·         Another Obama Appointee Axed.

·         A, Q, Khan Spills Beans on Nuke Programs.

·         Blaspheming School Stages Christian Killers Drill

·         Lunar Base: No We Can’t

·         Bed Panning

Iran’s test of a intermediate range (1,200 miles) missile over the weekend is an obvious provocation, and thumbs its nose at Obama’s threats.

Obama loyalist and appointee Yosi Sergant, National Endowment for the Arts communications director, has resigned effective immediately joining a growing list of embarrassing Obama appointees to be axed.  Yosi’s sin was blatantly organizing an NEA sponsored  conference call urging NEA client artists to “pick something, whether its health care, education, the environment, you know, theres four key areas that the corporation (NEA)  has identified as the areas of service.” Yosi mixed the NEA’s work – hitherto essentially non-partisan politics — with the administration’s political agenda. It might have gone undetected except for Andrew Breitbart’s new conservative site, Big Government that landed on it like a bird on a June bug.

It was Yosi Sergant, who helped make artist Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” image ubiquitous as an organizer of Obama campaign support from artists, and that got him a $200,000 a year slice of the vast Obama patronage pie.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, among critics, complained that the call politicized subjected the agency to “political manipulation, though the NEA initially defended the call. NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman later said the call “inappropriate” and that Sergant had acted “unilaterally” in helping to organize it. In any case Yosi’s political head was soon sent bouncing down Pennsy;lvania Avenue late Friday in an effort to avoid another embarrassing news splash splattering defecant all over Obama and the White House..

“This call was completely unrelated to NEAs grantmaking, which is highly regarded for its independence and integrity,” NEA top dog Landesman absurdly claimed.

The White House sought to downplay the story, and it has gotten cooperation from mainstream media that has paid it scant attention, despite heavy coverage on the right. But it did issue new guidelines aimed at preventing politics from mixing with agency business.

A PEW Foundation funded study finds that one-third of Mexicans would leave their country and come to the USA if they could.

Pakistan’s ‘father of the Islamic bomb’, nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, has disclosed new details of the exchange of nuclear secrets and materials between China, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea.   

Khan, who remains under house arrest in Pakistan, managed to send a letter to a British journalist at the Sunday Times who published its claims on Pakistan’s nuclear deals that have led to the ongoing proliferation crisis.

”We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong (250km southwest of Xian),” Khan wrote. “The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50kg of enriched uranium, gave us 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and 5 tons of UF6 (3%).”

On Iran, Khan wrote: ”Probably with the blessings of BB [Benazir Bhutto]…General Imtiaz [Benazir’s defense adviser, now dead] asked me to give a set of drawings and some components to the Iranians. The names and addresses of suppliers were also given to the Iranians.”

Of course the disclosure deflates Iran’s continuing claims that it does not have a nuclear weapons program.

As for North Korea

, he added: ”(A now-retired general)  took $3 million through me from the N. Koreans and asked me to give some drawings and machines.” Simon Henderson’s Sunday Times article describes how the letter instructed his daughter to provide it to Henderson, with whom he had casual journalist contact in the past. The article attempts to refute widespread allegations that Khan trafficked in nuclear secrets for personal gain, citing evidence of his impoverished state in 2006.

Then there’s Gadhafi living in a tent. After residents complained, he had to dismantle the tent he was living in in New York. Say what you want about Gadhafi, but don’t you wish your relatives would stay in a tent on the front lawn when they come?

School officials in Burlington, N.J., the same bunch involved in blasphemy by changing  the lyrics of a children’s song substituting the name Barrack Hussein Obama for Jesus Christ  and then had school children sing new lyrics during Black History Month  have topped themselves for foolishness and stupidity.

Saturday Associated Press characterized the singing incident as an effort to indoctrinate school children to idolize Obama but did not mention a bizarre drill staged by those same school officials just last week. It seems Burlington school officials staged a mock “hostage situation” purposefully portraying the attackers as Christians, including one who was upset that his daughter was expelled for praying before class.

School Supt. Chris Manno praised the exercise to test the response of the school and police, explaining, “You perform as you practice. We need to practice under conditions as real as possible in order to evaluate our procedures and plans so that they’re as effective as possible.”

Lifesite News reported that Christian students in the school were offended when the student body was told the alleged gunmen were “members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the ‘New Crusaders’ who don’t believe in separation of church and state.”

The Burlington County Times said the mock gunmen pretended to shoot several students in the hallways before taking 10 students hostage in the district’s media center.

Organizers of the drill said the “Christian” gunmen had gone to the school “seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class.”

But there’s not much of reality to that scenario, according to Bob Pawson, spokesman for the Scriptures in School Project. Instead, it was just an excuse to denigrate Christians, he said.

“So what allegedly real condition was imagineered? A grotesque scenario saturated with Christian-bashing prejudice and bigotry; a scenario which could never possibly occur,” he said.

It doesn’t even meet the logic test, he said. “As all Burlington school officials know full well: It is perfectly legal for any student or staff member to pray in a public school. They know that no student can ever be expelled for praying before class. Hence, the contrived reason for the mock attack is bogus.”

County officials said the drill was the first live test of its sort in their area, but Pawson said it was more a test of New Jersey Christians, trying to determine their response “to such a blatant example of anti-Christian animosity.”

In a belated statement released on the school’s website, officials said there were “concerns” that had been shared regarding the test.

“Any perceived insensitivities to our religious community as a result of the emergency exercise are regrettable,” the school said.

“Our schools have respected and supported staff members’ and students’ right to pray. Students and staff have held morning prayer vigils. There are various prayer groups within the High School as well as an established Bible club,” the school said.

The U.S. Supreme Court nearly 40 years ago concluded that students do not give up their constitutional rights “to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” and the U.S. Department of Education explicitly supports that freedom, penalizing any school that disallows constitutionally protected religious speech.

“A public apology is in order,” Pawson said. “The citizens of Burlington County could rightly demand the resignation or termination of school officials who dreamed up and approved this reprehensible scenario.”

In a commentary on Newsbusters.org, a writer lamented the situation.

“This is the root of liberal bias. It starts in the schools and spreads throughout from the children to the town councils and eventually to local newspapers such as the Burlington County Times where staff writer David Levinsky blends the fantasy of the mock scenario with the reality of school shootings through America,” the writer said.

“The real story is that it has become acceptable to discriminate against Christians with bigoted characterizations that portray them as gun wielding psycho killers,” the writer said.

The local newspaper had reported the drill was that of a situation that has “played out” numerous times across America. “Two Burlington Township police detectives portrayed the gunmen. Investigators described them as members of a right-wing fundamentalist group…”

Said Terry Trippany, editor at Webloggin, on a personal blog, “If the police had portrayed the real life scenario of gay terrorists or abortion rights activists upset for any contrived reason you would read about it in every major paper across the United States; and rightfully so because IT WOULD BE RIDICULOUSLY STUPID.”

An author at StopTheAclu.com said, “This is the stupid local bureaucrat version of the Sum of All Fears. What would have made the ‘drill more realistic’ would have been to cut the crap and portray the child-killing terrorists as Islamists.”

The local newspaper reported that, “Burlington Township Public Safety Director William Corter said the drill was the first live exercise testing the police and school response plans to a hostage crisis. ‘This should really show how well we work together and respond,’ Corter said. ‘If mistakes are made, we want to know how they should be corrected. The things we do right, we still want to see how we can make them better.’”

Someone needs to test the Burlington, New Jersey water supply for strange substances before this collection decides to become the first nuclear armed school district.

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America’s customer service — really, really unhappy — in August he sued the bank and its board, demanding “1,784 billion, trillion dollars” be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show. A judge has ordered Dalton to appear and explain the basis of his sxtrillion claim or have it dismissed. Te lawyer who filed it should be hanged.

Back to the Future: Lesson of the Luddites.

Back in the days of optimism and dedication to “bear any burden; pay any price” America’s world leadership, before its present planned decline into selfishness and isolationism the idea of permanent bases on the Moon and Mars would have set the nation tingling. JFK’s challenge to land on the Moon and safely retujrn to Earth in a decade galvanized America and launched it on decades long quests.

India hailed  the discovery. But, Obama diminishes “Space” exploration that has been back benched along with most of democracies co-advenrturers now abandoned to the ash heap in favor of a policy of apology, self-defeat and a petty White House led campaign for mediocrity or worse.

Is this week’s revelation that water ice is more prevalent on the moon than scientists expected a “game-changer” for future spaceflight, as some experts think? Actually, the rules of the game for going beyond Earth orbit haven’t changed - but the latest findings could bring new attention to options in the old playbooks.

The publication of three studies in Science about ice on the moon, plus yet another study about buried water ice on Mars, comes at an interesting time. More than five years after the White House set a goal of sending humans back to the moon by 2020, an independent panel chaired by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine is wrapping up a full report that takes a second look at all the options for human spaceflight.

At the same time, NASA is on the verge of taking two significant steps in its renewed moon effort: On Oct. 9, the LCROSS probe is due to slam into a crater near the lunar south pole, a dark pit that could contain usable reservoirs of ice. Later next month, the space agency will go ahead with a test launch of its prototype Ares I-X moon rocket.

For all these reasons, the back-to-the-moon plan - which was turning into a case of “been there, done that 40 years ago” - is starting to look sexy again – but is still without a latter day JFK.

“If we have water, we have the core elements needed to support life,” Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, said in a statement issued after the latest moon-ice reports. “H2O is a magic formula: We can drink it, raise crops with it, or even break it down for oxygen to breathe. We can even recombine the hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket propellant. Confirming the widespread existence of moonwater means we have a nearby oasis in space around which we can build the true human communities beyond Earth. There will be flowers on the moon in our lifetimes.”

Second thoughts?
You might think the latest research is sparking second thoughts among the members of the Augustine panel, formally known as the Review of Human Space Flight Plans Committee. But that’s not necessarily so: It turns out that panel members were given a confidential briefing on the research while they were working on their report.

“The research we heard about was at a very early stage of development,” Charles Kennel, a panel member and chairman of the National Academies Space Studies Board, said. “It certainly has exciting implications, if true, but it is way too early to base any planning for human spaceflight on it, in my view.”

Another member of the panel, XCOR Aerospace CEO Jeff Greason, said the findings were “incredibly important.” At the very least, the options for exploiting that lunar ice needed to be investigated further, he said.

“The real question has been, it’s hard to know how serious to get about planning for the economic exploitation of lunar resources,” he told me, ”because No. 1, we haven’t done it, and No. 2, nobody’s sure there’s enough to worry about. Now the preponderance of evidence is that there’s enough to worry about.”

The moon is not literally an oasis, of course. The most optimistic estimates put the water content of lunar soil at one part per 1,000 - which is drier the Sahara Desert. According to Brown University’s Carle Pieters, the lead researcher behind one of the Science studies, you’d need to process a baseball diamond’s worth of dirt to get a drink of water.

But if you could turn the processing of lunar dirt over to robots, like a space-age Sorcerer’s Apprentice, eventually the machines would build up enough water for drinking and irrigation, enough oxygen for breathing, and enough hydrogen for fuel. If nothing else, the moon could serve as a low-gravity fueling station for deep-space journeys headed for elsewhere.

“I would hope that an outgrowth of whatever direction national policymakers take NASA in would include developing a transportation system such that reaching the lunar surface is economically sensible,” said Greason, who emphasized he was speaking merely for himself rather than the committee.

Moon first, or Mars first?
You might think the “Moon First” option - the option that NASA is now basically pursuing - should remain the favored path. But that’s not necessarily so, either: Greason emphasized that the panel didn’t see the choices facing NASA as sticking with the International Space Station vs. landing on the moon vs. landing on Mars vs. going to other places in space.

