A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue
This is Agate Bridge, an extremely well preserved log of petrified wood, which spans a gully in Petrified Forest National Park. You'll note that there's a concrete support built underneath the wood. That was build in 1917 to replace a masonry support built in 1906 when park officals thought it best to preserve the structure with additional assistance.
Today, if such a fascinating find were discovered, the National Park Service would not engage in any such efforts - and let nature take its course:
"Current National Park Service philosophy allows the natural forces that create unusual features to continue. If discovered today, Agate Bridge would be left in its natural state. Eventually the natural forces that created Agate Bridge will cause it to fall with or without its supports. For your safety, and to help preserve the petrified log, please stay off the bridge."
Take a good look at this map. That's a map of the US circuits. It helps guide cases through to the US Supreme Court.
Notice anything interesting? Like how the Ninth Circuit includes the following states: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California, Arizona, and Nevada? It is far larger than any other circuit in the country. It has a case load in the tens of thousands of cases annually, and that it is also the circuit most frequently overruled by the US Supreme Court suggests that the bench can't handle the load.
Here's an idea that is long past time. Break up the Ninth.
At a minimum, there should be at least two new circuits out of it. Alaska, Washington, Idaho and Montana would all become the new 12th Circuit. Hawaii, Guam, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona would be the new 13th Circuit, and California would remain the 9th Circuit.
Each of the new circuits would be established based on the existing precedents of the 9th, but from the point of creation forward, each would be able to independently arrive at judicial decisions.
I know that I'm not the first to suggest breaking up the Ninth, nor will I be the last, but it is well past time that this get the attention it deserves.
Israel should give up its nuclear weapons to ensure Iran halts its illicit nuclear program, argues an adviser on nuclear issues to Sen. Barack Obama.
Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, also previously dismissed reports Israel's Sept. 6 airstrike targeted a Syrian nuclear reactor as "nonsense" and called Damascus' nuclear program "miniscule."
Immediately following Israel's air raid, Cirincione listed "Israelis [who] want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria" as among those spreading rumors Syria was constructing a nuclear facility.
He thinks Israel should give up its entire nuclear arsenal - as a good will gesture to get Iran to quit its secret nuclear program.
Let's just say that Cirincione doesn't exactly have a solid record on which to make claims and assertions. For example, he can't come up with any reason why Syria isn't braying about Israel's attack on its facility in the September 6 raid, except to say that it wasn't a nuclear weapons program and thinks that the Syrian program is nothing to be worried about because it's been around for 40 years and produces only a small amount of isotopes for research.
That doesn't quite explain the purpose behind the building complex destroyed by the Israelis, its similarities to a North Korean nuclear facility, and the unbelievable silence from the Syrians over the whole matter.
Cirincione also thinks that the Israeli raid on Osirak in 1981 was a failure, though one has to wonder how exactly that works given that Iraq would have been nuclear capable well in advance of the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the strategic and tactical calculus would have been quite different.
But, let's get back to the crux of the article - and that is how and why Cirincione thinks that Israel's unilateral nuclear disarmament will convince Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. How exactly does that work?
Israel gives up its nuclear deterrent, and Iran, whose nuclear program has progressed in secret can claim to give it up all while pursuing it via covert means? How exactly does that improve Israel's security posture? Why must Israel be the one to be sacrificed on the altar of diplomats who think that by making utterances and securing signatures on pieces of paper that they will obtain peace in our time?
There is absolutely nothing to indicate that Iran has any intention of giving up the ghost for obtaining nuclear weapons. Syria has been thwarted for the moment on its ambitions, but that doesn't mean that it will not continue to pursue those means.
In the meantime, remember that this is a person who is advising Obama on nuclear issues and the Middle East. Let's just say I'm not impressed.
Recognizing that his political downfall is all but unavoidable, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is considering accepting a proposal by senior Kadima ministers and MKs that is intended to allow the party to prepare for early elections while he leaves the Prime Minister's Office in a dignified manner, sources close to Olmert said Thursday.
According to the proposal, the prime minister would give the authorization necessary to initiate a Kadima primary that would elect his successor.
If Olmert is not charged in the Talansky affair, he would continue to serve as party leader and prime minister until the next general election, and the primary winner would become his heir apparent. If he is indicted and keeps his promise to step down, the winner could either form a new government or lead the party in elections that appear increasingly likely to take place by the end of the year.
Frankly, I don't care how Prime Minister Olmert wants to step down. He could quite easily be taken away in handcuffs, and that would be quite the show.
Olmert doesn't rate a dignified exit. His failures in the Hizbullah war and ongoing rocket war are more than justification for his resignation, but it has taken the corruption probe to finally bring things to this point.
Other reports indicate that Olmert has agreed to a primary election in which he would not participate, effectively ending his term in office.
Of course, his potential successors are busy lining up in their own calls for Olmert's resignation. That includes Tzipi Livni, the current foreign minister, and Ehud Barak, the current defense minister.
Throw in old whipping boy Sen. John F. Kerry for his nonsensical comments, and even more nonsensical clarification:
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) believes that on September 11 "we were basically at peace."
Asked to clarify his remarks, specifically asking about the attacks on the U.S.S. Cole during Barack Obama campaign conference call, Kerry said, "well, we hadn't declared war," The Hill's Sam Youngman reports.
Asked if al Qaeda was a threat at the time, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee said, "well yes, obviously they were a threat. But, fundamentally we were not at war at that point in time."
Kerry also called John McCain "out of step with history and facts."
Senator Kerry, would that be before 8:43AM ET? Or after the first plane slammed into the WTC?
Maybe an hour earlier when those planes were being boarded by the 19 hijackers?
The sad fact is that al Qaeda declared war on the US well before the USS Cole or 9/11, and were already killing Americans around the world and attacking US interests. Fatwas issued by al Qaeda spelled out their goals, and sought to defeat the US and its interests around the world.
For example, the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people. There was the 1996 Khobar Tower bombings, which killed several dozen Americans.
On 9/11, the war launched by al Qaeda was driven home in the most gruesome and violent manner - attacking the US and its financial and military centers - the Pentagon and WTC.
That the US failed to respond to this war well before 9/11 is the fault of those in power to that point. That includes President Clinton who was Commander in Chief as the Cole was bombed, the embassies bombed, and even the first WTC bombing, which was carried out by the forerunners and kindred spirits to al Qaeda's Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, as well as President Bush, who came into office just months before the attacks and was still in the process of figuring out the extent of the threat and what to do about it.
