NASA Chief Under Fire For Personal Shuttle Use

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL-NASA officials became suspicious when the Discovery shuttle was found in a golf-course parking lot.

Shirts Off at Days Charity Benefit!

What a hunk! Here's Jett with Lynne posing for a pic at the recent Days Of Our Lives annual charity "Meet the Stars" dinner. No, the girls kept their tops on, but with minimal encouragement, Jett gave in to the ladies' wishes. Over $10,000 was raised, but with Jett huggin' that beauty, I'm sure money wasn't the only thing raised!

Made in China - This ought to scare you!

The New Chinese Take-Out

By Michael E. Telzrow

Published: 2007-08-20 05:00

Lucia Cruz, a 74-year-old Panamanian grandmother, and at least 365 of her countrymen died last year from ingesting tainted medicine. Somehow a deadly chemical had found its way into cough syrup produced in a government laboratory. What Panamanians thought was a harmless over-the-counter drug turned out to be an elixir of death.

Local doctors were mystified by Cruz’s initial symptoms. Unable to explain the rapid onset of acute kidney failure, they directed her to a public hospital. More disturbing was the fact that Cruz was not alone. Dozens of other Panamanians were exhibiting the same symptoms. Dr. Jorge Motta, director of the Gorgas Institute, a joint U.S.-Panamanian medical initiative conceived to combat avian flu, suspected an emerging infectious disease. “Was it West Nile or E. coli or some post-influenza disease? Could it run through the population?” thought Motta. Neither he nor others, like Dr. Cirilio Lawson, the general director of the Ministry of Health, knew what was sickening the population. They only knew that it was spreading quickly, and that it was deadly.

While Panamanian doctors and officials worked to discover the cause of the sudden syndrome, Cruz and dozens of others lay in agony as the supposed disease ravaged their internal organs. Wracked by nausea, vomiting, and high fever, Cruz watched as her limbs swelled to twice their normal size. Her painful journey came to an end just weeks after the onset of symptoms. Her doctors, fearful that she had succumbed to a deadly communicable disease, advised her family to cremate her body.

In the following months, government officials successfully identified the cause of the illness as diethylene glycol — a highly toxic organic solvent commonly found in anti-freeze and other industrial applications. Its source was contaminated cough medicine. By then over 300 Panamanians lay dead. Lucia Cruz was No. 17. Subsequent investigations revealed that the diethylene glycol found in the cough syrup had a Chinese origin and that it had been passed off to a Spanish company as 99.5 percent pure glycerin, a harmless sweetening ingredient found in drugs. It was subsequently sold to Panama’s Medicom SA, which passed it on to the government lab. Diethylene glycol also showed up in antihistamine tablets and skin ointments made in the same lab.

Tainted Track Record

It wasn’t the first time that Chinese diethylene glycol had caused death from ingestion. Ten years earlier, a series of pediatric deaths were reported in Haiti. More than 76 children, most under the age of five, succumbed to acute renal failure in much the same agonizing manner as the Panamanian victims. As in Panama, medical officials were initially stumped. Kidney failure is uncommon in children, even in Haiti, a country plagued by a high infant mortality rate. Matters were further complicated by Haiti’s substandard medical facilities. When Centers for Disease Control officials arrived from the United States to lend assistance, they found children suffering from respiratory failure, facial paralysis, and brain damage. They looked to infectious agents, but found none. At the end of a long and difficult global investigation, they discovered the source — diethylene glycol-contaminated medicine used to treat fevers in small children. In a cruel twist of fate, medicine designed to alleviate pain contributed to the deaths of more than 70 children in an excruciatingly painful manner.

As later occurred in Panama, Chinese manufacturers were the source of the poison. The modus operandi was also the same: bulk chemicals fraudulently identified as safe glycerin were sold to European companies, which then passed them on to drug manufacturers. In the Haitian case, investigators traced the shipment to Xingang, China, and the Chinese trading company Sinochem International. According to Dr. Suzanne White Junod, a historian with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, attempts to find the origin of the tainted glycerin were hampered by uncooperative Chinese officials. Her report of the Haitian incident, which appeared in the January/February 2000 issue of Public Health Reports, reveals that the glycerin was not even made in a pharmaceutical plant, but rather in a “fine chemical manufacturing plant.” According to Dr. Junod, unscrupulous European middlemen further obscured the origin of the shipment by photocopying their letterhead onto a copy of the Certificate of Analysis in order to “obliterate the identity of the supplier.” By the time investigators traced the glycerin to a Manchurian plant, the plant had been closed and the records destroyed.

