DEDICATED TO EXPOSING DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA AND TO PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS - WITH SHARP ANALYSIS AND BLUNT COMMENTARY. NO ADS. NO TIP-JAR. JUST THE TRUTH.
Bbtv / Breitbart.tv:
Caught on Camera: Union Goon Hits, Shoves and Harasses GOP Supporter at Rally — You can see him using his left hand to knock a camera out of one of the volunteers hands at 8 seconds and again at 12 seconds. He returns later and shoves or hits the cameraman several more times.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has announced plans to launch a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel in partnership with Rupert Murdoch's Fox network.But as Diana West tells, this whole matter with Khashoggi seems to have been resolved rather nicely, so we shouldn't be taken in so easily. As the BBC explains:
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, former editor in chief of Alwatan newspaper and a media adviser to Prince Turki Al-Faisal at Saudi embassies in London and Washington D.C., will head the station.
Khashoggi is a controversial choice because he has clashed with Saudi authorities over religious police and women's rights and resigned from his newspaper position earlier this year over an editorial questioning Salafism, a form of Islam at the heart of the conservative state.
The opinion piece by Saudi poet Ibrahim al-Almaee criticised Salafism, a conservative school of Sunni Islam that draws inspiration from the practices of the earliest Muslims.So that mystery is solved.
Saudi Arabia is governed under an austere form of Salafi Islam, Wahabbism.
[...]
"We believe in al-Watan newspaper, and we believe in reform," Mr Khashoggi said after resigning. "The newspaper is more important than I am, and I hope it will continue. We may question social issues like women's rights, but we should not have allowed an article to question the essence of faith."
He said he was abroad when the decision was made to publish the article, and he did not agree with the points made by Mr Almaee.
[...]
Mr Khashoggi will keep his position on the editorial board of the paper, and said he would continue to write in support of reform.
The Rabbinical Congress for Peace (RCP) marked the fifth anniversary of Israel's disastrous withdrawal from Gaza by publishing a letter the group received from then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dated July 18, 2005. The Rabbis had handed Sharon a Torah Ruling against ceding land but Sharon chose to ignore it.So here we have another telling detail of why Sharon was really a villain. And this would help Israel economically? Right. Consider all the farmers who lost their fields and tons of money because of Socialist Sharon's disgusting act. This should be introduced as something to learn about in the educational curriculum, but it probably won't be.
"I believe that today, the benefit, peace and security of the Nation of Israel require the evacuation of the Gaza Strip, an area in which there is no chance of establishing a Jewish majority and which everyone knows will not be part of the State of Israel in a permanent accord,” Sharon wrote.
“At the same time, we are transferring the brunt of our efforts to the most important areas for safeguarding our future: the Galilee, the Negev, Greater Jerusalem, the settlement blocs and the security zones.
“I initiated the Disengagement because it is the best vehicle for a basic change in the national situation of the Jewish people. The departure from Gaza will have a decisive positive influence on all fields of life in Israel: security, economy and the quality of life in the country.”
Along with the letter from Sharon, the RCP re-published the Torah Ruling signed by almost 400 rabbis forbidding surrender of any land to foreigners. “The Disengagement proved again that the Torah Ruling against relinquishing land to enemies because it will make it easier for them to conquer the land is valid today more than ever,” the rabbinical forum said.
The Rabbis expressed their “amazement” that Israel has established various inquiry committees on different issues but “has still not found time to set up an inquiry committee to investigate the heinous crime committed by the Israeli government of uprooting thousands of Jews from their homes through a Disengagement which led to hundreds of casualties and to the deterioration of Israel’s security to an all-time low.”
The Radicalism of the Anti-Arizona SuitRTWT!!
As everyone knows, Arizona passed a law that says, among other things, state law enforcement will inquire with the feds about the status of suspected illegal aliens.
The Obama administration says that this law upsets the entire federal immigration scheme and is unconstitutional.
I'd be curious to know how, then, the Obama administration explains this passage in the U.S. code, which obviously contemplates state and local governments finding out about illegals and making inquires about them with the feds—indeed, forbids anyone from preventing this exchange of information from taking place:Sec. 1373. Communication between government agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (a) In general
Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.
(b) Additional authority of government entities
Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, no person or agency may prohibit, or in any way restrict, a Federal, State, or local government entity from doing any of the following with respect to information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual:
(1) Sending such information to, or requesting or receiving such
information from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
(2) Maintaining such information.
