JengisKahn's Blog

Glad to see the media paying some attention to little joe..

Editorial Che Kennedy, Chavez’s useful idiot

The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper
2008-01-03 08:00:00.0
Current rank: # 19 of 8,560

WASHINGTON -

John F. Kennedy would no doubt be horrified to see his nephew self-righteously shilling for a tin-horn communist dictator like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. JFK was a liberal on most domestic issues, but on foreign policy, he was an ardent anti-communist.

Countless movies and documentaries have been made about Kennedy's shining moment, the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was October 1962, when he forced Premier Nikita Khruschev to blink first and withdraw the Soviets’ nuclear-tipped missiles from Marxist dictator Fidel Castro’s Cuba, just 90 miles south of Florida.

Today, there is nothing at all bright about the way JFK’s nephew Joe – named after the oldest Kennedy son, who died bravely fighting the Nazis – is prostituting the family name on behalf of one of Castro’s closest allies and an avowed enemy of America.

Joe Kennedy appears in radio and TV spots offering low-income Americans a 40 percent discount on a one-time delivery of up to 200 gallons of heating oil. "Help is on the way," a Windbreaker-clad Kennedy promises in the ad, "from Citgo and our friends in Venezuela." He never mentions Chavez, nor does he explain why Venezuela, with a 2007 per capita gross domestic product of just $6,900 (less than Croatia or Belarus) would send highly discounted oil to a country with a per capita GDP of $43,500.

This is the same Chavez who expropriated U.S.-owned oil firms, then gave sweetheart deals to Chinese and Russian energy companies. He has repealed basic freedoms of press and speech, and was just barely prevented recently from becoming president for life.

Chavez never misses an opportunity to excoriate the U.S., perhaps most memorably in his cartoonish addresses to the United Nations and other international bodies. And let's not forget that Chavez has imported thousands of Cubans to fill key intelligence and military positions, embraced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and used his nation's oil wealth to buy $3 billion worth of Russian arms.

Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., described Kennedy - a former congressman who was born into the family fortune and now heads the non-profit Citizens Energy Corp. – as "a public relations prop for the Chavez regime." Ostensibly, Kennedy's CEC provides heat and other social services to low-income and senior Americans.

Curiously, despite his wealth, Kennedy receives a $400,000 annual salary. Instead of embracing his uncle's courageous anti-communist legacy, he has become just another smarmy celebrity who yammers on about having compassion for the poor from the doorways of multimillion-dollar mansions and private jets, all the while accepting oil stolen by a dictator. Lenin had a name for Western liberals who did this kind of thing – "useful idiots."

Examiner

 

 

Who elected this moron the guy to be the play by play guy for 3 networks?

I efuse to watch any of this game because of him. It's insulting to us as sports fans.  GumBall is a political animal.  Why force him on us for a sports game. 

I gather NBC is trying to do the same with Keith somebody or other.  I refuse to watch Sunday night football for the same reason.

Why are politics being forced into the NFL? 

 

 

 

 

Just an observation

pander            

Main Entry:  1pan·der                                   

Pronunciation:  \'pan-d?r\

Function:  intransitive verb

Inflected Form(s):  pan·dered; pan·der·ing \-d(?-)ri?\ : to act as a pander; especially : to provide gratification for others' desires pander to the basest emotions> — pan·der·er \-d?r-?r\ noun

Sure enough, Hillary's picture is right next to the definition of Pandering in the dictionary. Elect me and oil prices instantly drop, says Hillary Clinton in Iowa

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Sunday, December 23rd 2007, 4:00 AM

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Hillary Clinton predicted Saturday that just electing her President will cut the price of oil.

When the world hears her commitment at her inauguration about ending American dependence on foreign fuel, Clinton says, oil-pumping countries will lower prices to stifle America's incentive to develop alternative energy.

"I predict to you, the oil-producing countries will drop the price of oil," Clinton said, speaking at the Manchester YWCA. "They will once again assume, once the cost pressure is off, Americans and our political process will recede."

Clinton argued that former President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s actually started moving in the right direction toward energy independence, but his successor, Ronald Reagan, "dismantled" that work.

"Because costs were low, people didn't care, didn't complain," she said.

She warned that folks shouldn't be grateful now if oil countries cut prices from near $100 a barrel to $60 or $70, and compared it to trying to boil a frog.

"You put him in hot water, it jumps right out, you put him in cold water and turn up the heat - he's a goner," she said. "We've got to figure out how were going to not be the frog in the cold water anymore."

mmcauliff@nydailynews.com

Some stories do not require commentary

Father killed daughter for not wearing hijab, her friends say

Dec 11 01:56 PM US/Eastern

Friends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab.

Police said in a statement they received an emergency call at 7:55 am local time Monday from "a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter."

The victim, Aqsa Parvez, was "rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but tragically passed away late last night."

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested at the scene and will be formally charged with murder when he appears in court Wednesday, said police.

The girl's friends, meanwhile, told local media she was having trouble at home because she did not conform to the family's religious beliefs and refused to wear a traditional Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

"She wanted to go different ways than her family wanted to go, and she wanted to make her own path, but he (her father) wouldn't let her," one of her classmates told public broadcaster CBC.

"She loved clothes," another of her friends, Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, told the daily Toronto Star. "She just wanted to show her beauty ... She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person."

According to her friends, Aqsa had worn the hijab at school last year, but rebelled in recent months.

They said she would leave home wearing a hijab and loose-fitting clothes, but would take off her head scarf and change into tighter garments at school, then change back before going home at the end of the day.

