Saturday, February 28, 2009
From John McCain
Top Ten Porkiest Projects in the Omnibus Spending bill
From John McCain
Today at 5:50pm
Top Ten Porkiest Projects in the Omnibus Spending bill
10. $1.7 million "for a honey bee factory" in Weslaco, TX
9. $475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah
8. $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program that could help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past
7. $300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center
6. $1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah
5. $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi
4. $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York
3. $332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas
2. $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii
1. $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Instead of Calming Americans, he is the Conduit of Panic.
Ultimately, all recessions and depressions resolve themselves into crises of confidence. The instant, global, 24/7 communications of today make them ever more so. President Obama, in his pursuit of liberal big-government spending, has totally neglected the role of the president of the United States in reversing global panic. To the contrary, his every remark and the constant preoccupation of his Cabinet is to heighten the sense of crisis and to escalate the predictions of doom if we do not do as they tell us and raise spending now and taxes later.Instead of being a firewall, reassuring Main Street even as Wall Street crashed, he has become a conduit of panic, spreading the mood of desperation from the stock exchange floor to kitchen tables across the world.There are bad loans, which became bad assets, that lie at the root of the crisis. Through deregulation by the government and the greed of financial institutions, they spread to every portfolio in the world. But these basic facts have metastasized out of all proportion to their real harm into job and financial insecurity for every family on Earth. It is President Obama, not the markets themselves, who has spread this fear. A global Paul Revere, he has not only aroused us, but incited fear and trepidation in his wake.Previous panics have been global in impact, but local in focus. The world panicked because of developments in Mexico or Argentina or Thailand or South Korea. Now, with Collateralized Debt Obligations spreading the poison of a bunch of bad loans all over the world, infecting every portfolio, the panic is not only global in impact but in focus as well. Modern communications have hastened the spread of the virus of panic throughout the global bloodstream.In addressing this panic, the president of the United States must truly be the leader of the world -- showing the way back to confidence.Instead, Obama has been instrumental in purveying fear and spreading doubt. It is his pronouncements, reinforced by the developments they kindle and catalyze, that are destroying good businesses, bankrupting responsible people and wiping out even conservative financial institutions. Every time he speaks, he sends the markets down and stocks crashing. He doesn't seem to realize that the rest of the world takes its cue from him. He forgets that he stands at the epicenter of power, not on the fringes campaigning for office. This ain't Iowa.Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation, and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity. Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring.And then there is the matter of blame. The deeper the mess goes -- and the further down his rhetoric drives it -- the more imperative it becomes to lay off the blame on Bush. He must perpetually "discover" -- to his shock -- how deep the crisis that he inherited runs, stoking global fears in the process.So, having inherited a recession, his words are creating a depression. He entered office amid a disaster and he is transforming it into a catastrophe, all to pass every last bit of government spending and move us a bit further to the left before his political capital dwindles.But the jig will be up soon. The crash of the stock market in the days since he took power (indeed, from the moment he won the election) can increasingly be attributed to his own failure to lead us in the right direction, his failed policies in addressing the recession and his own spreading of panic and fear. The market collapse makes it evident that it is Obama who is the problem, where he should, instead, be the solution.
Dick Morris
Dick Morris
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
What happened to stopping Earmarks Mr. President (ya Liar)
Obama's New Spending Bill Has 9,000 Earmarks
Monday, February 23, 2009 9:29 AMBy:
William Douglas and David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks.
"We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."
President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts on Capitol Hill to curtail the practice.
The bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks — loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress — were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.
So while Obama and McCain were slamming earmarks on the campaign trail, House and Senate members — Democrats and Republicans — were slapping them into spending bills.
"It will be a little embarrassing for the president if he signs a bill with that many earmarks on it," said Stan Collender , a veteran Washington budget analyst. "He'll say they're left over from the Bush years, and he as to say that next year the bill will be clean."
Experts agree that most earmarks are legitimate. Cary Leahey , senior economist with Decision Economics in New York , said the nation's economic crisis is a contributing factor to the plethora of earmarks. Lawmakers can argue that for a relatively small price they've helped boost the economy.
"One congressman's earmark is another legislative way to fix a serious problem in his district," Leahey said.
Kenneth Thomas , a lecturer in finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of business, agrees.
"I generally believe that the priority is getting money into the system sooner rather than later, especially if it's for projects that will use local contractors and create jobs," he said.
Still, it wasn't supposed to be this way. Earmarks have come under fire because of those that seem to provide what Maya MacGuineas , president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, calls "laugh lines," such as Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" or North Dakota's Lawrence Welk Museum .
Obama pledged to take a hard hand on earmarks and warned lawmakers in a Feb. 3 letter from Budget Director Peter Orszag not to decorate the recently signed $787.2 billion stimulus bill with them.
Democrats declared the bill earmark-free. Republicans disagreed.
"While this bill does not include traditional earmarks, we should all understand that there are earmarks in this bill," said Sen. Mike Enzi , R- Wyo. "There is $850 million ... to bail out Amtrak , a $75 million earmark for the Smithsonian, a $1 billion earmark for the 2010 census."
Democrats have been trying to revamp the earmark process for about two years. In 2007, they instituted a system that required members to explain the contents of each earmark, as well as a justification for why it was included in the legislation that way. They claimed this led to a reduction in earmarks by as much as 43 percent.
