All posts by Chief

Jobs R-not Us

There’s bad news, and at least locally, some not so bad news.

The ‘Real’ Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed

As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for October, the highest it has been since June 1983.

One wonders how the alleged bail-out is working economic wonders, just the Change that The One promised that we can believe in.

Instead, it’s turned into “Change – Believe it or Not”…would you believe not, except change for the worse.

As far as the better news goes, recently the Chief saw a map on TV with different colors indicating the levels of states’ unemployment: South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska all were the same color, which represented the lowest unemployment rates in the country.  We’re (still) a long way from Detroit (so far).

Obamascare Stopper?

Lieberman Digs In on Public Option

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: “I’m going to be stubborn on this.”

Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a “public option,” or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won’t vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included.

Probe for a catch or caveat in that opposition, and none is visible. Can he support a public option if states could opt out of the plan, as the current bill provides? “The answer is no,” he says in an interview from his Senate office. “I feel very strongly about this.” How about a trigger, a mechanism for including a public option along with a provision saying it won’t be used unless private insurance plans aren’t spreading coverage far and fast enough? No again.

So any version of a public option will compel Mr. Lieberman to vote against bringing a bill to a final vote? “Correct,” he says.

Sounds pretty definite.

Obamacare Live, It’s Saturday Night

Dusty Harry Reid has adopted the classic philosophy of high pressure salemen: “Money talks, and no body walks.”

Sweeteners for the South

Staffers on Capitol Hill were calling it the Louisiana Purchase.

On the eve of Saturday’s showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn’t secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state.

And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote — and to trumpet the financial “fix” she had arranged for Louisiana. “I am not going to be defensive,” she declared. “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix.”

Her Freudian slip was showing…”$300 million fix”…indeed!
Other critical Donkey Party votes in the Senate used the occasion to extract whatever political payoff was most dear to their hearts from Reid.

Meanwhile, all concerned with the deals political bribes were hastening to deny that their maneuvers had anything to do with re-elections:

….the usually quiet [Blanche] Lincoln, [Donk-AR] who emerged from the cloakroom two hours later to announce her decision. Her attire was school-principal prim — blue suit with knee-length skirt, orange silk scarf tied tightly at the neck — and she was clearly uncomfortable in the spotlight. She spoke with the diction of somebody giving a dramatic reading, and she stumbled more than once as she read, botching the crucial line: “I will vote to support, of, the, the, will vote in support of cloture on the motion to proceed to this bill.”

She argued, a bit too strenuously, that “I’m not thinking about my reelection” in 2010.

If you believe THAT, pleased see me about a GREAT deal on tropical beachfront in NW Moody County, SD!

Here’s hoping that the conclusion of this WaPo piece doesn’t come true:

By the time this thing is done, the millions for Louisiana will look like a bargain.

A Modest Proposal…

The Brits are starting to position themselves for their next election cycle. This is part of that positioning from the opposition Conservatives

Tories to pull British forces out of Germany

British forces will pull out of Germany for good, nearly 70 years after the Allied victory in World War Two, as part of a Tory defence “revolution” being drawn up by Dr Liam Fox.

The Shadow Defence Secretary told The Daily Telegraph that ending Britain’s 25,000 strong military presence on the Rhine would be part of a fundamental reorganisation of Nato forces designed to free troops for military operations outside Europe.

The decision would close one of the unfinished chapters of the last war that saw the British military go from occupying force in the ruins of Nazi Germany in 1945 to guarantor of German security against the threat of Soviet invasion during the Cold War.

The announcement of what would be a major reassessment of Britain’s role in European defence came just 24 hours after the European Union surprised Westminster by handing responsibility for its diplomatic relations to the Labour peer Baroness Ashton.

Dr Fox’s decision to call time on Britain’s military links with Germany is a signal of his determination to force through a “wholesale recasting of our foreign and defence policy”.

He also called for the public to be told the truth about the “cost of defeat” in Afghanistan, including Britain being relegated to “the third division” of world politics.

What a concept! Why don’t WE do this? Do we REALLY need to still have a military presence in GERMANY any more? I doubt we’re worried about an incipient Nazi coup. Also, the threat of Soviet tanks from East Germany rolling through the Fulda Gap is obsolete.

IMHO, Dr. Fox has an excellent idea, that should work for us too!

Climategate Update: Glowbull Warming Science Falls in the Fire

More in the London Telegraph:

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

There’s more in the linked piece specifically noting cases involving:

Manipulation of evidence
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up
Suppression of evidence
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)
how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.
How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority

Throw another AlGore log on the fire!

NY-23 Election Hacked!

VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES: Tainted Results in NY-23

The computerized voting machines used by many voters in the 23rd district had a computer virus – tainting the results, not just from those machines known to have been infected, but casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines.

Cathleen Rogers, the Democratic Elections Commissioner in Hamilton County stated that they discovered a problem with their voting machines the week prior to the election and that the “virus” was fixed by a Technical Support representative from Dominion, the manufacturer. The Dominion/Sequoia Voting Systems representative “reprogrammed” their machines in time for them to use in the Nov. 3rd Special Election. None of the machines (from the same manufacturer) used in the other counties within the 23rd district were looked at nor were they recertified after the “reprogramming” that occurred in Hamilton County.

Republican Commissioner Judith Peck refused to speculate on whether the code that governs the counts could have been tampered with. She indicated that “as far as I know, the machine in question was not functioning properly and was repaired” by the technician.

Commissioners in other counties have stated that they were not made aware of the virus issue in Hamilton County. In Jefferson County, inspectors from four districts claim that “human error” resulted in their “mistakenly” entering 0 votes for Hoffman in several districts, resulting in Owens leading Jefferson County on election night though the recanvas of the computer counts now show that Hoffman is leading.

Sounds like this election is FAR from settled!

At least they do have some paper ballots as a backup. If we ever shift to a pure electronic system, American democracy will be dead.

Glowbull Warming: The Scientific Fix?

Reported by that bastion of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy called the New York Times!

Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics

Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

The e-mails, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views.

This can give a whole new meaning to the phrase “scientific cooperation”!

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

There’s good reason why the human caused Glowbull Warming proposition can be considered “junk science”.

What else is the big flap about, aside from that little thing about “scientific integrity”? Like the movie said: follow the money!

From the site that started this whole thing by having the files dumped to it:

Leaked FOIA files 62 mb of gold

…a summary of the 62 MB of data is – personal email correspondences between some of the major players Santer, Briffa, Mann, Osborne, Wahl. Data and code, the data SteveM and I will enjoy but I can’t load CA now. The code or a version of it for HadCRUT was released also. The tone of the emails is quite interesting Steve McIntyre is the focus of much of them but there are quite a few references to obstruction and making things difficult for the ’skeptics’. There are also budgetary items and grant monies- you wouldn’t believe how much money these boys play with.

There are several comments about scientists wanting to hide their environmentalist views to promote the best results. Also, some about people being happy with the death of skeptics as well as a lot of rubbish about the latest Yamal results at CA.

They’re wisely currently considering possible legal ramifications of all this, but in any event it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

ICE Cooled Down

Work site arrests of illegals fall dramatically

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday.

Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves – but at the expense of Americans’ jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

Given what we know about B.O. and his swarm of Czars, can anyone be surprised?

B.O. Hardly Working on War

Let’s see…B.O.’s had the information and proposals from HIS selected commanding combat General since August. It’s now November. Meanwhile the conduct of the war continues to stagnate, our local allies hold their breath as they wait to decide whether and/or when to jump ship, and any potential local allies take another look at the possibilities of making an accomadation with the Islamoterrs.

White House aides: No Afghan decision before Thanksgiving

President Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said Thursday.

The news came as the president greeted 1,500 troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, just before boarding Air Force One and heading back to Washington after an eight-day trip to Asia.

Obama and his top military and diplomatic aides have been deliberating for months over how to proceed in Afghanistan, where the United States and its partners have sought for eight years to defeat the Taliban and deny al-Qaeda a safe haven from which it can plan and launch attacks.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has stated that without the deployment of up to 40,000 additional troops within the next year, the mission “will likely result in failure.”

Plenty of time for global junketing, complete with his 70 car motorcade, but forget about the troops being left to wither on the vine while B.O. continues to dither.

Ft. Hood Jihad Update 5

As more information comes out over time, the self-affiliation of the terrorist assassin Hasan as an Islamic jihadi continues to thicken.

Major Hasan’s E-Mail: ‘I Can’t Wait to Join You’ in Afterlife
American Official Says Accused Shooter Asked Radical Cleric When Is Jihad Appropriate?

United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al-Qaeda recruiter, “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, over a six month period between Dec. 2008 and June 2009.

“It sounds like code words,” said Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a military analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. “That he’s actually either offering himself up or that he’s already crossed that line in his own mind.”

Other messages include questions, the official with access to the e-mails said, that include when is jihad appropriate, and whether it is permissible if there are innocents killed in a suicide attack.

“Hasan told Awlaki he couldn’t wait to join him in the discussions they would having over non-alcoholic wine in the afterlife,” the official said.

