Conservatively Speaking

·      State of the Union Forgettable.

·      NYT Calls Obama Budget Freeze “Joke of Day”

·      Haiti Police Shooting Scavangers

·      Obama Moves to Stop “Bed Wetting”

·      Brown Would Beat Obama: Zogby poll

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work,” said Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.

State of the Union addresses have generally been easily forgettable affairs and last night’s was no exception. Obama was more defiant than contrite despite recent political poundings. Notably he punted Obamacare to Pelosi and Reid – the latter so inspired that he fell asleep during Obama’s speech.

Obama oratorical skills and teleprompter-ease were not diminished and he deserves an A- but gets a D+ for content. We are told Iraq and Iran will be absent American combat troops in 2011 although we know tens of thousands will remain in various “non-combat” roles. He shook a finger at North Korea and Iran but avoided China and all others only devoting seven of a long seventy minutes to foreign policy and national defense.

Jobs we are told are his priority as he demanded another “jobs bill” to replace last year’s failed one. His focus continues to be on WPA-like projects and misty notions of green energy.

The high point in my mind was his pledge to double U. S. exports.in two year and redouble those in five more years. How and where he did not explain. Obama refused to say the words “tax cuts” but still favors “tax credits” for small businesses who produce jobs – he “knows” big government has to first take and then give back rather than keep its hands off in the first place.

He chastised the Supreme Court causing Justice Alito to mouth “not true,”  and called for an end of the don’t ask don’t tell policy.

Obama set the bench mark for BIOB (Blame It On Bush) indictments. He virtually ignored his much ballyhooed if lambasted so-called budget freeze.

About the only thing that made real news yesterday was Hilary Clinton’s absence and announcement that she will NOT serve 8-years as Secretary of State fueling speculation of a 2012 challenge or even VP spot. She says “No” — she wants to retire to write and teach.

Republicans generally glued to their seats glaring Nancy Palosi popped up and down like a June bug on a hot griddle dragging a grinning if annoyed VP Biden along.

Yesterday was Mozart’s birthday. The Austrian people are always trumpeting the fact that Mozart is from there. I think it’s meant to take your mind off any other very famous Austrians. - Ferguson

You gotta believe there’s something rotten in Denmark (and not just the Copenhagen climate talks either) when the NY Times’ JACKIE CALMES, calls Obama’s State of the Union proposed “budget freeze” the “Joke of the Day.”

Tomorrow night Obama will call for a three-year $25 billion freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday. That absurdly amounts to 59/100^th of one percent per year of a one trillion 400 billion spending plan.

The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks. It does not cover Congressional or other federal salaries or benefits

But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The New York Times says the estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time. Unfortunately its base figures and calculations are incomplete and do not consider the massive federal deficit already accumulated. But, even if correct it is not significant paying for but a few hours of interest on the skyrocketing national debt. The national debt is streaking toward $12.4 trillion amounting to over $112,000 per U. S. taxpayer so when it and the expected $9 trillion coming are added the debt tops $21 trillion bringing the individual taxpayer debt to $190,000 per taxpayer. About $4 trillion of the national debt is held by foreigners now and most of it by China.

The initiative holds political risks as well as potential benefits. Because Obama plans to exempt military spending while leaving many popular domestic programs vulnerable, his move is certain to further anger liberals in his party and senior Democrats in Congress, who are already upset by the possible collapse of health care legislation and the troop buildup in Afghanistan, among other things.

Fiscally conservative Democrats in the House and Senate have urged Obama to support a freeze, as a CYA move as the 2010 elections loom because it would suggest to voters, Wall Street and other nations that the president is willing to make tough decisions at a time when the deficit and the national debt, in the view of many economists, have reached levels that undermine the nations long-term prosperity. Perceptions that government spending is out of control have contributed to Obamas loss of support among independent voters, and concern about the governments fiscal health could put upward pressure on the interest rates the United States has to pay to borrow money from investors and nations, especially China, that have been financing Washingtons budget deficit.

Republicans were quick to mock the freeze proposal. Given Washington Democrats unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you’re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest, said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

The spending reductions that would be required would have to be agreed to by Congress, and it is not clear how much support Mr. Obama will get in an election year when the political appeal of greater fiscal responsibility will be vying with the pressure to provide voters with more and better services. The administration officials said the part of the budget they have singled out $447 billion in domestic programs amounts to a relatively small share, about one-eighth, of the overall federal budget.

But given the raft of agencies and programs within that slice, the reductions will mean painful reductions that will be fought by numerous lobbies and constituent groups. And not all programs will be frozen, the administration officials said; many will be cut well below a freeze or eliminated to provide increases for programs that are higher priorities for the administration in areas like education, energy, the environment and health.

The balancing act of picking winners and losers was evident on Monday at the White House. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. outlined a number of new proposals that will be in the budget to help the middle class. They cover issues including child care, student loans and retirement savings.

Administration officials also are working with Congress on roughly $150 billion in additional stimulus spending and tax cuts to spur job creation. But much of that spending would be authorized in the current fiscal year, the officials said, so it would not be affected by the proposed freeze that would take effect in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population.

But one administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said.

By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget, the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.

The administration officials did not identify which programs Mr. Obama would cut or eliminate, but said that information would be in the budget he submits next week. For the coming fiscal year, the reductions would be $10 billion to $15 billion, they said. Last year Mr. Obama proposed to cut a similar amount $11.5 billion and Congress approved about three-fifths of that, the officials said.

The federal governments discretionary domestic spending has grown about 5 percent on average since 1993, according to the administration. It spiked to about 27 percent from 2008 to 2009, however, because of the recession. The sudden increase reflected both the first outlays from the $787 billion stimulus package as well as automatic spending for unemployment compensation and food stamps that is triggered during an economic downturn.

The freeze that Mr. Obama will propose for the fiscal years 2011 through 2013 actually means a cut in real terms, since the affected spending would not keep pace with inflation.

According to the administration, by 2015 that share of the federal budget will be at its lowest level in a half-century relative to the size of the economy.

A lot of our caucus won’t like it but I dont think we have any choice, said an adviser to Congressional Democratic leaders, who would only speak on condition of anonymity about internal party deliberations. After Massachusetts and all the polls about independents abandoning us for being fiscally irresponsible, we cant afford to be spending more than Obama.

While the Democrats unexpected loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election last week gave new impetus to administration efforts to tackle the deficit, those efforts actually have been under way since last fall, when officials began early work on the 2011 budget.

Obamas budget director, Peter R. Orszag, initially directed Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to propose alternative budgets one with a freeze and another that cut spending by 5 percent. Months of internal arguments and appeals followed and the cutting idea has disappeared.

Oligopoly (ol-i-GOP-uh-lee) noun: A market condition where there are few sellers. ETYMOLOGY:From Greek oligo- (few) + -poly, patterned after monopoly, from polein (to sell).

It was inevitable that violence break out in an increasingly desperate Haiti now swarming with dogooder. Haitian police on Monday shot indiscriminately at scavengers and looters in Port-au-Prince, hitting two in the head as post-quake security deteriorated.

A group of police, pushed to keep control among an increasingly desperate population after the January 12 tremor which killed or injured many of their number and destroyed the city prison, opened fire on a warehouse from a building opposite.

An AFP photographer inside the scavengers’ building said two men were hit in the head, one of whom received medical attention. Two others were lying prone on the floor, one lifeless. The other was treated for a serious head wound.

A Haitian man in the street outside said he saw police pistol whip a man.

“This guy was trying to go inside (the warehouse), the cops took a gun straight to the back of the head. I don’t know why they do that. It’s not fair because everyone in Haiti is hungry,” the man, who declined to give his name, said.

Looters and scavengers have moved into the downtown commercial district, taking what they can from the ruins as bulldozers demolished damaged shops and warehouses.

The Haitian government has said the death toll from the January 12 quake, which shattered what little infrastructure existed in the capital and left a million people homeless, is expected to be around 150,000.

The next question is when wil the desperate form armed gangs and fight back. That could lead to outright civil war.

Over British objections the EU is sending 300 police officers into Haiti, and all those white faces with guns could become the trigger – shades of the French oppressors.

Of course the do-gooders are shocked.

John McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and their daughter Meghan have posed for photos endorsing pro-gay marriage here in California. Sen. McCain is very traditional. He believes a marriage should be between an old man and a hot-looking younger woman.- Leno

it is symptomatic of a profound misunderstanding of today’s America that Obama has resurrected David Plouffe, 43, the political strategist who managed his 2008 presidential campaign is back – this time in the White House – to “save” his presidency and hence the Democrat party from a debacle in 2010 and he in 2012..

His first public action was to say in a Washington Post Op-Ed piece published Sunday now is not the time for “bed-wetting” after the party lost a Massachusetts Senate election to pick-up driving Scott Brown.

“This will be a tough election for our party and for many Republican incumbents as well,” Plouffe writes. “Instead of fearing what may happen, let’s prove that we have more than just the brains to govern — that we have the guts to govern.”

Plouffe acknowledged the challenge won’t be easy because the governing party typically loses in midterm elections, but he urged courage, writing, “We may not have perfect results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast.”

And, Plouffe added, “Let’s fight like hell, not because we want to preserve our status, but because we sincerely believe too many everyday Americans will continue to lose if Republicans and special interests win.”

Plouffe and the often ascerbic David Axelrod continue to signal and urge the resurrection of Obamacare which is now opposed by over 60% of the nation;s voters.

Both are ignoring voter dissatisfaction with Washington and the direction of healthcare reform contributed to Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate win in Massachusetts, a survey suggests.

In the poll, conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University’s School of Public Health, 63 percent of Massachusetts’ special-election voters say the country is seriously off-track. Of those, two-thirds voted for the Republican state senator over Democrat Martha Coakley to serve out the term of the late Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat who held the seat for nearly 47 years.

Respondents listed jobs and the economy as the most important issues. Overall, two-thirds of those who voted for Brown said they did so at least partly because of opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington.

Three in four respondents said they want Brown to work with Democrats to inject Republican thinking into legislation. A smaller proportion — less than half — said they want Brown to work with Democrats specifically on healthcare legislation.

The survey revealed a decline in the proportion of voters who said the government should do more to solve problems. In 2008, 63 percent of Massachusetts voters said the government should do more, compared with 50 percent in the new poll.

Back in 1982, Scott Brown posed naked for Cosmo. Normally, you get elected to the Senate and then get caught with your pants down.—Leno

A stunning new poll conducted by Newsmax/Zogby reveals that Massachusett’s new Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown could defeat President Barack Obama in a presidential election. The Newsmax/Zogby poll released Tuesday found that the pair would be statistically deadlocked if the presidential election was held today.

The poll indicates surprisingly weak support for the president among independent voters, who favor the tyro Brown by 48.6 percent to 36 percent in a hypothetical matchup against Obama. 

Mark McKinnon, the respected political strategist who created former President George W. Bush’s successful television ad campaigns in 2000 and 2004, told Newsmax that the survey results should trigger alarms for Team Obama.

“The real problem for Obama is that he has lost the middle, and losing the middle means losing independents,” McKinnon said. “And it is independents that are responsible for swinging elections one way or the other in this country. So if you lose independents, you’re going to lose the presidency.” 

The poll asked likely voters: “If the election for president of the United States were held today and the only candidates were Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Scott Brown, for whom would you vote?”

The questions phrasing biases responses but underscores how far Obama has fallen.

Based on the 4,163 responses, Obama leads Brown by 46.5 percent to 44.6 percent. That amounts to a statistical tie because the Zogby survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percent. 

Brown has been the focus of national attention since his surprising upset last week of Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts race to fill deceased Senator Kennedy’s seat,that  gave Republicans the 41st vote they need to filibuster measures in the Senate. 

Artiodactyl (ahr-tee-o-DAK-til) adjective: Having an even number of toes on each foot. ETYMOLOGY:From Greek artio- (even in number, perfect) + -dactyl (toed, fingered). The mammal order Artiodactyla is made up of animals such as pig, camel, and giraffe. Those having an odd number of toes are called perissodactyl, from Greek perisso- (uneven, strange). Examples: horse, tapir, and rhinoceros.

·       What Happened in Massachusett’s-Ted Election

·       Obama and Crew Have “White House-itis”

·       Danger From American Muslim Extremist

·       One Of Worst Years in Democrat Party History

·       Hysterics Over California Rains

Obscurantism (uhb-SKYOOR-uhn-tiz-uhm, ob-skyoo-RAN-tiz-uhm) noun:
1. Opposition to the spread of knowledge. 2. Being deliberately vague or obscure; also a style in art and literature.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin obscurare (to make dark). USAGE:“Jean Kirkpatrick possessed the rare gift of being able to write subtle and challenging studies of international politics and to formulate strikingly simple and apt phrases to cut through obscurantism and cant.”

 

Obama gets MASS KICKING is on verge of contrition – but he’s still “right” – tells Setphanopolis.

A year to the day after occupying the White House Democrats awoke to the aftermath of a historic political earthquake as “TAXACHUSETTS”, the bluest of blue states, elected a Republican Senator for the first time since 1972. In the third repudiation in as many months Obama’s policies and practices were soundly  rejected and the seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly half a century is now in the hands of a stalwart conservative, Scott Brown campaigned against Obamacare, deficit spending, un and underemployment, and mollycoddling of terrorists. The defeat means Democrats no longer have the 60^th vote to stop a legislation killing filibuster. Brown won decisively 52% to 47% and Coakley quickly conceded.

Even before the results are final there is virtually a stampede away from Obama’s agenda sending ripples through the nation for instance:

·         Senator Webb (D) Va. demanded a slowdown saying no more votes should be taken on healthcare until Brown is seated. There has been talk of a political fight to delay Brown’s seating.

·         Democrats fearing their own political futures in the 2010 elections are demanding moderation and an end to secret talks on Obamacare.

·         It’s unclear how much the impending defeat impacted Erroll Southers, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration, to withdrawn his name from consideration. He was opposed because of a belief he would unionize TSA workers and because he lied on his application.