The Clinton Administration clearly didn't understand the nature of the threat, and its ongoing response to terrorist activities was anything but a vigorous defense of US interests.
Now, we have Sen. Kerry issuing statements that only continue to show just how out of touch Congressional Democrats are to the threats facing the country - past, present and future, as Kerry is a major supporter of the Obama campaign and would be seen as a player in any such administration.
One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.
Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.
There has never been an official U.S. government assertion of Chinese involvement in the outage, but intelligence and other government officials contacted for this story did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role. One security analyst in the private sector with close ties to the intelligence community said that some senior intelligence officials believe that China played a role in the 2003 blackout that is still not fully understood.
I'm skeptical of the fact that such links were not explored fully, and if that evidence indeed linked Chinese hackers, especially those working for the Chinese government, to the blackout, that the US government would not have taken a position on the matter through various means at their discretion. Such acts could be construed as acts of war since they were an attack on vital infrastructure and affected the national economy and directly and indirectly harmed more than 50 million people.
At the same time, it could be understandable that the power companies wouldn't want to let it be known that their systems were hacked and vulnerable to manipulation in a way that could cause a cascading failure.
The report also claims that the blackout in Florida this year was the result of a Chinese PLA hacker.
This isn't the first time that security companies have warned of hack attacks against energy infrastructure.
Jihad is a concept thoroughly intertwined in the ideological and theological teachings of Islam. While some will argue that this is an inner struggle to improve one's self, many Islamists have taken jihad and use it as a basis for going to war against all those it considers nonbelievers. It was here before President George W. Bush, and it will be here long after. This is a concept of war - forcing the submission of nonbelievers and Muslims who do not adhere to the tenets of Islam as thoroughly as its proponents desire.
Yet, Sen. Barack Obama would like you to think that if we simply withdraw from Iraq and beat a hasty retreat from the Middle East and our allies, that all will be right in the world.
This, of course, is total nonsense and ignores what happens when one withdraws from the field of battle to a foe. The enemy will not only claim victory, but the spoils. That means turning over places like Iraq to al Qaeda and other jihadists to say nothing of the religious ideologues in Iran who seek nothing less than spreading their version of Islam at the sword (or a nuclear tipped missile if you happen to be Iran).
Obama's prepubescent view of the world is hopelessly naive and fails to understand the basics of the enemies that we face around the world. They aren't simply looking to reach accommodation with the US; their ultimate goal is to supplant the US and the West's concept of nation-states with their own theocracy - a caliphate that crosses borders.
The jihad isn't only ongoing in Iraq. Jihadi groups are active in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and elsewhere that large Islamist populations are present. They are also agitating for a larger say in Europe, where they are demanding to be more equal than other religious and social groups.
So, it's no wonder that few journalists are willing to even question Obama on Iraq, the nature of the enemy we face, and his worldview relating to combating jihad.
It's all the more troubling considering that Hamas seems to have a thing for Obama, as do many Palestinians. Obama has surrounded himself with Palestinian sympathizers and terrorist apologists, and even former President Carter has shilled for him, with Carter's former advisers giving Obama guidance. There's a reason that many consider Obama to be the second coming of Carter - because he's pushing the same failed policies, especially in dealing with the Middle East and countries like Iran.
Carter's failures to deal with the Iranians who held Americans hostage for 444 days is a major reason that the Iranian regime is looking forward to an Obama presidency - they see many of the same failings in Carter in Obama including a failure to vigorously defend American tactical and strategic interests in the region. Obama's incessant talk about the need to withdraw troops from Iraq only warms the black hearts in Tehran because they know it would be a matter of time before their Iranian thugs can take advantage of the situation in Iraq.
The Fire Department said it has pulled people out of the wreckage at 354 East 91st Street near First Avenue. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The top floor of a nearby high-rise apartment building was damaged. Firefighters and rescue workers were continuing to search through the wreckage.
The accident happened 2½ months after a crane collapsed, killing seven people about two miles south.
It's not known how or why this particular crane collapsed, but will continue monitoring the situation.
According to city records, the company building the Azure is the Leon D. DeMatteis Construction Corporation of Elmont, on Long Island. A call to the sales office of 1765 First Associates L.L.C., a subsidiary of DeMatteis, was not immediately returned.
Joe Quinn, 25, a member of a lathers union, had started work at 7 a.m. as part of a crew of about 25 workers on the roof of the building when the accident occurred. The turntable, which was attaching the crane to the tower, “came right off,” Mr. Quinn said in an interview “Boom. There was no weight on it. It boomed up, then just boom! There was no load on it. It wasn’t hooked up to anything. The disk came off where it attaches to the tower.”
After the crane fell, “I ran like hell,” Mr. Quinn said. He used ladders and stairs to get down from the roof.
Bolivar Quiroz, 56, a construction worker who was standing and 92nd Street and First Avenue, said it sounded “like a bomb was crashing.” “We were standing outside working, and we ran outside because we heard the noise,” he said. He and his colleagues looked toward where the crash occurred. “I saw, at the fourth or fifth floor, a support, but they’re supposed to have another support just above that and they didn’t. We looked and the crane was wavering back and forth.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a previously scheduled on-air interview on WOR-AM, said, “We’re not going to tolerate any rate of accidents any higher than it has to be.” He did not appear to have been fully briefed on the details of this morning’s accident.
UPDATE: The Post is reporting two dead in this latest crane collapse and another person is critically injured.
Live coverage is at MyFoxNY. The building under construction, known as Azure, has been subject to 26 violations by the Buildings Department. It's not clear how many of those violations are related to the crane that collapsed. Nearby residents had complained about the crane though.
There are multiple street closures through the area: 1st Ave between E 86th St and E 94th ST; 91st St is closed from York Ave to 2d Ave. Diversions for the M15, M31, and M86 buses. No subways are affected.
UPDATE: Some conflicting reports over the number killed, but at least one person is definitely dead as a result of this collapse - the crane operator. The crane was jumped over the weekend, and a DOB inspector was on hand to watch the process. Meanwhile, Curbed notes that for the DOB, their day got only a little worse. Curbed also notes that some of the DOB violations were directly related to the crane.
Mrs. Lawhawk had pointed this out - the DOB had only recently decided to lift some of its more rigorous inspections resulting from the March collapse - two days ago:
On Wednesday, the department issued a report saying its inspectors attended 51 crane jumps between March 25 and May 16. It described 49 of the jumps as successful and said its inspectors found serious safety violations at two others.
