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Other News For The Week Of May 3 - May 9

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.

(Bee photo courtesy of S&L shutterbug, Franco.)

Related Articles:

This article was posted by Steve Gilbert on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 am. Comments are currently closed.

88 Responses to “Other News For The Week Of May 3 - May 9”

BillK
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:34 am
From the Los Angeles Times, proof that hypocrisy is SOP for the left:

Critics denounce gas tax ‘holiday’ backed by Clinton and McCain

They say the proposal is ‘pandering’ and would benefit the oil industry more than consumers.

By Michael Finnegan

As Sens. John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed Thursday for suspension of the federal gasoline tax, economists, environmentalists and others roundly denounced the plan as a political stunt that would favor the oil industry rather than consumers.

Economists are “as close to unanimous as you can get” in viewing the proposal as a “horrible idea,” said Joseph J. Doyle Jr., a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who has studied gas tax “holidays.”

Voter frustration over soaring gasoline prices has led Republican McCain and Democrat Clinton to make the proposal an economic centerpiece of their campaigns for president. With gas prices nearing $4 per gallon in much of the country, the tax relief carries broad political appeal.

But economists and other critics have ridiculed the plan for a moratorium on the 18.4-cents-per-gallon tax, and newspaper editorial boards across the nation have cheered Clinton’s Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, for opposing it.

Philip K. Verleger Jr., a Colorado economist and author of “Adjusting to Volatile Energy Prices,” called suspension of the gas tax “a hideously bad idea” that would let refinery owners keep some or all of the savings.

“My guess is 80% or 90% of the revenue loss for the government would go into the pockets of the oil industry — and not trickle down to consumers,” he said.

By encouraging consumption of gasoline, Verleger added, the proposal also contradicts commitments made by both Clinton and McCain to fight global warming and cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

“This is true pandering to voters without any consideration of the long-term interests of the country,” he said.

Doyle, who co-wrote a study of state gas tax holidays in Illinois and Indiana in 2000, said results in those states suggested that suspension of the federal tax would save motorists 10 to 15 cents per gallon. The savings, however, would be “lost in the usual ebb and flow of prices,” so an average motorist would reap perhaps $20 over the summer, Doyle said.

“For the usual person who fills up two or three times a month, it doesn’t look like huge savings,” he said. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....4891.story

So remember, if it’s not a “huge savings” it’s not worth doing.

I hope those who complain gas prices are too high remember thiis.

Say what you will, but a lot of people would appreciate that “$20.”
BillK
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 am
From the Los Angeles Times:

Schwarzenegger’s quest for revenues taxes consumers and their patience

The idea of paying more for services and takeout food doesn’t sit well with many residents, but economists think it’s a fine idea.

By Tami Abdollah and Evan Halper

Other states tax takeout cappuccino, movie tickets and personal trainer sessions. Why not California?

A woman looking for the cheapest jolt of caffeine on the menu at an Alhambra Starbucks offered one response: She’s already broke.

“There must be some other way,” said Gwen Angert, 38, a student at the California School of Professional Psychology who says she and her classmates have up to $80,000 in education debt. “We’re struggling to make ends meet.”

Her friend Chris Fyfe, 25, chimed in: “I don’t know if people will continue buying things if prices go up.”

News that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration is exploring potential tax hikes on personal services, some prepared foods and other items to help close a budget gap was not warmly received by consumers and business owners Friday.

A coffee shop owner in Koreatown fretted that such a tax could help push her out of business. A personal trainer in West L.A. wondered if it would make customers think twice about coming to work out. Movie patrons at the Grove complained that tickets cost too much already.

But one group — economists — is fond of the idea. They have long urged the state to tax services, saying there is little rationale to California’s current tax system, a crazy-quilt of levies that they say encourages consumers to spend money in some places and not others.

“There is no reason to exclude services from sales tax,” said Alan Auerbach, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley. “It discourages people from buying goods in favor of services.”

Auerbach, like other economists, says state officials should tinker with the tax code to bring fairness to it, not just to squeeze more money out of it. He suggested they might even cut a tax when they impose new ones — something that is not in the cards in cash-strapped Sacramento. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....8412.story

Ah, the economists think it’s a fine idea - I’m sure many of the same ones who think the gas tax holiday is a bad idea.

But the economists know all:

Food has traditionally been exempt from the sales tax because it is a necessity and adding to the cost of it would hit the poor particularly hard. So the state taxes food consumed at a restaurant, and not food taken out, presumably to be consumed at home.

But economists question whether a mochaccino is a necessity. Same with an artisan goat cheese pizza purchased at a gourmet food shop.

One proposal the administration is exploring would lift the tax exemption on such takeout foods, raising as much as $750 million. Steven Sheffrin, a professor of economics at UC Davis, says that may be easier said than done; the question is where to draw the line.

He cites an old tax rule in New York that classified doughnuts as tax-exempt only if they were beyond a certain size. Tax officials presumed that at that point, they were too large to consume in one sitting in a restaurant.

Jessica Cho, owner of Coffee & U in Koreatown, is less concerned with bringing fairness to the tax code than keeping her shop open. She says taxing takeout beverages is a lousy idea.

“The economy is bad,” she said Friday afternoon in her cafe, whose brown suede lounge chairs sat empty. “My business is very, very slow, and there’s already too many taxes — sales tax, business tax, taxes everywhere. I may give up my store.” …

But there are even some business owners living in fantasyland:

Not every business owner resists charging customers more on behalf of the state, however.

“We pay taxes for everything, so why not pay taxes for services?” said Echo Park hair stylist Rosa Martinez, 39, who charges $8 to $12 for haircuts. “It’s not too much money.“

I wonder how much she’ll hear about this from her (now former) customers?
BillK
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:48 am
Unions, always creative.

From the Los Angeles Times:

L.A. city unions push retirement incentives over layoffs

Six employee unions ask Villaraigosa to consider offering early retirements to longtime workers instead of cutting 767 jobs to balance next year’s budget
.
By David Zahniser

Six Los Angeles city employee unions have asked Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to offer early retirement to thousands of senior city workers, saying such a program could save $177 million annually and avert layoffs over the next year.

With Villaraigosa looking to pare 767 jobs to balance the budget for next year, the Coalition of L.A. Unions circulated a counterproposal that recommends giving financial incentives to as many as 6,000 of the city’s oldest, most highly paid workers.

Under the proposal, eligible employees who agree to leave would receive up to five more years toward their retirement calculation, giving them better pension benefits and a reason to leave right away, said Barbara Maynard, a spokeswoman for the coalition.

Maynard said the move also would allow the mayor to stabilize the budget, which calls for a range of cuts designed to preserve his plan to hire 1,000 police officers.

“Allowing city employees to retire early will allow the city to save critical services like library hours, after-school recreation programs and animal care in the city shelters,” said Maynard, whose group represents 22,000 workers.

Maynard discussed the proposal on the same day that the City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee went behind closed doors to discuss Villaraigosa’s plan for eliminating hundreds of jobs and forcing most remaining employees to take six unpaid days off. No decision was made, however. The furloughs would not apply to police officers, firefighters or most sanitation workers.

Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo said his boss had not made any commitment to the proposal. But he said the mayor was encouraged to see the six unions searching for alternatives to budget cuts.

“If there are other proposals that would achieve the same amount of savings in real dollars, the mayor would be willing to consider them,” he said.

Under the mayor’s proposal, no more than 370 layoffs are expected. Of the 767 positions that Villaraigosa wants to eliminate, 397 are vacant, according to a memo released Friday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....8388.story

Early retirement, otherwise known as “pay us off and we’ll leave.”
BillK
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:53 am
Continuing my love/hate relationship with the President, he once again proves he at times just doesn’t get it.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Ethanol defended by President Bush

The corn-based biofuel isn’t the main reason for high food prices, he says, and ‘it makes sense for America to be growing energy.’

By James Gerstenzang

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, MO. — President Bush on Friday defended his emphasis on ethanol to help the nation meet its energy needs even though increased production of the corn-based biofuel has been blamed for contributing to sharp increases in food prices.

