RadioActive with Steve Mitton: June 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Your Thoughts? Ohio City Considering Ordinance to Ban Adults From Smoking in Cars With Minors

This article says that most people are for it, but from the coverage I’ve seen, most Central Ohioans are against it . . .

It’s common for buildings to have rules against smoking inside, but one Central Ohio city is now considering an ordinance that would ban smoking in vehicles when young children are inside.

As it turns out, the idea is that of a high-school government class, and it’s already stirring some controversy.

Lauryn Robinson and Logan Justice are still in their teenage years, yet they could be just a few months away from having an idea that was generated in their Washington Senior High School AP Government class become law in Washington Court House.

It all started when the class was thinking of ideas for their class community action project.

“We were just kind of all sitting around and we’re thinking what really makes us mad when we drive through town and see things and someone brought up the subject, like, ’I hate seeing parents smoke in the car with their kids.’ So we kind of just took that idea and ran,” Robinson said.

They collected petitions, conducted research on similar anti-smoking laws and presented their case to council members in May.

Good Riddance, Robert Byrd

When Robert Byrd was a young man, he organized a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in his hometown of Crab Orchard and at the young age of 24 rose to the high office of “Exalted Cyclops.” He quickly climbed the KKK ranks, ascending all the way to “grand Kleagle,” a powerful recruitment head.

Once he became a prominent Democrat in the Senate, he had to mitigate his mistake of joining the Klan. As a former Exalted Cyclops and kleagle, it was hard for him to portray himself as a “good man in the wrong place at the wrong time” so he tried to mitigate the harsh image of the Klan that was becoming mainstream.

As he writes in his autobiography Child of the Appalachian Coalfields: “In those days, as I was told, many of the upstanding people in the communities belonged to the Klan. Doctors, lawyers, clergymen, judges, business people, and laborers—including women—were members of the organization. Many of the ‘best’ people were members—even senators and other high officials. It was with such background impressions, therefore, that I sought to become a member of the KKK.”

AFTER FAILED ATTEMPT OF FORCED ISLAMIZATION EGYPTIAN CHRISTIAN FAMILY UNDER SIEGE

EZBET FANOUS, EGYPT - (ANS)- A Middle Eastern journalist has revealed that "one of the most explosive issues in the relations between Christians and Muslims of Egypt is the abduction of Christian Coptic minor girls, to force them to embrace Islam, after humiliating and demeaning them psychologically and morally."

Mary Abdelmassih, in a story for the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org) said, "This dangerous phenomenon which appeared in the 1970s and which has become a lucrative business for all Muslim participants including the Egyptian State Security has been steadily on the rise, with reports surfacing weekly of several disappearances without a trace of Coptic girls."

She said that those fortunate enough to return home have talked of their ordeal. (See: www.aina.org/news/20091223164421.htm )

Abdelmassih went on to say that Zeenahom (Suzan) Nady Adly, 19-years old, "is one of the fortunate girls who was able to return home, after being drugged and abducted by Muslims to force her conversion to Islam.

"She comes from Ezbet Fanous, a small hamlet, near the town of Samalut (150 miles from Cairo), inhabited by a Coptic majority of twenty families to six Muslim ones and a Muslim mayor."

The journalist said that according to the girl's story, as she went out at night on Saturday, June 12, 2010, to buy soft drinks for some visitors at home, she was stopped by two Muslim men, who sprayed a substance in her face, making her lose consciousness.

"When I regained consciousness nearly two hours later, I found myself in the building of the Islamic Sharia Association in Minia, facing a shaikh [Islamic scholar] who tried to intimidate and force me to convert to Islam," reported Freecopts advocacy in a taped interview with Zeenahom. "He tried to convince me that I would be safer marrying a Muslim, and leaving the area."

Raising Arizona

Earlier this month the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education requested that the district Superintendent integrate discussions of Arizona’s recently-passed laws on immigration and ethnic studies into the public school curriculum. The LAUSD “school board wants all public school students in the city to be taught that Arizona’s new immigration law is un-American,” wrote Jana Winter for Fox News on June 2.

In response to Winter’s article, the board stated that they had “directed the Superintendent to ensure that LAUSD civics and history classes discuss the recent laws enacted in Arizona in the context of the American values of unity, diversity, and Equal Protection for all.” Therefore,

“This very important piece of current events would be taught in our classrooms along with a number of controversial periods and laws which are a part of our history and are currently being taught including: slavery; Jim Crow laws and segregation; reservations and residential schools for Native Americans; The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the anti-Irish racism in the 19th century; racism against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe during the 20th century; anti-Semitism; internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II and the Mexican Repatriation Program during the 1930s.”

In other words, the LAUSD BoE would prefer that students there were taught that the Arizona law is morally equivalent to these historical events.

In a resolution (pdf) against these two pieces of legislation, the school board claimed that Arizona’s SB 1070 “effectively sanctions and promotes unconstitutional racial profiling and harassment, and blatantly violates the civil rights of both Arizona residents and all visitors to the State…”

Some panelists at a recent conference co-sponsored by Georgetown Law and the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) expressed similar concerns with the law.

Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers

Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers 250610top2

President Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet ‘kill switch’ bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.

Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor.

In response to widespread criticism of the bill, language was added that would force the government to seek congressional approval to extend emergency measures beyond 120 days. Still, this would hand Obama the authority to shut down the Internet on a whim without Congressional oversight or approval for a period of no less than four months.

The Senators pushing the bill rejected the claim that the bill was a ‘kill switch’ for the Internet, not by denying that Obama would be given the authority to shut down the Internet as part of this legislation, but by arguing that he already had the power to do so.

Obama is not like Hitler, he’s like Capone

By writing a column that drew comparisons between the uninformed electorate of post World War I Germany and our own in the Obama era, Thomas Sowell helped Keith Olbermann fill at least 30 seconds of his show last week. (Olbermann also provided several minutes of filler by reading a short story — I thought I had accidentally tuned in to Monsterpiece Theater.) Sowell’s Hitler comparison, though quite indirect, created a stir in the Left blogosphere, too. Sowell had violated Goodwin’s Law, which states clearly that only President George W. Bush can be compared to Hitler.

I hate Hitler comparisons. But how disturbing to watch so many on the Left make this inartful rhetoric into a distraction from Obama’s devil-may-care attitude about his proper role as president under our system of limited and divided government.

Obama is not like Hitler. He is like Machiavelli, or Al Capone, or the hawk in Hesiod’s parable, or anyone else in any other context who lives under the illusion that might makes right. His administration’s governing axiom is “I won the election, and I’m bigger than you, so I’m going to push you around.”

This, I believe, is what our own Michael Barone referred to when he coined the term “gangster government” as applied to this White House. Obama knows that as President, he is stronger than most economic actors, and he is using the weight of his office to bully them. No doubt he views himself not as a bully but as Superman or Robin Hood. But his office has constitutional limits which he consistently fails to observe, and each transgression both sets a bad precedent for future presidents and makes us number to his own outrageous behavior.

