Fools
"Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away. How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and al-Qaeda as they were escaping. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al-Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq," Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) said.
So Mr. Hinchey would have us believe that officers in the US military on the ground in Afghanistan, in the Pentagon, and in various points around the globe, all agreed to a command from Bush to allow bin Laden to escape. In order that bin laden escape, he had to be close to being captured and if so, someone gave the command to let him escape. Produce one person who knows of this, and we can have trials and prison sentences.
Otherwise Mr. Hinchey, you are a liar, and a propogator of hate and lies, and slander.
Please go away with Michael Moore to Tahiti, you can help him with his McDonalds franchise. Otherwise, when you run again for the office you currently hold from the 22nd district of NY, I will send as much money as I can to your opponent, and will do so until you end up fired by the people.
losers
Monday, November 30, 2009
Michael Moore Speaks
November 30th, 2009 3:44 AM
An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).
So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.
There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.
With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.
Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.
I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"
Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.
We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?
Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.
The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.
President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.
All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.
When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.
Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.
Tonight we still have hope.
Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.
We're counting on you.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
P.S. There's still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.
*********************************************
Dear Michael Moore,
It is obvious you have passion. It is also crystal clear you hate the United States and its supremacy in the world. It is likewise crystal clear you prefer nearly any other political system to our own. The HATERS are not the only ones figuring that out. Simply check out boxofficemojo for your last piece of tripe - your revenues are down considerably (in case you haven't checked recently $14 million). I admit I don't know the cost, but certainly your profits took a nose dive along with your investors.
It is clear your time is coming to an end, and after reviewing your complaints in SICKO, CAPITALISM, and the various letters you have published on your website - I have considered your points and found them lacking. You have been measured against the long standard we all stand before, and have been found seriously wanting. Your condo overlooks the park and I am sure somewhere in the residence you call home, you can also see the Atlantic. Spare us your drivel and contempt. It is not just the HATERS who find you loathesome, even your moderate left have abandoned you, and the people who elected Obama - the independents, find you contemptible. It wasn't you and the other loser lefties who elected Obama. Did you really believe it was Michael? It was the independents. You and the entire bunch of the loser lefties can't elect a dog catcher - you need the middle, and you lost them with Bowling for Columbine.
Please Michael, we know you have it in you, we know you have some sense of urgency deep down inside, to simply stop, and go away. Buy yourself a McDonalds franchise on a Tahitian island and disappear. No one will be disappointed - not even your wife.
P.S. - What are you doing up at 3:44 am. I hope you are not heading out to IHOP for pancakes! You have a room you can turn into a gym - go for it. Even 5 minutes a day! And then when you get to Tahiti, you will be a svelte size 80.
P.S.S. - I am sorry Michael, I know, you are just big boned.
Michael Moore
An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).
So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.
There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.
With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.
Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.
I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"
Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.
We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?
Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.
The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.
President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.
All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.
When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.
Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.
Tonight we still have hope.
Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.
We're counting on you.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
P.S. There's still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.
*********************************************
Dear Michael Moore,
It is obvious you have passion. It is also crystal clear you hate the United States and its supremacy in the world. It is likewise crystal clear you prefer nearly any other political system to our own. The HATERS are not the only ones figuring that out. Simply check out boxofficemojo for your last piece of tripe - your revenues are down considerably (in case you haven't checked recently $14 million). I admit I don't know the cost, but certainly your profits took a nose dive along with your investors.
It is clear your time is coming to an end, and after reviewing your complaints in SICKO, CAPITALISM, and the various letters you have published on your website - I have considered your points and found them lacking. You have been measured against the long standard we all stand before, and have been found seriously wanting. Your condo overlooks the park and I am sure somewhere in the residence you call home, you can also see the Atlantic. Spare us your drivel and contempt. It is not just the HATERS who find you loathesome, even your moderate left have abandoned you, and the people who elected Obama - the independents, find you contemptible. It wasn't you and the other loser lefties who elected Obama. Did you really believe it was Michael? It was the independents. You and the entire bunch of the loser lefties can't elect a dog catcher - you need the middle, and you lost them with Bowling for Columbine.
Please Michael, we know you have it in you, we know you have some sense of urgency deep down inside, to simply stop, and go away. Buy yourself a McDonalds franchise on a Tahitian island and disappear. No one will be disappointed - not even your wife.
P.S. - What are you doing up at 3:44 am. I hope you are not heading out to IHOP for pancakes! You have a room you can turn into a gym - go for it. Even 5 minutes a day! And then when you get to Tahiti, you will be a svelte size 80.
P.S.S. - I am sorry Michael, I know, you are just big boned.
Michael Moore
Washington, Justice, Liberals, and Fathers
Why they raise Huckabee I am not certain - perhaps because Huckabee made a dumb statement when questioned after the murders.
The issue is what this person did in the state of Washington and why was he released days earlier on a bond for a crime so severe he should have been remanded - the rape of a child, and for assaulting police officers. Why was he allowed out? Why was his bail so low? What insanity would allow any justice system to allow anyone out of prison for crimes he committed. The families of those four police officers should get an apology from the liberal justice system of Washington, but it won't. Liberals never apologize, they don't have to.
Huckabee should fade away into the darkness and shut up. Four families without husbands or fathers, children who had just finished Thanksgiving, having given thanks, are now in mourning. Christmas - when these children would normally be at their happiest, with their parents, will now equate Thanksgiving and Christmas with the loss of their fathers. No apology can bring back what these children most want - their fathers.
Suspect in US police shooting on the run (now dead)
Nov 30, 2009
AFP
A gunman alleged to have shot dead four police officers is still on the run as shell-shocked officials condemned the killings as a "senseless act of violence."
After laying siege to the home in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood for 11 hours, police SWAT teams entered the building where convicted felon Maurice Clemmons was believed to be holed up.
Pierce County Sheriff's Office spokesman Ed Troyer said, however, that the house was empty and that Clemmons, who was wounded after opening fire on his victims on Sunday, was believed to be armed and still at large.
"We have cleared the residence ... the suspect is not there," Troyer told King 5 local television in Seattle.
Police used robots to search a trailer near the home during the siege early Monday. Police negotiators, meanwhile, used loudspeakers and airhorns in an effort to communicate with Clemmons, urging him to call 911.
A murder warrant has been issued, while a reward leading to Clemmons's arrest has been increased to 125,000 dollars.
Police earlier confirmed that Clemmons was wounded by return fire after he ambushed four police officers with a handgun in a coffee shop early Sunday near McChord Air Force base in Tacoma, south of Seattle.
All four officers, members of the fledgling Lakewood Police Department founded in 2004, were married with children.
Lakewood city officials and police were still struggling to come to terms with the attack on Monday.
"What happened yesterday was an outrageous, senseless act of violence," Lakewood city manager Andrew Neiditz told reporters. "Yesterday our hearts were broken but our resolve was not."
"We will get through this," Lakewood police chief Bret Farrar added, his voice wavering with emotion. "However, it is a tough time for us and the families of our fallen officers.
Troyer earlier said the shootings may have been motivated by general hatred of law enforcement on the part of Clemmons.
Clemmons was only released on bail last week after being held for several months on charges of assaulting a police officer and child rape.
Troyer said it did not appear that Clemmons had a specific reason for targeting the officers involved, saying he was "upset about being incarcerated.
"He was just targeting cops," Troyer said.
Clemmons served only part of a 35-year prison sentence in Arkansas before it was commuted in 2000 by then governor Mike Huckabee, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
After his release Clemmons committed two armed robberies and a string of other crimes which earned him another 10 year sentence. He was later paroled and moved to Washington state.
Huckabee said in a statement Sunday that if Clemmons was responsible for the shootings "it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State."
However, a victim of a 1989 street robbery involving Clemmons expressed incredulity that he had been released.
"I'm flabbergasted," Karen Hodge, 68, told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "He should still be in prison."
********************
He is dead. The best place for him, and is not the wrong action to have taken.
crime
The issue is what this person did in the state of Washington and why was he released days earlier on a bond for a crime so severe he should have been remanded - the rape of a child, and for assaulting police officers. Why was he allowed out? Why was his bail so low? What insanity would allow any justice system to allow anyone out of prison for crimes he committed. The families of those four police officers should get an apology from the liberal justice system of Washington, but it won't. Liberals never apologize, they don't have to.
Huckabee should fade away into the darkness and shut up. Four families without husbands or fathers, children who had just finished Thanksgiving, having given thanks, are now in mourning. Christmas - when these children would normally be at their happiest, with their parents, will now equate Thanksgiving and Christmas with the loss of their fathers. No apology can bring back what these children most want - their fathers.
Suspect in US police shooting on the run (now dead)
Nov 30, 2009
AFP
A gunman alleged to have shot dead four police officers is still on the run as shell-shocked officials condemned the killings as a "senseless act of violence."
After laying siege to the home in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood for 11 hours, police SWAT teams entered the building where convicted felon Maurice Clemmons was believed to be holed up.
Pierce County Sheriff's Office spokesman Ed Troyer said, however, that the house was empty and that Clemmons, who was wounded after opening fire on his victims on Sunday, was believed to be armed and still at large.
"We have cleared the residence ... the suspect is not there," Troyer told King 5 local television in Seattle.
Police used robots to search a trailer near the home during the siege early Monday. Police negotiators, meanwhile, used loudspeakers and airhorns in an effort to communicate with Clemmons, urging him to call 911.
A murder warrant has been issued, while a reward leading to Clemmons's arrest has been increased to 125,000 dollars.
Police earlier confirmed that Clemmons was wounded by return fire after he ambushed four police officers with a handgun in a coffee shop early Sunday near McChord Air Force base in Tacoma, south of Seattle.
All four officers, members of the fledgling Lakewood Police Department founded in 2004, were married with children.
Lakewood city officials and police were still struggling to come to terms with the attack on Monday.
"What happened yesterday was an outrageous, senseless act of violence," Lakewood city manager Andrew Neiditz told reporters. "Yesterday our hearts were broken but our resolve was not."
"We will get through this," Lakewood police chief Bret Farrar added, his voice wavering with emotion. "However, it is a tough time for us and the families of our fallen officers.
Troyer earlier said the shootings may have been motivated by general hatred of law enforcement on the part of Clemmons.
Clemmons was only released on bail last week after being held for several months on charges of assaulting a police officer and child rape.
Troyer said it did not appear that Clemmons had a specific reason for targeting the officers involved, saying he was "upset about being incarcerated.
"He was just targeting cops," Troyer said.
Clemmons served only part of a 35-year prison sentence in Arkansas before it was commuted in 2000 by then governor Mike Huckabee, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
After his release Clemmons committed two armed robberies and a string of other crimes which earned him another 10 year sentence. He was later paroled and moved to Washington state.
Huckabee said in a statement Sunday that if Clemmons was responsible for the shootings "it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State."
However, a victim of a 1989 street robbery involving Clemmons expressed incredulity that he had been released.
"I'm flabbergasted," Karen Hodge, 68, told the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "He should still be in prison."
********************
He is dead. The best place for him, and is not the wrong action to have taken.
crime
Sony Ericsson Xperia 3
The newest phone from the Cadillac of cell phones.
X3.
Uses the Android system.
It would seem to be a phenomenal system.
Nancy, instead of flowers for a year, I could do with this phone! Put it on the American people's tab! Why not, everything else is. At least I will enjoy the phone.
cell phones
X3.
Uses the Android system.