Residual hubris kicked in as the so often belligerent White House senior adviser David Axelrod urged Obama to order full speed ahead. Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, added on Wednesday’s “Good Morning America”: “I’m very confident we can pass health-care reform.” Democratic leaders insisted they planned to press ahead with health reform, and met late into Tuesday night in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. But they made no decisions about how to proceed.

The Drudge Report headlined a photo of Brown in his 200,000 miles pickup truck asking “Will he run for President?”

A few are speculated that Republicans could switch the more than 40 seats to take majority in the House, and kick out the unlikable Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) San Francisco.

It wasn’t clear Tuesday night how Democrats could now pass Obamacare, or how hard the White House is prepared to push. A statement by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announcing that President Barack Obama called Coakley and Brown made no mention of health reform.

Their options are few, and extremely complex, mostly involving legislative tactics that would be difficult to pull off in the best of circumstances, let alone at a time when members are worried they could be the next Martha Coakley – a seeming Democratic shoo-in laid low, in large part, by health reform.

Concerned liberals nationwide are counseling a more sophrosyne approach.

Homosexual U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, when asked whether Coakley’s recent dip in the polls was related to sentiments about President Obama, quipped, “President Obama is not Martha Coakley in drag.”

NEWSMAX’S Ron Kessler write, “(L)ongtime White House aides have a name for it: “White House-itis.”

It’s a malady of arrogance that grips presidents and their aides as everyone they come in contact with bows and scrapes before them. 

What else explains the Obama administration’s transparent disregard for the truth?

The latest example was an opinion piece by David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, in The Washington Post. Axelrod took Karl Rove to task for saying that congressional Democrats “will run up more debt by October than Bush did in eight years.”

Axelrod compared the $236 billion budget surplus President Bush inherited from President Bill Clinton with what he said was a $1.3 trillion deficit Bush handed Obama.

Not once did Axelrod refer to Obama’s wild spending spree that has dwarfed the Bush deficits, which were caused in part by the war on terror and the Iraq war.

Axelrod did not mention that most of the deficit he attributed to Bush was a projection of spending Obama initiated. He did not mention that Democrats have raised discretionary spending by 24 percent, not counting the stimulus package of $787 billion. Nor did he mention the fact that Obama’s binge spending will lead to an increase in the national debt to 76 percent of the gross domestic product by 2019, the highest proportion in 60 years.

If that took chutzpah, it was par for the course for Obama and his aides, who said that Fox News is not a news organization, when anyone who has watched the network knows it is.

In the same vein, Obama repeatedly claims that his healthcare proposal will save money and “bend the cost curve” of rising healthcare premiums. He is right — in the opposite direction. The Democrats’ plan would not only raise premiums, it would raise taxes while reducing the quality and availability of healthcare.

Just as regularly, Obama expresses regret for not making Washington more bipartisan, yet he laces his speeches with gratuitous swipes at Republicans and excludes them from healthcare planning sessions. 

Clearly, Obama and his aides have a bad case of White House-itis. As noted in my book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,” no one can imagine what it means to be president and how easily the power of the office corrupts. 

To be in command of the most powerful country on earth, to be able to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice on Air Force One, to be able to grant almost any wish, to take action that affects the lives of millions, is such a heady, intoxicating experience that only people with the most stable personalities and well-developed values can handle it. 

Simply inviting a friend to a White House party or having a secretary place a call and announce that “the White House is calling” has such a profound effect on people that presidents and White House aides must constantly remind themselves that they are mortal.

“The White House is a character crucible,” Bertram S. Brown, M.D., a psychiatrist who formerly headed the National Institute of Mental Health and was an aide to President John F. Kennedy, tells me. “It either creates or distorts character. Few decent people want to subject themselves to the kind of grueling abuse candidates take when they run in the first place,” says Dr. Brown, who has seen in his practice many top Washington politicians and White House aides.

“Many of those who run crave superficial celebrity. They are hollow people who have no principles and simply want to be elected,” Dr. Brown says. 

“Even if an individual is balanced, once someone becomes president, how does one solve the conundrum of staying real and somewhat humble when one is surrounded by the most powerful office in the land, and from becoming overwhelmed by an at times pathological environment that treats you every day as an emperor? 

“Here is where the true strength of the character of the person, not his past accomplishments, will determine whether his presidency ends in accomplishment or failure.”

Thus, unless a president comes to the office with exceptionally strong character, the crushing force of the office and the adulation the chief executive receives can lead to arrogance and disaster.

Axelrod closed his Washington Post article by saying that “the course correction that was so badly needed after the previous administration has begun in earnest.” With those words, Axelrod emulated the arrogance of his boss, who often speaks of reducing the deficit while he piles on more spending. 

Only those infected by an extreme case of White House-itis would have the gall to make such claims in the face of the administration’s record, which threatens to bankrupt the country. 

The foregoing is by Ronald Kessler chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com.

My own experience now with some 350 candidates and politicians at all levels pretty much confirms Brown’s views.  Narcacism is the least of sins for most politicians. Morally the worst was a Tennessee candidate who ambushed his opponent blowing his head off with a deer rifle. But, the alltime ass was Ohio Congressman Wayne L. Hayes.. Happily there have been exceptions who did not succumb to the various “itis” maladies – I judge those to be about 10%.

Asperity (ah-SPER-i-tee) noun: Harshness or roughness. ETYMOLOGY:Via French from Latin asper (rough).

In the past two years, more than 30 American Muslim extremists have been arrested in U. S. on various terror-related charges including providing material support to terrorists and plotting to plant bombs in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League reports. Since 9-11 there have been a reported 139 such incidents involving foreign and domestic Muslims and one third of those in the past year.

The organization’s magazine, ADL on the Frontline, warns in its winter 2010 issue that these extremists, “who have domestic addresses and U.S. passports, constitute a growing terrorist threat in the United States.”

That threat came into focus in November when authorities say Virginia-born Muslim Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 29 wounded.

Two months earlier, American Muslim convert Michael Finton was charged with attempting to bomb the federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill.

That same month, Najibullah Zazi, a U.S. permanent resident, was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the U.S. Officials believe he was plotting to blow up commuter trains.

“An alarming number of recent plots and conspiracies have involved, or been led by, American Muslim extremists,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.

“It is a troubling reminder of the broad problem of increased radicalization among a small subset of the domestic Muslim population. Many of these extremists are fueled by hatred of Jews, Israel, and America, and have been influenced, to some degree, by the ideologies of extreme intolerance propagated by terrorist movements overseas,” he added. 

Most Muslim extremists in the U.S. are American-born converts to Islam, first-generation Americans, or naturalized U.S. citizens or permanent residents, according to the ADL.

They share the belief that they are fighting against a Western enemy that victimizes Muslims around the world.

One factor fueling the threat is the increased availability on the Internet of extremist propaganda in English. This material, previously available largely in Arabic, might include instructions for carrying out suicide bombings.

Al-Qaida has an American spokesman, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, who converted to Islam and creates English-language videos inviting others to join the movement. One of his videos called America and Israel “forces of evil.”

Terrorist organizations also publish online magazines in English, the ADL noted. Last year the Al Mosul Islamic Network released what it called an “English jihad magazine,” which called for Allah to “destroy the enemies of Islam . . . the Jews, Christians, atheists, and the betraying criminals.”

Oren Segal, the ADL’s director of Islamic affairs, said ominously: “There are several Muslim extremist groups trying to raise their profile in America. The more support these groups get, the more influential they can become.

“We’ve got a serious problem that’s growing, and promises to keep growing.”

Critics of the Jewish organization points to its defiant clenched fist logo saying it is adamantly anti-Islam, and is raising false alarms or at least exaggerating the threat. Supporters say Obama has a pro-Islam tilt is dangerous and such claims come from anti-JDL groups are from the southern end of a north bound horse.

The heaviest snowfall in over 60 years is being reported in Beijing, China. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the army is now using snowplows to run over dissidents.—Leno

Political analyst Charlie Cook says the terms “gruesome” and “psychologically devastating” come to mind when he considers the political developments for Democrats over the last few weeks.

In his “Off to the Races” column for National Journal’s CongressDaily site, Cook points to these developments:

·         Within a matter of hours on Jan. 5, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, both Democrats, announced that they would not seek re-election in November.

·         The same day, Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry, the all-but-certain Democratic pick for governor, “decided his party’s nomination wasn’t worth having” and withdrew from the race.

·         Then came revelations about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2008 comments about candidate Barack Obama, referring to him as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect.”

·         These setbacks followed the announcements in December that Democratic Reps. Dennis Moore of Kansas, Brian Baird of Washington, and Bart Gordon and John Tanner of Tennessee would not seek re-election.

·         And on Dec. 22, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama announced that he had switched from Democrat to Republican.

Each post that was Democratic will not necessarily be Republican after November, Cook observes.

But “it’s the collective traumatic impact of these Democratic setbacks that causes the most damage, potentially moving other incumbents to decide to retire, undermining recruiting and chilling party fundraising, which until now has gone quite well.”

Cook predicted that Democrats will lose from 20 to 30 House seats in November, not the 40 the GOP needs for a majority.

In the Senate, Democrats will likely lose from four to six seats, including the one left open by Dorgan, according to Cook.

He said the most vulnerable senators, in addition to Reid, are Michael Bennet in Colorado, Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, and Barbara Boxer in California.

Chrysler is recalling 22,000 vehicles that’s good news – at least they actually made and sold that many.

It’s been raining in Southern California causing mudslides in the burn areas denuded by recent wildfires that ripped through Santa Barbara and Ventura counties north of LA. But it is nothing like the flash flood that could literally shoot off the hills along the Ohio River, and of course the nearly annual river floods of years ago when it was routine to see a garage or house float by.

Thirty years ago I moved to California and noticed an almost complete lack of adequate storm sewers and that every time even an inch of rain falls streets and highways flood and hydroplaning cars and trucks are the rule rather than the exception.

Perhaps the cat is the most inconvenienced as I have unlimbered my Texas slicker, Panhandle slim hat and boots for their annual moistening.

Otherwise after three decades little has changed

The war of late night words reached a crescendo in recent days with more nastiness than a political race. The exception is the “loser”, Conan Obrien, will pocket $40 million.

·       Crapper Primed in Massachusetts

·       Doing Good Or Do Gooders

·       Hitler, Stalin, Mao Misunderstood: Oliver Stone

·       Dumbest School Children

·       Would US or China Win World War 3?

As you know, security is being upgraded at the airports all across the country. In fact, today Nipolitano Put Osama bin Laden on the “no-fly” list.

Republican Massachusetts State Sen. Scott Brown could flush Democrat state Attorney General Martha Coakley’s campaign to replace deceased U. S. Senator Ted Kennedy. Everybody “knows” a Republican can’t be elected in Massachusetts – except for Mitt Romney and maybe Mr.  Brown.

 

Every candidate named Brown generates the slogan “If it’s “Brown Flush It Down” and Scott is no exception. But, less than 48-hours before Tuesday’s election it is still uncertain who will have the ignominy of being a guest in the political crapper.

 

A Suffolk University/7 News poll released Thursday night indicated that 50 percent of likely voters backed Brown, compared to 46 percent supporting Coakley. Another 3 percent of people questioned said they back Joseph Kennedy, no relation of Ted Kennedy’s clan a third party candidate running as a libertarian. The poll’s sampling error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

 

Two well-respected nonpartisan national political analysts, Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg, rate the race a tossup.

 

The race is more than just one Senate seat. Coakley would be a reliable 60^th vote in the U. S. Senate breaking any Republican chance to fillibuster Obama’s agenda. Brown on the contrary would happily end Obama’s yearlong reign of political terror and be a warrior talking liberal bills to death.

 

The situation is so serious, close and important Obama elected to miss the NFL Playoff Sunday and fly to Massachusetts to campaign for Democrat Coakley. What if Obama’s descending from the sky can’t pull it off having lost two governor’s mansions – is the big issue.

 

In a potential battle of septuagenarians 73 year old Brooks Firestone Is toying with the idea of running against 70 year old Congresswoman Lois Capps for control of the so-called “Ribbon of Shame” otherwise known as California’s 23^rd District – it runs along  coast sometimes shrinking to 6 inches wide and then looping inland around Democrat voter enclaves. Firestone ran and lost in 1998. Capps has become a supplicant of the controversial and often bizarre Henry Waxman.

 

Many people, 37% of Americans told Rasmussen they are sending cash, want to help those in Haiti recover from the recent earthquake. Do gooders sometimes help  – sometimes they think they are but are not.

The peculiar comment from the Obama White House that this is an opportunity too big to waste was a thoughtless choice of words. But, words that symbolize the hazard and danger of amateurs, the thoughtless and unscrupulous doing more harm than good.

Celebrities are infamous for showing up for photo opportunities and sucking up badly needed resources.  In one case I was personally involved as a Hollywood fop demanded a specific brand of bottled water be provided so she could help. In another tons of outdated and generally worthless blister packed medicines wound up being bulldozed into trenches to clear dock and warehouse space for needed supplies – later it had to be dug up because it was poluting the water supply. Private planes and luxury yachts clog air and sea ports with gawkers’ of all sorts seeking an ego trip to cluck and claim they were there seeing suffering first hand.. Perhaps my favorite was the rush to ship and unload two locomotives to a country without railroads – eventually they were cut up for scrap having deteriorated into uselessness after years of having blocked valuable dock space. .

I recall seeing that the most valued commodity to arrive were sheets of plastic bubble pack while the suffering often threw aside what it wrapped to use it as insulating ground cloths. blanket, and waterproof shelter.

I personally had to restrain a costmetic dentist and his psychologist wife who specialized in self-esteem who flew a private plane into a disaster area and demanded to “help.” Their airplane took up valuable airport space, and actually pushed back an arriving Globemaster carrying a water purification plant. I confess those boobs were goodhearted if wrongheaded.

Add to those legions of politicians and media flacks that roar around trying to look and sound important and the hazard grows.

If you want to help:

1.    contribute to a reputable NGO. By the way look behind some of those charity ratings in-as-much as the leading ones are nothing more than the charity’s opinion of itself and without substance..

2.    Unless specifically requested don’t send things directly, and

3.    for Pete’s sake don’t clog the air and sea ports with a million doses of acne medication,  panty hose or your private plane or boat.

