What has been the best thing G.W. has ever done? Appoint Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito! That's what!
Court Rejects ACLU Challenge to Wiretaps
WASHINGTON (AP) - The SupremeCourt dealt a setback Tuesday to civil rights and privacy advocates who oppose the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The justices, without comment, turned down an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to let it pursue a lawsuit against the program that began shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Wednesday night, February 29, 2008 the Western Hemisphere will experience a total Lunar Eclipse. That is, the Moon will be completely covered by Earth's umbra, or shadow. The Earth will briefly be directly in between the Sun and Moon. The Moon will still be visible to us Earthlings because of the refraction of light rays escaping the atmosphere. Because of the atmosphere acting like a filter, the only rays that will be able to escape is of the red spectrum. The Moon will appear blood red or brownish in color. Here is what is interesting about this: many religions associate the Moon turning blood red as a bad omen; even the bible. Read it here and here.
Interestingly, Cristopher Columbus used the Lunar Eclipse to his advantage.
Rewind to 504 years ago!
The story goes in 1504, Columbus was stranded and badly needing supplies in Jamaica. The locals were fed up and warring (perhaps mad as hell they were on their land, but that is another hisotry lesson) with these foreigners from Europe. They refused to give Columbus and crew anything.
Columbus looked to his almanac and discovered a mathematicians lunar prediction. Ding, goes off in the bold explorer's head!
He goes to the tribesman and tells them if they do not give him what he requires he will hide the moon!
Okay, I bet the tribesman were telling Colombus to get his white Euro-trash ass back on his dingy and fuck-off right? Yep! So Colombus says beware! (Disclaimer! These words are not actual conversation!)
That night I'm sure Colombus prayed his ass off that this pencil-necked mathematician from Berlin, or wherever, better had his numbers right!
Low and behold Colombus' bet paid off and the locals begged for him to return the moon!!!
Of course Colombus did so, but not before getting what supplies he and his crew needed!
Now that is genius!
Now what I'm getting at here is, how many times have you seen this happen today? Today as in our present time.
Me? I see it every freakin' day when Senators Obama and Clinton take the stage and make their threats to tax the evil rich and empty promises to the ignorant, uneducated, and emotional (make me faint when I hear Obama speak) liberals.
P.S. Thanks Breibart for a bit of the actual historical reference on Columbus' story. Read it here if you like.
Sen. Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he’s aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation’s rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing — exactly what the nation and the stock market do not want to hear.
Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants to “reopen” trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade. He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers, and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the earned-income tax credit and triple this benefit for minimum-wage workers.
The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won’t pay for it. It’s the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.
This isn’t free enterprise. It’s old-fashioned-liberal tax, spend, and regulate. It’s plain ol’ big government. The only people who will benefit are the central planners in Washington.
Obama would like voters to believe that he’s the second coming of JFK. But with his unbelievable spending and new-government-agency proposals he’s looking more and more like Jimmy Carter. His is a “Grow the Government Bureaucracy Plan,” and it’s totally at odds with investment and business.
Obama says he wants U.S. corporations to stop “shipping jobs overseas” and bring their cash back home. But if he really wanted U.S. companies to keep more of their profits in the states he’d be calling for a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Why isn’t he demanding an end to the double-taxation of corporate earnings? It’s simple: He wants higher taxes, too.
The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore has done the math on Obama’s tax plan. He says it will add up to a 39.6 percent personal income tax, a 52.2 percent combined income and payroll tax, a 28 percent capital-gains tax, a 39.6 percent dividends tax, and a 55 percent estate tax.
Not only is Obama the big-spending candidate, he’s also the very-high-tax candidate. And what he wants to tax is capital.
Doesn’t Obama understand the vital role of capital formation in creating businesses and jobs? Doesn’t he understand that without capital, businesses can’t expand their operations and hire more workers?
Dan Henninger, writing in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, notes that Obama’s is a profoundly pessimistic message. “Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar,” writes Henninger. “It’s a downer.”
