Despite Coming Ice Age, Poor Will Be Hardest Hit by Global Warming

As noted here earlier, despite the caterwauling and hysteria, we could see another ice age before long.

Still, no amount of evidence will stop the clowns at the UN from shaking everyone down in order to aid the wretched refuse of the earth in coping with the dreaded global warming climate change.

The developed world should help poor countries brace for global warming by assisting them in taking steps like restoring coastal forests and training health care workers, the head of the U.N.'s climate panel said.

Recognizing that climate change may be hard to reverse, experts are now examining "adaptation," or how to deal with potential catastrophes such as rising seas as a result of melting glaciers.

"In the developing countries it's critical we think of combining mitigation measures with adaptation measures," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

"We know extremes of temperatures are going to go up, now we have to adapt to them," he said at a climate panel at Columbia University late on Wednesday.

Uh, actually, we don't know that.

The United Nations agreed to start an adaptation fund for poor countries last month at climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. It comprises only about $36 million, but might rise to as much as $5 billion a year by 2030 if investments in green technology in developing countries increase.

Maybe guys like Pachauri and Gore can start contributing by waiving their speaking fees and stop jetting around the world on the public dime.

They may also want to start paying attention to those who don't agree with them and actually look at the data available that doesn't concur with their opinions.

Paging the Goracle, Al Gore pick up the courtesy phone

Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age

If the Sun’s magnetic activity does not increase, and it goes dim for an extended period, it will get quite chilly. In the meantime the Canada Space Agency, the Royal Observatory Greenwich and the US Air Force Solar Optical Observing Network are all keeping an eye on the Sun.

This is what occurred in the 17th century when the earth experienced a mini ice age. So maybe the Times was right back in the 70's when they predicated a global ice age.

Of course Atlanta has a Democratic government

Mayor Franklin: Atlanta facing $70 million budget deficit
Atlanta has been controlled by the Democrats since the end of the War of Northern Aggression I think. It is no surprise that the city is in debt, it is just the amount that is staggering, along with the revelations of how it got so bad.

For instance, some salary expenses, pension payments and worker compensation payments were listed as "reserves" when they were expense items, city officials said. The city did not anticipate spending $11 million to settle a lawsuit to police officers not paid for overtime and penalties to the Internal Revenue Service for payroll processing delays. The city also expects to spend $30 million more than expected for fuel, utilities, health insurance, vehicle repairs, consultant fees and other expenses.

Now in the way of defense some folks from the city government handed out some packets to reporters.

City officials noted Atlanta is not the only government facing financial troubles. They handed reporters a packet of newspaper articles detailing budget shortfalls in higher-populated cities like Los Angeles, New York and Phoenix. Sacramento, Calif., a city with a population similar to Atlanta, is grappling with a $55 million shortfall.

Now what do all of those cities have in common? Hmmm I can't quite put my finger on it.
What is missing from these articles is some of the funny math and just downright stupidity that went into doing the budget. They spend 8 million a year for an entertainment area known as Underground Atlanta. heaven only knows what the money goes for since the area is a bunch of shops and bars all privately owned. They also discovered that the pensions they were paying out instead of putting them on the minus side of the ledger they counting them as income.

For instance, some salary expenses, pension payments and worker compensation payments were listed as "reserves" when they were expense items, city officials said.

And no, all of the information is not contained in one source. It is hard to get beyond the headlines and find out any information regarding what actually led the nuts and bolts of the shortfall. Suffice it to say it plain looks like creative bookkeeping at its best.

Horrors: 'Saucy Schoolgirl' Ad Sparks Complaints

Lighten up, people.

Seriously, all this hubbub over thirteen complaints?

Ryanair has locked horns with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over a newspaper advert featuring a "saucy schoolgirl", the BBC reports.

The advert punting cheap flights, which appeared in the Herald, Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail, shows a teen temptress with the strapline “Hottest back to school fares”. It attracted 13 complaints to the ASA insisting it was "offensive to show what appeared to be a schoolgirl posing and dressing provocatively and that the ad implied there were sexual connotations to the image".

According to the ASA adjudication, Ryanair "disagreed that the ad suggested sexual connotations" and further "believed it was obvious that the image was of a woman fully clothed and that the short skirt and bare midriff were representative of the type of clothing that was fashionable among young women in the UK".

Ryanair defended that it "believed the ad was likely to be found offensive only by the minority of people who were likely to find any such representation objectionable".

Meanwhile, Ryanair also has some problems with Sarko.

Afghan vet faces enemy without body armor

First up is Chuck Ziegenfuss' take and comments on this confrontation. You'll have to excuse Chuck's language but just getting home from your 35th trip into the operating room and maybe not quite adjusted to the new meds will do that to you. For more info read the entries from his wife who has been keeping everybody informed of his trials and travails.

Of course Uncle Jimbo over at Blackfive couldn't leave so much red meat laying on the ground. (scroll down for his comments)
As for me. This soldier shows why we are winning in Iraq and Afghanistan. He doesn't hide behind shields and he saw a chance to confront directly some of the very people who have made his job harder and more deadly then it already was. The fine congress critters sitting in front of him showed they are not worthy to wash his ACU's. If a lone soldier in civilian clothes can draw such a dismissive attitude it kind of makes you wonder how they would act if faced with the same physical dangers the soldier is exposed to. Courage comes in many forms. More times then not it is moral courage that is harder to muster then physical courage. This young man proves he has plenty of both.

Diplomatic Furor Over 'Finger in the Butt'

Let's hope they can put this all behind them before there's a fullblown international incident.

A German song that is riding high on the country's charts has ruffled diplomatic feathers as a result of its mixing of geographic and scatological issues. But the singer of "Finger in the Butt, Mexico" is unrepentant.

Mexico's ambassador to Germany has voiced his displeasure over a popular German song that allegedly disparages the North American country.

The song, which has been on the German charts for 10 weeks, features as its chorus the charming refrain "Finger in the butt, Mexico." (The German version, "Finger im Po, Mexiko," rhymes.)

Germany's mass-circulation daily Bild reported Thursday that Ambassador Jorge Castro-Valle Kuehne has written a letter of complaint to EMI, the record company which publishes the song.

The newspaper quotes the ambassador as writing: "As I'm sure you can understand, the lyric has aroused great outrage among the members of the Mexican community living in Germany, who have a right to be angry that Mexico's name is being used in this kind of disrespectful and disgusting way."

The song was written and is performed by 34-year-old German entertainer Mickie Krause, who made his breakthrough performing works such as "Go Home, You Old Shit" and "10 Naked Hairdressers."

According to Bild, Krause does not understand what the big stink is about. "It looks like the ambassador has too much time on his hands," Krause says, "if he can spend so much time worrying about a finger in the butt."

Predator Drone Administers Justice to Al Qaeda Goons

Keep up the good work, boys. In fact, try and get a lot more practice.

A suspected U.S. missile strike that killed up to 13 foreign militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan region this week had targeted second or third tier al Qaeda leaders, according to residents in the tribal area.

Initial reports said 10 people were killed in the attack on Monday on a house in Torkhali village near the town of Mir Ali.

An intelligence official, however, told Reuters on Thursday that based on information gleaned from tribal contacts there were seven Arabs and six Central Asians killed.

He said the attack was believed to have been carried out by a pilotless U.S. Predator aircraft flown across the nearby border with Afghanistan.

"The missile appeared to have been fired by a drone," the intelligence official said.

The Pakistani authorities have not confirmed the attack, and the Pentagon has denied taking any action, but the Defense Department does not speak for the Central Intelligence Agency, which operates Predators that the tribesmen say carried out the attack late on Monday.

Looks like a couple of high value targets were present.

Tribesmen in the area said a deputy of Abu Laith al Libi, a senior al Qaeda leader, had been staying there and was among the dead, according to the intelligence official.

"The latest information we have from the area is that a second-in-command to al Libi was among those killed," he said.

A leading Pakistani daily, The News, reported that the strike had targeted Libi and another senior figure, Obaidah al Masri, though neither was present at the time of the attack according to a senior Taliban commander quoted by the newspaper.

Libi and Masri were promoted up the al Qaeda ranks due to successful U.S. and Pakistani operations in the past to catch or kill the guerrilla network's second tier leaders.

Some background on al-Libi and al Masri.

Hot Air links. Thanks!

UPDATE: Islamist website confirms al Libi is off to meet his virgins.

Allahpundit links again.

Fed Rate Cut Baffles the Beeb

Here is more pure stupidity by BBC editors.

Fed cuts US interest rates to 3%

The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates for the second time in nine days as it tries to keep the US economy from entering a recession.

The central bank lowered rates to 3% from 3.5% after a two-day meeting.

Last week, the Fed slashed the cost of borrowing by the largest amount in 25 years in a shock move to calm tumbling global stock markets.

The Fed is hoping the cuts will cushion the US economy from the worst effects of the credit crunch and housing slump.

There is no "hoping" to it, this will improve things in the market.

For those unfamiliar with how this impacts the economy (such as socialist BBC editors, apparently), not only does this lower borrowing costs, but it serves to expand the money supply due to increased lending activity. This will impact the economy much faster and deeper than any tax rebate. Fiscal policy moves like tax rebates have much longer time lags before they take effect.

Of course the BBc editors had to document their stupidity yet again by printing this criticism of the Fed:

The Fed looks foolish. It seems they're afraid of the market," said David Greenwald, a partner at Scalene Capital Management.

"Everyone knows that it takes a while for 75 basis points to get through the economy and by cutting 50 now, I just think they're not leaving much room in the future.

And everyone who knows what they are talking about knows that monetary policy takes effect much faster than fiscal policy. What would Mr. Greenwald and the BBC editors have the Fed do otherwise right now? Waive a magic wand? Wish upon a star?

Monetary policy moves have shorter time lags than fiscal policy moves. So once again, the BBC editors are either outright stupid or they are lying to you with this piece.

The reason why the Fed's did the 75-point basis cut last week was to forestall a market meltdown that was happening around the world on January 21 while the U.S. markets were closed due to a holiday. Their choice was either make the move or watch panic set in. The rest of the world was certainly not going to do anything to deal with the slide. Then the Feds recalculated and did the rest of the needed cut this week.

I look for the market to trade sideways for the next six months or so, and then start moving forward again. I also look for the BBC editors to continually document their stupidity in print with articles like this.

Small business seminars In Iraq!

Gee if the Iraqi economy gets any better they may start to scare our chicken little Wall St investors we seem to have in this country. Our stock market plunges because of rumors of Warren Buffet passing gas.

Small-business owners in Iraq attended training seminars at business centers in Fallujah and Ramadi to learn how to bid on government contracts, officials said.
U.S. Marines and civilian reconstruction officials hosted seminars at the refurbished Fallujah Business Development Center and the Ramadi Business Center using a bilingual presentation to advocate the expansion of small-business operations in Anbar province, a release by the U.S. II Marine Expeditionary Force said.
A Marine contracting official said the local sheiks and business owners met the chance to bid on U.S. government contracts with enthusiasm.
The seminar focused on training local businessmen how to find solicitations advertised by the U.S. government on the Internet and advised them to register with a U.S. database to receive future request-for-quotes, the official said.
The Marines reported 135 sheiks and local businesses attended the seminars.

MY SHAR'IA?

We keep being told by Islamic apologists that Sharia law is much misunderstood by us infidels and that it is in fact a very enlightened form of justice. There is an active Islamic lobby that would wish to see Shar'ia law implemented in the UK, for instance. In some areas it already operates at a low level and is unofficially sanctioned by the police doing nothing to stop it.

Now comes the news that a young man, a student of journalism, has been sentenced to death by an Islamic court in Afghanistan for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohammed. Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter.

Leaving aside the inherent anti-US bias in this report in the uberlibera Independent, surely it is just one more instance of how Islamic law and modern democracies are entirely incompatible? Can you imagine how Shar'ia law would roll back every form of liberal values imaginable. And yet, oddly enough, many western liberals appear content to run with the idea of tolerating Sharis law! Is it because their uberliberalism has stopped them from seeing that Shar'ia is a threat to us all, but most particularly, to them?

Cross posted on A Tangled Web.

Iran continues to build a wall of secrecy

This time is has to do with executions. No, silly they aren't going to stop them. They are just going to stop doing them in public.

Iran's chief justice banned executing convicts in public unless there are approved "social necessities," state-run Iran Press TV reported.

A spokesman for Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi said the decree was issued Tuesday.

I guess all those videos and pictures being shown in the free world is starting to have an impact, not that it has hurt their ability to maintain the "moral high ground" among the leftists in the west. So now it appears they have learned something else from their close ties to Russia. How to make people disappear.

National Heroes Tour Schedule

I had posted earlier about the National Heroes Tour and now the schedule is finalized. Go here for all the details.
This is a chance for you you to see and interact with some real heroes. Not the plastic Hollywood type or steroid pumped up prima donnas who are payed millions to entertain you. If they are coming to your area please try to see them and take the kids.

Building Putin's Empire

Deal with Serbia gives Russia victory in 'pipeline war' with EU

Russia won the right Friday to direct a major supply route for natural gas through its ally Serbia to Europe, a deal that analysts described as a Kremlin victory in a "pipeline war" with the European Union.

The agreement, signed in the Kremlin before President Vladimir Putin and visiting Serbian leaders, increased Moscow's control over energy supplies to Europe and could undermine a rival EU project.

Strong Russian opposition to independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo was a key bargaining chip in the negotiations that resulted in Serbia joining the project, the South Stream natural gas pipeline. Belgrade also agreed to sell a majority stake in Serbia's state-owned oil monopoly, NIS, to the Russian natural gas giant, Gazprom, at a favorable price.

South Stream is a project worth a projected €10 billion, or $14.7 billion, organized jointly by Gazprom and the Italian energy giant ENI to carry Siberian gas to Europe via the Black Sea.

"Our close political relations were today converted into economic results," Putin's chosen successor, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, told reporters. "This is a great breakthrough."

[...]

The agreements signed Friday by Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia, gave Gazprom a 51 percent stake in Serbia's NIS oil and natural gas company, for €400 million [US$593,259,318.44 ed.] and a pledge to invest €500 million more by 2012.

Some analysts described the price as well below market value, giving estimates of €1 billion to €2 billion [US$1,483,589,692.57 - US$2,966,249,293.59 ed.], although others said the NIS plant needed heavy reconstruction.

NIS dominates the Serbian market, with a monopoly on refining and a network of almost 500 gas stations. The NIS deal gives Gazprom its first refinery outside Russia.

Gazprom gets OMV stake

Gazprom will acquire a stake of 50 percent in OMV's natural gas hub in Austria, giving it greater access to the Continent's customers, under an agreement signed Friday, Bloomberg News reported.

The two will sell to Germany and Italy through the Baumgarten hub, located near a trunk pipeline from west Siberian natural gas fields.

Via The IHT

On January 17, 2008, The Streetwise Professor observed that

Gazprom/Russia is/are playing smashmouth ball over Serbia’s national oil company. Don Miller and Don Medvedev have presented Serbia with an offer it can’t refuse: to sell Naftna industrija Srbije at a fraction of its true value–and one with an unbelievably short fuse, like, you know, Friday.

In exchange for control of SIJ’s hard assets and guarantees of a monopoly position in Serbia for some period (take that Serbian consumers, Gazprom doesn’t do competition), Gazprom Neft (Gazprom’s oil affiliate) is offering an amount that has been estimated to represent well less than one-half (and perhaps as little as one-quarter) of the Serbian company’s value. The tacit quid pro quo is that Russia will support Serbia on Kosovo–but, if Russian rhetoric is to be believed (yeah, I know) they would do that anyways.

To make the deal look a little less like an abject surrender, Gazprom has also dangled the prospect of giving Serbia a stake in a future gas venture. Word of advice, guys–DON’T BELIEVE IT, and DON’T TAKE IT. Gazprom is the master of what Bob Amsterdam calls “premature contractualization.” That is, announcing deals just in time to forestall projects that are adverse to Gazprom’s interest, and then fading the deal when the threatening competing projects are shelved in response to the Gazprom announcement. Gazprom will whisper sweet promises in anybody’s ear to get what they want, and then renege when it suits them. (Nigeria–you should take note of this, as Gazprom has been wooing you too.)

