For those of us who are really, really PO'd at having to put Bedouin peasants through medical school on Mars every time we fill our gas tanks, some good, good news (maybe - I'll believe it when I see the "recycled computer gas" pump at my local convenience store):

Quoted from the Register Hardware UK Web site

 

http://tinyurl.com/6zyamf

 

by Austin Modine

"13th May 2008 19:59 GMT

Whether through a force of expanding environmental activism or just compliance with government edicts, the IT sector is in a pinch over how to safely recycle defunct computers and equipment...

(to give you some perspective on exactly how much pain in the wallet this can involve, here in Denver recycling an office computer can run you a cool $20 unless you can convince Goodwill, DAV or some other thrift store charity to pick it up.  A 20" CRT monitor or an old traditional color TV will cost you about up to $40 to drop off at the Denver city dump.) 

...But a team of scientists from Romania and Turkey say they've found a simple and effective method to turn printed circuit boards from discarded IT kit into material suitable as fuel or for industrial use.

The researchers note that the plastic portion of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is particularly tricky to recycle because it contains additives, heavy metals, and extremely toxic flame retardants. (You don't want too much polybrominated diphenyl ethers in your diet if you cherish your liver and brain.) 

In their paper "Feedstock Recycling from the Printed Circuit Boards of Used Computers," the scientists describe using a process of heat and chemical decomposition to destroy or remove almost all of the hazardous toxic compounds. A copy of the paper can be found here. (PDF warning.)

(In other words, downloading this paper might tie your Internet connection up longer than you or the people you live with might like; it's also apt to fill up your hard drive, because PDF files are BIG - typically over a megabyte.  Just giving you a heads-up.) 

The process isn't exactly light reading — but when it's done, what's left of the printed circuit board is pyrolysis oil (or bio-oil), which can be refined in a similar fashion as crude petroleum for fuel or can be used by industries to make other useful chemicals.

Indeed now more than ever, is there anything adding more RAM can't do?"

Yes, there is - the process doesn't pay for itself, smart-ass. 

The downside here is the same problem we have now - we give Waste Management Inc (or whoever) free labor in separating paper from cardboard from plastic from aluminum from steel cans;  some places, we pay extra for the privilege; and THEY get to burn the burnables and generate power or process steam to help run their plant.

And as the community of people who are running their diesel-powered cars on other folks' rancid fryer fat are finding out, this smelly crap is now called "waste vegetable oil" and runs about a buck a gallon, IF you can find a connection.  

There's already a Nigerian Email scam out there offering suck, er, recyclers every sort of used liquid carbohydrate at really good prices.  All you have to do is send them lots of money in advance (plus shipping, handling and customs duties) and sit around waiting for the truck full of 55-gallon drums of flammable gunk to arrive at your house.

So I'm not holding my breath for this to come to a filling station near you or me any time soon.   But word of anything that has a remote chance of spoiling any of the Middle East's whole days deserves to be shared.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 2:20 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 16 May 2008 4:20 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

"If you've got somebody in the White House, someone you know and you have history with, you're going to have results...  "

Barack Obama, speaking to the Teamsters.

Barack Obama has all but promised the Teamsters that he'll lift the close Federal oversight over their operations that has (over a number of years) lifted organized crime's heavy hand of control over the union's finances and operations.

So much for "I'm not about the old politics."  Obama has just demonstrated that he's nothing BUT the "old politics" - and now, he's even chasing the old clients.  I mean, who was the last Presidential contender to make heavy way by dealing with the Teamsters?

Richard Milhous Nixon.

No, Obama's not about the old politics.  He's about the REALLY old politics - open corruption.

Of course, the self-acclaimed "mainstream press" had to make sure that their coverage was even-handed to the extend that Hillary Clinton had to also be implicated in Obama's "footsy with the Teamsters" strategy. 

This has led to a little unintentional self-parody: 

Want to see the mainstream media take on this?

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/category/1208.aspx

"From NBC's Mark Murray
Earlier today, we clipped this Wall Street Journal piece, which asserted that "Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption." We even asked this question: Quid pro quo?

However, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor tells First Read that Obama told the Teamsters his position on ending the government's oversight of the union back in the summer of 2007 -- but the Teamsters didn't endorse Obama until February 20.

(My note: Oh, the Teamsters waited eight months before endorsing Obama.  That makes it all right.  

Boy, were we ever rushing to a conclusion.  Everybody knows that crooked political deals have a strict 60-day time limit. 

Otherwise, people might think that both politicians and crooked union bosses have memories that go back eight months.)

Vietor also passes along a 2004 clip from Crain's Chicago Business, which suggests that Obama favored lifting the government's oversight of the Teamsters back then.

(It's time to hang our heads in shame, people.  We've been completely unfair to Barack Obama - obviously, if Obama had opposed the Federal consent decree imposing independent supervision over the Teamsters right when it went into effect, he'd be completely above suspicion now... 

Seriously, though - is the Obama campaign really asking us to accept that because eight months elapsed between Obama's promise that the Teamsters would "get results" if he were elected President, that there was no issue of a quid pro quo between them?  When, as we'll find out below, he wasn't the only candidate in that particular bidding war?) 

