From Newsday:

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) arrives for a campaign stop at Traer Memorial Building in Traer, Iowa, December 30, 2007.

Hillary says she risked life on White House trips

Glenn Thrush

December 31, 2007

VINTON, Iowa - Ever since Barack Obama suggested Hillary Clinton’s eight years as first lady were a glorified tea party a few days back, she’s looked for an opening to strike back.

On Saturday night in Dubuque she pounced, arguing she risked her life on White House missions in the 1990s, including a hair-raising flight into Bosnia that ended in a “corkscrew” landing and a sprint off the tarmac to dodge snipers.

“I don’t remember anyone offering me tea,” she quipped.

The dictum around the Oval Office in the ’90s, she added, was: “If a place was too dangerous, too poor or too small, send the first lady.”

It turns out that Clinton wasn’t quite flying solo into harm’s way that day.

She was, in fact, leading a goodwill entourage that included baggy-pants funnyman Sinbad, singer Sheryl Crow and Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, then 15, according to an account of the March 1995 trip in her autobiography “Living History.”

As the plane approached the runway, the pilot ordered the Clintons into the armored front of the plane, Clinton writes.

What’s not clear is whether Sinbad or Crow were invited to the cockpit or had to brave it out in the unprotected rear.

Oh, my sides.

For the record, here is how Mrs. Clinton describes her death-defying mission in ghostwritten autobiography, Living History, pp 406-8: 

WAR ZONES

… After arriving at Baumholder, Chelsea and I attended church services, met with the families of our troops, and enjoyed a brief performance in the mess hall by Sheryl and Sinbad. Around 6:30 the next morning, our entourage boarded a C-17 transport plane and took off for Tuzla Air Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition to the entertainers, we brought pallets of mail and gifts for the troops, including donations from American companies of 2,200 long-distance calling cards and 300 movies on video. The White House contributed six cases of M&M’s with the presidential seal on every box. For the children in Bosnia, who had lost years of schooling because of the fighting, American companies donated school supplies and toys.

I spent the hour-and-forty-minute flight wandering around the cavernous metal belly of the huge transport plane, chatting with the crew and members of the press corps, who were strapped into benchlike jump seats. It was like touring the inside of a blimp, but louder. The pilot, then one of just four female C- 17 pilots in the Air Force, kept the plane cruising high over the devastated countryside, above the reach of surface-to-air missiles and sniper fire. As a reminder of the dangers that remained despite the official cease-fire, each of us was required to wear a flak jacket on the plane, and the Secret Service moved Chelsea and me up to the armored cockpit for the landing. Above the airstrip, the captain dipped a wing and made a near-perpendicular landing to evade possible ground fire.

Security conditions were constantly changing in the former Yugoslavia, and they had recently deteriorated again. Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find. One eight-year-old girl gave me a copy of a poem she had written entitled “Peace.” Chelsea and I presented the school supplies we had brought, along with letters from seventh-grade children at Baumholder whose parents and teachers had initiated a pen pal program. We were then hustled off to the fortified American base at Tuzla, where over two thousand American, Russian, Canadian, British and Polish soldiers were encamped in a large tent city.

Sheryl Crow, Sinbad and Chelsea and I flew in Black Hawk helicopters to visit soldiers in forward positions. We were flanked by gunships, an indication of what a dangerous job peacekeeping could be. We touched down at Camp Bedrock and Camp Alicia, army outposts in northeastern Bosnia. We watched our troops demonstrate how they were clearing mines from the fields and roads―a grim mission and another reminder of the precarious life our soldiers led. Many voices back home were raising questions about America’s role in Bosnia. Some argued that soldiers should not be involved in “peacekeeping,” even though it has been part of our military’s historic mission in places and times as disparate as the Sinai desert after the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt and the DMZ after the Korean War. Others argued that European, not American, troops should bear responsibility for maintaining secure borders in the region. Because of these concerns, I spent time talking with the soldiers and their officers, asking for their opinions and listening to their assessments of their mission. One lieutenant told me he hadn’t understood the role the United States could play until he saw Bosnia for himself.

“Before we came,” he said, “it was hard to fathom what was going on here.” He described ethnic groups who had lived peacefully together and suddenly were killing each other over their religions. “You go out in the villages and see all the damage,” he told me. “You see roofs blown off of houses. You see whole neighborhoods that were completely bombed out. You see people who had to survive for years with hardly any food to eat or water to drink. But now, wherever we go, the kids wave at us and smile,” he told me. “To me, that’s reason enough to be here.”

I got my own look at the desolation of war from the window of our chopper. From a distance, the rolling countryside seemed beautiful and green, typical of pastoral Europe. But as I flew lower I could see that there were few farmhouses with an intact roof, and it was the rare building that had not been pocked by bullets. The fields weren’t tilled; they were torn up by shelling. It was springtime, but nobody was planting because of the dangers posed by land mines and snipers. The forests and the roads were not safe either. It was awful to see the extent of the suffering and to recognize how much work remained before the people of Bosnia could resume a semblance of normal life.

I had planned a stop in Sarajevo to meet with a multiethnic delegation to hear their ideas about what the United States government and private organizations could do to help heal a society ripped apart by war. The security situation forced me to cancel my trip to Sarajevo, but the people I was to meet were so disappointed that they insisted on braving the journey along fifty miles of treacherous roads to meet me in Tuzla…

How harrowing.

