Centcom Post 10/10/07

ISF, USSF DELIVER HUMANITARIAN AIS TO VILLAGES NEAR JALULA MULTIINATIONAL CORPS

Posted: 08 Oct 2007 02:09 PM CDT

ISF, USSF DELIVER HUMANITARIAN AIS TO VILLAGES NEAR JALULA MULTIINATIONAL CORPS

Fox News:

 Fred Thompson, gracious after being singled out as the late entry into the 2008 Republican presidential race, made no major spills Tuesday but also didn’t hit one out of the ballpark at his first foray into the debate scene since joining the White House field last month.

Thompson was the butt of a few laughs, but lobbed back a few light-hearted zingers in a debate that was at times very intense, but also demonstrated the more optimistic side of the GOP.

Thompson struck me as the confident leader.  When I say that, I mean making no major spills, but not really beating up on anybody either is precisely what one does when one is in the lead, toward the end of a game. You play ball control, and keep the chains moving just enough so that you have possession.

As for the rest of the crowd on stage, any one of them would be a better choice than any one of the Democrats running.  Make no mistake about that.  But right now, we’re about putting the best man up against the Democrats.  And in my view, that is Fred Thompson.

Addeudum:  (David L)   The clear loser — Chris Mathews.   Off topic questions  gotcha mentality and unprofessional comments.   John Poderhortz, National Review:

As moderator, Chris Matthews intruded himself into the proceedings following a Fred Thompson answer on a possible Chrysler strike by saying that Fred Thompson went on too long  and would have been better off just saying “No” and stopping there. I’ve never seen such a blatant act of obnoxious misbehavior during a debate. Ever.

All future debates should be restricted to sober adults.   Matthews need not apply.

John Tierney pose some Azinger article over the weekend entitled… “Diet and Fat: A Case of Mistaken Consensus”

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable” magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal “food pyramid” telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.

The article goes on to very accurately protruding how government screwed that one up.  And clearly, they understand that the consensus is not only not scientific, it is also not always accurate.  Mark this down; place it in red letters on your calendar… the New York Times actually got one right.

But I’ll bet for all the accuracy that is in this article, they don’t understand the connections between the consensus mentioned here, and the one that has supposedly been reached as regards the one about global warming . Can you, I wonder?

One step more; With this article, comes an understanding of why government run health care is counterproductive to a healthy society.  How many Healthcare issues are decided on such consensus ?  How many such in accurate consensus would be reinforced with the power of government?  How many people would die as a result of such?

Perhaps someone should show this article to both Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton.  The resulting dance might even be amusing.

Update… while I was composing this one, McQ was posting the same thought.

I ask him in comments: how did the New York Times manage to get this one right? And, how did they manage not to make the extrapolations that you and I did?

 “Nobody asked your opinion, Christopher.”

Fred Thompson to Chris Matthews, via Erick, Red State.

Red meat for conservatives, and just think much fun it will be if Keith Olbermann were to moderate.

So, now, Hillary Clinton has decided that instead of lowering the amount of taxes people pay, so they can put more of their own money into their own retirement, the wicked witch of the south NOW wants to take even more money, in the form of taxes, (See also, theft) to give to everyone with a retirement plan, a total of $1000.

By the words of the press release of about a half hour ago:

The cost of the generous matching tax cuts to middle income families in Hillary’s American Retirement Accounts plan would be about $20-$25 billion per year. Hillary will finance these tax cuts without increasing the deficit by dedicating a portion of the revenue from freezing the estate tax at its 2009 level of $7 million per couple.

Of course this is the class envy game again:

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, freezing the estate tax at that level and avoiding outright repeal generates more than $400 billion over ten years. By devoting a portion of these resources to fund the matching tax cuts in the American Retirement Accounts plan, Hillary will be avoiding a further tax cut for 10,000 of the wealthiest estates in the U.S. in order to give tens of millions of families a tax cut to help build their own nest egg for retirement. If 50 million households benefit from the matching tax credits in the American Retirement Account, that would mean that for every 1 wealthy estate facing a less generous estate tax exemption, at least 5,000 middle class families would receive a tax cut that will help them save, invest and one day own an estate of their own.

Hmmm Sounds like a song I’ve heard, just recently….

Tax the rich
Feed the poor
Till there are no
rich no more.