The victim's 26 year-old brother was also charged with obstructing police in the investigation.

 

It's not even winter yet but Hudson Bay is frozen over and a big part of the US is under a snow cap already......

 

Wonder if our junior senator flew to Bali by commercial airline or aboard his wife's private jet, which is likely funded by their environmental funds.   Was noted that they ran out of parking for all the private jets that flew into Bali.   What a sham.  Sadly, they are about to reach into our pockets for major $$s to save us from globull warming.  

Kerry sells Democrats' green message in Bali Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:44am EST

By David Fogarty

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John Kerry swept into climate talks in Bali on Monday saying an administration run by the Democrats would mean the difference between night and day on policies to fight global warming.

Kerry said the Democrats want to do everything President George W. Bush doesn't to fight climate change, namely back mandatory emissions targets and pass a bill to create a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions.

"I am convinced the politics of 2009 in the United States are going to be just night and day, different from where we have been before," he told a news conference.

Republican Bush's falling approval rating with voters and a Democratic victory in midterm elections last year have given the Democrats high hopes of recapturing the White House in the November 2008 presidential poll. Kerry himself ran for the presidency in 2004.

"On behalf of us in the Senate and Congress who have been pushing for action on climate change, we believe that it is critical here in Bali to have a roadmap that has a strong mandate, based on science, which sets a date," he said.

Kerry spoke for nearly 30 minutes at the press conference, and stressed the United States, particularly individual states, and numerous large corporations, had already taken steps to curb emissions.

At one point his microphone cut out.

"Not even the (Bush) administration can be blamed for this," he said to laugher from the audience.

The U.N.-led talks are seeking to agree on the ground rules for launching two years of negotiations on a broader climate change pact involving all nations to succeed or replace the Kyoto Protocol from January 1, 2013.

About 190 nations are meeting in Bali.

Kerry stressed the need for all countries to be brought on board and said transferring clean energy technology was a crucial way to cut burgeoning emissions from developing nations. He noted that China's emissions would soon surpass the United States' carbon pollution.

"The message we bring is that the United States is willing to be at the table, the United States is going to lead, the United States is going to embrace significant change in policies in order to deal with climate change."

"This has to be driven by science, not politics," he said of global negotiations to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

He was confident an energy bill to be presented to the Senate and which lays out guidelines for a cap-and-trade system would become law.

"By 2009, if we haven't been able to pass it next year, we're going to pass this. This is going to pass and we are going to get a cap-and trade regime in the United States," he said.

Harlan Watson, the head of the U.S. delegation in Bali, said on Monday his team had not become irrelevant, despite the Bush administration being undermined by federal and state lawmakers' efforts to fight carbon emissions.

"I don't feel isolated," Harlan Watson said. He said he had "very cordial" contacts with many delegations.

This is really bad news for Ms Rodham.  Not so much the facts in the story, but the fact that the WashPost actually reported it.  Even worse is that it is written by Nedra Pickler, as she was a major sycophant of John Carry.  Maybe Ms Rodham is not the darling of the democrat  media.  Hmm.  Interesting.

Clinton Volunteer Quits Over Obama Email
AP ^ | Dec. 05, 2007 | Nedra Pickler

WASHINGTON (AP) - A volunteer Iowa county coordinator for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign has resigned after forwarding a chain e-mail that suggests Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to destroy the United States by being elected to its highest office.

Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and has never been a Muslim.

A hoax e-mail that has been widely circulated suggests Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate for Muslims.

Judy Rose, a Clinton coordinator and Democratic Party official in Jones County, Iowa, forwarded it without comment to eight people on Nov. 21. Rose referred requests for comment to one of the recipients, Grace Zimmerman, who serves with her on the Jones County Democratic Central Committee.

Zimmerman said Wednesday that Rose sent it to the members of the committee to "show people how dirty politics is" and did not agree with the content of the e-mail.

"Oh heavens no," Zimmerman said in a telephone interview. "She just wanted the people who were concerned with the politics of Jones County to be aware of it."

Zimmerman said the Clinton campaign never talked to Rose about why she sent it but simply demanded her resignation after another one of the recipients decried the e-mail in a post on the liberal blog Daily Kos.

"There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics," Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said in a statement Wednesday. "A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it."

According to a release on the Clinton campaign Web site, Rose is from Anamosa, Iowa, and served on Clinton's Women's Leadership Council.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on her resignation.

The e-mail that Rose forwarded points out that Obama's father and stepfather were Muslim and that Obama lived in Indonesia for part of his childhood. But other parts of the e-mail are false - Obama attended public and Catholic schools in Indonesia, not a radical Islamic school. It is also not true that Obama used the Quran instead of the Bible when sworn into office or that he ever "admitted" to being a Muslim.

This from the LA Times.  Ouch -

Regarding Media / Tim Rutten CNN: Corrupt News Network A self-serving agenda was set for the Republican presidential debates.

Tim Rutten
Regarding Media

December 1, 2007

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Corruption is a strong word. But consider these facts: The gimmick behind Wednesday's debate was that the questions would be selected from those that ordinary Americans submitted to the video sharing Internet website YouTube, which is owned by Google. According to CNN, its staff culled through 5,000 submissions to select the handful that were put to the candidates. That process essentially puts the lie to the vox populi aura the association with YouTube was meant to create. When producers exercise that level of selectivity, the questions -- whoever initially formulated and recorded them -- actually are theirs.

