducing notions like balance of power, deterrence, land and sea powers, pre-emptive and preventive wars. They see that China poses the classic security problem of a rising power upsetting the status quo relations among great powers, which historically has tended toward conflict.”
Taro Aso, Japan's foreign minister and a likely candidate to succeed Koizumi as prime minister, already sees the danger. Speaking in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Aso warned “Throughout the history of mankind, sudden rise of a new power has created both promises and tensions. China's recent development, because of its unprecedented speed, seems to have also created both. A shining face of new prosperity and affluence in today's China is not without risks and potential problems.” In March, he drew a protest from Beijing for remarks to a parliamentary committee regarding Taiwan. He said “its democracy is considerably matured and liberal economics is deeply ingrained, so it is a law-abiding country. In various ways it is a country that shares a sense of values with Japan.” These comments were similar to those made by President Bush on his Asian tour in November last year when he put Taiwan in the same camp as Japan and South Korea as successful democracies.
The new “Japan bashers”want to stifle any return to normal defense and foreign policy thinking in Tokyo because they see it as a support for America’s preeminent position in Asia. For this same reason, those who favor continued American leadership in world affairs need to defend a broader, deeper alliance between Washington and Tokyo."
This is why we need to have already had the borders closed.
By ANDREW RYAN
Associated Press Writer
BOSTON
<excerpt>
"A swarm of federal immigration agents sped silently, headlights off, down a Boston side street early Wednesday and surrounded an apartment house.
"Police! Policia! Police!" yelled Daniel Monico, a deportation officer, holding his badge to a window where someone had pulled back the curtain. "Open the door!"
Moments later, agents led a dazed-looking Jose Ferreira Da Silva, 35, out in handcuffs. The Brazilian had been arrested in 2002 and deported, but had slipped back into the country. He now faces up to 20 years in prison.
In a blitz that began May 26, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested nearly 2,100 illegal immigrants across the country. Officials said the raids are aimed at child molesters, gang members and other violent criminals, as well as people like Da Silva who sneaked back into the country after a judge threw them out.
The crackdown is called Operation Return to Sender. "
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/14/D8I84S980.html
I frankly don't believe that this illegals invasion we're experiencing would be any different if Democrats were in power because Democrats have voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Senate immigration bill TO DO NOTHING.
In fact as I've posted earlier Democrats are telling illegals they don't have to have papers to vote.
It's going to be real conservatives who manage to pull us out of the frying pan this time because they're the ones who vote to close the border, deny benefits to illegals and enforce current immigration laws on the books.
"Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 12, 2006
Source Human Events Online
"Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman's Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation's most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new "SENTRI" system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming "North American Union" that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a "non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world's first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America." Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.
Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an "investor based organization supported by the public and private sector" to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: "For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality."
The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an "SPP office" that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that "(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented." The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.
The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration.
A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks. "
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497
This has to be the reason for the "open borders" guest worker program.
"Bush Sneaking North American Super-State Without Oversight?
Mexico, Canada partnership underway with no authorization from Congress
June 13, 2006
By Jerome R. Corsi
Source WorldNetDaily.com
Despite having no authorization from Congress, the Bush administration has launched extensive working-group activity to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada.
The membership of the working groups has not been published, nor has their work product been disclosed, despite two years of massive effort within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
The groups, working under the North American Free Trade Association office in the Department of Commerce, are to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005.
This trilateral agreement, signed as a joint declaration not submitted to Congress for review, led to the creation of the SPP office within the Department of Commerce.
The SPP report to the heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, -- released June 27, 2005, -- lists some 20 different working groups spanning a wide variety of issues ranging from e-commerce, to aviation policy, to borders and immigration, involving the activity of multiple U.S. government agencies.
The working groups have produced a number of memorandums of understanding and trilateral declarations of agreement.
The Canadian government and the Mexican government each have SPP offices comparable to the U.S. office.
Geri Word, who heads the SPP office within the NAFTA office of the U.S. Department of Commerce affirmed to WND last Friday in a telephone interview that the membership of the working groups, as well as their work products, have not been published anywhere, including on the Internet.
Why the secrecy?
"We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public," said Word.
She suggested to WND that the work products of the working groups was described on the SPP website, so publishing the actual documents did not seem required.
WND can find no specific congressional legislation authorizing the SPP working groups. The closest to enabling legislation was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., on April 20, 2005. Listed as S. 853, the bill was titled "North American Cooperative Security Act: A bill to direct the Secretary of State to establish a program to bolster the mutual security and safety of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and for other purposes." The bill never emerged from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In the House of Representatives, the same bill was introduced by Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla., on May 26, 2005. Again, the bill languished in the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment.
WND cannot find any congressional committees taking charge for specific oversight of SPP activity.
WND has requested from Word in the U.S. Department of Commerce a complete listing of the contact persons and the participating membership for the working groups listed in the June 2005 SPP report to the trilateral leaders. In addition, WND asked to see all work products, such as memorandums of understanding, letters of intent, and trilateral agreements that are referenced in the report.
Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American Union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.
Referring to the SPP joint declaration, the report, entitled "Building a North American Community," stated:
The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.
To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that "our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary." Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America.
The CFR task force report called for establishment of a common security border perimeter around North America by 2010, along with free movement of people, commerce and capital within North America, facilitated by the development of a North American Border Pass that would replace a U.S. passport for travel between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
Also envisioned by the CFR task force report were a North American court, a North American inter-parliamentary group, a North American executive commission, a North American military defense command, a North American customs office and a North American development bank."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50618
Finally something sensible!! I hope the House dissects it completely into unrecognizable parts!!
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
<excerpt>
"Hopes for a quick compromise on immigration were dealt a blow Tuesday after House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he wanted to take a "long look" at a Senate bill offering possible citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.
Hastert said hearings on the Senate bill should be held before appointing anyone to a House-Senate committee to negotiate a compromise immigration bill. Later, he said he was unsure what the House's next move would be.
"We're going to take a long look at it," Hastert said late Tuesday.
House Majority Leader John Boehner agreed. "I think we should know clearly what's in the Senate bill," Boehner said. But he added there are lots of ways to understand its contents.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also scheduled a hearing for Monday to review provisions in the bill requiring employers to verify that their workers are legal. "........
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/13/D8I7L2180.html
Conveniently IGNORING that the sun is burning hotter, that its flare cycle is NOT tapering right now ....
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
Associated Press Writer
ORLANDO, Fla.
"As Tropical Storm Alberto threatened to strengthen into the ninth hurricane in 22 months to affect Florida, former President Clinton predicted Monday that Republican environmental policies will lead to more severe storms.
"It is now generally recognized that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming," Clinton said at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. "It's a serious problem. It's going to lead to more hurricanes."
Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," chronicles the former vice president's efforts to educate the public about global warming. It's in limited release around the country." ........
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/12/D8I6VEOO4.html
Source WorldNetDaily.com
A captured document from the Saddam regime but left untranslated by the Pentagon describes the hiding of chemical-weapons materials and the location of their burial in Iraq.
Joseph Shahda, who has translated a number of key texts from among the thousands made available on the Internet by the Defense Department, posted his work on the conservative forum FreeRepublic.com.
The memo, dated Sept. 15, 2002, is from the General Relations group of one of Saddam's military-intelligence organizations.
The document, signed by Moohsen Abdel Karim Mahmood, says a team from the Military Industrialization Commission "did bury a large container" that "contains a chemical material in the village" of Al Subbayhat, part of the district of Karma in Fallujah.
The area is described as a quarry region used by the South Korean manufacturer Samsung and "close to the homes of some citizens."
The container, the memo says, was buried using a "fleet of concrete mixers."
The text notes that before "the departure of the international inspectors in 1998, a United Nations helicopter flew over the region for two hours."
It also states:
The weblog Powerline points out the Military Industrial Commission ran the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program before the 1991 Gulf War and continued its existence afterwards in a more covert fashion.
In November, the producer of a documentary on Saddam Hussein said there is no question the ousted Iraqi dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Brad L. Maaske, who interviewed dozens of Iraqis in producing his film "Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein," pointed out it does not take much to create a WMD.
"There didn't have to be massive stockpiles of chemicals," he explains. "A few 55-gallon drums of a nerve gas could kill a million people if properly dispersed, so it's not that difficult for him to get rid of what he had."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50590
Those who would be king and queen of the world ..... wonder what the 
they're planning for us this time????? Hey, at least they're not so secret anymore!!!
"World's who's who hold secret talks in Ottawa
Jun 09 9:57 PM US/Eastern
"The world's political elite, top thinkers and powerful business folk gathered here for an annual, ultra-secretive Bilderberg conference as heavy security kept conspiracy theorists and curious onlookers at bay.