(3) Exchanging such information with any other Federal, State,
or local government entity.
(c) Obligation to respond to inquiries
The Immigration and Naturalization Service shall respond to an
inquiry by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purpose authorized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information.The brief in support of Arizona by state attorneys general is particularly good on this point.
President Barack Obama is taking aim at Senate Republicans, accusing them of playing politics with measures that would extend benefits to the unemployed and increase lending to small businesses.
Striking a deeply partisan tone in his weekly Saturday radio and online address, Obama said the GOP leadership has chosen to "filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress" by blocking votes on agenda items the president says would breath life into the economic recovery.
"These steps aren't just the right thing to do for those hardest hit by the recession," Obama said. "They're the right thing to do for all of us."
The address was recorded at the White House before Obama flew to Maine on Friday for a weekend family vacation.
FOR OBAMA TO BLAME THE MINORITY IS A FREAKIN' OUTRAGE.
THE CONGRESSIONAL GOP HAVEN'T STOPPED JACKSHIT.
OBAMA HAS BEEN IN POWER - WITH A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS FOR MORE THAN A YEAR AND A HALF.
OBAMA HAS PASSED JUST ABOUT ANYTHING HE WANTED: HE PASSED HIS PORKULUS WITHIN A MONTH OF TAKING POWER.
THIS ECONOMY IS HIS.
HE MAY HAVE INHERITED A FIRE, BUT HE POURED GASOLINE ON IT.
NOW, THE GOP ARE THE FIREMEN.
BLAMING THE GOP AND RIGHT TAKES TRUE AUDACITY.
WE CAN SHUT THIS LYING LEFT-WING SON OF BITCH'S PIE-HOLE THIS NOVEMBER: VOTE GOP!
AND ANOTHER THING: WHAT KIND OF IDIOTS ARE RUNNING THE WHITE HOUSE - TO SEND OBAMA TO MAINE FOR VACATION AND NOT THE GULF COAST!?!?
WHAT FREAKIN' MORONS!
The human race, [SAUL] Griffith has estimated, currently consumes energy at an average rate of approximately six-teen trillion watts, or sixteen terawatts — the equivalent of a hundred and sixty billion hundred-watt light bulbs burning all the time.SO... WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE PUSHING THE "GREEN ECONOMY"!?!?!
Capping greenhouse gas at a level that climatologists hope may be consistent with a global temperature increase of only two degrees Celsius would necessitate replacing all but three of those sixteen terawatts with energy generated from a combination of the most promising renewable and non-carbon-based sources: photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, biofuels, geothermal, and nuclear fission.
And doing that, Griffith said, would require building the equivalent of all the following:
- a hundred square me tres of new solar cells,
- fifty square metres of new solar-thermal reflectors,
- and one Olympic swimming pool’s volume of genetically engineered algae (for biofuels) every second for the next twenty-five years;
Such a construction program, he told me, is at least theoretically achievable, but the practicalities are daunting. The design, approval, and construction of nuclear power plants in the United States typically takes years, and fewer than three dozen new plants are being built or planned.
- one three-hundred-foot-diameter wind turbine every five minutes;
- one hundred-megawatt geothermal-powered steam turbine every eight hours;
- and one three-gigawatt nuclear power plant every week.
“Right now, everyone sees climate change as a problem in the domain of scientists and engineers,” Griffith told me. “But it’s not enough to say that we need some nerds to invent a new energy source and some other nerds to figure out a carbon-sequestration technology—and you should be skeptical about either of those things actually happening.
There are a lot of ideas out there, but nothing nearly as radical as the green-tech hype. We’ve been working on energy, as a society, for a few thousand years, and especially for the last two hundred years, so we’ve already turned over most of the stones.”
Such considerations help explain Griffith’s focus on ways in which affluent societies can make dramatic reductions in energy use without reducing their perceived quality of life—a challenge that involves wrestling with human nature as well as physics.
He once tried to determine at what point in history his ancestors would have been consuming energy at a rate that he believes would be sustainable by humanity today, and calculated that, even in 1800, Americans used energy (mostly by burning New England forests) at a rate close to double that of the average global citizen in 2010.
Realizations like that one are partly responsible for the note of pessimism that enters his voice when he talks about these issues — a change from his M.I.T. days.
