11/26/07 Monday Conservatively Speaking
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rab League countries led by Saudi Arabia with 16 others will attend a U.S.-insisted peace conference this week in Annapolis, Maryland concentrated on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A report in the Baltimore-Sun said the “mood at Arab League headquarters was more wary than ebullient.” Skepticism abounds about the Arab Leagues intentions, U. S. motives and chances for success. The most severe critics cite Albert Einstein’s admonitions that “Insanity: (is) doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
On the eve of the conference beleaguered University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Francisco Gil-White published and republished his research that could show the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and some other mostly Muslim Arabs have roots in Germany’s NAZI party. Obviously there is ample evidence that many Arab countries, organization and leaders are determined anti-Israeli Jew opponents, and an NAZI-ARAB anti-Semitic nexxus is a diplomatic nuclear weapon. Given the tenuous nature of this week’s consultation almost anything could scuttle it.
Simultaneously Former President Jimmy Carter invited Jewish leaders to meet in advance of Annapolis and was shunned. The Jewish community is still offended by his opinions in his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” and his remarks about the Jewish lobby’s disproportionately large influence on U.S. foreign policy. Observers say Carter was just trying to “horn in” or at least toot his own horn, and nothing would be accomplished by meeting with him.
Hopefully Annapolis can be a step forward rather than backward as the 2000 Camp David Accords painfully proved to be.
“Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing.” — Helen Keller
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ranian money and terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Libya have been the primary sources of fighters and fighting in Iraq according to a trove of recently released documents found in September near Sinbar, Iraq near the Syrian border. According to a Thanksgiving Day article in the New York Times “(T) he most significant discovery was a collection of biographical sketches that listed hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006.” Forth-one percent of the fighters (305) were Saudi citizens and 18% (137) Libyan. Many are recruited and financed through so-called charities that launder money from individuals and other interests. The use of “charities” and “foundations” continues a pattern that goes back at least to the Vietnam era when Soviet interests and others financed large segments of the antiwar and American communist party activities using such front organizations.
Both Saudi Arabia and Libya claim to be U. S. allies while allowing their citizens to be recruited, trained and move to Iraq to attack, kill and wound U. S. and coalition troops. Since the capture of the records and presentation of indelible proof the numbers of fighters from both countries have fallen because of more scrutiny and arrest. In addition many more are being killed and captured. The Times article makes the distinction that such efforts by these charities and individuals are not linked to nor sanctioned by the Saudi or Libya governments. Others are skeptical of these distinctions and the earnestness of both governments.
This is of immediate moment as nations meet to discuss Mideast peace – everyone except Iran. As the conference is set to start Israel says the U. S. and others are underestimated how long it will take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. Israel is under increasing pressure, and believes it can only count on the U. S. to glance away when it attacks Iran. The critical time constraint is the 2008 U. S. Presidential election that is driving so much of what will happen there in the coming year.
Syria has ordered advanced MiG-31E fighter-jets from Russia and Iran is paying the bill. In September Syria’s air force and air defense system was caught flatfooted and embarrassed by a lightening Israeli raid that destroyed a nuclear reactor believed capable of producing enriched Uranium (U-235) and Plutonium (Pu-239) for nuclear weapons.
Three German Companies are operating as fronts to help Iran’s nuclear weapons program. They are Farzanegan, Ascotech, and Persia System Co., also known as DDC. all of Dusseldorf. The companies’ operations have been exposed in detail including collaborators in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates (who then reexported embargoed equipment to Iran) by the Iranian opposition group — The National Council of Resistance of Iran.
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itt Romney’s campaign said last week he does not favor punishing women who have abortions but he favors punishing abortionists maybe by locking them up. He also said, in a Human Events interview, that Roe versus Wade should be overturned. Even though only a minority of American voters can describe what Roe vs. Wade is all about it provoking sharp emotions.
In 1973, in the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provided a fundamental right for women to obtain abortions. The Supreme Court held that the “right to privacy,” established by the Court’s precedents in the contraception cases of the 1960’s and early 70’s, assured the freedom of a person to abort unless the state had a “compelling interest” in preventing the abortion. Opponents of the decision argue that the 14th Amendment simply is not applicable, and the Blackmun opinion and court’s decision was badly decided.
The IOWA CAUCUSES are January 3rd; a MICHIGAN court OK’d its PRIMARY for January 15th so NEW HAMPSHIRE has moved its PRIMARY to January 8th. So that makes MICHIGAN a bigger deal.