That's where things begin to get troubling, because CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue -- immigration. Now, if that leaves you scratching your head, it's probably because you're included in the 96% of Americans who do not think immigration is the most important issue confronting this country. We've got a pretty good fix concerning what's on the American mind right now, because the nonpartisan and highly reliable Pew Center has been regularly polling people since January on the issues that matter most to them. In fact, the center's most recent survey was conducted in the days leading up to Wednesday's debate.

HERE'S what Pew found: By an overwhelming margin, Americans think the war in Iraq is the most important issue facing the United States, followed by the economy, healthcare and energy prices. In fact, if you lump the war into a category with terrorism and other foreign policy issues, 40% of Americans say foreign affairs are their biggest concern in this election cycle. If you do something similar with all issues related to the economy, 31% list those questions as their most worrisome issue. As anybody who has looked at their 401(k) or visited a gas pump would expect, that aggregate figure has increased dramatically since Pew started polling in January. Back then, for example, concerns over the war outpaced economic anxieties by fully 8 to 1. By contrast, just 6% of the survey's national sample said that immigration was the most important electoral issue. Moreover, that number hasn't changed in a statistically meaningful way since the first of the year. In other words, more than nine out of 10 Americans think something matters more than immigration in this presidential election.

So, why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters' concerns? The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday's debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing. His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN.

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal -- and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed. That's particularly true because that same Pew poll reported findings of particular relevance to Republican voters, the vast majority of whom continue to support the war in Iraq.

According to this most recent poll, a substantial number of Americans believe the surge is working. As Pew summarized their findings, "While Iraq remains a deeply polarizing issue across party lines, there has been improvement in how both Democrats and Republicans view the war. At the lowest point in February, barely half of Republicans (51%) said things were going well. Today, 74% of Republicans say the same. And while Democrats remain far more skeptical than Republicans, the proportion of Democrats expressing a positive view of the Iraq effort has doubled since February (from 16% to 33%).

"Independents' assessments of how the military effort is going remain far closer to the views of Democrats than of Republicans. Currently, 41% of independents offer a positive assessment, while half say things are not going well. In February, 26% of independents expressed a positive view of the situation in Iraq."

Those are significant swings of opinion, yet the poll also found that more than half of Americans still favor withdrawing American troops. That disconnect is a real issue for the GOP candidates, all but one of whom support the war. Unless we're going to believe that the self-selecting YouTube questioners were utterly different from the rest of American voters, it seems pretty clear that CNN ignored these complex -- and highly relevant concerns -- for an issue that served its ratings interests -- immigration -- or ones that made for moments of conventional television conflict, like gun control, which doesn't even show up in surveys of voters' concerns.

THIS is intellectual venality, but it pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues -- say, abortion -- that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It's nobody's business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

The latter point is relevant because CNN's noxious laundering of this question through the goofy YouTube mechanism quite clearly was designed to embarrass Mitt Romney -- who happens to be a Mormon -- and, secondarily, to help Mike Huckabee -- who, as a Baptist minister, had a ready answer, and who happens to be television's campaign flavor of the month.

Beside considerations like these, CNN's incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales.

In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it's time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

 

Canadians should brace for coldest winter in almost 15 years: forecast

 

By Michael Oliveira, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday.

 

With the exception of only small pockets of northern Canada and southwestern Ontario, this December through February is forecast to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory across the country, said senior climatologist David Phillips.

 

"It is somewhat remarkable that we're seeing the same situation from coast to coast to almost coast - from Vancouver Island to Bonavista, Nfld., we're showing the country as being colder than normal," Phillips said.

 

"The last time Canada had a significantly cold winter was back in 1994, more than a decade ago, and this may very well rival that one in terms of coldness."

 

1994 started with a bang of winter weather and Canadians across the country shivered through temperatures as cold as -42C - and that was before factoring in the wind chill.

 

Environment Canada's forecast for precipitation suggests much of the country is due for normal amounts of snow, although some cities could get more than usual, including Calgary, Regina and Toronto, which infamously called in the army in January 1999 to deal with a heavy snowfall.

 

The precipitation forecasts are less reliable, but Phillips said a colder winter would likely result in a lot of white Christmases across the country - defined as two centimetres of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on Christmas Day.

 

Even if the forecasts don't hold true, Phillips said the weather will almost certainly be worse than the last couple years for much of the country.

 

Last year, a number of traditionally cold and snow-covered cities like Quebec City, Ottawa and Timmins, Ont., had a green Christmas for the first time in decades.

 

And places like Moncton, all of Prince Edward Island and Toronto had only two-thirds of their normal snowfall.

 

If there is a bright side to the gloomy forecast that most Canadians will probably curse, it's that snow and cold in the winter is good for the economy, Phillips said.

 

When Canadians see snow outside their windows they'll likely get into the Christmas spirit and start shopping, he said. And others will see the snow and make immediate plans to head south.

 

"I always think it's good for the economy when weather is behaving like it should, when winters are cold and summers are hot," Phillips said.

 

"With the Canadian dollar the way it is and with this colder than normal weather, it very well may be that the busiest people in the country are travel agents."

 

Phillips said the forecast for cold weather is being triggered in part by La Nina, a period of lower than normal temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

 

 

There are many confirmed reports that the democrats have been packing debate audiences to embarass the repubs and enhance the democratic postion.  The dems have been cought with at least 8 frauds in both R&D audiences.   This turns debates into nothing more than a democrat advertisement in the guise of a debate.  Pretty sad.  And if the dems out there say boths sides do it, feel free to produce ANY evidence.

