MIAMI (AP) -- Miscommunication led to the detainment of three men at the Port of Miami on Sunday after authorities became suspicious of their documentation and the contents of their cargo truck, officials said.
Authorities initially said the men _ two Iraqis and one Lebanese national who are legal permanent U.S. residents _ had been caught trying to slip past a checkpoint at the port's
A port security officer became suspicious when the truck driver could not produce proper paperwork in a routine inspection to enter the port about 8 a.m., Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Nancy Goldberg said.
The driver also indicated he was alone in the truck, though security officers found two other men in the cab, she said.
"Due to a miscommunication between the gate security personnel and the truck driver, we believe there was a discrepancy in the number of people in the vehicle attempting to enter the Port of Miami," Goldberg said. "This, and the fact that one of the individuals did not have any form of ID raised our level of concern."
"Maybe it could have been a language barrier; we don't know at this point," she said.
The three men remained in police custody for questioning, Goldberg said. They had not been arrested or charged by Sunday afternoon.
The danger here is that the security personnel at the gates of our ports will now be less likely to sound the alarm the next time something suspicious crosses their path. Especially if the guards are disciplined or fired.
What the government needs to do is to not only praise the security guard who sounded the alarm but reward him in a public way, even if he in fact screwed up.
I also have a prediction. CAIR is even now drafting their statement of condemnation of the government's actions. They will shout from the rooftops that the only reason that the men were detained is that they were of Middle Eastern ethnicity. The remedy will be to send our ports security personnel to "sensitivity training" where they will learn that under no circumstances should anyone who appears to be an Arab or who gives any indication that he is a Muslim should be questioned, detained or interfered with in any way whatsoever. No matter the circumstances.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Never mind. . .
Today's belly laugh
From The Washington Post:
As the Democratic field for 2008 takes shape, one big remaining question is whether former vice president Al Gore -- winner of the popular vote in 2000, an almost-candidate in 2004 and now the public face of the movement to address global warming -- will be in it.
. . .there are small signs here and there that could be read as the stirrings of his renewed interest in a campaign. Early last month, Gore addressed more than three dozen labor leaders in Washington, a wide-ranging talk about the Democratic congressional gains and the media, said one attendee, who demanded anonymity. Asked about 2008, Gore said that he has taken a number of calls from people encouraging him to consider running but he "didn't know whether he was going to or not," the source said. "Everybody felt he left a small door open."
Please Lord let it be so.
Hillary is deadly dangerous, Kerry is just a sad pathetic clown of a loser and Obama will almost certainly turn out to be a lightweight.
But Gore. . . Gore offers the hope of true mirth.
The real Internet bad boys
From The New York Times:
In their persistent quest to breach the Internet’s defenses, the bad guys are honing their weapons and increasing their firepower.
With growing sophistication, they are taking advantage of programs that secretly install themselves on thousands or even millions of personal computers, band these computers together into an unwitting army of zombies, and use the collective power of the dragooned network to commit Internet crimes.
These systems, called botnets, are being blamed for the huge spike in spam that bedeviled the Internet in recent months, as well as fraud and data theft.
Security researchers have been concerned about botnets for some time because they automate and amplify the effects of viruses and other malicious programs.
What is new is the vastly escalating scale of the problem — and the precision with which some of the programs can scan computers for specific information, like corporate and personal data, to drain money from online bank accounts and stock brokerages.
“It’s the perfect crime, both low-risk and high-profit,” said Gadi Evron, a computer security researcher for an Israeli-based firm, Beyond Security, who coordinates an international volunteer effort to fight botnets. “The war to make the Internet safe was lost long ago, and we need to figure out what to do now.”
This is not good news. The criminals behind this are, for the most part Eastern European. They have discovered that they can steal more safely this way than by sticking a gun in someone's face. Although they will do that if they feel the need to.
The Internet is one of the greatest boons to mankind to come from the 20th Century, but its increasing penetration by these preditors is threatening to render it useless.
When you add the threat posed by hostile nations, such as Red China and Iran, to the mix the picture starts to look grim indeed.
I don't know what the ansere is, but the person or comapny that comes up with it will get very rich, or very much richer.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Photographic hijinks
Muslims are enraged, so what else is new?
From The New York Times:
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 5 — In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.
On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.
“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”
This sounds bad until you realize that there is nothing that we or the Iraqi government could have done which would have not been exploited by the Islamofascists.
Think about it. When US forces pulled him out of his pathetic hole in the ground, you know when he meekly surrendered, what was the reaction from the Muslim "street"? Anger at the fact that he had not fired his weapon, killed some of the US troops or shot himself. Muslim's were saying that they felt personally humiliated and were inspired to go and join the jihad to regain their manhood by killing some infidels.
By acting dignified and spitting his defiance at his executioners he becomes a martyr, but if Saddam had gone to the gallows crying and begging for mercy, renouncing Islam and calling upon Jesus to forgive him Muslims would have been enraged.
Since the executioners were Shiite the Sunnis are engulfed in murderous rage that the heretics were allowed to kill a Sunni, but if the hangmen had been Sunnis the Shiites would have been enraged that they were not allowed to execute the tyrant who tormented them.
The fact is that the normal default state for Muslims is murderous rage and they will seize upon any excuse to vent it.
The bottom line is that Saddam is dead and no matter how he was killed a lot of Muslims are going to be pissed. So what? The ones who actually go out and try to do something about it are just helping us identify the ones we need to kill.
If you won't listen to us. . .
From The Brussels Journal:
A quote from “Internal Security vs. Terror Threats,” an official report published by the French government
[S]ince Europe is closer and more accessible to the Middle East than the United States, it serves as an alternative to anyone seeking to attack the ‘distant enemy.’ Europe contains a variety of appropriate targets, some of which are connected with the United States and with Israel, and a strike on one or more of these targets would draw huge international attention. [...] [S]ome of the conflicts in the Middle East are mentioned extensively in the rhetoric uttered by the Islamist terrorists. However, the resolution of these conflicts would have no effect on ending global terror, which is functionally disconnected from these conflicts.
Perhaps since this comes from the French the American left will believe it.
The piper ALWAYS has to be paid
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 5 -- A young woman shot to death in her home Friday morning became at least the seventh New Orleans homicide victim of the new year.
The victim, whose identity was not released, was said to be in her early 20s. Her house in the Uptown section of New Orleans had been ransacked; police did not know whether anything had been taken.