This grand socialist a redistribution as scheme has been disproved on time and again and in more countries than just this one.  The woman is lying through her teeth. 

Which in turn brings to mind another song. Let’s see if I can recall it, here…

We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you’ll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you

But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!

It’s not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else

And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!

We would not care to wake up to the nightmare
That’s becoming real life
But when mislead who knows a person’s mind
Can turn as cold as ice

Why do you keep on making us hear your song
Telling us how you are changing right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!

As a follow-on to the story about the Democrats and their lies in promotion of S-CHIP, which I posted here last night:

Riehl World View:

Yes, the Frost children are victims, but not of conservatives. They look more like victims of a couple of mostly spoiled brats who became parents and never felt compelled to take responsibility for themselves when it came to the bottom line on that. There are poor people in America who need help, particularly as regards Health care. The point is, the family above shouldn’t be and simply aren’t among them. Call Dad next time you want some bucks FH. And kindly leave the rest of America’s collective wallet the hell alone.

Wake Up America:

Democrats Use Terrorist Tactics: Hiding Behind Children

Limbaugh:

This is Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old, and Frost’s father is self-employed. He owns the building in which he works. His father makes about $45,000 a year while his mother is employed at an unspecified salary by a medical publishing house that doesn’t provide health insurance coverage. Bottom line. This is from Mark Tapscott, who as an editorial page editor at the Washington Examiner, has been tracking all this on the blogs. “Two points. First, people make choices and it’s clear the Frosts have made a choice to invest in property and a business, but not in private health insurance. The Maryland-administered version of the federal SCHIP program, by the way, does not impose an asset test on applicants.” It’s one of the states where you have no asset test, so anybody can be part of the program! What the Democrats did: “President Bush used his regular Saturday radio address yesterday to explain and defend his veto of the massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) approved last week by Congress. … An hour later on national radio, the Democrats’ response to Bush was delivered by Baltimore private middle school student Graeme Frost, who, along with his sister, was seriously injured in an auto accident three years ago.

“His response to Bush was actually recorded earlier in the week and Matthew Hay Brown, a reporter from The Baltimore Sun, interviewed the young man after he did his recording. Frost said his parents work hard to provide for him and his sister, but one thing they can’t afford is private health insurance, so they have to depend upon the government program, Brown reported for The Sun. Perfect illustration of why the SCHIP program should be expanded, right? Actually, no, because the Sun only reported the Democratic version of the story and we can’t depend upon a mainstream media outlet like the Sun to get the rest of the story.” Well, the rest of the story is: “It turns out the Frost family sends its kids to one of Baltimore’s expensive private schools, owns a house in a neighborhood of homes valued in the $400,000-500,000 range and bought commercial property in 1999 for $160,000.” What’s the upshot of all this? This is nothing new. The Democrats lie! They have to in order to make their case. What was seductive to them was that this young man and his sister were severely injured in an auto accident, and they didn’t have private insurance. “That’s all we needed. That’s all. Just smear the president. That’s all we needed. We don’t need any other details, because we know that our buddies in the mainstream media are not going to uncover the details, and, if they do uncover ’em, they’re not going to report ’em — and when they do get uncovered a couple weeks later, a day later, the story is already ours. We already own it.”

So the bottom line for me is: They can’t rely on truth to make their case for their cause.

As if to prove that last point, I left a response to the issue over at one of the more rabid socialist sites, Firedog Lake, pointing out most of this. And what do you know… rather than let such ideas be freely discussed, they removed the response. Now at least we have some idea of why the tenor of the comments section at most leftist sites is of such monotonic quality. They KNOW they can’t handle the truth, and they REMOVE it from sight, first chance they get.

Justin McCarthy, News Busters, has the story of Whoopi Goldberg demanding an apogoly from Al Sharpton:

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Will you do me a favor? Will you ask him to please apologize to the Duke lacrosse players?

JOY BEHAR: Oh

GOLDBERG: Because I looked and looked and looked and I just wanted to make sure, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t speaking out of turn. I wanted to make sure that I was correct. And I know Al that you were down there and you were really trying to look out for the folks that thought were being really be run over, but as it turns out it wasn’t true. And, and I want you to apologize to them because those kids went through Hell and I think we owe it to them.

Personally, I add Steven Pagones to Goldberg’s list, but it’s a start.

I am reminded in my hopping around this morning that we are close on if not already by the anniversary of the death of one of the biggest monsters the world has ever known Che Gueava.

