Islamic acid: Ten Pakis arrested in Afghanistan for spraying acid on school girls.

Where traditional societies usually assign the role to men of protector of woman and children, it is not quite the Islamic way. Islamic men, who seem to have some serious wanker problems get especially freaky around woman.

If they were real men, surely, they would promptly and with extreme prejudice end the practice of acid washing their woman and girls. Not so with the scourge of Islam, the HIV of religion. What a pathetic disgrace. Does Islam have no shame?

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10 suspects arrested for acid attack on schoolgirls in S Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-11-25

KABUL, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Ten suspects on charge of spraying acid on schoolgirls have been arrested in southern Afghan province of Kandahar, said General Dawud Dawud, deputy chief of Interior Ministry on Tuesday.

"Afghan police and security forces have detained 10 Pakistani nationals suspected of committing the acid attack on teachers and schoolgirls on Nov. 12 in Kandahar city, capital of Kandahar province," Dawud told newsmen in press conference in Kandahar.

He said that those suspects admitted they received money for 100,000 Pakistani Rupees each (around 1,200 U.S. dollars) from Taliban militants based in the Pakistan tribal area.

"One special bank account has also been set up by Interior Ministry for treatment and other relief assistance of the victims," Dawud added. "The detection operation is still going on."

Armed men riding on motorbikes on Nov. 12 poured acid on schoolgirls and teachers who were on their way to school, injuring four teachers and 11 schoolgirls, six of them seriously, according to Interior Ministry.

The fundamentalist Taliban insurgents during their 6-year regime closed down girl schools and confined women to their houses.

Mumbai Lesson - Buy a gun, learn how to use it and carry.

Islamic murdering maggot. The little cocksucker, Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, is still alive.

Preparations for the atrocity may have began a year ago in a remote mountain camp in Kashmir Photo: AP

There appear to be 300 dead in Mumbai, killed by five two-man killing teams using mostly hand weapons. Government could not protect them before hand, while it happened, and will not be able to protect others, or you, next week or next year.

Like the police, governments can investigate after the fact, but rarely intercede and protect unless there is a controlled environment such as an airport. An airplane suicide attack such as 911 is unlikely. Another Mumbai is practically guaranteed.

In the Telegraph article, they describe the training and motivation of the killers. It was formidable.

From my experience in Central America, I can assure you that private security guards are practically useless. They are poorly paid, predictable in their placement and habits, obvious to identify and easy to intimidate or in this case kill. Most will simply flee at the first sign of a serious challenge. That is our natural instinct, flee and stay alive. Your reaction and that of most others would be the same. However, there is an important difference.

If a person trained with a private weapon cannot flee, is armed and finds themselves trapped on a restaurant floor such as in Mumbai, they become highly motivated to survive. Five or six others randomly seated and scattered through other parts of a hotel radically changes the math.

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300 May be dead in India

The audacious attack which took a year to plan
The attack was planned with military precision.

By Rahul Bedi in Bombay and Sean Rayment, Security correspondent
Last Updated: 10:44PM GMT 29 Nov 2008 Telegraph

Ten terrorists dedicated to fighting for an independent Kashmir were selected for an operation from which they were likely never to return.

The tactics were relatively simple: to strike at multiple targets while simultaneously slaughtering as many civilians as possible before going "static" in three of the locations within the city.

But such a plan would require a year of planning, reconnaissance, the covert acquisition of ships and speed boats as well as the forward basing of weapons and ammunition secretly hidden inside at least one hotel.

Nothing would be left to chance. Even the times of the tides were checked and rechecked to ensure that the terrorists would be able to arrive when their first target, the Café Leopold, was full of unsuspecting tourists enjoying the balmy Bombay (Mumbai) evening.

The preparations for the atrocity began a year earlier in a remote mountain camp in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan- administered Kashmir, according to the interrogation of a 19-year-old believed to be the only member of the terrorist unit to be captured alive.
The Sunday Telegraph has been shown details of the interrogation which provide the first clues to the identity of the terrorists and the amount of detail which went into the planning of the operation.

Kamal has revealed to his interrogators that most of the volunteers spoke his native Punjabi and that all of them were given false names and were discouraged from interacting with each other beyond what was barely necessary.

During the months of training they were taught the use of explosives and close quarter combat. It was ingrained upon every man that ammunition would be in short supply and therefore every bullet should count.

The terrorists were also taught marine commando techniques such as beach landings at another camp at the Mangla Dam, located on the border between Pakistan-administered Kashmir and India's Punjab province.

Kamal revealed that once their training was complete, his team of four travelled to the garrison town of Rawalpindi, where they were joined by another six terrorists, who had been trained at other camps close by.

It was in Rawalpindi that the 10-man team were briefed in detail with digitised images of their prospective targets – the Taj Mahal and Oberoi Hotels, the Jewish Centre and the Victoria Terminus railway station. Each member of the team memorised street names and routes to each location. Kamal told his interrogators that most of the targeting information came from a reconnaissance team which had selected the targets earlier in the year.

From Rawalpindi, the team then moved to the eastern port of Karachi where they chartered the merchant ship MV Alpha and headed for Bombay.

It was during this crucial phase, as the cargo ship headed into the Arabian Sea, that the terrorists appeared to almost lose their nerve. The Indian navy, Kamal revealed, were very active, boarding foreign vessels and searching their holds. The terrorists thought their plan might be compromised so on the night of 15th/16th November, the teams used their inflatable speed boats to hijack a local fishing boat, the Kuber.
Kamal also admitted to his interrogators that three of the Kuber's four crew were immediately murdered, while the ship's captain was ordered to sail for the Indian coast. When the Kuber was within five miles of the coast, the terrorists slit the captain's throat and transferred back into their inflatable speed boats and headed for the lights of Bombay.

On landing the 10-man team, stripped off their orange wind breakers and began hoisting large heavy packs onto their shoulders.

Kashinath Patil, the 72-year-old harbour master, who spotted the boats moor alongside the harbour wall was immediately suspicious and asked them what they were doing. "I said: 'Where are you going? What's in your bags?'" Mr Patil recalled. "They said: 'We don't want any attention. Don't bother us."

The terrorists then split into two-man teams and launched their attacks.
Major General RK Hooda, the senior Indian commander, acknowledged the group, the Deccan Mujadeen, were better equipped and had a better knowledge of the battleground than India's soldiers.

After the battle, one member of India's National Security Guard, who led one of the assault groups against the terrorists occupying the Taj Mahal hotel, said they were the "best fighters" he had ever encountered.

He said: "They were obviously trained by professionals in urban guerrilla fighting. They used their environment and situation brilliantly, leading us (the NSG) on a dangerous chase through various tiers of the hotel which they obviously knew well. Their fire discipline too was excellent and they used their ammunition judiciously, mostly to draw us out.

"It was amply clear they came to kill a large number of people and to eventually perish in their horrific endeavour," he said. "Negotiating with the Indian authorities or escaping was not an option for them."

Neeta, the sister of Harish Gohil, who was shot dead by the terrorists, mourns over his body at his funeral in Mumbai. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP

Choose Your Weapon

Why are The British Creating So Many Muslim Terrorists?

As a young American airman stationed in England during the sixties, I learned an early lesson in British sanctimony. (The British have a particular talent when it comes to instructing Americans.) At parties and social functions, my accent would be targetted by the hard lefties and I would be treated to remediation on Viet Nam, American racism and British enlightenment regarding multi-culturalism.

At that time, the British grand multi-cultural experiment was a work in process. To the English elite opinion makers, contemporary England was depressing pale in complexion and too monotone in her tongue. They fixed all that and drew in the masses from their former empire.

Some of their grand ideals have not worked out so well, specifically among the young Muslim middle class. The Independent begins to notice:

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British Muslims have become a mainstay of the global 'jihad'
Analysis by Kim Sengupta
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Independent

More than 4,000 British Muslims have passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to security agencies, providing a fertile recruitment pool for the Islamist international jihad.

Men from the UK's Kashmiri community have joined groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, the prime suspects in the Mumbai attacks, which have been fighting against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others from a Pakistani background are in the ranks of the Taliban and other groups taking part in action against British and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

A former commander of the British force in Helmand, Brigadier Ed Butler, has revealed that his troops had come across British Muslims in southern Afghanistan. "There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being found in places such as Kandahar," he said. "There is a link between Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK. This is something the military understands, but theBritish public does not."

Last year, RAF Nimrod intelligence-gathering aircraft tracking Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan heard insurgent fighters speaking with Yorkshire and Midlands accents.

As well as fighters joining their ranks, groups such as Lashkar also benefit from funds raised on their behalf in the UK by the Muslim community. It has also been claimed that some of the aid money donated for the earthquake disaster relief three years ago was siphoned off for militant groups.

Lashkar, previously known as Jaish-e-Mohammed, has forged links with al-Qa'ida in Pakistan and are said to have shared training camps. One of their most famous recruits was Rashid Rauf, accused of being a key member in the plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, who was recently reported to have been killed in an American missile strike.

British Muslim recruits have also been involved in other conflicts. Asif Hanif, 21, from London, killed three people and injured 55 by blowing himself up in Tel Aviv. A companion, Omar Sharif, 27, from Derby fled the scene after explosives strapped to his body failed to detonate and was later found dead, his body washed up on an Israeli beach.

Somalia's transitional government has accused Britain of being the main source of money and men for the fighters of the Islamist Courts Union (ICU), a fundamentalist group, in the country. The then deputy prime minister, Hussain Mohammed Aideed, declared: "The ICU's main support was coming from London, paying cash to the ICU against the government. Among those who died in the war with the ICU wereBritish passport holders."

The Independent, in Mogadishu after the Somali capital was taken over by Islamist forces last summer, discovered a significant number of young Somalis who had returned to fight for the Islamists from the diaspora in the West. Half a dozen young men, including two brothers from Wood Green in north London, were acting as bodyguards for Sheik Yusuf, one of the main Islamist commanders. One of the brothers, Hamid, said at the time: "The true Muslims are the only ones who are honest and who are patriots. We are doing our duty by fighting for the cause of Islam, which is above all countries."

Britain has also been accused of being the centre where a number of terrorist plots abroad were planned. Moutaz Almallah Dabas, a Syrian-born Spanish citizen accused of helping those who took part in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, was extradited from London to Spain after the discovery of links between the attack and an alleged cell in England.

Terror and death in Mumbai

Mumbai looks good from the air.

"They were in no hurry. Cool and composed, they killed and killed
The young men came to by boat to unleash a night of carnage on the 'gateway to India'. Americans and British tourists were targeted, but Indians made up most of the victims"

Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai, Duncan Campbell and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Friday November 28 2008 00.01 GMT
The Guardian, Friday November 28 2008

The gunmen, most of them apparently in their twenties, wearing T-shirts, black shirts and jeans, came ashore in black and yellow inflatable rubber dinghies. Armed with automatic weapons, and carrying rucksacks packed with hand grenades and explosives, they abandoned their landing-craft on the beach, from where they would have been able to make out the outlines of their targets, some of Mumbai's most famous buildings.

It would appear that they had landed earlier, around 8pm, in a larger vessel at Sasoon dock and then used the dinghies to get closer to their targets in the heart of the city.

"Six young men with large bags came ashore, after which the two who remained in the boat started the outboard motor again and sped off," said one witness. "They were fair, chikna [well-off] and looked around 20, 22, 25 years old. They said they were students. When we tried to find out what they were doing, they spoke very aggressively, and I got scared."

Within two hours, the young gunmen were causing mayhem in the city that has always prided itself as being the hospitable gateway to India.

The targets for the attacks were clearly chosen for their iconic value, whether as symbols of Mumbai's power and wealth, cultural centres associated with western values or places where foreigners would be gathered. The inclusion of the headquarters of an ultra-orthodox Jewish group was obviously intended to send its own message.

By 9.15pm, the Leopold Cafe, a popular haunt for travellers for more than a century, and close to the Taj Mahal hotel, was under attack. A watering hole for writers and artists, it is also patronised by backpackers hoping for work as western extras in Bollywood films. Five men wielding AK-47 rifles charged in and opened fire without asking anyone to identify themselves. They lobbed hand grenades at the horrified onlookers.

"All of a sudden there was automatic gunfire. The whole place fell apart. It was tremendously loud. My husband and I were hit, as were lots of people," said Diane Murphy, 58, from Northumberland, who was shot in the foot. Her husband Michael, 59, is in intensive care after being shot in the ribs. As the couple dived to the floor, other diners, including Germans and Americans, ran into the kitchen or neighbouring rooms. It was only after a siege lasting several hours that some made an escape.

"We knew they were closer than they had been for the whole four hours. There were grenades going off, we started breaking the windows and ripped down curtains to make a rope," said David Gross, an Australian. "People were sliding out, like you're taught to do ... it was a one-storey drop on to broken glass." They scattered, leaving behind bloodstains and missing shoes.

A few minutes later, the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, previously known as the Victoria terminus, a world heritage site and one of India's busiest stations, was the scene of mayhem, with blood spattered across the station forecourt and platforms. Gunmen shot up the reservation counter of the station, randomly sprayed passengers, believed to be entirely composed of Indian travellers and commuters, and fled. "They just fired randomly at people and then ran away. In seconds, people fell to the ground," said Nasim Inam, a witness.

Cafe worker Pappu Mishra said two men dressed in black walked into the station pulling guns from their bags and shooting commuters. "Their audaciousness was breathtaking," he said. "One man loaded the magazine into the gun, the other kept shooting. They appeared calm and composed. They were not in the slightest hurry. They didn't seem to be afraid at all." At least 10 people were killed.

By 9.30pm, another team of gunmen were attacking the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, best known just as the Taj, the city's premier hotel. Despite the security arrangements of a venue well aware that it might be a target, the gunmen appear to have had little problem gaining access.

"I was in the main lobby and there was all of a sudden a lot of firing outside," said the Conservative MEP Sajjad Karim, one of a delegation of European parliamentarians in Mumbai in advance of a European Union-India summit. "A gunman appeared in front of us, carrying machine gun-type weapons. And he just started firing at us ... I just turned and ran in the opposite direction."

Guests fled to their rooms and knotted curtains and sheets, which they lowered out of windows, and clambered down to safety. Some did not make it. Ralph Burkel, 51, a media manager from Munich, leaped from an upper floor window of the hotel to escape but fell heavily. He was able to reach a friend on his mobile phone who recounted that he was in agony. Burkel told him: "I've broken all the bones in my body. If no one helps me right now, I won't make it." He died before he could reach hospital.

Inside the hotel, the gunmen confronted guests and shouted: "Who has American or British passports?" Dining by the pool was Dalbir Bains, who runs a shop in Mumbai. She ran upstairs to the Sea Lounge restaurant, where around 50 other people were taking refuge. They hid under tables in the dark, hoping the gunmen would not find them and hearing the sounds of explosions elsewhere in the hotel. They managed to escape just before dawn.

There were bursts of automatic fire as other guests scattered. The shooting was followed by a series of explosions, just after midnight, that set fire to parts of the hotel. Screams could be heard from inside the hotel as flames burst from upstairs windows.

At least two of the gunmen were killed by police in the fierce battle to retake the hotel. Hermant Kerkare, the head of the police anti-terrorist squad and one of the most high-profile officers in the country, who was personally leading the operation, was one of the victims. There were repeated attempts by black-clad Indian commandos to take the hotels and free the hostages.

Even as this battle raged, Nariman House, the home of an ultra-orthodox Jewish group in south Mumbai, was coming under attack. Another group of gunmen had commandeered a police vehicle which allowed them to approach the HQ of the Chabad Lubavitch group. Two people are believed to have been killed and there were still reports last night of up to 10 Israelis being held hostage in the city.

By now the number of the attacks in the city was making it almost impossible for the police to keep up. Within moments, they were hearing reports of shooting at the Oberoi Trident hotel, part of one of the most prestigious chains of hotels in India. By 9.35pm guests there were trapped and in panic. "Save us", read a banner hung from one of the upper floor windows.

Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen who was dining at the Oberoi, told Sky News that a gunman ushered 30 to 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and ordered everyone to put up their hands.

"They were talking about British and Americans specifically," he said. "There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said: 'Where are you from?" and he said he's from Italy and they said 'fine' and they left him alone. And I thought: 'Fine, they're going to shoot me if they ask me anything' and thank God they didn't," he said. Chamberlain said he managed to slip away as others were marched upstairs to be kept as hostages.

Another guest fleeing from the Oberoi hotel was Mangho Kripalni, 84, who moved from India to New York as a young man and was taking his two daughters and granddaughter to India for the first time. "I just came here to show my family India but now I don't know why I did that," he said.

It would not be until the following morning that commandos were sent in to rescue people trapped inside. Two hotel staff, one security guard and two terrorists are thought to have been killed at the hotel.

While guests in both hotels spoke of some gunmen asking for Americans and Britons, the death toll made it clear that, by a vast majority, the main victims were Indians and that any foreigner was regarded as a suitable target. Among the dead are Japanese, Italians, Germans and Australians and among the guests rounded up were Yemenis, Spaniards, New Zealanders, Turks and Israelis.

The violence was far from over. As police sped from attack to attack, a taxi was blown up in Vile Parle at around 9.55pm. Gunmen also attacked Cama and Albless hospital and GT hospital, causing fresh panic. The hospital is known as a place where women and the children of the poor are treated and there was puzzlement as to why it had been added to the target list of the attackers. While there were reports of shooting, it was unclear how many died.

Also targeted by the gunmen was the 70-year-old Metro cinema, known as a popular hang-out for foreigners and cineastes as it shows English language and foreign films as well as being a popular venue for the premieres of mainstream Bollywood spectaculars.

As the sun came up yesterday morning and the city counted the cost, police declared a curfew around the Taj Mahal hotel, warning people to stay out of the area as black-clad commandos ran into the building seeking the gunmen and looking for remaining hostages and booby-traps. Soldiers moved from room to room, systematically flushing out gunmen. By 8.40am, all the hostages at the Taj had been rescued.

By the afternoon, bodies and guests who had been held as hostages were slowly emerging from the hotel. Witnesses reported at least three bodies, covered in white cloth, being wheeled out on trolleys. Other, some clutching luggage, were helped into ambulances.

"We're going to catch them dead or alive," Maharashtra home minister RR Patil told reporters. "An attack on Mumbai is an attack on the rest of the country."

While police and troops mopped up in the city, the Indian navy said its forces were boarding the cargo vessel suspected of being the mothership for the dinghies. Navy spokesman Captain Manohar Nambiar said that the ship, the MV Alpha, had recently come to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan. For a while, it seemed as though a new dimension was entering the equation but, after the ship had been boarded and searched, it was cleared and allowed to sail on. No weapons on traces of them were found on board and the naval statement confirming the all-clear came as Pakistani authorities warned that India should not accuse them of playing a part in the plot.

By 3.19pm yesterday the death toll had mounted to at least 119 people as police made attempts to flush out the remaining gunmen, around a dozen or so of whom remained holed up inside the hotels and Jewish centre. One man told reporters he had seen many bodies inside.

At Saint George hospital in south Mumbai, 63 people were confirmed dead, most from bullet wounds. Hospitals throughout the city started issuing lists of the dead and wounded as Mumbai began to count the cost of the massacre.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Russia just looking for a friend in Venezuela.

According to the Russian analyst, the United States will just have to get used to the Hugo Chavez's of the world. That certainly would take some getting used to, especially while countries like India are being attacked by terrorists and Russia is selling arms and weapon systems to all comers. The World has taken a decided turn to her ugly side and it is difficult to find news encouraging for the future.

Russia acts as if she will suffer no consequences from a less stable World and means to profit from whomever, wherever, whenever.

Nice. Real nice.

"...the gracious gifts of the most high God..."

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the everwatchful providence of almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S THANKSGIVING DAY PROCLAMATION, OCTOBER 3, 1863

"Show us your passports"

"They told everybody to stop and put their hands up and asked if there were any British or Americans," said Alex Chamberlain, a British businessman. "My friend said to me, 'Don't be a hero, don't say you are British'. I am sure that is what this is all about. They were talking about British and Americans specifically."

Telegraph

With the possible exception of the "floating" Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur which was made famous by the James Bond film Octopussy, the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel in Bombay is India's best-known and best-loved hotel.

For any serious foreign investor, businessman or wealthy tourist visiting India's commercial capital, "The Taj", as it is universally known by the cognoscenti, is always the first choice.

With best rooms in the superior old wing costing more than £250 per night - more than 250 millions Indians can expect to earn in a year - the hotel offers a world of secluded luxury, away from the grinding poverty and infrastructural decay of Mumbai.
Legend has it that its creator, a Parsi industrialist called Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, commissioned the building after being refused entry to the now-defunct Apollo Hotel, which had a strict Europeans-only policy.

However with its colonnades of shops stuffed with the world's most expensive brands, what Bombay's rich set consider the ultimate in cosmopolitan luxury, would equally be perceived by Islamist ideologues as a symbol of Western decadence.

Over the years guests have included The Queen, the former Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser and the Beatle John Lennon, to name but a few of the notable personalities to have checked in to the magnificent old wing.

More recently the hotel hosted the guests for Bombay leg of Liz Hurley's two-week extravaganza of a wedding, with guests dashing straight from the front door to waiting motor launches to take them to the privacy of waiting super-yachts in the harbour beyond.

To have pictures of burning Taj Hotel broadcast around the world will have a deeper impact than even perhaps the terrorists intended, striking a blow against a symbol of Indian wealth and progress and sending shivers down the spine of some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet.

Russian View on Pakistani Intelligence Involement in Indian Attacks

How is the Obama and the transition going?

Frankly, not too badly. So far he has taken a very pragmatic conservative and middle of the road approach in both his statements and his selection of cabinet nominees. His talk about bold steps in fiscal stimulation was sensible and his statement that when things get better, he intends to go through the budget line by line to take out unnecessary and wasteful programs and spending was reassuring. 

Obama has set a sober and restrained tone in his rhetoric. Yesterday, when pressed for a number on the fiscal stimulus, he wisely refused to throw out a number.

In tone and demeanor, Obama is serious and sensible. The man talks like he knows what he is doing. His reported decision to keep Gates on in Defense is cautious and pragmatic. Obama has probably distressed more on the left than he has on the Republican Right.

Will this last? We should all hope so. There will come a time when we will disagree. For the moment, let's hope that how he has begun is an indication of how he will lead.

Yesterday, Rufus observed that he was impressed with the way President Bush was handling the transition. I agree. The system is working and that is something that in which we can all take pride.

Does Obama's Citizenship Status Matter?

bobal linked to an article  which posed this question:

If someone were to violate the law by manufacturing a forgery in order trick the public, would that be enough evidence for members Congress to conduct hearings and for a court to issue an order for the critical records, including the original long-form birth certificate (signed by the doctor) to ensure that the U.S. constitutional requirements for office were not violated? After all, Congress is sworn to uphold and defend that Constitution, and the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are "guardians" of the Constitution. That's their job, isn't it?

Does the country want to go there? Does it care about Obama's citizenship status or is the economic crisis so paramount that this issue can be swept under the rug and anyone who brings it up dismissed as a wing nut? 

Forget the Franklins. We are going for Clevelands.

You didn't even know President Cleveland was on a note, well he is, and on a big one. The necessary reflation will result in the printing of lots of these. Someone will get blamed, but there were plenty of architects of the eventual inflation in our future.

Plan accordingly.

US Backs $300 billion in Citigroup Assets

They never sleep. Now we know why.

November 23, 2008
1
Summary of Terms

Eligible Asset Guarantee

Eligible Assets: Asset pool consisting of loans and securities backed by residential real estate and commercial real estate, and their associated hedges, as agreed, and other such assets as the U.S. Government (USG) has agreed to guarantee. Each specific asset must be identified on signing of guarantee agreement. Assets will remain on the books of institution but will be appropriately “ring-fenced.”

Size: Up to $306 bn in assets to be guaranteed (based on valuation agreed upon between institution and USG).

Term of Guarantee: FDIC standard loss-sharing protocol: Guarantee is in place for 10 years for residential assets, 5 years for non-residential assets.

Deductible: Institution absorbs all losses in portfolio up to $29 bn (in addition to existing reserves) Any losses in portfolio in excess of that amount are shared USG (90%) and institution (10%).

USG share will be allocated as follows:
UST (via TARP) second loss up to $5 bn;
FDIC takes the third loss up to $10 bn;

Financing: Federal Reserve funds remaining pool of assets with a non-recourse loan, subject to the institution’s 10% loss sharing, at a floating rate of OIS plus 300bp. Interest payments are with recourse to the institution.

Fee for Guarantee -
Preferred Stock: Institution will issue $7 bn of preferred stock with an 8% dividend rate (under terms described below). $4 bn of preferred will be issued to UST. $3 bn will be issued to the FDIC.

Management of Assets: USG will provide institution with a template to manage guaranteed assets. This template will include the use of mortgage modification procedures adopted by the FDIC, unless otherwise agreed.

Risk Weighting: Institution will retain the income stream from the guaranteed assets. Risk weighting for assets will be 20%.

November 23, 2008

2
Dividends: Institution is prohibited from paying common stock dividends, in excess of $.01 per share per quarter, for 3 years without UST/FDIC/FRB consent. A factor taken into account for consideration of the USG’s consent is the ability to complete a common stock offering of appropriate size.

Executive Compensation: An executive compensation plan, including bonuses, that rewards long-term performance and profitability, with appropriate limitations, must be submitted to, and approved by, the USG

Corporate Governance: Other matters as specified November 23, 2008

3
Preferred Securities

Issuer: Citigroup (“Citi”)

Initial Holder: United States Department of the Treasury (“UST”).

Size: $20 billion

Security: Preferred, liquidation preference $1,000 per share. (Depending upon the available authorized preferred shares, the UST may agree to purchase preferred with a higher liquidation preference per share, in which case the UST may require Citi to appoint a depositary to hold the Preferred and issue depositary receipts.)

Ranking: Same terms as preferred issued in CPP.

Term: Perpetual life.

Dividend: The Preferred will pay cumulative dividends at a rate of 8% per annum. Dividends will be payable quarterly in arrears on February 15, May 15, August 15 and November 15 of each year.

Redemption: In stock or cash, as mutually agreed between UST and Citi. Otherwise, redemption terms of CPP preferred terms apply.

Restrictions on Dividends: Institution is prohibited from paying common stock dividends, in excess of $.01 per share per quarter, for 3 years without UST consent. A factor taken into account for consideration of the UST’s consent is the ability to complete a common stock offering of appropriate size.

Repurchases: Same terms as preferred issued in CPP.

Voting rights: The Preferred shall be non-voting, other than class voting rights on (i) any authorization or issuance of shares ranking senior to the Preferred, (ii) any amendment to the rights of Preferred, or (iii) any merger, exchange or similar transaction which would adversely affect the rights of the Preferred. If dividends on the Preferred are not paid in full for six dividend periods, whether or not consecutive, the Preferred will have the right to elect 2 directors. The right to elect directors will end when full dividends have been paid for (i) all prior dividend periods in the case of cumulative Preferred or (ii) four consecutive dividend periods in the case of non-cumulative Preferred.

November 23, 2008

4
Transferability: The Preferred will not be subject to any contractual restrictions on
transfer.

Executive Compensation: An executive compensation plan, including bonuses, that rewards long-term performance and profitability, with appropriate limitations, must be submitted to, and approved by, the USG.

Summary of Warrant Terms

Warrant: Institution will issue a warrant to UST for an aggregate exercise value of 10% of the total preferred issued to USG (in both transactions) ($2.7 bn).

Exercise Price: The strike price will be equal to $10.61 per share (the 20 day trailing average ending on November 21, 2008). The warrants issued to UST are not subject to reduction based on additional offerings.

Term: Ten years, immediately exercisable, in whole or in part.

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD

__________________________ _______________________________


CITIGROUP INC. FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORP.


___________________________ ______________________________

Obama Takes Off the Velvet Glove with Automakers

"Yes boss"

Obama aide promotes job plan, warns automakers

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writers – Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – After more than two weeks of virtual silence on the economy, President-elect Barack Obama's transition team burst on the scene with new ambition and urgency Sunday, demanding swift passage by Congress of a massive two-year spending and tax-cutting recovery program.

Obama aides called on lawmakers to pass, by the Jan. 20 inauguration, legislation that meets Obama's two-year goal of saving or creating 2.5 million jobs. Democratic congressional leaders said they would get to work when Congress convenes Jan. 6.
Though Obama aides declined to discuss a total cost, it probably would far exceed the $175 billion he proposed during the campaign, but would not immediately seek to raise taxes on the rich. Some economists and lawmakers have argued for a two-year plan as large as $700 billion, equal to the Wall Street bailout Congress approved last month.

With the wounded economy worsening, the Obama team's new assertiveness was a recognition he needed to soothe financial markets with signs of leadership. It also foreshadowed a more hands-on role by Obama to influence congressional action during the final weeks of the transition.

Obama planned to introduce his economic team on Monday, including Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary and Lawrence Summers as head of the National Economic Council. Obama also has settled on New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as his commerce secretary.

"We don't have time to waste here, " Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. "We want to hit the ground running on January 20th." Echoing that, the second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said, `We expect to have during the first couple of weeks of January a package for the president's consideration when he takes office."

Added Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee: "We're out with the dithering. We're in with a bang."

Obama's team didn't limit itself to the long-term economic recovery. Axelrod warned automakers, seeking billions in government help to stave off collapse, to devise a plan to retool and restructure by next month. Otherwise, he said, "there is very little taxpayers can do to help them."

Axelrod couldn't resist taking a jab at the Big Three executives, who left Congress empty-handed last week after flying into Washington in corporate jets and pleading for money. "I hope that they will come back to Washington in early December — on commercial flights — with a plan," he said.

The emphasis on the economy began Saturday when Obama outlined the framework of a plan to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. The scope of the recovery package is far more ambitious than what Obama had spelled out during his presidential campaign, when he proposed $175 billion of spending and tax-cutting stimulus. The new one will be significantly larger and would incorporate his campaign ideas for new jobs in environmentally friendly technologies — the "green economy." It also would include his proposals for tax relief for middle- and lower-income workers.

But there were no plans to balance the tax cuts with an immediate tax increase on the wealthy. During the campaign, Obama said he would pay for increased tax relief by raising taxes on people making more than $250,000.

"There won't be any tax increases in the January package," said one Obama aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the Obama package have not been fleshed out.

Obama could delay any tax increase to 2011, when current Bush administration tax cuts expire.House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio urged Obama to make that explicit. "Why wouldn't we have the president-elect say, `I am not going to raise taxes on any American in my first two years in office?'"

In a sign of where the congressional debate might lead, Boehner called for lowering capital gains and corporate income taxes.

Some economists have endorsed spending up to $600 billion to revive the economy. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and former labor Secretary Robert Reich, a member of Obama's economic advisory board, both suggested $500 billion to $700 billion.

"I don't know what the number is going to be, but it's going to be a big number," Goolsbee said. "It has to be. The point is to, kind of, get people back on track and startle the thing into submission."

While Obama in the weekend Democratic radio address said his plan "will mean 2.5 million more jobs by January of 2011," aides said the figure was a net sum of jobs created and jobs saved that would otherwise disappear without government help.
The adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity said the plan would likely slow down job losses in 2009, but that new jobs probably would not be evident until 2010.
Obama's plan is both an economic and a political blueprint. By not including tax increases, he silences one potential Republican objection to his plan. If successful, the scope of his plan would set the stage for his other legislative goals, including expanded health care, permanent changes in tax rates and a comprehensive overhaul of energy policy.

"This package is designed to be a down payment to get his entire agenda started," the aide said.