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he U. S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and the other ships in its strike group were refused entry into Hong Kong by China’s communist government wrecking a planned Thanksgiving holiday for more than 5,000 sailors and marines. The Thanksgiving port call had been planned for months and hundreds of family members had flown there and were left waiting. After the ships had left the harbor, China realized its arbitrary decision was exposing it to worldwide criticism and possible retaliation by the U. S., Japan and allies it reversed course but the U. S. task force did not heading to its homeport in Japan instead. Hong Kong, until a decade ago was a British protectorate and open port is now under China’s Maoist-Marxist government thumb.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell
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dnaya Rossiya (United Russia) is Russian President Putin’s’ political party and slogan as the March 2008 Presidential election nears. Putin can not run for reelection because the present Constitution limits him to two consecutive 4-year terms. But, it does not stop him from running again in 2012, and it looks more and more like he wants to do it. Putin is increasingly belligerent against the West reviving Soviet era saber rattling.
He has not named specific nations or political parties, but offered a general criticism of his liberal, pro-business and Communist opponents, calling to mind the economic and political uncertainty that plagued Russia before and after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union as well the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that led to the installation of pro-Western regimes. A clear victory for the Объединенная Россия (United Russia) party would give Putin a popular mandate and a loyal parliament to limit his successor’s influence and possibly lay the groundwork for his return to the presidency in 2012 or sooner – if he can engineer amending the Constitution.
Recent Russian bomber flights reminiscent of the COLD WAR days are a symptom of Putin’s forward leaning, pro-military posture and the nationalistic Ednaya Rossiya party. Like China, Iran and others — Russia is increasingly convinced that the U. S. is about to enter a period of narcissistic isolationism that they can take advantage of in the coming decade launching a version of noli me tangere.
The UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION is not a suicide pact. American citizens are guaranteed inalienable rights that are limited by necessity such as not loudly proclaiming your Muslim religious beliefs on an airliner.
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arning that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani “must score early or die,” says Roger Stone meaning Giuliani must win in Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and South Carolina or give up too much ground to his opponents to recover. Rudy’s crowd disagrees saying they can make up ground even if they loose all this early primaries, and right now they would. Romney is taking exactly the opposite track investing heavily in those early states. Huckabee is in a dead heat in Iowa with Romney and Giuliani is fourth behind 3rd place Thompson. The Florida primary is January 29 just ahead of the February Super Tuesday that will wrap it up.
Giuliani, Romney, Thompson and McCain lead Clinton in Florida. Rudy 46-41%; Mitt 46-39%; Thompson 47-38% and McCain 48-38%. Because Clinton leads all Democrats in Florida that points well for the GOP.
On the Democrat side Barack Obama has stuck his nose out ahead of Clinton in Iowa, where Oprah Winfrey has announced she will actively campaign for him. In September Oprah raised nearly $4 million for Obama at a bash at her Santa Barbara home. Hillary’s camp will be watching for her to breach FEC financing rules, and if she does there will be lots of noise. But. they’ll have a tough time given the many overt political ad time on shows like ABC’s the VIEW, FOX News, CNN and MSNBC
President Bush M-U-S-T jawbone the price of a barrel of oil down. There is no oil shortage but there is speculation and speculators and oil companies can and should be intimidated and that is not being done. The 2008 Presidential and Congressional election will N-O-T be about IRAQ despite the mono-syllabics droning of REID-PELOSI. It will be about the economy, and if people continue to hurt Bush will be rightly blamed for a political disaster. Someone needs to simply say, “Mr. President, people do not give a damn about economists statistics when they can’t heat their homes, drive their cars or buy their children Christmas presents. ACT!”
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he Commission on Presidential Debates picked Mississippi, Tennessee and New York as the locales for next fall’s presidential debates. Each debate will be 90-minutes long and begin at 9PM eastern time. The first debate will focus on domestic policy, and foreign policy will be the topic for the third. The candidates will sit at tables and be divided into eight, 10-minute issue segments. There will be a single moderator for each debate and they will be selected next summer. The details are: Sept. 26, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford; Oct. 7, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn; Oct. 15, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., and the vice presidential debate will be held Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis.
CNN will host a so-called YouTube debate for Republican contenders this Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 8PM ET.
The NEW YORK TIMES admitted Tuesday that Baghdad is returning to normal, and residents are coming back to their homes and businesses as security improves.
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illionaire Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban financed, and Brian De Palma directed a movie flop titled “Redacted.” Described by those who have seen it as “anti-American” and “anti-military” the film opened the weekend before Thanksgiving taking in a paltry $26,000 (that’s right twenty-six thousand) which I believe to be the worst opening weekend result ever for any film. To punctuate the propaganda for the enemy, the film ends with a gruesome montage called “Collateral Damage,” in which pictures of dead Iraqis are projected on the screen and whose identities have been “blacked out” apparently due to legal concerns.
