This is just a snippet from a larger article but points up the problem that we have producing Ethanol - the future doesn't look good in a lot of areas due to these problems.
Making ethanol from corn is expensive.
Better biofuels are years away from the gas tank. Farmers are reluctant to change their practices. But do we really have any alternative to biofuels?
By David Rotman
The irrational exuberance over ethanol that swept through the American corn belt over the last few years has given way to a dreary hangover, especially among those who invested heavily in the sprawling production facilities now dotting the rural landscape. It's the Midwest's version of the tech bubble, and in some ways, it is remarkably familiar: overeager investors enamored of a technology's seemingly unlimited potential ignore what, at least in retrospect, are obvious economic realities.
More than a hundred biofuel factories, clustered largely in the corn-growing states of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, will produce 6.4 billion gallons of ethanol this year, and another 74 facilities are under construction. Just 18 months ago, they were cash cows, churning out high-priced ethanol from low-priced corn, raising hopes of "energy independence" among politicians, and capturing the attention--and money--of venture capitalists from both the East and West Coasts.
Now ethanol producers are struggling, and many are losing money. The price of a bushel of corn rose to record highs during the year, exceeding $4.00 last winter before falling back to around $3.50 in the summer, then rebounding this fall to near $4.00 again. At the same time, ethanol prices plummeted as the market for the alternative fuel, which is still used mainly as an additive to gasoline, became saturated. In the face of these two trends, profit margins vanished.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Peace is Not the Absence of Conflict
The new left in this country always trots out their pet slogan " peace at any cost " every chance they get - that isn't exactly how it goes but close enough -
The real peace is one that is bought with responsibility and sacrifice - as everyone knows there is no 'free lunch' or 'you can never go home' - in other words, yesterday will always be yesterday no matter how hard one tries to go back there or wish they could go back.
The world has changed and we have to view it that way in the real world - the following lines are not mine, I wish they were as they are lines to live by:
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the ability to cope with it.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
The real peace is one that is bought with responsibility and sacrifice - as everyone knows there is no 'free lunch' or 'you can never go home' - in other words, yesterday will always be yesterday no matter how hard one tries to go back there or wish they could go back.
The world has changed and we have to view it that way in the real world - the following lines are not mine, I wish they were as they are lines to live by:
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the ability to cope with it.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
Where Did The Summer Go?
Every time I see this photo I can feel the warm breeze in the late afternoon sitting on my porch have cool tall one contemplating the days additives, wondering where did the time go today.Now with 35 inches of snow on the ground and temperatures in the low teens, I long for the warm breezes - the beer I drink looking out the window with a sigh - -
Crack Down on Illegals - A Good Start
The Texans have taken the lead in stopping the illegals alien border crossings as indicated the accompanying article. It looks like when the pressure to have the Federal Government do it's jobs and the won't, not that they can't, they just won't, then it falls on the states to protect themselves.
It looks like the federal government is becoming more incompetent by the day - the president won't battle the socialist congress to get the fence going, and the socialist congress refuses to construct the fence that was signed into law last year -
I believe it has always been our personal responsibility to care for our own and there by we care for our neighbors as well.
I love a story that shows we are actually doing the right thing.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
*Border crossings cut by Texas crackdown*
December 29, 2007 - Wash. Times
By Sara A. Carter -
A strict policy to arrest, prosecute and jail illegal aliens who cross into the U.S. has shown significant success in reducing crossings and crime along the Texas border, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials said this month.
The first 45 days of Operation Streamline — a collaborative effort of local, state and federal agencies in Texas — has resulted in decreased illegal border crossings and crime since its implementation Oct. 31 compared with last year's numbers, said Laredo Border Patrol Sector chief patrol agent Carlos X. Carrillo."As more and more illegal aliens are prosecuted and incarcerated under Streamline-Laredo, the word is spreading quickly that illegal entry has its consequences," Mr. Carrillo said.
"Those found guilty of violating this statute face penalties that can include fines and up to six months in prison."During the first 45-day period of Operation Streamline in the Laredo sector only 2,833 illegal entries were reported, compared with last fiscal year, when 4,424 illegal entries were reported during a similar period.
The operation covers a 60-mile span along the U.S.-Mexico border at Laredo. Mr. Carrillo also noted that there was an overall reduction of 33 percent in apprehensions along the entire 171-mile Laredo border corridor.The Laredo Police Department's crime data for Oct. 31-Dec. 15 indicates a year-to-date reduction in reported crimes of approximately 30 percent, and a 36 percent decrease in major crimes during the 45-day Streamline-Laredo reporting period."As a result of this partnership, the positive effects of Streamline-Laredo resonate deep within the community," Mr. Carrillo said.Any person found guilty of illegally crossing in the Laredo sector can face a series of fines, and sentences that range from 10 days to a maximum of 180 days in jail.
Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican, said the strict policy to arrest illegal crossers is a significant step in securing the nation's borders.Operation Streamline will be adopted next month by law-enforcement agencies in the Border Patrol's Tucson, Ariz., sector, Mr. Culberson added. Mr. Culberson, who has publicly advocated for the strict border policy, said he hopes the operation will be adopted along the entire U.S.-Mexico border."I expect to see zero tolerance implemented in the Tucson sector in January, and my next target is the Brownsville Sector [in Texas]," Mr. Culberson said.
Operation Streamline II was first adopted in the Del Rio, Texas, sector in December 2005. It focused on high-traffic smuggling corridors along the 205 miles of the Rio Grande that divide the sector from Mexico. Since its implementation, the crime rate has been reduced by 76 percent and illegal border crossings are at the lowest numbers since Border Patrol began keeping records in 1972, Mr. Culberson added.
BORDER ENFORCEMENT
The following are results from Operation Streamline in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Laredo, Texas, sector:•Illegal entries:
For the same 45-day period, the Laredo Sector reported 2,833 illegal entries in 2007 versus 4,424 illegal entries in 2006.•Crime: A comparison of Laredo Police Department data covering Oct. 31 through Dec. 15, 2006, and the same time period this year shows an approximate 30 percent decrease in reported crimes in the community.Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
It looks like the federal government is becoming more incompetent by the day - the president won't battle the socialist congress to get the fence going, and the socialist congress refuses to construct the fence that was signed into law last year -
I believe it has always been our personal responsibility to care for our own and there by we care for our neighbors as well.
I love a story that shows we are actually doing the right thing.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
*Border crossings cut by Texas crackdown*
December 29, 2007 - Wash. Times
By Sara A. Carter -
A strict policy to arrest, prosecute and jail illegal aliens who cross into the U.S. has shown significant success in reducing crossings and crime along the Texas border, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials said this month.
The first 45 days of Operation Streamline — a collaborative effort of local, state and federal agencies in Texas — has resulted in decreased illegal border crossings and crime since its implementation Oct. 31 compared with last year's numbers, said Laredo Border Patrol Sector chief patrol agent Carlos X. Carrillo."As more and more illegal aliens are prosecuted and incarcerated under Streamline-Laredo, the word is spreading quickly that illegal entry has its consequences," Mr. Carrillo said.
"Those found guilty of violating this statute face penalties that can include fines and up to six months in prison."During the first 45-day period of Operation Streamline in the Laredo sector only 2,833 illegal entries were reported, compared with last fiscal year, when 4,424 illegal entries were reported during a similar period.
The operation covers a 60-mile span along the U.S.-Mexico border at Laredo. Mr. Carrillo also noted that there was an overall reduction of 33 percent in apprehensions along the entire 171-mile Laredo border corridor.The Laredo Police Department's crime data for Oct. 31-Dec. 15 indicates a year-to-date reduction in reported crimes of approximately 30 percent, and a 36 percent decrease in major crimes during the 45-day Streamline-Laredo reporting period."As a result of this partnership, the positive effects of Streamline-Laredo resonate deep within the community," Mr. Carrillo said.Any person found guilty of illegally crossing in the Laredo sector can face a series of fines, and sentences that range from 10 days to a maximum of 180 days in jail.
Rep. John Culberson, Texas Republican, said the strict policy to arrest illegal crossers is a significant step in securing the nation's borders.Operation Streamline will be adopted next month by law-enforcement agencies in the Border Patrol's Tucson, Ariz., sector, Mr. Culberson added. Mr. Culberson, who has publicly advocated for the strict border policy, said he hopes the operation will be adopted along the entire U.S.-Mexico border."I expect to see zero tolerance implemented in the Tucson sector in January, and my next target is the Brownsville Sector [in Texas]," Mr. Culberson said.
Operation Streamline II was first adopted in the Del Rio, Texas, sector in December 2005. It focused on high-traffic smuggling corridors along the 205 miles of the Rio Grande that divide the sector from Mexico. Since its implementation, the crime rate has been reduced by 76 percent and illegal border crossings are at the lowest numbers since Border Patrol began keeping records in 1972, Mr. Culberson added.
BORDER ENFORCEMENT
The following are results from Operation Streamline in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Laredo, Texas, sector:•Illegal entries:
For the same 45-day period, the Laredo Sector reported 2,833 illegal entries in 2007 versus 4,424 illegal entries in 2006.•Crime: A comparison of Laredo Police Department data covering Oct. 31 through Dec. 15, 2006, and the same time period this year shows an approximate 30 percent decrease in reported crimes in the community.Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Friday, December 28, 2007
Unions, Liberals and Drug Entitlement Programs
Here are a couple of stories that I found interesting at the Heritage Foundation - more nonsense and stupid stuff from big labor and the Democrats.
A Christmas present for big labor
The federal government has for the past several years been cracking down on corrupt union officials. The program has revealed a whole host of crimes by union officials against the workers they claim to represent.
“In the past month alone,” Heritage’s Rob Bluey reports, “a former financial secretary for the United Mine Workers in Wheeling, W.Va., was sentenced to a year in prison for embezzling more than $70,000 in union funds, an office secretary for the Plasterers in Denver pleaded guilty to embezzling $28,480 in union money, and the former president of National Treasury Employees Union in Detroit pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery.”
But liberals Congress managed to force through a big cut to the enforcement agency’s budget. And at the urging of their big-labor allies, they had even tried to block the collection of reports that would “disclose possible conflicts between personal interests and the officer’s or employee’s duty to the union and its members.”
