-Thucydides-
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Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value ...."
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It is difficult to imagine Israel attacking Iran.
It is, however, more difficult to imagine Israel not attacking Iran.
Consider three questions: Read on.
On July 16, Andrew Malcolm at the Los Angeles Times's Top of the Ticket Blog wrote the following:
When President Bush ordered the surge in January 2007, (Barack) Obama said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse," a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year he acknowledged progress, but maintained his position that political progress was lacking.
The LAT Blog notes earlier in its entry that "The parts (of Obama's web site) that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared."
Something else disappeared this week. Team Obama, for all its posturing, probably saw something like this coming -- which explains their web site scrubbing. (Read more.)
What more can anyone say about the 1960s and all its legacies?
Those who protested some 40 years ago often still congratulate themselves that their loud zeal alone brought needed "change" to America in civil rights, the environment, women's liberation and world peace. Maybe. But critics counter that the larger culture that followed was the most self-absorbed in memory.
Everyone can at least agree that the spirit of the .... (Read more.)
The failure to readily identify the battle between good and evil is a nagging, ongoing, dangerous pattern that shows no sign of easing up any time soon.
This week on Fox News Channel, I appeared on a show and “debated” Ibrahim Hooper, a vocal and forceful representative of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. The topic? Whether or not it’s a good idea for a group of Islamic folks, represented by a man once linked by the federal government of plotting to blow up buildings and kill innocent Americans, to be allowed to plaster over a thousand subway cars in New York City with advertisements promoting Islam.
I’m not kidding you.
This man, a Brooklyn imam named Siraj Wahhaj, is all over a promotional video hyping the ad campaign for the trains. According to the New York Post, he has said things like, “In time, democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam.” (Read on.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The principal reason why former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has climbed to the top of Sen. John McCain's practical wish list for vice president is the possibility that he could bring Michigan's 17 electoral votes to the Republicans for the first time since 1988.
Private polls show Romney could make all the difference in Michigan. A McCain-Romney ticket carries the state by a moderately comfortable margin. With any other running mate, McCain loses Michigan. (Read more.)
But the race is still basically tied according to the polls.
In one of those front-page editorials disguised as “news” stories, the New York Times blames “the lucrative lending practices” of banks and other financial institutions for helping create the current financial crisis of millions of borrowers and of the financial system in general.
It must take either a willful determination to believe whatever they want to believe or a cynical desire to propagandize their readers for the New York Times to call “lucrative” the lending practices that have caused many lenders to lose millions of dollars, some to lose billions and some to go bankrupt.
Blaming the lenders is the party line of Congressional Democrats as well. What we need is more government regulation of lenders, they say, to protect the innocent borrowers from “predatory” lending practices.
Before going further down that road, it may be useful to look back at what got us into this mess in the first place.
It was not that many years ago when there was ......
YASOUJ, Iran — Iran will not yield to world powers in the dispute over its nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in a speech broadcast live on state television.
"The Iranian nation will not retreat one iota in the face of oppressing powers," he said. "The Iranian nation has chosen its path."
The United States and its Western allies accuse Iran of ......
"You need to investigate the truth behind what you post. Do you believe everything you see in your email? This is a hoax email."I did not receive it as an email. I came across the correspondence from a respected blog and my post contained the site name and the link back to the website. I love it when someone "tells me" what "I have to do" on my own site. Further, he/she wants me to "investigate" but yet he/she cannot pick up on the simple fact that it was not an "email" that I had received, but a posting from another website.
WASHINGTON - The latest chain e-mail smear against Barack Obama: He "blew off" troops at an Afghan base to shoot hoops for a publicity photo.The letter was apparently written by a Utah Army National Guard intelligence officer in a linguist unit at Bagram Airfield who claimed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was rude to G.I.s.
Mr. Meek went on to say the Army brass were not happy with the email and debunked the allegations of Obama dissing the troops. They went on to say the comments were inappropriate
(military personnel are supposed to be apolitical) and not factually correct.
Are we to believe that the brass are getting worked up in a lather and debunking the "facts" in the email that was a hoax and from someone whom does not exist? That is a little hard to swallow.
Further, Mr. Meek said in his news column that emails to the officer and phone calls to his wife were not returned. Emails and phone calls to people who do not exist? Not likely.
Could it be an exaggeration of the real facts, or perhaps just his perception of the situation, but not truly reflective of what the real situation was? Perhaps.
Or, is the email fairly factual and realistically depicts what the real situation was? And now, the military brass is putting their "political spin" on it in an attempt to minimize the damage from one of their own - someone who, in their view, stepped over the line and expressed his political views.
