Jib Jab on the current presidential campaign

I just had to pass this one on. It is a very funny parody of the current campaign for president. It has something to offend just about everyone.

FISA bill passed - maintaining ability to spy on terrorists

Aside from the hot button immunity issue; the key issue in this FISA bill was over no court approval needed to wiretap when 1 end of the communication is overseas. The following outlines the objection:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/fisa-compromise.ars

Specifically, the new legislation dramatically expands the government's ability to wiretap without meaningful judicial oversight, by redefining "oversight" so that the feds can drag their feet on getting authorization almost indefinitely.

When it comes to judicial oversight of domestic-to-foreign calls, the legislation the House passed last month is an unambiguous victory for the White House and a defeat for civil libertarians. The legislation establishes a new procedure whereby the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence can sign off on "authorizations" of surveillance programs "targeting people reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." The government is required to submit a "certification" to the FISA court describing the surveillance plan and the "minimization" procedures that will be used to avoid intercepting too many communications of American citizens. However, the government is not required to "identify the specific facilities, places, premises, or property" at which the eavesdropping will occur. The specific eavesdropping targets will be at the NSA's discretion and unreviewed by a judge.


Many argue that since under the old law a warrant can be obtained later that no change was needed in the law when eavesdropping on communications between foreigners and US residents. But this overlooks why the new FISA bill will get passed and why warrantless eavesdropping on foreigners is a good idea even when they communicate with US residents.

And that is because getting a warrant for every instance of communication interception is TOTALLY, COMPLETELY impossible when the tools used to listen in to foreigners communications captures MILLIONS of calls and emails daily, etc. And then the information is flagged based on computer algorithms for human evaluation. That is how the NSA computers work. They listen in on EVERYTHING. You can't get a judge to issue millions of warrants after the fact on a daily basis.

The new law WILL demand a warrant be issued before any captured data is used against an American resident IN COURT. But it won't be needed just to listen in to foreigners no matter who they talk to.

Anyone who doesn't understand the above knows nothing about how intelligence agencies operate all over the globe. And that is why the bill will pass. Because all the Senators understand this. And the Senators voting against it are purely playing politics while wooing the ignorant voters who don't understand it .

Who voted for and against passage:

http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168

Those disreputable Senators who voted to hamstring the US intelligence apparatus:

Akaka (D-HI)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Wyden (D-OR)

But 21 Democratic Senators DID support this bill. Just goes to show that all Dems are not pandering fools.

A video for celebrating July 4th

Kate Smith singing God Bless America. One of the better versions of this available.

3 Cheers for the Irish - shooting down undemocratic EU treaty

Professional pols in the EU are pissed at the Irish for shooting down the treaty. But the average citizens applaud the vote and wish their own governments were more democratic and had allowed votes on the treaty.

Political leaders across Europe were shaking their heads in frustration this weekend at the Irish voters' veto of the latest European Union treaty. But many of their citizens weren't.

Ordinary Spaniards, Dutch, French and Britons, who wish they could get the same chance, might also say "no" to the cold, distant heart of Europe.

"Spaniards feel Spanish, the French feel French, and the Dutch feel Dutch. We will never all be in the same boat," said Eduardo Herranz, a 41-year-old salesman in Madrid, Spain.

Herranz said Europeans were right to feel alienated from bureaucrats in the EU base of Brussels, Belgium.

The EU's political establishment is already calling on all other members to keep ratifying the treaty through their governments alone while calculating what it will take to make Ireland vote again, only this time "yes."

Many Europeans say this is exactly the problem with democracy Brussels-style, where European Commission members are not directly elected but wield continental powers.

"We're told we can vote no, that the system requires unanimity. But when (a `no' vote) actually happens, every time, the EU tells us: You really only have a right to vote yes," said Dublin travel agent Paul Brady, who voted against the treaty. "You know, I love traveling through Europe, but I don't really want to live there all the time. I'd like to stay as close to America as Europe."