“As you know, I’m a ethanol person,” he said, explaining his belief that it can help reduce U.S. dependence on oil. “It makes sense for America to be growing energy.”

The president made his comments during a 20-minute speech and a rare, lengthy question-and-answer session with employees of a high-tech manufacturer.

On the day the government announced the loss of 20,000 payroll jobs in April, Bush said he recognized the nation was in a difficult period, “but this economy is going to come on.”

He also chastised Congress for blocking his initiatives, including a stalled free trade agreement with Colombia, his plan to open Alaska lands and coastal waters to oil and gas exploration, and his proposal to overhaul the government’s mortgage program.

He also shifted into a reflective mien, saying to a worker in Dallas with whom he was conversing in a demonstration of a videoconferencing system: “Tell everybody down there, in about 10 months, I’m coming home.”

With that end of his administration in sight, the president’s remarks brought into focus the flaring issues he faces: the economy, energy costs and, now, food prices.

The president for several years has been promoting the use of ethanol — which is largely made from corn — to alleviate the nation’s shortage of domestically produced energy.

Critics have focused on the new demand for corn as a factor in driving up food prices.

Bush acknowledged that ethanol has contributed to higher food prices, but said it was not the main reason. He also listed increased energy costs, which affect transportation and fertilizer prices; drought and other weather-related problems; and increased demand stemming from greater prosperity in once-poor nations. He noted that the middle class in India has grown to 350 million — more than the population of the United States. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....4559.story

Nice dig by the article’s author.

Of course there’s also the plummeting value of the dollar, but we won’t go there.

How can he possibly miss the fact that diverting crops to fuel production will inevitably drive up food prices as farmers sell their corn to ethanol producers rather than to food producers?

Still, though, you’ve got to appreciate the man while we can:

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, by the way,” he said as he finished the speech and invited questions. “Getting ready to march down the aisle.”

As for the approaching end of his presidency, he said that, having lived in the White House 7 1/2 years, he found “the furniture is interesting, but it is like a museum.”

“It’s been a fabulous experience,” he said — and singled out welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House last month — but, he added: “I guess I’ll go home and mow the lawn.”
Noyzmakr
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:29 am
LA TIimes says… “Critics denounce gas tax ‘holiday’…

I’ll bet they don’t want it. They know that when it comes time to reinstate the tax that the public will go ballistic at the sight of a gallon of gas going up 19 cents in one fell swoop and will finally realize how much government is gouging them for something government doesn’t produce and just takes their cut right off the top. It may just wake some folks in this country up. That’s what these “critics” are afraid of.

BillK asks… How can he possibly miss the fact that diverting crops to fuel production will inevitably drive up food prices as farmers sell their corn to ethanol producers rather than to food producers?

You’ve got me. However, it’s not only that the farmers are selling corn for fuel production, but the fact that they are not growing other food crops so they can grow more corn in those fields and that is probably the main reason for all other crop commodities rising prices caused by the dwindling of supplies.
Noyzmakr
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:00 am
Here’s an UPDATE of the story first posted here:
http://sweetness-light.com/arc.....ent-109011

From SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe News:

Chinese arms ship waiting to dock in Luanda
By Tererai Karimakwenda
30 April, 2008

The Chinese ship carrying a cargo of weapons for Zimbabwe is reported to be off the coast of Angola, waiting in a queue for a place to dock. The so-called “death ship,” An Yue Jiang, left Durban harbour two weeks ago after a court order was issued against it’s controversial cargo. Members of the South African Transport and Allied Union had refused to offload the cargo and Namibian rights activists were prepared to go to court to block the vessel docking there. Dockworker unions in the region as a whole had refused to unload the 77 tons of weapons and ammunition ordered by the Mugabe regime. After leaving South Africa the ship was difficult to locate because it turned off it’s transponder tracking device.

But according to a report in The Cape Times newspaper, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) says it’s waiting to dock in Luanda and there are 20 ships ahead of it in the queue. There is “no guarantee that it will not be allowed in ahead of them”.

The Cape Times also reported that Angola foreign affairs officials told the ITF, off the record, that the ship would officially not be allowed to off-load its arms shipment, but the same officials also believe there is an unofficial plan to clear the arms and transport them to Zimbabwe.

A report in The Nyasa Times this week said that the government of Malawi had decided to assist Mugabe in getting the arms shipment.

It claimed that Malawi had sent a 3-man team of intelligence experts to Angola to help with clearing the consignment. A source in Malawi’s State House is quoted as saying: “The plan is to clear the arms as if they are to be used by Malawi, while in real sense they will be passed over to Zimbabwe using trucks ferrying maize being sold to Zimbabwe by the President.”

The source added that the Malawi Secret Intelligence Services was approached by Zimbabwe’s CIO to help clear the arms if the ship docked in Angola. China and Malawi recently signed a US$4 million China-Malawi defence cooperation agreement.

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika, who has a farm in Zimbabwe, is a staunch supporter of the 84 year old Mugabe and has been providing food and other basic supplies direct to his household. Malawi also ‘donated’ 400,000 tonnes of maize to ZANU-PF during the campaign period for the March 29 elections. ZANU-PF gave away bags of maize to rally goers during that same period.

Rafiq Hajat, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Interaction in Malawi, recommended that the Malawi government not be involved in clearing arms for Mugabe. He said that this was not just because of any ideological or moral reasons, but also for practical ones.

Hajat explained that 40% of Malawi’s budget is supplied by Western donors, all of whom have condemned the actions of the Mugabe regime regarding the elections and the violence that has followed. Hajat says that supporting Mugabe would jeorpadise Malawi’s relationship with these donors.

Meanwhile the Botswana Civil Society Solidarity Coalition for Zimbabwe has released a statement calling on their government not to allow the cargo from the An Yue Jiang to pass through Botswana. The group also urged the government of Botswana to encourage all SADC member states to do the same.

http://www.swradioafrica.com/n.....020508.htm

Mugabe is determined to get his weapons and the Chinese are making sure he does. I say we “accidently on purpose” sink the damn ship in the harbor.
Noyzmakr
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:43 am
From La Cruces Sun-News and the AP:

FBI arrests illegal immigrants in NM driver’s license case
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 05/01/2008 06:04:39 PM MDT

ALBUQUERQUE—The FBI has arrested 10 illegal immigrants as part of an investigation into an alleged smuggling operation that involved the use of fake documents to obtain New Mexico driver’s licenses.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas McClenaghan announced Thursday that the arrests were made late Wednesday by the Albuquerque FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Investigations.

The case began two weeks ago when a Motor Vehicle Division employee reported that two people appeared to be using fraudulent information to get a driver’s license. Those two turned out to be illegal immigrants and were arrested by customs agents.

Investigators learned that several illegal immigrants living in New Mexico were charging thousands of dollars to help other illegal immigrants travel to the state to get licenses, said FBI spokesman Darrin Jones.

The FBI said the illegal immigrants being brought to the state were of “special interest” because their home countries are associated with special national security concerns. The FBI would not identify the countries.

Agents have served multiple search warrants in connection with the case and have seized computers,

The FBI said it is still trying to determine the scope of the smuggling ring, but agents believe that dozens of special interest illegal immigrants have been able to get New Mexico driver’s licenses over the last several months.

New Mexico, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Oregon, Utah and Washington do not require drivers to prove legal status to obtain a license.

In 2003, Gov. Bill Richardson signed a measure into law that allowed foreign nationals—including those living illegally in the country—to obtain a driver’s license. His office has said that one of the deciding factors in signing the bill was public safety.

Applicants for a New Mexico driver’s license who don’t have a Social Security number can present identification such as a tax identification number, a foreign passport or a Matricula Consular issued by the Mexican government.

http://www.lcsun-news.com/ci_9123351
See Also
http://www.krqe.com/Global/story.asp?S=8256631

The FBI won’t say what country these people are from, but they are called “special interest” aliens because their country of origin is of a “special national security concern”.

That’s a little unnerving especially knowing that just a few weeks ago the Columbians seized 66 pounds of uranium after that raid on the FARC and suspect they were trying to sell it for a “dirty bomb”.

