I am taking a well deserved vacation. I am visiting the great Americam sowthwest. I am planning to return about August 4, 2008. My mind needs a break. LOL.
Going to the rodeo today. I will give a full report of my fun when I returm.
TTFN
Tommy49646
By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt Published: June 20, 2008
WASHINGTON: Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.
More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.
Read the article here
Did I miss something or did we just become communist Cuba?
Who really thinks that we should trust the same people who mangae Social security with operating refineries?
What will happen to the stock holders?
Do we just tell them “Too bad so sad.”
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the most-ardent opponents of off-shore drilling sadi this:
We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.
By Tom Bates
Read my editorial here.
Sign the American Solutions Pettition to Drill here for Oil.
This is a simple argument for simple folks like me.
Gas Prices have breached the $4.00 levee mark.
What should we do to bring prices down?
Mr Obama says we should increase to taxes on oil companies. Who honestly believes this will have any affect on lowering gas prices?
Mr. McCain says we should drill now, drill here, and pay less.
I do not have an MBA from Harvard but it seems to me that an increase in supply, rather than higher taxes on oil companies, that will just be paid by consumers to increase their burdens, will have a better chance to reduce prices.
The environmentelists do not want any drilling any where any time. They want us to live in teepes and become vegitarians.
How did these people get such control over government policy? Easy, they purchased it. Our polititions are the best dressed men and women money can buy.
Well it’s time to put an end to this. We must buy our country back with our votes.
Please click on the American Solutions link above to sign the pettition. Do it for yourself and your children.
By Madeline Chambers
Tue Jun 17, 9:05 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany could elect its first openly gay Lutheran bishop next month, a move conservatives say would alienate many Christians and open divisions in the Church.
The July 12 election brings to Germany the question of gay clergy and same-sex unions which has caused rifts in several countries and faiths, including the Anglican community.
Did I just read this?
I wonder how much of the Bible they had to REWRITE to allow such things?
How will they teach the story of Lot and Sadam and Gamora?
How will they teach the sermon on the mount?
How will they just teach the teachings of Jesus?
I think I will cancell my trip to Germany.
I am alergic to lightning strikes.
Tom
June 12, 2008
Rick Moran
By the narrowest of margins, 5-4, the United States Supreme Court granted the constitutional protection of Habeus Corpus to foreign nationals being held at Guantanamo:
In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been held more than 6 years. Roughly 270 men remain at the island prison, classified as enemy combatants and held on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Read the article here.
by Will Manly
I’ve always thought of you as dangerously naive at best. Eloquent, gifted, genuine, yes. But dangerously naive at best.
I couldn’t vote for you — but not because of your funny name or your lunatic pastor. I couldn’t vote for you because you say we should raise taxes (even on the rich, who I’m convinced already pay too much), and because you say we should abandon Iraq (which I’m convinced would be surrendering a war we must win), and because you don’t respect the Second Amendment (which I’m convinced should disqualify any politician from any office).
Will Manly is a reporter for The Hays Daily News and The Stir. will@thestironline.comhttp://www.hdnews.net/Story/manly041408
Here’s a thought: Maybe gun rights voters know gun control laws kill people and steal freedom.
Here’s a thought: Maybe some Americans cling to their church because their pastor is a nice person.
Here’s a thought: Maybe, just maybe, us simpletons in small towns find it harder to be bigoted than all o’ y’all cityfolk.
And here’s my favorite thought of all: Maybe small-town folks are — really — capable of thinking. All on our own.
You’re wrong about why small-town Americans don’t vote for Democrats.
October 29, 1993
by Adam Thierer
Executive Memorandum #368
This key research from 1993 has been updated in James Gattuso’s new paper “Back to Muzak? Congress and the “Un-Fairness Doctrine”
Legislation currently is before Congress that would reinstate a federal communications policy known as the “fairness doctrine.” The legislation, entitled the “Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1993,” is sponsored in the Senate (S. 333) by Ernest Hollings, the South Carolina Democrat, and in the House (H.R. 1985) by Bill Hefner, the North Carolina Democrat. It would codify a 1949 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation that once required broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.” The fairness doctrine was overturned by the FCC in 1987. The FCC discarded the rule because, contrary to its purpose, it failed to encourage the discussion of more controversial issues. There were also concerns that it was in violation of First Amendment free speech principles. The legislation now before Congress would enshrine the fairness doctrine into law.
Here is what I think
What will this “Doctrine really do?
Here is the skinny on it.
Any and all broadcast stations that carry any political discussion programing will be forced to carry programming of other viewpoints. On the surface this sounds fair, right?
Well this is the way it will work.