Kate Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the Buildings Department, said that in the context of the new regulations the spot inspections “will best direct the department’s crane inspectors toward cracking down on the bad actors that do not follow the rules.”
In the future, the department said, inspectors will “conduct random, unannounced site visits to verify that required safety precautions and requirements are followed.”
Revisions to the new regulations were announced on Wednesday. Modifications included a new section on training, requiring jumping crews to “have practical experience” with the type of crane on which they will be working. The new section also called for the crews to have “relevant training,” but it did not specify how many hours of training or what type.
It should be noted that the jump over the weekend was done with the inspector present.
It appears that the investigation will likely focus on the turntable bolts and welds in that area. The turntable is the portion of the crane that allows it to pivot around on its axis. The crane model is no longer in production and is only one of four being used in the city.
The Trump Marina Hotel and Casino is being sold for $316 million to the consortium that operates the Margaritaville concept.
A New York gambling company that specializes in financing and developing entertainment resorts is buying Atlantic City's Trump Marina Hotel Casino for $316 million, and will rename and rebrand it Margaritaville, Trump officials said this morning.
The new owner, Coastal Marina LLC, an affiliate of Coastal Development LLC, is buying the casino from Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., the casino company under Donald J. Trump, in what is shaping up to be Atlantic City's most challenging year, given new neighboring competition.
In acquiring Trump Marina, Coastal will be charged with trying to turn around the worst performer among Trump's three casinos, one that sits next to the formidable Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa and Harrah's Resort in the city's Marina district.
The 23-year-old casino has not been refurbished in two decades, and has consistently ranked the lowest revenue generator among Atlantic City's 11 casinos.
Last month, slots revenue at Trump Marina dropped 10.6 percent, and table game revenue was off by 37.2 percent, compared with the same month a year ago.
The Marina has been consistently at the bottom of the casinos, and it has been shabby for decades because of Trump's money woes. A fresh infusion of funds and rebranding will certainly invigorate the casino, as will the continued development in the Marina district.
The location is prime considering the luxury Borgata down the road, and a new $5 billion Mirage hotel and casino complex that will be built adjacent to the Trump location.
There had been speculation that Trump would try to sell all three of its casinos, but there hasn't been any takers, so they're selling it piece meal.
Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal.
And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.
Iran continues to try and subvert the Iraqi government and has its thugs and terrorists trying to kill Iraqis and Americans on a daily basis to this day. There are frequent reports of Iranians killed or captured trying to attack Iraqis or Americans. Iranian weaponry and equipment is responsible for killing Americans.
Yet Pelosi has the audacity to give credit to the Iranians for all the hard work done by the Iraqis and the US-led coalition in Iraq? Unbelievable. Just when you think that Pelosi's grasp on facts can't be any worse, she goes out and surprises.
Just what we need. Another self-serving book by a disgraced politician who is trying to cash in nonetheless.
In a live interview on NewsChannel 7 Tuesday night – Craig, 62 - told Dee Sarton that he is in the process of writing a book on energy - that will also talk about his time in Congress – and the events of the past year.
"There will be a bit of what's happened in the last year, and the way it evolved,” Craig said. “I think that's important for Idaho and those outside Idaho who are interested to know."
He hopes the book will be on store shelves in the next year.
Don't doubt for a moment that his publisher told him to be sure to include some juicy tidbits about his bathroom exploits.
Once again, Palestinian terrorists continue firing rockets at Israel, hoping to cause casualties. One such salvo was fired at Ashkelon, while another was fired into the Negev. There were also mortar attacks too.
So, with all that in mind, you've got Desmond Tutu running about complaining about Israeli actions that are designed to prevent Israelis from being killed by Palestinian terrorists. He's busy demanding investigations, while ignoring the rockets slamming into Israel even while he's visiting the region.
UN envoy Archbishop Desmond Tutu, concluding a fact-finding mission to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Thursday, condemned as a "massacre" the killing of 18 members of a Palestinian family by Israeli shelling in 2006.
At a news conference, Tutu said Israel's contention that a technical fault caused the shells to hit two homes in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, a border area where militants fire rockets at southern Israel, "fell short of accountability".
Tutu's moral equivalence is quite stunning. Let's just ignore the Palestinian terrorists who attack Israel from within civilian areas with the express intent of killing Israelis, and if they happen to be caught in Israeli counterbattery fire, they hope that Palestinian civilians get injured or killed so as to inflate their body counts and inflame the media and Palestinian passions against Israel. The terrorists are nihilists, and Tutu is a useful tool for them.
The US believes that the Syrians have at least three secret nuclear facilities that were to provide materials for use in the facility that the Israelis destroyed on September 6 of last year. They're pressing the UN to send inspectors to figure out exactly what the Syrians were up to.
At least three sites have been identified by U.S. officials and passed along to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is negotiating with Syria for permission to conduct inspections in the country, according to U.S. government officials and Western diplomats. U.S. officials want to know if the suspect sites may have been support facilities for the alleged Al Kibar reactor destroyed in an Israeli air raid Sept. 6, the sources said.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, which has been seeking access to the Al Kibar site since shortly after the bombing, has acknowledged receiving requests to expand the scope of its inspections, but provided no details.
U.S. government officials declined to describe the specific sites that have drawn interest, or to discuss how they were identified. However, the United States and other Western governments have long been interested in identifying possible locations for a facility in Syria that might have supplied nuclear fuel rods for a Syrian reactor. Although the Al Kibar site was described as nearly operational at the time of the Sept. 6 bombing, it had no clear source of the uranium fuel necessary for operation, according to U.S. intelligence officials and diplomats familiar with the site.
Syria, which has denied having a nuclear weapons program, has not yet responded to IAEA requests for a firm date for inspections.
U.S. intelligence officials contend that the Al Kibar facility was built with North Korean assistance, to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview that the intelligence community's insight into Syria's nuclear ambitions has deepened since the Israeli raid.
"Do not assume that Al Kibar exhausted our knowledge of Syrian efforts with regard to nuclear weapons," Hayden said. "I am very comfortable -- certainly with Al Kibar and what was there, and what the intent was. It was the highest confidence level. And nothing since the attack last September has changed our mind. In fact, events since the attack give us even greater confidence as to what it was."