But critics contended the system still had problems. Simply making information more available, they said, didn't address the major criticism: That such projects should go through the regular legislative process, subject to detailed hearings and bipartisan votes.
Not only does this mean the public has no chance to challenge questionable spending, but too often powerful interests who know how to work the system get favorite measures inserted.
For instance, Congressional Quarterly reported recently that more than 100 House members got earmarks for clients of the PMA Group , a lobbying firm with close ties to Rep. John Murtha , D- Pa. , who heads the powerful defense spending subcommittee. The CQ Politics analysis said that in the 2009 defense spending bill, which Congress approved last year, PMA clients got about $300 million .
The CQ study came after reports that the FBI is investigating the possibility of illegal campaign contributions by PMA to Murtha and other lawmakers. A Murtha spokesman said earlier this month that the FBI probe has nothing to do with Murtha. A PMA spokesman declined to comment on the probe.
Appropriations committee chairmen say they are on track to reform the earmark process beginning in fiscal 2010 by requiring members to make public their requests early, so the public can scrutinize them and presumably contact lawmakers.
The change, though, doesn't apply to the 2009 funding that Congress will consider next week.
Several experts believe that dramatically reducing the number of earmarks, while a laudable goal, is almost impossible. But others contend that earmarks aren't that big of a problem.
"Earmarks get more attention than they deserve," said MacGuineas. "The problem is that they cause a loss of confidence in the whole budget process."
© 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Reprinted Via Newscom.
Monday, February 23, 2009 9:29 AMBy:
William Douglas and David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks.
"We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."
President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts on Capitol Hill to curtail the practice.
The bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks — loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress — were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.
So while Obama and McCain were slamming earmarks on the campaign trail, House and Senate members — Democrats and Republicans — were slapping them into spending bills.
"It will be a little embarrassing for the president if he signs a bill with that many earmarks on it," said Stan Collender , a veteran Washington budget analyst. "He'll say they're left over from the Bush years, and he as to say that next year the bill will be clean."
Experts agree that most earmarks are legitimate. Cary Leahey , senior economist with Decision Economics in New York , said the nation's economic crisis is a contributing factor to the plethora of earmarks. Lawmakers can argue that for a relatively small price they've helped boost the economy.
"One congressman's earmark is another legislative way to fix a serious problem in his district," Leahey said.
Kenneth Thomas , a lecturer in finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of business, agrees.
"I generally believe that the priority is getting money into the system sooner rather than later, especially if it's for projects that will use local contractors and create jobs," he said.
Still, it wasn't supposed to be this way. Earmarks have come under fire because of those that seem to provide what Maya MacGuineas , president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, calls "laugh lines," such as Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" or North Dakota's Lawrence Welk Museum .
Obama pledged to take a hard hand on earmarks and warned lawmakers in a Feb. 3 letter from Budget Director Peter Orszag not to decorate the recently signed $787.2 billion stimulus bill with them.
Democrats declared the bill earmark-free. Republicans disagreed.
"While this bill does not include traditional earmarks, we should all understand that there are earmarks in this bill," said Sen. Mike Enzi , R- Wyo. "There is $850 million ... to bail out Amtrak , a $75 million earmark for the Smithsonian, a $1 billion earmark for the 2010 census."
Democrats have been trying to revamp the earmark process for about two years. In 2007, they instituted a system that required members to explain the contents of each earmark, as well as a justification for why it was included in the legislation that way. They claimed this led to a reduction in earmarks by as much as 43 percent.
But critics contended the system still had problems. Simply making information more available, they said, didn't address the major criticism: That such projects should go through the regular legislative process, subject to detailed hearings and bipartisan votes.
Not only does this mean the public has no chance to challenge questionable spending, but too often powerful interests who know how to work the system get favorite measures inserted.
For instance, Congressional Quarterly reported recently that more than 100 House members got earmarks for clients of the PMA Group , a lobbying firm with close ties to Rep. John Murtha , D- Pa. , who heads the powerful defense spending subcommittee. The CQ Politics analysis said that in the 2009 defense spending bill, which Congress approved last year, PMA clients got about $300 million .
The CQ study came after reports that the FBI is investigating the possibility of illegal campaign contributions by PMA to Murtha and other lawmakers. A Murtha spokesman said earlier this month that the FBI probe has nothing to do with Murtha. A PMA spokesman declined to comment on the probe.
Appropriations committee chairmen say they are on track to reform the earmark process beginning in fiscal 2010 by requiring members to make public their requests early, so the public can scrutinize them and presumably contact lawmakers.
The change, though, doesn't apply to the 2009 funding that Congress will consider next week.
Several experts believe that dramatically reducing the number of earmarks, while a laudable goal, is almost impossible. But others contend that earmarks aren't that big of a problem.
"Earmarks get more attention than they deserve," said MacGuineas. "The problem is that they cause a loss of confidence in the whole budget process."
© 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Reprinted Via Newscom.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Atheist Professor
Atheist Professor........