It would seem to be a phenomenal system.
Nancy, instead of flowers for a year, I could do with this phone! Put it on the American people's tab! Why not, everything else is. At least I will enjoy the phone.
cell phones
Democrats: Out of Touch and Living on a Prayer
Out of touch? How many of you spend $3,000 US on flowers? Maybe you can help fund my student loan payback and cut down a little on the flowers.
Her jets, office refurbishing, cars and drivers, flowers ... a woman out of touch.
Pelosi spends $2,993 on flowers
Jake Sherman and Meredith Shiner
November 30, 2009
Politico
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers between June and October. House Majority Whip James Clyburn has a thing for Chantilly Donuts, spending about $265 at the Virginia shop in the past quarter. And Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a fiscal conservative, decided to give about $2,000 in unused office funds back to the government to help reduce the deficit.
These expenditures – culled from thousands of line items released Monday by the Chief Administrative Officer of the House – are just a fraction of the $300 million spent last quarter by House offices. But while the bulk of congressional office spending goes to salaries and routine office expenses, some of the line items offer a window into the personalities and priorities of each congressional office.
Pelosi, who has come under fire in the past for spending on flowers, also spent roughly $30,610 in food and beverage and about $2,740 on bottled water, contributing to the nearly $120,531 total from all congressional leadership accounts. Her offices defended the charges, saying the Speaker’s office holds more ceremonial events with visiting dignitaries than other congressional offices. They also use a local florist, and about a third of her flower expenses this quarter were for Jack Kemp’s funeral.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) racked up about $24,617 in catering costs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spent about $1,561 in bottled water and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) spent no money on water but a touch over $18,000 in food. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) spent about $24,116 on food and beverage.
These line by line expenditures used to come just in bound green books, but for the first time ever, Pelosi requested that the reports also be put online this quarter.
The nearly 3,400 digitized pages were released Monday afternoon and touted by Pelosi as expanding “accountability to taxpayers and the press.”
Most of the expenditures seem standard – everything from individual staff salaries to office supplies is listed. Most offices order food from the Capitol Host in-house catering service, but others order from outside locales. Clyburn, for example, frequently purchases donuts for his office from Chantilly Donuts in Virginia, where he spent about $265 in the period stretching from June until the end of September.
One of the biggest line items for congressional offices outside of salaries tends to be the pricy subscriptions to Congressional Quarterly, which produces high end legislative tracking products, a magazine and a daily publication. Cantor and Boehner together spent $69,832.50 on the company’s publications – Boehner spent $48,085 on CQ publications.
Lawmakers appear to have great flexibility on what qualifies as an office expense. Money is spent on everything from security services for district offices to thousands in mileage reimbursements for individuals’ cars. Taxpayers foot the bill for leasing cars for members, including cars for Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) spent $28,410 with a market communications firm to send a newsletter to his constituents, querying them on issues ranging from the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earmark reform and health care. A spokesman said it was sent to 196,000 constituents and is just “one of the many tools Congressman Kirk uses to communicate with constituents.”
Some even have money left over to give back to the government. Walz and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) both returned about $2,500 to cut away at the deficit. Bachus, a fiscal conservative, said he does not take cost-of-living increases in the middle of a congressional term.
Democrats
Her jets, office refurbishing, cars and drivers, flowers ... a woman out of touch.
Pelosi spends $2,993 on flowers
Jake Sherman and Meredith Shiner
November 30, 2009
Politico
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers between June and October. House Majority Whip James Clyburn has a thing for Chantilly Donuts, spending about $265 at the Virginia shop in the past quarter. And Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a fiscal conservative, decided to give about $2,000 in unused office funds back to the government to help reduce the deficit.
These expenditures – culled from thousands of line items released Monday by the Chief Administrative Officer of the House – are just a fraction of the $300 million spent last quarter by House offices. But while the bulk of congressional office spending goes to salaries and routine office expenses, some of the line items offer a window into the personalities and priorities of each congressional office.
Pelosi, who has come under fire in the past for spending on flowers, also spent roughly $30,610 in food and beverage and about $2,740 on bottled water, contributing to the nearly $120,531 total from all congressional leadership accounts. Her offices defended the charges, saying the Speaker’s office holds more ceremonial events with visiting dignitaries than other congressional offices. They also use a local florist, and about a third of her flower expenses this quarter were for Jack Kemp’s funeral.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) racked up about $24,617 in catering costs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spent about $1,561 in bottled water and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) spent no money on water but a touch over $18,000 in food. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) spent about $24,116 on food and beverage.
These line by line expenditures used to come just in bound green books, but for the first time ever, Pelosi requested that the reports also be put online this quarter.
The nearly 3,400 digitized pages were released Monday afternoon and touted by Pelosi as expanding “accountability to taxpayers and the press.”
Most of the expenditures seem standard – everything from individual staff salaries to office supplies is listed. Most offices order food from the Capitol Host in-house catering service, but others order from outside locales. Clyburn, for example, frequently purchases donuts for his office from Chantilly Donuts in Virginia, where he spent about $265 in the period stretching from June until the end of September.
One of the biggest line items for congressional offices outside of salaries tends to be the pricy subscriptions to Congressional Quarterly, which produces high end legislative tracking products, a magazine and a daily publication. Cantor and Boehner together spent $69,832.50 on the company’s publications – Boehner spent $48,085 on CQ publications.
Lawmakers appear to have great flexibility on what qualifies as an office expense. Money is spent on everything from security services for district offices to thousands in mileage reimbursements for individuals’ cars. Taxpayers foot the bill for leasing cars for members, including cars for Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) spent $28,410 with a market communications firm to send a newsletter to his constituents, querying them on issues ranging from the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earmark reform and health care. A spokesman said it was sent to 196,000 constituents and is just “one of the many tools Congressman Kirk uses to communicate with constituents.”
Some even have money left over to give back to the government. Walz and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) both returned about $2,500 to cut away at the deficit. Bachus, a fiscal conservative, said he does not take cost-of-living increases in the middle of a congressional term.
Democrats
Democrats and War
Democratic war tax proponent Obey calls expected troop surge a 'fool's errand'
By Jim Snyder
11/29/09 01:19 PM ET
The Hill
The chief architect of a bill to increase taxes to pay for the Afghanistan war said he didn't believe adding troops would yield much benefit.
"The problem is you can have the best policy in the world but if you don't have the tools to implement it it isn't worth a bean bag,"
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the House Appropriations Committee chairman, told CNN on Sunday.
President Barack Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday he will add 30,000 troops to the war effort in Afghanistan to stem the rise of Taliban and to pursue al-Qaeda.
But Obey said supporting a corrupt Afghan government by adding troops amounted to a "fool's errand."
If policymakers believe continuing the war effort in Afghanistan was an important public policy, Obey added, then they should be willing to pay for it by raising taxes on higher income levels. The war would likely cost as much over the next decade as the effort to reforming the healthcare system, Obey said.
"If we're being told we have to pay for healthcare we certainly pay for this effort as well," Obey said. Otherwise, Congress would eventually have to raid other parts of the budget targeted at education or the economy to fund the war effort. Using deficit spending to pay for the operations has also removed most Americans from any burden in the war effort.
"In this war, we have not had any sense of shared sacrifice," Obey said.
Obey's bill would increase taxes by 1 percent on incomes over $150,000. Tax rates would increase further at higher income levels.
The financial cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan was a central theme on Sunday talk shows.
Earlier on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a surtax should be part of the debate about how to pay for the war.
"We're going to have to have a serious talk about budget and about the $1 trillion deficit we are in now and will continue to be in," Lugar said.
But his colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), told ABC's "This Week" that Congress should cut spending to pay for the additional troops.
*********************************************
Mr. Obey, do you and Charlie honestly believe that you are so slick that your ideas appear to everyone as genuine.
How about a 1920s - ban on war as illegal. You and Charlie should promote that idea. It is as genuine, more genuine than your share the pain bill.
Is the war in Iraq or Somalia or Sudan or Yemen or Afghanistan more a war for the rich in this country, or is the war on terror, a war we must all win?
If it is a war we must all win, shouldn't we ALL have to sacrifice? I know your friend Charlie believes the poor already pay a disproportionate percentage in sending sons and daughters off to war, but Charlie has quite a few issues with his accounting procedures, it is no wonder he has the trouble he does have with ethics investigations and criminal exposure.
In case you care about facts Mr. Obey, the military have a website, I am sure you could even get better stats than I can find given your proximity to a president who nearly hates the military as much as you do, but in case you can't be bothered - someone did take the time to provide the facts: http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm
What you will learn Mr. Obey and Mr. Rangel is - the vast majority of recruits come from middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods. But you weren't interested in facts were you Mr. Obey. Your interest is in simply ending the war - you oppose the military, you opposed the wars, you just want it stopped and you see this as a good method of inflicting enough pain that it will stop.
While Rangel argues we need a draft to save the poor from fighting in Iraq, you have taken a different approach - tax the rich, as if they are the supporters of the war and if you can tax them enough, they will cut off funding and support for the war.
I have to say you are persistent, as is Charlie, but you are not very bright. Oh, perhaps brighter than the average Retardican who has a difficult time tying their shoe and chewing gum, and or talking at the same time, but .... you are no brain.
Neither Rangel's claim the poor are unfairly fighting the war nor your transparent attempt at ending the war are rational, logical, truthful, or factual. You are a petty politician and nothing more.
war
By Jim Snyder
11/29/09 01:19 PM ET
The Hill
The chief architect of a bill to increase taxes to pay for the Afghanistan war said he didn't believe adding troops would yield much benefit.
"The problem is you can have the best policy in the world but if you don't have the tools to implement it it isn't worth a bean bag,"
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the House Appropriations Committee chairman, told CNN on Sunday.
President Barack Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday he will add 30,000 troops to the war effort in Afghanistan to stem the rise of Taliban and to pursue al-Qaeda.
But Obey said supporting a corrupt Afghan government by adding troops amounted to a "fool's errand."
If policymakers believe continuing the war effort in Afghanistan was an important public policy, Obey added, then they should be willing to pay for it by raising taxes on higher income levels. The war would likely cost as much over the next decade as the effort to reforming the healthcare system, Obey said.
"If we're being told we have to pay for healthcare we certainly pay for this effort as well," Obey said. Otherwise, Congress would eventually have to raid other parts of the budget targeted at education or the economy to fund the war effort. Using deficit spending to pay for the operations has also removed most Americans from any burden in the war effort.
"In this war, we have not had any sense of shared sacrifice," Obey said.
Obey's bill would increase taxes by 1 percent on incomes over $150,000. Tax rates would increase further at higher income levels.
The financial cost of sending more troops to Afghanistan was a central theme on Sunday talk shows.
Earlier on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a surtax should be part of the debate about how to pay for the war.
"We're going to have to have a serious talk about budget and about the $1 trillion deficit we are in now and will continue to be in," Lugar said.
But his colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), told ABC's "This Week" that Congress should cut spending to pay for the additional troops.
*********************************************
Mr. Obey, do you and Charlie honestly believe that you are so slick that your ideas appear to everyone as genuine.
How about a 1920s - ban on war as illegal. You and Charlie should promote that idea. It is as genuine, more genuine than your share the pain bill.
Is the war in Iraq or Somalia or Sudan or Yemen or Afghanistan more a war for the rich in this country, or is the war on terror, a war we must all win?
