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Selected News For Week Jun 28 - Jul 4

This thread is for the busy bees of 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.

Related Articles:

This article was posted by Steve Gilbert on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am. You can leave a response.

42 Responses to “Selected News For Week Jun 28 - Jul 4”

DW
June 28th, 2008 at 9:50 am
From an outraged AP:

Dutch marijuana coffee shops brace for smoking ban

By Toby Sterling, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - This city’s famed marijuana bars have weathered many challenges over the years and are still smoking.

But now they face an unwelcome blast of fresh air: On July 1, the Netherlands will be one of the last European countries to ban smoking in bars and restaurants in compliance with EU law.

The Health Ministry says the ban will apply to cafes that sell marijuana, known as coffee shops. But this being Holland, which for centuries has experimented with social liberalism, there’s a loophole: The ban covers tobacco but not marijuana, which is technically illegal anyway.

But that still leaves coffee shops and their customers in a bind. Dutch and other European marijuana users traditionally smoke pot in fat, cone-shaped joints mixed with tobacco.

“It’s the world upside down: In other countries they look for the marijuana in the cigarette. Here they look for the cigarette in the marijuana,” said Jason den Enting, manager of coffee shop Dampkring.

Shops are scrambling to adapt. One alternative is “vaporizer” machines, which incinerate weed smokelessly. Another is to replace tobacco with herbs like coltsfoot, a common plant that looks like a dandelion and that smokers describe as tasting a bit like oregano.

But most shops are just planning to increase their sales of hash brownies and pure weed - and are hoping the law isn’t enforced…

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Wo.....81-ap.html

The anti-tobacco jihadists had taken things to the point where it is a criminal act in some areas to light a cigarette in your own car if there is a minor in the vehicle -and everybody’s cool with that. But when that Draconian legislation starts to affect illegal drug users, suddenly it’s a bad thing.
Here’s a couple of great quotes from the rest of the article:

…he expected a small decline in sales as smokers are forced to separate their nicotine addiction from their marijuana habit.

Got that? Smoking cigarettes is an addiction. Smoking joints is a habit. IOW: Tobacco bad. Pot good.
Here’s another:

The Dutch government, currently led by a conservative coalition with a religious bent, …

Ah. Round up the usual suspects, Inspector. Once again the real culprit is those religious zealots -aka conservatives.

There are a lot of good things to said about the Dutch, but when their biggest national issue is the right to get stoned out of your mind in a coffee shop, then it’s a small wonder that they get overrun whenever the Germans -and now the Islamists- can’t think of anything better to do.
Arctain
June 28th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Since I haven’t seen illegal ~~immigration~~ aliens in news lately, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Manslaughter charge filed in fire pit death

King County prosecutors charged a Federal Way father Friday with second-degree manslaughter, saying the man’s negligence caused the death of his 7-month-old son, who was found June 21 in a backyard fire pit.

Alberto Chacon Rios, 38, fell asleep within a few feet of a burning fire pit that night with his baby, Diego Rios-Santana, lying on Rios’ chest, only to wake up later to find the infant face up in the pit, according to court documents filed Friday.

The county Medical Examiner’s Office classified the death as homicide, which includes manslaughter. The office said the baby died from smoke inhalation and burns covering 100 percent of his body.

Prosecutors requested that Rios, who also goes by Calderon Mardonio Martinez, continue to be held with bail set at $1 million. They called him a significant flight risk, noting that he is in the country illegally and has been deported three times to Mexico. If freed on bail, prosecutors said, Rios would likely be deported a fourth time, “making it extremely difficult, if not impossible,” to prosecute him for the death of his son.

Prosecutors also said Rios had five drug convictions between 1990 and 1994, four relating to cocaine possession or distribution.

Rios told Federal Way police that he had consumed three to six beers during a party in the hours before his child’s death and did not know how the tragedy occurred…

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ource=mypi

This criminal’s deportations occurred in 1990, 1994, and 2001 - and during this whole time he was selling cocaine? It almost looks as if he’d get arrested as a way to get a free ride back to Mexico to pick up more drugs…
Helena
June 28th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
DW - This sentence in the article confused me: “The ban covers tobacco but not marijuana, which is technically illegal anyway.”

The Dutch have had these pot bars for a long time, but pot is technically illegal? I’ll do some looking around to see what I can find out, but this sounds weird. Though it does make sense of: “But most shops are just … hoping the law isn’t enforced…”

And of course, as you point out, if the Dutch are so oppressed now by their “conservative religious” government (which they themselves elected), just wait ’til they get some religious conservatives of a different stripe in charge.
Helena
June 28th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Well, did some checking - not exhaustive, just wikipedia - and it seems the Dutch are simply hypocrites about this. Growing and possession are misdemeanors, importing or exporting are serious crimes. The coffee shops are also technically illegal, but flourish nonetheless.

BUT:

“However, a policy of non-enforcement has led to a situation where reliance upon non-enforcement has become common, and because of this the courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted.

This is because the Dutch Ministry of Justice applies a gedoogbeleid (policy of tolerance or allowance policy) with regard to soft drugs: an official set of guidelines telling public prosecutors under which circumstances offenders should not be prosecuted. …

…The statutes are kept on the books mainly due to international pressure and in adherence with international treaties.”

So, the Dutch judiciary, like our own, has stepped in to muddy the waters. “Laws be damned, what we say goes.”
DW
June 28th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
For those who have been following Mark Steyn’s ordeal with the ~~Spanish~~ Canadian Inquisition…from the CP:

Complaint dismissed against Macleans

By THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a complaint filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean’s magazine.

The Congress claimed an article written by Mark Steyn, entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam” and posted on the Maclean’s website in October 2006, made a number of statements and assertions that were likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt.

But the commission also says that, overall, “the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court.”

Faisal Joseph, a lawyer for the Canadian Islamic Congress, says the Congress is disappointed the tribunal made its decision without hearing “the compelling evidence of hate and expert testimony” the Congress recently presented in a complaint to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. That tribunal has yet to release a ruling.

Full article:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Po.....56-cp.html

This is, of course, great news. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the very first time that someone dragged before one these abominations has not been automatically found guilty.
Bear in mind though, that Mr Steyn still faces the BC Human Rights Commission in regards to the same article (an excerpt from his book America Alone that Macleans Magazine printed).
DW
June 28th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
On the other hand…

SCOC raises bar on libel suits, expands fair comment

By Jeremy Hainsworth, THE CANADIAN PRESS

VANCOUVER - A decision by Canada’s top court Friday opens the door to greater freedom of expression in Canada without fear of legal action.

The Supreme Court of Canada has absolved former Vancouver radio personality Rafe Mair of defamation for a commentary in which he made reference to the Ku Klux Klan and Adolf Hitler.

In the 9-0 judgment, the court ruled that Mair was engaging in fair comment in the 1999 radio editorial critical of Kari Simpson, a high-profile player in a campaign opposing the use of teaching materials about gay lifestyles in local schools.

In the course of the editorial, the controversial former radio commentator made references to the Klan, Hitler and skinheads, although he claimed he wasn’t saying that Simpson actually advocated violence against gays.

“This is a significant victory, at a time when freedom of expression is increasingly under attack,” said spokesman David Gollob.