Help. But, use your head.

Canonical (kuh-NON-i-kuhl) adjective:

1. Authorized; recognized.
2. Religion: Relating to canon law.
3. Art: Relating to a particular artist’s works established as authentic and complete.
4. Literature: Relating to a list of literary works permanently established as having highest merit.
5. Math: In simplest or standard form.
6. Music: Relating to a piece of music in which a melody is played by different overlapping voices. Example: Pachelbel’s Canon.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin canon (measuring rod, rule), from Greek kanon (rule).

 

An American director’s upcoming Showtime documentary promises to put mass-murderers ‘in context’. According to liberal Hollywood director Oliver Stone, ‘Stalin, Hitler, Mao and McCarthy have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history’

 

Sometime great American director and often controversial Oliver Stone’s upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries “Secret History of America” promises to put mass-murderers such as Stalin and Hitler “in context.”

 

“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, (US Senator Joseph) McCarthy - these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

 

Stone went on saying, “Stalin has a complete other story,” Stone said. “Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’

 

“Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it’s been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect … People in America don’t know the connection between World War I and World War II.

 

“I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”

 

The controversial director’s 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that “at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history of the last 60 years.” An airdate has not yet been set.

 

Subjects in “History” include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

 

“You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate,” Stone said during the show’s trailer, which promised to put historical villains “in context.”

 

“I don’t want to put out conventional History Channel product where it’s easy to like it,” Stone said.

 

“He’s not saying we’re going to come out with a more positive view of Hitler,” emphasized professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the project. “But we’re going to describe him as a historical phenomenon and not just somebody who appeared out of nowhere.”

 

The politically liberal Stone said that conservative pundits will dislike the show.

 

“Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we’re going to get those kind of ignorant attacks,” said Stone, who also compared the experience of sympathizing with war criminals to making his “W” movie about former President George W. Bush. “I’m trying to understand somebody I thoroughly despised.”

 

The project will also show lesser-known positive aspects of American history and unsung heroes. Stone eventually hopes to send “Secret History” to schools as a teaching curriculum.

 

“It would be a very different counterweight to what they’re learning,” Stone said. “Nobody is going to force it down anybody’s throat.”

California Governor Schwarzenegger proposes to retrofit redlights in communities throughout the State to trap motorist who run stop lights. Fines range to nearly $300 and the State proposes to keep 85%. Traffic studies have consistently shown that the camera’s have no positive effect on safety. So this is simply a money scam.

Just when you thought America’s school shildren are the Wwrld’s dumbest comes this from the UK.

 

·         One in six children in Britain believe Auschwitz is a World War Two theme park, and

·         one in four think the atom bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor –

 

a study conducted in the UK among 2,000 schoolchildren showed.

 

The study, published in the Daily Mail last Friday, tested children between the ages of nine and 15 on their knowledge of facts of both world wars, and reveals disturbing ignorance of the kids’ knowledge of the circumstances, the dates, and the people at their center.

 

One of the study’s more disturbing findings is that one in 20 British children believe Adolf Hitler was a German soccer coach, not the leader of the brutal Nazi regime.

 

One in 20 think the Holocaust was a celebration held to mark the end of the war and one in 10 believe the SS refers to author Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven series, not Hitler’s personal bodyguards.

 

One in 12 said The Blitz was a massive clean-up operation in Europe after World War Two.

 

Britain marks its annual Remembrance Day next week, on November 11, but 40% of its schoolchildren are unaware of this, according to the study.

 

When asked to point to the nation’s symbol of Remembrance day – a red poppy – 12% of the children pointed to the McDonald’s gold arches instead.

 

Only half of the children know that the term D-Day refers to the invasion of Normandy – with a quarter of them thinking it means ‘Dooms Day’. A quarter of the children believe a nuclear bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor which spurred America’s involvement in the war.

 

The study was conducted by war veterans’ charity Erskine in the run-up to Remembrance Day.

 

Major Jim Panton, chief executive of Erskine, said: “Some of the answers to this poll have shocked us”, adding that he believes more emphasis should be placed on educating society on the matter.

 

“Schoolchildren are the future of the country and it is important that we help them to learn about our history,” he added.

 

One encouraging finding was that 70% of the students said they would like to be taught more about the world wars at school.

 

NBC announced that they are putting the NBC peacock on the endangered species list.- Letterman

 

Since the future of our world is likely to be decided by WW3, it may be of interest to predict its outcome.

In 2005, General Chi Haotian of China, its “Minister of National Defense” since 1993 to 2003, revealed in his speeches that in China’s war on the U.S.A., from one-third to two-thirds of Americans would be poisoned or infected biologically by the Chinese, and their homes and property would be transferred over to Chinese settlers, since the Chinese (and not the Germans, as Chi stipulated in his speech) are the superior race and must have everything best in the world.

Anyway, a slave state (China) has this advantage over a free country (the United States): it can reward (enrich!) 100 million or 200 million of its troops and its civilians with what those killed (poisoned and infected) Americans and their ancestors had been acquiring for the past two and a half centuries.

In the United States, an American’s betrayal of his country to China may well be seen to be his use of his freedom. This certainly applies to the U.S. Presidents, whose elections (which have little to do with the appointment of the prime minister in Britain) contradict the knowledge of mental ability, according to which the value of a thought may include its exclusivity: Einstein said that he was understood by seven people in the world. It was only owing to Einstein’s letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 that the Americans got the nuclear bombs before Hitler’s Germany completed its nuclear project.

Einstein emigrated to the U.S.A. because he was a Jew. Suppose he was not a Jew and did not emigrate and Hitler would have “the bomb,” which his Germany began to develop earlier than the United States. But what about the 100-percent American professors? None of them wrote a letter to Roosevelt about both possibility and necessity of developing the nuclear bomb. Einstein did, though officially he was not yet even an immigrant.

Have you ever heard the word “professor” used before the name “Einstein”? To begin with, he was not a professor.

Mental worker and mental work have been evaluated in the free countries in the past centuries as “genius,” “highly important,” or as “mediocre twaddle,” “a pack of insults, to humiliate his opponents.” Today such comments are conspicuously rare in the United States. If a holder of an opinion is a professor (something one can buy Online!) or has another degree, rank, or title, that opinion is accepted at least politely, and if he/she is just an Einstein, his/her opinion is ignored or met with a pack of insults.

The result? My article “What the CIA Knows about Russia?” (worse than nothing!) in the September 1978 issue of the “Commentary” magazine was reprinted or outlined in about 500 periodicals all over the free world. The most powerful free country has no intelligence service! A catastrophy? Yes! But the case was buried by professors and other titled officials in total silence as beneath attention.

In the United States, it is still understood sometimes that scientific, technological, philosophical, political or artistic endeavors have different levels of achievement, and not just one level. Yet the academic and government bureaucracy in the U.S.A. tends to reduce all of its endeavors to one level of mediocrity.

In the post-1949 China, we have been facing a geostrategic paradox. By the standards which had prevailed before the “advanced” Hitler’s Germany was routed by the “backward Russia,” China was classified as “backward,” since it had a vast agricultural population living outside cities. In 1917, the “backward” Russia produced 3.1 million tons of steel, as against 45.8 million of the U.S.A. But in 1989, the figures were 160 million for Russia versus 96 million for the U.S.A. In 2007, China produced 489.2 million tons of steel, while the U.S. output stayed near its 1989 figure. Which one is a “backward” country?

Just a decade ago, China was still considered “backward” because of its huge population. Today it is obvious (not to most academic and government officials in the U.S.A.) that the population of China, which is 1,331 billion, that is, more than four times larger than that of the United States, can be converted by the slave state of China into at least four times more creators and users of the latest weapons than can the United States.

A “slave state” is a mobilized military country, in which every slave is a mobilized military man or woman. The slave state of China has been at war, though that war is internal until it becomes an assuredly victorious limited operation, like conversion of the United States (described by General Chi Haotian) into a Chinese country as part of the Chinese world empire.

On the other hand, a free country enables everyone to be a great thinker as Einstein was. But many Americans would not like to be Einsteins even if they had the ability to. I have not met east or west anyone more dedicated to freedom than those in charge of NewsMax and WorldTribune. But the tremendous mission of rescue of the free world from the slave state of China requires a far greater attention. Hence life in the United States is presented by the rest of the media as an ongoing festival, in which money as well as new goods and services, crimes and sex are the most prominent, while for weeks or months China seems to have never existed.

Few people in the free countries believed that Hitler would launch aggressive wars to become the world dictator until he launched them just as soon as he was able to do so. But to the owners of China, wars should not be started unless there is a certainty that having started them, they will win them. The masters and slaves of China are preparing victorious wars while free Americans enjoy their festival.

In related news Rasmussen finds that 40% of American voters do not think the Space shuttle has been worth the cost while 37% disagree. Such polls have encouraged Obama to further restrict spending on space research throwing open the door for China that’s plan for the weaponization of space is thinly disguised.

Edited from a paper by Lev Navrozov who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972. His columns are today read in both English and Russian. To learn more about Mr. Navrozov’s work with the  Center for the Survival of Western Democracies.

 

·        Russia, Others, Pumping Iraqi Oil.

·        China Could Put Troops in Middle East.

·        Obama Cuts Off Arms To Israel: Big Tilt.

·        China Tops USA as Biggest Car Maker/Market

·        PRAVDA: America Creates Serfdom Through Cap and Trade

A White House spokesman peculiarly referred to the Haitian earthquake as an opportunity too big to waste.

Norway’s StatOil intends to invest $1.4 billion in Iraq’s West Qurna crude oil field by 2014. The company said it would cooperate with Russia’s LukOil for the second phase of West Qurna, regarded as one of the largest fields in Iraq. Executives said StatOil, with a 25 percent stake, would increase production at West Qurna to 1.8 million barrels per day. West Qurna phase 2 was said to contain reserves of 12.9 billion barrels of oil. LukOil said it would invest $4.5 billion. Iraq has been auctioning major oil fields in an effort to increase energy production and exports. ExxonMobil is included in the enterprise.

Ironically some of the same people critical of George W. Bush accusing him of invading Iraq for oil are now whining that Russia and others will profit from Iraqi oil. The deal will pour billions into the beleaguered Iraqi economy.

In an effort to calm people after the latest security problems, the White House said it is working even harder to find Osama bin Laden. The frustrating part is that we almost had him. Earlier this year, he snuck into the White House state dinner. – Leno

China is expected to deploy military forces and bases in the Middle East in the coming decade as part of an effort to protect its access to valuable resources like oil, according to British specialist on the Middle East Patrick Seale.

 

Seale told participants in a conference in Jordan last month that Chinese trade with Arab states amounted to $132 billion in 2008 and that its influence in the region was growing. China has reshuffled its diplomatic corp and is readying a much more agressive, forward leaning posture (see related artciel in “Conservatively Speaking” newsletter.)

China remains heavily reliant on oil shipments from the Middle East, including Iran and Saudi Arabia and is developing a strategy known as the “string of pearls” that is designed to protect – through both military, diplomatic and economic measures – sea lanes from the oil-rich region to China’s coast, where most development has taken place.

The “strings” have included seeking commercial seaports that have the potential to host Chinese warships, and alliances stretching from Gwadar in Pakistan, where a Chinese port is nearly finished, through the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.

China currently has an unknown number of military forces in Sudan, another major oil supplier for Beijing.

Meanwhile, a Chinese admiral last week urged China to establish naval supply bases overseas.

Rear Admiral Yin Zhou stated that bases abroad could be used to support Chinese out-of-area deployments, like the current anti-piracy program.

“This is entirely a matter for the country’s foreign policy circles, but I feel that would be appropriate if we could have a relatively stable, fixed base for supplies and maintenance,” said Yin, who is director of an advisory committee for the Chinese navy’s drive to upgrade information technology.

“I think countries near any relatively long-term supply bases established by China, and other countries participating in the escort mission, could understand,” he said, adding that would be more affordable than re-supplying via ship on the high seas.

D.C. police said a woman awoke to find a strange man cuddling her in bed. Police said they don’t know how the man got into the Glover Park home early Sunday. Sgt. Nicholas Breul said the woman woke up and startled the intruder, who fled the scene. Police said the woman was not injured and she was not able to give a good description.

The United States has agreed to discuss a long-standing Israeli concern that Arab countries eroded the military advantage of the Jewish state in the balance of power in the region.  The tilt away from Israel became pronounced in 2009 as Obama tipped increasingly toward Arab and Islamic countries.   In 2009, the Obama administration did not approve one major Israeli weapons request amid tension between the two countries over the U.S. demand for a freeze on Jewish construction in the West Bank. Officials said the Obama administration has decided to begin high-level talks that would address Israel’s assertions that its qualitative edge over its Arab neighbors had dissipated. They said the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu insisted that these talks were vital before any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state in 2011. “We discovered that the qualitative edge of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] has been eroded,” Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren said. “We came to the Obama administration and said: ‘Listen, we have a problem.’”   In December, Netanyahu announced a construction freeze in what was said to have lowered tension with the White House and paved the way for a discussion of Israeli concerns. Still, the White House has suggested sanctions on Israel. “Under American law, the United States can withhold support on loan guarantees to Israel,” U.S. envoy George Mitchell said on Jan. 6. On Jan. 12, U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones was scheduled to arrive in Israel for the launch of talks with Israel. Officials said Israel wants to review the billions of dollars of advanced weapons approved by Washington during 2009. A key Israeli concern, officials said, has been Obama’s approval of Harpoon Block 2 sea-based missiles to Egypt. Israel was said to have argued that the advanced Harpoon, manufactured by Boeing, was configured to enable land attacks from Egyptian Navy vessels. “They said they are going to deal with this matter and ensure that the qualitative edge of the IDF is preserved,” Oren told the National Jewish Democratic Council. “Since then we have embarked on a dialogue.”   On the eve of Jones’s visit, the U.S. Army reached agreement to store double the amount of equipment in Israel. Under the deal, reported on Jan. 11 by the Washington-based Defense News, the army would maintain up to $800 million in pre-positioned equipment and munitions in the Jewish state, which could be made available to Israel in case of emergency. Still, the Israeli Defense Ministry has been awaiting an administration decision on a range of Israeli weapons requests. Officials said they included advanced airborne reconnaissance and refueling systems as well as the AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter. “The Israelis are concerned over the U.S. failure to approve weapons requests as well as the advanced systems sold to Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — all countries that neighbor Israel,” an official said. Israel is shopping for arms from Russia and China.  If Israel is pushed against the wall seeing possible defeat it could use its nuclear weapons.