Posted by Noyzmakr in the Other News Mar 29 - Apr 4
Colombia seizes uranium from leftist guerrillas
Noyzmakr
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:04 am
From The Jerusalem Post:

Walid Jumblatt: Hizbullah planning attack on Beirut airport
May 2, 2008

Lebanese Druse leader Walid Jumblatt warned Friday that Hizbullah was planning to carry out a large scale attack in the Beirut international airport, Israel Radio reported.

Jumblatt said that recently a container was found in the airport to which a surveillance camera was attached.

He added the camera was used to collect information on the routine of arrivals and departures in the airport.

Story Here

Just send Jimmy Carter over to talk with them. I’m sure Hezbollah and there Iranian masters will gladly turn over a new leaf of peace in his awesome presence.
Noyzmakr
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:33 am
From the ever compassionate AP:

Border Patrol lets some illegals go — over and over again
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 2, 2:08 PM ET

EL PASO, Texas - Josefa Gonzalez Loya has sneaked across the Mexican border at least 128 times in the past eight years. And each time, the Border Patrol has been nice enough to give her a lift home.

Gonzalez and a group of other women and children — all Indians from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca — have no interest in staying in the United States. All they want to do is panhandle outside El Paso businesses, using the children as lures.

At the end of a productive day, they wait for the Border Patrol to come pick them up and drive them back to the border.

Little dramas like this play out day after day, accounting for thousands of arrests but hardly any prosecutions in the past several years.

The Oaxacan immigrants fall under a loophole that gives border agents discretion to keep some adults and children together and out of jail.

“They do qualify for jail and prosecution,” Border Patrol spokesman Ramiro Cordero said. “However, we’ve got to look at the humanitarian factor first if we are going to have to separate the family.”

Nearly 500 Oaxacan (pronounced wah-HAH-ken) women and children in colorful serapes have been rounded up since the fiscal year began in October, accounting for thousands of arrests.

The middle-aged Gonzalez and some of the others make a mad dash across the Rio Grande with the help of a guide. Occasionally they get caught trying to slip across, but evidently they are good at evading the Border Patrol, even though they use the same general area over and over. Sometimes, authorities realize they have arrived when they see the little footprints the diminutive immigrants leave along the banks of the Rio Grande.

Once she makes it across, Gonzalez, who speaks only a language common among Indians in Oaxaca, catches a bus to a strip mall a few miles away from the border, just far enough into El Paso to evade agents on patrol. There she starts begging for spare change.

Border agents say when she and her entourage are ready to go home, they muster in front of a store. Then they wait, knowing their presence will create enough of a nuisance that agents will come pick them up. When they do, the beggars’ mugshots are taken and their fingerprints checked. Then they are walked back across the border.

“Half the time when you see them, they’re ready to go,” Cordero said.

Gonzalez has been arrested 128 times. Despite a crackdown on illegal immigration along much of the border, she and most of her tribal members have never been jailed.

Most illegal immigrants cannot count on the goodness of immigration officials’ hearts. Unlike the Oaxacans and other Mexicans caught near the border, illegal immigrants arrested in the U.S. interior are routinely separated from their children, with some youngsters placed in foster care while their parents are deported.

Cordero said agents have the authority to “look at the totality of the circumstances” when deciding if an illegal immigrant should be prosecuted.

“They are coming to beg. They are not trying to further their entry into the United States,” Cordero said.

He said it is impossible to say how much each arrest costs the taxpayers.

Gonzalez and her crew seem well-aware of the law. The women all claim the children as their own, but that would mean women obviously in their 50s and 60s have just had babies. Often the same child is claimed by different women on different days. And still, the agents err on the side of keeping the self-proclaimed “families” together.

“We’re pretty sure they are family units or at least close-knit groups,” Cordero said.

Even David Hensley, manager of an El Paso department store, gives the panhandlers a few dollars before calling the authorities to take them away.

“It’s good to see that the Border Patrol is showing some common sense in dealing with the reality that is life on the border,” said Ruben Garcia, who runs a shelter in El Paso that sometimes houses some of the Oaxacans. “Nothing is served by locking these people up.”

Story Here

No wonder. There is no deterrent at all to these people who repeatedly break our laws. Instead of enforcing the laws these border agents have sworn to uphold they serve as the daily private taxi service for illegals.

I give up. -sigh-
texaspsue
May 4th, 2008 at 6:10 am
From the AMERICAN-STATESMAN:

Mother of slain girl supports immigration agents in jail

By Juan Castillo

Ann Hayden can’t relate to the outcry over plans to put federal immigration agents in the Travis County jail full time.

Just as she believes her daughter would be alive today if Austin police aggressively enforced immigration laws, she is convinced of the need for increased screening of illegal immigrants at the jail.

“It seems like common sense that it would be beneficial,” said Hayden, whose daughter Jenny Garcia Hayden was murdered in Austin in 2004 by a Mexican citizen who was in the country illegally. “Undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes or endanger society should be deported.”

Hayden and her husband Humberto Garcia, who has since died, sued the City of Austin in 2005, alleging it had a policy of not reporting undocumented immigrants, which contributed to their daughter’s death.The city says it has no policy that prevents employees, including police, from calling immigration officials.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the slain girl’s parents did not show a link between the alleged policy and her death.

Jenny Garcia Hayden, 18, was killed in her family’s North Austin home by David Diaz Morales, who pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. Her parents said that Austin police should have turned Diaz over to federal authorities for deportation when they suspected him of child molestation two years earlier. Diaz wasn’t arrested in that case; the district attorney’s office said there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

Diaz “should have never been in our country,” said Ann Hayden, who now lives in El Paso. She said her husband died of a heart attack last Thanksgiving during a visit to Austin, when he visited his daughter’s grave. Her murder caused his death, too, Hayden said.

“Our entire family was destroyed. He suffered the most,” Hayden said during an emotional telephone interview. “He would tell anyone, ‘All I want is to be with my daughter.’ ”

Jenny Garcia Hayden was a student at St. Edward’s University when she was fatally stabbed with a butcher knife.

“My daughter was an angel,” Hayden said. “She was the sweetest person that you would have ever met in your life, and her life was tragically cut short by this psychopath. It was so unnecessary and so unfair.”

Hayden said she endorses efforts to deport violent criminals and anyone committing a crime, such as driving while intoxicated or breaking into a home, that endangers others.

But like some critics of plans to have immigration agents at the jail around-the-clock, Hayden agrees some crimes might not deserve deportation. “I think a traffic offense anyone can have,” Hayden said.

Hayden said she supports immigration law reforms that would increase border enforcement as well as the number of work visas, provided applicants pass strict criminal background checks.

http://www.statesman.com/news/.....ilann.html

There are way too many crimes being committed by illegals, too many Americans have died needlessly. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We’re dying down here in Texas, Washington, doesn’t anyone in Congress care about the AMERICAN CITIZENS? The crime problem is exactly what Senator Cornyn was trying to address in the Senate when McCain laid the “F” bomb on him.

To be fair, Austin has been cracking down on illegal immigration but, it’s not enough. (Could be why the May 1 immigration march was really low key here.)

Also, this criminal got life in prison so we the taxpayers are going to foot the bill for this FOOL for the rest of his life. Where’s the Justice? No racism - just FACT!
DW
May 4th, 2008 at 6:34 am
From the Canadian Press

Parks Canada debates allowing guns in national parks with polar bear populations

By Bob Weber, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Arctic adventurer and writer Jerry Kobalenko is usually happy to see wildlife on his excursions, but his most recent trip to Torngat Mountains National Park on Labrador’s northern tip offered more than he needed.

“We had 13 polar bear encounters in six days and one was really close,” said Kobalenko. “A bear came into camp and would not go away. It took us seven flares and half an hour to chase it.”

Now, his rule for travel in polar bear country is simple. “You either have a firearm or you don’t go.”

Parks Canada is beginning to agree.

Policy director Darlene Pearson said the agency is reviewing its strict 122-year-old policy of no guns in national parks as it considers allowing at least some people to carry them in eight Arctic parks to protect themselves against polar bears.