Axelrod appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week." Schumer was on ABC, Hoyer and Boehner on Fox and Goolsbee was interviewed on "Face the Nation" on CBS. Reich appeared on "Late Edition" on CNN.

We are all Doomed and are going to die.

Canadian environmentalists say that the coming 23 year long cooling cycle is just a blip on way to true warming damnation.

New satellite indicates cycle of global cooling


November 20, 2008 Spokesman Review

Several Canadian environmental scientists agree the new Jason satellite indicates at least a 23-year cycle of global cooling ahead.

This oceanographic satellite shows a much larger than normal persistent Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Cooler PDO phases usually last 21 to 25 years, so we could be quite chilly as a planet until at least 2030, maybe longer.

However, based on long-term climatic cycles, there is another cycle of intense global warming, due by 2031 to 2038, when many of our weather cycles "collide in chaos."

These alternating natural climatic cycles defy the so-called climate consensus that human-emitted carbon dioxide was completely responsible for the recent cycle of global warming that began in the late 1970s and peaked in 1998. But, I do believe that human activities are enhancing environmental problems.

The Earth's previous warming phase from 1915 through 1939, which peaked in 1936 creating the infamous Dust Bowl, was about as warm as the recent cycle of global warming.

The last cooler cycle of global temperatures occurred from late 1939 to early 1976, peaking (or bottoming) in 1973. The harsh winters during World War II helped the U.S. and its allies defeat the Germans and later assisted our GIs in the Korean War because of extremely heavy snows and subzero temperatures north of the 38th parallel.

In the past 10 years, especially the past couple of years, the Earth's overall climate has cooled a bit, even though CO2 emissions have soared on a worldwide scale. However, as mentioned last week, temperatures continue to be much above normal in the Arctic regions. Only time will tell on where we go from here.

As far as our local weather is concerned, a parade of Pacific storms marched across the Inland Northwest during the first 13 days of this November. Then high pressure moved into the region, giving us mostly dry and cool and mild afternoon temperatures.

Our overall weather pattern should turn toward the wetter side. I now see some measurable snowfall around the Thanksgiving holiday into early December. The first half of the winter of 2008-09 should produce above normal amounts of snow.

Temperatures should be colder, however, with subzero readings expected around the Jan. 11-18 full moon cycle as a huge Arctic high pressure ridge moves in from the north into Eastern Washington and North Idaho as well as the surrounding regions of the Northwest.

It still looks better than a 50 percent chance of a brilliant White Christmas in the Inland Northwest, considerably higher probabilities than usual for the season.

The rise and fall of the femme fatale, Veronica Lake.

The rise and fall of Hollywood's ultimate femme fatale


Independent
By Paul Whitington
Saturday November 15 2008

Eighty-nine years ago yesterday, a baby girl called Constance Frances Marie Ockelman was born in deepest Brooklyn. Hardly the name that launched a thousand ships, but a couple of surnames later Veronica Lake would become box office gold in the early 1940s, a sultry blonde who slyly enticed the world from behind her famous peek-a-boo hairstyle.

Though her birth name might not suggest it, Lake was actually an Irish-American (three of her four grandparents were Irish, two of them first generation), and her extraordinary life is a salutary tale of the perils that befall the fading Hollywood starlet.

Constance Ockelman's father Harry worked for an oil company, and the family moved around America as his job required. In 1932, when she was 11, he died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia, after which her mother (also Constance) married a newspaper man called Keane, which became her daughter's new family name.

Young Connie was promptly packed off to an austere Catholic boarding school in Montreal, which she hated, but things looked up when the entire family moved south to sunny Florida in the mid-1930s. Her striking looks began to get noticed, but Connie was a troubled child by all accounts, and her mother would later claim she was diagnosed with a mental illness.

The defining event in her young life came when the family moved again, this time to Beverly Hills, in 1938. Connie, who had excelled in a high school play, was enrolled by her mother in the renowned Bliss-Hayden School of Acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, and took to acting like a duck to water.

Within a year, the 19-year-old had landed her first film part, a small role as a co-ed in an RKO picture called Sorority House. Lake would never be anyone's idea of a great actress, and she herself once remarked that "you could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision". But the camera absolutely loved her, and her screen charisma soon got her noticed.



She appeared in her first three or four films as either Connie or Constance Keane, but when Paramount producer Arthur Hornblow Jr was casting her in her first major role he suggested she change her name to Veronica Lake, as it suited her looks better.

The film in question was I Wanted Wings (1941), a routine drama about the lives and loves of three Air Corps recruits, but it proved to be her breakthrough. Her elfin looks and tiny physique were most unusual for the time, and the lick of platinum blonde hair that covered her right eye quickly became a trademark.

Among those who noticed Lake was maverick screenwriter Preston Sturges, who had just persuaded Paramount to allowed him to direct his first film. He cast her opposite Joel McCrea as the quirky love interest in his daring satire Sullivan's Travels (1941). The salutary tale of a self-important Hollywood director who decides to slum it with the depression poor in order to "know trouble", it was a wonderfully dark commentary on Hollywood's values or lack of them. And Lake was charming as the wise-ass starlet to whom McCrea takes a shine.

Her star was soaring, and in her next film she was cast opposite the man with whom she would form her most enduring screen partnership -- Alan Ladd. In fact, the pair were teamed for amusingly pragmatic reasons. At something under five foot six, Ladd's unimposing stature often required his leading ladies to stand in trenches while he resorted to lifts. The 4ft 11 1/2 inch Lake was the perfect miniature partner, and they would appear together in five films.

Their first was perhaps their best -- based on a story by Graham Greene, This Gun for Hire (1942) was a stylish tale of murder, blackmail and femmes fatales, and is now considered a noir classic.



Almost overnight Lake had become a huge star, and could seemingly do no wrong. Women across America slavishly tried to copy her peek-a-boo hairstyle, so much so that once the US entered the war Veronica appeared in an ad that graphically highlighted the dangers of sporting the do while working with heavy machinery.

But success apparently went to her head, and she acquired a reputation for being difficult. Eddie Bracken, who co-starred with her in the 1943 musical Star Spangled Rhythm, afterwards remarked that "she was known as 'The Bitch' and she deserved the title". And the novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler privately referred to her as 'Moronica Lake'.

Her career took a turn for the worse in more ways than one with the 1944 film, The Hour Before the Dawn. During filming she tripped on a cable while pregnant, and began haemorrhaging. The child, her second with husband John S Detlie, was born, but only survived a week. By the time the film came out her marriage was over, and though she'd marry a further three times, none of them were happy-ever-afters.

As for The Hour Before the Dawn, though it was far from a terrible film, Lake's portrayal of a treacherous Nazi spy went down badly with the public, and her dodgy German accent was lampooned by the critics.

As quickly as it had risen, Veronica's star began to fail. There was one further triumph, with Alan Ladd in the Chandler classic The Blue Dahlia (1946), but by the late 1940s Lake was considered news, and in 1948 Paramount cancelled her contract.

Thereafter, drinking heavily, she struggled to sustain her career, appearing on television and in the odd bad film. The IRS pursued her for unpaid taxes, and by the late 1950s she was drifting between cheap hotels in New York, and was arrested more than once for public drunkenness.

She hit the headlines in the early 1960s when she was discovered working as a barmaid in Manhattan. This led to some TV work, but nothing could stem her precipitous decline.

Estranged from her four children, she lived in squalor and imagined the FBI were pursuing her. She died, alone and practically destitute, on July 7, 1973, a few months shy of her 54th birthday.

Hillary Clinton accepts post as Secretary of State

It could have been worse.

Senator Hillary Clinton has accepted Barack Obama's offer to become US Secretary of State, as the president-elect moved at rapid speed to assemble an all-star cabinet amid steep challenges at home and overseas. Telegraph

Friends of the former First Lady told American news organisations that she had firmly decided to give up her seat as a senator for New York and become the international face of the man who thwarted her presidential ambitions in a long and sometimes bitter battle for the Democratic Party's nomination.

Other reports said Mr Obama will nominate Timothy Geithner, 47, as his Treasury Secretary. As head of the New York federal reserve bank he has been involved with the $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street, which he will take charge of if confirmed.
As a former treasury official, Mr Geithner has invaluable Washington experience and will be considered a wise choice. Stocks soared as news of his appointment reached Wall Street.

He will probably be joined around the cabinet table by Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor, who has been reportedly selected as commerce secretary after losing out to Mrs Clinton as secretary of state, the most prestigious job beneath the presidency.
With Mr Obama likely to name his economic team in full within a few days, and Mrs Clinton's decision clearing the way for other foreign policy posts to be filled, he is set to complete many of the most important slots in his administration at uncommonly early stage.

His choices for the positions of health secretary, attorney general and homeland security are Tom Daschle, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano, respectively, though they remain subject to approval by his vetting team.

Though news about some appointments has leaked out, to the frustration of the Obama camp, his transition from winning candidate to president is proceeding at a pace and with a smoothness that has impressed political observers.

Mr Obama and his aides have understood that with the financial markets very jittery and economic confidence subsiding a calm and orderly changeover was paramount.

His administration will feature veterans of the Bill Clinton administration and politicians rewarded for their early support of during the primaries, such as Mr Richardson, Janet Napolitano, the Arizona governor tipped to become head the Homeland Security Department and Tom Daschle, who will run health.

His recruitment of Mrs Clinton in particular honours Mr Obama's pledge to appoint an all-star cabinet, or a "team of rivals", of strong personalities who will speak their minds and provide contrasting views.

But some have criticised her management skills – her new department has 19,000 employees – and questioned her foreign policy experience at a time when the country is conducting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and facing growing pressure from Russia, Iran and China.

Obama supporters have also raised concerns that a politician with such a large power base would happily follow anyone else's orders. Some have been unable to forgive Mrs Clinton for her strong criticism of Mr Obama during the primaries, when she launched an advertisement questioning whether the nation would want such an inexperienced politician answering the White House hotline at 3am.

Mrs Clinton, 61, evidently had her own doubts, and was uncertain if she should give up her Senate seat from heavily Democratic New York, which she could most likely have occupied for the rest of her career.

The only hesitation about her within the Obama camp was removed after Mr Clinton co-operated fully with the vetting team's investigation of his network of overseas donors to his global charity.

The former president is understood to have promised not to conduct speaking engagements or seek funds from sources that might present a conflict of interest with the foreign policy his wife would be pursuing.

Hasta la vista Ass Hole

British terror mastermind Rashid Rauf 'killed in US missile strike' in Pakistan.

By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:07AM GMT 22 Nov 2008

Rauf has been on the run since escaping from a Pakistani jail nearly a year ago Photo: AP

Rashid Rauf, 27, who grew up in Birmingham, was killed along with at least three other militants in the attack on the house of a local tribesman in the North Waziristan area. A US drone targeted the home in the village of Alikhel, part of a district known as a stronghold for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

"The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan," a senior security official said. Rauf, who has been on the run after escaping from a Pakistani jail nearly a year ago, was said to have played a key role in a liquid bomb plot targeting transatlantic airliners in 2006.
Rauf, a British national who used to live in Birmingham, escaped from Pakistani authorities after appearing before a judge in an Islamabad court in December last year. At the time, he could have faced extradition to Britain within weeks.

After the escape, Khalid Pervez, a city police official, said that Rauf managed to open his handcuffs and evade police guards taking him back to Adiala prison in the nearby city of Rawalpindi. After the escape, 12 policemen were questioned and two had been accused of assisting the escape or negligence. Despite a huge manhunt, he was never recaptured.

Rauf was arrested in Pakistan in August 2006 along with seven other suspects, after a tip-off from British intelligence, over alleged attempts to blow up 10 transatlantic jets.
News of the liquid bomb plot paralysed global air travel, prompting authorities to implement stringent security measures at airports around the world.

Police believe that the plan was for different passengers to carry peroxide-based liquid explosive in drinks containers and detonators disguised as electronic devices and combine them on board.
The arrests sparked a security alert and mass flight cancellations as well as restrictions on carry-on luggage.

A dual citizen of Britain and Pakistan, Rauf was married to a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the head and founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist militant group in Pakistan that has been linked to al-Qaeda. Azhar has lived in Bahawalpur, a city in eastern Pakistan where Rauf had also settled.

A senior Pakistani official called Rauf "an al-Qaeda operative with linkages in Afghanistan." "Enjoy your raisins."

Rauf is understood to have left Birmingham following the stabbing to death of his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, 54, near his home in Alum Rock in April 2002.

More Results of US Stupidity in Latin America

As trade with Costa Rica grows, so does Beijing’s influence in Latin America. US influence will decrease. The Colombian Free Trade agreement is a prime example. Why are we ruled by fools?

Hu’s Visit Reflects China’s New Clout



By Gillian Gillers
Tico Times Staff |

For the first time in history, a Chinese president has visited Central America, a former bastion of Taiwanese support and a region that the United States has long considered its backyard.

During Hu Jintao's visit to Costa Rica on Monday, the two nations agreed to begin negotiations on a free-trade agreement and work together to expand Costa Rica's national oil refinery.

China will also open a center here to spread Chinese language and culture, and the China Development Bank will offer $40 million in credit to the cash-strapped Banco Nacional.

Hu spent about 24 hours in Costa Rica with his wife, Liu Yongqing, and a delegation of about 110 people, including government officials, journalists and advisers. Separately, about 100 Chinese businessmen visited this week to meet with their Tico counterparts.

“China is ready to intensify its contacts with Costa Rica's government, Congress and political parties,” Hu said at a press conference Monday.

Hu's visit here, followed immediately by trips to Cuba and Peru, highlights China's growing influence in Latin America, where the U.S. has been largely politically absent.

In courting Latin America, China appears to be seeking raw materials, new export markets and diplomatic support from the region's 12 countries that still back Taiwan.

China's gifts to Costa Rica are a reward for President Oscar Arias' decision in June 2007 to recognize China and end a 63-year relationship with Taiwan, according to a secret memo that a Costa Rican high court recently made public.

During Hu's visit, China agreed to free up additional funds for a national soccer stadium in La Sabana Park, on the western edge of San José. China will invest $83 million in the stadium, to be built over the next two years by the Chinese firm Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group.

Also this week, China National Petroleum Corporation agreed to help Costa Rica expand its national refinery in Moín on the Caribbean coast. The expansion, set to more than double the refinery's capacity, could take up to five years and cost $1 billion, to be divided between the two nations, said José León Desanti, president of Costa Rica's National Oil Refinery.

After the United States, China is Costa Rica's second most important trading partner, and commercial ties are set to strenghten over the next few years.

Trade officials will hold the first round of talks on a free-trade agreement Jan. 19 in San José, and negotiations will likely finish by early 2010, said Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz.

China is also donating 320 square meters of space to Costa Rica at the next World Expo, an international fair scheduled in Shanghai from May through October 2010.

Some companies are ahead of the game. Florida Bebidas, a subsidiary of Florida Ice & Farm, signed an agreement with the Chinese distributor Powersun on Monday to sell fruit juice and Imperial beer to Chinese consumers. Florida Bebidas will also distribute the Chinese beer Tsingtao here.

Trade with China has grown dramatically over the last five years. In 2002, just 0.64 percent of Costa Rica's exports went to China, compared to 9 percent in 2007. Ruiz said he expects exports to China to grow 11 percent under a free-trade agreement.

China is also seeking to strengthen cultural ties with Costa Rica through a new Confucius Institute, set to open soon at the University of Costa Rica (UCR). The center, funded jointly by the two nations, will offer Mandarin classes to students, teachers and the general public.

Costa Rica will be the eighth country in Latin America to have a Confucius Institute, joining Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.

China's generosity has impressed Costa Ricans and filled some of a niche once occupied by the United States. When asked in July to name Costa Rica's best friend, 25 percent of Ticos said China, while 29 percent named the United States. Two decades ago, 58 percent of Ticos considered Uncle Same the best, said Carlos Denton, president of CID-Gallup.