 

A millionaire motorist clocked up a record fine of 299,000 Swiss francs ($290,000) after Swiss police caught him racing through a village at 100 km per hour in his red Ferrari Testarossa, Swiss media reported on Thursday. Fines in Switzerland are calculated according to wealth.

 

China’s auto sales surged past those in the United States in 2009 to make the Asian nation the world’s biggest car market, industry data showed Monday, but analysts warned sales would slow this year.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said more than 13.64 million units were sold last year, marking an increase of 46.15 percent from the 9.4 million units sold in 2008, Xinhua news agency reported.

Auto output for 2009 increased 48.3 percent to 13.79 million units, Xinhua said. Calls to CAAM to confirm the figures went unanswered.

In the US, auto sales fell 21.2 percent to 10.43 million vehicles in 2009, according to Autodata figures released last week.

Analysts welcomed the news, but warned that China car sales could hit the brakes this year.

“We are still optimistic about the outlook for this year but it will be quite difficult to achieve the growth rates of 2009,” John Zeng, a Shanghai-based analyst at IHS Global Insight, told AFP.

“This year will see a high single-digits growth rate of nine to 10 percent.”

China’s car sales — which outstripped those of the United States for the first time in January last year, making the nation the world’s biggest auto market — soared in 2009 due partly to government incentives.

John Bonnell, a director of J.D. Power Asia-Pacific Forecasting in Bangkok, said he expected sales to increase by seven percent in 2010 as the government continued to support the sector through tax breaks and subsidies.

“I think with such tremendous growth in China in 2009, a lot of it unexpected given the economic conditions, you might expect a slowdown or a pullback,” Bonnell told AFP

“Our thinking is that the government is going to continue to support and continue to provide incentives to ensure that the industry continues to grow.”

Sedans made up 56 percent of total auto sales in 2009, with Shanghai Volkswagen, a joint venture between Volkswagen AG and China’s SAIC, selling the most, Xinhua said in a separate brief dispatch without identifying its source.

Several foreign auto manufacturers last week reported massive increases in their China sales — in contrast with sharp falls in their home markets.

US auto giant General Motors said sales surged 66.9 percent to 1.83 million vehicles in 2009, while Ford Motor Company and its Chinese partners said sales rose 44 percent to more than 440,000 units.

Volkswagen, the biggest European carmaker, said its Chinese sales soared 36.7 percent to a record 1.4 million vehicles.

Auto sales have surged in recent years due to rising incomes that have put private car ownership — once an unthinkable luxury — within reach for millions.

In Beijing alone, the number of registered cars topped four million in December, meaning a quarter of the capital’s 16 million permanent residents have cars.

Government incentives included slashing taxes on cars with engines smaller than 1.6 litres and subsidising clean-technology vehicles. The government also subsidised auto purchases for farmers.

38% of American voters rate the Obama admiistration’s response to the failed Christmas Day airliner attack as poor; 31% say is was good or excellent. When Napolitano said “the system worked” she was apparently talking about keeping her job.

Note: On the day Obama’s Congress attacked the mecca of capitalism, Wall Street’s bankers, Russia’s official house organ,- Pravda, branded the USA a feudal state

“When dealing with the American government, expect only the most illogical extremes”, says an ironic and scathing article in the January 13, 2010 issue of Moscow based PRAVDA (Truth) a Kremlincontrolled publication.

“The so called Land of the Free, has decided to recreate the ancient and rejected art of serfdom. As anywhere in history, serfdom was set in gradually with restrictive laws that slowly or quickly ate away at the right of the people to move freely, thus guaranteeing the government a stable tax base and its favorite enterprises, a stable work force to exploit, one that can not walk away.

In America that is about to be done by their new Cap and Trade Law, that will more than likely go into affect next year. Only one of the chambers of the parliament has passed it but the other will soon.

In the name of all things green, humans in the Anglo-sphere will be turned into serfs. How interesting. The Greens or rather Watermelons, Green on the outside, Marxist Red on the Inside have found the perfect tool with which to leverage the futures of all peoples in advanced nations. No longer is the cry of power to the people, as the cover for the power grab of the more equal amongst the “equals” but instead it is the cry of Power to the Plants and the Fishes and the little buggy things that fly around and annoy you….oh and it will cost the future of yourselves and your children, but Gia will love you when you are decomposing in her belly, serf.

But how will this be done?

In the giant, unread “democratic” bills that the American parliament loves to pass, some with literally up to ten thousand pages of unread and undebated laws. (and the Americans were only ranked 19th on the list of the most corrupt nations?) To be specific, Cap and Trade (American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) will force all home owners to make extremely costly efficiency upgrades to their homes, for energy efficiency, before the government will give the serf, er citizen, a license to sell their home. Of course, before the process begins, the serf must get and pay for a government inspection and another after the upgrades.

The level of “efficiency” will be set by the law and will rise yearly, but an appointed commissar, a national Environmental Protection Administrator, will have a further power to raise the standards as high as “needed”. In other words, if the indebted, cash strapped peasants of America suddenly find ways to make those improvements and regain mobility, well, we will just raise the bar even further, steal their mobility and bleed them for more cash. This will of course result in a trained and educated work force wedded for life to their present residence, as is intended by Section 202 Building Retrofit Program. Major local employers, in the pocket of the Anglo states (or are the states in the pocket of the local paymasters?) will have a captive work force to squeeze. This will be especially true in mill towns where other choices of employment will be non existent. As for the uneducated masses, and almost half Americans never finish basic school, dropping out, they are not going anywhere anyways.

Of course, an unintended consequence will be that many more people will simply abandon their houses, as they migrate to seek work.

Might the Land of the Not Quite Free reinstates another quaint age old custom: debtor prisons? Surely, this might make sure that the serfs do not run away.

A quivering lipped Google says it may leave  China because of government interference. China yawned

·       Obama Plays Truman With Buck Stops “Joke”

·       Russia Arms Vietnam Against China

·       Military Aid To Yemen To Double After Botched Christmas Attack.

·       China To Be More Aggressive

Sen. Harry Reid’s (D) Nevada racists comments has him on a hotspot and backing and filling. Of course Obama was immediately  forgiving. It was Reid who hypocritically blasted Sen. Trent Lott (R) Miss for comments supporting Strom Thurmond’s Dixicrats.

Obama has finally brought himself to confess America is at war, and with a wink and nod accepted blame for what he called a systemic failure leading up to the near fatal Christmas airliner bombing attempt.

The word “vigilance” is sometimes mocked as reactionary and jingoistic. But the failures in the war on terrorism – even rebranding in “non-war” terms — during the past few months have been failures of vigilance.

After warnings to American officials from his father, a radicalized Nigerian with ties to Yemen — holding a one-way ticket and no luggage — is allowed on a plane headed to Detroit. A man in Afghan military fatigues — covering a bomb vest — entered a CIA base in Afghanistan for an intelligence debriefing, without being screened – many died.  An Army psychologist — with a history of making provocative jihadist arguments and known to classmates as a “ticking time bomb” — is assigned to Afghanistan and reports for processing at Fort Hood – many more died.

After the Christmas attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano alarmingly concluded, “One of the things that may come out of this awful day is perhaps a renewed sense of urgency.”

Her statement is a confession that vigilance has faded over time. Some of this is a natural process — a human desire for normalcy, the tendency of civilized people to repress unpleasant realities. Vigilance is like a knife that dulls when it is not used.

Which is precisely why vigilance requires leadership. Urgency is either sharpened by rhetoric and expectation — or it is sharpened by tragedy.

Obama can’t be held responsible for every mistake at every level of government. But every level of government takes its cues from the president and his main advisers. And it is difficult to argue that the Obama administration has even attempted to create an atmosphere of urgency in the war on terror. The listless, coldblooded and clueless response of the Hawaii White House to the Christmas Day attack was only the most recent indication. Over the last year, nearly every rhetorical signal from the administration — from the use of war-on-terror euphemisms such as “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” to its preference for immediately categorizing terrorism as the work of an “isolated extremist” — has been designed to convey a return to normalcy, a contrast to the supposed fear-mongering of the past.

Add to this the Holderization of the war on terrorism. Attorney General Eric Holder began his work not with a high-profile assault on al-Qaeda but with a high-profile assault on the CIA — making clear to every ambitious officer that counterintelligence is a dead end of recrimination and legal bills. And now both the mastermind of Sept. 11, 2001, and the underwear bomber are headed toward celebrity trials. According to White House terrorism adviser John Brennan, the decision to prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court was made almost immediately by the Justice Department — though the president now concedes that “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula trained [Abdulmutallab], equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

This civilian prosecution strategy would make sense if the goal is punishment for an attempted mass murderer. But it makes no sense if the goal is vigilance in the war on terrorism — gaining information to prevent future attacks. Abdulmutallab evidently talked a bit with FBI investigators when first captured. But any defense lawyer — and now he has one — will urge him to withhold information for use in bargaining with prosecutors down the road. The reality here is simple and shocking: A terrorist with current knowledge of al-Qaeda operations in Yemen has been told he has the right to remain silent.

As a foreign terrorist, he does not have that right (as even the Obama administration has conceded by its use of military tribunals in other cases). And granting Abdulmutallab that privilege only because he tried to commit murder on American soil is an incentive of disturbing perversity.

The president has occasionally talked of a war on terrorism. But lip service is different from leadership. In the war on terrorism, 2009 was not a year of urgency and vigilance. It was a year of lullabies, hot toddies and Ambien — though it nearly ended with a bang.

The crucial issue now is what will be done from this point forward, and frankly that is seriously in doubt.

Discalced (dis-KALST) adjective: Without shoes. ETYMOLOGY:From Latin dis- (apart, away) + calceare (to fit with shoes), from calceus (shoe), from calx (heel). The word discalced is often used of members of religious orders who go barefoot or wear sandals.

Vietnam is purchasing six submarines from Russia along with other weapons system in what analysts say is a bid to counter China’s growing regional military power.

Hanoi announced a large arms deal for the submarines last week amid concerns that Vietnam is preparing to defend its interests in the resource-rich South China Sea, where Chinese military forces have increased their presence and aggressiveness in the past several years.

“I think their primary rationale is to counteract the military build-up that the Chinese have had in the South China Sea,” said Richard Bitzinger, a regional defense analyst with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

The arms deal was signed Dec. 15 during a visit to Russia by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Ironically Russia is reported to be selling $2.7 billion in arms to China.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Vietnam agreed to buy six Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines in a deal estimated to be worth $2 billion.

Disputes between Vietnam and China have been growing in recent months over disputed waters, including the Paracel Islands where Vietnamese fishermen have been harassed by the Chinese military.

Vietnam Deputy Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh called the maritime tensions “a matter of concern” two weeks ago. Analysts called it one of the most outspoken expressions of concern by Hanoi.

Dung confirmed in Moscow that the arms deal included submarines along with aircraft and “military equipment.” Advanced warplanes include 12 Su-30MK2 aircraft, among Russia’s most sophisticated export jets. The Su-30MK2 is comparable to the U. S. F-15 and superior to most other fourth generation fighters.  It is inferior to the U. S. made fifth generation F-22 (now cancelled) and F-35 joint strike fighter.

Good news for Gilbert Arenas. He got “Athlete of the Year” from “Guns & Ammo” magazine.—Leno . The momcompoop Arenas has been suspended indefinitely by the NBA for bringing a handgun into the locket room.

US official spokesmen have stepped up their rhetoric against al Qaeda in Yemen but do not have the manpower resources to open another anti-terror warfront in addition to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and to a lesser degree Somalia, Washington sources report.

 

This inadequacy is cloaked by the heated rhetoric, the closure of the US and British embassies in Sanaa for fear of a terrorist attack, the two governments’ declared intention of establishing a police force to fight al Qaeda in Yemen and a further injection of US counter-terror funding to the Sanaa government, although the chances of its survival - or president Ali Abdullah’s loyalty - are fairly low.

 

Yemeni “commentators” described as “productive” his talks in Sanaa Saturday, Jan. 2 with visiting Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command, with regard to action against al Qaeda. But Washington has a problem with the Yemen president: In the ten years since al Qaeda blew up the USS Cole in Aden harbor, Salah has conducted a dual policy, on the one hand, posing as America’s faithful ally in the war on the Islamist extremists, while, on the other, maintaining close back-door ties with al Qaeda in Yemen and giving them his protection.

 

Yemen’s revolving door for captured terrorists is part of this two-faced presidential strategy and accounts for al Qaeda’s mounting strength in the country. Any effort to contain this strength would be further doomed if the Obama administration were to go through with repatriating to their homeland 100 Yemeni Islamists released from Guantanamo Bay.

 

The US president’s top counter-terror adviser John Brennan told US television audiences Sunday: “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses a serious threat” which would be exacerbated by its reinforcement.

 

The day after his talks with Gen. Petraeus, Salah detached troops for the provinces east of the capital to ward off al Qaeda’s increasing presence there, but this was no more than a token gesture. His deals with Washington are unlikely to stand up for more than a few weeks or lead to the culling of al Qaeda strength in the country and, anyway, he has no military strength to spare from his other warfronts.

 

The Obama administration, facing mounting public criticism of the security lapses which led up to the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas day, is picking its way through this minefield in response to American fears and demands for a tough hand against the terrorists.

 

In the last of his three speeches on the subject on Saturday, Jan. 2, President Obama fingered al Qaeda in Yemen as the authors of the attempt after its organization, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s claim of responsibility. Now, he must follow through with a form of retaliation, even though by now the Islamist terrorists’ have abandoned their known hideouts and gone to ground among friendly native tribes or Yemen’s lofty mountains in the south.