"First they asked our opinion (on the constitution), and we said no. So the second time they didn't ask our opinion. They said it wasn't the same, just some little laws. But it is the same," said Han de Vries, a parking meter attendant in Amsterdam.

"Now the Irish have said no. So in Brussels they will now look again for a way and pass it anyhow," de Vries said.

Sarkozy conceded that voters throughout the bloc were liable to shoot down the high diplomacy of EU insiders, if given the chance.

Such is democracy EU-style. The political governing class have no respect for their people and want to tell them HOW TO THINK.

Black Conservatives displaying their racism in supporting Obama

What all the black conservatives are saying when interviewed for this news item is that they would never vote Democratic - except because Obama is black, they will vote for him. Now if that isn't blatant racism, I don't know what is. They are voting for him, not based on any issues, or any long help political beliefs. They are voting for him BECAUSE he is black.

Black conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams has never voted for a Democrat for president. That could change this year with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's nominee.

"I don't necessarily like his policies; I don't like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it," Williams said. "I can honestly say I have no idea who I'm going to pull that lever for in November. And to me, that's incredible."

Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans. They revel over the possibility of a black president but wrestle with the thought that the Illinois senator doesn't sit beside them ideologically.

"Among black conservatives," Williams said, "they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him in November."

J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he's thinking of voting for Obama.

Likewise, retired Gen. Colin Powell, who became the country's first black secretary of statePresident George W. Bush, said both candidates are qualified and that he will not necessarily vote for the Republican.

Yet Phillips, author of the book "He Talk Like a White Boy," realizes the irony of voting for a candidate based on race to get beyond race.

"We have to not judge him based on his race, but on his desirability as a political candidate," he said. "And based on that, I have a lot of disagreements with him on a lot of issues. I go back and forth."

See a short 100 sec video discussing this topic:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=8312849

The dictator Hugo Chavez is tightening the screws more and more

President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country’s intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela’s two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Mr. Chávez.

The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Mr. Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.

Poor Venezuela. Stuck with this moronic Castro wannabe. Unfortunately, it may be the death of many of his people as he tightens the screws on them more and more.

Donate your idle computer processor to scientific research

You can join up here:
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_intro.php

And if you want to join an existing team( DSL Reports Team Helix ), you can go here for instructions:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/14567

A couple clips from John McCain on Saturday Night Live 5/17/2008

These are actually pretty funny. McCain has a sense of humor. Something I can't say about Hillary Clinton.

McCain pandering to group( La Raza ) pushing insurrection in US Southwest

Michelle Malkin posts a good writeup on why John McCain, the Republican candidate for President in 2008, should avoid his pandering to Hispanic voters by giving respectability to a group that preaches returning the U.S. southwest to Mexico. His planned speech to the National Council of La Raza (The Race) is a slap in the face to all U.S. citizens who wish the United States to remain a single country and not face a civil war in the southwest.

Here are the top 10 reasons he should repudiate the radical open borders, speech-squelching group that he has long embraced:

10. La Raza supports driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

9. La Raza supports in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding US citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.

8. La Raza opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state, and federal authorities.

7. La Raza sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars, including the “Aztlan Academy” in Tucson, AZ, the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, AZ, and Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn.

6. La Raza gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), which the late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized as “a radical racist group…[and] one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.”

5. La Raza opposes a secure fence on the southern border.

4. Former La Raza president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic outreach advisor said this: ”

In the 1990s Yzaguirre said, “US English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.” He was referring to US English the nation’s oldest, largest citizens’ action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. “

La Raza also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms “illegal” and “amnesty.”

3. La Raza is currently leading a smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable TV networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves–in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes.

2. La Raza has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.

1. The National Council of La Raza means The National Council of “The Race,” for God’s sake.

Their signature slogan, chanted at pro-illegal alien rallies from coast to coast, is “La raza unida nunca sera vencida.”

“A united [Hispanic] race will never be defeated.”