“When we started, we were thinking about it like that,” he said, “and the menu of things was pretty much, there’s ISS, there’s the moon, there are lower-gravity bodies, Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, the Martian moons, and then there’s Mars. What do we do? As we worked on the problem, it became clear that ISS had value, that it was likely going to be an enterprise that it made sense to carry on at least for a little while.

“Now it’s not a ‘versus,’” he said. ”It’s ‘we’re going to do ISS, and then what? Why are we doing this?’ It’s our view that the organizing theme is that we’re embarking upon the work of becoming a multiplanet species. Mars is a key destination for that, but we’re not ready to do it right now.”

There’ll always be a moon vs. Mars rivalry, because both destinations have their pluses and minuses. Robert Zubrin, a rocket scientist who is president of the Mars Society, said “there are discoveries waiting to be made” on both worlds. But he argues that the Red Planet should be the main focus because it offers so many more resources - and so many more possibilities for addressing the big questions about life’s origins and humanity’s future.

Zubrin said the options being presented to the White House are fundamentally flawed because they don’t set an ambitious goal for the next decade - the kind of goal that President John Kennedy set back in 1961. “We could be on Mars by the end of the next decade,” Zubrin said.

This week’s revelations about the discovery of nearly pure water ice close to the surface at Mars’ northern midlatitudes reinforces Zubrin’s opinion. “It makes a settlement on Mars sustainable, because you don’t have to bring resources from Earth,” he said.

Tumlinson, however, sees things differently. The moon is close enough to make the perfect test bed for the technologies required for Martian settlement, he says. And knowing that there more water ice than expected on the moon could make for an easier sell.

“The next planetary destination obviously should be the moon,” he said. “The moon is a harsher mistress than Mars. If we can learn to make it there, we’ll make it anywhere.”

First, take one small step
The news about ice on the moon, and on Mars, highlight the need for technologies aimed at water extraction and purification - technologies that would be useful virtually anywhere we could land in the solar system (even Mercury!), and perhaps useful here on Earth as well.

One unorthodox extraction technique calls for “nuking” the moon with microwaves from lunar orbit, which would turn embedded ice into water vapor. The water would be collected when it refreezes at the surface. Let me say that “nuking” is a dangerous idea especially for the bewilderingly stupid, who in fact demanded the new name of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) because its original name was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (Imaging) and scientific Luddites wouldn’t touch the lifesaving medical gadget until the filty word was excised.

NASA is working on other methods for pulling resources out of lunar soil, and next month, teams will vie for prizes in a contest for moon-digging robots.

Schemes for processing materials from the moon have been kicking around for decades, as illustrated by this concept from 1978. Maybe it’s time to blend those 30-year-old dreams with some 21st-century innovation. Developing new technologies for water extraction would fit right in with a step-by-step “flexible path” to deep space - an option that got a sympathetic hearing from Greason and his fellow panel members.

“The whole question of ‘do we do this, or that, or the other thing’ is a false choice,” he said. “The only question is, ‘What order do you do these things in?’”

There’s one other question, however: “What can we afford to do?” The key decision facing the Obama administration has to do with how much NASA’s budget could be boosted to fund future exploration. Just today, the Government Accountability Office released a report saying that NASA’s current plan for future spaceflight was underfunded and lacked a “solid business case.”

The Augustine panel estimated the annual cost of a solid exploration program at $3 billion per year. If sufficient funding can’t be found for NASA’s ambitious goals in space, America “should accept the disappointment of setting lesser goals,” the panel said.

Is it realistic to expect a $3 billion boost in the space budget? Can NASA make a strong business case for going beyond Earth orbit? Maybe that’s where this week’s revelations could make a difference. But don’t expect the money to flow easily, particularly if the space effort takes a business-as-usual approach.

On Thursday, The Orlando Sentinel quoted an unnamed NASA official as saying that some of the agency’s top managers were “unfortunately caught up in the fantasy” that the space agency would get the extra $3 billion. Administration officials were said to consider that kind of increase ”highly unlikely.”

What do you think? Are this week’s revelations about water a big deal? Can a people that once inspired the world leap past current moral cowardess to find a new generation with such old values and aspiration or will we be dragged under by today’s political Luddites?

Luddites [luhd-ahyt] oun  a member of any of various bands of workers in England (1811–16) organized to destroy manufacturing machinery, under the belief that its use diminished employment.

Use Luddites in a Sentence

See web results for Luddites

See images of Luddites

Origin: 1805–15; after Ned Ludd, 18th-century Leicestershire worker who originated the idea.

Sister Mary Ann, who worked for a home health agency, was making her rounds. She was visiting homebound patients when she ran out of gas.

As luck would have it, a gas station was just a block away. She walked to the station to borrow a gas can and buy some gas. The attendant told her that the only gas can he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned

Since Sister Mary Ann was on the way to see a patient, she decided not to wait and walked back to her car. She looked for something in her car that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, Sister Mary Ann carried the bedpan to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried the full bedpan back to her car.

As she was pouring the gas into her tank, two Baptists watched from across the street. One of them turned to the other and said, “If it starts, I’m becoming Catholic.”

·       HHS Orders Humana to Stop Mailer

·       Congress Least Admired Profession

·       Least Worst Option: Latest Obama Shell Game

·       No Water for Farmers: Feinstein & Boxer

Today is the 150 anniversary of The New York Times. The sad thing is, I read about it online.- Leno

The government is “investigating”  Humana, a major insurance company, for a mailer it sent to seniors that allegedly tries to scare seniors about Obama’s health care overhaul currently staggering through Congress.

The Health and Human Services Department objects to a mailer that Humana recently sent Medicare recipients.

It is unclear exactly what “policing” powers or investigative authority HHS has over a private business or citizens.

It warned that “millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many … important benefits and services.” The bills in Congress would cut payments to private insurance plans that serve about one-fourth of seniors. Government experts say those plans are overpaid, and lawmakers insist it won’t affect benefits.

According to Associated Press HHS ordered Humana to stop all such mailings and says it may take further action based on its investigation. There was no immediate comment from Humana.

The HHS website says, rather incongruously the following about its symbol – shown above

“The symbol represents the American People sheltered in the wing of the American Eagle, suggesting the Department’s concern and responsibility for the welfare of the people.

This symbol is the visual link which connects the graphic communications of all components and programs of the Department. It is the major design component for the Department Identifiers - the Department Logo, Seal, and Signatures.

The symbol can never be altered and must always be positioned with the eagle facing left.

I emailed HHS’s PR type and asked under what authority it could investigate a private company and order it to stop. NO ANSWER.

Democratic Sen. Max Baucus has introduced his healthcare plan. It would be mandatory for everyone to get health insurance. They would fine people who didn’t get it, and If you don’t pay the fine, you could go to jail. The good news is, once you’re in jail — free healthcare! – Leno

Rasmussen Reports periodically asks adults their views of nine major professions. In both June and February, corporate chief executive officers rated at the very bottom, no surprise really given the country’s economic straits. Members of Congress in both surveys came in next to last - but not anymore.

Just one-out-of-four Americans (25%) have a favor opinion of members of Congress. Seventy-two percent (72%) view them unfavorably. There’s some intensity in that perception, too. Only four percent (4%) have a very favorable view of congressmen, while 37% view them very unfavorably.

Even 56% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Congress although their party controls both the House and the Senate. Of course, their opposition pales next to the 86% of Republicans and 81% of adults not affiliated with either party who have an unfavorable opinion of Congress.

But then voters are evenly divided over whether a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress.

CEOs don’t fare much better, with 27% who see them in a favorable light and 69% who regard them unfavorably. Only three percent (3%) have a very favorable opinion versus 35% with a very unfavorable one.

Government workers are more critical of CEOs than entrepreneurs and those who work for a private company.

For the third survey in a row, small business owners remain the most highly regarded profession. Ninety-four percent (94%) have a favorable view of them, while just three percent (3%) view them unfavorably. These numbers are little changed but slightly more positive than in the previous surveys.

In addition to small business owner, only those who start their own business (92% favorable), pastors and religious leaders (70% favorable) are favorably viewed while those with unfavorable ratings include bankers (49%); Journalist, Lawyers, and Stockbrokers are have 54% viewing them unfavorable; corporate CEOs have a 69% unfavorable rating, and of course member of Congress bring up the read at 74% unfavorable.

Of course many professions were not included in the survey. Similar surveys often find used car sales people and insurance agents near the bottom while health care professionals and public safety workers (police and fire) are near the top.

Bumper snicker: “CAUTION: Non-exposure to the Son will cause burning!”

Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: Obama officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.

Senior Obama regulators say they are seriously considering a plan to have the nation’s healthy banks lend billions of dollars to rescue the insurance fund that protects bank depositors. That would enable the fund, which is rapidly running out of money because of a wave of bank failures, to continue to rescue the sickest banks.

The plan, according to the New York Times, is strongly supported by bankers and their lobbyists, would be a major reversal of fortune, and can only be described as a giant shell game.

A hallmark of the financial crisis has been the decision by successive administrations over the last year to lend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to large and small banks.

 “It’s a nice irony,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a consulting company. “Like so much of this crisis, this is an issue that involves the least worst options.”

Bankers and their lobbyists like the idea because it is more attractive than the alternatives: yet another across-the-board emergency assessment on them, or tapping an existing $100 billion credit line to the Treasury.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which oversees the fund, is said to be reluctant to use its authority to borrow from the Treasury.

Under the law, the F.D.I.C. would not need permission from the Treasury to tap into a credit line of up to $100 billion. But such a step is said to be unpalatable to Sheila C. Bair, the agency chairwoman whose relations with the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, have been strained.

“Sheila Bair would take bamboo shoots under her nails before going to Tim Geithner and the Treasury for help,” said Camden R. Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers. “She’d do just about anything before going there.”

Bankers worry that a special assessment of $5 billion to $10 billion over the next six months would crimp their profits and could push a handful of banks into deeper financial trouble or even receivership. And any new borrowing from the Treasury would be construed as a taxpayer bailout that could open the industry to a political reaction, resulting in a wave of restrictions like fresh limits on executive pay which the NYT’s article did not point out has had a trivial impact on bank and bank  failures.

Since January the F.D.I.C. has seized 94 failing banks, causing a rapid decline in the deposit insurance fund. Despite a special assessment imposed on banks a few months ago to keep the fund afloat, its cash balance now stands at about $10 billion, a third of its size at the start of the year. (Another $32 billion has been set aside for failures that officials expect to occur in the coming months.)

It should be noted that in the Great Depression of the 1930s over 4,000 banks failed but they were generally local, smaller, and there was no depositor insurance.

The fund, which stands behind $4.8 trillion in insured deposits, could be wiped out by the failure of a single large bank, although the deposit insurance corporation could always seek a taxpayer bailout by borrowing from the Treasury to stay afloat.

Officials say that the F.D.I.C. will issue a proposed plan next week to begin to restore the financial health of the ailing fund.

There is no consensus among the five board members, consisting of Ms. Bair, two other F.D.I.C. officials, and the heads of the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Others may propose novel ways to replenish the fund, for example, by asking the banks to prepay the premiums that they were planning to make next year.

Borrowing from the industry is allowed under an obscure provision of a 1991 law adopted during the savings and loan crisis. The lending banks would receive bonds from the government at an interest rate that would be set by the Treasury secretary and ultimately would be paid by the rest of the industry. The bonds would be listed as an asset on the books of the banks.

So far no one has explained the consequences of a bank bailed out with Federal Taxpayer money buying bonds to lend a Federal Agency (FDIC) and then being paid back with interest with more taxpayer paid money.

Imprimatur (im-pri-MAH-tuhr, -MAY-) noun: 1. Approval or authority; imprint.
2. A license to print or publish, especially one issued by a censor of the Roman Catholic Church. From New Latin imprimatur (let it be printed), from imprimere (to imprint), from in- (in) + premere (to press). Ultimately from the Indo-European root per- (to strike) that also gave us print, press, pressure, compress, impress, express, and espresso.