Are you a CEO? Obama thinks he can fire you — and he will.

Are you a car dealer? He will take away your franchise and all the investments you’ve made in it.

Psychologist Analyzes Liberals

Recently I attended a lecture explaining the “Liberal Mind” by PhD. psychologist, Timothy C. Daughtry. He gave his explanation as to how such a minority (30%) in the United States has been able to impose its politics on the majority. When using the word Liberal below we are talking about the political Liberal.

Liberals dominate our institutions, i.e., the schools, universities, media, arts, cinema, nonprofits, government bureaucracies, etc. Anyone challenging their monolithic views is ruthlessly attacked to be silenced.

Daughtry stated there are two types of liberals. First are the hard liners. He suggested one is wasting his time trying to convince them of anything since they will not or cannot think about their underlying contradictory assumptions, for example, their contradictory belief in equality for all and affirmative action, i.e., special preferences for a favored group.

If you try to discuss facts, they generally respond with personal insults, try to marginalize you by getting a group of like-minded individuals to condemn you, demonize you by suggesting you have dark motives, make you a laughingstock, etc. Sara Palin comes to mind. One can always tell who in the mainstream that Liberals are frightened of by the ferocity of their personal attacks.

The second type of liberal is the uninformed liberal. That person may listen and analyze factual information if you can get them away from their monolithic liberal group.

In his overview Daughtry explained that the liberal character is all about dominance and power. They use the rules and the goodness of their opposition against them. For example, most people do not like conflict.

So the liberal lives on the offensive. They are intense; they demand, whine, blame, accuse, threaten, intimidate, escalate and have tantrums so there cannot be a discussion of the facts.

A few 'vapid' questions for Elena Kagan

Given Elena Kagan's aversion to "vapid and hollow" confirmation hearings devoid of "legal analysis," beginning Monday she might relish answering these questions:

-- It would be naughty to ask you about litigation heading for the Supreme Court concerning this: Does Congress have the right, under its enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce, to punish the inactivity of not purchasing health insurance? So, instead answer this harmless hypothetical: If Congress decides that interstate commerce is substantially affected by the costs of obesity, may Congress require obese people to purchase participation in programs such as Weight Watchers? If not, why not?

-- The government having decided that Chrysler's survival is an urgent national necessity, could it decide that "Cash for Clunkers" is too indirect a subsidy and instead mandate that people buy Chrysler products?

-- If Congress concludes that ignorance has a substantial impact on interstate commerce, can it constitutionally require students to do three hours of homework nightly? If not, why not?

In 2010, Conservatives Still Outnumber Moderates, Liberals

PRINCETON, NJ -- Conservatives have maintained their leading position among U.S. ideological groups in the first half of 2010. Gallup finds 42% of Americans describing themselves as either very conservative or conservative. This is up slightly from the 40% seen for all of 2009 and contrasts with the 20% calling themselves liberal or very liberal.

Political Ideology -- 2010 Half-Year Update (1992-2010 Trend)

The 2010 results are based on eight Gallup and USA Today/Gallup surveys conducted from January through June, encompassing interviews with more than 8,000 U.S. adults. The 42% identifying as conservative represents a continuation of the slight but statistically significant edge conservatives achieved over moderates in 2009. Should that figure hold for all of 2010, it would represent the highest annual percentage identifying as conservative in Gallup's history of measuring ideology with this wording, dating to 1992.

The recent rise in conservatism's fortunes follows a decline seen after 2003; liberalism has experienced the opposite pattern. From 1993 to 2002, the ideological trend had been fairly stable, with roughly 40% identifying as moderate, 38% as conservative, and 19% as liberal. Before that, the presidential bid of independent candidate Ross Perot may have contributed to a heightened proportion of Americans (43%) calling themselves moderate in 1992.

Partisans Maintain Their 2009 Ideological Leanings

Turtle Deaths Called Result of Shrimping, Not Oil Spill

By SHAILA DEWAN

June 25, 2010

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist says he believes most of the dead turtles that have been examined since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill died not from the oil or the chemical dispersants put into the water after the disaster, but from being caught in shrimping nets, though further testing may show otherwise.

Dr. Brian Stacy, a veterinary pathologist who specializes in reptiles, said that more than half the turtles dissected so far, most of which were found shortly after the spill, had sediment in their lungs or airways, which indicated they might have been caught in nets and drowned.

“The only plausible scenario where you would have high numbers of animals forcibly submerged would be fishery interaction,” he said. “That is the primary consideration for this event.”

Many times the usual number of turtles have been found stranded this year, but NOAA has cautioned from the beginning that the oil spill is not necessarily to blame.

Funny, this is the first we have heard of such cautioning from the NOAA. Our watchdog media seems to have missed their cautions entirely.

Shrimp boats are the chief commercial fishing danger for turtles because they tow their nets underwater for long distances, and turtles trapped in them are unable to come up for air. Shrimpers are supposed to equip their nets with turtle extruder [sic] devices, which help turtles escape. But environmentalists have complained that some shrimpers disregard the law or do not install the devices properly.

“I’m not surprised at all that shrimp fishing is causing a lot of turtle deaths right now, it happens every year and it’s a chronic problem that the federal government has refused to address,” said Todd Steiner, the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network in Marin County, Calif., which works to protect sea turtles around the world. He said there was not enough enforcement of the law requiring the extruder [sic] devices, though turtle deaths spike every year when shrimp season begins.

Want to protect the poor? Then give them jobs

At last, we are having the right argument for our time. Virtually everybody who is in touch with political reality now accepts that the old contest – socialism vs capitalism – is over. We all believe, with greater or lesser degrees of enthusiasm, in free-market economics. So the real source of contention that remains is the size and role of the state.

Anyone who thinks that this is a puny arena – that the boundaries of debate have shrunk to a less inspirational, purely managerial scale – is mistaken. The passion with which those on the Left are now defending their new turf should make it clear: this fight will be to the death because the power of government to control social and economic outcomes is seen by them as the last plausible incarnation of their moral world-view. The current arguments about welfare reform which the Government has robustly initiated are going to bring this abstract confrontation into the day-to-day experience of national life.

Now it is perfectly understandable that those who have a vested interest in state power – public sector trade union leaders, for example – should be prepared to risk everything to preserve it, but have the more thoughtful Left-liberal proponents really thought this through? Are they actually prepared to go down fighting for the idea that the state is the source of social virtue and must be the answer to all of our civic problems?

J. Christian Adams: You Deserve To Know — Unequal Law Enforcement Reigns at Obama’s DOJ (PJM Exclusive)

Soon after his confirmation, Attorney General Eric Holder labeled us a nation of cowards, a people supposedly unwilling or afraid to discuss race. Based on my experience as an attorney at the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, Holder has far more to fear from that discussion than do the rest of us.