“We are exploring permitting the use of firearms for safety reasons,” she said. “We are examining our existing policy because of an increasing presence of polar bears, more so than in the past.”

But some fear that what Parks Canada has in mind would be so restrictive that it will force Arctic guides and adventurers to avoid the parks altogether over concerns they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves or their clients.

When Banff National Park - Canada’s first - was created in 1885, part of the rationale for protecting the area was to preserve its wildlife, including bears, from hunting. Guns were banned and have been from parks ever since.

But beginning in 1984 with Ivvavik National Park in the northern Yukon, more and more parks have been created in the Arctic. Those parks contain polar bears and unlike other bears, their polar cousins will stalk humans.

There are many ways to deal with bears safely - from avoidance to warning signals to flares and bear bangers. But those who spend any time on the land in the Arctic know a gun is a necessary last resort.

Full story:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Po.....61-cp.html

Hey wait a minute - hasn’t the global warming crowd been telling us for years that polar bears are dying off because of the warming trend in the Arctic ? Isn’t that why we’ve been assaulted with photos of actors posing with “Knut the cute polar bear cub” ? (he’ll be considerably less cute in about a year’s time -I’d love to see one of them try and stand next to him then).
If Canadian authorities are relaxing their draconian firearms regulations, then you know they must have polar bears right up the wazoo in those parks.
Noyzmakr
May 4th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
The USS North Carolina Fast Attack Nuclear Submarine was commisioned yesterday in Wilmington, NC. It’s the newest submarine in the USN. It’s 377 feet and over 7,000 tons. A real “bad ass”.

USS North Carolina (SSN 777)

Print Story Here

Video of the Ceremony Here

Video News Report Here

Catch a Ride

Can’t you just feel the power?
BillK
May 5th, 2008 at 3:05 am
No shock here, from Fox News:

U.S. Frustrated By Elusive Justice Served to USS Cole Plotters

It’s been called “the forgotten attack” but it’s one of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history.

Eight years after the USS Cole was attacked by a motorboat packed with explosives, all of the six men convicted of the strike have escaped from prison, or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Seventeen sailors were killed and 40 more wounded in the strike, blamed on Usama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

Jamal al-Badawi, who helped organize the Cole plot, has reportedly escaped from Yemeni prisons twice. He is supposedly back in jail now, but the Washington Post reported that he has been spotted at his home and is apparently able to come and go around town as he pleases.

Another Cole defendant, Fahd al-Quso, reportedly was freed last year.

Two others, described as main plotters, are being held in held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, out of reach of U.S. courts. One other defendant may or may not be in prison in Yemen and the other three others apparently were freed.

Most of those believed responsible were rounded up, put on trial, put in a Yemeni prison. Two years later, most of them tunneled out of prison.

All this frustrates FBI agents who worked the case.

“After we worked day and night to bring justice to the victims and prove that these al Qaeda operatives were responsible, we’re back to square one,” FBI lead investigator, Ali Soufan told the Post. “Do the [Yemenis] have laws over there or not? It’s really frustrating what’s happening.”

FBI Director Robert Muller flew to Yemen in April, the paper said, to demand that Yemen extradite both men to face charges in New York. So far, Yemen has said no.

Yemeni officials have said that some of the Cole defendants have been let go because they’ve helped authorities track down other suspected terrorists, or because they’ve taken part in a “dialogue and reconciliation” program to reform al-Qaeda members.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354119,00.html

Sounds like what would happen to terrorists under an Obama administration.
BillK
May 5th, 2008 at 3:17 am
From, of all places, Newsweek:

Something Wasn’t Wright

Why Oprah Winfrey left Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church.

By Allison Samuels

For any spiritually minded, up-wardly mobile African-American living in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the Trinity United Church of Christ was—and still is—the place to be. That’s what drew Oprah Winfrey, a recent Chicago transplant, to the church in 1984. She was eager to bond with the movers and shakers in her new hometown’s black community. But she also admired Trinity United’s ambitious outreach work with the poor, and she took pride in upholding her Southern grandmother’s legacy of involvement with traditional African-American houses of worship. Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to attend off and on into the early to the mid-1990s. But then she stopped. A major reason—but by no means the only reason—was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of Wright’s more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her standing as America’s favorite daytime talk-show host. “Oprah is a businesswoman, first and foremost,” said one longtime friend, who requested anonymity when discussing Winfrey’s personal sentiments. “She’s always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn’t be smart. She’s been around black churches all her life, so Reverend Wright’s anger-filled message didn’t surprise her. But it just wasn’t what she was looking for in a church.” Oprah’s decision to distance herself came as a surprise to Wright, who told Christianity Today in 2002 that when he would “run into her socially … she would say, ‘Here’s my pastor!’ ” (Winfrey declined to comment. A Harpo Productions spokesperson would not confirm her reasons for leaving the church.)

But Winfrey also had spiritual reasons for the parting. In conversations at the time with a former business associate, who also asked for anonymity, Winfrey cited her fatigue with organized religion and a desire to be involved with a more inclusive ministry. In time, she found one: her own. “There is the Church of Oprah now,” said her longtime friend, with a laugh. “She has her own following.”

Friends of Sen. Barack Obama, whose relationship with Wright has rocked his bid for the White House, insist that it would be unfair to compare Winfrey’s decision to leave Trinity United with his own decision to stay. “[His] reasons for attending Trinity were totally different,” said one campaign adviser, who declined to be named discussing the Illinois senator’s sentiments. “Early on, he was in search of his identity as an African-American and, more importantly, as an African-American man. Reverend Wright and other male members of the church were instrumental in helping him understand the black experience in America. Winfrey wasn’t going for that. She’s secure in her blackness, so that didn’t have a hold on her.’ …

http://www.newsweek.com/id/135392

Of course Newsweek is following the PC template - Wright’s sermons were just typical of the “black church,” Obama was simply in search of “his identity as an African-American man,” etc.

But as we saw in the article from the Los Angeles Times last week, even black churches don’t believe Wright’s comments are typical of black churches.…
BillK
May 5th, 2008 at 3:58 am
From the Los Angeles Times:

Iraq sends mixed message on Iran, weapons

At first, spokesman Ali Dabbagh backs away from accusations over its neighbor supplying Shiite militants with arms. But later, he says proof exists and a committee is investigating.

By Alexandra Zavi

BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s spokesman backed away Sunday from Iraqi officials’ accusations of Iranian interference, saying that a committee had been formed to determine whether there is merit to U.S. charges that its eastern neighbor is arming and training Shiite Muslim militants here.

But hours later, spokesman Ali Dabbagh told journalists that his comments at a news conference had been misinterpreted. In a telephone call with Reuters news agency, he said proof existed and the committee’s job was to compile the evidence to submit to Iran.

The conflicting statements, after meetings with Iranian officials in Tehran, reflect the difficult position in which Maliki finds himself as he attempts to juggle relations with two powerful allies who are intense rivals.

“We have no choice but to have good relations with the neighboring countries,” Dabbagh said. “We do not want to be pushed into a conflict with a country like Iran.”

U.S. officials had in recent weeks trumpeted the discovery of large quantities of Iranian weapons, some of them manufactured in 2008. The purported finds have not been shown to the media. But if true, they would suggest that Iran had not kept a promise to Maliki to help cut the supply of arms, funding and training to Iraqi militants.

With pressure building from the United States to confront Iran, Maliki’s governing Shiite alliance last week dispatched a delegation to Tehran to discuss the evidence with senior Iranian leaders.

Iraq’s national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, and a spokesman for the Defense Ministry told The Times that Iranian-made weapons with manufacture dates of 2008 had been found in Basra during a recent crackdown on Shiite militias in the southern oil hub. Pentagon officials said they had also supplied the Iraqis with additional, unspecified evidence.

Iranian leaders, who deny providing backing to Iraqi militants, were furious at officials here for publicly airing their concerns. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini was quoted last week in the official Islamic Republic News Agency as “lambasting such undocumented and fabricated allegations” that he saidwere intended to “serve the policies of the occupying forces” — a reference to U.S. troops.

