Saturday, April 30, 2005

Doc Farmer's Plan to take over the United States


Doc Farmer has decided he wants to take over the United States. Not by force mind you, just a simple insurrecction. Now I like Doc and he is my freinds, but I do have a little adice for Doc. Try practicing on some thing a little smaller, say Canada. My son has an excellent plan for buying Canada, Doc. - Sailor





My Plan To Take Over The United States of America
Written by Doc Farmer
Saturday, April 30, 2005



Y'know, I've been writing these articles for nigh on two years now. I've written about the problems in our nation, and how we should correct them. I've stood up for the President when he's right, and I've chastised the President when he's wrong. There has been a lot more of the former than the latter, I might add (for any lib/dem/soc/commies out there, wringing their hands in glee in hope of a split in the
rep/con party) and I find him a likeable and more-than-competent Commander in Chief.

In all the time I have been writing this column, however, not once have any of my ideas been put into play. I had a solution to the voting problem. No sweat, just reprogram lottery machines. Even come up with incentives for people to vote in every state. I had a solution to the idiocy of Daylight Saving Time (which does no such thing). Get rid of it. If it's too dark in the morning for the kids to go to school, change the school hours. I had a solution for the fact that you can't get a sitting Senator or Congressman out of his seat without resorting to metaphorical dynamite. A Constitutional amendment for term limits. Did our vaunted representatives beat a path to my door and praise me for my foresight?

Go on, guess!

Now, we're in the midst of a war that slightly less than one half of Congress is fighting against, while slightly more
than one half of Congress is cowering in fear of potentially offending the slightly less than one half of Congress. We've got lib/dem/soc/commies kvetching about judicial nominees, threatening to filibuster, and daring to call the Constitutional option of changing the Senate rules ''nuclear.'' We've got a Justice Department that is anything but just, a Tax Department that is all too taxing, a Health and Human Services Department that is sick and inhumane, the list goes on and on.

We're in debt up to our great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren's eyeballs. A full 75% of our government agencies and functions are not sanctioned by the Constitution. Our soldiers have to wait in line for supplies and support because fat cat Congressmen and Senators are more worried about not offending minority groups than they are concerned with the defense of our nation. We're up to our collective be-hinds in illegal aliens, and our Border Patrol and local cops along the US/Mexico divide
actually take them to bus stations to move them deeper into American territory!

I've done more than write these articles. I've phoned other like-minded people in this country and asked them to help. I've written my Congressman and Senators (although only one of them even bothers to write back) until I have to uncramp my hand with a ball-peen hammer. I've phoned the Department of (No) Justice and asked them, very nicely, to do their job for a change. I've called the INS (or whatever their name is these days) and reported illegal aliens in MICHIGAN, for pity's sake.

All for naught.

Well, there's only so much a man can take.

So, there's only one option left. I have no choice but to take over the government of the United States of America.

Before anybody starts to yell ''Treason! Treason!'' please note that I plan a peaceful overthrow. No guns, no knives, no whoopee cushions, no rubber chickens. Well, okay,
maybe one rubber chicken. It is the duty of a citizen of this nation to take peaceful but assertive action in order to correct the manifold wrongs and problems created by the government. We are, after all, supposed to be a government of, by and for the people. Sadly, we've become a government of, by and for the government. Oh, and a lot of special interest groups.

Actually, taking over the country won't be all that hard. As long as I do it right. For one thing, I am NOT planning to stand in front of the Capitol Building with a couple of suitcases demanding to see the President. Last I checked, he doesn't live there. Hell, he doesn't even work there. He only visits once a year, and I'm not about to stand outside that building in the middle of January freezing my rump off waiting.

I simply plan to make an appointment to see President Bush. That way,
I'll know he's home. I don't need to bring any luggage - I'm sure my folks can forward my clothes along after I take over. It's not like they don't know the address, after all. When I enter the building, I'm sure I'll be checked for all manner of weapons. Although I do plan to carry my rapier wit, I am pretty sure that's not going to show up on the magnetometers.

When I enter the Oval Office, things will run along these lines, more or less…


    Dubya: Good morning, sir. How can I help you today?

    Doc: Well, Mr. President, I'm here to relieve you of your duties.

    Dubya: Come again?

    Doc: I'm taking over the country. Do you think you and your wife can be moved out by Thursday?

    Dubya: Now, wait a minute.

    Doc: Actually, I've been waiting for a number of years, so I guess one more minute won't hurt.

    Dubya: Are you telling me you're coming in here to commit an act of armed insurrection?


    Doc: Oh, no, not armed. Regular insurrection will do.

    Dubya: You're violating the Constitution, you understand.

    Doc: Sir, when's the last time anybody in this town actually OBEYED the Constitution?

    Dubya: . . . Damn. I hate to admit it, but you've got me on that one.

    Doc: Don't worry. You've done a good job for the most part. But this government needs a kick in the butt, and I'm afraid you're just too nice a guy to do it.

    Dubya: And just how long do you plan to be in power?


    Doc: A couple of years at most. I'll definitely move out before the next term starts in 2009. That's more than enough time to fire the congress, impeach every federal judge, hire new ones, pay off the national debt, implement some new Constitutional amendments (by national elections, of course), burn down the IRS, seal up the borders, kick out the illegals, restructure federal law, rebuild the armed forces, kick out the United Nations, prevent Hellary from EVER getting back into this building, legalize pot, criminalize Paulie Shore, send the ACLU to Abu Ghraib (permanently), nuke France, depose Castro, have Hanoi Jane, Hanoi John, Beijing Bill and Baghdad Jim tried for treason, strengthen veteran's benefits, apologize to Martha Stewart, make American (not English) the national language, make TexMex the national dish, make the Ladies of Fox News the national babes, embrace our friends, cut off our enemies, and
    generally put this country back on the track the original founders intended.


    Dubya: Nuke France, huh?

    Doc: Yup.

    Dubya: Uh, can we make it Friday? Laura wanted to clean the curtains on Thursday.

    Doc: No problem. Thanks.

    Dubya: No, thank you.
Of course, I wouldn't be able to run everything all by myself. However, I think I would have no problem recruiting some help. Ann Coulter (Hubba! Hubba!) would make a wonderful Vice President. Especially when it came time to run all those redundant Congressmen out of town on a rail. Rummy could stay on, of course, but this time as Secretary of State. If that doesn't scare every ''diplomat'' out of the UN, I don't know what will. I'd probably move Dr. Condi Rice over to Defense - she's a brilliant resource, and I'd be foolish to waste talent like hers. Director of Communications? Sean Hannity! He'd take the job in a heartbeat, just to get away from Alan Colmes. Normally I'd ask El Rushbo, but he's already said he couldn't handle the cut in pay. Besides, I'd have to have something to listen to from noon 'til three...

I haven't decided when I'll fly to D.C. to break the news to Dubya. I'm sure he'll be relieved, though. His wife will be even more relieved - she's been bugging him to help her redecorate the den back at their ranch, after all.

Win-Win all around, as
far as I can see.

Well, except for the enemies of America, the Constitution, and our Freedoms of course. They will be SOOOOO screwed.


About the Writer: Doc Farmer is a writer and humorist who is also a moderator on ChronWatch's Forum. He formerly lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but now resides in the Midwest. Doc receives e-mail at docfarmer9999@yahoo.co.uk.

This Article Was First Published In ChronWatch At: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14324

The Sailor's Personality Type


I took this personality thing and here are the results. Try this one and have some fun. - Sailor














Your #1 Match: ENTP




The Visionary

You are charming, outgoing, friendly. You make a good first impression.
You possess good negotiating skills and can convince anyone of anything.
Happy to be the center of attention, you love to tell stories and show off.
You're very clever, but not disciplined enough to do well in structured environments.

You would make a great entrpreneur, marketing executive, or actor.


Your #2 Match: ESTP




The Doer

You are adventurous and risk taking. You act first, think second.
You love being the center of attention. Chances are you were the class clown.
Competitive, charming, and charasmatic - you have your own code of honor.
You live a flexible life, bouncing between a series of activies that interest you.