If it is a war we must all win, shouldn't we ALL have to sacrifice? I know your friend Charlie believes the poor already pay a disproportionate percentage in sending sons and daughters off to war, but Charlie has quite a few issues with his accounting procedures, it is no wonder he has the trouble he does have with ethics investigations and criminal exposure.
In case you care about facts Mr. Obey, the military have a website, I am sure you could even get better stats than I can find given your proximity to a president who nearly hates the military as much as you do, but in case you can't be bothered - someone did take the time to provide the facts: http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda06-09.cfm
What you will learn Mr. Obey and Mr. Rangel is - the vast majority of recruits come from middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods. But you weren't interested in facts were you Mr. Obey. Your interest is in simply ending the war - you oppose the military, you opposed the wars, you just want it stopped and you see this as a good method of inflicting enough pain that it will stop.
While Rangel argues we need a draft to save the poor from fighting in Iraq, you have taken a different approach - tax the rich, as if they are the supporters of the war and if you can tax them enough, they will cut off funding and support for the war.
I have to say you are persistent, as is Charlie, but you are not very bright. Oh, perhaps brighter than the average Retardican who has a difficult time tying their shoe and chewing gum, and or talking at the same time, but .... you are no brain.
Neither Rangel's claim the poor are unfairly fighting the war nor your transparent attempt at ending the war are rational, logical, truthful, or factual. You are a petty politician and nothing more.
war
STOP. No Minarets. Swizterland says NO to political Islamization.
Swiss voters back ban on minarets in referendum
In what is being called 'huge surprise,' about 57.5% of citizens accept far-right call to oppose 'Islamization of Switzerland'. Result certain to embarrass country's neutral government
YNetnews
Reuters
11.29.09,
Israel News
Swiss voters approved a ban on construction of new minarets on Sunday, a surprise result certain to embarrass Switzerland's neutral government.
The Swiss news agency ATS and other media said about 57.5% of voters and all but four of the 26 cantons approved the proposal in the nationwide referendum, which was backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP).
The government and parliament had rejected the initiative as violating the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and the country's cherished tradition of tolerance. The government had said a ban could "serve the interests of extremist circles".
The United Nations human rights watchdog also voiced concern.
The government said it would respect the people's decision and declared construction of new minarets would no longer be permitted.
"Muslims in Switzerland are able to practice their religion alone or in community with others and live according to their beliefs just as before," it said in a statement.
Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the outcome of the vote reflected a fear of Islamic fundamentalism, but the ban was "not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies".
A group of politicians from the SVP, the country's biggest party, and the Federal Democratic Union gathered enough signatures to force the referendum on the initiative which opposes the "Islamization of Switzerland".
Its campaign poster showed the Swiss flag covered in missile-like minarets and the portrait of a woman covered with a black chador and veil associated with strict Islam.
"We're enormously happy. It is a victory for this people, this Switzerland, this freedom and those who want a democratic society," Walter Wobmann, president of the initiative committee, said in a victory speech in the town of Egerkingen near Berne.
Earlier, Wobmann told Reuters: "We just want to stop further Islamization in Switzerland, I mean political Islam. People may practice their religion, that is no problem."
"We want to stop the further developments -- minarets ... Sharia law," the SVP parliamentarian said. "The minaret is the power symbol of political Islam and Sharia law."
Call to prayer banned
The Alpine country of nearly 7 million people is home to more than 300,000 Muslims, mainly from Bosnia, Kosovo and Turkey.
Four mosques among the country's estimated 130 to 160 Muslim cultural and prayer centers, have minarets, including those in Geneva and Zurich. The call to prayer is banned in the country.
The result is likely to strengthen the hand of the SVP, which has been accused of racism for its anti-immigration campaigns, including a poster showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off a Swiss flag.
"Today the SVP has to take responsibility for this provocation and assume the consequences. We are the only Western country to inscribe into our constitution a ban on the construction of minarets," Ada Marra, a Social Democrat parliamentarian from Vaud canton, said on Swiss television.
Wobmann, asked whether the anti-minaret result would damage Switzerland's image and huge financial industry whose clients include wealthy Arab clients in the Middle East, replied:
"No, there is no link between the two. It's not a restriction on Islam. We can't trade a democratic decision for money. That would be absurd - prostitution!"
In Geneva, home to UN humanitarian agencies, voters appeared to have rejected the initiative by nearly 60%.
A Geneva voter, Antonio Spagnolo, told Reuters television as he left the polling station: "I'm shocked ... I'm against this initiative because I think it's intolerance."
Islamization
In what is being called 'huge surprise,' about 57.5% of citizens accept far-right call to oppose 'Islamization of Switzerland'. Result certain to embarrass country's neutral government
YNetnews
Reuters
11.29.09,
Israel News
Swiss voters approved a ban on construction of new minarets on Sunday, a surprise result certain to embarrass Switzerland's neutral government.
The Swiss news agency ATS and other media said about 57.5% of voters and all but four of the 26 cantons approved the proposal in the nationwide referendum, which was backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP).
The government and parliament had rejected the initiative as violating the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and the country's cherished tradition of tolerance. The government had said a ban could "serve the interests of extremist circles".
The United Nations human rights watchdog also voiced concern.
The government said it would respect the people's decision and declared construction of new minarets would no longer be permitted.
"Muslims in Switzerland are able to practice their religion alone or in community with others and live according to their beliefs just as before," it said in a statement.
Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the outcome of the vote reflected a fear of Islamic fundamentalism, but the ban was "not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies".
A group of politicians from the SVP, the country's biggest party, and the Federal Democratic Union gathered enough signatures to force the referendum on the initiative which opposes the "Islamization of Switzerland".
Its campaign poster showed the Swiss flag covered in missile-like minarets and the portrait of a woman covered with a black chador and veil associated with strict Islam.
"We're enormously happy. It is a victory for this people, this Switzerland, this freedom and those who want a democratic society," Walter Wobmann, president of the initiative committee, said in a victory speech in the town of Egerkingen near Berne.
Earlier, Wobmann told Reuters: "We just want to stop further Islamization in Switzerland, I mean political Islam. People may practice their religion, that is no problem."
"We want to stop the further developments -- minarets ... Sharia law," the SVP parliamentarian said. "The minaret is the power symbol of political Islam and Sharia law."
Call to prayer banned
The Alpine country of nearly 7 million people is home to more than 300,000 Muslims, mainly from Bosnia, Kosovo and Turkey.
Four mosques among the country's estimated 130 to 160 Muslim cultural and prayer centers, have minarets, including those in Geneva and Zurich. The call to prayer is banned in the country.
The result is likely to strengthen the hand of the SVP, which has been accused of racism for its anti-immigration campaigns, including a poster showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off a Swiss flag.
"Today the SVP has to take responsibility for this provocation and assume the consequences. We are the only Western country to inscribe into our constitution a ban on the construction of minarets," Ada Marra, a Social Democrat parliamentarian from Vaud canton, said on Swiss television.
Wobmann, asked whether the anti-minaret result would damage Switzerland's image and huge financial industry whose clients include wealthy Arab clients in the Middle East, replied:
"No, there is no link between the two. It's not a restriction on Islam. We can't trade a democratic decision for money. That would be absurd - prostitution!"
In Geneva, home to UN humanitarian agencies, voters appeared to have rejected the initiative by nearly 60%.
A Geneva voter, Antonio Spagnolo, told Reuters television as he left the polling station: "I'm shocked ... I'm against this initiative because I think it's intolerance."
Islamization
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Global Warming: The Sky is Not Falling
And the UN has asked for seed money to get the process rolling. A meager $10 billion.
Amazing.
The great climate change science scandal
Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
The Times of London
November 29, 2009
The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.
“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.
There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.
What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.
In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.
It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones’s belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.
Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.
What’s more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones’s statistical tricks were now public property.
Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”
Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists, campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of the science.
The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the scientists. “These have been the worst few days of my professional life,” said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving anonymous phone calls and personal threats.
Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of climate change?
THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.
That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.
The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?
The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.
Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period — so on average there was little change.
Plotted out, Mann’s data turned into the famous “hockey stick” graph. It showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.
That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and political one. The language used by “warmists” and sceptics alike has become increasingly polarised.
George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.
A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.
Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann’s hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.
Some critics believe that the unit’s findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what’s controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.
David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.
Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.
A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”
IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.
“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”
Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”
There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.
This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”
WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.
Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.
Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”
The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.
This weekend many of Jones’s colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn’t have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”
The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.
global warming
Amazing.
The great climate change science scandal
Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
The Times of London
November 29, 2009
The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.
“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.
There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.
What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.
In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.
It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones’s belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.
Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.
What’s more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones’s statistical tricks were now public property.
Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”
Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists, campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of the science.
The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the scientists. “These have been the worst few days of my professional life,” said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving anonymous phone calls and personal threats.
Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of climate change?
THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.
That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.
The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?
The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.
Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period — so on average there was little change.
Plotted out, Mann’s data turned into the famous “hockey stick” graph. It showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.
That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and political one. The language used by “warmists” and sceptics alike has become increasingly polarised.
George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.
A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.
Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann’s hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.
Some critics believe that the unit’s findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what’s controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.
David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.
Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.
A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”
IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.
“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”
Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”
There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.
This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”
WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.
Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.
Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”
The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.
This weekend many of Jones’s colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn’t have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”
The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.
global warming
People Who Need a Life.
Japanese gamer 'marries' Nintendo DS character
A Japanese man has "married" his video game girlfriend – an anime character who lives inside a Nintendo DS.
The Telegraph
By Matthew Moore
25 Nov 2009
The gamer fell in love with the virtual woman named Nene Anegasaki while playing Love Plus, a dating simulation game.
The aim of Love Plus is to court and build a relationship with one of three cartoon-style women, but virtual romance was not enough for this particular player, identified only by his username Sal9000.
Last weekend he became the first person to officially pledge his love to a video game character in a ceremony at a technology festival in Tokyo.
The couple's special day was witnessed by dozens of computer game fans and overseen by a real-life priest, although he stressed that the "wedding" was not official or legally binding.
However, some reports on computer game websites state that Sal9000 had earlier married his digital bride at a chapel on the Pacific Ocean holiday island of Guam, where wedding laws are less strict.
Japanese computer gamers are known for taking an obsessive approach to their hobby, and Love Plus is the latest game to develop a cult following.
Players are expected to spend hours with their virtual crushes – buying them flowers, taking them for dates and making future plans. The girls alter their behaviour and personality in reaction to how they are treated.
***************************
In a world where men marry men, women marry women, an some odd sorts marry their goats or dogs, whats the big deal about marrying an anime? Japan is leading the world in developing robotics, and I will guess, without too much concern for my guess being wrong, that at some point, someone will marry their robot.
The next step will be adopting.
A big wonderful family.
nutty
A Japanese man has "married" his video game girlfriend – an anime character who lives inside a Nintendo DS.
The Telegraph
By Matthew Moore
25 Nov 2009
The gamer fell in love with the virtual woman named Nene Anegasaki while playing Love Plus, a dating simulation game.
The aim of Love Plus is to court and build a relationship with one of three cartoon-style women, but virtual romance was not enough for this particular player, identified only by his username Sal9000.
Last weekend he became the first person to officially pledge his love to a video game character in a ceremony at a technology festival in Tokyo.
The couple's special day was witnessed by dozens of computer game fans and overseen by a real-life priest, although he stressed that the "wedding" was not official or legally binding.
