We're not counting the North Koreans' BOMBS? Why not?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: HOW LAME IS THIS?

When I look at arms control and things related to arms control, I think I've seen everything that could shock and amaze me; and then I find out I'm wrong.

From the Associated Press:

"North Korea nuclear accounting won't include bombs

By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 18 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea is expected this week to turn over its long-delayed accounting of its nuclear weapons activities, part of a chain of events leading to a unique photo opportunity: the destruction of the cooling tower at Pyongyang's main reactor.

One item that won't make the declaration, which the White House says is due Thursday, will be North Korea's nuclear bombs. The omission means the world will have to wait for an answer to the question at the heart of the nearly six-year-old standoff: Is the North ready to give up its nuclear weapons?

North Korea has invited foreign TV stations to broadcast the toppling of the cooling tower to demonstrate its plan to give up its nuclear ambitions. Sung Kim, the top State Department expert on Korea, will travel to North Korea for the planned destruction of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, an official at South Korea's Foreign Ministry said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing ministry policy.

U.S. officials who earlier insisted North Korea's declaration should be "complete and correct" have repeatedly scaled back expectations for the document in the wake of resistance from Pyongyang, which failed to meet a deadline for submitting the list at the end of last year.

Already, the declaration that the White House says is due Thursday is not expected to include details of the North's alleged attempts to enrich uranium — the dispute that sparked the nuclear standoff in late 2002. The list also will not describe how the North allegedly helped Syria build a nuclear plant.

Instead, those thorny issues will simply be "acknowledged" by Pyongyang, with the U.S. hoping that it can get more information in later discussions with the North, given that it has few other ways to dig for intelligence from the world's most closed country.

The main U.S. envoy to nuclear talks with North Korea affirmed this week that the communist nation's bombs also will not make the cut for the declaration. Instead, details on the bombs will be left to the next stage of the talks, when Pyongyang is supposed to abandon and dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

"The North Koreans have acknowledged that we have to deal with the weapons," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said in Beijing. "We're going to deal with it as soon as we sit down again to begin to map out the remaining piece of this negotiation."

The White House said Wednesday it will move quickly to lift sanctions and remove North Korea from the U.S. blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for handing over the declaration.

The North is expected in the declaration to say how much plutonium it has produced at its main reactor facility. The next step in the disarmament talks will be to verify that claim, through procedures that Hill said would be set up within 45 days.

That verification will not mean the U.S. or any other country will yet actually see the weapons-grade plutonium, or that nuclear inspectors will roam the countryside peeking into the North's vast network of secret underground tunnels to track down traces of radioactive material.

Instead, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this month that verification at first will simply mean reviewing documents and inspecting the reactor to infer how much plutonium was produced, to be compared with the amount that the North claims in the declaration.

"Once we have a clearer view of how much plutonium has actually been made, I think we'll also have a clearer view of what might have happened to it," Rice told an audience at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

In a report earlier this year, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated the North has between 61 and 110 pounds of plutonium, which could be enough to build from six to 10 bombs. The North proved it could build a working nuclear bomb when it carried out an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006.

The fireworks at the reactor will be a mostly symbolic move signaling that North Korea does not intend to make more plutonium for bombs. The reactor was shut down last year and already largely disabled so that it cannot easily be restarted.

What happens next with the bombs and fissile material the North already has stockpiled will be the real test of Pyongyang's commitment to disarm."

___

Burt Herman is chief of bureau in Korea for The Associated Press.

Hey, do you want to pay reparations? Just vote for Obama.
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: HOW LAME IS THIS?

According to an article on The Hill.com, Democratic Senator John Conyers plans to bring a bill before Congress during what many people see as an upcoming Obama presidency to require Congress to study paying African-Americans reparations for slavery.

Patient Conyers hopes to move slavery bill during an Obama administration

By Bob Cusack

Posted: 03/12/07 07:39 PM [ET]

After waiting nearly two decades, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) is well positioned to move legislation that could lead the federal government to apologize for slavery and pay reparations. But the Judiciary Committee chairman is willing to wait two more years, when he hopes Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will be in the White House."

H-1B visas during a RECESSION? WHY?
Topic: HOW LAME IS THIS?

Nearly HALF of all illegal aliens in the United States entered legally at first with a visa.

As dumb as it seems, though, certain members of Congress are rushing to expand the H-1B visa program, which imports foreign workers to take American jobs, many of whom overstay their visas and become illegal aliens.