Global luminaries such as former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, US banker David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands were greeted at the airport by limousine drivers holding single-letter "B" signs late Thursday, said local reports." .......
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/09/060609182249.1er4rqqb.html
Posted: June 8, 2006
1:17 p.m. Eastern
Source WorldNetDaily.com
"WASHINGTON - When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, was killed today by 500-pound bombs dropped by two F-16 fighter jets on a house north of Baghdad, it was the result of intelligence information gathered, in part, by an elite task force of international special operations forces formed just a month ago with the express purpose of taking him out.
The "A-Team" created for the mission drew on the skills and expertise of U.S. Army Green Berets, "Tier 1" of Britain's Special Air Service and the Israeli Mossad, as reported last month in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin......".
..."The decision to form the unit was taken after a top-level conference between U.S. and British defense chiefs in Washington a month ago.
The unit was part of the already-secret Task Force Black run by Britain's MI6 out of coalition forces headquarters in Baghdad. Nicknamed "The Untouchables," it was given a no-holds barred brief in pursuit of Zarqawi in May.
To avoid detection, the team dressed in clothes bought from second-hand stalls in Baghdad's back-street markets. They regularly sprayed themselves with a pungent, sweat-smelling odor known as "souk scent." Each man wore contact lenses that turned their eye color brown or black. The goal was to permit them to look like any other Iraqi peasant as they hunted the most bloodthirsty killer in Iraq.
"The Untouchables" were assured in advance they need fear no investigation into their methods to bring Zarqawi to summary justice.
Though Zarqawi was done in ultimately by massive bombs delivered from high-tech fighters, the unit members were each equipped with L115A-338 sniper rifles that allowed them to kill at 1,000 yards. But the key to the mission was the fact that each made high-risk surveillance operations into normally no-go areas in Iraq.
While officially Israel denies any presence in Iraq, four Mossad assassins were assigned to serve with the unit.
"The Untouchables" also used thermal-imaging equipment to probe the "rat holes" the terror chief used as he flitted around Baghdad and other cities. They also had at their disposal a CIA-operated Predator unmanned aircraft able to provide a real-time video feedback of any area where Zarqawi was spotted.
Zarqawi boasted on his website of beheading innocent victims, including the murders of more than 1,000 British and American soldiers in Iraq over the past two years. Zarqawi also led terrorists that killed thousands of Iraqis through relentless suicide bombings and organized attacks. Many of the bombings were directed at large crowds of Shi'ites under a strategy U.S. and Iraqi officials said was designed to trigger a civil war.
Gen. Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman, Britain's vice chief of the defense staff, had told senior officers in Baghdad that "removing this terrorist will be a massive blow against al-Qaida."
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told a news conference today the big breakthrough that led to Zarqawi's location came while U.S. forces were trailing Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abdul-Rahman.
"Through painstaking intelligence efforts we were able to start tracking him, monitoring his movements. ... Last night, he went to meet [Zarqawi] again at 6:15 p.m. when the decision was made to go ahead and strike that target," he added.
Zarqawi came from humble beginnings - a former street thug from Jordan. But he remained elusive despite several U.S. military offensives, a $25 million bounty on his head and the capture of what officials said were several of his aides.
Caldwell said an Egyptian militant trained in Afghanistan named Abu al-Masari, who established the first al-Qaida cell in Baghdad, may succeed Zarqawi as head of the group in Iraq.
"What everyone needs to understand is the strike last night did not occur in a 24-hour period," he said. "It truly was a very long, painstaking, deliberate exploitation of intelligence, information gathering, human sources, electronics, signal intelligence that was done over a period of time, many, many weeks."
An Israeli security official told WND final information on Zarqawi's whereabouts came from Jordanian intelligence, saying Egyptian intelligence had the same information.
There were six people in the house, including a woman and a child, but only Zarqawi and Abdul-Rahman have been identified.
Caldwell said important information was found at the location that led to 17 simultaneous raids later that night in Baghdad and its outskirts that uncovered a "treasure trove" of information.
But he cautioned against being overly optimistic because Zarqawi's followers still posed a threat.
"It's not the beginning or the end but it is a step forward," said Caldwell. "Ridding Iraq of Zarqawi will not instantaneously stop the violence."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50559
Leave it to FrontPageMagazine.com to zero in on an issue with a well researched, well referenced article backed up by pure cold facts.
Live embedded links.
A Cornspiracy So Immense
David Corn at The Nation charges President Bush with inventing Zarqawi’s threat – and insists Bush played into al-Qaeda’s hands by killing him. “[T]he two people most satisfied by Zarqawi's death,” he writes, “are Osama bin Laden and his number-two Ayman al-Zawahiri, for now they have been spared a competitor for attention and handed a martyr.” He surmised Zarqawi’s “death is welcomed – but it remains part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation.” He then lays out the Left’s current wisdom on the bombing:
Bush did not mention that it was his invasion of Iraq that fully allied Zarqawi with al-Qaeda. Prior to the war, terrorism experts considered Zarqawi more of a rival than a partner. And he did not mention that four years ago – before Zarqawi had become a major terrorist figure and before he had become responsible for the deaths of hundreds (if not thousands) – the Bush White House chose not to take him out when it could [in summer 2002]…The administration put off attacking Zarqawi because it wanted to invade Iraq.
Corn makes two mutually exclusive arguments: that Zarqawi was not “fully allied” with Osama bin Laden before the Iraq invasion…and that the president needlessly allowed him to inflict “hundreds (if not thousands)” of deaths on innocent Iraqis, and Americans, to secure an American occupation. Or as Democrats.com put it, Bush “refused to kill” this terrorist, because he “needed to keep Zarqawi alive to ‘sell’ his illegal and insane invasion. As a result of Bush's insanity, hundreds needlessly were murdered by Zarqawi. Impeach Bush Now!”
In addition to being logically untenable, it is ridiculous. In the summer of 2002, Zarqawi led an organization that, in time, became Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate based in northern Iraq – which named its hideout “Little Tora Bora” out of solidarity with bin Laden long before the invasion of Iraq. His group forcibly took its base of operations on September 11, 2001.
It is true the White House turned down plans to bomb Ansar in the summer of 2002 – because State Department officials long drew no connection between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. Like the Left (including Corn), Foggy Bottom analysts concluded the two were unaffiliated parties. By the time they connected the dots, a strike would have been too risky and virtually impossible to secure diplomatically.
Eric Alterman, the Mother Jones blog, Counterpunch’s Chris Floyd, Kurt Nimmo, and others recycled this self-contradiction, often in startlingly similar language. Coincidentally, most leftist bloggers were at Yearly Kos, an annual left-wing hatefest organized by the DailyKos website, when the news broke.
Others proved more creative. Kurt Nimmo – whose article appeared in The Final Call, the newspaper of the Nation of Islam – wrote Zarqawi’s death was “simply another dimension of a rather transparent psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon.” That is, the CIA put one over on the American people. “Al-Zarqawi is little more than hype, a neocon propaganda program…in fact, it is difficult to prove ‘al-Qaeda’ itself actually exists.” In his view, America also “engineered” the Iraqi “civil war.” (Either he is channeling Chris Floyd of Counterpunch or vice-versa.)
Ron Jacobs also endorses the belief that Washington created Zarqawi:
There is a likelihood that the forces of sectarian hatred have already done so much…that those hopes for a united nation without foreign occupation have been destroyed forever. Some folks even suggest that this was part of Washington's plan all along.
Jonathan Cutler, who is – surprise! – an Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies at Wesleyan University, dubbed Zarqawi the “ideological ‘mirror image’ of Washington's Neocons/Right Zionists.” The good doctor blogs these perfidious Jews – err, “neocons” – may have lied about Zarqawi’s death altogether.
Right Zionists will not shed a tear for Zarqawi, but they may miss him when he is gone. If he is gone. For Right Zionists, Zarqawi is really an indespensible enemy.
TalkLeft floats the opposite conspiracy theory: perhaps Zarqawi had been long dead by Thursday.
His face looks very intact for someone who was killed by two 500 pound bombs…Because this Administration has so little credibility and a history of distracting us with terror news when it is hurting politically, like now, I can't help but wonder if al-Zarqawi wasn't killed some time ago and they just decided to announce it today and tell us he was killed in yesterday's raid.