Here’s a comment I left on the point last June, which will serve as my response to all leftie hero worship I’m seeing….

-1-

I nteresting article on Che Guevara, today:

He’s the ultimate symbol of radical chic but was Che Guevara really a homophobic, racist square who personally ordered the jailing and executions of innocent men, women and children?

That’s according to Humberto Fontova, the author of “Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him,” who claims that Guevara probably would have imprisoned or punished most of his celebrity fans, from Johnny Depp to Angelina Jolie.

……

– Twice, Che plotted terrorist attacks against New York City. In November 1962, the FBI cracked a terrorist plot by Cuban agents who targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Grand Central Terminal. They planned to blow up those landmarks with 12 incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT the day after Thanksgiving. Several months before visiting New York in December 1964 and being feted by the toast of the city’s intelligentsia, Che hatched a plan with the Black Liberation Army to blow up the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument. The plotters were infiltrated in 1965 by a sharp-eyed NYPD cadet.

I suppose this is a case of trying to impose facts, where mere facts have no pull over the myth… but there it is.

-0-

Bottom line: Che isn’t “Cool” He was a bloody thug.  This is what leftists are celebrating?

Just doing some reading, this morning, and ran across a quote I had to share:

“I say to you…there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government. There is nothing heroic about turning your back on America, or ignoring your own responsibilities. If you want to preserve your own freedom, you must stand up for the freedom of others with whom you disagree. But you also must stand up for the rule of law. You cannot have one without the other. ”

— President Bill Clinton, 1995

That’s funny, coming from the leader of a party, a goodly chunk of which would prefer Ahmadinijad to George Bush.

Think about it.

Stewart Dimmock, truck driver, Kent UK:

 “I care about the environment as much as the next man, … However, I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to political spin in the classroom.”

Dimmock filed a lawsuit to prevent Al Gore’s Inconvient Truth from being shown in his  daugthjer’s class room.    Dimmock prevailed in court.   Further the British court declared that Gore’s film contained eleven inaccuracies.

Oh the price the leftards pay for taking their science clues from a college drop-out.

Hat tip:  John Hawkins, Conservatve Grapevine.

So let’s see, here… from the Democrats within the last few years, we’ve seen:

• Documents from a supposed news organization, which purport to demonstrate that the President of United States had not fulfilled his national guard obligations.  These documents were fed in support of Democrats. These documents were proven to be forgeries.
• A claim from the Democrats, that the name of Valarie Plame was released to spite political enemies of George W Bush. This charge was laid in support of Democrats and most of the players were shown to have high level Democrat party connections. That claim, too, was disproved.
• We have Jesse MacBeth, otherwise known as Jesse Adam Al-Zaid. This individual claimed to have taken part in Atrocities in Iraq, in an attempt to make America’s military involvement in Iraq look bad.  That claimed too was disproven when his DD214 showed up, (not the one someone had faked in a weak attempt to support the story) proving the guy had never made it out of basic training, and therefore had never been to Iraq. This is one of several phony soldiers the Democrat have propped up as being ‘Soldiers”.The whole thing was a fake.  Of course, this, two, was a claim are regionally mounted in support of leftist politics.
• When a Talkshow host was talking about these phony soldiers, his words were twisted around by the Democrats who attempted to say that he was labeling ALL solders who were against the Iraq war, as such… a claim which even a cursory listen to the tape of the show, or a read of the transcript reveals as falsehood.
• We have Haditha, Iraq, and false charges against Marines. These charges were pursued almost joyously by the Democrats in general, and Jack Murtha in particular, who sought to once again to make America’s military involvement in Iraq look bad, and to support leftist politics.  Of course, this too was a fake… one set up by our enemies… and is now officially documented as such.

Almost enough to have established a trend, of lying to get their way, wouldn’t you say?

And so now comes the campaign for socialist healthcare.  In which, we find that the Democrats are using falsehoods, yet again.  the very thing the Democrats point to as emblematic of their reason for being, turns out to be a fake.

Again.

Steyn isn’t the only one to notice… McQ and Don Surber do, as well.

OK, a little backfill. Surber, just to get you started on your own investigation of this stuff:

Remember the Frost family of Baltimore? They had a bad traffic accident 3 years ago. Their medical bills were paid by the taxpayer-subsidized SCHIP. Democrats trotted out Graeme Frost, 12, to call the president mean for not expanding the program beyond what he was willing to expand it.