You would make a great salesperson, marketing director, or entrepreneur.


Your #3 Match: INTP




The Thinker

You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can.
Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge.
Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat.
A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it.

You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor.


Your #4 Match: ISTP




The Mechanic

You are calm and collected, even in the most difficult of situations.
A person of action and self-direction, you love being independent.
To outsiders yous eem impulsive, surprising, and unpredictable.
You are good at understanding how all things work, except for people.

You would make an excellent pilot, forensic pathologist, or athlete.


Your #5 Match: ENFP




The Inspirer

You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends.
You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules.
Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives.
You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You're qutie the storyteller!

You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.


Outlining Social Security reform


Social Security is in a financial nightmare. Before 2050, the system will be brokes and laying out more money then it is taking in. PresidentBush has made some proposals to fix SS. One of those was allowing younger workes to set aside a small portion of their contributions into private accounts. To hear the dems/leftists tell it, you would think that the Presidnt wants to privatize the enitre system. The President has made some other proposals as well. The Washington Times commnets in their editorial.

To attain that major achievement, the president embraced the proposal of "progressive price indexing," which has been put forth by Robert Pozen, who served in 2001 as a Democratic member on the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security. Under current law, the "wage-indexation" formula for determining first-year Social Security benefits is based on trend changes in wages, which historically have risen faster than prices. Thus, based on current law and projected rising inflation-adjusted wages, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the scheduled initial annual benefit for the median-wage earner born in 1990 will be $23,300 (expressed in 2004 dollars). That is 56 percent higher than the scheduled initial benefit ($14,900) of the median-wage earner born in 1940 and retiring this year. The president's solvency plan would replace the wage-indexation formula with progressive price indexing.

Progressive price indexing would effectively guarantee that the Social Security benefits of the lowest 30 percent of wage-earners would continue to increase in accordance with the rising trend of inflation-adjusted wages. For the vast majority of the remaining 70 percent of workers in the middle- and upper-income categories, according to a sliding scale that incorporates both price changes and rising wages, initial inflation-adjusted Social Security benefits would continue to increase, but not as fast as real wages.
This will have the net effect of helping to keep SS more solvent, while helping lower income wage earners. As for private accounts, what is being proposed is allowing workers born after 1950, the ability to put 4% of their contributions into these private accounts.
Given Social Security's huge and ever-rising unfunded liabilities, the president has exerted solid leadership as the Senate Finance Committee begins writing reform legislation. Mr. Bush has offered a sensible proposal that addresses about 70 percent of the 75-year solvency problem, and he continues to invite Democrats to the table, where he welcomes discussion and negotiation of all options, except raising the payroll-tax rate. Solving nearly three-fourths of Social Security's long-term financing problems, while still allowing real initial benefit levels to continue to rise for the overwhelming majority of workers, represents a major, positive step forward.

Democrats who reflexively reject the progressive price-indexing option reveal themselves to be more interested in demagoguing Social Security than in rescuing it.
Would some one like to explain the dem/leftists plan to make SS solvent? What plan some may ask. I am asking that very same question. Where is the dem plan? Trashing Bush's proposals is not a plan, it is merely politics as usual for the dem/leftists. - Sailor

Friday, April 29, 2005

Sometimes, it simply isn't Vietnam


Since the end of the Vietnam War, anytime the US becomes involved in hostilities, the left and the other usual suspects bring up the spectre of Vietnam. They did this during the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanastan and once again with the Iraq War. Teddy (The Swimmer) Kennedy was one of those leading the "Iraq is another Vietnam" mantra. Let us not forget the cries from the liberal MSM such as "quagmire". Now Jonah Goldberg explains why these usual whiners, teeth gnashers and defeatsts were wrong once again in his commentary.

The gravitational pull of Vietnam analogies is so powerful in some quarters that it can bend not only light but logic. At The New York Times, especially, there seems to be a hair trigger for such comparisons. It's as if their computers have macros designed to bypass the laborious and go straight to the lugubrious; so that R.W. “Johnny” Apple & Co. needn't even type words such as “quagmire” or phrases such as “echoes of Vietnam” when deadlines loom.

For example, on Day 24 of the war in Afghanistan, Apple wrote, “Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word ‘quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?” Apple pondered. “Echoes of Vietnam are unavoidable.” For some, the echoes stopped suddenly when the Taliban fell a few days later.
The MSM went quiet very quickly on Afghanastan and the Vietnam comparisons. Now Afghanastan has an elected government and is a functioning demacracy. There are still issues to be resolved there, but it is no quagmire or Vietnam, much to the chagrin of the leftists.
In Iraq, meanwhile, it's nothing but insurgency now. But, unlike the Viet Cong, Iraq's insurgency is ideologically diverse. Some are terrorists seeking to impose a pan-Arab theocracy, some are looking to restore the secular bacchanalia of fear they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, and others are just gangsters. Vietnam was a jungle war that started against the French in the 1950s. Iraq was a desert war that permanently toppled Saddam's regime in a month. The technologies in play are incomparable. The terrain, the political will and ideologies behind the efforts, the cultures — almost every single point of comparison doesn't add up — save the common bravery of America's military. Perhaps most important: Casualty rates are vastly different.

Now, none of this is to say that the Iraq war was right (though I believe it was). The point is that a war can be completely different from Vietnam in almost every major respect and still be wrong — and hard. We've come to think that any military blunder or challenge must be akin to Vietnam (in much the same way some people think that if a law is bad, it must be unconstitutional). The war on terror and the Cold War are profoundly different enterprises, so it should only follow that the conflicts they generate would be different, too.

Of course, there are some similarities between Iraq and Vietnam — including the press' attitude toward both. But such similarities are inherent to all wars and national struggles in a republic such as ours. The Spanish-American War, for instance, would probably be a far more fruitful point of comparison for critics of the Bush administration, but that would require they read up on it first.
The left is still enamoured with the idea that Vietnam was won by a popular insurgency, which could not be further from the facts. The Viet Cong were more or less destroyed as an insurgency during the Tet Offensive. The left is still in denial that Vietnam was a state to state war. The MSM has tried in vain to make the Iraqi insurgency looklike the Viet Cong, to the point that they alluded to the Falujiah battle as the Iraqi Tet Offensive. Ironically, they were in a sense correct. Falujiah reduced this so called insugency into just what it always was, terrorism pure and simple. Of course the liberal MSM still think the Viet Cong won the Tet Offensive. - Sailor

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Ending the Judicial Nomination Impasse


Here is the text of Bill Frist's speech on the Senate floor on judicial nominees. SOURCE - Sailor

April 28, 2005
Ending the Judicial Nomination Impasse
By Senator Bill Frist

(Note: Majority Leader Frist delivered the following remarks on the floor of the United States Senate today.)

Throughout the judicial obstruction debate, emotions have run high on both sides. This should remind all of us, once again, of the need to return civility to our nation’s capital.

The American people want their elected leaders to work together to find solutions. To them -- doing what’s Republican or Democrat matters far less than doing what’s right for our country.

Let me briefly discuss how we got here.

Never in 214 years -- never in the history of the Senate -- had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote…until two years ago.

In the last Congress, the President submitted 34 appeals court nominees to the Senate. A minority of senators denied ten of those nominees -- and threatened to deny another six -- up-or-down votes.

They wouldn’t allow votes, because they knew the nominees would be confirmed and become judges. The nominees had the support of a majority of senators.

Now, in this new Congress, the same minority says it will continue to obstruct votes on judges. And, even worse, if they don’t get their way, they threaten to shut down the Senate and obstruct government itself.

Throughout this debate, we have held firm to a simple principle -- judicial nominees deserve up-or-down votes. Vote for them. Vote against them. But give them the courtesy of a vote.

Yet judicial nominees have not been given that courtesy. They’ve gone 2, 3, even 4 years without a vote. Now 46 seats on the federal bench are vacant -- as case after case and appeal after appeal stack up.