To revise a comment from an earlier post…”If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then we’d better call it a duck!”

Too Late…It’s Spent!

Obama warns on US public debt pile

After doubling the budget deficit since he came into office, and pushing hard for a massive increase in public spending for a number of programs including the Obamacare health “hellth” bill, it takes nothing if not a massive display of chutzpah to make comments like this.

US President Barack Obama warned that the US economy could head into a “double-dip recession” unless urgent steps were taken to rein in mounting public debt.

“It is important though to recognise if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the US economy in a double-dip recession,” said Mr Obama.

Sounds like the ChiComs have been reading him the riot act about his spending…after all, they have a LOT of investment in U.S. debt to protect from a total fiscal melt-down. IMHO it may be too late. I hope not, but…

Holder Loses Grip

Holder’s move to criminalize terrorists shows that he has totally lost his situational awareness, or else has determined to put a bullet into the war on terrorism by enabling some of the worst of the worst a very real chance of getting a legal pass.

Trying KSM in Civilian Court: Inconsistent, Indefensible, Inexplicable

Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a federal civilian court is inconsistent, indefensible and inexplicable.

It is inconsistent with Holder’s own decision to try Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in a military commission. It is indefensible in light of the unmistakable intentions of the Framers of the Constitution. It is inexplicable by any prudential analysis of the national interest in dealing with an enemy like al-Qaida.

Some strange ideological impulse—rather than common sense and respect for the rule of law—is driving the Obama administration to give special treatment to the perpetrator of one of the greatest war crimes ever committed against the United States.

Go on and read the rest of the gory details of this legal travesty.
Here’s more on this from another source, detailing the warm fuzzy connection of al Qaeda and the ACLU:

Al Qaeda’s Civil Liberties Union

“I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer.” That, according to former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, is what September 11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) said when he was captured in March 2003.

President Bush had another idea, one that involved protecting the national security interests of the United States. (What a concept!)

But of course the Bush administration did not grant KSM his wish. Instead, the master terrorist was seen as a potentially vital source of intelligence on al Qaeda, which had caught America sleeping less than two years earlier. If U.S. intelligence officials could get him to talk, the Bush administration and the U.S. intelligence community reasoned, then they could learn many of al Qaeda’s well-guarded secrets. And talk, KSM did. So much so, in fact, that he became the U.S. government’s “preeminent source” on al Qaeda and even the “most prolific” detainee in custody. While in the CIA’s detention, he identified (both wittingly and unwittingly) numerous of his fellow al Qaeda terrorists and divulged the details of much of al Qaeda’s post-September 11 plotting.

What could have been?

If KSM were initially shipped to New York for trial, however, the outcome would most likely have been very different. As former DCI Tenet writes in his book At the Center of the Storm: “I believe none of these [counterterrorism] successes would have happened if we had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up.”

And sadly, we’re left with the prospects of what Holder, B.O, et al have lined up for the country:

Who are KSM’s lawyers, in any event? They are members of the ACLU’s John Adams Project, which is run in conjunction with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). The John Adams Project represents Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other 9/11 conspirators the Obama administration has decided to move to U.S. soil for trial. Thus, it is not surprising that the ACLU has praised the controversial move, saying it was “a major victory for due process and the rule of law.”
It is nothing of the sort, but the ACLU consistently portrays itself in this light–as if it is only concerned with protecting the “rule of law.” The reality is quite different. The ACLU has worked diligently to undermine America’s stance in what was formerly known as the “war on terror,” and has even been willing to disseminate propaganda on behalf of our jihadist enemies.

It’s worth remembering that KSM was not just a strategic/tactical planner for al Qaeda’s 9-11 strike. He was willing to get up close and personal with his terrorism, being the one who confessed to CIA interrogators that he personally and tortuously beheaded US reporter Daniel Pearl: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan.”
This is the slime that Holder, and presumably B.O. think is justified in being granted the full panoply of Constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen.  F.E.T.E.

You Too Can be a Hamster (But WHY?)

French hotel offers guests a night as a hamster

It’s a unique concept according to its creators,…

Well, that’s ONE way to put it.

…a hotel in the French town of Nantes is offering the chance for people to become a hamster.

…but WHY would you want to?  This seems on the verge of psychosis…but at least it’s not harmful to anyone else.

For 99 euros ($148.10) a night, you can eat hamster grain, run in a giant wheel and sleep in hay stacks in what is called the “Hamster Villa.”

The Chief can supply some grain for a heck of a lot less than $148.10.
So who would do this?

Maud and Sebastien are the first ones to experience how hamsters live, not afraid at the thought of sleeping in hay or feeding on a hamster fountain and special grain.