He said, “In the past, friends have told me, ‘You’re like the manic-depressive without the depressive — you’re just always happy and manic.’ So they’re all a little worried about me at the moment, because when I talk about these things I sound a little less than optimistic.”
Shortly after we first met, Griffith told me, “I know very few environmentalists whose heads aren’t firmly up their ass. They are bold-facedly hypocritical, and I don’t think the environmentalism movement as we’ve known it is tenable or will survive.
Al Gore has done a huge amount to help this cause, but he is the No. 1 environmental hypocrite.
His house alone uses more energy than an average person uses in all aspects of life, and he flies prodigiously. I don’t think we can buy the argument anymore that you get special dispensation just because what you’re doing is worthwhile.”
Griffith includes himself in this condemnation. He said, “Right now, the main thing I’m working on is trying to invent my way out of my own hypocrisy.”
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
WHAT DO LEFTISM, KYOTO, SADDAM AND THE UN HAVE IN COMMON? A CORRUPT PINKO NAMED MAURICE STRONG - and he ain't alone!
FOX/ROSSETT - (hat tip Glenn):Officially, Strong cut his ties to the U.N. Secretariat almost two years ago, as federal investigators homed in on the discovery that back in 1997, while serving as a top adviser to then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he took a check for almost $1 million that was bankrolled by Saddam Hussein’s U.N.-sanctioned regime. The check was delivered by a South Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, who was convicted last summer in New York Federal Court of conspiring to bribe U.N. officials on behalf of Baghdad. Strong denied any wrongdoing and said he would step aside from his U.N. envoy post until the matter was cleared up.Man-made global warming is a sham perpetrated by leftists in order to construct a global tax-attack against industrialism, modernism, free trade and the free market. Like all leftist schemes it is really about their elitism and their bossiness and their covetousness. WE MUSTN'T LET THEM USE THE MSM TO CRANK UP HYSTERIA IN ORDER TO MAKE THEIR SCHEMES LAW.
Since then, Strong has receded, as he often does, into the shadows. He is currently spending most of his time in China. His name flickered recently through the speaker lineup for a gala dinner for clean technologies in San Francisco, but the organizers say he then canceled because “he has so much going on” in China.
China is a special place for Strong, a self-declared, life-long socialist. It is the burial place of a woman said to be one of his relatives, the famous pro-communist American journalist Anna Louise Strong, a vociferous supporter of Lenin and Stalin until the mid-‘30s, and a strong booster of Mao Zedong’s China. Maurice Strong’s presence in Beijing, however, raises awkward questions: For one thing, China, while one of the world’s biggest producers of industrial pollution, has been profiting from the trading of carbon emissions credits – thanks to heavily politicized U.N.-backed environmental deals engineered by Strong in the 1990s.
Posted by Reliapundit @ 9:52 PM ; PERMALINK
Quotas Hidden in Bank Reform Bill Will Cost Taxpayers MillionsMuch more HERE.
Buried deep in the bowels of the massive financial-regulation bill the Senate passed Thursday are massive race- and gender-employment provisions that will cost countless millions to enforce and appear to duplicate other civil-rights initiatives already in place.
[...]
Section 342 of the bill calls for an "Office of Minority and Women Inclusion" to be established in each of 29 federal bureaus and offices.
The regulations appear to go beyond ensuring that discrimination in hiring decisions does not occur. Instead, they require assurance of "fair inclusion." [This provision] will pressure companies to find and hire minorities even if one hasn't applied for a specific job.
LINCOLN SAID THIS:“To say “I am a Christian” is not enough. Why? Because the Christianity of the slaveholder is not the Christianity of the slave. The God to whom the slaveholders pray as they ride on the decks of the slave ship is not the God to whom the enslaved are praying as they ride beneath the decks on that slave ship.”
“How we are seeing God, our theology, is not the same. And what we both mean when we say “I am a Christian” is not the same thing.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.THE SENTIMENTS COULD NOT BE FURTHER APART:
Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained.
Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes.
"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
...the Top 5 percent in income earners — those households earning $210,000 or more — account for about one-third of consumer outlays, including spending on goods and services, interest payments on consumer debt and cash gifts, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Moody’s Analytics. That means the purchasing decisions of the rich have an outsize effect on economic data.IF YOU "SOAK THE RICH", THEN YOU KILL THE ECONOMY ALTOGETHER.