“The U.S. is disengaged,” Denton said. “That's why Costa Ricans aren't as conscious of the U.S. as a friend as they were 25 years ago.”

In the early 1980s, the U.S. pumped millions of dollars into Costa Rica's Central Bank to prop up the country's teetering economy. But the USAID mission in Costa Rica closed in 1996, and last year the Washinton, D.C., gave Costa Rica just $7 million in direct aid.

“The clasped hands have disappeared from Costa Rica,” Denton said, referring to the USAID emblem.

The United States is still Costa Rica's No. 1 destination for exports and the top source of tourists. And next month, Costa Rica is expected to join the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA).

Still, as Costa Rica diversifies its exports, commercial ties with the North American giant have become less important. In 2002, half of Costa Rican exports went to the U.S., compared to 35.2 percent in 2007.

While China's ambitions in the region have raised eyebrows in Washington, U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica Peter Cianchette seems unfazed. Stronger ties to China, he said, do not detract from Costa Rica's relationship with the United States.

“This isn't a zero-sum game,” he said.

And we did it without one Chinese component

The shattered dreams of George Bush the Humble

Are you as taken aback by this video? In it George Bush is elegant, humble and articulate. There is no way the man in this video could have foreseen the present condition of the country he led for eight years.

Will Rogers once said, "He never met a man he did not like." That was far too generous. A journalist, one of the Alsop brothers, dying of cancer, said, "He never met a man he could not feel sorry for."

Henry Kissinger on the end of hubris:

__________

An end of hubris
Nov 19th 2008
From The World in 2009 print edition

America will be less powerful, but still the essential nation in creating a new world order, argues Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state and founder of Kissinger Associates

Reuters/Economist

The most significant event of 2009 will be the transformation of the Washington consensus that market principles trumped national boundaries. The WTO, the IMF and the World Bank defended that system globally. Periodic financial crises were interpreted not as warning signals of what could befall the industrial nations but as aberrations of the developing world to be remedied by domestic stringency—a policy which the advanced countries were not, in the event, prepared to apply to themselves.

The absence of restraint encouraged a speculation whose growing sophistication matched its mounting lack of transparency. An unparalleled period of growth followed, but also the delusion that an economic system could sustain itself via debt indefinitely. In reality, a country could live in such a profligate manner only so long as the rest of the world retained confidence in its economic prescriptions. That period has now ended.

Any economic system, but especially a market economy, produces winners and losers. If the gap between them becomes too great, the losers will organise themselves politically and seek to recast the existing system—within nations and between them. This will be a major theme of 2009.


America’s unique military and political power produced a comparable psychological distortion. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union tempted the United States to proclaim universal political goals in a world of seeming unipolarity—but objectives were defined by slogans rather than strategic feasibility.

Now that the clay feet of the economic system have been exposed, the gap between a global system for economics and the global political system based on the state must be addressed as a dominant task in 2009. The economy must be put on a sound footing, entitlement programmes reviewed and the national dependence on debt overcome. Hopefully, in the process, past lessons of excessive state control will not be forgotten.

The debate will be over priorities, transcending the longstanding debate between idealism and realism. Economic constraints will oblige America to define its global objectives in terms of a mature concept of the national interest. Of course, a country that has always prided itself on its exceptionalism will not abandon the moral convictions by which it defined its greatness. But America needs to learn to discipline itself into a strategy of gradualism that seeks greatness in the accumulation of the attainable. By the same token, our allies must be prepared to face the necessary rather than confining foreign policy to so-called soft power.

Every major country will be driven by the constraints of the fiscal crisis to re-examine its relationship to America. All—and especially those holding American debt—will be assessing the decisions that brought them to this point. As America narrows its horizons, what is a plausible security system and aimed at what threats? What is the future of capitalism? How, in such circumstances, does the world deal with global challenges, such as nuclear proliferation or climate change?

America will have to learn that world order depends on a structure that participants support because they helped bring it about
America will remain the most powerful country, but will not retain the position of self-proclaimed tutor. As it learns the limits of hegemony, it should define implementing consultation beyond largely American conceptions. The G8 will need a new role to embrace China, India, Brazil and perhaps South Africa.

The immediate challenge

In Iraq, if the surge strategy holds, there must be a diplomatic conference in 2009 to establish principles of non-intervention and define the country’s international responsibilities.

The dilatory diplomacy towards Iran must be brought to a focus. The time available to forestall an Iranian nuclear programme is shrinking and American involvement is essential in defining what we and our allies are prepared to seek and concede and, above all, the penalty to invoke if negotiations reach a stalemate. Failing that, we will have opted to live in a world of an accelerating nuclear arms race and altered parameters of security.

In 2009 the realities of Afghanistan will impose themselves. No outside power has ever prevailed by establishing central rule, as Britain learnt in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th. The collection of nearly autonomous provinces which define Afghanistan coalesce in opposition to outside attempts to impose central rule. Decentralisation of the current effort is essential.

All this requires a new dialogue between America and the rest of the world. Other countries, while asserting their growing roles, are likely to conclude that a less powerful America still remains indispensable. America will have to learn that world order depends on a structure that participants support because they helped bring it about. If progress is made on these enterprises, 2009 will mark the beginning of a new world order.

Should Georgia be Included in NATO?

Do you see a President Obama in this picture?

Joe Biden predicted that shortly after taking office, President Obama would be tested somewhere by someone. Georgia seems a likely place. The issue will be NATO expansion into Georgia.

Putin is a ruthless, dangerous and violent KGB trained thug. He would love nothing more than to humiliate Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili. Putin has publicly threatened to cut his ball off. Putin certainly has the EU by the balls regarding energy. A nice little nasty scare in Europe would be good for the suffering Russia energy business.

NATO expansion into Eastern Europe was always contradictory to the stated goal of including Russia into the West. A missile defense system, parked on Russian borders is hard to explain to the Russians while maintaining a straight face.

At best Obama is ambivalent over missile defense. Do not be surprised to see it be traded away in eastern Europe. Georgia in NATO? Not likely.

Putin has more to gain and very little to lose in challenging the new American President over Georgia.

____________________

Obama, Misha and the Bear


By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF NYT
Published: November 19, 2008
TBILISI, Georgia

A wounded, angry bear is loose north of here, and it has people terrified.

The bear has ravaged this lovely country, a booming capitalist enclave that worships America, relies on a much-praised flat tax and has uprooted corruption almost overnight (in part by firing every traffic cop in the country).

A main road here is named for President George W. Bush, who visited in 2005. Everybody studies English, sometimes in the local McDonald’s franchises, and people seem bewildered at Western doubts about their behavior toward the Russians.

“We thought we had escaped them, and they came back and raped us,” said Alexander Rondeli, who runs a think tank in Tbilisi. “And people in the West are saying we have to tell them to be our guest.”

The architect of today’s Georgia is Mikheil Saakashvili. Misha, as he is universally known, is young, brilliant, charismatic, American-educated and staffs his government with people like him. You get the sense that any given Georgian cabinet official is about half the age and double the I.Q. of his or her American equivalent.

Now with Georgians mauled by the bear in the brief August war, they desperately want to join NATO for protection, and one of the few things that Barack Obama and John McCain agreed on in the campaign was to oblige by continuing the process of admitting Georgia into NATO.

In fact, that’s an awful idea. President-elect Obama needs a new approach to Russia if we want to avoid a new cold war, and we also need to get over our crush on Misha.

Look carefully and you see that Georgia isn’t quite the shining beacon of democracy that Americans sometimes believe.

“Journalists are basically forbidden from telling real stories,” said Sopho Mosidze, a television journalist. “If you watch Russian TV or Georgian TV, it’s the same. It’s government propaganda.”

Ms. Mosidze is bitter partly because the station she was working at a year ago was stormed by special forces carrying guns while she was anchoring a news show. She said that troops cut off the signal and then beat up some of the journalists. The channel soon was reborn as a pro-government station. Indeed, today all nationally broadcast TV stations are in effect controlled by the government.

Then there is the Georgian War of August. It’s still not clear exactly how the war started, but what is certain is that Misha’s narrative — an unprovoked Russian invasion that forced Georgian troops to try to defend their territory — is nonsense.

The most likely explanation is that Misha, tired of continuous Russian provocations and emboldened by American support, saw a chance to recover territories that Russians were nibbling on. That was spectacularly reckless, and as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented, the Georgian Army (along with Russia’s) fired cluster bombs that harmed civilians.

“It was possible to avoid this war,” said Nino Burjanadze, a former close ally of Misha who last month formed an opposition party to challenge him. “Because of miscalculation, my country was involved in a war it was clear that it would lose.”

Russia took advantage of the war on the territory of one of Georgia’s breakaway republics to invade Georgia proper, and, if it hadn’t been for forceful American and European protests, Russian troops might well have overrun Tbilisi.

Since then, the United States has announced a $1 billion package of aid for Georgia. We should remember that military assistance would be a waste, for Georgia’s Army will never be strong enough to deter Russia. In contrast, trade and investment give Georgia international economic weight and probably help discourage a Russian invasion.

Note to Mr. Obama: It would be a nightmare to have our troops tethered through NATO to Misha. In any case, Georgia doesn’t obviously qualify for NATO membership since it doesn’t control its full territory, while the talk about NATO pushes all the wrong Russian nationalist buttons.

“NATO is not Georgia’s future,” said Amy Denman, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia. “Georgia’s future is economic growth. If they can continue the economic growth cycle they’re on, they’re safe.”

Because Russia behaves irresponsibly — including its latest disgraceful threat to base missiles near Poland — the temptation in the Obama administration will be to continue with NATO expansion and perhaps even with the ill-advised missile system for Europe. (We have so many better ways to spend money!) Instead, let’s engage Russia as we engage China — while still bluntly calling Russia on its uncivilized behavior.

Poking badly behaved bears is no substitute for sober diplomacy. We don’t want Barack to be another Misha.

US Vulnerability to Chinese Espionage and Militarization of Space

China's hackers stealing US defence secrets, says congressional panel
Owen Bowcott
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 20 2008 12.53 GMT

China is stealing sensitive information from American computer networks and stepping up its online espionage, according to a US congressional panel.

Beijing's investment in rocket technology is also accelerating the militarisation of outer space and transforming it into the "commanding heights" of modern warfare, the advisory group claims. The strident warning, which may have a chilling effect on relations between the two Pacific powers, comes in the annual report of the US-China economic and security review commission due today.

A summary of the study, released in advance, alleges that networks and databases used by the US government and American defence contractors are regularly targeted by Chinese hackers. "China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks," says Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission set up by Congress in 2000 to investigate US-China issues.

The commission, consisting of six Democrats and six Republicans, says in its unanimous report that China's military modernisation and its "impressive but disturbing" space and computer warfare capabilities "suggest China is intent on expanding its sphere of control even at the expense of its Asian neighbors and the United States."

The commission recommends that the US upgrades its intelligence and homeland security systems which protect computer networks. It quotes the Chinese military strategist, Wang Huacheng, as describing US dependence on space assets and information technology as its "soft ribs".

China's space programme is "steadily increasing the vulnerability of US assets," the report says. Technical improvements in satellite imagery enables China to locate US aircraft carrier battle groups more accurately, faster and from farther away.

The People's Liberation Army officer and author Cai Fengzhen is quoted as saying that the "area above ground, airspace and outer space are inseparable and integrated. They are the strategic commanding height of modern informationalised warfare." "If this becomes Chinese policy," the report adds, "it could set the stage for conflict with the United States and other nations that expect the right of passage for their spacecraft."

Relations between China and the United States are businesslike and have not been under severe strain recently. During the presidential election campaign, Barack Obama said: "China is rising, and it's not going away," adding that Beijing was "neither our enemy nor our friend; they're competitors."

Allegations that Chinese hackers penetrate US defence computers have been made before, including reports of attacks on the Pentagon supposedly backed by the People's Liberation Army. US intelligence gave the assaults the codename "Titan Rain". In Britain last year Chinese cyberwarriors were said to have hacked into networks used by the Foreign Office, the House of Commons and other Whitehall departments.

China has said before that it is not trying to undermine other countries' interests and wishes to maintain good relations with the United States.

The baffling world of money and history unscrambled by Niall Ferguson.

This is a long clip, but worthy of a listen while you do something else. I have followed Niall Ferguson for some time and he is no fool. He puts the current financial situation in an historic perspective.

Just how much money is spent by the World's navies?

Indian warship destroys pirate ship

MOGADISHU (AFP) — An Indian warship destroyed a pirate "mother vessel" in the Gulf of Aden, the navy said Wednesday, as bandits demanded a ransom for a Saudi super-tanker seized in the most daring sea raid yet.

The Indian frigate INS Tabar, one of dozens of warships from several countries protecting shipping lanes in the area, attacked the Somali pirate ship late Tuesday after coming under fire, navy spokesman Nirad Sinha said.

The incident came as shipping groups reported a new surge in hijackings off Somalia and the International Maritime Bureau said pirates based in the lawless African nation were now "out of control".

"The INS Tabar closed in on the mother vessel and asked her to stop for investigation," the New Delhi navy spokesman said.

"But on repeated calls, the vessel's threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship if it approached," he added.

An exchange of fire ensued, causing explosions and the Indian navy ship then used heavy guns. "From what we see in photographs the pirate vessel is completely destroyed," a senior officer said on condition he not be named.

It was the first time a mother ship had been destroyed, in the most significant blow to pirates to date.

The piracy crisis has grown since the capture of the super-tanker Sirius Star on Saturday. The huge vessel was carrying a full load of two million barrels of oil worth an estimated 100 million dollars.

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic satellite television channel, broadcast an audio tape that it said was of one of the pirates making a ransom demand.

"Negotiators are located on board the ship and on land. Once they have agreed on the ransom, it will be taken in cash to the oil tanker," said the man identified as Farah Abd Jameh, who did not indicate the amount to be paid.

"We assure the safety of the ship that carries the ransom. We will mechanically count the money and we have machines that can detect fake money," the man said.

Vela International, owners of the ship, refused to comment on the report. "We hope there will be a quick solution," a spokesman in Dubai told AFP.

Seized in the Indian Ocean some 500 miles (800 kilometres) off the east African coast, the Sirius Star is now anchored at the Somali pirate lair of Harardhere, according to local officials.

The super-tanker has 25 crew -- 19 from the Philippines, two from Britain, two from Poland, one Croatian and one Saudi. It was the largest ship yet taken by Somali pirates and the attack furthest away from Somalia.

Pirates have hijacked three ships since capturing the Sirius Star.

Andrew Mwangura, from the East African Seafarers Association, said a Thai fishing boat, a Hong Kong-registered freighter, the Delight, and a Greek bulk carrier were seized on Tuesday in the Gulf of Aden.

The Greek merchant marine ministry said it had no word of a Greek-flagged or Greek-owned vessel being seized but the other hijackings were confirmed.

The Delight, chartered by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, was carrying 25 crew members and 36,000 tonnes of wheat when it was seized on its way to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

"So far no contact has been made with the ship and the hijackers," Majid Ensan Najib, a senior official with the shipping line, told the IRNA news agency.

On Wednesday, the pirates released another Hong Kong-flagged ship, MV Great Creation, and its 25 crew -- 24 Chinese and one Sri Lankan crew -- seized on September 18.

"The pirates released the Great Creation this morning and it is currently sailing to Abu Dhabi," Mwangura told AFP, adding that it was unclear whether a ransom was paid.

Pirates use mother ships, generally hijacked trawlers or deep-sea dhows, to tow speedboats from which they launch their attacks with grapnel hooks tied to rope ladders before neutralising the crews at gunpoint.

The Indian navy action could hamper the pirates in the Gulf of Aden in the near future but the group holding the Sirius Star operates from other mother ships further south.

The Gulf of Aden controls access to the Suez Canal, which allows trade between Europe and Asia without taking the longer and more expensive route around the southern tip of Africa.

NATO, the United States and a number of European nations have all sent ships to the region to try to stop the piracy, which has only increased instead.