Many of you may have seen this one before,
but I enjoyed the review and hope you will, too ........."Let me explain the problem science has with religion." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand. "You're a Christian, aren't you, son?" "Yes sir," the student says. "So you believe in God?" "Absolutely." "Is God good?" "Sure! God's good." "Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?" "Yes." "Are you good or evil?" "The Bible says I'm evil." The professor grins knowingly. "Aha! The Bible!" He considers for a moment, "Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?" "Yes sir, I would." "So you're good!" "I wouldn't say that." "But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't." The student does not answer, so the professor continues. "He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?" The student remains silent. "No, you can't, can you?" the professor says. He takes a sip of water from glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. "Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?" "Er...yes," the student says. "Is Satan good?" The student doesn't hesitate on this one, "No." "Then where does Satan come from?" The student falters, "From God." "That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?" "Yes, sir." "Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?" "Yes." "So who created evil?" The professor continued, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil." Again, the student has no answer. "Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?" The student squirms on his feet. "Yes." "So who created them?" The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question, "Who created them?" There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. "Tell me," he continues onto another student. "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?" The student's voice betrays him and cracks. "Yes, professor, I do." The old man stops pacing, "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?" "No sir. I've never seen Him." "Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?" "No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't." "Yet you still believe in him?" "Yes." "According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?" "Nothing," the student replies. "I only have my faith." "Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith." The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. "Professor, is there such thing as heat?" "Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat." "And is there such a thing as cold?" "Yes, son, there's cold too." "No sir, there isn't." The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain... "You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees." "Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it." Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer. "What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?" "Yes," the professor replies without hesitation. "What is night if it isn't darkness?" "You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and its called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?" The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. "So what point are you making, young man?" "Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed." The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time, "Flawed? Can you explain how?" "You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains... "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought." "It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it." "Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?" "If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do." "Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?" The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed. "Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?" The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. "To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean." The student looks around the room, "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" The class breaks out into laughter. "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir." "So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?" Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers, "I guess you'll have to take them on faith." "Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life," the student continues, "Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?" Now uncertain, the professor responds, "Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil." To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light." The professor sat down. If you read it all the way through and had a smile on your face when you finished, mail it to your friends and family.
PS: The student was Albert Einstein
Many of you may have seen this one before,
but I enjoyed the review and hope you will, too ........."Let me explain the problem science has with religion." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand. "You're a Christian, aren't you, son?" "Yes sir," the student says. "So you believe in God?" "Absolutely." "Is God good?" "Sure! God's good." "Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?" "Yes." "Are you good or evil?" "The Bible says I'm evil." The professor grins knowingly. "Aha! The Bible!" He considers for a moment, "Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?" "Yes sir, I would." "So you're good!" "I wouldn't say that." "But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't." The student does not answer, so the professor continues. "He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?" The student remains silent. "No, you can't, can you?" the professor says. He takes a sip of water from glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. "Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?" "Er...yes," the student says. "Is Satan good?" The student doesn't hesitate on this one, "No." "Then where does Satan come from?" The student falters, "From God." "That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?" "Yes, sir." "Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?" "Yes." "So who created evil?" The professor continued, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil." Again, the student has no answer. "Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?" The student squirms on his feet. "Yes." "So who created them?" The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question, "Who created them?" There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. "Tell me," he continues onto another student. "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?" The student's voice betrays him and cracks. "Yes, professor, I do." The old man stops pacing, "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?" "No sir. I've never seen Him." "Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?" "No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't." "Yet you still believe in him?" "Yes." "According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?" "Nothing," the student replies. "I only have my faith." "Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith." The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. "Professor, is there such thing as heat?" "Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat." "And is there such a thing as cold?" "Yes, son, there's cold too." "No sir, there isn't." The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain... "You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees." "Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it." Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer. "What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?" "Yes," the professor replies without hesitation. "What is night if it isn't darkness?" "You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and its called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?" The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. "So what point are you making, young man?" "Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed." The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time, "Flawed? Can you explain how?" "You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains... "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought." "It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it." "Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?" "If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do." "Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?" The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed. "Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?" The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. "To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean." The student looks around the room, "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" The class breaks out into laughter. "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir." "So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?" Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers, "I guess you'll have to take them on faith." "Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life," the student continues, "Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?" Now uncertain, the professor responds, "Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil." To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light." The professor sat down. If you read it all the way through and had a smile on your face when you finished, mail it to your friends and family.
PS: The student was Albert Einstein
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Not a good Idea to weaken America's Arsenal
Obama Plans Dramatic Changes to Reduce Nuclear Arsenal
Monday, February 16, 2009 7:29 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
If he has his way, President Barack Obama will dramatically change the nuclear weapons policy of the U.S. – leaving behind Cold War doctrine and looking to a model of a minimal nuclear arsenal -- just ominous enough to do the job of deterrence.
Obama may be mired in the economic stimulus debate, but the clock is also relentlessly ticking on some volatile policy decisions regarding the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal – the stuff of that deterrence. Foreign nations, friend and foe, are poised to discover Obama’s nuclear agenda, while some critics within the U.S. are fearful that the new president will go too far, too fast.
Among the weighty decisions on the president’s plate is whether to extend or renegotiate the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) with Russia, which run outs at the end of 2009, and whether to press for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) -- with which the U.S. only voluntarily complies, according to a report in USA Today.
The CTBT bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military testing or civilian purposes.
“This is not just a decision about the future of U.S. nuclear weapons, but about how the United States will address the challenges of … nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation and our entire 21st-century nuclear strategy,” Clark Murdock, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told USA Today.
It’s not just the calendar that is putting the pressure on Obama. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov in February called on the U.S. to deliver a “constructive response” to open negotiations on START II, which he said should include a ban on deployment of strategic offensive arms outside national territories.