Apparently the Software Business Association's been spending some major folding money on the Hill in one way or another, because expansion of the H-1B visa program makes no sense when American workers are staring right down the barrels of a recession.  Does it?

Some of the culprits?  (Click on their names to get information on how to show them the error of their ways, please!)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz) has introduced the Innovation Employment Act (H.R. 5630), which would DOUBLE the current H-1B visa cap to 130,000 per fiscal year. H.R. 5630 would further raise the cap to 180,000, for five years beginning in 2010, if the 130,000 cap is reached during the 2009 fiscal year.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has introduced the Strengthening United States Technology and Innovation Act (H.R. 5642), which would TRIPLE the current H-1B visa cap to 195,000 in 2008 and 2009.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is calling for a bill that would make Rep. Smith's increases permanent.

House Chief Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) recently made the erroneous statement that H-1B visas are "not tied up to the larger issue of illegal immigration" (when half of illegal aliens are here now on expired or otherwise invalid visas).

Representatives Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas) have introduced a bill that would practically staple a green card to the diploma of every foreign student who gets their Ph.D. from an American University.

These people can stick whatever name they like on their bills, but "strengthening United States Technology and Innovation" by opening the flood gates to unemployed foreign workers while Americans qualified and "overqualified" for the same jobs are unemployed is a strange way to go about the process.

It strikes me as more honest to force the authors and/or sponsors of these bills to label them honestly

- "The Taking Jobs Away From Taxpaying American Technology Workers Act" would be a fine description for any of them, as would

- the "Importing Sudden Jihad Syndrome Sufferers Bill." 

It's no stretch to see that when the big spenders in Silicon Valley bring in their hundreds of thousands of information workers from Pakistan and points further out in Radical Islam-land, their catch will include folks who identify intensely with Al-Qaeda and other Islamic radical organizations.

Even if they refrain from terror acts themselves (the Sudden Jihad Syndrome), too many will send money home to fund terror schools and increase the danger to our homeland.

We have all the technology workers America needs - they just can't be underpaid and bullied around the way that visa holders can by their sponsors.  Bringing in workers from overseas during a recession is both stupid and immoral.   It just makes no sense.

Obama's Pastor - "God Damn America!"
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: HOW LAME IS THIS?

ABC News's surprising report on Barack Obama's pastor - his spiritual guide for 20 years - reveals this clergyman to be a racist and a traitor to the very country Obama says he wants to run.

I'm just naïve enough to believe that racism is racism.  If you say "God Damn America" and rant on and on about how much you hate one particular ethnic group, you're a racist and a traitor.  Your skin color shouldn't give you a permit to engage in racist behavior without being exposed for your treachery toward your fellow Americans.  That goes double for someone who is absurd enough to blame the United States of America for the mass murders of 9/11/2001.

That describes Barack Obama's spiritual director in a nutshell.  It also raises dire questions about the fitness of the man receiving this spiritual direction to be President of the United States.

Reverse the situation.  Let's say that Fred Thompson or John McCain were found to be attending a church whose pastor was dispensing inflammatory hate rhetoric, and saying that the faithful should be saying "God Damn America" - just as Barack Obama's pastor does.

Would there even have to be a discussion about whether or not the politician concerned had forfeited his right to even be considered as a candidate for the highest office in the land?   Wouldn't the liberal press yell for the blood of the candidate foolish enough to have this man as a trusted spiritual guide?

But so far, it's just been ABC News who has had the courage to run with this story.  I've noticed sporadic signs of a backbone in that news organization - ABC sometimes reports the news even when it makes the Left look like the hypocrites that they are.  I doubt it'll last long, but it's nice to see. 

CBS Evening News with Katie Couric - New anchor, same old bias
Mood:  sad
Topic: HOW LAME IS THIS?

CITGO and Hugo Chavez - This Is a Good Idea Why?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: HOW LAME IS THIS?
How Lame is This?

(A new feature in this until-now dormant blog.)

One of the ads on ABC's Sunday morning show was from CITGO (a company whose current name struck one of my friends in junior high school as perfect for an lemon-lime-flavored laxative) bragging that its backing by Petroleo de Venezuela gave it perfect ability to respond to changes...

...such as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's sliding even further off the edge of the stage into support for leftist and other extremist terrorism?

Just how does CITGO think pimping for Hugo Chavez improves their appeal to the American business market?

Does CITGO think that providing a large additional source of funding for someone who really admires the leaders of Iran, North Korea and Cuba is a major selling point for their product?

Waiter! Whatever they're drinking, I want a double on the rocks.