Obama wants you to believe that America is in trouble, and that it can only be cured with a big lurch to the left. Take from the rich and give to the non-rich. Redistribute income and wealth. It’s an age-old recipe for economic disaster. It completely ignores incentives for entrepreneurs, small family-owned businesses, and investors. You can’t have capitalism without capital. But Obama would penalize capital, be it capital from corporations or investors. This will only harm, and not advance, opportunities for middle-class workers.
Obama believes he can use government, and not free markets, to drive the economy. But on taxes, trade, and regulation, Obama’s program is anti-growth. A President Obama would steer us in the social-market direction of Western Europe, which has produced only stagnant economies down through the years. It would be quite an irony. While newly emerging nations in Eastern Europe and Asia are lowering the tax penalties on capital — and reaping the economic rewards — Obama would raise them. Low-rate flat-tax plans are proliferating around the world. Yet Obama completely ignores this. American competitiveness would suffer enormously under Obama, as would job opportunities, productivity, and real wages.
Imitate the failures of Germany, Norway, and Sweden? That’s no way to run economic policy.
I have so far been soft on Obama this election season. In many respects he is a breath of fresh air. He’s an attractive candidate with an appealing approach to politics. Obama is likeable, and sometimes he gets it — such as when he opposed Hillary Clinton’s five-year rate-freeze on mortgages.
But his message is pessimism, not hope. And behind the charm and charisma is a big-government bureaucrat who would take us down the wrong economic road.
Its going to be an interesting 4 years after he wins.
There are those on the internet, and in Obamaland that refuse to believe that Obama is a Socialist at heart. That when you scratch the surface of pressed suit and great speeches you get a person bent on swinging America HARD LEFT. Then you have those that agree with those steps. Fine.
But for the earlier group swallow this:
Campaign workers for Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama are under fire for displaying a flag featuring communist hero Che Guevara. But Obama has his own controversial socialist connections. He is, in fact, an associate of a Chicago-based Marxist group with access to millions of labor union dollars and connections to expert political consultants, including a convicted swindler.
Obama's socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat. Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the "champions" of "Chicago's democratic left" and a long-time socialist activist. Obama's stint as a "community organizer" in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored.
Blogger Steve Bartin, who has been following Obama's career and involvement with the Chicago socialists, has uncovered a fascinating video showing Obama campaigning for openly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Interestingly, Sanders, who won his seat in 2006, called Obama "one of the great leaders of the United States Senate," even though Obama had only been in the body for about two years. In 2007, the National Journal said that Obama had established himself as "the most liberal Senator." More liberal than Sanders? That is quite a feat. Does this make Obama a socialist, too?
DSA describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. The Socialist International (SI) has what is called "consultative status" with the United Nations. In other words, it works hand-in-glove with the world body.
The international connection is important and significant because an Obama bill, "The Global Poverty Act," has just been rushed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the assistance of Democratic Senator Joe Biden, the chairman, and Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The legislation (S.2433) commits the U.S. to spending hundreds of billions of dollars more in foreign aid on the rest of the world, in order to comply with the "Millennium Goals" established by the United Nations. Conservative members of the committee were largely caught off-guard by the move to pass the Obama bill but are putting a "hold" on it, in order to try to prevent the legislation, which also quickly passed the House, from being quickly brought up for a full Senate vote. But observers think that Senate Democrats may try to pass it quickly anyway, in order to give Obama a precious legislative "victory" that he could run on.
Another group associated with the SI is the Party of European Socialists (PES), which heard from Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, back in 2006. Dean's speech is posted on the official Democratic Party website, although the European socialist parties are referred to as "progressive." Democrats, Dean said, want to be "good citizens of the world community." He spoke at a session on "Global Challenges for Progressive Politics."
Following up, in April 2007, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen reported that European socialists held a meeting "in the Democrats HQ in Washington," met with officials of the party and Democratic members of Congress, and agreed that "PES activist groups" in various U.S. cities would start working together. The photos of the trip show Rasmussen meeting with such figures as Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bernie Sanders, officials of the Brookings Institution, Howard Dean, and AFL-CIO President John W. Sweeney, a member of the DSA. The Brookings Institution is headed by former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a proponent of world government who was recently identified in the book Comrade J as having been a pawn of the Russian intelligence service.
