12/10/07 Monday Conservatively Speaking

The National Hurricane Center’s 2008 forecast is not as apocalyptic as in recent year’s (those have completely missed their mark) predicting only one major storm to make U. S. landfall next year.

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or the first time Oprah entered the fray on the side of a Presidential politician — Barack Obama — last weekend and packed them in for him forcing Democrats Clinton and Edwards almost entirely off the stage. The Obama-Oprah Show had to find a bigger venue in South Carolina after attracting the biggest crowd ever in Iowa. She will make a positive difference in Barack’s favor. Oprah could be the beginning of a Celebrity-Politician trend with Barbra Streisand and Hillary harmonizing; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rocking for Romney, and the Huck and Chuck (Norris) Show doesn’t seem destined for political box office boffo.

 

Oprah’s endorsement speech in Iowa was outstanding. Crowds everywhere were overflowing. Media attention was frothy. Oprah will have a big influence particularly among her vast audience of 8.6 million viewers and fans. Her message is simple “I know him well enough to believe in his moral authority,” Winfrey told the Hollywood Reporter. Remember she took an unknown jury consultant from Texas and made him a national celebrity – Dr. Phil.

 

Hillary threw a staffer under the bus because that individual allegedly authored an unauthorized blog about Obama’s Muslim heritage. The Washington Post apologized for “reader misunderstanding” that its article about it was meant to discredit the blog – how about rotten writing?

 

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) was on NBC’s MEET THE PRESS Sunday morning with an often snotty and always liberal Tim Russert in an hour-long bout including:

 

1. Giuliani admitted he’s trailing in early states but is in good shape in later big states – that he hopes count more.

2. On the NEI he said all options are still available and a preemptive attack is still on the table and pressure should be kept up on the “highly irresponsible regime” in Iran.

3. He defended his and his company’s business relationship with Qatar.

4. He laughed off his law firm’s clients including North Korean and Venezuelan Dictators Kim Jong Il and Hugo Chavez saying the relationships were arm’s length, for subsidiary groups, and that he can’t publish his complete client list because of confidentiality.

5. On federally indicted friend and disgraced NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik Rudy said he was mistaken in not vetting him more carefully, is sorry for it, and learned from it.

6. Giuliani said NYPD made the call on providing taxpayer paid security for his then mistress Judith Nathan.

 

Over all I rate Giuliani’s performance C+ with very weak answers on items 4 and 6 partly offset with better answers on 1, 2 and 5. Item 4 was a charitable “C.” Democrats were furiously taking notes.

 

Huckabee (R-AR); Edwards (D-NC); Biden (D-DE); McCain (R-AZ); Richardson (D-NM);Clinton (D-NY); Dodd (D-CT); Thompson (R-TN), and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).have already been in the barrel. You can see any one or all of the MEET THE CANDIDATES interviews at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21654394/ Next Sunday Mitt Romney will be on the program.

NEWSWEEK headlines with its HOLY WAR IN AMERICAN POLITICS lead article next week.

 

The ever more arrogant and disconnected NBC has reversed its decision not to run holiday ads thanking our troops and will now run the FREEDOMS WATCH ads. NBC originally said its policy is not to run “controversial” ads. Judge how controversial the ads are for yourself at http://www.freedomswatch.org/MediaCenter/VideoAds/tabid/73/Default.aspx.

 

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has pulled to within a single percentage point of the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a general election match-up — Rasmussen Reports says. Remarkably Huckabee is tied with the surging Obama. Among Democrats in Iowa, Obama and Clinton are locked in a tight race with John Edwards. Clinton’s lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama in South Carolina’s Presidential Primary has disappeared.

Friday Huckabee got smacked on the nose with a rolled up tax bill thus — Fred Thompson on Mike Huckabee in a new mailer: “Both Mike Huckabee and Bill Clinton earned a ‘D’ lifetime rating on the Cato Institute’s scorecard of governors. . . . Mike Huckabee talks like a Republican but taxes like a Democrat.”

Huckabee is viewed favorably by 40% of Likely Voters nationwide and unfavorably by 36%. His name recognition and favorable ratings have grown significantly since summer. Clinton is currently viewed favorably by 47% and unfavorably by 53%. Obama’s numbers are 48% favorable, 47% unfavorable. New polling data released Sunday shows Obama tied with John McCain, in a toss-up with Rudy Giuliani, and holding modest leads over Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney nationwide.

Romney got generally good marks for his Thursday speech about being a Mormon and a man of faith. He blurred the line between church and state saying freedom requires religion and religion requires freedom sending leftists secularist into spasms. Voters nationally ranks their willingness to vote for a Mormon for President barely ahead of an atheist or a Muslim and well behind a Chrisitian, Catholic or Jew.