Station “A” has Rush Limbaugh. They recieve a single complaint. That will mean they must also offer programing that expresses views other than Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh is being carried not because it is right or wrong. It is being carried because they have listeners who support sponsors. The stations can sell advertising to pay for the show. They would have to then carry programming such as is on the defunct liberal network “Air America”. Air America is defunct because they do not have enough listeners to support sponsorship. No one wants to hear their hate filled rantings. I have listened to these types of people and yes they are hateful and intolerant. If they disagree with you they want to shut you up. This is not freedom of speech.
The result would be thus:
1. The station could carry the alternative programing and not be able to sell advertising for it, meaning it would be carried for free.
2. The station would not carry any political disscussion programing because they couldn’t afford to give free air time away.
The net result would be that the only political viewpoints we heard would be from the admittedly left wing liberal press. Other viewpoints would be stiffled.
Freedom of speech would be lost. There are enough radio and TV stations to accomidate all points of view.
Tom
June 12, 2008
For the sake of my readers I am going to try something new.
I have been posting entire articles on my page for a while. Some poeple feel it can be a bit tedious and time consuming to read the entire article.
I am going to be putting just a short summary on my blog for a while. If you want the entire article you can click on the link to see it.
This link will take you to my archives web site where I will try to keep every article I post. On this site you will find a link back to my main BLOG page as well as the link, at the time of my posting, to where the original article was gleaned.
Since the originating sites often only keep the articles for a short time, you will be ably to find the full article.
Let me know if this works for you.
Tom Bates
Written By: Joseph L. Bast
Published In: Heartlander
Publication Date: February 1, 2003
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
When Al Gore lost his bid to become the country’s first “Environment President,” many of us thought the “global warming” scare would finally come to a well-deserved end. That hasn’t happened, despite eight good reasons this scam should finally be put to rest.
It’s B-a-a-ck!
Similar scares orchestrated by radical environmentalists in the past–such as Alar, global cooling, the “population bomb,” and electromagnetic fields–were eventually debunked by scientists and no longer appear in the speeches or platforms of public officials. The New York Times recently endorsed more widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, proving Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide gospel is no longer sacrosanct even with the liberal elite.
The scientific case against catastrophic global warming is at least as strong as the case for DDT, but the global warming scare hasn’t gone away. President Bush is waffling on the issue, rightly opposing the Kyoto Protocol and focusing on research and voluntary projects, but wrongly allowing his administration to support calls for creating “transferrable emission credits” for greenhouse gas reductions. Such credits would build political and economic support for a Kyoto-like cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
At the state level, some 23 states have already adopted caps on greenhouse gas emissions or goals for replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources. These efforts are doomed to be costly failures, as a new Heartland Policy Study by Dr. Jay Lehr and James Taylor documents. Instead of concentrating on balancing state budgets, some legislators will be working to pass their own “mini-Kyotos.”
Eight Reasons to End the Scam
Concern over “global warming” is overblown and misdirected. What follows are eight reasons why we should pull the plug on this scam before it destroys billions of dollars of wealth and millions of jobs.
1. Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate. More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying, in part, “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (Go to www.oism.org for the complete petition and names of signers.) Surveys of climatologists show similar skepticism.
2. Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientists predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 23 years ago. These readings are accurate to within 0.01ºC, and are consistent with data from weather balloons. Only land-based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe, are often contaminated by heat generated by nearby urban development, and are subject to human error.
3. Global climate computer models are too crude to predict future climate changes. All predictions of global warming are based on computer models, not historical data. In order to get their models to produce predictions that are close to their designers’ expectations, modelers resort to “flux adjustments” that can be 25 times larger than the effect of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations, the supposed trigger for global warming. Richard A. Kerr, a writer for Science, says “climate modelers have been ‘cheating’ for so long it’s almost become respectable.”
4. The IPCC did not prove that human activities are causing global warming. Alarmists frequently quote the executive summaries of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization, to support their predictions. But here is what the IPCC’s latest report, Climate Change 2001, actually says about predicting the future climate: “The Earth’s atmosphere-ocean dynamics is chaotic: its evolution is sensitive to small perturbations in initial conditions. This sensitivity limits our ability to predict the detailed evolution of weather; inevitable errors and uncertainties in the starting conditions of a weather forecast amplify through the forecast. As well as uncertainty in initial conditions, such predictions are also degraded by errors and uncertainties in our ability to represent accurately the significant climate processes.”
5. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization. Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by the IPCC. The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the “climatic optimum,” was even warmer and marked “a time when mankind began to build its first civilizations,” observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. “There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilization today.”