Five of the shootings, all unrelated, occurred within a 14-hour span Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Also, a body with signs of physical trauma was found Wednesday wrapped in a rug. That death has not been classified.
The spate of killings dashed hopes that the city's police chief was right on New Year's Day when he said he believed the violence that has plagued parts of the city for months had been brought under control.
History lesson: In the aftermath of Katrina The mayor and the chief of police sent the NOPD, those who had not run away, joined the looters and who really existed (rather than just existed on paper so that corrupt officials could pocket their pay), out to confiscate the firearms of legally armed citizens.
When questioned about this they denied it and when ordered to give the illegally seized guns back by a federal judge they have dragged their feet.
They have claimed all sorts of procedural and practical reasons why they can't return the property which they stole, but the real reason is sample.
The city itself no longer has control of the stolen guns. They were divided up among the police who actually did the stealing. Every one of the firearms is now in the collection of a New Orleans cop, or one of the cops from other areas who came to the area to help out. Or in the collection of some corrupt (is there any other kind?) New Orleans politician who had a friend on the force. Or they have been sold to a gun store or pawn ship or transferred to some criminal gang that pays NOPD protection. Even the cheap "Saturday night special" junk guns have some dollar value or are useful to corrupt police as "throw downs".
What New Orleans is going through now is the inevitable result of a corrupt political/police culture, a judicial system steeped in the politically correct idea of the criminal as victim of society, a large minority population which has always had the government there to take care of them, and therefore never had to learn responsibility and self reliance, and a civilian population which has now been rendered defenseless in a very public way.
Under those circumstances crime and violence could not do anything but skyrocket!
If Ray "School Bus" Nagin and his police chief want to turn the situation in the Crescent City around there is one way to do it. Go on TV and encourage the honest citizens to arm themselves. Open the police range for civilian practice and declare "open season on criminals".
Do this and New Orleans will become a model of law and order. Fail to do this and deep ordering the body bags.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Tonight's music
Tonight's music comes from the Canadian group The McDades. Three of them are siblings named McDade. You can find out which three by checking out their website.
The tune they are playing is called The Whistle Blower. Their CD is called For Reel
This is nothing new
Andrew Walden gives us a history lesson in today's Front Page Magazine:
America has been fighting Islamists for longer than many realize. Even before independence was declared, American ships were pirated and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers”—an Ottoman Islamist warlord ruling Algeria. When the colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American ships lost Royal Navy protection. A Revolutionary War-era alliance with France offered French protection to US ships, but it expired in 1783. Immediately, U.S. ships came under attack and in October 1784 the American trader “Betsey” was taken by Moroccan forces. This was followed with Algerians and Libyans (Tripolitans) capturing two more U.S. ships in 1785.
Lacking the ability to project U.S. naval force in the Mediterranean, America tried appeasement. In 1784, Congress agreed to fund tributes and ransoms in order to rescue U.S. ships and buy the freedom of enslaved American sailors.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. ambassador to France, and John Adams, then American Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Dey’s ambassador to Britain, in an attempt to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote of funding. To Congress, these two future presidents later reported the reasons for the Muslims’ hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.
…that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.
Sound familiar?
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Hijinks expected
From The American Spectator:
"Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership can no longer tell us what is on the table," Sheehan said on Wednesday, after commandeering a set of microphones from Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel. "We are the ones that put them in power and they are not including the peace movement."
Emanuel, the Illinois Representative who is credited with being one of the architects of his party's takeover of Congress, was holding a press conference on ethics reform when Sheehan and dozens of antiwar protestors shouted him down with chants of "de-escalate, investigate, troops home now." Emanuel retreated behind closed doors as Sheehan claimed the stage.
Although the incident was a just a footnote to this week's coronation of Nancy Pelosi as the new Speaker of the House, it is an indication of the tenuous position the new Democratic majority finds itself in. Democrats want to compile a set of accomplishments and shun the more radical elements of their party to demonstrate to voters that they can be trusted to govern responsibly, but by doing so they risk alienating the vehemently anti-war base of their party who helped put them in power.
As I have said before the next two years are going to be fun to watch as the moonbat wing of the Democrat Party goes to war against the part of the Party which is desperately pretending to be sane.
The George Soros/Dailykos/Moveon.org bunch thinks that they own the party; that it is their bought and paid for property and is there's to run. They honestly think that they put the Democrats in power and they expect to be paid back.
Nancy Pelosi may be many things (most of them bad) but one thing she isn't is stupid. She knows that if the Democrats give the impression that Cindy Sheehan runs the Party it will be electoral suicide. Yet if they alienate the lunatic fringe, which really isn't a fringe anymore but is more of a lunatic core, that they can't muster enough votes to win anywhere outside of a few Southern states.
I do not envy San Fran Nan's difficulties, but I fully intend to spend the next two years enjoying them.
Makes you wonder
From The Washington Post:
President Bush accepted the resignation of White House counsel Harriet Miers yesterday as he remakes his legal team to prepare for what aides expect to be a sustained struggle with a new Democratic Congress eager to investigate various aspects of his administration.
Miers, a longtime Bush loyalist whose nomination to the Supreme Court was withdrawn in 2005 as a result of conservative opposition, led an office that will oversee legal clashes that could erupt if Democrats aggressively use their new subpoena power. Bush advisers inside and outside the White House concluded that she is not equipped for such a battle and that the president needs someone who can strongly defend his prerogatives.
And yet she was the right person for the Supreme Court?
A new era dawns
From The New York Times:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — In a day of transition and pageantry, exultant Democrats on Thursday took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years and elected the first woman to be speaker of the House.
[. . .]
Both Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi promised a new era of cooperation after years of partisan passion and gridlock. “Guided by the spirit of bipartisanship,” Mr. Reid said, “Democrats are ready to take this country in a new direction.”
This is why they locked Republicans out of their first big legislative push.
The truth is that the Jackass Party can't even unify itself. You notice how Cindy Sheehan, spokeswoman for the "raving lunitic barking moonbat wing" of the Party staged a protest where they shouted down the Pelosi crowd, who make up the "quietly insane barking moonbat wing" of the Party.