Gazprom’s stratagem is analogous to a common ploy in the software business. In the 80s and 90s “vaporware” was a commonly employed competitive strategy. A software company would announce a new, improved software product in order to forestall entry by a competitor. Once the potential entrant was scared away, the new software would just fade away into the mists, never to be seen. Gazprom is essentially following this playbook–constantly announcing vaporpipelines, vaporwells, vaporinvestments, vaporstorage, vapor-you-name-it whenever a threatening project is mooted.

So, what Gazprom is offering Serbia is: a pittance in cash plus a pig in a poke in exchange for hard assets right now. Given Gazprom’s record of delivering on its big talk, the Serbs would be well advised to take cash on the barrelhead and take the promises for what they are worth–a little more than nothing.

It would be fair to say that Serbia is the first new province in Putie's Soviet Union Lite. Let's see how long it takes before soon-to-be Soviet Russian Premier Putin directs the new pawns - with their new military advisors - to square off against KFOR, while at the same time, telling the EU that abandoning their NATO obligations would be in their absolute best energy supply interests.

And whether he delivers the message or has his beard, Gazprom poohbah Gerhard Schroeder, do so instead.

See also: How To Attract Foreign Investment (Gazprom and its business partners)

Will the Chimpy McHitlerburton Horrors Ever End? Waterboarding Cows For School Lunches!

It's the perfect storm. We've got the confluence of animal rights wackos, the dastardly interrogation technique that turns leftwing knees into jello and a pet Democrat program all rolled into one.

Possibly the only thing that could make this a four-star bonanza were if it occurred at Club Gitmo.

Too good to be true.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Humane Society of the United States said on Wednesday a California slaughterhouse was using a range of torture including "waterboarding" to prod unfit animals into the slaughterhouse so they could be processed into food that may have ended up in school lunch programs.

The Humane Society displayed a video from its own undercover, six-week investigation that it said showed abuse by workers at the Hallmark Meat Packing Co of Chino, California. However, the name of the plant was not visible in the video.

The video showed workers kicking cows, ramming them with forklift blades, applying electric shocks and even using a hose to simulate the feeling of drowning so the animals would revive long enough to pass federal inspection.

"The attempt was to make them so distressed and to cause them so much suffering that these animals would get up and walk into the slaughterhouse," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, told reporters,

No word whether they were subject to lights or bad rap music.

"We've heard a lot about waterboarding in 2007 as a torture technique and we saw this applied to these animals where a high pressure hose was put in the mouth and through the nose," he said, referring to a controversial technique used in the past by the CIA in its terrorism interrogation program.

The company was not immediately available for comment but said in a statement that operations had been suspended at the plant and two workers fired.

Pacelle said the plant supplies meat to the Westland Meat Co, which is the second-largest supplier of beef to the USDA Commodity Procurement Program Branch.

This branch distributes beef to needy families, the elderly and to more than 100,000 schools and child-care facilities nationwide under the national school lunch program.

The man who called our troops in Iraq Nazis was immediately available for comment.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, on Wednesday called for an immediate federal investigation into the safety of ground beef used in the school lunch program.

"The treatment of animals in the video is appalling, but more than that it raises significant concerns about the safety of the food being served to our nation's children," Durbin said in a statement.

H/T Shiplord Kirel.

UPDATE: Hot Air links. Thanks. Gateway Pundit also links and has the video.

FILTHY ISRAEL AND JOHN MCCAIN

I'm sure you may have heard the latest anti-Semitic outburst from Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has proclaimed that...

"I advise you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line. It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall. The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers' days are numbered.''

Now, we all know just how dangerous this man is, as the regime which he heads up seeks to gain nuclear capability. For peaceful purposes, right?

But what is the connection with the MSM's favourite Republican - John McCain?

Well, McCain is using James "F*ck the Jews" Baker and Brent Scowcroft, the man who favours talking to Hamas - as his key foreign policy advisers. Both these men also hold interesting views on how the US should deal with Ahmadinejad's lunatic regime. Scowcroft has warned that the US should not to be belligerent with Iran, whilst the fabulous Baker boy believes that Iran can be a force for stability in the region. (Well, I suppose if wiping Israel off the map constitutes stability then maybe he has a sort of point?) So, both these appeasers of a regime that calls Israel "filthy" and is working to finish what Hitler started are the men that McCain turns to for his foreign policy expertise. Little wonder the MSM loves McCain.

Cross posted on A Tangled Web

Lancet Report on Steroids: Groups Now Claim a Million Dead Iraqis

Here we go again.

Supposedly independent groups issue a "study" claiming wildly inflated death tolls in Iraq and the media dutifully regurgitates it without question.

LONDON (AFP) — More than one million Iraqis have died because of the war in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to a study published Wednesday.

A fifth of Iraqi households lost at least one family member between March 2003 and August 2007 due to the conflict, said data compiled by London-based Opinion Research Business (ORB) and its research partner in Iraq, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS).

The study based its findings on survey work involving the face-to-face questioning of 2,414 Iraqi adults aged 18 or above, and the last complete census in Iraq in 1997, which indicated a total of 4.05 million households.

Respondents were asked how many members of their household, if any, had died as a result of the violence in the country since 2003, and not because of natural causes.

"We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been in the order of 1,033,000," ORB said in a statement.

So just what kind of group is the Opinion Research Business?

Well, Michael Fumento notes them in his current item shredding the Lancet study.

Only one source found higher numbers than either Lancet paper – a poll by the British Opinion Research Business (ORB). It claimed in a September 2007 press release that "more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003." (Emphasis added.) The polling ended in August 2007, and the actual alleged death toll was over 1.2 million.

"Murdered" isn't the language of the staid, neutral polling organization that its defenders claim ORB to be. Yet surely only a hardened cynic would assert that ORB's purpose was to make the Lancet figures seem to be in the ballpark despite all other studies showing otherwise.

Or perhaps it wouldn't take a hardened cynic. "The key importance of the [ORB] poll," claimed one leftist British "media watch" organization, "is that it provides strong support for the findings of the 2006 Lancet study, which reported 655,000 deaths."

Yes, they sound rather impartial.

Interesting how this report was released last September and it's being rehashed once again.

TRACTOR PRODUCTION IN UKRAINE UPDATE!

Do you remember the good old days when the rotten Soviet Union was crumbling from within? There used to be regular Pravda communication hailing the latest record-breaking run of factor production! Wheat production regularly exceeded all known targets. Nobody believed it, of course, but the Soviets felt obliged to pretend all was well, even as their people starved and their factories melted down.

Now comes the announcement from EU leaders that their

economies are strong and that the fundamentals are secure. Does ANYONE believe this drivel? The EU economies are a mess, and the underlying problem is that none of them can afford to run the welfare statism that characterises their economic infrastructure. Check out the unemployment rates in France or Germany if you want to assess just how solid those fundamentals really are. Britain is as bad, though, and government manipulation of statistics, just like Soviet manipulation of the statistics, does not alter this reality.

Cross posted on A Tangled Web

Silky P Quits Race, AP Sends Love Note

The smarmy snake-oil salesman finally got the message, and the Associated Press sends him off with a gushing love note.

Man, talk about a journalistic tongue-bath.

DENVER - Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies, The Associated Press has learned.

Nedra, baby, get off your knees.

Edwards burst out of the starting gate with a flurry of progressive policy ideas — he was the first to offer a plan for universal health care, the first to call on Congress to pull funding for the war, and he led the charge that lobbyists have too much power in Washington and need to be reigned in.

The ideas were all bold and new for Edwards personally as well, making him a different candidate than the moderate Southerner who ran in 2004 while still in his first Senate term. But the themes were eventually adopted by other Democratic presidential candidates — and even a Republican, Mitt Romney, echoed the call for an end to special interest politics in Washington.

Contrast this slobbering with the account of Rudy Giuliani departing the GOP race.

What media bias?

More on Edwards at Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, and Gateway Pundit, who has a fond farewell video to Silky.

FBI Launches Sub-prime Investigation

The FBI is starting their investigation into the sub-prime lending mess. You are going to hear a lot about lending practices and defaulting loans.

Just remember, these really are two different issues, and confusing them will not lead to a solution.

The FBI is investigating 14 companies embroiled in the sub-prime mortgage crisis as part of a crackdown on improper lending.
It did not identify the companies but said the investigation encompassed developers, sub-prime lenders and investment banks.

FBI officials said the agency was looking at instances of accounting fraud and insider trading.

There very well may be some accounting fraud and other inappropriate activities in the lending industry. But I don't think it had much to do the sub-prime meltdown.

The sub-prime market is focused on providing home loans to those with poor or limited credit histories.

Many of these borrowers have been unable to keep up with payments and face losing their homes.

The wider crisis emerged as many of these mortgages were converted into financial instruments and sold on to investors including the big investment banks.

It is a cold, hard fact that at any given time there are only so many people in the mortgage market who can really afford a mortgage. Years ago, those unqualified mortgage applicants would have been turned down until they improved their financial situation.

But due to political correctness and "red-lining" laws, it has become almost impossible for lending institutions to deny those unqualified applicants today without getting sued for discrimination of one sort or another.

So, lending institutions have shifted to making the risky loans, and then packaging the mortgages into other instruments and selling them off to both avoid getting sued and unload the risky loan, all the while making some nice fee income off the deal.

It's like a bookie taking a risky wager and sloughing pieces of it off on other bookies to dump the risk (not that I would have any direct knowledge of such illegal wagering activity, you understand).

The public is looking for someone to blame now for this mess, so I expect to see some bank CEO's get drawn and quartered on TV in the near future. But if we are really interested in avoiding a repeat of this situation down the road, we have to allow lending institutions to turn down unqualified applicants without getting sued into oblivion.

Once those risky loans are made, it's just a matter of time until a large number of them default.

Swarthy Munchkin: Israel's Days are Numbered

Of course, should Israel launch a pre-emptive strike, they'll be harshly condemned around the globe.

But this little freak can say what he pleases and nobody bats an eyelash.

HARDLINE president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has renewed his verbal attack on Israel, saying its days are numbered and predicting that the "filthy Zionist entity" will fall sooner or later.

"I advise you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line,'' Mr Ahmadinejad today told world powers in a speech in the southern city of Bushehr carried live on the state television.

"It has lost its reason to be and will sooner or later fall,'' he said.

"The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers' days are numbered.''

The Islamic republic considers Israel its arch enemy, along with the United States, and its hostility towards the Jewish state has deepened since Ahmadinejad became president in 2005.

Mr Ahmadinejad has drawn the ire of the international community by calling for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map and describing the Nazi holocaust a "myth''.

Those who don't greet such statements with a yawn will merely dismiss it as overheated rhetoric, but seriously, the point will soon be reached where Israel will need to aggressively deter these fanatics.

Then Little Mahmoud will realize his days are numbered.

'I have never worked anywhere where morale was so low'

Gee, the hopes were so high, yet now it's all coming unraveled.

Must be the after-effects of the neo-McCarthyite plot.

Apparently, only the Democrats take these people seriously.

Al-Jazeera's troubled English language news channel is facing a "serious staffing crisis" after scores of journalists left or have not had contracts renewed amid claims of a revolt over working conditions.

Staff at the Doha-based 24-hour news channel - which only reached its first birthday in November - have told MediaGuardian.co.uk of a series of issues including the removal of benefits and a lack of pay rises which have led many to resign or look to leave.

The staff unrest comes amid speculation that al-Jazeera English is set to relaunch in the second quarter of this year with new schedules and new studios in Gaza and Nairobi.

According to insiders, resignations have occurred across the board, including the director of human resources, the director of operations, producers, senior camera operators and editors.

One source said that the general belief among staff was that the English language rolling news service "cost so much to set up that they are now cutting costs at the expense of quality and quantity".

There are also renewed reports of tensions between al-Jazeera's Arabic language channel, which has been on air since 1996, and the more recently launched English outlet.

Sources have added that executives on the main Arabic al-Jazeera network are trying to exert more control over the English language outlet, which is mainly staffed by western journalists.

One source said the al-Jazeera editor-in-chief, Ibrahim Hilal, was pushing for the English channel to take a more Islamic slant, quoting the example of the recent furore surrounding British teacher Gillian Gibbons who was arrested in Sudan for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

"He [Hilal] sent an email banning the story from being run on al-Jazeera English because it would upset Muslims," the source added. "It was only covered when there were riots in Sudan."

Shocking, isn't it, that Jihad TV would want and Islamist slant?

Never saw that coming.

Al-Jazeera is also embroiled in two employment disputes, including one in London with the former al-Jazeera English head of planning, Jo Burgin, who is claiming sex, race and religious discrimination.

Sources have said that the Washington-based former financial controller Clive Brady is also taking legal action in the US after being dismissed.

Another source described the working environment at al-Jazeera English as "hateful".

"I have never worked anywhere where morale was so low," one former staff member said. "Some people have worked very hard to produce a channel but there is no recognition whatsoever."

These people pimp themselves out to a network that's an avowed enemy of the West and they're surprised they're treated like this?

Idiots.

We'll leave you with this laugher.

In a statement, he said: "Al-Jazeera's mission and vision has always been based on the values of human dignity, equality, and diversity.

"This applies not only to our coverage but also to our organisation. The commitment to diversity is the reason we have over 2,500 staff and journalists from over 40 different nationalities and from many different faiths working across all parts of the world.

"In a global organisation such as ours all employee grievances have a channel for resolution and we have an open door policy to resolve all issues.

H/T: Different Drummer via the LGF spinoffs.

Here's a big wet kiss for McCain

The polls have barely closed but the ads are already ready. This one may be coming to a tv near you tomorrow. It is an anti Hillary, er, McCain ad. hard to tell the difference nowadays.

Here is something for Condi to talk about the next time she talks to the Saudis

The father of a 16-year-old boy — who was executed last year following his arrest three years ago at the age of 13 in connection with the death of a young boy in Jizan — is seeking justice claiming his son was unjustly killed.

You can just add this to the long list of heinous acts carried out in the kingdom in the name of justice. These are the people who somehow the left in this country tell us have the "high moral ground". The next time some liberal plays the Bush is Hitler card point him to this story.

“I want justice. I will not rest until I get it,” Al-Hakami told Arab News, speaking about his son who was beheaded on July 10 last year. To add to his pain, Al-Hakami only learned that his son had been executed a few days later and till this day does not know where his body is buried.

The High Cost of Inflation ... and A Few Other Factors: Haitians Reduced to Eating Mud

Surely, someone will blame this on global warming. There certainly are residual effects on Hispaniola from the hurricanes in 2007, but Haiti in particular has been a hellhole for so long, it's a wonder whether it can ever function properly.

Either was you cut it, this should not be happening in the civilized world.

Poor Haitians resort to eating dirt

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

Believe it or not, some say eating dirt isn't all that bad.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

When Real Life Interrupts

Our heartfelt condolences go out to Boston Globe sportswriter and ESPN personality Bob Ryan, whose son Keith Ryan was found dead of an apparent suicide in Pakistan Monday.

Just awful news.

Growing up in Hingham, Keith Ryan held his political beliefs so strongly that he seemed like a real-life version of a popular TV character who was considerably more conservative than everyone else in his household.

"We used to kid when he was in high school that it was like 'Family Ties' -- he was Alex Keaton," said Mr. Ryan's father, Bob, a sports columnist for the Globe.

His political convictions brought Mr. Ryan into a career of federal service, which ultimately led to Pakistan, where he was an attache for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, based in Islamabad. Mr. Ryan apparently took his life, according to the US State Department, and was found today in his Islamabad residence. He was 37 and was about to return home to visit his wife and three children in Silver Spring, Md.

"As anyone who has been confronted with the suicide of a family member can tell you, the only word to describe the sensation is devastated," Bob Ryan said. "We will always have questions."

The US Embassy in Pakistan issued a statement praising Mr. Ryan, who, his father said, had been stationed in Islamabad since December 2006.

"Mr. Ryan was a well-respected, trusted, and longtime member of the US Mission in Pakistan," the statement said. "His death is a great loss.

Meanwhile another noted ESPN figure, the Washington Post's and Pardon the Interruption's Michael Wilbon, apparently suffered a minor heart attack Monday.

Michael Wilbon, the famed Washington Post sports columnist and co-host of ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption", suffered a minor heart attack early Monday morning.

According to reports, Wilbon complained of chest pains to his wife around 3 a.m. She then took him to the hospital. Doctors found minor blockage in his heart and performed an angioplasty, which successfully removed the blockage.

We wish him the best for a speedy recovery.

The Moment We've Been Waiting For: Abu Ghraib Documentary to Premiere

You get the feeling the left will still be carping about the alleged horrors of Abu Ghraib 150 years from now.