Nicaragua drifts deeper in to a dictatorship

President Daniel Ortega Saavedra beams from the billboards, promising “Citizens Power” as a solution to Nicaragua’s endemic poverty. “The world’s poor arise!” the signs say. But beneath the billboards, on walls and benches all over town, others have scrawled “No to CPC. No to dictatorship.”

The graffiti alludes to Citizens Power Councils — or C.P.C.’s. In December, Mr. Ortega established the neighborhood committees, which are controlled by his left-wing Sandinista party and administer antipoverty programs, despite a vote against the plan by the National Assembly.

Mr. Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla leader, maintains that the councils are meant only to let community leaders have a say in where and how government money is spent.

But opposition leaders say the councils are another step in what they call the Ortega administration’s drift toward an authoritarian and secretive government that does not have to answer to the legislature — mostly because the president controls tens of millions of dollars a year in aid from Venezuela.

Some of the president’s opponents charge that the Citizens Power Councils are nothing more than patronage mills, channeling government largess to supporters of the party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

Last year, Nicaragua and Venezuela signed a deal that opposition leaders and budget experts say has given Mr. Ortega’s administration essentially a slush fund outside the national budget, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

This is just more mischief fomented by that scum from Venezuela - Chavez, who is trying to set up Communist dictatorships in South America.

Here are some links to earlier stories on this trend to dictatorship in South America:
South America's 3 Stooges incite leftist revolutions
Chavez rapidly losing goodwill of his left leaning neighbors
Ecuador incubating another dictator like Venezuela's Chavez

Think you are on the way to Alzheimers ??

If you are forgetting things and starting to worry that you may be on the way to a slowly worsening case of Alzhemers, then you may want to read this story from the New York Times:

Exercise Your Brain, or Else You’ll ... Uh ...















Here are some additional links :

http://www.brainage.com/launch/howto.jsp

http://www.sharpbrains.com/

http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/memory-loss/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier

Happy Earth Day!! Environmentalists will cut their own throats

The EU, the supposed center of environmental responsibility, and dearly loved by environmentalists(as opposed to the US), is about to deal a death blow to the global warming alarmists.

Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are slated to build about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

But the return now to coal even in eco-conscious Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will make controlling global warming impossible.

Europe's power station owners emphasize that they are making the new coal plants as clean as possible. But critics say that "clean coal" is a pipe dream, an oxymoron in terms of the carbon emissions that count most toward climate change.

Enel, like many electricity companies, say they have little choice but to build coal plants to replace aging infrastructure, particularly in countries like Italy and Germany that have banned the building of nuclear power plants.

Coal reserves will last for 200 years, rather than 50 for gas and oil. Coal is relatively cheap compared with oil and natural gas, although coal prices have tripled in the past few years. More important, hundreds of countries export coal - there is not a coal cartel - so there is more room to negotiate prices.

In contrast, the technology that the industry is counting on to reduce the carbon emissions that add to global warning - carbon capture and storage - is not now available for coal. The European Union had pledged to develop 12 pilot carbon-capture projects for Europe, but it says that is not enough. There is a new coal-fire plant going up in India and China every week and most of those are not constructed in a way that it amenable to carbon capture, even if it were developed.

The European Union, through its emissions trading scheme, has tried to make power plants consider the costs of carbon, forcing them to buy “permits” for emissions. But with the price of oil so high, coal is far cheaper, even with the cost of permits to pollute factored in, Enel has calculated.

Well, here is the REALITY that was bound to happen when the need for electricity overrode all the nice pie-in-the-sky dreaming by environmentalists. What will they do now? Turn to eco-terrorism to blow up new coal plants?

Picture of Hillary Clinton punching Barack Obama

I really enjoy whenever the Democrats start going after one another. Here is a candid photo someone caught of Hillary Clinton punching Barack Obama after a debate. If the picture doesn't load right away, just click on the red X.

Proposal for Fed to regulate entire US financial industry

This news will get the "The Fed is taking over the U.S." conspiracy theorists in to a frenzy of blog posts.


