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The link is from the Peoples Blog for the Constitution
The first couple of posts discuss the issue of indefinite detention. About the fourth post down for anyone that is interested has a video of a debate discussing US counterterrorism techniques employed post 9/11.
The two sides are argued by John Yoo, legal counsel to George Bush's and author of his memos justifying certain torture methods, and Chip Pitts, lawyer and Board President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and former Chairman of Amnesty International USA.
The debate runs about 45 minutes but I found it interesting.
The link is from the Peoples Blog for the Constitution
The first couple of posts discuss the issue of indefinite detention. About the fourth post down for anyone that is interested has a video of a debate discussing US counterterrorism techniques employed post 9/11.
The two sides are argued by John Yoo, legal counsel to George Bush's and author of his memos justifying certain torture methods, and Chip Pitts, lawyer and Board President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and former Chairman of Amnesty International USA.
The debate runs about 45 minutes but I found it interesting.
For those of you from Idaho, Quirk is the author of this post.
ReplyDeleteWhy don it say Quirk then says deuce.
DeleteI'll listen tomorrow when my attention span is rested.
I'll look up People's Blog too, and see if the know what a NBC is.
b
Someone should be jailed here:
ReplyDeleteA man who was locked in a tiny cell by drug agents for five days without water and food has told of drinking his own urine to survive.
Daniel Chong was swept up during a drug raid in San Diego on 21 April, and placed in a 5ft (1.5m) by 10ft cell, where he was forgotten.
Mr Chong said he lost 15lb (7kg) and was hallucinating by the third day.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials are investigating why Mr Chong was left in the cell for so long.
"They never came back, ignored all my cries and I still don't know what happened," the UC San Diego student said. "I'm not sure how they could forget me."
'Sorry Mom'
According to the DEA, the student was one of nine people detained as a search warrant was executed.
At the residence, DEA agents say they found about 18,000 pills of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, as well as marijuana, prescription medications, hallucinogenic mushrooms and several firearms.
"The individual in question was at the house, by his own admission, to get high with his friends," the statement said.
DEA San Diego acting agent-in-charge William Sherman said on Wednesday that he was "deeply troubled by the incident that occurred here last week".
"I extend my deepest apologies to the young man and want to express that this event is not indicative of the high standards that I hold my employees to."
During a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Chong said agents had questioned him on 21 April but told him he could go home.
One DEA agent even offered him a ride, he said.
Somehow, instead of returning home Mr Chong was "accidentally left in one of the cells", say officials.
Another national police force from another agency out of control. How many federal police departments do we need?
From the previous post, I saw no mention of the surprising declaration from Obama on his signing a treaty with Afghanistan. What the heck is this? If Obama makes a treaty with Afghanistan, he is obligated to ask the Senate for approval. IMHO, after the whipped the Taliban, the USA could have set up the Afghan government quickly, then withdrawn from the conflict, remaining at the perimeter with the statement that if they did anything hostile to the USA, the USA could go back in to administer a 2nd dose of medicine. This never-ending Vietnam War stuff is insanity.
ReplyDeleteThe killing of bin Laden helps inoculate Obama against attacks on his foreign policy, but I don’t think foreign policy is going to be a very important issue on voters’ minds.
ReplyDeleteDefense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday harshly condemned former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, and former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin for downplaying the threat from Iran, saying the three are serving Tehran.
ReplyDeleteIn an interview with Yisrael Hayom newspaper, Barak denounced Olmert, Dagan, and Diskin's continued criticisms of him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Iranian issue.
Rand Paul wants to close down the TSA. Fine by me.
ReplyDeleteThat private outfit out there at San Francisco Airport seems to do a heck of a job for a lot less money.
ReplyDeleteWho won the debate?
ReplyDeleteRetired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, General Colin Powell's former chief of staff (in both the Persian Gulf War and while Powell was Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), has stated the following regarding Yoo: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzales and — at the apex — Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In the future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."