Despite a persistently high unemployment rate of 9.5pc, initial US weekly claims for jobless benefits fell to 429,000 in the week ending July 10, down 29,000 from the week before – the lowest level since August 2008.MORE EVIDENCE HERE:
It was the second straight week that initial claims dropped, in a sign that the American jobs market may be starting to recover.
The US Labor Department said manufacturers, including car makers, had not pressed ahead with seasonal shutdowns, keeping more people in work. General Motors is keeping the majority of its plants open to meet a pick up in demand for some models.
A Labor Department official said: "This is not just a General Motors thing, we are seeing this across a swathe of states, we did not see."
The manufacturing recovery continues to trend upward and has rebounded from severely depressed levels in 2009, according to the quarterly Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI Survey on the Business Outlook—June 2010. The index rose to a record high 81% from 78% reported in the March 2010 report.It breaks the previous high of 80% set in June 2004 and marks the third straight quarter it has reached 50% or above. The new benchmark for the index represents a significant turnaround from March 2009 when the index registered an historic low 21%.
"The overall composite index and several forward-looking individual indexes (orders, export orders, and U.S. prospective shipments) achieved new heights and indicate continued recovery in manufacturing," said Donald A. Norman, Ph.D., MAPI Economist."We should remain cautious, however, because many of the individual indexes are based on year-over-year comparisons. Manufacturing sector production fell sharply during the second quarter of 2009; a broad-based increase in production from the production trough reached at the end of the second quarter of 2009 would naturally lead to an increase in these indexes. Still, the broad-based strength in the composite index and the individual indexes point to further expansion in the next three to six months."
The backlog orders index, which compares the second quarter 2010 backlog of orders with the backlog of orders one year earlier, rose to 87% in June from 63% in the March survey.
"Low-cost sourcing can result in lower responsiveness and poor customer service, higher costs, and additional risk factors such as supply chain disruptions, diminished intellectual property protection and environmental concerns," said the IDC Manufacturing Insights report for Infor, the business software provider, and IBM.
"Manufacturers will continue to focus on optimising manufacturing operations and the supply chain, but they are now consistently prioritising customer fulfilment above all else. This is a remarkable shift from pure cost cutting initiatives of the past as seen in 2009 with the crisis." North American and European manufacturers were making this change, the report added.
Fraser Geekie, an in-sourcing expert from Oxford-based The Consultancy Company, said that the repatriation of production was now high on boardroom's agendas.
"I am now seeing a significant trend of people maybe not doing it but businesses questioning whether the offshoring and outsourcing they did eight to nine years ago is the right thing now. It's driven by currency and increased supply chain costs."
President Hugo Chavez has ordered a review of Venezuela's ties with the Vatican amid tensions between his government and the country's bishops.
An accord with the Vatican gave privileges to the Catholic Church not enjoyed by other churches, he said.
The Venezuelan Episcopal Conference warned this week about growing political polarisation ahead of key legislative elections in September.
Mr Chavez has described local Catholic leaders as "troglodytes".
CHAVEZ IS AN EVIL SOCIALIST; THEREFORE IT IS ONLY NATURAL THAT HE SHOULD DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM THE WEST AND JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.
AS A LEFTIST, CHAVEZ KNOWS IF HE HAS ANY HOPE OF MAKING HIS SOCIALIST STATE OMNIPOTENT HE MUST DESTROY ALL THE OTHER INSTITUTIONS WHICH HAVE A COMPETING HOLD MON THE PEOPLE.
THE CHURCH IS ONE SUCH INSTITUTION.
NOTE:
... where would we be without Judeo-Christian believers? Where would Western civilization be, What would our nation be?MORE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF JUDEO-CHRISTIAN RELIGION TO OUR FOUNDING HERE.
There would be no Declaration Of Independence without believers. We are endowed by our CREATOR with inalienable rights; (these rights are not the gift of aristocrats or the government or politicians!).
YES: Natural Law is the foundation of our founding - as the Judeo-Christian God is the very foundation of Western Civilization.
What would our civilization - our CULTURE - look like and sound like without God?No Sistine Chapel.
No Beethoven's Ninth.
No Bach.
No Psalms.
No Agnus Dei.
No Pieta.
No Gospel.
No Magdelene.
No David.
No Western Civilization.
YEAH YEAH YEAH: the knee-jerk left-wing postmodernists always retaliate to this by harking back to Europe's religious wars - as if they were the worst wars in history.