The socialist connections of Obama and the Democratic Party have certainly not been featured in the Washington Post columns of Harold Meyerson, who happens not only to be a member but a vice-chair of the DSA. Meyerson, the subject of our 2005 column, "A Socialist at the Washington Post," has praised convicted inside-trader George Soros for manipulating campaign finance laws to benefit the far-left elements of the Democratic Party. Obama's success in the Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses is further evidence of Soros's success. Indeed, Soros has financially contributed to the Obama campaign.
It is not surprising that the Chicago Democrat, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, has endorsed Obama. Schakowsky, who endorsed Howard Dean for president in 2004, was honored in 2000 at a dinner sponsored by the Chicago chapter of the DSA. Her husband, Robert Creamer, emerged from federal prison in November 2006 after serving five months for financial crimes. He pleaded guilty to ripping off financial institutions while running a non-profit group. Before he was convicted but under indictment, Creamer was hired by the Soros-funded Open Society Policy Center to sabotage John Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the U.N.
After his release from prison, Creamer released a book, Listen to Your Mother: Stand up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, described by one blogger as the book that was "penned in the pen." A blurb for the book declares, "Some people think that in order to win, Democrats need to move to the political center by adopting conservative values and splitting the difference between progressive and conservative positions. History shows they are wrong. To win the next election and to win in the long term, we need to redefine the political center."
In addition to writing the book, Creamer is back in business, running his firm, Strategic Consulting Group, and advertising himself as "a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America's budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform." His clients have included the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org. In fact, his client list is a virtual who's who of the Democratic Party, organized labor, and Democratic Party constituency groups.
Creamer's list of testimonials comes from such figures as Democratic Senators Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Harold Meyerson, MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd, and David Axelrod, a "Democratic political consultant."
Axelrod, of course, is much more than just a "Democratic political consultant." He helped State Senator Barack Obama win his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 and currently serves as strategist and media advisor to Obama's presidential campaign.
Now this is fairly old on the Blogosphere but I felt it necessary to capture most of the important things here. Val from Babalu Blog has done a PHENOMENAL job of getting everything pertaining to Obama and the the Che flag. So here is a small recap.
Obama Campaign office had a flag of El Che during a recent local news report. A Fox Affiliate had the report with Video.
The Obama Campaign issued a statement about the Flag:
Statement from the Barack Obama Campaign over Inappropriate Use of Flag February 13, 2008
"Senator Obama has made it clear that we will maintain the embargo as a way to leverage meaningful democratic change in Cuba. The office featured in this video is funded by volunteers of the Barack Obama Campaign and is not an official headquarters for his campaign."
And a more recent updated more PC version:
"This is a volunteer office that is not in any way controlled by the Obama campaign. We were disappointed to see this picture because it is both offensive to many Cuban-Americans -- and Americans of all backgrounds -- and because it does not reflect Senator Obama’s views. Barack Obama has been very clear in putting forward a Cuba policy that is based on one principle: freedom for the Cuban people." -- Obama Campaign
Seeing as every campaign involves "volunteers" except for the upper echelon of a campaign its pretty silly to just say this is an outside effort. But lets talk about this Houston "volunteer" for a minute.
Maria Isabel is a precinct captain for Obama. She is also co-chair of a volunteer group called Houston Obama Leadership Team (HOLT). She has pictures of herself with both Obama and his wife on her Flickr page. She is obviously very active in both the campaign and the Democratic party. Just because she's not a paid employ does not exonerate her or the campaign. Almost everyone except the very top people on a campaign are volunteers.
While Obama may try to distance himself from any Socialists ties NOW. The following post will open some eyes on that front.
This is going to be rather interesting in the next 4-5 years as we slowly see the crawl towards more "Nationalized" health care.
The cost of government benefits for seniors soared to a record $27,289 per senior in 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
That's a 24% increase above the inflation rate since 2000. Medical costs are the biggest reason. Last year, for the first time, health care and nursing homes cost the government more than Social Security payments for seniors age 65 and older. The average Social Security benefit per senior in 2007 was $13,184.
"We have a health care crisis. We don't have an entitlement crisis," says David Certner, legislative policy director of the AARP, which represents seniors.