If we had that frank, truthful discussion about race, we’d learn that the Obama administration doesn’t believe some civil rights laws protect every American. The Bush Civil Rights Division was willing to protect all Americans from racial discrimination; during the Obama years, the Holder years, only some Americans will be protected. Americans have a right to know and judge the racial policies of the administration they elected in 2008.

The dismissal of the voter intimidation lawsuit against armed New Black Panthers in Philadelphia is the most prominent example of this hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws. But that dismissal is far from the only manifestation of the beliefs infesting the Department. Many other cases and decisions — some of which I will detail below — are in question and deserve scrutiny.

On Election Day 2008, armed men wearing the uniforms and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were posted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the entrance to a polling site. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters. After the election, the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice brought a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and these armed thugs. I, and other Justice lawyers, obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the case against them.

Before a final judgment could be entered, however, our superiors ordered dismissal of the claims.

Congress has sought answers from the Department about why the Black Panther case was dismissed. The Department has repeatedly claimed the “facts and law” did not support the case — which of course is false. Others have speculated about a White House involvement. But I believe the best explanation for the corrupt dismissal of the case is the profound hostility by the Obama Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department towards a race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws.

This hostility was — and is — on open display within the Department of Justice.

I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

— Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944

(Newsbusters)- When Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond died, the MSM was quick to stress his segregationist past. The New York Times ran the headline “Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100,” leaving readers to imagine the South Carolinian had remained an advocate of segregation. The very first line of USA Today’s story described Thurmond as “the nation’s most prominent segregationist.”

Strange how the MSM can suddenly become reticent about mentioning someone’s segregationist past when the late politician in question is a Democrat. On Morning Joe today, Mark Halperin and Mike Barnicle used elliptical language worthy of a State Department dispatch to avoid mentioning that Byrd had been a member and leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

RBS tells clients to prepare for 'monster' money-printing by the Federal Reserve

Entitled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Here", it is a warfare manual for defeating economic slumps by use of extreme monetary stimulus once interest rates have dropped to zero, and implicitly once governments have spent themselves to near bankruptcy.

The speech is best known for its irreverent one-liner: "The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost."

Bernanke began putting the script into action after the credit system seized up in 2008, purchasing $1.75 trillion of Treasuries, mortgage securities, and agency bonds to shore up the US credit system. He stopped far short of the $5 trillion balance sheet quietly pencilled in by the Fed Board as the upper limit for quantitative easing (QE).

Gun rights case: Supreme Court rules on second amendment

The Second Amendment provides Americans a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a long-sought victory for gun rights advocates.

The 5 to 4 decision does not strike down any gun-control laws in place, nor does it elaborate on what kind of laws would offend the Constitution. One justice predicted that an "avalanche" of lawsuits would be filed across the country asking federal judges to define the boundaries of gun ownership and government regulation.

But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the opinion for the court's dominant conservatives, said: "It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."

The decision extended the court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that "the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home." That decision applied only to federal laws and federal enclaves such as Washington; it was the first time the court had said there was an individual right to gun ownership rather than one related to military service.

Monday's decision might be more symbolic than substantive, at least initially. No cities have laws as restrictive as the handgun bans in the District and in Monday's case from Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park. Although the court's decision did not specifically strike those laws, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said it would make the city's 28-year-old law "unenforceable."

Those who have fought for years for such an interpretation of the Second Amendment were ecstatic. "A great moment in American history," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, marking the occasion when "the Second Amendment becomes a real part of constitutional law."

Marika De Florio would rather go topless than listen to the noisy grandchild of a neighbour. (IAN MACALPINE/QMI Agency)

Marika De Florio is using her bare breasts to win a feud with her neighbours.

The 56-year-old says she is sick and tired of her neighbours’ five-year-old grandson driving a loud all-terrain vehicle for hours on her quiet Seeley’s Bay street.

She has found a solution.

De Florio has discovered that if she goes out topless, to the horror of the boy’s grandparents, they will take the child into the house.

“It is maddening,” she said of the noise.

“I’m going mental. I can’t breathe and I’m not moving, but I need some peace. I can’t believe I did this, but they pulled the kid inside and then called police because of their small-town mentality.”

De Florio said she will continue to go topless every time the child rides the ATV.

De Florio says the problems with her neighbours, Mike and Nancy Berry, started two years ago when she moved to the area and he helped her get her lawnmower going.

Leeds OPP, which covers Seeley’s Bay, have received complaint calls from both De Florio and the Berrys.

She is not breaking the law, because in Canada women are allowed to be topless.

“There is not a criminal charge for that ... not since 1996,” said Toronto Police Const. Isabelle Cotton.

Gore Accuser Paints Picture of Erratic, Forceful Man

The alleged crime took place nearly 4 years ago but we are just now getting a glimpse at what Al Gore’s accuser says was an incident of sexual assault. The accuser, who’s identity remains sealed by the Portland Police Bureau, was summoned to former Vice President Gore’s hotel room in downtown Portland for a 10:30pm massage, arranged by the hotel. What happened next is a story some find hard to believe, including (apparently) the Portland Police who have not yet filed charges.

In a 74 page police report obtained by ThePortlander, Gore’s accuser details a two and a half hour window where she felt trapped in the Vice President’s hotel room, unable to leave because of the perceived threat of physical harm. The Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT) tells of 4 distinct incidences where Gore crossed the line in a sexual way. Below are summaries in our own words, based on the lengthy police report.

Shortly after entering his hotel room, Vice President Gore asked the woman to massage his buttocks, inner thighs and abdomen during the scheduled 90 minute massage. In her police statement, she told authorities that it is rare for a client to ask for those services. She says that during the massage, Gore began to moan in a sexual manner while asking her to move our hands closer and closer to his genital region. When she stopped, he allegedly became angry and yelled at her before grabbing her hand and shoving it under the sheet covering his naked body, resting it on his pubic region.

After the first incident, the accuser was able to get back to a normal massage routine which she finished without further incident. However, as she was packing up the tools of her trade, she say’s Gore embraced her, grabbing and rubbing her butt and breasts. She told police that she recalled feeling Vice President Gore sexually aroused.

The background check on Barack Obama that the U.S. media neglected to do

The following is based on an article by Cliff Kincaid for Accuracy in Media.

In a Father’s Day column attacking Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, Colbert King of the Washington Post presents President Obama as a good family man who has been married to one woman and whose mother raised him to believe in “hard work and education.” Since King has brought up the topic of Obama’s upbringing, it is important to set the record straight. Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis was a sex pervert who mentored Obama during his growing-up years in Hawaii and became his substitute father.

Obama’s father abandoned the family and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, raised him only with the help of his grandparents. His grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, had selected Davis to be a mentor to a young Obama before he went off to college. Davis, described only as “Frank” in Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, was a major influence over Obama for eight years of his life. He operated as a journalist, first in Chicago, where he came into contact with Obama associate Valerie Jarrett’s former father-in-law, and then Hawaii, where he wrote for a Communist Party-sponsored newspaper financed by a communist-controlled labor union.