How hilarious (or rather, Hilliarous).

(By the way, lest we forget, there were no US or even NATO casualties from combat during the Kosovo War. And only a handful from crashes and land mines after the war.)

From the wire services:

Iraqi female police officers are seen with their weapons during a ceremony for 92 women who completed a two month course in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on Monday, Dec. 31, 2007.

Iraqi female police officers are seen with their weapons during a ceremony for 92 women who completed a two month course in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on Monday, Dec. 31, 2007.

Iraqi female police officers are seen with their weapons during a ceremony for 92 women who completed a two month course in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq on Monday, Dec. 31, 2007.

Female police officers demonstrate their skills during their graduation ceremony in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, December 31, 2007.

Female police officers demonstrate their skills during their graduation ceremony in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, December 31, 2007.

Female police officers demonstrate their skills during their graduation ceremony in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, December 31, 2007.

A police officer stands guard during the graduation ceremony of female police officers in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, December 31, 2007.

This is a good sign for Iraq on many fronts.

Of course all throughout history women have been the real civilizing force in the world.

From a dejected Reuters:

Residents buy presents as they prepare to celebrate the new year in Baghdad December 31, 2007.

For hopeful Iraqis, New Year’s parties at last

By Aseel Kami

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis were out all day on New Year’s Eve buying cakes, balloons, party decorations and new clothes to celebrate the holiday in the hope of a more peaceful 2008.

Many Baghdad residents said they planned to celebrate New Year’s Eve properly for the first time in years as violence subsides in the capital after years of sectarian war.

“My girlfriends, a cousin and I decided to gather in my house to celebrate,” said Baraa, a 30-year-old woman carrying a big box of cake from the al-Tahouna pastry shop in central Baghdad’s Karrada shopping district.

“Last year we also tried to gather but my cousin was killed on New Year’s Eve. God willing, this year things will go well.”

Like many Iraqis she said she will miss absent family like her brother, one of about 2 million Iraqis who have fled abroad.

“God willing this year peace prevails, the people who have gone abroad will come back.”

Qais Mansour, a 70-year-old Catholic priest, emerged from the shop carrying two plastic bags of sweets for children who were coming to his church on New Year’s Eve afternoon.

“We will say prayers thanking God that we are still alive and asking him for a better coming year, and for the situation to improve, to be more peaceful and secure,” he said.

“We wish the political parties will reach agreement next year that we are all human, to respect one another and to live in peace.”

Iraq has seen a dramatic reduction in violence over the past six months, but attacks have not ceased. A suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint near a school in Tarmiya north of Baghdad killing 11 people including five children.

Still, shops have reopened and the centre of Baghdad now bustles again in a way it hasn’t since early 2005, when the worst sectarian violence was unleashed.

Some shops decorated their front windows with cotton wool, writing: “Welcome 2008″ or “Happy New Year.” Others had Santa Claus decorations and Christmas trees.

In a flower shop Iyad Issa, 42, was buying a New Year’s Eve bouquet for his wife.

“Since we see things are getting better, I am trying to make my family happy. I decided to bring my wife flowers for New Year’s Eve to bring happiness and renewal,” he said while browsing among the blossoms.

In another street, Abu Wisam, 42, was buying party hats from a street vendor: “I wish the best to all Iraqis,” he said.

A group of women in a nearby boutique were out shopping together for outfits to see in the New Year.

“Tonight I am invited to a wedding party. Then I will go with my husband to our friend’s house to celebrate,” said Azhar, 35, who was looking for a new dress suit.

“I wish peace to prevail, and nothing else.”

It looks like Reuters thought they should slip in at least one positive story about Iraq before the year was out. They just got it in under the wire.

Of course just the other day Reuters and the rest of our watchdog media were hoping that the anniversary of their hero Saddam Hussein’s execution would finally bring about their longed for civil war.

But that, alas, did not happen. So they have had to resort to stories like this.

From their co-religionists at the Associated Press:

Thai policemen inspect the scene of a bomb blast in Sun Ngai Kolok town in Narathiwat province.

Thailand: Suspected Muslim Insurgents Wound 27 In Southern Thailand Bomb Blasts

2007-12-31

BANGKOK, THAILAND: Suspected Muslim insurgents set off five bombs early Monday (31 Dec) in a Thai-Malaysian border tourist town, wounding 27 people, many of them New Year’s revelers, an army spokesman said.

The bombs exploded in the hotel and nightlife area of Sungai Kolok, including two inside a hotel discotheque and one hidden in the carrying basket of a motorcycle outside a hotel, said spokesman Col. Akara Thiprote.

“Sungai Kolok is a tourist town and people were here to celebrate the New Year. I think this is why they targeted the town,” Akara said.

Sungai Kolok in Narathiwat province attracts many tourists from neighboring Malaysia and has been attacked several times in recent years. One of the 27 wounded may have been a Malaysian, Akara said.

More than 2,600 people have been killed in the Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, and some parts of neighboring Songkhla, since a long-simmering Islamic separatist insurgency flared up in January 2004…

Out with the old and in with the same old.

From those fans of nuclear proliferation at Reuters:

N.Korea misses nuclear declaration deadline: U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has missed a year-end deadline to provide a full account of its nuclear weapons program under a disarmament-for-aid deal, a U.S. official said on Monday.