“Redacted” is about a rape and murder in Iraq for which five U. S. soldiers were tried and convicted and one maybe executed but had already been kicked out of the military before the incident was discovered. De Palma has hit the rape theme before, in a 1980s anti-Vietnam War movie called “Casualties of War.” The director explained that “the premise for both wars [Vietnam and Iraq] is essentially the same, and that’s why this particular atrocity has occurred twice.” The Cuban-DePalma film is nothing more than propaganda, despicable and harmful to those who serve and its perpetrators and all their efforts should be shunned.
President Bush told ABC’s Charlie Gibson last week that HILLARY looks like the 2008 Democrat presidential nominee. Bill O’Reilly says HILLARY HAS A LOCK ON THE DEMOCRAT NOMINATION and only some unimpeachable scandal can prevent that. Assuming Republicans field a credible candidate he says the General Election will come down to Florida and Ohio. Ohio is evenly divided; while the GOP tends to lead in Florida. The wildcard is California’s ballot initiative from winner-take-all to allocation by Congressional district winner. If it gets past all its hurdles, and passes next June it could swing the entire national election to a Republican by awarding an Ohio sized 20-22 Electoral College votes. The ballot initiative once thought dead has been resurrected still faces a fight at the ballot box, and then court challenges.
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an Francisco has its own “Municipal Foreign Policy” declaring itself a sanctuary city among other self-proclaimed nonsensical policies. Its most recent declaration is an intention to issue every resident, despite legal status or criminal background an official identification card. In addition the City and County governments are arm twisting local financial institutions and other businesses to accept the identification as official allowing anyone to open bank and checking accounts and do business. It is unclear whether those institutions will be subjected to federal reporting requirements such as reporting transfers to and from terrorists states or known drug dealers. Observers call this a dangerous precedent in the wake of the national scandal over the now defunct New York state plan to indiscriminately issue driver’s licenses to anyone wanting one.
43% of Americans now say the U.S. and its allies are winning the war on terror, and 30% say terrorists are winning 22% say they are unsure, and 5% are simply vacant.
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dozen states are mulling whether to introduce anti-illegal immigration measures similar to those adopted this year in OKLAHOMA and ARIZONA. OKLAHOMA’s statute denies undocumented aliens public benefits like welfare, allows police to detain illegal immigrants and exposes employers to state fines and civil liability for employing undocumented workers instead of legal residents. GEORGIA and COLORADO had previously enacted tough immigration control policies as well, but the Sooner State is now generally considered to have the strictest such measure in the nation. In ARIZONA employers who do knowingly hire illegal workers can lose their business license.
Carol Helms, who founded Immigration Reform for OKLAHOMA Now, which worked to support HB 1804. Helms says she has personally advised like-minded citizens groups in KANSAS, NEBRASKA, MONTANA, CALIFORNIA, ALABAMA and NEW JERSEY, as well as FLORIDA. Others considering it include: SOUTH CAROLINA, NORTH CAROLINA, UTAH, MISSOURI, TENNESSEE and ARKANSAS.
STARBUCKS is running TV ads for the first time in its history. SALES are dropping as consumers appear to object to increasing prices - those $8 coffee drinks are getting much harder to sell.
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n a little noticed ruling an Ohio Federal Court Judge Christopher A. Boyko dismissed 14 home foreclosure actions brought on behalf of mortgage investors. He ruled that they failed to prove their ownership of the properties on which they wanted to foreclose. Why — because of the massive repackaging of loans into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) — $6.5 trillion in outstanding securitized mortgage debt. Mortgage notes put in CDO’ typically appear as data transfers rather than actual legal transfers, a move intended to speed the process. So, the Judge said that’s not a legal transfer of title.
“This court ruling in Ohio means that the securitized trusts own nothing,” according to Bob Chapman of the International Forecaster. “The investors in these securities might have assumed — wrongly, it turns out — that they actually owned some real estate in these deals. The problem is, they own nothing.” Legions of lawyers are rushing to fin a fix or block it. If a mortgagee is in defaults a runs to the court it gets confusing. Plus, properties in CDOs that are in default are hard to be fixed, and could wind up costing those who own them more than it is worth to seize and sell properties.
NEWSWEEK lends credibility to Moulitsas, publisher of dailykos.com, who says that Democrats need to make Bush’s record the primary issue of the 2008 campaign, and counterpointed it with Karl Rove’s first column calling Hillary hard and brittle, and predictably was printed on a left facing, and less read page while Moutitsas gets the right page placement.