The fact that the Syrians have largely remained silent over the Israeli September 6 raid suggests that the Syrians really don't want anyone knowing what was really going on, lest they spill the beans about the nature of their covert programs.
Governor David Paterson of New York has put out a call to his state agencies and departments to begin promulgating rules and regulations that accept and recognize gay marriages performed in California.
Gov. Paterson seems to be jumping the gun quite a bit here, given that the State Constitution authorizes the Legislature to act on such measures. This is not merely some minor issue, but is a fiscal one as extending benefits to gay partners/spouses is a cost to be borne by the state and its taxpayers.
Yet, the Legislature has no say in the matter?
I think Gov. Paterson may have just gotten himself into trouble.
Look, if New Yorkers want to extend benefits to gay partners/spouses, that's fine, but the Governor can't do so by fiat.
There is a legislative process that must be followed, and that has not been the case here.
Fair Lawn in the spring and summer is an ice cream truck owner's dream. With plenty of kids, pools, and parks, you'd think that there would be plenty of business to go around. Well, one driver was none too pleased when he saw a rival driver horning in on his turf.
So, he did what any idiot would do. He cut himself and invented a story that he was attacked by the other driver.
It was not clear Wednesday who regularly sells ice cream on Bellair Avenue, but Abdallah, 59, wanted to be the only person driving a truck in the neighborhood, police said.
So when he saw rival driver Abdulaziz Hammoud while he was delivering his Good Humor treats, he made up the story that he hoped would put his competition on ice.
At about 4:30 pm, Abdallah called police to report that Hammoud swerved his truck in front of Abdallah’s, forcing him to stop cold, police said. Hammoud, 48, jumped into Abdallah’s truck and slashed his arm seven times with a dull knife, Abdallah allegedly told police.
Bellair Avenue resident Rina Williams was just returning home from a jog with her dog when she saw the police cars, their lights flashing, sandwiching one of the trucks.
“I thought the police got him because of that annoying ‘helloooo!’” she said.
Williams heard another resident tell his wife, “Honey, the police stopped the ice cream truck!” but said she didn’t think any of her neighbors saw a fight.
Police noticed problems with Abdallah’s story when they brought him to the station, Serrao said.
Because of the angle, the cuts on Abdallah’s arm looked self-inflicted, and it seemed strange that Abdallah would have a slash in his shirt but no marks on the skin underneath, Serrao said.
Police also discovered that Abdallah, of Clifton, and his rival have crossed routes before, with flare-ups in Paterson and Glen Rock in recent weeks and a complaint filed four days ago in Fair Lawn, just a block away.
Abdallah is expected to be charged with filing a false police report.
Remember back to 2000 and the Democrats demand to count every vote? Well, the DNC seems to have dropped that concept down the memory hole, because doing so might result in an outcome they choose to refuse.
Frankly, I find this funny regardless of how it turns out. The DNC is deciding how to change the rules it set for itself, and will alienate a significant portion of its delegates and voters no matter how they decide.
They put themselves in this position by declaring that Florida and Michigan would lose all their delegates for moving their primaries ahead of February 5. The states had the audacity to decide that they're the ones who make the decision on when to hold primaries, not the political parties themselves.
Now, such decisions will help shape what happens going into the DNC Convention in Denver, and a partial seating would help Obama, since it may keep Clinton from claiming a majority of the popular vote.
Thanks Howard Dean for giving bloggers and pundits so much to write about. And pass the popcorn.
This is something like the third or fourth time in the past two weeks, including this past Friday afternoon as people were heading out of Manhattan for the Memorial Day weekend.
NJ Transit shares those tracks with Amtrak, and NJ Transit has already had to adjust its schedules across the board to accommodate 26 miles of concrete tie replacements because those ties were defective. Put another way, that effectively eliminate 25% of track capacity for that stretch. It also means that if there are problems with the remaining tracks, the delays get further magnified.
The Northeast Corridor is the most heavily traveled rail link in the US, and Amtrak and NJ Transit have done a poor job maintaining it. Service is nowhere near what it could or should be. Consider that Acela service was supposed to speed trains between New York City and Washington DC significantly faster than Metroliner service, and yet it hasn't lived up to its goals, because of poor implementation, engineering errors, and because significant mileage of track and the overhead wires cannot handle the higher speeds.
I'm a strong proponent of mass transit, but I have to wonder how many more billions will be thrown at Amtrak and wasted because they can't get the job done right the first time. It is well past time to consider privatizing the Northeast Corridor and enabling private enterprise to run rail lines between New York and DC. They certainly couldn't do any worse than Amtrak.
Jake Tapper at ABC chastises those bloggers and folks who make a big deal about Obama's comments yesterday that led to the Obama campaign releasing a correction about his grand uncle's participation in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.
Obama clearly misspoke/lied about what his uncle said and did, but instead of going after Obama and other journalists who gloss over this egregious gaffe, Tapper instead goes after bloggers saying that we're the ones who are off base.
How exactly does that work? Obama lied. Yet, Obama gets a pass when a simple spelling mistake by Dan Quayle gets repeated ad infinitum. President Bush gets ridiculed over his pronunciation of the word nuclear, and even Sen. Hillary Clinton rightfully gets slammed for claiming that she took sniper fire when visiting Tuzla. Yet, Tapper thinks that this is much ado over nothing?
Tapper claims that he's uncomfortable because the subject matter is the Holocaust and Obama was relating a fake but accurate story about his great uncle who happened to participate in the liberation of one of the Buchenwald subcamps, Orhdruf (Tapper, btw, gets that spelling wrong - he reports it as Orhdrud).
For me there's a tonal issue going on here with some of the Republicans pouncing on the issue and some of the blog coverage.
I suspect many members of the Jewish community wouldn't think this mistake that big a deal. Good for his great uncle for having helped liberate a concentration camp.
There's another argument, of course, that the best way to honor those killed in the Holocaust is to know their history, to know that Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians and was in Poland, and that Buchenwald was liberated by the U.S. and was in Germany, that Auschwitz was much larger than Buchenwald.
No matter where you stand, I guess I just don't particularly care to see Concentration Camp survivors on the same page as cartoon Pinnochios, as whoever does graphics for the Washington Post's great fact-checker Michael Dobbs has done HERE.
And do we really need the headline "Where In the World Is Auschwitz?" This isn't a joke.
The fact is that we need to know where such places like Auschwitz were located, and that our political leaders who claim to be worldly and knowledgeable about world events so that we do not repeat that gruesome history.
That's a double standard by any objective review.