A bruised ego.

Nothing else moves him to urgency. Nothing seems to compel him to act.

Freezing in the south last year? Nope.

Do anything about the oil spill? Nope

Meet with head of BP? Uh-uh

Even mention the oil spill? No.

Visit the Gulf coast? Nope.

Meet with the Governor of Arizona? Nah.

Secure the borders? Not a chance.

But if you insult Obama? Instant reaction.

You really have to hand it to Gen. Stanley McChrystal. He can do something the worst ecological disaster in recent history could not do.

Get a prompt reaction out of Obama.

The guy who took ten days to even mention the oil spill and more than 12 days to make his first visit to the region was moved to summon General Stanley McChrystal to the White House within 24 hours of a story appearing in Rolling Stone. It took Obama until October of 2009 to even meet with McChrystal for the first time- eight months after taking office- but the blink of an eye to call him on the carpet for embarassing Obama.

It’s all about priorities.

Portuguese writer José Saramago was an ‘unflinching‘ communist.

IF JOSÉ Saramago, the Portuguese writer who died on Friday at 87, had been an unrepentant Nazi for the last four decades, he would never have won international acclaim or received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. Leading publishers would never have brought out his books, his works would not have been translated into more than 20 languages, and the head of Portugal’s government would never have said on his death — as Prime Minister José Sócrates did say last week — that he was “one of our great cultural figures and his disappearance has left our culture poorer.’’

But Saramago wasn’t a Nazi, he was a communist. And not just a nominal communist, as his obituaries pointed out, but an “unabashed’’ (Washington Post), “unflinching’’ (AP), “unfaltering’’ (New York Times) true believer. A member since 1969 of Portugal’s hardline Communist Party, Saramago called himself a “hormonal communist’’ who in all the years since had “found nothing better.’’ Yet far from rendering him a pariah, Saramago’s communist loyalties have been treated as little more than a roguish idiosyncrasy. Without a hint of irony, AP’s obituary quoted a comment Saramago made in 1998: “People used to say about me, ‘He’s good but he’s a communist.’ Now they say, ‘He’s a communist but he’s good.’ ’’

The Smart Grid Trojan Horse

Perhaps you've heard of the Smart Grid initiative. Perhaps you understand that the goal of the initiative is to improve and modernize the nation's power transmission and distribution networks. Maybe your electric utility has even installed a Smart Meter at your home or business. What you probably don't know is that the Smart Grid movement is the Trojan Horse of the green agenda, a step toward Cap & Trade.

Since the time of grid pioneer Samuel Insull, the goal of utilities everywhere has been to balance generation capacity against electrical demand to ensure system integrity. Curiously, this goal is shared in modern times by the green movement. The difference is in how the goal is accomplished.

For decades, utilities satisfied unbridled energy demand growth by constructing new generating plants. The concept was pleasantly simple: Predict the pace by which energy consumption would increase and build generating plants to keep ahead of it. Then came environmentalism and its evil twin, mindless anti-capitalism, both rooted in the counterculture of the 1960s. Thereafter, utilities began to evolve at the point of a gun. Every aspect of generating electricity came into question under a variety of federal energy acts and environmental regulations. Power plant construction would never again be easy or cheap. Energy efficiency and conservation would have to save the day in accord with the Green agenda. Meanwhile, many state Public Utility Commissions established Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). These standards required utilities to incorporate high-cost renewable energy sources into their portfolio of low-cost conventional generation assets (never mind the consequences).

Now comes the Smart Grid initiative. In truth, the initiative is but a collection of programs captured in the form of federal standards that separately and jointly advance the Green agenda without raising many eyebrows. The first effort involves replacing conventional electric meters with Smart Meters. Smart Meters are key, because they can be programmed to total your energy consumption by time-of-day (among other sophisticated capabilities). This feature facilitates the application of Time-of-Use (TOU) billing tariffs, euphemistically called "dynamic pricing"in marketing circles. These tariffs vary energy charges depending on when energy is used. Conventional meters do not include the time-of-day feature. They are very modest devices that have little calculation capability. They simply total kilowatt-hour consumption (energy) for monthly billing calculation purposes with no regard to when energy is consumed. This simple metering approach met, and still meets, the operational needs of utilities that bill against a simple flat cost-per-kilowatt-hour tariff. That would be the majority of utilities.

Islamic Law Comes to Dearborn

Is it illegal to preach Christianity to Muslims in America now?

Acts 17 Apologetics, a Christian evangelistic group, was banned from passing out fliers at this year’s Arab Festival in Dearborn, Mich., but they went to the festival anyway and ended up getting arrested.

On Saturday, I got this message from David Wood of Acts 17: “Muslims threatened to kill Nabeel [Qureshi, an ex-Muslim and David’s colleague] and me if we showed up again at Arab Fest in Dearborn, so we went there yesterday. They didn’t kill us. Instead, police arrested us and we got to spend a night in jail (along with two others who were video recording us).”

Wondering if they were arrested for passing out fliers in defiance of the ban, I asked David about the ban. He answered, “Yes, we’re banned from handing out literature, but we didn’t do that. We followed the rules, and still got thrown in jail. They flat out lied about us. We can prove they lied with the video footage (just like last year), but the police took our cameras and won’t let us have the footage. There’s major oppression of anyone who criticizes Islam.”

Phoenix (AP) - "Cuanto?" asks a young man pointing to four bottles of car polish at a recent garage sale in an east Phoenix neighborhood.

The question, Spanish for "How much?" sends Minerva Ruiz and Claudia Suriano scrambling and calling out to their friend, Silvia Arias, who's selling the polish. "Silvia!"

Arias is out of earshot, so Suriano improvises.

"Cinco dolares," she says. "Five dollars." And another sale is made.

As the women await their next customer in the rising heat of an Arizona morning, they talk quietly about food and clothes, about their children and husbands. They are best friends, all mothers who are viewed as pillars of parental support at the neighborhood elementary school.

All three are illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Mexico asks court to reject Ariz. immigration law

PHOENIX - Mexico on Tuesday asked a federal court in Arizona to declare the state's new immigration law unconstitutional, arguing that the country's own interests and its citizens' rights are at stake.

Lawyers for Mexico on Tuesday submitted a legal brief in support of one of five lawsuits challenging the law. The law will take effect July 29 unless implementation is blocked by a court.

The law generally requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they're in the country illegally. It also makes being in Arizona illegally a misdemeanor, and it prohibits seeking day-labor work along the state's streets.

CNSNews.com White House Releases 'Patients' Bill of Rights'

Washington (AP) - Most health insurance plans will soon be barred from turning children down due to pre-existing medical problems, under an enforcement plan the White House announced Tuesday for the new patients' bill of rights.