You don't see any celebrity documentaries about the mass killings of Saddam Hussein. You hear diddly squat about the hundreds of annual public executions in Iran.

The murder and imprisonment of political prisoners in Cuba?

Pfft.

But a few soldiers get out of hand, pose with prisoners and put panties on their heads? Why it's nonstop coverage for five years, now culminating in a documentary, which is sure to sweep up awards and accolades worldwide, just because it makes us looks bad.

Abu Ghraib documentary in Berlin premiere

A FILM about the prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail will become the first documentary ever to enter the competition at the Berlin Film Festival next month, organisers said overnight.

Standard Operating Procedure by Oscar-winning director Errol Morris uses recovered footage, reenactments and the notorious photographs published round the world to shed light on the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi inmates by US troops at the notorious prison outside Baghdad.

"It kept us glued to our seats," Berlinale chief Dieter Kosslick said of the film ahead of the February 7 to 17 event.

"The known facts are presented in a way like you have never seen them before. That is the best thing a documentary can do."

Morris, who will turn 60 next month, won an Academy Award for his incisive 2003 documentary The Fog of War about former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara.

His films The Thin Blue Line about the death penalty in the United States and A Brief History of Time on the disabled British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking were also international successes.

Mr Kosslick said the line-up of the 58th Berlinale would be less political than in recent years and focus on music in cinema.

Yes, it will be less political by presenting this documentary and bashing George W. Bush over the head once again.

Carnival Float 'Commemorates' Holocaust

Nothing quite brings out the festive mood of Carnival down in Brazil like a float depicting images of the Holocaust.

Seriously folks, there's a time and place to observe the Holocaust, and this isn't it.

A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend.

The Viradouro samba organization, or school, plans to feature the grim display when it marches in the Sambadrome parade strip on Sunday, despite objections from a local Jewish group.

"Really, it makes no sense addressing this theme with drums and dancing girls," said Sergio Niskier, president of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro state, referring to the slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

"There are still survivors of that horror who have the marks of that tragedy on their skin," he said.

Rio's Carnival is famed for the parades by samba schools with glitzy floats and costumes and street parties where costumed revelers drink and dance all night.

The elaborately decorated floats are a key part of each samba school's presentation, along with thousands of dancers and drummers led by near naked Carnival queens.

Viradouro insisted its Holocaust float is not meant to offend anyone.

PELOSI ALIGNS WITH OSAMA!

To any objective observer, Al Jazeera is the broadcasting arm of the Jihadists.

It has continually attacked the integrity of our military, it has broadcast the disgusting decapitation videos, and lied about the Jihad. It is the modern day equivalent of the Nazi broadcasting that took place in WW2 - the name of their game is relentless propaganda aimed at undermining our side. So, naturally enough, Al Jazeera has been the best seat in the house for the State of the Union address. Yes, a very special place just a few steps away from the House Democrat Whips Office has been been reserved for Osama's little helpers. Makes you feel proud, eh? Al Jazeera should be BANNED from this event. They are the enemy within though perhaps the Dem's feel a deep affinity with them

Peaceful Religious Man Admits to Plot to Behead Solider 'Like a Pig'

And here all this time I though Islamists were offended by pigs?

Briton admits plot to behead Muslim soldier

Of course, the headline is just a wee bit misleading, since it was one Muslim who planned to kill another.

A man has pleaded guilty to a plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier, a court was told on Tuesday.

Parviz Khan, a 37-year-old Briton, pleaded guilty earlier this month to a series of charges including the beheading plot which was thwarted by police and the MI5 security service a year ago.

Media had previously been barred from reporting Khan's plea until Tuesday, when a trial of two other men opened in the central English city of Leicester.

Prosecutor Nigel Rumfitt told the jury Khan was "a man who has the most violent and extreme Islamist views", and at the centre of a Birmingham-based network gathering money and equipment to send to Pakistan for the use of "terrorists".

Why the quotes around the word terrorists?

He also wanted to get himself involved in acts of terrorism, Rumfitt said.

"He was enraged by the idea that there are Muslim soldiers in the British army," the prosecutor continued, adding that Khan had decided to kidnap such a soldier with the help of drug dealers operating in Birmingham.

Seems as if it doesn't take much to "enrage" these people.

"He would be taken to a lockup garage and there he would be murdered by having his head cut off like a pig. This atrocity would be filmed," Rumfitt said.

Such lovely people.

Monuments To Her Nazi Past

Honoring Nazi victims as witnesses fade
Most countries celebrate the best in their past. Germany unrelentingly promotes its worst.

The enormous Holocaust memorial that dominates a chunk of central Berlin was completed only after years of debate. But the building of monuments to the Nazi disgrace continues unabated. On Monday, the German minister of culture, Bernd Neumann, announced that construction could begin in Berlin on two monuments, one near the Reichstag to slain members of the gypsy groups, known here as the Sinti and Roma, and another not far from the Brandenburg Gate to gays and lesbians killed in the Holocaust.

In November they broke ground on the long-delayed Topography of Terror center at the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters. And in October, a huge new exhibition opened at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. At the Dachau camp outside Munich, a new visitor center opens this summer. The city of Erfurt is planning a museum dedicated to the crematoriums. There are currently two competing exhibitions about the role of the German railroads in delivering millions to their deaths.

This Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party taking power in Germany, which remarkably has prompted yet a new round of soul-searching.

"Where in the world has one ever seen a nation that erects memorials to immortalize its own shame?" said Avi Primor, the former Israeli ambassador to Germany, at an event commemorating the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz on Friday in Erfurt. "Only the Germans had the bravery and the humility."

[...]

Rüdiger Nemitz first began welcoming back this city's exiled victims of Nazi tyranny, the overwhelming majority of them Jews, in 1969. Berlin flies its former citizens, mostly Jews, back for a week of fully expense-paid visits, complete with a reception by the mayor.

The Invitation Program for Former Persecuted Citizens of Berlin, which has brought roughly 33,000 people for visits to the city, once had 12 full-time staff members. Now it is just Nemitz and another half-time employee.

The program is not, however, winding down due to waning support for commemoration of Germany's difficult past. To the contrary, at a time when the nearly-broke Berlin city government has had to make deep cutbacks in other areas, Nemitz said that every single political party in the city Parliament supported the program and had not pared back its budget of €550,000, or about $815,000, for flights, hotels and tours since at least 2000.

"When it started, they were grown-ups. Now, it's people with hardly any memory of Berlin," said Nemitz, 61, from his office on the ground floor of the Berlin City Hall. "Those who come today were children then."

The visits will end in either 2010 or 2011, Nemitz estimated, because there are so few victims left.

[...]

As the contact to the events becomes more remote, less personal, it raises the question of how a society should enshrine its crimes and transgressions over the longer term.

"I can't help but feeling that some of the continued 'Let's build monuments. Let's build Jewish museums,' is a fairly ritualized behavior," said Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forums in Potsdam, an international public research organization.

Her own children, she said, are saturated with discussions of the Holocaust and no longer want to hear about it.

"I worry terribly that it's going to backfire," she said.

[...]

When insufficient care is taken around the history, it immediately grabs national attention. In Munich this past weekend, a traditional carnival season parade overlapped with the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, celebrated every year on Jan. 27. The result was a nationwide flood of negative publicity for the city. Charlotte Knobloch, head of Germany's national Jewish organization, said that it "dishonors and insults the victims."

"There was no conscious affront," said Stefan Hauf, a spokesman for the city. He explained that they would have changed the date of the parade as the smaller city of Regensburg had, but too many participants were flying in from other countries to make the change on such short notice.

"The date has been on the public calendar since last May," Hauf said.

And not a soul working for the city was aware of the significance of January 27th??? My . . . Heinie . . . ass you didn't know.

Munich played a special role in Nazi history. It is where the National Socialist party rose to prominence and was the location of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, the failed coup attempt enshrined in Nazi myth. Hitler eventually declared the city the "Capital of the Movement." Unlike Berlin, which has developed a reputation as a city with a memorial practically on every street corner, Munich has often been criticized for playing down its history.

"Munich was the capital of the movement. Since 1945 it's been the capital of forgetting," said Wolfram Kastner, an artist who said he has fought the city government over the years for permits and permission to use performance art to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.

[....]

Read it all at International Herald Tribune

Honoring The Victims

Teenagers of all faiths remember Holocaust
The warmth which encompassed every faith community in Liverpool yesterday embraced elderly survivors of the Holocaust and victims' relatives at a memorial concert in the city. There to welcome them were teenage Jews, Christians, Hindus and - for the first time in an official capacity - Muslims who had been on a "walk of faith" to call for tolerance, friendship, and the sanctity of individual life.

"The Holocaust was not so much six million deaths as one death six million times," said the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, taking up the theme which won Liverpool the honour of hosting National Holocaust Memorial Day this year.

He and Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Commonwealth chief rabbi, prayed together by a huge heap of spectacles, sent to Liverpool town hall from across the world and piled on a set of railway tracks like the infamous ones at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

"This is the darkness," said Liverpool councillor Tina Gould, who worked for a year to organise the mixture of religious service, music, poetry and drama, before visiting Auschwitz earlier this month. "As a Jew and as someone who loves Liverpool, I find it very hard to bear. But look, here is the light."

She opened one of the big, mahogany doors of the town hall and colour flooded in from thousands of paper butterflies - an age-old symbol of the human spirit - made by children in honour of named individuals who died in the Nazi camps.

The main commemoration at the Philharmonic Hall, on Hope Street, which unites the two once warring cathedrals, also dealt in names rather than numbers. The packed audience listened to music by Hans Krasa, who died at Auschwitz, and Hans Gal, who escaped and ended up in Liverpool interned as an "enemy alien" during the war, but was shown around the city by friendly Scouser guards.

Martin Bell, the former independent MP and BBC reporter in the Balkans, then introduced the true story of Bosko and Admira, the Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo whose love was destroyed by the hatred between Serbs and Bosnians.

Tahira, 15, a Muslim who joined Catholic, Anglican and Hindu teenagers on the faith walk, said: "That is what we must prevent, and we do it by meeting together and making friends - simple, and just what we do in Liverpool's youth council."

Via The Guardian

See also: Liverpool Hosts Holocaust Memorial Day

H/T NYNana

Rove Derangement Syndrome Seeps Down to High School Level

Chances are strong most of these kids have no idea who Karl Rove is, and it was probably their whiny parents who complained.

Apparently others wanted an alleged comedian to be there instead.

Might help if they learned a little tolerance and developed some open-minded appreciation for those they may not disagree with.

As if.

Following protests from students, former presidential adviser Karl Rove has withdrawn as this year's commencement speaker at a prestigious prep school, the school's headmaster said Monday.

The choice of Rove as speaker for the June commencement at Choate Rosemary Hall had led some students to plan to walk out of the ceremony. Others had sought to bring comedian Stephen Colbert to campus for an alternate speech.

Instead of commencement, Rove now will speak at the school on Feb. 11, headmaster Edward J. Shanahan said. Shanahan said he will deliver the commencement address at the school, the alma mater of John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson.

Shanahan said he had asked seniors for their opinions on the proposed commencement speech and many said they wanted to hear from Rove - but at some time other than commencement.

He said they also were concerned that outsiders might disrupt graduation if Rove appeared in June.

Ah yes, the dreaded outsiders. Read: Obnoxious leftwing pinheads.

In an e-mail to students and staff Monday, Shanahan quoted Rove as saying: "I would not want 12 minutes of remarks to be used as an excuse by a small group to mar what should be a wonderful day of celebration for the members of the 2008 graduating class and their families, so I am delighted to instead accept Choate's invitation to speak on campus Feb. 11."

"He was more than understanding," Shanahan wrote to the students. "He was gracious and generous in his thinking about you and 'your day.'"

Far more gracious that those who would rather he remain silent.

A GROWING CRESCENT OVER EUROPE....

Oh it's not ME that's saying that. Well, not today anyway!( I've been saying that ever since the 11th September 2001)

But I wanted to share the news with you that an “overwhelming majority” of Europeans apparently believe immigration from Islamic countries is a threat to their traditional way of life, a survey revealed last night. The poll, carried out across 21 countries, found “widespread anti-immigration sentiment”, but warned Europe’s Muslim population will treble in the next 17 years. It reported “a severe deficit of trust is found between the Western and Muslim communities”, with most people wanting less interaction with the Muslim world. Who can blame them?

Let's think about that trebling of the number of Muslims in Europe to 15% in the next 17 years. I reckon that means we will have around 50 MILLION Muslims in the EU. Mmm - that's like Spain and Portugal being 100% Muslim. Can you imagine the pressure those burgeoning numbers will have on the already craven political class? If you think they are dhimmis now, just imagine what they will be like in the future. The shadow of the Islamic crescent grows larger by the day over Europe and given that many young Muslims (the future) refuse to integrate into our societies , a massive problem is building up here. What will relieve the pressure?

Cross posted on A Tangled Web.

Say It Ain't So, al-Goracle!

Some would think that they'd fall into line, eh. But Canadian scientists - that is, real scientists, eh, have hosed one of the linchpins of al-Gore's 'global warming' junk science. Doing so at the site where al-Gore says there's irrefutable, on-the-ground evidence that Bushchimphitler 'global warming' wreaked havoc in 2005 makes it ever so sweet.

Physicist questions climate change finding
No evidence in Canadian skies to back U.S. theory of jet condensation trails, York U. professor says

PETER CALAMI
NEW ORLEANS – A York University professor has ignited a controversy by challenging a supposed prime example of man-made climate change – that jet condensation trails, know as contrails, act like clouds, cooling the Earth during the day and keeping it warmer at night.

Physicist William van Wijngaarden says he found no evidence to support this climate effect in Canadian temperature records for the contrail-free days immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

That contrasts with a 2002 study by U.S. researchers that concluded the temperature spread between day and night over the lower 48 states increased by 1.5C over long-term averages between Sept. 11 and 14 in 2001, when commercial air flights were mostly grounded over North America.

Those results initially reinforced theories that thin jet contrails may spread out over large areas for days, becoming invisible from the ground but still blocking infrared radiation, or heat.

Their absence would mean lower temperatures at night as more heat escaped the Earth. It could also mean higher daytime temperatures since the contrails weren't there to reduce the sun's rays.

This double whammy would increase the span between daytime highs and nighttime lows, called the diurnal temperature range.

Heralded as evidence from a "natural laboratory," the U.S. findings after 9/11 have been widely quoted as demonstrating short-term human impact on climate, since the birth of jet travel in the 1950s, as opposed to the longer buildup of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"There's been a lot of groupthink going on about this," Wijngaarden said in an interview in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society.

The York researcher said he decided to double-check the U.S. findings because the claimed temperature rise was so large, almost equal to the global average temperature increase from greenhouse warming.

"If it was that big, then I ought to have been able to see it in Canada," he said.

But when he examined the spread between day and night temperatures from 112 weather stations across Canada for Sept. 8 to 17 in 2001, there wasn't a spike during the no-fly period.

In Canada, commercial flights were grounded entirely for 48 hours after the terrorist attacks and were about a third of normal levels for the next 24 hours.

Yet the diurnal temperature range for September 2001 across Canada fell well within the long-term average from 1977 to 2005.

The absence of any contrail effect held true even for the 34 weather stations in Canada below the 50-degree latitude, where jet flights are normally most intense.

Instead, Wijngaarden found the temperature range at stations across southern Canada both increased and decreased in the contrail-free days after the post 9-11

"The American researchers need to look a bit harder at the original data," Wijngaarden said.

The lead researcher on the original U.S. study told the Star yesterday that the negative results from Canada don't necessarily undermine his group's findings.

"It's possible that Canada simply doesn't have a high enough density of jet traffic for contrails to make any difference," said David Travis, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater.

But Travis said he had not realized Pearson Airport has been ranked 20th busiest airport in the world measured by takeoffs and landings.

Wijngaarden travelled in person to New Orleans to explain his controversial findings at the largest gathering of meteorologists and climate experts in the world.

"If I wasn't here, people might say I was chickening out," he said.


Via thestar.com

al-Gore was busy in his office doing paperwork and was unavailable for comment.


Previously: Wait a minute, I thought the science was settled?

Also at A Tangled Web

Building Bridges Rather Than Driving Off Them: Fat Drunk From Taxachusetts Endorses Barry O

Just watch it, Barack. Between The Swimmer and the Clintons, there's a long trail of, um, accidents, so make sure the Secret Service is on full alert.