Once fertile valley turned into new Death Valley to protect smelt. 

With hundreds of thousands of Californians out of work, food prices rising rapidly and California’s  farmers both its U. S. Senate an amendment that was billed as a way to help solve the San Joaquin Valley’s water problems.

By a nearly party line 61-36 vote, the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected the amendment offered by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both opposed it, even though they were targeted by a last-minute e-mail lobbying campaign organized by Westlands Water District.

On the Senate floor, a clearly unhappy Feinstein likened the surprise amendment to Pearl Harbor and she voiced dismay that it would be brought up without her prior knowledge.That seems to be why she and Boxer voted against it that their noses were tweaked.

DeMint’s long-shot amendment to a Fiscal 2010 Interior Department funding bill would have effectively restored full irrigation deliveries for a year to what is being referred to as a new Death Valley. The 400 miles San Joaquin Valley is a fertile strip of farm land that produces more fruits and vegetables per square foot than any comparable land in the nation – when it has water, which it does not.

“What started out as a local water problem in California is quickly developing into a food problem for the nation,” DeMint said. “If we don’t address this problem now, not only will thousands of people remain out of work in California, but everyone in the country will pay higher food prices.”

DeMint is a conservative whose strict budget-cutting views have often put him at odds with members of his own party as well as Democrats. Technically, his latest amendment would prohibit federal spending on two “biological opinions” that supported the irrigation delivery cutoffs.

DeMint has not previously involved himself in California water issues.

The irrigation water deliveries were curtailed to protect endangered species including salmon and the smelt found in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The pumping restrictions were lifted at the end of June. In the House, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, had repeatedly tried and failed to block the biological opinions through amendments to the $32 billion Interior Department bill.

Nunes, who has previously worked with other out-of-California lawmakers on water-related amendments, applauded the identical DeMint amendment on Tuesday, as did other Valley lawmakers.

“This amendment would allow a small reprieve to the economic and agricultural destruction that the San Joaquin Valley has been in the midst of for the past 12 months,” Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, declared in a letter sent Tuesday to Feinstein.

Bowdlerize (BOAD-luh-ryz) verb tr.: To remove or change parts (of a book, play, movie, etc.) considered objectionable. ETYMOLOGY:After Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), a British doctor, who edited the Family Shakespeare, an expurgated edition of William Shakespeare’s works. Bowdler believed the original wasn’t suitable for the delicate sensibilities of women and children. He also edited other books, such as Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Old Testament in a similar manner.

·         More Troop or Failue: McChrystal

·         China To Test Anti-Aircraft Carrier Missile: Warns US..

·         Puppet master Putin Reforms Russia’s Wprldwide Network

·         Recession’s Good News Bureacracies Shrinking

·         Obama Immigration Flim-flam Exposed

·         Norman Lear Founded Group Attacks Glenn Beck

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post and publiushed Monday moring.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

McChrystal concludes the document’s five-page Commander’s Summary on a note of muted optimism: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

Obama, who declared Afghanistan his and the good war, says he has not decided whether to send more troops or not.

Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of church morals, kept sticking her nose into other people’s business. Some members did not approve of her extracurricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

Henry, a man of few words, stared at her and walked away. He said nothing. Later that evening, Henry quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred’s house and walked home. He left his truck in front all night…

China’s efforts to develop a long-range ballistic missile to kill U.S. aircraft carriers is well advanced and a flight test of the new system is expected in the near future.

A Pentagon report states that China’s DF-21 medium-range missile being developed for anti-aircraft carrier attacks is part of a strategic effort to force carrier battle groups to remain more than 2,000 miles from China, so that Beijing can conduct operations against Taiwan or other areas without intervention by the United States. The 35′ long; 4.6 feet in diameter 32,000 pound  DF-21 is a solid fuel missile with a range of 2,000 miles and Mach 10 speed. It can carry a 200-300 kiloton nuclear or a conventional warhead. It is said to be equipped with GPS, intertial and radar guidance systems.

U. S. Navy equipped Aegis anti-ballistic missile  (ABM) are said to be able to intercept such a missile and destroy it in its post boost phase as it reenters the upper atmosphere and as a Navy friend says “not only hit the proverbial bullet with a bullet but pick which side.”

Aegis ships can engage multiple targets at once and each ship carries a score of anti-ballistic missiles. This is the system that Obama has now diverted to protect European allies and U. S. bases. The U. S. has 86 Aeghis equipped warships including 64 Arleigh Burke destroyers and 22 Tconderoga class warships. Japan, ROK, Norway, and Australian have 21 Aegis equipped warships.

Washington has not publicly responded to the Chinese demand.

Successive administrations in Washington have remained silent over the issue of aggressive Chinese spying on the United States, including several extremely damaging spy cases dating from the 1990s to the present.

Chinese ships have confronted U.S. Navy surveillance vessels in international waters five times this year, claiming the vessels had violated Chinese territory, despite the incidents taking place in international waters.

China’s defense ministry said in a statement that “China believes the constant U.S. military air and sea surveillance and survey operations in China’s exclusive economic zone had led to military confrontations between the two sides.”

“The way to resolve China-U.S. maritime incidents is for the U.S. to change its surveillance and survey operations policies against China, decrease and eventually stop such operations,” the defense ministry suggested.

U.S. analysts call the Chinese demand outrageous and an attempt to halt U.S. surveillance so that the PLA can hide its strategic assets on the coast, its construction of new port facilities, and other military improvements.

So far Obama has ignored China’s threat and spying that has recently included stealing F-35 Joint Strike fighter secrets.-

Obama whose own approval rating has fallen farther and faster than any other president since such polls have been conducted is telling New York Governor Paterson not to run for reelection because of his low job approval numbers and to let Cuomo have a clear field.

A report from London says Venezuela has been serving as an intermediary providing arms to Iran since 2006. Israeli intelligence has disclosed that Algeria has been a transhipper of weapons from Russia to Iran. This month Chavez planned to break any international  sanctions by shipping 20,000 barrel of gasoline a day to Iran.

Venezuela was helping Iran acquire material and components for strategic and conventional weapons programs. Caracas has imported a range of weapons that were later delivered to Iran.

“Today, we must see every Venezuelan arms deal as linked to Iran,” a Western intelligence source said.

Iran was also said to be establishing weapons factories and nuclear

Last week Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Russia has opened a $2.2 billion line of credit for Caracas. Chavez said Venezuela would purchase air defense systems, main battle tanks and other weapons. Russia is also supplying main battle tanks and fighters to Algeria.

The intelligence agencies were said to have assessed that Iran began using Venezuela as a front for the procurement of weapons since at least 2006. Intelligence sources have also warned that part of the latest Venezuelan weapons order from Russia would be diverted to Iran. Moscow, under pressure to cancel weapon deals with Teheran, has agreed to sell nearly 100 advanced T-90 MBTs to Caracas.

“It is likely that many of these tanks or technology would be relayed to Iran and then appear as indigenous weapons produced by Teheran,” the intelligence source said.

From 2005 and 2007 Russia signed 12 defense contracts with Venezuela said to have been worth about $4.5 billion. The contracts provided Venezuela with fighter-jets, attack helicopters and light weapons.

At the same time, Iran and Venezuela have signed a series of cooperation agreements, including those in the areas of defense, energy, finance and joint technology development. In April 2008, Venezuela and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding that stipulated full military support and cooperation.

Since at least 2006, Iranian military advisers have been embedded with Venezuelan Army. Two years later, Turkey detained an Iranian ship bound for Venezuela that contained laboratory equipment capable of producing explosives.

Iran’s Algerian connection has involved, among other things, the recent incident of the Artic Seas ship laden with both the X-500 and the S-300 surface-to-air missile desired by Teheran to repeal any Israeli attack on its nuclear weapons plants.

A just released American Enterprise Institute report to adds other pieces to the puzzle pointing out  Ahmadinejad has appointed members of his Cabinet based on a strategy to use his second term to militarize Iranian society.

Obamacare at alltime low as Sunday’s Barack-O-Blitz Began

A good consequence of the current recessions is that state government bureaucracies  are shrinking. The numbers of public employees is down compared to a year ago in 26 states but up in the other 24, according to a report released last month by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Part of this is that Obama Economic Stimulus taxpayer money pouring into states, counties and cities and being used to keep the bureaucracies from shrinking while businesses are ignored.

Housing-bust state ARIZONA experienced the steepest decline: 8.6 percent. But NORTH DAKOTA, which has managed to avoid a major budget gap, saw just as great an increase in its state government employment rate. The bigger surprise was MICHIGAN, which despite severe budget problems, had a 3.8 percent rise in its rate. The Institute attributed that in part to the chronic nature of the state’s budget troubles and said the increases came largely at state universities and colleges rather than state agencies.

Former President Carter, a notorious anti-Semite, abusrdly blamed opposition to Obamacare on racism. You can always count on the octogenerian to make a fool of himself and the USA.

In what appears like a classic bait and switch Obama said last week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get health care coverage.

According to an article in the Washington Times Obama also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered - a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

“Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. “That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, “If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.”

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.

“It is ironic that the president told the American people that illegal immigrants should not be covered by the health care bill, but now just days later he’s talking about letting them in the back door,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“If the American people do not want to provide government health care for illegal immigrants, why would they support giving them citizenship, the highest honor America can bestow?” Mr. Smith said.

But immigrant rights groups see the speech as a signal that Mr. Obama is committed to providing health care coverage for anyone in the United States legally, regardless of their citizenship status.

“It’s the first time I’ve certainly heard, publicly, him talking more about legal immigrants,” said Eric Rodriguez, vice president for research and advocacy at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). “I think that was certainly positive progress. We were absolutely concerned about not hearing that.”

Executioners couldn’t find a suitable vein in which to inject drugs to kill a 53-year-old murderer, who then got a one-week reprieve from the governor so Ohio prison officials can figure out what to do.

“This is unchartered territory for us,” prison spokeswoman Julie Walburn said of the difficulty in killing convicted rapist and murderer Romell Broom whose victim was 14-years old.

In a rather tortured leap of illogic a liberal political group founded by TV producer Norman Lear has launched an attack on conservative talker Glenn Beck, saying his influence on the GOP is “shameful.”

In an e-mail sent to supporters, People for the American Way’s President Michael B. Keegan referred to last weekend’s protests in Washington against President Barack Obama and the Democrats and rebutted the claim that as many as 2 million people took part.

“Officials estimated the crowd to be about 60,000,” Keating wrote. “Significant, yes, but not indicative that these people are anything more than a vocal minority representing the views of only a small portion of Americans.

“A PFAW staffer who showed up to check out the scene talked to many participants, and when she asked why they showed up, an overwhelming number gave the same answer: ‘Glenn Beck sent me.’”

Keating continued: “It is shameful that the GOP would give someone like Glenn Beck that sort of power. The Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world have been pulling the strings of the Republican Party for too long.”

The e-mail cited an upcoming conference called How to Take Back America, claiming it will be hosted by “some of the most fringe players on the Radical Right,” and asked for donations to help the group “fight back.”

Meanwhile Fox News is disputing a claim by an African-American advocacy group that its call for a boycott of advertisers on Beck’s Fox TV show has had a significant impact on its ad revenue.

Color of Change sought the boycott more than a month ago after Beck accused Obama of being a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

In a press release, Color of Change cited data from unnamed “industry sources” and asserted that the ad boycott “costs Glenn Beck over 50 percent of ad dollars.”

The group claimed that 62 advertisers have “distanced themselves” from Beck, and the boycott is costing Fox nearly $600,000 per week.

A Fox News spokesman told TVNewser: “The Color of Change figures are wildly inaccurate on all fronts — revenue has not been affected in any way.”

In a bizarre if not particularly picturesque scene a naked 91-year-old man held a drunken intruder at gunpoint until deputies arrived. Robert E. Thompson jumped out of bed early Saturday when his dog starting growling and attacking the intruder. Robert got his revolver and went out back and let the burglar know how he felt about home invaders.