One nominee -- Priscilla Owen -- has served 10 years as a justice on the Texas Supreme court. She won reelection with 84% of the vote in Texas, yet she can’t get the courtesy of a vote to be confirmed by the Senate.

Judicial nominees are being denied. Justice is being denied. The solution is simple -- allow Senators to do their jobs and vote.

In the spirit of civility and with sincere hope for a solution, I make an offer.

This offer will ensure up or down votes on judicial nominees after fair, open, and, some might say, exhaustive debate. It’s a compromise that holds to constitutional principles.

First, never in the history of the Senate had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote until two years ago. However, it was not unprecedented either for Republicans or Democrats to block judicial nominees in committee.

Whether on the floor or in committee, judicial obstruction is judicial obstruction. It’s time for judicial obstruction to end no matter which party controls the White House or the Senate.

The judiciary committee will continue to play its essential oversight and investigative roles in the confirmation process. But the committee -- whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats -- will no longer be used to obstruct judicial nominees.

Second, fair and open debate is a hallmark of the Senate. Democrats have expressed their desire for more time to debate judicial nominees. I respect that request and honor it.

When a judicial nominee comes to the floor, we will set aside up to 100 hours to debate that nomination. Then the Senate as a whole will speak with an up-or-down vote.

The Senate operated this way before we began to broadcast debates on television in 1986. This would provide more than enough time for every Senator to speak on a nominee while guaranteeing that nominee the courtesy of a vote.

Third, these proposals will apply only to appeals court and Supreme Court nominees. Judges who serve on these courts have the awesome responsibility of interpreting the Constitution.

So far, only up-or-down votes on appeals court nominees have been denied. I sincerely hope the Senate minority does not intend to escalate its judicial obstruction to potential Supreme Court nominees.

That would be a terrible blow to constitutional principles and to political civility in America. I hope my offer will make it unnecessary for the minority to further escalate its judicial obstruction.

Fourth, the minority of senators who have denied votes on judicial nominees are concerned that their ability to block bills will be curbed. As Majority Leader, I guarantee that power will be protected.

The filibuster -- as it existed before its unprecedented use on judicial nominees in the last Congress -- will remain unchanged.

Senator Reid and I have been talking almost every day on this issue. And I’m hopeful he’ll accept my offer as a solution. It may not be a perfect proposal for either side, but it’s the right proposal for America.

For 70% of the 20th Century, the same party controlled the White House and the Senate. Yet no minority ever denied a judicial nominee with majority support an up-or-down vote until the last Congress.

These minorities showed self-restraint. They treated judicial nominees with fairness. And they respected the Senate’s role in the appointments process -- as designed by the Framers of the Constitution.

Resolving the judicial obstruction debate, for me, isn’t about politics. This is about constitutional principles. It’s about fairness to nominees. It’s about Senators doing their duty and doing what’s right for our country.

Arbitrarily voting on just a few judicial nominees, as some have proposed, will fail to restore the Senate’s 214 year practice of up-or-down votes for all judicial nominees that come to the floor.

Senators have a duty to vote up-or-down on judicial nominees -- confirm them or deny them -- but give them all the courtesy of a vote.

United Nutters


I wonder what the dems/leftists/one worlders and UN ass kissers think of Zimbabwe being one of 15 countries selected by the UN's Economic and Social Council in New York to serve on the UN Commission on Human Rights. Dosen't the UN have enouch scandals to deal with? Now they have Robert Mugabe's repressive regime looking out for human rights. What a joke. Roger Bate details the abuses of the Mugabe regime in his article.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was dismayed:

"The Government of Zimbabwe has consistently disregarded the rights of its people, repressed political dissent and quashed any and all opposition. Far from earning a role as a protector of human rights, their membership renders the Commission illegitimate and irrelevant. A real and credible UN Human Rights Commission would be condemning the current regime and its activities. I deplore their selection as a Commission member, and hope that this outrageous appointment will help inspire UN members to enact extensive and meaningful reform of the Commission."
Sen. Frist is correct in every way, but he probably should have added that such disgraceful UN behavior is why it's vital that John Bolton is approved to be the US ambassador to the UN as soon as possible -- take note Sens. Voinovich, Chafee and Hagel.
John Bolton should be confirmed ASAP. This nonsense at the UN needs to be exposed and Bolton certainly is the man to do it. By the way, where is the wailing from the left and the MSM?
But it's often the smallest stories that grab people, so try this. In 2001 a Zimbabwean policeman with a reputation as a serial torturer was seconded to the UN police force in Kosovo. Not minding whose human rights he abused, Henry Dowa carried right on torturing and was eventually asked to leave in 2003. He is now back in Harare committing more offences against the powerless populace of Zimbabwe's capital. The human rights group, REDRESS, recently published a report on Dowa -- it makes grisly reading. According to the report, the UN acknowledged the gravity of the allegations made against Dowa. But here's the kicker:

"However, after very careful consideration and in consultation with UN Headquarters, we have with regret concluded that UN…cannot pursue criminal prosecution of the officer in Kosovo…[as the UN] has a very limited number of international judges and prosecutors to whom the case would have to be referred."
The plea of "scarce resources" sits rather uncomfortably amid any noble claim to protect human rights -- what point is the UN Commission on Human Rights if it refuses to prosecute known torturers? But honoring commitments was never high on the list for the UN at any level. Or maybe it's just another case of sordid backscratching among the powerful elite at the UN. Kojo Annan, who is still under investigation for his financial dealings in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, has also made a mint as a contractor for the construction of Harare's new International Airport. The airport is very nice, it reminded me of Stansted in England -- unnerving given that it's surrounded by abject poverty. One wonders what Mugabe has promised him and his father this time.

I hope the Senate Foreign Relations committee votes positively for John Bolton; his style is much needed there. Although he is wrong on one thing: losing ten floors of the UN building is not enough.
The bottom line here is that the UN is either to much of the coward or too incompitent to do anything about prosecuting those that they KNOW have committed atrocities, torture and other crimes. I wonder what how the usual suspects are going to either try nad spin this or just ignore, hoping no one will notice. It is high time for Bolton to be confirmed. - Sailor

Who's Afraid of John Bolton?


It would seem that the usual suspects, dems/leftists/one worlders, are scared to death of John Bolton. There are also a few hidden agandas here. OpinionJournal lays out a few of these hidden agandas in its Review & Outlook commentary.

Or consider the unnamed State Department official who recently told Newsweek that in November 2003, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had complained personally to Mr. Powell that his Undersecretary was taking too tough a line on Iran's nuclear weapons program. "Get a different view of [the Iranian problem]," Mr. Powell is reported to have told the aide. "Bolton is being too tough." Remember that at the time, Britain, along with France and Germany, had recently negotiated a nuclear-freeze deal with Iran, a deal Iran violated within months. (For the record, Mr. Straw denies Newsweek's report.)

And then there is Thomas Hubbard, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, who objected to portions of a speech Mr. Bolton delivered in Seoul in which the Undersecretary called North Korea a "hellish nightmare" ruled by a "tyrannical dictator." Mr. Hubbard does not formally oppose Mr. Bolton's nomination, but he has let it be known that he considered the speech "counterproductive" and overly "antagonistic."
So we have an "unnamed" source making a claim that is being denied. How convenient. Do you think the dems on the committee will name this source? Highly unlikely. Yet, they want to use this now denied information against Bolton. So much for truth. Bolton called North Korea exactly what it is. Now the uproar from the mamby pamby diplomats. Maybe they are afraid that Bolton hurt "The Leader's" feelings?
This was the consensus that held, or holds, that North Korea and Iran can be bribed away from their nuclear ambitions, that democracy in the Arab world was impossible and probably undesirable, that fighting terrorism merely encourages more terrorism, that countries such as Syria pose no significant threat to U.S. national security, that the U.N. alone confers moral legitimacy on a foreign-policy objective, and that support for Israel explains Islamic hostility to the U.S. Above all, in this view, the job of appointed officials such as Mr. Bolton is to reside benignly in their offices at State while the permanent foreign service bureaucracy goes about applying establishment prescriptions.

