You Decide

Always decide for yourself whether anything posted in my blog has any information you choose to keep.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

 

Kerry dissing troops Again

Another troop slam from someone who made it out of Nam with a band aid scratch then lied to congress.

I read he sued the Swiftboat Vets, causing them to spend thousands in attorney and court fees to defend themselves, then withdrew the suit as it came time for trial because he didn't want the truth to come out in court.  If Kerry was telling the truth what did he care if it went to trial???????????????

 


"White House Spokesman Slams Kerry Remark

By JENNIFER LOVEN Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON

The White House accused Sen. John Kerry on Tuesday of troop-bashing, seizing on a comment the Democrat made to California students that those unable to navigate the country's education system "get stuck in Iraq."

"Senator Kerry not only owes an apology to those who are serving, but also to the families of those who've given their lives in this," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. "This is an absolute insult."

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran and Bush's rival in 2004, fired back, saying the president and his administration are the ones who owe U.S. troops an apology because they "misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it."

White House Spokesman Slams Kerry Remark

"This is the classic GOP playbook," Kerry said in a harshly worded statement. "I'm sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did. I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium."

Snow was asked about the comment which Kerry made during a campaign rally Monday for California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. The White House spokesman was clearly ready, consulting his notes to read a fuller account of Kerry's statement and unleashing a sharp attack."

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/31/D8L3OTV00.htmlWhite

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

 

MN Keith Ellison-Muhammad

"Keith Ellison's great awakening

"I've tried to make one key point about Keith Ellison's alleged eighteen-month involvement with the Nation of Islam as the enthusiastic servant of a hate cult. Slightly modifying the words of the Frank Sinatra song, it was very long year. It extended at the least from Ellison's days as a law student from 1987-1990 at the University of Minnesota Law School to his first run for office under the name Keith Ellison-Muhammad in 1998. Among the media that have missed this key fact in their stories on Ellison are such notable organizations as the Minneaoplis Star Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and Reuters.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015709.php


Tuesday, October 31, 2006

 

Admission of liberal bias in the dinosaur media

Wow to all who have argued there's no liberal bias in the news, here's one of of the big three admitting just that in an interview. 

Yes, Todd and I both hear what we hear, see what we see and don't succumb to the MSM rewriting history, REALITY or reporting agenda as news. 

Anyone feeding from the swill trough of the MSM might want to have their realty barometer re-calibrated.  Y'all have been had over and over ...... and should have been given Godivas or flowers as a thank you.


From Powerlineblog.com

"Hugh Hewitt interviewing Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News.

(full transcript:    http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=1f133562-cfd3-40f8-af2f-129219d59c8d  )

........"Beyond that, though, one stiking feature of the interview was Halperin's ready admission of the liberal bias that pervades old media. Here are a few exchanges; there were more to the same effect:

MH: You’re asking me should people be skeptical? I think anyone who’s conservative should be skeptical of anything the old media does. ***

HH: But the old media is overwhelmingly liberal, correct, Mark Halperin?

MH: Correct, as we say in the book.

HH: And so everyone that you work with, or 95% of people you work with, are old liberals.

MH: I don’t know if it’s 95%, and unfortunately, they’re not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper. And it goes from the big and major like CBS’ outrageous story about President Bush’s draft record right before the 2004 election, to the insidious and small use of language describing Nancy Pelosi’s liberal policies and ideas different than they would Newt Gingrich’s conservative ones.


HH: And these liberals…you know, Terry Moran on this program said…Terry Moran on this program from ABC, your colleague…

MH: Right.

HH: …said that the media hates the military, has a deep suspicion of it. Do you agree with that?

MH: I totally agree. It’s one of the huge biases, along with gays, guns, abortion, and many other things.


MH: First of all, I never say MSM, because I don’t believe the old media is mainstream. They’re out of the mainstream on most of the issues I’ve been referring to. So I don’t use that phrase. I believe that as I’ve said several times, happy to say again, that anyone who’s conservative in this country has every justification to be skeptical about anything, an internal memo, or product that goes on the air, from the old media, because of a forty year or more history of liberal bias on a range of issues. And after what CBS News did in 2004, regarding the President’s National Guard record, I would be…I am thankful that any conservative looks to us ever for news and information, given how outrageous what they did was.".............

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015705.php


Monday, October 30, 2006

 

"Pacifism: The Ultimate Immorality

"Pacifism: The Ultimate Immorality

Written by Raymond Kraft
Tuesday, July 25, 2006

 

 

Last week, Jack and Jill Pacifisto were walking home through the park after dinner with friends, during which they had spent a few hours discussing the immorality of violence and war and their commitments to send more money to progressive activists over the next year. Suddenly, Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows and pointed a pistol at Jack and said, Give me your wallet, and, pointing the gun at Jill, Your purse.

 

 

 

What? asked Jack, incredulous, Hey, we dont want any trouble.  Were pacifists.  We arent going to hurt you.

 

 

 

Not my problem, said Tony, Gimme your money.

 

 

 

So Jack and Jill did, and then Tony said, And now gimme your watches, rings, jewelry, everything worth anything.

 

 

 

Hey, said Jill, This is my wedding ring!

 

 

 

And Tony said, Not my problem.

 

 

 

Jack and Jill handed over their wallet, and purse, and all their jewelry and Rolex watches, and then Tony shot them both twice in the chest and picked up the loot and stepped back into the shadows.

 

 

 

As Jill lay dying she whispered, Tony?  Why didnt you fight back?  Why didnt you have a gun?  Those were her last words.

 

 

 

I couldnt, whispered Tony.  Im a pacifist.  Those were his last words.

 

 

 

A few days later, Bill Thaxton and his wife were walking home through the park after dinner, when Tony Thug stepped out of the shadows.

 

 

 

Give me your wallet, your purse, said Tony, pointing his gun first at Bill, and then at his wife.  He did not know that Bill was an old lawman, and had been a Marine sniper when he was young, and was active in the Single Action Shooters Society and had a concealed-carry-permit.  Tony assumed that the old man was just an old man with some money and a few credit cards in his wallet walking home from dinner.

 

 

 

Sorry, friend, I dont like guns, and I dont want any trouble, said Bill.

 

 

 

Not my problem, said Tony, Gimme your wallet, your purse, he said, waving the gun at Bills wife, Rings, watches, everything.

 

 

 

And what if I dont? asked Bill.

 

 

 

Ill shoot you both. Her first, said Tony, pointing his gun at Bills wife again.

 

 

 

Well, said Bill, Okay, honey, do what he says.

 

 

 

She tossed down her purse. Bill reached slowly for his left lapel with his right hand and then, like lightning, did a cross-draw with his left and came out blazing with his trusty little 9, nailing Tony three times.

 

 

 

As he lay on the sidewalk dying, Tony Thug was heard to mutter, Damn, I shoulda stuck with the pacifists . . .

 

 

 

An acquaintance wrote me last week to tell me proudly how he had been a pacifist since the 60s. His letter set me thinking about pacifism, which is the ultimate and vilest form of immorality.

 

 

 

If you are Hitler, or Saddam, or Osama, or Ahmadinejad, your desire to kill those you dislike is at least honest and open. You wear you hate on your sleeve and we know who and what you are. But the Pacifist wears his refusal to resist evil as if it were a badge of honor, and claims it as a sign of his or her absolute moral superiority. The Hitlers and Osamas are at least honest about who they are, the Pacifist is notNot even to himself.

 

 

 

The German Pastor Martin Niemoller wrote a poem circa 1946 about the quiescence of German intellectuals in the face of the Nazi rise to power that has become famous.  Translated, it reads:

 

 

 

    When they locked up the social democrats,

 

    I remained silent,

 

    I was not a social democrat.

 

 

 

    When they came for the trade unionists

 

    I did not speak out,

 

    I was not a trade unionist.

 

 

 

    When they came for the Jews

 

    I did not speak out,

 

    I was not a Jew.

 

 

 

    When they came for me

 

    there was no one left to speak out.

 

 

The Pacifist says something like this, but, unlike Niemoller, without apology.  He says:

 

 

 

    When you come for my allies

 

    I will not fight you,

 

    for I am a Pacifist.

 

 

 

    When you come for my countrymen

 

    I will not fight you,

 

    for I am a Pacifist.

 

 

 

    When you come for my neighbor,

 

    I will not fight you,

 

    for I am a Pacifist.

 

 

 

    When you come for my mother,

 

    my father, my brother,

 

    my sister, I will not fight you,

 

    for I am a Pacifist.

 

 

 

    When you come for my wife,

 

    my husband, my son,

 

    my daughter, I will not fight you,

 

    for I am a Pacifist.

 

 

 

    When you come for me,

 

    I will not fight you,

 

    for I am a Pacifist.

 

 

The Pacifist claims that he (or she) is too good to fight against evil, and this is the catastrophic intellectual and moral failure of Pacifism. In the guise of being too good to oppose evil, the Pacifist invokes the ultimate immorality by aiding and abetting and encouraging evil, on the pretext of being too pure, too wise, too sophisticated to fight evil, thereby turning the pretense of goodness and purity into an invocation and license for evil to act without opposition. 

 

 

 

The moral stance of the Pacifist is, unwittingly perhaps, homicidal, genocidal, fratricidal, suicidal.  The Pacifist says, in effect: There is nothing good worth fighting for. And there is nothing so evil worth fighting against.

 

 

 

The Pacifist is willing to give evil free reign, because he or she thinks or feels that fighting against evil is even worse than evil itself . . . an intellectual and moral equivocation of monumentally staggering proportions. In order to be a Pacifist, one must hold that Nazism or Islamism or Communism or any other puritanical totalitarian ideology that seeks to slaughter or oppress all the Jews or all of any other race or tribe is no worse, is not morally inferior, to the existence of Jews and Judaism, or whatever other race or tribe is the whipping boy of the day.

 

 

 

To be a Pacifist, one must hold that acquiescence to a Jihad that seeks to destroy Western Civilization is no worse than Western Civilization, even though the Jihad seeks to extinguish intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, and ultimately even the freedom to be a Pacifist.

 

 

 

As the English philosopher Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The Pacifist replies, I am so good that I will do nothing, I will hurt no one, even if that means that good will be destroyed and evil will win.  I am so peaceful that I will not discriminate between the goodness of good and the badness of evil, certainly not with enough conviction to take up arms, literally or figuratively, against the triumph of evil over good, of totalitarianism over freedom, of barbarianism over civilization.

 

 

 

And so the Pacifist, perhaps unthinkingly, unwittingly, mistakenly, is deeply mired in his intellectual confusion, but surely and unequivocally, the epitome of evil itself, For the Pacifist devoutly believes that by refusing to fight against evil he is affirming that he is good, too good and pure to oppose evil, too good and pure to fight evil, to good and pure to kill evil. But in the end, he is the enabler without whom the triumph of evil would not be possible.

About the Writer: Raymond Kraft is a lawyer and writer living and working in Northern California.  "

http://chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=22667


Sunday, October 29, 2006

 

voting-machine shocker: Does Hugo Chavez own 'em?

This is a follow up to something I read earlier in the year.  Well if we have a democrat takeover in both houses we'll know how it happened. 

Thimk.............  The MSM has been working overtime priming us for it for at least a year and the gullible have been swallowing the whole load. 


U.S. voting-machine shocker:
Does Hugo Chavez own 'em?
Feds probe money trail behind company
for ties to Castroite Venezuelan president


Posted: October 28, 2006
9:30 p.m. Eastern


Source WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – Just 10 days before Americans vote in midterm congressional elections that could result in a historic shift of power, the federal government is investigating whether anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may control the company that operates electronic voting machines in 17 states.

Many questions have been raised about the reliability of the new machines, which leave no paper trails for the purposes of recounts. But now federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by the Castroite revolutionary leader of Venezuela who denounced President Bush as Satan in his most recent United Nations address, the Miami Herald reports.

An informal investigation of Smartmatic's ownership begun last summer has, the paper reveals, become a formal probe.

One of the other major concerns raised about the electronic voting systems is that they could, under the right circumstances, be tampered with to deliver fraudulent results.

The investigation stems from a May 4 inquiry to the Treasury Department by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., raising concerns about Smartmatic's purchase of Sequoia last year. Maloney said she was disturbed by a 2004 article in the Miami Herald revealing that the Venezuelan government owned 28 percent of Bizta – a company operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic.

(Story continues below)

In a deal with twists and turns even federal investigators are having trouble following, Bizta bought back those shares after the article appeared, and Smartmatic now characterizes the deal as a loan.

Bizta and Smartmatic had partnered with the Venezuelan telephone company CANTV to win a $91 million contract to supply electronic voting machines for Venezuelan elections, including the controversial 2004 referendum Chávez won in a vote in which he was widely accused of fraud.

Despite the probe, Smartmatic categorically denies any link to the Chávez regime.

"Smartmatic is a privately held corporation, and no foreign government or entity – including Venezuela – has ever held an ownership stake in the company," Mitch Stoller, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail to the Miami Herald.

"The government of Venezuela doesn’t have anything to do with the company aside from contracting it for our electoral process," the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, told the New York Times tonight.

But the Venezuelan connections have haunted the company whose machines have been plagued with problems in U.S. elections.

When the Chicago City Council asked Sequoia executive Jack Blaine in April about problems in that city's voting, he said some Venezuelans had provided technical support during the election and that some of the glitches could be traced to a component developed in Venezuela to print and transmit results to a central tabulation computer.

The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners is withholding further payment to Sequoia until after the Nov. 7 election.

The Smartmatic investigation is being conducted by the Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS – which determines whether deals involving foreign investors compromise national security.

Determining whether there really is a hidden connection to Chávez or anyone in his government is difficult because of Smartmatic's complex, though legal, corporate structure, reports the Miami Herald.

Stoller admitted the company is 97 percent owned by the four Venezuelan founders – two of them dual citizens: Mugica (Spanish and Venezuelan), Anzola, Roger Piñate and Jorge Massa (French and Venezuelan). The remainder of the company, Stoller told the paper, is owned "by employees of Smartmatic (past and present) and family and acquaintances of the founders."

The four top owners have not said whether they support or oppose Chávez.

"The government should know who owns our voting machines — that is a national-security concern," said Maloney, who started the investigation with her letter last May. "There seems to have been an obvious effort to obscure the ownership of the company."

Chavez has made it clear his goal in life is to bring the U.S. to its knees. He has stood with Iran against the U.S. and, as WND reported Thursday, he is providing documents that could help terrorists infiltrate the U.S.-Mexico, according to a new congressional report on homeland security.

"Venezuela is providing support – including identity documents – that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups," says the report of the subcommittee on investigations of the House Homeland Security Committee. "The Venezuelan government has issued thousands of cédulas, the equivalent of Social Security cards, to people from places such as Cuba, Colombia and Middle Eastern nations that host foreign terrorist organizations."

The documents can be used to obtain Venezuelan passports and American visas, which in turn allow the holder to elude immigration checks and enter the United States.

As WorldNetDaily reported, a Venezuelan military defector claims Chavez developed ties to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida – even providing the group with $1 million in cash after Sept. 11, 2001.

Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez's pilot, told WorldNetDaily through an interpreter that "the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours' flight from the United States."

Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.


If you would like to sound off on this issue, participate in today's WND Poll.


http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52668

Sunday, October 29, 2006

 

Map showing M-13 gang presence by state

This article has a map showing the greatest concentration of M-13 gang members are in California, New York, Virginia and North Carolina (last one is surprising) -lesser presences in other states shown. 

Simple equation, open borders with unimpeded access by invaders = more M-13 members slipping in and more gang activity.  In the Atlanta area we've already seen a rise in violent crime such as take over bank robberies, car jackings and brutal home invasions..... and we have a lesser presence of them but there's been plenty of graffiti left by gangs.


"Vicious MS-13 gang seen as growing threat
Authorities target group in Texas and across U.S.
<excerpt>
07:49 AM CST on Sunday, October 29, 2006
By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News

"PHARR, Texas – Shortly after midnight in late September, a Texas National Guard soldier with night-vision equipment spied four figures slipping through the brush and alerted Border Patrol agents.
The men were arrested, and one in particular stood out for the extensive tattoos across his face, body and arms.
A fingerprint check showed Santos Chileno-Gomez, a 23-year-old Salvadoran, had been deported for an assault on a Long Island, N.Y., police officer. His lengthy criminal record – and the tattoos – labeled him as a member of Mara Salvatrucha 13, a vicious international street gang that federal authorities call one of the most violent in the U.S.
Mr. Chileno-Gomez is among 76 MS-13 members apprehended by the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley during the just-ended fiscal year. That total was up from 62 the previous year, showing the gang's resilience to federal efforts aimed at rooting it out and its determination to travel almost at will through Texas to cliques operating throughout the U.S.
And, some police agencies believe, there is evidence that MS-13 has taken sides in the bloody war among drug cartels that's playing out in Nuevo Laredo.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/102906dntexMS13.2e3e193.html


Saturday, October 28, 2006

 

Maryland~ Steele 'slaps back with a sledge hammer'

"Morton's Monstrous Dilemma

Hatched by Dafydd

"Today, Republican Michael Steele slapped back at his opponent in the Maryland Senate race, Ben Cardin... with a sledge hammer.

Michael J. Fox has been running a tear-jerker ad in numerous venues, in which we discover that the Republican in the race, [Jim Talent | Michael Steele | Tom Kean, jr. | Mark Green | Peter Roscam], is a heartless bastard who doesn't care about sick people, and who actually wants to see Michael J. Fox suffer and die; whereas the Democrat in the race, [Claire McCaskill | Ben Cardin | Bob Menendez | Jim Doyle | Tammy Duckworth], is a bold visionary who supports scientific research and actually cares about suffering people... and if we elect the Democrat, then Michael J. Fox will be cured of Parkinson's Disease.

Today, Steele fired a response-ad right back at Ben Cardin. Here is the text; you can watch the ad at the Power Line link above:  (  http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015665.php  ) 

STEELE: I’m Michael Steele, and I approve this message.

TURNER: I’m Dr. Monica Turner.

Congressman Ben Cardin is attacking Michael Steele with deceptive, tasteless ads. He is using the victim of a terrible disease to frighten people all for his own political gain.

Mr. Cardin should be ashamed.

There’s something you should know about Michael Steele. He does support stem cell research, and he cares deeply for those who suffer from disease.

How do I know? I’m Michael Steele’s little sister.

I have MS, and I know he cares about me."....................

http://biglizards.net/blog/index.html


Saturday, October 28, 2006

 

Murtha on FBI Abscam tape

I must say that Murtha has a very extensive vocabulary of cuss words, no deficiency of ego, so if you're easily offended then don't listen to the video.  It's very long, but also revealing. 



 

"Murtha's Second Act
By Robert D. Novak
CNSNews.com Commentary
June 22, 2006

............"Murtha got into politics in 1968 as a 36-year-old highly decorated Marine and in 1974 became the first Vietnam War veteran elected to Congress. By 1980, Murtha was a lieutenant of Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill and was moving to the top in the House when the FBI named him as one of eight members of Congress videotaped being offered bribes by a phony Arab sheik.

The other seven congressional targets took cash and were convicted in federal court. The videotape showed Murtha declining to take cash but expressing interest in further negotiations, while bragging about his political influence. Murtha testified against the popular Rep. Frank Thompson in the Abscam case, which created lifelong enemies in the Democratic cloakroom. The House Ethics Committee exonerated Murtha of misconduct charges by a largely party-line vote, after which the committee's special counsel resigned in protest. "........

"A Tale of Two Scandals
Jack Murtha Is on the Run Back Home

by Diana Irey
Posted Oct 24, 2006

On Friday, September 29, two congressional scandals went public. One of them instantly became front-page news in every newspaper in the country, and led the broadcast networks’ evening and morning news shows for the next 10 days; the other one went virtually unnoticed, and seemed to drop into a news black hole.

The first featured despicable behavior by a member of Congress against several underage congressional pages; the second one featured despicable behavior by a member of Congress against more than half a million residents of his congressional district, and against every one of his fellow members of Congress, to whom he had been lying for more than a quarter century.

The result of the saturation coverage of the first scandal was to force the resignation of a sitting member of Congress, putting his seat in danger, driving down the poll numbers of the congressman’s fellow party members all over the country, and demoralizing the base voters of his party just as the country was entering the closing weeks of the campaign season; the result of the non-coverage of the second scandal was … nothing at all.

The first featured at its center a mid-level, 12-year veteran Republican member of Congress; the second featured a 32-year senior Democrat campaigning to become House majority leader.

Could the different partisan affiliations really be the only explanation for why one scandal became front-page news, and the other one didn’t?

The first scandal, or course, is the Mark Foley congressional page scandal.

The second scandal—most likely still unknown to you, almost three weeks after it went public—is the unveiling, for the first time ever, of the full 54-minute FBI Abscam surveillance video showing U.S. Rep. Jack Murtha (D.-Pa.) negotiating a $50,000 cash bribe from a man he believed to be an agent of a rich Arab sheik—but who was in reality an undercover agent for the FBI.

The video, available at www.YouDon’tKnowJack.org, proves that Jack Murtha has been lying for 26 years about his involvement in Abscam, the biggest congressional corruption scandal in history.

Contrary to Murtha’s stated defense that he only discussed how to bring needed investment into his southwestern Pennsylvania congressional district, the video proves that Murtha believed he had cut a deal to take a $50,000 cash bribe in exchange for helping a rich foreigner get into America, and proves further that the “investment defense” was nothing more than a cover to throw suspicious reporters off the trail.

Can anyone doubt that if the video had showed a senior Republican caught on tape discussing how to take a $50,000 cash bribe to help a rich foreigner get into the country, it would be front-page news all over the nation?

As Murtha’s opponent in Pennsylvania’s 12th District, I’m taking full advantage of the scandal surrounding this newly released FBI surveillance video.

The grassroots momentum for my campaign has been building for months, fueled by conservative bloggers and talk-radio hosts who have focused on Murtha’s repeated declarations of surrender in the War on Terror. With the addition of the FBI surveillance video—along with a front-page, above-the-field article in the New York Times documenting how Jack Murtha regularly trades his vote for cash, and a recently-released report from a liberal congressional watchdog group that listed Murtha among its list of Congress’ 25 “most corrupt” members—I’m making this race about Murtha’s long history of ethical lapses.

In a political environment where upwards of 70% of voters believe that members of Congress don’t live by the same set of rules, where “scandal-a-day” coverage is reminding voters on a regular basis of the corruption in Washington, and where a strong “throw the bums out” mentality is permeating the entire American body politic, I believe I’ve found just what’s needed to topple Jack Murtha.

 

Mrs. Irey is now in her 10th year of public service as a Washington County, Pa., commissioner, the only woman ever to be elected. She is a Republican challenging Rep. Jack Murtha (D.-Pa.) in the 12th District of Pennsylvania. Visit her website at Irey.com.


http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17653


Friday, October 27, 2006

 

"CAIR Betting on Democrats

"CAIR Betting on Democrats
By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 27, 2006

"With two weeks left before the November 7th election, speculation abounds about the shape of politics in Washington D.C. for the next two years. Many political commentators are expressing the view that America is about to return to the days of divided government – with a Republican in the White House and Democrats holding at least one, if not two, chambers of Congress. From all indications, America, it seems, is very evenly divided.

 

But for officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – the most visible group claiming to represent Muslims in America – their political loyalties appear to lean in one particular political direction. An extensive review of political contributions by CAIR officials, employees and board members on the local, state and national level reveals that CAIR is betting almost exclusively on Democrats to represent them politically on Capitol Hill during the upcoming 110th Congress.