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he Supreme Court announced last week that it will decide whether the District of Columbia’s 1976 ban on handguns violates the Constitution, a choice that will put the justices at the center of the controversy over the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years. In 1939 the court ruled on the U. S. versus Miller about a bootlegger and bank robber who transported a sawed off shotgun across state lines. National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). Passed in response to public outcry over the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the NFA requires certain types of firearms (including but not limited to fully automatic firearms and short-barreled rifles and shotguns) to be registered with the Miscellaneous Tax Unit (later to be folded into what eventually became the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF.
The Supreme Court declared then that no conflict between the NFA and the Second Amendment had been established, writing:
“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ’shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”
The court will hear the District of Columbia case forbidding any citizen to possess any firearm anywhere within the District early in 2008. A decision likely would come before it adjourns at the end of June 2008 and if it does that assures the issue will be front and center just in time for the Presidential Nominating conventions next summer.
Saturday Fred Thompson hit Rudy Giuliani saying, in effect, all of America is NOT NEW YORK CITY and Giuliani should stop acting like it is and that he can simply carbon copy it across America. “I think the sentiments of those people in the rest of the country are in support of the Second Amendment - which is where I’ve always been and I don’t think he’s ever been,” Thompson said.
New Hampshire was first named North Virginia and was once under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
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Florida judge cited Psalm 14:1 in dismissing an atheist lawsuit that alleged discrimination because while there are religious holidays there is no holiday for atheists. The judge reasoned that since Psalm 14:1 says ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God’ that makes April Fools Day an atheist holiday, and kicked everyone out of court.
“I’ll tell you what war is all about, you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” Gen.USAF Curtis LeMay.
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n Amsterdam resident has put for sale on eBay a chestnut that he says came from the tree that Anne Frank gazed upon while hiding from the Nazis, as activists fight to save the diseased tree from being felled Wednesday (they stopped it – for now). The chestnut has a bid of about $3,000. The seller says the buyer can grow his own Anne Frank chestnut tree.
Saturday is “black cat day”, in Italy, an initiative by an animal rights group to try to stop the killing of thousands of the cats by superstitious citizens convinced they bring bad luck.Saturday is “black cat day”, in Italy, an initiative by an animal rights group to try to stop the killing of thousands of the cats by superstitious citizens convinced they bring bad luck.Last Saturday was “black cat day” in Italy and designed to stop superstitious citizens from killing black felines which perish by the thousands.
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e count most everything in tens – likely based on our ten fingers and toes – the biggest and universal exception is how we keep time. The Babylonians made astronomical calculations in the sexagesimal (base 60) system they inherited from the Sumerians, who thought it up around 4,500 years ago. The sexagesimal system is still used to measure angles, geographic coordinates and time. In fact, both the circular face of a clock and the sphere of a globe owe their divisions to the 4,500-year-old numeric system.
The system is based on increments of 6, 12, 60, and 360 The Babylonians divided the sky in the 12 signs of the ZODIAC, a circle into 360 degrees, and the day into 12 hours of light and dark. The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (who lived circa 276 to 194 B.C.) divided a circle into 60 parts in order to devise an early geographic system of latitude. Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude around and devised a system of longitude lines. Around 150 A. D. Ptolemy explained and expanded on Hipparchus’ work by subdividing each of the 360 degrees of latitude and longitude into 60 smaller segments for greater accuracy because as you get farther away from the origin point the distance between the 360 degrees grew greater and more accuracy was needed.
The first division, partes minutae primae, or first minute, became known simply as the “minute.” The second segmentation, partes minutae secundae, or “second minute,” became known as the second. It was not practical to consider minutes until the first mechanical clocks that displayed minutes appeared near the end of the 16th century. As clocks got better second hands appeared. Soon the idea of 60 seconds in a minute; 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day was accepted worldwide as was the 360 degree circle, latitude and longitude.
Keeping absolutely accurate time was not entirely possible until the atomic age and most specifically when in 1967, one second was redefined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 energy transitions of the cesium atom. So-called atomic clocks are everywhere today and you can buy a clock that resets to the NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST.com) that broadcasts the time by radio to anyone with such an “atomic” clock or wristwatch adjusting it to within 1 second per million years accuracy.
An oddity is that after seconds could be easily measured the sexagesimal system was abandoned in favor of the metric system measuring sub-second time in tenths; hundredths and even millionths of a second.
I happen to wear an “atomic” wristwatch. The only bad thing is having a wrist watch that’s smarter than I am.
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