Still when San Fran Nan lifted that Speaker's gavel in triumph for the first time you know that a shiver ran through the Republican representitives looking for a spine to run up.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
A new (brain dead) energy policy
From The Washington Post:
House Democrats are crafting an energy package that would roll back billions of dollars worth of oil drilling incentives, raise billions more by boosting federal royalties paid by oil and gas companies for offshore production, and plow the money into new tax breaks for renewable energy sources, congressional sources said yesterday.
So let's review. We are going to pay more to heat and light our homes and fill our cars but in exchange we will have billions poured down various "green energy" rat holes.
Way to go voters!
There is one form of energy which can replace fossil fuels for the generation of power. Nuclear energy. It is clean and safe and produces small amounts of waste which can be disposed of easily through glassification and deep burial.
Even the French [spit] are smart enough to figure out that Nuclear power is the way to go. Are we really going to be dumber than the French?
The lynching continues
Paul Belien has some comments on the ongoing situation in England involving Simone Clarke the leading ballerina at the English National Ballet. Ms. Clarke was recently outed by the far left-wing newspaper The Guardian as a member of the BNP, a political party which worries about the uncontrolled immigration into the UK of islamist militants, rising crime rates and confiscatory taxes.
Mr. Belien compares Simone Clarke to Katharina Blum the heroine of the Heinrich Böll novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
. . . In the story the reporter, Werner Tötges, works for Die Zeitung, a right-wing mass circulation paper. Tötges deliberately ruins the life of Katharina Blum, a divorced housewife, who has met Ludwig Götten, a bank robber on the run from the police.
Katharina is innocent. She does not know who Götten, whom she bumped into at a carnival party, really is. Nevertheless, since Götten has escaped the law, Tötges concocts a story depicting Katharina as Götten’s accomplice. The journalist tracks down her friends and family, including her ex-husband, and publishes a wild story in which Katharina Blum is depicted as a fervent communist and an accomplice of Götten.
In order to set the record straight, Katharina agrees to grant Tötges an interview. The journalist, however, distorts her story to inform his readers how “cold and calculating” she is and to cast suspicion on her socialist father and brother. Die Zeitung crushes Katharina and her family completely, causing the death of her sick mother. When finally Tötges forces his way into Katharina’s home and proposes to let her off the hook if they have sex together, she ends the ordeal by shooting him, aware that her life has been utterly destroyed.
I very highly recomend going over and reading Mr. Belien's entire post. Europe is growing progressively less free on an almost daily basis. The fact is that they are an ally to the United States in name only and will soon not even be that.
Tonight's music
This is the traditional English quartet Kerfuffle, recorded at the Gosport and Fareham Easter Festival in 2006. Dirty Linen describs them as "delightfully sophisticated". The singer is Hannah James, who also plays the accordion. She is 19 years old and is a student at Newcastle University working on a Folk and Tradition Music degree.
The other members are Sam Sweeny (fiddle, percussion), Tom Sweeney (bass guitars) and Chris Thornton-Smith (guitar).
Unfortunately I don't see any US dates for them but if that changes I'll post an update.
New Orleans was not an accident
A few days ago I published a list of things which the residents of the areas hit by the recent massive blizzard did not do. Like blame the president and insist that the rest of the nation owed them massive handouts because of their misfortune.
Someone left a thoughtful comment which I want to respond to here:. . . in reality there's really no comparison. Let's be fair; 20,000 homes destroyed in New Orleans compared to......yes, you guessed it, 0 homes destroyed in the "Category 5 blizzard." When Katrina hit, around 250,000 people had to evacuate, and many lost everything (including the ability to even return home). In Colorado the storm "knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands." Not really the same thing at all. As a reminder to EVERYONE, the evacuees were not just black people by the way, some were even....dare I say it, white.
In the first place there was nothing in the post about race other than the observation that neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton had showed up. If the commenter, who says that he is from Houston, sees a racial component here it is from the evidence of his own eyes as he observes the Katrina evacuees rather than anything in the blog post.
I am well aware of the fact that many Katrina evacuees were White, but the points raised by the post all addressed attitude not race. How many of you remember the TV footage of New Orleans after the flood waters began to recede? How many automobiles, now ruined, do you remember seeing parked in driveways or on the street in front of houses? Each of those cars could have taken one or two families to high ground. Instead the owners sat and waited for someone to rescue them.
Then there were the famous school buses. Remember how Mayor Nagin tried to excuse the fact that they were not used to evacuate residents by saying that there was no one to drive them? What about the people who drive them every day? Did it never occur to the mayor or anyone in the city government, or in any past city government, that a city which is 12 feet below sea level and sandwiched between a lake and a river close to the Gulf of Mexico - in hurricane country - might need to be evacuated someday?
Why was there not a plan in place calling for each school bus driver to report to the city parking lot to get his bus and then drive to a specific point to pick up evacuees and then drive them along a preplanned route to a place on high ground where someone like the Red Cross would be waiting, by prearrangement, to meet them and take care of them? Why were the bus drivers not required, as a condition of employment, to participate in drills at least twice per year so that they would know exactly where to go and what to do?
The answer is that the people of New Orleans have an attitude of dependence (unlike the people of Colorado, who for them most part have an attitude of self reliance). The sad fact is that the dependant attitude of New Orleans stems from the fact that New Orleans is a predominantly Black city. Black Americans as a group have been schooled, for longer than most of them have been alive, to expect to live on handouts from White America.
Wealth and social class do not figure into this to any great extent. Ray Nagin is a wealthy man who has spent his life learning that as long as he played by a certain set of rules he would have the good things of life handed to him by a White hand. In every thing from his collage education (affirmative action) to his employment at high pay in corporate America (again affirmative action) to his political career (identity politics) his way has been paved by liberal White patronage. All he had to do was look the right way, say the right things and pay homage to the right liberal causes and liberal political and cultural figures and he could have success without ever having to do anything concrete to merit it.
Then suddenly Nagin was thrust into circumstances in which he would have to think for himself, act on his own initiative and actually produce concrete results for his city. He failed miserably because nothing in his life had prepared him for the challenge. The White people let him down. The White governor was unwilling to clear the way for the federal government to act (because she didn't want the president to have an opportunity to "look good" - her words) and the White president didn't invoke a Nineteenth Century law which would have allowed him to hold the state of Louisiana to be in a state of insurrection and move in and take over because he did not wish to be pilloried by a mostly White press corps and Democrat Party for implying that a female Democrat governor and a Black Democrat mayor were incompetent to handle what they were plainly incompetent to handle.