However, some reports on computer game websites state that Sal9000 had earlier married his digital bride at a chapel on the Pacific Ocean holiday island of Guam, where wedding laws are less strict.
Japanese computer gamers are known for taking an obsessive approach to their hobby, and Love Plus is the latest game to develop a cult following.
Players are expected to spend hours with their virtual crushes – buying them flowers, taking them for dates and making future plans. The girls alter their behaviour and personality in reaction to how they are treated.
***************************
In a world where men marry men, women marry women, an some odd sorts marry their goats or dogs, whats the big deal about marrying an anime? Japan is leading the world in developing robotics, and I will guess, without too much concern for my guess being wrong, that at some point, someone will marry their robot.
The next step will be adopting.
A big wonderful family.
nutty
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Paying for Elections
John Corzine - former governor and Senator from New Jersey spent a great deal of money to be both. In the 2009 election he spent close to $32 million of his own dollars to remain governor. To get the Senate seat he spent close to $75 million of his own money. To win the governor's race the last time, he spent over $50 million. Over $130 million spent for the couple.
Now we hear Michael Bloomberg spent $100 million to keep his job and in total for all his camapiagns well over $230 million.
We should realize that I have only counted two people, admittedly two of the wealthiest but still, only two. $360 million for the two of them.
I want to throw up.
wealth
Now we hear Michael Bloomberg spent $100 million to keep his job and in total for all his camapiagns well over $230 million.
We should realize that I have only counted two people, admittedly two of the wealthiest but still, only two. $360 million for the two of them.
I want to throw up.
wealth
ACORN and Holder
We all know about ACORN by now.
The voting fraud, and the illegal activities in several states.
Prior to the election we discovered that ACORN workers were commiting fraud by registering people who didn't exist, paying people to register, and otherwise violating state and federal laws. This happened in more than four states.
We find out later, after two individuals do an undercover sting operation against a number of ACORN offices that they rouitinely violate or suggest violating the law.
Several states began investigations into ACORN and its illegal activities and obstruction of justice efforts.
Now we have California AG - Jerry Brown inform us that we may not like them but ACORN has a right to conduct business.
The US Attorney General Eric Holder (stand in for OBAMA) told us that ACORN can receive federal monies, again.
Politics meets the road and politics wins.
The Democratic party understand the earthquake that has occured even if everyone else hasn't quite caught up, and the Democratic party is desperate to have all its most passionate workers out there creating voters for 2010. They need them.
democrats
The voting fraud, and the illegal activities in several states.
Prior to the election we discovered that ACORN workers were commiting fraud by registering people who didn't exist, paying people to register, and otherwise violating state and federal laws. This happened in more than four states.
We find out later, after two individuals do an undercover sting operation against a number of ACORN offices that they rouitinely violate or suggest violating the law.
Several states began investigations into ACORN and its illegal activities and obstruction of justice efforts.
Now we have California AG - Jerry Brown inform us that we may not like them but ACORN has a right to conduct business.
The US Attorney General Eric Holder (stand in for OBAMA) told us that ACORN can receive federal monies, again.
Politics meets the road and politics wins.
The Democratic party understand the earthquake that has occured even if everyone else hasn't quite caught up, and the Democratic party is desperate to have all its most passionate workers out there creating voters for 2010. They need them.
democrats
Obama, Al Qaida, and (the War on) terror.
This writer doesn't know Obama. I guess some people have not been made aware that the war on terror doesn't exist any more.
Ayoon Wa Azan (The War Is Necessary To Defeat al-Qaeda)
Fri, 27 November 2009
Jihad el-Khazen
dar al hayat
There is a consensus in the American media that President Barack Obama will announce a surge of 30 thousand U.S soldiers to be deployed in Afghanistan, in the speech that he will deliver next week at the West Point military academy, and which will be the first of many speeches and meetings aimed at rallying support for this surge.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S military commander in Afghanistan, requested 40 thousand additional troops; however, I read no news items that thought it likely that the surge will involve this figure, and perhaps what had transpired then was sort of a bazaar: it seems that the commander requested more than he actually needs, since he knows that the administration will not agree to his request as it is, and that it will reduce the figure to the number of soldiers that he does indeed need. In all cases, I express my reservation about any figures and will wait instead for the President’s speech.
What we know so far is that President Obama promised that he will finish the mission in Afghanistan, which is an expression that is open to all possible interpretations, whether in continuing the goals of the Bush administration that started this war, or in focusing the war on al-Qaeda alone, as requested by the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as it was al-Qaeda alone that was behind the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001. This is in addition to the possibility that the president has found a way to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, which is what he pledged during his election campaign; as such, the aim behind deploying more troops is to accelerate arriving at the conditions which will allow for faster withdrawal.
Meanwhile, President Obama will face a political battle as harsh as the one involving his healthcare plan. This is because the senior officials in the Democratic Party, his party, are opposed to a surge in Afghanistan, while the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that approving this surge is a very difficult legislative task to ask of her group in the Congress. In fact, Pelosi pushed the Congress to approve a one billion dollar measure to meet the cost of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She is thus aware that the Democratic Party would oppose an increase in these costs given the ongoing financial crisis, and is also aware of the danger of raising taxes, an unpopular choice among the voters.
The cost of deploying each U.S soldiers in the theatre of war amounts to one million dollars annually. This is while the government is suffering under the burden of trillion dollar debts, and I read that the interests paid on these debts amount to approximately 600 billion dollars per year, while unemployment has soared to 10.2 percent, and it does not appear that it will significantly decline in the upcoming few months.
Barack Obama is aware of all these and other issues. However, he also realizes that withdrawing from Afghanistan before establishing a government that is able to rule there, and before clearly defeating al-Qaeda will only mean encouraging the terrorists everywhere to challenge the United States.
Personally, I wish that the American forces would focus their war effort against al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that killed a larger number of Muslims than of those who perished in the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, which also means that it is the duty of Muslims before others to fight al-Qaeda and its ideology, and to help the American efforts.
However, the Muslim role against al-Qaeda remains limited and President Obama wants the Western Coalition to contribute more in the war. He specifically asked the NATO member countries to send ten thousand additional troops in conjunction with the American surge. However, I read that the allies did not promise more than five thousand soldiers, and that Canada and the Netherlands are planning to withdraw their existing troops in Afghanistan.
Barack Obama had a streak of good luck, which was at times almost surreal, and which put him in the White House. However, it seems that he has depleted this good luck, as the Bush administration left him with a heavy legacy, including the financial crisis, the bankruptcy of the treasury and the failed wars. In fact, the war on terror only increased terror around the world, which prompted the United States in the end to stop using this term.
President Obama, along with the Democratic Party, is faced with the midterm elections next year, in November. He is aware that there is a simple majority in the U.S that is opposed to the war, and that an even larger majority, or 69 percent, consider that the war is going badly. This means that the Democrats who control both houses of Congress will now pay the price for George W. Bush’s adventures and ignorance, and for the free pass he gave to the neo-conservatives to run the country’s policies behind his back.
We now hear that Afghanistan is “Obama’s Vietnam”. However, the war is necessary in order to defeat al-Qaeda; for this reason, I do not expect to see the Americans fleeing in airplanes from on top of their embassy in Kabul.
Obama
Ayoon Wa Azan (The War Is Necessary To Defeat al-Qaeda)
Fri, 27 November 2009
Jihad el-Khazen
dar al hayat
There is a consensus in the American media that President Barack Obama will announce a surge of 30 thousand U.S soldiers to be deployed in Afghanistan, in the speech that he will deliver next week at the West Point military academy, and which will be the first of many speeches and meetings aimed at rallying support for this surge.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S military commander in Afghanistan, requested 40 thousand additional troops; however, I read no news items that thought it likely that the surge will involve this figure, and perhaps what had transpired then was sort of a bazaar: it seems that the commander requested more than he actually needs, since he knows that the administration will not agree to his request as it is, and that it will reduce the figure to the number of soldiers that he does indeed need. In all cases, I express my reservation about any figures and will wait instead for the President’s speech.
What we know so far is that President Obama promised that he will finish the mission in Afghanistan, which is an expression that is open to all possible interpretations, whether in continuing the goals of the Bush administration that started this war, or in focusing the war on al-Qaeda alone, as requested by the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as it was al-Qaeda alone that was behind the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001. This is in addition to the possibility that the president has found a way to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, which is what he pledged during his election campaign; as such, the aim behind deploying more troops is to accelerate arriving at the conditions which will allow for faster withdrawal.
Meanwhile, President Obama will face a political battle as harsh as the one involving his healthcare plan. This is because the senior officials in the Democratic Party, his party, are opposed to a surge in Afghanistan, while the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that approving this surge is a very difficult legislative task to ask of her group in the Congress. In fact, Pelosi pushed the Congress to approve a one billion dollar measure to meet the cost of the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She is thus aware that the Democratic Party would oppose an increase in these costs given the ongoing financial crisis, and is also aware of the danger of raising taxes, an unpopular choice among the voters.
The cost of deploying each U.S soldiers in the theatre of war amounts to one million dollars annually. This is while the government is suffering under the burden of trillion dollar debts, and I read that the interests paid on these debts amount to approximately 600 billion dollars per year, while unemployment has soared to 10.2 percent, and it does not appear that it will significantly decline in the upcoming few months.
Barack Obama is aware of all these and other issues. However, he also realizes that withdrawing from Afghanistan before establishing a government that is able to rule there, and before clearly defeating al-Qaeda will only mean encouraging the terrorists everywhere to challenge the United States.
Personally, I wish that the American forces would focus their war effort against al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that killed a larger number of Muslims than of those who perished in the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, which also means that it is the duty of Muslims before others to fight al-Qaeda and its ideology, and to help the American efforts.
However, the Muslim role against al-Qaeda remains limited and President Obama wants the Western Coalition to contribute more in the war. He specifically asked the NATO member countries to send ten thousand additional troops in conjunction with the American surge. However, I read that the allies did not promise more than five thousand soldiers, and that Canada and the Netherlands are planning to withdraw their existing troops in Afghanistan.
Barack Obama had a streak of good luck, which was at times almost surreal, and which put him in the White House. However, it seems that he has depleted this good luck, as the Bush administration left him with a heavy legacy, including the financial crisis, the bankruptcy of the treasury and the failed wars. In fact, the war on terror only increased terror around the world, which prompted the United States in the end to stop using this term.
President Obama, along with the Democratic Party, is faced with the midterm elections next year, in November. He is aware that there is a simple majority in the U.S that is opposed to the war, and that an even larger majority, or 69 percent, consider that the war is going badly. This means that the Democrats who control both houses of Congress will now pay the price for George W. Bush’s adventures and ignorance, and for the free pass he gave to the neo-conservatives to run the country’s policies behind his back.
We now hear that Afghanistan is “Obama’s Vietnam”. However, the war is necessary in order to defeat al-Qaeda; for this reason, I do not expect to see the Americans fleeing in airplanes from on top of their embassy in Kabul.
Obama
Friday, November 27, 2009
USA: Down the drain ...........
It would be difficult to find a better way to undermine our country and utterly destroy the system we have today, than what is currently happening. It is difficult to figure out who is worse.
Damn the deficit: Full speed ahead on health care
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
November 25, 2009
Double-digit. That hyphenated adjective has been used most often recently to describe October's 10.2 percent unemployment rate. But it can also be used to describe the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product. That precise number is not yet known, but it may turn out to have a more dire effect on our national life than October's unemployment rate.