Full article:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Me.....31-cp.html

Funny how Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant (among others) have been dragged in front of these Stalinesque tribunals for doing their jobs -and that’s just fine. But someone receives some backlash for making unacceptable comments about a Conservative and all of a sudden “freedom of expression is under attack”.
notsoyoungjim
June 28th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
From the UK Telegraph:

Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must ‘kiss my ass’ for his support

http://tinyurl.com/3ond5o

Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama’s victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support.

Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president’s future campaign role is a “sticking point” in peace talks with Mrs Clinton’s aides.

The Telegraph has learned that the former president’s rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support. . .

[H}is lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: “He’s been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn’t. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who he’s been in contact with and he is mad as hell.” . . . .
notsoyoungjim
June 28th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
From the [surprisingly scatological] UK Telegraph:

Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must ‘kiss my ass’ for his support

http://tinyurl.com/3ond5o

Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama’s victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support.

Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president’s future campaign role is a “sticking point” in peace talks with Mrs Clinton’s aides.

The Telegraph has learned that the former president’s rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support. . .

[H]is lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: “He’s been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn’t. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who he’s been in contact with and he is mad as hell.” . . . .
DW
June 28th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
[H]is lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: “He’s been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn’t. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who he’s been in contact with and he is mad as hell.” . . . .

This is hardly surprising. It is widely believed that had Hillary finally achieved her goal of taking over the Oval Office, one of her first acts would have been to divorce her lying, serial philandering husband.
Now, thanks to Obama, he’s stuck with her until at least 2012.
I’d be pissed too.
sheehanjihad
June 29th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Apparently Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker is hell bent on exposing a covert operation to de stablize Iran and Akhmedinejad:

http://www.comcast.net/article.....REPORT-DC/

What caught my attention was democrat refusal to comment. This Hersh guy seems intent on exposing military secrets….

[The New Yorker article has been posted on its own thread.]
U NO HOO
June 29th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Can we please get the USA government out of the arts and public radio? Please, please, pretty please.

Last night on Prairie Home Companion the former poet laureate was on. Made me want to gag.

There was just too much politics and too little poetry.

The poetry sounded just like Maya Angelou’s so called poetry.

Sorry, had to vent.
BillK
June 30th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Hey, Government regulation to ban competition is great - if you’re one of the recipients of Government largesse.

Anyone recall seeing Alan Alda’s portrayal of Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator? Did you laugh at the antiquated concepts being espoused? That the Government should not allow other airlines to fly international flights, and that giving the rights to do so to one favored airline, Pan Am, was the right way to do things, because competition was bad?

Not so fast.

From Aviation Week:

Crandall Calls For Re-Regulation

By Anthony L. Velocci, Jr.

Decrying the “sad state” of U.S. commercial aviation, former American Chairman and CEO Robert Crandall yesterday declared three decades of deregulation a failure and said that treating airlines like a regulated utility must be a part of a broad solution to their current financial crisis.

“We have failed to confront the reality that unfettered competition just doesn’t work very well in certain industries, as aptly demonstrated by our airline experience and by the adverse outcomes associated with various state efforts to deregulate electricity rates,” Crandall told aviation and financial industry professionals gathered at the Wings Club in New York City. “It’s time to acknowledge that airlines look and are more like utilities than ordinary businesses.”

While the rapid rise in jet fuel prices has complicated the job of airline managers, fuel prices are not at the core of the industry’s precarious financial state. Inadequate scale isn’t to blame either, he added.

“The arguments in favor of consolidation are unpersuasive,” he said. “Mergers will not lower fuel prices, and they will not increase economies of scale for already sizable major airlines. If consolidation were really the answer, it is conceivable the system could be run by a single efficient operator.” …

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw.....annel=comm

Unfortunately, unreported in this piece is a quote of his reported elsewhere - that airlines be banned from offering flights of less than 300 miles in length, as those passengers should instead be transported via rail.

He also called for:

“a government role in pricing. He said unfettered market forces have fostered distorted pricing systems in which carriers sell seats too cheaply. Crandall suggested requiring airlines to price tickets based on the sum of fares for each leg flown, which would foster more nonstops that are more efficient and ‘turn conventional wisdom about hubs on its head’”

http://www.usatoday.com/travel.....038;csp=34

Yep, government regulations will fix the airlines, where say, pricing tickets in a way to cover costs won’t.

“AmAir” anyone?

Here’s a hint: airlines that price tickets below their cost of operations will go out of business - exactly what’s happening now.

Why do so many business people and so many in government have such an unawareness of the business cycle and its proper operation?!?!

Airfares are too low to cover costs? Raise prices. Those that can do it cheaper without going bankrupt will survive. Those that can’t won’t.

Those who can’t afford an airline ticket will drive or take the lib’s beloved choo-choos.

Nah, can’t let that happen. Too many votes from pilots making six figure salaries who belong to labor unions at stake.

Pilots belonging to unions who fly for major airlines.

You know, like American Airlines.
BillK
June 30th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Yet Nancy Pelosi continues to wonder why “San Francisco values” are a bad thing.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Feds probe S.F.’s migrant-offender shield

By Jaxon Van Derbeken

San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city’s immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.

The city’s practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

City officials say they are trying to balance their obligations under federal and state law with local court orders and San Francisco’s policies aimed at protecting the rights of the young immigrants, who they say are often victims of exploitation.

Federal authorities counter that drug kingpins are indeed exploiting the immigrants, but that the city’s stance allows them to get away with “gaming the system.”

San Francisco juvenile authorities have been grappling for several years with an influx of young Honduran immigrants dealing crack in the Mission District and Tenderloin.

Those who are arrested routinely say they are minors, but police suspect that many are actually adults, living communally in Oakland and other cities at the behest of drug traffickers who claim to be their relatives.

Nonetheless, city authorities have typically accepted the suspects’ stories and handled the cases in Juvenile Court, where proceedings are often shielded from public scrutiny.

Barred by state law from sending drug offenders to the California Youth Authority and bound by a 1989 city law defining San Francisco as a sanctuary city for immigrants - meaning officials do not cooperate with federal immigration investigations - juvenile officials settled on an unorthodox strategy.

Rather than have the drug offenders deported, they have recommended that Juvenile Court judges and commissioners approve city-paid flights home to Honduras for the offenders with the aim of reuniting them with their families.

The practice, federal authorities say, does nothing to prevent offenders from coming back, while federal deportation legally bars them from ever returning. Federal officials also say U.S. law prohibits helping an illegal immigrant to cross the border, even if it is to return home.

Federal officials recently detained a San Francisco juvenile probation officer at the Houston airport, where he was accompanying two Honduran juvenile drug offenders about to board a flight to Tegucigalpa.

They questioned him for several hours before letting him go, and seized the youths and deported them.

“Our job is to uphold the nation’s immigration laws,” said Greg Palmore, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “Although San Francisco is a sanctuary city, it’s a problem whenever someone attempts to evade the law. … Our law does not allow us to turn a blind eye to any individual who has come into this country illegally.” …

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....111QM7.DTL

Seriously - why is this city receiving penny one of federal funds?

Oh yeah, that’s right. The aforementioned Nancy Pelosi.
sheehanjihad
June 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Speaking of Federal Funds……The Air Force has repeatedly asked congress to kill funding on a “back up” engine for the F-35 Lightning…(Joint Strike Fighter) as being a boondoggle and unnecessary due to the excellence of the Pratt and Whitney design…..Congress refuses.

