Top political news:
White House bails out US auto companies
Car companies get half what they sought -- $17 billion, plus
Work rules must be made compatible with foreign car firms operating in the US
Funding to be taken from the $700 billion TARP money pot
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16740.html
Coleman leads Franken by just 2 votes
Two votes is all that stands between Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, according to the Associated Press tally in the state’s still-unresolved Senate race.
Coleman’s shrinking lead, combined with a state Supreme Court decision handed down Thursday, has suddenly heightened the prospects that Franken, who has trailed in every count since Election Night, could end up winning the seat after all the votes are counted.
Can anyone say “Fraud” or “Theft”? can anyone say “ACORN”?, – seems Democrats are about to name a failed comic to the Senate – might be appropriate given the Democrat Senate leader.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16732.html
President-elect Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a deeper involvement in pressing for a U.S. Senate seat appointment than previously reported – The Sun Times.
Emanuel talked with the governor in the days following the Nov. 4 election and pressed early on for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to the post
At least some of the conversations between Emanuel and Blagojevich were likely caught on tape, sources said.
Meanwhile, the governor seems increasingly likely to escape impeachment
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/1337789,CST-NWS-rahm18good.article
Opinion:
As the World Turns
Some things never change. Democrats in Minnesota are hard at work stealing that Senate election for the failed comic and radio talk show host Al Franken. No one is laughing.
Wags suggest the recount scam is a joke anyway and contend should Coleman win, Democrats will find another avenue down which to challenge for the seat.
Speaking of Democrat corruption – we are seeing more and more the governor of Illinois, indicted earlier, may yet escape impeachment by the legislature. His crafty criminal lawyer seems to be convincing lawmakers that taped phone calls using vile language aren’t (by themselves) criminal acts. That aspect of the case may be valid, but it’s a clever deviation from the main point regarding the governor’s stated intent to realize a profit from his selection of someone to replace Obama.
Meanwhile, Caroline Kennedy lunches with Al Sharpton and claims it wasn’t a political event. Seems Caroline is already well versed in avoiding facts and truth – must be something in her genes.
Now we see the White House caving to demands by the US auto companies and givng them about half of what they wanted in a bail out. Did I miss where the companies presented plans suggesting they could pay the money back at some point in the future? That was a requirement when the CEOs were sent back to Detroit to come up with a new attempt.
The money will come from the federal “Honey Pot” – the $700 billion TARP fund. At least the UAW will take a hit by having to make its wages comparable to those of the foreign auto companies that are non union. Expect the Obama White House to change all that and give the Unions whatever it is they want in the deal.
Thus do we enter the Christmas season – one in which far too many corporations cave into extremists in our society by avoiding use of the term “Christmas” and insisting on use of “Holiday Season”. I was never offended by :”Holiday Season” – and considered it was synonymous – but no longer. Now I find myself resenting the phrase since liberals have inferred on it a craven political correctness substitute to make a point favoring atheists and others. In England, clerics are even canceling the singing of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” because they say such descriptions as “how still we see thee lie” contradicts reality.
It seems not all the fools are found among Washington Democrats. There are many within the clergy too. But I wont go into that since it is hardly news at all.
Buddy
Top Blogs of the day:
1.
No Such Luck
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Leadership: President Bush reminded us this week of our triumphs in the war on terror despite critics who sought to deny him the tools. He's kept us safe since 9/11 and says luck had nothing to do with it.
With scarcely a month left in his presidency, the president on Wednesday took aim at critics who maintain that the lack of another terrorist attack on American soil had little to do with his leadership and skill. According to them, we've just been lucky.
In a speech at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., Bush noted that in the aftermath of the attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York, no one predicted another attack would not occur on his watch. Another attack has not occurred, and as he told the military audience, "It's not a matter of luck."
No, indeed. The Bush administration inaugurated the Department of Homeland Security, shepherded the Patriot Act into law and ran a surveillance program of foreign terrorists and their domestic contacts that proved the price of liberty is truly eternal vigilance. Democrats fought these and other tools in the war on terror.