Giuliani and Clinton are still seen as the most likely to get nominated by their respective parties.

Russia publicly rebuffed Secretary of State Rice’s request for more sanctions against Iran but privately joined growing support from European allies for sanctions. Russia has recently increased its naval presence in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf using its recently reinvigorated and now permanent base in Syria on the Mediterranean. Russia has not had a permanent naval presence in the region since the Cold War. Gulf States have expressed concerns and worry of the consequences if Russian and Iranian naval forces mix and maneuver together.

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he ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, is “profoundly disappointed” with the way the intelligence community has handled the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and says he is “not convinced” of their conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003. He called the closed door presentation of the National Intelligence Estimate “pathetic.” Hoekstra said the intelligence community “… can’t get analysis right… can’t build satellites… can’t keep a secret.”

“While the intelligence may have gotten better, it hasn’t improved to the point where we can make this kind of definitive statement, that Iran has stopped their weapons program,” he told Newsmax in an exclusive interview on Thursday. Sifting through the code speak he is saying what the entire Mideast and other U. S. allies have been asking – was the U. S. duped? There is talk that President Bush appoint a bi-partisan commission to look into it but, that will likely produce another of those gerrymandered products no one can or will read or pay attention to.

Israeli Defense minister Ehud Barak publicly argues that Iran had in fact restarted its nuke bomb program. “It’s apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped its military nuclear program for a time. But, in our opinion, since then, it has apparently continued that program.” If one reads the NIE report carefully such a restart is not ruled out but fudged saying Iran’s program was shutdown as recently as mid-2007 a claim Israel and others vigorously dispute.

Israel says Washington’s refusal to heed the intelligence Israel has gathered on Iran’s covert military nuclear program which refutes its latest NIE report; denying Israel access to authentic US intelligence and has embarked on steps detrimental to Israel in relation to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon, without informing it has strained U. S.-Israeli relations to the breaking point.

A friend in the Washington DC area said the scuttlebutt is the NIE Report was quickly revised and cobbled together to “rebalance” a growing belief the U. S. is prevailing in the war on terror and winning in Iraq and Afghanistan and to put pressure on Israel not to attack Iran’s nuke bomb facilities.

Incoming Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, told the Sunday Telegraph that Teheran could enrich enough uranium to make an atomic bomb by 2009. From there it is a very short trip to a nuke bomb. “It should be made clear that if Iran does not co-operate then military confrontation is inevitable. It is either co-operation or confrontation.” Prosor expressed astonishment over Washington’s latest intelligence assessment downgrading the Iranian threat. He said (Iran) “will do everything they can to derail any progress that is made between the Israelis and Palestinians.”

British analysts believed that the Iranians, knowing their phone conversations were being listened to, deliberately gave misinformation. “We are skeptical. We want to know what the basis of it is, where did it come from? Was it on the basis of the defector? Was it on the basis of the intercepted material? They say things on the phone because they know we are up on the phones. They say black is white. “They will say anything to throw us off,” the official told the Telegraph.

Norman Podhoretz. a Giuliani foreign policy adviser, is among the relative few who publicly are suspicious that the NIE was written to undermine President Bush’s foreign policy.

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raq’s ambassador expressed “concern” over the latest U.S. intelligence report and explained that Baghdad will likely speed up the creation of its own network and decrease dependence on Washington in such matters. Israel, Saudi Arabia, several Gulfs states have expressed similar question about the political biases in U. S. intelligence estimation and reporting. Some hitherto allies are reportedly withholding information to the U. S. fearing it will be misused and/or leaked to the press by staffers of members of Congress.

Less than 24 hours after the NIE was released, the Kremlin announced resumption of Russian work to finish Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr and the consignment of nuclear fuel. Still in crowing mode, Iran’s oil minister Gholam Hossein Nozari announced Saturday, Dec. 8, the cessation of oil transactions in US dollars. He labeled the greenbacks an “unreliable” currency.

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mid all the huffing and puffing there is an emerging, exquisite solution scenario involving: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, et. al. SAUDI ARABIA has apparently brokered secret backdoor talks between IRAN and the U. S. to avoid a war. Last week’s revelation that Iran’s nuclear weapons program had been put on hold in 2003 effectively took the US military option off the table. Absenting a U. S. attack on Iran was stipulated by Riyadh and Tehran to unlock direct talks. But, first a U. S. stipulation that Iran had to tamp down violence in Iraq, and keep it down which has happened.

The NIE – even if it is horse hockey — may have been facilitated as a trump card to start such talks as what could be a last ditch effort to prevent war with Iran. If Iran defaults Israeli loudly reserves its full range of options that Iran knows it could conduct successfully fomenting terrific internal unrest by exposing its ineptitudes. The U. S. wants:

1. The halt of Iranian weapons and road bomb shipments into Iraq and Afghanistan;

2. An Iranian instruction to Hezbollah to open the way for the election of a Lebanese president, in return for which Washington will not interfere in a new government with a place of honor for the Iranian surrogate militia. Israel calls this a sellout.