In the fiscal year just ended, federal spending was nearly 25 percent of GDP while federal revenues slipped below 15 percent because of the financial crisis and recession. We have not seen a budget deficit of this magnitude since World War II, which surely was a greater challenge than recent economic troubles.
Apologists for the Obama administration argue that some 2009 spending, like that on financial bailouts, is nonrecurring. True, but as the Congressional Budget Office has reported, the trajectory of administration spending and revenue is pushing the annual deficit toward $1,000,000,000,000 -- that's $1 trillion -- for the next decade.
Congressional Democrats' health care bills threaten to add to that. The bill currently before the Senate is advertised as costing less than $1 trillion. But significant spending doesn't kick in till 2014 and over the ensuing 10 years adds up to $1.8 trillion, nearly double that.
Thanks to current low interest rates, servicing the debt costs the government only $200 billion this year. But the White House estimates that debt service will exceed $700 billion in 2019. "In a few years," the Economist editorializes, "the AAA rating of Treasury bonds, the world's most important security, could be in jeopardy."
It's not only Republicans who decry this prospect. Examining the Democrats' health care proposals, William Galston, domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, writes, "We're already facing an unsustainable fiscal future."
Looking further ahead, Scott Winship notes in the Progressive Policy Institute's progressivefix.com blog that federal spending is on course to exceed 40 percent of GDP because of scheduled spending on entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- within the lifetime of today's children.
Yet the congressional Democrats who are pressing to expand federal health care spending do not seem much fazed by the prospect that, as Winship writes, "the level of taxation it would require to meet projected spending needs is far higher than anything the country has ever seen-slash-tolerated."
That suggests that, at least for some Democrats, huge looming budget deficits are not a bug but a feature.Just as Ronald Reagan hoped that cutting taxes would force politicians to cut spending, these Democrats hope that increasing spending will force politicians to increase taxes to levels common in Western Europe. Never mind that those economies have proved more sluggish and less creative than ours over the long haul.
The instrument they may have in mind is the value added tax, which operates as an invisible sales tax on goods and services. Back in May, Budget Director Peter Orszag's spokesman mentioned the VAT as a "credible idea" that he did not want to rule out. In June, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel suggested a VAT as "a point of discussion."
In September, John Podesta, head of the Obama transition team, spoke of how a VAT would "create a balance" with other economies, and White House adviser Paul Volcker cited a carbon tax and a VAT as ways to raise lots of revenue. In October, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "Somewhere along the way, a value added tax plays into this."
These statements are noteworthy, because American politicians are ordinarily skittish about saying we should imitate Europe's high-tax and high-spending policies. These policies seem more unpopular than ever 10 months into the Obama presidency. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 53 percent of voters worry that the federal government will do too much in response to economic problems, while only 37 percent worry it will do too little.
That mirrors voters' current opposition to Democratic health care bills. Democratic leaders nonetheless want to jam one through before their current majorities are eroded, as they seem likely to be, in the 2010 elections. This is politically risky, but makes sense if your goal is to expand government.
So the battle over health care is not just about health care. It's about whether government will permanently gobble up more of the private-sector economy and slow it down in the process.
obama
Damn the deficit: Full speed ahead on health care
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
November 25, 2009
Double-digit. That hyphenated adjective has been used most often recently to describe October's 10.2 percent unemployment rate. But it can also be used to describe the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product. That precise number is not yet known, but it may turn out to have a more dire effect on our national life than October's unemployment rate.
In the fiscal year just ended, federal spending was nearly 25 percent of GDP while federal revenues slipped below 15 percent because of the financial crisis and recession. We have not seen a budget deficit of this magnitude since World War II, which surely was a greater challenge than recent economic troubles.
Apologists for the Obama administration argue that some 2009 spending, like that on financial bailouts, is nonrecurring. True, but as the Congressional Budget Office has reported, the trajectory of administration spending and revenue is pushing the annual deficit toward $1,000,000,000,000 -- that's $1 trillion -- for the next decade.
Congressional Democrats' health care bills threaten to add to that. The bill currently before the Senate is advertised as costing less than $1 trillion. But significant spending doesn't kick in till 2014 and over the ensuing 10 years adds up to $1.8 trillion, nearly double that.
Thanks to current low interest rates, servicing the debt costs the government only $200 billion this year. But the White House estimates that debt service will exceed $700 billion in 2019. "In a few years," the Economist editorializes, "the AAA rating of Treasury bonds, the world's most important security, could be in jeopardy."
It's not only Republicans who decry this prospect. Examining the Democrats' health care proposals, William Galston, domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, writes, "We're already facing an unsustainable fiscal future."
Looking further ahead, Scott Winship notes in the Progressive Policy Institute's progressivefix.com blog that federal spending is on course to exceed 40 percent of GDP because of scheduled spending on entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- within the lifetime of today's children.
Yet the congressional Democrats who are pressing to expand federal health care spending do not seem much fazed by the prospect that, as Winship writes, "the level of taxation it would require to meet projected spending needs is far higher than anything the country has ever seen-slash-tolerated."
That suggests that, at least for some Democrats, huge looming budget deficits are not a bug but a feature.Just as Ronald Reagan hoped that cutting taxes would force politicians to cut spending, these Democrats hope that increasing spending will force politicians to increase taxes to levels common in Western Europe. Never mind that those economies have proved more sluggish and less creative than ours over the long haul.
The instrument they may have in mind is the value added tax, which operates as an invisible sales tax on goods and services. Back in May, Budget Director Peter Orszag's spokesman mentioned the VAT as a "credible idea" that he did not want to rule out. In June, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel suggested a VAT as "a point of discussion."
In September, John Podesta, head of the Obama transition team, spoke of how a VAT would "create a balance" with other economies, and White House adviser Paul Volcker cited a carbon tax and a VAT as ways to raise lots of revenue. In October, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "Somewhere along the way, a value added tax plays into this."
These statements are noteworthy, because American politicians are ordinarily skittish about saying we should imitate Europe's high-tax and high-spending policies. These policies seem more unpopular than ever 10 months into the Obama presidency. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 53 percent of voters worry that the federal government will do too much in response to economic problems, while only 37 percent worry it will do too little.
That mirrors voters' current opposition to Democratic health care bills. Democratic leaders nonetheless want to jam one through before their current majorities are eroded, as they seem likely to be, in the 2010 elections. This is politically risky, but makes sense if your goal is to expand government.
So the battle over health care is not just about health care. It's about whether government will permanently gobble up more of the private-sector economy and slow it down in the process.
obama
Thanksgiving
We have so much to be thankful for - our freedom, being the most important. Free to choose, free to act, free to do whatever we wish, within limits of the law, without fear of being killed. Even when we act outside the law, it is by choice and in rare cases will we be killed. Free to wake up and take a walk around the block, admiring creation wherever we go - without a fear of death or kidnapping, shootings, or beheadings. We have so much to thank the men and women who today stand between the abyss of darkness and what many of us have taken for granted.
We have the chance to grow up, to become, to be, and to do ... without fear of secret police or threats, intimidation, or death. We do not pay rival warlords to drive from county to county. We do not fear our bus being stopped and the occupants being marched into the jungle to be beheaded. We do not fear our buses being blown up, our malls the sites of mass slaughter. We do not fear the knock on the door from the collector, not of our rent, but of extortion money to keep us safe. We live today in the greatest country on earth, for all its faults and warts, none compare. Yet so many do not give thanks, they criticize, attack, and whine.
Part of thanksgiving, a large part, is gratitude. Gratitude for the beauty and wonder around us - the freedom we have and the opportunities we are provided.
thanksgiving
We have the chance to grow up, to become, to be, and to do ... without fear of secret police or threats, intimidation, or death. We do not pay rival warlords to drive from county to county. We do not fear our bus being stopped and the occupants being marched into the jungle to be beheaded. We do not fear our buses being blown up, our malls the sites of mass slaughter. We do not fear the knock on the door from the collector, not of our rent, but of extortion money to keep us safe. We live today in the greatest country on earth, for all its faults and warts, none compare. Yet so many do not give thanks, they criticize, attack, and whine.
Part of thanksgiving, a large part, is gratitude. Gratitude for the beauty and wonder around us - the freedom we have and the opportunities we are provided.
thanksgiving
Line in the Sand
Persecution of Christians.
At last, Christians draw a line in the sand against their PC secularist persecutors
The Telegraph
By Gerald Warner
November 24th, 2009
At long last, Christian leaders have faced up to their persecutors in the secularist, socialist, One-World, PC, UN-promoted axis of evil and said: No more. In the popular metaphor, they have drawn a line in the sand. For harassed, demoralised faithful in the pews it will come as the long-awaited call to resistance and an earnest that their leaders are no longer willing to lie down supinely to be run over by the anti-Christian juggernaut. This statement of principle and intent is called The Manhattan Declaration, published last Friday in Washington DC.
It is difficult to believe that so firm an assertion of Christian intransigence in the face of persecution will not have some beneficial effects even here. For this Declaration is no minor affirmation by a few committed activists: on the contrary, it is signed by the most important leaders of three mainstream Christian traditions – the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and Evangelical Protestants. For an ecumenical document it is heroically devoid of fudge, euphemism and compromise.
The Manhattan Declaration states that “the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions”.
For Barack Obama, the PC lobby, the “hate crime” fascists and, by implication, their opposite numbers in Britain, the signatories have an uncompromising message: “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” That is plain speaking, in the face of anti-Christian aggression by governments. The signatories spelled it out even more unequivocally: “We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but we will under no circumstances render to Caesar what is God’s.”
In a world where a Swedish pastor has been jailed for preaching that sodomy is sinful, similar prosecutions have taken place in Canada, the European Court of Human Rights (sic) has tried to ban crucifixes in Italian classrooms, Brazil has passed totalitarian legislation imposing heavy prison sentences for criticism of homosexual lifestyles, Amnesty International is championing abortion, David Cameron has voted for the enforced closure of Catholic adoption agencies, and Gordon Brown’s government has just been defeated in its fourth attempt to abolish the Waddington Clause guaranteeing free speech – this robust defiance is more than timely.
The signatories are unambiguously expressing their willingness to go to prison rather than deny any part of their religious beliefs. Those signatories are heavyweight. On the Catholic side they include Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia; Adam Cardinal Maida, Archbishop Emeritus of Detroit; the Archbishops of Denver, New York, Washington DC, Newark, Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Louisville; and other Bishops. The Orthodox include the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America and the Archpriest of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. There are also the Anglican Primates of America and Nigeria, as well as a host of senior Evangelical Protestants.
In terms of influence on votes and public opinion, this is a formidable coalition. It has served notice on the US government that further anti-Christian legislation will provoke cultural trench warfare and even civil disobedience. As regards the sudden stiffening of resistance among the usually spineless Catholic leadership, it is impossible not to detect the influence of Benedict XVI.
We need more declarations like this, on a global scale, and the requisite confrontational follow-up. This is Clint Eastwood, make-my-day Christianity – and not before time. From now on, any governments that are planning further persecution of Christians had better make sure they have a large pride of lions available for mastication duties. The worm has turned.