6. Efforts to quickly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions would be costly and would not stop Earth’s climate from changing. Reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990’s levels by the year 2012–the target set by the Kyoto Protocol–would require higher energy taxes and regulations causing the nation to lose 2.4 million jobs and $300 billion in annual economic output. Average household income nationwide would fall by $2,700, and state tax revenues would decline by $93.1 billion due to less taxable earned income and sales, and lower property values. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol by all participating nations would reduce global temperature in the year 2100 by a mere 0.14 degrees Celsius.
7. Efforts by state governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are even more expensive and threaten to bust state budgets. After raising their spending with reckless abandon during the 1990s, states now face a cumulative projected deficit of more than $90 billion. Incredibly, most states nevertheless persist in backing unnecessary and expensive greenhouse gas reduction programs. New Jersey, for example, collects $358 million a year in utility taxes to fund greenhouse gas reduction programs. Such programs will have no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. All they do is destroy jobs and waste money.
8. The best strategy to pursue is “no regrets.” The alternative to demands for immediate action to “stop global warming” is not to do nothing. The best strategy is to invest in atmospheric research now and in reducing emissions sometime in the future if the science becomes more compelling. In the meantime, investments should be made to reduce emissions only when such investments make economic sense in their own right.
This strategy is called “no regrets,” and it is roughly what the Bush administration has been doing. The U.S. spends more on global warming research each year than the entire rest of the world combined, and American businesses are leading the way in demonstrating new technologies for reducing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions.
Time for Common Sense
The global warming scare has enabled environmental advocacy groups to raise billions of dollars in contributions and government grants. It has given politicians (from Al Gore down) opportunities to pose as prophets of doom and slayers of evil corporations. And it has given bureaucrats at all levels of government, from the United Nations to city councils, powers that threaten our jobs and individual liberty.
It is time for common sense to return to the debate over protecting the environment. An excellent first step would be to end the “global warming” scam.
By:
Tom Bates
June 6, 2008
All rights reserved
Ladies and Gentlemen, Iran isnt kidding. They want Israel wiped off the face of the earth.
McCain will kick their butts and do everything to keep us safe.
Obama Will try to talk to them.
It is dangerous to talk to these types of men. Remember a guy named Martin Luther King?. Did he sit down and try to reason with the likes of George Wallace, Lester Maddox, David Duke or Bull Conner? Of course not. There was no way they would change their thinking. There are just some people you can’t reason with. You can never reason with an unreasonable person.
Have you ever had an employer who was just plain mean and sadistic? I sure have. Did you sit down with them and try to talk things out? What was the result? The unemployment line?
We are in for a very rough ride in the next few years. I don’t know about you but I want a fighter looking out for me and my family.
I do believe Israel is very important to our security. They play a big part in keeping the mid-east countries in line. Once Israel is gone do you honestly think they will just stop there? If it is to be believed when they say they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, is it not also believeable when they say it about us?
This is not a strugle for territory as many wars were in past centuries. It is a strugle inspired by a misguided misbelief in what the Karan says.
They have two conditions. Adopt Islam or die. Which should we accept?
Hevan Help us.
Jun 6 06:23 AM US/Eastern
Read the source article here .
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday raised the spectre of a full-scale military operation in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip despite Egyptian attempts to mediate a truce.
“According to the information as it is now, the pendulum is much closer to tough military action,” Olmert told journalists on arrival in Israel following a three-day trip to the United States.
His comments came a day after a man was killed in southern Israel in a mortar attack claimed by the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamist movement that has run Gaza since it ousted forces loyal to secular Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas a year ago.
But Olmert also suggested that the door to a negotiated truce was not completely closed.
He said his government was still considering whether to avoid getting “into a violent and hard conflict with the terror organisations in Gaza” or to launch “operations that would be much more aggressive and hard.”
Israeli forces launched several raids after Thursday’s attack.
On Friday a military engineering unit operating armoured bulldozers on the Gaza side of the border was involved in a firefight with Hamas gunmen, the military said.
A member of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, was killed in the exchange of fire, Gaza emergency medical services said, and an Israeli military spokeswoman said a soldier was wounded.
Earlier on Friday at least 10 Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli air raid on a Hamas police post in the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said. The military said the raid was in reply to Thursday’s attack.
Violence in and around the impoverished sliver of land has continued despite Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire and slow-moving peace talks with Abbas, who has only held sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since his forces were ousted from Gaza.
At least 491 people, nearly all Palestinians and mostly Gaza militants, have been killed since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks resumed in November, according to an AFP count.
The Israeli military said on Friday that Palestinians fired more than 2,300 rockets and mortar bombs at Israel in the past six months.