The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the way the government regulates the nation's financial services industry from banks and securities firms to mortgage brokers and insurance companies.

The plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 22-page executive summary obtained by The Associated Press.

The Fed would be given broad authority to oversee financial market stability. That would include new powers to examine the books of any institution deemed to represent a potential threat to the proper functioning of the overall financial system.

The proposal, which will be outlined Monday in a speech by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is certain to set off heated debates within different sectors of the financial services industry and in Congress, where some Democrats are likely to complain that the proposal does not go far enough to crack down on abuses.

The proposal would allow the Fed, in its new role as "market stability regulator," to dispatch examiners to check the books not just of commercial banks but of all segments of the financial services industry.

The administration proposal would also consolidate the current scheme of bank regulation by shutting down the Office of Thrift Supervision and transferring its functions to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates nationally chartered banks.

The plan recommends that the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates stock trading, be merged with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures trades for oil, grains and various other commodities.

The plan would create a national regulator for the insurance industry, which is now largely governed by the states, and would create a Mortgage Origination Commission to try to address the abuses exposed in the current tidal wave of mortgage defaults.

The role Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues have been playing to shore up the financial system would be formalized in the administration plan by giving Fed officials greater power to detect where threats might be lurking in the system.

Here is the 22 page Executive Summary of the proposal:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business/29regulate-text.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1206799699-kq0yMw1U1lvrItyKAhoU5A&pagewanted=all

FITNA - the 15 min movie fundamentalist muslims don't want you to see

Readers are sending the Liveleak English version of Geert Wilders’ Fitna, which has just been posted. (Be patient, may be a little slow to load.) It’s 15 minutes with scenes of jihad interlaced with quotes from the Koran. We are reminded of 9/11, Madrid, the murder of Theo van Gogh, and the threats to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s life.

Prepare for more March Madness. I don’t know what “solidarity” is in Dutch, but show it by embedding the video, e-mailing it, and writing about it. Their fight for the right to criticize the Religion of Perpetual Outrage is our fight.

A couple of links at michellemalkin.com that discuss this movie and the attempts by fundamentalist muslims to suppress it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410&hl=en
You can watch the flash video streaming in your browser at this link.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/28/fitna-follow-up-the-usual-suspects-do-the-usual-thing/
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/22/will-any-american-company-host-fitna/
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/21/if-its-friday-in-the-muslim-world-2/
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/02/scholars-demand-laws-criminalizing-insults-to-islam/

And a link where you can download the 32MB flash video in FLV format and watch it offline:
http://cdn.liveleak.com/16/media16/2008/Mar/27/LiveLeak-dot-com-197196-9896.flv

Infoworld lists some of the best free software & services

The Web's best free stuff

There's a wealth of downloadable software and online services, but free doesn't necessarily mean good.

Free: It's the magic word for an ever-expanding wealth of downloadable software and online services. Free doesn't necessarily mean good, however, and hunting for freebies can mean sifting through a lot of junk.

That's where we come in. We surfed, clicked, and installed to find sparkling free gems capable of planning your time, keeping you in touch, and tuning and securing your PC, not to mention glitzing up your desktop, helping you stay productive, and entertaining you with music, videos, photos, and games. We paid special attention to programs and services you may not have heard of before.

Here's some of the best of the bunch:

Productivity
AbiWord (download)Tired of expensive, slow, bloated word processors? Download this surprisingly powerful freebie, which includes sophisticated features such as mail merge and advanced layouts. The program handles a wide variety of document formats, including those of Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, OpenOffice.org, and other programs.
TrackMyShipments (service)If you place orders often via the Web or phone, here's a site for you. When you get a shipping notification, forward the e-mail to track@trackmyshipments.com. The service reads through your message for the tracking information and keeps it in one place for all of your orders. Log in to the site to see the progress of your shipments, including a map showing their progress.
Buzzword.com (service)You have plenty of free Web-based word processors to choose from, but most aren't as slick as this one. The design is tasteful and elegant, menu items slide in and out of place, and it's incredibly simple to use. But don't let the pretty face fool you, because Buzzword is feature-packed as well. Inserting tables and graphics is a breeze, you can easily select background colors, and the document manager is a standout too.