 

To conduct this study, I gathered the names of all CAIR employees and board members that could be identified from the national organization and the CAIR local and state chapters. This information was compiled from publicly available sources – CAIR websites and the most recently filed IRS Form 990s for the organizations at GuideStar.org. The names of the CAIR officials that could be identified were compared to current Federal Election Commission (FEC) individual donor information (this database only covers federal races) available at OpenSecrets.org. (Three caveats should be made about this data: first, not all CAIR affiliates identify their employees, officers and board members on their websites or 990s, so giving by some CAIR officials could not be examined; secondly, the most recent 990 publicly available for some CAIR affiliates is 2004, so some employee and board member positions might have changed since that time; and thirdly, some campaigns file their disclosures on a quarterly basis, so recent contributions may not have yet appeared in the FEC database.)

 

The political contributions by the CAIR officials that could be identified so overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party that I was only able to find three donations in the two-year 2006 political cycle that went to Republicans: a $300 donation by CAIR-New York President Nasir Gondal to moderate Republican Rob Simmons (CT-2), and two donations by CAIR-Houston President Tarek Hussein, who gave $1,000 to the Republican National Congressional Committee late last year, and another $1,000 to the primary campaign of Muslim candidate Ameer Omar, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in TX-30 (more on Mr. Hussein’s contributions later).

 

One CAIR official betting on a Democratic win next month is CAIR-Ohio President Asma Mobin-Uddin, who gave $250 to Democratic challenger Mary Jo Kilroy, who is currently in a tight race against Deborah Pryce – the moderate GOP incumbent and the fourth-highest ranked Republican in the House. This congressional district (OH-15) has been targeted by the Democratic Party as one of the seats that they can pick up from Republicans in this election, and the DNC is pouring money into this race to turn this seat blue. One might believe that the abortion issue would be a determining factor for Dr. Mobin-Uddin, a licensed pediatrician, as Pryce repeatedly affirms a constitutional right to abortion; but comparing the public positions of both candidates on the issue, Kilroy is even more pro-abortion than Pryce. As the leader of a prominent Muslim organization, Mobin-Uddin’s support for Kilroy very curious.

 

CAIR-California President Rashid Ahmad is another CAIR state chapter leader also betting on the Democrats this election cycle, giving $500 to Rep. Doris Matsui (CA-5), in her reelection bid – his only campaign contribution documented thus far.

 

The disproportionate spending by CAIR officials isn’t limited to the state chapters. In fact, board members of the national CAIR organization are apparently the most active political givers in the country – with all of their money going exclusively to Democrats.

 

Take, for instance, CAIR Co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Omar Ahmed. In May of this year, Ahmed went on a political giving spree, making $250 donations to five different Democratic congressional candidates, though none of the recipients are running in his home state of California. Four of the races Ahmed has given to are for seats currently being held by the GOP and have been identified by the Democratic Party as districts that they hope to change hands in this election. One of those seats is open, currently held by retiring Rep. Henry Hyde (IL-6), where Ahmed is backing Democrat Tammy Duckworth – a disabled Iraqi War veteran who opposes the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq. In another race, Ahmed is backing Democrat Patricia Madrid against Rep. Heather Wilson (NM-1) – the only female veteran currently serving in Congress (House and Senate). The other two Republicans targeted by Ahmed’s political contributions are Rep. Clay Shaw (FL-22) and Rep. Charles Taylor (NC-11). He also gave money to Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean (IL-8).

Those who have closely watched the news regarding CAIR in recent years might be familiar with Omar Ahmed. He was CAIR’s founding Board Chairman, a position he held until May 2005. He is also the former president of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) – the parent organization of CAIR that closed down after a federal court found them liable as a front for the terrorist organization, HAMAS, in the death of an American teenager killed in a HAMAS attack (see Joe Kaufman’s article “Death of a Terror Lobby”). According to testimony by counterterrorism expert Steve Emerson, author of American Jihad, before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism in February 1998, “IAP has issued Hamas communiques calling for the killing of Jews, produced training videos for Hamas operatives, and actually recruited for Hamas in the United States.”

 

Ahmed has also drawn fire for comments he made in 1998 explaining CAIR’s role in the future domination of Islam in America, recorded at the time by the San Ramon Valley Herald (July 4, 1998):

 
Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant, he said. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.
 

One of Ahmed’s former IAP colleagues, CAIR Co-founder, board member and Executive Director, Nihad Awad, is also enthusiastically giving to Democrats this cycle. Awad served as IAP’s Director of Public Relations, and his name regularly appears in Steve Emerson’s 1998 Senate testimony on the IAP, HAMAS and CAIR connection. He currently runs CAIR’s day-to-day operations.

 

One curiosity about Awad’s political contributions is that after he infamously gave $500 to Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney on September 11, 2001, he began using another name – Nehad Hammad – for his subsequent political giving. As Debbie Schlussel has previously noted, Awad had used the name “Nehad A. Hammad” in CAIR documents filed with the IRS in the early 1990s, and has taken up that same name for all of his political giving since his 9/11 donation.

 

In the current 2006 election, Awad has put all of his money – $2,000 – into the candidacy of Keith Ellison, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) nominee for the MN-5 Congressional District. The district has been drawn overwhelmingly Democratic, and Ellison is a shoe-in to win the election, which will make him the first-ever elected Muslim official in the federal government. As Scott Johnson explained two weeks ago in the Weekly Standard (“Louis Farrakhan’s First Congressman”), Ellison has been criticized for failing to pay $25,000 in income taxes, his long-time association with the Nation of Islam, and habitually defending anti-Semitic remarks made by his associates.

 

But that hasn’t stopped CAIR from throwing its considerable weight behind Ellison’s bid to become the first elected Muslim federal officeholder. As Joel Mowbray pointed out in the Washington Times last month, Awad has not only given his own money towards Ellison’s campaign, but he headlined a campaign fundraiser in August for Ellison, which netted him $15,000-$20,000, and is responsible for bundling at least $10,000 more in contributions for the candidate (Robert Spencer has also covered the Ellison-Awad connection, “Keith Ellison, CAIR and HAMAS”).

 

And just last week, Joe Kaufman reported that Ellison was speaking at a closed-door event for CAIR-Florida with Jim Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Florida, and that other CAIR officials, including CAIR National Governmental Affairs Director Corey Saylor and CAIR National Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed – a professor of Finance at the University of North Florida – have also contributed $1,000 and $500, respectively, to Ellison’s campaign.

 

But after Kaufman publicly revealed the hush-hush Ellison-CAIR event, Nihad Awad and Parvez Ahmed came out swinging in an editorial published by the Star Tribune accusing “right-wing bloggers, agenda-driven commentators and political operatives” of using the event to engage in “scurrilous smear tactics in an attempt to derail his campaign and to marginalize American Muslim voters." Of course, there's nothing "scurrilous" about it. Their political donations to Ellison can be obtained by anyone in the world with an Internet connection searching the FEC online database.

 

Keith Ellison has not been the chief beneficiary of CAIR’s giving, however. One name that continually appears in the political contributions of CAIR officials in the 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles is none other than Rep. Cynthia McKinney – perhaps the most rabidly anti-war member of Congress and who has accused President Bush of being secretly behind the 9/11 attacks. As Daniel Pipes noted in 2004, McKinney has been the recipient of political contributions from a Who’s Who of radical Islamic organizations in America.

 

McKinney has had a long and profitable history with CAIR. When she faced a tough challenger in the Democratic primary in 2002 (a primary race she would eventually lose, costing her congressional seat), CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad/Nehad Hammad gave not only his controversial $500 September 11, 2001 donation to her campaign, but a last-minute $1,000 in the closing days of her losing primary campaign, in addition to the $1,000 he gave to Democrat Rep. Jim Moran (VA-8) in the 2002 cycle. CAIR-Philadelphia Chairman Iftekhar Hussain also came through with $3,000 for McKinney that year, joined by fellow board member Mahmood Siddique, who gave $800 bundled with Hussain’s contribution. CAIR-Chicago board member Muhammad Kudaimi also attempted to come to McKinney’s rescue in 2002 with a late pre-primary $1,000 contribution, as well as another $1,000 from his wife, Randa Loutfi, but all to no avail.

 

And in McKinney’s unsuccessful bid to keep her congressional seat in this current 2006 election cycle, she received $500 from CAIR-Houston President Tarek Hussein, the same man responsible for only two of three contributions to Republicans by CAIR officials on all levels that I could find.

 

This giving to McKinney exposes a trend in data on giving by CAIR officials in the 2002, 2004, and 2006 elections – giving that appears to be driven more by anti-war and pro-radical Islamic ideology than political calculation. But perhaps for these CAIR officials, they are perceived to be one in the same, as they give to some of the most extreme elements on the American political spectrum.

 

For instance, between 2002 and 2004, Tarek Hussein gave four separate donations to conspiracy theorist and notorious anti-Semite, Lyndon LaRouche. And in the 2004 Presidential Election, there were no recorded donations by CAIR officials to Democratic Party nominee John Kerry, but two for Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader (by CAIR Co-founders Omar Ahmed and Nihad Awad/Nehad Hammad), and another for Moonbat Democratic candidate, Dennis Kucinich, by CAIR-Southern California Executive Director Hussam Ayloush. If these candidates are representative of the ideology that CAIR identifies with, they is not only out of the American mainstream, but even the mainstream of the Democratic Party itself.

 

But that notwithstanding, at present CAIR officials are content to liberally spread their campaign contributions to Democrats, apparently on the gamble that they will take one, if not both, chambers of Congress. Cynthia McKinney will be gone, of course, but Keith Ellison is certain to be there to carry the congressional water for radical Islam. With Democrats in control, CAIR is betting that they will be better represented on Capitol Hill in their self-proclaimed goal of eventual Islamic domination for America. Maybe that is something that citizens should keep in mind on November 7th as they go to the polls and vote.

(Just for the record, I have not contributed to any candidate, political party or PAC in the 2002, 2004 or 2006 cycles.) "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=25136


Friday, October 27, 2006

 

Muslim cleric likens women to 'uncovered meat'

Yeah we really need more of that mindset written into our laws and school books to brainwash our children.  Mad

Video:    Australia's senior Muslim cleric is being asked to resign over controversial comments concerning how women dress.
http://www.wsbtv.com/video/10165424/index.html

"Outrage as Muslim cleric likens women to 'uncovered meat'

"A Muslim cleric's claim that women who do not wear the veil are like 'uncovered meat' who attract sexual predators sparked outrage around Australia yesterday.
Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, the nation's most senior Muslim cleric, compared immodestly-dressed women who do not wear the Islamic headdress with meat that is left uncovered in the street and is then eaten by cats. ".............
............"
In a Ramadam sermon in a Sydney mosque, Sheik al-Hilali suggested that a group of Muslim men recently jailed for many years for gang rapes were not entirely to blame.
There were women, he said, who 'sway suggestively' and wore make-up and immodest dress "and then you get a judge without mercy and gives you 65 years. But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he said, referring to the women victims. "......................
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=412697&in_page_id=1770


Friday, October 27, 2006

 

Allen Exposes Underage Sex Scenes in Opponent's Novels

Sen. George Allen seems to be a class act in every respect and had been suffering from a brutal untruthful/Democrat attack campaign against him.     

I've declined posting passages from the book.


" ALLEN'S REVENGE: EXPOSES UNDERAGE SEX SCENES IN OPPONENT'S NOVELS
Thu Oct 26 2006 20:05:37 ET

Sen. George Allen, R-VA, unleashed a press release late Thursday that exposed his rival's fiction writing, which includes graphic underage sex scenes.
 The press release, as provided by the Allen Campaign:

WEBB’S WEIRD WORLD

The Author’s Disturbing Writings Show a Continued Pattern of Demeaning Women

· Some of Webb’s writings are very disturbing for a candidate hoping to represent the families of Virginians in the U.S. Senate.

· Many excellent books about the United States military and wartime service accomplish their purposes, and even win awards, without systematically demeaning women, and without dehumanizing women, men and even children.

· Webb’s novels disturbingly and consistently – indeed, almost uniformly – portray women as servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these. In novel after novel, Webb assigns his female characters base, negative characteristics. In thousands of pages of fiction penned by Webb, there are few if any strong, admirable women or positive female role models.

Why does Jim Webb refuse to portray women in a respectful, positive light, whether in his non-fiction concerning their role in the military, or in his provocative novels? How can women trust him to represent their views in the Senate when chauvinistic attitudes and sexually exploitive references run throughout his fiction and non-fiction writings?

· Most Virginians and Americans would find passages such as those below shocking, especially coming from the pen of someone who seeks the privilege of serving in the United States Senate, one of the highest offices in the land: "................
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashaw.htm

Friday, October 27, 2006

 

"Baghdad Vigilantes and the Dark Side of Civil Society

Anyone reading my blog knows I don't skirt away from thought provoking non-PC subjects.  Interesting, eye opening article showing just maybe our own nation and other democracies went through the same thing during very early formation/stabilization processes.


"Baghdad Vigilantes and the Dark Side of Civil Society

By Fredrick Turner

Source TechCentralStationDaily.com

"Isn't something missing in the current accounts of the new wave of Iraqi violence? The situation has changed quite radically, it seems, but nobody is saying exactly how. Here is how it strikes this naïve observer.

 

The attacks against our soldiers go on, but there is no surprise there. The suicide bombings of markets, mosques, bus stations, and police recruiting places do too—nothing new there either. The campaign against those courageous individuals who are trying to create a democratic Iraqi government also continues, as does the opportunistic violence of criminal gangs.

 

What has changed is that all of a sudden there is a whole new category of killing going on. Almost every night scores of individuals, obviously chosen and targeted with care, clearly known personally to their attackers, are being tortured and murdered. Who are they? And who are the killers?

 

The Press, it seems, is deliberately not answering these questions. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are giving the matter any public attention beyond deploring it in loud but utterly unspecific tones—and this in an election season. Even the Iraqi government is trying to hush it up; recently they forbade the hospitals to give out information about the victims.

 

It almost seems as if neither side—the ones who want the Iraqi government to fail, and those who want it to succeed--can afford to answer the awkward questions. Here is a hypothesis.

 

The Sunni extremists, al Qaeda-type Wahhabis and Saddamite Baathist fascists in uneasy alliance, perceived that they were losing the war in Iraq. A legitimate government had been voted in and the Americans were preparing to leave it in charge. It was a disaster. They resorted to a desperation measure: to attempt to foment a religious war between Shiites and Sunnis, in the hope of fishing in troubled waters. In doing so they unleashed a very terrible force. That force is not, as often claimed, civil war as such, or even religious war.

 

It is something with which we have become quite familiar in Latin America: vigilanteism on a massive scale—murder squads and desaparacidos—the force of civil society itself in extremis.

 

When there is a significant fraction of the population that will not join in political compromise, whether because of ideological idealism, addiction to supernatural power, or the passion for revenge, civil society is faced with a diabolical paradox.

 

It wishes to form legal and political institutions that are transparent, correctable by debate, and under the control of the people (with protections for minorities), where people can make good money in the marketplace and raise families in peace. But the reality is that even after all possible compromises have been offered to the refuseniks, civil society is faced with a small but absolutely hostile minority that will be content with nothing but total victory.

 

What can civil society do? The only solution is the disappearance of that implacable moiety. Civil society cannot use the instruments of government to stamp out its mortal enemy—for that would be to invalidate and destroy the very principles and legitimacy of that government, and set in place a precedent by which normal political squabbles could in future be settled by genocide or the Gulag. It would be to do what Saddam did to the Kurds, what Turkey did to the Armenians, what the Soviets and Maoists and Khmer Rouge did to their bourgeoisie.

 

The enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government are almost exclusively Sunnis (though so too are many of its supporters). By logical necessity the exterminators would have to be mostly Shiites and Kurds. The government simply cannot afford to go after its enemies in the systematic way required, for that would be to destroy its claim to represent all minorities. There are, from the point of view of Iraq's nascent civil society, some thousands of people who, in the Texas phrase, need killing. Who is going to do it?

 

In the absence of government intervention, the answer is: ordinary people. Basically the killers are posses of self-organized vigilantes, who know their local area, who know who the bombers are, and who the bombers' relatives are. The posses are expert in distinguishing those people who might be fair political enemies from those who will go on striking, like a snake, even when cut in two.

 

The change is radical. Whereas the Wahhabi/Baathist killers are indiscriminate in whom they kill, as long as their victims may include Shiites or at least people who might have voted in the elections, the death squads are quite focused in their aim. There is all the difference in the world between bombing a marketplace and shooting a man you have identified and chosen. Reason—even a vile and brutal reason—can be found in the second, where it was absent in the first. The whole point of bombing a market or a bus station is to assert the monstrous and magisterial superiority of chaos itself, of unreason—only thus can the ultimate terror be evoked, terror of what no reasonable strategy of complicity or evasion can avoid. Only thus can ordinary decent people be forced to accept any kind of order, however evil they find it, as long as it is predictable.

 

But death squads are rational, in their own horrible way. They may prove, as they did in Latin America, to be a pretty effective method of wiping out implacable enemies of social order and preparing the way for democratic and law-abiding government. In living memory almost every decent and legal regime in Latin America was preceded by a chaotic period in which ordinary men armed themselves with guns, said goodnight to their families, and went out in groups to kill some local dissident. That period was a bit further back in the past for the French, the English, and the Americans. But no nation can be shown to have reached the rule of democratic law without it. The work of the vigilantes is the hideous and dark crime that Socrates and the Greek tragic dramatists hinted must underlie all civilization. That crime is indeed a crime, and its perpetrators must stand trial for it, whether before God or some human tribunal. But it is possible that true civil self-government can only be established with its aid.

 

Death squads are distinctly better than suicide bombers. Their members want to survive and have something to lose—they envisage a future in which they can stop killing and get on with family life, while the horrible nightmares gradually fade.

 

In a sense, the great new weapon, the suicide bomber—which had seemed to all the world to be irresistible—has, like all weapons, shown its fatal flaw. That flaw was first revealed in the Jordan bombing of the hotel wedding party, which radicalized Jordanians against al Qaeda. Now it has turned to bite the radicals in Baghdad. If civil society finds itself threatened by utter chaos, it may resort to free-enterprise war against its enemy. By definition what it does then cannot be law-abiding or approved by its own government; it is in Hobbes' state of nature; but it can be a kind of savage rationality that might precede law.

 

But, as Socrates knew, this dark archetypal crime must be hidden. The American authorities in Baghdad are not saying much about it because the vigilantes are doing their work for them, with infinitely greater precision and expertise. The Iraqi government is not doing or saying much about it either, because it would lose legitimacy if it cooperated with the death squads, and sabotage its own interests if it tried (probably unsuccessfully, anyway) to stop them; but it obviously cannot admit that this inaction is its policy. The U.S. Republican Press cannot say anything about it because it would imply in an election year that it approved of the death squads. The Democratic Press cannot give the vital information—that most of the victims probably deserve their fate—because that would imply that the Iraqis have finally started to do what they were expected to do all along, that is, clean up their own house.

 

Everybody is waiting—the Iraq government, until the terrorists are all dead (whereupon it will launch a great campaign of national reconciliation and a long unsuccessful quest for justice against the vigilantes); the US armed forces, until their work is done for them; the irredentist Baathists and Wahhabis, hoping for true civil war; the Republicans, until the violence burns itself out; the Democrats, until the American people can no longer hold down its lunch at what is going on."

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=102506A


Thursday, October 26, 2006

 

"Why Johnny is reading Islamist propoganda

"Why Johnny is reading
Islamist propoganda

Critics charge Muslim radicals
determining textbook content

Posted: October 26, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Bob Unruh
Source WorldNetDaily.com

"Islam is being taught in the nation's public schools as a religion to be embraced because "organized Islamists have gained control of textbook content," according to an organization that analyzes textbooks.

The American Textbook Council has concluded that the situation is the consequence of "the interplay of determined Islamic political activists, textbook editors, and multiculturally minded social studies curriculum planners."

It has gone so far that correcting the situation now becomes a problem, because "educational publishers and educational organizations have bought into claims propounded by Islamists – and have themselves become agents of misinformation."

That comes from Gilbert T. Sewall, who not only wrote the organization's report on Islam and textbooks, but also generated a response to the flood of criticism he encountered.

(Story continues below)

William J. Bennetta, author of The Textbook Letter and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, also has documented dozens of instances of advocacy for or against a belief system, and has produced a list of books where the "religion preaching" leaves them "unfit for use."

Indeed, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes even has repeatedly expressed concern about the "privileging of Islam in the United States" and warns the stakes go well beyond 7th-grade texts. His opinion of Houghton Mifflin's "Across the Centuries? Full of "apologetics" and "distortions."


WND recently reported on a case in Oregon, where parent Kendalee Garner objected to having her son being taught Islam, including the memorization of the "Five Pillars" of Islam and dressing up as a Muslim.

That episode followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision just a few weeks ago not to review a lower court's ruling that a similar class requirement in the Byron Union School District in California, where students were instructed to "become Muslims" was "cultural education."

WND also has reported that a man arrested as a terror suspect for allegedly trying to transport $340,000 from a group tied to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, and who reputedly had connections to Osama bin Laden, helped write the "Religious Expression in Public Schools" guidelines issued by President Clinton during his tenure in office.


Abdurahman Alamoudi with President Clinton, Vice President Gore

Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was president of the American Muslim Council and a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, worked with President Clinton and the American Civil Liberties Union when the guidelines, guidelines later used by a federal judge to conclude such teaching was legal, were compiled.

Sewall said in his elaboration that his study showed world history textbooks "hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West" even while "Islamic pressure groups and their allies seek to suppress the critical analysis of Islam inside and outside classrooms."

Such textbooks result when "nervous publishers" obey educational fashion and rely more heavily on diversity experts than on trustworthy scholarship, he said.

"Textbook editors seem not to recognize that a school-related Islamic agenda in the U.S. uses multiculturalism as a device to guarantee a purely favorable and uncritical view of all things Muslim. At extremes, the report suggested, multiculturalism contributes to a form of peaceable cultural jihad meant to discredit or 'problematize' European civilization in favor of non-Western cultures," he wrote.

The ATC describes itself as an independent national research organization set up in 1989 to review the history and social studies textbooks used in the nation's schools.

Also contributing to the criticism is the work of Bennetta, whose conclusions are available at TextbookLeague.org. He finds that textbooks from a wide range of many of the best-known publishing houses used in public schools today simply shouldn't be there.

"When we examine the textbooks that major publishers try to sell to public schools, we sometimes find fraudulent passages that function as instruments of religious indoctrination: Religious myths are depicted as accounts of real people and events, religious superstitions are depicted as matters of fact, and the origins of religious writings are obscured or are wrapped in outright lies," Bennetta wrote.

"These passages of religious propaganda have been devised by individuals or groups that seek to use the public schools for spreading their own sectarian doctrines and for recruiting converts. In various cases, publishers evidently have accepted material from religious pressure groups and have put the material into textbooks, even though it is laden with blatant preaching, miracle-mongering and fake 'history,'" he wrote.

Bennetta, who is equally adamant that no religious beliefs be included as preaching in textbooks, cites a Houghton Mifflin book "Across the Centuries" as having a lot of Muslim "propaganda." He said the 1999 version has one thing an earlier edition didn't: an apparent source.

Listed as a consultant is "Shabbir Mansuri, Founding Director, Council on Islamic Education, Fountain Valley, California."