Two generations of Kennedys—the Democratic Party's best known political family—endorsed Barack Obama for president on Monday, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy calling him a "man with extraordinary gifts of leadership and character," a worthy heir to his assassinated brother.

"I feel change in the air. What about you?" Kennedy said in a speech salted with scarcely veiled criticism of Obama's chief rival for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as her husband, the former president.

Kennedy's endorsement was ardently sought by all three of the remaining presidential contenders, and he delivered it at a pivotal time in the race. A liberal lion in his fifth decade in the Senate, the Massachusetts senator is in a position to help Obama court Hispanic voters as well as rank-and-file members of labor unions, two key elements of the Democratic Party.

He is expected to campaign actively for Obama in the eight days leading up to next Tuesday's delegate-rich primaries and caucuses across 24 states, beginning later this week in Arizona, New Mexico and California.

The senator made his comments at a crowded campaign rally at American University that took on the appearances of a Kennedy family embrace of Obama.

He was introduced by Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late president, who said Obama "offers that same sense of hope and inspiration" as did her father. Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, son of the senator, also offered his support.

In is own remarks, Kennedy sought one by one to rebut many of the arguments leveled by Obama's critics.

"From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth," he said, an obvious reference to former President Clinton's statement that Obama's early anti-war stance was a "fairy tale."

"With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.

"With Barack Obama we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay," Kennedy said.

So the Democrats are going to stop pitting the race against race? Sure.

They'll stop playing the gender card? Sure.

They're stop using gays as mascots to bash people with? Sure.

Oh, that's just for Democrats?

You can bet every nickel you have Kennedy will just lie with impunity and misrepresent everything the GOP says.

And naturally, the media will let him get away with it.

It will be most curious to see the next card the increasingly desperate Clintons now play.

Next to the Kennedys, getting the endorsement of Janet Reno isn't exactly a big deal.

UPDATE: Suitably Flip and Gateway Pundit link. Thanks!

UPDATE II: You've got to be kidding me. Via Hot Air.

Michael Moore's Freedom Fighters Using Children as Human Bombs

Earlier this month we noted how the pathetic band of fanatics known as al Qaeda was reduced to using old ladies as homicide bombers.

Now these noble religious men ordained as freedom fighters by the porcine propagandist Michael Moore are using kids as young as 15 to carry out their murderous ways.

At this rate, even the leftwingers who sympathize with these scumbags might have to give second thought to why we're actually fighting the monsters.

BAGHDAD: Al-Qa'ida is using teenagers as suicide bombers in Iraq, a US military spokesman said yesterday, as an influential Sunni cleric urged the jihadists to stop "strapping bombs to children".

The comments came as Iraqi troops and tanks rolled into Mosul to boost forces for a huge offensive against al-Qa'ida after deadly bombings in the restive northern city in the past week killed dozens, among them a police chief.

Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said two suicide attacks in Iraq in the past week had been carried out by 15-year-olds.

"We are not sure whether one of these children even knew he was being used to deliver a bomb," the US military spokesman said.

One attack was carried out at a funeral ceremony near Tikrit, executed dictator Saddam Hussein's home town north of Baghdad, and the other was at a school in Mosul, Admiral Smith said.

He gave no details of the two bombings. Iraqi police said 17 people died in a January 21 suicide blast at the funeral near Tikrit for a relative of an Iraqi police colonel.

"Al-Qa'ida in Iraq is trying to brainwash children with hate and death ... they seek to create a culture of violence, hate and despair," Admiral Smith said.

Yeah, but are they using sleep deprivation techniques or, God forbid, putting panties on the heads of prisoners?

Of course not. They chop people's heads off instead.

"(They) are sending 15-year-old boys on suicide missions to spread death and helplessness."

Ninety per cent of "suicide murders inflicted on Iraqi people are committed by foreign fighters brought in by al-Qa'ida in Iraq to spread destruction," Admiral Smith said.

His comments came as moderate but influential Sunni leader Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarraie accused the al-Qa'ida-linked Islamic State of Iraq of committing the "worst crimes against our people".

"They have killed thousands of thinkers, dozens of scholars, tens of thousands of innocent people in horrifying ways," Sheik Samarraie said in a statement. The jihadists were "strapping bombs to children and sending them into gatherings and mourning ceremonies".

"They feel happy with these killings. They deceived young people to attach bombs to their bodies to explode themselves to go allegedly to paradise," he said, appealing to Islamic scholars around the world to declare such attacks as contrary to Sharia law.

Editors from The Lancet and The New York Times were unavailable for comment.

How Convenient: Demoted Figure in Spitzer Dirty Tricks Scandal Gets Mystery Promotion

We won't yet call this witness tampering, but it sure stinks to high heaven.

We will, however, call it business as usual with the ethically-challenged Spitzer administration.

TOP aides to Gov. Spitzer have secretly promoted a central figure in the Dirty Tricks Scandal who was demoted last summer after his involvement was revealed, The Post has learned.

The unannounced promotion of William Howard, Spitzer's former homeland-security advisor and liaison to the State Police, occurred this month, although Howard is expected to testify in connection with several scandal-related investigations.

The promotion, to acting chief of staff of the Homeland Security Office, was approved around the same time a top scandal investigator with ties to Spitzer was secretly granted a hefty pay raise after only a few months on the job.

"Howard's promotion is startling, because it looks like it is part of a pattern designed to influence the [scandal] investigation," said a Spitzer-administration source.

Howard was demoted from his $175,900-a-year post last July after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo confirmed The Post's disclosure that top Spitzer aides had used the State Police in a plot to damage Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, the governor's chief Republican opponent.

Howard's pay was cut to $155,000 a year, and he was transferred from the Governor's Office at the state Capitol to a secondary post at the Homeland Security Office.

He is expected to receive "a significant raise," a source added.

News of the promotion was all "the buzz" at a homeland-security forum held last week by the state's Business Council. His new title appeared on the list of speakers.

Howard could not be reached for comment.

Naturally. Though I'm sure he could easily be reached when Spitzer needs a favor.

With Democrats running the show in New York, expect them to simply try and milk the clock on this. If only some other media outlets outside of the New York Post would pay any attention (looking at you, NY Times), this might get somewhere.

His promotion comes just weeks after Herbert Teitelbaum, executive director of the Spitzer-controlled Public Integrity Commission, which is probing the scandal, was granted a $15,000-a-year raise and time to take a 21/2-week South American vacation after only a few months on the job.

Last October, Darren Dopp, a key scandal figure suspended in the wake of the Cuomo report, was hired at increased pay and, according to sources, with Spitzer's approval, by lobbyist Patricia Lynch.

A few weeks later, Teitelbaum's commission said Dopp, the governor's former communications director, may have committed perjury when he released what Spitzer claimed was a sworn statement about the scandal.

It must be great to have that D after your name.

French Bank Trainwreck

What a surprise! The French bank Societe General is now painting themselves as a victim in their own trading scandal.

French trader 'concealed deals'

The trader at the centre of an investigation into losses at Societe Generale has admitted to hiding deals, according to the Paris prosecutor.
Jerome Kerviel told police he concealed his actions to "appear like an exceptional trader and earn higher bonuses", the prosecutor said.

Last week, Societe Generale revealed a 4.9bn-euro ($7.1bn; £3.7bn) loss, which it blamed on Mr Kerviel.

Bank management puts it this way:

Speaking on French radio, Daniel Bouton, chief executive of Societe Generale, said: "This fraud has been committed by a great pretender, who has succeeded in navigating the many sophisticated control systems that we have, to permanently conceal what he was doing, while also going about his normal activities."

Let me be clear, this guy Kerviel deserves everything they can throw at him shy of the chair. But having said that, how do you hide deals this big for this long?

How could they have "many sophisticated control systems" and be taken like this?

Because their controls were deficient or nonexistent, that's why.

Here is how a good internal control is supposed to work. In my own professional investing activities, when I make a trade I keep my own log of my activities and give a trading ticket made up by myself to a third party who reports to somebody else, and who keeps track of all this and internally audits the results.

The original trade tickets and original account statements then go to this third party who reconciles everything and ensures that the trades were conducted per existing law and policy and as I logged in to begin with.

On a regular basis, we reconcile our two journals and the original statements to make sure everything matches. I also give the third party a heads up before each future trade so they know what is coming.

All of this is then regularly reviewed by an independent auditor who cross-examines me on any trades they feel like to ensure that I adhered to the rules. The auditor then reports to my Board of Directors on all investment activities.

So you have not only a watchman, but somebody watching the watchman.

The bottom line is, for me to ever trade against the rules, I would need to have a conspiracy with both the third party verifier and the independent auditor for it to not get caught but quick.

Not going to happen.

Getting back to the French scandal, my guess is some others at the bank had an idea what was going on, but looked the other way as long as they thought a profit was there.

Now that the stuff has hit the fan, nobody knows anything.

Hillary's Girlfriend Opting for Weiner?

According to Page Six, it appears to be the case.

HUMA Abedin, the traveling aide who is rarely out of Hillary Rodham Clinton's sight, has been seen with bachelor Rep. Anthony Weiner on the campaign trail. Shortly before Clinton arrived for a fund-raiser Thursday night at the Hiro club in the Meatpacking District, Abedin was spotted going into the Maritime Hotel around the corner with Weiner. If they were trying to keep their affair a secret, you'd think they'd find someplace where political reporters wouldn't be walking by.

H/T: Glenn Reynolds.

Previously.

BDS on Steroids: Brattleboro Boobs to Vote on Arresting Bush and Cheney, Requisite Hitler Analogy Added for Good Measure

Kurt Daims, evidence that liberalism indeed is a mental disorder

We mentioned these crackpots last month, and apparently the public ridicule has done nothing to dissuade them from their futile mission.

It's sad to watch hatred consume people to such an extent, but considering the closet case Che Guevara wannabes we're dealing with, we'll eschew sympathy in lieu of some light snickering.

Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning.

According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy, organizers of the Bush-Cheney issue gathered enough signatures, and it was up to the Select Board whether Brattleboro voters would consider the issue in March.

Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4.

Kurt Daims, 54, of Brattleboro, the organizer of the petition drive, said Friday the debate to get the issue on the ballot was a good one. Opposition to the vote focused on whether the town had any power to endorse the matter.

"It is an advisory thing," said Daims, a retired prototype machinist and stay-at-home dad of three daughters.

So far, Vermont is the only state Bush hasn't visited since he became president in 2001.

Daims said the most grievous crime committed by Bush and Cheney was perjury — lying to Congress and U.S. citizens about the basis of a war in Iraq.

He said the latest count showed a total of 600,000 people have died in the war.

Daims apparently hasn't gotten the memo on George Soros Lancet study long ago having been discredited.

Guess he's not reading the right blogs.

Anyway, Daims continued on his psychotic rant and naturally drew the tired comparison to Hitler.

Daims had no compunction in comparing Bush and Cheney with one of the most notorious people in history.

"If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes," Daims said.

Dude's got to freshen up his material.

Pantsuit: Bill's Been a Racist Asshole Because He's Tired

Gag alert. She claims he also has been behaving like the boor we've always known him to be because he loves her.

Right.

Hillary Clinton admitted Sunday her husband Bill's hard-charging campaign tactics had gone overboard, but chalked the ex-president's fiery broadsides up to love and a chronic lack of sleep.

A day after rival Barack Obama trounced her in the South Carolina primary, the former first lady also mounted a vigorous defense of the two Clinton White House terms, which Obama has said did not spark transformational change.

Clinton was asked on CBS television's "Face the Nation" whether her husband was "out of control" after he took the Illinois senator, and the media to task, during a foul-tempered week-long campaign.

"You know, my husband has such a great commitment to me and to my campaign," the New York senator said.

"He loves me just like, you know, husbands and wives get out there and work on each others' behalf."

She blamed the tensions of the tight battle for the party's presidential nomination

"Maybe he got a little carried away. You know, that comes with a hard-fought election," she said.

"It also comes with sleep deprivation which, you know, I think is marking all of us, our families, our supporters," said Clinton, who herself is running low on sleep, as she jets back-and-forth across the country.

You know, she says you know way too often.

Here's something I do know. These two vile lowlifes have been a blot on our nation's existence for far too long, and now the left is even realizing this.

You know, it would be nice if this hag was sent packing Super Tuesday.

NYT Public Editor: We're Totally Inept, But Stand By Our Stories Slandering the Troops

The New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, is in the unenviable position of trying to defend the outrageous series of stories, which continue today, that portray our troops as bloodthirsty, psychopathic killers.

Naturally, he takes a swipe at the New York Post (Ralph Peters demolished the original story here) and conservative bloggers who shredded the initial story for its outrageous portrayal of troops who've been charged with crimes since returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The original piece was immediately taken apart and unwittingly showed those who served in the military were five times less likely to commit felonies than the average citizen.

Now Hoyt continues to compound the error today.

Stories That Speak for Themselves

But The Times made some missteps at the beginning of the series, and critics have pounced, accusing it of demonizing veterans and exaggerating the problem even as some mental health professionals have thanked the newspaper.

Well, Clark, the critics pounced because the story was blatantly misleading.

How difficult is that to understand. If there weren't any missteps, like you say, maybe nobody would have pounced.

Are you really that dense?

The Times was immediately accused — in The New York Post and the conservative blogosphere, and by hundreds of messages to the public editor — of portraying all veterans as unstable killers. It did not.

Really? Then why was there such outrage across the board? He gives it away in the very next sentence.

But, the first article used colorfully inflated language — “trail of death” — for a trend it could not reliably quantify, despite an attempt at statistical analysis using squishy numbers.

So in one breath, Hoyt claims they were not trying to portray the troops as killers, then admits to using colorfully inflated language with squishy numbers.

What else is one to convey from this? That it was a fair and honest portrayal using statistically valid methodology?

Of course not. It was what it was, a vile hit piece beyond the realm of responsible journalism.

Finally, while many of the 121 cases found by The Times appeared clearly linked to wartime stresses, others seemed questionable. One involved a Navy Seabee accused of arranging her ex-husband’s murder during a bitter child custody battle, and another involved a soldier who was acquitted of reckless homicide in a car crash after a jury concluded that his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit and that many other accidents had happened on the same stretch of road.

So other seemed questionable? This begs the question: Where were the editors to vet this story? Apparently, they couldn't be bothered to read the story in advance.

Unreal.

Purdy urged me not to get lost in the numbers as I looked at the first two articles. I agree with that, but I believe The Times tangled itself in numbers right at the start. Bill Keller, the executive editor, said the newsroom’s computer-assisted reporting unit normally screens articles with statistical analyses. Some of the problems might have been avoided if someone in the unit had read the first article before it was published. But Terry Schwadron, the editor who oversees the unit, which created a database for the 121 cases, said that did not happen. “I read the story in the paper, and I shared some concerns” with Purdy, he said.

At the least, Terry Schwadron should be dismissed from his job.

As for Keller, he long ago forfeited any credibility and if the New York Times Board of Directors is content seeing the paper hemorrhage money and readers and still keeps him on, that's their problem.

In the end, Hoyt is reduced to a mealy-mouthed defense.

But the questionable statistics muddy the message. A handful of killings caused by the stresses of war would be too many and cause for action. Sometimes, trying to turn such stories into data — with implications of statistical proof and that old journalistic convention, the trend — harms rather than helps.

Yes, Clark, and that's why today the New York Times has so little credibility.

You folks would be better off scrapping this insulting series now.

Sadly, the two hacks with their bylines on this slander will probably wind up with Pulitzer Prizes.

Nice Outfit

They're going to love this fellow in the can.

Allentown police had suspected William Torres of dealing drugs in the city. But an undercover narcotics investigation yielded much more, and resulted in Torres, 21, being charged early Saturday with two counts of homicide.

Police said Torres, whose last known address was 436 Turner St., Allentown, gunned down two men at Fourth and Allen streets last month. According to court documents, Torres admitted killing the men.

Torres was driving on Turner Street Friday afternoon when he was pulled over by police and arrested. He was wearing a hooded sweartshirt with a skull-head pattern on it, pajama bottoms and fuzzy lion-faced slippers at the time. He was still wearing the get-up when he was arraigned after midnight at Lehigh County prison.

Bahrain Labour Minister: Gulf Arabs are Lazy

Surely, the locals will muster up the energy to seethe and whine when they read about this. Granted, he probably just doesn't want so many many people from the Asian sub-continent living in his country, but he does make a good point.