Thus you have the horrors of the Superdome and the Convention Center.
Many, perhaps most, of the people reading this will not be able to believe that this situation was deliberately created by the political left. They will not be able to get their minds around the idea that people like Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy looked at New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and smiled inwardly and felt a proud sense of accomplishment. They will not be able to force themselves to deal with the implications of the fact that "Black leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are willing and knowing accomplices to the infantalizing of their own people to the extent that they will walk past a car in their own driveway and report to a place which they have been told in advance will be an unsafe hellhole like the Superdome all because they have been so conditioned to the idea that someone will take care of them THAT THEY CANNOT EVEN CONCEIVE OF THE IDEA OF BEING RESPONSABLE FOR THEMSELVES.
Most people do not, can not, grasp the truth because they do not wish to have to deal with the realization that the leadership of one of the major political parties (Democrat) and cultural movements (liberalism) are not simply misguided and wrong on some of the issues, but are actually evil. Evil in the biblical sense of pure Satanic malevolance.
Now you understand why people like Patrick Conlon and I hate the Left with every fiber of our beings. We understand that their goal for America is an enslavement far more pernicious than than endured by antebellum Blacks. Simon LeGree and his fellows bound their slaves bodies with chains of iron but their souls remained free. The modern Left-liberal wishes to leave our bodies mostly free, but to bind our souls with chains of dependence.
The man whose mind remains free can always strike off his physical chains and run away or rebel. The man whose soul has been killed in infantsy by the poison of dependency cannot even perceive his chains and can never raise his hand against his master because he will never be able to view that master an anything but a benefactor.
The left knows that if it can become the only hand that feeds that it will never be bitten.
True ethics reform
From The New York Times:WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — On the brink of regaining power after 12 years, House Democrats said Wednesday that they would move immediately to try to sever ties between lawmakers and lobbyists who figured into scandals that helped Democrats win control of Congress.
Democrats, who campaigned relentlessly last year on the theme of a Republican culture of corruption, introduced the proposed ethics rules as part of a week of
choreography designed to deliver the message that they did not intend to do business as usual in Washington. In some cases, like restrictions on the use of corporate jets, the rules on gifts and travel by lobbyists go further than what Democrats had pledged earlier.
It is very easy to demonize "lobbyists" however two things should be remembered. One is that lobbyists represent people. The lobbyists who bring the case of the oil companies to the attention of congress represent not only the oil company executives but the shareholders and employees as well.
Everybody from the guy in the hardhat working on the drilling platform to the little old grandmother in tennis shoes living on her late husband's pension (pension fund heavily invested in the stock market) and investment portfolio (also heavily invested in the stock market) and social security (dependant upon tax revenue which is dependant on the nation's economic health, which depends in part on the stock market) has a stake in what congress does to the oil companies.
All of these people have an interest in how badly congress screws the oil industry, however they can not all journey to Washington to beg their individual Senators or representative not to steal too much of their money through increased taxation or regulation of the oil companies so they depend on oil company lobbyists to do it for them.
The same thing is true of other organizations as well. For example the NRA represents more than 4 million people who have pooled their money and influence to fight to protect their constitutional right to own and carry firearms.
Even the evil and malignant lobbyists like the Sierra Club and the Brady Bunch are only there representing their moonbat membership's destroy America agenda, as they have a right to do under the First Amendment.
What motivates the new left-wing congress' desire to push lobbyists away is actually the urge to put as many layers of insulation between themselves and the people as possible. The Democrat Party, with just a handful of exceptions, is morphing into a carbon-copy of the ruling socialist parties of Europe. Remember what the president of France said when the French public voted a resounding NO on the European constitution? "France has not rejected the constitution, only the French people have".
The "big D" Democrats are not "small D" democrats. They do not want all those pesky commoners telling them how to do their jobs as they set about transforming the society envisioned by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson into the society envisioned by Jacq Chirac and Dominique de Villepin.
While they know that for the time being they must continue to allow people to continue calling their offices and writing letters and even dropping by for a visit they can take steps to ensure that the public becomes unable to pool their resources into organizations which, by virtue of money and the ability to deliver a block vote, have true clout.
The other thing to remember is that all the perks that lobbyists have to hand out to congressmen would be utterly useless to them if the members of congress didn't have their grubby mitts stretched out grasping for any kind of handout they could get.
The true problem of corruption in congress starts and stops with individual congressmen. The true answer to cleaning up corruption in congress is to have a well defined set of ethics rules and to make expulsion from congress with a lifetime ban on ever again holding any kind of elective office or working on the staff of any elected official or for any government agency the first and minimum punishment for violation of any ethics rule. Remember that is the minimum punishment. The penalties would go up from there through high fines and into long prison sentences which would have to be served in the federal prison system where there is no parole.
Of course no congress will enact laws which subject them to possible loss of office and financial ruin and prison. They are much more comfortable exempting themselves from the laws that they pass to control everybody else's behavior. But that's the answer, if anyone cares.
Stop The ACLU Blogburst
Judge Roy Moore makes a New Years Resolution that I'm definitely on board with.
Each year the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberal organizations continue their efforts to destroy traditional values that we once assumed were self-evident and beyond question. And each year we sit quietly by doing nothing to stop their relentless assault on our culture and our religious heritage. As our resolution for the New Year, let us join together to defeat the ACLU's anti-Christian agenda and restore our civil and religious freedom.Most definitely the ACLU's attack on religious freedom is one of many good reasons we should resolve to join together and fight back. We have a whole list of other good reasons. The damage the ACLU has done to our National Security, the War on Terror, and our National Sovereignty are at the top of my personal list.
There are many reasons to stop the ACLU's agenda, but what people need to know is how. Everyone needs to get involved. There is a lot that can be done.
One thing to do is to get active. Email, write, or call your elected officials and let them know that National Security is of primary concern. This time last year the ACLU were running full page ad propaganda war against the NSA and the Patriot Act. Even though the Democrats made a show of not clapping for the Patriot Act, in the end they lost that battle. They are still beating the dead horse over the NSA program.
Another thing is to elect people who will appoint Constitutionalist judges. We've made progress in this area over the past year. Last year around this time the ACLU announced their official opposition to the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Many of the ACLU's biggest fans in the Senate fought hard to paint him as a woman hater and bigot, to the point of bringing his wife to tears, but in the end they all lost that battle.