Bennetta said the CIE is "a conspicuous Muslim outfit that evidently specializes in inducing schoolbook-writers to sanitize and eulogize Islam, to retail Muslim religious claims as facts, to retail Muslim woo-woo as history, and to depict Islam as an amicable religion that resembles, and is compatible with, Judaism and Christianity."

He said other texts and publishers for which he's found a basis for criticism include "Human Heritage: A World History" by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill; "A Message of "Ancient Days" by Houghton Mifflin; "Across the Centuries" by Houghton Mifflin; "Heath World History: Perspectives on the Past" by McDougal Littell; "Ancient World" by McGraw-Hill School Division; "Making Thirteen Colonies" by Oxford University Press, "World History: Continuity and Change" by Holt, Rinehart and Winston; and "World Cultures: A Global Mosaic" by Prentice Hall, among others.

Sewall said in his treatise that older textbooks didn't so much misrepresent Islam as neglected and ignored it. Now, those same textbook publishers have moved from ignorance to "self-censorship."

For example, a concern raised by Swarthmore historian James Kurth notes "the possibility of structural incompatibility between Islam and the American polity" because of the resistance of American Muslims to assimilate.

"These scholars should at least obtain a fair hearing. They do not," Sewall concluded.

And, he said, the California-based Council on Islamic Education director Shabbir Mansuri concluded the ATC was an "extremist" organization for issuing a report on such concerns, even though there's no evidence of that.

Houghton Mifflin's chief publicist, Collin Earnst, also criticized the report, suggesting that such "bias has misled the public into believing that Islam is a barbaric and murderous religion."

Earnst told WND that his company has a careful process for obtaining input on books, reviewing that input, and then deciding what should be published. Where issues of "belief" by a religious group are involved, reasonable citations and attribution are included, he told WND.

He said among the groups used for comment in the past have been Hadassah and the Christian Educators Association.

But Sewall said there were no such conclusions in his report. "The publisher made these cynical claims to deflect attention from the source of the problem: the textbooks themselves."

He cited one passage from Houghton Mifflin's "Patterns of Interaction":

 

"In Islam, following the law is a religious obligation. Muslims do not separate their personal life from their religious life, and Islamic law regulates almost all areas of human life. Because of this, Islamic law helped to bring order to Muslim states. It provided the state with a set of values that shaped a common identity. In addition to unifying individual states, law helped to unify the Muslim world. Even though various Muslim states might have ethnic or cultural differences, they lived under a common law."

That, Sewall said, "conveys nothing." Further, it never explains that sharia bears "no resemblance to U.S. law, which grew out of the British constitution."

Other criticism came from the report's concerns over why Muslims so often don't get along with neighbors. "Looking at Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, for example, where religious wars are being conducted today against infidels, this proposition is more than plausible," Sewall wrote.

In the California case that was litigated, Edward White III, of the Thomas More Law Center wondered, "Would it have been 'just cultural education' if students were in simulated baptisms, wearing a crucifix, having taken the name of St. John and with praise banners saying 'Praise be to Jesus Christ' on classroom walls?"

From Nyssa, Ore., where one parent raised objections to the Islamic teachings, Supt. Don Grotting, said the text includes assignments for students to learn the "Five Pillars" and study Ramadan.

Grotting acknowledged to WND that textbooks do "take a slant" on some issues, because publishers "are wanting to sell a textbook that is meeting the needs of the state and federal mandates."

And in the California case, school officials also blamed the "possible cant" of the textbook.

Sewall said textbooks in America should "explain the historically potent strain of Islam that promotes separatism and theocracy. Instead, they are trying to trim history to please Islamic pressure groups and allied ideologues.

"The implications for U.S. civic education are immense, especially if students are unaware of or even accept the idea that for politically esthetic reasons they are being lied to or emotionally manipulated."

"If our nation's cultural underpinnings are in conflict with religious dogma and values that are intent on replacing or even eradicating them, should not children and their teachers be made aware? Just as pro-Soviet enthusiasms, Mao worship, and Cold War revisionism seem naïve today, currently prescribed views of Islam may also some day seem like dangerous nonsense. And what key points might replace the obvious flaws in the current generation of textbooks? That militant Islam is a real force in the world today, an insurgency that is a real threat to the nation's democratic way of life and freedoms that its citizens often take for granted."

"Today, Christmas and Nativity scenes are outlawed while Clinton's nominee, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton, recently approved 'Islam: A Simulation' where children learn to become Muslim, recite the Quran, fast for Ramadan and pray to Allah including this prayer: 'In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of Creation, The Compassionate, the Merciful, King of Judgment-day! You alone we worship, and to You alone we pray for help, Guide us to the straight path,'" wrote Jen Shroder, on her BlessedCause.org website.

"America does not comprehend Muslim resolve to make America Islam," Shroder wrote. "Suicide bombers have already demonstrated their willingness to kill and die for it."

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52623


Thursday, October 26, 2006

 

A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data

Precisely why I use either Clusty or Copernic which uses several search search engines for research.  Highly resistent being fed the same swill everyone else drinks from.


http://clusty.com/

http://www.copernic.com/


A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us/politics/26googlebomb.html?ei=5090&en=cf9c1ba8c49c62b2&ex=1319515200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Thursday, October 26, 2006

 

"The Islamic States of America?

Anyone reading my blog would be well advised to pay VERY close attention to this article.  We think in terms of radical terrorist takeover, but we are like frogs in a pot of cold water where the heat is being turned up slowly and we're not noticing changes until we're cooked. 

Little by little bits and pieces Sharia law is being implemented by PC zealots on the socialist left eager to appease, believing if they do so then business as usual.  Not so .... for about 40 years we've been conditioned for socialism to become our economic system which weakens the nation by the very implementation of it.  Look at the Euro-weenies which can't even handle Islamic immigrant unrest within its own borders much handle any other threat to its existence. 

The socialist left bankrolled by Soros is pushing for a plan for the US to become another European Union with the creation of the North American Union which will subordinate all US laws to a higher governing body answerable to the UN which already has Sharia law written into its rules.  As Islamic law creeps inch by inch into our own US laws then our US Constitution is further subordinated to a religion which is a political system within itself, one NOT separate from the other.

So if that doesn't matter to you think of this.  Here in Atlanta there is a trial underway of a father accused of performing circumcision of his then two year old daughter with a pair of scissors, which the little girl has testified on the witness stand that she was held down by another man while he did it.  I'll provide a link http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=86605    so you can read the gut-wrenching details yourself which is a practice perfectly normal in Islamic countries.

In a nation where we have separation of church and state it seems very foolish to be voting for a party, the Democrats, which is the party terrorists are hoping will win because they know they'll cut and run in Iraq, bend over backwards to please known terrorist supporting organizations based in the US .... for more votes. 

Keith Ellison (D, MN)  http://www.powerlineblog.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=Keith+Ellison  Powerline has written extensively about him and his sponsors, ties and media support. 

"Give 'em what they want and they'll go away" worked well for Kim Jong didn't it???? 

There's more at stake than just politics as usual.  So you're not going to be around when it happens, think about your children and their children, and especially the little girls.


Muslim Brotherhood  search      http://discoverthenetworks.org/viewgroups.asp?txtKeyword=Muslim


"The Islamic States of America?

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
September 23, 2004

 

"The hardest thing for Westerners to understand is not that a war with militant Islam is underway but that the nature of the enemy's ultimate goal. That goal is to apply the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) globally. In U.S. terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur'an.

This aspiration is so remote and far-fetched to many non-Muslims, it elicits more guffaws than apprehension. Of course, that used to be the same reaction in Europe, and now it's become widely accepted that, in Bernard Lewis' words, "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century."

Because of the American skepticism about Islamist goals, I postponed publishing an article on this subject until immediately after 9/11, when I expected receptivity to the subject would be greater (it was published in November 2001 as "The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America"). I argued there that

The Muslim population in this country is not like any other group, for it includes within it a substantial body of people—many times more numerous than the agents of Osama bin Ladin—who share with the suicide hijackers a hatred of the United States and the desire, ultimately, to transform it into a nation living under the strictures of militant Islam.

The receptivity indeed was greater, but still the idea of an Islamist takeover remains unrecognized in establishment circles – the U.S. government, the old media, the universities, the mainline churches.

Therefore, reading "A rare look at secretive Brotherhood in America," in the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 19 caused me to startle. It's a long analysis that draws on an exclusive interview with Ahmed Elkadi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader in the United States during 1984-94, plus other interviews and documentation. In it, the authors (Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe, and Laurie Cohen) warily but emphatically acknowledge the Islamists' goal of turning the United States into an Islamic state.

Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Koran and discuss events of the day. But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well. …

Brotherhood members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day—perhaps generations from now—a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law.

This Brotherhood approach is in keeping with my observation that the greater Islamist threat to the West is not violence – flattening buildings, bombing railroad stations and nightclubs, seizing theaters and schools – but the peaceful, legal growth of power through education, the law, the media, and the political system.

The Tribune article explains how, when recruiting new members, the organization does not reveal its identity but invites candidates to small prayer meetings where the prayer leaders focus on the primary goal of the Brotherhood, namely "setting up the rule of God upon the Earth" (i.e., achieving Islamic hegemony). Elkadi describes the organization's strategic, long-term approach: "First you change the person, then the family, then the community, then the nation."

His wife Iman is no less explicit; all who are associated with the Brotherhood, she says, have the same goal, which is "to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state."

In addition to Elkadi, the article features information from Mustafa Saied (about whose Muslim Brotherhood experiences the Wall Street Journal devoted a feature story in December 2003, without mentioning the organization's Islamist goals). Saied, the Tribune informs us, says

he found out that the U.S. Brotherhood had a plan for achieving Islamic rule in America: It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office. "They're very smart. Everyone else is gullible," Saied says. "If the Brotherhood puts up somebody for an election, Muslims would vote for him not knowing he was with the Brotherhood."

Citing documents and interviews, the Tribune team notes that the secretive Brotherhood, in an effort to acquire more influence, went above ground in Illinois in 1993, incorporating itself as the Muslim American Society. The MAS, headquartered in Alexandria, Va. and claiming 53 chapters across the United States engages in a number of activities. These include summer camps, a large annual conference, websites, and the Islamic American University, a mainly correspondence school in suburban Detroit that trains teachers and imams.

Of course, the MAS denies any intent to take over the country. One of its top officials, Shaker Elsayed, insists that

MAS does not believe in creating an Islamic state in America but supports the establishment of Islamic governments in Muslim lands. The group's goal in the United States, he says, "is to serve and develop the Muslim community and help Muslims to be the best citizens they can be of this country." That includes preserving the Muslim identity, particularly among youths.

Notwithstanding this denial, the Tribune finds MAS goals to be clear enough:

Part of the Chicago chapter's Web site is devoted to teens. It includes reading materials that say Muslims have a duty to help form Islamic governments worldwide and should be prepared to take up arms to do so. One passage states that "until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful." Another one says that Western secularism and materialism are evil and that Muslims should "pursue this evil force to its own lands" and "invade its Western heartland." [links added by me, DP]

In suburban Rosemont, Ill., several thousand people attended MAS' annual conference in 2002 at the village's convention center. One speaker said, "We may all feel emotionally attached to the goal of an Islamic state" in America, but it would have to wait because of the modest Muslim population. "We mustn't cross hurdles we can't jump yet."

These revelations are particularly striking, coming as they do just days after a Washington Post article titled "In Search Of Friends Among The Foes," which reports how some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials believe the Muslim Brotherhood's influence "offers an opportunity for political engagement that could help isolate violent jihadists." Graham Fuller is quoted saying that "It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world. It's something we can work with." Demonizing the Brotherhood, he warns, "would be foolhardy in the extreme." Other analysts, such as Reuel Gerecht, Edward Djerejian, and Leslie Campbell, are quoted as being in agreement with this outlook.

But it is a deeply wrong and dangerous approach. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood is not specifically associated with violence in the United States (as it has been in other countries, including Egypt and Syria), it is deeply hostile to the United States and must be treated as one vital component of the enemy's assault force.

_________

Sep. 26, 2004 update: In a verbose and technical response to the Chicago Tribune article cited above, Esam Omeish, the president of the Muslim American Society, acknowledges that MAS has been influenced by the "moderate school of thought prevalent in the Muslim Brotherhood" and makes no effort to refute the article's premise that MAS has in mind "the goal of an Islamic state." How odd.

May 25, 2005 update: For more on this subject, see my weblog entry, "The Muslim American Society's Goals."


http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2100

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

 

"CNN Terrorist Outreach

"CNN Terrorist Outreach

By The Prowler 

Souce The American Spectator 

SNIPER NETWORK NEWS
Much has been written about CNN's decision last week to run portions of a video provided to the news network via a group identified by CNN as "the Islamic Army of Iraq."

This video, shot by the insurgent groups as propaganda for the Muslim world as well as a recruiting tool for a number of Islamo-fascist websites, showed terrorist snipers attacking American soldiers in Iraq.

According to CNN, the video was provided after a producer for CNN sent the group an email asking about its activities.

"I think the American public would be interested in exactly what the email contained, at least from the CNN side of things," says a producer for a rival news network, who was made aware of the video's existence before it aired. "My understanding is that email sent by CNN could not be construed any other way than as supportive of the Islamic militants' position in Iraq. There are people inside CNN who are disgusted by their colleagues' activities in Iraq and here in the United States in covering the war."

Attempts to get a copy of the email were unsuccessful. But one CNN source familiar with the techniques employed by network producers to get the Islamic extremist perspective says that it's common for producers to use Iraqi or Muslim contract employees to get information and access to the terrorists, and they do so by claiming sympathy or support for what the terrorists are doing.

"Anti-Americanism pays off for us over there, no doubt about it," says the CNN employee. "Questions were raised about this video and the way we got it. Once it was confirmed that it was real, the next question was how did we get it. And the answer was, we promised to give the terrorists a fair shake. I know that we are saying there was soul-searching here about running the tape. But I didn't see much of that. There were somber people here, but there was also a segment of people on staff, once the tape had run and created a firestorm, that celebrated. They thought they were so courageous."

A former CNN news employee says that at that network there is a decidedly anti-war approach to what they do. "It might not be so clear from some of our anchors, but there are people here who direct the news operation who are very comfortable giving aide and comfort to the enemy. They wouldn't call it that, but I would."

http://www.americanprowler.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10535


Wednesday, October 25, 2006

 

"Michael J Fox's Stem Cell Ads

Enjoy learning legal points providing clarity as opposed to partisan BS designed to inflame.  Emphasis added, mine. 

BTW, I also concur that any stem cell research should be in the private sector not subsidized by government funds.  Remember the Nazis and their drive for a perfect human race?  Better to keep it in the private sector away from politicians.


 

"MICHAEL J. FOX'S STEM CELL ADS

"In an attempt to elect more Democrats, Hollywood actor Michael J. Fox is recording campaign commercials for Democrats.  The most-talked about one is in Missouri [watch it], where Republican Senator Jim Talent is running for re-election against Democrat Claire McCaskill.  The polls currently show it's a dead heat, with maybe Talent up by a few points...but still under 50 percent.  This is going to be a close one.

Enter Michael J. Fox.

Hollywood celebrities recording campaign commercials endorsing one candidate or another are nothing new.  It happens all the time.  But in this case Fox, the popular actor currently suffering from the effects of Parkinson's disease, has produced ads that are deceptive.  The issue is federal funding embryonic stem cell research....and Michael J. Fox is the new stooge in the Democratic Party's campaign of deception.

Like a lot of Republicans, Talent is opposed to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.  Aided by the mainstream media, Democrats have been advancing the lie for several years now that if you're opposed to the federal funding of something...then that means you want to ban it.  Not so...in fact, what administration has provided more federal funding for stem cell research than another other?  Your answer:  the current Bush Administration.

I admire Michael J. Fox.  I admire his courage in facing this horrible disease.  I, too, want to see more research in this area.  I admit to having a problem with the taxpayers funding that research.  Is it a proper function of government?  Or of private research institutions?  My big problem here is that perhaps these ads are convincing voters that the Bush Administration and the Republicans are somehow working for a total ban.  That's just not so.

If there is so much promise and so many cures to be had from embryonic stem cell research, then there is absolutely nothing stopping private companies from pursuing it.  Embryonic stem cell research is not illegal...never has been.  It just the Democrats exploit people like Michael J. Fox to attack candidates opposed to federal funding.  But don't believe the hype....embryonic stem cell research is not now, nor has it ever been, illegal." 

http://boortz.com/nuze/200610/10252006.html#mjfox


Tuesday, October 24, 2006

 

"Spending Is The Problem

I heard an interview with Sen. George Allen last Friday.  He says he does YES support the Fair Tax among other things.


"Spending Is The Problem

"RedState is pleased to welcome Virginia's Senator George Allen to the front page. We'll be keeping this up top for a while. You can scroll down for more recent content.

“Congress doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.”

Just a few short years ago, the blogosphere – a powerful new branch of the media – burst onto the scene and swiftly became an integral part of our American laboratory of ideas. In short order, it became something that no pundit or journalist could afford to ignore. Candidates gradually learned the ropes of the blogosphere, too, and few candidates today would dream of campaigning without engaging the blogosphere.

Recently, though, the blogosphere took the next step. Because of the efforts of bloggers – and, in particular, a bipartisan blog effort called Porkbusters – the blogosphere helped to pass legislation. The Federal Funding Accountability And Transparency Act of 2006 was signed into law on September 26th, 2006, creating a searchable database of federal grants and contracts so that, beginning in 2008, citizens can go online to see exactly how and where the Federal Government is spending their money. That means greater transparency and accountability for American taxpayers. I was proud to be a sponsor of that bill.

Porkbusters represents citizens demanding accountability from their government. That is grassroots activism at its very best, and I share their goal.

Read on . . .

Congress doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Toward that end, I have supported a “Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights,” including:

  • The Line Item Veto: Senator Talent and I have taken the lead on legislation proposing a Constitutional amendment to give the President the authority that 43 State governors presently possess, and which I had as Governor of Virginia – the line-item veto – which would hold the President and Congress accountable for non-essential wasteful government spending.
  • The Balanced Budget Amendment: I have also introduced a constitutional balanced budget amendment which ensures both fiscal responsibility and helps to restrain the federal government to its constitutionally limited mandates, leaving more powers and freedoms to the States and to the people.
  • The Paycheck Penalty: This legislation that I introduced would withhold the salaries of members of Congress if they do not pass appropriations bills on time. This helps to avoid omnibus spending packages that become great vehicles for wasteful spending
  • Supermajority Vote: I support requiring a supermajority vote to increase spending beyond the rate of inflation.

I am also a sponsor of the “Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies Act,” which would establish a commission to review Federal agencies and programs and recommend the elimination of duplicate, wasteful, or outdated programs and agencies.

I also support passage of the “Stop Over Spending Act of 2006,” which I have sponsored, that includes several important provisions including: Presidential line-item veto authority; statutory caps for discretionary spending; a commission to look for fraud, waste, abuse and duplications across federal agencies and programs; an Entitlement Solvency Commission to make legislative recommendations to save the entitlement programs from financial ruin; and creation of a two year budget, authorization, and appropriation cycle.

I applaud Porkbusters’ citizen activism, which aims to increase transparency in government in order to cut wasteful and unnecessary pork barrel spending. I share that goal. "

http://www.redstate.com/stories/elections/2006/spending_is_the_problem


Monday, October 23, 2006

 

"North Korea Ready to Compromise?

"NORTH KOREA READY TO COMPROMISE?

"Since the end of last week we've been hearing that The Gargoyle apologized to China for his test of a nuclear weapon.  Why apologize to China?  Because China was furious about the test, and they let Kin Jong Il know it.  The Norks are fully dependent on Chinese aid ... so when China is mad things aren't well in North Korea.

Now .. that brings us to the Democrats.  You will recall that as soon as Kim Jong Il detonated his bomb the Democrats were insisting that bush give him just what he wanted ... two-party talks with the United States.  Bush said no.  Two-party talks would strengthen the Nork psychopath and demean the U.S.  Bush insisted on the multi-party talks and sent Secretary of State Rice to talk to the countries most directly affected by North Korea's actions.  The result?  China puts pressure on Kim Jong Il and another test doesn't seem to be in the cards, and now they seem to be willing to return to the six-party talks.

The Democrat way --- a strengthened Kim Jong Il.  Bush's way --- Kim Jong Il bowing to Chinese pressure."

http://boortz.com/nuze/200610/10232006.html#nkorea


Sunday, October 22, 2006

 

Terrorists Attempting To Influence US Elections With Current Violence

'Today': Terrorists Attempting To Influence US Elections With Current Violence Wave

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 19, 2006 - 08:06.

Amidst all the MSM reports about this being the deadliest month for US troops in Iraq in a long time, there was a stunning bit of candor today from NBC reporter Richard Engel suggesting this is not mere coincidence, but a conscious effort by the terrorists to elect Democrats.

At the end of his report on this morning's 'Today' on the situation in Iraq, having spoken with US soliders, Engel reported:

"They believe insurgents are intensifying attacks against American soldiers now in an attempt to influence November's mid-term elections."

Shouldn't it give Americans pause to consider that in the eyes of our men on the ground, our enemy wants to see the Democrats take power?

Perhaps George Soros will sponsor a new MTV series: 'Rocket-Grenade The Vote'.

http://newsbusters.org/node/8439


posted by konane  # 5:32 PM 5 comments

Sunday, October 22, 2006

 

...Why Democrats Are 'Dangerous' When It Comes To America's Defense

"Just Why Democrats Are 'Dangerous' When It Comes To America's Defense

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/20/2006

"Thomas Sowell, the distinguished Stanford scholar, wrote on this page a week ago that there's a difference between the major parties: "The Republicans are disappointing and the Democrats are dangerous." We'd like to take this opportunity to elaborate on his second point."........

........."While Democrats in Congress always assert they "support our troops," their political policies and actions have continually undermined our nation's fight to win the war on terror and defend America. Here is their national security record:
1. On missile defense of America — Democrats voted against it.".............

......." 7. On telling the world (and our enemy) about a timetable for withdrawing from and deserting Iraq — this is Democrats' retreat and defeat plan.

Think that's bad? Here's the Democrats' national defense record for the last 40 years:"........

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=246237121883661 


posted by konane  # 11:46 AM 0 comments

Sunday, October 22, 2006

 

"KGB Letter Outlines Sen. Kennedy's Overtures to Soviets

"KGB Letter Outlines Sen. Kennedy's Overtures to Soviets, Prof Says
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 20, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - The antipathy that congressional Democrats have today toward President George W. Bush is reminiscent of their distrust of President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, a political science professor says.

"We see some of the same sentiments today, in that some Democrats see the Republican president as being a threat and the true obstacle to peace, instead of seeing our enemies as the true danger," said Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College and the author of new book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

In his book, which came out this week, Kengor focuses on a KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War that shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan's foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.

The letter, dated May 14, 1983, was sent from the head of the KGB to Yuri Andropov, who was then General Secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party.

In his letter, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov offered Andropov his interpretation of Kennedy's offer. Former U.S. Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) had traveled to Moscow on behalf of Kennedy to seek out a partnership with Andropov and other Soviet officials, Kengor claims in his book.

At one point after President Reagan left office, Tunney acknowledged that he had played the role of intermediary, not only for Kennedy but for other U.S. senators, Kengor said. Moreover, Tunney told the London Times that he had made 15 separate trips to Moscow.

"There's a lot more to be found here," Kengor told Cybercast News Service. "This was a shocking revelation."