 

The threat of an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa is longstanding. Al Qaeda controls parts of four Yemen provinces, Abayan, Baida, Shabwa and Hadramout, covering nearly 200,000 sq. km, almost a third of Yemen’s total area (530,000 sq. km. - slightly smaller than California). No more than a skeleton staff of two or three officers normally mans the US embassy in Sanaa, the ambassador and most of the personnel working out of well-guarded and fortified safe houses. The British embassy diplomatic staff is likewise very small.

 

Yemen is sunk so deep in three chaotic wars against two insurgencies and al Qaeda that the notion of a police force is risible. So too is for the US to rely on its armed forces to contain al Qaeda.

 

Military sources report that for months now, Yemeni armed forces have been staggering from one defeat to another against the Houthi rebels in the north, further undermined by the pullout of Saudi troops last week.

 

An even more menacing insurgency led by the Southern Engine movement is fighting to separate southern Yemen from the North and declare independence from the strategic Red Sea port of Aden.

 

Yemen claimed to have carried out two air strikes against al Qaeda hideouts in Shabwa on Dec. 17 and Dec. 24. They were in fact the work of US drones.

 

The latter attack, which killed 36 al Qaeda high-ups, took place the day before the Detroit-bound airliner was threatened by an al Qaeda bomber.

 

The logical conclusion from this sequence of events is that American military action in Yemen had no effect on the plot to blow up an American airliner.

 

The most popular boys’ names in 2009 were Ethan, Noah, and Logan. The least popular boy name for 2009: Tiger Madoff Gosselin.- Leno

 

Sensing weakness and seeing opportunity the Chinese Foreign Ministry has reshuffled its leading diplomats with a view to waging a more aggressive “quasi-superpower diplomacy” in the coming decade. Foremost among the changes is the soon-to-be-announced posting of Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei to Washington.

He, 55, will replace incumbent Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong, who has reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 and is tipped to return home.

Meanwhile, the official Chinese media reported Jan. 4 that three new vice foreign ministers had been appointed. They are former UK Ambassador Fu Ying; former Japan Ambassador Cui Tiankai; and former Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun. The three rising stars are expected to be in charge of European, Asian and African affairs, respectively.

Of the three, the suave and elegant Fu, 57, has attracted the most attention. Of Mongolian descent and daughter of a PLA general, Fu is the second female diplomat since 1949 to have attained the rank of vice minister. (The first was Mao Zedong’s niece, Wang Hairong, who was vice foreign minister during the Cultural Revolution.)

A former ambassador to Australia and the Philippines, Fu has played a pivotal role in raising China’s profile in Europe and in boosting the country’s ties with the EU, its largest trading partner.

Yet it is He’s imminent move to Washington that has become the talk of the cocktail circuit in Beijing. A fluent English speaker who studied international relations in Switzerland for a year, He served in China’s missions in the U.S. and United Nations for many years.

Often spoken of as a future foreign minister, He is considered a hawk who will be pushing hard to establish de facto diplomatic equality between China and the U.S.

Just last month, He made headlines at the Copenhagen climate-change summit when he told a press conference that the U.S. representative, Todd Stern, “either lacks common sense or is extremely irresponsible.”

Many official Chinese analysts see Beijing taking a more aggressive stance toward the U.S. For example, Cui Liru, president of the prestigious China Institute of Contemporary International Research, sees “a new balance of power” between the superpower and the quasi-superpower.

“In the past, the U.S. was proactive and we tended to be reactive. In many areas, the U.S. was on the offensive and we were on the defensive,” Cui commented concerning bilateral ties over the past several decades.

“There will be some changes of posture in the coming 10 years,” the senior government adviser noted.

It is also significant that the generation of “returnees” — Chinese who had studied in the West — has gained dominance over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, also a former ambassador to the U.S., studied in Britain, as did Vice Foreign Minister Fu.

Vice Foreign Minister Cui has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.

It is a mistake, however, to think that diplomats who had received formal training in the U.S. and Europe tend to be more conciliatory toward the West. If anything, such officials tend to assume a hardline stance, if only to reassure the big bosses in the Chinese Communist Party that they have not succumbed to the proverbial “sugar-coated bullets of capitalism” during their years abroad.

The NFL Playoffs have begun with generally boring blowout games. Except for the overtime dustup between Green Bay and the Cardinals.

·       Russia To Save World from Asteroid Strike

·       2011 BCS Game To Be In 3-D.

·       Obama Plan to Disarm America

·       China Warns Obama Over Taiwan

·       2010 Election Predictions.

Happy New Year! Everybody was off for Christmas . . . And apparently, so was Homeland Security . - Leno

Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia’s space agency said Wednesday.

“We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done” to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.

“Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed,” Perminov said.

The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.

Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts.

Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new “space apparatus” designed solely for the purpose of diverting Apophis from a collision course with Earth safely.

“There won’t be any nuclear explosions,” Perminov said. “Everything will be done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this.”

In a statement dated from October and posted on its website, the US space agencyNASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated “a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.”

“Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million,” NASA said.

RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000 kilometres (18,600 miles) of Earth in 2029 — closer than some geo-stationary satellites — and could shift course to hit Earth seven years after that.

Skeptics say the odds are it will miss Earth and the whole things is a Russian ploy to put dangerous weapons in space. Others point to the 1998 movie where a USA team sacrifices itself to stop just such a catastrophe and Russia’s desire to be a hero..Last week Russia unveiled plans for multiple manned and unmanned space missions to replace U. S. as space leader.

Cothurnal (koh-THUR-nuhl) adjective: Of or related to tragedy or tragic acting. ETYMOLOGY:From Latin, from Greek kothornos (a thick-soled laced boot worn by tragic actors in ancient Athenian tragedies).

Today is the 2010 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) national collegiate football championship game between slightly favored Alabama and Texas and if ESPN, owned by ABC, and Disney have their way next year’s game will be in 3D. That game plus 25 World Cup matches, college basketball and football, and the Summer X Games will also be shown in 3-D on home television sets according to ESPN.

Discovery Communications, Sony and Imax are also set to announce Tuesday a 3D network that would launch in 2011. The joint venture of the three firms doesn’t have an official name for the network yet, although it has created a logo that says “3D TV,” according to sources. 

ESPN has been testing ESPN 3D for more than two years. For example, it showed a USC-Ohio State college football game in select theaters and on USC’s campus.

viewers must have a 3D-ready TV set to see the 3-D broadcast, and might need a new set-top box. And yes, viewers also must wear 3D glasses.

Plus, the added cost of producing content in 3D will likely get passed onto the consumer, resulting in another cable pay tier similar to current high-definition packages.

The recent box office success of “Avatar,” which recently passed $1 billion worldwide and is set to become the #2 movie of all time behind director James Cameron’s own “Titanic,” has helped prove the 3D format can draw a stunning number of viewers. 

3-D has existed in some form since the 1890s. Frederick Eugene Ives patented his stereo camera rig in 1900. The camera had two lenses coupled together 1 3/4 inches apart. Many say the “golden era” of 3-D began in 1952 with the release of the first color stereoscopic feature, Bwana Devil, produced, written and directed by Arch Oboler.

Some will recall that Stereo sound was a response to 3-D movies and called “3-D radio”

Obama’s plan to begin unilateral phasing out U. S. nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from the Pentagon and other US agencies, The Los Angeles Times reported late Sunday.

Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague last April in what many saw as an audition for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since then he has ended numerous defense programs including arguably the scraping air superiority F-22 fighter program, cutting the strategic bomber program, and reducing naval assets while China is arming to the teeth for a pushg against Taiwan and into the Pacific, and Russia is on the edge of military modernization and reexpansion.

But citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said the Obama administration is now locked in internal debate over a top-secret policy blueprint for shrinking the US nuclear arsenal and reducing the role of such weapons in country’s military strategy. Military commanders worry Obama’s plan is tantamont to disarming America and invites aggression against it and its allies who are already looking elsewhere for a reliable strategic partner.

Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission, the report said.

In turn, White House officials, unhappy with early Pentagon-led drafts of the blueprint known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have stepped up their involvement in the deliberations and ordered that the document reflect Obama’s preference for sweeping change, The Times noted.

The Pentagon has stressed the importance of continued US deterrence, an objective Obama has said he agrees with, the report said.

But a senior Defense official, who described the debate as “spirited,” acknowledged that some officials are concerned that the administration may be going too far, the paper pointed out.

Critics wonder what is to be gained by desolving the long held and successful “Peace Through Strength” ethos that formed the basis for the dissembling of the former Soviet Union and ending the Cold War without bloodshed.

 Investigators in the Florida Keys say they lured a suspected marijuana grower into turning himself in by leaving a ransom note in place of six seized pot plants.  Police left a number saying to call for the price to get his pot plants back. The grower called and offered $200 — the Einstein is in jail.

China on Tuesday again warned the United States against selling arms to Taiwan, amid media speculation that Washington could soon act on the island’s request for new weapons.

“We firmly oppose the US selling arms to Taiwan,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters at a regular briefing, saying Beijing has had “serious consultations” with Washington on the issue.

“We urge the US to recognise the gravity of selling arms to Taiwan… cancel any plans to sell arms to Taiwan and stop selling arms to Taiwan so as not to damage China-US relations.”

Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou, despite warming ties with Beijing, has appealed to the United States for weapons, saying the island must stay on guard in light of the mainland’s sharp rise in military spending.

Taipei is reportedly seeking F-16 fighter jets as well as helicopters for military transport and rescue missions to modernise its ageing fleet, and Obama is expected to act on that request in the coming months.

Washington has been the leading arms supplier to independent Taiwan, despite switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing during the Carter presidency,.

China and Taiwan split in 1949. Beijing still views the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

During his visit to China in November, Obama reiterated that the United States believed there was only one China shocking the Taiwanese..

The United States is required by law to provide Taiwan with weapons of a defensive nature, under the Taiwan Relations Act.

US defense firm Raytheon said last month that it had been awarded a contract worth 1.1 billion dollars for new Patriot missile systems to Taiwan, but that the missiles themselves would be part of a separate contract.

China is increasingly confident that it can bull rush Obama getting what it wants as it surged into the Pacific.

In reelated news China is said to be interested in taking over as many as 200 U. S. radio stations which could give it a trangle hold on Americans’ information media.

The other day in Ohio, employees at a Wendy’s saved a man’s life. Apparently, they told him, “We’re closed.”– O’Brien

Neither Connecticut’s Democrat Senator Chris Dodd or Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.)  will seek reelection. Dodd is trailing badly in polls.

Nevada’s Democrat Senator Harry Reid is also expected to lose his seat as his popularity there has plummeted.

The party in the White House, with rare exception, lose ground in midterm elections. In 1954 Eisenhower lost 18 House and one Seante seat; In 1962 Kennedy lost 4 house seats but gained 3 senators; in 1970 Nixon lost 12 House seats and gained 2 in Senate; in 1978 Carter dropped 15 house members and 3 in Senate; Reagan lost 26 in the house and gain one Senator; Clinton set the record in 1994 losing 54 house members and 8 Senate seats. Ironically G. W. Bush is the only modern President to gain in the House and Senate adding 8 and 4 respectively in 2002.

Prognosticators predict a shift of at least 30 house seats and as many as 8 Senate seats in this November’s national election. Such loses would not give Republicans control but would shift the power center away from Obama. Republicans have to win 40 house seats and 11 in the Senate to take control – and that is unlikely. All 435 house members, 36 Senators and 37 state houses are up for grabs.

The history of midterm elections does not escape Obama and Democrats which explains what the near panic to push through his agenda before the 2010 campaigns heat up.  

The 2010 census  will trigger redistricting nationwide setting up major shifts across the nation in 2012 when odds are Obama will run for a second term in the White House  in an entirely new political environment  either building or reversing the 2010 outcomes.     

In most state the filing period has just opened or is about to begin. All candidates for the June primary must file, collect sufficient signatures from citizens who are reghistered to vote in the contested jurisdiction, and pay a fee to run for office.

The good news is that this Nigerian underwear bomber is now in custody. Remember the good old days when the only threat from Nigeria was spam e-mail? — Leno

·       US Anti-Terror Authorities In Another Keystone Cops-like Episode

·       Russian Predicts End of USA in 2010

·       Cable Wars Close Circle

·       Clinton and Dean Darlings of Euro-Socialists

At least the original keystone cops were funny as buffoons but this current Napolitano led boondoggle is not.. All weekend various Obama sycophants have been scampering around saying such absurdities as “there was no single indicator Umar Abdulmutallab was a danger we just failed to connect the dots.”

 

In fact about the only thing this clown did not do was a warning on his forehead.

 

Consider just these damning facts:

 

The Obama White House National Security Council, US intelligence and counter-terror agencies failed to studied al Qaeda’s failed attempt to assassinate Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, deputy interior minister and commander of the Saudi anti-terror campaign in Yemen five months ago, they should have detected pointers to al Qaeda’s latest terror offensive and its methods.

 

Like the Nigerian bomber Umar Abdulmutallab, the Saudi minister’s would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali’ al-Asiri (al Qaeda-styled Abu Khair), who did not survive the attack, used explosives hidden in his underwear to fool the prince’s bodyguards. He won an audience with the prince by posing as an informant, the same trick used by the Taliban suicide bomber to penetrate a US base and kill 7 CIA agents and a US soldier last month.

 

This emerging prototype was missed or some worry perhaps suppressed by Muslim influence on Obama during childhood that seems to color and excuse Islamic terrorism is at best mysterious, confusing, and dangerous.

 

For the first time, Saturday, Jan. 2, Obama belatedly and even reluctantly accused al Qaeda of the failed attempt Christmas Day to blow up Delta Flight 253, charging its Yemeni affiliate with arming and directing him to the attack.

 

Obama, who has called a meeting of US security agency chiefs for Tuesday, Jan. 5, cannot expect serious brainstorming because it would be inhibited by a mindset that refuses to refer to the failed mass-murderer as an illegal or enemy combatant or terrorist but only as a “suspect.” Treated like a common or garden criminal, the Nigerian has been committed to an ordinary lock-up. This has given him the opportunity to hire American lawyers, who right away shut his mouth and advised him not to cooperate in answering questions about his accessories and masters.