Bahrain labour minister warns of 'Asian tsunami'

DUBAI (AFP) - A Bahraini minister has warned of an "Asian tsunami" because of the reliance of "lazy" Gulf Arabs on foreign labour to carry out even the simplest tasks, in an interview published on Sunday.

Labour Minister Majid al-Alawi told Asharq Al-Awsat that the presence of almost 17 million foreign workers in the Gulf, mostly from the Asian sub-continent, represented "a danger worse than the atomic bomb or an Israeli attack".

"I am not exaggerating that the number will reach almost 30 million in ten years from now," he told the pan-Arab daily.

Alawi has called for the residency of foreign workers in the oil-rich Gulf states to be limited to six years but the leadership of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council has not followed up on the proposal.

"The commercial lobby in the Gulf thwarted the project which was in the final phases before being implemented," he said.

Alawi said that Gulf nationals were "lazy" and "spoilt", relying on imported labour for the simplest of tasks.

"A lord with billions in Great Britain cleans his own car on a Sunday morning, whereas people of the Gulf look for someone to hand them a glass of water from just a couple of metres away," he said.

"If the Gulf governments do not watch out for this tsunami of foreign labourers, the fate of this region is very worrying," he said.

Al Alwai had previously lived in exile in London. He may again be exiled after this.

How unenthusiastic are Republican voters this year?

Based on the early turnouts Republican voters are not too happy with the choices they have. The totals for the four states for which there is data shows the Democrats doing a much better job at getting the vote out. The states I used to gather this data are IA, NH, MI, and SC.

There were no totals for NE, the IA results are estimates and only the Republicans have had a primary in WY so I didn't include WY in the totals. Total number of voters.

Democrats - 955,493
Republicans - 689,500

It will be interesting to keep an eye on the turnout for both parties. No doubt the Democrats will continue to get big turnouts. Nothing like the little race/gender war that they have ginned up to get out the voters.

And if I hear one more person say they voted for XYZ because of charisma, looks, or good speaking I am absolutely going to puke. For some reason I don't think those are the qualities our enemies are looking for.

They are looking for who is the biggest fool they can pull the wool over the eyes of or who is going to be most willing to surrender to their demands. The Islamic extremists want the person most afraid of confrontation.

For the folks that didn't see my post yesterday about a new face in the Republican race click here to learn about Jerry Curry, somebody who needs to get his message and his face out there fast.

Miss America 2008

Forget South Carolina and the Democrat primary. For my money, the big contest last night was out in Las Vegas, where a much better looking assemblage of talent was on display.

The lovely and talented Miss Michigan, 19-year-old Kirsten Haglund, has been crowned Miss America for 2008.

Miss Michigan Kirsten Haglund, a 19-year-old aspiring Broadway star, was crowned Miss America 2008 on Saturday in a live show billed as the unveiling of the 87-year-old pageant's new, hipper look.

Haglund, of Farmington Hills, Mich., sang "Over the Rainbow" and walked a crowd-pleasing strut in a black and gold bikini to clinch the title. She beat Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash, the first runner up, and Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto, the second runner up for the $50,000 scholarship and year of travel that comes with the crown.

Haglund, who studies music at the University of Cincinnati, grew up in a pageant family. Her mother is an active volunteer, and her grandmother Iora Hunt, competed for the crown as Miss Michigan 1944. Hunt joined Haglund at a news conference.

"The only words that come to my mind is that this is a dream come true, not just for me but for my family as well," Haglund said. "I'm not just standing up here alone."

Haglund, a cheery, classic blond, wore a revealing silver sequined dress and black bikini during the evening gown and swimsuit portions of the pageant. As her platform issue, she promised to advocate for awareness of eating disorders, an illness from which she has recovered.

Here she is with more clothing on.


While I won't quibble with the ultimate selection, I'd been hoping Miss Utah won, but it was not to be.

Usually tame by modern TV standards, the swimwear competition kicked it up a notch. Most contestants wore black bikinis, and some struck provocative poses and twirled as the audience howled. Contestants also wore blue jeans and added a bit of humor to the traditional opening number, the parade of states.

Haglund's moves won howls from the audience. "I think for the audience, the swimwear and evening wear was much more entertaining, am I right?" Haglund said when asked about the show's new look.

The changes included a chance for "Reality Check" viewers to text message votes for their favorite contestant. Miss Utah, Jill Stevens, an Army medic who served in Afghanistan, was named "America's Choice."

Stevens did not make to the final 10, but she took the disappointment with pluck. She dropped and gave the audience push ups before joining the other losers on a riser on the side.

Miss Wisconsin Christina Thompson, left, and Miss Utah Jill Stevens do push-ups after Stevens was eliminated from the finalists during the Miss America Pageant at the Planet Hollywood hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Finally, one last look at Miss Haglund.




UPDATE: Instapundit links. Thanks!

DOCTORS TO STOP TREATING THE SICK!

Isn't is somewhat surreal to read that British doctors would like to stop having to treat the elderly and the unhealthy? Or is it?

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the national health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone. They are right - unlimited free health care is a contradiction in terms. Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state. Again, I fully agree with this.

However where I profoundly disagree with these doctors is that they are trying to decide who will and who will not receive treatments. Where did they get THAT power, exactly? If the obese, the smokers, the elderly etc want to get treatments that may prolong and improve their lives, they must have that right. But they must also PAY for it. And this is my fundamental point - socialised medicine is such a very bad idea.

People should take responsibility for their own health and making the necessary FINANCIAL provision. For decades, Britons have been told that the State will provide them with all their medical needs. That was a lie then, it's a bigger lie now. But we have generations of people who think that the National Health Service will provide them with all that they need. The truth is that it cannot, it will not, and they are being led a merry dance by successive British governments. Telling the electorate that they will have to be financially responsible for their own health is not good for ones political health but no one will say it. But it's still the truth.

Socialised medicine, that proposed by Hillary Clinton, does not work. It is worse than that though because it relentlessly drives down medical standards, it provides the worst of all worlds, and means that we end up with doctors deciding that they will not treat the sick and needy.

Cross posted on A Tangled Web

Never Again

Holocaust should not be forgotten - Czech president
Prague- The extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime should not be forgotten and should remain an everlasting memento, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said today at a meeting in the Czech Senate commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Today it may be more necessary to recall the crimes against humanity committed against the Jewish population than decades ago because of the efforts to re-write the past and use its false picture for political purposes, Klaus said.

"We do not do this only for historical piety, but also for our future. We do this to prevent similar monstrous crimes against humanity from ever repeating," he said.

"The genocide of European Jews must not be forgotten and must remain an everlasting memento. This memento will remind us of the evil that people are capable to commit against each other. It should be a memento that will strengthen our belief in the fundamental importance of human freedom because it is the only guarantee that similar tragic events will never repeat," Klaus said.

The Holocaust, an international word that is not quite understandable in the Czech language, is used by Czechs to describe "may be the most awful and shameful crime in human history," Klaus said.

"However, I fear whether this one foreign word could complicate our possibility to sufficiently realise and feel the whole depth of monstrosity of what had happened then, the monstrosity of the extermination of European Jews by the German Nazi regime," Klaus said.

The modern time and its problems make the historical experience from the Holocaust distant for new generations, he said.

"We have experience with the efforts to re-write the past, replace the committers and victims, compare their sufferings and politically abuse a false picture of the past thus created," Klaus said.

"That is why it is necessary to point to the importance to commemorate the Holocaust victims today, may be even more than in the past," Klaus said.

He appreciated that not only Jewish organisations commemorate the Holocaust victims.

Klaus pointed to the significance of the passing of a law by the Czech parliament five years ago that made Holocaust Remembrance Day a memorial day in the Czech Republic.

This day became an opportunity for all to remember the common lesson from the tragedy of the Nazi "Final Solution of the Jewish Question," Klaus said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust in the World War Two, is celebrated on January 27, the day of the liberation of the Osvetim (Auschwitz) Nazi extermination camp.

In the Czech Republic, like in most European Union member states, it has been marked since 2004.

"The day reminds us that evil should be destructed on the start and that the roots of extremism do not lie in any concrete ideology, concrete religion or concrete national community," Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek (senior governing Civic Democrats, ODS) today said in a statement CTK received.

The special session in the Senate today was attended by Senate chairman Premysl Sobotka (ODS), Chamber of Deputies chairman Miloslav Vlcek (senior opposition Social Democrats, CSSD) and other guests.

Sobotka said that it was necessary to constantly mobilise all decent people for the opposition against evil and warned against the "underestimation of new dark risks."

Karel Holomek, chairman of the Association of Moravian Romanies, said that the fates of Jews and Romanies were similar during the Holocaust.

"This shows that the monstrosity of racist theories and their implementation should never be forgotten," he said.

Via ČeskéNoviny.cz/ČTK

Video courtesy of jluis333

The Wannsee Conference took place on October 20, 1942 in the Berlin suburb of Wannssee. In the HBO film, Conspiracy, Kevin Branagh portrays SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, architect of The Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Stanley Tucci portrayed Heydrich's able assistant, SS Colonel Adolph Eichmann; and Colin Firth presented a chilling performance as Dr. Wilhelm Stukart, representing the Reich Ministry of Justice. In this clip, Stukart gives an impassioned defense of the Nuremberg Laws and well he should -- he was the principal author.


The Reality of the Jew
Conspiracy | HBO Films
Video courtesy of HenryvKeiper

Life Imitates Art: Dopey Kids Edition

Some kids are really stupid.

CHESTERTON, Ind. — Two fourth-grade boys mimicking a scene from the movie "A Christmas Story" wound up with their tongues stuck to a frozen flagpole.

Gavin Dempsey and James Alexander were serving on flag duty at Jackson Elementary School Friday morning, with the job of raising and lowering the school's flags. They decided to see if their tongues really would stick to the cold metal.

"I decided to try it because I thought all of the TV shows were lies, but turns out I was wrong," Gavin said.

Karen Alexander, James' mother, said her son told her he got the idea from the movie, which is based on stories about a boy growing up in the northwest Indiana community of Hammond in the 1940s.

"I can't believe he did it, but they learned their lesson," she said.

Munchies Sold Separately

Well, you still need a prescription.

Los Angeles, CA -- Ironically...pot dispensing vending machines have been approved in California.

Starting Monday, patients can buy legal medical marijuana at a Los Angeles herbal nutrition center.

All they have to do is pass through security, submit their scripts, pay, and pick-up their drugs.

Store employees say it is a safe, fast way to process prescriptions.

Geoff Dulebohn, Herbal Nutrition Center: "They'll slide card in, and they'll fingerprint in to verify that it's them. A camera takes a picture of them, verifying that they're actually at the machine."

Why don't they just make it easier and use couriers?

Good News: Spy Satellite Could Hit the Earth

Where it lands, nobody knows.

A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials said Saturday.

The satellite, which no longer be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret.

Well, it was secret.

It may well be harmless, but who knows.

Maybe with the 24/7 news coverage we now get, we could have real hysteria like back in 1979 when Skylab came tumbling down then fell harmlessly into the Indian Ocean.

Hot Air links. Thanks!

UPDATE: As noted here and in the comments, parts of Skylab hit did hit Australia.

It's a Shame He Lived So Long

A real wart on the face of mankind has passed away.

Good riddance.

George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), died on Saturday in Amman at the age of 81, an official Jordanian source told AFP.

Habash stepped down as head of the Damascus-based PFLP in July 2000 after having led the faction which is a key component of the Palestine Liberation Organisation for more than 30 years.

He had been living in Jordan, the homeland of his wife, after an illness forced his retirement from political life.

The PFLP under Habash had hijacked airliners to Jordan and he called for the overthrow of Jordan's monarchy in 1970 before the Black September clashes in which the Jordanian army expelled the PLO from the kingdom.

More on this piece of garbage here.

* Habash was a Marxist guerrilla leader who was called a terrorist by Israel and hailed by Palestinians as a patriot.

* He stepped down as leader of the group in 2000, handing over to Abu Ali Mustafa, who was killed by Israel in 2001 during a Palestinian uprising.

* In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the PFLP carried out airline hijackings and kidnappings to highlight the Palestinian struggle. In September 1970, the PFLP hijacked and destroyed three Western airliners simultaneously, leading Jordan's King Hussein to crack down on the guerrillas.

* Habash -- often called The Doctor out of respect -- and other leaders of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), then moved to Beirut where he lived until Israel's 1982 invasion to root out the Palestinians. He then moved to Syria.

Sadly, he didn't suffer long.

"He had a severe heart attack and he died instantly," said Leila Khaled, a member of the Palestine National Council and a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Habash founded.

Khaled spoke by telephone from Jordan Hospital in Amman, where she said Habash died at 8:15 p.m. Saturday.

The miscreant will be honored with three days of mourning.

(IsraelNN.com) PFLP founder George Habash died at age 83 in his home in Amman. His terror gang massacred dozens of Israeli adults, children and babies, assassinated Minister Ze'evi and plotted to kill Rabbi Ovadya Yosef.

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced three days of mourning following the death of George Habash, the founder of terror gang PFLP. All PLO flags will be at half mast and there will be an official "house of mourning" in Abba's Ramallah office.

More here on his history of terror, with more at this Wikipedia page.

Former Guests at Club Gitmo Want Cash and an Apology

These guys should probably hold out until President Rodham is sworn in. She'll probably invite them over to the White House for coffee.

A group of Sudanese released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay demanded cash payouts and an apology from the United States on Saturday, for mental and physical torture suffered during years spent in jail there.

"We have asked for compensation and an apology," aid worker Adil Hassan Hamad told a conference in Khartoum, which was organized by local rights groups to demand the release of seven Sudanese still held at Guantanamo Bay.

Hamad, freed just over one month ago, wore orange overalls like those worn by detainees in the U.S. prison camp. He was working with refugees when arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to Afghanistan and then the U.S. camp in Cuba.

Nice of Reuters to simply regurgitate his claims. Nothing like investigative journalism.

He said his U.S. lawyer would seek compensation in the U.S. courts. One of Hamad's daughters died during his detention because his wife could not afford medical treatment. Two other inmates were also seeking compensation, he said.

Washington has designated Guantanamo prisoners, who were mainly seized in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, as "enemy combatants" and denied them prisoner-of-war status that would guarantee them certain rights under international law.

Many attending the Khartoum conference broke down in tears when addressed by the wife of al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj, the most high-profile of the around 300 detainees still in the prison on the Caribbean island.

He has been on hunger strike for 400 days but is force fed twice a day in a manner his lawyer told the conference was tantamount to torture.

OK, so now feeding someone is torture?

Sure.

His wife Aygol Ismailova, who is from Azerbaijan, wept as she told the gathering how Hajj has been urinating blood and was suffering from other health problems.

"His son Mohamed always asks me: 'Where is my father, who took him? What is prison? What do they do there?' And I don't know how to answer him," Ismailova told Reuters.

Maybe you can tell little Mohamed his father is a terrorist posing as a journalist. That would be a start.

"Do people know that I have no way to contact my husband other than letters that reach him late and are censored? For more than six years I've not heard his voice, not seen him," she said. "This is torture."

The tales of woe continue. Shockingly, other means of torture include making someone stand up for a period of time.

Oh, the humanity.

Hamad and another former Guantanamo detainee set up mock prison cells to show those attending the conference the cramped conditions in which they were held.

"Often they'd leave prisoners tied up in very, very cold rooms and refuse to allow them to go to the bathroom so they'd wet themselves."

"I was beaten, made to stand for long periods of time, deprived of sleep for three nights," Hamad said of his treatment by the U.S. army in Afghanistan before he was moved to Cuba.

Of course, he has no evidence of such claims, but why should that deter Reuters from reporting this as fact?

No doubt the left will lap up this nonsense as well.

Happy Anniversary, Slick

Ten years ago today.

Good Lord, we're still saddled with this moron.

Tomorrow we mark the tenth anniversary of another fantastic lie.



UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has a nostalgic look back.

Celebrity Nitwit: I'm in Love With Obama

Isn't this cute, a Hollywood actress falls in love with Barry O.

How special.

NEW YORK - Scarlett Johansson returned from the Persian Gulf with a whole lot of soldiers' trinkets and a delusion of her own engagement — to Barack Obama.

"I am engaged ... to Barack Obama," Johansson joked in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. "My heart belongs to Barack, and that is who I am currently, finally, engaged to. Yes."

Huh?