When it comes to religious freedom, the ACLU is America's number one censor. They have compared Christians to terrorists, and even called for jailing people over prayer. The most outrageous thing about this is that when these cases their attorney's fees are paid for by the taxpayer. We have made progress against this in the past year. Currently there is legislation to put a stop to this and we got it passed in the House of Representatives. The bill is still pending before the Senate, and just because we lost the majority is no reason for us to let up.
Support groups that are fighting the ACLU. There are many out there including the Alliance Defense Fund, ACLJ, Liberty Council, and Thomas More Law Center. Join one of them, donate to them, and tell others about them.
Educate the public about the ACLU's agenda. This last one is the New Year's resolution we are making...to continue our fight against the ACLU by educating the public. Join us and over 200 other blogs in helping to expose the ACLU's agenda to the people.
This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Tonight's Music
This is the Michael McGoldrick Band performing at the Gosport and Fareham Easter Festival in 2006. Like the other members of Capercaillie Michael had numerous solo projects to fill his time when Capercaillie isn't touring or recording.
Like I said, Europe is NOT free
Also from The Brussels Journal a post further supporting my point that Europe is no longer anything that could be called a "free" society. The issue under discussion is the treatment being inflicted upon the BNP, a nationalist political party in the UK.
The most recent example of the persecution that BNP members are being subjected to is the "outing" of the names of party members in the leftist press along with calls for party members to be denied jobs and socially ostracised.
Since lying about the BNP does not work very well in the age of the Internet, the gentler forms of destruction are being supplemented by stronger. Its leader has just been acquitted after a trial for speech crimes that did not exist when I was a boy. Its known members are losing their jobs in public bodies up and down the country. It has trouble getting its material printed. Banks are being persuaded to close its accounts. The legal machinery is in place to deny it access to the ballot in elections.
Mr Cobain’s articles must be seen as part of this attempted destruction of a political party. Let it become known that middle class supporters will be named and have their careers destroyed, and party membership will not proceed far beyond the working classes. Let it be made effectively impossible for any middle class person to stand as a BNP candidate, and the only candidates will be criminals and fools, who can then be held up as a reason not to vote BNP.
Much of this would be happening if there were a Conservative Government. But the intensity of the persecution faced by the BNP is peculiar to Labour. There has been a strain of antinomianism in our politics since 1997 not seen in centuries. From Tony Blair down, the Ministers believe passionately that they can and therefore must turn England into some kind of multicultural love feast. Their vision of a transformed England is not very clear. But, as with an impressionist painting, vagueness of detail is compensated by vividness of colour.
These people cannot imagine that anyone of good will could fail to believe as they do. Therefore, all opposition is evil, and may rightly be put down without regard for traditional norms of right and justice and common decency. See, as an example of this, how Peter Hain defends as a Minister police state measures that he used to condemn when used by the South African Government. To the Saints of New Labour, all things are lawful.
It helps that most of these people used to be Marxists. They no longer seem to believe in the positive doctrines of Marxism, but they retain its assumption that the traditional norms are mere “bourgeois legality”.
We can, therefore, look forward to much more of this. Sooner or later, our ruling class will shut down all electoral dissent. The only possible opposition will then be on the streets.
Now, I am able to say this from a position of safety. Neither I nor the Libertarian Alliance expect to suffer in any measurable degree from this shutting down of debate. We live in a potemkin democracy, where only limited diversity of opinion is tolerated. But even so, there must be some opposition.
I am fortunate enough to find myself in the licensed opposition. I face no official discrimination that I can see. I am allowed to work in state universities. I am allowed regular appearances in the media. I am not obviously under surveillance. This may be because our ruling class does not regard libertarians as much of a threat. It may be because someone outside the ruling class has to be tolerated, for the sake of keeping up the pretence of liberal democracy. Whatever the reason, we do not operate under any of the disadvantages that the real dissidents of the BNP must take as facts of life.
This imposes a duty on me and my friends to speak up in defence of the dissidents. Unlike the other “rights” organisations, we believe in freedom of speech with no exceptions. We do not enquire into the substance of a person’s views before defending his right to express them.
We denounce the persecution of the BNP. Though I do not expect them to pay any attention, I call on Liberty and the Conservative Party to do likewise.
Sean Gabb is the author of this piece and it the director of the Libertarian Alliance.
One quibble I have with Mr. Gabb is his contention that if no middle class persons can be found to stand for election as BNP candidates that the only alternatives will be "criminals and fools". Does Mr. Gabb believe that every last working class person in the UK is a "criminal" or "fool"?
Reading this could cause your head to explode
From The Brussels Journal:
Last week, the Paris police issued a prohibition on the distribution to the homeless of soup containing pork meat or fat. According to the police authorities – the same ones who are incapable of restoring law and order in the Paris suburbs – distributing soup containing pork or lard is a racist offence since some people in need might be Muslim and hence not allowed to eat pork. Yesterday, however, an administrative court of first instance in Paris ruled that distributing pork soup is not racist. Today Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of Paris, told the Paris police to appeal the court ruling.
[. . .]
On 28 December the Paris police prefecture issued a prohibition on the distribution of the soup, denouncing the “xenophobic character of a charity that excludes people of Jewish and Muslim confessions.” Paris police officers had to enforce the prohibition. This time the policemen did not need to enter certain Paris suburbs because the ruling sharia authorities in those no-go areas ensure that no pork soup is served there.
Yesterday’s court ruling, which again allowed the serving of pork soup, was criticized by Bertrand Delanoë. The Paris mayor said he was “astonished” to learn that the court tolerates an initiative which “knowingly excludes Jews and Muslims.” “Confronted with this xenophobic initiative, I want to express again that the city denounces and opposes every form of discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism,” the mayor said. He asked the police prefecture to appeal the verdict.
What needs to be stressed here. What if fact cannot be stressed too strongly is that the Paris city government is seeking to ban PRIVATE CHARITIES who use NO PUBLIC MONEY from GIVING AWAY FOOD.
This mayor wants to ban private citizens from giving away food because not everyone's religion will allow them to eat it.
Does anyone still think the European Union is remotely free?
The post on Brussels Journal ends with a question:
Mayor Delanoë is a Socialist and an outspoken homosexual. Religious Muslims oppose homosexuality at least as much as they oppose pork soup. If the mayor considers it a racist hate crime for a private organization to offer the homeless pork soup when some of the homeless might be Muslims, he may ponder the question whether it is not a racist hate crime for a city to have a gay mayor when some of the city’s citizens are Muslims.