 

With this invaluable intelligence door closed, Obama has turned to measures for enhancing the security of US air travelers and air traffic bound for US ports and demanded the matching-up of the counter-terror watch and no-fly lists. Abdulmutallab appeared on the first but was left off the second as a result of the failure of US intelligence agencies to share incoming data about his record.

 

Furthermore, should Obama and his advisers decide on retaliation, counter-terror sources are assured by reports from Yemen that al Qaeda’s operatives were no longer hanging around their bases twelve days after the airliner episode; they had packed up and made tracks for fresh hideouts in the northern mountains and Hadhramaut.

 

Os far, no one is asking what happened to the $70 million a year the US has been pouring into Yemen allegedly for counter terrorism.

 

The most definitive act has been closing down the U. S. and UK embassies in Yemen’s capitol city.

 

Since Obama’s Monday, Dec. 23 pledge: “We will not rest until we find all who were involved,” the days slipping by without a US reaction have given al Qaeda the chance to plot more airliner attacks from a safe location.

 

The second breach in US defenses against terrorist attack has deeper roots and derives from the misconceptions about al Qaeda governing US intelligence thinking.

 

Prince Muhammad in Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s top counter-terror executive, escaped with light injuries from Abu Khair’s attempt to kill him at his Jeddah palace on August 27, 2009, thanks mainly to the partial detonation of the explosive materials hidden in his underpants, a glitch repeated in the Nigerian bomber’s attempt.

 

The assassin gained entry to the most heavily fortified and guarded palace in the Red Sea town of Jeddah by convincing Saudi agents in Yemen that he was ready to switch sides - but only if he could discuss terms face to face with Prince Muhammad.

 

They did in fact hold several meetings - not in the palace but out in Najran province on the Yemen border. The data he handed over was solid enough to convince the Saudi prince that he was on the threshold of his government’s biggest breakthrough in its war on al Qaeda.

 

So when Abu Khair offered to bring with him to the Jeddah palace a list of al Qaeda high-ups in Yemen willing to defect to Saudi Arabia, the prince not only agreed to the venue but sent his private jet to pick him up from Najran.

 

Counter-terror sources allow that the government in Riyadh may have kept the details of this plot from the Americans - and not for the first time. Still, CIA and FBI undercover agents in the oil kingdom could have got wind of it from their own contacts.

 

Had it been properly scrutinized and analyzed, there was much valuable input to be gained from the attempt on Prince Muhammad, betraying as it did Al Qaeda methods which were later replicated in the attempted bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner and, again, in the deadly attack on Dec. 30 against the CIA contingent at Forward Operation Base Chapman, in the remote Afghan Khost province.

 

The bomber, who has not been identified yet, not only gained entry with explosives in his possession to the well-guarded US base, but detonated the device while the agents were unarmed and working out in the base gym.

 

How was this accomplished? The bomber had in fact been employed as a CIA informer and was therefore known at the gate and familiar with the routines of Base Chapman. Furthermore, he knew enough to time his attack for the day of the arrival in Kabul of a high-ranking CIA official. There has been no word about this official’s fate.

 

Friday, Jan. 1, the Pakistan Taliban claimed the attack had been carried out by a “turncoat” working for the CIA who had defected in order to kill senior American intelligence agents in revenge for the US drone attacks which killed their operatives inside the Pakistan border.

 

Matching up lists of would-be terrorists may address bureaucratic glitches but it will not cure the fundamental attitudes pervading US intelligence which does not let them get into the minds of al Qaeda plotters enough to second-guess their plans. Because of Obama’s personal proclivities there is scant chance this will change for the better.

 

January is named for the Roman God Janus who guarded heaven’s gates and had two faces one looking forward and one backwards. In 46 B. C. Julius Caesar added one day to it making it then the only month with 31 days. Anglo Saxons called the first month after Winter Solstice “Wolf’s Month” because hungry wolves came into villages looking for food. January is the coldest month with a record low of -80 degrees being recorded in Alaska in 1971. The record low was at Vostok, Antarctica in 1983 at a brisk -121 degrees. 

For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he’s been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. “It’s a record,” says Prof. Panarin. “But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger.”

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it’s his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin’s views also fit neatly with the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin’s ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country’s top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin’s apocalyptic vision “reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today,” says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. “It’s much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union.”

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin’s predictions. “Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people,” says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin’s theories don’t hold water.

Mr. Panarin’s résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are “classified.”

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

“When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise,” he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. “They didn’t believe me.”

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls “The Californian Republic,” and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of “The Texas Republic,” a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an “Atlantic America” that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls “The Central North American Republic.” Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

“It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time.” A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. “It’s not there for no reason,” he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia’s biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt “a pyramid scheme,” and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington’s role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama “can work miracles,” he wrote. “But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles.”

The article prompted a question about the White House’s reaction to Prof. Panarin’s forecast at a December news conference. “I’ll have to decline to comment,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino’s response was significant. “The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully,” he says.

The professor says he’s convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union — 15 years beforehand. “When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him,” says Prof. Panarin.

Interrobang or interabang (pronounced /ɪnˈtɛrəbæŋ/), ‽, is a nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers’ jargon as the bang). The ligature is a superimposition of those two marks. It was briefly introduced in the 1960s, and even appeared on a few typewriter keyboards before falling out of any favor.

It was proposed for use in A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.

For example:

• How much did you pay for those shoes‽
• You’re going out with whom‽
• They did what‽

Time Warner Cable and Fox Network agreed to pay Fox’s demand for more money and gets to keep Fox programming avoding a big hole. The two declared a cease fire into the New Year and resolved their dispute soon afterward..

Cable networks started in the late 1940s mostly in small towns and expanded into suburbs in the 1950-60s because rooftop antennae could not pull in a TV signal. Cable has grown to dominate local television markets striking monopolistic contracts with local governments for a healthy piece of the action, assuring cable companies virtually no competition, control of local television programming and little or no check on cable fees that have far outpaced inflation in almost every area. As a consequence “free access” like radio has almost ended replaced by universal pay per view.

Cable providers have spread out into internet access and even telephone service . “Telephone companies” like Verizon are countering by installing fiber optic cables in increasing numbers of communities worldwide. Verizon’s global IP network serves more than 2,700 cities in 159 countries, and its wireless network reaches approximately 289 million Americans putting it at loggerheads with AT&T.

Cable giant Comcast is taking a different approach by buying programming providers once the exclusive preserve of ABC, CBS, and NBC that have been withering since the 1970s.

Verizon has announced plans to fiber optically wire more cities – Santa Barbara, California is one. Verizon says it will offer enhanced, and it says cheaper internet, television, wireless and wired services.

The Fox flap could further thin out cable’s piece of the pie. An August 2009 opinion survey in Santa Barbara found over 79% complaining about high local cable prices and saying local cable provider, Cox Cable, should have its monopoly with the City ended in favor of open competition. The city council, desperate for more and more money to fill the udder where the bureaucracy feeds has so far ignored the public’s wishes.

But, cable companies are also under pressure by regulators and leglislators responding to complaints about censorship and blocking programming – especially sports blackouts – that anger subscribers.

Bringing things full circle  Dish Network and Digital TV satellite dishes are swarming  rooftops nationwide like ticks on a hound just as the once ubiquitous TV antennas did. There is even talk of yet another Obama Czar to really confuse things – hopefully Napolitano won’t be reassigned..

Ohio Bucks Beat the Oregon Ducks in 2010 Rose Bowl- in case you missed it. NAVY won too.

Former U. S. Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean recently said that “cooperation” between European socialists and the U. S. Democratic Party has “intensified significantly” and involves “regular contact” at “Congress, Senate, party and foundation levels.” He added that “efforts have been remarkable from both sides.”    But at a “Global Progress Conference” in October, Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson, acknowledged that socialized medicine in the U.S. faces a serious obstacle. He said that while Europeans are receptive to the expansion of government in their lives, in America there is an anti-government culture which prevents people from “expecting the State to solve their problems.”

“This explains why Obama will find it difficult to implement the social coverage plans such as a broader health service,” Benenson reportedly said.

The conference was held in Madrid, Spain in early December under the patronage of Spain’s socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose pro-homosexual and pro-abortion policies have led to street protests by thousands of supporters of traditional values. Zapatero is also under fire for a jobless rate of nearly 18 percent.

Dean’s comments came in a video address in which he joked that his failure to personally attend the Party of European Socialists (PES) convention, which was advertised as a “carbon neutral congress,” was actually a smart move because he avoided flying and contributing to global warming. “We’ve saved a lot of carbon,” Dean said.

In his comments, Dean called for a “long-term global vision” for the transformation of the global economy and mentioned that disgraced Democratic President Bill Clinton had previously spoken at a meeting of the PES-sponsored Global Progressive Forum. The April 2-3 Global Progressive Forum also featured Robert Borosage of the left-wing group that calls itself the Campaign for America’s Future.

The Global Progressive Forum is also sponsored by the Socialist International, whose U.S. affiliate, the Democratic Socialists of America, includes long-time backers of Obama.

“Free-market globalization alone cannot achieve social justice,” Dean told the PES convention. “What the world needs is a global New Deal.”

He defined this as a “transition to a low-carbon economy” involving “a major transformation in the patterns of production and consumption.” This will include “large-scale investments and mechanisms” to share the costs and the policies, he said. His remarks came on the eve of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Dean never used the words “world government,” but did declare that “We need a new institutional framework to govern, manage and monitor implementation.”

In order to bring this about, the PES Congress issued a “Call to Action” urging the imposition of a “global financial transaction tax” that would generate hundreds of billions of dollars and “provide funding for long-term public investments, to finance global development and climate change.” That is a variation of the call for massive redistribution of wealth from developed countries as  reparations.

As AIM has disclosed, there is a secret plan by left-wing non-governmental organizations to bring about this global tax over the next several months.

In another PES document, “A New Direction for Progressive Societies,” the group urged a “progressive peace policy” that says “…we fully support the initiative of the Obama administration in favor of global disarmament” and urges the “deepening [of] transatlantic cooperation with the new US administration.”

“It is our profound conviction that we must secure a Global New Deal for a new global order of social justice, equality, sustainable development and democracy,” the document concludes.

Howard Dean’s involvement with the PES is actually an old story as noted in an article published last Spring, “Another group associated with the SI [Socialist International] is the Party of European Socialists (PES), which heard from Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, back in 2006. Dean’s speech is posted on the official Democratic Party website, although the European socialist parties are referred to as ‘progressive.’ Democrats, Dean said, want to be ‘good citizens of the world community.’ He spoke at a session on ‘Global Challenges for Progressive Politics.’”

Following up, in April 2007, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen reported that European socialists held a meeting “in the Democrats HQ in Washington,” met with officials of the party and Democratic members of Congress, and agreed that “PES activist groups” in various U.S. cities would start working together.

Photos of the trip showed Rasmussen meeting with such figures as Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bernie Sanders, officials of the Brookings Institution, Howard Dean, and AFL-CIO President John W. Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The Brookings Institution is headed by former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a proponent of world government who was identified in the book Comrade J as having been a pawn of the Russian intelligence service.

The “Global New Deal” was also the theme of the October “Global Progress Conference” in Madrid, Spain, sponsored by the Center for American Progress, the IDEAS Foundation, and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, an affiliate of the German Green Party. A summary of remarks said that the conference was perceived to be the “starting point for a new global progressive alliance.”

The Center for American Progress is a George Soros-funded entity run by former Clinton official John Podesta, who co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Project.

Obama pollster Benenson has a website which says that he “was the lead pollster and a senior strategist for Obama during the 2008 election, and he continues in that role today.”

In addition to Obama and various Democratic Party candidates, elected officials, and campaign organizations, his clients have included the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Brookings Institution, the Soros Foundation, and the Working Families Party, an ACORN front.

Bureaucrats 2010 Plan REDUX. If it moves, TAX IT. If it keeps moving REGULATE IT. If it stops moving SUBSIDIZE IT.

·       Decade and Year Will End With Blue Moon

·       Half Century of Cooling Ahead

·       79% Expect Another Terror Attack in 2010

·       Iran Can Build Nuke in 2011: Israel

·       Obama Insults Veterans

The  lowest temperature every recorded was -129 degrees at the Soviet station Vostok in Antarctica in July 1983. The coldest inhabited place is Norilsk, Russia with an average annual temperature is 12.4 degrees (20 degrees below freezing). It is the northern most city in Siberia and was the center for the infamous soviet communist era forced labor camps - Gulag.

The decade and this year will end with a “Blue Moon.” The idiomatic expression “once in a blue moon” it metaphorically refers to a rare event. By modern definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. Blue moons are not entirely rare and occur about once every two years.

Most years have twelve full moons, but since a lunar cycle is 29.5 days, we wind up with almost 11 leftover days. Eventually the days add up, and we have two full moons in a single month — like we do this month.

The next blue moons will occur August 2012, followed by July 2015 and October 2020.

The expression has been in use for about 400 years.

The whole thing may have started in the dark ages which followed the fall of the Roman empire, one of the few lifelines for science and mathematics in Europe was the desire to calculate the correct date of Easter, following clues in the bible. This must fall on the Sunday immediately following the 14^th day of the Paschal Moon, which in turn falls on or after the day of the ecclesiastical vernal equinox which is fixed as 21^st March. It can never occur before 22^nd March or after 25^th April. Lent, which begins 46 days before Easter, contains the Lenten Moon.

By tradition all twelve full moons of a year have names, some religious like those above and the Moon Before Yule and the Moon After Yule, and some relating to seasonal activities and events such as Flower Moon, Hay Moon, Harvest Moon and Hunter’s Moon. The main function of a Blue Moon is to preserve the relationships between these religious and lunar events in those years when there is a thirteenth full moon.

By this rule, a Blue Moon is the third full moon of four in a fixed season usually containing three, and will always fall on the 20^th - 23^rd of May, February, August or November. Here, again using Universal Time, are the months in which blue moons will occur over a full 19 year cycle using this more traditional rule –

Sometimes dust or smoke from forest fires or a volcanic eruption somewhere can change the moon’s color. But the origin of the phrase referring to the moon’s hue is lost in time. NASA inks the “blue moon” term to the 1883 explosion of the Indonesian volcano Krakatau, when ash rose to the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, making the moon appear blue. But the phrase was in use before that.