“There has been no last-minute change,” said State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey after the target of midnight North Korean time 10 a.m EST(/1500 GMT) had passed.

The United States and allies South Korea and Japan had issued coordinated statements on Sunday lamenting the North’s failure to deliver the expected declaration.

“It’s unfortunate, but we are going to keep on working on this,” Casey told reporters. He said he expected consultations in the coming days among the six parties to the nuclear deal.

“The important thing is not whether we have the declaration by today,” said Casey. “The important thing is that we get a declaration that meets the requirement of the agreement, which means it needs to be full and complete.” …

It seems like we have heard this song before.

From those poll watchers at the AFP:

A resident of Kibera and supporter of presidential candidate Raila Odinga holds a sign that reads “No Raila no peace in Kenya” during disturbances, after Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner in the Presidential race.

More than 100 killed as poll violence sweeps Kenya

by Michel Cariou Mon Dec 31

NAIROBI (AFP) - An eruption of fresh violence triggered by Kenya’s disputed presidential ballot left more than 100 dead Monday, after defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga rejected Mwai Kibaki’s re-election.

Odinga had planned to hold his own alternative inauguration at a mass rally in Nairobi later Monday, a day after Kibaki was officially sworn in for a second term despite widespread allegations of vote-rigging.

But the opposition leader postponed the gathering until Thursday as violence flared across the country.

At least 64 people were killed overnight in western Kenya in fresh outbreaks of tribal unrest and clashes between police, looters and opposition activists.

Separate clashes in several Nairobi slums claimed a further 40 lives, said a senior police official.

At least 124 people have now been killed since Thursday’s elections, which have left one of Africa’s more stable democracies teetering on the brink of turmoil.

The government has enforced a ban on live television broadcasts related to the election in what it says is an effort to contain the violence.

“We know there are skirmishes in many parts of the country. We are fully cracking down and fully responding to every situation,” police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told AFP.

A total of 46 bodies were brought to the morgue in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city and an Odinga stronghold, a mortuary attendant told AFP.

“These bodies were brought here overnight by police officers,” he said, adding that 20 of them had multiple bullet wounds.

Local police chief Grace Kaindi declined to comment on the number of dead, but acknowledged that police had opened fire on “looters” during the night.

Reporters were also shown seven other bodies in Kisumu’s main hospital waiting to be transferred to the morgue.

Police imposed a day-time curfew in the city, with an order to shoot violators.

“We are going to deal with them (rioters) ruthlessly,” said Michael Baraza, a top police commander in the region.

Another seven people were killed in clashes between rival political supporters in the town of Nakuru, and four in a village near Kapsabet, police said.

According to police, hundreds of houses have already been torched in the western Rift Valley province and fresh fighting broke out Monday in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum.

Opposition supporters there were trying to march towards the city centre where Odinga, a fiery 62-year-old former political prisoner, had planned to hold his alternative swearing-in ceremony presenting him to the nation as “the People’s President”.

Odinga, who has been threatened with arrest if the rally goes ahead, said he would postpone the event until Thursday and predicted that one million of his supporters would turn up.

“We are calling for mass action, peaceful mass action,” he told reporters.

The rage boiling over in the Odinga camp was in stark contrast to the celebrations that filled the streets of pro-Kibaki towns in central Kenya on Sunday, where revellers flooded local bars.

Kibaki called for a “national healing” process as he was sworn in.

“I urge all of us to set aside the passions that were excited by the election process, and work together as one people with the single purpose of building a strong, united, prosperous and equitable country,” he said.

The European Union’s team of election observers acknowledged fraud and questioned the accuracy of the ballot results.

“We regret that it has not been possible to address irregularities about which … (we) have evidence,” chief EU observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said in a statement.

Kibaki cancelled out Odinga’s lead in late vote-counting, even as more than half of his cabinet ministers were voted out of parliament.

Former colonial ruler Britain expressed “real concerns” at reported “irregularities.”

But in Washington, US State Department spokesman Rob McInturff congratulated Kibaki on his re-election and called on all sides to accept the results.

Think of all of the carbon that has been released since Mr. Gore established this precedence. Of course some people will seize upon any excuse to loot and murder.

But this is the brave new world the left envisions for us.

More inadvertent humor from the Communist crying towel known as The Nation:

The loathsome Katha (sic) Pollitt holds forth before the equally loathsome “Freedom From Religion Foundation.”

Bill Kristol Gets New York Times Op-Ed Slot

Katha Pollitt Sat Dec 29

The Nation — Just shoot me. First, it was Sam Tanenhaus, conservative editor of the New York Times Book Review being put in charge of the News of the Week in Review section. That means one conservative will determine how politics,culture and ideas are covered in TWO of the most important sections of the supposedly liberal newspaper of record. Now, says the Huffington Post, the Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will be writing a weekly op-ed column. That’s Bill Kristol, Fox commentator, editor of the the Murdochian agitprop factory Weekly Standard, George W. Bush’s propagandist in chief, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, relentless promoter of the war in Iraq , ideological bully and thug. This is the man who blamed american [sic] liberals for the Khmer Rouge and the Ayatollah Khomeini (!), who will say just about anything, however bizarre or illogical or wild or (I’m guessing) cynical, to push the only ideas in his head: everything bad is the fault of Democrats and never mind the question, war is the answer.

On Iran: The right response is renewed strength–in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions–and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.