Finally, per Politico's Ben Smith, it seems Clinton also believes that the oversight has run its course. Here's what she said in March: "I am of the opinion that based on what I’ve seen over years of observation, this union has really done a tremendous job in turning itself around. That’s my observation. At some point the past has to be opened. If you screw up in the future, that’ll be a new day, right? That’s the way the system works. But you gotta -- you can’t go around dragging the ball and chain of the past. And I think that’s true for anybody, any organization, any individual, you know, and so I would be very open to looking at that and to saying, what is it we’re trying to accomplish here? And seeing what the answers were because at some point turn the page and go on."

So what does this mean?

That Hillary Clinton's capable of cutting dirty deals with the Teamster leadership, too?  Big surprise.

Also, that it may have taken the Teamsters eight months or more to make up their mind which of the two Democratic front-runners in the 2008 race to support? Would that even be newsworthy?

___ 

Unexplored by Big Press, or even by FoxNews (which arguably, judging from the Nielsen ratings, is even Bigger Press) as far as I can tell, is whether or not John McCain was guilty of the same accommodation with the Teamsters' front office.

Apparently the impulse to be even-handed in coverage of this story weakened and died when it came to what could only be a highly unfavorable comparison between John McCain and both Democratic candidates on the issue of pandering to corrupt union officials.

They'd have to admit that Obama was more mired in "old politics" than John McCain, and more apt to deal with crooks in order to get into the White House. 

Really big surprise. 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 5:03 PM MDT

Updated: Monday, 5 May 2008 9:06 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Ever wonder how to make a real difference in the war against terror for less than the price of a decent shotgun?  Wonder no more, mon frère - you can get an E-85 conversion kit for less than $370 for YOUR car!

E-85, for those who don't know, is a motor fuel made from 85 percent ethanol (grain alcohol, made from the fermentation of corn and other grains) and 15 percent gasoline. 

With the proper modifications (in cars built in the past 20 years, we're talking about changes to the fuel-injection computer and some of the hardware) a car can be modified to be "flex-fuel" capable - running either on regular gasoline or E-85 (which is up to a dollar a gallon cheaper than regular gas).  American car manufacturers have been selling "flex-fuel" cars for a while now. 

The news you can use, that the big media aren't talking about very loud, it that you can convert your existing car to flex-fuel operation for a few hundred dollars.  Do the math yourself - if you use a hundred gallons a month and the conversion kit costs four hundred dollars, payback comes at four months.  After that, you save a hundred dollars a month.

An outfit here in metropolitan Denver makes and sells these EPA-certified devices.  That's right - the US Environmental Protection Agency has checked these conversion kits out and found that not only do they work, they won't ruin your car.  You don't have to buy a whole new car to use E-85 fuel!

Check out the story at this link: 

 http://www.change2e85.com/servlet/Page?template=Injectortypesearch

The great news about these kits is that you don't have to own a new car to use them.  These units will work with cars built as long ago as 1990.   Great news for my wife and me, we'd be VERY happy to retro-fit our 1991 Subaru to burn E-85, which is almost a buck cheaper than the cheapest regular gas here in metro Denver!   Even better news for a friend of ours who bought a hybrid gas/electric car not long ago and would like to run E-85 in it... her savings in fuel would be astronomical (even with the slight decrease in miles per gallon due to the lower energy content of E-85, she'd be cutting her fuel bill by a third).

But what about the long list of objections the self-described "mainstream press" (which, of course, takes billions in advertising fees from Big Oil) nurses along against E-85?

There's an equally long list of facts that shoot these myths and exaggerations down.   The folks who make these conversion kits have compiled a list of them on their Web site:

http://www.change2e85.com/servlet/Page?template=Myths

As this entry gets pushed down my blog, you'll still be able to access the Web page on the links bar at the right of this page.   My way of helping the country break free of its current addiction to foreign oil.

So far, flex-fuel has taken the place of five BILLION dollars' worth of foreign oil - and that's mainly due to the relatively tiny fleet of new production flex-fuel cars on the roads up to the present.  

If EVERYONE who wanted to (or has to) hang on to their existing car or truck installed one of these kits:

- we'd all be better off financially to the tune of how much cheaper ethanol is than gasoline (and THAT'S improving constantly as corn refineries manage to sell both ethanol AND starches, sugars and animal feed from the same crop of corn);

- the additional billions of dollars which go to the Middle East would stay here in the hands of farmers and the people who sell things to farmers here in America (new factories for John Deere, anyone?)

 - and the people who give Osama bin Laden walking-around money would have to take care of their own urgent financial problems.  (EVIL, EVIL GRIN).

Take some time to learn the truth about the degree to which ethanol can be made at the same time and from the same corn as corn sugars and starches for the food industry and animal feed for our cattlemen. 

Then decide whether or not to invest in your own future and that of your country. 

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:38 AM MDT

Updated: Monday, 5 May 2008 7:45 PM MDT

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Mood:  celebratory

As I write this, I am watching that wacky old cowboy Don Imus on RFD-TV, Channel 231 on Dish satellite TV.  It’s good to see him back on the air.