• Obama Abandons ABM Shield.
• Wolf Hunts Resume
• President Without A Country
• Noriega’s Return
• Iran’s Yeah But…
• Americans Reject Obamacare Specfics
• Racism Explodes Over Obama School Speech

Schwarzenegger wants AG “Moonbeam”Brown to investigate possible ACORN criminality and racketeering. The 71 year-old Brown is mute on the admittedly tepid demand.

In yet another strategic retreat Obama is succumbing to pressure from Russia’s Putin and ending plans for a anti-ballistic missile defense shield to have been placed in the Czech Republic and Poland. Putin successfully threatened Obama into tucking tail and wirhdrawing the proposal shield.

Opponents of the ABM plan are rejoicing saying it could mean Russia will be more helpful in curtailing Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Proponents say it is more evidence of Obama’s chaotic foreign policy and will do little or nothing to stop Iran.

Most believed that Obama would not go ahead with the Euro-shield. When the Czech prime minister visited the U. S. Obama avoided him. The Czech called Obama’s decision an abandonment of the once Soviet vassal state/

Beau Brummell (bo BRUM-uhl) noun: A man who pays excessive attention to his clothes and appearance. ETYMOLOGY:After Beau Brummell, nickname of George Bryan Brummell (1778-1840), a British dandy. Brummell was known for his suits and elaborate neckwear and was considered an authority in matters of men’s dress and etiquette. He rose in society thanks to his royal connections, but gambling debts forced him to flee to France. He died penniless in a mental institution in Caen.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy shot down a request for an injunction to force a cease-fire in Idaho and Montana’s war on wolves. Ranchers and farmer applaud the decision and environmentalist are in a fury.The Wolves are still on Wyomings endangered species list.

Under the titled: Are there enough wolves to hunt?  CNN reported. Several “environmental and animal rights groups are upset by the decision this year to remove gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list.” Plans call for hunting and killing about 20 percent of the two states’ estimated 1,350 wolves which proponents would not cause long-term harm to the population. Federal biologists had shown the animal could sustain a 30 percent annual reduction without long-term harm.

The wolves are natural predators and routinely kill valuable livestock. By thinning the herd proponents say the wolves can lives within their habitat greatly reducing raids on ranches and farms saving livestock.

Environmentalist and animal rights activists disagree saying the wolves must be saved regardless of the costs.

Hunt proponents point to the bad consequences of a hunting embargo thatquickly rans up the wolf populations and lead to more livestock kills and costs to ranchers and farmers.

Periodically animal right activists have taken it upon themselves to cut fences and do other damage to ranches and farms leading them to be introduced to the business end of .30 caliber rifles.

Hunters in Idaho have so far taken three wolves since wolf season opened there Sept. 1. The state has a quota allowing as many as 220 wolves to be killed. Montana’s season is set to begin Sept. 15, with a quota of 75 wolves.

According to Fish and Game officials things have gone well with the hunt despite scattered warnings from animal rights activists about unspecified action which would seem unwise to risk confronting armed hunters,

An Alaska wildlife management program in which wolves are shot from low-flying airplanes and black bears are baited and snared has helped increase the numbers of moose and caribou, state wildlife officials say. Nevertheless wildlife conservation groups view it as state-sponsored slaughter. Ironically some of those same groups opposed the trans-Alaska oil pipeline sying it would harms moose and caribou. In fact it has helped the herds survive bitter cold storms because they huddle near it where it is warmer because of the oil flowing through the pipelines.

Termagant (TER-muh-guhnt) noun: A quarrelsome or overbearing woman. ETYMOLOGY:From Old French Tervagant. The term originates after an imaginary deity that Christians in medieval Europe erroneously believed was worshiped by Muslims. It was represented in morality plays as a violent, overbearing personage. Over time the term became generalized to apply to any brawling person, and eventually only to women.

Written by Pat Boone forwarded by Dr. Joel Strom

“We’re no longer a Christian nation.” - President Barack  Obama, June 2007

“America has been arrogant.”  - President Barack  Obama

“After 9/11, America didn’t always live up to her ideals.”- President
Barack  Obama

“You might say that America is a Muslim nation.”- President Barack
Obama,  Egypt 2009

Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president. I keep wondering what country he believes he’s president of.

In one of my very favorite stories, Edward Everett Hale’s “The Man without  a Country,” a young Army lieutenant named Philip Nolan stands condemned for treason during the Revolutionary War, having come under the  influence of Aaron Burr. When the judge asks him  if he wishes to say anything before sentence is  passed, young Nolan defiantly exclaims, “Damn  the United States ! I wish I might never hear of  the United States again!”

The stunned silence in the courtroom is palpable, pulsing. After a long  pause, the judge soberly says to the angry lieutenant: “You have just pronounced your own  sentence. You will never hear of the United  States again.. I sentence you to spend the rest  of your life at sea, on one or another of this  country’s naval vessels - under strict orders  that no one will ever speak to you again about  the country you have just  cursed.”

And so it was. Philip Nolan was taken away and spent the next 40 years at  sea, never hearing anything but an occasional  slip of the tongue about America. The last few  pages of the story, recounting Nolan’s dying  hours in his small stateroom - now turned into a shrine to the country he fore swore - never fail  to bring me to tears.  And I find my own  love for this dream, this miracle called America, refreshed and renewed. I know how blessed and unique we are.

But reading and hearing the audacious, shocking statements of the man who  was recently elected our president - a young  black man living the impossible dream of  millions of young Americans, past and present,  black and white - I want to ask him, “Just what  country do you think you’re president  of?”

You surely can’t be referring to the United States of America,  can you? America is emphatically a Christian nation, and has been from its inception! Seventy percent  of her citizens identify themselves as Christian. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were framed, written and  ratified by Christians. It’s because this was, and is, a nation built on and guided by  Judeo-Christian biblical principles that you,  sir, have had the inestimable privilege of being elected her  president.

You studied law at Harvard,  didn’t you, sir? You taught constitutional law  in Chicago ? Did you not ever read the statement of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the  Supreme Court and an author of the landmark  ”Federalist Papers”: “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers - and it  is the duty, as well as the privilege and  interest of our Christian nation - to select and prefer Christians for their rulers”?

In your studies, you surely  must have read the decision of the Supreme Court  in 1892: “Our lives and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the  teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is  impossible that it should be otherwise; and in  this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically  Christian.”

Did your professors have you  skip over all the high-court decisions right up  till the mid 1900’s that echoed and reinforced  these views and intentions? Did you pick up the  history of American jurisprudence only in 1947,  when for the first time a phrase coined by  Thomas Jefferson about a “wall of separation  between church and state” was used to deny some  specific religious expression - contrary to Jefferson’ s intent with that  statement?

Or, wait a minute . were  your ideas about America ’s Christianity formed  during the 20 years you were a member of the  Trinity United  Church of Christ under your  pastor, Jeremiah Wright? Is that where you got  the idea that ” America is no longer a Christian  nation”? Is this where you, even as you came to call yourself a Christian, formed the belief  that ” America has been  arrogant”?

Even if that’s the  understandable explanation of your damning of your country and accusing the whole nation (not  just a few military officials trying their best  to keep more Americans from being murdered by  jihadists) of “not always living up to her  ideals,” how did you come up with the  ridiculous, alarming notion that we might be “considered a Muslim  nation”?

Is it because there are some  2 million or more Muslims living here, trying to  be good Americans? Out of a current population  of over 300 million, 70 percent of whom are Christians? Does that make us, by any rational  definition, a “Muslim  nation”?

Why are we not, then, a  ”Chinese nation”? A “Korean nation”? Even a “Vietnamese nation”? There are even more of  these distinct groups in America than Muslims.  And if the distinction you’re trying to make is a religious one, why is America not “a Jewish  nation”? There’s actually a case to be made for  the latter, because our Constitution - and the  success of our Revolution and founding - owe a  deep debt to our Jewish  brothers.

Have you stopped to think  what an actual Muslim America would be like?  Have you ever really spent much time in Iran?  Even in Egypt? You, having been instructed in  Islam as a kid at a Muslim school in Indonesia  and saying you still love the call to evening  prayers, can surely picture our nation founded  on the Quran, not the Judeo-Christian Bible, and  living under Shariah law. Can’t you? You do recall Muhammad’s directives [Surah 9:5,73] to  ”break the cross” and “kill the  infidel”?

It seems increasingly and  painfully obvious that you are more influenced  by your upbringing and questionable education  than most suspected. If you consider yourself  the president of a people who are “no longer  Christian,” who have “failed to live up to our  ideals,” who “have been arrogant,” and might  even be “considered Muslim” - you are president of a country most Americans don’t recognize.

Could it be you are a president without a country?

Osama bin Laden has released a new audio recording slamming the president, America, Israel, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And then at the end when he’s really worked up, he yells, “And Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time!”

The leftist regime in Nicaragua is providing safe haven to Spanish ETA terrorists, according to intelligence information reported  in Spain.  

 Spanish security agencies have “well-founded” evidence linking the regime of resurrected communist, Chavez buddy and anti0USA Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to various ETA (Basque Fatherland and Liberty) fugitives who are hiding out in Nicaragua following the Sandinista leader’s return to power in November 2006.

Before being ousted in 1990 election, the Sandinista regime granted the Nicaraguan citizenship to some 20 ETA terrorists living there in order to protect them from extradition requests by the Spanish judiciary. In 1993 Nicaraguan authorities under Violetta Chamorro handed over to Spain the ETA terrorists Javier Maria Larreategi Cuadra, alias “Atxulo,” Francisco Javeir Azpiazu, and Sebastian Etxaniz Alkorta, alias “Sebas,” who, along with other ETA terrorists, had been working for the Sandinista Interior Ministry.

Spanish intelligence in 2006 traced the movement of ETA fugitives back to Nicaragua, the Madrid’s ABC news agency reported

Aug. 31. The ETA terrorists were tracked to Managua and an area close to the border with El Salvador.  

After the pro-western Somosa was murdered by Sandanistas in 1979 the country was in turmoil.  Ortega was active in politics and served at Nicaragua’s president from 1985 to 1990 until an uprising ousted him.  

For much of his adult life he has been a principal in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional or FSLN). His first period in office was characterized by a controversial program of land reform and wealth redistribution, hostility from the United States‘ Reagan administration, and armed rebellion by US-backed Contras.

In 1981, President Reagan condemned the FSLN for joining with Soviet-backed Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries such as El Salvador. Some within the Reagan Administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels, some of whom were former officers from Somoza’s National Guard, as anti-Sandinista guerrillas. These were known collectively as the Contras. This also led to one of the largest political scandals in US history, (the Iran Contra Affair), when Oliver North and several members of the Reagan Administration defied the Boland Amendment helping sell arms to Iran, and then using the proceeds to fund the Contras. Between 1980 and 1989, over 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the conflict between the Sandinista government and the Contras

Ortega ran unsuccessfully in 1996 and 2001 before winning the 2006 presidential election. He quickly renewed his alliances with Castro and Chavez and is believed to have been involved in various mischief in the region including in Honduras.

Ironically he has found a willing ally in Iran.

According to a new survey of all the social-networking sites, Twitter had the highest percentage of older users. In fairness, most of them just kept creating new accounts because they forgot their passwords.

The US will join other major powers in seeking an early meeting with Iran although Tehran’s refusal to discuss its nuclear program was described by Washington officials as “disappointing.” They said the Obama administration is consistent in its aim of dialogue with Iran and wants the meeting offered by Tehran to take place as soon as possible to assess Iran’s readiness to deal with the nuclear issue ahead of the Six-Power discussions taking place later this month on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Far from meeting the Obama administration’s gesture halfway, Iran’s new defense minister Ahmed Wahidi delivered a fierce attack on Washington Saturday, Sept. 12, warning the US “not to try the militarize the region” and denying the production of weapons of mass destruction as “contrary to our religion and principles.”