John Bolton would have none of this. For this, he has been smeared by his partisan critics and maligned, often anonymously, by his former colleagues. But he has also been vindicated by events, and by his accomplishments, in the last four years. If this makes Mr. Bolton unconfirmable in the eyes of the Senate, then talented Americans have no place in our government.
Exactly right. - Sailor

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Spitting on Hanoi Jane


Doc Farmer has some things to say about the recent incident where a Nam vet spit in Hanoi Jane's face. As for me, if Hanoi Jane was across the street on fire, I would not cross the street to piss on her. - Sailor





Spitting on Hanoi Jane
Written by Doc Farmer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005



Last week, you probably heard about an American Veteran of the Vietnam War who spat in Hanoi Jane Fonda's face at one of her book signings. The veteran, one Michael A. Smith of Kansas City, MO, apparently hocked a tobacco-laden loogie at the actress/fitness guru/traitor, and then ran off, only to be apprehended later by the local constabulary. Hanoi Jane declined to press charges. When asked why he had taken this action, Mr. Smith
reasoned, "she (Hanoi Jane) spit in our faces for 37 years. It was absolutely worth it. There are a lot of veterans who would love to do what I did."

Sorry, Mr. Smith, but I have to disagree.

Sure, Hanoi Jane is a squamulose, evil, self-centered, vulgar, money-grubbing, idiotic, treasonous b*tch who should be hanged in an electric chair in front of a firing squad. Except for the minds of the gilded (or is that gelded?) acting cesspool that is Hollyweird, and lib/dem/soc/commie apologists, this is an undeniable fact. She provided aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States during a time of war. She caused pain and suffering to our troops, both in the field and in the hellish POW camps. She broke the ONLY law described directly within our Constitution. And she did so with impunity.

That does not give Mr. Smith, or anybody else, however, the right to act in such a boorish
fashion. I don't care if it's tobacco juice or a custard cream pie, there are some things you just don't fire at somebody's face. No matter how much you feel that person may deserve it. No matter how much you disagree with her.

I do not condone Mr. Smith's actions, and I don't believe anybody else should either. Including Hanoi Jane. She did not act out of compassion; she acted so that she'd be the "good guy" in this instance. That's all that was, by the way - an act. And, as her cinematic history has proved, not a very good act either (see also: Barbarella).

Look, spitting in her ugly mug did nothing to correct the harm she caused. It didn't heal the wounds she created. All it did was give her the high moral ground. Which, considering who we're talking about, is an accomplishment of almost biblical proportions.

Does Hanoi Jane deserve a gob of phlegm in her face? No. What she deserves, and will never get thanks to our spineless Department of (No) Justice, is
a fair trial followed by a firing squad. Yes, she deserves the death penalty. It's that simple. She admitted her treason, the evidence is on film and audiotape, and the suffering she caused is well documented. She has earned six bullets in what passes for her heart, delivered by our judicial system. But thanks to the Tower of Jell-O that is our United States Government (from both sides of the political aisle, I might add), this walking turd in tights gets to hawk her putrid book, make non-apologies on national TV, and (Heaven help us all) is even now preparing sell that idiotic exercise tape she did a score of years ago on DVD.

You want to get back at Hanoi Jane, Mr. Smith? Or Hanoi John, or Beijing Bill, for that matter? Save your spittle for the nearest cuspidor, and get on the phone to your Congressman, your Senators, the Department of (No) Justice and the President and DEMAND they get off their fat, lazy butts and put that woman before the bench. Followed by a blindfold,
cigarette, and an early morning volley of gunfire.

That's what Hanoi Jane deserves.

It's also what America deserves.


About the Writer: Doc Farmer is a writer and humorist who is also a moderator on ChronWatch's Forum. He formerly lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but now resides in the Midwest. Doc receives e-mail at docfarmer9999@yahoo.co.uk.

This Article Was First Published In ChronWatch At: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14272


Update on Border-Security Petition to President


Here is an update on the petition to secure our borders. - Sailor

3 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, 2005

DEAR PETITION SIGNERS,

We now have more than 220,000 signers on the petition to President Bush urging him to immediately secure our borders!

Thanks to all of you who have been inviting your friends and relatives to sign up. Let's keep moving toward that goal of a million Americans on this petition: www.ReformUS.org

Congress working on border issues this afternoon

Although we won't be delivering the petitions to President Bush until Memorial Day, Congress is making decisions this afternoon that will have great influence over the fight against illegal immigration.

The only way for you to influence these decisions is to make a phone call to select Members of Congres THIS AFTERNOON.

For many of you, making a phone call to your U.S. Senator or Representative may be a little too much for you. If so, that's OK. Every citizen should try to do what feels right for them.

But for those of you who are ready for your next action after signing that petition, you should get on the phone this very minute and make a difference when it counts.

What's at stake in Conference (negotiating) Committee

The Senate and House have each passed Iraq supplemental spending bills. But each has attached wildly differing immigration provisions.

Official Conferees from both chambers have been working this week to negotiate which immigration provisions stay and which are dropped.

Citizen members of the NumbersUSA Action Network have been phoning and faxing for months to make sure that this defense bill includes items that will enhance the security of the United States on issues related to illegal immigration.

Our team of Capitol Hill professionals tells us that at this very moment, the Conferees are trying to decide whether to keep greatly expanded funding for more Border Patrol and interior enforcement agents.

Below are the Conferees. If you are from the state of one of them, your call into the D.C. office could be influential.

What you might say when you call

When a staffer answers, start by saying you are calling about the Senator or Representative's work on the Conference Committee on the Iraq spending bill.

Then, you might want to say in your own words that you urge the Senator or Representative to appropriate the highest amount of money possible to hiring more Border Patrol and interior enforcement agents and inspectors. And also more detention beds to hold illegal aliens so they can be deported.

For full information about the immigration items being debated in this Iraq spending bill, go to:
http://numbersusa.com/hottopic/0125sensenbrenner.htm

Phone these congressional Negotiators
who most need to hear from you

We have no assurance that the following Conferees will do what is best for Americans when it comes to combatting illegal immigration or protecting workers from unfair foreign labor competition.

Be firm but polite.

Top priority: Call any Negotiators from your state.

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ALABAMA
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Senator Richard Shelby
DC phone number: 202-224-5744

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ALASKA
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Senator Ted Stevens
DC phone number: 202-2243004

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CALIFORNIA
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Senator Dianne Feinstein
DC phone number: 202-224-3841

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COLORADO
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Senator Wayne Allard
DC phone number: 202-224-5941

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HAWAII
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Senator Daniel Inouye
DC phone number: 202-224-3934

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IDAHO
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Senator Larry Craig
DC phone number: 202-224-2752

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ILLINOIS
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Senator Richard Durbin
DC phone number: 202-224-2152

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INDIANA
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Rep. Peter Visclosky
DC phone number: 202-225-2461

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IOWA
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Senator Tom Harkin
DC phone number: 202-224-3254

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KANSAS
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Senator Sam Brownback
DC phone number: 202-224-6521

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KENTUCKY
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Senator Mitch McConnell
DC phone number: 202-224-2541

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LOUISIANA
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Senator Mary Landrieu
DC phone number: 202-224-5824

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MARYLAND
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Senator Barbara Mikulski
DC phone number: 202-224-4654

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MINNESOTA
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Rep. Martin Olav Sabo
DC phone number: 202-225-4755

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MISSISSIPPI
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Senator Thad Cochran
DC phone number: 202-224-5054

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MISSOURI
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Senator Kit Bond
DC phone number: 202-224-5721

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MONTANA
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Senator Conrad Burns
DC phone number: 202-224-2644

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NEVADA
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Senator Harry Reid
DC phone number: 202-224-3542

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
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Senator Judd Gregg
DC phone number: 202-224-3324

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NEW MEXICO
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Senator Pete Domenici
DC phone number: 202-224-6621

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NEW YORK
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Rep. Nita Lowey
DC phone number: 202-225-6506

