12/31/07 Monday, Conservatively Speaking
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he earliest recording of a new year celebration was in Mesopotamia, c. 2000 B.C. and was celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March. The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice. Early Romans picked March 1 then the first month of the 10-month calendar. The first time the new year was celebrated on January 1st was in Rome in 153 B.C. because that was the beginning of the civil year, the month that the two newly elected Roman consuls—the highest officials in the Roman republic—began their one-year tenure. Nevertheless many stuck to March 1 until 46 BC when Julius Caesar instituted the new Julian calendar replacing the old lunar one and decreed January 1st as the start of the New Year.
In 567 the Council of Tours abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year considering it pagan in origin and confusion reigned. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar reform (that we use today) restoring January 1 as New Year’s Day. The Catholic world adopted it but many Protestant countries did not. For instance, the reformed calendar was not adopted by the British and it colonies, including America, until 1752.
The famous TIMES SQUARE BALL that descends to mark the end of the old and beginning of the NEW YEAR will marks its 100th Anniversary at 12 Midnight tonight.
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uld Lang Syne” is an old Scottish song that was first published by the poet Robert Burns in the 1796. But it was bandleader Guy Lombardo first heard “Auld Lang Syne” in his hometown of London, Ontario, where it was sung by Scottish immigrants and popularized it when he and his Royal Canadians played it at a New Year’s Eve party at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City in 1929. From 1930s until 1976 he played it on a midnight radio broadcast from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The song became such a New Year’s tradition that Life magazine wrote that “if Lombardo failed to play ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ the American public would not believe that the New Year had really arrived.”
The words ‘Auld Lang Syne’ literally translate from old Scottish dialect meaning ‘Old Long Ago’ and is about love and friendship in times past. The phrase is not far removed from “Once Upon A Time.” The lyrics in the song Auld Lang Syne referring to ‘We’ll take a Cup of Kindness yet’ relate to a drink shared by men and women to symbolise friendship. Happy New Year!!!
A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday has Hillary 31%; Obama 27%, and Edwards 24% in Iowa. Romney and Huckabee are tied and McCain a distant 3td at 11%. The Iowa caucuses are Thursday.
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Ihadists Muslim radicals – including the Taliban and al Qaeda — have largely been responsible for rioting and terror attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere since former Prime Minister Bhutto’s assassination last Thursday. There is growing evidence too those radical elements assassinated her. Their goal is to destabilize Pakistan and leave open the possibility of a radical Islamic regime with nuclear weapons. Pakistan is believed to have about thirty nuclear warheads.
The U. S. has spent about $100 million to help Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal which President Musharraf has accepted and even welcomed. Admittedly Musharaff has been duplicitous in his “war” against terror choosing to allow a sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qaeda in a northwest Pakistan. Bhutto’s death, as head of Pakistan’s largest moderate political party, leaves open election of more radical elements. The gravest threat is infiltration by Taliban and al Qaeda agents especially if they have support from within the government or military by similarly motivated Muslims and/or those who have been bought.
For now there is probably no immediate concern about useful Pakistani nukes falling into terrorists hands. Pakistan may be using the U. S. devised PAL (Permissive Action Link) system that disables its nuclear weapons. It is an electro-mechanical encoded sequence requiring redundant participants with knowledge of complicated, exact and sequential steps. PAL is built deep into the weapons and is not just a “padlock” added onto it. That geometrically complicates using the weapons and under certain circumstances allows the weapon to be permanently rendered useless.
Bypassing a PAL is, as one weapons designer graphically put it, is about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end.”
Whether or not U. S. nuclear weapons experts are now in or are invited into and deployed to Pakistan to help it safeguard its nuclear stockpile is not known and in any case would be top secret lest someone in the U. S. Congress or State Department leak the fact if not the weapons’ actual locations. The situation is in tatters and there are wide ranging discussion from spiriting the weapons out of Pakistan to destroying them in place with or without Pakistan’s help. The Pakistani military are not boobs; wild-eyed religious radicals (in fact generally to the contrary) – so it’s a furball.
BACKGROUND: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, is often described as an “Islamic extremist” and “the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program.” In 2004 admitted that he had sold nuclear technology to a number of foreign countries, including North Korea and Libya, and is known to have collaborated with al Qaeda. A. Q. Khan, though not arrested has had “strict security restrictions imposed on him” according to a Pakistan foreign affairs official. He is believed to be under a constant and relentless guard.
Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007) was the last mature member of arguably Pakistan’s most powerful and one of its most corrupt political families. At 16 she entered and completed her degree at Harvard’s Radcliffe College then studied at England’s Oxford University. Her father was elected Prime Minister but arrested in a coup in 1977 and later hanged. Her two brothers were assassinated – one gunned down and the other poisoned. Benazir was elected and reelected before being forced into exile in 1996 amid corruption charges and a reelection bid in 1997 failed. She’s lived in exile In London since then. Bhutto was no saint and many steps shy of beatification.
Nevertheless she was perhaps the best chance to sustain a more moderate, pro-U.S. Pakistani government, and even Musharraf’s best chance to maintain stability without resorting to martial law or doing a rope dance. It is unlikely Bhutto and Musharraf could have coexisted for long, as she would have tried sooner than later to oust him. But, all that’s history and academic now. Musharraf has a bunker mentality single mindedly hunkering down to survive for another day.
The Bhutto assassination led immediately to U. S. presidential wannabe’s pontifications and posturing. Numerous candidates told of their real and imagined close relationship with Bhutto. Perhaps the most absurd is Obama blaming her assassination on U. S. Iraq policy. In any case much of what has been said is little more than self-serving drivel.
