Foreign Countries
More States Take Cutting Gasoline Tax Idea.
Forty-six percent (46%) of America’s Likely Voters favor a federal gas tax holiday this summer. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 42% are opposed and 12% are not sure. Most voters who earn more than $75,000 a year oppose the gas tax holiday. Most who make less than $60,000 a year favor that policy change. Among those make less than $20,000 a year, 62% favor the gas tax holiday while only 11% are opposed
OPEC may decide to increase production taking pressure off of prices and feightening speculators who account for 20-40% of crude oil costs. Analyst say there is an even change crude will fall below $100 a barrel if OpPEC increases production.
Houston, we have a problem in Obama’s own words…
“Houston, we have a problem.’ In Barack Obama’s own published words.
From Dreams of My Father: ‘I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.’From Dreams of My Father: ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.’
From Dreams of My Father: ‘There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.’
From Dreams of My Father: ; ‘It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.’From Dreams of My Father: ‘I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, Dubois and Mandela.’
From Audacity of Hope: ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’
Exaplaination please. No demanded…
Dizzy’s Ten Post Round-Up
There’s no rest for the wicked. Let’s see what wickedness is afoot in today’s Ten Post Round-Up:
1: Pentagon threatens soldier’s pay over emergency war funding bill….
2: Maybe Iraq could help pay for its reconstruction with their oil revenues?…
With House Poised to Spend $163 Billion, More Argue Iraq Should Use Oil Money to Pay for Reconstruction–AlterNet
3: Looks like GWBs “surge” strategy is being put to the test…
4: China is helping to fund GWBs presidential library…
Let’s See Who’s Funding The Bush Presidential Library–duckplops
5: Nevada governor is fighting to get back in the Governor’s mansion and oust his wife, in divorce dispute…
Governor wants back in mansion: Court battle brewing as Gibbons seeks to oust wife from official residence–Elko Daily Free Press
Less Affluent Favor Gas Tax Holiday.
According to a rasmussen Poll released Thursday forty-six percent (46%) of America’s Likely Voters favor a federal gas tax holiday this summer. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 42% are opposed and 12% are not sure. Most voters who earn more than $75,000 a year oppose the gas tax holiday. Most who make less than $60,000 a year favor that policy change. Among those make less than $20,000 a year, 62% favor the gas tax holiday while only 11% are opposed.
McCain proposed suspending the 18 cents a gallon federal tax and Hillary supports it. Obama opposes it.
Who is the Real Cindy McCain?
Cindy McCain, 53, John’s wife is a USC graduate and was a special-needs teacher. After her Dad died she took over his Budweiser distributing business and sales have doubled. It is a $100 million a year business. The McCains have a marriage prenuptial agreement, and her assets remain separate.
She is active with “Halo Trust” - to clear land mines, provide water and food in war ravaged and developing countries. Cindy has travelled the world clearing land mines these countries on a detonation team and serves on its board.
In 1991, Mrs. McCain came across a girl in a Bangladesh orphanage. Mother Teresa implored Mrs. McCain to take the baby with a severe cleft palate. She did so without first telling her husband. The McCain’s couple adopted the girl, nameing her Brigett (in 2000 she became an issue when opponents said she was a bastard child of an affair) She has had a dozen operations to repair her cleft palate and for other medical problems. Cindy has joined “Operation Smile”, a charity for corrective surgery on children’s faces. The McCain’s now have a Family Foundation for children’s causes.
The McCain’s have a 19 year old now serving in Iraq, another son in the Naval Academy, a daughter recently graduated from Columbia Univ., their adopted daughter is in high school, and another son who is the finance guy at the beer firm. The McCain’s raise their family in Phoenix declaring it better than Washington DC for kids.
Cindy has had two back surgeries and became addicted to pain killers.
She talks openly about it which she says is part of the recovery process.
The media has been generally mute about Cindy’s abilities and the McCain family’s attributes.
This is excerpted from an article by By MONICA LANGLEY in the Wall Street Journal April 17, 2008; on Page A8
DAYS OF INFAMY - book review
The book is typical of Gingrich in its detailed research and his ability to bring historic events alive and make them interesting. For everyone with interest in contemporary history and all those who listened to parents, Grandparents, aunts and uncles spin their yarns about World War II this book is worth your money and your time to read,
World Ends With A Whimper Not A Bang.
The National Policy Institute estimates what the world will look like in 2060 – about 50 years hence.
According to an article in Human Events authored by Pat Buchanan and published on May 2, 2008 in 1950 whites were 18% of the world’s population and Africans accounted for 9%. By 2060 the percentages will be about the same but the colors reversed. Two hundred million whites will vanish by then. Arabic people, counted among whites, will rise ten-fold to 743 million and account for 75% of whites.