The German navy said Tuesday one of its frigates had foiled attacks on two ships in the Gulf of Aden, using a helicopter to chase off pirates who fled in their speedboats.

The International Maritime Bureau has called on the United Nations to act over the piracy.

"The situation is already out of control," said Noel Choong, head of the piracy reporting centre at the IMB in Kuala Lumpur.

"The United Nations and the international community must find ways to stop this menace," Choong said. "With no strong deterrent, low risk to the pirates and high returns, the attacks will continue."

Spot on!

Not all chalk on a blackboard is irritating.

The Telegraph's top ten most irritating phrases:

1. At the end of the day
   
2. Fairly unique
   
3. I personally
   
4. At this moment in time
   
5. With all due respect
   
6. Absolutely
   
7. It's a nightmare
   
8. Shouldn't of
   
9. 24/7
   
10. It's not rocket science
    

Absolutely, it's not rocket science nor fairly unique at this moment in time running a blog 24/7. At the end of the day, with all due respect, it's a nightmare. I personally shouldn't of started.

George Bush, Demolition Derby King.

On his way to building his library.

The United States of America, within a year or two, may have its credit downgraded from "AAA." The Republican Party is already "bb" and will be unlikely to produce another Republican President in twenty five years. The only way that will not happen is if the Democrats produce a President less capable and more calamitous than George W. Bush. That does not seem possible. For the good of the country let's hope George Bush retains the title of last in the class. He earned it.

I know some of you will say, but he is a good man. He is not.

There is nothing good about taking the wheel of the the world's greatest country and driving it till every bearing is squealing for mercy. The financial ruin is a result of a leader who did not lead. He did not think through and consider the consequences of unwise action and the irresponsibility of no action. He did not exercise oversight. He did not ask and did not listen. He could not see and was incapable of articulating and persuading.

The Bush Administration Department of Justice lay idle while thieves ransacked the financial system. George Bush had more sympathy for illegal immigrants than ordinary middle class Americans who worked, saved, invested and voted. A man who could not bother to show up for Air National Guard meetings has deployed the National Guard for multiple missions to Iraq, a war that was to be paid for with oil, but likely to cost the US in the trillions.

When Bush had a chance to personally defend his country and volunteer to go to Viet Nam, he did not. His sense of duty did not go that far. He looked good in the uniform, but did not pick up the gun. Later in life, when trusted and given the US Presidency he was given a pen, a pen to use to veto and to protect the people who elected him from the excesses of a wasteful Congress. George Bush did not pick up the pen.

With great power comes great responsibility and trust. George Bush proved he was unworthy of such trust.

A good farmer or rancher leaves his spread better than he found it. Buildings and equipment in repair. Bills paid. New fields acquired. Seed bought and a legacy assured for the generations behind him. Has George Bush left us better than he found us?

________________________

George W. Hoover?


By WILLIAM KRISTOL New York Times
Published: November 17, 2008

Last week, assembled at Miami’s InterContinental Hotel for a meeting of the Republican Governors Association, the governors seemed cheerful. The G.O.P. had lost only one statehouse on Election Day. The prospects for a Republican pickup in Virginia in 2009 were decent, and good candidates were plotting runs in states like California, Pennsylvania and Ohio in 2010.

There was even a sense of liberation in the air. For the last 14 years, there has been either a Republican Congress or a Republican White House, or sometimes both. Now the Republican governors are free of those heavy taps on the shoulder from their “betters” in Washington. So for these governors, this seems a moment of opportunity, in which their policies, their examples and their successes can help shape the future of the G.O.P.

The governors will be important. But there was an almost-never-mentioned elephant in the Versailles Ballroom (yes, that’s its name) full of Republicans: George W. Bush. For the hard fact is this: The worst financial crisis in almost 80 years has happened on his watch. The Bush administration will leave behind probably the most severe recession in at least a quarter-century. Fairly or unfairly, this will be viewed as George Bush’s economic meltdown.

If Republicans and conservatives don’t come to grips with what’s happened — and can’t develop an economic agenda moving forward that seems to incorporate lessons learned from what’s happened — then they could be back, politically, in 1933.

From 1933 to 1980, Republicans repeatedly failed to convince the country they were no longer the party of Herbert Hoover — the party, as it was perceived, of economic incompetence, austerity and recession (if not depression).

Only two Republicans won presidential elections in that half-century, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Both were able to take the White House only because we were mired down in difficult wars, in Korea and Vietnam. And Ike and Nixon were unable — they didn’t really try — to change the generally liberal course of domestic and economic policy. The G.O.P.’s fate on Capitol Hill was worse. The party controlled Congress for only 4 of those 47 years.

That’s what happens when a depression begins on your watch and when you can’t offer a coherent explanation of how and why it occurred and what you are going to do differently. That’s what happens when instead of having such an explanation, you spend decades in quarrels between pragmatic but unimaginative moderates who seek to be better tax collectors for the liberal welfare state, and principled but fanciful conservatives who hope for a wholesale rejection of that welfare state. And the fact that there were many successful Republican governors in those years didn’t much change the party’s status nationally.

Then there was a real moment of economic rethinking in the 1970s. Supply-side economics challenged demand-side Keynesians and austerity-minded conservatives by putting growth, entrepreneurship and incentives at the center of economic policy. Supply-side economics gave Ronald Reagan’s G.O.P. a new and different economic agenda in 1980, and Republicans were able to become a governing party.

Republicans and conservatives today face a similar challenge to that of 1976. A hawkish foreign policy, social conservatism and middle-American populism aren’t the problems. Those elements, as embodied on the Republican ticket by John McCain and Sarah Palin, produced a respectable 46 percent of the national vote — in the midst of an economic meltdown, with the Bush administration flailing and House Republicans rebelling and the Republican ticket lacking any coherent economic message.

I don’t pretend to know just what has to be done. But I suspect that free-marketers need to be less doctrinaire and less simple-mindedly utility-maximizing, and that they should depend less on abstract econometric models. I think they’ll have to take much more seriously the task of thinking through what are the right rules of the road for both the private and public sectors. They’ll have to figure out what institutional barriers and what monetary, fiscal and legal guardrails are needed for the accountability, transparency and responsibility that allow free markets to work.

And I don’t see why conservatives ought to defend a system that permits securitizing mortgages (or car loans) in a way that seems to make the lenders almost unaccountable for the risk while spreading it, toxically, everywhere else. I don’t see why a commitment to free markets requires permitting banks or bank-like institutions to leverage their assets at 30 to 1. There’s nothing conservative about letting free markets degenerate into something close to Karl Marx’s vision of an atomizing, irresponsible and self-devouring capitalism.

If conservatives do some difficult re-thinking in the field of political economy, they can come back. If they don’t — well, there were a lot of admirable conservative thinkers and writers, professors and novelists, from 1933 to 1980. But conservatives didn’t govern.

President-elect Barack Obama

Watch CBS Videos Online

Teacher Unions Against Black Inner City Students

Will Barack Obama deprive D.C. children of the opportunity his children have?

School Choice
Will Barack Obama deprive D.C. children of the opportunity his children have?


Saturday, November 15, 2008; Washington Post

MICHELLE OBAMA'S visits to two private schools and her inquiries about Washington's public schools have sparked the inevitable public vs. private debate. We won't be weighing in because we would never presume to tell any parents where to send their children to school. Yet, as President-elect Barack Obama and his wife decide what's right for Malia and Sasha, Mr. Obama might want to think about the families that he would deny this precious freedom of choice.

During the just-concluded campaign, Mr. Obama spoke dismissively of the federally funded voucher program that gives poor D.C. families access to the kind of educational opportunities his family is fortunate to have. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program gives low-income families up to $7,500 per child for their children to escape failed public schools and attend private schools. Some 1,900 children receive vouchers, and many more are clamoring to join the program. Democrats, and their allies in public school teachers unions, oppose the vouchers and, with the party soon to control Congress and the White House, supporters of the program are right to worry.

Let's hope the experience of moving his girls and finding the place where they will flourish resonates with Mr. Obama so that he reexamines his stance on the District's voucher program. How is it right to take away what little choice there is for needy D.C. children? The scholarship program wasn't intended to replace Washington's public schools, and it doesn't lessen the urgency of improving them. But it does give some poor parents an opportunity taken for granted by better-off families, who can pick their residency based on school district even if they can't afford the most elite private schools.

To their credit, the schools Michelle Obama visited this week -- Georgetown Day and Sidwell Friends -- participate in the voucher program, as do many other area private schools. That means classmates of Malia and Sasha might lose the ability to attend their chosen school if the vouchers were eliminated. That wouldn't seem fair.

British Lawyers Fearful of Iraqi Courts Executing Murderers of British Soldiers

Iraqis accused of murdering British troops get thousands of pounds in legal aid

Two Iraqis accused of murdering British prisoners of war have been granted thousands of pounds in legal aid to fight being handed over to the Iraqi authorities to face trial.

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent, and Ben Leach Telegraph
Last Updated: 10:42PM GMT 15 Nov 2008

Faisal Al-Saadoon and Khalaf Mufdhi are accused of killing Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth and Sapper Luke Allsopp in cold blood during the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003.

The British government wants to hand the two Iraqis over to the Iraqi government for trial. But their British lawyer has launched a High Court legal challenge saying such a trial would breach his clients' human rights.

If he succeeds, the men, who are currently in British custody in Iraq, could be brought to the UK to face trial. Senior British Government officials are concerned that the two men will claim political asylum if they are tried in the UK.

The challenge, to be heard this week, has angered the dead British soldiers' relatives and opposition politicians.

Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP for Newark and a former infantry commander, said: " It seems totally wrong to me that these men are being given legal aid. Would we have given legal aid to Nazis who committed war crimes in the Second World War – of course not – this is arrant nonsense.

"What the hell is the point of fighting a war to try and establish democracy in a tyranny and then show a complete lack of trust in the new regime by failing to deliver alleged killers for trial? If these men do not stand trial in Iraq it would make a mockery of the blood spilt by British troops in fighting this war."

The murder of SSgt Cullingworth, 36, and Spr Luke Allsopp, 24, both members of 33 Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) provoked a storm of outrage in the UK, with Tony Blair claiming that the two men had been executed by the Iraqi Army.

The soldiers were travelling as part of a convoy which was ambushed by Fedayeen militiamen on the outskirts of the town of Al Zubayr in southern Iraq on March 23, 2003.

While half the convoy escaped, SSgt Cullingworth, who was married with two sons, and Spr Allsopp, were taken to a local Ba'ath party headquarters and then to an Iraqi intelligence base, where they were shot dead.

Photographs taken of the soldiers at the compound as they lay dying, surrounded by a baying mob of Iraqis, were later shown on the Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera. The soldiers' graves were discovered a month later and their bodies were exhumed.
The judicial review of the men's case has been launched by the firm Public Immunity Lawyers who have been funded through legal aid.

Phil Shiner, of Public Immunity Lawyers, believes that Mr Saadoon, 56, and Mr Mufdhi, 58, would not get a fair trial in Iraq and could face the death penalty if found guilty. He also believes they would be tortured and abused by other inmates.

Mr Shiner told The Sunday Telegraph that the Iraqi Higher Tribunal, where they would be tried, was a "politicised court" established by the US-led coalition to try senior members of the former Ba'athist regime, and had already ordered the execution of several regime members including Saddam Hussein.

Mr Shiner, who confirmed that the judicial review was being funded by legal aid, will claim that to try the alleged killers in Iraq would be a breach of their human rights under the Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

He said: "The IHT have a track record of sentencing people to death and we, the UK, have a policy of not handing over people to a jurisdiction if there is a risk of the death penalty being applied."

The Sunday Telegraph understands, however, that senior officials in the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice have been given assurances at the "highest level" that the two accused will receive a fair trial and treatment, whatever the outcome of the case.

It is also understood that one of the families of the British dead have written to the Iraqi court and asked for clemency in the event that the former Iraqi soldiers are found guilty.

Margaret Cullingworth, 83, the mother of Simon Cullingworth, who lives in Ruthin, North Wales, said: "They should be tried and brought to justice in their own country. It was a horrible crime. We could have accepted it if they had been killed in battle but they were prisoners and were murdered.

"We do have confidence in the UK authorities and believe they will do the right thing. Simon's widow has been left to bring up the children on her own and she has found it very hard – we all have."

A spokesman for the MoD said: "The Secretary of State for Defence and the Foreign Secretary have received assurances from the Iraqi Government that Mr Al-Saadoon and Mr Mufdhi will be treated humanely when they are transferred to Iraqi custody. The assurances have been considered and found credible, and they have agreed that the two suspects can be transferred to the Iraqi authorities, provided that the UK courts finds this lawful.

Why Deflation Must be Stopped

Deflation is sometimes likened to Dante's Inferno. "Abandon all hope" once you step into that Hellfire.


There is an underlying implication from many that the current financial crisis was caused by deadbeats and that they alone should suffer from their transgressions. That may be good politics or sound morality but it is bad and possibly fatal economics.

Intuitively, we all feel that falling prices are a good thing. That may be so for a short season but if it takes hold on a secular basis it can cause a pernicious and corrosive breakdown in unexpected parts of modern society.

Deflation is an avoidable consequence of bad policy, as an epidemic can be a result of bad hygiene. All will suffer needlessly. The Telegraph explains:

_____________________________

Abandon all hope once you enter deflation

The price of white truffles has fallen 84pc. Fines wines have dropped 65pc. Lobsters are off 52pc. Deflation has reached the City. It has engulfed housing and now threatens to spread through the broader economy, lodging like a virus in the British and global monetary systems.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph
Last Updated: 7:27AM GMT 13 Nov 2008

We are not there yet but Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, says it is now "very likely" that the UK retail price index will turn negative next year. This is a drastic reversal of the oil and food spike that played such havoc with monetary policy over the summer. "The world changed in September," said the Governor.
The Bank's fan charts point to zero inflation at current interest rates of 3pc, but the startling new feature is that price falls could gather pace. This is a clear signal that the Monetary Policy Committee will cut rates again in December – perhaps by a full point to the historic low of 2pc, last seen in the Great Depression.
Mr King let slip yesterday that there is "obviously" a risk of deflation, although he remains sure it can be averted by a pre-emptive monetary blitz. Let us hope he is right.

The curse of deflation is that it increases the burden of debts. Incomes fall: debts stay the same. This way lies suffocation. It was bad enough in the early 1930s when US farmers faced a Sisyphean Task trying to meet mortgage payments on their land as crop prices kept sliding. They suffered mass foreclosure and fled West, as recounted in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.

We forget, however, that overall borrowing was modest in the 1930s. The great credit bubble of the last 20 years has pushed debt levels in Britain, the US and other Western societies to unprecedented highs. UK household debt reached a record 165pc of personal income last year. This is almost 50pc higher than the burden at the onset of the recession in the early 1990s. Our sensitivity to debt deflation is therefore greater.

"It is going to be absolute murder in Britain if inflation turns negative," said Professor Peter Spencer from York University. "The big difference with past episodes is that we are now much more heavily indebted. Few people owned their own houses in 1930s. Debts were miniscule."

Deflation has other insidious traits. It causes shoppers to hold back. They wait for lower prices. Once this psychology gains a grip, it can gradually set off a self-feeding spiral that is hard to stop.

It also redistributes wealth – the wrong way. Savings appreciate, which is nice for the "rentiers" with capital. The effect is a large transfer of income from working people with mortgages to bondholders. (These may be pension funds, of course).
The modern warning to us all is the "Lost Decade" in Japan, a loose term for the on-again, off-again slump that ultimately led to zero interest rates and – when that failed – to the printing of money. After 18 years, the Nikkei stock index is now trading at 8,700 – down from a peak of nearly 40,000. House prices have fallen by half. Yet after all the stimulus, the country is once again tipping back into deflation.
Governor King said Britain was likely to avoid this fate. "We've taken action much earlier than was the case in Japan," he said.