THEY WEREN'T. NOT BY A LONG-SHOT.
Socialism killed more in the last century - the 20th C - than Judeo-Christianity killed over religion in the previous 20 COMBINED! Western religion killed a few million in the religious wars. Socialism 150 million.
And Islam killed more than socialism - (granted, they had 14 centuries and killed about 270 million for their ideology, their martial creed; that's more than all the West's wars combined; YES: Islam is the world's most deadly ideology).
So when you hear the militant atheists and postmodernists rant and rave about the ills of Judeo-Christianity... tell them to shut up and consider what life would be without Judeo-Christian Civilization.
And remind them that without a belief in God, our future might easily become as devoid of higher value as our pre-Judeo-Christian past. That was a world without personal liberty and without democracy; it was a world instead filled with pagan despotism, human sacrifice, and utter debauchery.
Imagine there's no leftismWE WILL MAKE ISLAMISM AND POVERTY HISTORY AFTER WE MAKE LEFTISM HISTORY.
It's easy if you try
No commies among us
Only truth and no BIG LIE
Imagine there's no Islam
It isn't hard to do
No hate for jihadis to kill or die for
And no terror too
Imagine no taxes
I wonder if you can
No need for government programs
And no 5 year plan.
You may say I'm a teabagger
Or a zionist racist corprate neocon bitch
I hope someday you'll grow up
And the world will be free and rich.
The study suggests that some people may end up voting for left of centre parties because they hold the mistaken belief that they are left wing…SCIENCE DAILY:
“The most startling result is that the more educated tend to believe that they are more left-wing than they are measured as being,” said Dr Rockey. “That is, well-educated individuals are more likely to think that they are quite left-wing but actually believe things that compared to the rest of the population would make them comparatively right-wing.
"It is clear is that, for whatever reason, an individual's conception of their ideological position often differs from that predicted by a policy question.THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS 3 DAYS AGO:
"Many of these results merit further investigation. Perhaps the most interesting question would be to consider why men and women see things so differently.
"The broad conclusion of the paper must be that individuals either choose not to, or are unable to, locate their ideological positions reliably compared to those of the positions of their compatriots.
"This is further evidence not just that voters are far from fully informed, but that somehow voters consistently misperceive where they lie on the ideological spectrum."
I INTUITIVELY DISCOVERED WHAT THIS STUDY REVEALED - AND I DISCOVERED IT BEFORE THEY STUDIED IT.MY LUNCH WITH FIDEL
A very liberal acquaintance of mine went to see a movie praising Fidel the other day. He dug it.
This lib is the kind of person who is still saying Bush "STOLE" the election, but somehow forgives Fidel and Raul for not even having one once in the last 60 years.
But deep down this lib has some decent American values - values which run counter to the leftist dogma he so doggedly follows. He forgives Fidel because his partisan comrades do, not because he has fully thought it out.
So I figgered I'd use the chasm between his values and the party line to open his eyes.
Here's what I said to him:I said.... what if me and him and his richy-rich buddy went to lunch one day at his favorite restaurant. Me - being poor - ordered pasta for $30; he ordered osso bucco for $50, and his rich pal ordered truffles and foie gras and veal chops for $100. TOTAL: $180.So... I asked my lib friend, what's the FAIREST most JUST way to distribute the $90? Should we split it evenly and each get $30? Or should we each get 50% off of what we each put in?
It was delicious.
The bill comes; we each fork up what we owe on what we each ordered.
A few minutes later the maitre'd returns; he says that because we were their 1,000,000 table served we're gonna get 50% off our bill and he puts $90 bucks on the table.
My lib friend said - without hesitation: we should each get back half of what we each put in: me $15; him $25 and his rich pal $50.
I then told him he just endorsed the Bush tax cuts.
He turned pale and his jaw dropped.
On a deep level, he realized that all the crap he'd heard and repeated FOR YEARS about the Bush Tax Cuts was total bullshit. The Bush Tax Cuts were indeed fair; they were not a tax break for the rich; everyone got back the same percentage of what they put in.
I told him he was a neocon at heart!
I then rubbed it in a little: I told him if he voted his values and not his party them he'd vote GOP sometimes.
I told him he should use his own values to figger out where he stood on any given issue and not wait to see what the editors of the NYTIMES said or columnists at THE NATION.