But all is not what it seems. Based a sympathetic Baltimore Sun story – reporters never question “victims” – a blogger did some snooping around.

Brutally Honest found that the Frosts (check out the kitchen) live in a 3,000-square-foot house in the Butchers Hill historic district of Baltimore.

The children attend the private Park School, where tuition is $20,000 a year each. Maybe that is subsidized. Interesting that public schools aren’t good enough for their kids but public health insurance is.

The Frosts contend they live on $45,000 and cannot afford health insurance. He’s a self-employed woodworker.

And they appear to be land rich, cash poor. He bought a building for $160,000 in 1999 and their house mortgage appears to be worth $200,000.

Yet, the drive-bys at the Baltimore Sun, those always dependable Democrat supporters, claim that despite all of this, they just can’t swing health insurance.

“Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.”

Problem is, as McQ points out well:

A combined income of $45,000?

But as Steyn points out, both of the Frosts work (or have worked) for their own company. He’s hardly just a ‘woodworker’ but instead the owner of “Frostworks”, a company he’s headed since 1992.

He owns Frostworks, a woodworking and furniture-design studio in Baltimore.

And he owns commercial property in which another company is located (rental income?).

So what magic have the Frost’s been able to pull off with that $45,000 a year salary?

Well own a business, a 3,000 sq. ft. house, a commercial building, send two kids to a private school at $20,000 a year, owned an SUV and apparently somehow manage to convince the state that they were too poor to afford health insurance.

The always lovely, always sharp Michelle Malkin notes:

A word for all the faux outraged leftists accusing conservative bloggers of waging a “smear campaign:” Asking questions and subjecting political anecdotes to scrutiny are what journalists should be doing.

When a family and Democrat political leaders drag a child down to Washington at 6 in the morning to read a script written by Senate Democrat staffers on a crusade to overturn a presidential veto, someone might have questions about the family’s claims. The newspapers don’t want to do their jobs. The vacuum is being filled.

If you don’t want questions, don’t foist these children onto the public stage.

Fight your battles like adults and stop hiding behind youngsters dragging around red wagons filled with your talking points.

The Democrats have lied to us about so many things, one of the first things we should be asking ourselves the second they open their mouths, is… “Why am I listening?’.

There’s a reason the Democrats can’t stick to the truth. The truth doesn’t support their talking points.

At what point do the Democrats start telling us the truth for change? 

STATEMENT FROM MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE – IRAQ: COALITION FORCES ENGAGED TERRORISTS NEAR BAQUBAH

Posted: 07 Oct 2007 12:46 PM CDT

STATEMENT FROM MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE – IRAQ: COALITION FORCES ENGAGED TERRORISTS NEAR BAQUBAH

Dick Morris:

 I give political analysis, not financial advice. But sometimes, the two closely merge. So here’s what I think: Hillary Clinton will cause the stock market to crash as her likely election as president approaches.

Yeah, well, she’s gotta GET there, first.  I still don’t accept the idea that this election is hers… though I find likely that she’ll win the nomination.  Just because the rank and file democrats are now stupid enough to hand her the nomination, doesn’t mean that the remaining voters in the country are stupid enough to hand her the White House.  Sorry, I just don’t see it.

And little tidbits like this, are why.  The more analysis like this that gets out there, the farther away from the White House she’s going to be.

Right Wing News emailed more than 225 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a list of whom they considered to be their “Least Favorite People On The Right.” Representatives from the following 45 blogs responded…

Aaron’s CC, David All Group, The Anchoress, Baldilocks, Betsy’s Page, Bit’s Blog, Blonde Sagacity, Boi From Troy, Bookworm Room, The Captain’s Journal, Captain’s Quarters, Cassy Fiano, Conservative Grapevine, Damian Penny, Dissecting Leftism, Argghhhh!, Ed Driscoll, Election Projection, Musings, GraniteGrok, GOPUSA Northeast, —Ian Schwartz, IMAO, Inside Larry’s Head, Jihad Watch, Likelihood of Success, Rachel Lucas, Barking Moonbat Early Warning System, Moonbattery, mountaineer musings, Pal2pal, Pirate’s Cove, PoliPundit, PrestoPundit, Right Thinking From The Left Coast, Right Wing Rocker, Matt Sanchez, Don Singleton, Solomonia, Stop The ACLUDon Surber, Texas Rainmaker, dcthornton.com, Vox Popoli, WILLisms

Go and see who’s on the list.