He says seniors shouldn't be blamed for the growing cost of government retirement programs.
The federal government spent $952 billion in 2007 on elderly benefits, up from $601 billion in 2000. It's the biggest function of the federal government. States chipped in $27 billion more in 2007, mostly for nursing homes.
All three major senior programs � Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid � experienced dramatically escalating costs that outstripped inflation and the growth in the senior population.
Benefits per senior are soaring at a time when the senior population is not. The portion of the U.S. population ages 65 and older has been constant at 12% since 2000.
The senior boom, however, starts big time in 2011, when the first baby boomers � 79 million people born between 1946 and 1964 � turn 65 and qualify for Medicare health insurance. The oldest baby boomers turn 62 this year and qualify for Social Security at reduced benefits.
USA TODAY used a variety of government data to calculate the cost of providing Social Security, medical benefits and long-term care to an aging population. Billions of dollars paid to non-seniors � the disabled, children and others in the programs � were removed to create an estimate that focuses exclusively on seniors.
Findings include:
•Medicare experienced the most explosive growth from 2000 to 2007. The Medicare prescription-drug benefit, started in 2006, accounts for about one-fourth of the increase in Medicare, which provides health benefits for people 65 and older.
•Long-term care costs per senior have declined slightly in the past three years because of a move away from nursing homes to less expensive home care.
•The cost of senior benefits is equal to $10,673 for every non-senior household.
•About 35% of the federal budget is spent on senior benefits, up from 32% in 2004.
Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Urban Institute, notes that the full cost of senior benefits goes beyond Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A complete estimate would include other programs for retirees, such as military and civil servant pensions and medical benefits, he says.
The Urban Institute estimates that kids receive an average of about $4,000 per child in benefits, including the child tax credit and other indirect assistance.
Economist Dean Baker calls it "granny bashing" to focus on the cost of senior benefits. The elderly paid a designated tax for Social Security and Medicare taxes during their decades of working to support these programs when they retired, says Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic Policy and Research.
Remember folks the SOLUTION is to have a NATIONAL government program that will make things..... cheaper....
Has anybody seen this story on the MSM sites??? On any of them?? Nyet. Me either
Three Afghan nationals held at Nedumbaserry Airport Kochi,
Feb 13 (UNI) Three Afghan nationals were arrested at the Nedumbaserry International Airport, near here, today for travelling on fake Mexican passports, Immigration officials said.
The three were earlier in the day deported from Kuwait after authorities there doubted their claim to be Mexican nationals.
Immigration and other security officials interrogated the three for several hours and finally arrested them on charges of travelling on forged passports.According to
Immgiration officials, they were Afghan nationals trying to go to France. However, their real names have not been disclosed so far.
The Mexican passports which they were carrying identified them as Antonio Lopez Juan (42), Javier Sanchez Alberto (20) and Atonio Lopez Ernesto (16). They had left from Nedumbaserry Airport on February 11 for Kuwait en route to France.
However, the emigration officials at Kuwait had found them to be suspects as they reportedly could not understand any Spanish. They also suspected the passports to be forged. The three were then deported to Nedumbaserry today.
The three had reportedly arrived in New Delhi on January 23 this year, as per the stamps on their passports. However, there was some doubt about the authenticity of the arrival stamps on the passports also, emigration officials said.
Thank God for Americans like Michelle Malkin. Please read this report from her about Bush plan to fund the southern Mexican border with American taxpayer money with security resouces so they control thier illegal immigration problems.
Yeah you heard me! America is going to help Mexico's border problem! HEEELLLLLOOOO!! Is Bush Serious???
Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.
Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.
In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.
All this Bull about enforcement not working? That its impossible to deport illegals is sure not being covered by major news outlets. Funny why that is.
Most of illegal immigration opponents like myself have stated this clearly. If you ENFORCE the laws, and make it harder for illegals to get jobs, get housing, and free education then watch as they all leave willingly. You won't need a single deportation bus.
Now we see how true that is:
Undocumented immigrants are coming into Texas, but not from where one might think.
The rush is coming from Arizona, Oklahoma and other states, places that recently passed tough anti immigrant laws. The two toughest measures are in Arizona and Oklahoma.