Air America host Randi Rhodes – whose program previously joked about assassinating President Bush – upbraided the troops for their inhumanity. Even al-Qaeda, she noted, asked Zarqawi to stop killing fellow Muslims. “Then you have to say to yourself, my God: Al-Qaeda is telling Zarqawi to cut the crap with the killing of the Iraqis, and yet we haven’t cut the crap with the killing of the Iraqis.” Her Air America colleague and rumored Ohio Democratic candidate Jerry Springer agreed, “We killed a hell of a lot more people just by the decision to go to Iraq than ever died at the hands of Zarqawi.” [1]
Meanwhile, the Mother Jones blog pined for the innocent terrorists, terror sympathizers, and enablers slain along with the “prince of al-Qaeda in Iraq.” Specifically, the blog
wants to know how many civilians were killed in the raid. Seems like a fair question to me…Sure, it's easy to say that there's a moral difference between accidentally killing civilians while trying to track down mass murderers and the actual mass murderers themselves, but at some point the fact that we're doing counterterrorism by dropping ‘precision-guided munitions’ on lots and lots of houses across the country should make people realize that there’s not really a moral way to conduct this war.
MoJo’s radical friends at the (frighteningly) popular World Socialist Website called the bombing of Zarqawi “an obscene spectacle.” They, too, charged Bush with “vastly exaggerating Zarqawi’s role in the country” in order to” justify its illegal intervention.” The commander-in-chief “sought to identify all armed opposition to the U.S. occupiers with Zarqawi, in an effort to discredit as terrorists the Iraqis who were fighting to rid themselves of foreign invaders,” the occupational forces of the United States. WSWS also intimates the United States was involved in decapitating Nicholas Berg.
…A view apparently shared by the man’s father. Michael Berg, the father of Nicholas Berg and current Green Party political candidate, said, “I think al-Zarqawi's death is a double tragedy.” On Thursday’s Fox and Friends, he blamed our president for his son’s death, saying, “George Bush destabilized the country to let Zarqawi in.” (As noted, Zarqawi had taken residency in Iraq long before the war.) This is somewhat toned down from his assertion immediately after his son’s beheading that “The administration did this.” (Michael acknowledges his son was “a Bush supporter.”)
Others on the Left have attempted to minimize the importance of this event, as they have with every American success. The blog of the Bill Moyers/George Soros-funded The American Prospect magazine insisted, “it would be honestly moronic to make a big deal out of this.” Discredited 9/11 Commission witness Richard Clarke stated, “this is not going to mean a big difference,” although, well, Zarqawi was “making a network in Europe and the Middle East.”
Most elected Democrats have followed one blogger’s suggestion to “declare victory in Iraq and bring our troops home.” Sen. John Kerry said the if Bush suggested “destroying” Arabs.) “It's time to work with the new Iraqi government to bring our combat troops home by the end of this year.” Surrender spokesman John Murtha said this will “have a significant impact in reducing the amount of violence in Iraq” – so “we should be able to substantially reduce our presence in Iraq and redeploy our military outside of Iraq.”
Potential Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, perfunctorily “commended” our troops – demanded withdrawal from Iraq on the grounds of…identity theft. “[A]s many as 2.2 million military personnel were among the 26.5 million records mishandled and lost by the Department of Veterans Affairs,” which is “simply the latest example of incompetence in the Bush Administration.” “If we can't even protect the personal records of our men and women in uniform, what does that say about our ability to secure a nation?” she asks.
Any retreat before Iraq is capable of defending itself will result in a bloodbath. Ayman al-Zawahiri – the number two man in al-Qaeda, who remains at large – instructed Zarqawi last fall to establish a theocratic caliphate in Iraq “in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans.” Expanding this beachhead throughout the Arab world will precede the destruction of Israel and the establishment of the Kingdom of Allah; but all is conditioned upon a U.S. retreat. In effect, the Democratic Party Left has said: We have killed al-Zarqawi, and now we must assure that his dream lives on.
The Democrats also fail to appreciate the effect of Zarqawi’s having been done in by one of his own. As those who have tracked domestic terrorists know, few tools are as effective as sowing seeds of doubt that one's co-conspirators are actually government informants. With this surgical strike, the United States has “cut off the head of the serpent,” the most charismatic leader in al-Qaeda (and also, for the record, its only free and effective one), spread confusion amongst his ranks, and imported paranoia to the jihadist movement. The death of Zarqawi no more assures victory than the capture of Saddam Hussein – though thankfully, unlike the Butcher of Baghdad, the Terrorist Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight won’t be haranguing an Iraqi judge on international television anytime soon. Instead, he serves as a witness that there are no “untouchables” in the jihadist camp, and his followers may soon follow him to Hell.
However, even guarded optimism is missing from the Democratic Left’s response to this American battlefield triumph. When the Left isn’t accusing our soldiers of killing “in cold blood” or inventing Zarqawi as a “psy-ops” campaign against their own families and neighbors, it offers a more desperate, less reasonable, and thoroughly ineloquent echo of the John Birch Society blog.
Wow wonder how much thought went into this???
"Dog Feces Left at Congresswoman's Office
Jun 08 10:44 PM US/Eastern
Email this story
GREELEY, Colo.
"Republican U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave's re-election campaign was already heated, and it just got smelly as well: Her staff accused a Democratic activist Thursday of leaving an envelope full of dog feces at Musgrave's Greeley office.
Musgrave spokesman Shaun Kenney said someone stuffed the envelope through the mail slot in the door on May 31 and then sped away in a car. Kenney said most of the preprinted return address was blacked out, but staffers used the nine-digit ZIP code to trace it to Kathleen Ensz, a Weld County Democratic volunteer.
Ensz told The Associated Press she left the envelope at Musgrave's office but said it "wasn't in the office doors, it was in the foyer." Asked what she meant by the act, she declined comment.
Kenney demanded an apology from Musgrave's likely Democratic opponent, state Rep. Angela Paccione of Fort Collins. "
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/08/D8I4E19G0.html
A savage murderer out of the 7th century is dead making the world a little brighter for all of humanity and they just can't stomach much less celebrate Pres. Bush's success. Tacky, tacky, tacky 
!!!
"Democrats call Zarqawi killing a stunt
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 8, 2006
"Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war.
"This is just to cover Bush's [rear] so he doesn't have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess -- get out."
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, said Zarqawi was a small part of "a growing anti-American insurgency" and that it's time to get out.
"We're there for all the wrong reasons," Mr. Kucinich said.
Officially, Democratic leaders reacted positively to the news and praised the troops that successfully targeted al Qaeda's leader in Iraq with 500-pound bombs at his safe house 30 miles from Baghdad.
"This is a good day for the Iraqi people, the U.S. military and our intelligence community," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
President Bush said that yesterday's killing of the 39-year-old Jordanian-born terrorist offers an opportunity to "turn the tide" in the war and that Tuesday he will discuss with Iraqi leaders "how to best deploy America's resources in Iraq."
A senior White House official cautioned that Mr. Bush was not hinting at possible early reductions in U.S. troops there, according to Reuters news agency.
What the drive-by media WON'T tell you, especially since this event IS YES favorable for President Bush. I've taken issue with his immigration stance, but NOT the war on terror.
Source Human Events Online
If you are looking for the legacy of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, do not look in the concrete rubble of so-called safe house in Baqubah that became his final resting place. Instead, look less than 10 miles to the west, on the side of the road in the desert town of Hadid, for a pile of cardboard banana boxes.
Inside those boxes were nine human heads.
Some of the heads still had their blindfolds on. Iraqi police are still attempting to identify the murdered men.
Days earlier, in Baquba, Iraqi police found another eight severed heads. One of those heads belonged to a prominent Sunni Muslim imam, who preached peace and tolerance.
For the past few weeks, U.S. military intelligence analysts had seen a spike in beheadings-a specialty of the Zarqawi network.
Of course, Zarqawi will be remembered chiefly as a beheader. He apparently enjoyed wielding the knife and slowly hacking off the head of Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa. In a video that Zarqawi's followers proudly posted on the Internet, Berg screams in pain in seven long minutes as Zarqawi saws through his neck.
Zarqawi also is believed to have beheaded Eugene Armstrong of Hillsdale, Mich.
Zarqawi is also believed to have beheaded Ken Bigley, the Liverpool, U.K.-based engineer who came to Iraq "to help people," in October 2004.
Now it is Zarqawi's own head that is capturing the world's attention. Displaying his head has several immediate benefits: it boosts the morale of Iraqi police and military officers, who have been taking increased casualties in the past few weeks and were spooked by the Zarqawi video released last month. In that video, Zarqawi made a point of firing an M-4 and an M-249-two automatic weapons that are only used by U.S. forces. If he can take guns from the hands of Americans he killed and turn those weapons against the world's sole remaining superpower, maybe Zarqawi is invincible after all. Yesterday's air strike has already reversed the downward spiral of Iraqi police morale, one source told me.