Wonder why? Well, Senator Ted Kennedy has just forced a 100 million dollar funding bill for the back up engine that the military doesnt want and wont use…….because it happens to be manufactured in Lynn Massachusetts…..by General Electric Aviation. So, even though our taxpayer dollars are being spent to the total of 1.5 billion for an engine nobody wants…..Kennedy insists it is the right thing to do and we pay for it.

Any wonder our congress is held in such low esteem? Somebody needs to duct tape the good senator’s face to the afterburner of this engine…..just to see who emits more hot air.
BillK
June 30th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Things just keep getting better in the story of Milwaukee’s (now convicted) ex-alderman Michael McGee.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

McGee told inmate money came from gangs

By John Diedrich

Newly unsealed federal court documents say Michael McGee told a fellow jail inmate the $15,000 the former alderman illegally wired to New York to book a rapper were drug proceeds from the Vice Lords street gang.

They also show McGee was trying to get supporters on the jury in hopes of a hung jury and that the former alderman had close contact from jail with the the Bishop Sedgwick Daniels, who raised $80,000 for his defense and read his jailhouse letters at church.

The new revelations come from more than 100 pages of documents that were sealed over the past two months leading up to McGee’s federal trial. A jury last week convicted McGee on all nine counts of extortion, attempted extortion, bribery and failing to file a report on a $15,000 wire transaction.

U.S. District Judge Charles Clevert unsealed the documents on a motion from the prosecutor, which was supported by an attorney appearing for the Journal Sentinel. The documents became available today.

Several of the documents, which quoted McGee’s taped calls from jail, were filed in response to repeated motions by McGee to get out of jail. McGee was ordered held without bond last summer after prosecutors showed he was trying to contact and intimidate witnesses from behind bars.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Wall said he chose to file the information under seal to protect McGee’s rights.

“These filings were meant to show that he had no respect for court orders or the integrity of the legal process. I asked that these be sealed to protect Mr. McGee from negative publicity that could have tainted the jury pool against him,” Wall said.

http://www.jsonline.com/watch/.....p;id=42452

With qualifications like this, McGee could run for Mayor of Washington D.C.
ATLien
June 30th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
The associated press discovers supply and demand. Kind of!

Giant Saudi Field is Key to Boosting Oil Output

Khurais Oil Field, Saudi Arabia — This massive oil field surrounded by the desolate sands of Saudi Arabia’s vast eastern desert feels like the middle of nowhere. But what happens over the next year at Khurais, one of Saudi Arabia’s last undeveloped giant oil fields, could hold the key to what drivers will pay at the pump for years to come. […] The project forms the centerpiece of the Saudi plan to increase the total amount of oil it can produce to 12.5 million barrels per day by the end of 2009 — up from a little more than 11 million barrels per day now…

http://tinyurl.com/4k79j7

*** So it will take the most technilogically advanced country on Earth (USA) ‘ten years’ to get oil, and it WON’T lower prices? But when Saudi decides to drill, oil comes out in less than a year and it DOES lower prices????
BillK
July 1st, 2008 at 1:49 am
Yet another “density good, suburbs bad” article from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Why is it so hard to get Americans to buy into building up, not out?

By Lynn Vannucci

Whimsical. It was the least loaded word I’d heard critics muster for “Old Downtown” Windsor, which is not old in any sense of the word; it is the brand-new brainchild of its developer, Orrin Thiessen, and it has whimsy to spare.

Located 60 miles north of San Francisco off Hwy. 101, Windsor is a town of some 22,000 residents. Its downtown core, which dated from the 1870s, had deteriorated in the last century into a motley collection of scarred buildings riddled with gang activity. “It looked like it belonged in Bosnia,” one long time resident told me.

In 2001, Thiessen came along. He demolished the rotted buildings and began construction of Windsor Town Green Village, a project that was nothing less than the re-imagining of a community. If the resulting faux Victorian facades and cartoon color scheme don’t put you in mind of Disneyland, you had a deprived childhood.

It is this architectural naivete - and its accompanying artifice - that galvanizes Windsor’s critics, but there is something else about the town that is absolutely cutting edge. Town Green Village is a mixed-use development. Mixed-use development, experts are telling us, is one of the foremost tools we have in mitigating the climate-change crisis. Windsor’s detractors often overlook this critical point. That could be because mixed-use developers are often short of the point themselves.

In planning-commission language, mixed-use consists of a neighborhood in which the buildings have a combination of purposes, usually retail on the ground level with residential, office and even industrial spaces on the upper floors. This is not a new way to organize human habitats.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, when walking was a primary form of transportation, big cities and small towns were arranged around the principle that people ought to live near where they worked. Businesses that supported daily life - groceries and post offices and apothecaries - as well as pubs and parks and other public spaces, were naturally part of the organic evolution of the community.

The coal-fired engines of the Industrial Age, however, made living beside the neighborhood soap factory unpleasant and hazardous; the advent of the automobile lessened the need to live in close proximity to one’s place of employment. After World War II, a separation of building functions was codified in municipal zoning laws. Manufacturing as well as shopping, which in the new city-building template became an industrial activity, were isolated from those areas where people lived. Common daily destinations began to be built farther and farther from each other, linked only by car. What James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency,” calls “the great suburban experiment” began in earnest.

There is little to love about the sprawl that has resulted from our experiment - the plastic signs, cheap construction and acres of parking lagoons we navigate to acquire the necessities of life. Though I live near a viable downtown center, it’s a 24-mile round-trip to a shopping complex when I need to purchase a new toner cartridge for my printer. The lifestyle we fashioned for ourselves in the last half of the 20th century is inconvenient at best. As gas prices rise, it is increasingly expensive. And it has been disastrous for our planet - according to the Energy Information Administration, transportation accounts for 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

A new book from Smart Growth America, “Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change,” warns that if sprawling development continues at its current pace, the total miles driven by Americans will increase by 48 percent between now and 2030. According to co-author Steve Winkleman, “Vehicle emissions still would be 34 percent above 1990 levels in 2030 - entirely off-track from reductions of 60 to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 required for climate protection.” …

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....10SQ4J.DTL

So to recap, you must be forced out of your car and your home. Soylent Green must show ideal living conditions for these folks:

Jim Kunstler believes the bottom line is that the suburban experiment is at an end. Those single-family developments still under construction were likely permitted and financed up to 24 months ago - before the twin calamities of $100 plus per barrel oil and the housing implosion. They are “the last twitchings of a dead body,” as he says.

If he is right - and there is little reason to believe he is not - mixed-use is the way the majority of us will be living in the generations ahead. We should pay attention to the communities of Windsor and Santana Row, as they are right now evolving our new city-building templates.

I hope Kunstler is right - that would mean lower prices for acreage for those of us who don’t want to hear everything our neighbor has to say.
sheehanjihad
July 1st, 2008 at 6:44 am
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....amo_trials

Seems the UN thinks their heroes at Gitmo cant get a fair trial at all, even though our supreme court has given them unprecedented status that even American Citizens cant have…..go figure.
BillK
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 am
Never knew there was a “Black National Anthem?”

It was sung during Denver’s “State of the City” address by John Hickenlooper and introduced as “our national anthem.”

From the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News:

‘Black National Anthem’ brings City Council president hate mail

By Daniel J. Chacon

Denver’s City Council president is getting hammered with hate-filled messages in response to Tuesday’s surprise performance of the “Black National Anthem” by a jazz singer during a city event.