The unions, Bluey concludes, “are doing what they can to shut down the one agency in the federal government that looks out for union workers.”
Heritage’s unfortunately accurate prediction
The New Medicare Drug Plan
In 2003, Heritage Foundation experts were working furiously to expose the dangers hidden in the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement plan. Heritage’s Derek Hunter, for example, warned about “the problem of senior dumping —which will occur when former employers drop current retirees into the proposed new government entitlement.”
And exactly this has come to pass. Under a new federal rule, “retiree health benefits can be ‘altered, reduced or eliminated’ when a retiree becomes eligible for Medicare,” according to the New York Times.
The government, to the consternation of groups like the AARP, used exactly the reasoning Heritage warned about: “Lawyers for the [Equal Opportunity Employment Commission] said the new Medicare drug benefit, now nearing the end of its second year, had strengthened the case for the regulation because it guaranteed that retirees 65 and older would have access to drug coverage.”
This raises two interesting questions. Why are many of the same groups that lobbied hard for a Medicare prescription drug benefit now complaining when employers take advantage of it and discard private coverage? Perhaps because they realize that government-run health programs like Medicare compare unfavorably with private-sector care. And second, why should taxpayers have to pay to cover retirees who already have insurance? There’s no good answer.
A Christmas present for big labor
The federal government has for the past several years been cracking down on corrupt union officials. The program has revealed a whole host of crimes by union officials against the workers they claim to represent.
“In the past month alone,” Heritage’s Rob Bluey reports, “a former financial secretary for the United Mine Workers in Wheeling, W.Va., was sentenced to a year in prison for embezzling more than $70,000 in union funds, an office secretary for the Plasterers in Denver pleaded guilty to embezzling $28,480 in union money, and the former president of National Treasury Employees Union in Detroit pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery.”
But liberals Congress managed to force through a big cut to the enforcement agency’s budget. And at the urging of their big-labor allies, they had even tried to block the collection of reports that would “disclose possible conflicts between personal interests and the officer’s or employee’s duty to the union and its members.”
The unions, Bluey concludes, “are doing what they can to shut down the one agency in the federal government that looks out for union workers.”
Heritage’s unfortunately accurate prediction
The New Medicare Drug Plan
In 2003, Heritage Foundation experts were working furiously to expose the dangers hidden in the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement plan. Heritage’s Derek Hunter, for example, warned about “the problem of senior dumping —which will occur when former employers drop current retirees into the proposed new government entitlement.”
And exactly this has come to pass. Under a new federal rule, “retiree health benefits can be ‘altered, reduced or eliminated’ when a retiree becomes eligible for Medicare,” according to the New York Times.
The government, to the consternation of groups like the AARP, used exactly the reasoning Heritage warned about: “Lawyers for the [Equal Opportunity Employment Commission] said the new Medicare drug benefit, now nearing the end of its second year, had strengthened the case for the regulation because it guaranteed that retirees 65 and older would have access to drug coverage.”
This raises two interesting questions. Why are many of the same groups that lobbied hard for a Medicare prescription drug benefit now complaining when employers take advantage of it and discard private coverage? Perhaps because they realize that government-run health programs like Medicare compare unfavorably with private-sector care. And second, why should taxpayers have to pay to cover retirees who already have insurance? There’s no good answer.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Friendly Faces in the Crowd
Just when you think there is no God after reading the liberal clap-trap in the paper, and hearing your friends talk about how cool Hillary will be a president, you see this trio looking at you waiting for you to lead them on an adventure, you realize there really is a God after all. How Much is a Billion to Politicians?
It seems there is no end to what the Washington politician will do to take money from productive people - the real problem though is most of these hard working people don't know or understand what is happening, or they just don't care - their horizons are too low to catch the big picture.
When they wake up to reality it may be too late - the problem will be out of their reach -
Watch and listen closely to Hillary and the other liberals in this election, they are predicting the future of the country and it will come true if you vote for them - it's fact!
But keep the faith - the battle is joined -
- -The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division . .
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean?
A. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you
each get $516,528. B.
Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787. C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D.C .. HELLO!!! ... Are all your calculators broken??
Their calculators aren't broken in the least - they are using them to calculate how much they can steal while we aren't looking.
When they wake up to reality it may be too late - the problem will be out of their reach -
Watch and listen closely to Hillary and the other liberals in this election, they are predicting the future of the country and it will come true if you vote for them - it's fact!
But keep the faith - the battle is joined -
- -The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division . .
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean?
A. Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you
each get $516,528. B.
Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787. C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D.C .. HELLO!!! ... Are all your calculators broken??
Their calculators aren't broken in the least - they are using them to calculate how much they can steal while we aren't looking.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Electric Cars Around the Corner?
This is just the first half of the article on the development of a new battery that will propel our cars in the near future, or so the they say - hmmm - read on - - interesting stuff.
Stanford Report, December 18, 2007
Stanford's nanowire battery holds 10 times the charge of existing ones
BY DAN STOBER
Courtesy Nature Nanotechnology
Photos taken by a scanning electron microscope of silicon nanowires before (left) and after (right) absorbing lithium. Both photos were taken at the same magnification.
Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.
The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."
The breakthrough is described in a paper, "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires," published online Dec. 16 in Nature Nanotechnology, written by Cui, his graduate chemistry student Candace Chan and five others.
The greatly expanded storage capacity could make Li-ion batteries attractive to electric car manufacturers. Cui suggested that they could also be used in homes or offices to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels.
"Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly," Cui said.
Stanford Report, December 18, 2007
Stanford's nanowire battery holds 10 times the charge of existing ones
BY DAN STOBER
Courtesy Nature Nanotechnology
Photos taken by a scanning electron microscope of silicon nanowires before (left) and after (right) absorbing lithium. Both photos were taken at the same magnification.
Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.
The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."
The breakthrough is described in a paper, "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires," published online Dec. 16 in Nature Nanotechnology, written by Cui, his graduate chemistry student Candace Chan and five others.
The greatly expanded storage capacity could make Li-ion batteries attractive to electric car manufacturers. Cui suggested that they could also be used in homes or offices to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels.
"Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly," Cui said.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Global Cooling is Fact not Fantansy
Again, the religion of global warming can not be denied - it's believers are like those in the Jim Jones mass killings some years back - over 900 died when the took poison - they took it not only because their leader said they should but they really believed it was right.
Al Gore and his loyal followers have the same hold on millions of people world wide - none of his followers have no intention of find what facts support the clam of global warming as a human cause in CO2 increase - Al knows there isn't any but facts aren't necessary when you have true believers.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined -
*Year of global cooling*
December 19, 2007 Wash. Times
By David Deming -
Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.
Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years.
Antarctica is getting colder.
Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S. South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure.
In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007.
Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared.
In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.
In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.
Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952.
The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.
Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells.
No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.
If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.
Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. (my emphases)
David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Al Gore and his loyal followers have the same hold on millions of people world wide - none of his followers have no intention of find what facts support the clam of global warming as a human cause in CO2 increase - Al knows there isn't any but facts aren't necessary when you have true believers.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined -
*Year of global cooling*
December 19, 2007 Wash. Times
By David Deming -
Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.
Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years.
Antarctica is getting colder.
Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S. South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure.
In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007.
Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared.
In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.
In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.
Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952.
The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.
Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells.
No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.
If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.
Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. (my emphases)
David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
Politics has Killed the Boarder Fence!
This kind of thing makes me sick - politicians will kills us all in the end - what's worse, many conservatives, or should I say Republicans, have joined in to end America's security for a few votes - where will this insanity end?
Read this - if this doesn't make you want to puke, nothing will - that is, if you have any moral fiber at all and a true love for this country - if you hate America, you will love this -
By MICHELLE MALKIN
December 19, 2007 --
DO you know the story of the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence? It's an object lesson in gesture politics and homeland insecurity. It's a tale of hollow rhetoric, meaningless legislation and bipartisan betrayal.
And - in the runup to the Iowa caucuses - it's a helpful learning tool as you assess the promises of immigration-enforcement converts now running for president. Last fall, Democrats and Republicans in Washington responded to continued public outrage over border chaos by passing the "Secure Fence Act. "Did you question the timing? You should have. It's no coincidence they finally got off their duffs to respond just before the 2006 midterm elections.
Lawmakers vowed grandiosely to keep America safe. The law specifically called for "at least two layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras and sensors" at five specific stretches of border totaling approximately 700 miles.
GOP leaders patted themselves on the back for their toughness. President Bush made a huge to-do in signing the bill into law. Never mind the lack of funding for the fence and the failure to address many other immediate reforms that could have been adopted immediately to strengthen immigration enforcement, close deportation loopholes and provide systemic relief at the border without the need for a single brick or bulldozer.
On the very day the bill was signed, open-borders politicians were already moving to water it down. Texas Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn pushed for "flexibility to choose other options instead of fencing, if needed."Six months after passage of the Secure Fence Act - now interpreted by Washington as the Flexible Non-Fence Act or, as I call it, the FINO (Fence in Name Only) Act - 700 miles shrunk to "somewhere in the ballpark" of 370 miles. A 14-mile fence-building project in San Diego was stalled for years by environmental legal challenges and budget shortfalls.
The first deadline - a May 30, 2007, requirement for installation of an "interlocking surveillance camera system" along the border in California and Arizona - passed unmet.Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), one of the few Republican presidential candidates to walk the talk on border security, blasted the Bush administration for suffering from "a case of 'the slows' on border enforcement."Now the citizen watchdog group Grassfire reports that just five miles of double-layer fencing has been built in the first 12 months of implementation of the act. Five lousy miles. The Government Accountability Office claims 70 miles were erected - but most of that fencing failed to meet the specifications of the law.
Is Congress up in arms? Will there be accountability? Don't make me snort. Instead of demanding that the law be enforced, the pols are sabotaging the law. As part of the omnibus spending package passed this week, House Democrats incorporated Senate Republicans' provisions to remove the two-layer fencing requirements and the specific target list of fencing locations.