Nor can Zarqawi be easily replaced. He had a kind of rogue-ish charisma that resonated in the Arab world. He was featured in Arabic-language pop songs and feted on Arabic soap operas. His persona drew hundreds of Saudis, Syrians and other foreigners to fight alongside him in Iraq. There is simply no one else in the organization who has his aura.
At the very least, the beheadings and suicide attacks will decline sharply."
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15453
Another dirtbag bites the dust making the world just a little safer.
Jun 8, 8:36 AM (ET)
By PATRICK QUINN
(AP) This is an image made from video originally posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 on the Internet showing...
Full Image
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages, has been killed in a precision airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. It was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.
Al-Zarqawi and seven aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, officials said.
"Al-Zarqawi was eliminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.
At the White House, President Bush hailed the killing as "a severe blow to al-Qaida and it is a significant victory in the war on terror."
(AP) Iraqi children play in the rubble at the scene near the town of Hibhib, northwest of Baqouba,...
Full Image
But he cautioned: "We have tough days ahead of us in Iraq that will require the continuing patience of the American people."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060608/D8I41K780.html
Closed eBay auction in the UK. Funny stuff begins about halfway down the page. Not totally crass but definitely not PC.
"Help for Americans
Jun 7, 2006
by Walter E. Williams
Source Townhall.com
"John Stossel, ABC's "20/20" anchorman, has a recently released book about the various untruths we accept, many from the media and academic elite. The book is appropriately titled "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity."
Being a longtime media insider, Stossel is well positioned to talk about the media's gross lack of understanding that often becomes part of the conventional wisdom. Stossel gives many examples; let's look at a few.
We're sometimes presented with television scenes of starving people, and it's often blamed on overpopulation. Ted Turner warned, "There are lots of problems in the world caused by too many people." News articles warn of "the population bomb" and the "tidal wave of humanity," and people call for subsidies for birth control.
Stossel says that one writer, worrying about Niger, said that birthrates must be reduced drastically or the world will face permanent famine. Viewers and readers are left with the idea that the problem is the number of people, but that's nonsense. Niger's population density is nine people per square kilometer; however, population density in the United States is 28 per square kilometer, Japan 340, the Netherlands 484, and Hong Kong 6,621. One would have to be brain-dead to argue that high population density causes poverty and starvation. A better argument is oppressive and corrupt governments.
Outsourcing destroys good jobs, and the new jobs created are inferior hamburger-flipping jobs. This myth is created by the likes of CNN's Lou Dobbs, who said, "This country has lost the ability to feed and to clothe itself, to build its own automobiles, to provide its appliances, its electronics, its computers." CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester chimes, "The United States has been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs."
First, since 1992 there's been a loss of 391 million jobs; however, during those years, America created 411 million new jobs, for a net gain of 20 million. A Dartmouth University Tuck School of Business study found that companies that send jobs abroad ended up hiring twice as many workers at home. Most new jobs created are higher-paid.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that two-thirds of the 30 fastest-growing occupations require high-skilled workers such as environmental engineers, software engineers, and service jobs in education and health care. As to the gripe about the loss of manufacturing jobs, I wonder how many textile workers ever wished to themselves, "I hope my little girl grows up to be a sewing machine operator"? I'm guessing their wish is their little girl becomes a nurse, a teacher or an accountant, all service jobs.
Hardly a day goes by without some kind of warning that mankind's use of fossil fuels, especially in the U.S., is causing global warming. Stossel looks at the numbers. Half of this century's global warming happened between 1900 and 1945. Stossel asks, "If man is responsible, why wasn't there much more warming in the second half of the century? We burned much more fuel during that time."
By the way, if there's global warming, it might be a godsend. According to Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, added carbon dioxide helps plants grow. Warmer winters give farmers a longer growing season, and the warming might end the droughts in the Sahara desert.
There's another consideration. For the past 800,000 years, there have been periods of approximately 100,000 years called Ice Ages, followed by a period of 10,000 years, a period called Interglacial, followed by another Ice Age. We're about 10,500 years into the present Interglacial period, namely, we're 500 years overdue for another Ice Age. If indeed mankind's activity contributes to the planet's warming, we might postpone the coming Ice Age.
John Stossel's "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity" exposes the false basis for the public fright often caused by an uninformed media and academic elite. Exposure is precisely what's needed because politicians use public fright as a means to gain greater control over our lives. "
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. "
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliams/2006/06/07/200020.html
This is soooooo 
Source Townhall.com
"Sigmund Freud was the fellow who had the copyright on the ego, the id and the superego. He was also the guy who managed to turn the couch, formerly just another piece of over-stuffed Viennese furniture, into a legitimate business expense. But even he acknowledged that he was unable to decipher what it was that women wanted.
Strangely enough, that happens to be one question to which I actually know the answer. Women want men to be manly chaps, strong and virile, while at the same time they want us to be completely open and in touch with our emotions. Furthermore, they want us to be more interested in what they think, say and feel than we are in cars, sports and beer. In short, they want the impossible. The more reasonable amongst them will settle for our picking up after ourselves.
The thing that has me stumped is trying to figure out what leftists want. For example, when left-wing judges take it upon themselves to legislate from the bench, liberals are quick to say that the Constitution is a living document and that it has to evolve to accommodate a changing world. However, whenever a conservative suggests that the 14th amendment, which grants automatic citizenship to any person born in America, ought to be changed in order to deny that gift to those born to illegal aliens, those same people carry on as if the Constitution, like the 10 Commandments, was carved in stone.
But, really, we have no reason to believe that the Founding Fathers, who fought a war in order to gain sovereignty for this nation, wouldn’t have entertained second thoughts if they’d ever envisioned a foreign invasion numbering in the millions. I mean, it’s a basic tenet of the law that nobody is entitled to profit from a crime. To suggest that the child, the beneficiary of his parents’ illegal act, doesn’t profit is patently absurd. To argue that he shouldn’t be deprived of the advantage because he didn’t break the law is ridiculous. You might as well suggest that if a bank robber gives his ill-gotten gains to his wife and kids, the family should get to keep the loot because, after all, they weren’t the ones who drove the getaway car.
Another thing about liberals I can’t begin to figure out is their abiding devotion to failed economic theories. The fact that communism hasn’t worked anywhere in the world doesn’t cool their ardor in the slightest. The fact that Marx’s brainstorm invariably metastasizes into a despotic tyranny—be it in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia or Venezuela—doesn’t make the slightest impression on them. Neither does the fact that socialism has brought much of Europe to the brink of moral and financial bankruptcy faze them in the least.
In our own country, the most obvious failure of socialism is social security, the single largest pyramid scheme ever conceived by the mind of man. When Ponzi did it he went to jail for fraud; when Roosevelt pulled it off he was hailed as a savior. As someone or other once observed, if you’re going to steal, steal big.
So why is it that leftists continue to promote these half- ed alternatives to capitalism, the only economic program that’s ever motivated people to aspire, to compete, to achieve and to innovate?
Well, I hate to be impolite, but when people keep doing the same thing in spite of getting the same rotten results, we have been told by experts in the field that it’s a pretty sure sign of insanity.
And just in case any doubt remains, you merely have to look to those who speak on their behalf. Assuming you’re not a cuckoo yourself, can you possibly imagine rallying around the unappetizing likes of Gore and Kerry, Schumer and Durbin, Kennedy and Rangel, Leahy and Biden, Byrd and Boxer, Sharpton and Jackson, McKinney and Waters, Al Franken and Michael Moore, George Soros and Norman Lear, Hillary and Bill, and Jimmy Carter?
Or merely consider the man the liberals selected to be their party’s leader, the man they chose to carry their banner into battle. While most people will always associate Howard Dean with his primary election meltdown, I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, in the heat of a presidential campaign—especially a campaign in which he had somehow managed to snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory—people are given to saying, or, in Dean’s case, shrieking some very odd things.
Instead, my clearest, most lasting memory of the party boss will forever be his calm and collected response to someone’s asking what the Democratic candidates should be saying in the upcoming elections. Replied Mr. Dean: “My three-word message is, we can do better.”
http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/BurtPrelutsky/2006/06/06/200059.html
This is the guy who won over the Democrat, Francine Busby who told illegals they didn't have to have papers to vote. Actual voice recording link below.
By ROBERT TANNER
A former Republican congressman narrowly beat his Democratic rival early Wednesday to fill the House seat once held by jailed Randy "Duke" Cunningham, one of several contests in eight states closely watched as a possible early barometer of next fall's vote.