On morning-after contraception: “I don’t know, I came into Fox this morning and one of our younger colleagues who works here, a guy just out of college a couple of years, said all his friends in who are still college are very happy about this — all his guy friends, his male friends who are still in college are happy about this. They have a wild night. Precautions aren’t taken. The burden is now totally off them. They tell their girlfriend to go out and get this drug and no problems at all. And I don’t think that’s a very good thing for the the country.”

On Sunni-Shiite hostility in Iraq and desire of shiites to set up a religious state:”pop sociology”

On Terri Schiavo: “After all, we are a ‘maturing society,’ as the Supreme Court has told us. Perhaps it is time, in mature reaction to this latest installment of what Hugh Hewitt has called a ‘robed charade,’ to rise up against our robed masters, and choose to govern ourselves. Call it Terri’s revolution.”

On John Kerry and the Osama videotape: “But the fact remains that Osama bin Laden is not neutral in our election. He is trying to intimidate Americans into voting against George W. Bush.”

What ever happened to meritocracy? For Kristol to get a Times column–after being fired from Time magazine no less — is as meritocratic as, um, George W. Bush becoming the leader of the free world. A pundit, even a highly ideological one like Kristol, has to be (or seem) right at least some of the time. But what’s striking about Kristol is that he’s has been wrong about everything! or did I miss the sound of democratic dominoes falling neatly into place all over the Middle East? And it’s not as if he’s a great prose stylist, either. At least David Brooks can occasionally turn a phrase. Kristol just churns out whatever the argument of the moment happens to be, adds jeers, and knocks off for lunch.

What this hire demonstrates is how successfully the right has intimidated the mainstream media. Their constant demonizing of the New York Times as the tool of the liberal elite worked. (Maybe it also demonstrates that the people in charge of the decision aren’t so liberal.) I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about the need for balance at the paper — funny how the Wall Street Journal doesn’t feel the need to have even one resident liberal, but fine, let’s have balance. Let’s have a true leftist on the oped page–someone as far to the left as Kristol is to the right. Noam Chomsky, anyone? (and why does he seem just totally out of bounds but Kristol does not?) Barbara Ehrenreich? Naomi Klein? Susan Faludi? Gary Younge? me?

Why do I think those phone calls will not be coming any time soon?

I don’t care who you are. This is just one of the most hilarious head-explosions ever to appear in print.

It’s especially piquant to see Ms. Politt cite self-evidently true quotations from Mr. Kristol as if they are somehow damning.

And the cherry on the top is the underlying and oft-stated premise that the New York Times is a liberal newspaper.

Of course Ms. Politt is merely enunciating the left’s ‘Brezhnev doctrine’ towards the media, which they believe they own. “What’s ours is ours and what’s yours should be (and soon will be) ours.”

Still, just imagine if the New York Times had hired a real conservative?

From Associated Press:

2007: A year of frustration in the news

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer

A war winds on, but lawmakers are seemingly powerless to do anything about it. The wrenching sorrow of tragedies on a Virginia campus, a Minnesota highway bridge and deep inside a Utah coal mine is compounded by a question that echoes: Could this have been prevented?

Thousands lose their homes in a mortgage and credit crisis that worsened — despite repeated assurances that the worst had passed.

Every year has grim headlines. But the story of 2007 was the frustration that wound through so much of the news. Americans repeatedly confronted the same images and the same misgivings in many of the year’s biggest stories.

The frustration factor was personified by former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, at the vortex of criticism over the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors. When the story began around the New Year, most would have figured it as a mildly sensational, fairly routine political brouhaha.

Then it stretched into the spring and summer, with an endless loop of Gonzales’ vaguely apologetic denials. Called before Congress in April, he found more than 70 ways to say he could not remember what had happened. Any day now, pundits speculated, Gonzales could take the fall.

By the time Gonzales finally did resign effective in September, the focus on right or wrong had largely been replaced by a grinding frustration over why resolution — any resolution — had taken so long. Even when it ended, it did so without clarity.

That story was hardly unique. After a while it became difficult to separate the frustration built into many of the year’s biggest news stories from a public mood of resigned exasperation.

Were we frustrated by the events themselves, or was our frustration reflected in our reaction to them?

That frustration made it difficult to recall that 2007 had started with a mix of uncertainty and possibility.

Voters deeply dissatisfied with the Bush administration had signaled a strong desire for a new direction and invested those hopes in opposition Democrats.

“The election of 2006 was a call to change,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi proclaimed as she led her party into leadership of the House in January. “The American people rejected an open-ended obligation to a war without end.”

But the war has stretched well into a fifth year, with troops no closer to an exit. And in early November, troop deaths made 2007 the deadliest year for American troops since the war began.

The number of attacks, deaths and injuries dropped off sharply in recent months, but the improvement did little to revise the public perceptions.

Opinion polls reflected public frustration with the inability of lawmakers to bring the war any nearer to an end, a feeling acknowledged by Pelosi.

“If you asked me in a phone call, as ardent a Democrat as I am, I would disapprove of Congress as well,” she told reporters.

The year’s frustrations were hardly limited to politics.

In April, the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation’s history provoked a national outpouring of grief for the people of Virginia Tech. But the initial horror turned to grim consternation when it became clear that university officials and others knew gunman Seung-Hui Cho was deeply troubled, yet they had missed any opportunity to prevent the killings of his 32 victims.