Washington sources say the Obama White House is relying on the public’s short memory on Iran’s prevarications. On July 20, 2008, the six powers including the US confronted Iran at the negotiating table in Geneva. Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili listened quietly to the Bush administration’s undersecretary of state William Burns’ words on its nuclear activities, then announced he was not competent to respond and would refer to Tehran for instructions. Jalili never did come back with his government’s response.

After Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated loud and clear last week that the nuclear file was closed for Tehran, the Iranian negotiators will no doubt repeat this exercise which had the effect of tying US hands for more than a year and will keep them tied for several more months. Whatever the outcome, it is no good Washington relying on tough new sanctions because that door has been shut by Moscow and Beijing’s published intention to block them.

The former commander of the big Israeli air base at Hatezerim, Brig. (ret.) Shelly Guttman, said Saturday that for the first time since the Yom Kippur War, Israel faces an existential  (pertaining to existence ) threat. Nevertheless, Russia and France are leading an internatonal drive to stall military action as well.

Thursday, Sept. 10, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin warned against the use of force or new sanctions against Iran, the toughest caution Israel has heard so far. Neither course will “solve the problem,” said the Russian leader.

 The caution from Moscow followed frantic consultations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the last week for a decision on whether Israel should resort to its military option for pre-empting the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran already on the threshold, according to US intelligence agencies. Our Moscow sources say the Russians may be expected to keep up their verbal pressure on Jerusalem.

Putin was supported from Paris the same day, when France released the opinion offered by French army chief Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin in Washington that military force to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program “was no longer viable.”

 While Putin explained his objections to military action as: “Russia has no reason to doubt that Iran’s nuclear program is purely peaceful,” the French general argued: “It is very difficult to plan a military operation in Iran, because we are not sure in one shot to be able to solve a problem and if you fail in one shot, it is a

A Turkish woman accused of cutting off her lover’s penis must wait 18 months for sentencing while a court determines whether his re-attached penis still functions, a court source said Thursday.

In the wake of President Barack Obama’s recent address to Congress on healthcare, a new poll reveals he may not have the support of most Americans on his reform plans.

The Zogby International/O’Leary Report survey of more than 4,200 likely voters found that a large majority oppose key provisions of Obama and the Democrats’ healthcare reform proposals, including plans to extend health insurance to as many as 50 million uninsured Americans and to incorporate a form of healthcare rationing in the reforms.

Zogby International and The O’Leary Report asked respondents several questions relating to the healthcare reform issue. Some results:

  Asked if they agree or disagree that the federal government should require all Americans to purchase health insurance or face a fine - a provision favored by Democrats - 70.2 percent said they disagree, and only 18.5 percent agree. The rest are not sure.

  A resounding 75 percent of respondents said that taxes should not be raised to fund a government-run health insurance program for Americans who do not have health insurance.

  The pollsters stated: “President Obama is promoting a new government agency called the ‘Independent Medicare Advisory Council,’ and some people believe this agency should use its powers to deny payment for procedures it deems unnecessary or futile.”

Critics say such power would interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, the pollsters noted, and many consider it a form of healthcare rationing. Nearly 59 percent said they oppose the creation of the council, and just 30.6 percent support it.

  Some Republicans have called for provisions allowing Americans to purchase health insurance from providers outside their state as an alternative to Obama’s proposed government-supported “public option” insurance plan. Respondents said they favor such provisions by an overwhelming margin, 82.8 percent to 6.9 percent.

Also, 78.5 percent of those polled believe tort reform is needed to lower the cost of medical malpractice insurance, an issue that Obama has not seriously addressed. And 77.3 percent oppose plans to tax employer-provided healthcare benefits.

“Tort reform and permitting Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines have near universal appeal with voters,” said Brad O’Leary, a best-selling author and publisher of The O’Leary Report.

“New taxes, on the other hand, are almost universally opposed.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to rent a prison building the state plans to close and turn it into the nation’s first chicken empathy museum. A PETA spokeswoman said a former prison is the ideal setting for exhibits on what it contends is mistreatment of chickens raised for slaughter and the museum also would have displays detailing chickens’ habits and intelligence. Isn’t this idea an example of chicken intelligence?

The Rev. Floyd Rose called for Valdosta, Ga. City School Superintendent Dr. Bill Cason’s resignation Monday night.

During the regular Board of Education meeting Rose, president of the Valdosta/Lowndes County Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, spoke to the board about the superintendent’s decision not to air President Barack Obama’s speech on education during school hours.

Rose and hundreds of others converged on the BOE office demanding answers for why the speech was not shown in a school system that is predominately black raising questions of race rather than education purpose. Rose is black. Carson is white..

On the day the speech was scheduled to air, Rose and others met with Cason and discussed why the speech would not be shown. Cason, Rose said, had plenty of time between the meeting and the speech to call the schools and tell them to allow the children to watch the speech.

Rose said Cason’s reasons for not showing the speech were that it did not align with the Georgia Performance Standards that are the basis for school lesson plans and that the speech and the lesson plans provided would cut into instructional time.

“Let us be clear,” Rose said. “We read the President’s speech, and at no time did he propose lesson plans before, during, or after his speech, as claimed by Dr. Cason. He never mentioned lesson plans. Never.”

Rose went on to say that any offer to show the speech later is not acceptable, he said.

“Here is what I know, here is what you know, here is what the hundreds of people here and out in the street know,” Rose said. “If Dr. Cason were black and 80 percent of the school children in his district were white, and he arbitrarily decided not to allow white children to watch a white president’s ‘back to school’ speech,’ and whites came here tonight in the numbers that blacks have come to protest, he would resign, or be fired. And we are here to demand no less.”

Rose got a standing ovation from a overwhelmingly black audience after his address to the board.

Cason then responded to what he called “allegations and accusations.”

He said that he received notification of the speech only several days before it was scheduled to be shown.

Cason went on to say that lesson plans were included to be used before, during and after the speech.

During his comments a person from the audience shouted “He lies!” in obvious reference to a White Southern Congressman who shouted the same in response to Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress  last week on his healthcare proposal.

As the lesson plans were presented they did not align with GPS, Cason said.

Checking around with other school systems in the area he found that many chose not to air the speech at its scheduled time and if they did they had provisions where students could opt out of watching the speech.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Walmart will now pay its employees electronically. It’ll still be in pesos . . . but electronically.- Jay Leno

• Tens of thousands march on Washington
• Where’s the Beef?
• “You Lie” Jeer Proves Correct
• Iran To Obama “Go To Hell”
• U. S. Offical Tells China Scrap Dollar

“Obamacare makes me sick” read one big sign as tens of thousands of Americans filled Pennsylvania Avenue Saturday as they protested the president’s health care plan and out-of-control spending.

The lines of protesters completely filled Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. People were chanting “enough, enough” and “We the People.” Others yelled “You lie, you lie!” and “Pelosi has to go,” referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi .

Others are waving U.S. flags and holding signs reading “Go Green Recycle Congress” and “I’m Not Your ATM.” Some men are dressed in colonial costumes. Police on motorcycles and horses watched as the marchers passed.

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, organized several groups from across the country for what they billed as a “March on Washington.”

Organizers say they built on momentum from the April “tea party” demonstrations held nationwide to protest tax policies, along with growing resentment over the economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

The group, like those who railed and snarled throughout August at klargely absent members of Congress can only be described as eclectic reflecting a hsarp shift in the nation.

Despite Democrats’ numerical advantage in Congress and in statehouses across the

country, more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal, according

to a new Gallup Poll. In fact, conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 states, with the two groups statistically tied in the other three: HAWAII, VERMONT and MASSACHUSETTS.  That remarkable data has not reflected in political party registrations. But it bode bad for Obama and Democrats.

 Gallup’s findings were derived from interviews of more than 160,000 Americans asking them whether their political views were very conservative, conservative, moderate,  liberal or very liberal. The states with the highest conservative “net” (percentage identifying themselves as conservative minus the percentage identifying themselves as liberal) are located primarily in the South, while those with the lowest conservative net are mainly on the East and West coasts.

Republican Congressman Joe Wilson has apologized for calling President Obama a liar during his speech on healthcare. Obama accepted Wilson’s apology, then invited him to appear before a death panel.

As Obama retreated behind locked doors to cajole selected members of Congress to support his still detail-less “Obamacare ” even liberal newspapers included the Washington Post are raising questions about how such far-reaching goals can be met. The Post’s Ceci Connolly said “One day after President Obama pitched his plan for comprehensive health-care reform to a joint session of Congress, administration officials struggled Thursday to detail how he would achieve his goal of extending coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans without increasing the deficit. ”

The 10-year, $900 billion proposal Obama envisions borrows heavily from concepts circulating on Capitol Hill, but there was little evidence that the broad ideas are sufficient to break a congressional logjam., says Ceci.

Only the most dewy-eyed, fleeceable believe the $900 billion price tag will not be quickly exceeded or that those dollars will somehow miraculously appear based on promises from a hospital or pharmaceutical association or be able to be filched from America’s seniors without their noticing.

After declining for months to identify himself with the details of emerging legislation, the president for the first time Wednesday embraced a set of ideas as “my plan.” But the White House released scant specifics on legislation advertised as including new taxes, changes in malpractice law, a new national high-risk insurance pool, a commission on eliminating Medicare fraud, and tax credits for individual consumers and small businesses that cannot afford insurance.

As they say “the devil is in the details” but Obama either can not or will not release the details of his still mystical and consequently incomprehensible plan.

Initially Obama said 47 million were uninsured but that has shrunk to 30 million after complaints the higher figure includes foreigners legally and illegally in the USA.. But, still includes about 10 million earning $75,000 or more a year who chose not to buy health insurance for their own reasons.

Even though Obama decalred “We have talked this issue to death” like the famous 1984 hamburger commercial featuring Clara Peller Americans are still asking “Where’s the beef?” That year Democrat presidential wannabe Walter Mondale ridiculed his opponent Gary Hart by repeatedly asking that question of him. Now Congress and Americans are asking Obama the same thing.

Saturday, September 12 tens of thousands of non-believeers will swarm into Washington DC to protest Obamacare.

Bernie Madoff is in real trouble now. His luxury apartment is being sold through Century 21. Not to be confused with Century 22 - that’s when he gets out.

Wednesday night Obama said Obamacare does not provide health care to illegals and was called a liar.

What Obama said is literally true but in fact his own NO Enforcement - Open Border Amnesty Policy  mandates free health care because there is no specific requirement to show proof of citizenship. .

Obama said his plan would not apply to illegals and Congressman Joe Wilson called him on his lie.

Here’s how it works. Just cross the border and enter a government clinic and you get free health care paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Don’t worry your illegal status will not be questioned .

According to The Center for Immigration Studies, an independent research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States Obama’s GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE could benefit 6.6 Million Illegals and cost taxpayers up to $31 Billion a year.

On July 30 an amendment by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) that would have required identity verification for those claiming U.S. birth was defeated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

83% of Americans say proof of citizenship should be provided before anyone gets taxpayer paid benefits.

The problem is at crisis levels in California. Below is a list of 10 Facts Caused by the Illegal Invasion as reported in the L. A. Times.

1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County are working for cash and not paying taxes. They are predominantly illegal aliens working without a green card and will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens and they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
4. Over 66% of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers and they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican Nationals here illegally and they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages and they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border and they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegals and they will be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.

(There are 10.2 million people in L.A. County) The fact that California is on the verge of bankruptcy is just a coincidence right? It has nothing to do with illegal aliens, right? 60% of Americans agree that illegal aliens are the cause of this and they do want them to be ELIGIBLE FOR FREE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE.

Rasmussen Reports has released polling data showing that 83% of Americans oppose illegal immigrants or illegal aliens receiving any “government health care subsidies”. Opposition crossed all racial, gender, and political party lines. Only 12% of those surveyed support health care subsidies for illegals.