Chanteuse René Marie had been invited by Mayor John Hickenlooper’s office to sing the national anthem during his annual State of the City address.

Council President Michael Hancock, the master of ceremonies, introduced Marie, who sang what is known as the “Black National Anthem” instead.

Her performance evoked angry reactions among some of the estimated 700 people at the event.

“There is no substitute for the national anthem. Period,” Councilman Charlie Brown said.

“This is the State of the City address. It’s not an NAACP convention,” he said, referring to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Hickenlooper and his staff said they expected Marie to sing the “The Star-Spangled Banner” and that they were surprised when she sang something different.

In a statement late Tuesday, Hickenlooper said: “I’m disappointed that this matter has been a distraction from the great work and significant accomplishments of our city employees over the past year and the many important initiatives on tap for the coming year.”

Hickenlooper said in an interview that he spoke to Marie after the ceremony and that she apologized profusely.

The mayor also said that Marie told him she meant no disrespect.

“She blended the two songs together,” Hickenlooper said. “She was trying to make an artistic expression of her love for the country. She did not intend to make a political statement or anything.”

Marie sang the first verse of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” also known as the “Black National Anthem,” but adapted those lyrics to the tune of the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Marie said she had no regrets. She deliberately didn’t tell anybody about her song choice “because I don’t think it is necessary for an artist to ask permission to express themselves artistically,” she said.

“I would not change a thing,” Marie said.

“You have to risk things. You have to. Otherwise, you might of well live your life by a script.” …

http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....sour-note/

Once again, a major disconnect here.

If the singer said she did it on purpose, “has no regrets” and “I would not change a thing,” how does that correlate with:

Hickenlooper said in an interview that he spoke to Marie after the ceremony and that she apologized profusely.

If she did it on purpose and would do it again, why did she “apologize profusely”?!?!

Remember when reporters would catch little things like that?

[A later report on this from a different source has been given its own thread.]
BillK
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 am
Nice to know the Marines leave our own snipers guessing in terms of RoE.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Marine snipers’ killing rules weren’t clear, lieutenant testifies

A platoon leader says that as he left for Iraq, he tried and failed to get clarification. He was testifying at a hearing for sniper charged in the deaths of 2 wrongly suspected of planting a bomb.

By Tony Perry

CAMP PENDLETON — – Marine snipers were never given clear rules about when they could kill a suspected insurgent at long range, a platoon commander testified today at a hearing for a sniper charged with manslaughter and assault in the killing of two Syrians and the wounding of two others.

Lt. Dominic Corabi said that as he and his Marines deployed to Iraq, he tried and failed to get clarification from senior officers about what constitutes “positive identification” and “hostile intent” — terms in the official rules of engagement that dictate when Marines can use deadly force.

Enlisted Marines, Corabi said, were worried that their combat decisions could be second-guessed and that, like the Marines involved in the Haditha killings of 2005, they could find themselves facing criminal charges.

“Their main message was, ‘I don’t want to ruin my career doing something I think is right and the Marine Corps doesn’t,’ ” Corabi said.

His testimony came at the preliminary hearing for Sgt. Johnny Winnick, accused of breaking Marine rules by opening fire on a group of men he thought was planting a roadside bomb near Lake Tharthar. No evidence of a bomb was discovered.

The hearing officer will recommend to the commanding general whether the case should go to court martial, be dropped or be handled through an administrative process.

Winnick, 24, a sniper team leader, was on his fourth tour to Iraq when the incident occurred June 17, 2007. Later, Marines changed the rules, requiring even a sniper team leader to get authority from an officer before pulling the trigger, except in cases of self-defense.

Corabisaid the company commander had warned snipers that “the Marine Corps eats its young.”

Winnick was the leader of a five-man team assigned to watch an area near a mosque that was thought to be a spot where insurgents might bury a roadside bomb.

When four men in a truck stopped at the spot in the predawn hours and began making suspicious movements near the tailgate, Winnick and the others opened fire.

After the initial volley, Winnick ordered his Marines to charge toward the downed men, firing their weapons. At the time he issued his orders, the team’s communication gear had broken down and Winnick was unable to get in touch with officers.

Within hours, officers had determined that Winnick had made a mistake, that the men in the truck were not planting a bomb. Winnick was relieved of duty, and Corabi said he was ordered to give him a negative evaluation, but refused.

Although Winnick was brought up on charges, reprimands were placed in the other Marines’ personnel files. During the battle for Fallouja in 2004, Winnick was given a meritorious promotion for killing an insurgent planting a roadside bomb.

http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....0113.story

Truly disgusting - obviously their Marine Corps superiors are waiting to see how the Press reacts to any particular incident before deciding whether it was proper.

Completely depressing - I always thought the Marines would be the last service to pull something like this.
BillK
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:58 am
The latest proof that there are no longer any military secrets, period.

From the Los Angeles Times:

U.S. spies on Iraqi army, sources say

Satellites are allegedly being used to track the American-backed force after breakdowns in trust and coordination.

By Greg Miller

WASHINGTON — Caught off guard by recent Iraqi military operations, the United States is using spy satellites that ordinarily are trained on adversaries to monitor the movements of the American-backed Iraqi army, current and former U.S. officials say.

The stepped-up surveillance reflects breakdowns in trust and coordination between the two forces. Officials said it was part of an expanded intelligence effort launched after American commanders were surprised by the timing of the Iraqi army’s violent push into Basra three months ago.

The use of the satellites puts the United States in the unusual position of employing some of its most sophisticated espionage technology to track an allied army that American forces helped create, continue to advise, and often fight alongside.

The satellites are “imaging military installations that the Iraqi army occupies,” said a former U.S. military official, who said slides from the images had been used in recent closed briefings at U.S. facilities in the Middle East. “They’re imaging training areas that the Iraqi army utilizes. They’re imaging roads that Iraqi armored vehicles and large convoys transit.”

Military officials and experts said the move showed concern by U.S. commanders about whether their Iraqi counterparts would follow U.S. guidance or keep their coalition partners fully informed.

“It suggests that we don’t have complete confidence in their chain of command, or in their willingness to tell us what they’re going to do because they may fear that we may try to get them not to do it,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a website about intelligence and military issues.

But the development was also seen as a sign the Iraqi army has reached a level of independence and competence that U.S. military planners had hoped it would achieve.

“The bad news is we’re spying on Iraqis,” said the former military official. “The good news is that we have to.”

The former military official and several other sources described the operation on condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity. The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies declined to comment about the mission. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....9615.story

Really - who needs the NSA or CIA any more when our government leaks like this?
BillK
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:07 am
More from on San Francisco’s illegal immigrant shield and its results, from the San Francisco Chronicle:

8 crack dealers shielded by S.F. walk away

By Jaxon Van Derbeken

An effort by San Francisco to shield eight young Honduran crack dealers from federal immigration officials backfired when the youths escaped from Southern California group homes within days of their arrival, officials said Monday.

The walkaways are the latest in a string of embarrassments for city officials who are protecting illegal-immigrant drug dealers from federal authorities and possible deportation because of San Francisco’s 1989 declaration that the city is a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.

Until recently, San Francisco flew juvenile illegal immigrants convicted of drug crimes to their home countries rather than cooperate with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a practice that drew national attention when The Chronicle reported it Sunday.

When federal law enforcement authorities demanded that San Francisco halt the flights and began a criminal investigation, the city decided to house some of the dealers in long-term youth rehabilitation centers. Some of those centers are run by a nonprofitcompany called Silverlake Youth Services in mountain towns southeast of San Bernardino.