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NORTH DAKOTA
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Senator Byron Dorgan
DC phone number: 202-224-2551

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OHIO
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Senator Mike DeWine
DC phone number: 202-224-2315

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PENNSYLVANIA
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Rep. John Murtha
DC phone number: 202-225-2065

Senator Arlen Specter
DC phone number: 202-224-4254

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SOUTH DAKOTA
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Senator Tim Johnson
DC phone number: 202-224-5842

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TEXAS
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Senator Kay B. Hutchison
DC phone number: 202-224-5922

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UTAH
======================

Senator Robert Bennett
DC phone number: 202-224-5444

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VERMONT
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Senator Patrick Leahy
DC phone number: 202-224-4242

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WASHINGTON
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Rep. Norm Dicks
DC phone number: 202-225-5916

Senator Patty Murray
DC phone number: 202-224-2621

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WEST VIRGINIA
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Senator Robert Byrd
DC phone number: 202-224-3954

Rep. Alan Mollohan
DC phone number: 202-225-4172

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WISCONSIN
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Senator Herbert Kohl
DC phone number: 202-224-5653

Rep. David Obey
DC phone number: 202-225-3365


Annan Threatened: Pay My Bills Or I'll Spill the Beans


It would seem that Kofi Annan has more troubles. Benon Sevan, who is the subject of investingation by the UN and US, has sent a letter to Kofi, demandin that the UN pay his legal bills or else. Stewart Stogel sheds some light on this in his article.

Volcker has publicly complained that Sevan has "been less than forthcoming" during his panel's investigation into the multi-billion dollar scandal.

Currently, Sevan enjoys "functional immunity" - U.N.-speak for diplomatic immunity.

Annan, however, has pledged to remove such immunity if any U.N. staffer is indicted for criminal activity or found to be obstructing the Volcker investigation.

If Sevan does indeed have new information - information kept from the Volcker investigation - that may prompt Annan to revoke his diplomatic shield before any criminal indictment, confirmed the U.N. official.

NewsMax has leaned that in addition to the U.N. investigation, Sevan is also the target of an Internal Revenue Service probe into possible tax evasion.

Neither Sevan Nor his legal team would comment on the recent turn of events.
The question becomes what does Sevan know, when did he know it and who does it involve? Will Kofi Annan lift Sevan's immunity? This will certainly be interesting to follow. - Sailor

One Year Later.......


It was one year ago today that I made my very first blog post here. I want to thank everyone who has encouraged me to keep on blogging, especialy my BlogMom, Indigo. It has been a very interesting experience for me, at times both frustrating and satisfying. Thanks to all of you that have come here to read the rantings of this sailor. - Sailor.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

No Deal: Frist Wants Vote on All Judges


Looks like Bill Frist has been told that he is the Majority Leader. He is standing firm on the issues of judicial confirmations. Mean while Harry Reid thinks he is the majority leader and is trying to dictate the terms of any deal on judges. NewsMax, via the AP, has more on this.

But Frist, in a rare news conference conducted on the Senate floor, said he would not accept any deal that keeps his Republican majority from confirming judicial nominees that have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Are we going to step back from that principle? The answer to that is no," Frist said.

That means he and Reid are still at deadlock, because Democrats have said they would not accept any deals that would permanently ban them from blocking Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court or the federal appellate courts, the top two tiers of the judicial system.

"As part of any resolution, the nuclear option must be off the table," said Reid, referring to the GOP threat to change the filibuster rules.
Harry wants to give a little here, so he and the dems can use the filibuster later, especially when the Supreme Court openings occur.
Frist would not talk about specifics on Tuesday, but said he would not advocate the withdrawal of any judicial nominee and would continue to insist they all get confirmation votes. "That would mean people in the past as well as the future," Frist said.

Republicans have threatened to use their majority to change long-standing senatorial rules that Democrats used to block 10 of Bush's first-term appeals court nominations. They fear a Democratic blockade could affect a Supreme Court vacancy if a high court seat opens in Bush's second term.
The dems know they do not have the votes to kill any of these nominations, do they resort to the filibuster, which is outside of the Senates Advice and Consent Constitutional role. Each of these nominees deserve an up or down vote in the Senate. There was a time when the ABA rating of most qualified was sufficient for confirmation, now it is all about politics.
Democrats argue that the nominees are too conservative to warrant lifetime appointments to the nation's highest courts. They have threatened to block the seven nominees that Bush sent back after winning re-election, and any others they consider out of the mainstream of judicial temperament.

Democrats drew criticism when they threatened to slow the Senate's business if Republicans eliminate judicial filibusters. Democratic leaders began stressing an alternative approach Monday, attempting to force debate on their own agenda rather than the president's.

"I've always said that we'd make sure the Senate went forward, but we're going to do it on our agenda, not their agenda," Reid said.
As I just said, it is all about politics. No where in the Constitution does it require a super majority to confirm judges. But that is exactly what the dems are trying to do using the filibuster. A note to Harry Reid: When you are the Majority Leader, then you can set the agenda. Until then, you are the leader of the loyal opposition. Time you started remembering that. You will have your chance in 2006. Try getting more of your party elected to the Senate. Until then it is the GOP that sets the agenda. - Sailor

Sudan's oil makes China a defender against U.N


The next time leftists start their no oil for blood chant, it should be in front of the Chinese embassy. Sudan is being protected in the UN by China. Why you ask? Over Sudan's oil reserves. In the menatime, the situation in Darfur is still desperate and the Sudanese government continues to wage war on the rebels there, ignoring the plight of the civilians there and at the same time killing those same civillians. David Blair explains in his article.

Without this windfall -- likely to be far larger this year -- analysts say it would be difficult for Mr. Bashir to maintain his military machine, let alone wage war against rebels in the western region of Darfur.

Energy-hungry China has invested more than $15 billion in Sudanese oil through the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), a state-owned monolith. The cost of Khartoum's new refinery alone was about $700 million.
China is energy starved, so they are more then willing to defend Sudan in the UN, despite the human rights debacle. France wants desperately to sell weapons to China. In the coming years, China's thirst for oil will increase. At some point, they may be desperate enough to seize oil fields by military means.
China is dependent on Sudan for 7 percent of its oil imports.

When the United Nations' Security Council passed Resolution 1564, threatening Sudan with oil sanctions unless it curbed the violence in Darfur, China rendered the resolution meaningless by pledging to veto any bid to impose an embargo.
China is one of five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, along with the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

Critics accuse China of being Sudan's chief international protector.
"It's very clear that's what is happening," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa desk at Human Rights Watch.

"China is now the largest foreign investor in Sudan, so it has an economic interest in ensuring that the Sudanese government is not penalized too harshly. It has been opposed to sanctions from Day One," she said.
So where are the leftists? Where is their cry for the human rights violations in Sudan? Why are they not taking China to task on all of this? Where is the UN? - Sailor

'Reform' and a Hidden Agenda


Looks like the some of the same groups that used deception and outright fraud to foist campaign finance reform upon us, have been busy in Illinois. Specifically, the Illinois Supreme Court race. Ryan Sager, who exposed the fakery used to support, pass and defend McCain-Feingold, sheds some light on those involved in the Illinois issue.

Money rolled in from pro- and anti-tort-reform forces around the country. And so one group appointed itself traffic cop: the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, the state's resident good-government watchdog. The "nonpartisan" group spearheaded a Tone and Conduct Committee — organized under the aegis of the state Bar Association — aimed at keeping advertising by outside interests to a minimum.

The media bought this charade hook, line and sinker, referring to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform as "nonpartisan" and the Tone and Conduct Committee as "independent."

In fact, the group has extensive ties to the trial-lawyer lobby. That fact was only brought to light this year, in a report from the business-funded, pro-tort-reform Illinois Civil Justice League. How does the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform answer that evidence? "Our work speaks for itself," says Cindi Canary, the group's executive director. (She also says ICPR reaches out to Republicans, Democrats, business and labor.)