Many people on the left are the same way: they're on the left now because that's where they've been for decades; it's the circle they travel in and the papers they read, the TV shows and movies they see.
What we need to do to OPEN THEIR EYES is show them that leftist policies do not reflect most of the values they hold dear, nor do they achieve the social goals they've long hoped for.
FURY has erupted after a shopping centre became the first in Britain to introduce Muslim-only toilets. The Middle Eastern-style squat holes, just a hole in the ground, are common in Asia. Two of the £200 “Nile pan” units have been put into the Exchange shopping centre in Rochdale, where one in five people is Asian.LOCAL GUARDIAN:
The centre, home to around 70 shops, said it was simply catering for the needs of many of their local Asian customers. Rochdale is a town with a large Asian community and managers at the shopping complex regularly go on cultural awareness courses, according to the spokeswoman for the centre. During the last course bosses at the shops suggested the idea of hole in the ground type squat toilets to their Asian trainer on the course and there was an enthusiastic response, the spokeswoman said.
WEASEL ZIPPERS LINKS TO THIS TODAY:
Napolit[a]no to Nadar: Bush & Cheney Should Be IndictedRound up here:
Whiskey!
Tango!
Foxtrot!
This is the guy who substitutes for Beck on FOX News, arguing he collected “massive evidence” and that criminal charges should be filed against former Commander-in-Chief. Some Libertarians are just as loony as the liberals in their zeal and disregard for national security.
Heather / Crooks and Liars:
Andrew Napolitano: Bush and Cheney Should Have Been Indicted for Torturing, for Spying and Arresting Without Warrants — Well, this is something you don't see every day. Ralph Nader hosted this interview segment with Fox News' Judge Andrew Napolitano and discussed his book, Lies the Government Told You.Discussion: Think Progress, The Confluence, Alan Colmes' Liberaland, The BRAD BLOG, The Impolitic and LewRockwell.com Blog
Napolitano is wrong.
HERE'S WHY:
REPEAT:Various excerpts (citations omitted) from Justice Scalia’s dissent (joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Thomas and Alito):
Today, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the Court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war….
The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad; the Suspension Clause thus has no application, and the Court’s intervention in this military matter is entirely ultra vires.
The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court’s blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today. The President relied on our settled precedent in Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950), when he established the prison at Guantanamo Bay for enemy aliens.
[I]n response [to the Court’s 2006 ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld], Congress, at the President’s request, quickly enacted the Military Commissions Act, emphatically reasserting that it did not want these prisoners filing habeas petitions. It is therefore clear that Congress and the Executive–both political branches–have determined that limiting the role of civilian courts in adjudicating whether prisoners captured abroad are properly detained is important to success in the war that some 190,000 of our men and women are now fighting…. What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever. But the Court blunders in nonetheless. Henceforth, as today’s opinion makes unnervingly clear, how to handle enemy prisoners in this war will ultimately lie with the branch that knows least about the national security concerns that the subject entails.
What drives today’s decision is neither the meaning of the Suspension Clause, nor the principles of our precedents, but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy. The Court says that if the extraterritorial applicability of the Suspension Clause turned on formal notions of sovereignty, “it would be possible for the political branches to govern without legal constraint” in areas beyond the sovereign territory of the United States. That cannot be, the Court says, because it is the duty of this Court to say what the law is. It would be difficult to imagine a more question-begging analysis.… Our power “to say what the law is” is circumscribed by the limits of our statutorily and constitutionally conferred jurisdiction. And that is precisely the question in these cases: whether the Constitution confers habeas jurisdiction on federal courts to decide petitioners’ claims. It is both irrational and arrogant to say that the answer must be yes, because otherwise we would not be supreme.
Putting aside the conclusive precedent of Eisentrager, it is clear that the original understanding of the Suspension Clause was that habeas corpus was not available to aliens abroad, as Judge Randolph’s thorough opinion for the court below detailed.… It is entirely clear that, at English common law, the writ of habeas corpus did not extend beyond the sovereign territory of the Crown.
Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable “functional” test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner. The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.
The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad; the Suspension Clause thus has no application, and the Court’s intervention in this military matter is entirely ultra vires.SCALIA WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE LAW AND THE AWFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE COURT'S MAJORITY OPINION IN THIS CASE.
The President relied on our settled precedent in Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950), when he established the prison at Guantanamo Bay for enemy aliens.