Tapper goes on:
I am certainly part of the media world that pounces on politicians when they screw-up. As such, I'm often guilty as charged when it comes to not seeing the forest for the trees. In this instance, the forest is the deliberate extermination of 12 million people. And the sacrifices of the brave Americans who risked and gave their lives to save those people victimized by Nazi barbarism. Not to mention our fighting men and women through the generations who have had to deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a conversation about which prompted Obama to mention his great uncle.
No one questions the patriotism or the heavy lifting that this man did, but that doesn't mean that Obama gets a pass because of the subject matter was unrelated to the discussion at hand.
In the meantime, one has to wonder what motivated Obama to expound on his crazy great uncle's experience in the military. Note, he was clearly trying to link his military service to his going crazy and spending six months in the attic.
Has anyone actually confirmed that this incident actually occurred? If so, it is a tragic situation for his great-uncle, but Obama is clearly trying to use it for political gain and in doing so once again casts soldiers as victims and attempts to slander them for their honorable service.
So, why would Obama mistake Auschwitz for Buchenwald? Well, it could be because of scale - anywhere from 2.5 million to 4 million people were slaughtered at Auschwitz, while less than 100,000 were murdered by the Nazis at Buchenwald. Both were ghastly locations, but Auschwitz (and Auschwitz II aka Birkenau and Auschwitz III) are properly considered extermination camps for their intent and purpose wasn't merely to work people to death, but to kill them in massive and mind-boggling numbers in as efficient a manner as possible.
Buchenwald was a concentration camp, where the victims weren't just Jews, but many political prisoners.
Still, there has to be more to the story than what we've gotten from Obama thus far. And the media still isn't willing to ask those questions or dig deeper.
George Monbiot, the journalist and activist, is planning the action because he believes Mr Bolton is a "war criminal".
He said he was surprised that Mr Bolton would be allowed to "swim through the politest of polite soirees – which is of course Hay."
Mr Bolton, who was the American ambassador to the UN from August 2005 to January 2006, is due to talk at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival at 6.30pm on international relations.
Mr Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper, plans to detain him as he steps off stage at the end of his talk. He said he was prepared to jump on stage and perform the citizen's arrest there if necessary.
He claimed Mr Bolton was "instrumental in preparing and initiating the Iraq war by disseminating false claims through the State Department" while he was under-secretary of state for arms control.
The problem for Monbiot and all the rest who peddle in this nonsense is that at the time those claims were made about Iraq, the WMD, and stopping Saddam Hussein before he became an imminent threat, the entire world community was convinced that Saddam was pursuing WMD - both in his word and deed.
It is only after the invasion that it turns out that the WMD claims were overblown.
It is only after the invasion that the true scope of Saddam's brutality and human rights violations became known. 300,000 people killed during his rule for crossing Saddam's path. The same people who bray about the US failing to intervene in Darfur and Burma want to see President Bush and other Administration officials hauled up on war crimes charges on Iraq, even though they took down a regime that engaged in the same kind of ethnic cleansing and genocidal activities that they see in Burma and Darfur.
Morris Talansky, the US businessman who has admitted to giving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert roughly $150,000 over the years says that a good portion of that amount went to his electoral campaigns while the remainder went to Olmert's personal expenses. Of those personal expenses, "...at least $25,000 in cash meant for a vacation in Italy and almost $5,000 to cover Mr. Olmert’s bill at a Washington hotel because Mr. Olmert’s own credit card was “maxed out,” Mr. Talansky said."
"In the wake of the current situation and considering the challenges Israel faces, including Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, Iran, the captured soldiers and the peace process, the prime minister cannot simultaneously lead the government and conduct his personal affairs," Barak told a press conference in the Knesset.
"Out of consideration for the good of the country and the accepted norms, I believe the prime minister must detach himself from the day-to-day leadership of country," continued Barak.
Of course, Barak is not a disinterested party since he too could be in line to become the next Prime Minister of Israel. Barak has already served in that capacity, and was involved in the 2000 Camp David deal that Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat couldn't even dignify with a counterproposal and whose minions launched right into another intifada.
It should never have come to this as Olmert should have been thrown out of office following his disastrous handling of the Hizbullah war and his ongoing failures to deal with the Gaza rocket war.
UPDATE: Meryl Yourish notes that a countdown clock should be in order. Still, Olmert has managed to stay in power despite the Winograd report, the rocket war, and the ongoing corruption investigation. This guy is better coated in Teflon than even John Gotti.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Lipni thinks that she's going to have a shot at being Prime Minister, so she's busy putting forth statements like this.
All this comes as rockets and mortars continue slamming into Israel from Gaza. It's hilarious listening to the likes of Desmond Tutu complaining about Israel's defensive measures as the rockets and mortars keep slamming into Israeli homes, businesses, and farms. He's busy complaining that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal, ignoring the fact that Hamas has openly declared war on Israel and seeks its destruction, and that Gaza is being blockaded by not only Israel, but Egypt as well. No one wants anything to do with the Palestinians in Gaza because they intend nothing but death and misery on those around them.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus wants to debate global warming junk science proponent and former Vice President Al Gore. Gore is ducking him thus far. I can't imagine why.
Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.
"My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, and our prosperity," he said.
Gore a former US vice president who has become a leading international voice in the cause against global warming, was co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Gore's effort was highlighted by his Oscar winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth.
Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.
"Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said.
"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.
Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.
"It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda," he said.
Maybe it has something to do with the inconvenient science that suggests that man has little, if anything to do with global climate patterns. A fiery ball of gases at the center of our little corner of the galaxy has something to do with that - and it goes through various short and long term phases regardless of what man does.
Whatever the case, I hope Klaus continues to press Gore to engage in a debate on the facts. I'd be real interested to see what Gore comes up with since he's peddled a whole lot of alarmism without actually engaging in any substantive reduction to his own global emissions.
The statue is of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, the communist founder of the Soviet Union. Lenin stands outside the front door of Red Square, the hipper-than-thou, Russian-themed restaurant and bar in The Quarter, the highly capitalistic dining and retail section of Atlantic City's Tropicana Casino and Resort.
And Garrett has objected to the architect of one of history's brutal dictatorships being part of a restaurant's theme statement ever since Lenin's likeness went up early in 2005. Garrett has written letters to the editor. He has made calls to radio talk shows. And he has circulated public petitions demanding that Red Square tear that statue down - or at least move it inside the restaurant, away from where thousands of people walk by it every day.