GOP Rep. Peter T. King, who sponsored the Secure Fence Act, told The Washington Times: "This is either a blatant oversight or a deliberate attempt to disregard the border security of our country. As it's currently written, the omnibus language guts the Secure Fence Act almost entirely. Quite simply, it is unacceptable."But so totally, totally predictable.
GOP Majority Leader John Boehner tried to blame the House Democrat majority: "The fact that this was buried in a bloated, 3,500-page omnibus speaks volumes about the Democrats' unserious approach on border security and illegal immigration," he said. "Gutting the Secure Fence Act will make our borders less secure, but it's consistent with the pattern of behavior we've seen all year from this majority."But it's border-state /Republicans/ who've been gunning to undermine the law while the ink was still fresh.To add insult to injury (and homeland insecurity upon homeland insecurity), Congress failed to adopt a ban on federal aid to "sanctuary cities" (which prevent government employees and law-enforcement officers from asking about immigration status).
It also voted to stall implementation of stricter ID standards at border crossings, and miraculously found enough money to provide $10 million in "emergency" funding for attorneys of illegal aliens. (my hilite)
Next time you hear a leading presidential candidate try to woo you with his nine-point immigration-enforcement plan or his secure ID plan or his Secure Borders platform, point to the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence. Poof! That is what happens to election-season homeland-security promises. Why would theirs be any different? /malkinblog@gmail.com/
Read this - if this doesn't make you want to puke, nothing will - that is, if you have any moral fiber at all and a true love for this country - if you hate America, you will love this -
By MICHELLE MALKIN
December 19, 2007 --
DO you know the story of the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence? It's an object lesson in gesture politics and homeland insecurity. It's a tale of hollow rhetoric, meaningless legislation and bipartisan betrayal.
And - in the runup to the Iowa caucuses - it's a helpful learning tool as you assess the promises of immigration-enforcement converts now running for president. Last fall, Democrats and Republicans in Washington responded to continued public outrage over border chaos by passing the "Secure Fence Act. "Did you question the timing? You should have. It's no coincidence they finally got off their duffs to respond just before the 2006 midterm elections.
Lawmakers vowed grandiosely to keep America safe. The law specifically called for "at least two layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras and sensors" at five specific stretches of border totaling approximately 700 miles.
GOP leaders patted themselves on the back for their toughness. President Bush made a huge to-do in signing the bill into law. Never mind the lack of funding for the fence and the failure to address many other immediate reforms that could have been adopted immediately to strengthen immigration enforcement, close deportation loopholes and provide systemic relief at the border without the need for a single brick or bulldozer.
On the very day the bill was signed, open-borders politicians were already moving to water it down. Texas Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn pushed for "flexibility to choose other options instead of fencing, if needed."Six months after passage of the Secure Fence Act - now interpreted by Washington as the Flexible Non-Fence Act or, as I call it, the FINO (Fence in Name Only) Act - 700 miles shrunk to "somewhere in the ballpark" of 370 miles. A 14-mile fence-building project in San Diego was stalled for years by environmental legal challenges and budget shortfalls.
The first deadline - a May 30, 2007, requirement for installation of an "interlocking surveillance camera system" along the border in California and Arizona - passed unmet.Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), one of the few Republican presidential candidates to walk the talk on border security, blasted the Bush administration for suffering from "a case of 'the slows' on border enforcement."Now the citizen watchdog group Grassfire reports that just five miles of double-layer fencing has been built in the first 12 months of implementation of the act. Five lousy miles. The Government Accountability Office claims 70 miles were erected - but most of that fencing failed to meet the specifications of the law.
Is Congress up in arms? Will there be accountability? Don't make me snort. Instead of demanding that the law be enforced, the pols are sabotaging the law. As part of the omnibus spending package passed this week, House Democrats incorporated Senate Republicans' provisions to remove the two-layer fencing requirements and the specific target list of fencing locations.
GOP Rep. Peter T. King, who sponsored the Secure Fence Act, told The Washington Times: "This is either a blatant oversight or a deliberate attempt to disregard the border security of our country. As it's currently written, the omnibus language guts the Secure Fence Act almost entirely. Quite simply, it is unacceptable."But so totally, totally predictable.
GOP Majority Leader John Boehner tried to blame the House Democrat majority: "The fact that this was buried in a bloated, 3,500-page omnibus speaks volumes about the Democrats' unserious approach on border security and illegal immigration," he said. "Gutting the Secure Fence Act will make our borders less secure, but it's consistent with the pattern of behavior we've seen all year from this majority."But it's border-state /Republicans/ who've been gunning to undermine the law while the ink was still fresh.To add insult to injury (and homeland insecurity upon homeland insecurity), Congress failed to adopt a ban on federal aid to "sanctuary cities" (which prevent government employees and law-enforcement officers from asking about immigration status).
It also voted to stall implementation of stricter ID standards at border crossings, and miraculously found enough money to provide $10 million in "emergency" funding for attorneys of illegal aliens. (my hilite)
Next time you hear a leading presidential candidate try to woo you with his nine-point immigration-enforcement plan or his secure ID plan or his Secure Borders platform, point to the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence. Poof! That is what happens to election-season homeland-security promises. Why would theirs be any different? /malkinblog@gmail.com/
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
A Christmas Greeting Even for Liberals
I believe, if the truth be known, this is how the liberal believes this holiday should be treated - I know for a fact there are liberals that actually believe Christmas is about the baby Jesus - really, they do.
To My Conservative Friends:
Best Wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!
To My Liberal Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.
Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
To My Conservative Friends:
Best Wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!
To My Liberal Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.
Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Something Good for Today and Bad
I like this quote -
"Half the world's problems are caused by poor communications - the other half are caused by good communications."
Of course, either one of these problems ever occurs in our congress - it seems like a fools play ground.
Oh by the way, did you hear Harry Reid yesterday? He told another whooper about Rush Limbaugh and the 'phony solders' thing - heh - He bold faced lied on the air and he doesn't care. The press doesn't care either. He gets away with it, almost. Twenty million people know now - -
Really, does it matter to anyone what Reid does or says? I think I may have to put him in the same category with Jimmy Carter - now that's the absolute worst place to be.
"Half the world's problems are caused by poor communications - the other half are caused by good communications."
Of course, either one of these problems ever occurs in our congress - it seems like a fools play ground.
Oh by the way, did you hear Harry Reid yesterday? He told another whooper about Rush Limbaugh and the 'phony solders' thing - heh - He bold faced lied on the air and he doesn't care. The press doesn't care either. He gets away with it, almost. Twenty million people know now - -
Really, does it matter to anyone what Reid does or says? I think I may have to put him in the same category with Jimmy Carter - now that's the absolute worst place to be.
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Religion of Global Warming
Now you have to admit the global warming crowd is mentally challenged - as I have mentioned in a past post, there are well over 600 stupid causes of global warming, some are good ones like the sun, but others are manufactured by the insane religious fanatics. Cow farts? heh
One of the elite of the crowd is a nut job from Stanford university, Prof. Ken Calderia. His proposal is that we need to reduce carbon emissions by taxing the United States citizens to the tune of 800 Billion a year. That's about half of the entire budget for the entire country.
This idiot, Calderia, is with the Carnegie Institute of Department of Global Ecology. These morons had a round table discussion for high ranking Us news executives during an annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. WOW why would anyone believe anything they have to say - a better name for this conference would be a circle jerk.
Here is the kicker to Calderia's madness, we, The United States could not trade with any nation that doesn't impose a carbon tax on them selves. ha ha ha ha - go figure - that's China and India and a host of other third world nations that don't have to tax themselves, according to the United Nations. Billions more lost. Result? The United States collapses. Her economy in total ruin. And who gets the hundreds of Billions of dollars? Why the UN of course. That pillar of truth and integrity. Out standing members in their countries made up of mass killers and tyrants. Who are these people?
Give me a break - how do these idiots even get out of bed by themselves.
But hey, keep the faith - the battle is joined.
One of the elite of the crowd is a nut job from Stanford university, Prof. Ken Calderia. His proposal is that we need to reduce carbon emissions by taxing the United States citizens to the tune of 800 Billion a year. That's about half of the entire budget for the entire country.
This idiot, Calderia, is with the Carnegie Institute of Department of Global Ecology. These morons had a round table discussion for high ranking Us news executives during an annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. WOW why would anyone believe anything they have to say - a better name for this conference would be a circle jerk.
Here is the kicker to Calderia's madness, we, The United States could not trade with any nation that doesn't impose a carbon tax on them selves. ha ha ha ha - go figure - that's China and India and a host of other third world nations that don't have to tax themselves, according to the United Nations. Billions more lost. Result? The United States collapses. Her economy in total ruin. And who gets the hundreds of Billions of dollars? Why the UN of course. That pillar of truth and integrity. Out standing members in their countries made up of mass killers and tyrants. Who are these people?
Give me a break - how do these idiots even get out of bed by themselves.
But hey, keep the faith - the battle is joined.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Liberal Democrats want Gun Confiscation
Liberal Democrats have for years tried to confiscate all hand guns and semi-automatic rifles in this country and limit every one's ability to even own a shot gun - socialists cannot control a population that is armed.
I keep harping on this issue that if you vote for a Democrat you vote to give up your freedom of choice - think about it - listen to what Hillary says - listen to what Obama says about big government and how they know what is best for you!
Keep the faith - the battle is joined.
DISARMED = VICTIM
Here's more proof that 'disarmed' and 'victim' are synonymous When violence looms and every second counts, recall that the police are only minutes away.M.D. Harmon December 14, 2007
Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage on the nearest police station?Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting ranger hunting club to vent their murderous frustration.It should only take a moment's thought to understand why: Those places have people who have relatively easy access to weapons themselves.
It's one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it's quite another to consider that one's murderous intent could be brought to an untimely halt through the immediate application of superior firepower. However, there are places that draw these people like magnets,and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely advertised. Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that say "No Guns Permitted" or "Gun-Free Zone.
"Virginia Tech was proud of its "gun-free" status, and boasted about how safe a place it was once it posted signs forbidding firearms on campus. Thirty-two people died there last April as the cost of that exercise in hubris and futility. Other places where firearms are typically banned are stores, including shopping malls, government buildings, including schools, and places of worship. We saw in the Columbine shootings how effective gun bans are for schools. And in Omaha last week, eight people died in a shopping mall before the shooter, cornered by police, killed himself.
