BAGHDAD — The Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has rebounded in strength in recent months and appears to be launching a concerted effort to cripple the Iraqi government as U.S. troops withdraw, Iraqi and American officials say.
The group asserted responsibility for four powerful bombings that targeted five government buildings in Baghdad in August and October — the deadliest attacks directed at the government in more than six years of war. Authorities say al-Qaeda in Iraq intends to carry out additional high-profile attacks in the months ahead and is attempting to regain its foothold in former strongholds just outside the capital.
President Obama was hell bent on getting troops out of Iraq. He claimed he was “ending the war”, but the war will only escalate without U.S. troops to finisih the job. Thanks, Mr. President.
As the Senate moved one step closer on Saturday to debating and passing a mammoth healthcare bill, it did so as D-Senator Mary Landrieu of Lousiana scored $300 million in bribes from Democrats for her state to procure her vote in favor of sending the healthcare debate to the next step.
On the eve of Saturday’s showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn’t secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state.
And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote — and to trumpet the financial “fix” she had arranged for Louisiana. “I am not going to be defensive,” she declared. “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.”
It was an awkward moment (not least because her figure is 20 times the original Louisiana Purchase price). But it was fairly representative of a Senate debate that seems to be scripted in the Southern Gothic style. The plot was gripping — the bill survived Saturday’s procedural test without a single vote to spare — and it brought out the rank partisanship, the self-absorption and all the other pathologies of modern politics.
“My vote today,” she said in a soft Southern accent that masked the hard politics at play, “should in no way be construed by the supporters of this current framework as an indication of how I might vote as this debate comes to an end.” Among the concessions she’ll seek: more tax credits for small business and a removal of the version of the “public option” now in the bill.
“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.
Kennedy voted against an amendment to a Democratic health care plan sought by the bishops. But he voted in favor of a health care plan that included the amendment he opposed.
Tobin, the spiritual leader of the nation’s most heavily Roman Catholic state, demanded an apology from Kennedy after learning of his remarks and requested a meeting.
“While I greatly respect the Catholic Church and its leaders, like many Rhode Islanders, the fact that I disagree with the hierarchy of the church on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic,” Kennedy wrote in a letter to Tobin, agreeing to a sitdown. “I embrace my faith which acknowledges the existence of an imperfect humanity.”
Their meeting fell apart. While Tobin called it a mutual decision, Kennedy accused Tobin of failing to abide by an agreement to stop discussing the congressman’s faith publicly.
Tobin followed up with a biting public letter published in a diocesan newspaper.
“Sorry, you can’t chalk it up to an ‘imperfect humanity.’ Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your Communion with the Church,” Tobin wrote.
Gateway Pundit posted this video of Patrick Kennedy criticizing the Church’s pro-life stance in an interview with CNS (Catholic News Serivce):
Kudos to Bishop Tobin for standing with right theology and the unborn and against corrupt political strongarming.
Publisher HarperCollins said Friday that Sarah Palin’s memoir sold 300,000 copies its first day, among the best openings ever for a nonfiction book. In 2004, Bill Clinton’s “My Life” debuted with sales of 400,000 copies. The year before, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “Living History” started at 200,000.
“Going Rogue” was released this week and its print run already has been increased from 1.5 million copies to 2.5 million, HarperCollins announced Friday. Palin, the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate, is in the midst of a nationwide promotional tour.
Atta Girl, Saracuda. Just watching the seething jealousy from libs who cannot sell a fraction of that number of books truly makes Palin the Conservative’s gift that keeps on giving. And just in time for the holidays!
BOSSE: It’s about time we had our voice in Congress. Just because we don’t exist, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t count. We’re just as serious, we’re just as real as the jobs that were created under the stimulus plan.
We found out this week that New Hampshire’s double zero district got about 2,800 jobs from the stimulus plan, which was news to the people who don’t live there because it doesn’t exist. And then when they changed the website they took those 2,800 jobs away.
So I’m gonna fight to bring ‘em back. And I think we need the kind of fake jobs that the stimulus is providing.