Iran’s population will rise from 71 to 100 million. Pakistan will grow to 300 million from about 71 million today. Afghanistan will triple to 79 million and Iraq will leap from 29 to 62 million. In America Hispanics will triple to 127 million while Mexico will grow to 130 million.
Last October PEW RESEARCH asked 45,000 people in 47 countries what they thought and majorities in 46 countries expressed fear about loss of their national culture. Sixty-two percent of Americans said more must be done to protect “our way of life.” Three-fourths wanted stiffer immigration laws and restrictions. Asians, Africans and Middle Easterners appear, by simple weight of numbers appear to be poised to inherit the earth.
“This is the way the world ends, “wrote T. S. Eliot in his closing couplet of “The Hollow Men,” “Not with a bang but a whimper.” It begs the question of whose world to which he referred.
Liar, Liar Pants On Fire - Obama’s Self-Immolation
Just 30% of the nation’s Likely Voters believe Barack Obama denounced his former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, because he was outraged. Most—58%–say he denounced the Pastor for political convenience according to a Rasmussen Poll released Friday. Only 33% of voters believe that Obama was surprised by the views Wright expressed at Monday’s press conference. Fifty-two percent (52%) say he was not surprised.
Fifty-six percent (56%) say it’s at least somewhat likely that Obama “shares some of Pastor Wright’s controversial views about the United States.” Just 7% of the nation’s voters agree with Wright’s views of the United States. African-American voters, by a 64% to 12% margin, disagree with Wright. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Republicans believe it’s somewhat or very likely that Obama shares some of Wright’s views. That assessment is shared by 48% of Democrats and 49% of those not affiliated with either major party.
In Indiana Clinton attracts 46% of the Democrat votes while Obama earns 41%. With just a week to go before Election Day, 13% remain undecided. Clintonleads by nineteen percentage points among White voters. Obama leads 90% to 4% among African-Americans.
In North Carolina Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton 49% to 40%. Earlier this week, Obama led by fourteen, 51% to 37%. A month ago, Obama led by twenty-three percentage points. Clintonleads by twenty-three points among White voters while Obama leads 74% to 10% among African-Americans. Clintonleads among senior citizens, the candidates split those in the 50-64 age range, and Obama leads among younger voters.
McCain’s 12th Amendment Mêlée - Maybe, Maybe not.
Imagine the disruption if McCain is elected, and sworn in as President and then he is declared ineligible because of the 12th Amendment, and Hillary Clinton finagled her way to the Democrat nomination, and demands to be seated – what a fracas.
Wednesday night the Senate unanimously declared John McCain a natural-born citizen, eligible to be president of the United States. But, the resolution has no legal standing and is only opinion. At least three pending cases are challenging McCain’s right to be sworn in as president. McCain was born to U. S. parents in a U. S. military hospital, on a U. S. base while serving in the U. S. Navy assigned to the then U. S. Panama Canal Zone.
Article II of the Constitution states that “no person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of president.” The problem is that the Founding Fathers never defined exactly what they meant by “natural born citizen,” and the matter has never been fully tested in court. The same question bubbled up in 2000 but when he failed to get the GOP nomination it fizzled and disappeared.
According to an article in the May 2nd Washington Post, “Curiously enough, there is no record of McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone Health Department’s bound birth registers, which are publicly available at the National Archives in College Park. A search of the “Child Born Abroad” records of the U.S. consular service for August 1936 included many U.S. citizens born in the Canal Zone but did not turn up any mention of John McCain.” There is a copy of a birth certificate citing his birth in the Coco Solo “family hospital.” Coco Solo was where his Dad’s submarine was based.
McCain’s case hasn’t been the only one. Hoover’s Vice President Charles Curtis was born in the territory of Kansas in 1860, a year before it became a state. The 12th Amendment requires that vice presidents possess the same qualifications as presidents. Barry Goldwater, who was born in the territory of Arizona in 1909, three years before it became a state was nominated but didn’t win. Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, ran for President in 1968, even though he was born in Mexico. Since neither Goldwater nor Romney won the presidency, the “natural born” clause was never tested.
A 1986 Supreme Court ruling states that the United States “exercised sovereignty” over the 10-mile-wide area between 1904 and 1979, when it was handed back to the Panamanians and most think that settles the issue. But, not everybody agrees.
Life Without Rev. “Wrong” And With O’Reilly
“…just terrible, absolutely dreadful,” a prominent supporter of Barack Obama said Monday morning after listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s screed at the National Press Club. Obama is hemorrhaging so badly that he is metaphorically simply bleeding to death politically. NPR reporter-Fox commentator Juan Williams, himself black, told Robert Novak Wright’s demagoguery is “ridiculous. I never have heard that in church.” The damage has been severe with Obama’s unfavorable ratings jumping up and his polling numbers falling.