For those that don't understand, when this gentlemen served he had to lie about be homosexual to get a clearance.  Sorry, to lie on a form like that is perjury and  punishable with imprisonment. 

----------------------------------------------------
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Summary: Rebroadcasts of the CNN/YouTube debate for Republican presidential candidates omitted a question from a retired brigadier general about the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, as well as the candidates' answers to the question. CNN did not note the omission.

In rebroadcasts of the November 28 CNN/YouTube debate for Republican presidential candidates, CNN expunged, without disclosure, a segment in which retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr asked the candidates to address "why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians." Kerr is a member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Americans for Hillary Clinton steering committee and a co-chairman of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary Committee. In rebroadcasts of the debate at midnight ET and 3 a.m. ET on November 29, CNN omitted the Kerr question, as well as the candidates' answers to his question.

University of Southern California professor Marty Kaplan noted the omission in a blog entry on The Huffington Post, writing:

MORNING AFTER PILL UPDATE V: When CNN rebroadcast the debate, according to commenter AdamDek, the don't-ask-don't-tell question from Brig. Gen. (ret.) Keith Kerr was edited out of the program. Gone! Just like that.

In a statement published in a November 29 post on CNN's Political Ticker blog, CNN senior vice president David Bohrman, the executive producer of the debate, apologized for selecting Kerr's question, given his campaign affiliation: "We regret this, and apologize to the Republican candidates. We never would have used the General's question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate."

On the November 29 edition of American Morning, co-host John Roberts interviewed Kerr and asked, "Now, did anyone from Hillary Clinton's campaign or from the steering committee or anyone else associated with a political organization put you up to the idea of asking this question?" Kerr responded: "Absolutely not. This was a private initiative on my own."

From the November 29 edition of CNN's American Morning:

ROBERTS: There were questions this morning about one of last night's questioners. It turns out that a retired general had links to the Clinton campaign. Here's his question, as submitted on YouTube.

KERR [video clip]: My name is Keith Kerr, of Santa Rosa, California. I'm a retired brigadier general with 43 years of service. And I'm a graduate of the Special Forces Officer Course, the Command and General Staff Course, and the Army War College, and I'm an openly gay man. I want to know why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians.

ROBERTS: So there's the question, and retired Army Brigadier General Keith Kerr joins me now this morning. We discovered after the debate last night that you are, in fact, a member of Hillary Clinton's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered steering committee. We did not -- we did a background check, and we found that you have not made any campaign contributions to any candidate. Does that still stand?

KERR: That's correct.

ROBERTS: OK. Well, let me ask you about your position on this steering committee. What does that entail, and have you, in fact, done any work for Hillary Clinton's campaign?

KERR: I have not done any work. Several friends asked me if I would allow my name to be listed, and I agreed because she is such a strong advocate of gay and lesbian rights.

ROBERTS: So this really hasn't required anything on your part other than lending your name to it?

KERR: Correct.

ROBERTS: Now, did anyone from Hillary Clinton's campaign or from the steering committee or anyone else associated with a political organization put you up to the idea of asking this question?

KERR: Absolutely not. This was a private initiative on my own.

From the original airing of the November 28 CNN/YouTube Republican presidential candidates debate:

KERR: My name is Keith Kerr, of Santa Rosa, California. I'm a retired brigadier general with 43 years of service. And I'm a graduate of the Special Forces Officer Course, the Command and General Staff Course, and the Army War College, and I'm an openly gay man. I want to know why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians.

COOPER: I want to point out that Brigadier General Keith Kerr is here with us tonight. Glad you're here. Again, the question to Congressman [Duncan] Hunter [CA].

HUNTER: Yeah. General, thanks for your service, but I believe in what [former Secretary of State and retired Army Gen.] Colin Powell said when he said that having openly homosexual people serving in the ranks would be bad for unit cohesion. And the reason for that, even though people point to the Israelis and point to the Brits and point to other people as having homosexuals serve, is that most Americans, most kids who leave that breakfast table and go out and serve in the military and make that corporate decision with their family, most of them are conservatives. And they have conservative values, and they have Judeo-Christian values. And to force those people to work in a small, tight unit with somebody who is openly homosexual, who goes against what they believe to be their principles -- and it is their principles -- is I think a disservice to them. And I agree with Colin Powell that it would be bad for unit cohesion.

COOPER: I want to direct this to [former Arkansas] Governor [Mike] Huckabee. Thirty seconds.

HUCKABEE: The Uniform Code of Military Justice is probably the best rule, and it has to do with conduct. People have a right to have whatever feelings, whatever attitudes they wish, but when their conduct could put at risk the morale, or put at risk even the cohesion that Duncan Hunter spoke of, I think that's what is at issue. And that's why our policy is what it is.

COOPER: [Former Massachusetts] Governor [Mitt] Romney, you said in 1994 that you looked forward to the day when gays and lesbians could serve, and I quote, "openly and honestly in our nation's military." Do you stand by that?

ROMNEY: This isn't that time. This is not that time. We're in the middle of a war. The people who have watched --

COOPER: Do you look forward to that time, though, one day?

ROMNEY: I'm going to listen to the people who run the military to see what the circumstances are like, and my view is that, at this stage, this is not the time for us to make that kind of a change.