Not everybody agrees, even after the shock and awe cut of 1.5 percentage points by the MPC. Albert Edwards, global strategist at Société Générale, has long warned that central banks in the Anglo-Saxon countries have stored up trouble by stoking credit booms, and may find it harder than they think to engineer a soft-landing.

"This could easily go the way of Japan. It is true that Bank of England has moved faster, but Japan was a local bubble. This time it is the 'great unwind' on a global scale with leverage spaghetti everywhere," he said.

"The monetary authorities don't have foggiest idea themselves whether this is going to work. They're crossing their fingers and hoping," he said.

Nor is it clear whether rate cuts are gaining much traction. The average rate of tracker mortgages has risen 72 basis points since last month, and credit card rates have been rocketing. The Bank's transmission mechanism is not working properly. This a variant of the 1930s struggle when the central banks found themselves "pushing on a string", in the words of John Maynard Keynes. He called for public works to lift the economy out of its liquidity trap. This is more or less what the US, Japan, China, and parts of Europe are now doing – with more in store after the G20 this weekend. Britain has pitifully limited scope on this front. We had a budget deficit of 3pc of GDP at the top of the cycle – when we should have been in surplus – and we are heading for over 8pc. This is already nearing the danger level. If the Government now lets rip on fiscal policy, we could face a 'gilts strike' as foreign investors retreat from UK debt.
The Bank of England has not run out of ammo yet. It can cut rates to zero if necessary and then escalate to direct infusions of money by purchasing bonds – or indeed by buying a vast range of securities, assets and even houses if necessary. Ultimately it can print money to cover the budget deficit.

As the late Milton Friedman put it, governments can drop bundles of banknotes from helicopters. If they really want to defeat to deflation, they can. Mr Friedman may have overlooked the fact that gunmen can shoot down the helicopter – the Bank of France in October 1931, when it ditched the dollar; perhaps Asian bond investors today? – but that is to quibble.

Professor Spencer says the Bank of England has learned the hard lessons. Without the constraints of the ERM, Gold Standard, or any other fixed exchange system, it retains great freedom of action.

"They are very aware of the deflation risk. They are cutting rates very fast, and if necessary they too will turn to helicopters. But in the end they will keep the wolf from the door," he said.

Short the Rouble

Some shorts work better than others.

Russia push for rouble trading no cure for short-term
Reuters, Friday November 14 2008
By Toni Vorobyova and Dmitry Zhdannikov Guardian

MOSCOW, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Russia's campaign to do more international trade in roubles, spurred by persistent pressure on its currency, is likely to prove a long haul with the chances slim of persuading any major players to sign up soon. Moscow spent tens of billions of its hard currency reserves in recent weeks to defend the rouble from falling oil and stock prices and a broad-based flight from emerging markets, prompting policymakers to cast around for new ideas.

Belarus on Tuesday pledged to discuss settling oil and gas trades with Russia in roubles, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talked about the possibility of bilateral trade with China in national currencies, and the use of the rouble is expected to be discussed at the G20 meeting at the weekend.

"We need to take practical steps to strengthen the role of the rouble as a currency for international settlements. And to move to settlement in roubles ... for oil and gas," President Dmitry Medvedev said in an address to parliament last week. The world's second largest oil exporter has accumulated reserves of nearly $600 billion during an oil and gas boom, but those reserves have fallen by a fifth in the last three months and falling oil prices may make them hard to replenish.

For the trade scheme to help, however, it will need bigger buyers of the rouble than Belarus and Kazakhstan, who account for 4.9 percent and 3.4 percent of Russia's exports respectively. Analysts say in the short-term further devaluations of the rouble are likely after the central bank gave in and let the currency ease 1 percent this week.

"It (rouble-denominated trade) would be a good idea if it could be realised, especially because now there is a lot of concern in the world about the stability of the dollar," said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank. "But we don't have sufficiently large political partners who would agree to trade in roubles, and hold roubles as a reserve currency. Those who would agree, like Belarus, are too small."

The European Union is Russia's largest trade partner. But Russia's relations with the West have been soured by a summer war with Georgia, and some Western countries are already worried about Russia's dominance in oil and gas which could potentially make them even less keen to switch to roubles.

Most other energy producers are sticking with the dollar and the status quo, though Iran has said it gets most of its oil income in euros and yen, and Venezuela has also opened some oil contracts in euros during the dollar's fall earlier this year.

COMPANIES PRESSURED

Russia's resource-dependent economy means the rouble's fortunes are closely tied with those of the oil price, potentially a big negative for its aspirations as an international currency. "Our trading partners should understand what the rouble is and what its risks are," said Stanislav Ponomarenko, head of Russia research at ING.

On the flip side, oil and gas also give Russia some muscle, and there are signs that the state is putting pressure on local companies to boost the role of the rouble.

"You cannot imagine how much pressure we have been facing recently to switch to roubles. We are being told it must happen at least with all of our term deals with foreign majors," said a trader with a major Russian oil firm.
"The first step will be with the neighbours, at least Belarus and Kazakhstan. That could happen as soon as next year."
Ironically, doing trades in roubles could make life harder for the companies which have to pay back large chunks of dollar-denominated debt and are unable to refinance it abroad due to the global credit crunch.

Oil firms also traditionally push the government toward weakening the rouble as the biggest chunk of their costs is home-based while revenues come in hard currency. In the short-term, the Belarus news seemed to have little impact on the rouble, which traded around 30.70 versus the basket seen as the central bank's new support level.

Even if Russia succeeds in persuading some partners to trade in roubles, analysts said this may not be enough to over-ride downward pressure on the currency.

"I think that the drivers of the rouble -- oil and capital flows -- will not change, even if the denomination of some of the flow is changed" said Roderick Ngotho, FX strategist at UBS, which does not rule out a 20 percent depreciation of the rouble against the basket in the next 12 months.

(Additional reporting by Gleb Bryanski; writing by Toni Vorobyova; editing by Patrick Graham)

Medvedev and Obama Negotiating Missile Defense

Medvedev said he had spoken with Obama by telephone and hoped to meet him in person soon.

"We hope to create frank and honest relations with the new administration and resolve problems that we were not able to resolve with the current administration," said Medvedev.

It looks as if our community organizer in chief wants to make a big splash fast. He and Medvedev are already chatting by phone and signaling negotiating points. It is almost too absurd to believe that Obama could be so rash and so foolish to even allow a hint of something so potentially dangerous, but if you look at some of the other dangerous liaisons Obama has maintained over the years, this should be no surprise.

The country in all it's foolishness has turned presidential leadership to an untested, untrained, unknown and otherwise unqualified enigmatic figure. Putin, through his wag Medvedev, is moving quickly sensing the naivete of the man.

______________

Medvedev: ready to respond if U.S. ends missile plan
Thu Nov 13, 2008

PARIS (Reuters) -

Russia could cancel its deployment of missiles near the Polish border if U.S. President-elect Barack Obama scraps plans for a missile defense system in central Europe, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said.

In an interview with French daily newspaper Le Figaro published on Thursday, Medvedev said Moscow had no choice but to react to U.S. plans to set up a network of missiles and radar systems near its own frontiers.

"But we are ready to abandon this decision to deploy the missiles in Kaliningrad if the new American administration, after analyzing the real usefulness of a system to respond to 'rogue states', decides to abandon its anti-missile system," he said.

"We are ready to negotiate a 'zero option'. We are ready to reflect on a system of global security with the United States, the countries of the European Union and the Russian Federation."

Washington says the missile defense system it plans to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic is needed to protect the United States against missile strikes from what it calls rogue states, notably Iran.

Russia believes the system poses a threat to its security and last week announced plans to deploy Iskander tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad region bordering Poland in response.

Medvedev said he had spoken with Obama by telephone and hoped to meet him in person soon.

"We hope to create frank and honest relations with the new administration and resolve problems that we were not able to resolve with the current administration," he said.

Asked about his response to the global financial crisis, which has hit the Russian banking sector hard, Medvedev said there had been a flight of capital out of Russia and moves to protect key banks and private savings were necessary.

He said the government might take stakes in certain banks, as had been done in the United States and Britain but he said "nationalization is not the solution" and added that any government stakes would be sold as soon as possible.

(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Louise Ireland)

60 in the Senate and The Broken Red Line

Will the Republican Filibuster be breached?

The Latest On The Senate Fights
Posted by Brian Montopoli CBS

Election Day may have come and gone, but three Senate races are still being fought, and fought hard. If all three go the Democrats' way – an unlikely outcome, but certainly not an impossible one – it would give the party 60 seats in the Senate, a crucial number since it would mean Democrats have attained a filibuster-proof majority.

(One cautionary note for hopeful liberals: Even if Democrats reach the 60 seat threshold, their majority would include independent senator and John McCain backer Joe Lieberman, who has broken with his party on national security issues, as well as other relatively conservative Democrats who might not always vote with their party.)

Here's the latest on the three races.

Alaska:


(AP)
For a while, it looked like 84-year-old Republican Ted Stevens had overcome his felony conviction to be reelected for an eigth term. But early and absentee ballots, which are still being counted, have now given a slim lead to Stevens' Democratic rival, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who says he is "cautiously optimistic" that he will prevail. (The latest count, as of late Wednesday: 132,196 to 131,382.)

If Stevens ultimately wins the race, he still faces the possibility of expulsion from the Senate due to his conviction. If that happens, there will be a special election in Alaska to replace the longtime Senator, and all eyes will be on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a potential candidate.

"My life is in God's hands," Palin said Wednesday. "If he's got doors open for me, that I believe are in our state's best interest, the nation's best interest, I'm going to go through those doors."

Minnesota:


(CBS/AP)
A nasty Senate race involving Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman has only gotten nastier since Election Day. Unofficial results put Coleman ahead by 206 votes (out of 2.9 million), but there will be a statewide recount, and both sides are now jockeying for an advantage.

The latest: Franken is suing for access to data on voters whose absentee ballots were rejected. His hope is that some of these ballots get reinstated and ultimately count in the recount. According to the Secretary of State, a decision about the fate of the ballots would have to be made – where else? – in the courts.

Meanwhile, a board billed as "extraordinarily nonpartisan" has been named to determine who has won the race once the dust settles. It includes Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, two state Supreme Court judges appointed by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, and a pair of county judges.

Georgia:


(AP Photo/John Amis)
Republican Saxby Chambliss, who had initially been expected to win reelection easily, garnered the most votes in his Senate race against Democrat Jim Martin. But Chambliss fell just short of the 50 percent mark necessary to avoid a runoff, and as a result, he will face off against Martin in a Dec. 2nd rematch.

Sen. John McCain, fresh off his failed presidential bid, is scheduled to headline a Chambliss rally in Georgia at 4:30 P.M. Eastern Time today. It's McCain's first campaign appearance since Election Day, and it comes in a state he won with 52 percent of the vote.

Despite the show of unity, however, McCain and Chambliss have had their issues in the past. Back in 2002, McCain harshly criticized an advertisement released by Chambliss against Democrat Max Cleland, who was severely injured in Vietnam. The ad suggested that Cleland was weak on national security and included photographs of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Chambliss ultimately defeated Cleland.

"I've never seen anything like that ad," McCain said at the time. "Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to a picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield, it's worse than disgraceful, it's reprehensible."

Will Detroit Seduce Congress?

You betcha!

Breaking Down The Bailouts

By Cal Thomas, For The Bulletin
11/12/2008

Remember when Democrats lamented the growing budget deficit and spoke of the burden our children and grandchildren would face if we didn't put our fiscal house in order? That was when Republicans ran the federal government and Democrats opposed tax cuts. Now that Democrats are about to be in charge, concern about the deficit has disappeared and spending plans proliferate, even though the national debt passed $10 trillion in September, and we added another $500 billion last month.


The latest, but by no means the last supplicant at the public trough, is the auto industry, which wants a bailout to save jobs because its cars are not selling. There is a reason for that and it can be summed up in five words: The United Auto Workers Union (UAW).

Half of the $50 billion the auto industry wants is for health care for its current and retired employees. This is the result of increasing UAW demands, strikes and threats of strikes unless health care and pension benefits were regularly increased. While in the past UAW settled for some benefit decreases while bargaining with the Big Three U.S. automakers, according to the Wall Street Journal in September of 2006, "on average, GM pays $81.18 an hour in wages and benefits to its U.S. hourly workers." Those increased costs, including the cost of health care, were passed along to consumers, adding $1,600 to the price of every vehicle GM produced. Last February, after General Motors offered buyouts to 74,000 employees, the Center for Automotive Research estimated the average wage, including benefits, for current GM workers had dropped to $78.21 an hour. New hires pulled down a paltry $26.65. GM, now facing a head-on collision with reality, has taken an important first step toward fiscal responsibility by announcing the elimination of lifetime health- care benefits for about 100,000 of its white-collar retirees at the end of this year.

Contrast this with non-union Toyota, whose total hourly U.S. labor costs, with benefits, are $35 per hour. Those lower labor costs mean Toyota enjoys a cost advantage over U.S. automakers of about $1,000 per vehicle. Is it any wonder that Toyota is outselling American automakers and from plants that have been built on U.S. soil? According to James Sherk of The Heritage Foundation, Japanese car companies provide their employees with good jobs at good wages: "The typical hourly employee at a Toyota, Honda or Nissan plant in America makes almost $100,000 a year in wages and benefits, before overtime."

While many in the Democratic Party have focused on "corporate greed" and "fairness," according to Sherk, "competition, not corporate greed, is the real problem facing labor unions. When unions negotiate raises for their members, companies pass those higher costs on to consumers." Americans used to tolerate those increases, but no more. Competition has brought lower prices for Japanese cars and Americans are buying more of them, taking a pass on those manufactured in Detroit.

The argument made by those favoring a bailout of Detroit is that it will save more than 100,000 jobs in the auto and related industries. But what good does that do if people are not buying cars in sufficient numbers to allow the Big Three to make a profit? This becomes the kind of corporate welfare Democrats decry when it comes to Wall Street. But, then, Wall Street isn't unionized and Democrats want and need the union vote.

What about Chrysler's bailout 30 years ago? It was a loan. Didn't Chrysler pay back the government? Wasn't it worth the risk to save jobs? According to the Heritage Foundation, the $1.2 billion in loan guarantees made by the Carter administration still resulted in a partial bankruptcy for Chrysler. "Most of the company's creditors were forced to accept losses just as they would if Chrysler had gone through Chapter 11, and the company ended up firing almost half its workforce, including 20,000 white-collar workers and 42,600 hourly wage earners. The only people who benefited from the bailout were Chrysler shareholders."

The Heritage Foundation also notes, "If Washington really wants to help Detroit, they could end the regulatory nightmare that prevents profitable, fuel-efficient cars from reaching market." Ford, they say, has begun selling a car that gets 65 mpg, but they're not selling it in America. Why? Because it runs on diesel fuel "and environmentalists in the U.S. have fought to keep diesel taxes high and refinery capacity low."

More government intervention in private industry will bring us closer to socialism. Better to renegotiate the labor contracts, re-train workers for other jobs, or help them get hired at the Japanese auto plants in America than to subsidize a failed economic model for the sake of political gain.

Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist.

Why Prices are Falling Everywhere

Hedge funds were the glamour toys of the investment world. They were risky, profitable inscrutable and unregulated. Billions were made by tycoons who traded and hedged industries, commodities and ultimately the entire world financial system. The games are over with the last gasp being $150 barrel oil which we were told was strictly demand driven. Blame for the financial collapse has been focused on the sub prime lending for homes and clearly that has been one component, but there is a lot of smoke out there that suggests that the blame belongs elsewhere.

Tomorrow Congress will huff and puff.

___________________

From Times Online

November 12, 2008
Hedge funds lose $100bn in October
Miles Costello

As much as $100 billion was wiped off the value of hedge fund assets last month as panic-stricken investors rushed to withdraw their capital and the worst markets in living memory blew a giant hole in performance.

Investors redeemed about $60 billion of funds in October, while see-sawing market conditions accounted for the remaining $40 billion fall, according to EurekaHedge, the Singapore based industry research firm.