Triskaidekaphobiacs, those who fear the num,ber 13. says that because the Blue Moon is the 13^th full moon of the year it will be unlucky. I guess that makes as much sense as any other part of it all.

 

In any case HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Authorities say they confiscated a teddy bear at a Southern California toy store that was stuffed with marijuana. The owner of Toy Town, in Mission Viejo said Monday that he got the package last week, opened it up and found a 2-foot-tall blue teddy bear that felt “hard and crinkly.” The bear turned out to be stuffed with three large, vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana.

It’s not surprising since in California it is increasingly common to see pot smokers puffing their “medicinal weed” on streets or even while driving cars. On Christmas Eve one such straggley-haired example toppled over into the gutter on  Santa Barbara’s main street amid last minute shoppers who simply stepped over him as he smoldered.

A university professor challenges the widely held notion that carbon dioxide is responsible for climate change — and says the Earth will continue to cool for the next half-century. In anticipation and out of caution they may simply be wrong, or as current revelation seem to signal, simply manipulators the global warming hysterics have relabeled their crusade “climate change.”

Rather than carbon dioxide, cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — already implicated in depleting the Earth’s ozone layer — are to blame for changes in the global climate, according to a paper by Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

CFCs are compounds once widely used as refrigerants, and cosmic rays are energy particles originating in outer space.

Lu’s peer-reviewed paper, published in the prestigious journal Physics Reports, states:

The total amount of CFCs decreased around 2000, Lu said, and “correspondingly, the global surface temptrature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate.”

Lu found that while there was global warming from 1950 to 2000, there has been global cooling since 2002, and his research indicates that the cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years.

Lu based his research on data from laboratory and satellite observations, according to the Insciences Web site. He previously published work on the ozone layer along with researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The paper, published Dec. 3 in Physics Reports, is available online at: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2009.12.002.

So far Lu has not been attacked by the climate change mafia.

Arsonists set fire early on Wednesday to a giant straw statue of the Swedish Yule goat, a forerunner to Santa Claus in Sweden, defying security measures for a third year in a row.

The botched attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit by the Nigerian nincompoop has refocused attention on the dangers of terrorism.

 

Immediately after the Christmas Day botched terror bombing of a Detroit bound airliner a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 79% of U.S. voters now think it is likely there will be another terrorist attack in the United States in the next year. That’s a 30-point jump from the end of August when just 49% of Americans felt that way. The current level of concern is even higher than it was in the summer of 2007 when 70% considered an attack likely. In December 2008, 58% said an attack was likely.

 

The new number includes 42% who say another terrorist attack in America is very likely within the next year.

 

Just 12% of voters now say another terrorist attack on the United States in the next year is not very or not at all likely.

 

The current survey was conducted among likely voters and the August survey was conducted among all adults. While there is often a modest difference in results for these two segments of the population, the difference is typically in the 3-5 percentage point range. So while the current numbers are not precisely comparable to the August results, the 30 percentage point jump in concern reflects a significant change.

 

Men feel more strongly than women that another terrorist attack is likely in the next year. Older voters are more concerned than those who are younger.

 

Republicans are more worried about another terrorist attack in the near future than are Democrats and voters not affiliated with either party. The Political Class is much less fearful than Mainstream voters.

 

A lot of voters, however, are definitely following news reports about the terrorist attempt to blow up an airliner at it was landing in Detroit. Eighty-three percent (83%) say they are following those news reports at least somewhat closely, including 44% who are following very closely. Just 15% are not following news about the terrorist incident very closely or at all.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been criticized for her response since the Christmas Day terrorist attempt. Forty-five percent (45%) of voters had an unfavorable opinion of Napolitano in April, while 30% viewed her favorably. Napolitano, who appears dull and even vacuous, is now under fire for sleeping at the Homeland Security switch.

 

Forty-nine percent (49%) of Americans in September believed that most of their fellow countrymen have already forgotten the impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in which 3,000 died. Thirty-nine percent (39%) disagreed.

 

Since then, in addition to the airline incident on Christmas Day, a Muslim U.S. Army officer massacred 13 at Fort Hood, Texas and wounded many others. Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide said the November 5 shooting should beinvestigated by military authorities as a terrorist act rather than by civilian authorities as a criminal act.

 

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Americans nationwide believe that it is the responsibility of American Muslims to speak out against terrorist attacks on the United States.

 

In early December, 44% of voters said the United States is safer today than it was before the 9/11 attacks, a number that had remained relatively stable since the end of the summer. Another 38% said America is not safer today, and 18% more were undecided.

 

Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters oppose the Obama administration’s decision to try the confessed chief planner of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York City as part of its effort to shut down the Guantanamo terrorist prison camp in Cuba. But most voters at the time were at least somewhat confident that New York City will be safe and secure while the trials are going on.

 

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Illinois voters oppose relocating some suspected terrorists from Guantanamo to a prison 150 miles west of Chicago.

 

Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans believe a cyberattack by terrorist hackers poses a greater economic threat to the United States than another 9/11 attack on New York City and Washington, D.C.

 

The U.S. economy was severely disrupted by the 2001 attacks, but consumer confidence is currently lower than it was in the aftermath of those attacks.

A suburban Philadelphia teenager was suspended for a day for wearing a Santa Claus suit to school. The 18-year old says he told the principal of his plan and was told not to because it would be a “distraction.” The boy was suspended for a day for “defiance of authority.”

Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Iran will have the technology to build a nuclear bomb early in 2010 and will be able to produce one in 2011.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered this assessment before the Israeli parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee.

The Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report, and a Barak spokesman wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Israel and most others rejects Tehran’s claims that its nuclear program is designed to produce energy, not bombs. It has lobbied for tough sanctions against Iran and has not ruled out a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

A recent analysis made public finds that Iran can not defend its nuclear plants against an Israeli attack even without U,. S. help. Recent Iranian supported attacks on Saudi Arabia via Yemen would appear to make such success more likely. 

Barak said in the December 28, 2009 issue of the Jerusalem Post that Iran’s Qom plant is immune to a “regular strike” because is is buried in reinforced bunkers. The Defense Minister did not describewhat other sort of strike could be successful or exactly what that would involve.

Israel has recently purchased and received bunker buster bombs that can be precision quided and have the capability to penetrate hundreds of feet of earth and reinforced concrete before exploding.

There is no indication that Barak was suggesting ot threatening the use of nuclear weapons or other WMDs. Some speculate Israeli commandos or unconventionmal ground forces could be deployed but that is speculation too.

What is clear is that Iran lacks the air defense capability, either missiles, fighter planes, or even detection gear, to repeal a determined Israeli using warplanes, cruise or other missiles.

Israel is believed to have deployed cruise missile firing submarines into the Persian Gulf within range of some Iran nuclear facilities. It is unlikely Israel would fire missiles from the Black Sea. Iran is under pressure from its domestic opposition and the West to suspend key parts of its nuclear program.

A living nativity scene at a Presbyterian Church near the Colorado ski resort of Vail almost had to go without two crucial actors when two donkeys escaped.A church member who stopped by the church Wednesday morning noticed the donkeys were gone. He and a sheriff’s deputy followed footprints in the snow and eventually caught up with them. The donkeys had wandered near some railroad tracks but were OK.

“Nobody made these guys go to war. They had to have known and accepted the risks. Now they whine about bearing the costs of their choice?” Obama commenting about his proposal to make injured military veterans buy insurance to pay for medical treatment.

Bad press, including major mockery of the plan by comedian Jon Stewart, led to Obama abandoning his proposal to require veterans carry private health  insurance to cover the estimated $540 million annual cost to the federal government of treatment for injuries to military personnel received during their tours on active duty.

Obama said he was puzzled by the magnitude of the opposition to his proposal. 

Veterans and veterans groups are expressing outrage at Obama’s arrogance, and insulting America’s injured military veterans demeaning their voluntary military service.

This checks out through http://www.snopes.com/ and also http://www.ask.com/, the story appeared in the Washington Times.  Chew on this for a while. So far America’s mainstream media has ignored both Obama’s proposal, arrogance, and insulting  comment.

In the aftermath of the luckily botched bombing of a Detroit bound airliner on Christmas Day Obama is expressing confidence in the bumbling Janet Napolitano his appointee for her leadership of the Federal branch of the Keystone Cops.

·      Only Dumb Luck Saved Airliner

·       MAO, Transsexual On White House Christmas Tree

·       Time for More Nuclear Power

·       Tax FIDO And Fluffy Global Warming “Polluters”

In a laughable admission Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a Nigerian terrorist on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab tried to use Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) to blow up the airliner over Detroit Christmas Day. PETN is one of the most powerful high explosives known and could have caused great damage on the Christmas Day airliner. Umar was seated directly above the fuel tank. Reportedly about 80 grams nearly 3 ounces of PETN was taped around the leg of the terrorist.

Eight ounces of the stuff in a World War II era 2.36” bazooka rocket could blast a hole in 5 inches of armour plate so 3 ounces would have make short work of the thin skinned aircraft.

 

“Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid had also used 8-10 ounces of PETN along with  triacetone triperoxide (TATP), in 2001 to try to blast that Boeing 767. Neither man successfully detonated their bombs

 

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s father a wealthy Nigerian banker informed authorities weeks ago that his son was dangerous having fallen under the influence of radical Muslims.

The UK denied Umar a new visa to return to his engineering studies there.

Despite both Umar was allowed to fly on KLM to Amsterdam and then on a NWA flight to Detroit. His name appears among 575,000 suspects on an FBI watch list but nothing was done to alert security of give him extra attention..

A passenger subdued Umar. There was no Air Marshal  aboard the flight because Dutch law forbids it.

Congressman Peter King (R) New York the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee has called for a full investigation of the near disastrous security boondoggle. The Obama White House is in the early stages of finger pointing and deflection.

PETN is a white crystalline substance that feels powdery to the touch.

 

PETN is used in detonation cord, blasting caps  and other applications. It is relatively simple to make but, like nitroglycerine is can be unstable turning an erstwhile manufacturer into a red paste spread around the walls, ceiling and floor of the would be bomber’s makeshift lab.

 

But, you need not make it there is a lot of the stuff around. For instance, the IAEA reported it lost track of 12,000 pounds of PETN in Iraq a couple years ago, and it is otherwise easily obtainable from various sources but you cannot buy it at the local Farm Bureau..

Obtaining PETN explosive from the Nigerian terrorist indicates that he has involvement with some big terror groups. The terrorist, who was alleged to have some association with Al Qaeda, has declared to have received training at the Al Qaeda base in Yemen. Apparently the detonator was faulty just as was Reid’s when he failed to detonate his shoe bomb at Christmastime 2001. Iran’s heavily involved in Yemen as a munitions supplier.

 Had either bomb detonated it is likely both aircraft, passengers and crews would have been destroyed.

 

Fewer than 5% of airport screening post have the equipment yo detect PETN and related explosives.

The White House Christmas tree in the Blue Room has been the center of Presidential Christmases since the Harrison administration.  This year though, the tree reflects Obama’s leanings and Anti-Christian philosophy.  The tree does not celebrate a season but includes propaganda and politics.

According to World Net Daily, several ornaments on the tree, depict the extremist views of the administration.  One ornament contains the face of Mao Zedong, who killed many of his country men.  Another a transvestite with rainbows around the ornament.  Another pictures Obama added to Mounty Rushmore.  A Communist, a transvestite, and our most pompous president to date deck this anti-American, anti-Christian tree.

Not only does our President promulgate his Anti-Christian views in America’s home, he also does overseas.  He made one statement in Turkey last April that, ”We [America] do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”   Other statements are, ”Whatever we were, we are no longer a Christian nation,” and “The Sermon on the Mount [is] a passage that is so radical that our own defense department wouldn’t survive its application.”  These statements are all according to Chuck Norris’s column in World Net Daily.

When Obama first started his presidency last January, he was not even attending a church, something many American Presidents have done as soon as they moved to DC.  He went to the gym instead.

Many Americans are hoping that Santa brings us a new president.  In 2012 those Americans will probably get there wish.  One that is filled with the Christmas spirit.  One who is filled with the American Spirit.  God Bless America!

Missouri troopers seized about 20 pounds of marijuana from a car this week — some of it in luggage, and some in boxes wrapped as Christmas gifts. The Highway Patrol says troopers found the marijuana in the car they stopped for speeding on Interstate 44 near Joplin.Two California women in the car gave troopers permission to search the vehicle. Both were charged Tuesday with one marijuana-related count and released on $1,000 bond.

The Luddite-like opposition to nuclear power in the United States has waned with 60% supporting nuclear power (70% or men and 50% of women). The American public has been led to believe that nuclear power is extremely dangerous and that nuclear waste disposal is an unsolved problem. Those beliefs are based on preposterous distortions by media and environmental extremists.

The USA gets less than 20% of its electricity from nuclear plants compared to world leaders France 76%; and Belgium 54%. But, the USA produces more megawattage than any other country or course it proportionately uses more power too.

One of the biggest distortions concerns the disposal of spent fuel rods. While any waste has to be disposed of properly ash from coal fired power plants is far more hazardous that such rods primarily because there is so much of it. Scientific ignorance and self-serving hysteria has kept the USA dependent on hydrocarbon power for decades.

There has not been a new nuclear power plant built in the USA or Canada for 30 years. New applications are moving with glacial serenity though the NRC permitting process.

It would be relatively easy to triple US nuclear power production while all alternative fuels (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal) does not now appear to offer anywhere near such potential at least in the forseeable future.

Uranium is very prevelant in the Earth’s crust. Of course it also provides the heat making the planet’s core molten and contributing to the habitability of the Earth. Because the innocuous dull gray metal (see photo inset) is the feeder fuel for nuclear weapons it also fuels the profits of professional naysayers costing the nation its dependence on foreign oil and the dictators many of whom  who rob us and hate us.