On Sunday, Dabbagh said during a news conference that the Iraqi officials who had made the accusations against Iran had acted irresponsibly and that Maliki had appointed a Cabinet-level committee to investigate the claims. Committee members include the commander of the Iraqi armed forces and the nation’s ministers of defense, interior and national security.

“We need to document this information . . . and prove whether such country is interfering or not,” he said. “If there is real interference, or Iranian arming, then this is a dangerous agenda which is not accepted by the Iraqi government and should be discussed at the highest levels with Iran.”

The announcement came as a surprise to U.S. officials, who last week described the discovery of large quantities of Iranian munitions in Basra as an “eye-opener” for the Iraqi government. A senior military official in Baghdad said Sunday, “We were blindsided by this.

“My guess is that the group that went over to Iran was made scared,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “That’s the only thing I can think of, why they would change their position, because they have seen the evidence.” …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....9812.story

So, in essence, what we have here is the US Congress.

The Iranians are spouting the DNC line, and the Iraqis are acting like Republicans - occasionally speaking the truth but in general too afraid to speak the truth instead preferring to capitulate as necessary in the name of “getting along.”

Got it.

You have a fractured government in Baghdad trying to assess the clandestine activities of a multi-polar government in Tehran. It’s incredibly muddy,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“Though Iran’s role can frustrate even Shiite Iraqis sympathetic to Tehran, Iraq’s political elite have consistently calculated that the costs of publicly alienating Iran and losing Iranian support outweigh the benefits of taking Iran to task publicly for its meddling,” Sadjadpour said.

Yep, sounds like Bush did export “democracy” - as practiced in the United States in 2008.
BillK
May 5th, 2008 at 4:06 am
I’ve seen lots of warped new-age thinking in the Los Angeles TIems before, but wow.

Adult orphans: when parents die

In her new book, ‘Death Benefits,’ therapist Jeanne Safer explores what happens when adults lose their parents. In some ways, life can get better.

By Melissa Healy

JEANNE SAFER loved and revered her mother, and braced for impact as the seemingly indomitable woman’s mind and heart began to fail seven years ago. But ready or not, the end came in December 2004. Esther Safer rallied long enough to exult to her daughter, “This is my day!” then died peacefully at 92.

At 57 — her father having died many years before — Jeanne Safer became an orphan.

As a psychotherapist in New York City for 30 years, Safer had heard countless patients talk about the effect their parents’ deaths had on them. She anticipated the sadness, the heightened sense of her own mortality, the comfort taken in her mother’s bequeathed treasures. But in the months and years that followed her mother’s death, she began to confront in herself, and to recall from the accounts of many patients, something unexpected, a “shocking — almost sacrilegious” truth:

The death of your parents can be the best thing that ever happens to you.

That provocative assertion became the opening line of “Death Benefits,” an autobiography-cum-guidebook Safer has written about that most momentous of midlife passages — becoming an adult orphan. The book, published by Basic Books, is due in bookstores this week.

“The death of a parent — any parent — can set us free. It offers us our last, best chance to become our truest, deepest selves,” Safer writes. “Nothing else in adult life has so much unrecognized potential to help us become more fulfilled human beings — wiser, more mature, more open, less afraid.”

And maybe healthier too. Safer and other health professionals point to legions of adults in midlife whose parents’ deaths inspired them to lose weight, tidy up poor health habits, get help for depression or anxiety, pursue new passions and shoulder responsibility for their physical and mental well-being.

Dr. Howard Brody, a family physician for 30 years who now teaches ethics at the University of Texas Medical Campus in Galveston, remembers bracing for near-daily visits from one of his most needy, hypochondriacal patients after learning that the woman had lost both of her parents in the span of a month.

What he got instead was a lesson in death benefits.

“I was quite shocked when a new person, for all intents and purposes, walked into my office for her next visit,” Brody reported. “This new person seemed much more confident and willing to take charge of her own life, and not to seek medical remedies for whatever ailed her.” In her late 40s, this patient, who had long seemed incapable of taking steps to improve her life and health, had joined a church group, made new friends and appeared to be seized by a new sense of purpose.

Though virtually universal, the adult experience of parental loss has been little studied. That is, in part, precisely because it is universal, and therefore perceived as a normal process, says Debra Umberson, one of the few who have conducted research on the phenomenon. Adult children, having seemingly established their independence, were long thought to absorb the expected blow and move on to tend to relationships with the living.

Safer’s book, however, comes amid an evolving view of this adult milestone. Increasingly, research psychologists and those in clinical practice see the loss of elderly parents as an event that not only touches off an emotional reaction that is real and long-lasting, it also is often the beginning of a continuing, though wholly different, relationship with the dead.

At any stage of adulthood, losing one’s parents can bring death benefits, Safer says. The adult intent on making the most of a parent’s loss should be willing to examine her parents’ emotional legacies carefully and consciously. Doing so, she argues, will better distinguish those parental legacies worth keeping — the ones that contribute to health and well-being — from those that no longer serve that end. The age of the adult matters less than his willingness to do that sorting “in a mindful way,” she says.

But in recent decades, profound demographic changes have made orphans in midlife the most common, and most receptive, beneficiaries of death benefits.

As improved healthcare has pushed average life expectancies up into seven decades, parents have begun typically to live well into their children’s adult lives. Today, one-third of American 50-year-olds have a father still living and two-thirds still have their mother. But by the time they turn 60, two-thirds of Americans will have become adult orphans.

In short, midlife has become a time of loss — and, Safer argues, of potential gain. As these increasingly older parents die, they are leaving children who have established mature identities but are on the cusp of new transitions. They can anticipate many more years — in many cases decades — of active life. But much of the hardest work of early adulthood is behind is them. Their own children may be leaving the home or having children of their own; their careers have often peaked or are in a state of flux; retirement looms and new horizons beckon; and as their bodies change and relationships shift, their self-images are primed for transformation.

“Parent loss,” Safer writes, “is the most potent catalyst for change in middle age.” And because they have experienced so much of life by that point, these bereaved children can see their parents with more wisdom and greater understanding.

“Finally,” she writes, “we can empathize.” …

http://www.latimes.com/feature.....2558.story

Where to start? Is psychological “thinking” like this just a prelude to the advocacy of euthanasia for the elderly, or am I reading too much into this?

After all, if you can’t truly “become yourself” until after your parents are dead, you owe it to yourself to help them along.

Don’t you?
texaspsue
May 5th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
From Breitbart:

“German Parade Float Features ‘Obama’ Dog Biting Hillary’s Posterior”

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=90203

LOL-
Noyzmakr
May 5th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Leave it to the Germans to get it right. Thanks for the post texaspsue. That’s Hillaryous! ;-)
Diane
May 5th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
From The Register:

A Tale of Two Thermometers

A paper published in scientific journal Nature this week has reignited the debate about Global Warming, by predicting that the earth won’t be getting any warmer until 2015. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences have factored in cyclical oceanic into their climate model, and produced a different forecast to the “consensus” models which don’t.

But how will we know whether the earth is warming or cooling? Today, it all depends on the data source.

Two authorities provide us with analysis of long-term surface temperature trends. Both agree on the global temperature trend until 1998, at which time a sharp divergence occurred. The UK Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Studies Had-Crut data shows worldwide temperatures declining since 1998. According to Hadley’s data, the earth is not much warmer now than it was than it was in 1878 or 1941.

By contrast, NASA data shows worldwide temperatures increasing at a record pace - and nearly a full degree warmer than 1880.
…
Confusing? How can scientists who report measurements of the earth’s temperature within one one-hundredth of a degree be unable to concur if the temperature is going up or down over a ten year period? Something appears to be inconsistent with the NASA data - but what is it?

One clue we can see is that NASA has been reworking recent temperatures upwards and older temperatures downwards - which creates a greater slope and the appearance of warming. Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre has been tracking the changes closely on his Climate Audit site, and reports that NASA is Rewriting History, Time and Time Again. The recent changes can be seen by comparing the NASA 1999 and 2007 US temperature graphs.