Eight Honduran juveniles who had been convicted of dealing drugs in San Francisco were sent within the past few weeks to the company’s group homes, where one month’s placement costs $7,000 per youth - an expense borne by San Francisco taxpayers.

Within 10 days of being sent to the unlocked group homes, however, all eight youths ran away, said Bill Siffermann, head of juvenile probation in San Francisco. He said his agency has issued arrest warrants for them.

Siffermann said the city has stopped sending juvenile offenders to Silverlake because of the escapes. “We have now eliminated that as a prospect,” he said, adding that San Francisco is trying to come up with an approach for handling the juveniles that does not involve giving them to federal immigration authorities.

San Bernardino County sheriff’s Capt. Bart Gray said Silverlake had reported the Honduran youths as runaways - not as juvenile offenders. Three of the youths were listed as missing from Silverlake’s Douglas House in the town of Yucaipa, 16 miles southeast of San Bernardino, on June 20 and two more on June 22, Gray said.

Juvenile probation officials say three other Honduran youths who had been convicted as juveniles in San Francisco disappeared from another Silverlake-run group home, but it was not immediately known which one.

Silverlake officials confirmed that the youths had vanished but would say nothing further, referring inquiries to San Francisco officials. Silverlake’s operations officer, Jeff Boyd, said he was barred by law from commenting. …

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....11HGVL.DTL

Not at all surprising what San Francisco is willing to do with the taxpayer’s money, is it?

Of course the Feds will pick up the tab for this soon, so why worry?

You’ll love the justification:

San Francisco sent the youths to the Southern California group homes after federal authorities demanded that they stop flying illegal immigrant juvenile offenders to their homeland without alerting immigration officials.

Turning the youths over to federal authorities for deportation could have resulted in their being legally barred from ever returning to the United States. Federal officials said the city’s practice of returning the youths to their homeland to be reunited with their families did nothing to prevent drug-dealing juveniles from coming right back to the United States.

They also noted that it is a crime to help an illegal immigrant cross the border, even if it is to leave the country.

San Francisco officials countered that many of the youths were victims of drug dealers and that it wasn’t fair to bar them from ever becoming citizens.

Awww - get convicted of a felony and you are barred from ever becoming a citizen.

Some would say that’s a good thing, but since the left wants to do away with the notion of citizenship anyway - anyone on US soil can stay - we’re obviously the misguided ones.
BillK
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:15 am
More from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Newsom says underage illegal immigrant criminals are courts’ problem

By Marisa Lagos and Jaxon Van Derbeken

(07-01) 16:14 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — With his handpicked juvenile probation chief at his side, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said today that he is powerless to order that the city turn over underage illegal immigrant criminals to federal officials for deportation.

Instead, Newsom said at a City Hall news conference, the question of what to do with illegal immigrant minors who deal drugs and commit other crimes is one for juvenile court judges, the district attorney and public defender to sort out.

“I don’t have the authority here,” Newsom said as he stood beside Juvenile Probation Director William Siffermann. “I have a bully pulpit. The courts have the authority here.”

Newsom’s comments, his first since The Chronicle reported this week that the city was shielding underage illegal immigrant drug dealers from deportation, put him at odds with the head of the city’s juvenile courts. She has said that judges were simply approving recommendations from juvenile probation officials.

The Chronicle revealed that the city had been flying Honduran juvenile drug dealers to their homeland, from which they were free to return, until the federal government demanded that officials halt the practice. The city then sent eight illegal immigrants convicted of dealing crack to a group home for juveniles in San Bernardino County, where all escaped within days.

“The question you need to ask is why the courts, the DA and the public defender are directing (the Juvenile Probation Department) to do that,” Newsom said.

Siffermann said he is trying to balance federal law with San Francisco’s 1989 proclamation of itself as a sanctuary city, a status that has led city officials to refuse to cooperate with federal agents in deporting immigrants.

“The chief doesn’t do it on his own,” Newsom said. “He is told by the courts to do this. … The DA and judges and public defender all tell chief Siffermann what to do.”

Siffermann, who was appointed by Newsom to run the Juvenile Probation Department in 2005, insisted at today’s news conference that his agency simply made recommendations to juvenile court judges about what should be done with underage illegal immigrants convicted of drug dealing.

However, Judge Donna Hitchens, who oversees the city’s Juvenile Court, told The Chronicle last week that the original idea for flying illegal immigrant youths home had been advanced by juvenile probation officials. She said it was up to Siffermann’s agency, not judges, to work out differences with the federal government.

Hitchens was on vacation today and was not immediately available to comment on the mayor’s remarks. …

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....11I71H.DTL

Of course this buck-passing moron also announced today he’s looking at a run for Governor.

Californians, as with the US in general, will get the leadership they vote for…
BillK
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
From Fox News, the latest threat from Iran:

U.S. Navy Commander Warns Iran: Don’t Try Closing Gulf Oil Passageway

The U.S. Navy and its Gulf allies will not allow Iran to seal off the strategic Strait of Hormuz if the country is attacked, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf said Wednesday.

The warning comes as Iran’s oil minister vows that any attack on his country by the United States or Israel would provoke an unimaginably fierce response.

The announcement by Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the 5th Fleet, came as he was holding talks with naval commanders of Gulf countries at a conference in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi. The one-day meeting was to focus on the region’s maritime and trade-route security and the threat of terrorism.

The 5th Fleet is based in Bahrain, across the Gulf from Iran. Cosgriff said that if Iran choked off the Strait of Hormuz, it would be “saying to the world that 40 percent of oil is now held hostage by a single country.”

“We will not allow Iran to close it,” he told reporters.

Cosgriff’s comments follow Iranian threats that it could seal off the key passageway in case of a Western attack on Tehran. But Cosgriff said that if Iran moved to choke off Hormuz, the “international community would find its voice rapidly” against Iran.

Gholam Hossein Nozari, Iran’s oil minister, has threatened that military moves against Tehran would further roil already volatile oil markets that are seeing price records set almost daily.

Earlier this week, Cosgriff said in Bahrain that such an Iranian move would be viewed as an act of war.

Cosgriff said that out of 60 percent of known world oil reserves in the Gulf, a third are shipped by sea. Twenty-five million barrels of oil pass through Hormuz every day — the equivalent of about $3 billion, he said. …

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,374905,00.html

Just a reminder: with oil underground, that means it would not be affected by explosions on the surface - conventional or nuclear.

Just saying.
BillK
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:12 am
It’s “do as I say, not as I do” time for Obama again.

From the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News:

Obama: Students should serve

He calls on young people to help in their communities

By Nancy Mitchell

Cindy Stevenson liked what Barack Obama had to say Wednesday about students getting engaged in community service.

But the Jefferson County School District superintendent worried about differing definitions of community service. Does a school food drive count? What about work in a church? Or involvement in the Boy Scouts?

“The difficulty is, when you start making it a graduation requirement,” she said. “That’s when individual value systems among parents and different groups in the community . . . you can get an awful lot of conflict.”

The plan Obama outlined in Colorado Springs called for getting middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of community service a year and 100 hours a year for college students.

He said the goals would be achieved by making federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs.

But Obama also said he believed young people would rise to the occasion - challenging what he said were “cynics.”