But out of three senior staffers listed on the group's Web site, two have extensive ties to trial lawyers. The assistant director, David Morrison, used to work for the Coalition for Consumer Rights, a typical "consumer" group opposed to tort reform. The project manager of ICPR's Judicial Campaign, Mary Schaafsma, has been affiliated for almost two decades with a group, Illinois Citizen Action, that is funded by trial lawyers and also aggressively opposes tort reform.
Once again the MSM is either hoodwinked, stupid or perhaps in cahoots with this group. How can a group formed under the aegis of any bar association not be supportive of anything that benefits the bar's membership? As for independent, pigs will fly first.
It turns out that the eight groups under the umbrella (ICPR, the Sunshine Project, the Citizen Advocacy Center, Protestants for the Common Good, the Better Government Association, Common Cause Illinois, Illinois Public Interest Research Group and the League of Women Voters of Illinois) have received about $3 million in grants from George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Joyce Foundation since 1997.

Those names should sound familiar to anyone who has followed the unmasking of the campaign-finance lobby at the national level. They are two of the eight liberal foundations that spent more than $120 million between 1994 and 2004 to fake up a "grass-roots movement" to pass the McCain-Feingold law, defend it in court and lobby for further restrictions on political speech.

These state groups are part of the same effort to restrict all political speech deemed unworthy of a hearing by a cadre of liberal foundations.

These groups exist in nearly every state. And just as at the federal level, they get almost no scrutiny from the press. "The news media in Illinois have not really done the kind of reporting that shows who's playing this game," says Murnane.

"They accuse us of being a front for big business . . . We don't hide from that," he says, referring to his group's business backing. "They're hiding, pretending they're somebody that they're not." As in neutral, nonpartisan.
Once again, we see the convicted swindler, George Soros, funding groups that are deceiving all of us by claiming to be nonpartisan and only "concerned" about cleaning up campaign financing. What they are really doing, is trying to shut up their opposition, by what ever means possible. As fore the MSM, as usual they are failing to do their jobs. Of course, it seems the MSM always has a problem doing their jobs, when it is liberal/leftist groups using subterfuge and deceipt. It could be some in the MSM are just looking the other way because they support the ultimate goals of those groups. Once again, it will be up to the bloggers to expose them. - Sailor

Monday, April 25, 2005

Urge President Bush to Secure Our Borders Immediately!


We are all aware of the intolerable situation on our borders. It is time to let out voices be heard. Please go and sign the petition! - Sailor (hat tip: Doc Farmer)

Mr. President, Please Secure Our Borders Immediately

It has been nearly four years since the 9/11 attacks inside our country by foreign nationals. Yet, tens of thousands of foreign nationals every few weeks continue to be allowed to enter this country illegally through our loosely guarded borders. All of these illegal entrants threaten American citizens in one way or another—either as unfair labor competition, tax burdens, instruments of organized crime including drug running and slavery, or as terrorists.

We can no longer allow such disorder on our borders. One of the clearest responsibilities of the federal government and of the President is to protect this country's citizens from attacks across our borders.

We urge you to direct your officials in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create and institute plans to ensure that foreign nationals who attempt to cross our borders without permission will be (a) detected, (b) apprehended and (c) either removed from this country or detained for appropriate punishment under the law.

While your Administration is implementing long-term sustainable programs to achieve border security, we urge emergency measures that begin to provide the same protection immediately by mobilizing some combination, as necessary, of Border Patrol, other DHS personnel, the military, other federal personnel and technological tools.

Various pilot programs at selected locations have proven that zero tolerance of illegal human traffic across our borders is achievable if the federal government places a priority on protecting its citizens. We submit our names with the appreciation of your consideration and action.

Email a link to this page to friends and family so that President Bush can receive a petition with a million American names before Memorial Day.

Copies will also be delivered to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate.

Republican joins Bolton hearing monkey biz


Mark Steyn has a few things to say on the Bolton hearings. I am still trying to figure out how Voinovich did not have time to attend all but one day of the hearings. It would do Voinovich some good to actually read the transcripts of the hearings so he might be able to figure out that the dems/leftists are trying any way they can to kill the Bolton nomination.

As Shakespeare didn't quite say, who is Voinovich? What is he? Well, he's a fellow called George, and he's apparently a senator from Ohio who's on this Foreign Relations Committee. He was, alas, unable to interrupt his hectic schedule to attend either of the committee's hearings for John Bolton's U.N. nomination, but nevertheless decided last week he could not bring himself to support Bolton's nomination. ''My conscience got me,'' he said. Maybe one day his conscience will get him to attend the hearings he's paid to attend, but, for the moment, his conscience is more troubled by the story brought up by the senior Democratic obstructionist Joe Biden. As Sen. Biden put it, ''The USAID worker in Kyrgyzstan alleges that she was harassed -- not sexually harassed -- harassed by Mr. Bolton.''

This was a decade ago, in some hotel. John Bolton allegedly chased this woman down a corridor in a non-sexual manner. It's not clear from Biden whether he would have approved had she been chased down the corridor in a sexual manner, as the 42nd president was wont to do. But the non-sexual harassment was instead about policy matters relating to Kyrgyzstan. Maybe Bolton was in a foul mood or maybe he was in a vowel mood and, this being Kyrgyzstan, they didn't have any. But this is what the pitiful constitutional travesty of the Senate's ''advise and consent'' role has now dwindled down to: a sex scandal with no sex. All talk and no action. Only in America, folks. Or, to be more precise, only in the U.S. Senate.
It would be nice if some of these Senators earne dtheir pay from time to time. The USAID worker in question was also the head of "mothers Against Bush" in Texas. There were no witnesses to this alleged harrassment either.
The weak bromides touted by the Dems in lieu of a policy -- a legalistic approach to the war on terror, greater deference to the U.N. and America's ''friends'' -- were defeated at the polls. Since then, they've been further discredited: The failure of terrorist prosecutions in Europe underlines how disastrous John Kerry's serve-'em-with-subpoenas approach would be; the sewer of the Oil-for-Food scandal and the attempts by Kofi Annan to castrate the investigation into it demonstrate yet again that there is no problem in the world today that can't be made worse by letting the U.N. have a hand in solving it; and America's ''friends'' -- by which Kerry meant not allies like Britain and Australia but the likes of France and Canada -- turn out to be some of the countries most implicated in the corruption of U.N. ''humanitarianism.''

Republican voters understand this. Why don't Republican senators? The rap against John Bolton is that he gets annoyed with do-nothing bureaucrats. If that's enough to disqualify you from government service, then 70 percent of citizens who've visited the DMV in John Kerry's Massachusetts are ineligible. Sinking Bolton means handing a huge psychological victory to a federal bureaucracy that so spectacularly failed America on 9/11 and to a U.N. bureaucracy eager for any distraction from its own mess. The Democrats' interest in derailing Bush foreign policy is crude but understandable. But why would even the wimpiest Republican ''moderate'' want to help them out? Who needs capuchin monkeys in the Senate when GOP squishes are so eager to tap-dance for Democrat organ grinders?
The UN is a major cesspool of corruption and scandal. Everything the UN touches seems to turn to shit. Of course, I am sure there are those that actually think that Libya should haed the UN Commission on Human Rights. After all, who knows more about supressing human rights than Libya?

Some one needs to remind the dems that they are the minority party. Some one also needs to remind the republicans as well. The dem/leftist policy on national security and foreign affairs, what little there is of that, was defeated at the polls in November. If they want to have their "ideas" implemented, then they need to get elected. - Sailor

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Kofi Annan's 'leadership'


Kofi Annan's leadership of the UN has been nothing less than disasterous. Under his so called "leadership" the UN has become an ecer greater cesspool of corruprion and scandal, not too mention the failures of the UN to prevent and/or react to genocide. Yet, the leftists, one worlders UN lovers and assorted others continue to praise Annan's "leadership". The Washington Times lays out Annan's failures in an editorial.