Arcadian (ahr-KAY-dee-uhn) adjective: Idyllically pastoral: simple, peaceful. noun: One leading a simple rural life. After Arcadia, a region of ancient Greece whose residents were believed to have led quiet, unsophisticated lives of peace and happiness.

US intelligence agencies informed the New York Times Thursday, Sept. 10, that they have concluded in recent months that “Iran has created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, spring for a nuclear weapon.”

The White House is quoted as saying that “Iran has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb.”

 A few hours earlier, a US diplomat warned that Iran is close to producing its first nuclear bomb.

 Military sources say these steps add up to a new US intelligence assessment that Iran is now in position for deciding at any moment to take that last, extremely short step, toward making a bomb - or even two.

 Thurday, Sept. 10 the Debkafile said: The Obama administration might conceivably decide to live with a nuclear-armed Iran. Israel does not enjoy that luxury. Now that Iran has got all the components for making a nuclear device at extremely short notice, as affirmed by US intelligence. Israel can no longer delay a decision on pre-emptive action.

The US chief envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davis, said Wednesday, Sept. 9 that ongoing enrichment activity is moving Iran “closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity.” Davis spoke of “serious concerns” in Washington that Iran is now either very near or already has enough low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon. This could happen if Iran made a decision to further enrich the material to weapons grade.

Monday, IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei said his watchdog agency was locked in a stalemate with Iran and urged Tehran to “substantively re-engage” with the Vienna-based organization to prove there are no military dimensions to its nuclear program.

Wednesday, Sept. 9, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki finally handed representatives of the six-nation group of nuclear negotiators (P5 + Germany) his government’s long-promised reply to the package of incentives it offered for talks to resolve the dispute on Tehran’s nuclear program.

Although the contents of the package were not published, Washington sources report extreme US frustration with the document which bars any discussion of its nuclear issues

According to Iranian sources, it consists of a long-winded, sanctimonious treatise, with no proposals for solving the nuclear issue, but rather a sermon on the need for a new world order based on Iranian revolutionary Islamic tenets. Iran’s rulers offer to discuss reforming the new world order with the big powers and “reaching a comprehensive agreement on issues beyond the nuclear file,” including the crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

From the document’s tone, Iran is putting itself forward as the seventh world power and demands a key role in all important international political, economic, social and cultural policy-making.The document has only three things to say on the nuclear subject:

1. Iran is fully entitled by the Non-Proliferation Treaty to carry out uranium enrichment without interference or limitations.

2. Iran is not ready to discuss its nuclear activities with any foreign power.

3. It is willing to discuss the worldwide nuclear problem.

The package follows on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s public declaration that his country’s “nuclear rights” are not open to negotiation; the UN nuclear watchdog’s determination that its interaction with Iran is in stalemate; and the statement by US chief envoy to the IAEA, Glyn Davis, that ongoing enrichment activity is moving Iran “closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity.”

Iran’s “package” takes the entire controversy into a fresh blind alley. President Barack Obama must now decide on his reaction to Iran’s virtual slap in the face in response to his offer of direct nuclear dialogue.

Obama’ approach to Iran has failed, he has tried to shift blame to his advisers by playing musical chairs with but it is his fauly that Iran has been able to cross the red line and stand on the threshold of having nuclear weapons. That appears almost certain to happen unless Israel act alone to destroy its nuclear weapons capabilities.

Ellen Degeneres has been named the new judge on “American Idol.” She’s now the second most powerful lesbian on the planet, the first, of course, being North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.

It makes sense for China to diversify its huge stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, the U.S. Treasury’s economic and financial emissary to China said on Friday.  It’s likely that this is a signal to the inevitable.

China’s forex reserves, the world’s biggest stockpile, stood at $2.13 trillion at the end of June.

China has expressed concerns in the past about the value of its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, as massive U.S. debt offerings pose the risk of eroding the value of dollar assets.

“The general issue is that China has a huge amount of reserves and it makes some sense to diversify what you put these reserves (into),” David Dollar told a meeting of the World Economic Forum in the northeast Chinese city of Dalian.

“It’s healthy to have a wide and different type of reserve currencies,” he said.

The composition of China’s foreign exchange reserves is a state secret. Analysts estimate that up to 70 percent of the stockpile is invested in dollar-denominated assets, mainly in U.S. government debt. China ha consistently suggested it wants to dramatically alter the dollars position and most believe such a change will economically harm the U. S.

“If you talk to God, it’s prayer. If God talks to you, it’s schizophrenia.”- bumper snicker

• Chief Cheerleader Obama Changes Few Minds
• Chavez and Iran Agree to Nuke Deal
• Worst Toupee Returns
• Presidential Speech to School Children - History.
• Refrigerator George - a Joke.

Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress briefly sounded like a session of the British parliament when he was jeered and heckled during Wednesday night’s address. A southern Congressman called his a liar when he claimed no illegals would be covered under Obamacare. The Congressman apologized for breaking the decorum of the body.

What Obama did do was ensure an overflowing Capitol this weekend as protestors descend there from across the nation.

Republicans are still insisting that the public option be firmly dismissed, and that more must be done to control costs. Tort lawyer cash is still too high a cost for Obama to pay as reform of malpractice remains anathema to Democrats.

There is no change in the fundamentals of the debate, and he did not significantly change any minds.  

On this site  http://www.shadowstats.com/ you’ll find statistics computed using the government formulas that applied pre-Clinton.  Unemployment rate, by this formula is over 17% nationally. 

Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are working on a wide-raging plan to replicate Iran’s key nuclear installations in Venezuela, possibly in the framework of a new program there on the Iranian and North Korean models.

The French news agency AFP, reporting from Tehran Sunday, disclosed Chavez’s suggestion to Iran to establish in his country a “nuclear village” to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. But, according to Iranian sources, the conversation between the two presidents Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5-6, when they visited Shiite shrines in Meshhad, went as far as to discuss the relocation or replication of key elements of the Iranian nuclear industry to Venezuela, both to keep them safe and to guarantee they would keep on ticking over if Iran was attacked by the US or Israel.

Their talks have advanced far enough to get Washington worried about the prospect of yet another hostile nuclear program coming into being, this one at America’s back door.

Chavez eagerly embraces the plan as another chance to rile the Americans, while the Iranian president stopped trusting Damascus as Tehran’s nuclear back-up partner when Israel demolished the nuclear facility under construction by North Korea in northern Syria two years ago and its president began to be wooed by Obama even though Assad shunned Obama in favor of Iran.

 While establishing a joint team cagily assigned with developing “nuclear cooperation for peaceful purposes” a covert track between Iran and Venezuela is progressing much faster on costing the replication of Iranian nuclear plants in the South American country as compared with their transfer, lock, stock and barrel.

 Such a deal can easily be imagined as a provocation for nuclear proliferation in other South American countries.

Two Bangladesh newspapers printed as fact a hoax reported on a website named THE ONION claiming NEIL ARMSTRONG had admitted his moon landing was a fraud. Both later retracted their story - they said they thought the website was a legitimate news source. Duh!

“I plan to get right back in it!” boomed James Traficant, former Mahoning County, Ohio Sheriff, Democratic U.S. congressman from Ohio’s 17th District (Youngstown, Ohio) and newly released convict announcing to 1,200 cheering supporters Sunday. He   just might still have a little of the old magic under what could be the world’s worst toupee that has become his trademark - he did snip off his prison grown pony tail.

Many year ago I lived in Youngstown, Ohio (then called bomb city USA) and brushed against the then Sheriff as well as the local mafia who played that place like a fiddle. Both helped on the local Boy Scout Sustaining Membership Enrollment fund raising campaign. Growing up as I did in a town run by organized crime, and going to school with their kids I am far from virginal or timid.

Just as in his heyday, said Sunday’s Washington Post, Traficant promised that he’d take on the federal government that he said “cheated” to put him behind bars for racketeering and bribery. As the crowd shouted “Run for Senate,” he trashed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and caused frenzy when he proclaimed: “If we can take care of people all over the world, damn it, we can take care of our people here!”

Jimbo is back.

Calling himself “a congressman and a convict,” Traficant, released Wednesday from prison, invoked imprisoned Nelson Mandela and said, “I know America” better because of his years behind bars.

The more Traficant talked, the more people pressed toward him for autographs. He looked fit. A friend described his new hair as a “partial toupee.” He was wearing a vest and his trademark skinny tie.

Nobody at this welcome-home party in suburban Youngstown’s Mr. Anthony’s Banquet Center cared that the U.S. Congress voted 420 to 1 to expel him. They are a “Bunch of Washington elites — who trusts ‘em? “they railed.

“Jimbo” was revered, and feared when I lived there, and respected for his straight talk. Perhaps most famously he called the IRS, the Internal Rectal Service, and people in the tough, one time steel center loved it. He could be funny.

In a place where the minor league baseball team is named the “Scrappers” and where then reigning heavy weight boxing champion Ernie Shavers got shot for threatened a local steel mill worker in a bar a guy like Traficant might just pull off a political comeback.

A decade ago, during the Traficant era, the sheriff, the county prosecutor, judges and mob boss Lenny Strollo — more than 70 people altogether — went to prison for mob-related activity. Hit men had rigged so many car bombs that explosives triggered by the ignition had become known as a “Youngstown tune-up.”  One evening - years before - I remember my house shake to learn a man had been blown through the roof of his car to be tracked down by the smell five days later wedged in an air conditioning unit atop a nearby three story building

The local Youngstown Vindicator reported Sunday under the headline: Same Old Jimbo that ,”A decade ago, during the Traficant era, the sheriff, the county prosecutor, judges and mob boss Lenny Strollo — more than 70 people altogether — went to prison for mob-related activity. Hit men had rigged so many car bombs that explosives triggered by the ignition had become known as a “Youngstown tune-up.”

Sunday the never dull ex-convict said, “You probably have IRS agents and FBI agents writing down your license plates,” he said in a dead-pan style to loud laughter.”

A jury in April 2002 found Traficant guilty of 10 felony counts including racketeering, bribery, obstruction of justice and tax evasion. He was sentenced in July of that year to eight years in prison. He got out Wednesday with his sentence reduced for good time. He is on supervised release for three years.

Traficant was elected nine times to Congress, often with more than 70 percent of the vote. He even got 15 percent of the vote in a congressional race held while he was behind bars.

Not everyone in the Mahoning River Valley is pleased preferring to resurrect the shady reputation of the 500,000 people who live in that eastern Ohio valley where the DeBartolo family of 49er football infamy held sway for decades.

But, for now there is a giddiness that one supporter said of Traficant and the event “The crucifixion is over and the resurrection will begin and maybe the insurrection.”

Asinine (ASS-uh-nyn) adjective: Extremely stupid; ridiculous. From Latin asinus (ass), from the general reputation of donkeys — entirely undeserved — as being stubborn and stupid.

Even though the speech was never the issue much was made about the criticism surrounding Obama’s Tuesday speech to the nation’s school children. The controversy bloomed or blew up over the U. S. Department of Education’s inappropriate imposition of curriculum on the nation’s schools to have children write a letter on how they could help Obama.  That letter idea was withdrawn.

When President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech in October 1991 to students at a junior high school in Washington, D.C., Democrats exploded and went much further and investigated the event, Washington Examiner columnist Byron York reminded Tuesday.

Democrats, who controlled Congress at the time, ordered the General Accounting Office to probe the production of the speech and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for a hearing, York wrote.

The Bush speech at Alice Deal Junior High School cost $26,750 - expenditure paid by the Department of Education - and drew fire from Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, who ordered the probe. Ford was an old-fashioned labor and lunch-pail liberal who served his working-class Michigan district in the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years.

Ford said at the time, “As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event.”