That futility lasted long after the massacre, with investigators stymied in their search for a motive and with continued hand-wringing over where or whether to place blame.

“This is a story of recrimination, or a story of redemption, which will just take us into the past,” one Tech professor said, addressing calls for the university’s president to resign months after the massacre. “The story of redemption is how we move on.”

Late in the year, the nation confronted still other violent tragedies. In early December, a 19-year-old who wrote that he “just snapped” fatally wounded eight people and killed himself at an Omaha mall; days later, a 24-year-old gunman killed two staffers at a Colorado missionary training center, then two young women at a megachurch before turning a gun on himself.

In August, the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River during rush hour. Thirteen people died and more than 100 others were injured. The miracle was that it wasn’t worse.

The curse was the nagging doubts about whether the disaster might have been preventable. Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge was “structurally deficient,” but had relied on small-scale repairs and inspections rather than reinforcement or replacement.

Then attention turned to a disaster in a place that seemed all too familiar. Fully a year and a half after West Virginia’s Sago Mine tragedy prompted widespread calls for tougher oversight of the mining industry, an accident in Utah provided an indelible reminder of those dangers.

At first, efforts to rescue six workers trapped inside the Crandall Canyon Mine appeared to offer reason for hope. But the deaths of three would-be rescuers compounded sorrow with futility. In November, investigators reported that despite the public’s focus on mine safety, federal regulators had failed to inspect one of every seven underground coal mines in the year following Sago — and that their inspections of the Utah mine were seriously flawed.

The year also saw greatly increased attention to global warming. But acknowledging the issue was one thing, finding solutions was another.

“We seek your leadership,” a delegate from Papua New Guinea told U.S. officials at international climate talks in December. “But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”

The talks ended with a U.S. agreeing to negotiations for a new climate treaty on condition that, for now, plans will not include specific emission reduction targets. At home, it took until well into December for the federal government to mandate the first increase in auto fuel economy in 32 years along with stepped up use of ethanol.

Across the South, dry weather extended a parching drought that some blamed partially on climate change.

As officials battled for precious water, and belatedly began focusing on conservation, the drought’s persistence convinced some to try more extraordinary measures.

“We come here very reverently and respectfully to pray up a storm,” Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue told a crowd of people who gathered outside the Capitol to seek divine intervention.

Meanwhile, the headlines offered more than enough to confound any consumer.

First came the recall of cat and dog food linked to the death of more than 100 pets, blamed on ingredients provided by a Chinese manufacturer. That lead to broad concerns about the safety of food products made in Chinese factories, but tighter import restrictions seemed fruitless. The pet food scare was followed by the Chinese toothpaste scare, then worries about seafood and lipstick.

But nothing unsettled the public as much as a series of recalls of Chinese-made toys, starting with Thomas the Tank Engine wooden train sets found to contain lead paint. That was in June, but more recalls of toys tainted with lead or other hazards continued well into November.

At the same time, energy prices rattled the public. Oil began the year at near $60 a barrel, but began climbing in the spring and just kept on going. By year’s end, the price regularly flirted with $100 a barrel. The question was how much that would cut into consumers’ ability to keep up spending. The answer was complicated by the fact that buying power was simultaneously curbed by a drop in the value of the dollar.

But the frustration of higher prices at the pump seemed minor compared to the fears and uncertainty that accompanied a crisis in the housing and mortgage lending sector.

It began as the story of what sounded like a marginal niche of the economy — subprime loans. But concerns rippled. Maybe it was about more than thousands of people losing their homes. Maybe it was a sign of deeper troubles with the credit markets that sustain businesses, and a premonition of more serious woes that would could cut into the consumer spending that has long been the economy’s mainstay.

Or maybe not. Month after month, federal economic officials offered calm reassurances that the problems were “contained,” and did not pose a danger to the rest of the economy.

But by year’s end, even optimists were sounding doubtful, the stock market had fallen sharply from record highs, and the questions about subprime had morphed into a debate over whether a recession was in store in the new year.

No wonder, then, that polls showed the majority of Americans frustrated with the status quo and with deep misgivings about the nation’s direction. And little in the news seemed to reassure us.

“Do you understand our frustration?” Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin asked Gonzales, in a July hearing.

“I do understand your frustration,” Gonzales replied.

The answer sounded simultaneously empathetic and empty. And at the end of the exchange, anyone craving resolution or relief probably was more frustrated than ever.

I posted this in its entirety just to show how far the Associated Press is from anything resembling honest, objective journalism.

Mind you, this was published as news not as opinion. As if there is ever much made of the distinction in any of our watchdog media these days.

But just look at it.

What a disgrace.

From those champions of representative democracy at the AFP:

Asif ali Zardari, right, husband of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto attends his wife’s funeral with their son Bilawal Bhutto, second from left, at her family’s mausoleum, in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, near Larkana, Pakistan on Friday, Dec. 28, 2007.

Bhutto’s son takes over party, husband is co-chairman

by Hasan Mansoor

NAUDERO, Pakistan (AFP) - The party of Pakistan’s murdered opposition leader Benazir Bhutto named her 19-year-old son as its new leader Sunday and announced it would contest upcoming general elections.

Bilawal Bhutto, a student at Britain’s Oxford University, was named party chairman at an emergency meeting, taking the reins of the party formerly led by his mother and grandfather, both of whom met violent deaths.