Sadly, the reality bears little resemblance to the gushing praise Mr. Annan often receives from political and media elites. In his two most recent posts (director of U.N. peacekeeping operations from 1993 to 1996 and secretary-general since 1996), Mr. Annan has presided over a panoply of international disasters, ranging from genocide to the erosion and collapse of international sanctions against Iraq and the oil-for-food scandal. He is currently under fire for blocking, at the behest of Syria, a U.N. report critical of Damascus' role in Lebanon. Following are just some of the most prominent debacles that occurred on his watch:

• Rwandan genocide. In 1994 in Rwanda, Mr. Annan failed to act upon receiving warning from Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the commander of U.N. peacekeeping forces there, that Hutu radicals were planning to massacre members of the rival Tutsi tribe. Gen. Dallaire said he requested permission to seize an arms cache that Hutus aligned with the Rwandan government were planning to use as part of their impending ethnic-cleansing campaign against the Tutsis. Mr. Annan rejected the request to seize the arms cache, helping pave the way for the ensuing massacres, in which 800,000 people were killed. An independent report concluded that Mr. Annan and aides in his peacekeeping headquarters encouraged the Security Council's indifference on the matter.

• Other peacekeeping failures. In July 1995, U.N. peacekeepers who worked for Mr. Annan broke their promise to protect Bosnian Muslims in a "safe area" at Srebrenica. As a result, Serbian troops and militiamen executed 7,000 Muslim men and boys -- one of the worst massacres in Europe since World War II.
In Congo, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, a U.N. watchdog, issued a report in November documenting a pattern of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers who are supposed to be protecting local residents. Some of the victims were girls as young as 13.

• The oil-for-food scandal. In March 2000, when Saddam Hussein was systematically diverting assistance intended for the Iraqi people to his cronies, Mr. Annan was telling the Security Council about all he had done to reform the program to make it more transparent. After coalition troops ousted Saddam, investigators found Iraqi Oil Ministry records that say Benon Sevan -- the man Mr. Annan picked to run the program -- received vouchers for millions of barrels of oil from Saddam. Only when he came under political pressure did Mr. Annan cooperate with congressional investigatations of the scandal by releasing internal U.N. audits of the program. Mr. Annan's chief of staff, S. Iqbal Riza, authorized his secretary to shred several years worth of documents relevant to the investigation.

• Iraq. In addition to oil for food, Mr. Annan has come under fire for appeasing Saddam during the 1990s. In February 1998, for example, when the Iraqi dictator provoked a crisis by blocking weapons inspectors, Mr. Annan traveled to Baghdad in order to cut a deal with Saddam that weakened weapons inspections. He heaped praise on Saddam for his courage and asserted that the Iraqi ruler had been misunderstood. Mr. Annan was feted at a state dinner in Paris by French President Jacques Chirac and was given a hero's welcome by U.N. staff when he returned to New York.
I suggest it is not John Bolton who does not belong at the UN, but rather Kofi Annan.
By contrast, Iraqis liberated from Saddam's tyranny reacted very negatively last year after Mr. Annan warned coalition forces against an assault on the terrorist insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. "Where was Kofi Annan when Saddam was slaughtering the Iraqis like sheep?" Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Sha'alan demanded. The secretary-general has much to answer for.
Perhaps Kofi was too busy watching the money his son Kojo was raking in from the Oil-for-Food scam.

Annan indeed has much to answer for, but do not expect those currently at the UN to do anything, especially the French, Germans and Russians. After all, many influential political figures in those countries allegedly profitted form Oil-for-Food as well, not to mention the large amounts of hard currency coming in from illegal arms sales to saddam. - Sailor

France Not Softening on Push to Lift China Arms Embargo


Once again, the French have found another repressive government they would love to sell arms to. In this case it is China. Forget that the US, rest of the EU and several human right groups oppose this. For the French it is as usual, all about money. Patrick Goodenough has more in his article.

An informal meeting of E.U. foreign ministers last Friday ended with representatives expressing doubts that the embargo could be lifted soon.

Shortly beforehand, the European Parliament voted 431 to 85 in favor of a report urging the 25-member union not to lift the embargo. The report cited concerns about human rights as well as the "anti-secession" law allowing force against Taiwan.

But French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who began a visit to Beijing on Thursday, made it clear that Paris would continue to press for the "unfair" embargo to end.
The French have also decided to side with China on the use of force against Taiwan. Seems now that a pre-emptive war is just fine with the French. It would seem the French see this just as another opportunity to increase foreign trade in weaponry.
Raffarin said the E.U. was convinced that China, as a responsible country and a large power, would continue to live in harmony with its neighbors and play a larger role in maintaining world peace and stability.
Live in harmony alright. As long as you do not happen to be Taiwan or any of the countries that have legitimate claims to the Spratly Islands. China has a huge thirst for oil and the Spratly Islands may hold the potential for billions of barrels of oil.
Raffarin did not explain how France intended to get E.U. consensus before June, but he did say the decision "is to be taken between Europeans," and that efforts where underway to "reassure" the U.S.

U.S. undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns told lawmakers last week that the administration would shortly begin a "strategic dialogue" with the E.U., covering issues like the arms embargo.

Burns said the E.U. had not made a compelling case for ending the ban on weapons sales, and U.S. officials would use the dialogue to ensure the Europeans understood the dangers that lifting it would pose to regional security.

Proponents of ending the ban, led by France and Germany, argue that doing so would be more symbolic than practical, and would not lead to a significant surge in weapons sales to China.

Beijing characterizes the embargo as "discriminatory" and has been lobbying hard for its removal.
The French have already helped the Chinese upgrade their submarine forces' electronic capabilities. I some how doubt that this will be "symbolic". The French will do anything to turn a few euros. After all, the French economy is in the dumper and unemployment is hovering around the 10% mark. One also has to wonder with the French, how many politically connected Frenchman are having their palms greased here. - Sailor

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Heralds of a Brighter Black Future


Heralds of a Brighter Black Future

Heather Mac Donald has a marvelous column at City Journal, on the
bright black future. It will, natuarally upset the usual dem/lib/leftist crowd as well as the race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Here are some tease for you.

When Bill Cosby, in a speech to the NAACP last May, let fly a merciless condemnation of black illegitimacy, educational apathy, and the idea that white racism causes black social problems, political commentators dropped their jaws. They remained stunned when he vented similar frustration to audiences across the country over the next six months. Sure, “civil rights” advocates have been known, on rare occasions, to criticize self-defeating black behavior, but convention requires that after briefly denouncing, say, black-on-black crime (as if black-on-white crime would be okay), the “leader” should turn his attention to the racial injustice that allegedly causes such crime and harp on that for the next year or so. This Cosby refused to do. “It’s not what [the white man] is doing to you; it’s what you’re not doing,” he thundered in Detroit.

The reaction of black audiences was just as unexpected. Rather than take offense, they waited hours in line, in blistering heat and freezing cold, to hear Cosby deliver his impassioned plea for bourgeois behavior.
We all know what a bombshell Cosby dropped on the so called civil rights, (blame whitey} establishment.
How can anyone in their right mind accept reparations?” asks Rapheal Adams incredulously. “I would never accept them,” he says, pressing his hands to his chest. “I don’t have shackles.” Suddenly solemn, Adams intones melodramatically: “ ‘Four hundred years ago, they brought us here!’ ” He squints skeptically: “Yeah? You’re lookin’ pretty good for 400 years old. Guess what? The slaves have been dead a long time. Show me where the ‘Colored Only–Whites Only’ signs are in this country . . . anywhere. Everyone agrees slavery was horrific, but you have to look at what people did to end it. I’m sorry, you’re not owed one damn dime.”