“This will allow us to arrive in the foreseeable future at an arrangement which will mark a new substantial step forward along the road to missile and nuclear disarmament,” said Ivanov at the recent 45th Munich Security Conference, according to a report by Xinhua.
The Challenge of Change
President Obama comes to office with some heavy baggage – most significantly the failure of the Bush White House to make real progress on their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-related disarmament commitments, including the negotiation of a global verifiable fissile material cut off, according to a report in Foreign Policy in Focus.
Meanwhile, overall U.S.-Russian relations have gone south because of the previous administration’s election to abandon the bi-lateral strategic nuclear arms control framework with Moscow.
In 2002, the administration pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to develop a strategic missile defense system. George W. Bush then proposed the deployment of a controversial anti-missile site in Poland.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, however, an on-the-ball Obama is already reaching out to repair relations with Russia.
This past December, while still president-elect, Obama reportedly dispatched former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to meet with Russian President Medvedev in order to get a jump start on thawing things in Moscow.
Kissinger, credited with nurturing detente during the Nixon presidency, reached out for a nuclear disarmament initiative.
During talks, Kissinger reportedly met with Russian officials to win their support for an important Obama’s initiative -- having Russia and the U.S. both cut their nuclear warhead inventory to 1,000 warheads.
Moves such as the dispatching of Kissinger may get both parties to the negotiating table after eight years of reticence to do so by Washington, according to the Telegraph report.
Meanwhile, Kissinger has not retreated from the frontlines.
In mid-February, Kissinger publically called on the U.S. and Russia to negotiate on new cuts in nuclear weapons, according to the ChinaView. He pushed for a quick start to negotiations,
“The immediate need is to start negotiations to extend the START II agreement,” said Kissinger at the Munich Security Conference.”
Promises to Keep
During the campaign, Obama pledged: “As president, I will set a new direction in nuclear weapons policy and show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.”
President Obama has a tough row to hoe with this promise. It’s a brave new dangerous world out there.
Experts estimate that all the nuclear-weapon states together possess about 27,000 intact nuclear warheads, of which 97 percent are in U.S. and Russian stockpiles, according to an analysis in Truthout.
About 12,500 of these warheads are considered operational, with the balance in reserve or retired and awaiting dismantlement. The Pentagon has custody of nearly 10,000 stockpiled warheads, of which 5,735 are considered active or operational. Russia, in one estimate, has 16,000 intact warheads, of which about 5,830 are considered operational.
No wonder that in January 2007, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned that, despite the reduction of arsenals, the world had entered a “Second Nuclear Age marked by grave threats.”
And it is just this perceived grave threat that may hamper Obama’s visions of universal disarmament.
President Barack Obama’s pledge of no new nukes for the U.S. is wholly impractical say experts who have examined not only the issue of maintaining the hardware of nuclear deterrence, but the human factor of keeping competent trained managers at the nation’s nuclear switch.
The new Administration has declared without equivocation that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama “will stop the development of new nuclear weapons,” but much like the pledge to close the detainee center at Gitmo, this may turn out to be more a commitment to a complex process rather than an event.
So far, White House staffers will say only that President Obama and his Secretary of Defense, Roberts Gates have not yet had an opportunity to fully debate the particulars, but on the record Gates has consistently argued that building a new generation of more reliable nuclear warheads would give the U.S. the wherewithal to downsize its overall nuclear arsenal.
Gates’ logic: If you have confidence that only a 50 percent of your aged nuke stockpile will detonate at full capacity, you many need to stock twice as many – and that looks bad if you are the nation ostensibly leading the way to the bright shinning day when terms such as “deterrence” and “assured mutual destruction” have passed from the lexicon.
In the final analysis, it’s all about that operative word “new.”
Frank Gaffney of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy points to the work of that think tank’s “New Deterrent Working Group,” which is charged to provide input to the nation’s Strategic Posture Commission.
The group goes beyond the Gates’ argument and logic to profess why “new” is not and cannot be a dirty word when the nation’s leaders consider nuclear weapons policy:
“We must adopt anew a national commitment to design, test and produce, on a continuing basis, new nuclear weapons. These activities are ‘performance arts.’ Expertise can be maintained only by engaging in them. Simply put, the extreme complexity and hazards of the work are such that there is no substitute for competent, integrated management. Such management, in turn, requires continuing, hands-on experience.”
An Eroding Deterrence
Bottom line to the group’s argument: the U.S. can’t even maintain a shaky status quo by simply nursing along its dusty degrading inventory of nukes. Yet this is exactly what Obama seems to favor.
Scienceline reports that the U.S. has maintained its 5,400-warhead arsenal by replacing degraded plastic and rubber parts. But the vital explosive radioactive core in the warhead naturally decays over time and has not been replaced.
The warheads will remain dependable for at least 82 more years, or until the year 2091, according to a 2006 report by JASON, an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960.
This perceived cushion alone may contribute to why Congress has been reticent to fund replacements for the aging warheads. Last May, Congress refused to fund a $9.4 million RRW (Reliable Replacement Warhead) research initiative. In fact the RRW budget request for fiscal year 2010 has been nixed.
“The bottom line is that the current U.S. arsenal is safe and reliable,” notes Stephen Young, a senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Boston-based advocacy group lobbying to reduce nuclear threats, according to the Scienceline report.
“A Democratic Congress is not going to approve a budget created by a Republican [like Pres. Bush],” said RRW supporter Maj. Gen. Robert L. Smolen, deputy administrator for defense programs for the National Nuclear Security Administration, to Scienceline.