In Ogden, Utah, last February, a man killed five people in a mall before an armed off-duty police officer pinned him down until help could arrive. And just this past weekend, a disturbed youth who had posted violent diatribes against Christians on an Internet site killed two students at a Colorado missionary center. He later showed up at a church that had an association with the missionary group carrying multiple weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. But because of the earlier shootings, the church had activated its voluntary security force, composed of members who had licenses to carry concealed weapons and the training to use them.
The gunman killed two teenage girls in the church parking lot and wounded their father before he entered the church. But once he got inside, he was confronted by one of the church's volunteer guards, Jeanne Assam, a former police officer armed with a pistol. As witnesses described it, she advanced on the shooter yelling "Surrender," and when he raised his weapon, fired several shots,bringing him to the ground. Police reported that the badly wounded gunman then shot himself to death.Assam, dubbed "Dirty Harriet" by one writer, was credited by the church's pastor with having saved 50 to 100 lives.
It's almost enough to make a fair-minded, thoughtful person conclude that armed, law-abiding citizens might have saved countless more lives at places like those listed above. But not in the view of the confiscation crowd. They point at the weapons the gunmen used and say that banning them would halt such shootings. Problem is, there's precious little evidence to support that view, and much to disprove it.
Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of people to defend themselves also counts.
The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted.
As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as "Instapundit") noted after the VT murders last spring,"People don't stop killers. People with guns do." He wrote, "Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene."Police, he notes, can't be everywhere, and when they do arrive, it's usually too late for at least some victims.
However, "one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. (But) if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all."As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders whether the Second Amendment protects our right of self-defense with firearms, the actual case is being proved by people like Jeanne
Assam.M.D. Harmon is an editorial writer. He can be contacted at:mharmon@pressherald.comCopyright © 2007 Blethen Maine Newspapers
I keep harping on this issue that if you vote for a Democrat you vote to give up your freedom of choice - think about it - listen to what Hillary says - listen to what Obama says about big government and how they know what is best for you!
Keep the faith - the battle is joined.
DISARMED = VICTIM
Here's more proof that 'disarmed' and 'victim' are synonymous When violence looms and every second counts, recall that the police are only minutes away.M.D. Harmon December 14, 2007
Has anyone ever wondered why people with guns who have kissed sanity good-bye never take out their uncontrollable rage on the nearest police station?Nor do they drive off to the nearest Army base, shooting ranger hunting club to vent their murderous frustration.It should only take a moment's thought to understand why: Those places have people who have relatively easy access to weapons themselves.
It's one thing to be homicidal and suicidal, but it's quite another to consider that one's murderous intent could be brought to an untimely halt through the immediate application of superior firepower. However, there are places that draw these people like magnets,and they, too, are easy to locate: They are the places where the possession of firearms is forbidden, and that fact is widely advertised. Some of these places even go so far as to publicly display their vulnerability to mass murder through the posting of signs that say "No Guns Permitted" or "Gun-Free Zone.
"Virginia Tech was proud of its "gun-free" status, and boasted about how safe a place it was once it posted signs forbidding firearms on campus. Thirty-two people died there last April as the cost of that exercise in hubris and futility. Other places where firearms are typically banned are stores, including shopping malls, government buildings, including schools, and places of worship. We saw in the Columbine shootings how effective gun bans are for schools. And in Omaha last week, eight people died in a shopping mall before the shooter, cornered by police, killed himself.
In Ogden, Utah, last February, a man killed five people in a mall before an armed off-duty police officer pinned him down until help could arrive. And just this past weekend, a disturbed youth who had posted violent diatribes against Christians on an Internet site killed two students at a Colorado missionary center. He later showed up at a church that had an association with the missionary group carrying multiple weapons and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. But because of the earlier shootings, the church had activated its voluntary security force, composed of members who had licenses to carry concealed weapons and the training to use them.
The gunman killed two teenage girls in the church parking lot and wounded their father before he entered the church. But once he got inside, he was confronted by one of the church's volunteer guards, Jeanne Assam, a former police officer armed with a pistol. As witnesses described it, she advanced on the shooter yelling "Surrender," and when he raised his weapon, fired several shots,bringing him to the ground. Police reported that the badly wounded gunman then shot himself to death.Assam, dubbed "Dirty Harriet" by one writer, was credited by the church's pastor with having saved 50 to 100 lives.
It's almost enough to make a fair-minded, thoughtful person conclude that armed, law-abiding citizens might have saved countless more lives at places like those listed above. But not in the view of the confiscation crowd. They point at the weapons the gunmen used and say that banning them would halt such shootings. Problem is, there's precious little evidence to support that view, and much to disprove it.
Different parts of this country display disparities in rates of serious crimes. But that crime rate has been falling steadily for almost 20 years. While many factors undoubtedly contribute to that trend, including tougher sentencing laws, the ability of people to defend themselves also counts.
The 40 states (including Maine) where concealed-carry permits are readily available to law-abiding people report on average a 22 percent lower violent crime rate, a 30 percent lower murder rate, a 46 percent lower robbery rate and a 12 percent lower aggravated assault rate than the 10 states where the possession of firearms by honest citizens is greatly restricted.
As University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as "Instapundit") noted after the VT murders last spring,"People don't stop killers. People with guns do." He wrote, "Though press accounts downplayed it, the 2002 shooting at Appalachian Law School was stopped when a student retrieved a gun from his car and confronted the shooter. Likewise, Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene."Police, he notes, can't be everywhere, and when they do arrive, it's usually too late for at least some victims.
However, "one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. (But) if they're armed, they may wind up not being victims at all."As the U.S. Supreme Court ponders whether the Second Amendment protects our right of self-defense with firearms, the actual case is being proved by people like Jeanne
Assam.M.D. Harmon is an editorial writer. He can be contacted at:mharmon@pressherald.comCopyright © 2007 Blethen Maine Newspapers
Friday, December 14, 2007
Global Warming is the Fantasy of Idiots
So far their are over 600 reasons why the planet is warming up - there is a web site that tracks this stuff - I can't remember what it is but I do know it' British - it's a blast to read them all - heh
Check this short article out - just a few things the converted don't want to think about -
- - "Once more for the record, I've stated that I don't pretend to be certain of whether or not man-caused CO2 and other so-called 'greenhouse gases' are actually responsible for the modern up-trend in global temperatures. I'm not a climate scientist. Further, I make no attempt to minimize the fact that overwhelming evidence does indeed suggest that a slight increase in temperatures is happening on a global scale or that coincidentally, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have increased measurably since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
However, within the framework of these actualities, I am certain of four things:
1) Planet Earth has experienced a huge number of climatic change periods in its history, both warming and cooling - all except the current one having occurred long before humans could ever have influenced the environment with their evil internal combustion engines or coal-fired power plants.
2) The 'scientific community' (a term which has grown to include a lot of people whose credentials as climate specialists are questionable) is far from united in agreement that man-generated GHGs are the cause of the modern global warming trend. As an example, one of today's most credible climate scientists, Carleton University paleo-climatologist and Professor of Geology Tim Patterson, testified in 2005 before Canada’s Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development that:
"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
3) Lots of people - few, if any, of them scientists - are making lots of money and garnering lots of power and attention from the promotion of global warming hysteria. Conversely, those who challenge this mania (again, there are hundreds of credible examples of these) are mercilessly painted by the media and other global warming profiteers as ,flat-Earthers. They increasingly stand to gain nothing for their courage except ridicule, the ruination of their reputations, swift marginalization in polite circles and quite possibly a pink slip. To me, this gives their words a far greater weight than those on the other side of the argument.
4) The major media is not reporting on ANY of these three aspects to any significant degree — despite the somewhat inconvenient truth that credible backup for all of these facts can be found with just a few minutes of online research. (I did, and you can, too.)
Again, these are the only four truths of which I'm certain with regard to the entire climate change debate — except for one more thing: That even to a barely literate, synaptically challenged rube like me, it should be perfectly clear that the Earth’s climate should NOT stay static, but periodically change, sometimes radically.
Why does this come as a surprise to anyone? The simple fact that there are ocean-like deposits of oil — which is nothing more than the remains of eons worth of ancient plant matter subjected to huge amounts of pressure and time —under what's now desert sand and arctic tundra should tell anyone with more than two brain cells that climatic change is the ONLY constant on planet Earth.
Check this short article out - just a few things the converted don't want to think about -
- - "Once more for the record, I've stated that I don't pretend to be certain of whether or not man-caused CO2 and other so-called 'greenhouse gases' are actually responsible for the modern up-trend in global temperatures. I'm not a climate scientist. Further, I make no attempt to minimize the fact that overwhelming evidence does indeed suggest that a slight increase in temperatures is happening on a global scale or that coincidentally, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have increased measurably since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
However, within the framework of these actualities, I am certain of four things:
1) Planet Earth has experienced a huge number of climatic change periods in its history, both warming and cooling - all except the current one having occurred long before humans could ever have influenced the environment with their evil internal combustion engines or coal-fired power plants.
2) The 'scientific community' (a term which has grown to include a lot of people whose credentials as climate specialists are questionable) is far from united in agreement that man-generated GHGs are the cause of the modern global warming trend. As an example, one of today's most credible climate scientists, Carleton University paleo-climatologist and Professor of Geology Tim Patterson, testified in 2005 before Canada’s Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development that:
"There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
3) Lots of people - few, if any, of them scientists - are making lots of money and garnering lots of power and attention from the promotion of global warming hysteria. Conversely, those who challenge this mania (again, there are hundreds of credible examples of these) are mercilessly painted by the media and other global warming profiteers as ,flat-Earthers. They increasingly stand to gain nothing for their courage except ridicule, the ruination of their reputations, swift marginalization in polite circles and quite possibly a pink slip. To me, this gives their words a far greater weight than those on the other side of the argument.
4) The major media is not reporting on ANY of these three aspects to any significant degree — despite the somewhat inconvenient truth that credible backup for all of these facts can be found with just a few minutes of online research. (I did, and you can, too.)