COOPER: Is that a change in your position from --

ROMNEY: Yeah, I didn't think it would work. I didn't think "don't ask, don't tell" would work. That was my -- I didn't think that would work. I thought that was a policy -- when I heard about it, I laughed. I said, "That doesn't make any sense to me." And you know what? It's been there now for, what, 15 years? It seems to have worked.

COOPER: So, just so I'm clear, at this point, do you still look forward to a day when gays can serve openly in the military or no longer?

ROMNEY: I look forward to hearing from the military exactly what they believe is the right way to have the right kind of cohesion and support in our troops, and I'll listen to what they have to say.

COOPER: All right. General Kerr is -- as I said, is here. Please stand up, General. Thank you very much for being with us. Did you feel you got an answer to your question?

KERR: With all due respect, I did not get an answer from the candidates.

COOPER: What do you -- what do you feel you did not --

KERR: American men and women in the military are professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians. For 42 years, I wore the Army uniform on active duty, in the Reserve, and also for the state of California. I revealed I was a gay man after I retired. Today, "don't ask, don't tell" is destructive to our military policy. Every day, the Department of Defense discharges two people, not for misconduct, not for the unit cohesion --

COOPER: Wait, the mike is -- you've lost -- is the microphone not working? All right. Please, just finish your -- what is your question?

KERR: Not for the unit cohesion that Congressman Hunter is talking about, but simply because they happen to be gay.

COOPER: OK. Senator [John] McCain [AZ].

KERR: And we're talking about doctors, nurses, pilots, and the surgeon who sews somebody up when they're taken from the battlefield.

COOPER: I appreciate your comment. Senator McCain, I want to give you 30 seconds. You served in the military.

McCAIN: General, I thank you for your service to our nation. I respect it. All the time, I talk to our military leaders, beginning with our joint chiefs of staff and the leaders in the field, such as General [David] Petraeus and General [Raymond] Odierno and others who are designated leaders with the responsibility of the safety of the men and women under their command and their security and protect them as best they can. Almost unanimously, they tell me that this present policy is working, that we have the best military in history, that we have the bravest, most professional, best prepared, and that this policy ought to be continued because it's working.

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HUNTER TO HILLARY CLINTON DEBATE PLANT: "THANKS, SEND MORE!" Email from Duncan Hunter campaign | Nov 29, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 29, 2007

CONTACT: Gary Becks (619) 334-1655, dlhunter08@yahoo.com

San Diego, CA - - - GOP Presidential candidate Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) today sent the following response to Senator Hillary Clinton who planted a member of her campaign staff in the audience to ask a question at the Republican debate last evening in Florida. The retired military general, who announced during his question that he was gay, asked the candidates about their position on the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding homosexuals serving in the military.

November 29, 2007

Dear Senator Clinton,

Regarding the "plant", retired Brig. Gen. Keith H. Kerr, that you sent to ask me the question at the CNN-YouTube debate last night in Florida …

Send more!!!

Merry Christmas,

Duncan Hunter

Why post an obit for a retired Admiral?  Because we are so involved with entertainment personalities the truely great Americans get lost.   Do we want to know more about Paris Hilton than we do Admiral Crowe?  Who decided this? 

I grew up in a different America then exists now.  We revered great people and maligned and eschewed  twits.  So I take the opportunit to introduce the current generation to a great human.  A leader with courage,  a PhD  from Princeton.  Let's not forget the men that made America great.   A little less Paris and a little more Crowe.

And sadly, I  must admit, I had to go to a paper from the UK to hear about a great American.  Why?

 

 

Admiral William Crowe
Last Updated: 1:45am GMT 29/11/2007

 

Admiral William Crowe, who has died aged 82, was chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and later served as America's ambassador to Britain.

  Admiral William Crowe at the Pentagon explaining military movements in the Gulf

The son of a lawyer, William James Crowe Jr was born on January 2 1925 at La Grange, Kentucky. The family moved to Oklahoma City, where William attended Classen High School before going on to Oklahoma University. He then took up a place at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he was in the same class as the future president Jimmy Carter.

In 1950 Crowe qualified in submarines, and four years later was appointed assistant to the naval aide at the White House. He took leave of absence from the Navy to take an MA in Education at Stanford (1956), followed by a PhD in Politics at Princeton (1965). A pursuit of academic honours was an unusual route for anyone wishing to rise in the US Navy, but it did not impede Crowe's progress.

From 1960 to 1962 he commanded a diesel attack submarine and by 1970 he was acting as a senior adviser to the South Vietnamese River Navy. Four years later he was promoted rear-admiral with responsiblity for naval strategic planning in East Asia and the Pacific at the Pentagon. By 1980 he was commander-in-chief of Nato forces in southern Europe, where much of his time was spent mediating in disputes between Greece and Turkey.

In 1983 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Pacific and Indian Ocean forces, the largest of the unified commands, a role in which he demonstrated an adroit political sense.

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President Reagan was so impressed by one of Crowe's 90-minute briefings (during which he never once referred to a note) that he made him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff two years later. Crowe was the first appointee to the post not to have served in the Second World War.

As chairman Crowe was a critic of the rivalries between the services, which he said led to duplication of tasks and confusion; examples, in his view, were the failed mission to rescue hostages in Iran in 1980 and the invasion of Grenada three years later; and he made it his aim to foster greater co-operation between the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

He achieved greater influence than his predecessors as a result of legislation, in 1986, that effectively made him the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary for defence and the National Security Council, with the power to resolve disputes between the various services. He was among Reagan's closest advisers during the arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.