RRW has become a touchstone in the great nuclear deterrence debate.
Gaffney and his group pull no punches when it sings the praises of RRW.
“RRW must be reestablished as a vital program in order to prevent the loss of core nuclear weapon capabilities in National Nuclear Security Administration’s labs and plants, and to provide the optimum replacement approach for those over-age weapons in our stockpile which will be needed for decades to come.
“The RRW provides our only opportunity at the moment to recapture the experienced, integrated management expertise necessary to guide new nuclear weapons from concept definition to service introduction. Without RRW, this invaluable capability will, for all intents and purposes, be lost,” concludes the Center for Security Policy group.
Says Gaffney: “At the very least, the Strategic Posture Commission -- and assuredly the next president -- is going to have to wrestle with a problem that cannot be effectively addressed by straddling, let alone by wholly wrong-headed thinking to the effect that the world will become nuclear free -- if only the United States would de-nuclearize.”
In the final analysis, however, in these times of economic downturn, what may decide the fate of RRW is just the price tag -- estimated to cost at least $100 billion.
Meanwhile, there is no such heady debate going on in the inner sanctums of other major nuclear powers. Great Britain, France, Russia and China are all marching briskly ahead modernizing their nuclear arsenals, according to USA Today.
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Monday, February 16, 2009 7:29 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
If he has his way, President Barack Obama will dramatically change the nuclear weapons policy of the U.S. – leaving behind Cold War doctrine and looking to a model of a minimal nuclear arsenal -- just ominous enough to do the job of deterrence.
Obama may be mired in the economic stimulus debate, but the clock is also relentlessly ticking on some volatile policy decisions regarding the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal – the stuff of that deterrence. Foreign nations, friend and foe, are poised to discover Obama’s nuclear agenda, while some critics within the U.S. are fearful that the new president will go too far, too fast.
Among the weighty decisions on the president’s plate is whether to extend or renegotiate the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) with Russia, which run outs at the end of 2009, and whether to press for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) -- with which the U.S. only voluntarily complies, according to a report in USA Today.
The CTBT bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military testing or civilian purposes.
“This is not just a decision about the future of U.S. nuclear weapons, but about how the United States will address the challenges of … nuclear terrorism, nuclear proliferation and our entire 21st-century nuclear strategy,” Clark Murdock, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told USA Today.
It’s not just the calendar that is putting the pressure on Obama. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov in February called on the U.S. to deliver a “constructive response” to open negotiations on START II, which he said should include a ban on deployment of strategic offensive arms outside national territories.
“This will allow us to arrive in the foreseeable future at an arrangement which will mark a new substantial step forward along the road to missile and nuclear disarmament,” said Ivanov at the recent 45th Munich Security Conference, according to a report by Xinhua.
The Challenge of Change
President Obama comes to office with some heavy baggage – most significantly the failure of the Bush White House to make real progress on their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-related disarmament commitments, including the negotiation of a global verifiable fissile material cut off, according to a report in Foreign Policy in Focus.
Meanwhile, overall U.S.-Russian relations have gone south because of the previous administration’s election to abandon the bi-lateral strategic nuclear arms control framework with Moscow.
In 2002, the administration pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to develop a strategic missile defense system. George W. Bush then proposed the deployment of a controversial anti-missile site in Poland.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, however, an on-the-ball Obama is already reaching out to repair relations with Russia.
This past December, while still president-elect, Obama reportedly dispatched former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to meet with Russian President Medvedev in order to get a jump start on thawing things in Moscow.
Kissinger, credited with nurturing detente during the Nixon presidency, reached out for a nuclear disarmament initiative.
During talks, Kissinger reportedly met with Russian officials to win their support for an important Obama’s initiative -- having Russia and the U.S. both cut their nuclear warhead inventory to 1,000 warheads.
Moves such as the dispatching of Kissinger may get both parties to the negotiating table after eight years of reticence to do so by Washington, according to the Telegraph report.
Meanwhile, Kissinger has not retreated from the frontlines.
In mid-February, Kissinger publically called on the U.S. and Russia to negotiate on new cuts in nuclear weapons, according to the ChinaView. He pushed for a quick start to negotiations,
“The immediate need is to start negotiations to extend the START II agreement,” said Kissinger at the Munich Security Conference.”
Promises to Keep
During the campaign, Obama pledged: “As president, I will set a new direction in nuclear weapons policy and show the world that America believes in its existing commitment under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to work to ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.”
President Obama has a tough row to hoe with this promise. It’s a brave new dangerous world out there.
Experts estimate that all the nuclear-weapon states together possess about 27,000 intact nuclear warheads, of which 97 percent are in U.S. and Russian stockpiles, according to an analysis in Truthout.
About 12,500 of these warheads are considered operational, with the balance in reserve or retired and awaiting dismantlement. The Pentagon has custody of nearly 10,000 stockpiled warheads, of which 5,735 are considered active or operational. Russia, in one estimate, has 16,000 intact warheads, of which about 5,830 are considered operational.
No wonder that in January 2007, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned that, despite the reduction of arsenals, the world had entered a “Second Nuclear Age marked by grave threats.”
And it is just this perceived grave threat that may hamper Obama’s visions of universal disarmament.