From what I can garner to date, this email was sent to his wife and she got it out there on the internet and it has spread like wildfire as things often do on the net. Perhaps he had no desire or intent on getting it out on the internet as this may cause him a heap of trouble.
Barack does have a "military problem". He, himself, has acknowledged this. But let's face it, military votes are not enough to have much of an impact on elections.
By the way, forgetting about this email from Afghanistan kerfuffle, what's up with Barack stiffing the soldiers in Germany? He was to go to a couple of bases and also visit the wounded at the military hospital in Germany - but canceled. What's up with that? He won't win the hearts and minds of our military personnel with tactics such as this.
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON---- Some 90 billion barrels of oil and nearly a third of the world's undiscovered natural gas remain untapped under an area north of the Arctic Circle, government scientists estimate, in the largest-ever survey of the area's energy potential. Full story.
The Soldier Voting Scandal
By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, on July 8 introduced a resolution demanding that the Defense Department better enable U.S. military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections. That act was followed by silence. Democrats normally leap on an opportunity to find fault with the Bush Pentagon. But not a single Democrat joined Blunt as a co-sponsor, and an all-Republican proposal cannot pass in the Democratic-controlled House.
Analysis by the federal Election Assistance Commission, rejecting inflated Defense Department voting claims, estimated overseas and absentee military voting for the 2006 midterm elections at a disgracefully low 5.5 percent. The quality of voting statistics is so poor that there is no way to tell how many of the slightly over 330,000 votes actually were sent in by the absentee military voters and their dependents and how many by civilian Americans living abroad -- 6 million all total.
Nobody who has studied the question objectively sees any improvement since .....
Written by Capt. Jeffrey S. Porter, USMC
Thursday, 24 July 2008
[Last Saturday, July 19, Barack Hussein Obama paid a brief visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on his way to Kabul. US Marine Battle Captain Jeffrey S. Porter wrote a brief eyewitness account in an email to his family and friends, which To The Point is able to publish here.]
Hello everyone,
As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram, Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.
As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball.
He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service. So really he was just here to make a showing for the Americans back home that he is their candidate for President.
I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the way over here, you would thank those who are providing the freedom that they are providing for you.
I swear we got more thanks from the NBA Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders than from one of the Senators, who wants to be the President of the United States.
I just don't understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.
If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.
In service,
CPT. Jeffrey S. Porter
American by birth, MARINE by the grace of God
HUMAN EVENTS
Out here in West Texas we love our guns, we support our troops, and we treasure our freedom. We are an independent bunch and -- pardon me, Senator Obama -- fiercely but not bitterly so. We are proud to have our own things to do with as we choose to, as free people of the freest nation in the history of the world.
We also walk around on top of oil: yes it’s far beneath us, but it’s there. And all these ....
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts.
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.Go read the whole article.Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. ...
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. ...
3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). ...
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect. ...
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion. ..
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times.
As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" — when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow."IF you think the US markets have problems, look at the value of al Qaeda shares throughout the Muslim world: A high-flying political equity just a few years ago, its stock has tanked. It made the wrong strategic investments and squandered its moral capital.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Osama bin Laden was the darling of the Arab street, seen as the most successful Muslim in centuries. The Saudi royal family paid him protection money, while individual....
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
Does Osama bin Laden possess nuclear weapons? Has he smuggled these weapons into the United States? Does he have a plan to detonate these weapons in multiple American cities if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities? Dr. Hugh Cort, President of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research, believes the answer to all of these questions is yes.
Cort has assembled a body of evidence which he claims....
House Speaker Pelosi is hinting at reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, and many of her liberal colleagues in Congress are doing the same in both chambers. Alleging the press isnt balanced, they say government should be making sure all viewpoints meaning the lefts are fairly represented. I agree the press isnt balanced, but Mrs. Pelosi has it backward; liberalism dominates the press, including the three major networks and most major newspapers.
Though originally the Fairness Doctrine did not require...
Despite a report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., has continued to use textbooks that teach hatred of everyone not of their specific brand of faith, the U.S. State Department has yet to act to close down the school. Officials of the academy, which has about 1,000 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12, promised to excise passages in the textbooks that disparage Jews and Christians, but according to an examination by The Washington Post for the 2006-2007 school year, though "much of the controversial material had been removed, at least one book still contained passages that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one's enemies and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was 'justified.'"
Once again, Islamic Saudi Academy officials have promised to clean up the text.
There are at least two questions that should be asked. One: .....