There are dozens more at this InfoWorld link:
The Web's best free stuff

Happy Easter

Wishing everyone a Happy Easter

How did the mortgage crisis come about ?

Some good information on how the U.S. got in to this mortgage mess. Click on the map above for the raw numbers and an analysis by a joint committee of the U.S. Congress.

And to see how we got there, read the following:
Mortgage Market House of Cards

The mortgage market, as we all know, is the heart of the current problem. It is a gigantic carry trade market, and it always has been. Mortgage lenders are borrowed short and lent long, which is the essence of the carry trade. Now this trade has been disrupted because what should have been obvious in 2005: the inability of subprime borrowers to pay off their loans. This has become public knowledge. The mortgage lenders cannot raise the short-term capital necessary for the game to go on as before.

This newly reassessed risk is based on a discovery, namely, that Greenspan's ludicrously loose monetary policies, 2000–2003, have led to a housing bubble crisis. But Bernanke will never admit this in public.

He is now in search of new suppliers of pools of capital who are willing to rush in and bail out the mortgage-lending market. Who wants to be first? Nobody. But the crisis will get much worse if lenders don't enter this market to provide loans for visible deadbeat borrowers. This must be done very soon.

If the deadbeats walk away from their homes, and if new lenders are not found to fund replacement owners, America will experience hundreds of billions of dollars of property equity decline by the end of 2009. He will not say this directly, but this is the problem. Squatters and the weather will take over occupancy.

Who, then, should rush in where angels fear to tread? Local banks, says Bernanke. They did not create the crisis, but they must solve it.

Local banks got out of the mortgage market two decades ago, after the savings & loan debacle took its toll. Government-guaranteed mortgage lenders entered, pooling trillions of dollars of mortgages based on a broad geographical base of loans from around the country. This was done in the name of asset diversification. It also cut costs of local monitoring. The statisticians assessed the risk, and nobody was hired locally to monitor the loans and collect monthly payments. So, local banks took commissions for originating loans locally and then passed the loans on to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Local banks went into commercial real estate instead. Their banks are now at risk. The Comptroller of the Currency, John Dugan, on January 31 gave a speech to the Florida Bankers Association.

When the commercial real estate market begins to fall in the recession, as it will, local banks will have their hands full. Where will they get the capital to head off foreclosures in the residential estate market?

So, no one is available locally to monitor the empty houses or screen replacement home owners. The cost of monitoring is rising. The number of people locally to do the job has declined.

Bernanke now thinks that local banks are ready, willing, and able to take over their old tasks. But how? No one has been trained to do this for 20 years. The people with these skills have retired. The local banks got cut out of the mortgage market except as loan originators, which economic idiots could do, and did.

Why would any local bank step in now? Not to get rich, surely. Only to keep from getting poorer in a national banking crisis. Here is Bernanke's message: "Heads, you lost; tails, you will lose even more. Step right up! This way to the guillotine!"

Senator Barack Obama's good friend

Here is a video of Obama's minister. Do you want a president who has been listening to this guy for 17 years?




Words posted with this video:

Senator Barack Obama and his pastor, the reverend Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity Unity Church of Christ in Chicago.

Do Wright's statements, which Obama regularly brought his family to witness for over two decades, reflect Obama's opinion of America and caucasians? Do his wife's statements shed more light on Barack's true beliefs?

Why wouldn't a leader, a future president, say something, anything, about such statements until forced by public outcry?

Is it possible that Barack Obama was completely unaware of these sermons and beliefs for over two decades?

Barack Obama can denounce Jeremiah Wright today, but does that erase seventeen years of spiritual and social guidance?