Christian
At last, Christians draw a line in the sand against their PC secularist persecutors
The Telegraph
By Gerald Warner
November 24th, 2009
At long last, Christian leaders have faced up to their persecutors in the secularist, socialist, One-World, PC, UN-promoted axis of evil and said: No more. In the popular metaphor, they have drawn a line in the sand. For harassed, demoralised faithful in the pews it will come as the long-awaited call to resistance and an earnest that their leaders are no longer willing to lie down supinely to be run over by the anti-Christian juggernaut. This statement of principle and intent is called The Manhattan Declaration, published last Friday in Washington DC.
It is difficult to believe that so firm an assertion of Christian intransigence in the face of persecution will not have some beneficial effects even here. For this Declaration is no minor affirmation by a few committed activists: on the contrary, it is signed by the most important leaders of three mainstream Christian traditions – the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and Evangelical Protestants. For an ecumenical document it is heroically devoid of fudge, euphemism and compromise.
The Manhattan Declaration states that “the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions”.
For Barack Obama, the PC lobby, the “hate crime” fascists and, by implication, their opposite numbers in Britain, the signatories have an uncompromising message: “We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” That is plain speaking, in the face of anti-Christian aggression by governments. The signatories spelled it out even more unequivocally: “We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but we will under no circumstances render to Caesar what is God’s.”
In a world where a Swedish pastor has been jailed for preaching that sodomy is sinful, similar prosecutions have taken place in Canada, the European Court of Human Rights (sic) has tried to ban crucifixes in Italian classrooms, Brazil has passed totalitarian legislation imposing heavy prison sentences for criticism of homosexual lifestyles, Amnesty International is championing abortion, David Cameron has voted for the enforced closure of Catholic adoption agencies, and Gordon Brown’s government has just been defeated in its fourth attempt to abolish the Waddington Clause guaranteeing free speech – this robust defiance is more than timely.
The signatories are unambiguously expressing their willingness to go to prison rather than deny any part of their religious beliefs. Those signatories are heavyweight. On the Catholic side they include Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia; Adam Cardinal Maida, Archbishop Emeritus of Detroit; the Archbishops of Denver, New York, Washington DC, Newark, Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Louisville; and other Bishops. The Orthodox include the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America and the Archpriest of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. There are also the Anglican Primates of America and Nigeria, as well as a host of senior Evangelical Protestants.
In terms of influence on votes and public opinion, this is a formidable coalition. It has served notice on the US government that further anti-Christian legislation will provoke cultural trench warfare and even civil disobedience. As regards the sudden stiffening of resistance among the usually spineless Catholic leadership, it is impossible not to detect the influence of Benedict XVI.
We need more declarations like this, on a global scale, and the requisite confrontational follow-up. This is Clint Eastwood, make-my-day Christianity – and not before time. From now on, any governments that are planning further persecution of Christians had better make sure they have a large pride of lions available for mastication duties. The worm has turned.
Christian
Global Warming: Such Good Imagery: Trampling All Over Gore. The End of the Great Lie?
Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws
By Gerald Warner
November 26th, 2009
The Telegraph
Just a few considerations in addition to previous remarks about the explosion of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails in America. The reaction is growing exponentially there. Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.
Senator James Inhofe’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.
At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.
The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.
At this rate, Copenhagen is going to turn into a comedy convention with the real world laughing at these liars. Now is the time to mount massive resistance to the petty tyrants and hit them where it hurts – in the wallet. Further down the line there may be, in many countries, a question of criminal prosecution of anybody who has falsified data to secure funds and impose potentially disastrous fiscal restraints on the world in deference to a massive hoax. It’s a new world out there, Al, and, as you may have noticed, the climate is very cold indeed.
global warming
By Gerald Warner
November 26th, 2009
The Telegraph
Just a few considerations in addition to previous remarks about the explosion of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails in America. The reaction is growing exponentially there. Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.
Senator James Inhofe’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.
At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.
The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.
At this rate, Copenhagen is going to turn into a comedy convention with the real world laughing at these liars. Now is the time to mount massive resistance to the petty tyrants and hit them where it hurts – in the wallet. Further down the line there may be, in many countries, a question of criminal prosecution of anybody who has falsified data to secure funds and impose potentially disastrous fiscal restraints on the world in deference to a massive hoax. It’s a new world out there, Al, and, as you may have noticed, the climate is very cold indeed.
global warming
Global Warming: Cap n Trade, Emissions Trading, CO2 Reduction - Same result: Government Control
Climategate: five Aussie MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax
By James Delingpole
November 26th, 2009
Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.
ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.
The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.
Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.
Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.
The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.
Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.
For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives, and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through carbon trading, this principled act by Australia’s Carbon Five is fantastic news.
Where they lead, the rest of the world’s politicians will eventually be forced to follow: their appalled electorates will make sure of it.
global warming crap
By James Delingpole
November 26th, 2009
Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.
ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.
The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.
Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.
Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.
The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.
Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.
For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives, and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through carbon trading, this principled act by Australia’s Carbon Five is fantastic news.
Where they lead, the rest of the world’s politicians will eventually be forced to follow: their appalled electorates will make sure of it.
global warming crap
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Monstrous is one word that describes this: Child Brides
Child bride's nightmare after divorce
By Paula Newton
CNN
August 28, 2009
SANA'A, Yemen (CNN) -- It is midday and girls are flooding out of school, but Nujood Ali is not among them.
We find her at the family's two-room house in an impoverished suburb of the city where Nujood is angry, combative and yelling. Tension surrounds the home like a noose.
After much arguing with family members, Nujood finally grabs her veil and agrees to sit down with CNN. Her presence is grudging, although CNN had got permission in advance to see how the girl who rocked a nation by demanding a divorce was shaping up.
Nujood is very different from the girl we first met nearly two years ago. Then, there was no doubt the 10-year-old was every inch a child. She was the very portrait of innocence: A shy smile, a playful nature and a whimsical giggle.
That picture was very much at odds with the brutal story of abuse she endured as a child bride who fought for a divorce and is now still fighting. Watch Nujood tell her story to CNN on World's Untold Stories »
Nujood says she remains relieved and gratified that her act of defiance -- which led to appearances at awards shows and on TV -- had paid off.
The story was supposed to end with the divorce and an innocent but determined girl allowed to fully embrace the childhood she fought so hard to keep.
Instead, there has been no fairytale ending for Nujood.
There was, though, a stunning transformation. Nujood went from being a victim and child bride to a portrait of courage and triumph. Her inspirational story was told and re-told around the world, but at home all was not well.
In the fall of 2008 Nujood was recognized as Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year, alongside some of the world's most impressive women. She even attended the ceremony in New York and was applauded by women from Hillary Clinton to Nicole Kidman.
There is a tell-all book which is to be published in more than 20 languages, and the author says Nujood will receive a good portion of the royalties.
Nujood's strength was celebrated by complete strangers. But what did all the fame do for the one person it was meant to transform?
"There is no change at all since going on television. I hoped there was someone to help us, but we didn't find anyone to help us. It hasn't changed a thing. They said they were going to help me and no one has helped me. I wish I had never spoken to the media," Nujood says bitterly.
There was never going to be a fortune. Generous people have donated thousands so Nujood could go to a private school, but she refuses to attend, according to Shada Nasser, the human rights lawyer who took on the child's divorce case.
"I know Nujood was absent from the school. I spoke with her father and her family. And I ask them to control her and ask her to go every day to school. But they said, 'You know we don't have the money for the transportation. Don't have the money for the food,' " says Nasser.
She believes Nujood is being victimized by her own family because they believe Nujood's fame should bring them fortune.
Nujood's parents say they've received nothing, and in the meantime Nujood stews wondering out loud how everything turned out this way.
"I was happy I got divorced but I'm sad about the way it turned out after I went on television," she said adding that she feels like an outcast even among her family and friends.
Nujood was pulled out of school in early 2008 and married off by her own parents to a man she says was old and ugly. And yet, as a wife, Nujood was spared nothing.
"I didn't want to sleep with him but he forced me to, he hit me, insulted me" said Nujood. She said being married and living as a wife at such a young age was sheer torture.
Nujood described how she was beaten and raped and how, after just a few weeks of marriage, she turned to her family to try to escape the arrangement. But her parents told her they could not protect her, that she belonged to her husband now and had to accept her fate.
CNN tried to obtain comment from Nujood's husband and his family but they declined.
Nujood's parents, like many others in Yemen, struck a social bargain. More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18, many times to older men, some with more than one wife.
It means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. But Nujood's parents say they did not expect Nujood's new husband to demand sex from his child bride.
To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- for the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.
After several hours, a judge finally went to see her. "And he asked me, 'what do you want' and I said 'I want a divorce' and he said 'you're married?' And I said 'yes.'" says Nujood.
Nujood's father and husband were arrested until the divorce hearing, and Nujood was put in the care of Nasser.
Indeed, it seems the judge had heard enough of the abuse to agree with Nujood that she should get her divorce.
But based on the principles of Shariah law, her husband was compensated, not prosecuted. Nujood was ordered to pay him more than $200 -- a huge amount in a country where the United Nations Development Programme says 15.7 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.
Khadije Al Salame is working to help Nujood get her life back. Now a Yemeni diplomat, 30 years ago she too was a child bride. But when she left her husband, she did not have to endure the publicity that now haunts Nujood.
She said: "It's good to talk about Nujood and to have her story come out, but the problem is it's too much pressure on her.
"She doesn't understand what's going on. She's a little girl and we have to understand as a media people that we should leave her alone now. If we really love Nujood then we should just let her go to school and continue with her life, because education is the most important thing for her."
To get her divorce, Nujood showed a character and strength not easily expressed by women in Yemen, let alone a 10-year-old child bride. But she will need to muster all that strength and more if she's to finally reclaim her life.
Nujood told us she thought the divorce would be the end of her struggle and she's still angry that it turned out to be just the beginning.
****************************
Feminist organizations in the United States look for every opportunity to claim women are not equal here. They have quieted down considerably since January, even though nothing has changed, which shows their true colors. But, in any case - you would expect feminists to stand up for women who are forced to marry at young ages, forced to wear burquas, kept from schools, prevented from getting jobs, kept ignorant and pregnant, and yet we hear very little when American forces liberate countries and create an opportunity for women. You would think these women would rush to Afghanistan to help set up schools or education centers. You would think.
And you'd be wrong, because politics is more important to them then principle.
Islam
By Paula Newton
CNN
August 28, 2009
SANA'A, Yemen (CNN) -- It is midday and girls are flooding out of school, but Nujood Ali is not among them.
We find her at the family's two-room house in an impoverished suburb of the city where Nujood is angry, combative and yelling. Tension surrounds the home like a noose.
After much arguing with family members, Nujood finally grabs her veil and agrees to sit down with CNN. Her presence is grudging, although CNN had got permission in advance to see how the girl who rocked a nation by demanding a divorce was shaping up.
Nujood is very different from the girl we first met nearly two years ago. Then, there was no doubt the 10-year-old was every inch a child. She was the very portrait of innocence: A shy smile, a playful nature and a whimsical giggle.
That picture was very much at odds with the brutal story of abuse she endured as a child bride who fought for a divorce and is now still fighting. Watch Nujood tell her story to CNN on World's Untold Stories »
Nujood says she remains relieved and gratified that her act of defiance -- which led to appearances at awards shows and on TV -- had paid off.
The story was supposed to end with the divorce and an innocent but determined girl allowed to fully embrace the childhood she fought so hard to keep.
Instead, there has been no fairytale ending for Nujood.
There was, though, a stunning transformation. Nujood went from being a victim and child bride to a portrait of courage and triumph. Her inspirational story was told and re-told around the world, but at home all was not well.