SULLIVAN: You know, if I was a fake member of that fake district, I’d be really upset that I was discounted as being fake.
BOSSE: And that’s why I want you to pretend to vote for me.
Climatologists are stumped by the global warming stand-still as temperatures stopped rising over the past 10 years and the credibility of their scientific methods are in question:
Not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
Oops, that’s embarrassing.
Meanwhile, hackers broke into the data base of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealing e-mail correspondence between pro-global warming researchers showing a overt attempt to “hide the decline” in global temperatures over the past several decades.
Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit, wrote an e-mail to colleagues about the deceptive trick:
From: Phil Jones
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers Phil
Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx NR4 7TJ UK
Jones now says about the controversial “hide the decline” comment from an e-mail he wrote in 1999 that there was no intention to mislead, but he had “no idea” what he meant by those words.
Hmmmm….
Now for comic relief, here’s our resident climate alarmist Al Gore. “With Hurricanes at a 30 Year Low, Gore Turns to Photoshop” for the cover of his new book, Our Choice; A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis.Below is Algore’s book cover open.
The cover opens and closes half and half — so you only see one hurricane…as in the press release photo or the one on Amazon.
But this is the real picture sequence from the book which I looked at Borders today and took cell-phone pictures, original (before the retouching by some “artist”) Note all of the Arctic ice and the size of the Florida Peninsula…
A midget Southern Hemisphere cyclone is off the coast of Florida, another hurricane is sitting on the equator off the coast of Peru — and the Arctic Ice is gone (perhaps it is summer) and the Florida Peninsula is half gone
There are other differences I am sure you can find — but the hurricanes are just nonsense…
Ryan
Also note that the hurricane by Florida is spinning in the wrong direction, Cuba has completely disappeared meaning the water level has risen over 6,000 feet…. can you find any other errors? There are more.
A former North Korean Colonel who defected to the South several years ago reports that despite the South’s “Sunshine Policy” toward the North, the Kim Jong-Il regime stockpiled weapons in bunkers along the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) in preparation for a possible invasion of the South.
Construction of the bunkers began in 2004, the second year of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which continued the so-called Sunshine Policy of its predecessor.
“Pyongyang had built at least 800 bunkers including an unknown number of decoys by 2007 to prepare for a possible invasion of South Korea,” the ex-colonel claimed. “Each bunker contains military equipment that can fully arm 1,500 to 2,000 soldiers.”
“If a soldier carried all his military equipment, which weighs 32 kg, and came to the DMZ in full gear, he would already be exhausted before reaching the South,” the defector said. “So they built bunkers at the DMZ and put all their operations equipment there. In the bunkers, there are South Korean military uniforms and name tags, so that they can disguise themselves as South Korean troops. Also reserved are… 60-mm mortar shells, condensed high explosives, and all sorts of ammunition.”
“Despite Seoul’s appeasement policy, or whatever the South does toward the North, Pyongyang hasn’t given up its aim of unifying the Korean Peninsula by military force. They are sticking to this principle and teaching North Koreans about it,” he said.
The South’s policy of appeasement was doomed to failure because sunshine and butterflies are no match for demented dictators and evil religious cult leaders like Kim Jong-Il. It wasn’t hard to predict that the South, or the rest of the global community, would get nothing in exchange sucking up to the North except kidnapped citizens, continued human rights actrocities and nuclear build up.
GRAHAM: Can you give me a case in United States history where an enemy combatant caught on the battlefield was tried in civilian court?
HOLDER: I don’t know, I’d have to look at that, um, I think that, you know, the determination…
GRAHAM: We’re making history here, Mr. Attorney General, I’ll answer it for you, the answer is ‘no’..,.. we’re making history, and we’re making bad history…
Senator Graham asked the Attorney General these questions:
If Osama bin Laden is captured, where would he be tried?
Why would he be tried someplace different than KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in NYC)?
Does it matter if you use the law enforcement theory or the military theory?
Where would you put him?
If we catch bin Laden tomorrow, when does custodial interrogation begin?
Would he be entitled to Miranda rights at the time of capture?