It’s a unique experience and, the guests say, just something different. “To become a hamster, eat seeds, change our way of life…come out of our daily routine” Maud and Sebastien told Reuters TV…

If it’s their money, and that’s REALLY how they want to spend it, it’s THEIR problem, but IMHO these people SERIOUSLY need to find themselves a real life somehow.

It seems like there’s another descriptive word that might fit better than “hamster”.

Hmmmm. Let’s see…(think, think)…oh, yeah: MOONBATS!

CHINA Worried About Obamacare Costs!

This is sourced from Reuters…not exactly noted as a nerve center of the VRWC!

China questions costs of U.S. healthcare reform

Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.

Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.

Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.

Looks like even the ChiComs get the picture…now, if we can only get SanFranNan Pelosi and Dusty Harry Reid to exercise some fiscal rationality….

Paying the Danegeld – Update

[UK] Army tells its soldiers to ‘bribe’ the Taleban

British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with “bags of gold”, according to a new army field manual published yesterday.

Army commanders should also talk to insurgent leaders with “blood on their hands” in order to hasten the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

The edicts, which are contained in rewritten counter-insurgency guidelines, will be taught to all new army officers. They mark a strategic rethink after three years in which British and Nato forces have failed to defeat the Taleban. The manual is also a recognition that the Army’s previous doctrine for success against insurgents, which was based on the experience in Northern Ireland, is now out of date.

In a previous posting concerning other NATO bribes tribute payments the Chief noted that according to the report at least the US and UK had enough sense not to revive this historical tradition of paying “Danegeld” to the Taliban. (See the previous posting for the explanation concerning Danegeld.)

Unfortunately, it is necessary to retract the credit for a residue of rationality that the current Ingsoc government of the island that has recently transformed into Airstrip One.  Apparently the current Big Brother Gordon Brown has completely lost his historical mind, and forgotten the lessons that the England of King Alfred the Great learned through hard experience.

Ft. Hood Jihad Update 4

Well, more stuff keeps coming out, further reinforcing the image of Nidal Hasan as viewing himself to be a militant jihadi.

Now, not only his own leavings like his e-mails, business card captions self-proclaiming himself to be a “Soldier of Allah”,  but his Yemeni Sheikh correspondent modestly concedes that he could claim a role in transforming Major Hasan into jihadi Hasan, as reported by that not exactly right-wing rag, The Washington Post.

Cleric says he was confidant to Hasan

In his first interview with a journalist since the Fort Hood rampage, Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi said that he neither ordered nor pressured Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to harm Americans, but that he considered himself a confidant of the Army psychiatrist who was given a glimpse via e-mail into Hasan’s growing discomfort with the U.S. military.

The cleric said he thought he played a role in transforming Hasan into a devout Muslim eight years ago, when Hasan listened to his lectures at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Northern Virginia. Aulaqi said that Hasan “trusted” him and that the two developed an e-mail correspondence over the past year.

As to whether or not Sheikh Aulaqi is qualified as a militant himself, he can speak for himself:

Explaining why he wrote on his Web site that Hasan was a “hero,” According to Shaea, Aulaqi said: “I blessed the act because it was against a military target. And the soldiers who were killed were not normal soldiers, but those who were trained and prepared to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Aulaqi’s views are controversial, earning him not only designation by U.S. counterterrorism officials as a leading English-language promoter and supporter of al-Qaeda, but also criticism from other fundamentalist Islamic clerics. Sheik Salman al-Awdah, a Saudi religious leader, gave an interview last week calling the massacre at Fort Hood “unjustified,” “irrational” and “inadvisable” because it will cause a backlash against Muslims in America and Europe.

But Aulaqi’s statements reflect the increasingly radical path he has taken since settling in Yemen in 2004. Print, video and audio files of his words have been found on the private hard drives of terrorism suspects in Canada in 2006 and in the United States in 2007 and 2008. He also wrote congratulations to al Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group leading an insurgency in Somalia, after it apparently used the first U.S.-citizen suicide bomber last fall.

In the light of just what has been reported from various sources, ANYONE who is still holding to the shibboleth “Don’t jump to any hasty conclusions about Hasan’s motivation” has their head firmly in a location where the sun never shines, whether it their name is Obama, Napolitano, Leahy, or anything else.

AirStrip One Update

ATTENTION!  Among the late dispatches received from Airstrip concerning the latest Ingsoc Party proposal:

Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance’

Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say.

Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.

Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using.

If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.

Let’s see…a word comes to mind:…oh…er…well…? ORWELL!

Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: “This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about….

D’ya think?

It’s Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business.”

Hopefully, for their sake, the GlowBull Warming mania fad will have run its course before this goes into effect.