It is not evident with whom Tunney actually met in Moscow. But the letter does say that Sen. Kennedy directed Tunney to reach out to "confidential contacts" so Andropov could be alerted to the senator's proposals.

Specifically, Kennedy proposed that Andropov make a direct appeal to the American people in a series of television interviews that would be organized in August and September of 1983, according to the letter.

"Tunney told his contacts that Kennedy was very troubled about the decline in U.S -Soviet relations under Reagan," Kengor said. "But Kennedy attributed this decline to Reagan, not to the Soviets. In one of the most striking parts of this letter, Kennedy is said to be very impressed with Andropov and other Soviet leaders."

In Kennedy's view, the main reason for the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s was Reagan's unwillingness to yield on plans to deploy middle-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, the KGB chief wrote in his letter.

"Kennedy was afraid that Reagan was leading the world into a nuclear war," Kengor said. "He hoped to counter Reagan's polices, and by extension hurt his re-election prospects."

As a prelude to the public relations strategy Kennedy hoped to facilitate on behalf of the Soviets, Kengor said, the Massachusetts senator had also proposed meeting with Andropov in Moscow -- to discuss the challenges associated with disarmament.

In his appeal, Kennedy indicated he would like to have Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) accompany him on such a trip. The two senators had worked together on nuclear freeze proposals.

But Kennedy's attempt to partner with high-level Soviet officials never materialized. Andropov died after a brief time in office and was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev.

In his attempt to reach out the Soviets, Kennedy settled on a flawed receptacle for peace, Kengor said. Andropov was a much more belligerent and confrontational leader than the man who followed him, in Kengor's estimation.

"If Andropov had lived and Gorbachev never came to power, I can't imagine the Cold War ending peacefully like it did," Kengor told Cybercast News Service. "Things could have gotten ugly."

In the long run of history, Kengor believes it is evident that Reagan's policies were vindicated while Kennedy was proven wrong. In fact, as he points out in his book, Kennedy himself made a "gracious concession" after Reagan died, crediting the 40th president with winning the Cold War."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200610/NAT20061020b.html

posted by konane  # 11:42 AM 0 comments

Sunday, October 22, 2006

 

"Syrian psychiatrist on her way to Israel

In a metaphysical article I read a prediction of sorts which said that Middle East peace would be begun by a woman, a mother, on the opposite side from the Jews.  It appears we are witnessing that prediction unfold through the actions of one very courageous woman, Dr. Wafa Sultan. 


 Her debate video  http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null


"Syrian psychiatrist on her way to Israel
Dr. Wafa Sultan, the Syrian-American psychiatrist who was made famous by speaking out against Islam in a television debate earlier this year, met with the Israeli Consul General to Los Angeles Ehud Danuch. During the meeting Sultan agreed to visit Israel and the two began discussing specific dates for the visit.

Sultan left Syria in 1989 and arrived in the US with her husband and her three daughters. In Syria, Sultan says, the citizens of the country are brainwashed on the subject of the Jewish and Arab worlds.

Sultan is convinced that the conflict between the west and Islam is a religious conflict, not a political one. “The problem is built within Islam and within the Koran itself. Solve the religious problems, and the political problems will be solved by themselves,” she said.

Sultan explains that for 1,400 years, Islam has been “charging forward” without anyone doubting it. “Nobody has ever dared to challenge Islam, and because of that, two generations will have to pass in order for the message to seep in. The next generation is already saturated with hate that our generation has passed on to it.” The first crack in the wall, says Sultan, was the famous caricature of the prophet Mohammad published in the Danish newspaper earlier this year.

The solution, she says, must come from international pressure exerted on the leaders of the Arab-Muslim world to change. The problem is that things are going in the opposite direction. When Sultan left Syria, there were very few private schools teaching men religious studies. Today there are more than 5,000 of them who teach the Koran to the boys of the next generation. Despite that, Sultan emphasizes that she is pessimistic as to the seriousness of the western world. ”The Arab-Muslim world must be helped by the western world through the internet, television, radio, and any other possible way, she says.”

“Nobody can get out of prison by himself, Sultan concluded referring to the millions of Muslims living under oppressive regimes. “The world needs to help those who are locked away inside the Arab-Muslim world under regimes such as in Iran and Syria,” she said. "

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=9920


posted by konane  # 11:14 AM 0 comments

Sunday, October 22, 2006

 

Tennessee ~ wheels coming off Ford campaign

From Powerlineblog.com 


VIDEO  http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015611.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXSPyDP8i3k&eurl=

"I thought earlier this week when I saw the Corker campaign ad (above) about Harold Ford that it was devastating. Offhand, I can't think of a more devastating campaign ad that I have ever seen based on simple statements of facts. The ad seems to have rattled Harold Ford and had something to do with the apparent desperation on his part that Glenn Reynolds puzzles over (with several video links) here. Ford refers to the ad in the second video news clip posted here (Ford says the ad criticizes his appearance, while in fact the ad says he looks good on television, i.e., it implies that he is glib), and Hugh Hewitt comments on the video news clip here.

JOHN adds: If you haven't already seen it, this is the local news coverage of Ford's bizarre attempt to crash Corker's press conference. The wheels appear to be coming off the Ford campaign:

VIDEO      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h5MZMpXgWI&eurl=

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015611.php


posted by konane  # 10:24 AM 0 comments

Saturday, October 21, 2006

 

"Saudis to Invest Over SR2 Billion in Iraq

If Iraq were going down the tubes there would not be investors ready to put down cash.


"Saudis to Invest Over SR2 Billion in Iraq
Source Arab News
"RIYADH, 22 October 2006 — Many Saudi businessmen are now getting ready to establish a number of development projects in Iraq after the Iraqi Parliament approved its foreign investment law, the Al-Eqtisadiah daily reported.

Iraqi authorities are studying the projects and providing the necessary guarantees to attract investors and attract more Arabian capital. Thaeer Al-Feili, consultant at the Iraqi Ministry of Housing, said that there are three big projects that Saudi investors tend to launch in Iraq. The projects include industrial, housing and agricultural investments. The total investment of these projects are estimated at more that SR2.2 billion ($587 million). Al-Feili said that the biggest of these projects is the agricultural project, lead by big Saudi investors. The project will take large space of land and will improve the Iraqi agricultural production. He said that these investments would be the first step toward many Saudi investments coming to Iraq. He said that the General Iraqi Investment Committee has received many investment applications from Arabs and foreigners. He said that many Saudis applied for investment in Iraq and their requests is under study at the moment and soon it will be done within weeks.

He said, "Saudi investors have great experience in business investment especially investment abroad. They will help in developing the infrastructure of Iraq and their money investment will be a great benefit to Iraq." The investment projects will receive many incentives like tax free for ten years and the option to transfer the money abroad after paying the Iraqi government. The law will provide the investor, regardless of his nationality, all incentives and guarantees including living in Iraq.

Al-Feili said that Saudi businessmen supported Iraq in the past by exporting food to Iraq and other necessary products. He pointed out that a business forum would be held in the following two months in Kuwait where Iraqi businessmen will meet with Arab businessmen to reveal investment opportunities in Iraq. About 500 Saudi companies are expected to attend the gathering."
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093131391

posted by konane  # 10:36 PM 0 comments

Saturday, October 21, 2006

 

...."asks Pentagon to remove embedded CNN reporters

I wish they'd bar all embedded reporters period, but do hope they permanently ban CNN for this.  Hey anything for ratings since theirs are down the tube.               


 

"House Defense chair asks Pentagon to remove embedded CNN reporters
KESQ-Channel 3

<Excerpt>

SAN DIEGO The chair of the House Armed Services Committee asked the Pentagon today to remove C-N-N reporters embedded with U-S combat units.

The network televised portions of a video on Wednesday showing insurgent snipers targeting U-S military personnel.".......

......."Executives said the tape came to the network unexpectedly through contact with an insurgent leader.
http://www.kesq.com/global/story.asp?s=5569487&ClientType=Printable

posted by konane  # 12:10 PM 2 comments

Saturday, October 21, 2006

 

"Read Their Lips

Latest portrait of Pelosi, Rangel, Dingell.  Only thing they forgot was the little red star. 

                     


"Read Their Lips

By Mallory Factor

Source TechCentralStationDaily

"So what would the Democrats actually do in power? Voters are starting to ask, as polls suggest that Democratic control of the U.S. House is more and more possible.

 

For starters, take Nancy Pelosi, who would be Speaker of the House if the Democrats win. She has cut through a San Francisco fog of obscurity about the Democrats' intentions and spoken clearly: Last week she said that President Bush's tax cuts would have to be rolled back for those above "a certain level," with details to be worked out later. To parse this statement, recall that the Democrats' definition of "rich" is pretty broad; in 2001, before the Bush tax cuts were enacted, the 36% income tax rate kicked in at $166,500 for married couples filing jointly. Not content to stop at the usual "soak the rich" Democratic rhetoric, Pelosi also noted that middle-class tax relief would have to take a backseat (and maybe the caboose) to not increasing the deficit. So if the Democrats win, you will have no idea what your taxes will be next year.

 

Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York would be in charge of writing the nation's tax legislation. He would determine what rates you and your business will pay. Singing the same tune as Pelosi, Rangel recently said that if the Democrats win, "Everything is on the table." In fact, when he was asked if he would consider across-the-board income tax increases on everyone, including the middle class, he said "No question about it."

 

If top Democrats talk this way now before they're elected, what can we expect them to do afterwards?

 

Next, let's look at spending. One has to admit that the Republicans have given into the spending temptation, too, in the last few years. But the answer is structural reform to fight Congressional earmarks, not a change in party control. Rep. Pelosi suggests that most new spending would be "pay as you go." At first, this sounds good, with its hint of not adding new government programs until we can afford them. But "pay as you go" really means "pay before passing go"—and certainly don't collect any $300 tax refund checks as with the Bush tax cuts in 2001. Rep. Pelosi would be much more convincing on spending if her party had not already proposed $90 billion in new government spending, even before it takes control of the House. The only way to "pay as you go" and fund these programs is for "you" (the taxpayer) to "pay" more. That's why Rep. Rangel has to say that middle class tax increases have to be considered, too—just raising taxes on the rich won't pay for everything.

 

With $90 billion in spending proposals, and 12 years out of power, can we really believe that Democrats will turn on a dime to become the party of spending restraint? Instead, let's hope that this year's near-death experience for the Republicans will help keep them focused on cutting government spending and keeping taxes low.

 

Rep. Pelosi says she believes in the marketplace. But who knows what Rep. John Dingell of Michigan will want to regulate when he gets back to being Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee? When Dingell was chairman of the committee in the 1980s, the inside-the-Beltway political magazine National Journal described his jurisdiction as "anything that strikes Dingell's fancy."

 

Oh, and Rep. Pelosi says she'll pass five major bills (dealing with lobbying reform, homeland security, the minimum wage, the student loan program, and changing Medicare drug pricing rules) in the first 100 hours of the House's year. So much for debate on these important issues. Members of the House won't have time to read the bills, much less engage in open debate. Not a promising start.

 

The scent of impending power is evidently a truth serum for Democrats like Reps. Pelosi and Rangel. With their comments, the verdict is in: the economy simply can't afford a Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Rangel, or Chairman Dingell.  "

 

Mr. Factor is Chairman of the Free Enterprise Fund. "   

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=101806C


posted by konane  # 10:21 AM 0 comments

Friday, October 20, 2006

 

Gargoyle caved thanks to Bush Policy

China's real interest in stabilizing this situation via getting the Gargoyle under control is they don't want North Korean citizens invading China which would happen due to the fact that North Korean citizens are starving, many already crossing the border.

Wonder what part of the Gargoyle's anatomy the Chinese said they'd hand him if he didn't comply?????????


"THE NORKS' MEA CULPA

"North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il now says he's sorry about his nation's first nuclear test.  Why the sudden change of heart?  Because North Korea's biggest neighbor, China, has turned up the heat.  Essentially China sent a delegation to meet with The Gargoyle and told him to come back to the six-party talks and stop testing nuclear weapons.  The result was Kim Jong-Il caved.  China is his enabler.  He had no real choice.  So we probably won't see anymore nuclear tests north of the DMZ for awhile.

All of  this proves one thing......the Bush administration's way of dealing with North Korea actually works, whereas the Clinton administration's policy of appeasement and bilateral negotiations does not.  If Clinton had been in office --- or if the Democrat Appeasement Party had its way, we would have rushed in there with money and promises, and the Gargoyle would be sitting fat and happy, the toast of America-haters everywhere.

All The Gargoyle did with his agreement with the Clinton White House was violate it immediately.  It wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.  Requiring Kim Jong-Il to negotiate with his neighbors in the six-party talks is proving much more effective.  What's The Gargoyle going to say to China?  No?  I don't think so...especially since China could squash North Korea like a bug.

Of course, the mainstream media won't report the story this way.  They'll project Kim Jong-Il in a positive light for his reversal, and never mention that it is the result of the Bush policy and Bush administration diplomatic efforts with China, South Korea and Japan.  And they won't go solicit comment from people like The Poodle, who think we should be negotiating with North Korea directly. "

http://boortz.com/nuze/200610/10202006.html#nkorea 


posted by konane  # 11:44 AM 0 comments

Friday, October 20, 2006

 

"House Intel Chair suspends staff member

Now we're getting somewhere ..... we've known about leaks so perhaps the loop is closing around them. 

"House Intel Chair suspends staff member
Associated Press

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Thu Oct 19, 9:31 PM ET

<excerpt>

"WASHINGTON - House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

A spokesman to Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, confirmed that a committee staff member was suspended this week. He said the staff member is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061020/ap_on_go_co/congress_leak_1

posted by konane  # 9:39 AM 0 comments

Friday, October 20, 2006

 

"Keith Ellison's terror-loving friends ~ Minnesota

Taken directly as written by Powerlineblog.com. 

They've written extensive highly detailed articles with substantiating links embedded

http://www.powerlineblog.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=Keith+Ellison  )

about Keith Ellison which the news media is glossing over or omitting his support by various groups which have ties to terror.


"Keith Ellison's terror-loving friends

 

For those with eyes to see, the mask has long since fallen from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Even such stalwart Democrats as Senators Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer have come to recognize CAIR's "association with groups that are suspect," its "ties to terrorism" and its "intimate links with Hamas."

In fact, in the words of Anti-CAIR, since its founding in 1994, CAIR, its employees and its officials have worked with third parties including the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Holy Land Foundation, and the Global Relief Foundation to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda and to propagate radical Islam. See generally "CAIR: Islamists fooling the establishment" by Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha and "CAIR backs down from Anti-CAIR" by Daniel Pipes.

Is CAIR still fooling the establishment? For a while after 9/11, it certainly did so. The subsequent convictions of CAIR officials and employees for terror-related activities have made it increasingly difficult for CAIR to continue its charade with the same high level of success.

No such difficulty confronts CAIR at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has proved itself a willing dupe. The Star Tribune's blinkered view of CAIR was prominently on display in Sharon Schmickle's September 17 Ellison-related story on CAIR, discussed here in "Ellison's excuse brigade: Exposed and at work."

Taking the direct approach, the Star Tribune today opens its pages for an op-ed column by CAIR executive director Nihad Awad and CAIR chairman of the board Parvez Ahmed. I think they're talking about us here:

There has been much sound and fury in certain circles about the American Muslim community's support for Keith Ellison and his campaign to represent Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District.

A handful of right-wing bloggers, agenda-driven commentators and political operatives have used scurrilous smear tactics in an attempt to derail his campaign and to marginalize American Muslim voters. These smears and distortions send an un-American message of intolerance and bigotry.

We are proud of our personal donations to Ellison's campaign. He has proven himself to be an effective legislator and his commitment to social justice is worthy of admiration. We believe his election will send a powerful message to the world about America's commitment to religious inclusion and tolerance.

Ellison's election will certainly send a powerful message, as does the support of Ellison by the likes of Awad and Ahmed, though not the message that they note. Meet Nihad Awad:
• Nihad Awad publicly declared his enthusiasm for Hamas at Barry University in Florida in 1994: "I'm in support of Hamas movement more than the PLO."

• This same year, according to the Weekly Standard, when Mike Wallace of CBS's "60 Minutes" asked Awad if he supports the "military undertakings of Hamas," Awad stood up for the terrorist group and told him, "The United Nations Charter grants people who are under occupation [the right] to defend themselves against illegal occupation."

• In an August 19, 2006 interview on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Awad rationalized suicide terrorism by suggesting it's really about fighting injustice. He refers to the writing of author Robert Pape on the subject: "He found out that it [suicide terrorism] has more to do with occupations and fighting injustice than religion. It really responds to the myth and the known notion now that has been used by several commentators and some politicians as a cliché because it sounds maybe dramatically well but factually it is not."

• Shortly after September 11, 2001, Awad and CAIR placed on their website a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and under it a call for donations. It read, "What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks," and by clicking on "Donate to the NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund" one was unsuspectingly sent directly to the website of the Holy Land Foundation. A week later, the wording of the site was changed, as visitors to the site were directly told to "Donate through the Holy Land Foundation." The link was on CAIR's website until early December 2001, when the information mysteriously disappeared.

• On December 4, 2001, the reason for the disappearance was apparent, as the Holy Land Foundation's assets were blocked by the United States government for funneling money to Hamas. According to the White House website, "The U.S.-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development [provided] millions of dollars each year that [was] used by HAMAS."

• On Sept. 16, 2000, at a Washington rally sponsored by CAIR, AMC, and MPAC, Awad declared: "They [the Jews] have been saying 'next year to Jerusalem,' we say 'next year to all of Palestine!'"

Awad is a former official of the Islamic Association of Palestine, which was a front group for Hamas. As one can infer from the items above, Awad and CAIR appear to act as voices of the "Wahhabi lobby" and as a front for supporters of Islamist terrorism. Below is a photo of Awad speaking on April 20, 2002 in Washington, D.C. on a stage bearing the flag of Hezbollah.

And who is Parvez Ahmed? Ahmed was a prominent supporter of Sami Al-Arian, the convicted terrorist financier and head of the terrorist North American branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Star Tribune hits bottom today in its service as a propaganda outlet for Minnesota Fifth District congressional candidate Keith Ellison. Nevertheless, Awad's and Ahmed's utterly shameless column supporting Ellison should at least serve the purpose of alerting Ellison's prospective congressional colleagues to the rogue they are about to receive into their midst. "

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015594.php 


posted by konane  # 9:06 AM 0 comments

Thursday, October 19, 2006

 

"Liberals Gone Wild!

                


"Liberals Gone Wild!

By Victor Davis Hanson
Source RealClearPolitics.com

"Why do Republicans drive leftists so crazy these days? Liberal democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera.

Consider some of the recent rabid outbursts by once sober, old-guard politicians. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller insists that the world would be better off if Saddam were still running Iraq. Crotchety Congressman John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, rushed to announce that our Marines were guilty of killing Iraqis in "cold blood" before they were tried. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin has compared our interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, while Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said our soldiers have "terrorized" Iraqi women and children.

Then there is the constant anger from Democratic ex-presidents. It used to be that out-of-office chief executives kept relatively hush. Presidents Ford and Bush Sr. - both voted out of office - did not bray when President Clinton had his trials, personal and otherwise.

Not so now with Presidents Carter and Clinton. They repeatedly harp about the sins of the current administration. By now, everyone has seen clips of Clinton losing his temper (complete with finger-wagging) and lashing out at the "right-wingers" on TV. He lectures on political extremism, even as one of his wife's staff members slandered John McCain by saying he broke under torture while a POW in Hanoi. And even at 82, Jimmy Carter almost daily carps over Bush's foreign policy.

Do not forget the unhinged billionaire leftist philanthropists. Ted Turner said he resented President Bush asking Americans, after 9/11, to take sides in our war against Islamic terrorists. George Soros claimed that President Bush improved on Nazi propaganda methods.

The frustration with Bush & Co. has driven a few in the media almost to the point of clinical madness. In 2004, a clueless Dan Rather imploded by airing clearly forged memos that called into question Bush's National Guard service - with the result that he was eased out by an embarrassed CBS News. More recently, Keith Olbermann, the foaming news head on the struggling cable channel MSNBC, keeps his ratings low with uncontrollable rants about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pushing a "new fascism."

On college campuses, the old leftist intolerance of unwelcome free speech is back with a fury. A guest spokesman for the Minutemen immigration reform group was shouted down at a recent Columbia University lecture. Earlier, Harvard's liberal president Larry Summers was forced out, after timidly questioning academic orthodoxy about the role of women in science and engineering.

What sends liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria?

Is it that George Bush is a polarizing figure, not just in terms of his Iraq policy, but also because of his Christian Texan demeanor?

Or is the current left-wing savagery also a legacy of the tribal 1960s, when out-of-power protestors felt that expressions of speaking bluntly, even crudely, were at least preferable to "artificial" cultural restraint? Why should graying veterans of the barricades, then, remain "polite" when their country's less sophisticated red-state yokels are taking it in the wrong direction?

The Democrats have not elected congressional majorities in 12 years, and they've occupied the White House in only eight of the last 26 years. The left's current unruliness seems a way of scapegoating others for a more elemental frustration - that they can't gain a national majority based on their core beliefs. More entitlements, higher taxes to pay for them, gay marriage, de facto quotas in affirmative action, open borders, abortion on demand, and radical secularism - these liberal issues don't tend to resonate with most Americans.

To compensate, leftist pundits, billionaire philanthropists and politicians, from current officeholders to ex-presidents, work to ensure that isolated moments of Republican ineptness (George Bush strutting on a carrier deck in his flight suit) and wrongdoing (repulsive e-mails from a perverted Congressman Mark Foley) blare out as the only issues of the day. This distracting drumbeat, not their own agenda, is the only strategy for success in the next election.

True, reactionaries in the 1990s expressed a Neanderthal hatred of Bill Clinton. But now shouting leftists have lowered the bar. The danger, of course, is that by emulating the rhetoric of a Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore, the feral Democrats - when they come back into power again as tamed leaders who must govern - will have created Frankensteins. And, as we know, such monsters always turn on their creators. "

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing [email protected]. "
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/liberals_gone_wild.html

posted by konane  # 5:26 PM 4 comments

Thursday, October 19, 2006

 

"Hastings: American Secrets for Sale?

"Hastings: American Secrets for Sale?
By Andrew Walden
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 27, 2006


Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s possible pick of Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to become Chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence if Democrats win control of the House in the November 7 elections is a sure sign of Democrats’ true attitude toward the War on Terror.  Pelosi is apparently planning to hand leadership and even more dangerous--access to America’s most sensitive secrets--to a man who has shown that he is a criminal who can be bought. 

 

 

The best evidence for that conclusion comes from Hastings’ articles of impeachment.  Alcee Hastings is one of only 13 Federal Judges to be impeached in the entire history of the United States.  In 1988 Nancy Pelosi joined in supporting the 413-3 impeachment vote by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.  Hastings was convicted in a Senate trial the next year —finally forcing him from the bench.

 

 

As Jacob Laskin explained in a June, 2006 Front Page Magazine article: “The case involved two brothers, Frank and Thomas Romano, who had been convicted in 1980 on 21 counts of racketeering. Together with attorney William Borders Jr., Hastings, who presided over the Romanos' case, allegedly hatched a plot to solicit a bribe from the brothers. In exchange for a $150,000 cash payment, Hastings would return some $845,000 of their $1.2 million in seized assets after they had served their three-year jail terms. Taped conversations between Hastings and Borders confirmed that the judge was a party to the plot….”