President Barack Obama is marking the first 90 days since he signed the landmark health care overhaul legislation by spelling out details of how the law's short-term benefits will be implemented. The major expansion of coverage to some 32 million now uninsured doesn't come until 2014, but other safeguards take effect for plans renewing on or after Sept. 23.

In addition to guaranteed coverage for children, the safeguards include:

-- A ban on lifetime coverage limits. More than 100 million people are enrolled in plans that currently impose such limits, the White House said.

-- Phasing out annual coverage limits. Starting this year, plans can set annual limits no lower than $750,000. Such limits rise to $2 million in 2012, and will be completely prohibited in 2014.

-- Forbidding insurers from canceling the policies of people who get sick. Unintentional mistakes on application forms cannot be used to revoke a policy.

-- Guaranteed choice of primary care doctors and pediatricians from a plan's network. No referral needed for women to see an ob-gyn specialist. No prior approval needed to seek emergency care out-of-network.

U.S. Spent $2 Million on Study Promoting Condom Use Among Intravenous Drug Users in Kazakhstan

CNSNews.com – The National Institutes of Health has spent over $2 million on a study that, among other things, seeks to incease condom use among intravenous drug users in Kazakhstan.

Dr. Nabila El-Bassel, a Columbia University professor in the School of Social Work, proposed the study to “rigorously test the efficacy of an innovative, couples-based HIV/STI risk reduction intervention (CHSR) to decrease new cases of HIV and Hepatitis C (HCV) and incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as well as to reduce unsafe injection practices and increase condom use among injecting drug users (IDUs) and their heterosexual, intimate partners in Shu, Kazakhstan.”

Dr. El-Bassel received funding for the study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The NIDA funded the study in the amounts of $676,058 in 2008, $670,914 in 2009, and $670,212 in 2010, totaling $2,017,184 in federal funds derived from U.S. taxpayers.

According to the study’s description, “Central Asia has experienced one of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemics due to a sharp increase in injection drug use,” and, “There is a race to develop and implement effective HIV preventive interventions for IDUs and their sexual partners to stem the spread of HIV, HCV and other STIs in Shu and other Central Asian towns along drug trafficking routes.”

According to the Central Intelligence Agency profile on Kazakhstan, the country is a “transit point for Southwest Asian narcotics bound for Russia and the rest of Europe,” and a “significant consumer of opiates.”

Shu, Kazakhstan “is located along a major drug trafficking route” says the NIH description of the grant.

The paper is quite technical, but the bottom line summary is that a one percent increase in government purchases (as a share of GDP) increases GDP by a maximum of 0.7 percent and then fades out rapidly. This means that government spending crowds out other components of GDP (investment, consumption, net exports) immediately and by a large amount.

Now, remember that Obama and his fellow liberals tell us that government spending spurs job growth and economic activity. But, per the IMF, in order to grow the economy .7%, the government must spend an amount equivalent to 1% of the economy. Meaning that government “stimulus” efforts grow government faster than they grow the economy.

Hardly a sustainable economic policy. In fact, a policy that grows government faster than the economy could actually be said to be moving us backward by destroying economic activity.

NUGENT: The Declaration of Defiance

Defiance is the DNA of America. Every fiber of my being is overdosed on high-octane defiance. I often rise in the morning convinced that I am Rosa Parks with a loud guitar. It is beautiful.

From our forefathers tossing tea into the Boston Harbor over abusive taxes; to the brave defenders of the Alamo, who were outnumbered 25-to-1; to Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, who answered the Nazi punks with "Nuts!" when he was asked to surrender at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, the DNA of America is rife with proud defiance.

We celebrate our freedom on Independence Day, but when you read Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, it could have easily been called the Declaration of Defiance.

What Jefferson and his fellow patriots John Adams and Benjamin Franklin wrote was a uniquely defiant document that not only listed their grievances defying King George's oppressive government but also was a declaration of out-and-out war against tyranny.

Our forefathers knew when they signed the Declaration that they were pledging their sacred honor, fortunes and, more than likely, their lives in hopes that we could live free. They knew their Declaration of Defiance would bring war against the world's most powerful, undefeated military. Our forefathers then fired a shot heard around the world.

Judas Must Have Been a Republican

There is no greater injustice than punishment of a man for doing something good, and no more loathsome cowardice than when those responsible for defending good sacrifice their cause to accommodate an uncompromising evil. But this type of betrayal is not uncommon for the Republican leadership, and it happened again last week in Congress.

Thursday's House committee hearings with BP CEO Tony Hayward consisted mostly of the empty political grandstanding one would expect from this type of proceedings, characterized by Mark Levin as Soviet-style show trials. There was an exception, however, when Representative Joe Barton spoke out against the Obama regime for extorting $20 billion from BP -- without due process -- to be distributed by an Obama appointee as compensation not only to Gulf residents harmed by the oil leak, but also to those left unemployed by Obama's moratorium by fiat on all offshore drilling operations. This was not to say that the Gulf residents shouldn't be compensated, but that the manner in which the funds were expropriated is reprehensible, and it is outrageous for the government to force a private corporation to finance a moratorium imposed by the president.

"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Congressman Barton said. "I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown -- in this case, a $20 billion shakedown. ... I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is -- again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown."

Amen, Congressman Barton. It is horrifying to witness the constant statist attack on property rights and the rule of law while being essentially powerless to stop it. What a relief it was to hear someone who does have a modicum of power speak out against this assault on our nation.

Enforcing immigration law isn’t U.S. goal

‘The problem is,’ Obama said, ‘if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.’ In other words, they’re holding it hostage.” - Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) recounting a private conversation with President Barack Obama.

You’re right, Sen. Kyl. And I was one of the hostages.

Sunday afternoon - Father’s Day - I was driving my four kids through Framingham to grab some ice cream and open my Dad’s Day gifts. We rounded a bend on Route 135 and were swamped by a sea of yellow-jerseyed chaos. Brazil had won a soccer match.

Traffic came to a standstill as the streets filled with celebrants waving the Brazilian flag, honking their car horns, hanging off the backs of pickups and (I think I can say this in a family newspaper) tooting their vuvuzelas. And there we sat - a typically American, soccer-challenged family, trapped in the streets by a swarming street party straight from Sao Paulo.

After 15 minutes, my 7-year-old daughter asked: “Daddy, why can’t we go home?”

“Because the Brazilians are celebrating,” I told her.

“Yeah . . . but why can’t we go home?”

Everything I know about being a good consultant comes from Fight Club. Discretion is everything. Rule number one is you don’t talk about consulting for the Tea Party. Rule number two is you don’t talk about consulting for the Tea Party. The story about the wild characters who are shaping this campaign cycle is worth telling, but please excuse my anonymity.

I hold as many meetings as possible over Tanqueray and tonics at the St. Regis hotel on K Street in Washington, D.C. The bar is dark and private, with comfortable couches. Even the gin tastes better there. On weekday afternoons the only people in the bar are foreigners and political consultants long past caring about who actually wins.