“These are the voices that will tell you - not just what you can’t do - but what you won’t do,” Obama said. “Young Americans won’t serve their country - they’re too selfish, too apathetic or too lazy. This is the soft sell of the status quo. The voice that tells you to settle because settling isn’t that bad.”

But Stevenson worried it sounded like a federal mandate.

“Somehow I have a hard time imagining the federal government withholding funds from poverty-stricken 8-year-olds based on high schools not doing community service,” she said. …

http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....uld-serve/

Oh, you’d better believe; it’s the left’s well-worn path to indoctrination of the notion that all things come from the government - charities are passé, and churches are just fonts of hatred.

Students will “rise to the occasion?” Or they won’t be given high school diplomas or college degrees without performing “service?”

Be scared - be very scared.
BillK
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
More fear from “science.”

From the (Boulder, CO) Daily Camera:

CU prof: Math glitch could mean faulty extinction calculations

By Brittany Anas

A math glitch could mean the future of creatures on endangered species lists is even grimmer, as the calculations commonly used underestimate extinction risks by as much as 100-fold, according to a new study from a University of Colorado researcher.

Brett Melbourne, an assistant professor in CU’s ecology and evolutionary biology department, said math models used to determine extinction threats, or “red-listed” status, of species worldwide overlook random differences among individuals in a given population.

Survival rates and reproductive success can hinge on those variations — such as male-to-female ratios, as well as size or behavioral variations. And that has a large effect on extinction risk calculations, according to Melbourne’s study.

The findings could have a profound impact on the conservation biology field, as experts are urged to adjust their calculations and could find that species may be on a much more rapid extinction path, Melbourne said.

“When we apply our new mathematical model to species extinction rates, it shows that things are worse than we thought,” Melbourne said. “By accounting for random differences between individuals, extinction rates for endangered species can be orders of magnitude higher than conservation biologists have believed.”

The National Science Foundation paid for the study. …

http://www.dailycamera.com/new.....on-calcul/

Or, the EPA has just assured its existence by giving them an excuse to list even more species as endangered and to cut off even more lands from any type of ownership or development.

A government power grab paid for with government dollars.

You’ve got to love the system the left has set up - all on the basis of data that the story states could be true.

Why, it’s another numeric model - just like Global Warming! How could it possibly be wrong?
BillK
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
A great editorial piece from the Wall Street Journal:

Global Warming as Mass Neurosis

By Bret Stephens

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it’s time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA’s Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of “99% confidence”).

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that “80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters,” according to a report by NPR’s Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere’s coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.

So let’s stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific “consensus” warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to “patriarchal” science; curtains to the species. …

http://online.wsj.com/article/global_view.html

Absolutely great stuff - of course unworthy of discussion as the author isn’t a “scientist.”
BillK
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 am
Yet another great opinion piece from the WSJ:

The Politics of Can’t-Possibly-Do

By Daniel Henninger

In a few months we’ll arrive at the seventh year after the events of September 11, 2001. All can recall the coming together of the nation in the aftermath, and then how the coming together fell apart.

Reflecting the nation, the two parties have fought over the prison at Guantanamo, waterboarding three of the captured terrorists and tapping their overseas phone calls. Both candidates in the six-month Democratic primary said repeatedly that the president’s strategies against the terrorists who did the airliner atrocities have made us “less safe.”

Given a choice between unity and politics, we chose the indulgent pleasures of politics.

Still, the site where the Trade Center towers fell that sunny morning endures as a cold testament to a truly brutal form of politics. For those of us who work near Ground Zero, it seems that half the world’s people have come to look at the 16-acre hole, New York’s grim tourist attraction.

Thanks to the diminished dollar, many are Europeans who bring whole families to see the ripped walls. This probably nets out as positive, if unmeasurable, global support for knowing what Islam’s terrorists wish to do and why resistance matters.

To resist, though, one needs a functioning political system, and it’s an open question whether we have one, or are losing the one we’ve got.

Yes, we have a healthy politics, but after the immense fun of watching the campaigns and the speeches ends, what remains is the work of running the system.

This week the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued a stunning document to explain why Ground Zero has remained nothing but a hole for some seven years.

It is arguably the greatest political and bureaucratic fiasco in the history of the world. Remember the line about how if we don’t rebuild the towers “the terrorists will win”? The terrorists will be dead of old age before this project is finished.

Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward, who did the remarkably frank report at the request of a frustrated Gov. David Paterson of New York, wrote that original estimates of time and cost (now at $15 billion) “did not reflect the unprecedented challenges associated with a project . . . involving so many different public and private stakeholders.” (Arguably the system began its decline when the vocabulary changed deadly “factions” into benevolent “stakeholders.”)

Ground Zero is a perfect storm of contemporary American politics. The report cites “19 different governmental entities from every level of government each laying claim to some component of the overall project.” And, “Each entity makes daily decisions about their individual projects, but no streamlined process or authority is in place to . . . ensure that each decision is in the best interest of the overall project.” This sounds eerily like the 9/11 Commission’s assessment of our dis-coordinated national security agencies.

Besides the public players, the report notes “dozens” of family groups representing the victims, plus various community groups. Bowing to another toxic value, the agency promises to still be “inclusive,” then complains no one has the authority to decide anything.

That is because productive decision making has fallen as a public value below “being heard.” Even being heard is no longer enough. The “stakeholders” have to prevail, somehow assuming that the process – or a complex project like this – will endure endless blows. Meanwhile, construction of the wholly private, 52-story 7 World Trade Center building was done in 2006. …

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....24861.html

Sadly, it’s not only not surprising, but expected from New York, the ultimate expression of the liberal ideal.
BillK
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:33 am
One more from the WSJ:

America’s Days Aren’t Numbered

By Thomas F. Madden

I have a simple request. As we celebrate the birth of the American Republic, can we all stop predicting its death? It’s getting depressing.

The last time I strolled through the local Barnes & Noble, there were so many books announcing the end of American power, wealth, influence, or just America itself, that I began to wonder whether my dollars would be worth anything by the time I hit the checkout counter.

First there was Patrick Buchanan (”Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart”), who told me “we are on a path to national suicide.” Then Chalmers Johnson (”Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”) stopped me near the coffee shop to say that the “extinction that befell our former fellow ’superpower,’ the Soviet Union . . . is probably by now unavoidable.” And don’t even get me started on Naomi Wolf (”The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot”).

These are just the tip of the iceberg. I dare you – I double-dare you! – to find a recent book on America’s future that does not predict a coming collapse. The causes are legion: a power-hungry president, domestic spying, military overreach, a faltering economy, an energy crisis, too much diversity, too little diversity, wars that are both pre-emptive and endless.

Even the optimists, like Fareed Zakaria (”The Post-American World”), tell us that the rest of the planet is rising and America had better get out of the way.

As a historian, I find this trend fascinating. After all, since humans climbed out of the trees and began surveying the lion-infested Savannah, none have ever lived in a period more prosperous, secure and stable than Americans do today. The U.S. is not only the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth now, but in all of history. There’s never been a better time and place to be alive than America in the 21st century.

So why all the decline theorists?

Here’s my theory: Prosperity and security are boring. Nobody wants to read about them. The same phenomenon occurred in ancient Rome, the last state to acquire such a firm hegemony. By the second century B.C., Roman citizens were affluent and their empire no longer had any serious rivals. With the dangers past and the money rolling in, they developed a taste for jeremiads. If you had a stylus, ink and scroll you could hardly go broke telling the Romans their empire, culture and way of life were yesterday’s news.