Republican Brian Bilbray emerged victorious after a costly and contentious special election race against Democrat Francine Busby, a local school board member.
"I think that we're going back to Washington," Bilbray told cheering supporters. He will serve out the remaining seven months of Cunningham's term and get a boost for the November election.
With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Bilbray had 56,130 votes, or 50 percent. Busby trailed with 51,292 votes, or 45 percent."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060607/D8I3BT6G0.html
TORONTO (AP) - Police said Monday more arrests are likely in an alleged plot to bomb buildings in Canada, while intelligence officers sought ties between the 17 suspects and Islamic terror cells in the United States and five other nations.
A court said authorities had charged all 12 adults arrested over the weekend with participating in a terrorist group. Other charges included importing weapons and planning a bombing. The charges against five minors were not made public."......
"....A U.S. law enforcement official said investigators were looking for connections between those detained in Canada and suspected Islamic militants held in the United States, Britain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Denmark and Sweden. "........
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060605/D8I2B1TO0.htmlBy Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page A03
HELENA, Mont. -- Like a hunter using a duck call, Shannen Rossmiller invites the online attentions of would-be terrorists by adorning her e-mail with video clips of Westerners getting their heads cut off.
"They get pumped up when they see beheadings. For them, it's like rock videos," Rossmiller said. "I always give the appearance that I am one of them."
Judge Shannen Rossmiller, an online expert who works with federal agencies, and her husband, Randy, somewhere in Montana. (By Blaine Harden -- The Washington Post)
Save & Share
Appearances deceive. At her Montana high school, Rossmiller was a cheerleader -- a farm girl whose slight frame meant she was the one hoisted to the top of the human pyramid. Now 35, she is a mother of three, a part-time paralegal and a $23,000-a-year municipal court judge in a town north of here.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she has found herself an unpaid night job. She uses the Internet to find terrorism suspects, she said, hunting for them while her family sleeps, spending the hours between 3 a.m. and dawn at her home computer. Her husband, Randy, a wireless network technician, keeps eight computers and two broadband systems working in their house.
Posing as an al-Qaeda operative, she has helped federal agents set up stings that have netted two Americans -- a Washington state National Guardsman convicted in 2004 of attempted espionage, and a Pennsylvania man who prosecutors say sought to blow up oil installations in the United States. Rossmiller was a key prosecution witness against the Guardsman, who is serving a life sentence, and said she has been told she will be called as a witness in the Pennsylvania case. "......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/03/AR2006060300530.html
This appeared under letters to editor/opinion. Find this history very interesting, totally enlightening.
"Islamic Barbarian Theocracy: Invaders and Occupiers of Iran
Feb 26, 2006
Letter to editor, Amir
Source LATEST IRAN NEWS & IRANIAN CULTURE JOURNAL
"I have come across some sentiment that depicts the current Islamic Regime as a foreign occupying force in Iran. The term "second Arabo-Islamic invasion of Iran" has gained popularity. Are these sentiments based on the truth, or are they baseless and just rhetoric?
Indeed, these barbarians can only be thought of as foreign invaders. They call themselves Iranians, but are they really Iranians?
What does it mean to be Iranian? It means to hold dear the traditions, ideology, and ways of life of Iran. It means to love Iran itself, and more importantly, the citizens of Iran.
As we all know, Iran (land of the Aryans) is a country with very old and deep rooted traditions, going back at least 7000 years. A nation which is that old cannot be expected to remain static. Change is of course inevitable in its history. But what type of change can be deemed acceptable and simply an evolution of a society, and what type of change is deemed unacceptable and antagonistic to the foundations of that society?
Those changes that act to advance a society, both technologically as well as morally, while staying true to the basic principles of that society will be considered acceptable and should be integrated into that society. Those that set a society back, either technologically or morally, and are antagonistic to the founding principles of that society must be considered unacceptable.
So, let's examine Iran's history from the perspective of who in our history was a legitimate Iranian regime and who was merely a foreign occupying force. Let's review who merely brought changes that aimed to build upon and improve our existing Iranian culture, versus who brought changes that were designed to undermine and destroy the Iranian culture and Iran. As always, a historical perspective will help clarify the present circumstance.
The Achaemenians built upon the existing cultures of the Elamites and Medes. They accepted them as their own, stayed true to their tradition for the most part, and accelerated that society in an amazing way. There was technological, economic, military, as well as moral acceleration. Their impact was so great, and so positive, that they not only expanded Iranian culture but also became its primary defining feature.
After Alexander's conquest, Iran fell under a foreign occupying force. The subsequent Seleucid Empire was obviously not Iranian, but Greek. They did not arrive with the intent of evolving Iranian culture, but rather to dominate it, use it, and overwhelm it with another culture: Greek. Some of the results were positive, in so much as Greek culture is as rich as ours and has much to offer. Nevertheless, since it set out to overwhelm and subjugate Iranian culture instead of simply enriching its foundations, it can be viewed only as a foreign occupation. Fortunately, it did not succeed.
The Parthians, another Iranian tribe, drove out the Seleucids and restored Iranian culture. They remained true to the spirit and culture of Iran, and did their best to make positive contributions. Though their contributions were limited (although it may have been more involved than we think, only because our historical records regarding this period are so relatively scant), because they were loyal to Iranian citizens and culture, they must be viewed as players in the advancement of the nation.
The Sassanids, second only to the Achaemenids in their service to Iran were also a major defining feature of Iranian culture and identity. They considered themselves the direct descendants of the Achaemenids, and obviously sought to preserve Iranian culture and identity while serving their nation. They took a great role in advancing the foundations of Iranian civilization in many different aspects.
Then came a major turning point in our history: the Arabic barbarian invasion of our Iran. This was the second of many foreign occupying forces to dominate Iran. With the Arabic invasion, Iran was again faced with an enemy from within which aimed to undermine its civilization and identity. The first factor used to destroy a national identity was an attack on its predominant religion: "Zoroastrianism".
With physical and economic coercion, the Arabic barbarians were able to convert a large portion of Zartoshdtis to Islam. The Arabic language and customs were also forced on the native Iranians. The ruling Umayyads and Abbassids were Arabic dynasties, with loyalties only to themselves, their Arabic tribesmen, and their Arabic culture and religion. Iran was to them only a commodity, used for its natural resources and its people. The moral system that the Arabs brought with them was much more primitive and barbaric compared to the system which already existed under the Sassanids. And those Arabs were clearly determined to wipe out as much as they could from the Iranian culture and collective memory. Magnificent artworks were destroyed, and the Arabs had themselves a good old fashioned "book burning." You may recall the old Arabic edict "We need no other book other than the Quran." Clearly, this invasion served as a devolution of Iranian culture. Fortunately, the Arabs did not completely succeed in their goal of destroying Iranian identity. It is noteworthy that Iran was the only nation to be dominated by Arabic rule for so long yet retain its identity as non-Arabic. Others were not as fortunate. One of the greatest of ancient civilizations, Egypt, never recovered from the barbarian invasion and has remained Arabic forever. In that respect, Egypt's place in history remains very lamentable.
After the Arabic occupation, the Saffarids retained control over Iran. They identified themselves as Iranians, sought to regain Iranian culture and tradition, and aimed to serve the citizens of Iran instead of using them as a commodity for a foreign power. Yaqoub Saffarid made it a point to restore Persian language by making it the mandatory language of his court. The fact that we don't speak Arabic today is owed to the Saffarids and none other than Ferdowsi. The Saffarids kept the language alive long enough for it not to be completely extinguished, but were not able to completely restore it. However, they played a very important role, because they kept it alive long enough for a genius like Ferdowsi to come along centuries later and use it in such a way that only an epic poem can do. In doing so, he ignited a flame in all common Iranians to regain their language.
A multitude of different dynasties followed, most of which were foreign: Turkish, Mongol, Uzbek, etc. The vast majority of these had no interests in building upon the existing Iranian culture, and again, can only be viewed as foreign occupying forces with only self serving motives.
The Saffavids followed, which served a very important role. Their role in Iranian identity and culture was very ambivalent. They wished to promote an Iranian agenda and revive Persian culture. In that, they were quite successful. But in pushing for Persian unity, they used Shiite Islam as a tool. Forced conversions were implemented, as well as religious persecutions. Because of them, islam was here to stay. Since islam is clearly a foreign ideology and not at all conducive to Iranian culture and identity, as well as morally inferior to the original Iranian way of life, this act of the Saffavids had very clear anti-Iranian results. Hence the ambivalence of the Saffavids to truly serving Iranian identity and culture. Nonetheless, the Saffavids cannot be viewed as a foreign occupying force, and overall served the Iranian purpose.