Your answer Mr. Mayor?
More whining from the left
From The American Spectator:
After World War II, Winston Churchill initially opposed war crimes tribunals. He believed hearings would afford Nazi leaders dignity they didn't deserve. Instead, the losers should be dispatched without benefit of trial: Why not just hang the bastards?
Time marches on, I guess. Current British PM Tony Blair spoke out against Saddam Hussein's death sentence when it was handed down in November after the two-year trial. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema used outrage over the former leader's hanging Saturday to urge the United Nations to enact a worldwide death penalty moratorium.
The two statesmen represent elite European consensus on the subject. The death penalty is thought beyond the pale -- abolishing it is a prerequisite for membership in the European Union. The London Economist recently editorialized, "capital punishment [is] wrong in itself, however wicked the guilty party," even the very wicked Hussein.
It's also sort of gauche. James Fallows is a former Carter speechwriter and an old hand at the Atlantic whose writing represents the leading edge of respectable opinion in the U.S. His thoughts on Hussein's capture and hanging are interesting because, like so many Baby Boomers, he couches these judgments in the experiences of his generation.
Fallows tells us that he is okay with "[d]eadly force as necessary in military or police campaigns." (Made peace with Vietnam? Check.) He is even satisfied with the bloody way the U.S. military dispatched Hussein's two sons. However, "calmly-administered death, via the guillotine or the noose"? That is very clearly "something else."
"[A]t this stage of life I am flatly against capital punishment, even for the worst of humanity," Fallows admits. When he was a younger liberal he may have "listened respectfully to arguments about 'deterrence'" -- note the scare quotes -- "and the importance of society's being able to administer the gravest of penalties for the gravest of offenses," but he's put away such childish notions: "I'm in my 50s now, and I think: this is barbaric."
When the Eurotrash leftists and former Carter Administration hack leftists are united against something that itself amounts to an almost airtight prima facie argument that the thing, whatever it is, is in fact good.
The argument against capital punishment is an argument against the concept of basic human dignity. If we are truly responsible, self-aware, free moral agents then we may act is a way which causes us to forfeit our right to continue existing.
To deny this is to deny the essential moral responsibility, and by that I mean the ability and duty to act responsibly, which lies at the heart of our concept of ourselves as sentient and free individuals. If we do not bear individual responsibility for our choices then we are, each of us, just one more ant in the hill and we have no business thinking of ourselves as anything more.
The argument that we elevate ourselves by showing compassion on even the most evil among us fails because the "compassion" we show the monster only devalues the lives of the monster's victims. This is why the most strident opponents of capital punishment become resentful when mention is made of the victims. A sane person (and when I say "sane" I mean a very minimal definition such as a person who can dress themselves, feed themselves and hold a job out in the community) cannot believe two diametrically opposed ideas at the same time.
And make no mistake a genuine appreciation of the suffering of the victims cannot coexist with a weepy determination to protect the cause of the suffering. In other words you cannot simultaneously want to spare the life of the beast known as Mumia Abu Jamal and give a rat's ass about the suffering of Daniel Faulkner as he lay on the pavement begging for his life while Jamal calmly executed him. A heinous crime, and cold blooded murder is a heinous crime, forces us to choose between the killer and the killed.
I will always side with the innocent.
Warning! Do not view if you have a weak stomach!
Gay marriage, not even in MA
From The New York Times:
BOSTON, Jan. 2 — Massachusetts, the only state where same-sex marriage is legal, took a first step toward possibly banning it Tuesday when legislators voted to advance a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman.
The amendment now requires the approval of at least 50 legislators in another vote in the 2007-8 session. Then it would be placed on the November 2008 ballot as a referendum question.
If it passed, the amendment would not invalidate the more than 8,000 same-sex marriages that have taken place since they became legal in May 2004. But it would prevent future marriages of gay men and lesbians.
“This is democracy in action,” said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment. “It’s giving people the opportunity to vote on the most essential institution in human existence — marriage.”
Arline Isaacson, co-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, choked back tears.
“The price that our children and families will pay is so severe that we simply have to recommit ourselves to fight this some more,” she said.
The swiftness of the vote on Tuesday surprised people on both sides of the issue, taking place without any debate, just minutes after the constitutional convention had been gaveled into session. Proponents of the amendment needed just 50 of the legislature’s 200 lawmakers to support it; the final vote was 61 in favor of the amendment and 132 opposed.
We should pause here and note that Massachusetts is just about the bluest state in the Union. I mean what other state would keep sending the broken down brain-dead alcoholic Ted Kennedy back to the Senate?
The fact is that if gay marriage can't get majority support in deep-blue moonbat loon Massachusetts what chance does it have in the real America? This is why Democrats so desperately want the issue to just go away. It is a sure winner for conservatives.
This is why Republicans need to keep pounding on the issue. Something like 70% of the American people want the federal constitution amended to forbid gay marriage. This is an issue which unites people across party lines and Republicans should play it for all its worth.
Herding moonbats
From The Washington Post:
Democratic leaders set to take control of Congress tomorrow are facing mounting pressure from liberal activists to chart a more confrontational course on Iraq and the issues of human rights and civil liberties, with some even calling for the impeachment of President Bush.
The carefully calibrated legislative blitz that Democrats have devised for the first 100 hours of power has left some activists worried the passion that swept the party to power in November is already dissipating. A cluster of protesters will greet the new congressional leaders at the Capitol tomorrow. They will not be disgruntled conservatives wary of Democratic control, but liberals demanding a ban on torture, an end to warrantless domestic spying and a restoration of curbed civil liberties.
The protest will be followed by an evening forum calling for the president's impeachment, led by the Center for Constitutional Rights, antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan and a pro-impeachment group called World Can't Wait.
These grass-roots Democrat moonbats think that they are why the Jackass Party won control of congress last year. They should call themselves the coalition of the politically tone-deaf.
They need to go back and look at the winning Democrat campaigns rather than just rereading their own blog posts. What is there about the campaigns of Heath Shuler or Jim Webb that make any of these moonbats think that there will be any energy behind impeachment or efforts to roll back the national security legislation which has kept the nation free of terrorist attacks since 9/11?