Information-sharing facilitated by the Patriot Act was critical to dismantling terror cells in Portland, Ore., Lackawanna, N.Y., and Virginia. The act's information-sharing provisions assisted the prosecution in San Diego of those involved in an al-Qaida drugs-for-weapons plot involving Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
Even the New York Times, in exposing the NSA surveillance program, acknowledged that the program had been successful in disrupting terrorist plots. It cited the case of Ohio trucker Lyman Harris, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to charges of supporting al-Qaida by plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
These are a few of the successes that we know about. Shortly after 9/11, Bush said the public might never hear of our successes — partly because we might not know ourselves what attacks were prevented by our actions, but also because the means and techniques would have to be kept secret from our enemies.
In his War College speech, Bush did mention a few successes. He named an attempt to bomb fuel tanks at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the plot to blow up jets bound for the East Coast, a plan to attack a shopping mall in the Chicago area, and another to blow up the tallest building in Los Angeles.
Democrats fought the Patriot Act and surveillance of our enemies, as well as the interrogation of captured jihadists at Guantanamo. It was the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002 and Osama bin Laden's chief of operations, that led us to 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh. Interrogations of both terrorists then led us to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11.
Bush took the war to the enemy, deciding it was better to fight in the streets of Baghdad than Boston. Bush's efforts have won great victories and wrought huge changes in the Middle East, not the least of which have been the liberation of 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His actions led to the establishment of democracy in two of the most brutal dictatorships on earth while routing al-Qaida in Iraq and pushing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, sparing millions from torture, oppression and mass graves. Don't just fight the alligators, he figured, drain the swamp in which they thrive.
Bush's post-9/11 actions may have prevented many more devastating acts of terrorism, but we may never know. "While there's room for an honest and healthy debate about the decisions I made — and there's plenty of debate — there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe," he said.
Critics should ask our terrorist foes how lucky they feel lately.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=314495560702238
2.
Is Obama vulnerable to blackmail?
By James Lewis
Suppose you're Bashir Assad or Putin, and you watch the Blago Blowup, a month before the next president even takes office.
What are you thinking right now?
First, Obama looks vulnerable to blackmail. His homey network is full of people who can't stand the light of day. They know all kinds of things the leftist media suppress -- people like Auchi (the Iraqi billionaire), Rezko (the corrupt Syrian multimillionaire), Emil Jones (the Godfather of Southside), and the whole Daley Machine.
That's not even counting the freaky radicals or the pols Obama has surrounded himself with. Mayor Daley's brother is one of the official transition leaders, for heavens' sake, along with Valerie Jarrett and a whole, privately paid operation that doesn't have to follow Federal rules on transparency, lobbying or accounting.
Leverage on the people around Obama is the first step. So you ask your handy secret agents in the US to beat the bushes for more blackmail material. Easy enough. Chicago is a Machine town, and there's always a rumor mill in a town full of neighborhood taverns.
Here's what else the spy masters are sure to be wondering.
1. Is there an organized crime connection in the Obama network? Not just Chicago politics, but drug money, prostitution, extortion, racketeering, money-laundering, violent Soprano types. In a political monolith like Chicago wouldn't you keep an eye out for that -- if you were running China's Red Army Intelligence, let's say?
2. Can Machine politicians be played to ask favors of their friends in the administration? Bill Clinton allowed the sale of missile launch secrets to the Chinese. Is there something China wants very badly that some Machine pols can get for them? Or the North Koreans? Or the mullahs? Or Putin?
4. Even if the US prop-media won't publish anything bad, Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating corruption on Obama's turf. A financial record mailed anonymously could prove a valuable lead for investigators. Such threats could provide unbelievable arm-twisting power in DC.
I've long wondered about a French connection to the phony Valerie Plame "spy scandal," conjured up to destroy the Bush Administration. Chirac and Villepin may have leaked the faked Niger documents about uranium for Saddam Hussein -- the little country of Niger being almost a de facto department of Paris. We know Chirac-Villepin tried to drop a phony scandal on the current president of France, Sarkozy, so this could just be their modus operandi. The Plame-Wilson farce had all the appearance of a huge disinformation campaign, helped by the Gail Collins of the Editorial Page of the New York Times, former Clinton NSC staffers, and, yes, by media darling Colin Powell. Powell's bosom friend Richard Armitage leaked Plame's name, but Scooter Libby went to jail.
How's that for justice?