In order to visualize the changes, I overlaid the 2007 version on top of the 1999 version, above, and a clear pattern emerged. The pre-1970 temperatures have been nearly uniformly adjusted downwards (red below green) - and the post 1970 temperatures have been adjusted upwards (red above green.) Some of the yearly temperatures have been adjusted by as much as 0.5 degrees. That is a huge total change for a country the size of the US with thousands of separate temperature records.

How could it be determined that so many thermometers were wrong by an average of 0.5 degrees in one particular year several decades ago, and an accurate retrofit be made? Why is the adjustment 0.5 degrees one year, and 0.1 degrees the next?

Describing this more succinctly, the 2007 version of the data appears to have been sheared vertically across 1970 to create the appearance of a warming trend. …

http://tinyurl.com/54jml9

The Register is an online IT news journal with a British twist - sort of Bill Gates meets Monty Python. They don’t really consider themselves bound to stick with just IT news, though, and write about whatever suits them.

The article itself presents numerous graphs and goes into some detail regarding the statistical manipulations that NASA has apparently used to cook the original data, leading to the rewriting of history to make Mr. Gore’s fantasies appear to have some relation to reality. The upshot is that it’s possible that the constant shifting of historical averages is just a consequence of the algorithm that NASA uses to account for missing or incomplete data - if so, though, one would expect small, random fluctuations in the historical data, and not a persistent trend to depress temperatures from before 1970 and inflate those afterwards.

I’d been pretty much convinced by the data that global warming was actually happening, although I doubted that human activity was responsible. Now I find myself wondering if the data itself can be trusted.

The original blog post on which this is based is here. If you have any background in statistics, the comments to the article make especially interesting reading.
greybeard
May 5th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
She loves me - She Loves me Not

April 14, 2008 - 4:29 PM
Swiss experts say plants have rights too

Plants need protection from maltreatment and pollution, government experts said on Monday.
A report by the government-appointed Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) described interfering with plants without a valid reason as “morally inadmissible”.

The committee looked at ethical views held on plants and issues of how their use could be justified.

It said that from a wider perspective, “all action involving plants for the preservation of the human race was morally justified”.

A majority of the committee found that genetic modification of a plant did not contradict the idea of its “dignity” if it did not harm its adaptive or reproductive capacities, adding that the patented use of plants was acceptable.

The ECNH was appointed to give an ethical perspective on the field of non-human biotechnology and gene technology and develop proposals on the principle of the dignity of creatures.

The Weekly Standard

The Silent Scream of the Asparagus
Get ready for ‘plant rights.’
by Wesley J. Smith
05/12/2008, Volume 013, Issue 33

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain.

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer’s herd–the report doesn’t say). But then, while walking home, he casually “decapitates” some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can’t agree why. The report states, opaquely:

At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves

more here: http://tinyurl.com/4aftnv

I’ve got to stick my head in a can of glue so I can start seeing the world with the same perspective of this mental disease that seeks some kind of unattainable utopia that puts everyone in jail or zoombie wards. Unbelievable.
DEZ
May 5th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Kill that cow, It ate a daisy! Bust that dear, render that rabbit!
Sure gives a new meaning to keep of the grass!
OH, Greybeard, save some glue for the rest of us.
JohnMG
May 5th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
DEZ; ….”Sure gives a new meaning to keep of(f) the grass…..”

Sounds to me like thry’re on more than grass–but then, what would I know?

BTW, did you get my E-mail? Somehow I’ve got two addresses for DW and I don’t remember which is which.
DEZ
May 5th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
E-mail, No, I asked that my addy be passed on to you via DW.
But No I haven’t seen anything from you.
Send it to me now and I will respond asap!
JohnMG
May 5th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Done. It’s out there in cyber-space somewhere.
DEZ
May 5th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Not recieved!
SG, if you can sir, please send my addy to JohnMG!
Thanks in advance!
Noyzmakr
May 6th, 2008 at 2:50 am
Eye opening posts Diane and greybeard. Thanks.
BillK
May 6th, 2008 at 4:04 am
From a joyous Los Angeles Times:

Iraqi militia commanders harden stance toward U.S.

Elements of the Mahdi Army are accepting help from old foes in Iran. The move is a pragmatic shift by a movement under siege from rival Shiite groups and U.S. troops.

By Ned Parke

BAGHDAD — It was sunset, and a pair of Iraqi soldiers were sitting in a roofless house by the Iranian border, awaiting orders. Suddenly, Abu Baqr recalls, his friend let out a gasp and fell silent, a sniper’s bullet in his forehead. Abu Baqr couldn’t help him, couldn’t move for fear of being shot. He lay beside his friend’s corpse until morning.

“How would you feel after that?” Abu Baqr asked. “You come out of that, you only come out bad.”

Abu Baqr, now a commander in the Mahdi Army militia of cleric Muqtada Sadr, blames Iran for what happened to his friend more than 20 years ago during Iraq’s war with Iran, just as he blames Saddam Hussein for that conflict.

He still hates Iran. But now, he said, he accepts its weapons to fight the U.S. military, figuring he can deal with his distaste for the Iranians later. So he takes bombs that can rip a hole in a U.S. tank and rockets that can pound Baghdad’s Green Zone without apology or regret.

“I think that the Iranians are more dangerous than the Americans. I hate them and I don’t trust them,” he said in an interview over soft drinks. But the militia has limited resources, he said, and “therefore, when somebody gives you or offers help, it’s hard to say no.”

He laughed: “If it came from Israel, we would use it.”

Abu Baqr’s attitudes illustrate the pragmatism of a movement under siege. Elements of the Mahdi Army are engaged in an intense conflict with rival Shiite Muslim parties in the Iraqi government that benefit from their own close ties to Iran and, more advantageously, the assistance of America’s superior firepower.

The attitudes of commanders such as Abu Baqr would seem to confirm U.S. accusations of Iranian meddling in Iraq. Although the extent of their relationship remains unclear, the commanders have embraced a hardened stance that may bode ill for the U.S. military.

These leaders confound U.S. attempts to categorize and differentiate between moderate fighters and what U.S. officers call the Iranian-funded and trained “special groups” that are believed to continue armed struggle against American forces despite a truce called by Sadr.

“It blurs out there,” acknowledged a senior U.S. military commander who is not authorized to talk publicly about the various factions within the Mahdi Army, which is thought to number as many as 60,000 fighters. …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....5010.story

Ah for the days when Saddam Hussein stomped Shiites into the sand; Sunnis can no longer summarily have their enemies executed, and so we’re supposed to feel sorry for them and understand their willingness to accept weapons from Iran.

Yeah.

Of course I don’t doubt any of this at all:

He claims the Mahdi Army has men everywhere inside the heart of the Iraqi police and army.

“It is our right to place elements within the Iraqi army and police,” he said. “We are even close to the operations command, and they give us information in real time.”

He brags about the ambushes they have set for the U.S. and Iraqi troops — lining alleys with bombs for armored vehicles. He boasts about the militia’s knowledge of the Green Zone and the layout of the U.S. Embassy and houses and offices of prominent Iraqis.

“We know the Green Zone inch by inch,” he said. “We are working 24/7 gathering information.”

Like his late son, he claims, he is ready to die fighting the Americans and has no doubts about sacrificing himself for the Sadr movement.

“We believe in God. God is with us,” he said. “The first and foremost agenda is to kick out the American occupation. The Iranians are right next door. The Americans come from far away.”

Proving again that the only way to win is to destroy their will to fight - something the US can never ever again do in a time of war thanks to the left.

Perhaps the left is right; perhaps it is time to go.

Since we’ve all but retreated already.
BillK
May 6th, 2008 at 6:08 am
From the AP:

Top US commando says strain of war limits forces elsewhere

By Robert Burns

WASHINGTON (AP) — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are making such heavy use of the nation’s Green Berets and other elite warriors that they cannot fulfill their roles in other parts of the world, the military’s top commando told The Associated Press.