What would you tell the military commander that captures Osama bin Laden? Would you tell him he must read him his rights and give him a lawyer? And if you do tell him that, would you jeopardize the prosecution in a federal court?
These are some of the basic questions the administration needs to be asked, and there are no sure answers. Attorney General Holder’s answers, “It depends” and “there are a variety of factors that would determine that” show that this endeavor to try enemy combatants in federal criminal courts is fraught with vulnerabilities that favor the terrorist, not the American citizen and not justice.
Good work, Mr. Lindsey. And I don’t say that often.
Republican Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder about his assertion that the only reason he decided to try 9/11 terrorists in federal court because he’d be “more likely to get a conviction” there than in a military tribunal:
KYL: How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when Khalid Sheikh Mohammad has already asked to plead guilty before a military commission and be executed? How could you be more likely to get a conviction in an Article 3 Court than that?
A missing 5-year-old whose mother was accused of offering her for sex was found dead off a heavily wooded road in a rural area Monday, ending a weeklong search, police said.
Two people have been charged in her disappearance, one of them her mother, Antoinette Davis, 25. Police charged Davis with human trafficking and felony child abuse, saying Shaniya was offered for prostitution.
Authorities also charged Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, with kidnapping after they said surveillance footage from a Sanford hotel showed him carrying Shaniya there. Authorities said McNeill admitted taking the girl, though his attorney said he will plead not guilty.
When is this going to stop? At what point are people going to start bringing out the pitch forks and protesting in the streets as we saw with the healthcare debate? Or is our message to children, “We’re just not that into you?”
The irony of this lovely girl being (presumably) raped and disposed in a landfill when millions of unborn every year are legally violated and murdered, and subsequently dumped into landfills, should not be overlooked. THERE IS A CONNECTION. When children are viewed as a burden, inconvenience, or as our dear leader put it, “a punishment”, how can we not expect the depraved among us to exploit this vulnerability?
Another child used for sex and disgarded as trash. So what’s it going to take, America? How many more children?
To the amazement of the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Forcesays women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year. The guidelines also recommended thatwomen not do regular breast self-exams and that women over 74 should not have mammograms or preventative measures to detect breast cancer.
Mammograms produce false-positive results in about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
Is this a joke? Mammagrams can produce false-positives in 10% of women, causing anxiety and unnecessaryfollow-up tests? Does the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force know what the alternative is, like perhaps not diagnosing cancer early enough resulting in mastectomies or death?
DANIEL B KOPANS, radiology professor at Harvard Medical School: “Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it. It’s crazy — unethical, really.”
Is the federal government recommending cutting costs and rationing care????
Some questioned whether the new guidelines were designed more to control spending than to improve health. In addition to prompting fewer doctors to recommend mammograms to their patients, they worried that the move would prompt insurers to deny coverage for many mammograms.
The new recommendations took on added significance because under health-care reform legislation pending in Congress, the conclusions of the 16-member task force would set standards for what preventive services insurance plans would be required to cover at little or no cost.
The dichotomy between private sector research organizations like the American Cancer Society and the federal government cannot be any clearer.
For all the mocking Democrat politicians do when anyone suggests their healthcare plan will include rationing, death panels and risky cost-cutting, does anyone need more proof that a U.S. run healthcare system will look like that of Canada or Britain?
Washington Post- The Obama administration will propose that the federal government take over safety regulation of the nation’s subway and light-rail systems, responding to what it says is haphazard and ineffective oversight by state agencies.
Under the proposal, the U.S. Department of Transportation would do for transit what it does for airlines and Amtrak: set and enforce federal regulations to ensure that millions of passengers get to their destinations safely. Administration officials said the plan will be presented in coming weeks to Congress, which must approve a change in the law.
The proposal would affect every subway and light-rail system in the country, including large systems in Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It’s about time the main stream media started doing its job. Here ABC News reports on White House claims, via the White House’s Recovery.Gov website, that the $812 billion dollar stimulus package that said to have created and saved jobs throughout the States have actually done so in many state districts… THAT DON’T EXIST.
Example? The White House reports the stimulus created 30 jobs for $761,420 in Arizona’s 15th Congressional District.
