Mood:  incredulous

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (also increasingly known as "that treasonous, ignorant, terrorist-enabling bitch") demanded that our people in Iraq negotiate an end to the sectarian violence there with the Iranians without whose donations of money, technical help and advanced weapons such as "copperhead" shaped armor-piercing charges the Sadr-led Shia insurgency would have collapsed long ago.   The usual suspects in the House and Senate added their me-toos to the clamor.

Would you like to see how well that worked out?

"Top Military Officer Assails Iran's Role in Iraq" by David Stout, the International Herald Tribune

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/25/mideast/military.php

Washington: The government of Iran continues to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq, despite repeated promises to the contrary, and is increasingly complicit in the death of U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a stark new assessment of Iranian influence.

The chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was "extremely concerned" about "the increasingly lethal and malign influence" by the government of Iran and the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, a special force that aids and encourages Islamic militants around the world. The Quds Forces in Iran were created during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and report directly to the leadership of Iran's theocratic government.

Pentagon concerns about Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq is nothing new, but the content and tone of Mullen's remarks left the impression that far from abating, the worries about Iran have intensified in recent months.

"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago," Mullen said. "It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way."

The discovery of weapons caches in Iraq, with devices bearing stamps that indicate they were manufactured quite recently, run contrary to the Iranian promises not to interfere in Iraq, the admiral said. He conceded that he had "no smoking gun" to prove direct involvement by the very highest echelons in Tehran, but he said he found it hard to believe that all the top leaders were ignorant of recent developments."

Since they pay for those "recent developments" from a shrinking pool of oil revenue from which they must also finance terrorism elsewhere in the world - including those famous Qassam missiles landing on Israel - and their nuclear weapons production program (I think that it's fair to say they're past the "development" phase, since they have thousands of centrifuges busy purifying bomb-grade uranium, and are hot at work getting their reactor at Bushehr on-line - presumably to create plutonium, since they have more oil and gas than they'll EVER need to generate electric power at home). 

"The Pentagon is sufficiently concerned about Iran's apparently deepening involvement in Iraq that it plans a briefing in the near future by General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, to publicize the caches of weapons, some of which are believed to have been used against U.S. troops in the recent fighting in Basra, in southern Iraq. Details of the weapons and the Pentagon's concerns over them were disclosed Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

"I believe recent events, especially the Basra operation, have revealed just how much and just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability," Mullen said.

Of particular concern to U.S. military commanders are explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, which the Pentagon says are being made in Iran and shipped to Shiite militants in Iraq, where they are used to deadly effect against U.S. forces trying to subdue extremist elements and bolster the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Asked whether the new evidence of Iranian mischief in Iraq portends an U.S. military conflict with Iran, the admiral said, "I'm not going to add anything to what I've already said in that regard." For now, Mullen said, the best weapon against Iran is a combination of diplomatic and financial pressure by the United States and other nations alarmed by Iran's attitude.

Pentagon leaders have said they would not rule out military action against Iran. But it is not uncommon for U.S. civilian and military leaders to leave "all options on the table," in an often-used phrase, because to rule out military action in advance is seen as admitting a lack of resolve.

Mullen acknowledged that the U.S. military was being stretched thin by the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, "it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability." As for Iranian motives, Mullen said he believed the leadership in Tehran hopes for a weak Iraq, so that Iran can increase its influence in the region.

Moreover, deep resentment remains in Iran toward the United States, which until the Iranian revolution in 1979 long supported the repressive regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Cold War. The current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has shown little indication of wanting better relations with Washington.

Mullen said Iranian influence in Iraq goes beyond shipment of weapons. "They continue to train Iraqis in Iran to come back and fight Americans and the coalition," he said. Reiterating earlier accusations, he asserted that Iranian leaders "continue to broadly support terrorists in other parts of the region," including the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

"And in fact, we're seeing some evidence that they're supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan," Mullen said.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting."

We read this sort of reporting where?   In the International Herald Tribune and Reuters, which distribute their news mostly overseas.

Is the mainstream-media truth-tropic enough to stay with the "let's negotiate with Iran" story long enough to find out whether it worked? 

Of course not. 

It's not "newsworthy" unless (let's say it all together) it confirms the biases of the people who make decisions in the mainstream press.

These people are savvy enough, they think, to believe that admitting when they're wrong to their public would impair their credibility.

The opposite is true.  When the CIA admits that their intelligence gathering prior to the war may have been flawed (that's never been proven, by the way, and indications are that even Joe Wilson's news flash about uranium sales from Niger was crap and that there were sales of yellowcake from Niger that could have ended up through intermediaries in Iraq), this is taken as proof that there's something wrong with their process.

The truth is not so simple.  CIA is to be commended for publishing the outcome of their in-house analysis.   The willingness to question the validity of one's methods and conclusions is truth-tropic, scientific behavior. However....

There are people in CIA who were gaming the situation all along to make Bush look bad.  These people at the very least were guilty of malfeasance and should have been sacked.  Instead, their opinions were reported as fact by the press when their motivations should have been questioned just as closely as the Administration's were.  Joe Wilson himself should have had to explain many irregularities in his reports to CIA from Niger, his appointment to do the investigation there in the first place, and his statements afterward.

In reporting the aftermath of Wilson's "mission" and the railroading of Scooter Libby on contrived charges unrelated to the original accusations against him, Big Press has been anything but truth-tropic.