3. The naming of Saudi Arabia as arbitrator of American and Iranian differences.

4. A US pledge to backtrack on its charges that the Iran is engaged in developing nuclear weapons. That was embodied in the dramatically revised NIE that lifted the American military axe from over Iran’s strategic and economic infrastructure – and possibly regime - but also tied but did not handcuff Israel’s hands.

Skeptics question whether that is simply too slick for a Bush Administration that so often has been ham-handed and that it smacks of the 1938 Sudeten Crisis. Similarly there is worry it leaves the U. S. wide open to Iranian duplicity. Certainly it represents a major shift in U. S. – Israeli relations and policy. Some of this is the result of Israeli’s failures during the recent Lebanon conflict where it was largely impotent militarily exposing what some sees as Israel’s and its vaunted military’s have feet of clay.

Perhaps the greatest domestic coup is that the usually hostile U. S. media has swallowed the pretext hook, line and sinker and hasn’t figured out what’s really going on.

In the spirit of the season pPorn star Mary Carey, who shot to fame by running for California governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger, unveiled plans on Tuesday to auction off her autographed, recently removed breast implants for charity.Porn star Mary Carey, who shot to fame by running for California governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger, unveiled plans on Tuesday to auction off her autographed, recently removed breast implants for charity.orn star Mary Carey and onetime candidate for California Governor will auction her autographed breast implants for charity. Gives the idea of stocking stuffers a whole new feel doesn’t it?

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he arrest and guilty plea of FBI Agent and CIA operative Nada Nadim Prouty is being viewed within U.S. intelligence circles as a disaster that has compromised some of the most significant intelligence sources on terrorism in the U.S. government. It is also the first major case showing that weak U.S. counterintelligence poses risks beyond foreign intelligence, to include penetration by foreign terrorist organizations.

Additionally, there are worst-case fears that the compromise of U.S. secrets could undermine future planned military operations against Iran, because of the close links between Hizbullah and Iran. An FBI said, on condition of anonymity, “This make us all look like a bunch of boobs. Why would anyone believe what our intelligence people say?” They don’t.

 

Chinese agents recently tried to hack into computers at the secret OAK RIDGE NUCLEAR FACILITY in Tennessee .

Speaking of boobs “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” ratings beat those for “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show,” which ran on CBS two hours later last Tuesday, by almost 7 million viewers (14.3 million to 7.4 million viewers). I suppose that means a glowing nose beats – well never mind.

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ousing markets from Punta Gorda, Florida, to Stockton, California, will crash and suffer price drops of more than 30 percent before the housing crisis is over in 2009, a report from Moody’s Economy.com said on Thursday. It will not be until 2010 before a measurable improvement in sales, construction and pricing will emerge, the report said. Price declines, however, will vary in degree throughout the nation, with more than a 15 percent peak-to-trough expected around Washington and Detroit. Significant declines are also expected throughout most of Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada. During the housing market’s heyday, speculative activity was rampant in these areas, causing prices to surge much higher than other regions.

Fraud committed both by shady loan brokers and by devious borrowers, combined with poor underwriting, may account for up to 25 percent of subprime mortgage defaults made last year, reports Fitch Ratings, which analyzed a sampling of defaults. Problems included occupancy misrepresentation, suspicious credit reports, miscalculations of debt-to-income rations, and questionable incomes. The FBI has become involved and is finding widespread fraud.

The fraud is in two categories for housing and fraud for profit. In fraud for housing the borrower commits the crime to get the loan and the house but intends to meet the mortgage. In fraud for profit, however, which often involves industry insiders and multiple conspirators, the criminals have no intention of repaying the loan.

Long term investors are moving to take advantage and be ready for the turnaround. The real estate arm of Morgan Stanley recently closed a $525 million deal that gave it an 80 percent stake in 11,000 home sites valued at $1.3 billion sold by Lennar, the country’s biggest homebuilder by revenue.

Alan Greenspan is increasingly being tagged for enabling the housing bubble and bust as well as the dot com debacle of the 1990s with profligate financial policies. Defenders say it was his policies that facilitating the boom-bust-boom cycles of recent years.

Economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast said the damage from the housing market won’t be enough to create a recession. The forecast, one of the most widely respected in the nation, is in line with earlier predictions from UCLA but acknowledges that things have gotten slower lately.