ReplyDelete"They're going to try to get some of the big boys," he added.
ReplyDeleteAbout time.
Link
Russia's top military officer has threatened to carry out a pre-emptive strike on U.S.-led NATO missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if Washington goes ahead with its controversial plan to build a missile shield.
ReplyDeleteLink
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ReplyDeleteI read that because of faulty CIA intelligence the US overspent billions of dollars during the Cold War in trying to counter a Soviet military threat that didn’t really exist. IMO we are today wasting money on a daily basis fighting the war on terror that makes the Cold War spending look like chump change.
Even if we ignore the other negatives; the rights we have given up or that have been taken under legislation such as the Patriot Act or the NDAA, the fact that our actions have incensed our allies to the point that countries like Canada refuse to turn over terror suspects due to fear of rendition, torture, or indefinite detention, or that countries like Germany tell us they are unwilling to support us in the WOT, or that countries all over the ME are being radicalized against the US because of the many civilians killed by our drone attacks, or that countries no longer view the US as a dependable partner much less Reagan’s ‘shining city on a hill’ the latest example being the Chen affair in China, no, forget all that and just concentrate on the billions we waste on an ongoing basis.
I could go into detail but the redundancy and inefficiency resulting from us piling layer after layer of bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy has already been detailed in the Washington Post series Top Secret America. I say we are wasting billions because what has been the actual effect of all this bureaucracy? What have we got for our money? IMO, very little.
Sure we eventually got OBL but that was after four years of excellent police work tracking a particular lead. What else have they done for us lately? Let’s face it the big ‘successes’, the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, those four or five ‘terrorists’ down in Florida who were out every day walking around in camo fatigues, were all stopped not because of Homeland Security but because of either incompetence or luck.
So what do we get for our money? We get the TSA, we get various organizations within HS tripping over each other, we get massive amounts of data pulled on individuals without judicial review or authorization, amounts so vast it’s impossible to cross-reference it all in order to develop actual leads on a timely basis, we get people being put on watch lists by mistake and never being able to get off. Billions and billions of dollars. It’s a tragedy.
There’s a saying that describe the absurdity of the current situation, "When seconds count the police are only minutes away."
Supposedly, the WOT was launched to fight terrorism by al Queda and its Islamofascist allies (thus creating a war that will likely never end). The precipitating event obviously was 9/11, a tragedy that none can deny. There is now a saying, ““Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims.” And this is used as justification for many of our actions and our views. Yet, using government records and their definition of ‘terrorist’, of the 318 terrorist events perpetrated in the US between 1980 and 2005, only 6% were carried out by Muslims.
Yet we continue to waste billions on the WOT.
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New intelligence agency being set up - the National Clandestine Service (like that name!)--
ReplyDeletehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4340318.stm
I mostly agree with Quirk though I'm not so down on the TSA, but then I never fly.
I wonder about that 6% figure and what definition of terrorism is being used.
Anyway I read the war on terror was over in time for the election so we're home free.
I like the sound of that National Clandestine Service though, there's an agency with a memorable name.
b
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DeleteNational Clandestine Service sounds too British to me.
I'd prefer something like National Intelligence Network for Justice thru Assassination (NINJA)
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Russia threatens to strike missile defense system --
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/3/russia-threatens-strike-nato-missile-defense-sites/
Anybody have any idea what to do about this? It might be a simpler world if Iran were defanged. Things can become complex past the point of analysis. Israel recently called up some troops to active duty.
Few can do anything about anything, most just watch and witness.
b
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DeleteI didn't pay all that much attention to it at the time but in the debate between Yoo and Pipps above, Yoo was questioned on ramifications of executive perogatives that he espoused and when asked if it would be legal for Russia or China to attack us in the way we invaded Iraq, he said sure.