He doesn't like the idea of Lenin getting a place of honor - or at least high visibility - anywhere in the United States. But it really bugs him that it happened in Atlantic City, just down the White Horse Pike from his Absecon home.
Lenin was the father of one of the most ruinous and murderous totalitarian dictatorships in modern history. Yet, the Trop has decided to give his statue prominence?
What gives? Well, communist chic perhaps. The same folks that profit off Che Guevara are the kind who push this kind of nonsense. The historically illiterate will simply wonder who the bald dude at the front is if they even bother to ponder such things as they go between the casino and the restaurant as they partake in that most capitalistic of activities - gambling.
Former assemblyman Mims Hackett Jr. pleaded guilty to one federal corruption charge Tuesday, hours after he resigned as mayor of Orange.
Hackett appeared in federal court in Newark Tuesday morning.
He had been charged with taking a $5,000 bribe to steer a city contract to an insurance broker.
The 66-year-old Hackett was among 12 people, including 11 public officials, arrested last fall on federal bribery charges.
The Democrat resigned from the Assembly days after his arrest. His mayoral term was set to expire on July 1.
He's going to likely spend 18-24 months in jail. Of the 12 people arrested, there have already been several plea deals and convictions. Still, it is the tip of the proverbial iceberg of corruption in New Jersey.
There's still far too much pay to play and politicians think of their positions as one on which to get fat off taxpayers rather than serving for the common good.
Sen. Barack Obama is a walking gaffe-maker. It seems every day he's making a verbal blunder or some other malaprop that would make even President G.W. Bush blush. That's right folks, Obama's even more prone to factual errors than the sitting President.
Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.”
Interesting. Did Obama's uncle serve in the Soviet Red Army?
Because that's who liberated Auschwitz, not the Americans, who never entered Polish territory since they stopped at Berlin at the close of the war in the European theater. The Auschwitz death camps were liberated January 27, 1945. The Allies were still bogged down in the Ardennes Forest as a result of the Nazi's last ditch attempt to cut the Allied lines.
The US, UK, and other Western allies didn't cross into Germany until much later - in March 1945 when they managed to capture the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen.
U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945, a few days after the Nazis began evacuating the camp. On the day of liberation, an underground prisoner resistance organization seized control of Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards. American forces liberated more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. They also liberated Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen.
Now, Obama could have been mistaken about which camp that his uncle helped liberate, but a factual error is still an error. We thank his uncle for his service, but Obama would be better served if he'd provide some facts to go along with all his gaffes.
It's also curious that CBS, which reported this incident, didn't notice the factual problem either. Are they also historically illiterate? Or, are they in the tank for Obama that they're willing to overlook all the unforced errors.
UPDATE: Is this a bigger problem for the CBS reporter than for Obama? Did Obama even mention an anecdote regarding Auschwitz in his speech?
Here's his speech from yesterday:
No mention of Auschwitz. Obama didn't talk about his uncle at all. So where did the reporter come up with that entire passage?
UPDATE: As for Obama's other recent gaffes, let it be known that he now has powers envisioned by the likes of M. Night Shymalan.
UPDATE: Hot Air notes my comments, and forwards along that the WaPo also notes the Auschwitz comments.
"In World War Two we didn't have the concept of post traumatic stress syndrome. People had to basically handle it on their own," he said. Referring to an uncle who had been one of the first U.S. troops into Auschwitz, the concentration camp, Obama said: "The story in the family is he came home and just went up in the attic."
The speech posted above was only about 10 minutes long, and Obama spoke for about an hour according to WaPo. In other words, this gaffe is owned by Obama - hook, line, and sinker.
This is without a doubt, proof that Obama is historically illiterate, geographically challenged, and what's perhaps even more troubling - the media isn't noting the problems the way that they would if a Republican made such gaffes.
UPDATE: Which uncle? Obama's mother is an only child, and his father was Kenyan, so it begs the question who exactly was doing what. And as history notes, the US military was still segregated during WWII, so the likelihood that a black unit would liberate the camps was quite remote.
UPDATE: Jim at Gateway Pundit notes that this isn't the first time that Obama has claimed that US troops liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka. It is, however, the first time he's attributed a relative to said liberation. And it once again calls into question Obama's fact checkers for letting a gaffe like that stand on Obama's website, and the media's ongoing failure to report on these errors in judgment.
UPDATE: Let's go to the videotape of Obama talking off the cuff after that earlier video. In it, he clearly states that his uncle was involved in going to Auschwitz - in its liberation.
No weasel words there. No qualifiers that he went at some later date as the first US troops. His uncle was a liberator of Auschwitz who then had a mental breakdown and spent time in his attic for six months.
WaPo claims quotes him as claiming his uncle was one of the first US troops to enter Auschwitz, with no claim of liberating it
"In World War Two we didn't have the concept of post traumatic stress syndrome. People had to basically handle it on their own," he said. Referring to an uncle who had been one of the first U.S. troops into Auschwitz, the concentration camp, Obama said: "The story in the family is he came home and just went up in the attic."
Someone is covering up? Because that's not what Obama actually said.
UPDATE: Well, we've finally gotten to the bottom of this mess, and Obama did indeed screw up. It wasn't his uncle, but rather his grand uncle (error 1). It wasn't Auschwitz, but rather one of the sub-camps of Buchenwald, Ohrdruf (error 2). And that Auschwitz wasn't even in an area where US troops operated since it was behind the Red Curtain in Soviet dominated Eastern Europe (error 3). Nice trifecta you got there for telling a family anecdote, which apparently goes back to 2002.
Will someone please run a fact checker on Obama's memoirs? How many other problems are there?
The Palestinians love to blame Israel for all their woes, but the sad reality is that their own leaders - the terrorists in Hamas and Fatah should shoulder the entire blame.
They regularly condone terrorist attacks against Israel regardless of the damage done to the Palestinian people. A massive suicide truck bomb that detonated at Erez Crossing last week also happened to sever two of the seven power trunk lines that provide electricity to much of Gaza. That means that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are without water or electricity. Israeli authorities are working to restore the power links, but have to take their security situation into account.
The death toll from Mexico's ongoing war against drug cartels and corruption continues rising, and the deaths are becoming higher profile figures, including police chiefs and other leading officials.
Top security officials who were once thought untouchable have been gunned down in Mexico City, four in the last month alone. Drug dealers killed another seven federal agents this year in retaliation for drug busts in border towns. Others have died in shootouts.