“The sand in the hourglass is running out. We are at the last pinch of sand,” the Yediot Aharonot daily quoted Defence Minister Ehud Barak as telling leaders of southern Israeli communities near Gaza.
The mass-circulation newspaper said it appeared likely that a major military operation in Gaza would take place within days.
Before leaving Washington on Thursday, Olmert played down the chances of achieving a truce in and around Gaza. “Israel’s conditions for a truce are not bearing fruit in the way that could lead to a ceasefire,” he said.
In exchange for stopping rocket attacks, Hamas has demanded an end to the blockade of Gaza which Israel says is aimed at forcing militants to halt their attacks on the Jewish state.
Israel has demanded an end to rocket attacks and arms smuggling from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, as well as progress in negotiations for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by Palestinian militants in 2006.
Egypt has been acting as mediator in the truce talks because Israel refuses to negotiate directly with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organisation.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
Jun 6 03:36 AM US/Eastern
Read the source article here .
An Israeli deputy prime minister on Friday warned that Iran would face attack if it pursues what he said was its nuclear weapons programme.
“If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it,” said Shaul Mofaz, who is also transportation minister.
“Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme,” Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot daily.
He stressed such an operation could only be conducted with US support.
A former defence minister and armed forces chief of staff, Mofaz hopes to replace embattled Ehud Olmert as prime minister and at the helm of the Kadima party.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
Read George Wills collumn here.
By George F. Will
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, explained: “I rise to discuss rising energy prices.” The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek an increase in its oil production, and Schumer’s gorge was rising.
Saudi Arabia, he said, “holds the key to reducing gasoline prices at home in the short term.” Therefore arms sales to that kingdom should be blocked unless it “increases its oil production by one million barrels per day,” which would cause the price of gasoline to fall “50 cents a gallon almost immediately.”
Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply? Schumer does know that if you increase the supply of something, the price of it probably will fall. That is why he and 96 other senators recently voted to increase the supply of oil on the market by stopping the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which protects against major physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the 97 senators who voted to stop filling the reserve also oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today’s senators — including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain — have voted to keep ANWR’s estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.
So Schumer, according to Schumer, is complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline. “Democracy,” said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” The common people of New York want Schumer to be their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline prices, which are a predictable consequence of their political choice.
Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent to Washington senators and representatives who have voted to keep ANWR’s oil in the ground and who voted to put 85 percent of America’s offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that restricted area contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — 10 times as much oil and 20 times as much natural gas as Americans use in a year.
Drilling is underway 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.
ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware), and drilling along its coastal plain would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington’s Dulles airport. Offshore? Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill. There has not been a significant spill from an offshore U.S. well since 1969. Of the more than 7 billion barrels of oil pumped offshore in the past 25 years, 0.001 percent — that is one-thousandth of 1 percent — has been spilled. Louisiana has more than 3,200 rigs offshore — and a thriving commercial fishing industry.
In his book “Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence,’ ” Robert Bryce says Brazil’s energy success has little to do with its much-discussed ethanol production and much to do with its increased oil production, the vast majority of which comes from off Brazil’s shore. Investor’s Business Daily reports that Brazil, “which recently made a major oil discovery almost in sight of Rio’s beaches,” has leased most of the world’s deep-sea drilling rigs.
In September 2006, two U.S. companies announced that their Jack No. 2 well, in the Gulf 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, had tapped a field with perhaps 15 billion barrels of oil, which would increase America’s proven reserves by 50 percent. Just probing four miles below the Gulf’s floor costs $100 million. Congress’s response to such expenditures is to propose increasing the oil companies’ tax burdens.
America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy.
At the height of the civil war when Union defeats were at their worst, Abraham Lincoln called a cabinet metting. He opened a joke book and started reading it aloud, laughing along the way. The cabinet members didn’t quite know what to do. They all thought the president had gone over the edge and lost his mind. When he finished and put the book down he reportedly said “Gentlemen, if I could not find something to laugh about at times like these, I fear I could go out of my mind.”
With that advice, I offer up a few laughs I found on youtube. Enjoy.
I think she says it quite well.
Let let him tell you in his own words.
Maybe he can tell us. I’ll just keep quiet and let them a picture be worth a thousand words.
Read what Rush has to say here.
May 16, 2008
With Obama we started out, we couldn’t talk about his big ears ’cause that made him nervous. We’ve gone from that to this: Not only can we not mention his ears…
We can’t talk about his mother.
We can’t talk about his father.
We can’t talk about his grandmother unless he does, brings her up as a “typical white person.”
We can’t talk about his wife, can’t talk about his preacher, can’t talk about his terrorist friends, can’t talk about his voting record, can’t talk about his religion.