President Barack Obama’s pledge of no new nukes for the U.S. is wholly impractical say experts who have examined not only the issue of maintaining the hardware of nuclear deterrence, but the human factor of keeping competent trained managers at the nation’s nuclear switch.
The new Administration has declared without equivocation that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama “will stop the development of new nuclear weapons,” but much like the pledge to close the detainee center at Gitmo, this may turn out to be more a commitment to a complex process rather than an event.
So far, White House staffers will say only that President Obama and his Secretary of Defense, Roberts Gates have not yet had an opportunity to fully debate the particulars, but on the record Gates has consistently argued that building a new generation of more reliable nuclear warheads would give the U.S. the wherewithal to downsize its overall nuclear arsenal.
Gates’ logic: If you have confidence that only a 50 percent of your aged nuke stockpile will detonate at full capacity, you many need to stock twice as many – and that looks bad if you are the nation ostensibly leading the way to the bright shinning day when terms such as “deterrence” and “assured mutual destruction” have passed from the lexicon.
In the final analysis, it’s all about that operative word “new.”
Frank Gaffney of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy points to the work of that think tank’s “New Deterrent Working Group,” which is charged to provide input to the nation’s Strategic Posture Commission.
The group goes beyond the Gates’ argument and logic to profess why “new” is not and cannot be a dirty word when the nation’s leaders consider nuclear weapons policy:
“We must adopt anew a national commitment to design, test and produce, on a continuing basis, new nuclear weapons. These activities are ‘performance arts.’ Expertise can be maintained only by engaging in them. Simply put, the extreme complexity and hazards of the work are such that there is no substitute for competent, integrated management. Such management, in turn, requires continuing, hands-on experience.”
An Eroding Deterrence
Bottom line to the group’s argument: the U.S. can’t even maintain a shaky status quo by simply nursing along its dusty degrading inventory of nukes. Yet this is exactly what Obama seems to favor.
Scienceline reports that the U.S. has maintained its 5,400-warhead arsenal by replacing degraded plastic and rubber parts. But the vital explosive radioactive core in the warhead naturally decays over time and has not been replaced.
The warheads will remain dependable for at least 82 more years, or until the year 2091, according to a 2006 report by JASON, an independent scientific advisory group that provides consulting services to the U.S. government on matters of defense science and technology. It was established in 1960.
This perceived cushion alone may contribute to why Congress has been reticent to fund replacements for the aging warheads. Last May, Congress refused to fund a $9.4 million RRW (Reliable Replacement Warhead) research initiative. In fact the RRW budget request for fiscal year 2010 has been nixed.
“The bottom line is that the current U.S. arsenal is safe and reliable,” notes Stephen Young, a senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Boston-based advocacy group lobbying to reduce nuclear threats, according to the Scienceline report.
“A Democratic Congress is not going to approve a budget created by a Republican [like Pres. Bush],” said RRW supporter Maj. Gen. Robert L. Smolen, deputy administrator for defense programs for the National Nuclear Security Administration, to Scienceline.
RRW has become a touchstone in the great nuclear deterrence debate.
Gaffney and his group pull no punches when it sings the praises of RRW.
“RRW must be reestablished as a vital program in order to prevent the loss of core nuclear weapon capabilities in National Nuclear Security Administration’s labs and plants, and to provide the optimum replacement approach for those over-age weapons in our stockpile which will be needed for decades to come.
“The RRW provides our only opportunity at the moment to recapture the experienced, integrated management expertise necessary to guide new nuclear weapons from concept definition to service introduction. Without RRW, this invaluable capability will, for all intents and purposes, be lost,” concludes the Center for Security Policy group.
Says Gaffney: “At the very least, the Strategic Posture Commission -- and assuredly the next president -- is going to have to wrestle with a problem that cannot be effectively addressed by straddling, let alone by wholly wrong-headed thinking to the effect that the world will become nuclear free -- if only the United States would de-nuclearize.”
In the final analysis, however, in these times of economic downturn, what may decide the fate of RRW is just the price tag -- estimated to cost at least $100 billion.
Meanwhile, there is no such heady debate going on in the inner sanctums of other major nuclear powers. Great Britain, France, Russia and China are all marching briskly ahead modernizing their nuclear arsenals, according to USA Today.
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Half Ton People???? WHY???
To preface this post I was watching the TLC channel the other night and saw a program about the Super morbidly obese. I have no problems with overweight people mind you. I am one and have struggled since my teens with weight issues but I just can't fathom how these people on these programs end up in the place they are. These people can't get out of bed for ANYTHING. They relieve themselves in their beds and everything has to be done for them. I am sorry but wasn't there a day maybe before all this when they could see it was getting impossible to get to the Bathroom because of their FATNESS and they should have maybe sought help at that point... In every case there is a FAT relative that is enabling them to remain the way they are also. Their mom, sister or spouses are bringing them their requests, (all high fat, sodium foods) The worst stuff they could be eating. I think if it was my spouse or child I would be calling for help long before I would be changing sweaty, fecal and urine covered bedsheets and trying to find my husbands butt through his Rolls and folds of fat to clean him up a bit. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't enable that to happen. Lets face it when your loved ones are hanging Christmas tree air freshners off your ears, it's not a good thing. I do have compassion for people who end up like this BUT I blame them and their enablers completely for doing this to them
STORY BELOW.