A number of other mediocre dynasties followed :Afshar, Zand, Qajar, which were Iranian and clearly not foreign occupiers. Though Iranian, their contributions to Iran (with the exception of a few noteworthy individuals such as Amir Kabir) were minimal to none. It was a time of great incompetence and stagnation, which left Iran greatly vulnerable again to foreign interests in the twentieth century.
Enter the Pahlavi dynasty: the greatest Iranian dynasty since the Sassanids. The Iranian patriotism and service of this father and son to the Iranian nation, culture, and identity is unquestionable. After a millennium and a half, they were the first to truly recognize the important role that our pre-islamic heritage and civilization serve in our identity. They sought to rebuild Iran where the Sassanids had left off. They catapulted Iran forward by two centuries in a matter of half a century. The manner by which they served the traditions, culture, and citizens of Iran can only be viewed as a great evolutionary step forward. Unfortunately, their efforts were halted, undermined, and greatly reversed with the Revolution.
This was more a Revolution from without than a Revolution from within. Regardless of its origins, the result was obvious: a ruling theocratic Islamic regime from hell. Power was handed to Islamic Mullahs, people whose only intellectual interest is the religion that spurted from an Arabic, tribal, nomadic way of life. A religion which developed and has remained in medieval times. The mullahs and their Islamic followers' allegiance is understandably only to themselves and their ideology which binds them to Arabo-Muslims. Their education (if you can call it that) and upbringing had always been in relation to this foreign religion, which can only identify with the Arabic mentality and cause.
Their upbringing is Arabic, their thoughts are Arabic, their traditions are Arabic, their culture is Arabic, their religion is Arabic, their clothes are Arabic, their language is Arabic, and unfortunately, their morality is Arabic.
Are we really surprised that their allegiance is Arabic?
Now let's review part of the role that this theocracy has played in the last 27 years.
1. Changed the national flag. The lion and sun, which is unrelated to monarchy but represents ancient Iran, was replaced with the double swords of a Sikh symbol. What's a Sikh symbol doing on our flag?
2. Implemented religious persecution of any minority non-islamic (and even sometimes Islamic) religious group.
3. Persisted on the use and knowledge of the Arabic language, while de-emphasizing Farsi. Coercing students to learn Arabic if they wish to get an education.
4. Attacked ancient Persian cultural monuments and archeological sites. If not for the resistance of brave Iranians, Persepolis would have been demolished by now.
5. Insisted by coercion on naming Iranian newborns using foreign Arabic names instead of proud Iranian names, by refusing to issue birth certificates to those with purely Iranian names.
6. Attempted to suppress the ancient traditions of Nowruz and Chaharshanbeh Souri commemorating the Persian new year. Fortunately, this was yet another unsuccessful and pitiful attempt to subdue Iranian culture.
7. Falsely changed history books, giving misinformation to young students regarding Iran's history. Deceitfully and purposefully depicted the Iranian nationalists, patriots and kings as tyrannical while glorifying and legitimizing the barbarian Arabic invaders and their descendants as heroes.
8. Neglected Iran's citizens and infrastructure, while using its natural and human resources to achieve their goals: self-serve, and propagation and support of Arabo-Islamo-Fascism and terrorism.
Let's also not forget that Khomeini barely spoke any Farsi; Arabic was his first language. He always called for propagation, preservation, and expansion of Islam; he never said a caring or positive word about Iran. The only times he mentioned Iran was in relation to how it could serve Islam and the Islamic agenda. Iran has been made Islam's commodity since 1979.
"By now I'm sure you have heard that there is no small amount of angst over plans by the Homeland Security Secretariat to reduce by some amount the flow of anti-terrorism funds into New York City in favor of some other locations in the country. Now ... bear this in mind: New York City will still get more anti-terrorism funds than any other state or local government entity in the nation. It's just that for those in New York City, it's not enough.
There are people in Europe who think that once they've hopped on a plane, flown across the ocean, and spent three days in New York City, they've seen America. Sadly, there are quite a few people in New York who would agree with them. To them America disappears when you travel more than 30 miles from Times Square.
Charles Schumer .. heard of him? He's New York's senior senator. He is spitting fire over the diversion of some anti-terrorism funds to POTNY ... Places Other Than New York. When he discovered that some of those funds would be channeled to Georgia he had this little gem of a quote:
"Other states that have very little problems got an increase, Georgia got a 40 percent increase. Somehow this administration thinks that Georgia peanut farmers are more at risk than the Empire State Building. Something is dramatically wrong."
So ... there you go. Georgia is all about peanut farmers. Yankee arrogance and stupidity rears its head yet again. So, not that he'll ever hear it, I have a little message for Senator Schumer:
Senator. First of all, the money is allocated to the City of Atlanta, not to the State of Georgia. Last time I checked there were no peanut farmers in Atlanta, though you will find peanuts at Atlanta Braves Baseball games. The Braves, senator. Perhaps you've heard of them. Your Mets have finished the last 14 seasons sniffing the Braves' hind quarters. We also have an airport in Atlanta, Senator Schumer. Perhaps you've heard of Hartsfield International Airport? Do we need to remind you that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were launched from busy airports? Well, ours is the busiest. Hartsfield is busier than LaGuardia and busier than Kennedy. Prettier too, with friendlier people. In fact, Hartsfield is busier than any other airport anywhere in the world. This ain't peanuts, senator. Airports need to be watched and protected, and the largest in the world could very well need more attention than it's getting right now. Something else, Senator Schumer. You do know that terrorists might use biological weapons, don't you? Ever heard of the CDC? The Centers for Disease Control? The CDC is here in Atlanta. You'll find it right in the middle of a peanut field just two miles east of downtown. Just where do you think much of the important research in bio-terrorism is being handled? That's right, the CDC. I don't know if the CDC does any work on peanut allergies. Perhaps you could have one of your staffers check on that. Get back to us on that one, will you? Oh, and by the way ... we have tall buildings in Atlanta too, senator. And they're not peanut storage facilities. They house the offices of many of the nation's Fortune 500 companies. Some of them are even tall enough to have elevators. I'm not in the apology game, Senator Schumer, so I'm not asking for one from you. I did just want to point out that you did an exemplary job of showing your ass with that statement about Georgia and peanut farmers. Thanks for fortifying the image that so many Americans have of people from New York. "
http://boortz.com/nuze/200606/06022006.html#nyTwo questions (1) Why don't we have them on our US/Mexican border NOW ???? (2) What is "anti-terrorism equipment" ??? Senator Isakson (R) (GA) proposed using drones but the idea was rejected.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that the tiny planes will fly at more than 2,500 feet over the English Channel and Mediterranean beaches as part of a £1bn programme to equip Europe's police forces, customs officers and border patrols with hi-tech surveillance and anti-terrorism equipment.
The aircraft, called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are already being used by the Belgian government to catch tankers illegally dumping oil in the North Sea. Several ships' captains have already been prosecuted.
The European Commission now wants to use similar drones, which can have a 6-metre wing-span and weigh as little as 195kg, to patrol the Mediterranean coasts and the Balkans where illegal immigrants try to enter the EU. The Russian government is also close to flying drones over its borders. ".........
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article624667.ece
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted May 30, 2006
Source Human Events Online
"In March 2005 at their summit meeting in Waco, Tex., President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin issued a joint statement announced the creation of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP). The creation of this new agreement was never submitted to Congress for debate and decision. Instead, the U.S. Department of Commerce merely created a new division under the same title to implement working groups to advance a North American Union working agenda in a wide range of areas, including: manufactured goods, movement of goods, energy, environment, e-commerce, financial services, business facilitation, food and agriculture, transportation, and health.
SPP is headed by three top cabinet level officers of each country. Representing the United States are Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Representing Mexico are Secretario de Economía Fernando Canales, Secretario de Gobernación Carlos Abascal, and Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores, Luis Ernesto Derbéz. Representing Canada are Minister of Industry David L. Emerson, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety, Anne McLellan, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Stewart Pettigrew.
Reporting in June 2005 to the heads of state of the three countries, the trilateral SPP emphasized the extensive working group structure that had been established to pursue an ambitious agenda:
In carrying out your instructions, we established working groups under both agendas of the Partnership – Security and Prosperity. We held roundtables with stakeholders, meetings with business groups and briefing sessions with Legislatures, as well as with other relevant political jurisdictions. The result is a detailed series of actions and recommendations designed to increase the competitiveness of North America and the security of our people.