Joe Wilson declared early on in the media circus that he intended to have Karl Rove "frog-walked out of the White House" under arrest.  Clear evidence of malice and a poisonous agenda.  Has anyone ever held Wilson's feet to the fire about this?  Of course not.

During prosecutor Fitzgerald's series of show trials directed at West Wing staffers under Rove, had anyone influential in Big Media questioned the propriety of pursuing the investigation once it became clear that Richard Armitage and not Karl Rove had been the person responsible for revealing that Wilson's wife worked for CIA? Of course not.

In the precincts of Big Press there anything approaching a clamor to know why Scooter Libby is going to jail for some inaccuracies in his testimony - when Bill Clinton got by with a slap on the wrist for lying outright under sworn testimony in order to conceal his activities as a sexual predator? Of course not.
____ 

And will Big Press return to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and the rest of the terror-enabling caucus to ask them why negotiating with the Iranians has not had the effect they predicted?  Of course not.

For that to happen, Big Press would need to be inexorably guided by a sense of responsibility to the public which depends on them for information, and objectivity, candor, a professional ethic inclining them toward looking critically at the facts before reporting on them.   Are they?

Of course not.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 9:51 PM MDT

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Mood:  mischievious

"O nobly born, at this time thou will see visions of males and females in sexual union.  Meditate upon them with great fervency.... "

from the Third (Sidpa) Bardo, Tibetan Book of the Dead

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 6:57 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Quoted from:

http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/jimmy_carter/2008/04/21/89639.html

"The Real Jimmy Carter," by Ronald Kessler

(good alternative title: Newsmax DOES get it right every now and then)

Monday, April 21, 2008 8:47 AM

"As former President Jimmy Carter met with Hamas leaders and laid a wreath at the tomb of terrorist Yasser Arafat, Americans were wondering who Carter really is.

Carter came into office portraying himself as a man of the people, a peanut farmer who cares about the problems of working class Americans. But Secret Service agents, Air Force One stewards, and White House residence staff saw an entirely different picture.

While Richard Nixon was known to the Secret Service as the strangest modern president, Carter was known as the least likeable. If the true measure of a man is how he treats the little people, Carter flunked the test. Inside the White House, Carter treated those who helped and protected him with contempt.

“When Carter first came there, he didn’t want the police officers and agents looking at him or speaking to him when he went to the office,” Nelson Pierce, an assistant White House usher, told me for my book "Inside the White House: The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Institutions." “He didn’t want them to pay attention to him going by. I never could understand why. He was not going to the Oval Office without shoes or a robe.”

“We never spoke unless spoken to,” said Fred Walzel, who was chief of the White House branch of the Secret Service Uniformed Division. “Carter complained that he didn’t want them [the officers] to say hello.”

“Carter came into the cockpit once in the two years I was on with him,” James A. Buzzelli, an Air Force One flight engineer, told me. “But [Ronald] Reagan never got on or off without sticking his head in the cockpit and saying, ‘Thanks, fellas,’ or ‘Have a nice day.’ He [Reagan] was just as personable in person as he came across to the public.”

What follows, though, condemns Carter to me as the foulest parasite and traitor ever to occupy the White House - when he was on vacation, the Russians could easily have destroyed the United States without fear of retaliation, because Carter refused to have the "nuclear football," the vital link to our Strategic Air Command and other nuclear retaliatory forces, with him. 

"Meanwhile, Carter refused to carry out the most important responsibility a president has — to be available to take action in case of nuclear attack. When he went on vacation, “Carter did not want the 'nuclear football' at Plains,” a Secret Service agent said (the "nuclear football" is a briefcase used by the president to authorize the use of nuclear weapons when away from fixed command centers). “There was no place to stay in Plains. The military wanted a trailer there. He didn’t want that. So the military aide who carries the football had to stay in Americus,” 10 miles away from Carter’s home in Georgia.

Because of the agreed-upon protocols, in the event of a nuclear attack, Carter could not have launched a counterattack by calling the aide in Americus.

“He would have had to drive 10 miles,” the agent said. “Carter didn't want anyone bothering him on his property. He wanted his privacy. He was really different.”

Through his lawyer, Terrence B. Adamson, Carter denied that he refused to keep the nuclear football near him in Plains and that he instructed uniformed officers not to say hello to him in the White House.

But Bill Gulley, who, as director of the White House military office, was in charge of the operation, confirmed that Carter refused to let the military aide stay near his residence.

“We tried to put a trailer in Plains near the residence for the doctor [who travels with the president] and the aide with the football,” Gulley said. “But Carter wouldn’t permit that. Carter didn’t care at all.”

If the Soviets had known about this criminal refusal of James Earl Carter to execute the duties of his office as Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces, it would have been feasible at the very least for them to destroy America with little or no fear that a retaliatory strike would fall on them, except possibly from our submarine ballistic missile force, whose main task is to exact nuclear vengeance in the case of a surprise attack.

But the whole purpose of maintaining a triad of bombers, land-based missiles and submarine-launched missiles, the sole justification for all that expense, is deterrence.  All of that is supposed to assure any nuclear-armed enemy that there is absolutely no chance of surviving a nuclear attack on the United States of America, because the President would then order retaliation of an appropriate nature on being informed of the attack. 

Which, during the Carter Administration, would have been impossible when Carter was on vacation on his property in Georgia - by his express order.  He and the "football," his main link with both NORAD, our source of early warning of a nuclear attack, and with the Strategic Air Command, which was the agency tasked with retaliating against a nuclear aggressor, would have been ten miles away from each other.