Polybius blamed pandering politicians, who, he predicted, would transform the noble Republic into mob rule. Sallust claimed that Rome’s vicious political parties had “torn the Republic asunder.” Livy wrote his entire “History of Rome” just so that his fellow citizens could “follow the decay of the national character . . . until it reaches these days in which we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.”

The Romans may have been unquestioned masters of their world, but they sure didn’t like reading about it. And when the empire actually did start its decline in the third century A.D., criticisms and predictions of collapse became noticeably thinner on the ground. …

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....24909.html

Alas, telling America everything is broken has been the model for the DNC for years now.

It will be interesting to see how many of these problems will suddenly see much less play when Obama takes office - except to say that the Republicans have done much more damage to the country than can be conceivably fixed on any reasonable timeline.
BillK
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Finally, again from the WSJ, a reminder you should print out and place on the desk of your liberal coworkers.

Why We Went to War in Iraq

By Douglas J. Feith

A lot of poor commentary has framed the Iraq war as a conflict of “choice” rather than of “necessity.” In fact, President George W. Bush chose to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he concluded that doing so was necessary.

President Bush inherited a worrisome Iraq problem from Bill Clinton and from his own father. Saddam had systematically undermined the measures the U.N. Security Council put in place after the Gulf War to contain his regime. In the first months of the Bush presidency, officials debated what to do next.

As a participant in the confidential, top-level administration meetings about Iraq, it was clear to me at the time that, had there been a realistic alternative to war to counter the threat from Saddam, Mr. Bush would have chosen it.

In the months before the 9/11 attack, Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated diluting the multinational economic sanctions, in the hope that a weaker set of sanctions could win stronger and more sustained international support. Central Intelligence Agency officials floated the possibility of a coup, though the 1990s showed that Saddam was far better at undoing coup plots than the CIA was at engineering them. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz asked if the U.S. might create an autonomous area in southern Iraq similar to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, with the goal of making Saddam little more than the “mayor of Baghdad.” U.S. officials also discussed whether a popular uprising in Iraq should be encouraged, and how we could best work with free Iraqi groups that opposed the Saddam regime.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld worried particularly about the U.S. and British pilots enforcing the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi forces were shooting at the U.S. and British aircraft virtually every day; if a plane went down, the pilot would likely be killed or captured. What then? Mr. Rumsfeld asked. Were the missions worth the risk? How might U.S. and British responses be intensified to deter Saddam from shooting at our planes? Would the intensification trigger a war? What would be the consequences of cutting back on the missions, or ending them? …

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....24921.html

But here’s the part that should be printed up and distributed on flyers in your neighborhood:

1) Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11. The Iraqi dictator had started wars against Iran and Kuwait, and had fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel. Unrepentant about the rape of Kuwait, he remained intensely hostile to the U.S. He provided training, funds, safe haven and political support to various types of terrorists. He had developed WMD and used chemical weapons fatally against Iran and Iraqi Kurds. Iraq’s official press issued statements praising the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.

2) The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling and urgent after 9/11. Though Saddam’s regime was not implicated in the 9/11 operation, it was an important state supporter of terrorism. And President Bush’s strategy was not simply retaliation against the group responsible for 9/11. Rather it was to prevent the next major attack. This focused U.S. officials not just on al Qaeda, but on all the terrorist groups and state supporters of terrorism who might be inspired by 9/11 – especially on those with the potential to use weapons of mass destruction.

3) To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years. The U.S. did not rush to war. Working mainly through the U.N., we tried a series of measures to contain the Iraqi threat: formal diplomatic censure, weapons inspections, economic sanctions, no-fly zones, no-drive zones and limited military strikes. A defiant Saddam, however, dismantled the containment strategy and the U.N. Security Council had no stomach to sustain its own resolutions, let alone compel Saddam’s compliance.

4) While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of leaving Saddam in power were even larger. The U.S. and British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones were routinely under enemy fire, and a larger confrontation – over Kuwait again or some other issue – appeared virtually certain to arise once Saddam succeeded in getting out from under the U.N.’s crumbling economic sanctions.

Mr. Bush decided it was unacceptable to wait while Saddam advanced his biological weapons program or possibly developed a nuclear weapon. The CIA was mistaken, we all now know, in its assessment that we would find chemical and biological weapons stockpiles in Iraq. But after the fall of the regime, intelligence officials did find chemical and biological weapons programs structured so that Iraq could produce stockpiles in three to five weeks. They also found that Saddam was intent on having a nuclear weapon. The CIA was wrong in saying just before the war that his nuclear program was active; but Iraq appears to have been in a position to make a nuclear weapon in less than a year if it purchased fissile material from a supplier such as North Korea.

5) America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers. It was reasonable – one might say obligatory – for the president to worry about a renewed confrontation with Saddam. Like many others, he feared Saddam might then use weapons of mass destruction again, perhaps deployed against us through a proxy such as one of the many terrorist groups Iraq supported.

Thoughtful, patriotic Americans differed then and now on whether the risk of leaving Saddam in power outweighed the risk of war. But Mr. Bush concluded that it did, and that war therefore was necessary. In Congress, many Democrats as well as Republicans supported that conclusion. Debates will continue over whether the president should have balanced the risks differently. But characterizing the Iraq war as “a war of choice” sheds no light on the issue.

Amen.
BillK
July 4th, 2008 at 2:36 am
From a dismissive AP:

White House says ruling could free detainees in US

By Deb Reichmann

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Thursday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. as a result of last month’s Supreme Court ruling about detainees’ legal rights. Federal appeals courts, however, have indicated they have no intention of letting that happen.

The high court ruling, which gave all detainees the right to petition federal judges for immediate release, has intensified discussions within the Bush administration about what to do with the roughly 270 detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“I’m sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said about al-Qaida’s former third in command.

President Bush strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court decision that the foreigners held under indefinite detention at Guantanamo have the right to seek release in civilian courts. The 5-4 ruling was the third time the justices had repudiated Bush on his approach to holding the suspects outside the protections of U.S. law.

The legal ramifications of the Supreme Court decision remain fuzzy, but it’s unlikely that a federal appeals court would order a detainee released into the United States even if a judge finds that the government was holding the detainee improperly. A court might tell the Bush administration to let a prisoner go, but it presumably would be up to the executive branch to figure out where. …

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s.....TANAMO_BAY

What a great double play by the AP!

Trash Bush, and perpetuate that the wise, honorable appeals court judges will do the right thing.

Remember, all of this could have been avoided by just leaving things up to the judges in the first place…
BillK
July 4th, 2008 at 5:14 am
What could Republicans possibly do to sully their image further?

Why not propose a renewal of the most hated and most ignored law ever placed on the books since the repeal of probation?

From auto enthusiast site Left Lane News:

Senator proposes 55 mph national limit redux

Republican politicians are supposed to stand for less government intervention in the lives of Americans. But don’t tell that to senator John Warner of Virginia. The lawmaker is considering asking Congress to reimpose a national speed limit similar 55 mph directive to the one introduced in 1974.

That abomination took 21 years to repeal. U.S. states have been free to set their own speed limits for the last 13 years, but if Warner has his way that could end — again. In a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Warner cites a study showing the 55 mph speed limit saved an average of 167,000 barrels of oil a day.