The fact is that the USA is a center-right country and is only growing more so. To win Democrats needed to find candidates who were, or at least could pretend to be, conservative. In an environment like this the Democrat leadership is not going to jeapordize its tenuous grip on power by giving in to the loon wing of the party.
Cindy and Co. just need to be patient. The plan is to pretend to be sane until 2008 so that they can enlarge their congressional majority and win the White House. Then declare a "Global Warming Emergency" and suspend the constitution and elections for at least a century. Then they can transform the nation and bring forth the New Soviet Man.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Cox & Forkum
As I have said, when it comes to the great World War against Islam the will to act is more valuable than numbers or advanced technology. Tiny Somalia's tottering provisional government and Ethiopia, whose military couldn't stand up to a determined assault from the Rhode Island National Guard, were able to send the Islamofascists running back under their wet rocks because they were willing to do what needed to be done. And the Islamofascists knew it.
What would the US be able to accomplish if we kicked out the reporters, told the EU and the UN to go screw themselves, threw away the rules of engagement and told our warriors to do what they had to do, that the nation had their back?
Ye shall not fear him. . .
From The AP:
In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.
"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."
Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.
Robertson said God also told him that the U.S. only feigns friendship with Israel and that U.S. policies are pushing Israel toward "national suicide."
Robertson suggested in January 2006 that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli- controlled land to the Palestinians.
The broadcaster predicted in January 2004 that President Bush would easily win re-election. Bush won 51 percent of the vote that fall, beating Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
He also predicted Bush's victory for a second term in 2005.
"I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."
Mr. Robertson says that "God" tells him these things, then when he gets one wrong "sometimes I miss". Which is it Pat? Are you guessing or is God telling you these things?
Of course if God were using Pat Robertson as a prophet there would be no "misses". This means that Pat is speaking presumptuously and at best is to recieve no respect from believers. At worst he is to be stoned to death.
Mr. Robertson seems to be a decent man and his political views are usually right, but a record of false prophecies disqualify him as a legitmate minister of the gospel and he should withdraw from the spotlight.
Left-wing whining joines Arab whining
Jacob Laksin answers the moronic left-wing whining about the trial and execution of the Butcher of Baghdad in an essay on today's Front Page Magazine:
Allegations that the trial was a slipshod affair, replete with procedural shortcuts designed to facilitate a speedy conviction, are difficult to square with the meticulous decision produced by the tribunal, its 298 single-spaced pages reportedly making it the longest on record. Overall, as Scharf has said, the tribunal did a "reasonable job against amazing challenges."
In this connection, it is worth noting that the Sunni backlash to the execution predicted by many observers has not, as of this writing, materialized. On the day of the execution, the number of bombings was consistent with the daily average -- too high, to be sure, but scarcely the disastrous spike in violence that had been anticipated.
Undeniably, the execution will not end the insurgency in Iraq. Nor will it smooth over the tribal, religious and cultural tensions that have heretofore made the country such infertile soil for orderly democratic government. But acknowledging that Hussein’s death is not a solution to all of Iraq’s problems does not require one to believe that it is not an answer to any of them.
As so rarely happens in history, a tyrant has been lawfully brought to justice. The least that people of conscience can do is to credit the Iraqi tribunal for this achievement. But it would not be going too far to applaud the efforts of the American troops who pulled Hussein from one hole in the ground so that the Iraqi people -- with the law on their side -- could direct him to another.
Of course no amount of reason will be able to put a dent in the Left's criticism. Because that criticism is based on a loathing of their own cultures which leads them to cling to the West's enemies, no matter how evil and murderous they are.
New faces, please
From The New York Times:
MIAMI, Jan. 1 — When the same old irksome question popped up recently at one of his final public events here, Gov. Jeb Bush, addressing Spanish-speaking reporters, gave an atypically dramatic answer: “Yo no tengo futuro,” or “I have no future.”
His words set off round-the-world buzz, with The Daily Telegraph of London going so far as to call them “a recognition by the Bush family that their dynastic reign in American politics is drawing to a close.”
But in fact, the question lives on. Mr. Bush’s spokeswoman said last week that he made the comment jokingly, and when asked about it later in an e-mail message, Mr. Bush himself replied, “I was misunderstood by a reporter.”
Of course Jeb is thinking about running for president. He has been an excellent governor of Florida. Unlike his brother and father he is a genuine conservative and he has even more appeal to Hispanic voters, the new largest minority, than George W.
The main drawback to a Jeb in '08 run is his name. The American public has seen two names figuring prominently in American politics for the last 27 years. Bush and Clinton.
Ever since George H W Bush tried for the Republican nomination for the 1980 election and wound up Reagan's running mate there has been a Bush on the ticket in every presidential election except one. And ever since Clinton finished his second term and began to devote his time to managing his wife's career every campaign season has had Hillary haunting it like Marley's ghost.
The American people have grown as tired of Bush vs Clinton as the English of the Fifteenth Century must have been of Lancaster vs York. We are ready for a change and if the parties try to force another Bush or Clinton down the public's throat next year the result will be an electoral projectile vomit that will make McGovern's loss to Nixon look like a damn close thing.
Fight the right battle
From The Washington Post:
In lobbying, a threat is good for business, whether it's genuine or not.
This might help to explain the dire warnings being issued by the National Rifle Association as the Democrats prepare to take control of Congress this week.
"The new leadership could be one of the most unfriendly to the National Rifle Association," declared Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the NRA. "If there's an effort to pursue gun control, we will mount an active defense."
The famously combative lobby, with 4 million members, is displeased with the voting histories of Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other top Democrats in the House and is putting them on notice that it won't tolerate passage of anti-gun measures.
The only problem: No one expects gun legislation this year.
There is a fact which most people in the pro-gun community have failed to grasp. That fact is that we have won.
Not the war. The war never ends because human nature never changes. However we have won the battle. "Battle" being defined as the effort to change the political culture in such a way as to take gun control off the table politically for the current generation - at the national level.
Of course the war continues with battles being fought in state legislatures and local communities. The battle of New Orleans is ongoing with the NRA assisting Crescent City gun owners in recovering their firearms which were illegally seized by police during Katrina.
I have news for the unfortunate gun owners of New Orleans. You will never see your firearms again, unless it is on the shelves of a pawn shop or gun store or a display table of a gun show because your guns were divided up among the cops as "spoils" and they will either keep them or sell them. Sorry, but that's the truth and it will remain so as long as you keep electing politicians who create a political culture more like a Third World banana republic than an American city.