Manuel "Meme" Uribe, 42, looks at a photo of himself in the 2008 Guinness Book of World Records. (AP Photo/Monica Rueda)
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Half-Ton Man Leaves House After 5 Years.(AP) Manuel Uribe, who once weighed a half ton but has slimmed down to about 700 pounds, celebrates his 43rd birthday on Wednesday with a simple wish for the coming year: to be able to stand on his own two feet to get married. Interviewed at his home in northern Mexico, where he can still do little more than sit up on a bed, Uribe said more than two years of steady dieting have helped him drop about 550 pounds from his Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds. He hopes Guinness representatives will confirm in July that he holds a second title: The world's greatest loser of weight. But Uribe is still unable to walk his fiancee, Claudia Solis, down the aisle. "It frustrates me a little, because it is not easy to get out," said Uribe, who has not been able to leave bed for the last six years. His most recent attempt to escape the house - to attend Solis' 38th birthday party in March - fell through when a flatbed tow truck brought to transport his reinforced bed got caught beneath an underpass. But Uribe vowed not to be deterred: "We are in love, and this year my birthday wish is to be able to stand when we get married," he said. Uribe said he met Solis, a 38-year-old hairdresser, four years ago. They have been together for the last two. "We are a couple," Uribe said. "We have sex, and in the eyes of God we are already married." Proudly showing off her sparkling engagement ring, Solis said life with a heavyweight is not always easy. "I bathe him every day, and we get along very well," she said. "At times, yes, people say things ... that it's a fake relationship, but what we have is real." Solis said her family initially opposed the match with Uribe, because her first husband, who was also obese, died of respiratory failure. "They were worried about me being involved with another fat man, because they thought another husband would die on me," she said. Uribe, a former auto parts dealer, said his birthday party Wednesday will be a low-key dinner with the family. "We were going to go out, but the last time out scared me so much," he said. "When we crashed into the lighting conduits on the underpass, I thought we were going to get an electric shock." Uribe said his weight problem spiraled out of control after he moved to the United States for a few years in 1988 and indulged in a nonstop diet of junk food and soft drinks. A botched liposuction that damaged his lymph nodes left him with giant tumors on both legs weighing a total of 220 pounds. The tumors are the main reason he is unable to walk. "It is all because of the junk food," he said. About two years ago, a team of doctors stepped in to help Uribe change his eating habits and tackle his extreme obesity. Today he says he eats small portions of food five times a day, including chicken, ham, egg-white omelets, fruit and vegetables. Sitting in bed, Uribe exercises his arms with pull-ups and by pedaling with his hands. Hoping his struggle will inspire others, he plans to launch the Manuel Uribe Foundation this year to educate people about nutrition and to combat obesity - a growing problem in Mexico. Solis is focused more on the present. "It is a miracle he is still alive," she said. "He's going to turn 43, and that is something we have to celebrate."
Related
Interactive
HealthWatch
Explore health issues including AIDS, cancer and antibiotics.
Stories
Half-Ton Man Leaves House After 5 Years.(AP) Manuel Uribe, who once weighed a half ton but has slimmed down to about 700 pounds, celebrates his 43rd birthday on Wednesday with a simple wish for the coming year: to be able to stand on his own two feet to get married. Interviewed at his home in northern Mexico, where he can still do little more than sit up on a bed, Uribe said more than two years of steady dieting have helped him drop about 550 pounds from his Guinness record weight of 1,235 pounds. He hopes Guinness representatives will confirm in July that he holds a second title: The world's greatest loser of weight. But Uribe is still unable to walk his fiancee, Claudia Solis, down the aisle. "It frustrates me a little, because it is not easy to get out," said Uribe, who has not been able to leave bed for the last six years. His most recent attempt to escape the house - to attend Solis' 38th birthday party in March - fell through when a flatbed tow truck brought to transport his reinforced bed got caught beneath an underpass. But Uribe vowed not to be deterred: "We are in love, and this year my birthday wish is to be able to stand when we get married," he said. Uribe said he met Solis, a 38-year-old hairdresser, four years ago. They have been together for the last two. "We are a couple," Uribe said. "We have sex, and in the eyes of God we are already married." Proudly showing off her sparkling engagement ring, Solis said life with a heavyweight is not always easy. "I bathe him every day, and we get along very well," she said. "At times, yes, people say things ... that it's a fake relationship, but what we have is real." Solis said her family initially opposed the match with Uribe, because her first husband, who was also obese, died of respiratory failure. "They were worried about me being involved with another fat man, because they thought another husband would die on me," she said. Uribe, a former auto parts dealer, said his birthday party Wednesday will be a low-key dinner with the family. "We were going to go out, but the last time out scared me so much," he said. "When we crashed into the lighting conduits on the underpass, I thought we were going to get an electric shock." Uribe said his weight problem spiraled out of control after he moved to the United States for a few years in 1988 and indulged in a nonstop diet of junk food and soft drinks. A botched liposuction that damaged his lymph nodes left him with giant tumors on both legs weighing a total of 220 pounds. The tumors are the main reason he is unable to walk. "It is all because of the junk food," he said. About two years ago, a team of doctors stepped in to help Uribe change his eating habits and tackle his extreme obesity. Today he says he eats small portions of food five times a day, including chicken, ham, egg-white omelets, fruit and vegetables. Sitting in bed, Uribe exercises his arms with pull-ups and by pedaling with his hands. Hoping his struggle will inspire others, he plans to launch the Manuel Uribe Foundation this year to educate people about nutrition and to combat obesity - a growing problem in Mexico. Solis is focused more on the present. "It is a miracle he is still alive," she said. "He's going to turn 43, and that is something we have to celebrate."