Rapheal Adams is a dissenter in Cincinnati, seat of the country’s most vicious race politics. Until recently, the ebullient 43-year-old fought the city’s racial arsonists as a host on black talk radio, working the night shift at a General Electric jet-engine plant in order to promote his views during the day. When race riots erupted in 2001, Adams, as the sole pro-police counter-demonstrator at an anti-cop rally, barely escaped assault.
Dissention by a black is sometimes met with violence. This nonsense about reparations is just that, nonsense. Many of our forebearers came to theis country well after slavery was abolished and, quite frankly, were in no position to discrimate angainst anyone, since some of them were fighting through that issue as well.
David A. Clarke, the towering sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, electrified Milwaukee in 2003 with his candid expression of disgust at the scapegoating of police. Lamarr Nash, a 24-year-old criminal, had stolen a truck and then led the police on a 17-mile high-speed highway chase, ending when he crashed into a deputy’s squad car. Nash exited the truck with his hands up and lay down on the asphalt. The deputies surrounded him, and for a brief moment, one put his foot on Nash’s neck, without causing any injury.

Predictably, the black civil rights establishment erupted in rage at this instance of police “brutality.” The NAACP called a meeting to denounce the police. At the meeting, Sheriff Clarke asked the crowd if they thought the offending deputy was a racist. The verdict was yes. Interesting, said Clarke; here’s his picture. The deputy was black.
This is quite typical of the NAACP and their dem/lib/leftist allies. Blame the police, extol the criminal behavior and portray the criminal as the victim.

Hopefully these snippets will be sufficient the whet your interest in the full article. - Sailor

Let blogs run free


Let the Blogs run free

Here is an
editorial from the Chicago Tribune on the how to deal with Blogs. I could not agree more, some one in the MSM finally gets it. - Sailor

"Let blogs run free

April 23, 2005

Sometimes the best political action is no action. When Congress passed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law in 2002, it deliberately avoided mention of the Internet. That has been very healthy for American democracy.

Unfortunately recent actions by the courts and Congress raise new questions as to how long that benign neglect will last, particularly for that feisty, sometimes foul-mouthed, but often innovative new medium known as the blog.

Short for Web log, the Internet-based diaries have exploded into a bountiful and boisterous blogosphere of voices from diverse political views. Some of the blogs got a lot of attention in 2004, raising funds, Web-casting attack ads and providing links to candidate sites and political action groups.

Whether the authors of the 1st Amendment imagined such a boundless platform for a cacophony of voices, it is not hard to imagine that they would have approved.

Nevertheless, questions have been raised about whether bloggers are making an end run around campaign finance laws. Should a blogger's online endorsement and promotion of a candidate be counted as an "in-kind contribution" to the campaign? Should the blogger be subject to campaign finance law if he's raising money? Are these journalists or political activists?

That last question erupted with a vengeance after revelations that South Dakota Republican John Thune's Senate campaign paid two bloggers who posted attacks against Thune's Democratic opponent, Tom Daschle. Howard Dean's presidential campaign paid two blogs for (presumably) unrelated consulting services.

The Federal Election Commission has proposed new rules and scheduled public hearings in June to address blogging-for-dollars and other political funding issues in the largely uncharted universe of cyberspace.

This creates all sorts of potential tensions. Which Web sites and blogs should be considered legitimate news organizations, exempt from McCain-Feingold's restrictions, and which should not? Should individual bloggers be treated differently than organizations? If a blogger receives payment for a political activity, does that turn the blog into a political committee that is subject to campaign finance regulation?

Such questions would be rendered moot under new laws proposed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, to exclude the Internet from federal campaign finance laws. They have the right idea.

Attempts to regulate the flow of political writing run smack into the 1st Amendment protection of speech. And there's a long trail of evidence that campaign finance "reform" laws are ultimately futile. Campaign cash, like water, finds new channels when old ones are blocked.

Democracy is better served by more voices and choices, not fewer ones. Congress and the FEC should encourage more civic involvement and welcome more online voices to the political process instead of throwing regulatory roadblocks in the way.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune "

Celebs Ignore Death, Poverty on MTV Enviro Series


MTV has this new series, "Trippin'," that extolls the the "virtues" of backward, third world countries and how "environmentally" friendly they are. Of course, they do neglect to mention the high infant mortallity rate and the far shorter than average life expectancies. Actress carmen Diaz and some of her Hollywood elitist pals, go jetting around the world, to these places to revel in "environmental" correctness. The article by Marc Morano, looks into these Hollywood environuts.

Actress Drew Barrymore, who reportedly earns $15 million a film, told MTV viewers in one episode that after spending time in a primitive, electricity-free Chilean village, "I aspire to be like them more."

Barrymore, apparently enthralled by the lack of a modern sanitary facilities, gleefully bragged, "I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome."
Well how nice for you Drew. Her is a pampered little phony going on and on about a primitive lifestyle that she is in no way going to live. I seriously doubt Drew is about to give upo her plush lifestyle to save the environment.
Diaz also criticized the lifestyles of many Americans after visiting an indigenous village in Chile. "It's kinda gotten out of hand how much convenience we think we need," she said.

Despite the celebrities' praise for the primitive life, "Trippin'" shows them flying on multiple airplanes and chartering at least two helicopters and one boat to reach remote locations over the course of the first four episodes.

The series also showed the celebrities being chauffeured to the airport in a full-size Chevy SUV -- despite several on-screen, anti-SUV factoids noting how environmentally unfriendly SUVs are.
Well then Ms. Diaz, why do you not lead by example and give up all of your excessive convenience? Not likely to happn. Then there is the hypocricy of dissing SUVs while beinf chauffeured around in one. I wonder how many SUVs this group owns anyway?
'The first four episodes of the MTV series made scant mention of the difficult economic and social conditions of the countries visited. Bhutan, a country that received particular praise from Diaz for its environmental policies, has one of the highest infant mortality rates (103 infant deaths per 1,000 live births) and lowest life expectancies (54 years) in the world. By comparison, the United States, which Diaz described as having too much "convenience," has an infant mortality rate of only 6.6 per 1000 and an average life expectancy of more than 77 years.

Located between China and India in the Himalayan Mountains, Bhutan was profiled on the second episode of "Trippin'."

Diaz described it as the "only country in the world where forest cover is increasing."

According to CIA
estimates, Bhutan has one of the world's smallest and least developed economies, with the country's 2-million people surviving mostly on the crops they grow themselves.
I suppose this is evirnmentally sound. You a lower birth rate due to high infant mortallity, you have a lower population because no one lives that long, then all these people that die early get buried and fertilize the land.

A critic of the environmental movement condemned the new MTV series.

"There's something perverse and immoral when multi-millionaire Hollywood celebrities head off on junkets in the jungle - and then preach to us lesser mortals about the joys of the simple life, and how we should protect the Earth, conserve energy, prevent global warming, and help the poorest people on our planet continue 'enjoying' their poverty, malnutrition and premature death," Paul Dreissen, author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power/Black Death told Cybercast News Service.

"Life in these developing countries is still nasty, brutish and short. And that there is a reason our parents and grandparents worked so hard to create modern homes and hospitals and technologies, so they could leave behind the unsafe water, dung fires, pollution, rotted teeth, infant mortality and life expectancies half or ours," said Driessen.

"This entire MTV series totally glosses over the hardships and premature death that is right before their eyes. Even mentioning these facts would obviously get in the way of their ideological message, and their determination to turn [MTV viewers] into little ventriloquist's dummies for the sustainable development movement," Driessen explained.

I wonder how many of these "stars" are now going to live this lifestyle? Do not hold your breath waiting to anyone of these spoiled Hollywood brats packing up and leaving their creature comforts to go live in some backward, Third World remote, primitive village. What hypocricy. - Sailor

Friday, April 22, 2005

Friday night blogs.


Radio Blogger has a Friday night discussion, which is becoming a regular event over at his blog. Tonight the subjuct is the UN and John Bolton. Here is just a little tease for you.

As is becoming the norm on this site, every Friday the blogosphere holds court with Larry Kudlow on CNBC's Kudlow & Company. The target: Kofi Annan. The panel? Roger L. Simon, Austin Bay, & a special appearance by Wall Street Journal columnist and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies scholar, Claudia Rosett. Claudia has done Pulitzer-caliber work on the Oil for Food scandal, and if the subject is Kofi Anna, Claudia is the one you want on to comment.
Head on over to read the transcript. It makes for a good read. Oh, and not forget not to pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. - Sailor