5. What about obvious DC corruptocrats like Harry Reid (Nevada real estate), Barney Frank (banking scandals), Chris Dodd (ditto), the folks at Treasury who are handing out a trillion dollars to favored banks in secret? Such men may have other secrets. And if they do, how can a ruthless foreign secret service exploit that?
J. Edgar Hoover kept files on Washington politicians from the 1930s onward. The Watergate scandal was triggered by Hoover's second in command, Mark Felt, after he was passed over for promotion. Nixon was forced out of office because he failed to promote Mark Felt to FBI Director. So blackmail is nothing new in DC. The Washington Post was complicit in the Mark Felt revenge campaign. The media and the permanent bureaucracy won unprecented power and prestige as a result of Watergate. The voters lost. In the end, millions of South Vietnamese and Cambodian people died as a result.
(No media campaign was ever launched to oust LBJ, who was no better than Nixon. LBJ was a Democrat, and probably knew where all the bodies were buried around town. The War on Poverty was the biggest Democrat payoff machine since the New Deal, before Obama).
We know that the media keep explosive secrets and threaten to expose them if they don't get their way. Some politicians do it, and the Federal bureaucracy does it. The New York Times has dumped one huge CIA leak after another, just to sabotage the Bush Administration and its foreign policy objectives. Why shouldn't the Chinese? The Saudis? The Syrians and their close friends in Tehran? Maybe the North Koreans are carrying on an international trade in Washington secrets?
Nobody knows Fitzgerald's real reason for triggering the Blago circus, rather than following his Plame strategy and walking the cat up the hill. The appointment of Eric Holder at Justice might have triggered that warning, since Holder could fire Fitzgerald. Fitz might be firing a warning shot across the bow of the Daley Machine, to signal that yes, you've got the White House now, but don't go too far. But there are other possibilities. This could be a hidden battle between Clinton holdovers and Obamanistas. There might actually be some honest patriots at Justice, trying to stave off a new wave of corruption. Or it might be exactly as Fitzgerald claims. (You never know).
Whatever the truth may be, you can bet that all the embassies and spy services are looking for ways to exploit this mess. Obama, Axelrod, Rahm and their friends have already exposed a lot of weak spots in the next administration.
Welcome to the Big Leagues, Slugger.
3.
Climate Crisis = Logic Crisis
Larrey Anderson
Al Gore is right! Sort of. The current debate over climate change is over. At least, it is over in terms of a logical and unbiased inquiry
The debate over "climate change" is no longer a matter of science. In the past forty years, the proponents of "climate change" have written and rewritten their hypotheses to fit the empirical facts. In logic this is sometimes called "The fallacy of saving the hypothesis." There is no honest discussion when the topic of a debate is constantly controlled, and occasionally altered, by the proponents of one side of the argument. Climate change proponents have been doing this for years.
I distinctly remember the first time I had an argument with someone about "climate change." It was a warm spring day in April of 1975. I was walking across the campus at Harvard headed for lunch. A fellow classmate (we were both juniors) ran up to me. He was really excited. He hollered out:
"Have you heard? The ice age is coming. They've proven it with computer studies at MIT."
"How did they prove that there is an ice age coming with computers?" I asked my friend.
"The planet is getting colder. They have the data. And it is going to keep getting colder. They have these computer models --"
I stopped him right there. I knew enough about computers to understand that they were not up to accurately predicting short-term weather patterns -- let alone an ice age.
"No way. Computers aren't that powerful. "
"But they have the data and they have computers!"
"I know they do. But computers spit out whatever they are programmed to spit out. Load a computer with the data that the world has been getting colder; ask it what the weather will be tomorrow, and what do you think the computer is going to tell you? The world is getting hotter? If it does you'd better get a better computer. You hungry?" I replied and I continued on my way to lunch.
The original "climate change" hypothesis was that the planet was getting colder and that it would continue getting colder. That was a very simple hypothesis and was easily proven or refuted. Planet keeps getting colder = hypothesis correct. Planet gets warmer = hypothesis incorrect.
The world got warmer instead of colder. The "climate change" hypothesis was rewritten. This time the planet was facing a catastrophic meltdown. The world was not only getting warmer -- it was going to keep getting warmer at an ever increasing and life-threatening rate.