This is not a theoretical exercise being prepared so it can be submitted for review. Instead, SPP is producing an action agreement to be implemented directly by regulations, without any envisioned direct Congressional oversight.
Upon your review and approval, we will once again meet with stakeholders and work with them to implement the workplans that we have developed.
And again, the June 2005 SPP report stresses:
The success of our efforts will be defined less by the contents of the work plans than by the actual implementation of initiatives and strategies that will make North America more prosperous and more secure.
Reviewing the specific working agenda initiatives, the goal to implement directly is apparent. Nearly every work plan is characterized by action steps described variously as “our three countries signed a Framework of Common Principles …” or “we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding …,” or “we have signed a declaration of intent …” etc. Once again, none of the 30 or so working agendas makes any mention of submitting decisions to the U.S. Congress for review and approval. No new U.S. laws are contemplated for the Bush administration to submit to Congress. Instead, the plan is obviously to knit together the North American Union completely under the radar, through a process of regulations and directives issued by various U.S. government agencies.
What we have here is an executive branch plan being implemented by the Bush administration to construct a new super-regional structure completely by fiat. Yet, we can find no single speech in which President Bush has ever openly expressed to the American people his intention to create a North American Union by evolving NAFTA into this NAFTA-Plus as a first, implementing step.
Anyone who has wondered why President Bush has not bothered to secure our borders is advised to spend some time examining the SPP working groups’ agenda. In every area of activity, the SPP agenda stresses free and open movement of people, trade, and capital within the North American Union. Once the SPP agenda is implemented with appropriate departmental regulations, there will be no area of immigration policy, trade rules, environmental regulations, capital flows, public health, plus dozens of other key policy areas countries that the U.S. government will be able to decide alone, or without first consulting with some appropriate North American Union regulatory body. At best, our border with Mexico will become a speed bump, largely erased, with little remaining to restrict the essentially free movement of people, trade, and capital.
Canada has established an SPP working group within their Foreign Affairs department. Mexico has placed the SPP within the office of the Secretaria de Economia and created and extensive website for the Alianza Para La Securidad y La Prosperidad de Améica del Norte (ASPAN). On this Mexican website, ASPAN is described as “a permanent, tri-lateral process to create a major integration of North America.”
The extensive working group activity being implemented right now by the government of Mexico, Canada, and the United States is consistent with the blueprint laid out in the May 2005 report of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), titled “Building a North American Community.”
The Task Force’s central recommendation is the establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter. (page xvii)
The only borders or tariffs which would remain would be those around the continent, not those between the countries within:
Its (the North American Community’s) boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America. (page 3)
What will happen to the sovereignty of the United States? The model is the European Community. While the United States would supposedly remain as a country, many of our nation-state prerogatives would ultimately be superseded by the authority of a North American court and parliamentary body, just as the U.S. dollar would have to be surrendered for the “Amero,” the envisioned surviving currency of the North American Union. The CFR report left no doubt that the North American Union was intended to evolve through a series of regulatory decisions:
While each country must retain its right to impose and maintain unique regulations consonant with its national priorities and income level, the three countries should make a concerted effort to encourage regulatory convergence.
The three leaders highlighted the importance of addressing this issue at their March 2005 summit in Texas. The Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America they signed recognizes the need for a stronger focus on building the economic strength of the continent in addition to ensuring its security. To this end, it emphasizes regulatory issues. Officials in all three countries have formed a series of working groups under designated lead cabinet ministers. These working groups have been ordered to produce an action plan for approval by the leaders within ninety days, by late June 2005, and to report regularly thereafter. (pages 23-24)
Again, the CFR report says nothing about reporting to Congress or to the American people. What we have underway here with the SPP could arguably be termed a bureaucratic coup d’etat. If that is not the intent, then President Bush should rein in the bureaucracy until the American people have been fully informed of the true nature of our government’s desire to create a North American Union. Otherwise, the North American Union will become a reality in 2010 as planned. Right now, the only check or balance being exercised is arguably Congressional oversight of the executive bureaucracy, even though Congress itself might not fully appreciate what is happening. "
"CFR's Plan to Integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada
by Phyllis Schlafly, July 13, 2005
Source EagleForum.org
"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has just let the cat out of the bag about what's really behind our trade agreements and security partnerships with the other North American countries. A 59-page CFR document spells out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter.""Community" means integrating the United States with the corruption, socialism, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada. "Common perimeter" means wide-open U.S. borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
"Community" is sometimes called "space" but the CFR goal is clear: "a common economic space ... for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital, and people flow freely." The CFR's "integrated" strategy calls for "a more open border for the movement of goods and people."
The CFR document lays "the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America." The "common security perimeter" will require us to "harmonize visa and asylum regulations" with Mexico and Canada, "harmonize entry screening," and "fully share data about the exit and entry of foreign nationals."
This CFR document, called "Building a North American Community," asserts that George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin "committed their governments" to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" and assigned "working groups" to fill in the details.
It was at this same meeting, grandly called the North American summit, that President Bush pinned the epithet "vigilantes" on the volunteers guarding our border in Arizona.
A follow-up meeting was held in Ottawa on June 27, where the U.S. representative, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, told a news conference that "we want to facilitate the flow of traffic across our borders." The White House issued a statement that the Ottawa report "represents an important first step in achieving the goals of the Security and Prosperity Partnership."
The CFR document calls for creating a "North American preference" so that employers can recruit low-paid workers from anywhere in North America. No longer will illegal aliens have to be smuggled across the border; employers can openly recruit foreigners willing to work for a fraction of U.S. wages.
Just to make sure that bringing cheap labor from Mexico is an essential part of the plan, the CFR document calls for "a seamless North American market" and for "the extension of full labor mobility to Mexico."
The document's frequent references to "security" are just a cover for the real objectives. The document's "security cooperation" includes the registration of ballistics and explosives, while Canada specifically refused to cooperate with our Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
To no one's surprise, the CFR plan calls for massive U.S. foreign aid to the other countries. The burden on the U.S. taxpayers will include so-called "multilateral development" from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, "long-term loans in pesos," and a North American Investment Fund to send U.S. private capital to Mexico.
The experience of the European Union and the World Trade Organization makes it clear that a common market requires a court system, so the CFR document calls for "a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution." Get ready for decisions from non-American judges who make up their rules ad hoc and probably hate the United States anyway.
The CFR document calls for allowing Mexican trucks "unlimited access" to the United States, including the hauling of local loads between U.S. cities. The CFR document calls for adopting a "tested once" principle for pharmaceuticals, by which a product tested in Mexico will automatically be considered to have met U.S. standards.
The CFR document demands that we implement "the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States and Mexico." That's code language for putting illegal aliens into the U.S. Social Security system, which is bound to bankrupt the system.
Here's another handout included in the plan. U.S. taxpayers are supposed to create a major fund to finance 60,000 Mexican students to study in U.S. colleges.
To ensure that the U.S. government carries out this plan so that it is "achievable" within five years, the CFR calls for supervision by a North American Advisory Council of "eminent persons from outside government . . . along the lines of the Bilderberg" conferences.
The best known Americans who participated in the CFR Task Force that wrote this document are former Massachusetts Governor William Weld and Bill Clinton's immigration chief Doris Meissner. Another participant, American University Professor Robert Pastor, presented the CFR plan at a friendly hearing of Senator Richard Lugar's Foreign Relations Committee on June 9.
Ask your Senators and Representatives which side they are on: the CFR's integrated North American Community or U.S. sovereignty guarded by our own borders. "
Eagle Forum • PO Box 618 • Alton, IL 62002 • phone: 618-462-5415 • fax: 618-462-8909 •
Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05-07-13.html
"President Bush spoke yesterday in Los Angeles on the subject of immigration reform. For the life of me I cannot figure out what is motivating his stance on this subject.
Bush, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, insists that any immigration bill passed by the Congress be "comprehensive." Just exactly what does he mean by "comprehensive." Glad you asked. He means that a bill that simply provides for tighter border security and harsher punishment for employers who hire people who are in this country illegally will not satisfy his demands. We're being invaded. Some of the invaders crossing our borders refer to themselves as "reconquistadors." If you don't hablo Espanol, let me help you. They are calling themselves "re-conquerors." Many of them ... who knows what percentage ... are not just here to find some better-paying work so they can send dinero back home ... they are here to conquer and establish political control of huge parts of the American Southwest. If their purposes were entirely benign, why would they print articles in major Mexican magazines bearing headlines like "Los Angeles is ours!"