But I digress. The point is that gun control has proven itself to be a consistently losing issue outside of certain left-wing regions like New Jersey and Manhattan and San Francisco. The politicians of both parties have gotten the point and so the battle for our firearms rights will be fought out in state legislatures and town councils for the next 13 years, at least.
Of course Senators and Representatives occupying left-wing safe seats (think Ted Kennedy) will continue to introduce gun control legislation, but it will be dead on arrival.
By all means maintain your NRA membership because a strong association is one of the things helping to create the current pro-gun, or I should say anti-gun control, climate. Just don't get your underwear in a bunch over the new congress, at least not where firearms are concerned.
I can't close this post without sharing this bit with you. Here is the quote from the Brady Bunch:
Veteran NRA-watchers have seen such rhetoric before. "This is vintage NRA fear tactics from an organization that knows how to use them to energize a base of supporters who have an unhealthy terror that the forces of government will take their guns away," said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "It's both ugly and untrue."
"Ugly and untrue". This is coming from the spokesman for the organization which exists to lobby government to take people's guns away. This is why, no matter how many battles we win, the war will never be over.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Food for thought
I saw this posted over on Atlas Shrugs and it was so good I had to steal it:
THINK ABOUT THIS FOR A MOMENT.
Denver Post:
This text is from a county emergency manager out in the central part of Colorado after todays snowstorm.
WEATHER BULLETIN
Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event--- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
FYI:
George Bush did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV .
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.
No Sean Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.
Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families.Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."
It does seem that way, at least to me.
I hope this gets passed on.
Maybe SOME people will get the message. The world does Not owe you a living.It would be great if the rest of the country thought like this. W. Duke 01-01-07
Back to normal
For me the "holiday season" begins in late October when I see the Halloween decorations going up. It seems a short series of steps from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas/New Years. I enjoy that whole time. Fall is my favorite season and down here fall really kicks off in mid October so the holiday atmosphere coincides with the coming of the fall colors and the end of the wretched summer heat.
As I said my favorite time of year.
However I am also glad to see January 2 come around. The disruptions to my work schedule make my job harder and the television networks and cable channels tend to fill their schedules with reruns and mostly uninteresting specials at the end of the year.
All in all it will be a relief to get back to normal.
On a personal level I have a good feeling about 2007. I think that we will end up being pleasantly surprised with what the new year has in store for us.
And, last but not least, Jack Bauer will be back in a couple of weeks - along with Battlestar Galactica and the final broadcast episodes of Stargate SG-1.
Paging Winston Smith
From The Brussels Journal:
A quote from al-Guardian, 1 January 2007
Officials from the English National Ballet [ENB] faced calls to sack one of their leading dancers yesterday after Simone Clarke defied criticism and gave a detailed interview defending her support for the British National party. Two weeks after she was named by the Guardian as a card-carrying member of the far right group, the ballerina hit out at her critics, voicing her belief that the BNP seemed to be the only party “willing to take a stand” against immigration.
[...] Clarke, 36, who will take the lead in the ENB's production of Giselle at the London Coliseum next week, said she had been called a “racist and a fascist” since her decision to join the BNP 18 months ago became public. One report claimed that following the Guardian’s revelations, fellow dancers confronted her before a matinee performance of The Nutcracker. She told the Mail on Sunday: “Everything will be different now. I will be known as the BNP Ballerina. I think that will stick with me for life.” But she added: “I don’t regret anything. I will stay a member.”
[. . .]
Lee Jasper, equalities director for the mayor of London and chairman of the National Assembly Against Racism, […] called on funders and David Lammy, the arts minister, to intervene. Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said people had a right to their private political views but added: “This will taint the ENB in the eyes of many minority communities. Questions need to be asked about how someone in that position can be allowed to abuse that position to promote the BNP.” […] Clarke’s membership became public in reports by Guardian reporter Ian Cobain, who used a pseudonym to join the far right party and was quickly selected to become its central London organiser. During his seven months undercover, Clarke told him that immigration “has really got out of hand”.
Things have gone further in the UK than I had feared. Apparently they have their very own branch of the Thought Police. Who is the Minister of Love over there now anyway?
Football player murdered
DENVER (AP) - Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting early Monday, his limousine sprayed with bullets in downtown Denver.
Team spokesman Jim Saccomano said police called him about 3 a.m. from the scene and told him three people had been shot, and the 24-year-old Williams had been killed. The killing came hours after the Broncos were eliminated from the playoff race.
A little after 2 a.m., a white Hummer limousine was fired on from a vehicle that pulled up along its side, police spokesman Sonny Jackson said. There were at least eight bullet holes in the limo.
Three people in the limo were hit and were taken to hospitals, where one man was pronounced dead, Jackson said. The other man and woman who were shot were not identified.
Jackson said police were searching for suspects and interviewing witnesses.
Here's a tip. If you can afford a "hummer limousine" you can also afford to have it armored against small arms fire.
A prayer for the new year
Starting the New Year with good news
From The Times Online:
Despite winning re-election to the US Senate by a handsome margin in mid-term voting last month, Clinton has had little to celebrate as polls from the presidential primary battlegrounds signalled early trouble for her historic bid to become America’s first woman president.
In Iowa, the Midwestern state that will once again open the primary season with its caucus votes on January 14, 2008, Clinton slumped to fourth place with only 10% of the vote in a survey of 600 likely Democratic voters.
In New Hampshire, which will hold the first full primary eight days later, Clinton had appeared to be cruising comfortably with a 23-point lead over her Democrat rivals — until last weekend, when a poll in the Concord Monitor newspaper showed her only one point ahead of Senator Barack Obama, the comparative political newcomer who is considering a similarly historic attempt to become America’s first black president.
Obama’s emergence as a charismatic alternative to the Democratic party’s veteran leadership — and the arrival in the race last week of former Senator John Edwards, the losing vice-presidential candidate in 2004 — have electrified Washington and placed Clinton under early pressure to abandon her cautious approach to the presidency and take to the hustings months earlier than she might have planned.
Several Democratic strategists last week urged Clinton to unleash a “charisma offensive” in the new year to counter the saturated media coverage that has helped propel Obama up the polls.
This will be difficult for Mrs. Clinton to do since she possesses no "charisma" to offer. However there is still a great deal of time until the voting actually starts and anything is still possible.
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