The drop in assets under management means that, worldwide, hedge funds probably manage about $1.6 trillion on behalf of wealthy individual and professional institutional investors.

This is down from a peak last year of about $2 trillion at the top of the hedge fund boom and comes amid predictions that a rash of funds will collapse before the end of the year.

Experts have predicted that as many as one in four hedge funds will be forced to shut within the next five to six weeks, with hundreds of billions eventually being wiped off assets.

Hedge funds have suffered particular trauma in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street investment bank that was a big backer of funds, in mid-September.

Many also found themselves the wrong side of AIG, the embattled insurer that has been bailed out twice by the US Government.

Almost all of EurekaHedge's main performance indices recorded steep falls in October, leaving some recording a loss of as much as 44.75 per cent for the year to date.

The research firm, which tracks hedge fund strategies worldwide, found that less than half of the funds held on its database made money last month, while a similar amount were in the red over the year so far.

EurekaHedge's composite hedge fund index, an indicator of the industry's performance as a whole, lost 3.3 per cent in October.

EurekaHedge said that this was a strong monthly performance when set against a 19.1 per cent drop in the MSCI World Index and an 18.3 per cent drop in the Reuters CRB index over the same period.

"This was against the backdrop of heightened expectations of a global economic slowdown and further stress in the credit markets, which led to a spike in volatility and harsh movements across asset classes," EurekaHedge said.

Thoughts From President Bush

This from a CNN interview: Bush: 'I regret saying some things I shouldn't have said'

Bush described the atmosphere in his Oval Office meeting with Obama as relaxed and said he offered the future president advice on the transition process. Bush also said Obama was specifically interested in how his two young daughters would adjust to life in the White House.

"It was interesting to watch him go upstairs," Bush said. "He wanted to see where his little girls were going to sleep. Clearly, this guy is going to bring a sense of family to the White House, and I hope Laura and I did the same thing. But I believe he will, and I know his girls are on his mind and he wants to make sure that first and foremost, he is a good dad. And I think that's going to be an important part of his presidency."

Bush said he plans to return to Texas after he leaves office January 20 and "may write a book" but otherwise has few plans. "No doubt I'm heading straight home. I miss Texas; I love Texas; I've got a lot of friends in Texas.

"I'll probably get back and take a deep breath," he said.

Bush said he has begun to think about an outline for the book.

"I want people to know what it was like to make some of the decisions I had to make," he said. "In other words, what was the moment like? And I've had one of those presidencies where I've had to make some tough calls, and I want people to know the truth about what it was like sitting in the Oval Office."

Bush expressed regret that Republican presidential nominee John McCain did not win the presidency but called the election of Obama "good for our country."

The Fed and Treasury Need to Start Buying Stocks

I have suggested this before. It is more urgent that it be done now. Pension funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, endowments all are watching stock values and their investments plummet. There is an irrational behavior in much of the selling as many of the companies who find their common shares under pressure are well capitalized, strong and vital corporations.

However when panic sets in, calmer heads need to do something. All equities are priced at the margin of the last sale. Targeted buying by the Treasury would be supportive and cost the US taxpayer nothing.

Th US purchasing these shares would be buying low to sell later at much greater prices. If this is not done soon, we may very well find that the US Government is no longer capable of preventing a financial catastrophe.

Buy shares and put them in the Social Security Trust Fund.

From Boys to Men

Ass Kissing

Some are more worthy than others.

Canada Free Press
The Republicans-in-name-only are officially dead

As is their ability to do so, Democrats will now go on a search-and-destroy mission of all things that have been a thorn in their side for all these years. They will attempt to silence talk radio, internet conservatives, Republican activists, and to a small extent, we have it coming. We have been too tolerant.

We have allowed RINOs to take over the Republican Party. Those who sought to reach out to Democrats, while a noble gesture, are the ones who brought the Barack Obama juggernaut down around us. When Bill Clinton was first elected with a Democrat house and senate, no overtures were demanded by the media, and none was offered by the left. When John McCain found media refuge in bashing his own party in 2000, he believed it was the ticket to political success. When George W. Bush was elected, his “New Tone” was not embraced, and should Rahm Emanuel become Obama’s chief of staff, no new tone will even be considered.

They will seek to crush their opposition while they have the opportunity; something we could have done in 1994 and in 2000, but Republicans listened to and obeyed the demands of our political enemy. We left them alone.

While millions of Americans took to the streets in Third World-style jubilation, celebrating the end of all things racist, sexist, homophobic, intolerant, Republicans who stayed at home last night should reflect on why they didn’t come out for John McCain and Republicans.

Our elected national leaders decided it was more important to be liked by our enemies, and took our votes for granted. Our elected leaders decided it was more important to water down our principles, spurn the base that put them in power, and reach out to those who consider us lower than Satan’s bile.

We have allowed them unfettered access to our children, and liberals have successfully spawned a new generation who voted for Obama because they were told they would see “change”. We allowed the left the room to protest conservatives, while they redefined our God-given right of dissent as “hate” and “smears”. We have allowed them to rewrite history for their political convenience, and use the very words of racism and intolerance upon those who had the nerve to oppose them.

Thankfully, we are now going to live in liberal America. While that’s reason for many of us to be concerned, it’s also a golden opportunity for another brand of change.

When most sports teams have a disastrous season, very few go without making drastic changes in personnel and direction. This is our opportunity and Republicans nationwide need demand a house cleaning of so-called leadership.

RINOs should be told, in no uncertain terms, to leave the party and become Democrats. Those who sympathize with the enemy are the enemy, and we should have no use for them. At this time when we are about to be gang raped by the Democrat Party, we should allow no place in our home for those who opened the door and let the rapists in. That means saying sayonara to the McCains, Romneys, and our turncoat senators and congressmen and women who reached out to everyone except those who put them in power.

My father said, “You have to kiss ass until you can kick it.” Sorry, but RINOs tried kissing the ass of the left and their media and look where it got us.

Our Rulers and Masters - It is Now Policy

Obama, Emanuel and US Policy in Israel

Obama Has a Chance to Kill OPEC. He Should.

Slay the OPEC dragon.

The new President will be in an unusual position to do what Bush should have done after 911, and that is seize the pricing power away from our enemies.

Oil is dancing around $60 per barrel. OPEC is unhappy and wishes to add an additional export tax of $30 per barrel to fund the good works of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran and Russia. That will drive the price up to $90 per barrel.

The West should not let them get away with it. We have reconciled ourselves to higher energy prices and alternate domestic sources.

The US imports ten million barrels a day. We should add a $30 per barrel import tax.

A $30 barrel tax on imported oil is an astounding $300 million daily revenue stream.

On an annual basis that is about $110 billion. $110 billion is the debt service on $2.2 trillion in debt.

In other words we can finance the restoration  of the  economy caused by the banking meltdown and financial bailout by simply seizing the taxing ability away from OPEC.

We get the added benefit of giving incubation to alternate domestic sources of energy which in turn will create new wealth and industry.

Seize the moment young man. Kill OPEC.

The Loyal Opposition

It always offended me seeing a Volvo or Prius with a "He's not my president" bumper sticker. The Left can banter such nonsense but a true conservative cannot.

The election of a President is a lawful act. We have great obligation to do all that we can to elect a leader that most suits our interests and political convictions. That is a civic duty.

A newly elected President, Barack Hussein Obama, is no longer the same man he was before the election. His ambitions, responsibilities and acquaintances must now be tempered by the immense responsibility that all voters placed with him and on him. And it is all voters, because regardless of your selection, all of us, Americans, voted to support the system of our governance.

Those of us who voted for John McCain sincerely hope that the majority of the American people made a better choice than we did. We hope that the presidency of Barack Obama will be successful, because we want America and her people and us to be successful. To be otherwise would make us as bad as the worst of the Left.

No one has hammered Barack Obama and fought his winning more than I have on this blog. I remain very sceptical of his ideology. I did not want him to win and be President. That fight is over. He was not my choice but he is now my President.

At the end, Barack Obama had a unanimous decision and held his gloves in the air. Like a good and honorable opponent, John McCain bumped gloves and hugged the man that just beat him. That is the way a prize fight is supposed to end, and so it goes with an American election.

___________________________________

Harsh Words About Obama? Never Mind Now

By JIM RUTENBERG New York Times
November 8, 2008


That whole anti-American, friend-to-the-terrorists thing about President-elect Barack Obama? Never mind.

Just a few weeks ago, at the height of the campaign, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota told Chris Matthews of MSNBC that, when it came to Mr. Obama, “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views.”

But there she was on Wednesday, after narrowly escaping defeat because of those comments, saying she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year.” Ms. Bachmann, a Republican, called Mr. Obama’s victory, which included her state, “a tremendous signal we sent.”

And it was not too long ago that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, accused Mr. Obama of “palling around with terrorists.”

But she took an entirely different tone on Thursday, when she chastised reporters for asking her questions about her war with some staff members in the McCain campaign at such a heady time. “Barack Obama has been elected president,” Ms. Palin said. “Let us, let us — let him — be able to kind of savor this moment, one, and not let the pettiness of maybe internal workings of the campaign erode any of the recognition of this historic moment that we’re in. And God bless Barack Obama and his beautiful family.”

There is a great tradition of paint-peeling political hyperbole during presidential campaign years. And there is an equally great tradition of backing off from it all afterward, though with varying degrees of deftness.

But given the intensity of some of the charges that have been made in the past few months, and the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s election, the exercise this year has been particularly whiplash-inducing, with its extreme before-and-after contrasts.

The shift in tone follows the magnanimous concession speech from Mr. McCain, of Arizona, who referred to Mr. Obama’s victory Tuesday night as “a historic election” and hailed the “special pride” it held for African-Americans. That led the vice president-elect, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., to get into the act. During the campaign, Mr. Biden said he no longer recognized Mr. McCain, an old friend. Now, he says, “We’re still friends.” President Bush, in turn, also hailed Mr. Obama’s victory, saying his arrival at the White House would be “a stirring sight.”

Whether it all heralds a new era of cooperation in Washington remains to be seen, and it may be downright doubtful. But for now, at least, it would seem to be part of an apparent rush to join what has emerged as a real moment in American history.

The presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said she was hard-pressed to find a similar moment when the tone had changed so drastically, and so quickly, among so many people of such prominence.

“I don’t think that’s happened very often,” Ms. Goodwin said. “The best answer I can give you is they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history, and they recognize how the country saw this election, and how people feel that they’re living in a time of great historic moment.”

Others in the professional political class were not so sure. Some wondered whether simple pragmatism was the explanation.

“My experience is, it’s less an epiphany and more a political reality,” said Chris Lehane, a former Democratic strategist who worked on the presidential campaign of Al Gore. “I’m thinking they will continue in this direction so long as the polls indicate it’s a smart place to be.”

There are notable exceptions: Rush Limbaugh has given no quarter. And while his fellow conservative radio hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have noted the significance of his victory — on Wednesday, Ms. Ingraham said “Obama did make history” and “It’s not the time to vilify him” — they seem to be in line with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. Relishing his new role in the opposition camp, Mr. O’Reilly said, “The guy is still a mystery, so our oversight will be intense.”

Some lawmakers also do not appear inclined to give up the fight. Representative John A. Boehner, the House minority leader, has already criticized Mr. Obama’s choice of Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, as his chief of staff.

But other people who opposed Mr. Obama, like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, have good reason to try to make up with the winning ticket. As an ardent backer of Mr. McCain, Mr. Lieberman angered the Democrats, who in 2000 nominated him as their vice-presidential candidate. After losing a Democratic primary challenge in 2006 and then winning as an independent, he still continued to caucus with the Democrats.

Attending an event with Mr. McCain in York, Pa., in August, Mr. Lieberman said the race was “between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not.”

As a speaker at the Republican National Convention, Mr. Lieberman went further than Democrats expected by criticizing Mr. Obama for “voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground.” (Mr. Obama voted for bills that included plans for withdrawal from Iraq and against others that did not.)

This week Mr. Lieberman, who has been asked by the Democratic Senate leadership to consider giving up his position as the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released a statement congratulating Mr. Obama for “his historic and impressive victory.” It continued, “The American people are a people of extraordinary fairness.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesman for Mr. Lieberman, said that as far as the senator was concerned, “It’s over, and it’s genuinely time to find unity and move forward behind the new president.”

And what about that whole bit about Mr. Obama not always putting his country first? “He believes that President-elect Obama — and, then, Senator Obama — is a genuine patriot and loves his country,” Mr. Wittmann said. “The only point he was making in his campaign was about partisanship.”

Mr. Obama is apparently ready to bury the hatchet with his new fans. “President-elect Obama has made it clear that he wants to put partisanship behind and work together to solve the many challenges confronting the country,” said Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for the Obama transition team. “We’re pleased that others do as well.”

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who will help decide Mr. Lieberman’s committee assignment, sounded less ready to forgive, at least when it came Mr. Lieberman’s support for Mr. McCain. “Joe Lieberman has done something that I think was improper, wrong, and I’d like — if we weren’t on television, I’d use a stronger word of describing what he did,” he said on CNN Friday.

Why I Believe in The Americas First Baby!

Change You Can Believe in, or Else.

If you hire a shark, does that make you a shark?

If you send in an enforcer, are you, de facto, an enforcer, too?

President-elect Barack Obama, practitioner of consensus and preacher of civility, made a singular statement by choosing Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, the first hire of the new administration.

Stay tuned.

Hiring Emanuel shows Obama's hand

November 8, 2008
BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist


Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin

Brilliant, hardworking, in some ways he may be a good yin to Obama's yang. But I was very surprised because he has a very different personality type from those around Obama," longtime Chicago political consultant Kitty Kurth said by phone Thursday.

"I had first met Rahm after the '88 presidential campaign, on Mayor Daley's '89 mayoral race. He was always brilliant but a complete hardball player. The first six or seven times I met him, he never remembered who I was. . . . I never had anything he needed, so he didn't need to know who I was."

There are a million stories about the 49-year-old, profane, pirouetting, ballet-trained Emanuel.

Whether it's ripping up contributions of political donors who lacked the good survival sense to write a bigger check, or mailing a dead fish to express his extreme displeasure or repeatedly stabbing a steak knife into a table to punctuate a list of Democratic politicians he was putting on a "dead" list, Rahm Emanuel mastered hardball long before Chris Matthews peddled it on TV.

Would Emanuel be displeased by the above description?

Nope. He revels in the legend.

But he's nobody's caricature, either.

Friends from childhood include Wendy Cohen, a senior policy adviser for the Illinois attorney general, who remembers when the Emanuel clan bought the house across the street in the affluent suburb of Wilmette in the late 1960s.

"I have a memory of when they moved in, the dog ran away and the three boys" -- Rahm, Ari and Ezekiel -- fanned out like "roadrunners . . . feudal lords . . . they were loud and warm with hearts of gold," Cohen said.

That kind of affection may not be shared by members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, who have felt Emanuel's razor-sharp elbows in their ribs.

That kind of trust may not exist in the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago after they saw how Emanuel reacted to their indictment of Donald Tomczak, a boss hog of the city's Water Department. It was Tomczak, under orders from higher-ups in Mayor Daley's office, who dispatched an army of city patronage workers to guarantee Emanuel would win his first political race in 2002 for Congress. It was a close race and their help sealed the deal.

Emanuel, whose grasp of detail is second to none, condemned the corruption when the indictment was announced but improbably claimed to be clueless and even more improbably certified that Daley couldn't possibly have known, either.

As much as he understands the "old politics," Rahm Emanuel is a standard bearer of the "new." Responsible for engineering the current Democratic majority in Congress, Emanuel is so feared and respected that he amazingly was given a dispensation by his colleagues for "hiding under the desk" during the primary, endorsing neither of his friends, Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama.

"That speaks volumes about his political skills," said Illinois state Sen. Jeffrey Schoenberg, who has known him for years.

But what does hiring Rahmbo now say about Obama?