A good commentary on Obama's speech where Obama defended his continued association with his racist pastor:
The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud

South America's 3 Stooges incite leftist revolutions

The leftist leaders of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Nicaragua support drug lords, assassins, & terrorist guerrilla groups in South America. They are now trying to topple Columbia by flooding Columbia's borders with armed troops defending Columbia's leftist terrorist group FARC. The scum leftist leaders scream Columbia doesn't respect their countries sovereignty. But Columbia doesn't have much choice while the 3 stooges continue to aid and abet and protect the terrorist groups inside their borders.

Chavez has ordered thousands of troops and tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia and threatened to slash trade and nationalize Colombian-owned businesses. Ecuador has also sent troops to the border.

Uribe, who is hugely popular among Colombians for efforts to crack down on the FARC, which finances itself through kidnapping and drug trafficking, declined to comment on the crisis as he arrived for a meeting with Dominican President Leonel Fernandez.

Earlier, Uribe defended the attack as necessary given Ecuador's inaction against Colombian rebel camps in its territory. Colombia complains that rebels take refuge across the border in neighboring countries and has accused their leftist leaders of backing the rebels — a claim the leaders deny. Uribe has said he won't send Colombia troops to the border.

The crisis widened Thursday when Nicaragua broke off relations with Colombia over the attack inside Ecuador. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who was also expected to attend the summit, is an ally of Chavez and Correa.

Uribe has refused to rule out future military incursions into Ecuador or Venezuela, saying he first needs assurances from Correa and Chavez that they are not harboring rebels.

McCain walking tightrope on immigration

McCain is walking a tightrope on immigration and he can't be trusted by either those who want tighter rules or those who want amnesty.

Many conservatives don't trust his new promises on immigration. While at the same time he is starting to antagonize Hispanics because he is being forced to talk about a tighter border, which they don't want, to gain conservative support.

My guess is that in November he won't be able to energize conservatives to really get out and vote in massive numbers and that middle of the road Hispanics will go for Obama. This immigration tightrope may well result in his falling on his face on election day.


John McCain faces a dilemma on immigration as he works to persuade conservatives he's tough enough on the issue without erasing his historic appeal to Hispanic voters.

Once a crusader for offering the nation's roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants a way to get legal status, McCain now says his first priority is fortifying U.S. borders. McCain is remaking his image with an eye toward the general election.

McCain told congressional Republicans in a closed-door meeting recently that he had been badly bruised by his push for immigration reform and had learned the hard way that sealing the border should be his priority.

Hispanic voters there and elsewhere, though, are listening with concern to the same change in tone that has gained McCain points with the GOP base. "His rhetoric has absolutely shifted, and people have noticed," said Munoz of La Raza, "He's going to have to figure out a way to talk to this community."

Cuba gets new leader; but nothing will change

Cuba has themselves a new leader. But nothing is really going to change. Raul Castro is just Fidel's shadow and his supporting government is the same one that has been in place for decades. To expect change while these old guard revolutionaries are still running the country is to expect something they are incapable of delivering.

Cuba's parliament named Raul Castro president on Sunday, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel but leaving the island's communist system unshaken. In a surprise move, an old guard revolutionary leader was named No. 2, suggesting that major changes are not likely anytime soon.

Raul Castro stressed that his brother remains "commander in chief" even if he is not president by proposing to consult with Fidel on all major decisions of state — a motion approved by acclamation.

Jose Ramon Machado, who fought alongside the Castro brothers in the Sierra Maestra during the late 1950s, was named to the No. 2 slot that Raul Castro had previously held. He is 76 years old, like Raul Castro.

The other four vice presidents included Juan Almeida Bosque, 80, a historic revolutionary leader; Interior Minister Abelardo Colome Ibarra, 68; Esteban Lazo Hernandez, 63, a longtime Communist Party leader, and Gen. Julio Casas Regueiro, 71, who was Raul Castro's No. 2 at the Defense Ministry.

The council secretary remained Dr. Jose M. Miyar Barrueco, 75, physician and historic revolutionary leader, and longtime aide to Fidel Castro and Council of State.