Again, these are the only four truths of which I'm certain with regard to the entire climate change debate — except for one more thing: That even to a barely literate, synaptically challenged rube like me, it should be perfectly clear that the Earth’s climate should NOT stay static, but periodically change, sometimes radically.
Why does this come as a surprise to anyone? The simple fact that there are ocean-like deposits of oil — which is nothing more than the remains of eons worth of ancient plant matter subjected to huge amounts of pressure and time —under what's now desert sand and arctic tundra should tell anyone with more than two brain cells that climatic change is the ONLY constant on planet Earth.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Open Markets for Competition Globally
Government regulation will kill competitiveness in the world wide market - the United States will be the loser - Whaz up?
Good article from the Wall Street Journal detailing the problems -
*The Other Market Crisis*
December 10, 2007;
Page A18 WSJ
The subprime mess is grabbing all the headlines these days, but allow us to focus on another problem for American financial markets: their growing lack of global competitiveness. In the past year, that problem has only grown worse.
That's the judgment of the latest report of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, which started a debate last year with its initial study on how and why American public stock markets are losing global market share. Last week the committee -- a volunteer group of academics, investors and business leaders led by Harvard's Hal Scott -- published its first follow-up report, which highlights two troubling new trends.
First, the delisting of foreign companies from U.S. markets leapt this year -- to 56 so far, up from 30 in 2006 and 12 a decade ago. Those 56 represented 12.4% of all listed foreign companies. In part, the jump is the result of an SEC rule change that lowered the bar for delisting. But don't take comfort in that. "Pent-up demand" to delist is still demand. Companies that maintain their listings only because they can't escape the SEC hardly signal confidence in U.S. markets.
A second trend is the increasing number of U.S. companies going public outside the U.S. Between 1996 and 2001, a mere three American companies went public by listing only on a foreign exchange. In the first three quarters of this year, 15 firms made the same choice. That's 9.2% of all U.S. initial public offerings in that period. Given the natural affinities to listing in one's home market, this exodus is remarkable. It's also alarming to the extent it reflects more serious underlying problems. And as the report notes, regulatory burdens -- especially post-Sarbanes-Oxley -- and litigation costs are driving companies out of our publicly traded markets.
This matters because the strength of financial markets is an important source of national prosperity. It gives American firms, and others that list here, access to the deepest and most liquid pools of capital anywhere. It also lets average Americans share in the ownership of the country's great businesses.
To cite another example from the new report, since 2002 four out of five foreign companies that chose to raise capital in the U.S. through an IPO did so outside publicly traded exchanges. Instead they used what's known as the far more restricted Rule 144a offering. Ten years ago, more than half of these "Global IPOs" that came to the U.S. for part of their offering listed on a public exchange. But companies that go the Rule 144a route can only sell their shares to "qualified" investors, and thus those companies are not subject to Sarbox, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 or to strict liability in shareholder suits.
To put it another way, 80% of the foreign companies that do raise capital in the U.S. do so outside of the reach of most of the laws that are supposed to protect investors. These companies must think the costs of complying with regulation and avoiding litigation are no longer worth the benefits of a ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.
This isn't a partisan issue, or at least it shouldn't be. Democrats ought to appreciate that hollowing out our publicly traded markets in favor of foreign markets, or private markets open only to the rich, does not serve the small investor. Yet after last year's general alarm over these trends, this story has disappeared from our politics and media. Perhaps this is because our politicians and media elites know that they have helped to promote the lawsuits and regulation that are doing such harm. Meanwhile, the British, Chinese and Arabs are only too happy to steal our financial business.
Good article from the Wall Street Journal detailing the problems -
*The Other Market Crisis*
December 10, 2007;
Page A18 WSJ
The subprime mess is grabbing all the headlines these days, but allow us to focus on another problem for American financial markets: their growing lack of global competitiveness. In the past year, that problem has only grown worse.
That's the judgment of the latest report of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, which started a debate last year with its initial study on how and why American public stock markets are losing global market share. Last week the committee -- a volunteer group of academics, investors and business leaders led by Harvard's Hal Scott -- published its first follow-up report, which highlights two troubling new trends.
First, the delisting of foreign companies from U.S. markets leapt this year -- to 56 so far, up from 30 in 2006 and 12 a decade ago. Those 56 represented 12.4% of all listed foreign companies. In part, the jump is the result of an SEC rule change that lowered the bar for delisting. But don't take comfort in that. "Pent-up demand" to delist is still demand. Companies that maintain their listings only because they can't escape the SEC hardly signal confidence in U.S. markets.
A second trend is the increasing number of U.S. companies going public outside the U.S. Between 1996 and 2001, a mere three American companies went public by listing only on a foreign exchange. In the first three quarters of this year, 15 firms made the same choice. That's 9.2% of all U.S. initial public offerings in that period. Given the natural affinities to listing in one's home market, this exodus is remarkable. It's also alarming to the extent it reflects more serious underlying problems. And as the report notes, regulatory burdens -- especially post-Sarbanes-Oxley -- and litigation costs are driving companies out of our publicly traded markets.
This matters because the strength of financial markets is an important source of national prosperity. It gives American firms, and others that list here, access to the deepest and most liquid pools of capital anywhere. It also lets average Americans share in the ownership of the country's great businesses.
To cite another example from the new report, since 2002 four out of five foreign companies that chose to raise capital in the U.S. through an IPO did so outside publicly traded exchanges. Instead they used what's known as the far more restricted Rule 144a offering. Ten years ago, more than half of these "Global IPOs" that came to the U.S. for part of their offering listed on a public exchange. But companies that go the Rule 144a route can only sell their shares to "qualified" investors, and thus those companies are not subject to Sarbox, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 or to strict liability in shareholder suits.
To put it another way, 80% of the foreign companies that do raise capital in the U.S. do so outside of the reach of most of the laws that are supposed to protect investors. These companies must think the costs of complying with regulation and avoiding litigation are no longer worth the benefits of a ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.
This isn't a partisan issue, or at least it shouldn't be. Democrats ought to appreciate that hollowing out our publicly traded markets in favor of foreign markets, or private markets open only to the rich, does not serve the small investor. Yet after last year's general alarm over these trends, this story has disappeared from our politics and media. Perhaps this is because our politicians and media elites know that they have helped to promote the lawsuits and regulation that are doing such harm. Meanwhile, the British, Chinese and Arabs are only too happy to steal our financial business.
Muslims Want Us Dead - Period
It seems the left and it allies, terrorists and mass killers of all sorts, have the constitutional right to condemn anything they wish that they don't like or goes against their agenda of total world domination. As the article states, it's okay to kill, rape and behead those that they don't like.
The Democrats are in full agreement with these people because they think they can take control of the country after the terrorists attack America and kill thousands - the population will be stampeded into a socialist state that will enslave them for generations. The liberal Democrat wants to destroy our country as we know it - you will lose everything, your freedom!!
I love my country and I morn all those that have given their lives for us to be free that are being betrayed by the Democrats.
But hang on, keep the faith - the battle is joined - read on - - -
Subject: Michigan State & Muslims
(Hooray for Michigan State!!)The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association.
The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech."Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:
Dear Moslem Association:
As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.
This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues.I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."
If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.
Cordially,
I. S. Wichman Professor of Mechanical Engineering
As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.
Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.
For its part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor Wichman, saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks.
This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.
The Democrats are in full agreement with these people because they think they can take control of the country after the terrorists attack America and kill thousands - the population will be stampeded into a socialist state that will enslave them for generations. The liberal Democrat wants to destroy our country as we know it - you will lose everything, your freedom!!
I love my country and I morn all those that have given their lives for us to be free that are being betrayed by the Democrats.
But hang on, keep the faith - the battle is joined - read on - - -
Subject: Michigan State & Muslims
(Hooray for Michigan State!!)The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association.
The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech."Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:
Dear Moslem Association:
As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.
This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues.I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."
If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.
Cordially,
I. S. Wichman Professor of Mechanical Engineering
As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.
Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.
For its part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor Wichman, saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks.
This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
NBC: In from the Cold? Thanking Troops?
This looks like a fragrant act of journalism - NBC actually thanking the troops for defending our freedom - my goodness where will it end - or maybe they have some other agenda in mind -I wonder what it might be - - ?
Read on -
Last week, Freedom's Watch launched a series of non-political ads to thank our troops this holiday season, but initially NBC and its affiliate networks refused to air this message of support - it was deemed it too political. There is nothing political about thanking those who serve our nation, and we were relieved when NBC relented and began running the ads yesterday.
From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP)--NBC reversed course Saturday and decided to run a conservative group's television ad thanking U.S. troops.The ad, by the group Freedom's Watch, asks viewers to remember the troops during the holiday season.
NBC had refused to air the ad because it guides viewers to the Freedom's Watch Web site, which NBC said was too political.But in a statement issued Saturday evening, NBC said:"We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site. Based on these amended standards the Freedom's Watch ad will begin to run as early as Sunday."
For the full text of this article, please click here.
This reversal by NBC didn't happen by accident. The network chose to review its policies only after thousands of supporters just like you visited freedomswatch.org to sign the petition and call NBC to ask the network to stop their descriminatory actions and support our troops. Now we're asking you to use the power of that collective voice to say thank you.
Please visit our Web site to find out how YOU can support the troops this holiday season, and sign the card to wish them a happy holidays.
Sincerely,
Bradley A. Blakeman
President and C.E.O
Freedom's Watch
Read on -
Last week, Freedom's Watch launched a series of non-political ads to thank our troops this holiday season, but initially NBC and its affiliate networks refused to air this message of support - it was deemed it too political. There is nothing political about thanking those who serve our nation, and we were relieved when NBC relented and began running the ads yesterday.
From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP)--NBC reversed course Saturday and decided to run a conservative group's television ad thanking U.S. troops.The ad, by the group Freedom's Watch, asks viewers to remember the troops during the holiday season.
NBC had refused to air the ad because it guides viewers to the Freedom's Watch Web site, which NBC said was too political.But in a statement issued Saturday evening, NBC said:"We have reviewed and changed our ad standards guidelines and made the decision that our policy will apply to content only and not to a referenced Web site. Based on these amended standards the Freedom's Watch ad will begin to run as early as Sunday."