"You’re going to see something spectacular," an old friend who has a knack for black-bag operations said as he proudly downed his vodka. "About a month from now you’ll see ACORN explode from within." Right on schedule a video was released that showed undercover conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles getting advice from employees at the Baltimore office of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now on how to smuggle underage El Salvadoran girls into a fictitious brothel.

La. companies ask judge to end drilling moratorium

NEW ORLEANS – Companies that ferry people and supplies to offshore oil rigs asked a federal judge Monday to lift a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects imposed in the aftermath of the massive Gulf spill.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman heard two hours of arguments Monday and said he will decide by Wednesday whether to overturn the ban imposed by President Barack Obama's administration after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

The April 20 disaster killed 11 workers and blew out a well that has gushed anywhere from 68 million to 126 millions of oil into the Gulf.

BP said Monday it has spent $2 billion in two months fighting the spill and compensating victims, with no end in sight. It's likely to be at least August before crews finish two relief wells that are the best chance of stopping the flow of oil.

The British oil giant released its latest tally of response costs, including $105 million paid out so far to 32,000 claimants. The figure does not include a $20 billion fund that BP PLC last week agreed to set up for Gulf residents and businesses hurt by the spill.

Kenneth Feinberg, who has been tapped by President Barack Obama to run the fund, said many people are in desperate financial straits and need immediate relief.

House Dems prepare alternative to budget that would avoid deficit vote

House Democrats are readying an alternative budget measure that would set next year’s spending levels without requiring a vote on deficits.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) said the alternative would be the “functional equivalent” of a full-fledged budget. But because it won't be a traditional budget resolution, it will be silent on future deficits, which are expected to average nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

Democrats have expressed concern about voting for a document showing lots of red ink in an election year.

A traditional budget resolution sets the discretionary spending levels and also lays out the majority’s fiscal policies for future years. Alternative budget measures, known in past years as “deeming resolutions,” set spending caps but lack the statement on future spending and tax policies.

House Republicans have seized on Democrats’ inability to even bring up a budget resolution for consideration. Budget rules call on lawmakers to pass a budget by April 15.

Republicans had control of the House the previous four times Congress failed to approve a final budget resolution since 1974, when the current budget rules were put into place. But should Democrats move forward with an alternative budget measure, it would be the first time the House had failed to even propose a budget resolution.

The Obama presidency is nearly out of gas. So are the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Yet the White House and congressional Democrats aren’t surrendering. They’re still intoxicated with their “historic majorities” and bent on enacting more landmark liberal legislation this year, including cap and trade, a value-added tax (VAT), and who knows what else.

Are they fantasizing? Not entirely. The odds—and the political climate—are against them. But their ideological ambitions are undiminished and they have a sense of urgency. They know their majorities will be crippled (if not eliminated) in the midterm elections on November 2, which means they must enact the remaining parts of the agenda in 2010 or put them back in the cupboard of liberal dreams, maybe for decades. So it’s now or never.

There are two time slots for passing these bills, both difficult. The first is between now and whenever Congress recesses in the fall. Prospects look bleak in this time frame for approving anything except the final version of the financial reform bill. The second is when a lame duck Congress, filled with defeated and retired senators and House members, convenes in December.

The most disgusting aspect of the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico isn't the video images of oil-soaked birds or the incessant blather from pundits about what BP or the Obama administration should be doing to stem the flow of oil. Instead, it's the ugly spectacle of the corn-ethanol scammers doing all they can to capitalize on the disaster so that they can justify an expansion of the longest-running robbery of taxpayers in U.S. history.

Listen to Matt Hartwig, communications director for the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry lobby group: "The Gulf of Mexico disaster serves as a stark and unfortunate reminder of the need for domestically-produced renewable biofuels." Or look at an advertisement that was recently placed in a Washington, D.C., Metro station: "No beaches have been closed due to ETHANOL spills. … America's CLEAN fuel." That gem was paid for by Growth Energy, another ethanol industry lobby group.

The blowout of BP's Macondo well has given the corn-ethanol industry yet another opportunity to push its fuel adulterant on the American consumer. And unfortunately, the Obama administration appears ready and willing to foist yet more of the corrosive, environmentally destructive, low-heat-energy fuel on motorists.

Older men scam

Women often receive warnings about protecting themselves at the mall and in

dark parking lots, etc. This is the first warning I have seen for men. I

wanted to pass it on in case you haven't heard about it.

A 'heads up' for those men who may be regular customers at Lowe's, Home

Depot, Costco, or even Wal-Mart. This one caught me totally by surprise.

Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out shopping.

Simply going out to get supplies has turned out to be quite traumatic. Don't

be naive enough to think it couldn't happen to you or your friends.

Here's how the scam works:

Two nice-looking, college-aged girls will come over to your car or truck as

you are packing your purchases into your vehicle. They both start wiping

your windshield with a rag and Windex, with their breasts almost falling out

of their skimpy T-shirts. (It's impossible not to look).

When you thank them and offer them a tip, they say 'No' but instead ask for

a ride to McDonald's.

You agree and they climb into the vehicle. On the way, they start

undressing. Then one of them starts crawling all over you, while the other

one steals your wallet.

I had my wallet stolen Mar. 4th, 9th, 10th, twice on the 15th, 17th, 20th,

24th, & 29th. Also Apr. 1st & 4th, twice on the 8th, 16th, 23rd, 26th &

27th, and very likely again this upcoming weekend.

So tell your friends to be careful. What a horrible way to take advantage of

us older men. Warn your friends to be vigilant.

Wal-Mart has wallets on sale for $2.99 each. I found even cheaper ones for

$.99 at the dollar store and bought them out in three of their stores.

Also, you never get to eat at McDonald's. I've already lost 11 pounds just

running back and forth from Lowe's, to Home Depot, to Costco, Etc.

So please, send this on to all the older men that you know and warn them to

be on the lookout for this scam. (The best times are just before lunch and

around 4:30 in the afternoon.)

Abnormal radiation detected near intra-Korean border

In this undated photo released by the Korean Central News Agency in North Korea and distributed by Korea News Service in Tokyo on Monday, June 21, 2010, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il gestures while meeting with miners at Pyeong-an puk-do, North Korea. (AP Photo/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service)

SEOUL (AP) -- Abnormally high radiation levels were detected near the border between the two Koreas days after North Korea claimed to have mastered a complex technology key to manufacturing a hydrogen bomb, Seoul said Monday.

The Science Ministry said its investigation ruled out a nuclear test by North Korea but failed to determine the source of the radiation. It said there was no evidence of a strong earthquake, which follows an atomic explosion.

On May 12, North Korea claimed its scientists succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction, a technology necessary to manufacture a hydrogen bomb. In its announcement, the North did not say how it would use the technology, only calling it a "breakthrough toward the development of new energy."