Crowe retired in 1989 to take up a post as a professor of geopolitics at Oklahoma University. But he was a vocal critic of the Bush administration's "rush to military action" against Iraq and of its policies at home.

Meanwhile, he defended Bill Clinton against Republican accusations that the Democrats' presidential candidate was a draft-dodger, and when Clinton took office in 1992, one of his aides was heard to say: "We don't owe too many people, but we do owe Crowe."

The president viewed Crowe as a trusted adviser and offered him the directorship of the CIA and the American embassy in Moscow - both of which Crowe refused.

London, however, was more to his liking; and Crowe arrived in 1994. A large, jovial presence, he proved an entertaining host, admired for his presence of mind and his wit. His after-dinner repertoire included the observation: "Under the US Constitution every person is judged innocent until nominated for office by the President."

The issues that most concerned him were Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and he was full of praise for Tony Blair, noting in a communiqué after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales: "Once again, Tony Blair showed his uncanny ability to correctly read the nation's mood." In the same dispatch he referred to the "tawdry excesses and rigidity" of the British royal family.

There was a somewhat embarrassing episode in early 1996, when the embassy's employees could not be paid while Clinton and Congress argued over Republican plans to cut federal spending. The ambassador himself ran out of funds for official entertaining.

Crowe was the author of a memoir, Line of Fire (1993), and co-author of Reducing Nuclear Danger: The Road away from the Brink (also 1993). Among many honours, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He spoke fluent French and German, and had a weakness for chocolate truffles. To relax he played chess and tennis, while his hobby was collecting hats - among them a kufiya once worn by Yasser Arafat and a Neapolitan cardinal's mitre.

William Crowe married, in 1954, Shirley Mary Grennell, a former American Airlines stewardess, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

Again we travel to a non-USA source to hear what is going on...  This from the Telegraph.

Christopher Booker's Notebook

By Christopher Booker

 

We are set on a course of 'planet saving' madness

The scare over global warming, and our politicians' response to it, is becoming ever more bizarre. On the one hand we have the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.

This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.

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On the other hand, we had Gordon Brown last week, in his "first major speech on climate change", airily committing his own and future governments to achieving a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 - which is rather like prime minister Salisbury at the end of Queen Victoria's reign trying to commit Winston Churchill's government to achieving some wholly impossible goal in the middle of the Second World War.

Mr Brown's only concrete proposal for reaching this absurd target seems to be his plan to ban plastic bags, whatever they have to do with global warming (while his government also plans a near-doubling of flights out of Heathrow).

But of course he is no longer his own master in such fantasy exercises. Few people have yet really taken on board the mind-blowing scale of all the "planet-saving" measures to which we are now committed by the European Union.

By 2020 we will have to generate 20 per cent of our electricity from "renewables". At present the figure is four per cent (most of it generated by hydro-electric schemes and methane gas from landfill).

As Whitehall officials privately briefed ministers in August, there is no way Britain can begin to meet such a fanciful target (even if the Government manages to ram through another 30,000 largely useless wind turbines).

Another EU directive commits us to deriving 10 per cent of our transport fuel from "biofuels" by 2020. This would take up pretty well all the farmland we currently use to grow food (at a time when world grain prices have doubled in six months and we are already face a global food shortage).

Then by 2009, thanks to a mad gesture by Mr Blair and his EU colleagues last March, we also face the prospect of a total ban on incandescent light bulbs.

This compulsory switch to low-energy bulbs, apart from condemning us to live in uglier homes under eye-straining light, is in practice completely out of the question, because, according to our Government's own figures, more than half Britain's domestic light fittings cannot take them.

This year will be remembered for two things.

First, it was the year when the scientific data showed that the cosmic scare over global warming may well turn out to be just that - yet another vastly inflated scare.

Second, it was the year when the hysteria generated by all the bogus science behind this scare finally drove those who rule over us, including Gordon "Plastic Bags" Brown, wholly out of their wits.

Billions of MoD spending is off target

The great row over under-funding of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, led in the Lords by five former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, has so far missed a hugely important part of the story, although it was hinted at by General Sir Mike Jackson when he was interviewed on the Today programme.

Alas, John Humphrys failed to pick up the significance of Jackson's observation that "we may not have enough to do the things which we do now and the things which we may have to do in the future".

The problem with our defence spending in recent years is not that the Ministry of Defence has been starved of cash. On the contrary, it has been earmarking colossal sums for projects designed to equip us to fight imaginary wars in the future, as part of the European Rapid Reaction Force to which Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon committed us around 2000: £20 billion on the Navy's two giant carriers (with planes and infrastructure); £16 billion on FRES, a new family of vehicles for the Army; not to mention the £20 billion already committed to Eurofighters for the RAF.

It was the diversion of resources into planning for that imaginary future that took the eyes of the MoD and the then-Chief of the Defence Staff off the need to equip our forces adequately for the totally different type of insurgency war they have actually been having to fight.

The MoD is belatedly trying to make amends for this disastrous blunder, for instance equipping our troops with properly mine-protected Mastiffs, instead of the unprotected Snatch Land Rovers that have caused so many deaths. It may also help that enthusiasm for the EU's fantasy armed forces of the future has been on the wane.

But no one at the time shared that enthusiasm more obviously (or was happier to send those hopelessly inadequate Land Rovers to Iraq) than the officer who was then Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson.

Schools minister neglects homework

Desmond Swayne, MP for New Forest West, tells me of a fearful problem affecting Hampshire schools, which have been told by the county education officer, Ian Beacham, that under new rules teachers must no longer drive pupils in mini-buses unless they have a full "passenger vehicle licence" - "a huge and expensive undertaking which entitles them to drive a coach or bus".