We can’t talk about appeasement.
We can’t talk about color; we can’t talk about lack of color.
We can’t talk about race. We can’t talk about bombers and mobsters who are his friends. We can’t talk about schooling. We can’t talk about his name, “Hussein.”
We can’t talk about his lack of experience. Can’t talk about his income. Can’t talk about his flag pin.
This started out we can’t call him a liberal.
It started out we just couldn’t talk about his ears.
Now we can’t say anything about him.
Read what Mr. Obamas web page says here
Mr. Obamas web page words will be in black while my words will be in red ..
Nuclear Weapons
A Record of Results:
The gravest danger to the American people is the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes. Obama has taken bipartisan action to secure nuclear weapons and materials:
He joined Senator Dick Lugar in passing a law to help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.
I guess Mr. Obama thinks that international terrorists are going to start obeying American laws after he tells them to.
He joined Senator Chuck Hagel to introduce a bill that seeks to prevent nuclear terrorism, blueuce global nuclear arsenals, and stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
I see. Wow all we have to do is to say it’s illegal for international terrorists to use nuclear weapons and they won’t do it. He will also order countries like Red China, North Korea, India, Pakastan, Russia and Isreal to reduce their nuclear stockpiles and they will just do it.
And while other candidates have insisted that we should threaten to drop nuclear bombs on terrorist training camps,
(I don’t recall any canditates saying this) Obama believes that we must talk openly about nuclear weapons – because the best way to keep America safe is not to threaten terrorists with nuclear
weapons, it’s to keep nuclear weapons away from terrorists.
The best way to keep America safe from international terrorists is to kill them.
Secure Loose Nuclear Materials from Terrorists:
Obama will secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years. While we work to secure existing stockpiles of nuclear material, Obama will negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. This will deny terrorists the ability to steal or buy loose nuclear materials.
Let me see now. He is going to force the world to do what he says regarding nuclear materials. Hmmmmm. And if they don’t, then what? More words? What about countries like Iran who say “Up yours we are going to do it anyway”?
Strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty:
Obama will crack down on nuclear proliferation by strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions.
Sure he will. Sanctions won’t work. Can we all say “Iraq oil for food program”? The UN who was suppose to be the watchdog of that program was the biggest flouter of it. Pay corrupt officials enough money and you can get anything you want.
Toward a Nuclear Free World:
Obama will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But he will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. He will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate- range missiles so that the agreement is global.
While he is at it how about a military free world. Let’s ban crime also while we are at it.
Maybe you could do this Mr. Obama, Get all the world leaders together in a boxing ring and let them duke it out, winner take all.
Am I the only one here who is scared of this guy?
ABC’s article words will be in black while my words will be in red .
Obama Warns GOP “Lay Off My Wife”
Obama Loses Argument With Wife Over Getting a Dog
By IMAEYEN IBANGA
May 19, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama ripped into a Republican ad today that targets comments made by his wife, Michelle, and called the GOP tactic “low class” and “detestable.”
The senator and his wife discuss the race for the White House. The Illinois senator told “Good Morning America” that he expects hardball tactics from the Republicans if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
“But I also think these folks should lay off my wife,” he told “GMA” as his wife chuckled beside him.
I guess even though he uses his wife in his campaign, she should be able to say and do anything she wants with impunity. How dare thoes rascally Republicans use her own words against her. Isn’t she, after all, the one who said “for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” ? Maybe it wasn’t she who said it. Maybe it was some rascally Republican ventrilquist with a Michelle look-a-like dummy. It is as though he thinks of himself as the messiah and any critical comments are akin to blastphemy. How dare we critisize the messiah.
Obama told “GMA” that he believes he will win a majority of the Democratic delegates once the votes are counted after Tuesday’s primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. Obama is favored in Oregon while rival Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is expected to win Kentucky.
Obama was careful not to act as if he had already clinched the nomination, but he also tried to present himself as the candidate who will be taking on Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the fall.
“The GOP, should I be the nominee, I think can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record,” Obama said. “I’ve been in public life for 20 years. I expect them to pore through everything that I’ve said, every utterance, every statement. And to paint it in the most undesirable light possible. That’s what they do.”
“But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable,” he said.
Obama praised his wife’s patriotism and said that for Republicans “to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class … and especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values, who claim that they are protectors of the values and ideals and the decency of the American people to start attacking my wife in a political campaign I think is detestable.”