ObaMao!

This is obviously a scurrilous attack of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VWRC) on Our Enlightened President designed to make him look like a Communist!

…uh…oh.  It’s not.  It’s the ChiComs themselves welcoming him into their club!

Chinese greet ‘Oba Mao’ with flaming statue, fakes

Obamao

The Chinese have learned English from his speeches and celebrated the way he rolls up his sleeves. Now President Barack Obama is finally coming, and he’s being greeted with “Oba Mao” T-shirts and a statue of him that bursts into flames.

Is this a message? Do the ChiComs recognize a true spiritual brother?

Barack Hussein ObaMao, Hmmmm – hmmmm -hmmmm.

Fat Lady Reluctant to Sing in NY-23

Recanvassing shows NY-23 race tightens even as Rep. Bill Owens is sworn into House seat

They say it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. In the NY-23 election, contrary to reports, this hasn’t happened yet.

Vote count errors, and 10K+ uncounted absentee ballots could actually reverse the election outcome…unfortunately the Donkey Party candidate was already sworn in and voted for the Pelosiscare Hellth Bill.

…a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes — 12,748 to 11,000.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.

Sill, it would be really interesting if the results were reversed…turns out with the absentee votes out, including those from the Ft. Drum 10th Mountain Division, that the close result could well be changed.

Another problem found was the discovery that there were at least four instances where the Conservative Hoffman’s vote was erroneously reported as “zero”….that MIGHT have some effect too…d’ya think?

A Mixed Blessing

Federal program to help company that processes Black Hills wood chips

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has selected Western Biomass Energy LLC to participate in the Biomass Crop Assistance Program. Western Biomass Energy converts wood chips from the Black Hills into renewable fuels.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., authored BCAP, which was included in the 2008 Farm Bill.

The company will use the funding to offset the feedstock cost associated with its pilot biorefinery in Upton, Wyo., that refines cellulosic ethanol from South Dakota wood chips.

One supposes that this is supposed to be good news. It is for some.

Senator Thune can claim that he brought home the bacon for SD. Sure ’nuff! A Democrat couldn’t have done it better!

The Chief worked in a lab at the SD School of Mines for 5 weeks one summer a few years ago as a science teacher. This was very informative, and very enjoyable…the project of the lab was to devise methods of looking for techniques to increase the ethanol yield from wood chip cellulosic feedstocks.

I had a chance met the entrepreneurs of this project. I was impressed by them. They are highly competent engineers and businessmen, and are doing all they can to succeed with their enterprise. The School of Mines was also doing its job well…using their grants from the company for assisting the businesspeople to be able to make use of SD products (OK, by-products) to produce a value-added commodity that can help you get your car down the road at a cheaper price.

So what’s the rub?

Firstly, one could wonder if this enterprise could continue without the continued infusion of tax money (or should it be called printing-press money these days)? Hate to say so, but probably not…otherwise there would be no need for the subsidy. (Ooops! That also could apply to the corn-based ethanol too…but we won’t go THERE!)

Some might argue that the Glowbull Warming crisis forces us to use public funds to develop alternative renewable energy. Frankly, as noted in numerous previous postings on the category of “Glowbull Warming”, the Chief isn’t a member of the Orthodox Carboniferous Church of St. AlGore so that’s not a real impressive argument hereabouts. (If you really think man-made CO2 is causing a problem…stop exhaling it with every breath!)

So, what else?…oh, yeah…Senator, could you remind me again what article and section of the Constitution addresses cellulosic biomass ethanol? Must have missed that one in my PoliSci classes.

I guess if one thinks the constitution is “a flexible living document”, allowing stuff like this, then it’s all OK?…sort of like supporting McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Political Speech Limitation Act while you were still in the House. Don’t get me wrong…I REALLY DO like you Senator, and you’re generally way ahead of most of the Senate, but you really ought to bone up on the Constitution a bit, otherwise some might think that you have leanings towards Republocratic Demicanism.

It is realized that this may not give many readers a warm fuzzy glow, (with stuff to alienate both sides of the so-called spectrum) but what’s the point of trying to develop political principles if one’s not willing to at least make the effort to be consistent with them. Easy for ME to say…knowing I’ll never be elected…but hey, it feels right anyway.

More Mid-East Mess

B.O. administration non-decisiveness chickens are starting to come home to roost.

Is Yemen the most dangerous new front in the war on terror?

In case you don’t recall, one of Major Hasan’s internet e-mail pen pals is Yemeni Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki.