Effective January 1, the Arizona law suspended the business license of employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants. On a second offense, the license is revoked.
The Oklahoma statute, which took effect in November, makes it a crime to transport, harbor or hire undocumented immigrants. Anecdotal information seems to indicate undocumented immigrants are leaving these states in growing numbers.
"They're really tightening the screws," said Mario Ortiz, an undocumented Mexican worker who came to Houston after leaving Phoenix last year." There have been a lot coming. It could be 100 a day."
In Tulsa, Okla., the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has estimated 15,000 to 25,000 undocumented immigrants have left the area. One builder estimated 30 percent of the Hispanic work force left Tulsa.
"There's been a tremendous impact in Oklahoma City," said David Castillo, the executive director of the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "We've had several companies close shop and leave the state. Banks have called us and say they're closing 30 accounts per week."
Enrique Hubbard, Mexico's consul general in Dallas, said a dozen Mexican families from Oklahoma have applied for consular documents listing their new homes in the Dallas area.
Texas' reputation as a welcoming destination has experts predicting more immigrants will come to Houston and other cities in the state. Texas has not passed a state wide law targeting the employment of undocumented immigrants.
"Texas is still very much an entrepreneurial place where you can find your place in this economy," said James Hollifield, a Southern Methodist University professor and migration expert.
Ortiz, a native of he southern Mexican state of Tabasco, said he left Phoenix eight months ago after working 60 to 70 hours a week at a plant nursery. While now he can only pick up two to three days a week of yard work and barely earns enough to send back to his family, he prefers Texas to Arizona.
"Here, they let you work. Over there, they won't. There is a lot of racism, but here there isn't - it's better," Ortiz said of Houston.
And the issue has NOTHING to do with racism. But with the damn LAW!
It was another two-hanky day on the campaign trail yesterday, as Hillary Rodham Clinton teared up at an event targeting female voters on the eve of the Super Tuesday elections.
After she got a warm introduction from an old friend, Clinton's eyes welled up and glistened under TV camera lights. She paused and gathered her composure.
She didn't choke up - as she did at a similar event on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, a moment that Clinton now says may have helped her snag a critical victory last month by making her appear human and vulnerable.
But there were enough similarities between the two teary instances that skeptics wondered whether the whole thing was contrived.
"Whenever [Barack] Obama picks up steam, she seems to open up the waterworks," said one Democratic operative.
It all started yesterday, when Clinton got a moving introduction from one of her mentors, Penn Rhodeen, who supervised her at a Legal Aid Society while Clinton was a student at Yale Law School.
Rhodeen called Clinton "our incomparable Hillary," after describing the day when, "You appeared at my door, dressed mostly in purple" in a sheepskin coat with bellbottoms.
"You looked wonderful - and so 1972," he said.
Rhodeen himself choked up during his remarks, and Clinton came to the brink of losing her composure. Tears welled up in her eyes as she gathered herself to address 12 preselected women sitting around a table at the Yale Child Study Center, where she once worked.
"Well, I said I would not tear up. Already, we're not exactly on that path," Clinton said, evoking laughs from the crowd.
"She controlled it, but at the table you could see [the tears in her eyes]," said Erin Phillips, a second-year law student, who said Clinton "did great."
Later on, Clinton conducted a town-hall meeting on the Hallmark Channel with audiences from 22 Super Tuesday states. Her campaign paid Hallmark $500,000 for the hour of airtime.
She also appeared on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman," where the talk-show host asked her if she had ordered hubby Bill to "ease up" on attacking Obama.
She acknowledged talking to her husband, but said, "It was more like, 'We have to get on the positive here.' "
Meanwhile, Obama campaigned with Sen. Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy at the Izod Center arena in New Jersey, next to the home of the champion Giants.
"Sometimes the underdog pulls it out," Obama said. "You can't always believe the pundits and prognosticators."
BRAVO.. right on cue. Its was PERFECT. Didn't even skip a beat. Almost as good as this one:
Notice the words, "I have so many opportunities for this country" damn if that is not Stalinist I don't know what is. Also what is this we have to reverse it thing? You mean reverse the growth in the economy? Well yeah if you ask Mr. Clinton. You know we have to stop Global Warming and all and to do that you have to destroy the US economy. Its the only way.