So far no one has resurrected the specter of the mid-1990s Clinton era fund raising and graft scandal involving Pakistan and laid breadcrumbs to Bhutto’s front door contributing to the corruption changes raised against her by coup d’tat leaders who ousted her. By some estimates she and her brothers pilfered hundreds of millions of dollars – some of it U. S. AID money
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t is a common myth that the word assassin comes from the Arabic word haschishin for hashish user. Originally assassins were most likely non-Arabic speaking Persians (mostly today’s Iranians) sect inside Shi’i Islam, more specifically the Nizari Isma’ilis, in the period from the 11th to the 13th century. They forbid alcohol and drug use. The assassins are famous for their fearless and mindless murders especially against Christian Crusaders. Their terrorism became a religious duty executed with the promise of salvation and martyrdom. Their original base was the fortress at Alamut on the Caspian Sea.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters believe that reporters cover the political debates in a way that helps their favored candidate according to a Rasmussen poll released at 12N EST Friday, December 28th. Half say the debates are a good way to learn about candidates; 28% disagree and 22% are not sure. Democrats are far more skeptical of reporters than Republicans according to the poll. 70% of those surveyed say they have seen at least part of one debate.
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ecretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s plan to aid the pro-democracy movement in Iran was sabotaged by “ivy-league liberal” partisans in the U. S. State Department. The most notable being one of three who authored the recent much disputed National Intelligence Estimate saying Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program. The disastrous result of those partisans is that there is no overt program of support for Iranian democracy and no clandestine effort to overthrow the regime,” former U. S. Ambassador to the U. N. John Bolton told Newsmax. It is worth noting among these partisan policy saboteurs are those who refused to be deployed to Iraq lest their precious derrieres be at risk.
Worse the State Department emphasis on European-led negotiations has allowed Iran to buy the time it needs to perfect the technology to make nuclear weapons, he says. Bolton believes the U. S. probably doesn’t have enough time now for covert actions to be effective before the Iranians get the bomb. Bolton said that the CIA shared the State Department’s position. This approach is particularly dangerous because the U.S. intelligence community has almost always been wrong in its estimates of when Iran could acquire nuclear weapons capability.
Before President Jimmy Carter’s astonishingly foolish surrender of Iran to the Mullah’s in 1979 it had corked up Soviet expansionism into the Mideast. Now Russia has allied with Iran and Syria and expanded its influence and power in the region. It is not hard to see the Armageddon-like consequences of a nuclear Iran, backed by Russia confronted by Israel.
An asteroid about as big as a football field has a 1 in 25 chance of smacking into Mars’ equator while travelling about 8 miles a second on January 30th. If it does it will be similar to the object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and leave a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona. The NASA Mars Rover is in the neck-of-the-woods but will be out of range if the hit occurs.
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he Pew Center for the Public and Media’s findings of “increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies” prompted liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to issue a “call to arms” for increased partisanship and to man the liberal barricades in a recent SLATE online opinion piece. Dedicated Bush basher Krugman suffers an east of the Hudson academic conspiracy streak a mile wide. His elitism is practiced but his political skills are not particularly accomplished. Born in 1953 he fell under the 1940s Keynesian spell and is called a neo-Keynesian. Krugman remains upset he was dissed by Bill Clinton’s White House and knows his last hope for socialist economics could be in a new Democrat White House since he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in a Republican regime.
Dougherty County, Georgia authorities are investigating the disappearance between December 21 and 27th of a 53-foot-long trailer loaded with more than 2,300 cases of beer. It’s going to be one hell-of-a-New Years-party.
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s many as 13.5 million taxpayers who use five tax forms related to the AMT will have to wait to file their returns until the agency can reprogram its computers to comply with the new law because Democrats in Congress delayed passage of the tax bill so long. The IRS says the delay in refunds could be weeks for some taxpayers. If you delay paying the IRS you are subject to severe penalties and interest. Exactly why taxpayers will not be treated fairly and receive compensation because of the Democrat gaff remains so far unexplained.
In China atheism is the law.
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rozac, the antidepressant, is 20 years old and has become the most prescribed drug of its kind – and perhaps most overprescribed — in medical history. America’s love affair with antidepressant drugs is as peculiar as its obsession with the blank, anesthetic, mood-altered culture of the 1960-70s. But, it is not new. A century ago, so many medicines were laced with opium that we imported the equivalent of 15 doses to every man, woman, and child in the country. In the 1930s, barbiturates became the drug of choice and eventually more than 30 different drugs were on the market. The next boom was amphetamines in the 1950s followed by Valium and Librium and the tranquilizer decade followed by antidepressants.
Critics point to a warehouse of studies showing that something like 90% of patients do just as well with placebos than with the antidepressants, and that ironically was almost exactly the argument and counterargument made for and against previous drugs, and with the same conclusion. But, Americans are addicted to and demanding of a pill for any ill, real or imagined.
New Hampshire and Alaska are the only states with neither a general income nor a general sales tax.
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t’s like a real life GREEN ACRES episode featuring the bumbling county ag agent Hank Kimball and Eva Gabor confounding Eddie Albert — beekeepers and seedless mandarin growers warring in California. The seedless fruit is worth 2 to 3 times more than the seed kind. But, to a bee any blossom is one worth indiscriminately pollinating, so they are cross pollinating seedless with seeded upsetting growers to a fair-the-well. Plus bees are being decimated by a mysterious nationwide malady. Bugles blaring it is the California State Legislature to the rescue – pass a law – hold a Powwow – pop off — yaada, yaada — the buzz is the bees are not the only ones very busy being counterproductive.
A Malaysian referee took out his gun and fired warning shots in the air after a local soccer match turned unruly following the suspension of a player, A Malaysian referee took out his gun and fired warning shots in the air after a local soccer match turned unruly following the suspension of a player,A Malaysian referee pulled out a handgun and fired shots into the air after a soccer match turned unruly when a player was suspended.
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