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But, then, "anarchy isn't easy" - heh -
ReplyDeletehttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/03/video-juan-williams-takes-on-michelle-malkin-over-comparisons-between-the-occupy-movement-and-the-tea-party/
Since both Obama and Pelosi seemed endeared to these folks, no need to watch them perhaps. But the Tea Party!...
Michelle Malkin v Juan Williams
b
What do you do for a living, Sir?
ReplyDeleteI'm an anarchist. It's hard work!
b
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DeleteIf you are looking for truth in advertising, one of these financial corporations should step up and change their name to "Anarcho Capital".
Like it. "Where we work hard for you"
Deleteb
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DeleteWell, if you are still looking for 'truth in advertising', I guess I would leave out the 'for you' part.
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Then there is the following -
ReplyDeletehttp://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-clerics-call-grave-attack-bio-weapons/story?id=16268233#.T6LrH9XfMiV
Threatening to burn down the national forests and use bioweapons in the cities. One begins to think maybe we do need that National Clandestine Service.
The government is in a hard position. They really can't do no right. If they get it wrong and something big happens they get blamed, on the other hand if nothing ever happens they seem heavy handed.
b
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ReplyDeleteBobbo, remember I was trying to think of a subject for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)in November. My first thought was to place the novel in the not too distant future, a future in which anarcho capitalism is the predominant theme, where all the big corporations had their own private armies, where western and eastern religions were literally fighting each other, where the Pope had his own private army, where income inequality had reached its zenith and there were no jobs, where parts of the east and west coast where sinking due to global warming, and where the poor were being forced out of their homes and off their land all over the US so that the government could plant crops for ethanol.
But then I thought that might be a little ambitious to complete in one month so I will have to do that one separately.
I guess I will just go for a little 'sword and sorcery' for NaNoWriMo.
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While it sounds like a mammoth project, don't sell yourself short. Extend yourself, flex those brain cells, begin at 6:30 in the morning, knock off about 7:00 pm. It's all there in your outline. Great outline, Rufus will like the part about planting for ethanol. Do you have a dictaphone? If not get one. Saves the typing, your can hire that out. I like the part about the armed big corporations. John Deere could mount machine guns on those big tractors. Easily able to hole a small town at bay. No one will really miss the east and west coast anyway, you might think of taking the west coast out with earthquakes. Think forest fires in the national forests.
Delete"FORWARD!"
bobbo
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DeleteRufus will like the part about planting for ethanol.
Yeh, I thought so. I figure any novel with dystopia as its theme should have Rufus and ethanol in it somewhere.
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Better hurry before the Yellowstone Caldera blows.
ReplyDeleteAt last report the Caldera is rising.....if she goes....
DeleteQuirk, add that Caldera blowing to your narrative.
b
I'm a little bit surprised you're not already published Quirk. If you are seriously thinking about dipping your big toe in, I suggest you keep an eye on BC where occasionally the subject turns to self-publishing on-line. Wretchard has done it, fiction and non-fiction. Don't know if he's going to retire in Monaco but I'm thinking he's making a few bucks on it.
ReplyDelete.
DeleteYou have pointed out I am a bit anal. Like the WOT my re-writing would never end. The advantage with NaNoWriMo is that the work doesn't necessarily have to be good, the main objective being to pump out 50-70k words in a month and actually complete a novel.
The assumption is you would then go on from there after getting past that first hurdle.
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Clinging again.
DeleteWhen I was trying to be Nice.
Shall I recap your insults?
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DeleteI would start with paranoia.
:)
Damn, I thought I was being nice and giving you an honest answer.
Perhaps, Rufus is right and I am more 'crotchedy' than I think.
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All right then.
Delete[Roubini] sees the risk of a military conflict greatest after the U.S. presidential election, regardless of who wins. Negotiations to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions have already failed, he argued.
ReplyDeleteWhich means there is a “meaningful chance” the U.S. will “do the job” after the election, according to Roubini.
Link
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Bartender, An Armageddon please. Hold the umbrella.
