Thanks to NEWSBUSTERS.ORG
C(BS) thinks this story will go away by tomorrow. It's funny that they're still talking about Rush Limbaugh's comments going into the second week.
Thanks to my good friend Rob.
Minorities Hit Hardest
NBC News reports......
President Bush and his staff sit comfortably in the White House, the snow continued to pile up on the many poor and African American victims in the Buffalo, NY area who could not afford to get out of town or to safety in Florida. Crucial supplies of blankets, hot cocoa, popcorn, gold jewelry, plasma TVs, Colt 45 and dark rum - so essential to surviving the stress of any major snowstorm - lay in stores
un-delivered.
"Where is the government? I need my sidewalk shoveled so I can get out to buy my lottery tickets!" said one Buffalo resident from his living room. "Why are we wasting money in Iraq when we could be spending it here on me?
"Progressive blogs blasted the President for his inaction. "We find the timing terribly suspicious - just as the North Korean sanctions kick into high gear, what happens? A major northeast Blizzard. Why now?" wrote one blogger.
Hearings into the Blizzards' effect on hearings are almost acertainty. Howard Dean has suggested he will call for an investigation once his new medications kick in and John Kerry took a break from his vacation in Aspen to call for new legislation outlawing snowstorms. "The Republican Congress has dropped the ball once again. I have always been astaunch supporter of anti-snow legislation, except for certain locations where I ski. Snow has no business on our roads and the President and Congress know that.
"Calls for impeachment over "SnowGate" as some are calling it already are mounting as deeply as the snow itself, and what will be discovered underneath will prove to have a truly chilling effect on the Republicans, as the inevitable thaw proceeds.
This just in... More breaking news...Jesse Jackson wants an investigation as to why snow is ALWAYS white.
It is reported that Dick Cheney has stock in Tru-Value Hardware. Do you have any idea how many SNOW SHOVELS they sold today to the unsuspecting consumer?
The American people will demand to know why FEMA has been so late in reacting to this storm. THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN IT WAS COMING! And yet they failed to have crews in place to fix the electricity as soon as it went off. It just shows that Bush and the Republicans just don't care about the people in the Northeast. The Senate needs toinvestigate this with administration personnel under oath.
We speculate that the great junior senator from N.Y. has opened the doors of her Long Island mansion to all of the heatless poor of her neighborhood and is busy baking cookies for them while her husband applies body heat to the nearly frozen teen-aged girls.
This is how the Democrats "support" our troops. While our brave men and women are fighting and defending America half way around the world, back home a leading Democrat says they're there because their stupid. These are the people who want lead our country.
If the Democrats think our troops are stupid, what does that say about the Democrats ability to protect America?
Here's a transcipt.
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
This is the typical denegration of our troops from the Democrats. To the Democrats our troops are either poor or stupid, why else would they volunteer to fight for America? Patiotism is unknown to the Democrats. Ted Kennedy's KGB connections are proof of that.
But like most things that come out of Kerry and the Democrats mouths, the truth is quite different.
JFK must be spinning in his grave....
It's only fitting that New York honor Fidel Castro with a massive monument in Central Park to be unveiled November 8th. "The portrait celebrates Castro's humanitarianism," gushes David Kesting, the spokesman for the statue's sculptor. "Inspiration for the gilded head of Castro, large enough to belong to a 25 foot man, comes from Harlem's acclamation for Castro's contributions to civil rights," reads a wire story.
In reality he craved the nuclear incineration of the entire metropolis. "If the missiles had remained we would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City," admitted his sidekick Ernesto "Che" Guevara, thinking he was speaking "off the record" to London's Daily Worker in November 1962.
A monument heralding Hitler in Warsaw, London or Rotterdam would make more sense.
story.....
No way the libs would let us react this way. What would the world think of us. I guess the Russians didn't care back then.
The Russians go in and play by terrorist rules. They terrorize the terrorists. Back in the 1980s, for example,Islamic terrorists in Lebanon kidnapped a Russian diplomat. The Russians (then the Soviets, a distinction without much difference in these matters) quickly found out which faction had their guy, kidnapped a relative of one of the kidnappers, and had a body part delivered to the Islamic kidnappers. The message was, release the Russian diplomat unharmed, or the KGB (Soviet secret police) would keep sending body parts, and grabbing kinfolk of the kidnappers. The Russian diplomat was released.
story.....
Not only are British police being told to enter suspected Muslim homes in their socks, not to use bomb sniffing dogs and not to make arrest during daily prayer times (that's five times a day), now the police are being told not to make arrests during Ramadan.
Does this mean that no Catholic arrests during Easter?
story.....
How do you win the war on terror with an attitude and perspective like this?
How could we as freedom loving Americans ever allow Democrats to regain power when clearly they have no interest in protecting American lives or our way of life?
Wow, if you weren't sure Democrats were weak on terror before... this should convince you... Democrat Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut regrets that he didn't filibuster the terror interrogation bill recently signed by President Bush, calling the legislation a "major blow to who we are."