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Cheney Warns of Attacks on Obama's watch
Cheney Warns of New Attacks
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 12:42 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is blasting the fledgling administration of Barack Obama, arguing that its policies dealing with terrorism and international foes are naïve and dangerous, making it all the more likely that terrorists will succeed in their next attempt at killing Americans, according to a report in Politico.
Simply by closing Guantanamo Bay’s detention camp for terrorists, Cheney said, Obama inadvertently will aid enemies eager to make another attack on the United States. Another major attack on this country — perhaps even using biological or nuclear materials — is very likely in the next few years, Cheney said.
“I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt,” Cheney said. “Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.”
Cheney opined that the inevitable attack will be “a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter — a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” that is set off in an American city.
In a wide-ranging interview with Politico, Cheney emphasized the usefulness of the interrogations at Gitmo while lambasting the policies emerging from the new administration.
“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaida terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.
Concentrating on the merits of Gitmo, Cheney described it as a first-class operation, noting that one of the painful lessons learned was the penchant for those detainees who were released to return to their terrorist roots.
He noted that 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration had “gone back into the business of being terrorists.” He also characterized the remaining 200 or so remaining detainees as “hard core” cases that were even more likely to be repeat offenders.
Releasing the prisoners or ramping up their due process would be unwise, Cheney charged.
“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes,” he said.
Cheney defended the hard-line tactics of the Bush administration as responsible for the safety of the country after 9/11.
“If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”
Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 12:42 PM
By: Dave Eberhart
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is blasting the fledgling administration of Barack Obama, arguing that its policies dealing with terrorism and international foes are naïve and dangerous, making it all the more likely that terrorists will succeed in their next attempt at killing Americans, according to a report in Politico.
Simply by closing Guantanamo Bay’s detention camp for terrorists, Cheney said, Obama inadvertently will aid enemies eager to make another attack on the United States. Another major attack on this country — perhaps even using biological or nuclear materials — is very likely in the next few years, Cheney said.
“I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt,” Cheney said. “Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States.”
Cheney opined that the inevitable attack will be “a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter — a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” that is set off in an American city.
In a wide-ranging interview with Politico, Cheney emphasized the usefulness of the interrogations at Gitmo while lambasting the policies emerging from the new administration.
“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaida terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.
Concentrating on the merits of Gitmo, Cheney described it as a first-class operation, noting that one of the painful lessons learned was the penchant for those detainees who were released to return to their terrorist roots.
He noted that 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration had “gone back into the business of being terrorists.” He also characterized the remaining 200 or so remaining detainees as “hard core” cases that were even more likely to be repeat offenders.
Releasing the prisoners or ramping up their due process would be unwise, Cheney charged.
“The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes,” he said.
Cheney defended the hard-line tactics of the Bush administration as responsible for the safety of the country after 9/11.
“If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”
Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Congress thinks we are Stupid.
This was from a Bulletin today I received.
by Mike Huckabee
by Mike Huckabee
I learned a few tricks and tactics while I was a lieutenant governor and governor for over 13 1/2 years. And one thing is that when someone is in a hurry to pass legislation, you'd better slow it down because the reason to hurry a law is rarely urgency to help the citizens, but urgency to get it passed before people find out what the heck it really is.A lot of legislation is like garbage and it's garbage the first day in the can, but if it sits there long enough, it really starts smelling.Congress knows that the so-called stimulus bill is garbage, but hope it gets voted on before it sits there long enough to start smelling.If you sent your kid to college and in less than a month he spent all the money you sent with him for the semester and then, on top of that, maxed out the credit card you loaned him for extreme emergencies, what would you do?Would you say, hey, let me give you even more money than before and another credit card, but don't tell me how you spent that first bunch of money and it's not even necessary to tell me how you'll spend the new money I'm sending?Not hardly. You'd want a full accounting of what he did with all your money since you now have to work even harder to replace it.And, before you gave him any more, you'd put very strict controls on how he spends it.Congress must think we're stupid. And maybe we are: We did send these guys back.But they've spent all the money we sent them in taxes. They've run up a debt that our children and even grandchildren will have to pay and they don't really even know what they've done with the money.Somehow, they think that if we're in this horrible mess because they spent, borrowed and squandered billions, they can fix it if we just let them spend, borrow and squander trillions.And we even have a new treasury secretary to oversee it all — who didn't know how to use TurboTax and didn't pay his own taxes for four years and had an illegal immigrant working in his house.Here's the Huckabee plan:Term limits for members of Congress — 12 years and go home.Instead of automatic pay raises, you lose 2 percent of your congressional salary every year you don't balance the budget.We end the congressional pension and you have to go into the same Social Security system we're in.You get a fixed amount for health insurance and you pay for half of yours and all your family's and you go into the marketplace and buy it like we do.You pass the "fair tax" and eliminate the burden on businesses and individuals trying to create jobs and you close the IRS — especially since the guy you just confirmed to run it doesn't even know he's supposed to pay taxes.That's a start, but I have some other ideas that I'll bring up in future weeks.If you want more information on the outrageous examples of waste in this pathetic pork-laden piece of **&^, go to my Web site at mikehuckabee. com and let me know what you think.That's my view, I would love to hear yours.
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