We’ll say this much for PETA’s leaders: they’ve got an answer for everything. If you write to PETA and ask them about our “PETA Kills Animals” website, they’ll send back a form letter including some of the lame excuses below:
“Thank you for contacting PETA about the ‘PETA Kills Animals’ billboard and the accompanying promotions for it … PETA can’t afford billboards in Times Square, so we’re grateful for the opportunity that this one provides to discuss the animal overpopulation crisis.”
PETA’s lying. The organization has erected not one but two Times Square billboards (one in 1997 and another in 2003), both featuring silicone beauty Pamela Anderson. Click here and here to see PETA’s own promotional materials about these advertisements. And PETA’s annual budget is over $25 million. That’s about seven times what the Center for Consumer Freedom spends.
“We do not run a traditional shelter. In fact, we refer every healthy, cute, young animal we can to shelters.”
Uh oh. There they go again. In 2003 PETA reported transferring exactly one animal to another shelter. In 2002 PETA transferred just two animals. Click here to see the documents PETA filed with the state of Virginia. Since 1998, PETA has transferred a total of 130 animals to other shelters, and 21 of them were chickens. By comparison, it killed over 10,000 animals.
“[M]ost of the animals we receive are broken beings for whom euthanasia is, without a doubt, the most humane option.”
PETA kills 85 percent of the animals it takes in, and finds adoptive homes for just 14 percent. By contrast, the Norfolk SPCA, whose shelter is located less than 4 miles from PETA’s headquarters, found adoptive homes for 73 percent of its animals in 2003. It’s rather hard to believe that the animals entrusted to PETA are any more likely to be “broken beings.” Dana Cheek, the former (and most recent) director of the Norfolk SPCA, wrote to us recently:
I often receive phone calls from frantic people who have surrendered their pets to PETA with the understanding that PETA will “find them a good home.” Many of them are led to believe that the animals will be taken to a nearby shelter. Little do they know that the pets are killed in the PETA van before they even pull away from the pet owner’s home … PETA refuses to surrender animals they obtain to area shelters for rehoming. If only the celebrity “deep-pocket” donors on the west coast knew that their donations were going to kill adoptable cats and dogs here in Norfolk.
PETA talks a good game about caring for animals, but seems uninterested in saving the only creatures it actually has contact with. If PETA were sincere, it could use its incredible wealth to buy a huge plot of land where its thousands of victims could live out their natural lives. Instead, these animals meet PETA’s hypocrisy head-on, in the form of “tough love.”
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The pastor at Anchorage First Free Methodist Church was mystified. Why was the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals chastising him? No animals are harmed in the church’s holiday nativity display. In fact, animals aren’t used at all.
People, however, do dress the parts - Mary, Joseph, the wise men, etc. The volunteers stand shivering at a manger on the church lawn in a silent tribute to Christmas.
The Rev. Jason Armstrong was confused by an e-mail this week from PETA, which admonished him for subjecting animals “to cruel treatment and danger,” by forcing them into roles in the church’s annual manger scene.
“We’ve never had live animals, so I just figured this was some spam thing,” Armstrong said. “It’s rough enough on us people standing out there in the cold. So we’re definitely not using animals.”
2,981. That’s how many dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, and other “companion animals” died needlessly at PETA’s hands in 2006. According to the group’s own records, PETA employees killed more than 97 percent of the flesh-and-blood creatures in their care that year.
Compare that with the Norfolk (where PETA is based) Society for the Protection of Animals, which euthanized only 38 of the 1404 animals placed in their care that year. Even the Norfolk city pound managed to release or adopt out more than half the number of animals it euthanized.
While PETA collects millions in donations by pretending to advocate for the welfare of animals, the group has killed 17,400 pets since 1998. Some animals are killed at PETA headquarters and stored in a giant walk-in freezer.
Others are killed in roving death vans and tossed into dumpsters. In fact, less than three percent of the animals handed over to People for the “Ethical” Treatment of Animals actually survive.
Because of cash shottages Hillary isn’t paying her staff. When asked if they were getting health insurance, she dodged the question.
DEVELOPING………..
A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.
Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom’s “Mutaween” police.
Her story offers a rare first-hand glimpse of the discrimination faced by women living in Saudi Arabia. In her first interview with the foreign press, Yara told The Times that she would remain in Saudi Arabia to challenge its harsh enforcement of conservative Islam rather than return to America.
“If I want to make a difference I have to stick around. If I leave they win. I can’t just surrender to the terrorist acts of these people,” said Yara, who moved to Jeddah eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.
Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner.
The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues — who are all men — went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.
She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café’s “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.
For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.
“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?’. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.
The men were from Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.
Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.
“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.
“He said ‘You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell’. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.
Yara’s husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.
“I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don’t have the connections I did,” she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.