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said he regretted being talked out of filibustering tough new tribunal legislation signed by president Bush on Tuesday, and plans to seek new legislation to overturn portions of the bill.
Dodd denounced the measure, which civil liberty groups have said endangers many freedoms."It's a major, major retreat for us as a people," Dodd said during a visit to Iowa on Tuesday afternoon. "It's incredible what they did."
The measure signed by Bush sets up military tribunals to try terror suspects and allows the introduction of evidence obtained through tough interrogation procedures. It also suspends rights such as habeas corpus, which requires that suspects be brought to court to ensure they are being held legally and if they should be released.
Dodd said he initially intended to filibuster the bill but was talked out of it by other Democrats who said there wouldn't be enough votes to support the filibuster.
"I regret now that I didn't do it," he said. "This is a major, major blow to who we are."The truth comes out... To Democrats like Dodd, fighting terrorism is a "major blow to who we are."
story...
Sounds like the Dems want to repeat history....
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War? Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist [in The Wall Street Journal, 3 August 1995]. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said,
"We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
Q: Anything else?
A: Train South Vietnam's generals. The junior South Vietnamese officers were good, competent and courageous, but the commanding general officers were inept.
Q: Did Hanoi expect that the National Liberation Front would win power in South Vietnam?
A: No. Gen. [Vo Nguyen] Giap [commander of the North Vietnamese army] believed that guerrilla warfare was important but not sufficient for victory. Regular military divisions with artillery and armor would be needed. The Chinese believed in fighting only with guerrillas, but we had a different approach. The Chinese were reluctant to help us. Soviet aid made the war possible. Le Duan [secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party] once told Mao Tse-tung that if you help us, we are sure to win; if you don't, we will still win, but we will have to sacrifice one or two million more soldiers to do so.
Q: Was the National Liberation Front an independent political movement of South Vietnamese?
A: No. It was set up by our Communist Party to implement a decision of the Third Party Congress of September 1960. We always said there was only one party, only one army in the war to liberate the South and unify the nation. At all times there was only one party commissar in command of the South.
Q: Why was the Ho Chi Minh trail so important?
A: It was the only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in the South. Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort, involving tens of thousands of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication units.
Q: What of American bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail?
A: Not very effective. Our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At times, accurate B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top of the trail that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always came out the bottom. Bombing by smaller planes rarely hit significant targets.
Q: What of American bombing of North Vietnam?
A: If all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have hurt our efforts. But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't worry us. We had plenty of times to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We always had stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest were damaged. The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.
Q: What was the purpose of the 1968 Tet Offensive?
A: To relieve the pressure Gen. Westmoreland was putting on us in late 1966 and 1967 and to weaken American resolve during a presidential election year.
Q: What about Gen. Westmoreland's strategy and tactics caused you concern?
A: Our senior commander in the South, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh, knew that we were losing base areas, control of the rural population and that his main forces were being pushed out to the borders of South Vietnam. He also worried that Westmoreland might receive permission to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
In January 1967, after discussions with Le Duan, Thanh proposed the Tet Offensive. Thanh was the senior member of the Politburo in South Vietnam. He supervised the entire war effort. Thanh's struggle philosophy was that "America is wealthy but not resolute," and "squeeze tight to the American chest and attack." He was invited up to Hanoi for further discussions. He went on commercial flights with a false passport from Cambodia to Hong Kong and then to Hanoi. Only in July was his plan adopted by the leadership. Then Johnson had rejected Westmoreland's request for 200,000 more troops. We realized that America had made its maximum military commitment to the war. Vietnam was not sufficiently important for the United States to call up its reserves. We had stretched American power to a breaking point. When more frustration set in, all the Americans could do would be to withdraw; they had no more troops to send over.
Tet was designed to influence American public opinion. We would attack poorly defended parts of South Vietnam cities during a holiday and a truce when few South Vietnamese troops would be on duty. Before the main attack, we would entice American units to advance close to the borders, away from the cities. By attacking all South Vietnam's major cities, we would spread out our forces and neutralize the impact of American firepower. Attacking on a broad front, we would lose some battles but win others. We used local forces nearby each target to frustrate discovery of our plans. Small teams, like the one which attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, would be sufficient. It was a guerrilla strategy of hit-and-run raids. [lloks like a re-writing of history with the benefit of hindsight]
Q: What about the results?
A: Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.
Q: What of Nixon?
A: Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam.
Q: What else?
A: We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect.
story....
They were not good enough, they are not smart enough and doggone it nobody likes them.
I am sure Al Franken is crying, but mostly over the $300000 that Air America owes him. Good for you Franken and Garafalo , you were burned by the left. At least garafalo knew to jump ship early
According to the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Gorbachev — recalling President Reagan's famous Cold War demand, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" — said America seems to have forgotten its history.
I think Gorby has forgotten HIS history.
The Berlin wall was to keep people in, Our wall is to keep Illegal aliens and possible terrorists OUT. Everyone is welcome if they enter legally !