Johansson, who showed her support for the Democratic presidential candidate at the Iowa caucus earlier this month, was really just deflecting a question about rumors she might be engaged (to actor-beau Ryan Reynolds).

The 23-year-old actress talked about the warm welcome she received while visiting troops stationed in the Persian Gulf last week. Johansson dropped by U.S. bases in Kuwait on Jan. 17 and Jan. 18 as part of a USO tour in which she met about 3,500 men and women in uniform.

"Everybody that I met there was so incredibly friendly and polite and genuine and generous," she said. "They were so, so sweet. I mean, I was just amazed."

Yes, I'm sure they were impressed by your, um, acting skills. Yeah, that's it.

Is this the saviour of the Republican party?

That man is Jerry Curry. He just announced his bid for president in Oklahoma and I saw him interviewed on Fox and Friends this morning. He is a retired general and claims to be the conservative answer Republicans are looking for. Is this the candidate we have been looking for? Check out this 6 1/2 minute video that appears to be a tv interview, unfortunately I don't when this was done.

He wasted no time firing some shots across the bow of the Democrat front runners either.

He said owing to Clinton's "cowardly act" of calling Gen. David Petraeus a liar without having a private conversation with him is why she is not fit to hold the presidency.
"I believe she can never successfully fulfill the duties of Commander-in-Chief," Curry said. "Not because she is a woman. I support women in leadership. Rather because of her example in dealing with our military."
Curry said Obama may be a good president 10 years from now, but in the mean time he would have to use the office of president as a training ground.
"It would be like trying to fly a plane while reading the instruction manual," Curry said.

He actually started campaigning back on Jan 9th.
Here is his official web site CurryForAmerica.com

At Play In The Fields Of al-Gore

New green taxes for 'gas-guzzling' cars
Motorists face having to pay new green taxes as ministers step up their war on "gas-guzzling" cars.

The Government wants to get people out of high-emissions vehicles by making them more expensive, while also cutting the cost of driving for more environmentally-friendly options.

Two recently published reports commissioned by the Department for Transport examine the impact of raising the cost of buying the most polluting cars, and of increasing running costs by raising road tax or fuel prices.

Let's be honest. The increase in running costs will come about by raising the road tax and fuel prices.

Labour's plans, although not as advanced, echo those announced by the Tories last year. David Cameron's advisors drafted a series of "green supertaxes" which would add as much as £3,000 (US$5,940.89) in tax to the showroom price of bigger cars.

The first detailed report, by Cambridge Econometrics, sought to identify policies that "might be used to reduce CO2 emissions from road transport."

It said its findings confirmed "the prior beliefs of the DfT", that people buying cars in the middle tax bands were most likely to be affected by small changes in both purchase price and running costs.

A £3,000 'green supertax' would be a small change in the purchase price. rofl

According to the report, these drivers are most likely to choose more environmentally friendly cars next time they go into the showroom.

This was reinforced by a second study, by the Economics for the Environment Consultancy, which examined what would happen if only 1 per cent was added to the showroom price of new cars.

The economists found the biggest impact on carbon dioxide emissions came when prices were hiked up for cars in the middle of the market, between 141 grams CO2 per kilometre and 225.

In this range - encompassing a Ford Fiesta 1.4 to a Ford Focus 2.5 - the change in price would see large numbers of motorists buying greener cars.

The DfT said the studies were "routine research" without any policy recommendations.

But the willingness of the DfT to commission them is significant, given that Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, has ordered his own report on how motorists can be encouraged to chose greener cars.

That study, from Professor Julia King, vice-chancellor of Aston University, is due to be presented before the next budget.

Last night the Tories welcomed the Government's readiness to adopt green motoring taxes.

[...]

But the AA voiced alarm at the prospect of yet more motoring taxes.

"National and local government are coming up with yet more schemes which are financially punitive for car owners and their families," said a spokesman.

[...]

Read it all at The Telegraph

The American Left salivates.

Egypt's New Citizens?

Gazans Breach Egyptian Border Again
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas-backed militants driving bulldozers knocked down more fortifications Friday along the Gaza-Egypt border - a brazen challenge to Egyptian riot police, who abandoned their positions after attempting to reseal the frontier using human chains, dogs and water cannons.

Militants in black clothing, some of them masked, stood atop a bulldozer as it knocked down concrete slabs under the watchful eyes of Hamas security officials, who turned a blind eye and were later seen patrolling on the Egyptian side of the border.

Thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, pushing through several openings as Egyptian troops retreated to their bases on the other side of the border. Palestinians positioned cranes next to the border and lifted crates of supplies into Gaza, including camels and cows.

Hamas, after blasting open the border wall earlier in the week, offered further proof Friday that it simply cannot be ignored - driving home in no uncertain terms that a high price will be paid by anyone who seeks to shape Gaza's border arrangements without the militants' consent.

The day's events also underscored a great dilemma faced by Egypt: if it acts forcefully against the Gazans, it could anger its own people, who are sympathetic to the Palestinians' plight. But if it does nothing, it risks infiltration by Islamic militants.

Earlier Friday, Hamas gunmen fanned out along the Gaza side of the border, attempting to create order. For the first time since the border wall was torn down in a series of blasts on Wednesday, Gaza's Hamas rulers deployed their most elite forces to contain the rowdy crowd.

Hamas is clearly seeking to flex its muscles ahead of a potential new border agreement with Egypt that the militants hope will help end a 2-year-old blockade imposed by Israel and the West.

The group called for a three-way meeting among Hamas, Egypt and the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas to try to come up with a new border arrangement for Gaza.

"If the leadership in Ramallah refuses this call, we will not stand idle until the siege overruns life in Gaza," Hamas said in a statement.

The border breach provided a significant popularity boost to Hamas, which can claim it successfully broke through the closure that has deprived the coastal strip of normal trade and commerce.

[...]

Read it all at AP News/MyWay

Certain people in the State Department are trying to make sense of it all.

At least they have their priorities right.

Previously: Israel to Egypt: Take Gaza, It's Yours and Border Crisis Deepens

Oh no - it's the end of the world. Quick, start building a raft. Or a rocket.

According to world-renowned climate scientist the Rev Al Gore global warming is..... MUCH WORSE than we feared!

Yes, according to Dr Gore Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change. Recent evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us.There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five year."


You have to admire his brass neck, don't you? All those elementary mistakes in his comedy hit movie "An Implausible Truth" and yet he keeps spewing out more garbage.


Hey Al, if global climate change is causing the Arctic Ice to melt, how come that winter sea ice around Antarctica has set a record maximum? Isn't it GLOBAL warming we have????

The environmentalist extremists, led by Rev Gore, realise that the more grim their predictions, the better the headlines from a sympathetic MSM. That's why Gore and his followers will continue to exaggerate, to inflate, to deny the reality that the current spell of global warming stopped in 1998.

Massive Blaze at Vegas Hotel

This does not look good.

LAS VEGAS -- A three-alarm fire has broken out on the roof of the Monte Carlo hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Flames and plumes of black smoke could be seen on what appeared to a west-facing rooftop of the resort.

Las Vegas fire spokesman Tim Szymanski says city and county firefighters were on the scene. The fire was reported just before 11 a.m.

Watch live video here and here.

It appears contained to the top five stories and started on the roof.

UPDATE 4:35: Thankfully, it now appears under control and best of all, no injuries reported.

Rezko Photographed With Notorious Criminals

Naturally, the smartest woman in the world has no recollection.

"Today" show host Matt Lauer asked presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Friday if she has a connection to indicted developer Tony Rezko after flashing an undated photo of the two posing with President Bill Clinton.

"You were attacking Senator Obama, in particular, his work connected to what was a so-called a slumlord in Chicago, a guy named Tony Rezko," Lauer said. "You can't see what I'm going put up on the screen ... but it is a picture of you and your husband Bill Clinton posing with that same man."

Lauer said he they were unable to verify when the photo was taken, but it most likely happened during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Clinton said she did not remember taking the picture and said she doesn't even remember meeting Rezko.

"I've probably taken hundreds of thousands of pictures," Clinton said. "I don't know the man, I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door, I don't have a 17-year-relationship with him."

Since her lips were moving, we can only conclude she's lying.

Do we really want to trust the presidency with someone who has selective amnesia?

By the way, in case anyone hasn't checked, here's a list of political contributions Rezko and his family have made since 1991.

He gave plenty to Barack Obama, but also to many others, both Republicans and Democrats, including George W. Bush, Barbara Boxer (former Clinton in-law), Jesse Jackson, Jr., John Kerry, Al Gore, Dick Durbin, the RNC, and the DNC.

I find it most amusing how this pathological liar would even bring up suspicious contributors considering how one of her biggest donors recently pled guilty and is in prison.

Does this man look familiar? Will anyone even ask her about it?

Dummy Up and Count Your Cash, Bill

Bill Gates needs to find a nice rubber room, eat some tapioca pudding with a plastic spoon, and be put on medication. Get a load of this loony stuff from Bill:

Gates calls for creative capitalism

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates called on Thursday for a new "creative capitalism" to help the world's 1 billion poorest who live on less than $1 a day.

Gates, one of the world's richest men, said he was not dumping the basic tenets of capitalism but argued market forces must be better used to address the needs of those left behind by advances in technology and healthcare.

"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," he told the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. "I like to call this idea creative capitalism."

At first glance, I thought this was a put-on. Then I realized he was serious. Hey Bill, jam your "left behind" crapola. Please show me anybody who has not been positively affected by advances in technology and healthcare.

Capitalism improves the standard of living in the economy, poor as well as rich. Take a good look at the standard of living in your average communist country like Zimbabwe or Cuba and tell me how that works out for you. The best thing you can do for the "poor" is have clear capitalism, get out of their way and watch them succeed. Back to the article.

Greater focus on recognition for improving the lives of others could provide a spur for companies to focus more on making money out of providing valuable products at affordable prices to the world's poor.

He urged multinationals to pledge the services of their top people to the work.

"This kind of contribution is even more powerful than giving cash or offering employees time off to volunteer. It is a focused use of what your company does best," he said.

Some comments:

1. Most of that "poor" live in communist/socialist countries, Bill. How dare you blame capitalism for their problems.

2. The comment about providing affordable prices is laughable coming from Gates. When companies like WalMart provide valuable services/products at low prices to the poor, they get attacked by the moonbats and Gates, who says nothing to defend them.

3. Having top people pledge services to this end is the same as pledging cash or volunteering, Bill. The goal of capitalism is to maximize the value for your shareholders--all your shareholders. Most stock is held by the working class through their pension funds, not the "wealthy," and you know it Bill. You are not being intellectually honest here.

These comments by Gates is pure unadulterated left-wing gibberish by someone wanting to be loved by the media.

Another One Bites The Dust

Italian Premier Resigns After Vote Loss
Italian Premier Romano Prodi resigned Thursday after his center-left coalition lost a Senate confidence vote, a humiliating end to a 20-month-old government plagued by infighting.

Calling early elections or asking a politician to try to form another government are among President Giorgio Napolitano's options as head of state. Until he decides, Prodi will stay on in a caretaker role.

Elected in April 2006, Prodi has had a shaky government from nearly the start. It lurched toward collapse this week after a small Christian Democrat party, whose votes were vital to his Senate majority, yanked its support in the latest coalition spat.

Prodi, a 68-year-old former economics professor, went into the vote with the numbers stacked against him after a few additional senators in his coalition parties said they would cast "no" votes.

The government lost 161-156 after a fiery debate during which one senator was spat upon, fainted and had to be carried out on a stretcher.

[...]

Although decades of revolving-door politics has produced 61 governments since World War II, Italy's political climate had stabilized in recent years, with Berlusconi's government lasting for a full five-year term starting in 2001.

[...]

Read it all at The AP/MyWay

Previously: Well, they're they go again

Bollywood Fatwa

We've stumbled upon the Muslim secret plan for world domination.

We'll all die laughing at them.

Seriously, these cats are so off the hook, they're now whipping out fatwas against people who--get this--have wax statues of themselves.

A Bollywood actor has had a fatwa issued against him for allowing Madame Tussaud's in London to make his image in wax.

Salman Khan, star of more than 50 movies, unveiled the statue himself last week and described it as an honour.

Most Indians would agree, but Mufti Salim Ahmad Qasmi, a Muslim cleric in India, said the statue is illegal according to the Sharia, which forbids depictions of all living creatures, Mohammed in particular.

This psycho apparently isn't being taken too seriously.

Film critic Parsa Rao feels Khan doesn't have much to worry about.

"This is just nonsense that no one pays any attention to," he said yesterday.

"These fatwas are becoming a joke."

Manbearpig: Climate change 'significantly worse' than feared

Of course, this bloated oaf needs to make sure he uses the term climate change, especially when most of the country is in the dead of winter, with subzero weather across the nation.

Really though, is anyone outside the fawning press taking him seriously any more?

Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday.

Recent evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us," climate campaigner and former US vice-president Gore said.

There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five years, he told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Naturally, the story doesn't provide any evidence to support his absurd claims.

Of course, once 2013 rolls around, these gross exaggerations will never be revisited and Gore will never be held accounatble for his outlandish claims, all made, of course, while handsomely lining his pockets at the expense of the gullible.

Israel to Egypt: Take Gaza, It's Yours

But when that idea was floated, let's just say that the Egyptians were less then receptive.

"This is a wrong assumption," Hossam Zaki, the official spokesman for Egypt's Foreign Ministry, said of Israeli hints that it was thinking of giving up administration of Gaza, including supplying electricity, now that the Palestinian territory's southern border with Egypt is open.

Anybody else see the irony in this? For so long, Israel has been condemmed for its' treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza, and now when they say to another Muslim country here you can take over, they quickly backpedal.

The Egyptians, of course, don't want these loose cannons running around in their country and apparently feel it's much better to bash Israel then to actually step and try to do something to help these poor "refugees".

Of course, that is what the EU, US, and UN are for. Bigger suckers were never found.

In the past two days, Gazans have stocked up on supplies in Egypt, including cement, fuel, generators and other staples. Israel then stopped emergency shipments of industrial diesel fuel, arguing that Gazans were now able to get supplies from Egypt.

Along with big screen tv's, stereos, music devices, etc. You know, all the essentials of life.

Think of Katrina survivors with shopping carts full of beer and looted goods.

Although this will never happen since there is no way a Muslim country will permit anything to do with the Palestinians happen in their countries, especially after they have all kicked them out and hung them like a millstone around the necks of the Israelis.

But it is fun to watch the heads popping in Egypt at the mere mention of them having to take over responsibility for the culture of the perpetual victims.

Soldiers serve wherever there is a need

Eli Manning celebrates NFC title with U.S. Army Lt. Col Greg Gadson, who lost both legs to a roadside bomb in Iraq but, as honorary co-captain, has become part of the Super Bowl-bound team.

I don't know how Jammie missed this one, but it looks like some of the Giants success this year is due in some part to a wounded veteran of the war in Iraq. Just cutting and pasting some quotes won't do the story justice. Go read the whole thing.

And finally I reminded them that nothing is promised to anybody in this life, starting with tomorrow."

A lot of sports stuff today huh?

Pathetic Leftwing Fringe Group to Spend $8.5 Million Bashing Bush

These nutcases pretend to care so much about the poor and the homeless, so wouldn't it be money better spent if they donated it to charity?

Besides, when you have 99.8% of the media bashing Bush on a daily basis, spending this kind of coin is rather superfluous.

Although, I guess this confirms the fact Bush Derangement Syndrome indeed is a mental illness.

So sad.

A liberal advocacy group plans to spend $8.5 million in a drive to ensure that President Bush's public approval doesn't improve as his days in the White House come to an end.

Americans United for Change plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising, to keep public attention on what the group says are the Bush administration's failures, including the war in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina and the current mortgage crisis.

In selling the plan to fundraisers, the group has argued that support for President Reagan was at a low of 42 percent in 1987 but climbed to 63 percent before he left office. "All of a sudden he became a rallying cry for conservatives and their ideology," said Brad Woodhouse, the group's president. "Progressives are still living with that."

The group is a nonprofit corporation that made a splash by airing ads against Bush's plans to overhaul Social Security in 2005. The group has conducted polls and focus groups and is now raising money for their anti-Bush effort. It gave a Power Point presentation last week to representatives of about 30 liberal and labor organizations.

It planned to announce the campaign at a press conference Thursday afternoon during a forum featuring liberal critics of the administration. It also aims to air its first ad before Bush's State of the Union speech on Monday.