Can anyone reading this or listening to me on the radio think of one job -- one duty owed this country by the man we made president that is more solemn, more serious, more important than to use whatever resources he may have at his disposal to turn back an invasion of our homeland? Does the president's duty to protect and defend our borders only come into play if the invasion force is carrying guns?
This particular invasion force doesn't need guns. They're going to have a more potent weapon, the ballot. What does this "fast-track" to citizenship that Bush is so insistent upon really mean? That means a fast track to putting ballots in the hands of those we now call illegal aliens. This is the ultimate goal of President Bush, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and others. In fact, movements are already underway in many states and municipalities to grant full voting rights to non-citizens, and in some cases illegal aliens!
Think of the strength behind a ballot! Americans have been using ballots for hundreds of years to change leadership, to punish political wrongdoing, and to reward political courage. Americans now gleefully use this weapon to gain access to the property of others, and this they do without a moment's thought given to their legal form of plunder. A ballot can be used to change our very way of life in this country. A ballot can be used to gain access to the pockets of every single working American. A ballot can be used to open the floodgates even further to an broader invasion force. A ballot can be used to destroy our rights to property and to diminish our standing as free and independent individuals. What happens when this weapon is placed in the hands of tens of millions of people who had no respect whatsoever for the laws of this country, millions of people who broke the law coming here and broke the law by staying! What happens when this weapon is placed in the hands of people who show no desire whatsoever to assimilate into American culture; people who show disdain for our language and our customs; people who wave flags of their homeland instead of the banner of the United States as they demonstrate for their undeserved amnesty?
President Bush says that the " vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people." Sorry, Mr. President. They're criminals. Criminals are not generally regarded as decent people, except perhaps by politicians. The decent people you speak of are the ones still in Mexico, still in Guatemala, still in Honduras and Colombia. The decent people are the ones who visit the American embassy or consulate to begin the arduous task of applying for permission .... legal permission to enter the United States. The decent people, Mr. President, wait patiently day after day for that magical notice to arrive from U.S. officials telling them that the American people await their arrival as legal, law abiding new neighbors.
Never in my 37 years of talk radio have I seen a time when the politicians inside the beltway have been so completely and thoroughly out of touch with the American people. Eight out of ten Americans want the border between the U.S. and Mexico sealed. These Americans have somehow developed the attitude that the people they send to Washington to make decisions related to our national security have some sort of a duty to recognize an invasion when it is happening, and to take steps to stop it. They don't want Bush's "comprehensive" approach. They want a direct, focused approach. Criminals are pouring across our borders, and they want it stopped. Now. These Americans do not want amnesty for those who have wantonly and brazenly ignored our laws.
The House Republican leadership is talking a tough game right now. No amnesty. No guest worker program. But ... right now that's all it is. Talk. If Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner want to insure that Nancy Pelosi will occupy the Speaker's office come next January all they have to do is cave in to Bush and the Senate with a comprehensive plan embracing anything that looks, smells or tastes like amnesty. I think I have some sort of a sense of what people are fired up about, and believe me, this issue has people burning mad. http://boortz.com/nuze/200606/06022006.html#aliens
Yeah, after bussing homeless unregistereds to the polls, after college kids voted multiple times each, after dead folks and dogs voting Democrat, I REALLY BELIEVE SHE MISSPOKE!!! NOOOOOOOOT!!!!!
Democratic candidate tells Latinos: 'You don't need papers for voting'...
AUDIO FILE... http://www.drudgereport.com/
On Thursday night, Francine Busby, the Democratic candidate for the 50th Congressional District, was speaking before a largely Latino crowd in Escondido when she uttered those words. She said yesterday she simply misspoke.
But someone taped it and a recording began circulating yesterday. After she made that statement at the meeting, Busby immediately said: “You don't need to be a registered voter to help (the campaign).”She said that subsequent statement was to clarify what she meant.
The recording, which was played yesterday on Roger Hedge 's radio talk show, jolted the campaign.
Busby, a Cardiff school board member, is in a tight race with Republican Brian Bilbray, a congressman-turned-lobbyist, who has based his campaign on a tough anti-illegal-immigration stance. Busby has focused her campaign on ethics reform. The two are vying to replace Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who was jailed after pleading guilty to taking bribes.
Busby said she was invited to the forum at the Jocelyn Senior Center in Escondido by the leader of a local soccer league. Many of the 50 or so people there were Spanish speakers. Toward the end, a man in the audience asked in Spanish: “I want to help, but I don't have papers.”
It was translated and Busby replied: “Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can all help. You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help.”
Bilbray said at worst, Busby was encouraging someone to vote illegally. At best, she was encouraging someone who is illegally in the country to work on her campaign.
“She's soliciting illegal aliens to campaign for her and it's on tape – this isn't exactly what you call the pinnacle of ethical campaign strategy,” Bilbray said. “I don't know how she shows her face.”
The two later met in a debate in Carlsbad last night.
Earlier, San Diego Minutemen volunteer Anthony Porrello said he got the tape from an an anonymous Minuteman and passed it on to the news media and talk radio. News of the gathering had circulated among local Minutemen before the meeting, according to William Griffith, the independent candidate in the race who has been endorsed by the San Diego Minutemen.
He attended, but did not hear the statement. He said he was in the back of the room.
“I heard what I expected to hear from a Democrat who supports amnesty,” he said. Busby says she doesn't support amnesty, but backs the comprehensive plan pushed by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that includes opening a path to citizenship for people in the United States illegally if they pay penalties and abide by certain conditions.
Busby said that Republicans are now twisting her words. She does not in any way support or advocate that illegal immigrants vote, she said.
“I was clarifying the question that was being asked in Spanish and then stated that you do not have to be a registered voter to help the campaign because there were many people who appeared to be to be under 18 in the group who wanted to volunteer,” she said in a statement. “I'm not surprised that the Republican Party is making this last-minute, desperate ploy and it is absolutely false.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/50thdistrict/20060603-9999-1mi3busby.htmlPreviously posted a link to this site because of its weather related photos. Check these out!!
Photo Taken: Friday June 2, 2006 - Boscochiesanuova (Verona), Italy
Knew the Fair Tax movement was growing, but didn't realize how big it has become until watching this video!! Huge and growing!!
Bandwidth usage is heavy so be patient downloading .... worth your time, guarnateed!!
__________________
Boortz states proceeds from sales of Fair Tax book will be donated to charity, so with Todd's permission I posted a link to Amazon.com to order the Fair Tax book in a previous blog entry.
Some months back if memory serves me, I posted something to the effect that since New Orleans is built on silt which sinks, the levees would also be sinking lower when they were originally built due to that phenomenon. Well looks like this latest proves that assertion .... which was no more than simple common sense.
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Wed May 31, 11:02 PM ET
<excerpt>
WASHINGTON - Everyone has known New Orleans is a sinking city. Now new research suggests parts of the city are sinking even faster than many scientists imagined — more than an inch a year.
The research, reported in the journal Nature, is based on new satellite radar data for the three years before Katrina struck in 2005. The data show that some areas are sinking four or five times faster than the rest of the city. And that, experts say, can be deadly.
"My concern is the very low-lying areas," said lead author Tim Dixon, a University of Miami geophysicist. "I think those areas are death traps. I don't think those areas should be rebuilt."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060601/ap_on_sc/sinking_new_orleans_9
I hope Sgt. Peter Damon wins hands down and collects every penny!!! 
Iraq veteran sues Moore over 9/11 film
DENISE LAVOIE
Associated Press
<excerpt>
BOSTON - A veteran who lost both arms in the war in Iraq is suing filmmaker Michael Moore for $85 million, alleging that Moore used snippets of a television interview without his permission to falsely portray him as anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Sgt. Peter Damon, a National Guardsman from Middleborough, is asking for damages because of "loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment, and personal humiliation," according to the lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court last week.
Damon, 33, claims that Moore never asked for his consent to use a clip from an interview Damon did with NBC's "Nightly News."
He lost his arms when a tire on a Black Hawk helicopter exploded while he and another reservist were servicing the aircraft on the ground. Another reservist was killed in the explosion.
In his interview with NBC, Damon was asked about a new painkiller the military was using on wounded veterans. He claims in his lawsuit that the way Moore used the film clip in "Fahrenheit 9/11" - Moore's scathing 2004 documentary criticizing the Bush administration and the war in Iraq - makes him appear to "voice a complaint about the war effort" when he was actually complaining about "the excruciating type of pain" that comes with the injury he suffered.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/entertainment/movies/14709855.htm
Came in email ...... great for a few laughs to start the day. Have fun watching!!
"Evolution of Dance"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg
September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 January 2013 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 March 2011 January 2011 December 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 March 2005 November 2004 October 2004