Nominate "lost in the hand" for previous thread winner. Never heard that phrase before but it's worth its weight in Dimon's.
This lead to a glimmer of agreement. Milken and Roubini both believe that eventually the world will move away from dependence on Middle Eastern oil—it’s just a matter of timing.
ReplyDeleteBut Roubini warned that timing could be everything.
"Keynes used to say that in the long run we're all dead. We may be dead in the short run," he said.
Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO Boutique, said the pull of Facebook's IPO became clear when his elderly parents started asking him about it on behalf of neighbors at their Florida retirement community.
ReplyDelete...
With such demand in the offing, few investors think Facebook's IPO arc will follow that of Google's in 2004. University of Florida Professor Jay Ritter noted that Google initially priced its stock at its IPO at between $108 and $135 a share.
That was later revised down to $85 to $95 and ultimately priced at $85. Google shares now trade for more than $600.
As their campaigns fell apart, Santorum and Gingrich also emerged as authentic complainers, blaming their woes on the cosmic unfairness of having a better-funded opponent run ads using their own words against them, ignoring the fact that those words were out there to be used against them owing to nobody’s fault but their own.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson in all of this? That authenticity isn’t always an unalloyed blessing.
And that it may be better to be just a touch inauthentic than authentically something that people don’t want.
:)
DeleteVery good. Author??
Never mind. Just another op-ed writer I've never heard of.
DeleteTwo embarrassing candidates.
You found it then? I can throw the link up.
DeleteNoemie Emerie, not much on-line information about her but she's pretty astute I think.
DeleteI have to wonder what kind of name is "Noemie?"
Asked about the party leader Nikos Michaloliakos' links to the military junta which ruled Greece between 1967-1974, he said that people were calling for the return of George Papadopoulos, the leader of the Colonel's regime.
ReplyDelete...
Ahead of its most uncertain election, the Golden Dawn's message is getting through to some first-time voters such as Ioanna Vassila, who is unemployed. Attending a political rally for the first time in her life, the 29-year-old said she was excited to be voting for a patriotic party and that it was time to for Greece to be "cleansed of the foreigners".
Laughing and joking with her boyfriend they, applauded as men in paramilitary uniforms waved black flags and chanted "Greece for the Greeks".
The Obama-Biden campaign has just released the cartoon slideshow "The Life of Julia," which takes "a look at how President Obama's policies help one woman over her lifetime—and how Mitt Romney would change her story."
ReplyDelete...
Under President Obama: Julia's father is arrested and put in jail for running a legal medical marijuana dispensary in California, where President Obama's Justice Department has overseen a drug war that Jacob Sullum calls in many "ways even more aggressively intolerant than George W. Bush's."
Under Mitt Romney: "We've got to not only continue our war on drugs...but also to market again to our young people about the perils of drugs."
Under President Obama: Julia's mother is among the more than 1 million immigrants that Obama has deported since taking office while promising not to deport immigrants, and loving them very much.
Under Mitt Romney: Julia's mother is also deported, but only after cutting his lawns.
Under President Obama: Julia is ready to start college at a four-year state school, which now costs $55,000 a year thanks to persistent tuition inflation fueled by massively expanded student loans and other grants.
...
Under Mitt Romney: College is for billionaires only and sex is banned.
Life Of Julia
On this day in 1936, "Joltin" Joe DiMaggio made his professional baseball debut with the New York Yankees.
ReplyDeleteAnswer to Job (Antwort auf Hiob) is a 1952 book by Carl Gustav Jung addressing the moral, mythological and psychological implications of the Book of Job. It was first published as Antwort auf Hiob (Zürich, 1952) and translated into English (London, 1954).