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, a close friend of Castro, said the leadership change in Havana was "occurring without any type of trauma."

"Transition in Cuba?" asked Chavez, whose country is now a major economic ally of Cuba. "The transition occurred 49 years ago, from that capitalism, dominiated by imperialism, (under which Cuba) was a colony, to a socialist Cuba. The transition will continue marching forward, always with Fidel at the forefront."

China kills all chances of climate treaty with their policy stance

Since China has come right out and refused to reign in their pollution and greenhouse gases, there is no chance that any kind of climate treaty will be reached where the U.S. can take part. They instead blame developed countries and blame actions taken decades ago to justify their refusal. That attitude will make U.S. participation impossible if the U.S. is expected to hobble our economy while China grows unimpeded by climate regulations.

Negotiations on a new treaty to fight global warming will fail if rich nations are not treated as "culprits" and developing countries as "victims," China's top climate envoy said.

The whole world must take action to confront climate change, but developed countries have a "historical responsibility" to do much more because their unrestrained emissions in the past century are responsible for global warming, said Ambassador Yu Qingtai.

"The United States and the developed states as a whole are the countries that created the problem, caused the problem of climate change in the first place. In my view, that's what a culprit means," he said in an interview this week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly debate on climate change.

The United States and China are the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Washington has argued it should not have to cut its emissions to a level that would hurt the U.S. economy while countries like China and India are not required to make similar cuts.


For a view opposite that of China's climate representative see this very good blog entry:
An Inconvenient Truth

Don't Vote if you aren't informed

Take the test at DontVote.org and see if you are informed enough to vote. If you can't pass this test, it would be better for America if you stayed home on election day.



DontVote.org's mission is to combat the "Get out the Vote" movement that is pushed by organizations that would like to increase the number of uneducated voters to help their cause. DontVote.org encourages people to Vote, but only AFTER they have educated themselves on the policies and individuals for which they are voting. Voting should be considered a privilege and exercised with responsibility and discretion. Just like a final exam, responsible voting requires self-education and thought. When the time comes to cast your ballot, if you don't know for what or whom you're voting, then DON'T VOTE.


P.S.> Here is how I did on the test, which is comprised of 60 questions and allocates 350 points:

Strange but true !!

The states visited by tornadoes on election day and that killed at least 40 all voted for Huckabee on primary day.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN06248862
The storms tore across Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j-rJkxLbJTFVe7_sztS_x_XcNpQwD8UKMG9O0
Huckabee won in Alabama, Tennessee and his home state of Arkansas, states where two-thirds of the voters were born-again Christians.

Is God trying to send Pastor Huckabee & his followers a msg??

American voters are idiots

If you want to know why US voters are always annoyed with the president, here is why. They have the impression that the president actually has the power to fix things for them. The people who voted in column 1 are sadly deluded about how the country and the economy works and just set themselves up for grief. In my opinion, only those who voted for col 3 really know what is going on.

News story on what US voters believe the president has the power to do.[Clink on link to read]

Large majorities of voters believe the president has considerable sway on a range of big issues such as inflation, interest rates, the federal deficit, taxes and more. Fully three-quarters believe the president has at least some influence over health care costs, for example. Sixty-nine percent can see the president making gasoline prices go up or down.

The full poll info is here in this Adobe Acrobat PDF file:
There is a lot of other info in the poll about the 2008 candidates, election issues, consumer confidence, etc.

Three of the 2008 US Presidential Candidates out on campaign trail

Got an extra $200,000 laying around for a space trip ?

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic showed off models of a spaceship it hopes will take space travel mainstream. Trips will initially cost about $200,000 and will eventually go down in price. That's far less than the $20 million reported cost of businessman Dennis Tito's trip on a Russian spacecraft in 2001, considered the first space tourist.
Virgin Galactic unveils spaceship

More info can be seen in this story:
Virgin Unveils Private Spaceship Design

2008 Economic Forecasts from the U of Pa Wharton School