 

 

The 17 Articles of Impeachment indicate why Hastings would be a perfect choice to implement the Democrat Party post-victory plan.  Article 17 explains Hastings, “(formed) a corrupt relationship” with William Borders.  Hastings “repeated false testimony” and engaged in the “fabrication of false documents which were submitted as evidence at his criminal trial….”

 

 

These are the exact skills Hastings would need to use in order to manufacture the fraudulent intelligence documents which Democrats would need as “evidence” for their planned impeachment of President Bush.  On his campaign website, Hastings prepares the ground for this, denouncing the war in Iraq as “unjustified” and accusing the Bush administration of “pre-meditated fabrication of intelligence.”  Hastings’ knowledge of impeachment procedures—having been on the receiving end--is icing on the cake.

 

 

Hastings is proud of his qualifications.  When he won election to Congress from Florida’s 23rd Congressional District in 1992 he explained, “I bring with me the added notoriety of being impeached and removed by the same body that I now get to serve in.”

 

 

Parts of Hastings’ district were at the center of the 2000 Florida Presidential election recounts.

 

 

Hastings’ proven willingness to sell himself, lie and fabricate evidence are not his only qualifications.  Hastings’ is also willing to reveal secret information in order to undermine law enforcement.  Impeachment Article XVI states:

 

 

“…Judge Hastings revealed highly confidential information that he learned as the supervising judge on the wiretap, as follows: On the morning of September 6, 1985, Judge Hastings told Stephen Clark, the Mayor of Dade County Florida, to stay away from Kevin “Waxy” Gordon, who was “hot” and was using the Mayor’s name in Hialeah, Florida.

 

 

“As a result of this improper disclosure, certain investigations then being conducted by law enforcement agents of the United States were thwarted and ultimately terminated.”

 

 

Hastings has also been reported to be the subject of ethics investigations in 2004 by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, the Florida Elections Commission and the Federal Election Commission.

 

 

Hastings is the number two Democrat on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  He also serves on the Terrorism, Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence Subcommittee and the Intelligence Oversight Subcommittee. Members of the Intelligence Committee are often the only members of Congress briefed by the Administration on classified intelligence operations. 

 

 

While receiving classified information, Hastings has been traveling extensively overseas. 

 

 

The April 2, 2004 Miami Herald explains, “One of the top five world travelers in the past decade was our own Congressman Alcee Hastings, says PoliticalMoneyLine, a Washington-based website. The Miramar Democrat spent $152,378 in taxpayer money on 57 trips to 116 countries. (The dollar figure doesn't include costs for staff or use of military aircraft.)”

 

Hastings’ destinations include many where foreign officials may have an intense interest in buying US secrets.

 

''He's not going to garden spots,'' Alcee Hastings spokesman Fred Turner said. ``He is flying back today from a trip to the Middle East that included Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus. . . . I don't think anybody thinks going to those places constitutes a taxpayer-funded vacation.''

 

 

Hastings was elected president of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly in 2004.  He occupied the Presidency for a two year term until July, 2006.  This position offered Hastings an opportunity to meet numerous officials from dozens of countries who might have an interest in US secrets.

 

Hastings defended The New York Times when it exposed the secret US efforts to track terrorist financing through the international banking system.  On “Fox Special Report”, June 29, 2006 he said,Find all of the leakers, prosecute them, put them in jail but let a free press stand in this nation." 

 

 

Hastings was less interested in a “free press” when fascists demanded the death of Danish cartoonists who dared to lampoon Mohammed.  Said Hastings:

 

 

“The cartoons are not only offensive and untrue, they debase the marketplace of ideas in the name of free speech. This is abhorrent and should be denounced as such. A responsible press should report the news, not incite hate or inflame hostility. In this instance, the publishers of these newspapers have failed miserably on both counts. As the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, an organization which has never failed to excoriate xenophobia in all its ugly forms, I reject totally the inferences made in these cartoons and beseech the press to stop running them."

 

If Pelosi goes through with the Hastings appointment, she would bypass Jane Harmon, currently the senior Democrat on the House Intel Committee.  Harmon, who is Jewish, is critical of the Bush Administration but believes America must finish the job in Iraq rather than surrender to al-Qaeda.  She also supports the use of wartime spying against America’s enemies abroad.  This marks her out of the Democratic leftist mainstream and targets her for demotion.

 

 

In contrast, the American Civil Liberties Union feted Hastings in May, 2005 for his opposition to the Patriot Act, the cornerstone of anti-terrorist intelligence efforts.

 

 

Hastings’ trips often include his “staff assistant”, reputed girlfriend Vanessa Griddine, who “earns” more than Hastings’ Chief of Staff.  Griddine is not the only member of Hastings’ staff rumored to be romantically linked.  Another “staff assistant” Patricia Williams is believed to “earn” as much as $129,000 per year.  Williams, who represented Hastings in the impeachment trial, was disbarred in 1992 for “mishandling client funds” – acts which occurred about the time of the impeachment hearings.  She is believed to be owed substantial legal fees by Hastings.

 

 

Hastings’ bio on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee website says: “Known to most as ‘Judge Hastings,’ he has had a distinguished career as an attorney, civil rights activist and judge. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, he became the first African American to serve as a Federal judge in the state of Florida, and he served in that position with distinction and honor for ten years.”

 

 

Here are a few items they left out.

 

 

Although Hastings was not impeached and convicted until 1988-89, his criminal activities began very shortly after his 1979 appointment to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter. In December, 1981 a Florida Grand jury indicted Hastings on the bribery charge for which he was eventually impeached as well as several related felony charges.  These charges made Hastings only the third federal judge to face criminal indictment in the 20th century.  In 1983 he was acquitted even as his co-defendant was convicted. 

 

 

Shortly thereafter, three federal judges took the unusual step of calling on the House of Representatives to impeach Hastings on the criminal charges as well as for claiming that the charges were racially motivated.  In 1985 Hastings revealed the secret wiretap information to the Dade County Mayor.  In 1987 a panel of 27 federal judges recommended impeachment of Hastings.  In 1988 Hastings was impeached on charges including 14 counts of perjury during his 1983 trial.  In 1989 Hastings was convicted by the Senate.  In 1991 Hastings filed suit to overturn his conviction.  In 1992, the conviction was remanded back to the Senate by a federal court ruling on a technicality.  The timing—two months before Election Day-- was perfect for Hastings.  Hastings was elected from the newly-created heavily Democratic and mostly black 23rd Congressional District in November, 1992.  In January, 1993, just before Hastings was sworn in as a Congressman, the Supreme Court ruled that courts have no authority to review Senate impeachment trials--effectively upholding Hastings’ impeachment.

 

 

He “keeps” two female companions—one a disbarred lawyer—on his staff.  He was subject to three different investigations in 2004.  Are we supposed to believe this person who so quickly fell into corruption after being named to the federal bench suddenly changed his ways in 1993? 

 

 

Hastings’ well known criminal record and his choice to travel with a paid female “companion” are unspoken invitations to any foreign intelligence official or anti-American journalist seeking access to American secrets.  His extensive foreign travels give him access to numerous such individuals.  Hastings is already very dangerous to American security as a member of several intelligence-related House committees and sub-committees as well as the OSCE.  But apparently Pelosi believes Hastings is not yet doing enough damage."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24590


posted by konane  # 9:08 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

 

Kansas candidate Ahner campaigning for Fair Tax

SO -- YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN?

Fine.  Here's one that merits your consideration.  His name is Chuck Ahner, and he's running for the 3rd Congressional seat from the state of Kansas.

Ahner has several things going for him.  First, he's not an incumbent.  He hasn't been sitting up there in Washington voting for record budgets and growing the size of the Imperial Federal Government.  He didn't vote for the anti-free speech McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Monstrosity.  He hasn't been complicit in turning a blind eye to the Mexican invasion.

Plus ... Chuck Ahner is campaigning on the FairTax! 

A lot of you are asking what you can do to give the FairTax a boost in this election.  Well here's a chance if you happen to live in Kansas' 3rd Congressional District.  You can replace a Democrat with a Republican who will push for passage of the FairTax once he arrives on Capitol Hill.  Here's his website ... give it a look.

http://www.ahnerforcongress.com/

http://boortz.com/nuze/200610/10182006.html#republicans


posted by konane  # 12:30 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

 

"Decorated Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming

Global warming = cottage industiries making huge profits from generated fear.  Many scientists receiving huge government grants to create these cottage industires of fear.

Global warming solution = the sun is burning warmer in this cycle heating our entire solar system and there's nothing we can do about it except wait for a cooling cycle.

They seem to nail it.  $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and political agendas.


"Decorated Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming - Caps Year of Vindication for Skeptics

October 17, 2006

"Washington DC - One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.

Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France’s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the “cause of climate change remains unknown” and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.

“Following the month of August experienced by the northern half of France, the prophets of doom of global warming will have a lot on their plate in order to make our fellow countrymen swallow their certitudes,” Allegre wrote. He also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”

Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.” See: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/sciwarn.html

Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States.

Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to “Holocaust deniers.” See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers."

This increase in rhetorical flourish comes at a time when new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists’ computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.

60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears

Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called “consensus” that the Earth faces a “climate emergency.” On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.

“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,” the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

“It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas,” the 60 scientists concluded.

In addition, an October 16, 2006 Washington Post article titled “Climate Change is Nothing New” echoed the sentiments of the 60 scientists as it detailed a new study of the earth’s climate history. The Washington Post article by reporter Christopher Lee noted that Indiana University geologist Simon Brassell found climate change occurred during the age of dinosaurs and quoted Brassell questioning the accuracy of computer climate model predictions.

“If there are big, inherent fluctuations in the system, as paleoclimate studies are showing, it could make determining the Earth’s climatic future even harder than it is,” Brassell said. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500672.html

Global Cooling on the Horizon?

In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html  

Sun’s Contribution to Warming

There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml

“Global Warming” Stopped in 1998

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming – it stopped in 1998. “According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. “…this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled “There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

“Global”? Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming

In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to “global warming theory” and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word “global” in “global warming” may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be “Northern Hemisphere” warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern-hemisphere-ignores-global.html

Alaska Cooling

According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was “0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average.” See: http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2006/jul06/noaa06-065.html

Oceans Cooling

Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans “certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.“ See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/

Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter

Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006’s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.

Droughts Less Frequent

Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming “shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.” http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/where-are-the-droughts

Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age

Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study “claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world…Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,” according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/overturning-ocean-hype

‘Hockey Stick’ Broken in 2006

The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was found to be unsupportable by the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts in 2006. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697

Study Shows Greenland’s Ice Growing

A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp that Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.

Polar Bears Not Going Extinct

Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media’s unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419

Media Darling James Hansen Hypes Alarmism

As all of this new data debunking climate alarmism mounts, the mainstream media chooses to ignore it and instead focus on the dire predictions of the number-one global warming media darling, NASA’s James Hansen. The increasingly alarmist Hansen is featured frequently in the media to bolster sky-is-falling climate scare reports. His recent claim that the Earth is nearing its hottest point in one million years has been challenged by many scientists. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N39/EDITB.jsp Hansen’s increasingly frightening climate predictions follow his 2003 concession that the use of “extreme scenarios” was an appropriate tactic to drive the public’s attention to the urgency of global warming. See: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html Hansen also received a $250,000 grant form Teresa Heinz’s Foundation and then subsequently endorsed her husband John Kerry for President and worked closely with Al Gore to promote his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” See: http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6 & http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf

American People Rejecting Global Warming Alarmism

The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.

Senator Inhofe Chastises Media For Unscientific & Unprincipled Climate Reporting

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented last week on the media’s unfounded global warming hype and some of the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called “consensus” that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet.

“The American people are fed up with media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only “emergency” confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,” Senator Inhofe said last week. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264616

“The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows,” Senator Inhofe explained.

Eco-Doomsayers’ Failed Predictions

In a speech on the Senate floor on September 25, 2006, Senator Inhofe pointed out the abject failure of past predictions of ecological disaster made by environmental alarmists.

“The history of the modern environmental movement is chock-full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict,” Senator Inhofe said on September 25th. See: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759

Related Links:

For a comprehensive review of the media’s embarrassing 100-year history of alternating between promoting fears of a coming ice age and global warming, see Environment & Public Works Chairman James Inhofe’s September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech debunking the media and climate alarmism. Go to: (epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)

To read and watch Senator Inhofe on CNN discuss global warming go to: (http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264308 )

To Read all of Senator Inhofe’s Speeches on global warming go to: (http://epw.senate.gov/speeches.cfm?party=rep)

“Inhofe Correct On Global Warming,” by David Deming geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264537)

 

 

 

 http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777

 

posted by konane  # 11:23 AM 2 comments

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

 

"Carter Blames Bush For Korean Crisis

Carter ....typical socialist failure at everything while in office.  When payola Carter gave the Gargoyle back during Clinton didn't continue to work  .... just as ALL of Carter's foreign policy decisions resoundingly FAILED ..... go for the tried and true socialist mantra .... re-write history for the short attention span crowd and ..... blame Bush.

Carter's mind has to be gone .... he continues with typical socialist/communists strategy of re-writing verifiable, recorded history FAILING to realize we're in the information age where his BS lies are being flushed out and flushed on a daily basis.

Failure as the Governor of Georgia double failure as President.  Never met a dictator he didn't love and never misses a chance to spew anti-American rhetoric. 

A total disgrace to this nation and all it represents.


Kim Jong crumb trail

https://blogs.lotterypost.com/konane/2006/10/kim-jong-crumb-trail.htm


"Carter Blames Bush For Korean Crisis


Keith Whitney reports

 

Reported By: Keith Whitney
Web Editor: Michael King
Last Modified: 10/18/2006 8:13:12 AM


Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday night that an agreement he brokered 12 years ago for North Korea to halt nuclear weapons development is "in the wastebasket." Carter contends the Bush administration turned its back on the deal and labeled the isolated nation part of an "axis of evil."

But Carter, speaking at a previously scheduled panel discussion on his 1994 mediation, said he does not foresee the current dispute over North Korea's test of a nuclear bomb leading to war.

Carter said that in 1994, war "appeared to be imminent" if the Clinton administration had pushed sanctions against North Korea through the UN Security Council. But he said it is less likely now. Although North Korea branded sanctions imposed by the security council as an act of war, Carter said they are not as stringent as those proposed by the Clinton administration 12 years ago.

Laney said it appeared that war was certain before Carter's trip, which demonstrated to him that every opportunity for peaceful resolution of a crisis must be used."
http://www.11alive.com/specials/local/decision2004/decision_article.aspx?storyid=86210


posted by konane  # 10:12 AM 2 comments

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 

Todd, this one's for you

 


"Why Vote Republican

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJmbomyq0fc

_________________________________________

"But God, what must it be like to live behind Democratic eyes? They live in a world that is three days wide: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Anything more than a day in past or future is beyond the Democratic event horizon and ceases to exist."
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 12, 2006, at the time of 04:29 AM 
http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2006/10/beyond_the_demo.html
__________________________________________
In response to Dafydd's post above a poster by the handle 'Infidel' added:
___________________________________________

..........."Back in the 1960s, a conservative sociologist named Edward Stanfield wrote a book on urban policy called The Unheavenly City. It was influenced, he told me, by the Austrian School, as shown by his analysis of social classes according to time horizons.

The more upper-class people are, he said, the more they care about their posterity and their society. Even if they have no children, they're future oriented. These people are the opposite of the Keynesians and their "in the long run we're all dead." Like Mises, they uphold the good and true, for the long term.

These are the savers and investors, the entrepreneurs and producers who make a capitalist economy hum. They're also the generous givers, people who make charitable contributions to preserve what's right, and change what's not, over the long term.

Further down the class scale, said Banfield, people are more present-oriented. And at the lower end, they are more likely to be on welfare or criminals. Those on the dole have little concern for tomorrow. As to the outlaws, when they want money, there's no thought of working for it. They grab your wallet.

One of the worst effects of the welfare state, Banfield showed, is to skew all of society's time horizons towards the lower class. Thanks to redistribution and giveaways, there is far less preparation for the future: too many people feel that the government will take care of them, and the Fed's inflation generates a live-for-the-moment attitude as well.

All this is, needless to say, extremely damaging for individuals, nations, and civilization in general. Those who can postpone consumption for the future are mature and prosperous; those who must have it now, no matter what the consequences, are childish and poor. We know where America is headed.

That puts an even greater burden on the responsible and farsighted. The struggle to push back statism, restore the free market, and rebuild a responsible society is a long-term one. It requires people who understand the value of ideas and their effect on our future.
(from: Ludwig von Mises Institute)  "

http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2006/10/beyond_the_demo.html


posted by konane  # 8:06 AM 3 comments

Monday, October 16, 2006

 

Tennessee .... ""Pension Looters for the Left?

Live links referencing statements made.  Again if the Republicans did it ....... it would be all over the evening news.  Haven't heard a peep about this. 


"Pension Looters for the Left?
By Patrick Poole
Source  FrontPageMagazine.com | October 16, 2006


"Imagine the following scenario: during the height of election season, a high-placed Republican donor is discovered to have looted millions of dollars from the retirement funds of individuals and companies he manages, and then contributes more than $70,000 to his state GOP party. When the fraud is discovered, the state party not only refuses to give the money back to the victims, but characterizes calls from Democrats to return the ill-gotten gains as “a cheap Democratic ploy” – even as top GOP elected officials in the state demand that their party return the money.

 

Is it hard to imagine the virtual non-stop coverage that both local and national media would devote to the GOP scandal, with constant reference made by Democratic Party-linked talking heads and mainstream media “reporters” incessantly predicting how the scandal will derail Republicans' chances in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races under way in that state?

 

The scenario described above has been unfolding for months in the Volunteer State, but it isn’t the Tennessee Republican Party on the working end of the scandal. Instead, local news reports indicate that the Tennessee Democratic Party has received $52,250 for state races and $18,000 for federal races from a major Democratic donor, Barry Stokes, who was arrested by federal officials on Friday for embezzling retirement funds from his clients – money Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Bob Tuke vowed last Friday to keep even after one of the top state Democratic Party officials, State Sen. Doug Jackson, urged his own party to return the money. In a letter to Tuke, Jackson said that keeping the money would be a “travesty.” In recent months, two Tennessee Democratic Congressional candidates have returned campaign contributions from Stokes.

 

The intramural exchange between Jackson and his Democratic Party chairman came only after the Tennessee Republican Caucus returned $1,000 earlier last week that had been donated by Stokes in 2003 – a move the Democratic Chairman Tuke described as a “cheap Republican ploy.” But in a statement, the Tennessee Republicans explained, “our Caucuses want no part in receiving stolen pension funds - or any other stolen money or goods for that matter.” Their Democratic counterparts, however, don’t seem to share their scruples.

As the scandal threatens the reelection prospects of Tennessee Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen – one of the few remaining Democratic governors in the Red State South and the only Democrat to win statewide office in Tennessee since 1992 – and potentially dashes the hopes of Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Memphis), who Democrats nationwide hope will pick up a US Senate seat in a Republican-leaning state (the seat being vacated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist), there has been no mention of the escalating scandal in the national mainstream media – quite unlike a similar scandal last year involving Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and a GOP supporter who has pled guilty to stealing money from an account he managed for the Bureau of Worker’s Compensation. Despite the national media blackout of the rapidly unfolding Democratic scandal, the matter is being superbly covered by local bloggers and grassroots journalists, including Bill Hobbs and Terry Frank, and by the major Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean.

Looking at the known facts so far in the Tennessee case, it is much worse than the hypothetical scenario I previously described. Not only is the Tennessee Democratic Party refusing to return the stolen retirement money to the US Bankruptcy Court trustee handling the matter (unlike Tennessee Republicans), but Barry Stokes – the man accused of embezzling the funds and who used his position within Gov. Phil Bredesen’s highest circles to pitch flexible spending accounts managed by Stokes’ company, 1Point Solutions, to the State Treasurer’s office –  is represented in the matter by Bredesen’s 2002 campaign manager and current campaign treasurer, lobbyist Stuart Brunson. Stokes’ company was also awarded a contract last year by the Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees most of Tennessee’s colleges and universities, to manage the flexible spending accounts of 14,000 Board of Regents employees. Last week, the Board of Regents employees discovered that debit cards linked to their accounts with 1Point no longer worked.

 

Also last week, Bredesen spokeswoman Lydia Linker revealed that Stokes met with Bredesen chief-of-staff, Dep. Gov. Dave Cooley, on several dates in 2003 and 2004 seeking assistance on a custody dispute. The ties between Stokes and Gov. Bredesen continue until today. In fact, Stokes is still listed on Bredesen’s campaign website as one of the “Top Business Leaders Endorsing Bredesen.

 

According to a September 26th article in The Tennessean, even as Stokes’ financial empire began to crumble in recent months under pressure from multiple lawsuits, his giving to the Tennessee Democratic Party continued unabated. On one day this past June, as one Nashville law firm was demanding the transfer of their employees' 401(k) and flexible spending accounts, Stokes was giving the Tennessee Democratic Party a huge $20,000 check at their annual Jackson Day fundraiser at the historic Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole ‘Opry in downtown Nashville (Stokes had also given $20,000 to the Tennessee Democratic Party in May 2005).

 

The victims of the fraud by Stokes and his company are widespread. Among them are 1,000 Nashville Metro government employees that had accounts handled by 1Point (Nashville Metro government is controlled by Democrats). The contract was awarded even though the company had not submitted an audited financial statement and annual report, as had the other companies submitting bids.

 

According to an article in Saturday’s edition of The Tennessean, the 1Point web began unraveling in April when the New York-based Jewish Funds for Justice filed a lawsuit seeking the return of retirement funds Stokes and his company had been given to manage. That lawsuit was eventually settled, but the money used to pay off Jewish Funds for Justice came from an account that Stokes was pouring millions into from other clients to settle the claims and pay personal expenses.

 

In mid-September, an auto-parts manufacturer based in Smyrna, Tennessee, was told by one of Stokes’ attorneys that $7 million given to 1Point to manage was “gone and likely unrecoverable.” Within days, several other clients also filed claims in court against the company. With lawsuits rapidly piling up, 1Point was forced into bankruptcy last month. The bankruptcy trustee has discovered that in the weeks after the 1Point accounts had been frozen by the court, Stokes withdrew at least $40,000.

The bankruptcy trustee also announced last week his discovery that after one client had transferred $650,000 to 1Point in May and June, not only did the money never make it to the investment houses, but $100,000 of those funds were deposited into a trust account for Stokes’ father, and Stokes had pocketed $30,000 and spent another $9,300 with a Tokyo art gallery. Stokes is reputedly one of the world’s largest collectors of Japanese block prints, with a collection estimated at $2.5 million. But bankruptcy officials have discovered that at least $1 million worth of paintings have disappeared from storage.

 

Ironically, included amongst 1Point’s victims are employees of the Tennessee Democratic Party. But Democrats should have known better, notwithstanding his cozy relationship with the Tennessee Democratic elite, as indicated by Stokes’ troubled financial past, as described last week by The Tennessean:

 

Barry Stokes came onto the Nashville scene three or four years ago, spending lavishly at fundraising galas, often showcasing his valuable museum-quality Japanese print collection to raise money for social and cultural causes.

 

 

He rapidly grew his business, signing up clients such as Metro government, a local law firm and the state of Louisiana and even handling the retirement accounts for employees working for the Tennessee Democratic Party, to which he contributed nearly $50,000.