The party also appointed Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari as co-chairman, and called for a United Nations probe into the circumstances of her slaying in a gun and suicide bomb attack Thursday.

“Democracy is the best revenge,” Bilawal told a chaotic news conference in the Bhutto family’s ancestral home here, vowing the party’s “long and historic struggle for democracy will continue with a new vigour.”

Zardari said the Pakistan People’s Party would take part in the scheduled January 8 parliamentary elections, seen as a key step in Pakistan’s transition to civilian democracy.

“We will go to elections,” he told reporters.

The decisions came just three days after Bhutto’s assassination at a rally stunned the nuclear-armed nation and left a void at the head of the PPP, the country’s largest political party.

Taking part in the election has the potential to restore some much-needed stability after the street violence triggered by her slaying that has left at least 38 people dead.

A spokesman for Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto’s main opposition rival, said earlier that it would review its own decision to boycott the election if the PPP was going to take part, and Zardari urged it to join the polls.

The PPP meeting in the Bhutto family’s ancestral home in Naudero, deep in southern Pakistan, began amid emotional scenes as thousands of mourners beat their chests in grief and denounced President Pervez Musharraf.

“Bilawal is the new chairman of the party and Asif Ali Zardari will assist him as co-chairman,” a party official said.

It means the party leadership follows the bloodline for a third generation, some four decades after it was founded by Bilawal’s grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a prime minister who was ousted and later hanged by the military.

Political commentator Najam Sethi said Zardari would “run the show to keep the place warm” for Bilawal, much like India’s Sonia Gandhi for her son Rahul.

PPP vice president Makhdoom Amin Fahim and its Punjab provincial president Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi will sit on a so-called “advisory council” for their young leader, party officials said.

As the PPP convened, the PML-Q backing Musharraf announced it was suspending its own campaigning for the vote and suggested a delay of up to 12 weeks…

So much for the media’s grand illusion about Mrs. Bhutto’s dedication to democracy.

From those lovers of dictators (and directors) at the Associated Press:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) and U.S. film director Oliver Stone talk to the media as they arrive at Santo Domingo’s Airport December 28, 2007.

Chavez launches hostage mission

By TOBY MUSE, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 29

VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia - A sensitive mission to retrieve three hostages from the rebel-held jungle this weekend entered a key phase as two helicopters sent by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrived in Colombia.

Wearing the red beret and fatigues of his paratrooper days, Chavez was accompanied by American filmmaker Oliver Stone and a group of international observers to see the helicopters off.

“I‘m hoping it works,” said Stone, a fan of the socialist leader who said he was there to film “a documentary about Latin America and also about North America.”

Chavez said former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner and the other observers would follow the helicopters to Villavicencio, about 50 miles south of Bogota, as soon as the Venezuelans receive word from the guerrillas about where to pick up the hostages.

For security reasons, Chavez said, the rebels have demanded that the Venezuelan pilots not be told where they will fly until they are airborne. The pickup could happen anytime this weekend, according to the latest information from those involved…

Now this could make for a great movie.

A black comedy.

From Reuters, via YouTube:

Bhutto’s last moments caught on tape

This is more than just morbid curiosity, now that there are claims that she did not die from a bullet or shrapnel wound.

From the UK’s Sky News:

Bhutto Assassin ‘Captured On Film’

Saturday December 29, 2007

The latest video footage from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in Pakistan appears to show the moment her killer attacked.

The images capture a man aiming a pistol and firing at least two shots, just yards from the opposition leader. An explosion can then be seen.

Al Qaeda-linked militant commander Baitullah Mehsud has denied government claims that he was involved in the attack.

Meanwhile, a row has erupted over exactly how Ms Bhutto died, while emergency talks into whether a January election should be go ahead loom.

Ms Bhutto was killed on Thursday after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi. The gunman opened fire before an explosive was detonated.

Security officials initially said Ms Bhutto had been shot in the neck and head. But the government then announced she died when the force of the blast smashed her head on a sunroof lever.

Dismissing the government’s “ludicrous” theory, a close aide who prepared Ms Bhutto’s body for burial insisted she was shot in the head.

Sherry Rehman said: “She has a bullet wound at the back of her head on the left side. It came out the other. That was a very large wound, and she bled profusely through that.”

She accused the government of not providing enough security for Ms Bhutto and attempting a “cover up”. …

Needless to say, we will be hearing conspiracy theories about this for the rest of time.

Though, hopefully, Ms. Bhutto’s close personal friend Mrs. Clinton will have her way and an international tribunal will be commissioned to investigate this.

With all the suspects afforded all the rights and privileges of US citizens under our Constitution, of course.

A highly insightful piece from Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy In Media:

CNN and Hillary Destabilize Pakistan

By Cliff Kincaid  |  December 28, 2007

In the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Wolf Blitzer of CNN made much of an e-mail, exclusively provided to him by a close associate of Bhutto and a Hillary Clinton supporter, casting blame on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for her murder. We can now understand why Musharraf’s November 3 state-of-emergency decree took foreign news outlets like CNN off the air. Musharraf, who is one of the main targets of the al-Qaeda international terrorist organization, recognizes that the so-called “CNN effect” in global affairs can destabilize foreign governments, including his own. It’s no wonder that he recently complained about being betrayed by the Western media.  