Yara was visited yesterday by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.
An embassy official told The Times that it was being treated as “an internal Saudi matter” and refused to comment on her case.
In Health Debate, Clinton Remains Vague on Penalties
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton inched closer Sunday to explaining how she would enforce her proposal that everyone have health insurance, but declined to specify — as she has throughout the campaign — how she would penalize those who refuse.
Mrs. Clinton, who did not answer Senator Barack Obama’s question on the topic in a debate last Thursday, was pressed repeatedly to do so Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on the ABC program “This Week.” When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked a third time whether she would garnish people’s wages, Mrs. Clinton responded, “George, we will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it’s that or it’s some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments.”
She then added that the focus on enforcement clouded a more important point, that her proposal to cover the uninsured was superior to Mr. Obama’s because she would mandate coverage for all, while he would require it only for children.
What might seem a mundane debate over health policy has taken on outsized importance in the approach to Tuesday’s voting because it is one of the few substantive differences between the two leading Democratic presidential candidates.
Polling has found that health care is a top concern of Democratic voters, and that they rank covering the uninsured as more important than reducing health costs or improving quality.
Mrs. Clinton, therefore, has argued that her plan, because of its mandate, would achieve universal coverage while Mr. Obama’s would not. She has taken recently to calling universal coverage “a core Democratic value and a moral principle.”
Mr. Obama asserts that his plan, which is like Mrs. Clinton’s in its use of government subsidies to reduce the cost of insurance, would effectively guarantee coverage to anyone who wants it.
But about 20 percent of the uninsured have household incomes of $75,000 or more, according to the Census Bureau, meaning they presumably can afford coverage but prefer to take the risk. Mrs. Clinton argues that these “free riders” impose a hidden tax on the insured because their uncompensated care must be factored into medical charges and insurance rates.
Mr. Obama’s campaign has tried for months to move from defense to offense by pressing Mrs. Clinton to explain how she would enforce her mandate. A recent study published in the journal Health Affairs concluded that compliance with government mandates varied greatly, both in the United States and in other countries. But compliance is greatest, the authors wrote, when “penalties for noncompliance are stiff but not excessive.”
A group of doctors and health policy analysts, including a number of Obama advisers, pointed out in a letter released Thursday that Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, has thus far failed to enroll nearly half of its uninsured despite imposing a modest first-year tax penalty of $219 (the fine increases significantly this year). Because the Massachusetts program is less than a year old, it is not yet possible to fully judge the effectiveness of its mandate.
Mr. Obama raised the Clinton campaign’s ire late last week by charging in a voter mailing that “Hillary’s health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it… and you pay a penalty if you don’t.”
Mrs. Clinton argues that she can make premiums affordable for low-income workers by spending $110 billion on subsidies and cost-saving devices. Like Mr. Obama, she would pay for her plan primarily by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans. She would not allow exemptions from the insurance mandate, as Massachusetts does for those who cannot afford even subsidized premiums.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton had said previously that she would consider garnishing people’s wages, and that the uninsured could be automatically enrolled when they present themselves at hospitals or government offices. But Mrs. Clinton, who faced criticism in the 1990s for not adequately consulting Congress on her husband’s health plan, has typically said she would leave such details to negotiations with lawmakers.
She said Sunday she would not impose fines, as Mr. Obama has said he would to enforce his insurance mandate for children. “We want them to have insurance,” she said. “We want it to be affordable.”
The reason for the continuing vagueness is simple, said Robert J. Blendon, a Harvard professor of health policy and political analysis. “Whenever you talk about penalties, you lose some number of people who support the principle of universal coverage,” he said. “It’s the equivalent of candidates proposing new programs that may lead to a tax increase but never wanting to discuss it.”
The Obama campaign hopes to make Mrs. Clinton pay a price, not just on health policy but on the issue of character. Bill Burton, the Obama campaign’s spokesman, said on Sunday that Mrs. Clinton had “again refused to directly answer the question,” and added, “America needs a leader they can trust, not someone who will avoid hard questions.”
More “stuff” from the granola state. When is the big quake comming?
Berkeley council tells Marines to leave
By Doug Oakley
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 01/30/2008 01:48:16 PM PST
Council says Marines unwelcome in town. Hey-hey, ho-ho, the Marines in Berkeley have got to go.
That’s the message from the Berkeley City Council, which voted 6-3 Tuesday night to tell the U.S. Marines that its Shattuck Avenue recruiting station “is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”
In addition, the council voted to explore enforcing its law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation against the Marines because of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy. And it officially encouraged the women’s peace group Code Pink to impede the work of the Marines in the city by protesting in front of the station.