In the fall of 2008 Nujood was recognized as Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year, alongside some of the world's most impressive women. She even attended the ceremony in New York and was applauded by women from Hillary Clinton to Nicole Kidman.
There is a tell-all book which is to be published in more than 20 languages, and the author says Nujood will receive a good portion of the royalties.
Nujood's strength was celebrated by complete strangers. But what did all the fame do for the one person it was meant to transform?
"There is no change at all since going on television. I hoped there was someone to help us, but we didn't find anyone to help us. It hasn't changed a thing. They said they were going to help me and no one has helped me. I wish I had never spoken to the media," Nujood says bitterly.
There was never going to be a fortune. Generous people have donated thousands so Nujood could go to a private school, but she refuses to attend, according to Shada Nasser, the human rights lawyer who took on the child's divorce case.
"I know Nujood was absent from the school. I spoke with her father and her family. And I ask them to control her and ask her to go every day to school. But they said, 'You know we don't have the money for the transportation. Don't have the money for the food,' " says Nasser.
She believes Nujood is being victimized by her own family because they believe Nujood's fame should bring them fortune.
Nujood's parents say they've received nothing, and in the meantime Nujood stews wondering out loud how everything turned out this way.
"I was happy I got divorced but I'm sad about the way it turned out after I went on television," she said adding that she feels like an outcast even among her family and friends.
Nujood was pulled out of school in early 2008 and married off by her own parents to a man she says was old and ugly. And yet, as a wife, Nujood was spared nothing.
"I didn't want to sleep with him but he forced me to, he hit me, insulted me" said Nujood. She said being married and living as a wife at such a young age was sheer torture.
Nujood described how she was beaten and raped and how, after just a few weeks of marriage, she turned to her family to try to escape the arrangement. But her parents told her they could not protect her, that she belonged to her husband now and had to accept her fate.
CNN tried to obtain comment from Nujood's husband and his family but they declined.
Nujood's parents, like many others in Yemen, struck a social bargain. More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18, many times to older men, some with more than one wife.
It means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. But Nujood's parents say they did not expect Nujood's new husband to demand sex from his child bride.
To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- for the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.
After several hours, a judge finally went to see her. "And he asked me, 'what do you want' and I said 'I want a divorce' and he said 'you're married?' And I said 'yes.'" says Nujood.
Nujood's father and husband were arrested until the divorce hearing, and Nujood was put in the care of Nasser.
Indeed, it seems the judge had heard enough of the abuse to agree with Nujood that she should get her divorce.
But based on the principles of Shariah law, her husband was compensated, not prosecuted. Nujood was ordered to pay him more than $200 -- a huge amount in a country where the United Nations Development Programme says 15.7 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.
Khadije Al Salame is working to help Nujood get her life back. Now a Yemeni diplomat, 30 years ago she too was a child bride. But when she left her husband, she did not have to endure the publicity that now haunts Nujood.
She said: "It's good to talk about Nujood and to have her story come out, but the problem is it's too much pressure on her.
"She doesn't understand what's going on. She's a little girl and we have to understand as a media people that we should leave her alone now. If we really love Nujood then we should just let her go to school and continue with her life, because education is the most important thing for her."
To get her divorce, Nujood showed a character and strength not easily expressed by women in Yemen, let alone a 10-year-old child bride. But she will need to muster all that strength and more if she's to finally reclaim her life.
Nujood told us she thought the divorce would be the end of her struggle and she's still angry that it turned out to be just the beginning.
****************************
Feminist organizations in the United States look for every opportunity to claim women are not equal here. They have quieted down considerably since January, even though nothing has changed, which shows their true colors. But, in any case - you would expect feminists to stand up for women who are forced to marry at young ages, forced to wear burquas, kept from schools, prevented from getting jobs, kept ignorant and pregnant, and yet we hear very little when American forces liberate countries and create an opportunity for women. You would think these women would rush to Afghanistan to help set up schools or education centers. You would think.
And you'd be wrong, because politics is more important to them then principle.
Islam
To the Nigerians who may read this (eventually) - three issues, although really two with the third related to the first.
1) Sort out the Islamo-fascists in your country before they destabilize your country, eliminate the government and implement sharia law.
2) The destabilization of your country would throw the world oil markets into chaos.
3) Root out those criminals who send off the moronic emails about millions awaiting you if you but ... Find them and punish them 'severely'.
It is a blight on your country - both the threat from Islamo-fascists and these criminals.
nigeria
1) Sort out the Islamo-fascists in your country before they destabilize your country, eliminate the government and implement sharia law.
2) The destabilization of your country would throw the world oil markets into chaos.
3) Root out those criminals who send off the moronic emails about millions awaiting you if you but ... Find them and punish them 'severely'.
It is a blight on your country - both the threat from Islamo-fascists and these criminals.
nigeria
Plagues and Blame
September 1, 2009
Essay
Finding a Scapegoat When Epidemics Strike
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
The New York Times
Whose fault was the Black Death?
In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed so often, and so viciously, that it is surprising it was not called the Jewish Death. During the pandemic’s peak in Europe, from 1348 to 1351, more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out, their inhabitants accused of spreading contagion or poisoning wells.
The swine flu outbreak of 2009 has been nowhere near as virulent, and neither has the reaction. But, as in pandemics throughout history, someone got the blame — at first Mexico, with attacks on Mexicans in other countries and calls from American politicians to close the border.
In May, a Mexican soccer player who said he was called a “leper” by a Chilean opponent spat on his tormentor; Chilean news media accused him of germ warfare. In June, Argentines stoned Chilean buses, saying they were importing disease. When Argentina’s caseload soared, European countries warned their citizens against visiting it.
“When disease strikes and humans suffer,” said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski, chief of infectious diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and an expert on the history of epidemics, “the need to understand why is very powerful. And, unfortunately, identification of a scapegoat is sometimes inevitable.”
A recent exhibition, “The Erfurt Treasure,” at the Yeshiva University Museum in Manhattan, displayed a timely and depressing memento of this all too human habit. A chest with more than 600 pieces of gold jewelry, including a magnificent 14th-century wedding ring, was dug up during excavations in what was once a thriving Jewish quarter in Erfurt, Germany. It also held 3,141 silver coins, most with royal portraits; the last king depicted on them died in 1350.
That, said Gabriel M. Goldstein, the museum’s associate director of exhibitions, strongly suggests the hoard was buried in 1349, the year the plague reached Erfurt.
“Why put such a huge investment portfolio in the ground and leave it for 700 years?” he asked. “There was a major uprising against Erfurt’s Jews — records say 100 or 1,000 were killed. Seemingly, whoever hid it died and never came back.”
Dr. Martin J. Blaser, a historian who is chairman of medicine at New York University’s medical school, offers an intriguing hypothesis for why Jews became scapegoats in the Black Death: they were largely spared, in comparison with other groups, because grain was removed from their houses for Passover, discouraging the rats that spread the disease. The plague peaked in spring, around Passover.
But in every pandemic, the chain of causation is intricate. The historian William H. McNeill, author of “Plagues and Peoples,” suggests that ultimate blame may rest with Möngke Khan, grandson of Genghis, who in 1252 sent his armies as far south as present-day Burma, putting them in contact with rodents whose fleas played host to Yersinia pestis, the plague bacillus. After Yersinia returned with them to the flea-bitten marmots of the Eurasian steppes, it began creeping through the rodent burrows lining Mongol caravan routes, which stretched as far west as the Black Sea. That’s where plague-ridden rats boarded ships in the besieged Crimean port of Kaffa in 1346, taking it to Europe.
But that lets off the hook the Indian or Egyptian sailors who had presumably first moved the wild black rat out of India 1,000 years earlier. And then, whom in prehistory does one blame for first carrying Yersinia north from its original home in the Great Lakes region of Africa?
It is not uncommon for ethnic groups to have religious or cultural customs that protect against disease — but whether it was originally intended to do that or not is often lost in time.
Manchurian nomads, Dr. McNeill said, avoided plague because they believed marmots harbored the souls of their ancestors, so it was taboo to trap them, although shooting them was permitted. Butin the early 20th century, trapping by immigrants from China contributed to plague outbreaks.
And Tamils from India working as plantation laborers in Malaysia may have had less malaria and dengue than their Malay and Chinese co-workers did because they never stored water near their houses, leaving mosquitoes no place to breed.
The most visible aspect of blame, of course, is what name a disease gets. The World Health Organization has struggled mightily to avoid the ethnic monikers given the Spanish, Hong Kong and Asian flus, instructing its representatives to shift from “swine flu” to “H1N1” to “A (H1N1) S-O.I.V.” (the last four initials stand for “swine-origin influenza virus”) to, recently, “Pandemic (H1N1) 2009.”
Headline writers have rebelled, and ignored them.
Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the Pan American Health Organization, said that in the pandemic’s early days, she fought suggestions that it be named the Mexican flu or the Veracruz flu or the La Gloria flu after the country, state and town where it was discovered.
“We try to avoid demonizing anyone and to keep the focus on the virus,” she said. “It helps reduce the level of panic and aggression.”
When Dr. Roses was a girl, growing up in a small town in Argentina, her neighbors blamed city dwellers for polio. One summer, families took turns with the local police staffing roadblocks to turn back buses from the capital.
“No one wanted the people from Buenos Aires,” she said, “because they were bringing polio.” (There was some logic in it. Polio, an intestinal virus, peaks in summer, and is more common in cities with overflowing sewers than in rural areas with outhouses.)
“It wasn’t until I grew up that I learned that that was no way to fight it,” she said. “It was vaccinating 99 percent of the children that stopped polio.”
By the old naming conventions, the 1918 Spanish flu probably ought to be known as the Kansas flu. According to “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” John M. Barry’s history of the epidemic, the first identifiable cases arose in Haskell County, in Kansas. They soon spread to Fort Riley, from there to other military bases, and then to Europe in troop ships. France, Germany and Britain had war censors controlling news reports; Spain did not. Spain got the blame.
Most human diseases originate in animals. While culling animals sometimes makes sense as a public health measure — for example, culling chickens to stop an outbreak H5N1 avian flu — animals are also sometimes “punished” pointlessly. In May, the Egyptian government slaughtered thousands of pigs belonging to the Coptic Christian minority, despite international protests that doing so was racist against Copts and medically pointless because the disease was already in people. When the swine flu arrived anyway — in a 12-year-old American girl, the first confirmed case — the government vowed to hunt down the last few pigs hidden by poor families and kill them on the spot.
In Afghanistan, Khanzir, the country’s only pig, a curiosity in the Kabul Zoo, was quarantined to keep him away from the goats and deer he had formerly eaten with.
And during the spread of the avian flu around Asia, Thailand’s government shot open-billed storks in its cities and chopped down the trees they nested in, even though the flu had not been found in a single stork.
Though the truth is that diseases are so complex that pointing blame is useless, simply deflecting blame may be more efficient.
During the Black Death, Pope Clement VI issued an edict, or bull, saying Jews were not at fault. He did not, of course, blaspheme by blaming God. Nor did he blame mankind’s sins. That would have comforted the Flagellants, the self-whipping sect who were the bull’s real target; they often led the mobs attacking both Jews and the corrupt church hierarchy, and were considered heretics. Nor did it blame Möngke Khan or Yersinia pestis. It would be 500 years until the “germ theory” of disease developed.