Threatening many extra-curricular activities, such as away sporting fixtures, this is causing such grief that Mr Swayne has asked in Parliament whether it is right that teachers should be forbidden to drive children in this way.

Schools minister Jim Knight didn't know the answer but said he would look into it. Harriet Harman, Leader of the House, suggested that Mr Swayne should move for a debate on the issue.

Had those ministers or Hampshire's education officer learned to use Google, they might have found in seconds that this is all a fuss about nothing. The two relevant EU directives on driving licences, 91/439 and 2003/59, make clear that teachers are exempted from the licensing requirements, as does a leaflet available at the click of a mouse on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency website.

But does it not say something about the way we now allow our laws to be made in Brussels that neither ministers nor a council official responsible for enforcing them appear to know what those laws say?

• On October 19, 1999 I reported here a remarkable "personal message" sent out to Britain's small businesses over the signature of Nick Montagu, then head of the Inland Revenue Board. He told them how "exciting and important" it was for him and his staff to be "at the forefront of implementing the new Labour Government's policy agenda".

How apt, in light of the mega-grief they are currently causing the Government, that eight years later our incompetent tax-gatherers appear to be playing such a significant part in New Labour's impending downfall.

 

You can't make this stuff up.  The up tight PC folks don;t want a st named Hooker.  Sadly the street was named for General Hooker, a union officer during the civil war.  (It was for the women that played for pay following around General Hooker's troops that the occupation hooker got it's name.)  When does this silly stuff stop.  This has to be an entry for the stupid school yearbook.  (By the way we need a new category for stupid stuff!)

South Dakota Town May Rename Hooker St.

 

Monday, November 26, 2007

(11-26) 13:56 PST Whitewood, S.D. (AP) --

 

If the Rev. David Baer has his way, the Whitewood City Council will change the name of one of the northern Black Hills town's streets.

 

Hooker Street doesn't quite lend itself to a family atmosphere and is offensive to some residents in the town of about 800 people, according to Baer.

 

It's actually named after a Union general from the Civil War, but Baer said that even renaming it to General Hooker Street might not be much better.

 

Any renaming would affect one resident and six water bill accounts, said Brenda Lindstrom, Whitewood city finance officer.

 

The council is expected to discuss the request its Dec. 17 meeting.

How out of touch are we in America.  Barely anyone I know knows what happened in Syria back on Sep 6th.   No wonder we act like ostriches on the world stage.   Pays to read overseas newspapers to know what is really going on.

Last update - 10:25 22/11/2007 Inside Intel / Not a reactor - something far more vicious By Yossi Melman Tags: Israel Air Force, IAEA 

Ten weeks have passed since the Israel Air Force attacked in Syria, and there is still no reliable information about the precise target that was destroyed, or about the importance and necessity of the attack. Since Israel keeps maintaining its veil of secrecy, Everything that is known comes from leaks by anonymous U.S. administration officials to several of the major American media outlets. What is almost certain, judging from the leaks, are the following facts: A nuclear site built by the Syrians was attacked, and there was some connection to know-how and technology transferred from North Korea. The prevailing assumption is that it was a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor that was in stages of construction, that would have enabled Syria to produce plutonium to manufacture a nuclear bomb.

This assumption relies first and foremost on an analysis by scholar David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington (ISIS). Albright was part of the United Nations supervisory unit in Iraq that searched for weapons of mass destruction. In recent years, he and his institute have gained a reputation as experts in nuclear proliferation. He is considered close to the U.S. intelligence communit and to have connections with the Israeli defense establishment.

A month ago Albright, as well as The Washington Post and The New York Times, published satellite photos of the site attacked in Syria. The photos were taken on August 10, 2007 and reveal a structure built adjacent to a hilly slope, not far from the Euphrates River. Incidentally, it would be interesting to learn who knew already then, about a month before the attack to take photographs of the Syrian structure from the satellite company DigitalGlobe.
A reactor without a dome

Albright compared the structure in Syria to satellite images of a structure located at the Yongbyon nuclear site in North Korea. The dimensions of the two structures are similar - about 48 by 32 meters and lacking a dome. The structure in North Korea is a nuclear research reactor built on the basis of a 1980 Chinese archetype. As opposed to the Western countries, in the Communist bloc countries, reactors commonly have a flat roof and lack a dome. For example, the reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the radioactive leakage disaster occurred in 1985, had no dome.

The official production capacity of the reaction in Yongbyon, which was fueled with enriched uranium, is 5 megawatts, but the experts estimate that in fact its capacity had been extended. Over the years, particularly during the period when North Korea was not under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it produced plutonium from the nuclear fuel rods. U.S. intelligence estimates that even after the nuclear test conducted about a year ago (a test which failed), North Korea still has reserves of about 40 kilograms of plutonium, which is sufficient to produce 10 atom bombs. This plutonium is not under supervision, and North Korea could have concealed it in its laboratories or sold it to another country - Syria, for example.

Albright's assessments, which hold that what was attacked in Syria was a nuclear reactor, have become almost an authoritative voice. They have been unreservedly adopted all over the world, Israeli media included.