Carter — codenamed Deacon by the Secret Service — was moody and mistrustful.

“When he was in a bad mood, you didn’t want to bring him anything,” a former Secret Service agent said. “It was this hunkered down attitude: ‘I’m running the show.’ It was as if he didn’t trust anyone around him. He had that big smile, but when he was in the White House, it was a different story.”

“Carter said, ‘I’m in charge,’” a former Secret Service agent said. “‘Everything is my way.’ He tried to micromanage everything. You had to go to him about playing on the tennis court. It was ridiculous.”

One day, Carter noticed water gushing out of a grate outside the White House.

“It was the emergency generating system,” said William Cuff, an assistant chief of the White House military office. “Carter got interested in that and micromanaged it. He would zoom in on an area and manage the hell out of it. He asked questions of the chief usher every day. ‘How much does this cost?’ ‘Which part is needed?’ ‘When is it coming?’ ‘Which bolt ties to which flange?’”

At a press conference, Carter denied reports that White House aides had to ask him for permission to use the tennis courts. But that was more dissembling. In fact, even when he was traveling on Air Force One, Carter insisted that aides ask him for permission to play on the courts.

“It is a true story about the tennis courts,” said Charles Palmer, who was chief of the Air Force One stewards. Because other aides were afraid to give Carter the messages asking for permission, Palmer often wound up doing it.

“He [Carter] approved who played from on the plane,” Palmer said. “Mostly people used them when he was out of town. If the president was in a bad mood, the aides said, ‘You carry the message in.’ On the bad days when we were having problems, no one wanted to talk to the president. It was always, ‘I have a note to deliver to the president. I don’t want him hollering at me.’”

Palmer said Carter seemed to relish the power. At times, Carter would delay his response, smugly saying, “I’ll let them know,” Palmer said. “Other times, he would look at me and smile and say, ‘Tell them yes.’ I felt he felt it was a big deal. I didn’t understand why that had to happen.”

Early in his presidency, Carter proclaimed that the White House would be “dry.” Each time a state dinner was held, the White House made a point of telling reporters that no liquor — only wine — would be served.

“The Carters were the biggest liars in the world,” Gulley said. “The word was passed to get rid of all the booze. There can’t be any on Air Force One, in Camp David, or in the White House. This was coming from close associates of the Carter family. I said to our White House military people, ‘Hide the booze, and let’s find out what happens.’ The first Sunday they are in the White House, I get a call from the mess saying, ‘They want bloody marys before going to church. What should I do?’ I said, ‘Find some booze and take it up to them.’”

“We never cut out liquor under Carter,” said Palmer, the chief of the Air Force One stewards. “Occasionally, Carter had a martini,” Palmer said. He also had a Michelob lite. “Rosalynn may have had a drink . . . She had a screwdriver.”

Towards the end of his term, Carter became suspicious that people were stealing things and listening to his conversations in the Oval Office.

“They were becoming very paranoid,” said a General Services Administration (GSA) building manager in charge of maintenance of the west wing. “They thought GSA or the Secret Service were listening in.”

One afternoon, Susan Clough, Carter’s secretary, insisted that some of the crude oil in a vial had been stolen from the Oval Office. The vial was a gift to Carter from an Arab leader.

“Susan Clough swore up and down that someone poured some of it out,” a GSA manager said. Even though the vial was sealed, “There was a big fuss over it. The Secret Service photographs everything in the president’s suite. They photographed it [again], and it hadn’t been touched. It shows the paranoia.”

There was more in Kessler's article, but it just embellishes the picture we get of Carter in office - an egotistical buffoon, a lying hypocrite (I didn't mind the man's sanctimoniousness about his faith nearly as much until finding out that he and his wife braced themselves for Sunday services with Bloody Marys...  ), but worst of all, a traitor to his country who placed his personal comfort and peculiarities ahead of the security of his people.

Kessler's closing, however, deserves repeating:

"In telling Iran-supported Hamas that it should stop its rocket attacks on Israel, Carter no doubt thought he was still sitting on Air Force One, savoring the power of letting aides know when they could use the tennis courts."

And anyone who thinks that the terrorists paid this self-important, overeducated moron any attention at all is even more foolish than Carter himself.

Carter was the best thing to happen to the Soviets while he was in office; he is now worth his weight in gold to the Iranians.

Come to think of it, Carter was worth more to the Iranian radicals than he was to us back during the hostage crisis - his micromanagement of the rescue mission probably hampered our Special Operations Forces to the point where it made the compound failures which led to its failure much more likely. 

When the Chump-in-Chief is jogging your elbow every minute, it becomes much easier to overlook a thousand details, each of which can scuttle a time-critical secret mission in enemy territory.  Did FDR tell Eisenhower his business every minute during the lead-up to the Normandy invasion?  No.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 6:29 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 25 April 2008 6:46 PM MDT

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I am going to dissect a recent newsmax.com article in this post, because bad coverage of a good story is not restricted to the 'mainstream media.'  Often news outlets that seem to 'get it' get intellectually lazy, or just plain clueless. 

This seems to be the case increasingly with newsmax.com. 

While they do have it right that most news outlets seem to have given up on reporting and simply pass on press releases from their favorite politicians after a little editing, newsmax.com has fallen into the trap of doing the very same thing, just from the conservative standpoint.  Not good.