No, the pope picked a target particularly tough to take revenge upon: a misalignment of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
blame
Essay
Finding a Scapegoat When Epidemics Strike
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
The New York Times
Whose fault was the Black Death?
In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed so often, and so viciously, that it is surprising it was not called the Jewish Death. During the pandemic’s peak in Europe, from 1348 to 1351, more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out, their inhabitants accused of spreading contagion or poisoning wells.
The swine flu outbreak of 2009 has been nowhere near as virulent, and neither has the reaction. But, as in pandemics throughout history, someone got the blame — at first Mexico, with attacks on Mexicans in other countries and calls from American politicians to close the border.
In May, a Mexican soccer player who said he was called a “leper” by a Chilean opponent spat on his tormentor; Chilean news media accused him of germ warfare. In June, Argentines stoned Chilean buses, saying they were importing disease. When Argentina’s caseload soared, European countries warned their citizens against visiting it.
“When disease strikes and humans suffer,” said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski, chief of infectious diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and an expert on the history of epidemics, “the need to understand why is very powerful. And, unfortunately, identification of a scapegoat is sometimes inevitable.”
A recent exhibition, “The Erfurt Treasure,” at the Yeshiva University Museum in Manhattan, displayed a timely and depressing memento of this all too human habit. A chest with more than 600 pieces of gold jewelry, including a magnificent 14th-century wedding ring, was dug up during excavations in what was once a thriving Jewish quarter in Erfurt, Germany. It also held 3,141 silver coins, most with royal portraits; the last king depicted on them died in 1350.
That, said Gabriel M. Goldstein, the museum’s associate director of exhibitions, strongly suggests the hoard was buried in 1349, the year the plague reached Erfurt.
“Why put such a huge investment portfolio in the ground and leave it for 700 years?” he asked. “There was a major uprising against Erfurt’s Jews — records say 100 or 1,000 were killed. Seemingly, whoever hid it died and never came back.”
Dr. Martin J. Blaser, a historian who is chairman of medicine at New York University’s medical school, offers an intriguing hypothesis for why Jews became scapegoats in the Black Death: they were largely spared, in comparison with other groups, because grain was removed from their houses for Passover, discouraging the rats that spread the disease. The plague peaked in spring, around Passover.
But in every pandemic, the chain of causation is intricate. The historian William H. McNeill, author of “Plagues and Peoples,” suggests that ultimate blame may rest with Möngke Khan, grandson of Genghis, who in 1252 sent his armies as far south as present-day Burma, putting them in contact with rodents whose fleas played host to Yersinia pestis, the plague bacillus. After Yersinia returned with them to the flea-bitten marmots of the Eurasian steppes, it began creeping through the rodent burrows lining Mongol caravan routes, which stretched as far west as the Black Sea. That’s where plague-ridden rats boarded ships in the besieged Crimean port of Kaffa in 1346, taking it to Europe.
But that lets off the hook the Indian or Egyptian sailors who had presumably first moved the wild black rat out of India 1,000 years earlier. And then, whom in prehistory does one blame for first carrying Yersinia north from its original home in the Great Lakes region of Africa?
It is not uncommon for ethnic groups to have religious or cultural customs that protect against disease — but whether it was originally intended to do that or not is often lost in time.
Manchurian nomads, Dr. McNeill said, avoided plague because they believed marmots harbored the souls of their ancestors, so it was taboo to trap them, although shooting them was permitted. Butin the early 20th century, trapping by immigrants from China contributed to plague outbreaks.
And Tamils from India working as plantation laborers in Malaysia may have had less malaria and dengue than their Malay and Chinese co-workers did because they never stored water near their houses, leaving mosquitoes no place to breed.
The most visible aspect of blame, of course, is what name a disease gets. The World Health Organization has struggled mightily to avoid the ethnic monikers given the Spanish, Hong Kong and Asian flus, instructing its representatives to shift from “swine flu” to “H1N1” to “A (H1N1) S-O.I.V.” (the last four initials stand for “swine-origin influenza virus”) to, recently, “Pandemic (H1N1) 2009.”
Headline writers have rebelled, and ignored them.
Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the Pan American Health Organization, said that in the pandemic’s early days, she fought suggestions that it be named the Mexican flu or the Veracruz flu or the La Gloria flu after the country, state and town where it was discovered.
“We try to avoid demonizing anyone and to keep the focus on the virus,” she said. “It helps reduce the level of panic and aggression.”
When Dr. Roses was a girl, growing up in a small town in Argentina, her neighbors blamed city dwellers for polio. One summer, families took turns with the local police staffing roadblocks to turn back buses from the capital.
“No one wanted the people from Buenos Aires,” she said, “because they were bringing polio.” (There was some logic in it. Polio, an intestinal virus, peaks in summer, and is more common in cities with overflowing sewers than in rural areas with outhouses.)
“It wasn’t until I grew up that I learned that that was no way to fight it,” she said. “It was vaccinating 99 percent of the children that stopped polio.”
By the old naming conventions, the 1918 Spanish flu probably ought to be known as the Kansas flu. According to “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” John M. Barry’s history of the epidemic, the first identifiable cases arose in Haskell County, in Kansas. They soon spread to Fort Riley, from there to other military bases, and then to Europe in troop ships. France, Germany and Britain had war censors controlling news reports; Spain did not. Spain got the blame.
Most human diseases originate in animals. While culling animals sometimes makes sense as a public health measure — for example, culling chickens to stop an outbreak H5N1 avian flu — animals are also sometimes “punished” pointlessly. In May, the Egyptian government slaughtered thousands of pigs belonging to the Coptic Christian minority, despite international protests that doing so was racist against Copts and medically pointless because the disease was already in people. When the swine flu arrived anyway — in a 12-year-old American girl, the first confirmed case — the government vowed to hunt down the last few pigs hidden by poor families and kill them on the spot.
In Afghanistan, Khanzir, the country’s only pig, a curiosity in the Kabul Zoo, was quarantined to keep him away from the goats and deer he had formerly eaten with.
And during the spread of the avian flu around Asia, Thailand’s government shot open-billed storks in its cities and chopped down the trees they nested in, even though the flu had not been found in a single stork.
Though the truth is that diseases are so complex that pointing blame is useless, simply deflecting blame may be more efficient.
During the Black Death, Pope Clement VI issued an edict, or bull, saying Jews were not at fault. He did not, of course, blaspheme by blaming God. Nor did he blame mankind’s sins. That would have comforted the Flagellants, the self-whipping sect who were the bull’s real target; they often led the mobs attacking both Jews and the corrupt church hierarchy, and were considered heretics. Nor did it blame Möngke Khan or Yersinia pestis. It would be 500 years until the “germ theory” of disease developed.
No, the pope picked a target particularly tough to take revenge upon: a misalignment of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
blame
Pushing the Envelope
Dear Adam Lambert,
I know that I should include evidence in any statement I make concerning any issue or claim. I was raised this way both in academia and in the several years of law school - facts, facts, and more facts. Do not let emotions carry you away or you will find yourself carried back on your shield.
In this case, I don't care enough, although I am becoming annoyed with the claims you are making, along with the gay and lesbian consortium - that what ABC did and CBS after it, was either discrimination or bias.
I recall reading, and the facts of this will not disappear off the internet, within hours of your action at the AMA, that you were a performer and what do performers do - they push the envelope. You mentioned this several times within the first 24 hours. Then ABC received over 1500 complaints and your story changed, although no one called you on it for whatever reason - it was an unintended act, and look at Madonna and Britney kissing on television. Their kiss was neither blurred nor edited out.
Except you gave the facts away when you opened your mouth for the second time - you are a 'performer' and what do 'performers' do - they push the envelope, like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osborne.
Which is it Adam? You are a performer pushing the envelope or it was an action that just occured without any thought. You are either pushing the envelope or it was an unintended act. It is NOT both. Performers who accidentally do something noteworthy did it by accident and do not receive any mention, rather they do their craft and live maturely. You, by your example, live to push the envelope. It would appear to me, based on all evidence available, that it was planned to push the envelope.
Adam, you do not push an envelope if it is accidental, unintended, happenstance, unexpected.
You push the envelope through intention, purpose, direct action with the goal of causing discomfort that will in turn force reconsideration.
Which is it Adam? Intentional with the goal of envelope pushing, or accidental and simply the act of a guy who wanted to kiss another guy who looked hot?
Madonna did it intentionally - to push the envelope.
No singer simply starts kissing their band members or back up dancers for fun - because they can't wait until the show is over. Poor judgment. Raging hormones pushed to the forefront by the glamour of stage, and fans. Acting out.
I suspect a couple 'performers' will now 'push the envelope' to make a statement. Perhaps Stefani Germanotta will kiss a back-up singer/dancer in her next performance (I so do not like the moniker she has adopted and prefer her real name to being gagged by gaga) - she will immediately claim solidarity with gays and champion equality, and march off to applause. What a role model.
In any case, Adam, you are left to figure out what it is you did and whether it was intentional (envelope pushing like Madonna and Britney) or accidental / spur of the moment (simply the desire to kiss a guy you have probably wanted to kiss publicly).
Your choice. Take a stand and accept the consequences.
sex
I know that I should include evidence in any statement I make concerning any issue or claim. I was raised this way both in academia and in the several years of law school - facts, facts, and more facts. Do not let emotions carry you away or you will find yourself carried back on your shield.
In this case, I don't care enough, although I am becoming annoyed with the claims you are making, along with the gay and lesbian consortium - that what ABC did and CBS after it, was either discrimination or bias.
I recall reading, and the facts of this will not disappear off the internet, within hours of your action at the AMA, that you were a performer and what do performers do - they push the envelope. You mentioned this several times within the first 24 hours. Then ABC received over 1500 complaints and your story changed, although no one called you on it for whatever reason - it was an unintended act, and look at Madonna and Britney kissing on television. Their kiss was neither blurred nor edited out.
Except you gave the facts away when you opened your mouth for the second time - you are a 'performer' and what do 'performers' do - they push the envelope, like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osborne.
Which is it Adam? You are a performer pushing the envelope or it was an action that just occured without any thought. You are either pushing the envelope or it was an unintended act. It is NOT both. Performers who accidentally do something noteworthy did it by accident and do not receive any mention, rather they do their craft and live maturely. You, by your example, live to push the envelope. It would appear to me, based on all evidence available, that it was planned to push the envelope.
Adam, you do not push an envelope if it is accidental, unintended, happenstance, unexpected.
You push the envelope through intention, purpose, direct action with the goal of causing discomfort that will in turn force reconsideration.
Which is it Adam? Intentional with the goal of envelope pushing, or accidental and simply the act of a guy who wanted to kiss another guy who looked hot?
Madonna did it intentionally - to push the envelope.
No singer simply starts kissing their band members or back up dancers for fun - because they can't wait until the show is over. Poor judgment. Raging hormones pushed to the forefront by the glamour of stage, and fans. Acting out.
I suspect a couple 'performers' will now 'push the envelope' to make a statement. Perhaps Stefani Germanotta will kiss a back-up singer/dancer in her next performance (I so do not like the moniker she has adopted and prefer her real name to being gagged by gaga) - she will immediately claim solidarity with gays and champion equality, and march off to applause. What a role model.
In any case, Adam, you are left to figure out what it is you did and whether it was intentional (envelope pushing like Madonna and Britney) or accidental / spur of the moment (simply the desire to kiss a guy you have probably wanted to kiss publicly).
Your choice. Take a stand and accept the consequences.
sex
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