You might recall that Imus was fired with considerable fanfare and to-do from his nationally-syndicated radio show for referring to members of a collegiate women’s basketball team as “nappy ‘ho’s,” a term he might been forgiven for thinking was unexceptional for its prevalence  and that of similar terms among college athletes and other people besides Don Imus.  But Imus blundered into the crime of thinking that he could use words which everyone on campus uses – and thereby hung a hapless old white guy from a rhetorical noose of much ado about damn little. 

Imus was a man about it, though; he apologized to the ladies concerned sincerely and profusely, to just about everyone to whom he could conceivably owe an apology and to several folks to whom he didn’t even owe an apology.  And Imus still lost his job as a radio host while Howard Stern makes a wonderful living on satellite radio interviewing assorted people who you’d lock your car doors if you saw them heading toward you at a busy intersection.  Stern's conversational style, if you've missed his show, resembles nothing so much as an acute episode of Tourette's Syndrome. 

Mr. Imus has another radio show now, and I’m watching him produce it in his studio from the “RFD-TV” satellite TV channel (RFD-TV has carved out a warm place in my heart for their coverage of vintage railroad train lines such as the Ohio Central on their “Trains and Locomotives” show).  

He also has an entertaining little teletype-like series of text news highlights running across the bottom of his show’s screen (one of his news items: “Bill and Hillary Clinton reportedly make ‘substantial’ donation to Chicago church where Jeremiah Wright was pastor. Campaign says Clintons feel sense of obligation and gratitude…  ” was the least they could do.”).

You have to admire Imus’s sense of humor, even if he manages to wedge one of his size twelve cowboy boots in his mouth every now and then.  I’d rather, though, listen to a fellow who comes out and says what’s on his mind without giving you a pressurized political spiel than, say, to Brian Williams or Chris Matthews. 

_____

Right now, Imus has got Kinky Friedman (the state of Texas’ answer to Will Rogers) on the phone line, who has just described the relationship between Rev. Wright and Sen. Obama as “another example of black-on-black crime.”

More from Kinky Friedman… “Looking at the vote here in El Paso County, we’re isolated geographically, pretty pure politically… El Paso County is sending over 120 delegates to the Democratic national convention, and almost all of them are voting for Hillary Clinton… I think there’s just one Hispanic delegate left voting for Obama, and that’s Bill Richardson… “ 

I think that this is a fair assessment of the situation here in Denver – the people who actually are citizens here in the US who are of Hispanic heritage seem to be Clinton loyalists – Obama’s appeal seems restricted to the far left, the star-struck devotees of the trendy and the politically glamorous, and his fellow African-Americans.  Nothing wrong about that as such – although if former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards were able to overcome the restriction against convicted felons running for the Presidency, I still wouldn’t vote for him despite the fact we’re both Cajuns.  Ethnic loyalty only gets you so far, and Mr. Edwards pardoned a convicted murderer from Angola State Prison who went on to shoot a cousin and childhood friend of mine in cold blood during a robbery of a restaurant.

Friedman and Imus then rehashed the wonderful study in contrasts between the press’ treatment of Imus and Wright’s respective verbal missteps – Imus raised something like three hundred million dollars for his ranch for sick children on his radio show, no one disputes this, which is some impressive context – and it was totally disregarded by the politically-correct lynch mob of the press and the political left.  Yet Barack Obama (who was in the forefront of those calling for Don Imus’ professional ruin over a single half-witted joke) demanded that Wright’s foul-mouthed, treasonous tirades be excused in the context of his supposed good works – until Wright shamelessly repeated all of his bigotry and his whack-o conspiracy theories about AIDS and crack before the NAACP and the National Press Club.

After a brief pause, Friedman sighed.  “We’ve come a long, long way from Martin Luther King, haven’t we?  Now we’ve come to Rev. Wright, Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson.  I mean, Martin Luther King was a man of true compassion, true courage, he was a true Christian, who never would give in to hatred, and this is where we’ve gotten ourselves…  that’s a long journey, and it’s twenty years of it were shared by Obama and Rev. Wright.”

______

Obama is right on one thing – perspective IS important.  Context IS important.

One careless remark – what Don Imus himself agrees was a stupid, regrettable attempt at a joke, for which he has apologized time and time again - led to his losing his job after a hue and cry orchestrated by some of the biggest phonies on the planet Earth, not a few of whom work in politics, the media and political activism.

When will the Reverend Wright apologize for all of the things HE has said?  When will he take back the lies he has uttered about our country?   When will he back away from his racism and his outrageous comments about the United States of America, and his ridiculous charges that the government is somehow responsible for the drug trade or the spread of infectious diseases among drug users and the poor?

Will Jeremiah Wright continue to live here in the United States as a pathetic joke to everyone around him but the very worst bigots and head cases who share his delusions, or will he move to  another country which he might like better?  If this foul-mouthed lunatic had the slightest clue about propriety and dignity, and what it means to contribute to a free nation, he’d slink away from America in shame. 

But who else would have him?   Iran?  Maybe Venezuela or Cuba?

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:24 AM MDT

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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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