The GAO found no wrongdoing on the part of the Bush administration

But after Bush spoke, The Washington Post implied in a front-page story that the speech was staged for the president’s political benefit, and Democratic allies continued to pounce on Bush for the cost of the event.

Conveniently Obama, his flacks inside and outside the media forgot the 1991 inclident, and adopted a posture of persecution and sanctimony.  Personally I found nothing offensive or inappropriate in either speech.

Wednesday evening Obama gives a speech on his beleaguered healthcare plan that could define his administration.

George, who was 70-years-old, went for his annual physical. All of his test results came back normal. Dr. Smith said, “George, everything looks great physically. How are you doing mentally and emotionally? Are you at peace with yourself, and do you have a good relationship with God?”

George replied, “God and me are real tight. He knows I have poor eyesight, so he’s fixed it so that when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, POOF the light goes on when I pee, and then POOF the light goes off when I’m done.”

“Wow,” commented Dr. Smith, “That’s incredible!”

A little later in the day, Dr. Smith called George’s wife.

“Thelma,” he said, “George is just fine. Physically he’s great, but I had to call because I’m in awe of his relationship with God. Is it true that he gets up during the night and, POOF the light goes on in the bathroom, and then POOF it goes off when he’s done?”

Thelma exclaimed, “That old fool! He’s peeing in the refrigerator again!”

• PO-D Parents Pummel Local School Boards Over Obama Scheme
• Dog Dropping Diplomacy
• How Did China Steal F-35 Secrets?
• Harsh interrogations Saved Lives: CIA Says
• Kevorkian Says Jackson Got What He Wanted.
• Brief History of Labor Day.

HAPPY LABOR DAY. An astonishing 57% of Californian do not have jobs. And the State’s unemployment rate is 12%. 15 million Americans are jobless. Obama brags about and counts temporary summer youth employment as jobs saved. California has an unofficial 15% jobless rate when you count those who have quit looking for work. Most of the Economic Stimulus Funds have gone to public employees and little to small businesses.

The White House is trying to calm national angst that in a Tuesday speech Obama will deliver to US school children he will attempt to politically prostitute them.

The ever more Clarabelle-the-Clown like Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs couldn’t even put a battle dressing on this latest gaping wound saying, “Giving kids a little encouragement as they start the school year and asking them to strive for excellence and to stay at what they are doing is an important message.”

But, the fuel air bomb had already detonated as parents and citizens warned local school boards against playing politics with their children and that it is their political heads that are on the chopping block.

Gibbs should have but did not restrain his fumbling efforts at ‘cuteness’ saying it was ‘Much ado about nothing’ adding fuel to this latest political conflagration.

What should and could have been a benign speech erupted when a “Menu of Classroom Activities” which Obama’s Department of Education sent to all schools strongly suggesting that school children write about “how they could help the president”.

The nation’s top Tea-Partier labeled it Obama-worship. Others sketch it as  ”Pied Piper Obama” going “into the American classroom” to spread a perverse ideology. Obama seems to be able to go against the beliefs of a majority of Americans while sugaring his coffee at dawn of any day.

Tensions ratcheted up last week, some school districts have decided not to air the speech, others pawned the decision off on teachers and school principals, and some offered opt-outs for children whose parents do not want them to see or hear the speech. Not even Van Jones’ blazing effigy could divert the public’s snarling glare.

Some called it a hullabaloo and “hysteria”. And that’s at least part of it is. But, that misses the point. Obama’s plummet is mostly driven by a growing distrust of him and Congress which are at a boil.

Obama’s Department of Education has reworded its contentious line in the classroom activities list suggesting children write about how they can help Obama to “write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals”.

Obama’s tipping point was his attack on Cambridge police in the now infamous Gate’s arrest and the genuinely stupid White House lawn beer bust that spotlighted his feet of clay and galvanized simmering distrust.

The hubris has gotten much, much worse.

Nearly one in five Americans over age 65 is living at or below the poverty level.

Obama’s fall has been dizzying. In just 7 months as arguably the smuggest, most conceited president in America’s history he has:

• had his job approval headed for the 30 percentiles from more than twice as much in January;
• squandered the last vestiges of the trust even the most opposed had initially granted to him:
• appointed a collection of the most radical sycophants, nincompoops, and tax cheats “don’t call them Tzars” in a blatant effort to support a domestic agenda wholly contrary to a majority of America:
• seemingly purposefully offended international allies,
• almost universally emboldened enemies, even the most tin horned,
• and submerged the nation under crippling debt.

In addition to polarizing a nation along ideological, racial and maybe even religious lines as never before he has figuratively and actually sent Americans to the barricades. Everywhere TEA PARTIERS have sprung from their chase lounges into the streets. An arrogant Congress that has largely refused to face its constituents has completely lost the national trust with nearly 60% saying it’s time to kick them all out and start anew. Town Hall meeting have sprung up in nearly every village and town to deride Congress largely in absentia, and although raucous have been largely peaceful save for one man who had his little finger bitten off after sticking his fist in another man’s mouth.

Americans are a generally noisy but not particularly violent punch until roused, and then they can collectively be a really nasty bastardly bunch. But such rousing isn’t easy and almost always has required direct trespass - but if you poke your finger in their eye as Obama has done they relish the fight.

It is exactly such trespass that Obama has managed in this remarkably brief half year. He has managed to get into America’s face with a bewildering array of arrogantly offensive schemes. Those who argue otherwise or see the dissent and unrest as magically inspired and organized by some off-planet conspiracy are paddling a badly leaking boat up a raging river of dissent and discontent.

Admittedly there are some who don’t like Obama because of his half-African heritage. But, frankly those are so few as to be meaningless. In fact Obama has fallen fastest and father among blacks, Hispanics, the young and the nonpartisan - conservatives never liked him and still don’t. But, now liberals are twitching too either because he isn’t radical enough or for any number of pet agendas ranging from an ever more bloody, bottomless war in the Afghanistan wilderness to a failure to pay reparations from the Civil War era of slavery.

Saturday America’s newspaper headlines bleated stories of the latest and perhaps dumbest White House scheme to have school children write themes about what they could do to help Obama. That defecation splattered from sea to shining sea at supersonic speed last week embattling teachers and school boards not to use school time to even allow their children to even watch Obama speak lest he try to political prostitute them. The idea of a federally imposed day’s curriculum of theme writing was quickly flushed but the damage is already done.

The question now is can Obama somehow regain the trust or at least the acquiescence of the man and woman now at least figuratively manning the barricades with posse-like zeal; rebuild our allies lost faith, and reestablish our enemies’ respect.

That will take a lot more than glibness which has been too much Obama’s chief asset to date. If he flunks next Wednesday’s self-invitation to speak before a joint session of Congress it will mean much more than besmirching his own escutcheons but to stop spreading more of the rancid dog droppings that are sticking to the nation’s shoes and being tracked everywhere.

Mawkish (MAW-kish) adjective:1. Excessively sentimental, especially in a false or childish manner. 2. Having a nauseating taste or smell. From Middle English mawke (maggot). Are maggots sentimental? We don’t know, but the secondary sense of the word mawkish derives from the disgust we feel at the sight of the insect. By extension the word began to refer to something sickeningly sentimental.

The office of the National Counterintelligence Executive NCIX) is focusing U.S. counterspy efforts on protecting critical supply networks from economic or other espionage. Critics say it is a CYA scheme to slam the barndoor after the horse has already escaped.

The NCIX will hold an open source conference Sept. 17 on the topic “Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: Understanding the Risk” that will focus on the current global threats to acquisition supply chains.

The conference comes following one of the most serious breaches, the compromise of F-35 jet fighter data. That compromise is much more important given Obama’s junking of the F-22 — what is arguably the most advanced air superiority fighter bomber in history.

In April computer spies penetrated the Joint Strike Fighter, at $300 billion one of the most expensive weapons systems that is over budget and behind schedule.

Unidentified intruders successfully broke into Pentagon computers and obtained several terabytes of data related to the fighter-bomber’s design and electronics systems.

A terabyte the unit for digital information storage and is equal to 10¹² (1000000000000) bytes or 1024 gigabytes.  That’s Enough words that it would take every adult in America speaking at the same time five minutes to say them all.

Such breaches mean that adversaries like China or Russia could use the data for their own fifth generation fighters or for use in developing countermeasures for the F-35 (already inferior to the now scraped F-22 platform) , such as identifying a key vulnerability in the aircraft’s electronics that would allow enemy electronic warfare systems to render the jet useless, or shut down or weaken its defenses.

The conference was promoted by Joel F. Brenner, who until July was the head of the office. In a note coinciding with his departure, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Brenner played a “significant role in articulating a broader understanding of both offensive and defensive and defensive CI, particularly as it relates to computer networks and the supply chain.”

Brenner is criticized by many at NCIX for weakening the central coordinating office’s counterintelligence expertise, and some say this conference is little more than a CYA effort, and worry not enough it yet being done to stop such beaches.

China was blamed for the reported pilfering of F-35 jet secrets. It has not been publicly made know if China had agents inside the F-35 program.

The House Intelligence Committee earlier this year ordered the National Intelligence Council to produce a major estimate on the dangers of technology loss through vulnerabilities in the U.S. global supply chain. The House committee report on the issue stated that because of cyber threats, “it is appropriate to focus the Intelligence Community’s attention on threats emanating from the global supply chain that provides much of the computer systems for both government and private industry.”

This breach, thought to be the most serious, has some arguing that such CYBER WARFARE is the greatest threat to U. S. security even rivaling a NUCLEAR ATTACK., and much more serious than 9-11 attack on Pentagon.

Muhammad Ali visited the town in Ireland where his great-grandfather was born, and thousands of people lined the streets to greet him. All the Irish people had one burning question for Ali, “What’s it like to fight with someone while sober?” - Conan Obrien

The controversy over CIA interrogations has produced some of the first secret reports on the information produced by senior Al Qaida that led to the thwarting of terrorist attacks.

While most press reporting has focused on the 2004 CIA inspector general report detailing alleged harsh interrogation techniques, the most significant details of harsh interrogation are contained in two documents declassified by the CIA and known as the Cheney documents, because they were requested in April by the former vice president and initially rejected for release by CIA.

The June 3, 2005 report “Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al Qaida,” reveals that a laptop belonging to key Al Qaida financier Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was seized in March 2003 and “represented Al Qaida members who were to receive funds”.

“The information… helped us to better understand Al Qaida’s hierarchy, revenues, and expenditures, … as well as funds that were available to families,” the report said.

The CIA report, partially declassified, shows that the CIA did not have a good understanding of Al Qaida prior to 9/11 and that interrogations of captured leaders helped to reveal key details of networks and some operations.

The report stated that since 9/11 detainee intelligence reporting was “a crucial pillar of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, aiding intelligence and law enforcement operations to capture additional terrorists, helping to thwart terrorist plots and advancing our analysis of the Al Qaida target,” the report said.

“In addition, detainees have been able to clarify and provide context for information collected from other sources; they have also provided unique insights into different aspects of the terrorist organization, including its leadership, attack strategic and tactics, and [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] capabilities and ambitions,” it stated.”

Contrary to views expressed by many liberal media pundits, the report states that Abu Zubaydah “provided details about Al Qaida’s organization structure, key operatives and modus operandi.” Additionally, the CIA said Zubaydah identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Unemployment, according to the Department of Labor jumped to 9.7% a 26-year high. When discouraged workers are added that “real” figure is closer to 12%.

On the eve of pop singer Michael Jackson being interred at the LA area Forest Lawn Cemetery Thursday Dr. Jack Kevorkian defended Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray, who is the sole target of the investigation into the late pop star’s death by injection. Jackson’s death has been ruled a homicide.

On Wednesday the now-paroled Kevorkian, 81, told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “I don’t think he (Murray) was malicious. Murder is defined as malice aforethought… Did the doctor have forethought? I doubt it.”

Murray says he injected Jackson with heavy sedatives including the anesthetic propofol at the singer’s request.