... Putting aside the conclusive precedent of Eisentrager, it is clear that the original understanding of the Suspension Clause was that habeas corpus was not available to aliens abroad, as Judge Randolph’s thorough opinion for the court below detailed.…
It is entirely clear that, at English common law, the writ of habeas corpus did not extend beyond the sovereign territory of the Crown.
... a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization.
Junior Finance Minister Remi Babalola said the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had asked for help to cover its debts and fund its operations.ONLY A SOCIALIST ENTERPRISE RUN BY THE POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS COULD ACCOMPLISH THIS.
But the NNPC denied the claim and said the government was not paying its own debts to the firm.
The company controls more than half of oil assets in Nigeria - one of the world's biggest exporters.
"NNPC is insolvent as current liabilities exceeded current assets by 754bn naira ($5bn; £3.3bn)," Mr Babalola said at a government finance meeting.
He said the NNPC owed about $3bn (£2bn) to Nigeria's Federation Account, which distributes oil money to varying levels of the country's government.
Oil accounts for about 85% of Nigeria's government revenues.
Subsidised petrol
The NNPC rejected Mr Babalola's claim and said it was able to meet its financial obligations.
"We cannot be classified as insolvent when we have healthy cash flow and we can pay for our crude and product import obligations," said NNPC spokesman Levi Ajuonuma.
* Price capped at 65 naira ($0.44; £0.29) a litre
* Subsidy costs $4bn (£2.6bn) a year
He said the Nigerian government owed the company more than $7bn (£4.6bn) in subsidies "which if reimbursed would enable the NNPC to offset the... debt being owed the Federation Account Allocation Committee".
The NNPC is plagued by mismanagement and corruption, says the BBC's Caroline Duffield in Lagos.
Although Nigeria is a major crude oil producer, it must buy almost all the petroleum products it uses on the international market because its own refineries are insufficient and dilapidated.
The NNPC buys refined petrol at international prices and sells it on to local marketeers at a big discount because Nigerians see cheap petrol as their birthright, says our correspondent.
The cost of capping petrol prices at just 65 naira ($0.44; £0.29) a litre is reportedly at least $4bn (£2.6bn) a year.
Correspondents say the subsidy also fuels smuggling and corruption.
Previous attempts to increase petrol prices have led to massive strikes and a government U-turn.
In May, China agreed a $23bn (£15bn) deal to build four new oil refineries in Nigeria.
President Goodluck Jonathan has promised to tackle corruption in the oil industry. He has sacked some officials from the NNPC and ordered an audit of the firm's accounts.
The Knesset revoked privileges from MK Hanin Zoabi Tuesday, due to her participation in the Gaza aid flotilla in May.She better be. This must serve as an example to any politician who abuses their standings in parliament and office, and works to undermine the security of the country they're "serving" that they are not above the law.
A majority of 34 MKs voted in favor of invalidating her diplomatic passport and revoking her right to receive funding for legal expenses.
A violent brawl was nearly started between Arab and Jewish MKs after the hearing. Zoabi clapped when the Knesset's decision was announced, and MK Yoel Hasson drew close to her and said, "You will soon be a former MK."
France's lower house of parliament has approved a ban on burqa-like Islamic veils, a move that is popular among French voters despite serious concerns from Muslim groups and human rights advocates.Guess who's among the opposition to the bill outside the parliaments (besides the Socialists)?
There were 336 votes for the bill and just one against at the National Assembly. Most members of the main opposition group, the Socialist Party, refused to participate in the vote.
France is the second European country to impose such a ban, after Belgium's lower house of parliament approved a similar ban in April.
Following Tuesday's vote, the ban on face-covering veils will go in September to the Senate, where it also is likely to pass. Its biggest hurdle will likely come after that, when France's constitutional watchdog scrutinizes it.
If it is approved by the senate, the law will go into effect next year, in order to give citizens time to learn the new stipulations. Violators will be fined 150 euro or forced to undergo studies on the principles of citizenship in France, the bill states.
Initiators of the bill, which include President Nicolas Sarkozy, clarified that its aim is to fight oppression of women. Thus any man who forces a woman to cover her face in public will be fined a staggering 30,000 euro, or double that if the female is a minor.