What’s unclear is how reducing oil consumption by 2 percent will ease the pain at the pump caused by $4 a gallon gas. Whether a relatively small drop in demand will do anything to affect gas prices is a question for economists to answer. But it seems inconceivable prices would fall in any appreciable way.

According to the Energy Department, fuel economy drops considerably above 60 mph. For every additional 5 mph, motorists pay an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs, Warner claims. Apparently, this “Republican” thinks the federal governments needs to tell Americans how they can and cannot spend their money. …

http://www.leftlanenews.com/se.....redux.html

I’ve been waiting for some idiot politician to propose this, but always thought it would be someone from the other side of the aisle.

Pity.

Republicans really have forgotten every single thing Reagan stood for.

Though to be fair, Warner didn’t like Reagan for a moment, and is as “Republican” as Olympia Snow, Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel and, well, John McCain.

But even the Dems have been smart enough not to attempt reimposing the 55 MPH speed limit… yet.

IMHO any politician wanting to reimpose a 55 MPH speed limit must be forced to drive across Nebraska at 55 MPH first.
BillK
July 4th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Celebrate the Fourth of July by propagating more fact-less fear, like the San Francisco Chronicle:

Greenhouse gases called threat to Pacific life

By David Perlman

(07-03) 16:22 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — Ocean waters welling up from the depths along the Pacific Coast from Canada to Mexico are threatening a wide variety of marine organisms as carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, saturates the water and increases its corrosive acidity, government scientists report.

The world’s oceans now absorb millions of tons of the global warming gas each year, and thus help to slow the pace of climate change, but the benefit is far outweighed by extreme and damaging changes in the water’s chemistry, according to seagoing oceanographers.

In separate recent reports in the journal Science and in congressional testimony, the scientists warn that the rate of “ocean acidification” is increasing, and say damage to some of the most important living organisms in the sea’s food web is becoming more apparent.

The acid can endanger all kinds of marine animals, from the shells of microscopic plankton to the beaks of giant squid, biologists are finding from laboratory experiments and seagoing studies.

Richard Feely, a chemical oceanographer in Seattle with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates that the world’s oceans have become at least 30 percent more acidic since the Industrial Age began more than 200 years ago, and that if greenhouse gas emissions continue uncontrolled, the world’s oceans in this century will become 150 percent more acidic than they are today.

“While the changes are alarming, it’s nearly impossible to predict how this unprecedented acidification will affect entire ecosystems,” says Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford. …

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....11IG0Q.DTL

Unanswered is how sea life managed to survive past periods in the Earth’s history when CO2 levels exceeded anything being seen today.

But that would require scientific thought and analysis of data, not mere fear mongering aimed at producing more government funding, all while admitting they have no idea whether acidification, if it is occurring, will have any effects:

“We have little idea what ocean acidification will do to fish eggs or fish larvae, or how the loss of organisms at the base of the food chain might affect the larger fish that so many people have come to depend on,” Caldeira said last month in testimony to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.

Or as Feely put it in his own testimony before the same congressional committee: “Since ocean acidification research is still in its infancy, it is impossible to predict exactly how the individual species’ responses will cascade throughout the marine food chain and impact the overall structure of marine ecosystems.“

It is “impossible to predict” it, so let’s predict the worst and not wait for any actual effects to occur.

We could predict nothing would occur, but that wouldn’t generate any NSF funding, would it?
Greg England
July 4th, 2008 at 5:41 am
For every additional 5 mph, motorists pay an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs, Warner claims.

And as you correctly pointed out, Mr. BillK that’s their business!

I haven’t driven in the States (although I have visited several times) but I assume that when you are driving on the Freeway, you are entitled to drive at 55mph in the slow lane if you are concerned about fuel consumption. You can certainly drive at 50mph on a UK motorway if you wish. Just move into the inside lane, and follow a speed limited truck.

In other words, once again, politicians are trying to legislate when the free market, and … erm … freedom is happily taking care of the situation.

High gas prices + tight budgets = drive slower if you want.

It’s not difficult, is it?
DW
July 4th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
For every additional 5 mph, motorists pay an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs, Warner claims.

This sentence doesn’t even make sense if you think about it. Most people are aware that if you go fast you burn more fuel. You may use more gallons of fuel, but you won’t be paying any more per gallon.

I know that sounds like nitpicking, but when elected officials are trying to ram yet another law down peoples’ throats they should, at the very least, have their sh*t together.

OK, so it is nitpicking. Sue me.

Anyways, happy birthday all y’all.
wardmama4
July 4th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
For every additional 5 mph, motorists pay an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs, Warner claims.

If a person can pay it - what business is it of government? Just more and more divisiveness based on class envy - damn it - my hubby and I have worked since our teens to reach the financial point where we can choose how we spend our money. . .That moorons in the DC beltway is what is called freedom.

and along with that goes this:

The plan Obama outlined in Colorado Springs called for getting middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of community service a year and 100 hours a year for college students.

He said the goals would be achieved by making federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs.

Uh - is Obamantion (aka Master of the Universe) going to determine which programs would be acceptable - thereby forcing students to pick only approved programs to get their financing? Isn’t that forced governmental servitude (i.e. slavery) or worse conscription of the worst sort? What about personal freedom and that all so liberal code word - choice???

Be very afraid - they are out of control and attempting to run our lives in every aspect possible.
take_no_prisoners
July 4th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
30 cents per 5 mph reduction in speed works out to saving 30 cents for 5 extra minutes in travel time per hour. This works out to saving $3.60 cents for every extra hour of travel time it would cost you to drive at the reduced speed. A 12 hour trip at 70mph becomes a 15 hour trip at 55mph. This doesn’t register with the beltway types who fly if the trip is longer than an hour but for us fly over people the extra time driving across states like Nebraska, Kansas, Montana or on a trip from Georgia to Ohio the extra time makes a tolerable trip intolerable. I don’t know anyone who thinks that their time isn’t worth more than $3.60 an hour–this doesn’t even come close to the current federal minimum wage. Drill here, drill now and forget about dictating ridiculous limits on how far we can go in an hour.
wardmama4
July 4th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Take_no_prisoners - try driving across Texas - I’ve actually cried three times as it feels (even at 70+) like there is no getting out.

This idea is only meant to appear as though those in DC are doing something - like that will ever happen with the Nancy Pelosi 110th Do Less Than Nothing Congress!

Happy 4th of July - if Obamanation is elected in Nov - it may be the last free one we have had since 1776.
navycopjoe
July 4th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Oh lord, a little over a month ago, I drove from Chicago to Jersey. Ohio took a while but Pennsylvania took FOREVER! Went 75-80 the whole way except for Ohio since the OHP was everywhere.
I’ll take a plane next time.
1sttofight
July 4th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Where are all those personal atomic helicopters we were promised in the 50’s that every one would be getting around in in the 21st century?
take_no_prisoners
July 4th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
navycopjoe,
Hope you were able to cross Pennsy on I-80 as I-70 is a white-knuckle nightmare due to it’s narrowness and concrete barriers in lieu of wide medians (it was one of the first 4-lane limited access highways in the U.S.). Back in the 1970’s and 80’s the Ohio Highway Patrol was notorious for handing out tickets for 57mph or 58mph and they were everywhere. Just say no to 55mph, it’s not worth the trouble.
U NO HOO
July 4th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I can’t take it anymore.

Won’t driving 55 in a 35 zone use more gas?

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