Story....
To translate that from UN diplo-speak into English, it's a harshly worded memo saying please don't do it again...
Sanctions will include a broad arms embargo, a ban on luxury sales to North Korea and measures to encourage countries to inspect all cargo shipments in and out of the country, in part to frustrate any attempt by Pyongyang to proliferate its weapons technology around the world. International travel will also be forbidden for North Korean officials with any connection to the country's weapons programmes.
If that doesn't strike fear into the heart of a ruthless dictator, I don't know what will...
story....
Nice article about how the main streammedia ignores any good news about tax cuts.
Sound of Silence: Media Caught Flat-footed by Shrinking Deficit
Oops. Back in 2004, then-ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran argued President Bush's tax cuts were building debt, not prosperity: "Most experts say that making those tax cuts permanent would cause gigantic deficits virtually as far as the eye can see." Early last year, CBS's Bob Schieffer suggested it would be impossible for the federal budget deficit to be cut in half before 2009 without raising taxes: "The government has just got to find some money to finance these programs."
Well, the tax cuts haven't been repealed, and there have been no big new tax increases. But Wednesday the White House announced that final tallies for the federal government's fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, the budget deficit had shrunk from $413 billion two years ago to $248 billion. The federal government collected $2.407 trillion in taxes in FY2006, $122 billion more than originally forecast back in February.
On Wednesday night, ABC and CBS skipped this good economic and budget news.
more.....
Top Ten Things NY Dems Should Do to Show They Actually Condemn Sexual Predation.
10. Demand explanation from Chuck Schumer as to why he did not support expulsion of his then House Caucus-mate Gerry Studds after the Democrat proudly admitted to having sex with a 17-year old male page.
9. Demand explanation from Shelly Silver as to why he didn't fire his Counsel Michael Boxley after the first charge surfaced of Boxley sexually violating a much younger woman, and demand that the Assembly Ethics Committee release a full report on the repeated sexual scandals involving Shelly Silver's Counsel Michael Boxley.
8. Demand that Democratic House leaders explain why they failed to take appropriate action against Congressman Barney Frank after it was revealed that his boyfriend was running an illegal prostitution ring out of Congressman Frank's Washington DC residence.
7. Demand answers on the cover-up of sexual harassment allegations against Erie County Legislator Thomas Mazur.
6. Demand that Democrat led Assembly immediately pass Governor's civil confinement legislation to keep sexual predators out of our neighborhoods and away from our children.
5. Demand that Democrat led Assembly immediately pass Jessica's Law, ending their resistance to the Governor's legislation that would toughen penalties for people who sexually assault or rape children.
4. Demand an explanation from Senator Hillary Clinton as to why then-President Bill Clinton granted a midnight pardon to convicted child molester and former Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds, immediately commuting the jail sentence of the disgraced Democratic luminary for yet other felony crimes he committed.
3. Demand that Speaker Silver fully investigate and disclose the findings regarding the mysterious resignation of Assemblyman Karben after it was revealed that he allegedly watched gay pornographic movies with an intern and often made unwanted sexual advances toward male interns and staffers.
2. Demand that democrat led Assembly immediately pass Governor's legislation that would toughen penalties on the sick individuals who produce, promote and distribute child pornography.
1. Demand that former Democratic Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson immediately rescind and explain his hiring of convicted child molester -- and former Democratic Congressman -- Mel Reynolds as a "youth counselor."
Statement from New York Republican State Committee Chairman Steve Minarik:
"The facts are clear -- National Democrats have a long and tawdry history of granting sexual predators renomination, reelection, Presidential pardons and even employment as a 'youth counselor' and the leadership of the NY State Democratic Party has played the role of enabler by sitting by silently as such outrages have occurred. Just as troubling, the State Democratic Party leaders like Shelly Silver and Denny Farrell have placed their own sexual scandal skeletons in the closet and refused to open them for the public to see.
"While we question the wisdom of Democrats thinking they can and should campaign on the issue of what is the appropriate response to the serious matter of sexual predation, we know the contrast in past actions speaks loudly to the Democrats weaknesses and the Republicans strengths so we welcome the debate wholeheartedly and hope the Democrats will continue their gross political miscalculation."
story....
How far should our government go to accomidate islamic law? Give me a break !
Scores of Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who say their faith prohibits them from driving passengers with alcohol have sparked a debate over how far a government must go to accommodate Islamic law.
"These taxi cab drivers basically think they're living in they're own countries where it's OK to impose your religious beliefs upon others,"
more.....
U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell wrote Tuesday that the law could restrict the free speech rights of people in nearby homes, sidewalks and streets, even if they cannot be seen or heard by funeral participants.
I feel a family that is grieving the loss of a son or daughter has a right to do it without being harassed.
There's hope though.....
Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo said he would consider an appeal. "I believe that society has an interest in honoring its war dead. Funerals are times of sacred and solemn reflection which must be protected from aggressive disruption," Stumbo said in a statement.
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