Rev. Wright’s rants, as Obama now calls his pontifications, are simply wrong. Joe Conason says, “So long as a religious or political leader sounds sufficiently “militant” and seems to outrage white people, he (or she) must be not only accepted and excused but celebrated. That is why Minister Louis Farrakhan — the Nation of Islam leader who shares responsibility for the conspiracy to murder Malcolm X and whose theology of hovering spaceships and evil big-headed scientists is highly eccentric, to be polite — enjoys fulsome admiration from the likes of Wright. That is why the Rev. Al Sharpton — who was paid and financed by Republican dirty tricksters in 2004 — still somehow wields influence in the media and politics. And that is why Wright himself can insinuate that the government purposely invented AIDS, and claim that the brains of white and black children function differently (a notion that would rightly be dismissed as racist idiocy coming from a white academic or preacher).”
In contrast to Obama tawdry performance Hillary Clinton was on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor looking the reasonable, measured, thoughtful candidate with good judgment.
The question writ large is, “Can Obama escape his toxic mentor or more specifically be excused for what has turned into a history of a dishonesty about ongoing relationships with the likes of Rev. Wrong?” So far the answer is an emphatic “No.”
Madonna Or Maduhna.
“I don’t know what our government does period, instead of getting us in more debt and blowing up countries,” Madonna told the Tribeca Film Festival audience as attendees Rosie O’Donnell and Natalie Portman nodded and grinned.
Notwithstanding Madonna’s ignorance the United States remains the most generous nation on earth contributing about a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) in all forms of aid worldwide.
“You can take a SOB story and a stick of candy and lead America right off into the DEAD SEA.” Will Rogers 1933.
Separation of Church and State Really of Religion and Politics.
Separation of church and state was really about separating religion from politics. Before mass media and the internet most Americans heard the news at church and then disseminated it to friends and neighbors. To have someone in a pulpit espouse an idea was tantamont to approval from on high.
The English tradition was originally a church inhabited by the nitwit siblings with less knowledge or ability than an alder brother, and virtually no theological training or even intent. The Puritans, as odd as they may have been, resisted mixing political ideology with what they saw as theology.
Now comes the personal resurrection campaign of Rev. Wright that has put a political expedient Barack Obama who used that church when it was convenient for his ambitions in a tight spot. Irrespective of the relative narcissism of that pair it underscores separation of the religious and the political.
Republicans and Hillary Clinton are giddy watching this brace of monumental egos make the other look hypocritical. Obama tossed Wright overboard Tuesday, and looks all the more duplicitous and disingenuous.
“Dozens” of Obama Media Supporters Are Playing Distressed
It seems striking to me that the talking heads who are obviously Obama supporters (Chris Matthews et al) seem most completely distressed by the witty performances of Rev Wright.
There is a poll out saying that 41% or more say the Reverend’s non bombastic debut on the national stage “with a difference” has harmed Barack Obama. Thrown him under the bus according to Keith Olberman and others.
What if those 41% were already McCain or Hilary supporters? If so, is this just so much hysteria about nothing? Could the media actually be guilty of making the news rather than reporting it?
Middle East Deeper Into U. S. Politics.
Israeli Maj. Gen. Eliezer Shkedy told CBCNews 60 Minutes Bob Simon Thursday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats against Israel must be taken extremely seriously. He said it reminds him of the Holocaust. “We should remember. We cannot forget, We should trust only ourselves.”
On Friday U. S. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday, April 25, the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran and that “it would be a mistake ( for Iran) to think that we are out of combat capability.”
Shkedy’s comment appeared designed to show Israeli resolve to both Iran and the United States and Mullen’s to punctuate that Iran’s continued truculence is a dangerous strategy.
A peculiar development was the endorsement by the Hamas terrorist group of U. S. Democrat candidate Barack Obama as a latter-day JFK and someone the terror group can deal with. Iran has made similar expressions. Within hours Senator McCain, the presumed GOP presidential nominee said if in the White House he would be Hamas’ “worst nightmare.”
2009 Too Late To Stop Iran’s Nuke Weapons.
If not stopped by next year, Iran will have “crossed the threshold of stockpiling fissionable material,” warns Dennis Ross who served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East envoy under President Bill Clinton in remarks to Toronto’s Shaarei Shomayim Congregation that were reported by the Canadian Jewish News.
Not only did Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vow to “wipe Israel off the map,” but former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami has stated that it would “take only one bomb” to annihilate Israel, Ross told the gathering.
There are clear signs that the Bush administration will not wait that long and military action is imminent. Israel “is preparing for heavy casualties,” expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution following a U.S. strike. Saudi Arabia is reportedly taking emergency steps in preparing to counter any radioactive hazards that may result from an American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.