Jesus why is no one else seeing this garbage? I PRAY she wins the general elections. God I do. I want people to realize what a FANTASTIC mistake that will be.
Russia, China and OPEC oil-producing countries have a worrisome potential to use their growing financial clout to exert political pressure, the top U.S. spy chief told Congress on Tuesday.
U.S. National Director of Intelligence Michael McConnell voiced the concern to Congress in his annual assessment of potential security threats to the United States.
McConnell also told the Senate Intelligence Committee in prepared testimony that the global threat of terrorism remained, but that al Qaeda had suffered setbacks and its international reputation was diminishing.
He voiced continued concern over Iran's potential to develop nuclear weapons despite its halt to nuclear warhead design, and said political uncertainty in Pakistan had not threatened the military's control of that country's nuclear arsenal.
In listing top threats, McConnell cited "concerns about the financial capabilities of Russia, China and OPEC countries and the potential use of their market access to exert financial leverage to political ends."
Russia was positioning itself to control an energy supply and transportation network spanning from Europe to East Asia, and China's global engagement was driven by a need to access markets and resources, McConnell said.
He voiced concerns about the impact of a weaker U.S. dollar on global oil suppliers, some of whom have asked to be paid in currencies other than dollars, or delinked their currency pegs to the dollar.
"Continued concerns about dollar depreciation could tempt other producers to follow suit," McConnell said.
The dollar devaluation has its pros and its cons. The pro being more exports from the US. One of the cons are the supposed removing of the dollar from Oil purchases, but that is probably not going to happen. The world economy is way to invested in it to take that kind of hit.
Bravo to George Stephonopolous this weekend for hammering Clinton on this issue. Here's the gist of it:
The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always pecified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC's "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mechanisms" that are possible, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment."
Please don't be an idiot and vote for this woman. Need I say more.
Last night I couldn't believe my eyes. They did it. The NY Giants won the Super Bowl. I am a Giant fan and even I didn't think they would even make the playoffs nor win the Superbowl! Nethier did many many many many other people. Niether did the Patriots. They came in undefeated. They were heavily favored. They were supposed to easily annihialate the G-men into obilivion for even daring to try and take their Superbowl win. HA! HA HA HA! How do you like them apples Bostonians!
This month, I received the results of a called-for study detailing the costs of services delivered to illegal aliens. The estimated drain on County services and community medical providers is more than $250 million a year.
The numbers only confirm my suspicions, but the findings are worse than I could have imagined because the estimates are likely on the low-side. While more than $100 million in taxpayer’s dollars is drained from our budget every year to provide services to people who are in this country illegally, there is another $154 million in costs for un-reimbursed emergency medical care. This is not a direct County cost; however, it is a huge hit on the community.
I asked for action to determine the financial impact of illegal aliens to County services in my State of the County Address as Chairman of the Board in 2006. Now we have the numbers that show how much money is being diverted that could be used to do such things as fix roads and provide better public safety. This is a hidden redistribution of taxpayer’s dollars amounting to $100 for every citizen in our County.
I am preparing a response to the study and will present findings to the entire Board of Supervisors at our meeting on September 25, 2007. I would welcome your comment any time and at that public meeting. If you would like to have a copy of the Undocumented Immigrant Study, please go to our website at http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/cnty/bos/sup5/.
I have been trying my best at not blogging about the current primary elections. Mostly because I believe that every one of them suck.
Rudy has bowed out and even though Rudy was one of the reasons I realized I am a conservative I am glad he did. He ran a horrible campaign and really had no vision that resounded well with the rest of America.
McCain is the "new front runner" after Huckabee went from BOOM to BUST in 1 state. I guess people really started looking at Hucakabee's actual record instead of the fact that he goes to church every week. Go figure.
With McCain as the new front runner I am really concerned about the fact that conservatism in America as we know it may be dead. The days of Regan Conservatism is passing and is being replaced with this new liberal-conservatism. McCain along with the likes of Mel Martinez and Crist who both endorsed McCain in the final hours of the Primaries in Florida made me realize its dead. Floridas primaries this year seem to be the defining moment on when I realized that its all but dead folks.