Now, with Hillary Clinton appearing on Blitzer’s show one day later, to complain about a “blank check” for Musharraf and the “failed policies” of the Bush Administration, the Democratic Party agenda is out in the open―overthrow the government of Pakistan, no matter what comes after it. This is the recipe that brought the Mullahs to power in Iran under Democrat Jimmy Carter’s Administration. It could bring al Qaeda to power in Pakistan, with control over dozens of nuclear weapons, if President Bush doesn’t get control of his State Department and the CIA.  

“Happening now―breaking news,” Blitzer breathlessly declared on Thursday. “Benazir Bhutto holds Pakistan’s president responsible for her assassination in an e-mail sent only weeks before her death. We’re going to bring you an exclusive look at that never-before-seen e-mail and an interview with the man who received and who let me in on his chilling secret.” 

Blitzer understood the impact of his words. “We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world,” he said, knowing such an explosive report could lead to the further loss of life (19 people had died in Pakistan in riots following the Bhutto death as of Friday afternoon). 

It was an incendiary charge. Blitzer called it “my exclusive report on Benazir Bhutto casting blame for her own assassination two months before it happened.” If killed, she reportedly said in the e-mail, “I would hold Musharraf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions…” 

But Musharraf, under U.S. pressure, was forced to let her back in the country. Musharraf had to withdraw Interpol notices for her arrest on corruption charges. She is reportedly worth more than $1 billion and has been linked to the U.N.’s oil-for-food scandal.  

He knew―and she knew―that she would also be in danger from the same al-Qaeda forces that have targeted Musharraf himself. (Musharraf is a target because he has rounded up hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, including some directly involved in 9/11, and has turned them over to the U.S.) 

Choosing to blame Musharraf for her murder (in advance of it happening) is about as rational as appearing openly at crowds with thousands of people and then departing in a car with her head poking through a sunroof. This was clearly reckless conduct on her part. But this gross error has been compounded by Hillary now calling for some kind of international investigation of who murdered Bhutto. On the Blitzer show, she even suggested that Interpol ought to take the lead, when it was Interpol that had issued the notice for Bhutto’s arrest on corruption charges.    

When Blitzer brought up some of the facts about Bhutto’s open–air campaigning to Mark Siegel, the source of his controversial e-mail, he replied that “Benazir Bhutto believed in democracy and she believed in speaking to the people. It’s not reckless to go out and touch the people. Don’t blame the victim for the crime…”   

But it was Bhutto blaming Musharraf for the crime―in advance of it happening. And CNN was circulating her irrational statement to a worldwide audience.  

Blitzer’s exploitation of this e-mail was unconscionable. The real story is not whether Bhutto would irrationally blame Musharraf for her possible death, but where this e-mail came from and why it was being released at this time. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire. To his credit, Senator John McCain noted, like Bush, that Musharraf has been a reliable partner of the U.S. in the war on al-Qaeda terrorism. He has compared himself to Abraham Lincoln holding America together as a sovereign entity and using emergency powers during the Civil War.   

Musharraf is sometimes labeled a “military dictator” who doesn’t deserve U.S. support. But we have to remember that he seized power from a Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, who reportedly accepted bribes from Osama bin Laden and presided over the building of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. Under U.S. pressure, Sharif is now back in Pakistan as one of Musharraf’s other political rivals.  

With Hillary’s appearance on Blitzer’s show, one day after Siegel released the controversial Bhutto e-mail, it is clear that a network of Democratic Party officials is pursuing its own dangerous foreign policy agenda.  

Siegel, who provided the e-mail to Blitzer and has endorsed Hillary for president, is a prominent member of a Democratic Party foreign policy network and served on the board of the federally-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI), a group that has been promoting “democracy” in Pakistan. Siegel was a lobbyist and registered foreign agent for Bhutto (according to the Washington Post, Siegel was paid $452,941 for one year’s work for Bhutto) when she was Prime Minister and his resumé includes work for President Jimmy Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy. Carter, you may recall, helped undermine and topple the Shah of Iran in the name of promoting human rights and democracy there. That gave us the fanatical Mullahs and their “peaceful” nuclear program.  

Blitzer, on his show, referred to Siegel merely as Bhutto’s “long-time friend” and “U.S. spokesman” and someone having a long “relationship” with her. He is much more than that, and Blitzer knows it.  

Just recently, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, a member of the NDI board of directors, gave testimony blasting Musharraf for allegedly not doing enough to ensure credible elections are going to be held in Pakistan.  

Is the Democratic Party position that Musharraf should be toppled, in the same way that Carter helped undermine the Shah? It is interesting to note that Democratic candidate Bill Richardson, considered a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, called for Musharraf to step down but didn’t identify who his replacement ought to be. Yet, Richardson is supposed to be a Democrat with foreign policy experience.  

Much of the socialist-oriented political platform of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) reads like it was taken from the speeches of Democratic Party politicians. This mish-mash calls for “a synthesis of economic liberalism with a strong social democratic agenda” and has numerous references to making foreign policy decisions based on the U.N. Charter and U.N. agreements, such as the global warming treaty.   

Not surprisingly, Democratic Party politicians and much of the liberal media have portrayed Musharraf as a villain and Bhutto as a martyr for human rights and democracy.  

In order to accelerate this campaign to destabilize Pakistan, Bhutto’s book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, is being rushed into print by HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Ironically, Siegel told Blitzer that he helped write the book and that it is about how problems “within Islam and between Islam and the West” can be “reconciled peacefully, and in a way that promotes peace in the future.”  