Whatever credibility conservatism has comes from a willingness to look at the truth unblinkingly and report what is really there.  That was the basis of what was good in the Reagan Revolution; failure to stick with telling the truth was what got the Reagan Revolution in trouble - we eventually replaced one set of blinders (from the left-leaning media) for another, equally bad set of blinders that allowed us to get good and lost. 

Reasonable people may - and do - disagree on how and in what we way we got lost.  Part of the problem is that Ronald Reagan was not God, despite any intimations to the contrary.  A great man who saved his country - yes, but only because his countrymen had gone through hell after trusting Jimmy Carter and the Democratic party with their futures and having gotten screwed in return. 

They were ready to be saved, and Reagan had a good plan to get us out of trouble.  He succeeded more than we had a right to expect - but he also let his wife get her mitts on the levers of power and run good men out of the West Wing; and by consenting to arms talks with Gorbachev, he compromised our national defense to a serious degree.  Trust me, the Russians can lay waste to Europe and the US just as conveniently with their current ICBM arsenal and the new generation of cruise missiles they were working on long before Putin's tantrum over missile defense as they could before Gorbachev and Reagan agreed to get rid of "battlefield nukes."  All because he wanted a bump in the polls and some props from the mainstream press.

Well, Reagan got his accolades from the mainstream - after his health took him out of play as a serious threat to liberalism.  The only Reagan the liberals could tolerate was one who could barely speak, because Ronald Reagan in the old days made the liberals shudder every time he got in front of an open mike.  He knew his public better than all the people around him, right, left, or center, and he led us back from national oblivion.

Fast forward past the miseries of the intervening years - two generations of spineless Bushes in the White House, separated by two terms of a shameless sexual predator controlled by a worse harridan than Nancy Reagan ever dreamed of being, and who is now in serious running to be President herself (at least we were never in danger of Nancy Reagan having control over the Button... ).

Since Reagan, no one with serious leadership skills or rapport with the public has come forward to be considered with two exceptions:

- Joe Lieberman, who was handicapped by a pervasive streak of anti-Semitism that is unfortunately all too alive and well here in the United States (the drawback to having a vibrant, living national culture is that idiots and loudmouths of all political stripes get the same freedoms of speech reasonable people enjoy - but it's a drawback I can live with, given how the alternative works even in democracies like the UK and Canada);

- and John McCain, handicapped mainly by a metastatic ego and willingness to walk across the aisle and cooperate with liberals to a degree that put our Constitutional rights in jeopardy (including freedom of speech when backed by all but the right kind of money - McCain - Feingold "Campaign Reform" allowed George Soros and the Ketchup Lady to push truly awesome amounts of left-wing money into politics in the 2004 Presidential election while muzzling most of the traditional GOP funding sources - some campaign reform there, buddy).

But this has given us a weathervane-like oscillation between two sets of political hacks, neither of which has exactly helped the country get through its challenges intact.   The press would have us believe that the hacks are the GOOD part of the picture, and would have us believe that the alternative to trusting them is Ralph Nader and points loonier on the Left and Pat Robertson and dimmer bulbs on the Right.  (There was a public-service ad featuring Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson on a seashore beach, and all I could think is "Where's Jaws when you really need him?")

Getting to the point, newsmax.com sits off to the far right edge of the weathervane's range of travel.  From there, they can see much that you miss if you stuck to the major network news organizations and PBS in the way of facts (the truths that Al Gore would find inconvenient).  They also jump the shark, not infrequently.

Iran is their latest shark - a nasty brute, to be sure.  But let's look at a brand-new article from their site on the subject (I'm indenting their text and interspersing my own comments on it in regular margins):

"Ross Issues Urgent Warning on Iran

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 1:31 PM

The U.S. and its allies probably have no more than a year to take action against Iran before that nation acquires nuclear weapons, warns Dennis Ross, an architect of the Mideast peace process.

By 2009, Iran “could be a nuclear power, if not a nuclear weapon state, said Ross, who served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East envoy under President Bill Clinton.

(OK, tell me in ten words or less the difference between "a nuclear power" and "a nuclear weapons state." 

There IS no difference. 

West Germany and Japan both have great big nuclear power and engineering industries, but neither of them is a "nuclear power."  Neither is South Africa, which WAS a nuclear power in the past by virtue of owning nuclear weapons and still has a promising nuclear power industry.  

Being a "nuclear power" is inextricably tied to ownership and control of nuclear weapons.  The US and UK are the only formal "nuclear powers" in NATO because the nuclear weapons of France are not in the NATO military command structure. 

Mr. Ross, if he really said the paragraph that he was quoted as saying, is a dimbulb who draws a distinction which does not exist in reality.)

If not stopped by next year, Iran will have “crossed the threshold of stockpiling fissionable material,” Ross said in remarks to Toronto’s Shaarei Shomayim Congregation that were reported by the Canadian Jewish News."

(So Mr. Ross is dishing red meat to an uncritical audience, very possibly well compensated to do so. 

When's the last time a hot news story broke in the parish hall of your local church, folks?)

“Once they cross that threshold, we’re going to be in a different ball game. We have to approach this with a high degree or urgency. We’re running out of time.”

Not only did Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vow to “wipe Israel off the map,” but former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami has stated that it would “take only one bomb” to annihilate Israel, Ross told the gathering.

“Is that their intention?” he asked. “Can you ignore what they say?”

(You can just about hear the babushkas' sharp intake of breath at this point. 