ReplyDeleteJung considers the Book of Job a landmark development in the "divine drama", for the first time contemplating criticism of God (Gotteskritik). Jung described the book as "pure poison", referring to the controversial nature of the book (Storr, 1973). He did, however, feel an urge to write the book. The basic thesis of the book is that as well as having a good side, God also has a fourth side - the evil face of God. This view is inevitably controversial, but Jung claimed it is backed up by references to the Hebrew Bible. The book, has however, been criticised. For example, it assumes that the John who wrote the fourth Gospel was the same John who wrote The Book of Revelation - which most Bible scholars today dispute. Jung saw this evil side of God as the missing fourth element of the Trinity, which he believed should be supplanted by a Quaternity. However, he also discusses in the book whether the true missing fourth element is the feminine side of God. Indeed, he saw the dogmatic definition of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Pope Pius XII in 1950 as being the most significant religious event since the Reformation.
The author Joyce Carol Oates, in her review "Legendary Jung" (from her collections of essays The Profane Art), considers Answer to Job to be Jung's most important work.
Jungian scholar Murray Stein claims Jung viewed the book of Job as an example of a Scriptural religious experience:
"In Jung’s interpretation, Job is completely innocent. He is a scrupulously pious man who follows all the religious conventions, and for most of his life he is blessed with good fortune. This is the expected outcome for a just man in a rationally ordered universe. But then God goes to work on him, tests him with misfortune, reduces him to misery, and finally overwhelms him with questions and images of divine majesty and power. Job is silenced, and he realizes his inferior position vis-a-vis the Almighty. But he also retains his personal integrity, and this so impresses God that He is forced to take stock of Himself. Perhaps He is not so righteous after all! [ As Marc Fonda observes, God’s omniscience precludes self-awareness. Being omniscient, God has no concentrated self to speak of. Being a part of everything, God has no opportunity to distinguish self from non-self. However, as God knows the thoughts of humans, through the thoughts of his creation he can experience what self-awareness is. ] And out of this astonishing self-reflection, induced in God by Job’s stubborn righteousness, He, the Almighty, is pushed into a process of transformation that leads eventually to His incarnation as Jesus. God develops empathy and love through his confrontation with Job, and out of it a new relationship between God and humankind is born."
Never did understand The Book of Job - except in Safire's interpretation that God was teaching Man he has a Right to object to injustice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_to_Job
FWIW, I go with William Safire's interpretation.
ReplyDeleteFWIW.
And out of this astonishing self-reflection, induced in God by Job’s stubborn righteousness, He, the Almighty, is pushed into a process of transformation that leads eventually to His incarnation as Jesus.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting.
I don't see how omniscience would preclude self-awareness, but I don't know anything.
b
Good point. I don't either but I'm sure another whiskey will come up with something.
DeleteSelf-awareness implies existential boundaries which have no meaning in an omniscient space.
But it is interesting to postulate that Man instructed God in something.
Heretical actually.
The Bathtub Test
ReplyDeleteDuring a visit to my doctor, I asked him,
"How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an assisted living?"
"Well," he said, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub."
"Oh, I understand," I said.
"A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup."
"No" he said. "A normal person would pull the plug.
Do you want a bed near the window?"
The meaning of the name Noemi is Beautiful, Gentle
ReplyDeleteThe origin of the name Noemi is French
Just googling around.
You've posted some of her work before I believe which is how I first learned of her name. No wiki page. Seems kind of odd.
DeleteMystery woman.
Boredom At Airport
ReplyDeleteGermany is about to deliver a fourth Dolphin class nuke capable submarine to Israel, the fourth out of six. How odd things are, the Germans talked them into some submarines more or less against the Israeli Navy's desire, and are paying for them, basically gifting them, and Germany is now Israel's best bud in Europe.
ReplyDeleteb
“There’s a game changer going on,” he says and few people seem to be talking about it. That game changer is the Bakken Shale which stretches from Canada down into North Dakota – it could hold 4 billion barrels of oil reserves.
ReplyDelete...
And he says, “And if the Bakken oil fields produce that kind of volume, oil prices will come down."
...