“Maybe Jackson craved these things so much he pestered the doctor until he got it.” Kevorkian added, “The patient got what he wanted. He is the one who said yes or no to take a drug.”

As for his own life, Kevorkian says he has “no regrets.”

Jack Kevorkian (pronounced /kɛˈvɔrkiːɛn/ (born May 26, 1928) is a former pathologist sometimes labeled “Dr. Death.” He is most noted for publicly championing a terminal patient’s right to die via physician-assisted suicide; he claims to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He famously said that “dying is not a crime.” Kevorkian is accused of being a caricature of mercy.

After being tried numerous times he was convicted and between 1999 and 2007, Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. He was released on June 1, 2007, on parole due to good behavior.

Kevorkian also demonstrated a flair for dramatic publicity stunts, showing up at one trial in a powdered wig. He protested an incarceration pursuant to another trial by staging a hunger strike and wore a placard challenging the Oakland County prosecutor to bring him to trial. Kovorkian adherents say that prosecutor’s subsequent political defeat was the result of a shift toward assisted suicide and euthanasia. Much of that is based on reports from the UK that 70-80% supports both practices although those finding have been challenged as incorrect.

In 2002, 40 percent of respondents to an ABC News/Beliefnet poll thought that doctors should be legally permitted to help terminally ill patients commit suicide by giving them prescriptions for lethal drugs, compared with 48 percent who disapproved.  A 2006 Pew Research Center poll found that 84 percent of Americans believe patients should have the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment, although the public is evenly split at 45 to 46 percent over whether physicians should be able to help patients to end their lives.

Any discussion of this subject opens a Pandora’s Box, and inserting Dr. Kovorkian, and Michael Jackson’s death fans those flames.

A 54-year old Pennsylvania history buff who restores weapons from old wars accidentally fired a 2-pound cannonball through the wall of his neighbor’s home and it came to rest in a closet. The man was arrested and has promised to stop shooting cannons on his property 35- miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Neighbor are releaved.

In the U.S., Labor Day is a legal holiday, the first Monday in September in honor of labor. The history of Labor Day begins in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the Eight Hour Day Movement in the 1850s. In Europe, Labour Day is now celebrated on May Day, May 1 in apparent deference to the celebration of the former Soviet Union.

In the U.S., our history of Labor Day can be linked to the Canadian celebration. Canadian Labor Day began with the printers’ revolt in Toronto in 1872 and the Canadian “Nine Hour Movement”. Printers organized to create a 54 hour workweek.

There is some ambiguity as to exactly who first proposed the holiday for workers. Some sources say that in 1882, Peter McGuire, an American labor leader, witnessed the annual Toronto festivities and returned to the U.S. with a plan to institute a Labor Day celebration. With the Knights of Labor supporting him, McGuire mounted the first American Labor Day parade in September that year. Others say that Matthew Maguire, a machinest, founded the holiday. Mathew Maguire proposed the holiday while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. Either way, the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

Folks argue about whose idea it first was. Most agree the first Labor Day in the U.S. was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. The first Monday was selected in 1884. Canada and the U.S. adopted Labor Day on the same date, easing pressure on businesses that operated on both sides of the border and demonstrating solidarity between the two countries.

Labor Day has lost many of it’s original traditional associations. Today, the holiday is, for most, simply a day off work to enjoy with family and friends.

Shrew (shroo) NOUN: A bad-tempered, nagging woman. ETYMOLOGY:Shrew is an animal of the Soricidae family having a long, sharp snout. From the belief that a shrew had a venomous bite, in the beginning the term was used metaphorically for anyone of a spiteful nature, male or female. Eventually the word came to be applied exclusively to women.

• Obama’s “Free Speech Chief of Police”
• Obama Job Approval Lowest Ever: Others Plummet Too.
• Holder/Obama At War With CIA
• U. S. Places Priority Order for Bunker Buster Bombs

“Ribbon of Shame” Congresswoman Capps Finally Holds Town Hall Meeting On Why She Supports “Universal Health Care.”

Obama appointee, don’t call him a Czar, Mark Lloyd, is the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Lloyd has been openly critical of private media companies in Venezuela, where Lloyd believes that Marxist ruler Hugo Chavez is trying to implement a popular democracy.   

Lloyd, who worked as a broadcast journalist at BC and CNN, has come under fire from Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck and Seton Motley of the Media Research Center for his stance.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski appointed Mark Lloyd, a former senior fellow at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), to be the FCC’s “Chief Diversity Officer” or the so-called “Chief of Free Speech Police.”  

Lloyd is a proponent of the Fairness Doctrine and wrote that the Doctrine, and other regulatory tools such as localism and diversity mandates, should be employed by the FCC to limit the number of conservative voices on the air and supplant them with liberal voices.

Lloyd has suggested fining conservative radio stations up to $250 million and giving the proceeds to national public radio. According to polling conducted by Zogby International and The O’Leary Report, most American voters disagree with what Lloyd prescribes.

At the FCC, Lloyd is in a position to try to influence and control media content by making statements and issuing directives on media “diversity” and fairness.

At a 2008 “media reform” conference sponsored by the arch-liberal Obama financier George Soros-funded Free Press organization, Lloyd declared that the Marxist revolution in Venezuela under Chavez was “incredible” and “dramatic” but that the “property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media in Venezuela rebelled” against the would-be dictator and supported a coup against him. However, Lloyd said that Chavez wised up and “then started to take the media seriously…”

 The implication of these remarks is that Chavez dealt with his opponents in the media by trying to control or silence them, and that Lloyd supports that strategy when dealing with opponents of revolutionary Marxism here in the U.S.

Accuracy in Media, which published the book, The Death of Talk Radio?, has been warning for years that the liberal/left has a plan to silence conservative media voices. Lloyd appears to be the point man in this scheme.

The process has accelerated in Venezuela. Indeed, the National Press Club of the U.S. noted in an Aug. 6 statement that it is “distressed by the Venezuelan government’s recent actions to intimidate and bully the country’s media. The government of Venezuela has taken a series of steps since July 31 that threaten to destroy press freedom. On July 31, the government revoked licenses for more than 30 private radio stations and a Venezuelan minister has said more than 200 other stations are under investigation. Venezuela’s attorney general recently proposed a ‘Special Law Against Media Crimes’ that would punish journalists who present a ‘false perception’ or ’cause a panic.’ Venezuela’s journalist association says the law will ‘criminalize journalism.’”

National Press Club President Donna Leinwand said that “These actions are designed to sow fear among journalists whose reporting challenges or criticizes the government. If the government persists, it will erode free expression. We call on the government of Venezuela to allow media organizations to operate unfettered.”

It is apparent that Chavez is using the government to force private companies out of the media business and restrict and investigate the remaining independent journalists. This is a process that apparently meets with the approval of “progressives” such as Mark Lloyd in the U.S.

Could this be the plan for the U.S. as well?

Obama Job Approval Falls Faster and Farther Than Any Other President Since World War II.

30% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11.

Most voters now expect that the situation in Afghanistan will get worse over the next six months. That’s up fourteen points over the past month. At the same time, the number worried about a terrorist attack in the United States has declined.

The climate change legislation passed by the House of Representatives earlier this summer receives mixed reviews from the public.

Overall, 45% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s down a point from yesterday and the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama. Fifty-three percent (53%) now disapprove.

Obama’s sagging job approval is bleeding to Congress with 57% of American voters now saying kick them all out and start over.

Individual members of Congress are also taking a beating such as: Harry Reid and Chris Dodd who are both trailing in reelection polls.

Congresswoman Lois Capps’ (D) CA. who represents its 23^rd District, the so-called Ribbon of Shame, job approval in her wildly liberal hometown of Santa Barbara is down to 54% with 40% disapproving and the balance undecided. Capps’ recently reversed refusal to hold townhall meetings on healthcare blew up resulting in numerous independent townhalls up and down the 200 mile long coastal district, and even protest at her office.

Obama Will Address Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.

Kent Clizbe, a former member of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, paints a grim picture of the days after 9-11 and right to today in an exclusive report for Newsmax. 

Clizbe writes that after President Clinton’s emasculation of the CIA it was left to a small group of men, and a few women with vast amounts of intelligence experience to fan out across the world to run operations against terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon and only because of the astonishing bravery of a few airline passengers were attacks stopped on the White House or Capitol.

The FBI, a domestic law enforcement agency, did not have the ability or skills needed to track down and strike the attackers overseas. The Pentagon, with F22s, nuclear aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and battalions of the best armor in the history of mankind, was like an elephant attacked by a mouse - mighty, but helpless in its mammoth rage.

Our best hope, says Clizbe, was in the hands of the gray-bearded intelligence professionals Supplementing the skeleton crew of staff officers left in the wake of Clinton’s anti-intelligence scourging of the CIA, the volunteers went to the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, to the most remote and isolated outposts in the world to stop the next attack.

Their mission: Seek and destroy the terrorist planners, facilitators, trainers, financiers, and their infrastructure wherever they were. They were guided by the CIA Counterterrorism Center’s motto, to: “Deny, Disrupt, Destroy.”  

While that was going on, where was Eric Holder?

Well before leaving President Clinton’s employ, he orchestrated the pardons of several Puerto Rican separatist terrorists. Then in 2003, as a partner in the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, Holder’s client, Chiquita Brands, admitted paying to support terrorist death squads in Colombia and paid a $25 million fine. Plus Holder’s law firm was representing - for free - 16 terrorist detainees at Guantanamo.

Now Holder is America’s top law enforcement official as Attorney General and at the epicenter of what Clizbe labels the Holder/Obama Global War on the CIA (GWCIA)  It has only just begun, as it debuted with “grisly revelations” of revving drills, gunshots in the next cell, and threats against a terrorist’s children. The GWOT is not for the faint of heart, nor the queasy. No war ever has been. There may be “slight improprieties” stashed in the CIA’s closets, but the liberal-appeasing GWCIA is foolhardy and dangerous.

Mike Spann, was the first to die in the GWOT. He won’t have to worry about the Holder/Obama GWCIA. But others in the agency are very worried. While we sacrificed to achieve incremental victories, Holder and Obama plotted and schemed - not against those “evil-mongers” who killed our countrymen, but against those of us hunting the terrorists.

“Something is rotten in Denmark. The odor is not from Langley, Mr. Holder. ”

When Obama’s CIA Director appointee Leon Panetta learned of the Obama/Holder scheme he erupted in a profanity laced tirade at the White House threatening to quit.

Former ebay CEO and candidate for California Governor Meg Whitman campaigned in Santa Barbara this week.

In view of new information about Iran and North Korea’s underground nuclear facilities, the US Air Force has asked to speed up the delivery of 10 to 12 giant Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford.

 Unusually, military sources report, the order has been trebled in less than a year after Congress was first asked for $68 million to buy four MOPs by the US Pacific Command which covers the Korean area and US Central Command which oversees Iran. On Aug. 3, the Pentagon announced a decision to accelerate delivery and again on the 30th for the order to be filled as soon as possible by July 2010 at latest.

 Gen. Shackelford said: “These are purchases beyond just those needed to test their capability. In other words (the military is seeking to) build a small inventory of, I believe, 10-12 bombs.”

The 20-ton, 21 foot, MOP, using GPS and inertial guidance to find its target, can penetrate 200 feet underground, and is the latest of a line of American super bombs. Reportedly the massive bombs can be dropped by the B-2 stealth bomber and carries 7,500 pounds of high explosive hitting with pinpoint accuracy.

 If one of these things pops through the roof of an underground facility and goes off in such a contained space it would ruin your whole day.

 Whether or not this is just posturing or a serious warning to North Korea and Iran is, as it should be, unannounced.

A McClatchy-Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that 40 percent of Americans favored the sort of health overhaul that Obama’s been talking about and 45 percent opposed it. Three-fourths also wanted incremental change versus fixing everything at once.