Arizona has only 8 Congressional districts.
The White House reports that the stimulus created 25 jobs costing $0 in Connecticut’s 42nd District.
There is no 42nd Disctrict in Connecticut.
Is the White House lying, inventing or incompetent? Whichever, it’s not good.
One of the things I love the most about Sarah Palin is that she lives her pro-life position. Sarah Palin, former Alaska Governor and Republican VP nominee, told Oprah that when she told her husband Todd that the child she was carrying had Down Syndrome, she was scared, but that when she asked him, “Why us?”, he asked, “Why not us?”
Many of the top tiered Conservative blogs are having a conniption over President Obama’s “breech of protocol” in Japan when he greeted his hosts, Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, with a deep bow.
Now, I’m as Conservative as the next. In fact, I’m a Reagan Conservative. I was 13 in 1980 and was enticed into love of country and political thought as I began to follow Ronald Reagan’s speeches, how he responded to world crises, and particularly his presidential debates. My political thought was formed in my young teenaged years as a direct result of Ronald Reagan’s expression of Conservatism and how it buttressed my own personal beliefs.
That said, I love blogs like GatewayPundit, Hot Air and Michelle Malkin. This changes nothing. But I do think their criticism of Barack Obama’s bow to Japan’s Emperor and Empress is unfounded.
This is President Obama bowing to Japan’s Emperor and Empress:
The criticism seems to come from the fact that Obama actually bowed, based on a breeched protocol, a protocol which no one seems to be able to specifically identify, and the fact that it was Obama, and that Obama did it.
It’s also based on an opinion piece in the LA Times by Andrew Malcolm titled, “How Low Will He Go? Obama gives Japan’s Emporer a wow bow”. I’m not sure what expertise Mr. Malcolm has in Asian culture, but hisargument that "To some in the States, an upright handshake might have looked better” isn’t exactly overwhelming.
As a military wife living in South Korea for a year and a half now, I can tell you that bowing is cultural common place. It is not a sign of disrespect for your own country, it is not a sign of subversion, it is not a sign of obedience, it is not a sign of surrender, it is not a sign of worship; it is a sign of respect.
I bow dozens of times a day. The depth and length is up to the individual and usually determined by the estimate of the person being bowing to. Age and seniority are factors. I bow to the cleaning lady and man, ajumas and adashis daily. I bow to store clerks.
If I want a deep bow, I go down to the local ritzy department store and men adorned in long red coats will give it to me. That’s always special.
Yes, I did see the several smaller bows by the President directed to the Emperor and Empress after his initial, and short, deep bow. That’s akin to a westerner nodding in agreement or giving acknowledgement. I do it when I pass through security points or when I pass Korean construction workers directing traffic.
I also noticed that the Emperor extended his hand to Obama. Both men are trying to meet each other where they are. I also noticed that the Empress gave Obama several slight bows or nods.
Emperor Akihito an historical figure being part of the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy. His country is also a close ally, unlike Saudi Arabia.
Barack Obama brought a lot of this criticism on himself because he surrounds himself with unpatriotic staff and criticizes his own country with such frequency and ease. Suspicion, even if knee-jerk, is warranted with this Commander in Chief. But unless we want to be guilty of the same sort of Derangement Syndrome liberals directed at George W. Bush, we should focus on critiquing his policies, theologies, ideologies, morality and governance. He gives us plenty of material; slamming him over this is an unworthy and ignorant battle to choose.
While insinuating that the Bush administration dragged out justice for 9/11 terrorists, Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that five high level 9/11 terrorists, including the mastermind behind the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be given U.S. Constitutional rights and be tried as common criminals in a civilian court in New York City rather than be tried as war criminals in front of a military tribunal.
“After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11th will finally face justice,” Holder said.
“If we have to bring them to the United States, New York City is not the place to have it, let alone in a courthouse that is in the shadows of the twin towers,” Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son died in the 9/11 attacks, said. The city’s wounds, he said, are simply still too raw.
“Ripping that scab open will create a tremendous hardship,” he said.