 

Sooner or later it had to happen. Man’s best friend is being tagged as one of the environment’s worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

Farm animals have already been flagged for their flatulence and corrective proposals vary from affixing filters or collectors to their posteriors.

But the revelation in the book “Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living” by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand analyzed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a “medium” sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) — around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4×4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

“Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat,” Barrett said.

Other animals aren’t much better, the Vales say.

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

But Reha Huttin, president of France’s 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.

“Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly,” Huttin told AFP.

“Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don’t eat meat, so why shouldn’t I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?”

Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs — the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars — says defiantly, “Our animals give us so much that I don’t feel like a polluter at all.

“I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.

“I don’t want a life without animals,” she told AFP.

And pets’ environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.

With a total 7.7 million cats in Britain, more than 188 million wild animals are hunted, killed and eaten by feline predators per year, or an average 25 birds, mammals and frogs per cat, according to figures in the New Scientist.

Likewise, dogs decrease biodiversity in areas they are walked, while their faces cause high bacteria levels in rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to drink, starving waterways of oxygen and killing aquatic life.

And cat poo can be even more toxic than doggy doo — owners who flush their litter down the toilet ultimately infect sea otters and other animals with toxoplasma gondii, which causes a killer brain disease.

But despite the apocalyptic visions of domesticated animals’ environmental impact, solutions exist, including reducing pets’ protein-rich meat intake.

“If pussy is scoffing ‘Fancy Feast’ — or some other food made from choice cuts of meat — then the relative impact is likely to be high,” said Robert Vale.

“If, on the other hand, the cat is fed on fish heads and other leftovers from the fishmonger, the impact will be lower.”

Other potential positive steps include avoiding walking your dog in wildlife-rich areas and keeping your cat indoors at night when it has a particular thirst for other, smaller animals’ blood.

As with buying a car, humans are also encouraged to take the environmental impact of their future possession/companion into account.

But the best way of compensating for that paw or clawprint is to make sure your animal is dual purpose, the Vales urge. Get a hen, which offsets its impact by laying edible eggs, or a rabbit, prepared to make the ultimate environmental sacrifice by ending up on the dinner table.

“Rabbits are good, provided you eat them,” said Robert Vale.

 

·         Police Order Naked Bicyclists to Put on Helmets.

·         Israel Could Crush Iran and Its Nuke Plants

·         Persian Gulf States Worried About Iran: Obama Dithering

·         Obama Job Approval Falls to New Lows.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand —  Police picked up two naked men on a late night bike ride in a New Zealand town but let them off with a warning: put on helmets.

“They were wanting to experience total freedom,” said Senior Constable Cathy Duder, who stopped the pair about 10 p.m. on a recent night in the beach resort town of Whangamata. She told them: “You may experience total confinement. You should head home and get helmets.”

The duo turned tail and headed directly back to their house, Duder told The Associated Press on Wednesday. She said she did not see them again during her shift, and it was not known if they donned helmets and resumed their ride.

Public nudity can attract a charge of offensive behavior in New Zealand, but Duder said she cut the two men a break.

“It was dark and there was no one else around. They were jovial young men who had not intended to cause offense,” she said.

She described the two as “happy young men in their mid-20s … they appeared to be as sober as two judges.”

The Dec. 7 encounter, which has only just come to light, probably signaled the start of what Duder described as summer hijinks in Whangamata, a popular surfing and holiday getaway where partying is common during Christmas and New Year season.

The left wing website Daily Kos predicts Democrats will “get killed” in the 2010 elections saying, “86 percent of Republicans plan on turning out or are likely to turn out. Only 56 percent of Democrats are–similarly believe they’re going to turn out or likely to turn out. Only 32 percent of African-Americans, only 41 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds. We have numbers like that, we’re going to get killed…”

Obama reportedly told representatives of the Chinese government recently that the US may not be able to restrain the Israelis from launching a massive military strike on Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities for much longer.

According to the Israeli Newspaper Ha’aretz on December 17: Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Ha’aretz. They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American’s visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the US attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program.

The Israeli officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the United States had informed Israel on Obama’s meetings in Beijing on Iran. They said Obama made it clear to Hu that at some point the United States would no longer be able to prevent Israel from acting as it saw fit in response to the perceived Iranian threat.

However, Iran appears to be in denial of the danger and continues to be its own worst enemy with a constant campaign of bluster, hyperbole and threats.

As with a number of well-known Middle Eastern leaders, including the late and largely unlamented Saddam Hussein, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad continues to put what purports to be national pride before common sense or a rational approach to international relations.

The Iranian government, its military and intelligence services go out of their way to needle the West in a manner that suggests that they still harbor the illusion of surviving such a military confrontation.

Iran incapable of defending its strategic targets

The truth is that Iran is quite incapable of defending its air space and strategic targets against a determined Israeli attack, let alone one that involved US air assets.

Iran’s air force and air defense forces are a generation or more behind its potential foes. According to the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington in May 2009, “Without Russian air defense systems, Iran is a sitting duck.”

CSIS said, “Iran’s current air defense umbrella is antiquated and could not stop an Israeli or US strike. Iran’s air defense network could be easily penetrated by the air forces of Israel and the United States.”

The CSIS report continued, “Iran’s aging US and Russian-origin assets could not intercept Israeli F-15 and F-16 fighters … Iran lacks the modern weapon systems, integration and C4I battle management to reduce the potential destructive effectiveness of any offensive interdiction missions by Israel.”

The report, titled “Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities”, said: “One can predict a very low attrition rate to an Israeli strike.”

Indeed, there are so far unconfirmed reports that the five-day Iranian air defense exercise held in late November to test the defense of its strategic nuclear sites was an abject failure. Middle East sources have reported, “From the word go on Sunday, November 22, Iran’s five-day drill demonstrated that its air force and air defense units were unequal to their mission of keeping the skies over its nuclear sites clear of incoming strike aircraft.”

The Iranian navy is limited to counter-attacking allied naval forces in the Gulf in the event of a major conflict, while the Iranian army has no one to attack directly, with Iraq, Syria and Jordan between its armored forces and the borders of Israel.

It goes almost without saying that any serious attempt by Iran to launch a military strike on US or allied forces based in Iraq, the Gulf, Pakistan or Afghanistan, or indeed the strategically vital oilfields of Kuwait, northern Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, could be expected to bring an immediate Western military response with catastrophic consequences for Tehran.

A growing missile threat
This leaves just Iran’s growing missile capability for Israel and the West to ponder.

It is fair to say that Iran has made considerable strides in such technology with the overt help of North Korea and covert assistance by Pakistan, China and very probably a number of renegade Western commercial companies.

Iran does now have a limited ability to strike at Israel and Western targets throughout a wide area of the Middle East.

It was widely reported on December 16 that Iran test-fired an upgraded version of an advanced missile system believed to be capable of hitting Israel and even parts of Europe in an apparent show of strength aimed at discouraging attacks on its nuclear facilities. The test of the medium-range Sajjil-2 was reportedly a success and encouraged Iran to claim that it could retaliate effectively against a future US or Israeli military strike.

The Foreign Office in London said Iran has the “clear intention to extend the range of its missiles”, calling the launch “the wrong signal to send when the international community is trying to find a diplomatic solution” to its growing nuclear program.

James Lewis, a senior defense expert at CSIS, said that Iran probably has up to 300 shorter-range Shahab missiles, while the Sajjil remains in the test phase and currently “it’s not a sophisticated program”. But, Lewis added, “they’ve been putting a lot of money and effort into this program for more than a decade, and we have to take their claims seriously.”

Wednesday’s test was the third for the Sajjil-2 since it was unveiled in May. The missile has the longest range of any in Iran’s arsenal, about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) - putting Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, and US bases in the Gulf region well within reach. It could also reach parts of southeastern and eastern Europe.

Nuclear capability still years away

However, while Iran may have recently tested a “nuclear trigger” under laboratory conditions - if unconfirmed reports coming out of London are to be believed - and have enough enriched uranium for a single crude nuclear bomb, it still remains likely that Iran is at least five years away from having a genuine nuclear first-strike capability against Israel, even assuming that this is the path it is taking - something Tehran consistently denies. Abridged from a copyrighted article  by Richard M Bennett who is an intelligence analyst.

Before that stage is reached, a considerable amount of weapons-grade material would have to be produced; the bomb and its trigger tested, probably more than once and then the advanced technology developed to build a significant number of miniaturized nuclear weapons to fit the nose cones of its missile force.

Iran is highly unlikely to be able to develop or procure in the foreseeable future the type of advanced strike aircraft capable of delivering an air-dropped nuclear weapon over the required distance and which would have undoubtedly provided a quicker option for developing a nuclear strike force.

Therefore, the Iranian threat in the immediate future will rest on a relatively small number of missiles with conventional warheads, for if Tehran was to use any of its known stocks of chemical or biological weapons in missile attacks on Israel, the response would quite certainly be that which would have followed a nuclear attack; the total devastation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

If Iran continues to be at odds with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, then it must be a distinct possibility that Israel will indeed launch a massive air assault, feasibly backed up by cruise missiles launched from submarines in the Arabian Sea sometime next year.

Even a successful Israeli attack will still hold grave dangers for Washington, however.

A very significant proportion of the munitions that the Israeli Defense Forces would drop on Iran would be “Made in the USA”. It remains a valid point that Iran may reasonably not be too concerned with who actually drops the bombs and be far more vengeful against those who made the weapons, trained the pilots, built the aircraft and who Tehran ultimately blames for sponsoring and protecting its attacker.

Nor could the Iranian military be 100% certain that any such attack would not include covert US involvement and particularly satellite targeting intelligence and electronic warfare assets. Iran’s response may therefore be to blindly strike back at any and all available targets, whether Israeli or Western, and by any means left to it, including missile strikes and attacks by its worldwide network of supporters, including Hezbollah and Hamas.

As far as Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz and cutting off oil flow. It is possible but unlikely, and in any case the US Navy would destroy Iran’s naval forces in 24-36 hours if they tried..

Freshman Democratic Representative Parker Griffith of Alabama is switching to the Republican Party. He’ll be the first Republican to hold the seat since 1866. Griffith was narrowly elected last year from a region of northern Alabama that includes Huntsville and Decatur. President Barack Obama lost the district badly to Republican John McCain. Griffith is a radiation oncologist. His switch comes as Congress is trying to pass a much-contested healthcare bill. Democrats will still control the House by a substantial margin but this is a step closer.

Persian Gulf state representatives at an annual strategy conference, the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, warned that Iran’s confrontation with the West over Teheran’s nuclear program could plunge the Gulf into war.   

 The Kuwaiti foreign minister was one of several speakers who identified Iran as a leading threat to the Gulf. Other speakers asserted that Iran was helping the Shi’ite rebellion in Yemen, which has spread into neighboring Saudi Arabia.

But the U.S. representatives at the Manama Dialogue refused to confirm the accusations that Iran was supporting the Shi’ite rebellion in Yemen even though Saudi Arabia, and other sources – including this column in Hypocrisy.com – have confirmed it.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman said Washington had not received “independent information” to confirm Iranian involvement.

Mamoun Fandy, a senior fellow at the London

based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which organized the Manama Dialogue, said Iran was fomenting tension throughout the Gulf. Fandy said Iran was also involved in stirring unrest in Egypt and Iraq.

 

“Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, Iran’s confrontation with the international community, Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people, the Horn of Africa, and the crisis in Yemen [threaten Gulf security],” Kuwait Foreign Minister Mohammed Sabah Al Sabah said.

Addressing the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Dec. 11, Al Sabah cited growing instability in Iran. He said this could further increase regional tension.

“People call for rebellion against the regime, challenging the government and calling for the overthrow of the government in place,” Al Sabah said.

Iran was also said to have topped the agenda of the Gulf Cooperation Council summit, scheduled to end on Dec. 15 in Kuwait.

“The military training [of the Shi'ite rebels] proves there has been foreign intervention,” Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said.

A senior Yemeni official agreed. National Security Agency chairman Maj. Gen. Ali Al Anisi, citing the recent capture of a suspected Iranian weapons ship, said Teheran has been directing the Shi’ite rebellion in 2009.

“There is intelligence information [to support this],” Al Anisi said. “There are indeed signs, proof of Iranian interference, but we can’t elaborate on what these indications and their details are to the media.”

Al Anisi said the Iranian-backed Believing Youth movement intends to become another Hizbullah. He said the Believing Youth has been expanding the Shi’ite rebellion beyond Yemen.

“They [Believing Youth] have a clear agenda, much like that in southern Lebanon with Hizbullah,” Al Anisi said. “The Houthi [Shi'ite] rebels are seeking to create a belt around our border with Saudi Arabia and establish themselves as an organization with genuine influence.”

Obama has set and lifted a series of deadlines to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities the most recent the end of this year. Many believe the U. S. reticence rest on the repeatedly failed strategy of talking Iran out of nukes and its war making and support for terrorists and call it foolish and only encouraged Iranian aggression. Last week Iran sent troops into Iraq and took over an oil field.

Do you believe that huge snowstorm in D.C.? Pretty  amazing. President Obama spent one day in Copenhagen and global warming is solved.– Leno

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that just 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21 That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President .

 

Fifty-three percent (53%) of men Strongly Disapprove along with 39% of women. Most African-American voters (58%) Strongly Approve while most white voters (53%) Strongly Disapprove.

 

Seventy-four percent (74%) of Republicans Strongly Disapprove as do 52% of unaffiliated voters. Forty-seven percent (47%) of Democrats Strongly Approve.

 

For the second straight day, the update shows the highest level of Strong Disapproval yet recorded for this President. That negative rating had never topped 42% before yesterday. However, it has risen dramatically since the Senate found 60 votes to move forward with the proposed health care reform legislation. Most voters (55%) oppose the health care legislation and senior citizens are even more likely than younger voters to dislike the plan.

 

A Kansas mother is praising a neighbor as “Superman” after her 6-year-old daughter told her he somehow found the strength to lift a full sized Mercury sedan off her. The girl escaped with minor injuries after she and neighbor Nick Harris said she was pinned under the vehicle that accidentally rolled backward over the child. Nick says he doesn’t know how he did it. A Christmas miracle?