This guy's got an agenda.  If he was delivering this message in a meeting room full of people who look at these data for a living, the sound you'd be hearing would be raucous laughter of a bitter sort.

The point is not whether to ignore what they say, but what to DO.  Whole 'nother story.  Does Mr. Ross expect these folks to rush back home, Email their MPs and demand that Canada join the US and EU3 in doing something they haven't said they were going to do yet?)

"Ross helped the Israelis and Palestinians reach the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, facilitated the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, and also worked on talks between Israel and Syria."

(And this is a... positive employment reference?  Sorry, but I wouldn't put that on MY resume, given how badly those agreements have worked out.

Especially to an audience which presumably might resent how badly Israel got screwed as a result of holding up their end of the deal while the Arabs cheat on it every chance they get, and are publicly cynical about doing so when they're speaking their own language.)

"Regarding Iran, he said the country is vulnerable to economic pressure because it derives 85 percent of its export revenue from oil, and squeezing Iran’s oil revenue can push the “not very popular” regime into abandoning its nuclear weapons efforts, according to the Jewish News.

(But Iran's not selling their OPEC quota right now and hasn't for a while.  Even if this were not the case, they could find ready buyers even if - going from the fact that this guy is talking at synagogues in Canada - Canada suddenly closed their borders to Iranian goods of any sort.  Just what does this guy expect to happen?)

"But there are clear signs that the Bush administration will not wait that long and military action is imminent.

As Newsmax reported in mid-April, a leading member of America’s Jewish community disclosed that a military strike on Iran was likely, and said Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent trip through the Middle East should be seen as preparation for the U.S. attack.

The source also told Newsmax that Israel “is preparing for heavy casualties,” expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution following a U.S. strike.

And Saudi Arabia is reportedly taking emergency steps in preparing to counter any radioactive hazards that may result from an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities."

None of this is really news, or is changed in any way by what Mr. Ross said.

This is a story about a speech by a guy who was once part of the traveling circus Clinton called a Middle East negotiating team waxing emotional for a very sympathetic audience (who, to do them credit, could probably have negotiated a better deal for the Israelis than Ehud Barak did when he was doing the job). 

It doesn't satisfy the leading criteria I look for in "news":

- something I don't already know from 

- more authoritative sources

- in a relatively objective and significant setting.

If Mr. Ross had been speaking to people who were in a position to comment critically on what he said, it would have been one thing.  But he wasn't.  He was in the reception hall of a local religious organization, speaking to people with no particular connection to nuclear proliferation policy or theory.

I submit that a serious news organization could find better copy than this with no trouble at all, just by combing the Internet web sites of serious organizations that make the news every so often.

Even the politically-active news mags on either side of the political divide (and they all take sides to some extent, at least on some subjects) have higher standards for the sort of stories they run with. 

For an example, while the "Weekly Standard" is pretty much what hard-leftist morons rant about when they say "neo-con" and mean "influential Jews," nothing as pointless as the article I just found above from newsmax.com is liable to appear outside Kristol's editorial page.

So what does that make newsmax.com?  Apart from guys who run very large advertisements for what are sometimes very questionable products? 

You decide.  I basically sift it every now and then for the occasional topaz or red beryl (no pun intended) in a ton of tailings.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:47 PM MDT

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Revoke Carter's passport

(as posted by Bruce Tefft on the Yahoo group "Open Source Intelligence")

Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:38 am (PDT)

"He gave me a hug. We hugged each other, and it was a warm reception," Shaer said. "Carter asked what he can do to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel ... and I told him the possibility for peace is high."

But the heaviest criticism for Carter came over a meeting on Friday and Saturday with Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshal. The U.S. has designated Meshal, who is said to be responsible for the deaths of more than two dozen Americans, a terrorist.

Carter also met with Meshal's deputy, Moussa Abu Marzouk, also a fugitive terrorist wanted by the U.S.

In addition, Carter laid a wreath at the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"His actions reward terrorists lend support, and provide legitimacy to their belief that violence will eventually get them what they want," said Myrick, founder and co-chair of the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus.

Congress granted the Secretary of State the power to grant and verify passports. In 1981, the United States Supreme Court held in the case of Haig v. Agee that the Secretary of State has the implied power to revoke passports as well, noted Myrick spokesman Andy Polk.

Another U.S. lawmaker introduced legislation Wednesday to strip Carter's Georgia-based scholarly institution of taxpayer support.

And a third lawmaker presented a non-binding resolution that would urge former presidents from "freelance diplomacy" in direct response to Carter's visit.

"America must speak with one voice against our terrorist enemies," Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., said in a statement. "It sends a fundamentally troubling message when an American dignitary is engaged in dialogue with terrorists. My legislation will make sure that taxpayer dollars are not being used to support discussions or negotiations with terrorist groups."

Knollenberg said the Carter Center has received about $19 million in taxpayer funds since 2001. The Center is housed at Emory University in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, the non-binding legislation was forwarded by Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa.

If adopted, the bill would express the "sense of Congress" that it "disapproves of former President Jimmy Carter's freelance diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, which contradict the stated foreign policy position of the current Administration."

At least two fellow Democrats also frowned on Carter's meetings with Hamas leaders.

Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Mideast subcommittee, wrote Carter imploring him not to meet with any more Hamas officials.

"This visit will undermine the Middle East peace process and damage the credibility of Palestinian moderates," they wrote, adding that the "legitimacy and prestige that Hamas will derive from your visit will be seen in the region as a clear demonstration that violence pays.

Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., told Fox News: "I don't think Israel should try to negotiate with Hamas because Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist."

Davis added that Carter's overtures undermined a tradition of support for Israel in America.

On Tuesday, more than 50 House members wrote Carter urging him to not meet with Meshal, calling him the man behind the deaths of 26 Americans.

Carter, speaking briefly with Fox News on Wednesday, said the search for Mideast peace should include reaching out to groups such as Hamas. The former president was the broker of Israel's peace treaty with Egypt three decades ago.

"I'm going to try to get Syria to be constructive in the entire peace process, that would include Iraq and Lebanon, as well," he said.

Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom he praised as a man who fought for "just causes" in the world. 

The Bush administration and many Israelis blame Arafat for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed.

President Bush did not visit Arafat's mausoleum in Ramallah when he visited earlier this year."

 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 5:04 PM MDT

Updated: Monday, 21 April 2008 5:14 PM MDT

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Mood:  irritated

Quoted from Aaron Klein of World Net Daily:

"Hamas terrorists join Jimmy Carter fan club
Top political adviser calls ex-prez 'noble person who can achieve something no one else can'

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

JERUSALEM – Former President Jimmy Carter is a "noble person" whose planned meeting with Hamas would help the terror organization "engage with the world community," Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas' top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, told WND today in an exclusive interview.
 
"Carter can achieve something no one else can. He is open-minded and has a very noble cause to come and meet with all people," said Yousuf, the chief political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed prime minister of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
 
Yousuf, who is usually the Hamas figure responsible for coordinating meetings with foreign officials, said Carter "should get credit because he is the one who really understands the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict and knows what is needed to achieve peace."
 
He indicated Carter's visit could help end Hamas' international isolation.
 
"If he comes and meets Hamas, this will also enhance the image and understanding between America and the Muslim world," said Yousuf, speaking by phone from Gaza. "Carter's visit is a good step and a positive step in the right direction. It would engage with the world community. To what degree he succeeds depends on the people in Europe and the U.S."
 
Yousuf blasted the Bush administration for "trying to block every attempt to lift sanctions against Hamas."
 
He accused "Zionists" and U.S. Jewish groups of "trying to sabotage [Carter's Middle East] trip ... . Some reports said American Jewish groups tried to stigmatize him with being connected to terrorism or working against Jewish ambitions at home."
 
Asked if he believes Democrats would engage Hamas if the party takes the White House next year, Yousuf replied, "I do believe Democrats will make a drastic change in American foreign policy. I hope they are able to fix the damage done by [President] Bush and the Republicans and engage again in a very positive way with the Arab and Muslim world, where most of their vital interests lie."
 
Yousuf slammed Bush for "engaging in a terrible crusade against the Muslim world."
 
According to reports, Carter is planning to meet in Syria with Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal, who resides in Damascus.
 
The U.S. and Israel have been trying to isolate Hamas, which is classified by the State Department as a terror group. It is responsible for scores of deadly suicide bombings, and thousands of shooting attacks and rocket firings against Israeli civilian population centers.
 
The State Department says it twice advised Carter against meeting any Hamas representative.
 
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Carter for his planning meeting with Hamas.

"I find it hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is, in fact, the impediment to peace," Rice said.

Carter arrived in Israel today in a stop on a wider regional tour, but he was mostly shunned by Israeli leaders. A schedule released by the U.S.-based Carter Center showed no plans for the former president to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
 
Carter did meet Israeli President Shimon Peres in a low key talk that was closed to members of the media. 
 
Israel's Haaretz daily newspaper quoted sources in Peres' office stating the Israeli president rebuked Carter over his last book, titled, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," in which he claimed Israel was an apartheid state, and told Carter his activities in the Israeli-Palestinian arena in recent years caused grave damage to Israel and to the peace process.
 
The former president is defending his plan to meet with Hamas.
 
"I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative and to find out what their attitude is,'' Carter said on the ABC News program "This Week.''
 
"If Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, Hamas will have to be included in the process," he said.

Carter told ABC his aim during his Middle East trip is "to promote peace in the region.''

Does anyone remember that when Jimmy Carter went to North Korea to promote peace in THAT region, not only did North Korea violate every provision of the resulting treaties they physically could, but they now have equipped Iran with a three-stage missile that could easily be used to hit targets in an arc ranging from Casablanca to Berlin (something of which Vladimir Putin could hardly fail to be aware as he sells the Iranians things to put on top of that missile). 

The words "Jimmy Carter" and "world peace" go together like "Adolf Hitler" and "bar mitzvah," at least from the cause-and-effect standpoint. 

This probably explains why Carter's the Arab world's favorite infidel who deserves only to be beheaded if he does not renounce a faith which worships a brother of pigs and apes.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:41 PM MDT

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Mood:  irritated

Hamas terrorists make 2008 U.S. presidential pick
Cite need for change, excuse opposition to Carter meeting

_____

Posted: April 14, 2008
10:09 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
C 2008 WorldNetDaily

Sen. Barack Obama (Courtesy Carrie Devorah)

JERUSALEM - On the eve of a planned meeting with former President Jimmy Carter, the isolated Hamas terrorist organization has expressed "hope" Sen. Barack Obama will win the presidential elections and "change" America's foreign policy.

"We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections," Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas' top political adviser in the Gaza Strip, said in an exclusive interview with WND and with the John Batchelor Show on WABC Radio in New York.