“We’re going to fewer countries, staying for shorter periods of time, with smaller numbers of people than historically we have done,” Adm. Eric T. Olson said Monday in his first interview since becoming commander of U.S. Special Operations Command last July.

Olson, himself a combat veteran, saw little chance that the demand for his special operations forces in Iraq will decline anytime soon. Even as the overall American force there shrinks - from about 158,000 now to about 140,000 by the end of July - the number of special operations forces in the war zone is likely to increase, he said.

More of these specially trained, often secretive forces may be required in Iraq in order to fill a niche role in the development of Iraqi security forces as the number of conventional Army troops goes down, he said.

Nothing I’ve been told leads me to believe that there will be a reduction” in special operations forces in Iraq, “and the door is always open for an increase in demand, so we’re just trying to prepare for that the best we can,” Olson said.

In addition to their role in training Iraqi soldiers and police, U.S. special forces perform small-scale raids, long-range reconnaissance and other secretive operations in search of al-Qaida and other terrorist suspects. They also work quietly with Iraqi tribal leaders to undermine the insurgency.

Olson, a native of Tacoma, Wash., is the first Navy SEAL to lead Special Operations Command.

He spoke for about 30 minutes in an office he uses when visiting the Pentagon; his headquarters is at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Under his command are the elite forces from each of the military services, including Army Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Marine and Air Force commandos.

Olson made it clear he is not seeking a bigger role for special operations forces in Iraq. In fact his forces already are so heavily engaged there and in Afghanistan that they are unable to fully perform their traditional mission in other parts of the world. To illustrate that point, Olson said that when the 7th Special Forces Group, which is based at Fort Bragg, N.C., and whose normal area of focus is Latin America, rotates into Afghanistan for seven-month tours, it takes two of its three battalions, leaving just one in Latin America.

“That leaves us underrepresented” in Latin America, the admiral said.

In Latin America, as in other areas of greatest interest to the Special Operations Command, Green Berets deploy to friendly countries like El Salvador or Colombia to train local military forces.

Special operations units that are designated mainly for use in Africa and Europe, Olson said, also are under strength for their normal role in those regions because they, too, are tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, about 80 percent of the overseas deployments of special operations forces have been to the Middle East and Afghanistan, Olson said. That compares with 20-25 percent before Sept. 11, 2001.

To deal with that trend, Olson is overseeing a substantial increase in the size of his total force. He is authorized by Congress to add five Army Special Forces battalions as well as three Army Ranger companies as part of a total increase of 13,000 troops over five years, starting this year.

“The reason we’re growing is not necessarily to enable us to surge more forces into (Iraq and Afghanistan); it’s really to get us back out into the rest of the world where we have been underrepresented” because of the heavy focus on the two-front war, he said. …

http://customwire.ap.org/dynam.....E_WARRIORS

Isn’t this complaint a little like saying we had fewer troops available to protect Hawaii in February, 1942 than in December, 1941?

Also, I’m sure the left will have a field day with the “underrepresented in Latin America” line, given they see nothing but nefarious motives behind Americans in Latin America anyway (not to mention in the rest of the world.)
BillK
May 6th, 2008 at 6:18 am
From Breitbart TV, writer Steven King had this to say:

“I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got, the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s, it’s not as bright. So, that’s my little commercial for that.”

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/90023.html

I hope some troops send his books back because they’re too illiterate to be able to read them…
BillK
May 6th, 2008 at 6:25 am
From the AP, Bernanke urges more action to bail out homeowners:

Bernanke urges more action to stem home foreclosure crisis

By Jeannine Aversa

WASHINGTON (AP) — A rising tide of late mortgage payments and home foreclosures poses considerable dangers to the national economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned anew as he urged Congress to take additional steps to alleviate the problems.

“High rates of delinquency and foreclosure can have substantial spillover effects on the housing market, the financial markets and the broader economy,” Bernanke said Monday in a dinner speech to Columbia Business School in New York. “Therefore, doing what we can to avoid preventable foreclosures is not just in the interest of lenders and borrowers. It’s in everybody’s interest,” he said.

Some 1.5 million U.S. homes entered into the foreclosure process last year, up 53 percent from 2006, Bernanke said. The rate of new foreclosures looks likely to be even higher this year, he said.

To provide more relief, Bernanke again called on Congress to give the Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages, more flexibility to help distressed borrowers at risk of losing their homes. He also again urged lawmakers to move ahead on legislation revamping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which finance mortgages. And, he called on the two mortgage giants to quickly raise new capital.

House leaders plan action on those and other housing measures this week.

“Conditions in mortgage markets remain quite difficult,” the Fed chief said. A copy of the speech was made available in Washington.

The reasons behind surging late payments and foreclosures can vary and that needs to be taken into account when developing solutions, Bernanke said. For instance, parts of New England, states in the Great Lakes, including Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, show increased mortgage delinquencies and “notable increases” in unemployment rates, he said. …

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

It’s truly depressing - the only way Bernanke believes the economy can be “saved” is by giving homeowners who got in over their heads a pass.

After all, isn’t every foreclosure “avoidable” if lending institutions are hamstrung enough in their ability to take action against borrowers who are in default?
wardmama4
May 6th, 2008 at 8:52 am
-’Why Oprah Winfrey left Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church.’- So Oprah was savvy and smart enough to know (not-so-right) Rev. Wright could do damage in the guilt by association venue but not Obama The Movement?!? Not until it was so late, that it looks immature, inexperienced and just plain stupid to do it.

Maybe Oprah should be running - at least she’d be a twofer the Dems could love - rich and loved, oh wait I got that wrong. My bad.
wardmama4
May 6th, 2008 at 8:54 am
-’Adult orphans: when parents die’- Yes this is new age garbage - all meant to take the blame and responsibility off oneself as long as possible - and believe me - I too think this will be just another ‘future’ reason to ‘remove with dignity’ the elder population.

There is a way now to do it, fast easy and painless for all - Grow Up.
Noyzmakr
May 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
From the AP:

3,500 US troops set to leave Iraq in the coming weeks
May 6, 2:37 PM (ET)

By BRADLEY BROOKS

BAGHDAD (AP) - About 3,500 American soldiers are scheduled to leave Iraq in the coming weeks, the U.S. military announced, as part of the Pentagon’s overall reduction in troop strength following last year’s “surge.”

Washington plans to trim it forces in Iraq to about 140,000 soldiers by the summer - from a peak of about 170,000 in October at the height of the troop buildup in Baghdad and surrounding areas.

The departing soldiers, part of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, will redeploy to Fort Benning, Ga., the military said.

The U.S. sent some 30,000 additional troops into Iraq last year to help stem growing violence. The troop increase, a truce by a key Shiite Muslim militia and the rise of Sunni fighters who allied with the U.S. in the battle against al-Qaida were credited with a sharp decrease in bloodshed during the last 10 months.

The soldiers are part of the third of five “surge” brigades scheduled to leave the country. The other two are expected to return to the U.S. by the end of July. There are currently about 159,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

“The continued drawdown of surge brigades demonstrates continued progress in Iraq,” Brig. Gen. Dan Allyn said in the statement released late Monday. “After July, commanders will assess our security posture for about 45 days and determine future force requirements based on these conditions-based assessments.”

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has pushed for a so-called “pause” in further redeployment of U.S. troops.

Critics have called for a quicker withdrawal of American soldiers, but commanders on the ground insist the slowdown is needed so a sharp increase in violence is not seen when U.S. forces leave.

Separately, the U.S. military said in a statement Tuesday that a brothel in northern Iraq was attacked the day before. The Americans blamed the attack on al-Qaida insurgents, but local police did not speculate on who carried out the killings.

Iraqi police said the attack in Mosul killed three prostitutes and wounded two others.

There have been a string of attacks against women deemed immoral in recent months, including the bombing of hair styling salons and the frequent murder of women not wearing traditional clothing in the southern city of Basra.

Meanwhile, at least four civilians were killed overnight in the Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, hospital officials said Tuesday. Some 21 people were wounded at the same time in Sadr City, which has seen fierce fighting between the Mahdi Army militia and U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Clashes in the sprawling slum of 2.5 million people that serves as a power base for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi fighters have raged for five weeks, since the Iraqi government began a crackdown on the militants in southern Iraq.