For the full text of this article, please click here.
This reversal by NBC didn't happen by accident. The network chose to review its policies only after thousands of supporters just like you visited freedomswatch.org to sign the petition and call NBC to ask the network to stop their descriminatory actions and support our troops. Now we're asking you to use the power of that collective voice to say thank you.
Please visit our Web site to find out how YOU can support the troops this holiday season, and sign the card to wish them a happy holidays.
Sincerely,
Bradley A. Blakeman
President and C.E.O
Freedom's Watch
Merry Christmas to Democrats - I guess
Can this be true? Have the Democrats gone so far over the edge that they do not remember where they came from? Maybe they aren't from around here - hmmmm
From what I've seen, they sure don't know where they are headed - history is not their strong suit - only the here and now.
TO ALL MY DEMOCRAT FRIENDS:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in theWestern Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
Have a Happy Non-Denomination Winter Holiday
TO ALL MY REPUBLICAN FRIENDS:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
From what I've seen, they sure don't know where they are headed - history is not their strong suit - only the here and now.
TO ALL MY DEMOCRAT FRIENDS:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in theWestern Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
Have a Happy Non-Denomination Winter Holiday
TO ALL MY REPUBLICAN FRIENDS:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Monday, December 10, 2007
A Shadow Government in America
If you ever thought a shadow government couldn't exist in this country, think again - the following article is just one of the glimpse that we get into the inner workings of this hidden organization.
The New York Times is the mouth piece of this organization as we see almost daily, or just in time to change national events in their favor, in their head lines and articles detailing classified information that puts our country at risk - this information comes from the state department, Justice department, the CIA and the FBI as well as the Pentagon. They are everywhere.
This article, from NewsMax, is a little long but packed with heart wrenching information - I said it's not possible that this can be happening in America - I was wrong -
The liberal Democrats want America to fail, totally. They want to destroy this country just to gain power - they do not care about anything else.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 9:38 AMBy: Kenneth R. Timmerman
A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts — not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned.
Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.
Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.
Dangerous Game
The National Intelligence Council, which produced the NIE, is chaired by Thomas Fingar, “a State Department intelligence analyst with no known overseas experience who briefly headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,” I wrote in my book "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender."
Fingar was a key partner of Senate Democrats in their successful effort to derail the confirmation of John Bolton in the spring of 2005 to become the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.
As the head of the NIC, Fingar has gone out of his way to fire analysts “who asked the wrong questions,” and who challenged the politically-correct views held by Fingar and his former State Department colleagues, as revealed in "Shadow Warriors."
In March 2007, Fingar fired his top Cuba and Venezuela analyst, Norman Bailey, after he warned of the growing alliance between Castro and Chavez.
Bailey’s departure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was applauded by the Cuban government news service Granma, who called Bailey “a patent relic of the Reagan regime.” And Fingar was just one of a coterie of State Department officials brought over to ODNI by the first director, career State Department official John Negroponte.
Collaborating with Fingar on the Iran estimate, released on Monday, were Kenneth Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, and Vann H. Van Diepen, the National Intelligence officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation.
“Van Diepen was an enormous problem,” a former colleague of his from the State Department told me when I was fact gathering for "Shadow Warriors."
“He was insubordinate, hated WMD sanctions, and strived not to implement them,” even though it was his specific responsibility at State to do so, the former colleague told me.
Kenneth Brill, also a career foreign service officer, had been the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2003-2004 before he was forced into retirement.
"Shadow Warrior" reports, “While in Vienna, Brill consistently failed to confront Iran once its clandestine nuclear weapons program was exposed in February 2003, and had to be woken up with the bureaucratic equivalent of a cattle prod to deliver a single speech condemning Iran’s eighteen year history of nuclear cheating.”
Negroponte rehabilitated Brill and brought the man who single-handedly failed to object to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and put him in charge of counter-proliferation efforts for the entire intelligence community.
Christian Westermann, another favorite of Senate Democrats in the Bolton confirmation hearings, was among the career State Department analysts tapped by Fingar and Brill.
As a State Department intelligence analyst, Westermann had missed the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba, and played into the hands of Castro apologist Sen. Christopher Dodd, D, Conn., by continuing to use impeached intelligence reports on Cuba that had been written by self-avowed Cuban spy, Ana Belen Montes.
“After failing to recognize the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba and Cuba’s cooperation with Iran, Westermann was promoted to become national intelligence officer for biological weapons,” I wrote.
“Let’s hope a walk-in defector from Iranian intelligence doesn’t tell us that Iran has given biological weapons to terrorists to attack new York or Chicago,” I added, “because Westermann will certainly object that the source of that information was not reliable — at least, until Americans start dying.”
It now appears that this is very similar to what happened while the intelligence community was preparing the Iran NIE.
The Defector
My former colleague from the Washington Times, Bill Gertz, suggests in today’s print edition of the paper that Revolutionary Guards Gen. Alireza Asgari, who defected while in Turkey in February, was the human source whose information led to the NIE”s conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But intelligence sources in Europe told Newsmax in late September that Asgari’s debriefings on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs were “so dramatic” that they caused French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister to speak out publicly about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Sarkozy stunned his countrymen when he told an annual conference of French ambassadors on Aug. 27, 2007, that Iran faced a stark choice between shutting down its nuclear program, or tougher international sanctions and ultimately, war.
“This approach is the only one that allows us to escape from a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb, or the bombing of Iran,” Sarkozy said.
Three weeks later, Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher warned in a televised interview that the world’s major powers needed to toughen sanctions on Iran to prevent Tehran from getting the bomb and to prevent war. “We must prepare for the worst,” Kouchner said. “The worst, sir, is war.”
Those comments were prompted by reports that were given to the French president about Iran’s nuclear weapons program derived from debriefings of the defector, Gen. Ashgari, a Newsmax intelligence source in Europe said.
Ashgari is the highest-level Iranian official to have defected to the West since the Islamic revolution of 1979. His defection set off a panic in Tehran.
As a senior member of the general staff of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Asgari had access to highly-classified intelligence information, as well as strategic planning documents, as I reported at the time.
A damage assessment then underway in Tehran was expected to “take months” to complete, so extensive was Asgari’s access to Iran’s nuclear and intelligence secrets.
Asgari had detailed knowledge of Iranian Revolutionary Guards units operating in Iraq and Lebanon because he had trained some of them. He also knew some of the secrets of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, because he had been a top procurement officer and a deputy minister of defense in charge of logistics. But Asgari never had responsibility for nuclear weapons development, and probably did not have access to information about the status of the secret programs being run by the Revolutionary Guards, Iranian sources tell Newsmax.
In an effort to cover up the failure of Iranian counter-intelligence to prevent Asgari’s defection, a Persian language Web site run by the former Revolutioanry Guards Comdr. Gen. Mohsen Rezai claimed in March that Asgari was on a CIA “hit list” of 20 former Revolutionary Guards officers and had been assassinated.
The Senate intelligence committee will be briefed today on the NIE, and the House committee on Wednesday.
But already, the declassified summary has Republicans grumbling on Capitol Hill.
“We want to know why we should believe this,” one congressional Republican told Newsmax. “This is such a departure from the past and there are so many unanswered questions.”
While the intelligence community is supposed to report just the facts and its assessment of those facts and their reliability to policy-makers, this NIE clear advocates policy positions.
“Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously,” the NIC wrote in the declassified “Key Judgments” of the NIE.
The NIE opined that the new assessment leads to the policy conclusion that the United States should offer “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunites,” in order to lock in Iranian good behavior.
This carrot and stick approach has been the State Department’s preferred policy for the past 27 years, and has only strengthened the resolve of Iran’s leaders to continue defying the United States. “Those [countries that] assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," Ahmadinejad said in Tehran in September at a military parade.
By “progress” Ahmadinejad was referring to Iran’s recently-declared success at enriching uranium.
Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees “have been running around with big smiles on their faces,” a Republican source tells Newsmax.
Republicans on the committees intend to ask for more information on the sourcing of this latest NIE during closed door briefings today and tomorrow.
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
in America but it's true -
The New York Times is the mouth piece of this organization as we see almost daily, or just in time to change national events in their favor, in their head lines and articles detailing classified information that puts our country at risk - this information comes from the state department, Justice department, the CIA and the FBI as well as the Pentagon. They are everywhere.
This article, from NewsMax, is a little long but packed with heart wrenching information - I said it's not possible that this can be happening in America - I was wrong -
The liberal Democrats want America to fail, totally. They want to destroy this country just to gain power - they do not care about anything else.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran
Tuesday, December 4, 2007 9:38 AMBy: Kenneth R. Timmerman
A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts — not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned.
Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.
Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.
Dangerous Game
The National Intelligence Council, which produced the NIE, is chaired by Thomas Fingar, “a State Department intelligence analyst with no known overseas experience who briefly headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,” I wrote in my book "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender."
Fingar was a key partner of Senate Democrats in their successful effort to derail the confirmation of John Bolton in the spring of 2005 to become the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.
As the head of the NIC, Fingar has gone out of his way to fire analysts “who asked the wrong questions,” and who challenged the politically-correct views held by Fingar and his former State Department colleagues, as revealed in "Shadow Warriors."
In March 2007, Fingar fired his top Cuba and Venezuela analyst, Norman Bailey, after he warned of the growing alliance between Castro and Chavez.
Bailey’s departure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was applauded by the Cuban government news service Granma, who called Bailey “a patent relic of the Reagan regime.” And Fingar was just one of a coterie of State Department officials brought over to ODNI by the first director, career State Department official John Negroponte.
Collaborating with Fingar on the Iran estimate, released on Monday, were Kenneth Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, and Vann H. Van Diepen, the National Intelligence officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation.
“Van Diepen was an enormous problem,” a former colleague of his from the State Department told me when I was fact gathering for "Shadow Warriors."
“He was insubordinate, hated WMD sanctions, and strived not to implement them,” even though it was his specific responsibility at State to do so, the former colleague told me.
Kenneth Brill, also a career foreign service officer, had been the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2003-2004 before he was forced into retirement.