 

 

But if those businesses or agencies that contracted for his services had looked deeper into his background, they might have thought twice. A closer examination by The Tennessean revealed an earlier bankruptcy, failed computer ventures in Houston, a termination from a financial company and a string of federal and state tax liens that paint a problematic picture of the 49-year-old’s business life.

 

 

As the Tennessee Democratic Party responded to calls from outsiders and members from their own party to return the stolen pension and retirement funds to the US Bankruptcy trustee, the Party spokesman, Mark Brown, dismissed concerns that they intended to keep the pilfered money, which presumably is being spent to reelect Gov. Bredesen and to send Harold Ford to the US Senate (hailed by many as “this year’s Obama”), and stated that the state party’s primary concern was for the four employees who have lost money in the 1Point scandal, instead of the thousands of employees and retirees in Tennessee and around the country who are also victims. “Our sole focus at this point is to protect the interest of the four Tennessee Democratic Party employees whose retirement funds were managed by 1Point Solutions,” Brown told the press late last week.

 

What potential impact this story might have on the races in Tennessee remains to be seen. The race for the open US Senate seat is being watched nationally as the race between Harold Ford and Bob Corker remains close, and the story is getting a lot of local coverage, which could potentially hurt Ford and Bredesen, as well as other Democrats running for office in the Volunteer State.

 

But the added scandal of the Tennessee Democratic Party keeping stolen retirement funds doesn’t seem likely to get near the national media attention as had the similar GOP scandal in Ohio, which is hurting many Ohio Republicans who had no involvement in the matter. Ohio Democrats have benefited tremendously from coverage of the Taft-Bureau of Worker’s Compensation scandal in multiple stories by the New York Times, Washington Post, and other national media outlets, and the Democratic National Committee is airing numerous campaign commercials in Ohio trying to tie unconnected Republicans to the affair.

 

But nothing in the Ohio GOP scandal can remotely compare to the Tennessee Democratic Party’s decision last week to knowingly profit from the crimes of one of its major donors and the brazen callousness of the party chairman, Bob Tuke, to the plight of thousands of Tennessee citizens who probably will not see their retirement accounts restored anytime soon. In comparing the ongoing reporting on the Ohio story with the current national coverage of the explosive Tennessee scandal that has escalated since earlier this year, the mainstream media silence on the latter has grown deafening."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24938


posted by konane  # 9:14 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 16, 2006

 

"Starvation Is Paradise

"Starvation Is Paradise
By Hyok Kang
Sunday (London) Times | October 16, 2006

Source FrontPageMagazine.com


"Growing up in North Korea, Hyok Kang was surrounded by desperate people who ate grass and bark before they died. Yet pervasive propaganda made them feel lucky to be there.

The first time I ate chocolate was when I was five years old. My grandfather had relatives in Japan who were given exceptional permission to visit us. They came like extraterrestrials with their arms full of presents and food. I remember waving tins of condensed milk and chocolate bars under my friends' noses. I was a horrid little boy. It was 1990 and I didn't yet know what famine was. I wouldn't taste chocolate again until we escaped to China when I was 13.

In 1994, shortly before the death of Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, the state food distribution system began to break down. Eventually, there was no more rice, no more potatoes. We moved on to vile food substitutes. Weeds, of whatever kind, were boiled up and swallowed in the form of soup. We picked these inedible leaves on the edges of the fields or the banks of the river. The soup was so bitter that we could barely keep it down.

Our neighbours collected grass and tree bark - usually pine, or various shrubs. They grated the bark and boiled it up before eating it. And much good it did them: their faces swelled from day to day until they finally perished.

Not only food was scarce. Our teachers gave each of us collection quotas: maize leaves (for paper mills), copper and other metals - and, during the winter, dung for fertiliser. We had to take six whole carts of faecal matter to the school, and not any old excrement: it had to be human. As it was frozen - the temperature fell to -20C or -30C - we used a pick or a hatchet to hack it from the back of the rudimentary outdoor toilets by each dwelling. In extremis, dog poo was tolerated as well.

My mother started selling buns and pancakes in the market. She was shattered by the sight of dozens of ragged urchins (some of them little more than toddlers) avidly watching the customers as they ate their pancakes just in case they accidentally dropped some. Then they would dart forwards to pick up scraps and stuff them into their mouths. Some adults, racked with hunger, beat the children and stole from them.

International food aid began to arrive in Onsong, our city, near the border with China. For a while the children started to get their strength back. But then the cadres reduced the rations. First the children had to make do with soup, then with nothing. Their faces were terribly thin, their cheeks were hollow and their eyes bulged with hunger.

The United Nations must have heard that the aid was not being distributed, because an inspection was organised. The party cadres, who had been alerted in advance, had rice delivered to the schools from state storehouses, which were apparently far from empty. The children were told to tell the UN inspectors that this diet was perfectly normal. On the day of the visit there were all kinds of dishes on the menu: noodles, maize soufflé. Once the UN team set off again, the cadres took back everything, including all the uneaten food from the tables where the children were still sitting.

Hunger engulfed my little universe. The poorest children lived on nothing but grass, and during class their stomachs rumbled. After a few weeks their faces began to swell, making them look well nourished. Then their faces went on growing until they looked as though they had been inflated. Their cheeks were so puffy that they couldn't see the blackboard. Some of them were covered with impetigo and flaking skin.

My classmates started dying during the summer of 1996. One girl spent her days by her dying brother's bedside, going short herself so that he would have more to eat. She died before he did.

As time passed there were fewer and fewer of us sitting at the school desks. Sometimes there were only about 10 in a class of 35. The teachers themselves no longer had enough energy to take their classes. They sat shapelessly in their chairs, cane in hand, while we repeated by heart lessons we had already learnt about the childhoods of Kim Il-sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader.

The famine encouraged the most selfish kinds of behaviour. My grandmother sold soya dishes and soups at home, a little trade that helped her to survive. I remember one father who regularly came to my grandmother's house in secret to eat his fill far from the eyes of his family. Many parents left their homes in search of food, and most didn't come back.

People generally died at night, and every morning we counted five or six deaths in our neighbourhood. Most of them were ordinary people, because neither party cadres nor policemen nor high-ranking military officers suffered as a result of the famine. My father calculated that the district where we lived had shrunk from 4,000 to 2,000 inhabitants.

There were empty houses everywhere. We felt as though we were living in a ghost town. Nonetheless, with my boy's eyes, I found it all relatively normal. It was all I had ever known, and I thought that things abroad must be pretty much the same, or worse, as our leaders told us, assuring us that North Korea was "paradise" compared with other states. My belief in Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il remained unshakeable.

The party cadres blamed "natural disasters", the US and South Korea for the shortages. My friends and I caught frogs and cooked them skewered on bicycle spokes. We also ate grasshoppers, which are delicious fried, as are dragonflies. Grilled, the flesh of fat dragonflies tastes a bit like pork; but you can eat them raw, once the head and wings have been removed. Sparrows and quails ended up in the pot. We caught them with nets set in wooden frames. Other birds, like crows, we fried on a brazier.

The railway station was a hideout for abandoned children. The shortage of petrol and electricity had reduced the daily rail service to one departure every two weeks. So the station was filled with people waiting for trains that never came. Destitute crowds slept there night and day. Skeletal children wandered through the waiting room. Some of them were very young: I remember kids of one or two who couldn't even stand upright. They crawled on all fours on the filthy floor, picking up whatever they could with their black fingers.

People gathered for a few minutes around the body of a child who had just died, but lost interest almost immediately. A friend of my father's was in a unit responsible for their collection and burial. He told us he never rushed to pick up dead children. He waited until at least three had died before collecting their bodies because that way he only had to dig a single grave. He dug rather shallow graves so as not to tire himself, and then laid the little skeletons in the holes, sometimes without so much as a shroud.

By 1997 my school had ceased to function. I ended up joining the gangs of children who stole from the market stalls. I would distract a well-padded person's attention and then my gang of five or six would jump on them and grab their money. The misfortune of others, even your own family, leaves you completely indifferent when you have nothing in your belly. You rob ruthlessly; you would even kill.

My father worked in the local lignite mine. In the autumn of 1997 he asked the cadres for a change of employment. This was a legitimate request, because he had worked in the mine for more than 15 years, and the labour had been very hard. The cadres refused. Exasperated, my father hurled an ashtray through a window, and started insulting them. He ended up breaking all of the cadres' office windows, calling them fat pigs.

He was summoned to the penal labour colony in Onsong the following week for "re-education", but instead he escaped to China. After three months, and after saving some money, he came back to get me and my mother. But he was caught, laden with sausages and other foodstuffs, by border guards who wolfed down the food in front of him and then beat him up. Within days he was in an overcrowded cell in Onsong prison.

Eventually, after contracting typhus from infected lice, my father was granted provisional release on condition that he would go back to prison if he recovered from the illness. Depressed, he hit the bottle and one evening he suddenly started shouting at the top of his voice: "Kim Jong-il, son of a bitch . . . bastard, swine!" My mother, in a panic, jammed both hands over his mouth. Our house was under constant surveillance from neighbourhood informers, and this sort of outburst could get us all shot.

He made up his mind to smuggle us to China. For more than a month he tried everything he could think of to persuade us, but my mother wasn't convinced. "In spite of the shortages," she insisted, "North Korea is without a doubt one of the most prosperous countries in the world!" I told him I would rather be a beggar in North Korea than follow him to China. I spouted phrases that I had learnt at school: "Let us safeguard socialism . . . I will fight to the death to protect socialism and the Great Leader Kim Il-sung!" My father went on insulting Kim Jong-il in the worst possible terms. My mother finally yielded. In turn she tried to persuade me, the confused 13-year-old. She said we would spend a year in China, no more, and we would earn money and come back to North Korea.

Reluctantly, I agreed. We made our getaway from home on March 19, 1998, at 4am, because that was the time when my father was under the least amount of surveillance. We had only the clothes on our backs, because even the smallest bundle of clothing would have looked suspicious. Needless to say, we did not return after a year - nor have we ever.

This is an excerpt of Hyok Kang's book, *******  "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24942


posted by konane  # 8:59 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 16, 2006

 

"Study: 1 million sex crimes by illegals

Think we don't have a problem, think again. 

   

"Study: 1 million sex crimes by illegals
Researcher estimates more than 100 offenders crossing border daily
Posted: May 31, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Source WorldNetDaily.com

"Based on a one-year in-depth study, a researcher estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each.

Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants.

She found that while the offenders were located in 36 states, most were in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California had the most offenders, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Florida.

Schurman-Kauflin concluded that, based on a figure of 12 million illegal immigrants and the fact that more of this population is male than average, sex offenders among illegals make up a higher percentage than offenders in the general population.

She arrives at the figure of 240,000 offenders – a conservative estimate, she says – through public records showing about 2 percent of illegals apprehended are sex offenders.

"This translates to 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sexual offenders coming across U.S. borders illegally per day," she says.

She points out the 1,500 offenders in her study had a total of 5,999 victims, and each sex offender averaged four victims.

"This places the estimate for victimization numbers around 960,000 for the 88 months examined in this study," she declares.

Schurman-Kauflin breaks down the 1,500 cases reviewed this way:

Of the child molestations, 47 percent of the victims were Hispanic, 36 percent Caucasian, 8 percent Asian, 6 percent African American and 3 percent other nationalities.

In 82 percent of the cases, she noted, the victims were known to their attackers.

"In those instances, the illegal immigrants typically gained access to the victims after having worked as a day laborer at or near the victims' homes," she says. "Victims ranged in age from 1 year old to 13 years old, with the average age being 6."

In her examination of the sex-related homicides, Schurman-Kauflin found the most common method was for an offender to break into a residence and ambush his victims.

Not only were victims raped, she said, but some – 6 percent – were mutilated.

"The crime scenes were very bloody, expressing intense, angry perpetrator personalities," she said. "Specifically, most victims were blitzed, rendered incapable of fighting back, and then raped and murdered. The most common method of killing was bludgeoning, followed by stabbing."

She found it especially disturbing that in 22 percent of all sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants, victims with physical and mental disabilities were targeted.

The highest number of sex offenders, according to the study, came from Mexico. El Salvador was the original home to the next highest number. Other countries of origin included Brazil, China, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Russia, and Vietnam.

Nearly 63 percent of the offenders had been deported on another offense prior to the sex crime, the study showed. There was an average of three years of committing crimes such as DUI, assault or drug related offenses prior to being apprehended for a sexual offense.

In 81 percent of cases, offenders were drinking or using drugs prior to offending. Rapists and killers were more likely to use alcohol and drugs consistently than child molesters.

Only about 25 percent of offenders were found to have been stable within a community. In 31 percent of the crimes, the offenders entered into the communities where they offended within two months of the commission of their sex offenses.

But many, 79 percent, had been in the U.S. for more than one year before being arrested for a sex crime. They typically were known to the criminal justice system for prior, less serious offenses before they molested, raped or murdered, the study said.

Schurman-Kauflin concludes illegal immigrants gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported.

"Those who were deported simply returned illegally again," she says.

She points out that only 2 percent of the offenders in her study had no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally.

"There is a clear pattern of criminal escalation," she said. "

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50441


posted by konane  # 11:09 AM 3 comments

Sunday, October 15, 2006

 

..... Hill Lashes out at Dubya"

Goodness, I remember "WE ARE THE PRESIDENT" so whatever happened wrong under Clinton(s) happened under her watch too.


 

"LOOK WHO'S TALKING: HILL LASHES OUT AT DUBYA

Source New York Post

...... " Has Sen. Hillary Clinton forgotten it was her husband who so generously presented the North Koreans with their nuclear reactor.....they promised to use it for peaceful purposes only. But they lied. Can you imagine the outcry if President Bush exhibited such gullibility? Name redacted Manhasset

........" President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright caved in to North Korean demands in 1994 and provided a known communist regime with nuclear reactors and tons of fuel on the premise they would be used to provide energy for Kim Jung Il's people.....Pres Clinton caved to North Korea because he wanted to be seen as the "diplomat." This utter failure, along with his failure to get Osama bin Laden multiple times, truly shows just which president's failed policies have led the world to this critical time. Think again before you elect another Clinton to any elective office, let alone the White House. East Williston

....  "what plan does Clinton and her Democratic cohorts offer to the nation as a way of lessening tensions in the Korean peninsula? Criticizing the president in everything he does, from Iraq, Iran and North Korea to socialized prescription drugs, without offering solutions, means nothing..... The Bronx

....."Stay tuned, America. As Bush actually tackles terrorism, with a booming economy to boot, more is sure to come as a result of Clinton's failed policies.

Think again before you elect another Clinton to any elective office, let alone the White House......East Williston "

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10152006/postopinion/letters/look_whos_talking__hill_lashes_out_at_dubya_letters_.htm


posted by konane  # 10:17 AM 2 comments

Saturday, October 14, 2006

 

Gerry Studds dead

Read he'd been subpoenaed to testify currently.  What a bummer in timing ..... Dead

Brings back memories of Vince Foster, Ron Brown and others.


"Former U.S.-Rep. Studds Dies at 69


Oct 14, 10:21 AM (ET)

By JAY LINDSAY

BOSTON (AP) - Former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress, died early Saturday at Boston Medical Center, several days after he collapsed while walking his dog, his husband said.

Studds fell unconscious Oct. 3 because of what doctors later determined was a blood clot in his lung, Dean Hara said.

Studds regained consciousness, remained in the hospital, and seemed to be improving. He was scheduled to be transferred to a rehabilitation center, but his condition deteriorated Friday and he died at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Hara said.

Hara, who married Studds shortly after gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004, said Studds was a pioneer who gave courage to gay people everywhere by winning re-election after publicly acknowledging his homosexuality. "................

 

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061014/D8KOF54G0.html 


posted by konane  # 1:53 PM 10 comments

Saturday, October 14, 2006

 

"Defining "Liberalism" Down

"Defining "Liberalism" Down: "Leftists believe it's government's business to prevent individuals from making private choices that leftists dislike""

Primo!!!  Big Grin  Am sure he'd agree too. 


"Defining "Liberalism" Down
By Jon Sanders
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 11, 2006


"Just in time for the frenzied last month of an election season, the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday published an essay by University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone entitled "What it means to be a liberal." In it, Stone, the author of Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, posits 10 propositions that to him "define 'liberal' today."

 

Stone's essay would have been more convincing if it had been titled: "What it should mean to be a liberal." For example, Stone's first two propositions include such corkers as "Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate" and "Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference." One wonders if Stone has in mind the same "liberals" who championed academic speech codes, cheered the flouting of the First Amendment under the rubric of “campaign-finance reform,” and spent the last six years demonizing President Bush as a Nazi or worse.

Where did Stone go wrong? He started by defining "liberals," in opposition to Republicans, as a proxy for Democrats. That illustrates a fundamental misconception of liberalism (one that, in Stone's defense, is shared by many conservatives, too). A true liberal would be perplexed by today's self-professed liberals. He might ask, in the words of Herbert Spencer, "How is it that Liberalism ... has grown more and more coercive in legislation?"
 
Someone who still holds an Enlightenment ideal of liberalism, rather than the nanny-state vision of today, would want a better set of propositions than Stone's. They would address themselves to those on the political Left; i.e., socialists, statists, paternalists, and others who favor more and more coercive legislation.
 
The following 10 propositions take their starting points from Stone's but are conformed to the actual practices of "liberals," which is to say, leftists:
 
1. Leftists believe paradoxically that there is no such thing as objective truth but that truth is relative. From this belief leftists will say silly things such as "your truth" and "my truth," and then they will choose whichever "truth" serves the "public good" (i.e., leftist "truth") at the moment. This is why their "truth" today frequently contradicts their "truths" yesterday. Leftist "truth" also holds that they are "skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate" — but the truth is, they are happy to resort to censorship and stymie debate when the discussion counters their "truth." When they do so, they say they are making the discussion “more free.”
 
2. Leftists believe individuals should be forced to respect them and their ideas. Leftists will use the government to prosecute "hate speech," which is how leftists define intolerant speech that offends them. Such speech inevitably comes about during truly free and open debate. Leftists also believe religious expression is by its very nature intolerant. Leftists do not believe that the best counter to offensive speech is more speech; even though Justice Louis Brandeis observed that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," leftists believe some ideas should not be allowed to see the light of day.
 
3. Leftists believe people have an obligation to — that is, they should be forced to — fund public social-welfare programs. Leftists believe people should be on the hook not only for the political schemes by elected politicians, but also they should be made to pay for the political campaigns of all kinds of aspiring scheming politicians. Leftists believe that forcing private individuals to fund extremist politicians who could never garner private donations on their own is a way to improve elections. Then leftists believe that private donations to campaigns ought to be severely limited and that campaign advertisements should be, too.
 
When leftists curtail liberty like that, they have to resort to euphemism to try to put it in a positive light. So they call those things creating "a more vibrant freedom of speech."  Just like the "most vibrant" people can be found in cemeteries.  
 
4. Leftists believe that "the people" are objects to be governed by leftist elitists, according to leftist "truths." As for protecting individual privacy, leftists believe individuals are harmed when they privately enter into voluntary wage contracts with employers and think that they should be forced into unions led by leftists to negotiate their wages for them. Leftists think that individuals cannot protect themselves from other individuals' exercise of their freedoms — whether those individuals freely express their religion, freely express their opinion, freely support political campaigns, freely own a firearm for safety or recreation, freely take a job at Wal-Mart, freely purchase a cigarette or a hamburger, freely enjoy their property, freely choose private or (worse) home-school education for their children, freely own and operate an SUV, freely support private charities with income not having been confiscated for "government charity," and so forth. Naturally, when leftists intrude in all these private concerns, they say that they are "defending freedom."
 
5. Leftists sort individuals according to groups, and they believe that government must discriminate in the favor of pre-determined favored groups, such as individuals of certain races, gender, creeds, criminal status, or politics. Leftists pretend to champion "political dissidents" so long as the "dissident" agrees with leftist ideas; they try to silence those who disagree with them on abortion, racial preferences, confiscatory taxation, religious expression, etc. Leftists will even allow those who speak in opposition to leftist ideas to be shouted down, harassed, and even physically attacked, but they will subsequently defend the "rights" of those who attacked the speaker. To leftists, a pie or even a fist in the face of a speaker opposing leftism is "more vibrant" free speech, but a word of criticism in reaction to a leftist speaker is "chilling speech."
 
6. Leftists believe that a fundamental role of government is robbing productive individuals of their hard-earned rewards and giving it to those who are disinclined to work. It is leftists who support growing all kinds of government social programs designed to take resources away from people who have made it on their own. It is leftists who are astounded when people who get government handouts for doing nothing continue to do nothing. It is leftists who scramble to blame the productive people for that, too.
 
7. Leftists believe government should never allow any expression of faith within earshot of the faithless. Leftists believe that a passer-by is irreparably harmed when he encounters phrases like "Merry Christmas" or "God Bless America." It is leftists who have worked very hard to make public school administrators, teachers, students, and students' parents believe that the First Amendment calls for a "separation of church and state." It is leftists who won't discuss that the First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion.
 
8. Leftists believe courts have a responsibility to establish special liberties for certain groups. Leftists will tell themselves that they preserve freedom of expression, freedom of religion, etc., even while talking about ways to oppose, for example, advertisers' and religious individuals' expression and limiting judicial protection for some, such as "the wealthy," the unborn, and members of unfavored races, gender, or creeds.
 
9. Leftists believe people are incapable of thinking and acting in their own best interests and therefore need government to be their Big Brother to keep them safe. Leftists suspect that any agreement between an individual and a corporation is unfair, and they will exploit the involuntary arrangement between individuals and government to interfere with voluntary arrangements between private individuals. 

10. Leftists believe it's government's business to prevent individuals from making private choices that leftists dislike. Leftists agree that government should protect their rights to make private decisions that might offend others. To keep freedom "more vibrant," of course, leftists would prefer not to extend those rights to the others. "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24862


posted by konane  # 1:40 PM 0 comments

Saturday, October 14, 2006

 

Missing money site

Via Kim Komando newsletter a link to where you can search for missing money you may have forgotten.  Believe Oprah has mentioned this site on her show too.  Several links to other sites to search.    Good luck!!  Blue Angel

 


http://www.unclaimed.org/mainframe.asp?VisitorType=owner
posted by konane  # 11:12 AM 0 comments

Friday, October 13, 2006

 

"The Men Behind N.K. Nuclear Bomb

"The Men Behind N.K. Nuclear Bomb


October 13, 2006
By Annie I. Bang
Korean Herald

"Who are driving North Korea's nuclear ambitions? Experts in Seoul point to three hawkish military generals whose influence has led the North's leader onto a dangerous path. They also mention two revered scientists who laid the groundwork for nuclear technology in the North.

As the world ponders over North Korea's alleged first-ever nuclear test on Monday, experts in Seoul say the North's leader Kim Jong-il might have received pressure from his close generals to go ahead with the test.

The generals are Park Jae-kyung, Hyun Chul-hee and Lee Myong-su. They belong to the North Korean People's Army and often appear in the North Korean media standing next to Kim.

"It is very likely that the three and other military hard-liners set the stage for enforcing the nuclear bomb test, and then Kim Jong-il ratified the procedure," said Nam Sung-wook, a North Korean studies professor at Korea University.

"Park and Hyun have insisted that North Korea must possess nuclear weapons in order to uphold its social and military structures," Nam said.

As North Korea engages in its military-first policy, observers say its military strength is now stronger than ever.

North Korea's bomb was made possible by noted scientists such as the late Do Sang-rok, who defected from South Korea to the North in 1946.