It says that the incoming president's message may be delivered with a velvet glove but it covers an iron hand. That the organization he has created, relentless in its message control, ruthless in rebuking those who challenge it -- just ask WGN Radio's Milt Rosenberg -- brings Rahm Emanuel to the dance because consensus goes only so far, civility has distinct limits, and time is fast running out to staunch the bleeding of this country's profound crises.

If you hire an enforcer, are you, de facto, an enforcer, too? Yes.

Why You Pullin' for Barack or McCain?

HatTip: BobW

You will not find a better argument for getting the US government out of public education.

GWB and the Republicans could have accomplished that with a voucher system. Had they done so, they would have saved millions of young Americans from a second or third rate education inflicted by teachers like the one in this clip, a woman fitted for mopping school floors instead of standing in front of a classroom.

The Republicans failed miserably.

Acre of Independence

Chine Lectures on the Environment

From a country that cannot keep melamine out of children's milk, which has killed hundreds in Central American with toxic toothpaste, purveys adulterated medicine to the unsuspecting and is a national toxic generating machine:

China continues climate change call to action

By China correspondent Stephen McDonell
Australia Broadcast Corp

China has stepped up its rhetoric on climate change, calling on Western countries to do more to tackle the problem.

China's Premier Wen Jiabao says people in countries like Australia, can not go on living the way they are if the world's environment is going to be saved.

Speaking at a meeting with representatives of 76 countries Premier Wen said: "The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life."

The meeting in Beijing is discussing how new technologies can tackle climate change.

United Nations climate official Yvo de Boer has told the same meeting that much of the "clean" technology which wealthy nations promised the developing world in the Kyoto Protocol has simply not arrived.

Chris Matthews MSNBC Reports

Love Does Not Conquer all in Washington.

Young George Bush, the inarticulate, with mom and dad.

Tuesday's debacle was some 8 years in the making. Or more.

American Thinker

Consider: Eight years ago, George Bush rode into town from Texas with one thing on his mind: bringing a "new tone to Washington." He was going to use his Texas charm and drawl to end all of the partisan bickering. This was a tad dispiriting to t some of us who had supported him frankly. We were thinking more along the lines of some partisan victories in congress to roll back some liberalism. Actually, only Bush wanted a new tone. Neither his supporters nor his opponents had even the vaguest interest in it, dooming it from the start.

(What does this have to do with McCain v. Obama? Everything. Stick with me.)

Nontheless, with the new tone, its architect Karl Rove was going to fashion a "permanent Republican majority" governing coalition. We're not sure what this new permanent coalition was going to accomplish exactly, since the operational foundation of the new tone turned out to be giving in on your principles so as to be universally loved. Nontheless, Bush and Rove were confident it would work. To ensure it, they were quick to "reach across the aisle" to let ultra-liberals like Ted Kennedy and John Edwards from time to time.

Well damned if Bush didn't pull it off after all, in a Bizzaro-world fashion. There is indeed a new governing coalition in Washington as of Wednesday, and they are determined to make it permanent. They have the numbers to give it a good shot, too. And that new tone? That is the clanking of widespread hatred of a President who was, above all else, determined to be loved. There is little partisan bickering on this issue, since his approval ratings prove most are in agreement on his performance. This is sad and unjust, since his tax cuts, the Surge and the war on terror are all vitally important successes.

Even last night, this new tone President who was almost nowhere to be found during the entire campaign, could peer out his window at the White House and see how well his eight year capitulation had worked. He had not thrown a single elbow in this entire election cycle, yet the hatred was running thick. This was a classic “in your face” demonstration against Bush. Forget the vapor in Chicago, there was red meat in D.C. These folks have no idea that his terror policies perhaps saved some of their lives.

The man from Texas is profoundly hated by the left. But that is not the point. The man from Texas is not hated alone.. The left has projected their hatred of him onto us. His refusal to fight back for his principals was not the personal individual "falling on the sword" that he has convinced himself it was. When he refused to fight, he let us all down.

The result has been a directionless party with no effective titular head. Too much liberalism crept into policy and caused problems. Those problems, with a new tone leader not willing to point fingers, got laid right at the undeserving doorstep of the Bush Administration. That is our doorstep too, however, and Bush never seemed to understand this.

(We are getting to McCain v Obama, I promise)

Remember that the attacks of 9-11 were dreamed up, planned, staffed, financed, practiced and set into motion during the Clinton Administration, but it was deemed to have "happened on Bush's watch." Hurricane Katrina exposed decades of corrupt and inefficient Democrat control of New Orleans, but Bush (and by extension, all Republicans) took the blame. Thirty years of liberal energy policy came crashing down on us this year with four dollar gas, yet Bush, Big Oil and free enterprise took the hit. Two decades of liberal political correctness, fraud and crony capitalism in the form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed and took an over-leveraged economy with it. Again, Bush and free enterprise took the fall even though Bush actively fought the bad energy and lending policies. Interestingly McCain was at times quick to help this negative inertia with his public "straight talk."

Conversely, the Bush tax cuts have done a great job of undergirding the economy for nearly eight years and bringing us out of the tech bubble and 9-11. Bush and conservatism, however, received no credit for this. There had not been another terror attack on this nation since 9-11 -- an amazing feat no one thought possible -- yet Bush and his hawkish efforts were not recognized as the reasons for this success.

You see, all the new tone did was ensure that Bush received no credit when he deserved it, and he deserved it often. Yet, he often took all the blame when he did not deserve it. This led to a candidate like John McCain for the 2008 race.

Bush lavished his "a new tone" on the Republican left, supporting moderates in their primaries against upstart conservatives. But they would never return the favor when they got to Washington. Led by maverick John McCain, this wing of the party worked against Bush on almost every major legislative initiative. Some even say McCain took great satisfaction bashing Bush in the press, in retaliation for the 2000 primary season.

The result has been almost a total lack of conservative leadership anywhere. On the few occasions when Bush actually tried to practice conservatism, McCain and various permutations of the "gang of 14" were always there to torpedo the efforts. Meanwhile, the inarticulate Bush would often trot out some lightweight like Scott McClellan to occupy the bully pulpit, at least until the too-brief tenure of Tony Snow. There was no message, no leadership, no cohesion. There was, however, a 25% approval rating. Thus, when McCain emerged from the primary pack as the pundits' candidate of choice for the GOP, a run against Bush himself was the natural inclination.

This amounts to one of the great political ironies of all time, since in practice there is not that much difference between Bush's "new tone" and McCain's incessant need to "reach across the aisle." You can make the case that Bush's low approval numbers were to a degree the natural result of McCain's Bush-bashing plus Bush's new tone refusal to state his own case.

As we know, McCain made his willingness to work with Democrats a centerpiece of his campaign. He made a big issue of numerous pieces of legislation where he did so, and some of them are unmitigated disasters, chief among them is Campaign Finance Reform, which was going to take the money out of politics. Perhaps that did not go exactly as planned.

And neither did the flawed notion that McCain would swoop into the White House on this great wave of bi-partisan fever on the part of "independents." This is one of the great tea leaf misreads of all time. In my view, there is no great clamor for bi-partisanship, there is only the conceit that there is such a clamour. Surely, if such a public hunger existed, McCain would have won by double digits. He did not. He did not even win the moderates themselves. He lost them by 21 points. He also lost notable moderates like Colin Powell, Chuck Hagel and Lincoln Chaffee.

Reagan, on the other hand, carried the independents by convincing them he was right, not that he was one of them. Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America Congress won them by exposing the liberal Democrats as the corrupt political animals they were. There was no reaching across any aisle or any new tone with those successes. There was simply unabashed constitutional conservatism, proclaimed boldly and repeatedly (and at times with humor), and it resonated. You might even call it partisan.

Conversely, McCain would rarely mention conservatism or Reagan without quickly reminding us of times when he fought against them. Well no wonder it didn't sell. The salesman doesn't even like it!

Conservatism did not lose last night, as it was not on the ballot. The big winner was ignorance and the biggest loser was the Bush-Rove-McCain brand of watered down Republicanism. Yes, the Bush-Rove-McCain brand. They gave us each other. Much as the two men cannot stand each other, they are ironically much the same. And the result is indeed a new tone in Washington, and it is a scary dreary leftist tone.

We will never beat it back until the watered down bi-partisans are flushed from the system. Thomas Jefferson loved partisanship. Hugo Chavez does not. That should tell us all we need to know about this flawed path our party has been on for many years. Tuesday, our aisle reaching chickens came home to roost.

Know Your Enemy

This is how we lost. Young Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that the US is fundamentally a racist country that needed cleansing, perhaps redemption. The only means to redeem America was to choose one, who would show the world that America not only needed changing but has changed. Enough people bought the argument.

That is not difficult to understand.

Whites have been brow beaten into accepting that everything about their heritage was wrong and poisoned. America turned over the education of their youth to a generation of social activists who have taken control of the fundamental channels for education and media. White guilt is an accepted fundamental from which social theorems were created.

The papers and media are full of stories about how America has been changed, cleansed, redeemed. It is not much different than an Islamic shaving of the body, a religious cleansing, a baptism, a sacramental excorcism, voodoo for the white man, shown the way to eternal salvation by the black one, chosen for the quest.

We have a problem. This is different. This is not going to be solved by a short Republican jaunt into the political wilderness. We have lost something and started something. Just like the Jew became the source of all evil to the nazi, so has the White European-American become the symbol of all that is wrong with America. If the world and American youth believe the lie, they will accept the remedy. They obviously believe, and all the controls of information and media are firmly in the hands of the one. The Left and liberal establishment has accepted the putsch and fallen in adulation of the leader. That is how religious fervor works.

This was not an election. This is the beginning of a religion about a shepherd and his flock.

It has taken the son of a Muslim goat herder, an African and a white girl as Mary, who provided the holy grail to start the fundamental change of reordering America. There is a creepiness here that can get out of hand. This is something new for us, but not new to mankind. It is a dismal historic repetition of the past. Careful, be very very careful.

President Barack Obama

What is up with that dress? 

Republicans will benefit from a White House defeat
Alex Singleton at Nov 5, 2008 , Telegraph

Shortly after President Bush was first elected, I found myself attending The Wednesday Meeting, a Washington DC institution where over a hundred conservative strategists, thinkers and lobbyists descend on a downtown office and co-ordinate actions. There was a real buzz in the meetings I attended back then.

The attendees' dream of replacing President Clinton had come true, and Grover Norquist, the chairman of the group, had managed to secure significant influence with the new President, encouraging boldness in tax cuts. The destruction of the Twin Towers was still to occur, and President Bush was a dream come true.

When I returned a few years later, the optimistic buzz had all but disappeared. Bush was still a believer in low taxes, but he had become a big government conservative, allowing spending to run out of control.

The more libertarian free-marketeers present had become completely disillusioned with the President, regarding Guantanamo Bay and the USA Patriot Act, which increased the government's surveillence powers, as distinctly un-American. Even those unworried about Bush's attacks on civil liberties seemed concerned that their man had, in retrospect, been a poor choice.

Losing the White House is probably a healthy outcome for the Republicans. It will give them time to reanalyse what their purpose is - something much easier when out of power - and allow a new, less illiberal Republican school of thought to emerge.

Just as the New Democrats emerged after the Republicans retained the White House in 1988, New Republicans need to emerge after this election, making the Republicans once again relevant for the America that exists today.

George Bush and Republican Leadership

Take Hugh Hewitt's Advice and Ignore the Lying Bastards

"Florida Goes To Gore"
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 11:43 PM

The election night decision of the networks in 2000 to call Florida for Gore --erroneous, and done even before Florida had closed its polls-- was the single worst intervention in America's elections by the MSM in history. It cost Republicans across the country an untold number of votes and many seats in the House and the Senate, and almost cost Bush the election.

The second worst intervention was the bogus exit polling in 2004, which had effects across the country too complex to chart.

In both instances the MSM's "decision desks" injured the basic functioning of our democracy, and tomorrow the trend will probably hold as MSM analysts --except the always-to-be-trusted Barone-- work overtime to find in their numbers the results their polls have been predicting for a month. This dynamic will slow down any good news for McCain and accelerate any perceived good news for Obama.

Play the part of Charlie Brown if you like tomorrow and try and kick MSM Lucy's football, but the best advice is believe nothing until all the polls have closed and the real results are tallied.

It is an extremely close race in all of the key states.

Obama on personal responsibility. Do as I say, not as I do.

SCUM BAG- Hail From the Chief - Afro Style

Presidential Timbre

This is surely a change. It must be a black thing, because I do not remember any of the old white guy presidents doing it. Maybe it is setting some new standards, possibly in the wrong direction.

Forget about  bringing standards up. Let's reduce them to the lowest possible standard so no one has to feel bad about themselves. Barack know how to do it. 

Who else could be better at it than the first black President? After all, we could not get the black illegitimacy rate any higher, or the numbers in prison greater. How about murders , or 7-11 stick ups or some good old gangsta rap? No change there, that is all mainstream now. 

So lets put new meaning into Hail from the Chief from Barack Hussein Obama. 

McCain is the Better Man. May the Better Man Win.

I can understand the blacks lining up to vote for Obama because he is black.

I can understand the students who want to get an education for free voting for Obama.

I can understand those that pay no taxes, wanting a free government check, voting for Obama.

I can understand those who scam the system and get their health care for free by showing up in emergency wards voting for Obama.

I can understand those that send their children to tuition free public schools and pay no real estate taxes voting for Obama.

I can understand socialists, marxists and left wing ideologues voting for Obama.

I can understand those who never were and never will be in the military voting for Obama.

I can understand the self loathing and the losers and victims of society voting for Obama.

I can understand the anti-Christians voting for Obama.

I can understand all those things, but I cannot understand   working and middle class Americans, who are none of the above,  joining Obama. 

If there are a majority of Americans who want to join the losers and takers, then I will accept that the America of lore and legend is gone. These things happen. It is the historic rule rather than the exception.

I will then continue to be a free man and will adapt and live my life and protect myself and my property from those that believe they can take it from me.

May the better man win.

Obama Will Kill Pennsylvania Coal Industry

Listen to  How Obama Talks in San Fransisco

In Pennsylvania there are approximately 7,000 direct mining jobs and over 65,000 indirect or support jobs created to support and service Pennsylvania's mines. Pennsylvanians and other Americans need to listen to Obama's words. He is a dangerous Left wing ideologue. Votes matter. Pennsylvania owes Obama nothing.

How McCain Wins Pennsylvania. Race Matters.

McCain Can Take Pennsylvania and the Election.

One million voters now separate the Democratic Party from the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.

The total PA population, 2006 estimate, is 12,281,054. 15% are older than 65.

Blacks make up 10.7% of the population. Hispanics are 4%. Of the total population, 22% are under 18. That would imply there are approximately 960,000 potential Black voters and they are 90% Democratic and in this race effectively 100% Democratic.

That would further imply that the remaining White voters are split 50/50 as Republican and Democrats. Say 4,400,000 White Democratic voters and 4,400,000 White Republican voters. Since we are assuming all Black voters are Democratic, that gives the Democrats the extra million voters over the Republicans in Pennsylvania.

Of each group, 15% is over 65, but let's say there is no preference between those over 65 towards McCain or Obama. Personally I believe they will favor McCain, but as this is speculative I will balance off the older vote that favors McCain with the small Hispanic vote, most of whom are illegal and not registered.

So lets break the numbers.

Give Obama all the potential Black votes or 960,000. Add to that 70% of the 4,400,000 White Democratic vote which is roughly 3,100,000 and Obama gets 4,060,000 votes.

Give McCain 80% of the Republican vote, 3,500,000 and 20% of the White Democratic vote, (900,000), and he gets 4,400,000 and wins. Reduce that to McCain getting 15% of White Democratic vote and McCain still wins by a nose with 4,160,000.

Of course, voter turn out is important, but I am predicting McCain wins in Pennsylvania.

"Murtha the Mouth" He helps in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania and Barack Obama