South Korean experts doubted the North actually made such a breakthrough. Scientists around the world have been experimenting with fusion for decades, but it has yet to be developed into a viable energy alternative.

**FILE** Former President George W. Bush addresses The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan on Thursday at Lake Michigan College's Mendel Center in Benton Harbor, Mich. (Associated Press)

The rich did indeed get richer under President George W. Bush, but they also paid an ever-larger share of the federal tax burden, according to new numbers compiled by Congress' chief scorekeeper.

After dipping in the early part of the Bush administration, by 2007 the top quintile of earners - the 20 percent who made the most - paid nearly 70 percent of all the taxes that the federal government collected, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. That includes a staggering 86 percent of the income tax being paid by just the top quintile of earners.

By contrast, the bottom 40 percent on average not only pay no income tax, but they siphon money back from the federal government in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a 35-year-old program designed to offset some of what low-income workers pay in Social Security taxes.

The Point of No Return: Failure Is Coming

I first became interested in Social Security back in the 80s. In order to become a Fellow in the Society of Actuaries you had to study all manner of insurance programs, both private and social, to understand the framework in which insurance and pension products existed.

The Greenspan Commission back in 1981-1983 proposed another large increase to Social Security taxes. The system only needed a small lift to get it past some demographic difficulties, but the Commission proposed, and Congress passed a large change, which would mean that the Social Security would develop a large base of Treasury Notes, because income to the system would outstrip benefit payments for a long time, and the proceeds would be invested in Treasuries, because they are a neutral asset. Investing in other assets would invite socialism and cronyism.

But really, what was needed was to move to a pay-as-you-go system, as Pat Moynihan suggested in the early 1990s.

But the fix could never be permanent, because even as taxes were increased, the benefits increased along with them, and there would come a day of reckoning. But when? There are three dates that many would point to:

When the excess of taxes over benefits would peak.
When benefits and taxes would be equal.
When the trust fund would be broke.

Obama Is Wrong; Alternative Energy is Not an Alternative

Obama is using the oil spill in the Gulf as an emotional lever to push his cap and trade policy. The spill is a disaster, but exploiting it is truly despicable. It is made far worse when the alternative energies solutions don’t work. Increased costs will damage the economy and negatively impact the people he claims to represent. We’re in this predicament because of exploitation by politicians and environmental groups who deliberately ignore scientific evidence and corruption in climate science. Options were dramatically reduced by campaigns of fear against nuclear power creating legislation so that it now takes up to 14 years to construct a nuclear power plant.

Obama’s Cap and Trade will increase the cost of oil, coal and natural gas sufficient to make the US economy uncompetitive. This will reduce the possibility of paying off the massive debt he has incurred.

Capabilities of alternative energies were misrepresented and real costs grossly distorted by subsidies. Politicians added political canards such as US self-sufficiency, when all solutions are available in-house. Wikipedia says, “alternative energy is an umbrella term that refers to any source of useable energy intended to replace fuel sources without the undesired consequences of the replaced fuels.” If this were true what people consider alternative energies would qualify as “replaced fuels.” It is a cute academic definition, but the reality is the only fuels considered “undesirable” are those that produce CO2. This is because of the false work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). People forget their predictions of future temperatures are based on continued and increasing demand for electricity – business as usual. They cannot anticipate technological innovations. For example, though expensive at present, Light Emitting Diode (LED) white light will dramatically reduce power requirements.

Image Foundry Studios; Winter/Getty

Historians say Cleopatra probably looked more like this computer generated model (l.), than bombshell Angelina Jolie who is slated to play her in an upcoming film.

Angelina Jolie is one of the most beautiful women in the world, but her "perfect" looks have some critics complaining she's all wrong for her latest role.

Earlier this month producer Scott Rudin got the Internet buzzing with his announcement that he was developing a Cleopatra biopic "for and with Jolie" based on Stacy Schiff's book "Cleopatra: A Life."

Schiff raved about the choice, telling USA Today, "Physically, she's the perfect look."

But some members of the African American community beg to differ -- they are outraged by the casting decision and say Jolie is "too white" to play the Egyptian Queen.

Obama Cracks Down

The sweet nothings Hillary Clinton whispered into the ears of foreign television audiences went stateside on Friday, as America media outlets began confirming what the secretary of state first told an Ecuadoran news channel: the Obama administration is planning a lawsuit against Arizona's new immigration law.

Publicly, Obama administration lawyers will only admit that a thorough "review" of SB 1070 is ongoing. But the toothpaste is out of the tube. Officials in Eric Holder's Justice Department are quietly giving word that it is a matter of when, not if, they will seek to subvert Arizona's attempt to protect its people from porous borders.

On cue, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard -- the Democratic gubernatorial candidate -- dropped his promised "vigorous legal defense" of the law. Goddard opposed the statute and had been sparring with Gov. Jan Brewer, his likely Republican opponent in the general election, about how it will be defended.

Bureaucracy frustrates U.S. Gulf oil spill efforts

* Local officials frustrated by delays, red tape

* Barges halted for 24 hours for safety inspections

* Military-type chain of command urged

By Jeffrey Jones

GRAND ISLE, Louisiana, June 19 (Reuters) - Those on the front lines of the U.S. Gulf Coast oil spill say they are forced to fight two battles -- one against the crude washing into lush wetlands and another against needless bureaucracy.

Sixty-one days after the BP Plc well began spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, angry local officials blame dozens of federal agencies involved in approving response plans, a maze of regulations and poor coordination for their struggles beating back the slick.

"My experience has been frustration, too much red tape, no a sense of urgency. For the state and the coastal parishes that are directly affected to put forth a plan, you have to kick and scream every step of the way to get it approved," said John Young, council chairman for Jefferson Parish in Louisiana.

"The president said it's a war. I agree we're under siege, but if it was a war, we'd be occupied territory now."

It is time for President Barack Obama's administration to appoint an "oil spill czar" to streamline operations for the 31,000 people fighting the worst spill in U.S. history and avoid the costly delays, Young said as he prepared to board a boat to tour his region's fouled wetlands.

An NCO recognizes a flawed Afghanistan strategy

Torrents of uninteresting mail inundate members of Congress, but occasionally there are riveting communications, such as a recent e-mail from a noncommissioned officer (NCO) serving in Afghanistan. He explains why the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are "too prohibitive for coalition forces to achieve sustained tactical successes."

Receiving mortar fire during an overnight mission, his unit called for a 155mm howitzer illumination round to be fired to reveal the enemy's location. The request was rejected "on the grounds that it may cause collateral damage." The NCO says that the only thing that comes down from an illumination round is a canister, and the likelihood of it hitting someone or something was akin to that of being struck by lightning.

Returning from a mission, his unit took casualties from an improvised explosive device that the unit knew had been placed no more than an hour earlier. "There were villagers laughing at the U.S. casualties" and "two suspicious individuals were seen fleeing the scene and entering a home." U.S. forces "are no longer allowed to search homes without Afghan National Security Forces personnel present." But when his unit asked Afghan police to search the house, the police refused on the grounds that the people in the house "are good people."