Woodhouse said one goal is to make sure Bush does not enjoy a resurgence in public approval toward the end of his presidency that could help Republican congressional candidates and the GOP presidential nominee in this year's elections.

What does this moron Woodhouse propose if Bush's approval increases with hindsight once he leaves office? Considering the disaster another Clinton administration would bestow upon us, it's safe to say Bush will really be looking good in a couple of years.

Michelle Malkin has more on these kooks.

The Biggest Loser

Calling the Atlanta Falcons a professional football team is being generous. Well it looks like we have a new coach.

"My goal is to build a well-disciplined, hard-nosed football team that will be able to run the football on offense and stop the run on defense," Smith said. "I've always believed that's what makes championship teams."

I wish him well but unless he has the power to fire everybody and start over I am afraid he will wind up like every other coach that comes to this town. There is an attitude that permeates the Falcons. You can see it in the way they play and the way they act. One notable exception is Warrick Dunn, who is truly an outstanding young man. The rest of the team view football nothing more then something that produces a paycheck, a very good paycheck, for the disruption it causes in their lives.
Well, welcome to Atlanta coach Smith, but I wouldn't put that resume away just yet even though you signed a 4 year deal.

UN Rebukes Israel, Ignores Constant Rocket Attacks

If you ever needed further evidence the UN Human Rights Council is clearly pro-terrorist and anti-Israel, all you need to do is take a look at their latest actions.

It's as if they don't realize the rest of the world has access to news and can see for themselves what's going on.

The U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday demanded Israel lift its week-long blockade of Gaza, rebuking the Jewish state for violations in the Palestinian territories for the third time since it was set up in 2006.

The 47-member council adopted a resolution presented by Arab and Muslim states by a vote of 30 states in favour and one against with 15 abstentions, and one delegation absent.

Israeli military attacks on Gaza and the West Bank city of Nablus constituted "grave violations of the human and humanitarian rights" of Palestinian civilians, it said.

But Western countries abstained in bloc after criticising the text as unbalanced for failing to even mention the rockets launched into Israel from Gaza by Palestinian militants.

Mohammed Abu-Koash, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told the special emergency session called to address conditions in the Palestinian territories that Israel's siege and raids in Gaza constituted "war crimes".

"We hope the resolution will trigger international pressure and action to lift the Israeli siege and restore supplies of food, fuel and medicine, open border crossings and end repeated Israeli military attacks throughout the occupied Palestinian territory," he said.

Israel, facing frequent rocket attacks from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, tightened its border closure last week. It briefly halted fuel delivery to a Gaza power station and cut supplies to petrol stations, and blocked food and other humanitarian aid.

The Israeli army estimates about 250 rockets and mortar rounds have pounded Israel since last week. Israeli troops killed more than 30 Palestinians over the same period.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, in a speech on Wednesday, denounced Israel's "disproportionate use of force and targeted killings" as well as the Palestinian militants for firing rockets into Israel.

Arbour, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor, told the forum that Israel should lift restrictions on aid intended for Gaza.

"All parties concerned should put an end to the vicious spiral of violence before it becomes unstoppable," she warned.

When we last heard from this idiot Arbour, she was condemning NATO and sucking up to the Taliban. Before that she was getting her panties in a knot over the alleged Islamophobia of Europeans. She's also quite cozy with the hairy munchkin from Iran.

Shocking how she would come out against Israel, isn't it?

Oh, the Heartbreak

This New York Giants fan can never have enough of poking fun at the Dallas Cowboys.

It appears their golden boy quarterback, Tony Romo, who has yet to win a playoff game but was lavished with a $67 million contract after one season, has dumped bleach-blond bimbo Jessica Simpson.

I wonder if there's anything we can do to help the lovebirds patch things up?

At least they'll always have Mexico.

Dallas Cowboys star Tony Romo has reportedly dumped Jessica Simpson, who was widely blamed for costing him a shot at the Super Bowl.

"Tony is now starting to blame her himself," a pal told OK! magazine. "Before dating Jessica, he was Texas' golden boy. Now he's become a joke."

A few days after the Giants bounced the Cowboys from the playoffs, Romo called the "Dukes of Hazzard" star to tell her their romance was over.

"He said he thought it was better if they went back to being friends," a pal of hers said.

A final breaking point came when Romo told Simpson he wouldn't move to L.A. - and she responded there was no way she could leave Tinseltown.

In addition to blaming Simpson, Cowboy fans may also want to blame their inept coach and the fact the Giants were the superior team when it mattered.

UPDATE: Hot Air's resident Cowboy fan is most buoyed by the news.

Spitzer 'Cracks' Up

The idiotic plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens was bad enough, but that was obviously pandering for votes in a heavily blue state.

This latest idea from New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is so mind-numbingly crazy, it makes you wonder whether he's sampling the product he's looking to tax.

SPITZER 'CRACK TAX' PROTECTS DRUGGIES

ALBANY - Dealers and users who pay a proposed state levy on illicit drugs - dubbed the "crack tax" by critics - would not be turned over to police by tax officials under a plan being pushed by Gov. Spitzer.

Spitzer, in his 2008-09 budget proposal unveiled Tuesday, said he wants to create a tax stamp for illegal drugs, similar to such stamps used for cigarettes, which he says would raise $13 million in the coming fiscal year and $17 million annually after that.

Let's forget for a minute the horrors brought on by the crack epidemic in the late 1980's. Who in their right mind thinks crack dealers are going to follow the law and pay a tax on their product?

According to a memo explaining the eyebrow-raising proposal, "The bill contains a unique and strict secrecy requirement, preserving the confidentiality of any information obtained from a dealer."

Disclosure of the information in some cases would be allowed for a criminal or civil proceeding involving taxes.

But "the bill specifically provides that none of the information may be used against the dealer in any criminal proceeding [other than a tax crime] unless it has been obtained independently," the memo said.

Dubbing it the "crack tax," state Sen. Martin Golden, a Brooklyn Republican and former city cop, called Spitzer's plan "another pie-in-the-sky idea that really has no legitimacy, and hopefully is not a first step toward legalizing drugs."

The plan, modeled after one in North Carolina, would require arrested drug dealers or users to purchase different tax stamps from the state.

"Upon receipt of the product, the dealer must affix enough stamps to the packages of marihuana [as it's spelled in official state legislative documents] or the controlled substance in order to show the tax has been fully paid," according to the proposal.

A tax stamp for marijuana would cost $3.50 per gram, while one for a controlled substance, "whether pure or dilute[d]," would be $200 per gram.

Experience in other states shows that stamp collectors, not drug dealers, are the ones purchasing the tax stamps.

The taxes and any applicable fines and penalties in those states are typically collected after a person is charged and their drugs seized by police.

Somehow, the geniuses in his administration have an inkling they may not exactly be expecting a cash windfall.

Spitzer aides said they realize it's highly unlikely any drug dealers would come forward to purchase tax stamps.

Duh. So why even proposes something so idiotic.

Over to you Mrs. Clinton.

Any thoughts?

EU Set To Take 'Moral High Ground'

Instead of capitulating to the EUSSR, maybe Gordon Brown should rethink his grand plan of denying the Brits his previously promised referendum on the new EU Constitution Treaty of Lisbon.

EU aims for moral high ground with swingeing climate change package

A blueprint for tackling global warming was put on the table yesterday by the EU, which challenged the US and other big polluters worldwide to join the battle against climate change. Setting out plans for the world's first significant low-carbon economy, the EU ordered swingeing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions which included challenging targets for Britain.

Under draft legislation unveiled by the European commission, 20% of Europe's energy mix is to come from renewable sources by 2020, while Europe's biggest polluting industries must slash their emissions by 21% against 2005 levels by the same deadline.

The climate change package, senior officials in Brussels said, would give the EU the moral high ground, letting it lead the drive for a new, post-Kyoto international bargain on global warming with the US, China and India.

Moral high ground taken by a bunch of amoral hacks. rofl

While the overall aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 363m tonnes, or 20%, by 2020, Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, said the scheme included "automatic triggers" to take the cuts to the level of 30% if the remainder of the world signed up for similar action.

"Climate change is the great project of our generation," said José Manuel Barroso, the commission president. "Europe can be the first economy for the low-carbon age ... The package is the most far-reaching legislative proposals made by the European commission for many years."

Other than seizing the national sovreignty of member states, what other 'far-reaching legislative proposals' have been made?

The EU executive laid out binding targets for each of the 27 member countries on emissions reductions and on renewable energy in order to reach the goal of the 20% cut in greenhouse gases, as well as the 20% target for Europe's energy mix being provided by renewables, and 10% of all road fuel deriving from biofuels.

Barroso put the cost of the package at about €3 a week for every European - the price of three tanks of petrol a year.

Cool. Let the EU pay for it out of its budget - without increasing member 'fees'.

The bulk of the reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions is to be obtained through a carbon trading scheme in which the union's biggest industrial polluters, such as power generators and oil refineries, buy and sell emission permits. The "price of carbon" is expected to rise and the hope is that the market will deliver the compulsory cuts.

In the sectors not involved in the carbon trading scheme, such as transport, farming, and construction, national caps are being imposed.

The British government welcomed the commission's draft, which orders a 16% cut in emissions by Britain by 2020. The UK is also obliged to increase its reliance on renewable energy, from less than 2% now to 15% of the country's total energy needs by the same date.

Hide your wallets, folks.

The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said: "This plan shows exactly what we are aiming for globally - a comprehensive and effective agreement to tackle climate change, with the carbon market at its heart."

John Hutton, the business secretary, said the government would review its strategy to meet the UK share of the EU renewables target. "This package will show the EU's continuing global leadership on climate change. I want to see it agreed as soon as possible to give business the certainty it needs to plan low-carbon investments with confidence."

Better results if market forces were allowed to work free of government interference, but try explaining that to a socialist.

Environmental pressure groups sounded broadly satisfied with the package, which has to go through the European parliament and be endorsed by national governments before becoming law, perhaps in a year's time.

"A work in progress", was the verdict of Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change. "I see no reason why some of these targets may not become stronger, may not become more stringent."

Barroso said the package would unleash a money-spinning bonanza in Europe and urged EU firms to seize the opportunity to become global leaders in innovative green technologies. He predicted hundreds of thousands of new jobs, insisting that the overall €60bn cost would be less than 0.5% of Europe's economic output.

For some reason, I'm quite confident that comrade Barroso will not do the honorable thing should the cost be more.

The scheme would save €50bn a year in reduced oil and gas imports, he said. Bowing to pressure from energy-intensive industries such as the steel and cement sectors, which have threatened to pull out of Europe if the measures cripple their competitiveness, the commission held out the prospect of free pollution permits under the carbon trading scheme.

This came amid warnings that it would be "economic suicide" to penalise the sectors too heavily. But big energy groups, which amassed huge profits in the early stages of the trading scheme, will have to bid at auction for all their permits from 2013.

The commission says that by 2020, this will be adding 5%, or about €150, a year to household bills, though its own officials say that the rise could be 15%.

In other words, they haven't a clue.

A decision on free permits for sectors hit by competition from low-cost countries is to be taken from 2010 onwards.

Via The Guardian

al-Gore was too busy doing paperwork to comment.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. --- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Memo to Barroso

Previously: Global Warming Scam to Cost EU $100 Billion

See also Reality Confronts European Union.

Wait a Minute, I Thought the Science Was Settled?

Keep this very hush hush. We don't want to alarm the alarmists.

Study: Warming may cut US hurricane hits

WASHINGTON - Global warming could reduce how many hurricanes hit the United States, according to a new federal study that clashes with other research. The new study is the latest in a contentious scientific debate over how man-made global warming may affect the intensity and number of hurricanes.

In it, researchers link warming waters, especially in the Indian and Pacific oceans, to increased vertical wind shear in the Atlantic Ocean near the United States. Wind shear — a change in wind speed or direction — makes it hard for hurricanes to form, strengthen and stay alive.

So that means "global warming may decrease the likelihood of hurricanes making landfall in the United States," according to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Miami Lab and the University of Miami.

With every degree Celsius that the oceans warm, the wind shear increases by up to 10 mph, weakening storm formation, said study author Chunzai Wang, a research oceanographer at NOAA. Winds forming over the Pacific and Indian oceans have global effects, much like El Nino does, he said.

Wang said he based his study on observations instead of computer models and records of landfall hurricanes through more than 100 years.

His study is to be published Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters.

Critics say Wang's study is based on poor data that was rejected by scientists on the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They said that at times only one in 10 North Atlantic hurricanes hit the U.S. coast and the data reflect only a small percentage of storms around the globe.

Of course, they and noted scientist Algore are the true arbiters and how dare anyone disagree with them?

You may wind up being called a denier.

Hurricanes hitting land "are not a reliable record" for how hurricanes have changed, said Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Trenberth is among those on the other side of a growing debate over global warming and hurricanes. Each side uses different sets of data and focus on different details.

One group of climate scientists has linked increases in the strongest hurricanes — just those with winds greater than 130 mph — in the past 35 years to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said "more likely than not," manmade global warming has already increased the frequency of the most intense storms.

But hurricane researchers, especially scientists at NOAA's Miami Lab, have argued that the long-term data for all hurricanes show no such trend. And Wang's new research suggests just the opposite of the view that more intense hurricanes result from global warming. The Miami faction points to a statement by an international workshop on tropical cyclones that says "no firm conclusion can be made on this point."

So, what they're saying is, there's a debate? I thought anyone who didn't march in lockstep was a denier on par with Holocaust deniers?

In fact, there's a debate whether man-made global warming indeed exists, but even broaching that topic apparently puts one in the distinct minority, and we can save that for another day.

When it comes to what causes hurricanes, I'd rather take the word of actual hurricane researchers than some UN panel and a failed politician.

Show the UN some love

Something called the Better World Campaign is hosting a blog asking for your input on what the new president of the United States should do on their first day in office. And just to help you out they are giving you the topics or labels for your posts if you choose to leave a comment. They are US Image in the world, Iraq, Nuclear Proliferation, Terrorism, Peacekeeping, Poverty, Democracy in the World, Climate and energy, and Global Womens Issues. Hmmmm no choices for ending membership in the UN or kicking the UN out of the US. How about a simple butt out of our affairs. It is also curious that the first post on the blog is from Joe Wilson and his topic? End cowboy diplomacy.

The Better World Campaign (BWC) works to strengthen the relationship between the United States and the United Nations through outreach, communications, and advocacy. We encourage U.S. leadership to enhance the UN’s ability to carry out its invaluable international work on behalf of peace, progress, freedom, and justice. In these efforts, we engage policy makers, the media, and the American public to increase awareness of and support for the United Nations.

Here is John Bolton showing them some love. So if you are so inclined head on over to Day One and leave them a comment or two.

THERE GOES THE BRIDE...

As further evidence of the pernicious and deliberate undermining of marriage that is such a key element of the liberal mindset, Heterosexual married couples are no longer regarded as the "norm" in Britain, according to the largest survey of social attitudes here.

Yes - Government support for gay couples and single parents, the rise in cohabitation and an official failure to support traditional marriage are said to have resulted in previously unconventional lifestyles becoming widely accepted. Imagine that!

The annual report by the National Centre for Social Research says marriage - once the bedrock institution of British society - is seen by two thirds of people as virtually indistinguishable from cohabitation. Only one in four people thinks married couples make better parents than unmarried ones, while a third believe that gay male couples are as capable of being good parents as a man and a woman.

The survey exposes the decline in the importance of marriage with the finding that most people see weddings as an excuse for a party rather than a public declaration of lifelong commitment.

So - we are now at the stage where, as Cole Porter put it, anything goes in Britain - and where all lifestyles and arrangements are considered equally valid. This is a triumph for the propagandist message of moral relativism pumped out day in day out by the MSM and beloved by all good liberals. Meanwhile, the COST of family breakdown costs Britain £24 BILLION a year and rising.

Maybe we just need more gay parents to take the strain?

Cross posted on A Tangled Web

THREE LITTLE PIGS MAY OFFEND MUSLIMS!

Guess what? Yes -a story based on the Three Little Pigs fairytale has been turned down from a government agency's annual awards because the subject matter could offend Muslims. The digital book, re-telling the classic fairy tale, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

The judges concerned also attacked "Three Little Cowboy Builders" for offending builders. (What about offending cowboys, HUH?) The CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the three little pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children. But judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the "Asian" community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

The book's creative director, Anne Curtis, said that the idea that including pigs in a story could be interpreted as racism was "like a slap in the face". As Curtis says, will Orwell's "Animal Farm" be banned because it too uses pigs?