Hillary and her allies in the Democratic Party and the media are doing anything but promoting peace. They are exploiting a tragic death in order to destabilize a U.S. ally.

He’s right, you know.

This thread is for the busy bees at S&L to post news items themselves.

In order to make the articles as readable as possible, please try to stick to the format described in the first of these weekly editions here.

Of course articles that fit under the topic of a recent thread should be posted there. As always, remember to excerpt heavily and to provide a link to the original source.

From those holymen at Islam Question and Answer:

A tourist walks behind Christmas decorations outside a mall in Sharm El-Sheikh December 26, 2007.

Ruling on celebrating non-Muslim holidays and congratulating them

Question:

Can a muslim celebrate a non muslim holiday like Thanksgiving?

Answer:

Praise be to Allaah.

Greeting the kuffaar on Christmas and other religious holidays of theirs is haraam, by consensus, as Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allaah have mercy on him, said in Ahkaam Ahl al-Dhimmah: “Congratulating the kuffaar on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by consensus, as is congratulating them on their festivals and fasts by saying ‘A happy festival to you’ or ‘May you enjoy your festival,’ and so on. If the one who says this has been saved from kufr, it is still forbidden.

It is like congratulating someone for prostrating to the cross, or even worse than that. It is as great a sin as congratulating someone for drinking wine, or murdering someone, or having illicit sexual relations, and so on. Many of those who have no respect for their religion fall into this error; they do not realize the offensiveness of their actions. Whoever congratulates a person for his disobedience or bid’ah or kufr exposes himself to the wrath and anger of Allaah.”

Congratulating the kuffaar on their religious festivals is haraam to the extent described by Ibn al-Qayyim because it implies that one accepts or approves of their rituals of kufr, even if one would not accept those things for oneself. But the Muslim should not aceept [sic] the rituals of kufr or congratulate anyone else for them, because Allaah does not accept any of that at all, as He says (interpretation of the meaning):

“If you disbelieve, then verily, Allaah is not in need of you, He likes not disbelief for His slaves. And if you are grateful (by being believers), He is pleased therewith for you. . .” [al-Zumar 39:7]

“. . . This day, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islaam as your religion . . .” [al-Maa’idah 5:3]

So congratulating them is forbidden, whether they are one’s colleagues at work or otherwise.

If they greet us on the occasion of their festivals, we should not respond, because these are not our festivals, and because they are not festivals which are acceptable to Allaah. These festivals are innovations in their religions, and even those which may have been prescribed formerly have been abrogated by the religion of Islaam, with which Allaah sent Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) to the whole of mankind. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“Whoever seeks a religion other than Islaam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers.” [Aal ‘Imraan 3:85]

It is haraam for a Muslim to accept invitations on such occasions, because this is worse than congratulating them as it implies taking part in their celebrations.

Similarly, Muslims are forbidden to imitate the kuffaar by having parties on such occasions, or exchanging gifts, or giving out sweets or food, or taking time off work, etc., because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever imitates a people is one of them.” Shaykh al-Islaam Ibn Taymiyah said in his book Iqtidaa’ al-siraat al-mustaqeem mukhaalifat ashaab al-jaheem: “Imitating them in some of their festivals implies that one is pleased with their false beliefs and practices, and gives them the hope that they may have the opportunity to humiliate and mislead the weak.”

Whoever does anything of this sort is a sinner, whether he does it out of politeness or to be friendly, or because he is too shy to refuse, or for whatever other reason, because this is hypocrisy in Islaam, and because it makes the kuffaar feel proud of their religion.

Allaah is the One Whom we ask to make the Muslims feel proud of their religion, to help them adhere steadfastly to it, and to make them victorious over their enemies, for He is the Strong and Omnipotent

Their tolerance knows no bounds.

From Ralph Peters at the New York Post:

Sand artist Sudarsan Patnaik creates a sand sculpture of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, following her assassination, at a beach in Puri, close to the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneshwar, December 28, 2007.

THE BHUTTO ASSASSINATION: NOT WHAT SHE SEEMED TO BE

By RALPH PETERS

December 28, 2007 — FOR the next several days, you’re going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Her country’s better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and “hardheaded” journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.

Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan’s feeble education system to rot - opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.

During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not forward. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat - which she artfully played both ways - spread like cancer.

But she always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet, there are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a country nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable - but, unfortunately, it’s not always immediately possible. Like spoiled children, we have to have it now - and damn the consequences.

In Pakistan, the military has its own forms of graft; nonetheless, it remains the least corrupt institution in the country and the only force holding an unnatural state together. In Pakistan back in the ’90s, the only people I met who cared a whit about the common man were military officers.

Americans don’t like to hear that. But it’s the truth…

Granted Mr. Peters got a little panicky a little while back about the prospects of the “surge.” But he is largely correct in his assessment here of Ms. Bhutto.

[S]he was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani.

Indeed, she sounds a lot like another woman politician we know.

But Mr. Peters is wrong to suggest her death will help Pakistan. For it will just be an excuse for more senseless violence from now through the rest of time. (As if these people need an excuse.)

More surprisingly, Mr. Peters neglected to mention Ms. Bhutto’s early and vital support for the Taliban.

Which makes her death at their allies hands even more ironic.