The Primaries were open only to registered Republicans so I could not vote as I have no part affiliation. And McCain won! I was in total shock to be honest. How the hell did Floridians decide that McCain can now be called a Conservative is beyond me. There isn't anything that he believes in that would even come close to being called Conservative, yet here they are choosing him as the nominee.
For Christs sake he backed McCain/Feingold and McCain/Kennedy and you wonder WTF is so Conservative about that?
People talk about how McCain can reach across party lines and negotiate. But that is BULLSHIT. He doesn't negotiate, he flat out gives liberals what they want. How the hell was the Immigration bill this last summer even remotely a negotiation. It was a damn Amnesty plan.
Romney is the other front runner. I have stated before "I do not trust this guy". Romney makes John Kerry look consistent!
What is wrong with the conservative part of the Republican party? Mits Romneywho switches opinions like he is changing underwear and John I concede everything to liberals McCain? Really?
At LEAST Romney understands economics. Even though he is a complete corporate welfare type of guy.
McCain on the other hand can't even answer a question about economics without saying he will have "OTHERS" with him in his administration that will know about it. WTF IS THAT? Leadership is one thing, sure its a good thing to have, but what good is leadership if you don't have a CLUE on WTF you are leading on. Its like a bring great leader and in a war on the front lines, but not having a clue about military operations.
He didn't even answer the question! Just that he'll have OTHER GUYS making those decisions pretty much!
Sigh.... I digress.
I fear I will have no one that I can put my real support behind.
If McCain in fact if ANYONE of the front runners for the Republican Party win the nomination I will vote for Obama or Hillary. As I have stated countless times on forums. I will NOT vote for the Devil I know over the Devil I don't any longer. I figure if we are going to go down the toilet, lets flush this shit down quickly. Obama and Clinton being so close together on actual issues are just the people to take us there quick!
Let liberals and Americans see what it is like when you have Congress and the White house under Democratic/Liberal rule.
You need a Carter to get a Reagan! Bring it on then!
This is what kills me about these damn Global Warming freaks, they totally brush off these findings and continue down this path that somehow humans are so powerful that we effect global temperatures. When in reality just 1 volcano makes a century of our activity seem like a grain of sand on the beach.
So no Gore, the debate is not over:
Another factor might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers: volcanoes.
In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica.
"This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said.
Volcanic heat could still be melting ice to water and contributing to thinning and speeding up of the Pine Island glacier, which passes nearby, but Vaughan said he doubted that it could be affecting other glaciers in western Antarctica, which have also thinned in recent years. Most glaciologists, including Vaughan, say that warmer ocean water is the primary cause of thinning.
Volcanically, Antarctica is a fairly quiet place. But sometime around 325 B.C., the researchers said, a hidden and still active volcano erupted, puncturing several hundred yards of ice above it. Ash and shards from the volcano carried through the air and settled onto the surrounding landscape. That layer is now out of sight, hidden beneath the snows that fell during the next 2,300 years.
Still, the layer showed up clearly in airborne radar surveys conducted over the region in 2004 and 2005 by American and British scientists. The reflected radio waves over an elliptical area about 110 miles, or 176 kilometers, wide were so strong that earlier radar surveys had mistakenly identified it as bedrock. Better radar techniques now can detect a second echo from the actual bedrock farther down.
The thickness of ice above the ash layer provided an estimate of the date of the eruption: 207 B.C., give or take 240 years. "It's probably within Alexander the Great's lifetime, but not more precise than that," Vaughan said.
MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.
It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations—in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote’s duel with the windmill?
Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents—an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.
The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.
Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.
Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.
Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.
Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.
Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.
Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.
The principal among those diverse links is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.
What can’t be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow.
Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north—but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that.
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.
As usual with most things on the internet, the far left will get 1 sound byte and RUN WITH IT. Without even looking at anything else and completely ignoring the rest of the conversation that she was having with David Frost, the fringe left took the words "the man Sheik Omar who murdered Bin Laden" and took it to every corner of the internet to start their usual conspiracy theory riddled crap.