“We have a president who doesn’t know we’re at war,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, had been the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She said she was sickened by “the prospect of these barbarians being turned into victims by their attorneys.”
There’s a reason why this announcement was made on a Friday afternoon, when the President of the United States was out of the country touring Asia: this decision is indefensible.
Chinese researchers claim to have found a 17 percent increased breast cancer risk among women who have had induced abortions.
Peng Xing and other researchers in the Department of Oncology at the First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University enrolled in their study 1,417 patients diagnosed with breast cancer and 1,587 women without a prior breast cancer.
The researchers’ findings indicated that induced abortion increased a woman’s risk of breast cancer by a “statistically significant” rate of 17 percent.
A Turkish study published earlier this year reported a 66 percent increased breast cancer risk among women who have had abortions.
Karen Malec, CABC president, said the Chinese and Turkish studies are relevant to the debate in the U.S. over government-funded abortion.
“Government-funded abortion means more dead American women from breast cancer,” she charged.
President Obama from Japan today unable to give historical context to the A-Bomb and whether it was the right thing to do for the U.S. to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why? Because to Obama, victory is a dirty word.
REPORTER: What is your understanding of the historical meaning of the A bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Do you think it was the right decision?
OBAMA: Now obviously Japan has unique perspective on the issue of nuclear weapons as a consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You had one more question… And I’m not sure I remember it. What it North Korea?
REPORTER: No, it was that did you believe that the U.S. dropped the bomb..
OBAMA: No, no, no, there were sets of questions…out asked about… North Korea?
In my previous entry highlighting George W. Bush’s speech on human freedom, he referred time and time again to history, and how human courage and solidarity changed the future. Obama in contrast seems to detest history, looking only forward to hope and change, never looking back to see what can be learned.
You know, those who don’t learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.
Now this is a presidential speech, the sort of message a U.S. President should be sending to the world.
Former President George W. Bush delivered an inspiring speech yesterday at the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, launching the Bush Institute which will act as a center for research and humanitarianism.
The four main areas of focus at the institute are:
Laura Bush is heading up the Women’s Initiatives portion of the institute saying which focuses on human rights for women and children throughout the world.
Here, President Bush describes Human Freedom and the need every individual has for it. Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. It’ll restore your hope in America as a beacon of hope in the world:
BUSH: “With the Freedom Collection, the Bush Institute will send a message to dissidents and underground preachers and political prisoners around the world, ‘We hear your voice; and as you stand for your freedom, free people will stand for you.’ “
But I thought the Ft. Hood murderer U.S. Army MAJ Nidal Malik Hasan killed 14 people this week because “he cracked” under the pressure of harassment for being Muslim in the U.S. military by other troops.
Abdul-Rashid Abdullah, deputy director of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, told FoxNews.com that the nonprofit group has not received a single report recently of a U.S. soldier being harassed “simply because he was Muslim.”
“That kind of report is inconsistent with what we’ve heard,” Abdullah said prior to a press conference in Washington to denounce Thursday’s shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 dead and 38 wounded. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old Army psychiatrist who was reportedly due to be deployed later this month, is accused in the mass shooting.
Abdullah said his organization, which condemned the “unspeakable” attack, serves “several thousand” Muslim soldiers.
In less than 6 months, U.S. troops have been murdered on their own turf twice by Islamic extremists. Coincidence?
In June 2009, a hapless youth named Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammadshot and killed one U.S. soldier and wounded another at an Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Muhammad, a covert to Islam with ties to terrorist groups who was at one time detained in Yemen, shot to kill because he opposed the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military has a habit of being politically correct to benefit select individuals. Take for example the military’s affirmative action programto promote particular individuals over others based on sex and race. If two soldiers are facing promotion and their written records are similar, race and sex often determines which is promoted. In fact, this practice is so pervasive in the military that white males up for promotion often list themselves in their promotion packets as “Other” rather than “Caucaisan” to give themselves a fighting chance at selection.
But we can take comfort in the words of our Commander in Chief Barack Obama to “not rush to judgment” when connecting the dots with Muslim terrorists who kill U.S. soldiers here at home.
Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 10:41AM 