But Prof. Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University is challenging them here for the first time. On the basis of an analysis of the same satellite photos, which have been published in the media and on Web sites and are accessible to everyone, he believes that the structure that was attacked and destroyed was not a nuclear reactor. Even, a former Meretz MK, is a chemist who until 1968 worked at the nuclear reactor in Dimona (KAMAG - Hebrew for the Nuclear Research Center). For years he has been keeping track of, and writing about, Israel's nuclear policy and the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Even's questions relate to several substantive issues. First, in the reactor in Yongbyon, one can clearly see a chimney, which is necessary for the emission of the radioactive gases (incidentally, based on the emission of the gases experts can determine the capacity of the reactor). In the satellite photos of the structure in Syria there is no chimney. It could be claimed that the Syrians may not have had time to build it. This is a reasonable answer, but it is overshadowed by the fact that there is evidence that the structure was under construction already four years ago. There are satellite photos of the site from 2003. In these photos one can clearly see in one of the building walls openings, which disappeared in the 2007 photos. "We can assume that construction began even before 2003," says Even. "In all those years, five years or even more, a chimney had still not been built? Very strange."

No less strange in his opinion is the fact that the "reactor" did not have cooling towers. The pumping station seen in the photos, 5 kilometers from the site, cannot, according to him, be a substitute for such towers. "A structure without cooling towers cannot be a reactor," he says, pointing to the satellite photo from Yongbyon, in which one can clearly see the cooling tower, with steam rising from it.

Another structure essential for a reactor is missing from the Syrian photos: a plutonium separation facility. As mentioned, the reactor is fueled by enriched uranium of fuel rods, which undergo a process of radiation. In order to turn them into plutonium, they have to be processed chemically in a plutonium separation facility.

And there is an additional question. If this was, in fact, a nuclear reactor, whose construction was not completed, clearly it would have taken the Syrians several years until they were able to operate it and produce plutonium. Why was Israel in a rush to attack a reactor that was under construction, years before it would have become operational? Was it willing to risk an all-out war with Syria because of a reactor in stages of construction? (A war Israel was afraid would erupt last summer, even without any connection to the nuclear issue.) This is very unlikely.

To give an example, the attack on the Iraqi reactor in 1981 was carried out very shortly before it would have become operational. From this, we may conclude that a nuclear reactor under construction, which is far from endangering Israel, should not have been a worthy target for attack.

Even more dangerous

All these explanations and others lead Even to believe that what was destroyed was not a nuclear reactor. If this is the case, what was the purpose of the structure?

"In my estimation this was something very nasty and vicious, and even more dangerous than a reactor," says Even. "I have no information, only an assessment, but I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely a factory for assembling the bomb."

In other words, Syria already had several kilograms of plutonium, and it was involved in building a bomb factory (the assembling of one bomb requires about four kilograms of fissionable material).

Processing the plutonium and assembling the bomb require utmost caution, because plutonium is one of the most toxic and radioactive materials. One microgram can kill one person, and a gram is capable of killing a million people. Handling it requires special lathes, but because of its lethal nature nobody is allowed to come into direct contact with plutonium or with the lathes. That is why there is a need to build labs containing dozens of glove boxes, which isolate and separate the worker from the material and the equipment.

What reinforces Even's suspicion that the structure attacked in Syria was in fact a bomb assembly plant is the fact that the satellite photos taken after the bombing clearly show that the Syrians made an effort to bury the entire site under piles of earth. "They did so because of the lethal nature of the material that was in the structure, and that can be plutonium," he said. That may also be the reason they refused to allow IAEA inspectors to visit the site and take samples of the earth, which would give away their secret.

Another piece of information crucial for reinforcing Even's assumption is the scant attention paid in the Israeli media to an op-ed published last month in The Wall Street Journal by two members of the U.S. Congress, Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Hoekstra is the senior Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Ros-Lehtinen is the senior Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. They expressed their anger at the fact that the Bush administration "has thrown an unprecedented veil of secrecy around the Israeli airstrike. It has briefed only a handful of very senior members of Congress, leaving the vast majority of foreign relations and intelligence committee members in the dark. We are among the very few who were briefed, but we have been sworn to secrecy on this matter."

They write in the article that Syria received "nuclear expertise or material" from North Korea, and in the same breath they mention Iran, without explaining why. They claim that the administration leaks are intentionally vague: to justify the Israeli attack but also to blur North Korea's part in the affair.

The two Congressmen have a clear agenda: They want the administration to remove the cloak of secrecy and tell the members of Congress and the public the truth about what happened, in the belief that such information will lead the majority in Congress to understand that the negotiations with North Korea should be stopped.

North Korea's consent to shut down the Yongbyon reactor and to allow renewed international monitoring of it (although it is not clear what will happen to the fissionable material in its possession - enriched plutonium and uranium), was achieved after exhausting contacts that lasted for about five years, with China, Russia, the U.S., Japan and South Korea. In exchange, North Korea will receive economic assistance and fuel. Hoekstra and Ros-Lehtinen are apparently aware that revealing the truth about North Korea's role will lead to pressure on the U.S. administration to discontinue the contacts with the regime in Pyongyang. But for exactly the same reason, the administration is not interested in doing so, particularly not at this sensitive time when it is trying to prevent Iran's nuclear program.

And what about Israel? Wasn't it in Israel's interest to publicize what was bombed in Syria? Of course it was. Even more so if this was a plant for assembling a nuclear bomb based on information, technology and fissionable material that Syria re ceived from North Korea, perhaps with the knowledge and consent of Iran, or even more than that.

Then why is Israel insisting on continuing to maintain total secrecy? The only logical explanation (except for the embarrassment of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which doesn't particularly bother Israel), is the desire not to make things hard for the U.S. administration.