Amnesty International has urged French lawmakers to reject the bill, and a French anti-racism group, MRAP, which opposes such dress, has said a law would be "useless and dangerous." France's highest administrative body, the Council of State, warned in March that a total ban risks being found unconstitutional.Amnesty Irrational is surely the worst of the bunch here, as this is just one more display of their really, REALLY bad side. I hope this bill is ultimately approved, as it will help tremendously in the fight against shari'a tactics.
Kansas City Star:NAACP passes resolution on racism in tea party — Late this afternoon the NAACP passed a resolution calling on all people — including tea party leaders — to condemn racism within the tea party movement. — Passed on the fourth day of the National Association for the Advancement …
WHY DID THE NAACP DO THIS/Posted: July 13th, 2010 10:50 PM ET
From CNN Political Producer Shannon TravisWashington (CNN) – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has passed a resolution that condemns what it feels is rampant racism in the Tea Party movement. Members passed the measure on Tuesday at the NAACP's 101st annual convention being held in Kansas City, Missouri.
Tea Party activists have swiftly denounced the action as unfounded and unfair.
One of the MAJOR reasons Obama beat McCain was the black turnout; they need to repeat this to have any chance of holding the House and the Senate.
Here's the back-story:
THE MARGIN OF VICTORY FOR OBAMA WAS THE BLACK VOTE.In last year’s presidential election, younger blacks voted in greater proportions than whites for the first time and black women turned out at a higher rate than any other racial, ethnic and gender group, a census analysis released Monday confirmed.
As a result, in the election that produced the nation’s first black president, the historic gap between black and white voter participation rates over all virtually evaporated.Total turnout in 2008 was about the same as it was in 2004, about 64 percent of voting age citizens.
But with Barack Obama on the ballot, the makeup of the 131 million who voted last year was markedly different.
While the number of non-Hispanic white voters remained roughly the same, 2 million more blacks, 2 million more Latinos and 600,000 more Asians turned out.
Compared with 2004, the voting rate for black, Asian and Hispanic voters increased by about four percentage points.
The rate for whites declined by one percentage point.
REPEAT: THE MARGIN OF VICTORY FOR OBAMA WAS THE BLACK VOTE.
AND IT WASN'T AN ACCIDENT; POLITICO - 10/6/08, JUST A MONTH BEFORE THE ELECTION:IN 2008, THE LEFT HAD A BLACK MAN ON THE TOP OF THE TICKET, AND TOOK ADVANTAGE OF IT. (THEY ALSO LIED, AND TOLD THE ELECTORATE THAT OBAMA - THE MOST LEFTIST CANDIDATE EVER NOMINATED - WAS A CENTRIST.)As Barack Obama trekked through the Philadelphia suburbs, Northern Virginia and Greensboro, N.C., in recent days, his campaign was ramping up a massive parallel effort in big cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Miami.
In the largely black precincts of those metropolises, radio broadcasts blast constant reminders to vote for Obama, field organizers swarm, and megastars including Jay-Z, Russell Simmons and LeBron James have led massive rallies, working to reach not just the substantial portion of the black community who regularly come out to vote but also the younger people and others who have never before cast a ballot.
Though the rallies are publicized, much of the advertising directed at black voters isn't. Get-out-the-vote ads on radio and television aren't released to the media, and the number of new voters Obama has registered is a closely held secret. He is, however, leaving no stone unturned when it comes to registering African-American voters. The campaign has, for example, a major initiative aimed at turning barbershops and beauty parlors into voter registration offices. This week, Kimora Lee Simmons' E! Network reality show, "Life in the Fab Lane," carried a campaign ad at the bottom of the screen reminding citizens to register to vote.
Monday morning, the deadline for registration in several key states, Obama appeared on two of the most widely heard African-American radio programs, where hosts implored listeners to register to vote and Obama directed them to his campaign's registration website.
"The African-American vote can be a game-changer in all sorts of states," Obama told host Steve Harvey. "In Florida, in Indiana, in North Carolina, in Ohio. I just want people to look at the numbers."
Little of this targeted outreach has produced images of Obama addressing black crowds or mingling with black officials, and most has gone unnoticed by the broader electorate.
"If you didn't notice it, then you probably weren't the target," said Obama spokesman Corey Ealons of the targeted advertising. He described the campaign's general voter registration drive — which has focused heavily on young voters, as well as African-Americans — as "a very extensive effort and that's been one of the highlights and major focuses of the campaign."
IN 2010, THEY DON'T HAVE A BLACK ON TOP OF THE TICKET.