The fringe left or hell in some cases just the left:
believe that Osama Bin Laden was killed in the bombings along the Pakistan border after 9/11. Despite him releasing tapes afterwards.
Well of course, it takes some research to see that CLEARLY she was taken completely out of context and misspoke. In her conversation she was talking about the western journalists that were murdered by orders of Bin Laden to Sheik Omar, that journalist was Daniel Pearle who was killed in 2002.
Also to note is the fact that Omar Sheik was taken into captivity in July of 2002, Bin Laden released video after that date and audio. His right hand Ayman al-Zawahiri man has never once made any mention of OBL being dead or dying.
However for some this is not enough so to further squash this conspiracy theory right out of existence there are two interviews with Bhutto that should end this nonsense.
First this is part of the transcript of her interview on CNN 1 day after the Frost interview on November 3rd 2007 in which she says:
WHITFIELD: So, Ms. Bhutto, am I hearing you correctly in saying that you almost directly blame General Pervez Musharraf for helping to produce these safe havens in Pakistan, where there is terrorist activity, where, perhaps, in these safe havens someone like the Osama bin Laden, the most-wanted terrorist in the world, just might be taking refuge?
BHUTTO: I wouldn't like to go so far as to blame General Musharraf directly, but I would certainly say that many people in his administration and his security apparatus responsible for internal security make me feel very uneasy. And I believe that tribal areas of Pakistan could not have become safe havens without collusion of some of the elements in the present administration. And this is why I believe that regime change is very important.
I had hoped --
WHITFIELD: Do you Musharraf -- I'm sorry. Do you think General Musharraf knows where Osama bin Laden is?
BHUTTO:I don't think General Musharraf personally knows where Osama bin Laden is, but I do feel that people around him are many who are associated with the earlier military dictatorship of the '80s. That military dictatorship formed the Iran Mujahideen.
If she did not misspeak LITERALLY the day before with Mr. Frost, then why would she not even MENTION that Omar Sheik murdered OBL so "knowing where he is", is irrelevant?
But to solidify it some more. Since there are those on the left that believe that CNN is part of the conspiracy. I turn now to NPR, and Mrs Bhutto's interview on NPR with Steve Insky, which can hardly be part of any conspiracy. This interview was on November 13th 2007. Its audio so you lefties reading this now don't think that its been altered in anyway.
STEVE: What is your Freedom of movement like if any?
BHUTTO: I have freedom of movement within the house. I don't have freedom of movement outside the house. We've got a heavy police force inside the house, and we've got a very heavy police force -- 4,000 policemen around the four walls of my house, 1,000 on each. We've even entered the neighbor's house and I was just telling one of the policemen, I said, should you be here after us? Shouldn't you be looking for Osama bin Laden? And he said I'm sorry, ma'am, this is our job. We're just doing what we're told.
Again why would she tell NPR that she told a soldier to go look for Osama when she knows that OBL is dead? Probably folks because she misspoke in the Frost interview.
I am sure even this is not enough to convince the lefty morons/moonbats (as Michelle Malkin likes to call them) that still believe the the US government is covering up OBL's supposed death. As though Bush would not announce it and SILENCE his critics and be part of the history books as the one that took out Osama.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said on Monday that she might allow a U.S. military strike inside Pakistan to eliminate al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden if she were the country's leader.
"I would hope that I would be able to take Osama bin Laden myself without depending on the Americans. But if I couldn't do it, of course we are fighting this war together and (I) would seek their cooperation in eliminating him," Bhutto said in an interview on BBC World News America.
Again if she believed he was dead, and did not misspeak why would she say this to Reuters?
So once again the left has failed, and in her death began to circulate things about her that she cannot refute, pretty convenient no? The Left doesn't care what image it tarnishes, it just cares about its ridiculous conspiracy theories and its fascination with Bush and supposed cover ups.
This is for all the MORONS that come onto this site seeking where the source of all this information comes from. In some cases even questioning its validity and or its information.
Its really simple and I guess I should have made the site more "moonbat friendly". If you click on the title of the story it will take you to the SOURCE of what the post is.
Try it, you'll be amazed at how factual and correct everything that is posted on the site is.