"The first-class treatment received by professor Do from Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il tells us that they held a strong interest in developing nuclear weapons," a government source said.

Do was born in 1903 in North Korea and died in 1990 after publishing several research papers on nuclear matters and nuclear energy.

He had taught at Seoul National University before Korea declared its independency from Japanese colonization in 1945. He then left for Pyongyang and taught at the North's top Kim Il-sung University.

Do was beloved by the North Korean regime's founder Kim Il-sung and his son Jong-il. He received numerous awards, including the Kim Il Sung Award in 1973 for his contribution in nuclear development.

Aside from Do, there is another renowned scientist - Seo Sang-guk, a physics professor at Kim Il-sung University.

Born in 1938, Seo has played a leading role in the development of nuclear bombs and taught at Kim Il-sung University after studying abroad in Russia in the 1960s.

When Kim Jong-il celebrated his 60th birthday in 1998, North Korean media reported that he had sent a prize to Seo for his contribution to the nation's development in the field of science.

It is reported that Seo is also a secret member of the North's defense committee and deals with its nuclear plans and policies.

With the North's hard-line position becoming stronger, experts say it has become more difficult to deal with its nuclear ambitions.

Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, who recently visited Pyongyang, said the financial sanctions against North Korea have made the nuclear issue more complicated.

In May, North Korea abruptly canceled a test-run for the inter-Korean railways, citing military security concerns.

And the Seoul government explained the North's military authorities have never been happy with implementing inter-Korean agreements.

The North's hard-liners have also been opposed to the inter-Korean businesses in the North's border city of Gaeseong and at Mount Geumgang, saying the North has nothing to benefit from them."

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2006/10/14/200610140003.asp

http://www.stevequayle.com/index1.html


posted by konane  # 11:29 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

 

"Al-Qaida's Growing Doubts


"Al-Qaida's Growing Doubts
by Austin Bay
Source TechCentralStationDaily

"Several declassified al-Qaida documents -- one discovered after the June 2006 air strike that killed al-Qaida's Iraqi emir, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- strongly suggest al-Qaida's leaders fear they are losing the War on Terror.

On Sept. 18, Iraqi National Security Advisor Muwaffaq al-Rabi released a letter from al-Qaida commander "Atiyah" (a pseudonym) to Zarqawi. West Point's Counter Terrorism Center (ctc.usma.edu) has the letter archived online.

The letter features al-Qaida's usual religious panegyrics, but also contains strong evidence of fear, doubt and impending defeat. It seems five years of continual defeat (and that is what the record is) have shaken the 9-11 certitude of al-Qaida's senior fanatics.

Let's establish the broader context of Atiyah's letter.

Accurate insight into an enemy's assessment of an ongoing war is immensely valuable to political leaders and military commanders. With notable exceptions, such "mid-conflict" insight is also quite rare.

Commanders ask their intelligence teams to determine an enemy's intentions -- what the enemy intends to do, so the commander can counter it. If intel can also assay enemy perceptions and assumptions, so much the better.

During World War II, America and its allies often had the valuable "edge" of such insight. The Allies' ability to intercept and decrypt Japanese and German radio traffic provided not only hard facts about enemy plans, but insight into their high command's perceptions of Allied military and political actions.

Allied decryption capabilities were closely guarded secrets. Protecting them ensured their continued utility.

That's why the National Security Agency and other present-day spy shops release captured al-Qaida communications with great reluctance.

They should be less reluctant. Here's why. Information Age media -- swamped with ideological and political Sturm und Drang -- are a key battlefield in this war.

In America's open society, people constantly take public counsel of the fears. Sowing doubt about current leadership is a fundamental opposition tactic in every democratic election.

Thus America's "narrative of doubt" tends to dominate the global media -- with a corrosive effect on America's ability to wage ideological and political war.

Though war's doubt and uncertainty affect all sides, dictators and terrorists can control their "message." As a result, there is no balance to media portrayal of American doubt.

The American "narrative of doubt" plays into the business model of sensationalist media, which rely on hyperbolic and emotional display to attract an audience. (CNN's Anderson Cooper, with his "show rage" coverage of Hurricane Katrina, is an example.)

Which is why the rare glimpse, like Atiyah's letter to Zarqawi, is truly big news.

"The path is long and difficult," Atiyah writes, "and the enemy isn't easy, for he is great and numerous, and he can take quite a bit of punishment, as well." Atiyah's assessment seems to be a major change in tune and tone. Previous al-Qaida documents touted the Clinton administration's withdrawal from Somalia as the template for American action.

Atiyah adds that al-Qaida's leaders "wish that they had a way to talk to you (Zarqawi) ... however, they too are occupied with vicious enemies here (presumably in Pakistan). They are also weak, and we ask God that He strengthen them and mend their fractures."

Atiyah tells Zarqawi to contact him via a specific Internet site because of "the disruption that exists and the loss of communications." Releasing the letter thus reveals a potential source of new intelligence. Weigh that against what it says about the highly restricted lives of al-Qaida's leaders. Their jihadist cave life is dangerous, and their ability to command is severely curbed -- these men are besieged.

Al-Qaida's leaders also fear they are losing the war for hearts and minds. Atiyah senses a souring of "the hearts of the people toward us." Al-Qaida has long sanctioned the murder of Muslim opponents it labels "corrupt" and apostate. However, Atiyah indicates Zarqawi's terror in Iraq has backfired. Atiyah says killing the popular "corrupt" is "against all of the fundamentals of politics and leadership." He warns "against all acts that alienate."

But it may well be too late.

StrategyPage.com and similar websites noticed in mid-2005 that al-Qaida and insurgent mass murder in Iraq had begun to turn Arab Muslim opinion against the terrorists. "

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=101006B
posted by konane  # 9:53 PM 2 comments

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

 

Kim Jong crumb trail

This explains a lot for a failure in office who never got over being turned out to pasture by Reagan and still evidently believes himself to be superman.  Clown  Seems he's hit himself in the head with a hammer too many times. Dead

This is something I never knew until reading.  Thanks to Powerline for the link.


"There He Goes Again [Steven Hayward]

Jimmy Carter turns up in the pages of the New York Times this morning to pat himself on the back for having "solved" the NorKo nuclear crisis back in 1994.  Of course, Carter implies that the whole thing is George W. Bush's fault for having called the Norks bad names ("axis of evil").  It is a classic example of Carter's delusional state of mind. 

Just deconstruct this graph, for example:

Responding to an invitation from President Kim Il-sung of North Korea, and with the approval of President Bill Clinton, I went to Pyongyang and negotiated an agreement under which North Korea would cease its nuclear program at Yongbyon and permit inspectors from the atomic agency to return to the site to assure that the spent fuel was not reprocessed. It was also agreed that direct talks would be held between the two Koreas

Where to start.  "an invitation from Kim Il Sung."  Yes, and why do you suppose he wanted Carter so badly?  ". . . with the approval of Bill Clinton. . ."  Accuracy demands that it read "with the reluctant approval of Bill Clinton."  Carter actually presented Clinton with a fait accompli  [An irreversible accomplishment]Carter told the White House was going to go hold hands with the Norks whether Clinton approved or not.  Clinton, by the way, was furious with the outcome, which Carter announced on CNN before he told the White House.  Clinton told Warren Christopher that Carter was to be stopped from making any further freelance trips of this kind.  "It was also agreed that direct talks be held between the two Koreas."  The Norks demanded a multi-million dollar payment from the South Koreans just to show up for the talks.  In other words, the Norks turned it into a Jesse Jackson-style shakedown operation. 

But remember—Jimmy is our best ex-president ever."

Posted at 10:33 AM 
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmVhZDk5OGRhMTE2OWUzMDczN2ZjZWY0Y2JhZjA1M2I=

posted by konane  # 6:32 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

 

"Soros, Foley and the FBI

Properly footnoted, documented so anyone curious enough can follow back to sources.  Big Grin

The Democratic party is being steered by Soros pulling strings, bankrolling. 

The Democratic party that WAS .... exists no more .... I don't know how many ways it has to be said in order for it to soak in. 


"Soros, Foley and the FBI
By Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 11, 2006


THE SCANDAL over Congressman Mark Foley’s sexual misconduct has generated some unexpected blowback.  It has pitted George Soros’ Shadow Party against the FBI.

 

 

 

The Soros-funded group CREW has effectively declared war on America’s top federal law enforcement agency. CREW has called on the Justice Department to investigate the FBI.  In an October 5 statement, it accused the Bureau of having “fabricated and disseminated” falsehoods about CREW, as part of an FBI “cover-up” of the Foley scandal. (1)

 

In the war of words now raging between CREW and the FBI -- CREW through its press releases, and the FBI through anonymous press leaks – each accuses the other of obstructing justice in the Foley investigation.

 

CREW started the fight with a surprise announcement on October 2. It stated at a press conference that it had obtained some of Foley’s incriminating e-mail correspondence on July 21 – two months before ABC News broke the Foley story on September 28.  CREW claimed that it had sought to interest FBI investigators in the Foley e-mails, but to no avail.

 

“Since the FBI has known about Rep. Foley’s emails since July, the question arises: Did the administration help to cover up Rep. Foley’s conduct and leave a potential sexual predator on the loose?...” asked CREW executive director Melanie Sloan.  “The American public deserves to know not just how and why members of Congress failed to take action to protect the youngsters entrusted to the care of the House of Representatives, but also why the FBI – an agency charged with protecting the public – failed to safeguard other youngsters from a potential sexual predator.” (2)

 

FBI sources retort that it was CREW, not the Bureau, that was playing games with the Foley evidence.  According to the Washington Post of October 5:

 

“…unidentified Justice and FBI officials told reporters that the e-mails provided by CREW were heavily redacted and that the group refused to provide unedited versions to the FBI. One law enforcement official – speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation – also told The Washington Post the FBI believed that CREW may have received the e-mails as early as April and that the group refused to tell the FBI how they were obtained.” (3)

 

CREW says the G-men are lying.  It has posted on its website a point-by-point refutation of their account. (4)

 

CREW – whose initials stand for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington – presents itself as a non-partisan, public interest group, which litigates and brings ethics charges against corrupt politicians.  Its website (citizensforethics.org) states that CREW, "targets government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests. We will help Americans use litigation to shine a light on those who betray the public trust…”  Despite this idealistic language, the degree to which CREW’s litigators target Republicans and spare Democrats lends credence to the view expressed by many Washington observers that CREW is little more than an attack machine for George Soros’ Shadow Party.

 

 

Shadow Party Agenda

 

The Shadow Party is a tightly-coordinated network of private groups through which Soros disburses campaign cash and exerts influence over the Democrats.  In 2004, the Shadow Party raised more than $300 million for Democrat candidates.  This gave Soros unprecedented power to bend the Democratic Party to his will.  After the election, Soros operative and MoveOn PAC director Eli Pariser declared, “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it…” (5)

 

Shadow Party operative Robert Borosage expressed a similar view at the time.  A hard-left militant during the ‘60s, Borosage now serves as co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a leftwing activist group which has received more than $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Institute.  In a November 29, 2004 article in the Marxist journal The Nation, Borosage and Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote:

 

“[P]rogressives drive this party now - we provide the energy, the organizers, the ground forces, the ideas, and much of the money. We should organize the opposition [against Republicans].  Progressives should mount a powerful assault on Republican boss Tom DeLay.” (6)

 

It is probably no coincidence that CREW executive director Melanie Sloan was thinking along the same lines.  "Since I started [with CREW], the main thing I wanted to do was to go after Tom DeLay,”  Sloan told the Wall Street Journal in May 2005. “DeLay is my top target.” The Journal reports:

 

        "A former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ms. 

 

        Sloan engineered an ethics complaint against Mr. DeLay in the House, 

 

        asked the Internal Revenue Service to audit a pair of Mr. DeLay's 

 

        fund-raising committees and sued the Federal Election Commission to 

 

        obtain more information about possible financial ties between Mr. DeLay 

 

        and a Kansas utility. She also urged the Justice Department to 

 

        investigate Mr. DeLay for his role in promising fund-raising help to a 

 

        family member of Nick Smith, at the time a Republican House 

 

        representative from Michigan, in exchange for Mr. Smith's vote on 

 

        Medicare legislation." (7)

 

CREW was joined in its campaign against DeLay by a swarm of Soros-funded groups, all posing as “non-partisan” watchdogs – among them Common Cause, Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Public Campaign and the Campaign Legal Center.  (8)  The above-named groups have all received large contributions from Soros’ Open Society Institute. Common Cause has received $650,000; Democracy 21, $300,000; Public Citizen, $275,000; and Public Campaign, $1.3 million.(9) The Campaign Legal Center acknowledges on its Web site that it too has received “generous financial support” from the Open Society Institute.

 

Most of CREW’s targets have been Republicans.  On those few occasions when it picks fights with the left, it tends to target people like Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, whom Democrat leaders regard as competitors or spoilers. (10)

 

On March 14, 2006, The Hill newspaper reported that CREW had targeted 14 Republican legislators for lawsuits or ethics complaints, but only one Democrat (Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas). (11)

 

 

Democrat Operatives

 

CREW was founded by Democrat activists Norm Eisen and Louis Mayberg.  Eisen is an attorney.  Mayberg is president and co-founder of the Bethesda, MD mutual fund management firm ProFund Advisors LLC.

 

CREW’s 990 IRS filing for 2001 lists its three founding directors as Louis Mayberg, Mark Penn and Daniel Berger.  Mayberg and Berger are prominent Democrat donors. Mark Penn is a top Democrat strategist and pollster.

 

Penn played a decisive role in Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign, and served as head of message and strategy for Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign. Penn is a fellow of Simon Rosenberg's New Politics Institute (NPI), an important Shadow Party think tank.  He is president and co-founder of the polling firm Penn & Schoen Associates.

 

CREW deputy director Naomi Seligman Steiner formerly served as communications director for Media Matters for America, yet another group with strong ties to Soros’ Shadow Party.

 

Melanie Sloan became executive director of CREW in 2003. She is a long-time Democrat operative, having served as a former aide to Rep. John Conyers and Senator Joe Biden. 

 

Before joining CREW, Sloan served as nominations counsel for Joe Biden’s Senate Judiciary Committee (1993); counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee for Charles Schumer (1994); minority counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee under John Conyers (1995-1998); and assistant U.S. district attorney for the District of Columbia (1998-2003).

 

 

Soros Money

 

George Soros' Open Society Institute contributed $100,000 to CREW in January 2006. (12)  More importantly, CREW has reportedly received substantial funding through the Democracy Alliance, a network of leftwing millionaires and billionaires organized by Soros.  According to the Washington Post:

 

        "...a Democracy Alliance blessing effectively jump-started 

 

        Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).... 

 

         Alliance officials see CREW as a possible counterweight to 

 

        conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, which filed numerous lawsuits 

 

        against Clinton administration officials in the 1990s.” (13)

 

Other CREW funders include the Tides Foundation, the Barbra Streisand Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, the Mayberg Family Charitable Foundation, the Woodbury Fund, Inc., and the Sheller Family Foundation – all institutions distinguished by their support for far-left causes. (14)

 

“The Mark Foley scandal is over, as the disgraced Congressman enters rehab and leaves politics forever,” states an October 4 e-mail to Nation subscribers.  “But… the Republican Congressional Leadership scandal is most definitely not over.”

 

The Congress is well rid of Foley.  No one is sorry to see him go.  But, for the Shadow Party, the Foley scandal is merely a means to an end.  Their goal is regime change.  They will not rest until government power rests in Soros’ hands.  And they will use any pretext to achieve that ambition.

 

Until now, CREW has met little resistance.  The confidence with which it challenges the FBI bespeaks its long track record of success.  It remains to be seen whether the FBI will crumble as easily before CREW’s onslaught as have so many Republican leaders. "

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. Press Release: “CREW Demands DOJ I.G. Investigate FBI Cover-up on Inaction on Foley Emails Sent by CREW”, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), citizensforethics.org, 5 October 2006

 

2. Press Release: “CREW Urges DOG I.G. to Probe Why FBI Failed to Investigate Foley Emails Sent by CREW This Summer”, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), citizensforethics.org, 2 October 2006

 

3. Dan Eggen, “Watchdog Group Disputes FBI’s Claims on E-Mails”, Washington Post, 6 October 2006, A04

 

4. Press Release: “Lies vs. Facts: CREW’s Role in the Foley Scandal”, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), citizensforethics.org, 10 October 2006

 

5. Sam Hananel, “MoveOn to Democratic Party: 'We Own It'”, Associated Press, 9 December 2004

 

6. Robert L. Borosage and Katrina vanden Heuvel, “Progressives: Get Ready to Fight”, The Nation, 29 November 2004

 

7. Brody Mullins, “In Washington, Watchdogs Bear Watching”, Wall Street Journal, 10 May 2005

 

8. Alexander Bolton, “Watchdogs in Soros’s Pocket: GOP”, The Hill, March 23, 2005; Michelle Malkin, “Wobbly Watchdogs,” michellemalkin.com, June 22, 2004

 

9. “ The Soros Agenda: Free Speech for Billionaires Only,” The Wall Street Journal Online (OpinionJournal.com), January 3, 2004

 

10. Press Release: “CREW Files FEC and IRS Complaints Against Nader for President 2004 and Citizen Works”, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), citizensforethics.org, 25 June 2004

 

11. Alexander Bolton, “Watchdog’s Tax Status, Politics are Questioned,” The Hill, 14 March 2006

 

12.  Sabrina Eaton, “Watchdog Group Gets Assist from Foe Ney”, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), 24 May 2006

 

13.  Jim VandeHei and Chris Cilizza, “A New Alliance of Democrats Spreads Funding”, Washington Post, 17 July 2006, A01

 

14. Guidestar.org, FoundationSearch.com. "


http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24871

posted by konane  # 10:24 AM 2 comments

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

 

"Activist ready to out 'gay' GOP senator

"Activist ready to out 'gay' GOP senator
Held info on Foley, has vowed to shake up November election
Posted: October 5, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern


Source WorldNetDaily.com

A radical homosexual activist who claims some of the credit for revealing former Rep. Mark Foley's relationships with underage male pages has warned there is more to come, stating on his website earlier this year he would "out" a "gay" Republican senator during the run-up to the mid-term elections.

"Ladies and Gentlemen ... if they want a cultural war, I'll give them a f------ cultural war. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy 2006," wrote Mike Rogers on his weblog in January – a posting noted by the blog Sweetness & Light

As WND reported, Rogers held on to damaging information about Foley – who abruptly resigned Friday in the wake of revelations – having indicated the story would break just prior to the Nov. 7 congressional elections.

Rogers helped develop a "target list" of 20 lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers he believed were hiding their sexual orientation while promoting an "anti-gay" political agenda. The list included Foley and Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland

Rogers claimed that before the Foley story broke, he shared information about the congressman with Bill Burton, the director of communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. WND spoke with a Burton assistant, but the director did not respond to a request for comment.

Foley resigned as reports surfaced of inappropriate e-mails with a male page. Later, ABC News released online instant messages of more salacious exchanges. Foley has issued a statement saying he checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation program at an undisclosed location. His attorney Tuesday said the congressman is a "gay man" who suffered abuse in his youth from an unnamed member of the clergy.

On his blog in January, Rogers wrote an open letter to the purported Republican lawmaker on the eve of the Senate vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Homosexual activists fiercely opposed Alito, and Rogers warned the senator, "Tomorrow you will decide if your political position is worth more than doing what is right for others like you."

Rogers continued, with a reference indicating his knowledge of career-destroying facts about the senator.

 

For others like you, Mr. Senator, who engage in oral sex with other men. (Although, Mr. Senator, most of us don't do in the bathrooms of Union Station!) Your fake marriage, by the way, will NOT protect you from the truth being told on this blog.

Rogers added notes after the letter, including this one, indicating the senator would be outed at a time that would impact his re-election effort.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen.... if they want a cultural war, I'll give them a f------ cultural war. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy 2006.

UPDATE: Some of you have asked if he will be outed tomorrow. No. The blog will report on this closeted Republican Senator between tomorrow and a time when it may most impact the reelection effort of the Senator. Just because the Democratic establishment has given up the fight for our Nation, doesn't mean this site will. ...

David Corn, Washington editor of left-leaning The Nation magazine, wrote in a post on his blog yesterday of a "list going around" of homosexual Republican aides on Capitol Hill.

Corn said "The List," as it's called, includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries and two directors of communications. Among the Republican lawmakers for whom they work are Rep. Katherine Harris, Rep. Henry Hyde, Sen. Bill Frist, Sen. George Allen, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rick Santorum.

Corn says he has a copy of the list but won't publish it.

"For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay," he writes. "And generally I don't fancy outing people – though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers."

Corn referred to a report Tuesday by CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger, who noted anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice."

The implication, said Corn, is "that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List – drawn up by gay politicos – is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network."

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52295


posted by konane  # 10:15 AM 2 comments

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

 

'Democratic operative' shopped Foley e-mails

Nothing like a few facts to begin putting things together.  The MSM runs with sensationalism, the heck with facts and time-lines.  Couple of very interesting points in this article. 

Live embedded links.


'Democratic operative'
shopped Foley e-mails
Reporter says magazine killed story in May,
2 newspapers had info from source 1 year ago

Posted: October 10, 2006
5:00 p.m. Eastern

Source WorldNetDaily.com

A Democratic operative shopped around the story of disgraced former congressman Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior with male pages more than one year ago, according to Harper's magazine.

In a story posted today on the weekly's website, reporter Ken Silverstein says that in May he received copies of the now-infamous e-mail exchanges between Foley and a 16-year-old page.

Silverstein said that one year ago his unnamed source provided the same material to the St. Petersburg Times and, he "presumes," the Miami Herald, which both decided against publishing the stories. The two papers already have acknowledged receiving copies of the e-mails – the Times said it didn't run the story because the e-mails contained "nothing overtly sexual," and the boy and his family wouldn't speak on the record.

The Harper's reporter wrote a story after receiving the e-mails in May, but the magazine did not publish it, he said, "because we didn't have absolute proof that Foley was, as one editor put it, 'anything but creepy.'"

In the e-mails – which were not sexually explicit but, nevertheless, troubled the teens' parents – Foley requested a photograph and asked what the 16-year-old wanted for his birthday. Later, Foley's salacious instant-message exchanges with another teen prompted his resignation.

Silverstein said, "At the time I was disappointed that the story was killed – but I must confess that I was also a bit relieved because there had been the possibility, however unlikely, that I would wrongly accuse Foley of improper conduct."

Silverstein said he also was provided with several e-mails the page sent to the office of Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who had sponsored the teen when he worked on Capitol Hill.

The Harper's reporter contends the Democratic operative was "genuinely disgusted" by Foley's behavior and had no partisan intent, because the e-mails might originally have come from Republicans, and the operative was not working "in concert" with the Democratic Party.

If this was all a plot to hurt the GOP's chances in the midterm elections, why did the original source for the story begin approaching media outlets a full year ago? If either of the Florida papers had gone to press with the story last year, or if Harper's had published this spring, as the source hoped, the Foley scandal would have died down long ago. A stronger case could be made that the media, including Harper's, dropped the ball and inadvertently protected Foley and covered up evidence of the congressman's misconduct.

The e-mails got into the hands of the George Soros-sponsored Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington July 21. The group says it turned them over to the FBI, which later concluded the messages "did not rise to the level of criminal activity." Two months later, Sept. 24, an anonymous blog, StopSex Predators.com, published the e-mails. ABC News, which had received the messages in August but put them aside to cover other stories, published them on its website Sept. 28. The next day the network received copies of sexually explicit instant messages between Foley and a teenage boy from 2003, leading to the congressman's resignation.