I remember this hypothesis too. It was scary. Computers were fed information that the world was now heating up and asked, again, "what will the weather be tomorrow?" This time the computers spit out: "hotter." Good computers.
The computers said it would be even hotter the day after tomorrow. Hotter still next week, and next month. And in a few years? Forget about it.
The hypothesis predicted, and the computers affirmed, an exponential increase in temperatures was being caused by the exponential increase in man made green house gases. Al Gore's famous (and refuted) "hockey stick graph" proved it. In other words, the earth would heat fast, then faster, then faster still. Man made global warming was predicted to be a run away train on a steep downhill incline that had to be stopped and stopped immediately.
That was the hypothesis. It was simple. And it was just as easily proved or refuted as the global cooling hypothesis. World gets steadily and increasingly warmer = hypothesis correct. Planet gets colder = hypothesis incorrect.
But while concentrations of CO2, the 'culprit' behind man made global warming, continued to rise -- the temperature did not. The empirical data refused to cooperate with the hypothesis. In the last few years the earth's temperature has leveled off. It may be dropping.
Oops. Another hypothesis bites the dust. Not to worry. The hypothesis has been rewritten, once again. Now we have a "climate crisis." Long term global warming is causing short term global cooling that will, eventually, result in long term global warming. Really. That is the new hypothesis.
The official reason being given is that the "weather is not the climate." For those readers not skilled in dialectical huckstering, the argument seems to be that the weather can get colder while the climate gets warmer.
Proponents of global warming finally have an irrefutable, because incoherent, theory guaranteed to win any debate. This hypothesis cannot be refuted. If the "weather" cools it proves that the "climate" is getting warmer. If the weather gets warmer then the climate gets warmer. As the barker shouts out at the carnival,
"Winner! Winner! Winner!"
This latest hypothesis is a violation of the most basic of the laws of logic: the principle of non-contradiction. Something cannot be both A and not A. The weather cannot get colder while the climate gets hotter anymore than the earth can be flat while the world is round. This is not science, or logic; this is unabashed nonsense.
Yes. Climate science has come to this: We are now being told, in effect, to ignore the data and believe the hypothesis. I have recently written that global warming is not a science -- it is a religion. I take it back.
Global warming, aka climate crisis, is now a crisis of logic. In other words, it is insanity.
Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and submissions editor for American Thinker. His latest award-winning novel is The Order of the Beloved. His memoir, Underground: Life and Survival in the Russian Black Market, has just been released.
(Gore's rant did accomplish one positive thing: giving him it's prize demonstrates how low the Nobel Committee has sunk into the slime and mire of left wing politics. Nobel must be spinning in his grave)
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/climate_crisis_logic_crisis.html
4.
China Sends Ships to Fight Somali Pirates
By Stephanie Ho
Beijing
China has officially announced that it is indeed sending naval ships to join international efforts to combat pirates who have been hijacking ships off the coast of Somalia.
Somalia is thousands of kilometers away from China. But foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao says Beijing is making active preparations to send warships to the Gulf of Aden.
Liu says piracy has become an international enemy, posing a great threat to international navigation, trade and security. He gave no details of the Chinese deployment, but said information would be forthcoming soon.
The Chinese spokesman says nearly 1300 Chinese ships have passed through the area in the first 11 months of this year. In the same period, he says there have been seven pirate attacks on Chinese ships or crews.
This includes one on a Chinese cargo ship that was attacked, Wednesday, off the coast of Somalia. The Chinese crew was rescued with the help of an international anti-piracy force that sent in attack helicopters.
Liu says another Chinese vessel and 18 Chinese sailors are still being held by Somali pirates.
The Chinese warships would represent an unprecedented deployment of the country's navy. They would be joining an international flotilla, which includes vessels from the United States, Russia, Denmark and Italy.
Rampant piracy in the busy Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, near Somalia, has become a growing problem, driving up insurance costs and forcing ships to take alternate routes.
China has traditionally kept its troops close to home, reflecting its consistent policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of another country. But, as China's economic clout has grown, it has become increasingly involved in peacekeeping operations around the world, including in Haiti and in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.
China Sends Ships to Fight Somali Pirates
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