Sheikh Anwar’s latest blogpost describes Major Hasan as a “hero”, a man of conscience. Given that the cleric says other Muslims have a right, or a duty, to behave similarly, army investigators will no doubt be keen to see who else was in contact with him. But the blog is worth reading for other reasons, too. Last month, for instance, Sheikh Anwar told us to expect the unexpected. But the message had nothing to do with Fort Hood. Instead, his focus was closer to hand: “Could Yemen be the Next Surprise of the Season?” he asked.

The Yemen situation is truly what the Brits might refer to as “a sticky wicket”.

The multiple crises afflicting Yemen are not a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and certainly not to those in Washington. There is every reason to suppose that the US authorities are far more alarmed over events there than they were over Major Hasan, but they have been similarly unsure how to react. Some commentators in the Middle East are starting to see this as a trend: an uncertainty over how to deal with the Muslim world is leading to disaster.

Yemen, which occupies an important position at the tip of the Red Sea and on the borders of Saudi Arabia, is home to three separate conflicts. One is against al-Qaeda, which has put down strong roots in the territory, the ancestral home of the Bin Laden clan. One is against secessionists in the south. The third is the most obscure, the most seemingly pointless, but the most destructive: a long, drawn-out campaign against an insurgency by a group of Shia tribalists known as the Houthis.

Fir the gory details of Yemen (“It ain’t that pretty at all.”) go to the piece. Meanwhile, on other fronts of WW-IV, formerly known as the G.W.O.T., things aren’t much better:

…In the Occupied Territories, America has scuppered its Palestinian ally Mahmoud Abbas by allowing him to set conditions for talks with Israel which it then allowed Israel to ignore.

On Iran, Washington set a deadline for a response to a proposed deal on enriched uranium, and then let the deadline pass. Israel and Saudi Arabia, who both regard Iran as a mortal enemy, are taking counsel.

In Afghanistan, it has just given itself more time to decide whether to send extra troops. Can Hamid Karzai even consider himself a friend of America any more?

The trend was summarised by Riad Kahwaji, the chief executive of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, in a research note yesterday: “It is a bad time to be an American ally.” He quotes one Arab official as asking, “With a weak and hesitant ally, who needs enemies?”

No such uncertainty affects the Houthis, whose slogan could not be clearer: “God is Great; Death to America; Death to Israel.” [emphases added]

As is common these days…one needs to go to the UK press to get a decent picture of events.

Another B.O. Advisor Run Down by Bus!

Dunn to Step Down as White House Communications Chief

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn will step down by the end of November and be replaced by her deputy Dan Pfeiffer, Fox News has learned.

Dunn’s departure had been expected as she took the position on an interim basis earlier in the year. But her exit comes at a critical time for the White House, with the administration trying to push the Senate to follow the House of Representatives’ lead in passing health care reform.

Apparently cheerleading for mass murderer Mao Tse Tung also didn’t contribute to her remaining in office.

Looks to the Chief  like the B.O. White House waited just long enough to provide plausible deniability that the Mao comments were not in IMMEDIATE memory before throwing her under the same bus that took out Van Jones.

Pelosi Obamascare Budget Holes

Say it isn’t so!  A major new governmental program proposal (this one from the Donkey Party) that will exceed it’s initial estimated cost?

AHHEEEEEEE!  What’s the world coming to!

‘Fuzzy math’ could drive health bill cost higher

The official $1.1 trillion price tag for the House Democrats’ health care bill excludes dozens of unfunded programs that could drive up costs when future congresses look to fund them.

Republicans said the health care bill includes two dozen programs whose funding is listed as “such sums as may be necessary.” That amounts to legislative jargon, they said, for “We’ll bill you later.”

The list of projects ranges from the “No child left unimmunized against influenza” project to 10 programs in the Indian health care system. There are also programs to encourage people to go into nursing and to spur states to restrain medical-malpractice lawsuits.

Shocking! Simply Shocking! Who would have EVER expected this?…oh, yeah, anyone who pays attention to government. Right.

Ft. Hood Jihad Update 3

In spite of what some may think out by Lake Madison, this is some tangible evidence that the Chief isn’t making something out of nothing in his concerns about P.C. trumping realism in the latest episode of domestic terrorism.

EDITORIAL: Too scared to recognize terrorism

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was declared “not a terrorist” before the facts were out – even before officials were sure whether the attacker was alive or dead. Failing to honestly name a terrorist attack despite the evidence is as destructive and dishonest as leaping to call an attack terrorism without the facts to support that.

Apparently, the claim was based largely on the fact that Maj. Hasan appears to have been a lone gunman. However, terrorism is defined not by the number of people involved, but by the motivations and intentions of the attacker. If reports about him are true, Maj. Hasan clearly was a terrorist.[emphasis added]

Hear, hear!