And to support his thesis Wien points to the latest ISM data which showed the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector picked up in April to its highest level in 10 months. “That’s a sign the economy has momentum in it,” he says.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47254745
I sense I would have better luck working though the omniscient space of the divine before making a call on Peak Oil. There's a lot of excitement over the Bakken fields. Time frames to be determined. As Roubini notes, timing is going to be crucial in the near term. As wretchard notes, the "design margin" has thinned out.
The Bakken Field is going to top out somewhere between 650,000 and 700,000 bbl/day, I think (it's producing 558,000 bbl/day at present.)
ReplyDeleteWhen the number of producing wells go up by one, daily production goes up by 100 bbl/day.
We import approx 8,500,000 bbl/day, and produce a little less than 6,000,000 bbl/day.
It's better to have the Bakken, and the Eagle Ford than to not have them, but the trend in oil is toward "less," and the trend in oil price is toward "higher."
The most interesting thing happening at present, as transportation goes, is the increasing efficiency of the U.S. fleet (new vehicles, purchased, are averaging 24.1 mpg, as opposed to 20.2 mpg just a couple of years ago.)
ReplyDeleteAs a result, gasoline consumption is steadily falling (we're now down to 1997 levels,) and "vehicle miles driven" has actually started rising the last couple of months.
"Low Hanging Fruit," baby; it's our secret weapon.
Monthly Production Report for North Dakota (Bakken)
ReplyDeleteYou will see that in Jan and Feb they added 248 producing wells, but only increased the output by 23,206 bbl/day. That would be 93 bbl oil added for every new hole in the ground.
Here's your new homework assignment. If the average new well was producing 800 bbl/day, how much would the field have declined had the weather been too bad to complete those new wells? Take your time, I'm going to get a bowl of ice cream.
Okay, lessee, 248 new wells X 800 bbl/day apiece = 198,400 bbl/day.
ReplyDeleteBut, production only went up 23,206 bbl/day.
That means the 6,478 wells that were producing in Dec must have lost 175,194 bbl/day from Dec.'s production of 535,047 bbl/day,
or 32% of their production. In Two Months.
USGS estimates on Bakken -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911#.T6NVPNXfMiU
25 times larger than 1995 estimate.
b
535,047 - 175,194 = 359,853 That's what the Bakken would be producing if drilling had been shut in for those two months.
ReplyDeleteNow keep this in mind: They're drilling a "honey-hole" up by Williston. What happens when that honey-hole is drilled-out? When they start drilling "dry holes?" (CHK just drilled two dry holes a couple of miles south of there.)
What happens when a few go broke, and a bunch of them go back to the nat gas (which could be selling for six or seven times what it is now) plays?
The Bakken is a shiny thing.
Reserve estimates mean nothing if you can't afford to get it out. It's all about "Flow."
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteYes dystopia, thy name is Rufus (and his evil spawn ethanol).
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Just doin' the sums, Q. They is what they is.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a problem with the numbers take it up with the state of North Dakota. It's their web site.
ReplyDelete.
DeleteJust taking a cheap shot as is my wont, Ruf.
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Ambassador Gary Locke said Thursday U.S. officials repeatedly asked if Mr. Chen wanted to go to the U.S., and were told no. He also said Mr. Chen would have been allowed to stay at the embassy for years rather than accept a deal he didn't like and wasn't pressured to leave.
ReplyDelete...
Once reunited with his family, Mr. Chen gave his final assent to the deal, Mr. Locke said. But by that evening, after calls from other activists, Mr. Chen began telling reporters he had changed his mind.
He cited what his wife said were threats of bodily harm from security forces who tied her to a chair for two days and threatened to hurt her after he had escaped.
And, it would seem to me like a person that is always espousing "Decentralized" Energy Systems would be almost the antithesis of a dystopian.
ReplyDeleteOur vast energy reserves -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/our_vast_energy_reserves_obama_notwithstanding.html