"Shadow Warrior" reports, “While in Vienna, Brill consistently failed to confront Iran once its clandestine nuclear weapons program was exposed in February 2003, and had to be woken up with the bureaucratic equivalent of a cattle prod to deliver a single speech condemning Iran’s eighteen year history of nuclear cheating.”
Negroponte rehabilitated Brill and brought the man who single-handedly failed to object to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and put him in charge of counter-proliferation efforts for the entire intelligence community.
Christian Westermann, another favorite of Senate Democrats in the Bolton confirmation hearings, was among the career State Department analysts tapped by Fingar and Brill.
As a State Department intelligence analyst, Westermann had missed the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba, and played into the hands of Castro apologist Sen. Christopher Dodd, D, Conn., by continuing to use impeached intelligence reports on Cuba that had been written by self-avowed Cuban spy, Ana Belen Montes.
“After failing to recognize the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba and Cuba’s cooperation with Iran, Westermann was promoted to become national intelligence officer for biological weapons,” I wrote.
“Let’s hope a walk-in defector from Iranian intelligence doesn’t tell us that Iran has given biological weapons to terrorists to attack new York or Chicago,” I added, “because Westermann will certainly object that the source of that information was not reliable — at least, until Americans start dying.”
It now appears that this is very similar to what happened while the intelligence community was preparing the Iran NIE.
The Defector
My former colleague from the Washington Times, Bill Gertz, suggests in today’s print edition of the paper that Revolutionary Guards Gen. Alireza Asgari, who defected while in Turkey in February, was the human source whose information led to the NIE”s conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But intelligence sources in Europe told Newsmax in late September that Asgari’s debriefings on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs were “so dramatic” that they caused French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister to speak out publicly about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Sarkozy stunned his countrymen when he told an annual conference of French ambassadors on Aug. 27, 2007, that Iran faced a stark choice between shutting down its nuclear program, or tougher international sanctions and ultimately, war.
“This approach is the only one that allows us to escape from a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb, or the bombing of Iran,” Sarkozy said.
Three weeks later, Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher warned in a televised interview that the world’s major powers needed to toughen sanctions on Iran to prevent Tehran from getting the bomb and to prevent war. “We must prepare for the worst,” Kouchner said. “The worst, sir, is war.”
Those comments were prompted by reports that were given to the French president about Iran’s nuclear weapons program derived from debriefings of the defector, Gen. Ashgari, a Newsmax intelligence source in Europe said.
Ashgari is the highest-level Iranian official to have defected to the West since the Islamic revolution of 1979. His defection set off a panic in Tehran.
As a senior member of the general staff of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Asgari had access to highly-classified intelligence information, as well as strategic planning documents, as I reported at the time.
A damage assessment then underway in Tehran was expected to “take months” to complete, so extensive was Asgari’s access to Iran’s nuclear and intelligence secrets.
Asgari had detailed knowledge of Iranian Revolutionary Guards units operating in Iraq and Lebanon because he had trained some of them. He also knew some of the secrets of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, because he had been a top procurement officer and a deputy minister of defense in charge of logistics. But Asgari never had responsibility for nuclear weapons development, and probably did not have access to information about the status of the secret programs being run by the Revolutionary Guards, Iranian sources tell Newsmax.
In an effort to cover up the failure of Iranian counter-intelligence to prevent Asgari’s defection, a Persian language Web site run by the former Revolutioanry Guards Comdr. Gen. Mohsen Rezai claimed in March that Asgari was on a CIA “hit list” of 20 former Revolutionary Guards officers and had been assassinated.
The Senate intelligence committee will be briefed today on the NIE, and the House committee on Wednesday.
But already, the declassified summary has Republicans grumbling on Capitol Hill.
“We want to know why we should believe this,” one congressional Republican told Newsmax. “This is such a departure from the past and there are so many unanswered questions.”
While the intelligence community is supposed to report just the facts and its assessment of those facts and their reliability to policy-makers, this NIE clear advocates policy positions.
“Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously,” the NIC wrote in the declassified “Key Judgments” of the NIE.
The NIE opined that the new assessment leads to the policy conclusion that the United States should offer “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunites,” in order to lock in Iranian good behavior.
This carrot and stick approach has been the State Department’s preferred policy for the past 27 years, and has only strengthened the resolve of Iran’s leaders to continue defying the United States. “Those [countries that] assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," Ahmadinejad said in Tehran in September at a military parade.
By “progress” Ahmadinejad was referring to Iran’s recently-declared success at enriching uranium.
Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees “have been running around with big smiles on their faces,” a Republican source tells Newsmax.
Republicans on the committees intend to ask for more information on the sourcing of this latest NIE during closed door briefings today and tomorrow.
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
in America but it's true -
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Elect Democrats and Lose Your Soul
Many things have changed in the last 100 years but the one thing that hasn't changed is the need to be free to pursue our dreams - to be all that we can be and not be dictated to by those the have an agenda that wants to take these freedoms away from us.
Live the dream - take control of your life - do not allow others to decide what is best for you. Live and die by decisions that you make. A principled life is a rich life no matter how much money you have.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
This is what we get when we elect Democrats!
TAXES!
Tax his land, Tax his wage, Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat.
Tax his ties, Tax his shirts, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his booze, Tax his beers, If he cries, Tax his tears.
Tax his bills, Tax his gas, Tax his notes, Tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know That after taxes, he has no dough. If he hollers, Tax him more, Tax him until he's good and sore.
Tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb, "Taxes drove me to my doom!" And when he's gone, We won't relax, We'll still be after the inheritance
TAX Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit
Tax CDL License TaxCigarette
Tax Corporate Income
Tax Dog License
Tax Federal Income
Tax Federal Unemployment
Tax (FUTA)Fishing License
Tax Food License
Tax Fuel Permit TaxGasoline
Tax Hunting License
Tax Inheritance
Tax Inventory
Tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax), IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor Tax, Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Service charge taxes, Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax (Truckers), Sales Taxes, Recreational Vehicle Tax, School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA), Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax, Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Telephone Recurring andNon-recurring Charges Tax, Telephone State and Local Tax, Telephone Usage Charge Tax, Utility Tax, Vehicle License Registration Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Workers Compensation Tax.
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in theworld. We had no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world.What happened?
And now we have to "press 1" for English.
Live the dream - take control of your life - do not allow others to decide what is best for you. Live and die by decisions that you make. A principled life is a rich life no matter how much money you have.
Keep the faith - the battle is joined!
This is what we get when we elect Democrats!
TAXES!
Tax his land, Tax his wage, Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat.
Tax his ties, Tax his shirts, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his booze, Tax his beers, If he cries, Tax his tears.
Tax his bills, Tax his gas, Tax his notes, Tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know That after taxes, he has no dough. If he hollers, Tax him more, Tax him until he's good and sore.
Tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb, "Taxes drove me to my doom!" And when he's gone, We won't relax, We'll still be after the inheritance
TAX Accounts Receivable Tax Building Permit
Tax CDL License TaxCigarette
Tax Corporate Income
Tax Dog License
Tax Federal Income
Tax Federal Unemployment
Tax (FUTA)Fishing License
Tax Food License
Tax Fuel Permit TaxGasoline
Tax Hunting License
Tax Inheritance
Tax Inventory
Tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax), IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax), Liquor Tax, Luxury Tax, Marriage License Tax, Medicare Tax, Property Tax, Real Estate Tax, Service charge taxes, Social Security Tax, Road Usage Tax (Truckers), Sales Taxes, Recreational Vehicle Tax, School Tax, State Income Tax, State Unemployment Tax (SUTA), Telephone Federal Excise Tax, Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax, Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax, Telephone Recurring andNon-recurring Charges Tax, Telephone State and Local Tax, Telephone Usage Charge Tax, Utility Tax, Vehicle License Registration Tax, Vehicle Sales Tax, Watercraft Registration Tax, Well Permit Tax, Workers Compensation Tax.
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in theworld. We had no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world.What happened?
And now we have to "press 1" for English.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Israel Won't Accept NIE Report Findings
Israel has a good reason not to believe the NIE report in that it was falsified to meet an agenda of destruction of the Bush administration and the Israels -
The three men that wrote this report have come under close scrutiny as to their political beliefs and associations. They are found to be all liberals and are willing to sacrifice the entire American nation and the Israels to gain power -
The liberal will stop at nothing to secure power. How could anyone lie about nuclear weapons? Who are these monsters? Liberal Democrats - Marxists!
Israel challenges report on nukes
December 5, 2007 Wash. Times
By Joshua Mitnick - TEL AVIV — Israeli officials yesterday disputed the conclusions of Monday's surprise U.S. assessment of Iran's nuclear program, citing "clear and solid intelligence" that Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and Europe.
"We have no doubt," said one Israeli official, who requested to remain anonymous. "If one looks at the investment, if one looks at the nature of the project, if you look at the cost to the Iranian economy, there is no logical explanation other than that the Iranian program is not benign."
The intelligence assessment revealed a rare open rift between the intelligence communities of two allies, which have cooperated closely and share almost all their information about Iran's nuclear program.
The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate said that Iran froze its program to develop a nuclear weapon four years ago, while it continues to engage in uranium-enrichment activity.
In addition to virtually eliminating the possibility that the U.S. will attack Iran before the end of the Bush presidency, the estimate widens the gap between Israeli and U.S. estimates on the time remaining before Iran could achieve a nuclear weapon.
Israel still insists that there is as little as two years to stop Iran from going nuclear, while the new U.S. assessment finds that unlikely to happen before 2010 to 2015.
"Until now, there were no sharp differences in interpretation," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party legislator who sits on the parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
"I don't know of any piece of intelligence that supports this conclusion. It seems to me that this report repeats the mistake of Iraq, but taking it to the opposite conclusion.
"We have a lot of very clear and solid intelligence, that to my best understanding, clearly shows that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons today, as they did two years ago. This is not a matter of speculation, but this is about solid intelligence."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak was only slightly less definite in published interviews yesterday.
"It looks like Iran stopped its program to create an atom bomb in 2003 for a certain time, but as far as we know, it has since probably renewed it," he was quoted as saying. "There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters that Israel "will make every effort — first and foremost with our friends in the U.S. — to prevent the production" of nuclear weapons by Iran.