Imagine with me;

You’re standing on the corner of Main and Clinton, in downtown Rochester, NY. There’s a fair amount of vehicle traffic and a very good amount of foot traffic, given that its lunch hour, and we’re office workers are left in downtown Rochester are out seeking their new day meal.  Or, perhaps they’re just enjoying a midsummer’s day, before having to reenter their particular salt mines.

Within a second, that pattern of activity, and the sound that goes with it, is shattered by a hugely loud jet.  It’s moving so fast you have trouble locating it. Finally, you catch a glimpse of it as it seems to be moving impossibly fast between downtown buildings.  The plane is blue and yellow, you notice, as its streaks by.  Then you notice it looks to be right down in the concrete canyon of what is Clinton avenue.  It’s going so fast you have trouble estimating how high it really is. Right smack dab in the middle of North Clinton avenue, this guy who already has everyone’s attention in town, pulls a U-turn right over Main and Clinton, pulling at least five G’s in the process, and disturbing so much air that his wings turn white.. as he banks at 90 degrees, then he tops it…does something I’ve never seen before… he slides around 180 degrees laterally, and slides to a near stop, hovering for just a second on the sheer power of the jet engines….and then escaping from the canyon in the same way he came in, and seemingly twice as fast. The best way I can describe it is a hot rodder pulling a 180 degree slide and spinning his tires momentarily as he grinds for some traction.  Finding it, he gets going faster than any car has a right to. Zoom, gone.

Again, this is over city streets.

The whole display is over in perhaps five seconds.  And yet, that five seconds leaves you breathless… with an impression that you’re going to carry for the remainder of your life. “Damn, these guys can FLY….”  Trust me, my friends, that’s a display I will never forget.

I wrote about the experience of the show itself some years ago, as a sidebar to the New Years’ eve celebration we’ve been taking part in the past few years.

The only thing in real life I’ve seen that comes close is The Blue Angels airshow taking off, while you’re directly under their flight path, as happened to us last summer, during their show in Rochester. I have a mental picture of myself standing with my family at the end of the runway… and we could see the jets coming, like cats on the hunt. It’s nearly silent, though you can see the event coming… and then suddenly, you’re standing in a full force gale, your chest vibrating, your ears complaining about the pressure, and your eyes not wanting to blink for fear of missing it. What a rush!

In some ways, the run-up to the show, was more exciting than the show itself.  Perhaps it was the anticipation level that was helping them along.  Or perhaps it was the virtuosity of the pilots , or perhaps it was just the unusual sight of a fighter jet flying seven stories over the main drag in downtown Rochester.

Here’s some video.

Anyway, what draws me to write about all of this is that its fleet week in San Francisco.  Personally, I love the smell of burning liberals in the morning.  And lately, that’s what fleet week in San Francisco has become.  Cinnamon Stillwell writes about that this week. 

The truth is San Francisco is a city that likes to pretend its favored existence has nothing to do with the generations of fighting forces that have shed blood, sweat, and tears on America’s behalf. When Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval foolishly stated on “Hannity and Colmes” in 2006 that “the United States should not have a military,” that pretty much said it all.

Well, not quite.

Update: The first hour of the KQED radio show “Forum” this morning featured a discussion on this very topic or, as it’s put it in the website description, “the complicated relationship the Bay Area has with the military.” The guests were Edward Leonard, chairman of the San Francisco Fleet Week Committee (and a veteran), Carl Nolte of the San Francisco Chronicle, and, of course, lefty supervisor extraordinaire Chris Daly.

Daly, who one has to give points for at least being up front about his anti-military political proclivities, did the rest of the country a favor by demonstrating exactly what ails San Francisco leadership. Then there was the caller who felt that bringing his 3-year-old son to the Folsom Street Fair (captured by Zombie in all its degenerate glory) would be preferable to the little tyke being subjected to the horrors of the Blue Angels “war machine” (in fact, some parents did see fit to bring their children to the S&M fest). Surreal, even by San Francisco standards. Listen here.

I’ll ask the same question today that I asked day before yesterday; Do you begin to understand what mainstream America is up against with these people?

(BBCT: Michelle)