On another mission, some Afghan adults ran off with their children immediately before the NCO's unit came under heavy small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and the unit asked for artillery fire on the enemy position. The response was a question: Where is the nearest civilian structure? "Judging distances," the NCO writes dryly, "can be difficult when bullets and RPGs are flying over your head." When the artillery support was denied because of fear of collateral damage, the unit asked for a "smoke mission" -- like an illumination round; only the canister falls to earth -- "to conceal our movement as we planned to flank and destroy the enemy." This request was granted -- but because of fear of collateral damage, the round was deliberately fired one kilometer off the requested site, making "the smoke mission useless and leaving us to fend for ourselves."

Counterinsurgency doctrine says that success turns on winning the "hearts and minds" of the population, hence rules of engagement that reduce risks to the population but increase those of U.S. combatants. C.J. Chivers of the New York Times, reporting from Marja, Afghanistan, says "many firefights these days are strictly rifle and machine gun fights," which "has made engagement times noticeably longer, driving up the troops' risks and amplifying a perception that Marja, fought with less fire support than what was available to American units in other hotly contested areas, is mired in blood."

The value of any particular counterinsurgency must be weighed against the risks implicit in the required tactics. The U.S. mission in Afghanistan involves trying to extend the power, over many people who fear it, of a corrupt government produced by a corrupted election. This gives rise to surreal strategies. The Wall Street Journal recently reported U.S. attempts "to persuade [President Hamid] Karzai to act more presidential by giving him more responsibility for operations inside his country." Think about that.

Rahm Emanuel Expected to Quit White House

A British newspaper reported Sunday that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is expected to quit within six to eight months in frustration at the Obama administration’s unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.

The story in the London Sunday Telegraph says that while Emanuel, 50, “enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama,” both men have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.

Emanuel’s friends tell the paper that he is also worried about burnout and losing touch with his young family due to the pressure of one of most high profile jobs in US politics.

"I would bet he will go after the midterms," a leading Democratic consultant in Washington tells the paper. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."

An official from the Bill Clinton era said that "no one will be surprised" if Mr Emanuel left after the midterm elections in November, when the Democratic party will battle to save its majorities in the house of representatives and the Senate.

Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US

A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.

The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.

Due to there being few limits on the US President's emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group, said it was concerned about "unintended consequences that would result from the legislation's regulatory approach" and "the potential for absolute power". And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman Bill's emergency powers "include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems."

The idea of an internet "kill switch" that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia's sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to "declare a cybersecurity emergency", and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to "order the disconnection" of certain networks or websites.

You know why President Obama's Gulf Coast oil spill address from the Oval Office failed so miserably on Tuesday?

It went over too many heads.

At least that's what the folks at CNN.com believe.

Maybe that's why the so-called geniuses at MSNBC didn't like it [0] - it went over Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and Howard Fineman's heads!

Even more absurd in this piece [1] by the CNN Wire Staff is that it completely ignored how Obama's speech patterns when he addresses the nation are at a lower grade level than those of George W. Bush (h/t Lachlan Markay):

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.
Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said. [...]
At a micro level, the average word in the speech contained 4.5 letters, a bit longer than is typical for the former constitutional law professor, Payack said.
Obama's nearly 10th-grade-level rating was the highest of any of his major speeches and well above the Grade 7.4 of his 2008 "Yes, we can" victory speech, which many consider his best effort, Payack said.

Got that?

The supposedly smartest president in history on Tuesday night was speaking at less than a 10th-grade level. But that was TOO complicated for the television audience to understand.

This genius is FAR MORE effective when he speaks like a 7th-grader!

Yet George W. Bush was an idiot, right?

Liberals Hate Palin Because She’s Beautiful

Liberals have never liked former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. They don’t like that she didn’t go to an Ivy League school, that she doesn’t follow the usual protocol of not speaking until a liberal says it’s okay to do so, and that she chose to carry her Down Syndrome baby to term instead of aborting it. (That last one really drives them crazy.)

They dislike her political support for smaller government, tax cuts, and a strong military. They are outraged by her ongoing push for drilling in ANWR, her participation in hunting sports, and the fact that she’s a card-carrying, Life Member of the NRA.

But all these reasons are trumped by the fact that they despise her beauty. It pushes them over the edge to know that she doesn’t just shoot an assault rifle, but makes an assault rifle look good when shooting it.

This was obvious when she was running for Vice President on the McCain ticket and it became known that she’d taken part in beauty pageants to get money to pay college tuition. How dare her that she is not only beautiful, but she used that beauty for profit.

It was even more obvious when she was criticized for allegedly spending $150,000 on her wardrobe during the presidential campaign. While I’m not saying that’s not a lot of money, I’ll never forget how the press fawned over Michelle Obama and relished the opportunity to proudly report the outrageous price of every piece of clothing she wore.

The President's Oil Reserves Lie

Tuesday night, following a tour of the Gulf Coast area, the President of the United States addressed the nation regarding the state of the BP oil spill. In his speech from the Oval Office, President Obama spoke regarding our nation's dependence upon oil and how we need to break that dependence.

During his speech, the president made a statement that was blatantly false. The president noted, "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."

We are not running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. In fact, it is due to the president's party of extreme environmentalists that BP had to drill some forty miles from the coastline in deep waters to extract oil. Imagine if this oil leak had happened in the shallow waters off of the East Coast or even, dare we say it, in the pristine ANWR region. How much easier it would have been to cap the leak and clean up the oil?

Consider our nation's vast oil reserve resources that are currently unavailable for use due to government ownership of the land or outright bans on drilling in certain areas.

According to a June 2008 article in Kiplinger Magazine, the United States has enough oil reserves to power the nation for upwards of three centuries. That's three hundred years, Mr. President. We are not running out of oil reserves -- it's just that those oil reserves have been declared off-limits due to decades of environmental lobbying of our politicians, especially those on the Left. This lobbying has driven the likes of BP and others out deep into the Gulf of Mexico to extract the nation's needed oil.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “Billion potential barrels of oil” under BP’s ruptured well; “Thing could really explode” expert says

CNN’s first mention of concerns about the structural integrity of BP’s blown-out well occurred on the June 16 edition of the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, during an interview with a member of the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group, Professor Steven Wereley.

Blitzer described a conversation he had with an expert who said, “They’re still really concerned about the structural base of this whole operation.” “This thing could really explode,” added Blitzer, “And they’re sitting, what, on — on a billion potential barrels of oil.”

Wereley responded, “I’ve heard concerns about the structural integrity of the well.” More precisely, the structural concerns were if “the casing of the well is — is faulty at some point.”

The one billion barrels in estimated reserves mentioned by Blitzer is similar to the number stated by Bush Energy Adviser Matthew Simmons during a June 15 interview with Bloomberg TV.