"I hope Mr. Obama and the Democrats will change the political discourse. ...I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principal (sic). And he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance," Yousuf said, speaking from Gaza.

Yousuf, the Hamas figure usually responsible for coordinating meetings with foreign officials, told WND
www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61496 earlier that Carter's planned meeting this week with Hamas would help the terror organization "engage with the world community."

"Carter can achieve something no one else can. He is open-minded and has a very noble cause to come and meet with all people," said Yousuf."

Well, that confirms something I've been saying all along (let's glide past the obvious comment that Carter's open mind allowed his brain to escape from his head somewhere on the way to the North Korean nuclear weapons negotiations in the 1990s) - 

Barack Obama = Jimmy Carter (plus fifty IQ points, apparently used for charm and plausibility).

Any questions? 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 7:30 PM MDT

Updated: Wednesday, 16 April 2008 8:37 PM MDT

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Mood:  irritated

From an Email my wife forwarded to me from her office: 

"WHERE TO BUY GAS WITHOUT FUNDING TERROR...

Gas rationing in the 80's worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us!

The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor. An interesting thought is to boycott their GAS. Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis. 

Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. 
 
I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and  which major companies import Middle Eastern oil. 
 
These companies import Middle Eastern oil: 
 
Shell.......................... 205,742,000 barrels 
 
Chevron/Texaco.........144,332,000 barrels 
 
Exxon /Mobil...............130,082,000 barrels 

Marathon/Speedway...117,740,000 barrels  

Amoco........................62,231,000 barrels 
 
Citgo gas is from Venezuela, run by Hugo Chavez, a murdering Communist, Fidel-loving dictator who hates Americans.

If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amounted to over 18 billion dollars.

But the current truth is worse than that because oil is now $90 - $100 a barrel 

That's right - the scum and filth who had 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11 and sent the cowardly little turd who murdered my son in Iraq and eight other troops  with an IED are making about 54 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR from the crude oil they sell us.

___ 

Here are some large companies that DO NOT import Middle Eastern oil: 
 

Sunoco.....................0 barrels 

Conoco/Phillips....0 barrels 

Sinclair.....................0 barrels 

BP..............................0 barrels 

Hess..........................0 barrels 

ARCO........................0 barrels 
 
Sunoco.com has a list of their station locations near you. 

All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is  required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing. 

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers."

PASS THIS ON, PLEASE.   IT'S IMPORTANT IF WE'RE GOING TO BREAK THE TERROR MACHINE.

Be aware, though, that this is unlikely to be as powerful a weapon as the author seems to think it is. 

China would just buy up any oil that we didn't buy on the world market - we have to out-bid them right now on the spot market, just to get oil from overseas.  China is one major reason oil costs over US$100 a barrel. 

However, it would drop the market price for oil on the world market, which would hurt the Arabs.

In fact, if we were able through driving less, using hybrid, ethanol and other biopower, and nuclear-generated electricity to stop importing oil entirely, we would bootstrap our economy into a whole new era of efficiency and profitability.

Just developing inertial confinement fusion power, which can use an isotope of boron which makes up 80 percent of the natural supply as nuclear fuel and may not create nuclear waste at all (since the boron fusion reaction creates no neutrons, and thus makes few radioactive materials), could turn the United States of America back into the leader of the free world in every respect - technology, economic power, military power (an inertial confinement fusion reactor would probably be much easier to build and safer than current nuclear reactor designs, and might be capable of being built small enough to run ships, aircraft and motor vehicles).

We keep not working to our strengths.  This is going to be our undoing if we persist in it.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 6:32 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 25 April 2008 7:50 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

What do we know?

Quoted from "Barack Obama's 'bitter' remarks give Hillary Clinton an opening ahead of Pennsylvania primary, " By Jim Kuhnhenn and Charles Babington of the Associated Press:

"At issue are comments he (Obama) made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

The comments, posted Friday on The Huffington Post Web site, set off a blast of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials, and drew attention to a potential Obama weakness — the image some have that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant and aloof."

I think that Obama went way past "arrogant and aloof." 

Barack Obama is obviously so immersed in that famous racial experience he and his former pastor share that he is indulging in prejudice against people who are not like him.  He is a glib, slick, gladhanding racist.

This isn't as much about arrogance as it is about prejudice.  Obama is so blind to the concerns of "people in those small towns" (which is another way of saying "white people") that he discounts those concerns without having examined them.  

If people in Carmel, Indiana or Peoria, Illinois or Hershey, Pennsylvania, or Thibodaux, Louisiana or Sterling, Colorado don't agree with Obama on gun control (which, since the assault weapons ban elapsed several years back, has been demonstrated to be almost completely unnecessary), economic policy, faith or illegal immigration (which should concern people, considering that it IS a violation of Federal law that Obama's party is trying to help people commit), Obama doesn't need to revisit his ideas - oh, no, it's the fault of those ignorant, inbred crackers out in the sticks who don't even know the real reason they're upset. 

It's our fault.  We're just a bunch of ignorant redneck white trash. 

Back to the story: 

"His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage.

There has been a small "political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through.

"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country." 

After acknowledging his previous remarks in California could have been better phrased, he added:

"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to."