Hassan al-Rubaie, a Sadrist lawmaker, suspended his seat in parliament on Tuesday to protest the fighting in Sadr City. He said he held the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responsible for the fighting in the slum.

The lawmaker also blamed Iran for interfering with Iraq’s security and said the neighboring nation was causing much of the violence by supplying money, weapons and training to Iraqi fighters, a charge U.S. commanders have repeatedly made. Iran denies the allegations.

Meanwhile, a rocket slammed into Baghdad’s municipal building in the city’s center. Seven people were wounded in the attack, officials said.

Elsewhere in the capital, a mortar hit a college campus, wounding one person.

U.S. and Iraqi forces raided two police stations and arrested 48 policemen suspected of having links to Shiite militias late Monday in the Baghdad neighborhood of Shula, a Shiite stronghold, a policeman said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Elsewhere, two policemen were killed Monday night in clashes with unidentified gunmen in Mosul, a provincial policeman said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media. Around the same time in eastern Mosul, two gunmen were killed by police.

North of Baghdad in Tikrit, a car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in the central part of the city, killing four people and wounding eight others, local police said. One policeman was among the dead.

http://apnews.myway.com//artic.....AC600.html

Good news for those troops and their families as well as our overall status in the GWOT front in Iraq.

We’re winning!
greybeard
May 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Obama camp responds to McCain speech (on Judges)

From NBC’s Mark Murray

“The Straight Talk Express took another sharp right turn today as John McCain promised his conservative base four more years of out-of-touch judges that would threaten a woman’s right to choose, gut the campaign finance reform that bears his own name, and trample the rights and interests of the American people,”
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. “Barack Obama has always believed that our courts should stand up for social and economic justice, and what’s truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves.”

more here:

Obama would have judges legislate from the bench. (humm a lot of what is already going on)
Judge appointments will be a major impact on where our country heads in next 20 years.

I’d like to point out another Obama comment/ or belief here.
“Can, and should, the existing concepts of American jurisprudence provide racial minorities more than formal equality through the courts?”

…provide racial minorities more than formal equality?

and this:
Obama regarding the confirmation hearings for John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said, ‘The role of a justice is to favor the weak over the strong. In the most difficult cases, the determining factor is not what the law in question says, or what the Constitution says. In those difficult cases,’ ” what matters is “what is in the judge’s heart.”

…->In the most difficult cases, the determining factor is not what the law in question says, or what the Constitution says

Yes, Obama has some ‘changes’ acomin’ for the masses.
bullforever
May 6th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
This may be a re-post as I have not yet been lucky enough to have the time to go through all of the archives. Just more evidence regarding the MYTH of global warming.

http://www.dailytech.com/Resea.....e10973.htm

“…Miskolczi’s story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution — originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today — ignored boundary conditions by assuming an “infinitely thick” atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always…”
BillK
May 6th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
The 911 case in Madison, WI continues:

Significant sounds in 911 call were missed

By Steven Walters

Madison - Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk today ordered a review of “current training and personnel qualifications” of the county’s 911 workers after one of them did not follow policies and failed to follow up on a call from the cell phone of a murdered University of Wisconsin-Madison student.

Investigators trying to solve the April 2 murder of Brittany Zimmermann in her downtown Madison apartment have since discovered “sounds that would have significance” to a trained 911 worker - sounds that were “not heard” by the worker who took the call from Zimmermann’s cell phone, Falk told reporters.

Falk again refused to discuss the contents of the call from Zimmermann’s cell phone, saying it is part of the ongoing investigation into the students’ murder. “I am not allowed” to discuss that call, Falk said.

The 911 worker who took the cell phone call asked to be transferred to a different department in Dane County, and the request was granted. However, the 911 worker, who has not been named, is the subject of a disciplinary investigation, Falk said.

Besides ordering a review of training and qualiications of 911 workers, Falk also ordered Joe Norwick, the director of the center, to “review as soon as possible all three sets of available records” in which several calls come in right after another that require follow-up responses by 911 workers.

Falk released a new chronology of April 2 calls to the center that said a wireless call came in from Zimmermann’s cell phone, the 911 worker “made three inquiries” but did not then make a follow-up call, as required by 911 rules. The 911 worker then made a follow-up call after a second caller hung up, but Falk said the second call “had no connection” to the Zimmermann case.

http://www.jsonline.com/watch/.....p;id=39305

In the end, it’s of course unclear whether this woman would be alive if Police had been dispatched; truly a sad story all around.

But hey, at least they apologized:

Falk apologizes to Zimmermann’s family, fiance

By Mike Miller and Nathan Comp

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk has written letters of apology to be sent to the family of murder victim Brittany Zimmermann and her fiance, in response to a disclosure last week that a call to the 911 center was made from her phone around the time she was killed, but was not returned as is normal protocol.

Falk aide Joshua Wescott said Monday that the family and Zimmermann’s fiance, Jordan Gonnering, should receive the letters of apology shortly.

Someone, presumably Zimmermann, made a call to the 911 center on April 2, the day Gonnering found Zimmermann’s body in the Doty Street apartment they shared, and when the caller hung up no return call was made. Neither Madison Police nor 911 center officials disclosed the existence of that call until a story in Isthmus last week revealed the call had been made.

While officials have still not made public a tape of that call, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said last week that there was information in the call which should have resulted in a dispatcher calling back to the Zimmermann phone.

Along with Falk, Dane County Board Chairman Scott McDonell also offered an apology Monday, saying Zimmermann should have gotten a call back from the 911 center but did not.

Falk plans to instruct Dane County 911 director Joe Norwick on Tuesday as to what steps need to be taken to assure that a similar situation does not occur in the future, and has also told Norwick that she expects to be updated regularly on events in the 911 center, Wescott said. …

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/top5/284860

Note the very far left-leaning Cap Times says the call was “presumably” Zimmermann; I suppose the call could have been made from her cell phone by the killer, but I doubt it.

There is also growing controversy as to who terminated the call, with several news organizations now reporting that it was the dispatcher who terminated the call after not receiving a response to her queries.
bullforever
May 6th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
More debunking of the environmental whacko movement, Daily Tech:

Dispelling The Bag Menace Myth

Michael Asher - March 10, 2008

Another in a long line of baseless environmental scares bites the dust

You’ve all heard the claims — plastic bags kill marine animals. Hundreds of thousands of them. And not just the slimy, icky ones, but the cute ones too, like baby seals.

Have you ever seen a animal more adorable than a baby seal? How could anyone in good conscience possibly carry home groceries in a plastic bag?

So dutiful consumers lined up shoulders to bandwagon, and millions called on their politicians to solve this critical problem. Nations like Ireland placed a whopping 20 cent tax on each bag. San Francisco banned them outright, and cities from Boston to Portland considered following suit. Even in areas without a ban, stores made spent tens of millions of dollars to make paper bags available to outraged costumers.

The only problem? It was all bunkum.

Apparently, the problem started with a typo in an 2002 Australian Government report. It attempted to quote from an Canadian study 15 years earlier, which found that up to 100,000 marine animals had been killed over four years by “discarded nets” from the fishing industry. Somehow, the 2002 report replaced that phrase with “plastic bags.” The statement was quickly seized upon by environmentalists looking for a cause. Somewhere along the way, the “four years” was dropped as well, and the myth of our shopping bags strangling hundreds of thousands of poor animals every year sprang up. Voilà! … a star was born. Protesters carried placards, and thousands of complaisant reporters parroted the claims.

The Australian report was eventually corrected four years later, but no one noticed. The myth was now self-supporting, with hundreds of sources all pointing to each other for verification. A few scientists tried vainly to correct the record, but no reporter was interested in interviewing them.

But finally science seems to be winning out. According to David W. Laist of the Marine Mammal Commission, and author of a primary research paper on the subject, “plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement. The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands.” Professor of Marine Biology Geoff Boxshall concurred, “I’ve never seen a bird killed by a plastic bag&#

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