 

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ep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and attorney fees because he illegally released a taped 1996 cell phone call of the Republican leadership council. The call had been intercepted by a Florida couple using a police scanner, given to McDermott who distributed it to news media. McDermott said it was his 1^st Amendment right but an appeals court disagreed and the Supreme Court will not hear the case so he’s personally on the hook.

“Sen. Clinton said that as president she would bring the troops home. The troops? She can’t even get Bill to come home.”– Leno

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he Writer’s strike is benefiting Hillary Clinton by keeping her from being the butt of jokes on TV. From Jan. 1, 2007 to Oct. 10, 2007, the former first lady was the subject of 186 late-night jokes as reported by the Los Angeles Times. All of the other Democratic candidates combined chalked up a mere 197 quips. Vice President Dick Cheney (197), Paris Hilton (258) and late-night perennial punching bag George W. Bush (826).

Don Imus went back on the air last Monday morning on Citadel Broadcasting saying, “Dick Cheney is still a war criminal and Hillary Clinton is still Satan.” His cast now includes two black staffers. Advertisers have been cool to Imus waiting to see whether the premium prices being demanded are worth it.

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n apocryphal if charming Christmas story involved three sisters who, left without a dowry and so little prospect for marriage, hung their stockings on the fireplace to dry ne snowy Christmas eve. As Santa Claus passed by, and seeing the stockings. he flung gold coins for a dowry down the chimney landing in them making them the very first Christmas stockings.

Retreating from earlier optimistic predictions, newspaper publishers and analysts now say next year will probably be just as tough for the troubled industry as 2007. With shareholders staking their hopes on a turnaround in 2008, this is bad news for newspaper stocks–and may also torpedo major deals like the planned buyout of Tribune Co., for instance.

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ighty-three percent (83%) of Americans say they will celebrate Christmas this year, while 3% say they celebrate Hanukkah and 3% will recognize the Winter Solstice. Last year 90% of Americans said they would celebrate Christmas. Fewer people plan on decorating their homes for the holidays this year. Most Americans (67%) say they intend to decorate, that is down from 78% in last year’s poll. Twenty-four percent (24%) do not plan on decorating. Sixty-one percent (61%) plan on attending a religious service this holiday, while 31% do not, with a larger percentage of Republicans (74%) than Democrats (54%) saying they will go to a service this year. Source – Rasmussen Polling.

A 70-year old Santa Claus in an Australian department store was given the heave-ho for saying “ho ho ho” and singing Christmas songs to children. In Australia Santas had been warned to say “ha ha ha” because the word “ho,” which is American slang for whore, could offend women, media reported. Officials said he was fired for an “attitude problem.”

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ational Democrats may have been handed next year’s Presidential election when GOP backers of an initiative to change how California’s electoral votes are counted admitting qualifying for the June 2008 ballot is “unrealistic” and they will direct their attention to November. By waiting until November, initiative backers face two significant downsides. First, they can’t benefit from the depressed turnout expected in June, a factor that would have likely meant a smaller proportion of Democratic voters. They also stand to face a legal challenge over whether the initiative would apply to the 2008 presidential election because they would appear on the same ballot. The change would likely have awarded 20-22 more Electoral College votes to the GOP (an Ohio sized allotment) and decided the election.

The LATIN word for left was “sinister” and in Roman times things left were suspect and believed guided by evil. In Nero’s time his advisor Gaius Petronius (AD 27-66) insisted his fellow Romans entered and departed a building on their right foot only – guard were placed at the entrance of all public building to ensure the practice and violators were barred, chastised or could be arrested. That led to the idiom “starting off on the wrong foot.”

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Stumped about what to give that special someone this Christmas? How about some rhino poop? The International Rhino Foundation is auctioning separately on eBay four pieces of dung from the endangered species and will use the proceeds to fund conservation effortshe International Rhino Foundation, headquartered in Florida, is auctioning endangered Rhino feces and what some see as the perfect Christmas gift for someone who has everything – four pounds of Rhino dung. Proceeds for what may be the first e-bay auction of poop will be used for foundation programs. Each piece of rhino dung has been dried, sealed and mounted in a clear trophy box, and labeled with the name of the rhino species that produced it. Prices vary depending upon the rarity of the species – proving excrement is happening.

Clintonista Nancy Soderberg, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, is briefing NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg on foreign policy increasing speculation that he is preparing to a run for President as an Independent is current front runners falter.

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Louisiana man has been sentenced to more than four years in prison for bilking friends and family out of nearly $900,000 by convincing them that his wife was a government agent who could arrange to have their medical problems diagnosed by satellite imaging. If any medical problems were found, secret agents would administer medicine to cure them The pair is required to repay $873,786.94. It’s a good thing there’s no laws against stupidity or there would be a lot of people in jail there.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been campaigning for his Platform for America in Iowa and some think to become candidate for Vice President. He is one smart cookie.

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