And another thing that is absolutely true is that people don't want to be told that they don't know what they're angry about when it's very clear:

- people are getting away with waltzing across our national border in direct violation of Federal law;

- once here, they steal the identities of American citizens, run up debts in their names, DON'T pay taxes, DO send their kids to school at public expense despite NOT paying taxes, murder, rob, rape and steal at much higher rates than people who are here legally;

- the people who ARE here legally are being deprived of their own legitimate rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be secure in their possessions and property against greedy land developers who pay city councils off in order to run folks off of their land through abuse of eminent domain; 

- health care is unaffordable to a large part of the populace in great part because one of the largest supporters of the Democratic party, the trial lawyers of America, flood the courts with baseless law suits which are often paid off by hospitals, drug manufacturers and their insurance companies to avoid trials in which exorbitant awards could bankrupt health care providers whether they're guilty or innocent of any wrongdoing - and the cost is passed down to the rest of us, so many of us can't afford health care when we once could...

...the list goes on and on.  We know perfectly well why we're angry - the system is broken and Barack Obama's party had a large part in breaking it.  But it's easier to smugly explain all of that away by talking about bitter people in small towns than to confront the activists and wealthy supporters of one's own party in an election year.  

You can't win the Democratic Party's nomination to the Presidency by admitting that the Democratic Party has, by hook and by crook, sabotaged our own government - so sharp operators like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards could make fortunes by picking up the phone and cashing in favors, or by threatening to bankrupt your local hospital if their insurance company doesn't cough up a few million dollars, forty percent of which a sharp operator like Edwards can keep.  Easy money for the Democratic Party's powerful. 

That's why Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama are so cynical and crooked - she plays exactly the same game he does - she just sugar-coats her quack medicine more palatably.

"Clinton attacked Obama's remarks much more harshly Saturday than she had the night before, calling them "demeaning." Her aides feel Obama has given them a big opening, pulling the spotlight away from troublesome stories such as former President Clinton's recent revisiting of his wife's misstatements about an airport landing in Bosnia 10 years ago.

Obama is trying to focus attention narrowly on his remarks, arguing there's no question that some working-class families are anxious and bitter. The Clinton campaign is parsing every word, focusing on what Obama said about religion, guns, immigration and trade.

Clinton hit all those themes in lengthy comments to manufacturing workers in Indianapolis.

"The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich," she said.

"I also disagree with Senator Obama's assertion that people in this country 'cling to guns' and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration," Clinton added."

That's funny.  The wench never saw a gun control bill she didn't like before....

"People don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."

Exactly why neither Clinton nor Obama belongs in the White House.  They BOTH look down on us as ignorant sheep waiting to be sheared. 

"McCain's campaign piled on Obama, releasing a statement that also accused him of elitism."

Again, pot calling kettle black.  McCain has also played footsy with liberal elitists whenever he thought it would help him... remember "McCain-Feingold"?  The law that gave George Soros and his liberal pals a near-monopoly on access to political advertising in the 2004 election?

"One of Clinton's staunchest supporters, Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., acknowledged there was some truth in Obama's remarks. But he said Republicans would use them against him anyway."

Republicans?  REPUBLICANS?  Bayh (another elitist horse's ass from the Senate) seems oblivious to where 99 percent of the brick bats over Obama's little lapse into saying how he really feels are coming from - the other Democratic candidate.  Not the Republican party.  McCain has hardly said anything - doesn't need to, really.  Hillary's got that target saturated. 

"Political insiders differed on whether Obama's comments, which came to light Friday, would become a full-blown political disaster that could prompt party leaders to try to steer the nomination to Clinton even though Obama has more pledged delegates. Clinton supporters were eagerly hoping so.

They handed out "I'm not bitter" stickers in North Carolina, and held a conference call of Pennsylvania mayors to denounce the Illinois senator. In Indiana, Clinton did the work herself, telling plant workers in Indianapolis that Obama's comments were "elitist and out of touch."

No.  Obama's comments were accurate in that they tell us how the man really feels. 

He does NOT respect the people of America - at least the people who are not like him. 

Barack Obama is himself a patronizing bigot of the worst sort - the kind who believes he is uniquely qualified to run other people's lives for them. 

His remarks about "people in small towns" are very thinly disguised code for "people who don't look like me and who didn't go to an Ivy League school."

"Obama tried to quell the furor Saturday, explaining his remarks while also conceding he had chosen his words poorly.

"If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," Obama said in an interview with the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal."

Not "I'm sorry,' not "I shouldn't have said those stupid things," not "I was out of line and said things I had no business saying," but "I deeply regret that."

"I deeply regret that" is one of those things a politician says when he doesn't regret having done something one bit, but can't afford to admit it. 

Barack Obama has managed to be a sublimely arrogant racist and an insufferable snob at once.  And if the people of this country vote for him we deserve every minute of national agony we will endure afterwards.

Barack Obama is worse than Jimmy Carter because, unlike Carter, Obama is smart enough to really foul things up - like the precocious six-year old who knows how to pull the back cover of the color TV off. 

In a century when countries that can't maintain their own paved roads can purchase nuclear weapons, we don't need snotty, arrogant, bigoted pissants (or psychotic broads with major control issues) in charge.  

McCain may not be the best choice for the job, but he's the best man for the job in the current Presidential election.   In four years, maybe we can get Joe Lieberman to run. 

Until then, it's McCain or national disaster.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 9:37 PM MDT

Updated: Sunday, 13 April 2008 10:05 PM MDT

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(as posted to Open Source Intelligence on yahoo.com by Dietmar Muehlboeck dmuehlboeck@gmx.net)

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 1:18 PM MDT

Updated: Saturday, 12 April 2008 1:24 PM MDT

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