Naturally the British government agency behind this dhimmitude is proud of its decision.

Cross-posted on A Tangled Web

Universal Health Care....Not so fast

Doctor's old-fashioned medical care starts with a $1,600 price tag
Now here is a novel idea. I wonder why somebody didn't think of it before? Can everybody afford $1600 a year for a doctor? That breaks down to a little more then $100 a month or what you are probably paying for cable. Sure the liberals will scream about this only benefits the rich but think about this for a minute. If by taking patients away from the regular practices they are easing the burden on the clinics by reducing the number of patients seen there wouldn't that be a good thing?

Imagine having a doctor who’s available by cell phone 24 hours a day, who handles your care personally if you’re hospitalized, who doesn’t rush through your appointment so he can see his next patient.
Gainesville has that doctor. But if you want to be one of his patients, it will cost you extra.
Dr. Jeffrey Terry, an internal medicine physician at Northeast Georgia Diagnostic Clinic, is the first doctor in the area to offer "concierge" medicine.

And least you think he just pulled that $1600 figure out of the air, think again. He met with his current patients and discussed it.

"Their main concern has been the cost," he said. "When I made the decision, I knew it would be difficult for a number of patients to be able to afford the service. We settled on an amount we thought would be acceptable to (most of) our patients."
There also have been a lot of questions about Medicare and private insurance. Terry said patients’ insurance plans will continue to be billed for any of services normally covered.
He said older patients and those with numerous health problems seem most enthusiastic about DirectCare.

So while the Dems want to wrap us in the blanket of their various Universal Health care plans it looks like the private sector is coming up with unique and innovative ways of dealing with the issue, just like they always do.

Dutch to Impose Burqa Ban, Seething to Follow

Those zany Dutchmen are really getting insensitive now, daring to free women from the oppression of having to dress up in a hefty bag in schools and government buildings.

Next thing you know, they'll insist the peaceful practitioners of Islam stop treating their women as chattel and they'll ban them outright, but that might offend the delicate sensibilities of the 7th century cavemen.

The Dutch government is set to impose a ban on the Muslim burqa in schools and government offices, media reported on Wednesday, in a retreat from the previous cabinet's plan for a general ban.

The cabinet has decided against a broad ban on burqas in public as that would violate the principle of freedom of religion, news agency ANP said, citing unnamed cabinet sources.

The Muslim community says only about 50 women wear the head-to-toe burqa or the niqab, a face veil that conceals everything but the eyes. They said a general ban would heighten alienation among the country's about 1 million Muslims.

An interior ministry spokesman said there was no final decision on the subject yet and the issue is expected to be discussed at the weekly cabinet meeting on Friday next week.

The wearing of headscarves in schools and at work is a sensitive topic across the European Union.

France, with Europe's largest Muslim minority, bans headscarves and other religious garb from state schools. Italy has a decades-old law against covering the face in public as an anti-terrorism measure.

Shortly before being voted out of office, the previous centre-right Dutch government proposed a complete ban on burqas and other Muslim face-veils in public, citing security concerns.

A new centrist coalition government of Christian Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union came into power in February 2007 and has taken a more conciliatory line on immigration.

Right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders -- who has angered Muslims with his fierce criticism of Islam -- sent a bill to parliament last July proposing a ban on the burqa in public.

Curious, isn't it, how we never read anything about the delicate sensibilities of religious minorities in Muslim countries.

Double standard, anyone?

Speaking of Wilders, here are some trailers for his new movie that we noted last week.



Here is Part 2:



Nothing like a jolt of reality.

Canada as repressive as Afghanistan

Compare what is happening to journalists in Afghanistan to what Canada, with it's vaunted Human Rights Council, is trying to do to Mark Steyn. Granted Canada is not going for the death penalty, but the end results are the same, to shut up voices critical of Islam.
Afghan journalist sentenced to death

An Afghan journalist sentenced to death for distributing an article that allegedly violated Islam is actually being punished for reporting by his brother about abuses by northern warlords, a media group said Wednesday.
Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, 23, was sentenced to death Tuesday by a three-judge panel in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for distributing a report he printed off the Internet to fellow journalism students at Balkh University.

Steyn: The Canadian 'Human Rights' Sham
NRO: Free Steyn

the radical Islamic front group calling itself the “Canadian Islamic Congress” has filed mindcrime complaints against author Mark Steyn with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, in an effort to stifle criticism of Islam and intimidate other writers. It’s the legal jihad in action.

One other word of caution. The AP article carries a by line from a Afghan reporter named Amir Shah, whom I mentioned in the case of the incident in Afghanistan involving Marines who were ambushed and then accused of killing several civilllians which resulted in a spineless general ordering the unit out of the country.

Democrats: The Party of Racism

You just know the opinions of Bruce Bartlett will cause a firestorm with the Democrats.

Because it's all too true.

Racial gaffes by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, the meteoric rise of Sen. Barack Obama and the pivotal role of the South Carolina primary on Saturday have intensified the issue of race in the Democratic Party, which makes Bruce Bartlett seem like a prophet of sorts.

In his new book, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past," Mr. Bartlett chronicles the party's history from slavery to the civil rights era and beyond, providing a look at such figures as South Carolina's "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman and other racist Democrats.

"At least on a historical level, the Democratic Party has always been the party of racism," Mr. Bartlett said in a telephone interview with The Washington Times.

A former Reagan administration official whose previous book "Impostor" criticized President Bush for straying from conservative policies, Mr. Bartlett said the purpose of his latest book is to challenge Democrats' "party of inclusion" mantra and to encourage black voters to dutifully consider the merits of both major parties.

"One purpose of the book was to give Republicans a kind of story to tell, if they decide to go into the black community and talk to black leaders," he said. "I think at an abstract level there are a lot of blacks who recognize that being almost totally part of one political party and not being involved with the other is not good for them."

Democrats long ago began taking the black vote for granted, and the GOP would be much healthier if they genuinely sought the black vote without having to quiver and quake about being called racist.

In fact, the GOP has been the one party that has promoted and supported the African-American community in deeds, not words.

Just look at the cabinet makeup of the past two presidents if you need a guide.

The rise of Mr. Obama as a challenger to Mrs. Clinton indicates the urgency for Republicans to establish their appeal to black voters.

"If [Republicans] start to talk now about the Democratic Party's racist past, then they'll help prepare themselves for dealing with the possibility of running against a black candidate and being able to frame some of their criticism of him, that they undoubtedly will have, in terms that will not be viewed as potentially racist," he said. "It's going to be a difficult balancing act."

Indeed it will be, if it comes to that.

Of course, the GOP won't have just the Democrat machine to fight this battle against.

You can be sure the overwhelming majority of the media will be whipping out the race card every chance they get while conveniently ignoring the dark past and often odious current history of the Democrats. Instead of running to a racial arsonist like Al Sharpton every time there's a racial controversy, how about seeking out a fresh voice like Michael Steele or a genuine national treasure like Thomas Sowell, a man who knows what real racism is all about?

Senator Robert "Sheets" Byrd (D-WV) was unavailable for comment.

Border Crisis Deepens

Let's see how Condoleezza Rice handles this one.

Tens of Thousands Cross Downed Gaza Wall
Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured from the Gaza Strip into Egypt Wednesday after masked gunmen with explosives destroyed most of the seven-mile wall dividing the border town of Rafah.

The Gazans crossed on foot, in cars or riding donkey carts to buy supplies made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory. Police from the militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel has no forces on the Gaza-Egypt border and, "therefore it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly, according to the signed agreements."

"We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem," Mekel said. "Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter."

[...]

They have, dude. Our friend Carl in Jerusalem has the details, including some video.

Condi Goes Ballistic

Rice Slams US Envoy's NKorea Criticism
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday sharply rebuked a fellow member of the Bush administration who criticized international negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program.

Rice said that Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush's special envoy on North Korean human rights, "doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks, and he certainly has no say on what American policy will be in the six-party talks."

Lefkowitz said Thursday that the North is not serious about disarming and probably still will have its nuclear weapons when the next U.S. president takes over in January 2009, despite four years of nuclear disarmament talks by the United States, the Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.

The Bush administration has been working to distance itself from the rare public criticism of administration policy by a government official. The comments come at a time when the nuclear talks have reached an impasse, and the North has missed a promised deadline and increased its hostile rhetoric.

Rice, speaking with reporters on her way to Germany for talks on Iran's nuclear program, said that she knows where Bush stands on North Korean policy, "and I know where I stand, and those are the people who speak for American policy."

Asked if she thought the Chinese and Russians would be confused by Lefkowitz's comments, Rice said she doubted they would even recognize the special envoy's name.

[...]

Someday she might figure out who the bogeyman is.

Maybe.

Read the rest at The AP

UPDATE: Instapundit links. Thank you, Glenn!

On Winning Friends And Influencing People

Russia rattles its depleted sabre in the Atlantic
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow

The Kremlin has flexed its military might off the European coastline as Russian warships and nuclear bombers test fired missiles close to the Iberian peninsula during the first major military manouevres in the Atlantic since the Cold War.

The RAF and the Norwegian Air Force were forced to scramble fighter jets to shadow Russian long-range bombers headed for the Bay of Biscay where vessels from the Northern and Black Sea fleets have begun three days of exercises.

The manouevres are the latest indication of Soviet premier President Vladimir Putin's intent to project Russia's growing military prowess to the international community and to pander to growing nationalist sentiment at home.

The Russian Air Force said that two Tu160 bombers, known in the West as Blackjacks, would conduct tactical missile launches off the Spanish and Portugese coastlines. Both countries, Russia said, had been informed in advance.

Earlier, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, took part in a live fire exercise that a navy spokesman said was 100 per cent successful.

Although Russia gave warning of the exercises to Nato countries last year, the operation is likely to cause an element of disquiet in the West - albeit more for political than military reasons.

As East-West relations have soured, Mr Putin responded last year by ordering a resumption of long-range bomber patrols in international airspace for the first time since the Soviet era.

He also threatened to retrain part of Russia's considerable nuclear arsenal on European targets if a proposed US missile defence shield, to be built in Poland and the Czech Republic by 2012, is not scrapped.

Yet for all the posturing, Russia still carries a small stick militarily - big enough to impress ordinary Russians at a time when Mr Putin is plotting to retain power behind the scenes after elections this March but too puny to frighten the West just yet.

While the president has sharply increased defence spending and commissioned a new generation of nuclear missiles, Russia's defence budget is a tenth of the United States' and is also smaller than Britain.

The Atlantic exercises - described by a Russian navy source as "the biggest exercise of its kind in the area since Soviet times" - have also shown that Russia's conventional military hardware remain in a sorry state.

For unexplained reasons, a number of ships meant to participate stayed at home and those that did sail are in poor condition. The Moskva is 30 years old, while the Admiral Kuznetzov, Russia's rickety aircraft carrier, spends much of its time in dry docks undergoing repairs.

In a token gesture of East-West co-operation, the French navy has agreed to send an anti-submarine frigate to join the exercises. The Russian flotilla had earlier docked in Toulon.

Given Toulon's status of being a major French naval installation, I'm sure the Soviet Russian high command arranged this visit for purely altruistic reasons - a cultural exchange, so to speak.

While Russia's military prowess may still be dubious, its growing status as an energy superpower is not. Russia and Serbia yesterday agreed a pipeline deal that will boost Moscow's energy control over Europe.

Last week a similar deal was agreed with Bulgaria.

Via The Telegraph

The Bush administration's Russian expert was too busy plotting the demise of Israel to comment.

Well, There They Go Again

Prodi Coalition on the Brink of Collapse
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government seems on the brink of collapse after a tiny party withdrew from his shaky center-left ruling coalition on Monday. The beleagured prime minister said Tuesday he will now try to maintain continuity by seeking a confidence vote in both houses of parliament.

The crisis comes in the wake of the resignation of Justice Minister Clemente Mastella last week and his decision on Monday to pull his small UDEUR party out of the coalition.

Prodi still has a majority in the lower house, but the loss of UDEUR's three senators means that his already precarious one-seat majority in the Senate is now gone.

Mastella had initially indicated that he would support the government from outside after his involvement in a corruption scandal prompted his resignation. He and his wife Sandra Lonardo, a senior official in the Campania region, have been placed under investigation, though both deny any wrongdoing. Mastella insists that he has been targeted due to his attempts to reform the judiciary. On Monday, Mastella complained that his fellow ministers had failed to back him up and that he would now vote against the government, adding: "This center-left experience is over."

The center-right opposition, led by former Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi, is chomping at the bit to profit from the Prodi government's disarray. "We should have elections straight away," Berlusconi insisted on Monday. But one ally, Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, who faces a confidence vote himself over the Naples garbage crisis (more...), urged his fellow politicians to back Prodi: "It would be masochism to hand Italy back to Berlusconi," he said Tuesday.

[...]

See the rest at der Spiegel Online

Heh. With sixty-one governments under their belts since 1945, you never know, the Italians just might get it right . . . this time.

Another Republican drops out of the race

I didn't even know he was running.

He outlasted two congressmen and almost one actor.
Glynn County commissioner H. Neal "Cap" Fendig Jr. ended his quixotic bid for the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday, citing a lack of media exposure and his inability to land a spot on the Georgia ballot.

What gets me is that even in this article the Atlanta Journal Constipation can't refer to Fred Thompson as a former Senator. Nope, he was just an actor.

Thanks for the ride Fred

Well it is official now. Fred Thompson has announced he is dropping out of the presidential race. He was the only true conservative on the Republican side in my opinion. So now the Republican field continues to dwindle voters are now faced with selecting the lesser of about 4 evils on the Republican side .

Thanks Fred for giving it a go.

Palestinians having border problems

No silly not the one with Israel, it is the one with Egypt.

Israel eased its siege of Gaza for a day Tuesday, sending in medicine and fuel for Gaza City's power plant. But tensions erupted over Egypt's closure of its Gaza border, with hundreds of Palestinian protesters breaking through the crossing and clashing with Egyptian guards.

But the Palestinians are never one to let anything get in the way of their real goal in life either.

Also Tuesday, Palestinian militants fired 11 rockets toward Israel, despite the easing of restrictions. The initial blockade, along with a fuel cutoff, was imposed in response to a rocket barrage last week on Israeli border towns.

Don't forget to check out the photos that with the story. Boy them Paleos can play it up for a gullible western press can't they?

Report: West Must Be Ready for Pre-emptive Nuclear Attack

Boy, the no nukes crowd is going to freak out when they get wind of this.

As I scan the names authoring this report, I don't see a single rabid, rightwing, neocon warhawk anywhere to be found.

In fact, one of them was appointed Chair of the Joint Chiefs by (gasp!) Bill Clinton.

Maybe at the next Democrat debate the moderator could ask Clinton's boss what she thinks of this.

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

Can you just imagine the reaction from the solons at the UN over this?

Just imagine. Their cravenly feckless approach toward Iran, the years of appeasement, could simply be washed away by the civilized Western world sobering up and taking the logical approach to the nuclear proliferation of rogue Islamic nations.

The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April.

Such views and opinions--the desire to preserve mankind--are considered radical, and those who have such views are now afraid to even publicly express it.

"The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Read the rest.

Here are the authors:

John Shalikashvili: The US's top soldier under Bill Clinton and former Nato commander in Europe, Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw of Georgian parents and emigrated to the US at the height of Stalinism in 1952. He became the first immigrant to the US to rise to become a four-star general. He commanded Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war, then became Saceur, Nato's supreme allied commander in Europe, before Clinton appointed him chairman of the joint chiefs in 1993, a position he held until his retirement in 1997.

Klaus Naumann: Viewed as one of Germany's and Nato's top military strategists in the 90s, Naumann served as his country's armed forces commander from 1991 to 1996 when he became chairman of Nato's military committee. On his watch, Germany overcame its post-WWII taboo about combat operations, with the Luftwaffe taking to the skies for the first time since 1945 in the Nato air campaign against Serbia.

Lord Inge: Field Marshal Peter Inge is one of Britain's top officers, serving as chief of the general staff in 1992-94, then chief of the defence staff in 1994-97. He also served on the Butler inquiry into Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and British intelligence.

Henk van den Breemen: An accomplished organist who has played at Westminster Abbey, Van den Breemen is the former Dutch chief of staff.

Jacques Lanxade:A French admiral and former navy chief who was also chief of the French defence staff.