Those who want to explain this away as the result of stress, workplace violence or the “stretched force” are willfully blind. Condemned Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad…petitioned for clemency on the basis that he suffers from severe mental illness and Gulf war syndrome. Surely someone who hunts down and murders strangers is not in his right mind, but the primary motive in both Muhammad’s case and Maj. Hasan’s was jihadism.

The refreshing candor of someone like Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the shooter in the June attack on the Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark., is rare. Reportedly, he said he was a practicing Muslim angry with the U.S. military for its crimes against Muslims and would have shot more than the two soldiers he killed if more had been available. This incident also was called “not terrorism. “

The United States is engaged in a global struggle with violent adherents to an extremist Islamic creed. It does not besmirch the Muslim faith – or the vast majority of American Muslims – to admit that fact. The politically correct tendency to define attacks as something other than terrorism simply to avoid addressing the motives of the attacker is dangerous. Anyone who shouts “Allahu Akbar” and opens fire on a crowd of unarmed people is a terrorist. If Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is not a terrorist, no one is. [emphasis added]

Couldn’t have said it better!

Big Brother Arrives in Airstrip One

Every phone call, email and internet click stored by ‘state spying’ databases

Big Brother is arriving in what used to be known as Britain…but which now might more appropriately be given Orwell’s designation from 1984: “Airstrip One”.

All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting.

Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors.

They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

From across the pond, here’s the commentary from Samizdata from the UK.  They are similarly unimpressed, maybe there’s still some hope for Britain NOT to morph into Airstrip One, at least just yet.

NOW do you get what the movie “V for Vengeance” was about?  (By the way, Guy Fawkes Day was last week on November 5th.)

Ft. Hood Jihad Update 2

The plot thickens.

U.S. had al Qaeda intelligence on Fort Hood shooter

U.S. intelligence agencies learned an Army psychiatrist tried to contact Islamists with suspected al Qaeda links and relayed that information to federal authorities before the man allegedly went on a shooting spree in Texas last week, U.S. sources said on Monday.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said intelligence agencies intercepted electronic communications between the suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and anti-American Islamists starting last year and reported the contacts to federal authorities, including the FBI. The sources did not identify who Hasan contacted but described them as Islamists associated with and sympathetic toward al Qaeda.

Who might these “Islamists with suspected al Qaeda links” be? Why, just the friendly fiendly neighborhood Imam.

U.S. Knew of Fort Hood Suspect’s Tie to Radical Cleric

Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between the military psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings.

But the federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding that the messages from the psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, did not suggest any threat of violence and concluding that no further action was warranted, government officials said Monday….

Given the radical views of Mr. Awlaki, however, the conduct of the F.B.I. and the military is likely to come under intense scrutiny from Congress. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, on Monday asked intelligence and law enforcement officials to preserve all records of their dealings with Major Hasan.

The communications provide the first indication that Major Hasan was in direct communication with anyone who espoused militant views. On Monday, Mr. Awlaki praised Major Hasan on his Web site, saying that he “did the right thing” in attacking soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The officials said the communications did not alter the prevailing theory that Major Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim.

Major Hasan, who was shot by a police officer, has regained consciousness at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and is able to talk, though he declined on Sunday to speak to federal investigators about the shooting rampage. “He is critical but stable,” said a hospital spokeswoman, Maria Gallegos.

Ms. Gallegos added that Major Hasan had come out of a coma on Saturday and had been conversing with his doctors ever since. A lawyer for Major Hasan told The Associated Press on Monday that he had asked investigators not to question his client and expressed doubt that he could get a fair trial. The lawyer, John P. Galligan, a retired Army colonel, said he was contacted by Major Hasan’s family on Monday and was traveling to San Antonio to consult with him.

The imam whom Major Hasan made contact with is an American citizen born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents. He wrote on Monday on his English-language Web site that Major Hasan was “a hero.” The cleric said, “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

Mr. Awlaki added, “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

Meanwhile Homeland Insecurity Sec’y Napolitano continues to beat the PC drum about not offending Islam…

Homeland chief warns against anti-Muslim backlash

The U.S. Homeland Security Insecurity secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.

Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday’s rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.

This is more of the same, with similar vaporizations on the subject from the Army Chief of Staff, His Imperial Mightiness B.O. hisself, and others.

Apparently 300 witnesses, many of whom clearly heard the perp yell “ALLAHU AKBAR”, and then SAW him shooting isn’t enough, along with the above mentioned reports according to the administration and their ilk to give enough evidence for us to move beyond cautions about making a judgment about his motives, or even for that matter the fact that he did it.