In a separate item, the council voted 8-1 to give Code Pink a designated parking space in front of the recruiting station once a week for six months and a free sound permit for protesting once a week from noon to 4 p.m.
Councilman Gordon Wozniak opposed both items.
The Marines have been in Berkeley for a little more than a year, having moved from Alameda in December of 2006. For about the past four months, Code Pink has been protesting in front of the station.
“I believe in the Code Pink cause. The Marines don’t belong here, they shouldn’t have come here, and they should leave,” said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates after votes were cast.
A Marines representative did not respond to requests for comment.
The resolution telling the Marines they are unwelcome and directing the city attorney to explore
issues of sexual orientation discrimination was brought to the council by the city’s Peace and Justice commission.
The recommendation to give Code Pink a parking space for protesting and a free sound permit was brought by council members Linda Maio and Max Anderson.
Code Pink on Wednesday started circulating petitions to put a measure on the November ballot in Berkeley that would make it more difficult to open military recruiting offices near homes, parks, schools, churches libraries or health clinics. The group needs 5,000 signatures to make the ballot.
Even though the council items passed, not everyone is happy with the work of Code Pink. Some employees and owners of businesses near the Marines office have had enough of the group and its protests.
“My husband’s business is right upstairs, and this (protesting) is bordering on harassment,” Dori Schmidt told the council. “I hope this stops.”
An employee of a nearby business who asked not to be identified said Wednesday the elderly Code Pink protesters are aggressive, take up parking spaces, block the sidewalk with their yoga moves, smoke in the doorways, and are noisy.
“Most of the people around here think they’re a joke,” the woman said.
Wozniak said he was opposed to giving Code Pink a parking space because it favors free speech rights of one group over another.
“There’s a line between protesting and harassing, and that concerns me,” Wozniak said. “It looks like we are showing favoritism. We have to respect the other side, and not abuse their rights. This is not good policy.”
Ninety-year-old Fran Rachel, a Code Pink protester who spoke at the council meeting, said the group’s request for a parking space and noise permit was especially important because the Marines are recruiting soldiers who may die in an unjust war.
“This is very serious,” Rachel said. “This isn’t a game; it’s mass murder. There’s a sickness of silence of people not speaking out against the war. We have to do this.”
Anderson, a former Marine who said he was “drummed out” of the corps when he took a stand against the Vietnam War, said he’d love to see the Marines high tale it out of town.
“We are confronted with an organization that can spend billions of dollars on propaganda,” Anderson said. “This is not Okinawa here; we’re involved in a naked act of aggression. If we can provide a space for ordinary people to express themselves against this kind of barbarity, then we should be doing it.”
Friday, February 01, 2008
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., says the City of Berkeley, Calif., no longer deserves federal money.
DeMint was angered after learning that the Berkeley City Council voted this week to tell the U.S. Marine Corps to remove its recruiting station from the city’s downtown.
“This is a slap in the face to all brave service men and women and their families,” DeMint said in a prepared statement. “The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money.”
“If the city can’t show respect for the Marines that have fought, bled and died for their freedom, Berkeley should not be receiving special taxpayer-funded handouts,” he added.
In the meantime, a senior Marine official tells FOX News that the Marine office in Berkeley isn’t going anywhere.
“We understand things are different there, but some people just don’t get it. This is a part of the military machine that gives them the right to do what they do, but what they are doing is extreme,” the official said.
— $975,000 for the University of California at Berkeley, for the Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service, which may include establishing an endowment, and for cataloguing the papers of Congressman Robert Matsui.
— $750,000 for the Berkeley/Albana ferry service.
— $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, for a school lunch initiative to integrate lessons about wellness, sustainability and nutrition into the academic curriculum.
— $94,000 for a Berkeley public safety interoperability program.
— $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District, nutrition education program.
The Marine official, speaking with FOX News on Friday, said Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway scoffed at the news, but there are no plans for to protest the City Council’s decisions. There are definitely no plans to move the recruiting station either.
“To actually put something into law that encourages the disruption of a federal office is ridiculous. They are not going to kick a federal office out of its rightful place there, and this is not going to discourage those young patriots who want to be Marines,” the official said.
The Berkeley City Council this week voted to tell the Marines their downtown recruiting station is not welcome and “if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome guests,” according to The Associated Press.
The council also voted to explore whether a city anti-discrimination law applies to the Marines, with a focus on the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prevents open homosexuality in the military.
The council also voted to give the antiwar group Code Pink a parking space in front of the recruiting office once a week for six months, as well as a protest permit.
The Marine recruiting office in Berkeley has been open for about one year, but has been the subject of recent protests by Code Pink members.