As WND reported, a radical homosexual activist has claimed some of the credit for revealing Foley's behavior and has warned there is more to come, stating on his website earlier this year he would "out" a "gay" Republican senator during the run-up to the mid-term elections.

"Ladies and Gentlemen ... if they want a cultural war, I'll give them a f------ cultural war. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy 2006," wrote Mike Rogers on his weblog in January.

As Rogers held on to damaging information about Foley – who abruptly resigned Friday in the wake of revelations – having indicated the story would break just prior to the Nov. 7 congressional elections.

Rogers helped develop a "target list" of 20 lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers he believed were hiding their sexual orientation while promoting an "anti-gay" political agenda. The list included Foley and Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland

Rogers claimed that before the Foley story broke, he shared information about the congressman with Bill Burton, the director of communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. WND spoke with a Burton assistant, but the director did not respond to a request for comment.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52383


posted by konane  # 9:22 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

 

"Saved by Foley

Skeletons are finally beginning to shake out of closets in both political parties except when one is found in the Republican party, it is drop kicked immediately along with a thorough housecleaning as a follow up. 

Dems seem to make light and defend their perverts, murderers and former KKK members, extolling their virtues and allowing them to continue to serve.  Want names, they're there.

For those who prefer short sentences with quick answers my blog is not the place for the Twinkie topping crowd who half reads something thinking they've grasped the entire meaning then fires back a half @$$ed reply.  That has gotten a few people blocked because I don't suffer stupidity well at all, much less having my words "interpreted" by someone who thinks they knew what I said or posted because they're accustomed to reading spun fluff.

Getting to the bottom of the Foley issue which should have been already addressed by anyone in a position to do something about it, there is a very large crumb trail leading back to Democrats who were on the run, scared spitless losing political ground big time. 

And no the door has never swung both ways when a exploiter is found among Dems but it's the end of the world when it's a Republican.

Two articles .... live embedded links for additional referenced, well substantiated reading.

___________

" It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance." Dr. Thomas Sowell

Washington Prowler

"Saved by Foley
By The Prowler
Published 10/10/2006 12:08:15 AM
"One of the stories going around Democrat Party circles is that party operatives like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and American Family Voices weren't quite ready for primetime with the opposition research materials they had gathered for the 2006 election cycle.

According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de grace, not the first shot."

So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the country. "Bush's national security speeches were getting traction beyond the base, gas prices were dropping, economic outlook surveys were positive. We were seeing bad Democratic numbers in Missouri, Michigan, Washington, Arizona, Florida Pennsylvania, even parts of New York," says the operative. "A month before, we were looking at launching an offensive against Republicans who according to polling barely held a five-seat majority if the election were to be held at the end of August. That was doable for Democrats from September 1 to November 7. But by mid-September, Republicans were back to having held seats for a 15-seat majority. In the Senate, it looked like a wash. We held seats in Florida, Nebraska, picked up seats in Pennsylvania, but that that was about it. They were holding in Missouri and possibly within reach of Maryland and Washington. We were looking at a disaster in the making."

So how to remedy? "You pull out the bright shiny things that distract the average American voter away from the issues we all know they care about -- national security, anti-terrorism -- and focus on the ugly: Foley and Iraq."

"Republicans had to have known we'd be looking to change the national debate," says a House Democrat leadership aide. "You had our leadership looking at cratering polling numbers. A majority within grasp wasn't drifting away, it was being yanked back by Republicans. I wouldn't be surprised if Foley had to be bumped up on the scandal schedule. That makes a lot of sense given where we were two weeks ago, and where we are now."

Conventional wisdom had Republicans seeing improving numbers in races across the country throughout the month of September after Congress spent the month of August home campaigning in their districts. But some Republicans don't disagree that the polls were improving that dramatically. "I've seen some of the polls and I don't buy into the notion that we were making up tons of ground in a lot of these races," says one GOP political consultant. "Some of the underlying data led me to believe that the polling was somewhat flawed, and that this was a lot of spin to re-energize a base that was growing disenchanted."

What no one disputes, however, was that the GOP was sensing some wind at its back and reinvigorated base with Bush on the stump, and Congress quietly at home not creating any more messes for the media to hit on. Now, of course, the Foley story has left a far bigger mess a month out of Election Day than anyone had expected. "

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10469


"Democratic Foleygate Source Revealed

 

Update: Harpers Magazine was offered the story last year by a democratic operative!! (more below)

Just received this information this morning...

A democratic operative who knew about the Foley scandal designed to alter this year's midterm election was revealed to me this morning.

This much was revealed- "There is very strong speculation that Brian Smoot is one of the high ranking democrats who knew of the Foley scandal months before the news broke on September 29, 2006."

Erick at RedState actually wrote this about Brian Smoot back on October 3, 2006:

Let's follow this chain of events, which may be coincidental and may not be coincidental:

In August of 2004, Rodney Alexander's Chief of Staff, Brian Smoot, and five other staffers abruptly quit because Alexander switched to the GOP. National Journal reported on August 13, 2004, that the Chief of Staff "sharply criticized Alexander for switching parties." The Chief of Staff and five staffers were promptly hired by minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

In November 2005, Alexander is notified by a couple in his district that the couple's son had gotten emails from Mark Foley that were not really kosher.

In October of 2006, we find that Alexander's former Chief of Staff is now running the congressional campaign of Ron Klein in Florida's 22nd Congressional District against Republican Representative Clay Shaw -- a district that shares a major media market with Mark Foley's district.
Smoot has had this to say on his involvement with the scandal:

Smoot is currently working as campaign manager for Democrat Ron Klein's bid to unseat GOP Rep. Clay Shaw in Florida's 22nd District. Shaw's district neighbors Foley's former 16th District. . . . When contacted, Smoot said while there is no love lost between Alexander and himself, he never worked for Pelosi and he only learned about the Foley matter from media reports. "I would be the last person to have any idea of what is going on in Alexander's office," said Smoot. "I had no idea about e-mails or ideas about this page and am absolutely not involved in this situation whatsoever. I also never worked for Pelosi nor have I ever worked for the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] or Democratic Party."
More at RedState.

Smoot left Alexander's office the week after the representative switched parties from Democrat to Republican back in 2004. He signed on to work with Democrat Virginia Schrader's campaign the week after Alexander made his announcement.

It was revealed that Smoot has known about the Foley documents for quite some time.

The FBI is going to interview former page Jordan Edmund tomorrow concerning his knowledge about former congressman Mark Foley. Wild Bill at Passionate America first revealed Edmond as one of the former pages involved with the scandal.

The Strata Sphere has more on liberal smear campaign and the latest "outings" this morning.
(BTW- Did you notice that Rogers wrote his article at "PageOneQ" in the third person this morning?) "................

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/

posted by konane  # 3:12 PM 10 comments

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

 

"Take the Fence to the United Nations?"

"TAKE THE FENCE TO THE UNITED NATIONS? 

Source Boortz.com 

"Are you believing this nonsense? 

It's as if we're not even a sovereign country any more.  The United States doesn't exist.  There are no borders.  The U.S. is nothing but a grandiose economic system providing  jobs to Mexicans and shoring up the corrupt Mexican government in the process. 

Why the outrage?  Well, as you should know, Bush is saying he is going to sign a bill that calls for the construction of a fence along about 700 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico.  That fence will be built on our side of the border.  On U.S. territory --- if there is any such thing any more.

Well .... actually the Mexicans don't seem to think that there is any such thing as "U.S. territory."  They're raising hell about the fence and -- now get this -- they want the United Nations to stop it.  The message here is that we have no right to protect our border.  We have no right to keep people from entering into this country illegally. 

Vicente Fox only has about seven weeks left in his presidency, but he has dispatched his foreign secretary, Luis Ernesto Derbez, to Europe on a mission.  Part of that mission is to complain about the border fence.  So far Sr. Derbez has talked to the French foreign minister about the fence, and now he's on his way to complain to the governments of Spain and Italy.  Derbez says he will continue his campaign against the border fence until Fox's last day in office.

What the hell?  This payaso is traveling around Europe complaining that the United States is building a fence to keep his countrymen from crossing into our country illegally?  This is absurd?

Well .. .maybe not so absurd if you look at it through the eyes of Derbez and his cronies in the Mexican government.  First -- they truly feel that the border is illegitimate in the first place.  That border runs along the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.  Those states, and the southern half of Colorado, are what many Mexicans refer to as the "Republica del Norte."  The area used to be part of Mexico -- or whatever preceded Mexico -- and is now being "re-conquered."  Go ahead.  Google "Republica del Norte" and take a trip through the 12,000+ hits you'll get.

This stream of Mexicans across our border is an invasion, not a migration.  They're invaders, not immigrants. 

I don't give a flying leap how many bales of pine straw they spread, how many square miles of sheetrock they hang, how many homes they build, how many cars they buff up as they emerge from the car wash .... I don't care.  It's an invasion just the same.  No real attempt is being made to assimilate into American culture.  No interest is shown in learning to speak anything past basic English.  Why should they?  The ultimate goal is their own country, or a brand new northern state to be part of Mexico.  Instead of trying to become part of our society, they write magazine articles informing us that "Los Angeles is Ours." 

So .. .along comes this idea for a border fence, and they react is if they are being fenced off from something that belongs to them!  They react that way because they feel that way.

In case you are one of the few out there who are wondering how it is that the Republicans came to be in such trouble in this upcoming election .... look at the stream of Mexican invaders coming across our borders.  What have the Republicans done to stop it?  The border fence?  Hey, it's about 1400 miles too short.  Besides ... and here's the key ... it hasn't been funded yet, and there are some serious doubts as to whether or not the congress will fund that fence at all. "

http://boortz.com/nuze/200610/10102006.html#un
posted by konane  # 10:11 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

 

Ted Turner says he can't pick sides in War on Terror

 

Ted Turner says he can't pick sides in War on Terror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J-mUwkmw-M

_______________________

Ted Turner says media has no business showing American Flag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPIA95SLv6g

 


posted by konane  # 9:57 AM 0 comments

Monday, October 9, 2006

 

"The Left's Diplomacy Pays Off

"How bad is it?

 

"In news of the inevitable, North Korea has exploded a nuclear device. Weird dicatators crave nukes -- it's one of the less weird things about them. No one was/is going to talk or pressure North Korea out of developing such weapons. If we had a shot, it was back in the mid-1990s when North Korea was just getting started. Our failure to take meaningful action and to hide instead behind the "agreed framework" is another piece of President Clinton's legacy and another item in President Carter's disgraceful resume.".....

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015502.php


"The Left's Diplomacy Pays Off
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 9, 2006

"SCORE ONE FOR BILL CLINTON and Jimmy Carter.

 

"As of this writing in the early morning hours of October 9, President Bush is expected to announce that North Korea has conducted an underground nuclear test. Unlike the abortive launch in July, last night’s explosion netted the Stalinist gulag valuable information and packed a lethal impact. At 9:35 p.m. EST, the U.S. Geological Survey measured a 4.2 magnitude disturbance approximately 240 miles northeast of Pyongyang.

 

The Left quickly attempted the shopworn tactic of pinning the blame on the Bush administration’s rhetoric or unwillingness to bribe Kim Jong-il. Early this morning, Joseph Cirincione of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress told CNN, “They had numerous opportunities to negotiate a deal…They did not.” He concluded, “I think the North Koreans came to that conclusion: that there is no deal to be had with this administration, and they decided they had nothing to lose.”

 

By way of commentary, the popular left-wing blog The Daily Kos quoted Selig S. Harrison from the international edition of Newsweek:

 

North Korea's missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date “in the future” were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that “soft” tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.

 
The Kos feels no need to explain which U.S. provocation justified the birth of the North Korean nuclear program in 1994 – during Bill Clinton’s presidency – nor that the DPRK’s “‘soft’ tactics” entailed firing a missile over the Japanese mainland and threatening to strike the United States.
 
Worse yet, Kim Jong-il’s methods have paid off handsomely. Each act of brinksmanship has brought cash, supplies, oil, nuclear reactors, or additional concessions from the West. Within two months of the Taepo Dong missile scraping across Nippon in August 1998, President Clinton sent North Korea a multi-million dollar aid package and reopened bilateral negotiations.
 

The Dear Leader’s nuclear test could not have occurred without Bill Clinton’s decade of dalliance. Clinton could have obliterated the Yongbyong reactor with one strike when he first learned of North Korea’s covert nuclear program in 1994. Instead, he allowed Jimmy Carter’s private foreign policy to preempt him. Upon completing the “Agreed Framework” in 1994, Clinton stated, “This agreement will help achieve a vital and long-standing American objective: an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula.” We now know the $4.6 billion bribe gave the Communists the two nuclear reactors they used to create their current arsenal.

 

If the Left’s policies allowed Stalinists to arm, they left Americans defenseless. The Democratic Party has defined its defense policy in opposition to the concept of defense. For more than two decades, the Democratic Party has worked in concert to block any missile defense program and castigated those who tried to shield the United States from a doomsday device. When President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, Ted Kennedy promptly denounced it as “Star Wars.” The New York Times called it “a projection of fantasy into policy,” and other outlets fretted the abandonment of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) would encourage the United States to pre-emptively attack the Soviet Union. Bill Clinton pledged his support for a missile shield in theory during his 1996 re-election campaign, then withheld critical funds and scheduled deployments in his second term. When George W. Bush pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – negotiated in the 1970’s with a nation that no longer exists – the Left branded him a “unilateralist.” During the 2004 campaign, John Kerry adviser Rand Beers said North Korea was able to acquire a nuclear weapon, not because naïve leftists insisted on bribing its playboy despot, but because “Bush and his closest advisers were preoccupied with missile defense.” Twenty-three years after President Reagan’s vision of “rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete,” the United States remains vulnerable to madmen like Kim Jong-il…or whoever purchases his wares. Ironically, the Left’s got it wrong on SDI twice: the mere idea of missile defense caused the Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy, and the fact that it remains merely an idea emboldens tinhorn dictators to engage in nuclear blackmail.

 
The Left has specialized in sidelining those who would conduct a vigorous foreign policy, so impugning this president’s integrity as to render anything he says suspect. When the media dubbed the assessment of every intelligence agency in the world that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs “wrong,” it could not merely acknowledge that statesmen must act on the best information available to them at the time. Instead, they had to brand the commander-in-chief a “liar” and “fraud.” Ted Kennedy famously thundered, “Week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie.” Congressional Democrats demanded an investigation into whether President Bush coerced intelligence agents into “sexing up” Iraqi intelligence. (Multiple reports proved he did not.) Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid then shut down the Senate last November 1st to demand investigations into whether the Bush administration twisted intel ex post facto. Sen. Pat Roberts’ Senate Intelligence Committee recently released two documents that exonorated him on that point, as well. Yet the current cover story of Mother Jones magazine is, “Lie by Lie: How Our Leaders Used Fear and Falsehood to Dupe us Into a Mideast Quagmire: A Timeline.” Having claimed Bush “lied” about Iraqi WMDs, he finds himself circumscribed in dealing with other rogue regimes; after all, who would follow a “liar” into war twice?
 

Even this has been insufficient for today’s partisans, who demand Bush’s full demonization. Comparisons to Hitler early became ubiquitous. Al Gore bellowed, “He buhtrayeed Amurrucuh”; Howard Dean referred to Bush-43 as “Big Brother”; and Air America, the British Guardian newspaper, and a new motion picture have pined for his assassination. If Kim Jong-il is insane, in the Left’s view, he is not materially worse than our president.

 

Not all blame can be placed on the Left, though. This administration’s foreign policy has sent an uncertain message in its second term. The Bush team has offered Kim Jong-il bilateral relations, the Dear Leader’s penultimate goal. (The ultimate goal being U.S. aid. Such prominent Democrats as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton also advocate rewarding Korean belligerence with direct talks.) Having dealt with the result of the Clinton-Carter Agreed Framework of 1994, President Bush offered Iran essentially the same deal. At stages, the war in Iraq has been carried out half-heartedly: backing off Fallujah, allowing anti-Americans prominent governing positions, doing little to stop supplies and terrorists from crossing the Syrian and Iranian borders, etc. There are even reports Yemen “will generate power through nuclear energy in cooperation with the United States and Canada.”

 

And there are troubling signs of a creeping failure of nerve. Chief of Staff Andy Card, brought in to “shake things up,” has publicly advocated firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in favor of James A. Baker III. Jim “F-ck the Jews” Baker’s Iraq Study Group will soon release a study reported to call, in broad strokes, for the president to back down in Iraq, “the central front in the War on Terror.”

 

Today’s crisis has also raised eyebrows. According to early leaks of today’s UN Security Council proposal, the administration’s requested sanctions would exclude China’s oil trade, which provides some 85 percent of Pyongyang’s fuel.

 

The Bush administration could present a robust plan of action to the United Nations Security Council today as its needed rebound. China will likely veto any measure to curtail its oil exports, but the U.S. could support Japan’s desires to build an appropriate defense. We could and should do the same for Taiwan, as well. In addition to providing a counterweight to Pyongyang, this would apply long-term geopolitical pressure to Beijing. The president would also be well advised to use the crisis to push through greater funding for missile defense, the only ultimate hope of “rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” 

 

Or he could acquiesce to Foggy Bottom’s wisdom and issue yet another empty threat or ineffective sanctions package, followed by offers of diplomatic carrots, which would reinforce the growing perception that, rhetoric aside, the United States is too paralyzed by internal debate to prevent apocalyptic madmen from acquiring nuclear weapons. Like a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, backing down before Kim Jong-il’s pressure will send a clear message to people like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and other aspiring tyrants.

 
Before making such a move, President Bush must remember there is something worse than meeting the advance of evil with inaction: that is resisting evil only strenuously enough to give the enemy the thrill of victory. "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24826
posted by konane  # 9:50 PM 2 comments

Monday, October 9, 2006

 

"A Korean Nuke

"A KOREAN NUKE?
Source Boortz.com

Well here we are....North Korea has done it.  Forget about stopping Kim Jong-Il from acquiring a nuclear weapon....that happened long ago.  Forget about his missile tests a few months ago.  Now he's done what many thought he wouldn't...he's tested a nuclear weapon.  He set off the bomb.

Geologists have reported an earthquake that registered a 4.2 on the Richter scale....and the cause of that explosion is assumed to be the underground detonation of North Korea's nuclear bomb. 

Condemnation was swift from around the world, including the United States.  Tony Snow issued this statement:  "A North Korean nuclear test would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in northeast Asia."  South Korea is mad...China is upset.....countries around the world are condemning the test.  So what is going to happen next?  What will be North Korea's punishment?

Absolutely nothing, and North Korea knows it.  That's why The Gargoyle pushed the button...he knows there aren't any consequences.  Oh sure...the U.S. says it will push for sanctions at the UN today.  But North Korea is already under military and economic sanctions.  Kim Jong-Il simply doesn't care.  He knows we're not going to do anything, at least militarily.

The most interesting reaction may be Russia's.  Prior to the actual test the Russian leadership said that if North Korea does conduct such a test that would be a signal for the United States to enter two-party talks with North Korea.  Well, that's exactly was North Korea has been asking for ... so that would make Russia's position one of appeasement. 

Ahhhhh ... appeasement.  It makes you wonder just how long it will be today before the Democrats start making similar statements.  My bet is that some leading Democrat will step forward and demand two-party talks before the sun goes down.  I'm betting on either John Kerry or Al Gore.  Maybe Hillary! 

And just why does that strange little gargoyle who rules North Korea want two-party talks?  Two reasons!

  1. Any talks between just North Korea and the United States would legitimize the North Korean government.
     
  2. It is much easier to stage a raid on the U.S. Treasury .. and on the American taxpayers .. in two-party talks.  The Gargoyle can't feed his own people ... a lot of U.S. money would help him. 

OK Democrats ... step up here!  Who is going to be the first to call for those two-party talks, and to support a raid on the U.S. taxpayers to calm The Gargoyle down?"

http://boortz.com/nuze/200610/10092006.html#nkorea


posted by konane  # 9:29 AM 4 comments

Monday, October 9, 2006

 

Online gambling info

My Kim Komando free newsletter had this .... wish I could provide more info but she will fill in some blanks tomorrow.

There seems to be a ray of hope for online gamblers.     Big Grin


"New legislation will make online gambling more difficult. But this probably won't stop hardcore gamblers. Tune in to tomorrow's Kim Komando Computer Minute to learn more. Visit my site to find out how you can catch my Computer Minute. 
posted by konane  # 9:24 AM 0 comments

Sunday, October 8, 2006

 

"Mass Venezuela opposition rally

"Mass Venezuela opposition rally

 
By Greg Morsbach
BBC News, Caracas

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in support of the main opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales.

Mr Rosales will face President Hugo Chavez in December's presidential poll.

The march, which filled the main avenues of the city centre, was the biggest opposition rally Venezuela has seen since early 2004.

Then, protesters made an unsuccessful bid to oust Mr Chavez from power in a recall referendum."........

........"Mr Rosales condemned what he called the cheque book diplomacy of Mr Chavez, accusing him of giving away Venezuela's oil wealth to foreign powers."......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4801521.stm


posted by konane  # 9:15 AM 0 comments

Monday, October 2, 2006

 

"North American Union threat gets attention of congressmen

"North American Union threat gets attention of congressmen
Resolution aimed at blocking merger, funding of 'NAFTA superhighways'

Source WorldNetDaily.com

" WASHINGTON – While several members of Congress have denied any knowledge of efforts to build "NAFTA superhighways" or move America closer to a union with Mexico and Canada, four members of the House have stepped up to sponsor a resolution opposing both initiatives.

Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., has introduced a resolution – H.R. 487 – designed to express "the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico and Canada."

"Now that Congress is preparing to take up the issues of the North American Union and NAFTA superhighways, we are moving out of the realm where critics can attempt to disparage the discussion as 'Internet conspiracy theory,'" explained Jerome Corsi, author and WND columnist who has written extensively on the Security and Prosperity Partnership – the semisecret plan many suspect is behind the efforts to create a European Union-style North American confederation and link Mexico and Canada with more transcontinental highways and rail lines. "This bill represents a good first step."

Corsi explained to WND that the Bush administration is trying to create the North American Union incrementally, under the radar scope of public attention.

"Even today," said Corsi, SPP.gov has a 'Myths vs. Facts' section that denies the administration is changing laws or working to create a new regional government. Unfortunately, the many references on SPP.gov to Cabinet-level working groups creating new trilateral memoranda of understanding and other trilateral agreements makes these denials sound hollow."

The resolution introduced by Goode had three co-sponsors: Reps. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo., Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Walter Jones, R-N.C.

The "whereas" clauses of the resolution lay out the case against the North American Union and NAFTA Superhighways as follows:

 

The resolution calls for the House of Representatives to agree on three issues of determination:

 

  1. The United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System;

     

  2. The United States should not enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada; and

     

  3. The President should indicate strong opposition to these or any other proposals that threaten the sovereignty of the United States.

"As important as this resolution is," Corsi said, "we need still more congressional attention. Where is congressional oversight of SPP? We need congressional hearings, not just congressional resolutions."

H.Con.Res.487 has been referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Internal Relations for consideration prior to any debate that may be scheduled on the floor of the House of Representatives."

 

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52230

posted by konane  # 11:53 AM 3 comments

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