Although Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies share most of their data regarding the Iranian threat, it is possible that Israel has some exclusive information.
"Just because we are friends doesn't mean we are going to share everything," said Meir Javedanfar, a Tel Aviv-based analyst who co-authored a book on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the nuclear program titled "The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran."
Israelis were uncertain whether to be relieved at the distancing of an existential threat or to be concerned that readiness to confront that threat has been dissipated, perhaps for good.
A leading Israeli analyst, Ehud Ya'ari, said on Channel 2 television that the American finding showed that the Iranian program "is further behind than we assumed."
Washington, he said, had rejected Israel's belief that the Iranians are pursuing one or two secret nuclear programs that are not monitored by the West.
"The Americans apparently came to their conclusions on the basis of human intelligence," he said, mentioning Gen. Ali Reza Asghari, a former Iranian deputy defense minister who defected to the West in February.
Oded Granot, a commentator on Channel 1, who, like Mr. Ya'ari, has good connections with Israel's security establishment, said American intelligence had intercepted a transmission from a senior Iranian military official several months ago, in which he expressed disappointment that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been halted.
Although this might have been deliberate misinformation, Mr. Granot said that in recent weeks a flood of other evidence pointed to the program's being frozen.
Mr. Granot said Israel has learned that many of the 3,000 centrifuges that the Iranians had begun to activate in order to enrich uranium — whether for civilian or military purposes — have broken down.
The three men that wrote this report have come under close scrutiny as to their political beliefs and associations. They are found to be all liberals and are willing to sacrifice the entire American nation and the Israels to gain power -
The liberal will stop at nothing to secure power. How could anyone lie about nuclear weapons? Who are these monsters? Liberal Democrats - Marxists!
Israel challenges report on nukes
December 5, 2007 Wash. Times
By Joshua Mitnick - TEL AVIV — Israeli officials yesterday disputed the conclusions of Monday's surprise U.S. assessment of Iran's nuclear program, citing "clear and solid intelligence" that Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and Europe.
"We have no doubt," said one Israeli official, who requested to remain anonymous. "If one looks at the investment, if one looks at the nature of the project, if you look at the cost to the Iranian economy, there is no logical explanation other than that the Iranian program is not benign."
The intelligence assessment revealed a rare open rift between the intelligence communities of two allies, which have cooperated closely and share almost all their information about Iran's nuclear program.
The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate said that Iran froze its program to develop a nuclear weapon four years ago, while it continues to engage in uranium-enrichment activity.
In addition to virtually eliminating the possibility that the U.S. will attack Iran before the end of the Bush presidency, the estimate widens the gap between Israeli and U.S. estimates on the time remaining before Iran could achieve a nuclear weapon.
Israel still insists that there is as little as two years to stop Iran from going nuclear, while the new U.S. assessment finds that unlikely to happen before 2010 to 2015.
"Until now, there were no sharp differences in interpretation," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party legislator who sits on the parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
"I don't know of any piece of intelligence that supports this conclusion. It seems to me that this report repeats the mistake of Iraq, but taking it to the opposite conclusion.
"We have a lot of very clear and solid intelligence, that to my best understanding, clearly shows that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons today, as they did two years ago. This is not a matter of speculation, but this is about solid intelligence."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak was only slightly less definite in published interviews yesterday.
"It looks like Iran stopped its program to create an atom bomb in 2003 for a certain time, but as far as we know, it has since probably renewed it," he was quoted as saying. "There are differences in the assessments of different organizations in the world about this, and only time will tell who is right."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters that Israel "will make every effort — first and foremost with our friends in the U.S. — to prevent the production" of nuclear weapons by Iran.
Although Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies share most of their data regarding the Iranian threat, it is possible that Israel has some exclusive information.
"Just because we are friends doesn't mean we are going to share everything," said Meir Javedanfar, a Tel Aviv-based analyst who co-authored a book on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the nuclear program titled "The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran."
Israelis were uncertain whether to be relieved at the distancing of an existential threat or to be concerned that readiness to confront that threat has been dissipated, perhaps for good.
A leading Israeli analyst, Ehud Ya'ari, said on Channel 2 television that the American finding showed that the Iranian program "is further behind than we assumed."
Washington, he said, had rejected Israel's belief that the Iranians are pursuing one or two secret nuclear programs that are not monitored by the West.
"The Americans apparently came to their conclusions on the basis of human intelligence," he said, mentioning Gen. Ali Reza Asghari, a former Iranian deputy defense minister who defected to the West in February.
Oded Granot, a commentator on Channel 1, who, like Mr. Ya'ari, has good connections with Israel's security establishment, said American intelligence had intercepted a transmission from a senior Iranian military official several months ago, in which he expressed disappointment that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been halted.
Although this might have been deliberate misinformation, Mr. Granot said that in recent weeks a flood of other evidence pointed to the program's being frozen.
Mr. Granot said Israel has learned that many of the 3,000 centrifuges that the Iranians had begun to activate in order to enrich uranium — whether for civilian or military purposes — have broken down.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Hugo Chavez Gone in 2012
With this vote in the can so to speak, Hugo Chavez will not be president for life. He wanted this so he could convert the entire country to socialism, including his special secret police that are being trained by Cubans.
The question now is will he step down in 2012 or will he have consolidated enough power to take the government by force? His secret police should be ready to take control by then in most parts of the country. With death squads operating in the larger cities carrying out Chavez's orders, and if the army is on his sideas well as the Cubans, it will happen.
I think Chavez will never relinquish power. Have you ever heard of a communist that willing gives up power? Just look at what lengths the Clinton's are going to to get back into power. Remember, liberals love mass killers and totalitarian dictators.
The Clinton's and Chavez will make a great pair.
CARACAS, Venezuela - (an AP release)
Humbled by his first electoral defeat ever, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.
“I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense,” he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent.
Opposition activists were ecstatic as the results were announced shortly after midnight — with 88 percent of the vote counted, the trend was declared irreversible by elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.
Some shed tears. Others began chanting: “And now he’s going away!”
Without the overhaul, Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012.
Foes of the reform effort — including Roman Catholic leaders, media freedom groups, human rights groups and prominent business leaders — said it would have granted Chavez unchecked power and imperiled basic rights.
Chavez told reporters at the presidential palace that the outcome of Sunday’s balloting had taught him that “Venezuelan democracy is maturing.” His respect for the verdict, he asserted, proves he is a true democratic leader.
“From this moment on, let’s be calm,” he proposed, asking for no more street violence like the clashes that marred pre-vote protests. “There is no dictatorship here.”
U.S. sees vote for democracy.
The White House took note of Chavez’s setback.“We congratulate the people of Venezuela on their election and their continued desire to live in freedom and democracy,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns also said it was a victory for the country’s citizens who want to prevent Chavez from having unchecked power.
“We felt that this referendum would make Chavez president for life, and that’s not ever a welcome development,” Burns told reporters in Singapore. “In a country that wants to be a democracy, the people spoke, and the people spoke for democracy and against unlimited power.”
Chavez, who was briefly ousted in a failed 2002 coup, blamed the loss on low turnout among the very supporters who re-elected him a year ago with 63 percent of the vote.
Seven in 10 eligible voters cast ballots then. This time it was just 56 percent.
The defeated reform package would have created new types of communal property, let Chavez handpick local leaders under a redrawn political map and suspended civil liberties during extended states of emergency.
Jose Miguel Gomez / Reuters
Chavez blamed the loss on low turnout among the very supporters who re-elected him a year ago with 63 percent of the vote.
Other changes would have shortened the workday from eight hours to six, created a social security fund for millions of informal laborers and promoted communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds.
The question now is will he step down in 2012 or will he have consolidated enough power to take the government by force? His secret police should be ready to take control by then in most parts of the country. With death squads operating in the larger cities carrying out Chavez's orders, and if the army is on his sideas well as the Cubans, it will happen.
I think Chavez will never relinquish power. Have you ever heard of a communist that willing gives up power? Just look at what lengths the Clinton's are going to to get back into power. Remember, liberals love mass killers and totalitarian dictators.
The Clinton's and Chavez will make a great pair.
CARACAS, Venezuela - (an AP release)
Humbled by his first electoral defeat ever, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.
“I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense,” he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent.
Opposition activists were ecstatic as the results were announced shortly after midnight — with 88 percent of the vote counted, the trend was declared irreversible by elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.
Some shed tears. Others began chanting: “And now he’s going away!”
Without the overhaul, Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012.
Foes of the reform effort — including Roman Catholic leaders, media freedom groups, human rights groups and prominent business leaders — said it would have granted Chavez unchecked power and imperiled basic rights.
Chavez told reporters at the presidential palace that the outcome of Sunday’s balloting had taught him that “Venezuelan democracy is maturing.” His respect for the verdict, he asserted, proves he is a true democratic leader.
“From this moment on, let’s be calm,” he proposed, asking for no more street violence like the clashes that marred pre-vote protests. “There is no dictatorship here.”
U.S. sees vote for democracy.
The White House took note of Chavez’s setback.“We congratulate the people of Venezuela on their election and their continued desire to live in freedom and democracy,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns also said it was a victory for the country’s citizens who want to prevent Chavez from having unchecked power.
“We felt that this referendum would make Chavez president for life, and that’s not ever a welcome development,” Burns told reporters in Singapore. “In a country that wants to be a democracy, the people spoke, and the people spoke for democracy and against unlimited power.”
Chavez, who was briefly ousted in a failed 2002 coup, blamed the loss on low turnout among the very supporters who re-elected him a year ago with 63 percent of the vote.
Seven in 10 eligible voters cast ballots then. This time it was just 56 percent.
The defeated reform package would have created new types of communal property, let Chavez handpick local leaders under a redrawn political map and suspended civil liberties during extended states of emergency.
Jose Miguel Gomez / Reuters
Chavez blamed the loss on low turnout among the very supporters who re-elected him a year ago with 63 percent of the vote.
Other changes would have shortened the workday from eight hours to six, created a social security fund for millions of informal laborers and promoted communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds.
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