Drug traffickers have killed at least 170 local police officers as well, among them at least a score of municipal police commanders, since Mr. Calderón took office. Some were believed to have been corrupt officers who had sold out to drug gangs and were killed by rival gangsters, investigators say. Others were killed for doing their jobs.
The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure. The government has smashed the cartels, he says, forcing a war among the splinter groups. The killing of Commissioner Millán, he has said, was “a desperate act to weaken the federal police.”
“What it signifies is a strategy of some criminal organizations who seek to terrorize society and paralyze the government,” he said last week. “The question is, should we persevere and go forward or simply hide in our offices and duck our heads. No way is the Mexican government going to back down in such a fight.”
The violence between drug cartels that Mr. Calderón has sought to end has only worsened over the past year and a half. The death toll has jumped 47 percent to 1,378 this year, prosecutors say. All told, 4,125 people have been killed in drug violence since Mr. Calderón took office.
But the steady drumbeat of police killings has caused more shock here. On Wednesday, for instance, the second in command of the police in Morelos State and his driver were found dead in the trunk of a car. A placard on the bodies warned against joining the Sinaloa Cartel.
Several terrified local police chiefs have resigned, the most recent being Guillermo Prieto, the chief in Ciudad Juárez, who stepped down last week after his second in command was killed a few days earlier.
“It is not just happening in Ciudad Juárez,” Mayor José Reyes Ferriz, said at the funeral for the deputy commander, Juan Antonio Roman García. “It’s happening in Nuevo Laredo, in Tijuana, in this entire region. They are attacking top commanders to destabilize the police.”
One reason for the surge in violence is that Mr. Calderón and his public security minister, Genaro García Luna, have upset longstanding arrangements between the police and drug traffickers at every level of government, several experts on crime in Mexico said.
The official government of Mexico is trying to take down the drug cartels, and the Times instead thinks that the Mexican government is killing its police? The Calderon government wants accountability and wants to eliminate graft and corruption, which have been holding back development in Mexico for generations, and yet the idea of going after the drug cartels is an anathema to the Times, despite the carnage wrought on society worldwide as a result of drug trafficking.
This is yet another symptom of the warped worldview pervasive at the Times.
The UN is at the heart of yet another funding scheme that doesn't do anything near what it was intended to do? And that it happens to be a carbon trading scheme makes it all the richer:
Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.
Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.
The criticism centres on the UN's clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.
Credits from the project are being bought by European companies and governments who are unable to meet their carbon reduction targets.
The market for CDM credits is growing fast. At present it is worth nearly $20bn a year, but this is expected to grow to over $100bn within four years. More than 1,000 projects have so far been approved, and 2,000 more are making their way through the process.
A working paper from two senior Stanford University academics examined more than 3,000 projects applying for or already granted up to $10bn of credits from the UN's CDM funds over the next four years, and concluded that the majority should not be considered for assistance. "They would be built anyway," says David Victor, law professor at the Californian university. "It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts."
So, many of these projects would have gone ahead anyways, but the carbon trading scheme provides a rich alternative to recoup some of those expenses. Nice work if you can get it.
It's also a black hole of waste and graft, which will surely come out in coming years as users abuse these nonsensical programs.
A California Congresswoman, Rep. Laura Richardson, shows just how batty the political system is in this country.
She defaulted on not one, but three homes and saw one foreclosed. As is typical, she claims that there was miscommunications on the parts of others and takes no responsibility for her own situation:
U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson was in default this spring on three separate California houses, and lost one to foreclosure, according to a hard-hitting report in today's Daily Breeze.
The Daily Breeze's Gene Maddaus: "Rep. Laura Richardson, who lost her Sacramento home in a recent foreclosure auction, has also defaulted on properties in Long Beach and San Pedro, records show."
Richardson, a Democrat from Long Beach, has declined to answer detailed questions about her finances, but has blamed her financial woes in part on the distractions caused by her whirlwind political rise, which saw her climb from local politics in Long Beach to the state Legislature in Sacramento and then to Congress in the space of two years. She also has heavy debts from her campaign for Congress in a special election last year. But with a congressional income of nearly $170,000, it is not clear why she failed to make payments on all three properties, and faced potential foreclosure on all of them.
The newspaper reports Richardson had fallen behind by $12,400 on payments on a San Pedro home in March, and was threatened with foreclosure on that property, and had fallen behind by $19,900 on payments on a Long Beach property in March, though it appears she paid that balance off. She owed more than $570,000 on the Sacramento house when it went into foreclosure this spring.
More: Richardson "was able to bring her payments up to date on the Long Beach home relatively quickly, but the San Pedro property lingered in the foreclosure process for almost eight months, and still has a pending auction date. In her first interview since the news broke Tuesday that her Sacramento home had been foreclosed, Richardson blamed the foreclosure on a miscommunication by her lender. She offered no apologies for failing to make payments on three separate homes and expressed no regret for failing to pay nearly $9,000 in property taxes.
She says that the home foreclosure was improper, and claims that she used her own money to finance the campaign and fell behind on her house payments. Richardson also claims that she's renegotiated the loans and will repay the loans and delinquent property taxes but says that she received no preferential treatment because she was a Congresswoman.
Yet, she's entrusted by her constituents to know how to spend taxpayer money? She can't manage her own home(s) and basic lending contract issues - like timely repayment of loans, but she's responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars of spending during her term in office?
The mouth of the South, former President Jimmy Carter can't help himself. He has this overwhelming desire to open his mouth about most any subject, especially Israel.
He thinks it's important to reveal that he thinks Israel has about 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Doesn't he forget the reason that Israel needed to develop those weapons - the fact that every other country in the region sought its destruction on multiple occasions and all but two continue down that path today? Iran is currently engaged in a nuclear program that even the Saudis think is going to result in nuclear weapons, and they don't want to suffer those consequences either.
Why reveal that information? What is gained? Israel has always maintained an ambiguity about its nuclear program; it hasn't tested nuclear weapons, nor has it said that it has them. Experts have long believed that it had a small arsenal, ranging anywhere from the low end of about 80 weapons, up to 450.
He then goes on to call for the EU to break with the US and open economic relations with Gaza. Never mind that the aid goes right into the gaping maw of a terrorist group dedicated to nothing less than Israel's destruction, but he goes on to say that we should engage in negotiations with these terrorists directly.