“Homeland Security?”  What a joke!

Fort Hood Jihad Update

Army Chief Concerned for Muslim Troops

General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said on Sunday that he was concerned that speculation about the religious beliefs of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of killing 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian and wounding dozens of others in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, could “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”

“I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” General Casey said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union. “It would be a shame — as great a tragedy as this was — it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”

Quick – somebody hit him upside the head with a cluebat!

IS HE NUTS? Speculation?  Like the following collection of random facts?

Jihad at Fort Hood

On May 20, 2009, a man giving his name as “NidalHasan” posted this defense of suicide bombing (all spelling and grammar as it is in the original):

There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” and Allah (SWT) knows best.

Of course, it may not be the same Nidal Hasan. But there is more. One of his former colleagues, Col. Terry Lee, recalled Hasan saying statements to the effect of “Muslims have the right to rise up against the U.S. military”; “Muslims have a right to stand up against the aggressors”; and even speaking favorably about people who “strap bombs on themselves and go into Times Square.”

Maybe he just snapped, perhaps under the pressure of his imminent deployment to Iraq. But it’s noteworthy that if he did, he snapped in exactly the same way that several other Muslims in the U.S. military have snapped in the past. In April 2005, a Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. AP reported: “Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve ‘maximum carnage’ on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.”

And Hasan’s murderous rampage resembles one that five Muslim men in New Jersey tried to carry out at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007, when they plotted to enter the U.S. Army base and murder as many soldiers as they could.

That was a jihad plot. One of the plotters, Serdar Tatar, told an FBI informant late in 2006: “I’m gonna do it….It doesn’t matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away, it doesn’t matter. Or I die, doesn’t matter, I’m doing it in the name of Allah.” Another plotter, Mohamad Shnewer, was caught on tape saying, “They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing.”

Nidal Hasan’s statements about Muslims rising up against the U.S. military aren’t too far from that, albeit less graphic. The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, the Chief calls it a duck.  In other words, A TERRORIST IS AS A TERRORIST DOES!

Apparently the Chief isn’t alone in his evaluation of the situation.

Lieberman Suggests Army Shooter Was ‘Home-Grown Terrorist’

A senior U.S. senator on Sunday said the shootings at Fort Hood could have been a terrorist attack, and that he would launch a congressional investigation into whether the U.S. military could have prevented it.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who heads the Senate’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said initial evidence suggested that the alleged shooter, Army Major Nidal Hasan, was a “self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist” who had turned to Islamic extremism while under personal stress.

’nuff said.

Pelosiscare Hellth Bill Passed

Landmark health bill passes House on close vote

SanFranNan was able to beat the bushes enough to get her abortion of a hellth-care bill passed by a close margin.

The Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed landmark health care reform legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard won victory on his signature domestic priority.

Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposing the plan that would expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

On to the Senate, where the prospects for approval are less favorable.

House health care overhaul faces Senate stone wall

The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”

The problem is that the Senate won’t run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.

If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.

“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said dismissively.

Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

Hopefully this thing dies a much-deserved death in the Senate.

Pelosiscare Update

House Dems struggle for final votes on health care

Amid intense lobbying by the Obama administration, House Democratic leaders struggled Friday for the final votes needed to pass sweeping health care legislation, working to ease concerns among Hispanic holdouts and abortion foes.

“We’re very close” to having enough votes to prevail, said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, although he added a scheduled Saturday vote could slip by a day or two and sought to pin the blame on possible Republican delaying tactics.

“Nice try, Rep. Hoyer, but you can’t blame Republicans when the fact is you just don’t have the votes,” shot back Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for the GOP leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.

You just KNOW the press-gangs will be out to try to Shanghai the votes.

Meanwhile, South Dakotas own self-proclaimed blue dog isn’t making SanFranNan’s life any easier:

Herseth Sandlin says she will vote against health care reform

SOUNDS good…but she HAS left herself some room to waffle with.

Her answer is “no.”

For now, at least.

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin on Friday ended speculation on how she would vote on the much-amended, much-debated House version of health care reform, giving it a thumbs down.

In a hastily called conference call Friday morning, the South Dakota Democrat told reporters she would oppose a House reform plan expected to face a floor vote this weekend. Despite improvements, it still costs too much, burdens states with increased Medicaid costs and reduces long-term coverage for senior citizens, among other problems, Herseth Sandlin said.

Here’s the “but-monkey” part of teh statement:

But she also said further work by the House, Senate and President Barack Obama might produce a better version of reform that she could eventually support.

How this ultimately ends up is anybody’s guess.