Meanwhile, he thinks that the world community should force Hamas and Fatah to reconcile and form a unity government to wrest more concessions from Israel:
Carter said European countries should be "encouraging the formation of a unity government," including Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, which is the officially recognized ruling party of the Palestinian Authority.
"They should be encouraging Hamas to have a ceasefire in Gaza alone, as a first step," he told the invited guests.
"They should be encouraging Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement in prisoner exchange and, as a second step, Israel should agree to a ceasefire in the West Bank, which is Palestinian territory."
Hamas doesn't want a ceasefire in Gaza, and have repeatedly demonstrated that they have no interest in peace with Israel. They want war, and they've got one. This is precisely the situation they want. Hamas and Fatah engaged in a civil war over control in Gaza, and Fatah lost power there completely. If not for being propped up by the Israelis, the US and the West, Fatah would lose in the West Bank as well, even though Fatah is no less dedicated to Israel's destruction. Fatah has been sidetracked by corruption and graft and is willing to destroy Israel in the 1,000 papercuts strategy - negotiations that never lead anywhere because the Palestinians have never offered up a reasonable counterproposal while Israel is forced to make concession after concession.
This is the same former President Carter who met with Hamas on multiple occasions in a recent trip to the Middle East, whose fawning over Arafat at his grave marker, and whose repeated statements undermining both Israeli diplomatic efforts and those of the US shows that he has a singular interest in pursuing his own diplomatic positions despite the fact that he was a complete failure and thrown out of office by voters in the 1980 elections.
On a domestic note, Carter called for Hillary to get out of the race, and thinks that the superdelegates will press that point home in June. Never mind that Hillary continues to show that she's got serious popular support, and that Obama has serious demographics problems, to say nothing of the fact that Obama doesn't have the requisite number of delegates needed to win the nomination.
He also engaged in wishful thinking that President Bush would be put on trial for engaging in torture and war crimes should he leave the US. It's a position shared by the far left the world over. Never mind that the same groups that engage in such drivel want the US to act to stop the genocide in Darfur or engage in military operations to provide airdrops in Burma before the junta gave permission to the US and others to provide humanitarian aid. They simply have decided that Iraq was not to be successful because the US did engage and depose a brutal dictatorship whose military intentions in the region were clear even as his WMD claims turned out to be far less so.
The latest US unmanned probe to Mars has successfully landed and is now broadcasting the first imagery. They include photos of the craft and of its immediate surroundings.
Unlike the Spirit and Opportunity missions, which included mobile rovers that could explore the surrounding areas, the Phoenix is a stationary platform from which experiments will be conducted. It was originally conceived as part of the "faster, better, cheaper" approach to unmanned missions, but when several other Mars probes were lost, the Phoenix mission was scrubbed and rethought. Nearly 50% of missions to Mars have ended in failure.
The US has sent an unmanned probe to Mars, the Phoenix, which is supposed to be landing on Mars later this evening. MSNBC provides a live feed of discussion and coverage of the landing.
Chinese authorities are concerned by 69 dams in Sichuan that have been badly damaged, and also by numerous rivers that have been blocked by landslides. The Chinese military has been called in to blow up some of those landslides so that the rivers can resume their prior flow.
Nearly 70 dams scarred by the force of China's most powerful earthquake in three decades were in danger of bursting, rattled again Sunday by one of the strongest aftershocks since the initial disaster.
Meanwhile, soldiers carrying explosives hiked to a lake formed by a blocked river near the epicenter, hoping to blast through debris to alleviate the threat of floods.
The confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake rose to 62,664, with another 23,775 people missing, the Cabinet said. Premier Wen Jiabao has said the number of dead could surpass 80,000.
An aftershock Sunday afternoon caused office towers to sway in Beijing, 800 miles away. There was no immediate information on any new damage.
The magnitude 5.8 aftershock was among the most powerful recorded, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The China National Seismic Network, which uses a different measurement system, said the aftershock was the strongest of dozens since May 12.
The aftershock lasted about 20 seconds in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu. At one teahouse, customers scurried into an open courtyard. "It's scary, but we're getting used to it," said Mary Nong, a 46-year-old telephone company worker.
The Water Resources Ministry said in a statement Sunday that 69 dams in Sichuan were in danger of collapse. It did not give further details.
The government had earlier said the quake affected 391 dams, mostly small structures.
China's sorrow is far from over, as the death toll continues climbing.
Sen. Barack Obama isn't exactly a fan of capitalism and market forces, but he notes that the rising gas prices may be changing consumer preferences when buying and using cars. Have we detected a sign that Barack Obama recognizes that the market works?
Perhaps.
Let me spell it out clearly for the Obama camp if they haven't quite understood things.
The market - and we're talking the oil market - is affected by supply and demand worldwide. Under the current situation where demand outstrips supply, prices rise. Those rising prices appear to be causing a change in consumer habits by altering the kinds of vehicles sought, and may be leading to changed driving habits.
None of this is the result of the US government changing a single policy or forcing consumers to buy econoboxes through mandated corporate mileage requirements.
Obama, an Illinois senator and the front-runner for his party's presidential nomination, has made fighting climate change a key issue of his campaign, and as fuel prices soar, he has repeatedly called on car makers to increase fuel efficiency standards.
Without specifically telling Americans to stop buying gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, the Illinois senator said higher fuel prices would lead to a shift.
"We've seen that this quarter. People are changing their behavior and we've seen a slump in the sales of SUVs and big trucks and a drastic spike in cars both medium size and small," he told reporters on his campaign plane.
Obama put responsibility on car makers to make vehicles more fuel efficient.
"They've done a better job of investment than they have in the past. There's still more work to do, and the federal government should help them do it," he said.
Obama, who spends most of his time traveling around the country on a plane and in cars driven by his Secret Service agents, does have a car of his own that is environmentally friendly.
Those vehicles used during the campaign are usually large SUVs. I don't begrudge the guy for that - he's got an entourage and the large SUVs are safer than the smaller cars, to say nothing of the fact that they're likely armored for his protection.
However, for him to say that he doesn't drive it much these days is funny considering that he's spending much of his time on the road campaigning and being chauffeured by his team from one event to another.
Still, he continues to argue for the changed fuel economy regulations, even though the market is already moving in that direction without any government interference. Companies that make products that people want to buy will benefit. Those that are slow to respond, or those who are overly reliant on SUVs and trucks for sales, will find their sales hit hard (Chrysler, I'm talking about you).