Humans are not the only recent victims of contaminated Chinese food and drug imports. This spring American Food and Drug Administration investigators determined that Chinese producers had laced wheat gluten with melamine scrap in an attempt to boost the appearance of added protein value due to melamine’s nitrogen-rich content. This wheat gluten was added to over 60 million containers of pet food in the United States. The result has been an estimated 8,000 animal deaths, but an accurate count will not be known until the FDA finishes its investigation this fall.

Melamine, a kidney-destroying plasticizer when eaten, is normally used as an industrial coating or as a fertilizer. Its appearance in other Chinese export food products, such as corn gluten sent to South Africa, verifies that its use was intentional, not accidental as Chinese officials claim. Indeed, during an April visit to China, American food safety inspectors had little trouble finding Chinese workers who openly admitted that scrap melamine is routinely used to augment low-grade wheat, corn, and soybean products, particularly those made for animal consumption. According to an ABC News source, melamine-tainted products have been used in the United States as hog feed. Despite a subsequent Department of Agriculture directive to slaughter 6,000 suspect hogs, American consumers are now left wondering whether melamine has made its way into the human food supply.

Death Trade

Recent revelations of diethylene glycol and melamine poisoning highlight the dangers faced by unsuspecting consumers. As Americans are now discovering, the pet-food scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg. Since the discovery of the melamine-laced pet food earlier this year, a catalog list of tainted and counterfeit export products has emerged, providing irrefutable evidence of China’s deliberate attempt to dump dangerous products on the world market. From children’s toys to toothpaste, the list continues to grow.

Tainted and counterfeit toothpaste with a Chinese origin has been discovered in Canada, in Massachusetts, and in prison systems in the southern United States. A temporary halt to the import of Chinese toothpaste has failed to eliminate the threat, as Canadian and U.S. communities are discovering evidence of tainted toothpaste already in the market. Health authorities began to warn consumers in early July after tests conducted on counterfeit toothpaste sold under the Colgate brand name turned up evidence of harmful bacteria. Canadian authorities then urged consumers to avoid Chinese toothpaste after high levels of diethylene glycol were discovered. At the same time, Massachusetts authorities advised consumers to avoid toothpaste marked “Made in China,” and “Colgate” produced in South Africa, after toxic chemicals were discovered in the toothpaste sold in several communities. Despite an FDA warning posted in early June, contaminated products continue to surface, typically in independently owned grocery and convenience stores.

Tea leaves, the iconic Chinese export, can now be added to the list of suspect food products. William Hubbard, former deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told National Public Radio about one Chinese manufacturer’s practice of drying tea leaves by using truck exhausts. “To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out,” said Hubbard. “And the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves.” Hubbard noted that the FDA only inspects about one percent of all food and food ingredients coming into the country, and tests only about half of one percent.

As if contaminated food products were not enough of a concern, American consumers are now faced with the realization that Chinese-produced toys pose a health threat nearly as serious as contaminated or tainted food. In mid-June of this year, more than 1.5 million Thomas & Friends miniature wooden railway sets were recalled because of lead paint. Neither the Thomas & Friends manufacturer, RC2 Corporation of Chicago, nor the British license holder, HIT Entertainment, knew that the popular children’s toys contained lead paint.

Lead paint has the potential to damage developing nervous systems, and anxious parents now wonder how many other Chinese-made toys might contain the dangerous material. Preschool children, precisely the group that is most attracted to these types of toys, routinely put playthings in their mouths. A toy containing a lead base then becomes a vehicle for dispersing the harmful substance into a developing child. That type of exposure may eventually lead to reduced IQ, severe learning disabilities, kidney damage, and stunted growth, among other adverse effects.

In all, 24 types of toys recalled in the United States during the first half of 2007 were manufactured in China. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 60 percent of all toys recalled in the United States in 2007 were manufactured in China.

“OPEC of Vitamin C”

Most U.S. consumers are aware that Chinese products dominate the shelves of most retail stores, but few realize the dominance extends to vitamins and drugs. Fully 90 percent of all the vitamin C sold in America comes from the communist trade giant. This near-monopoly control of the vitamin-C market caused the Wall Street Journal to dub China the “OPEC of vitamin C,” and like the oil cartel it has been accused of price fixing. In 2001, China’s four largest producers met to form a consortium, and shortly thereafter began a series of price manipulations undercutting U.S. and European competitors. Volatile prices induced American companies, which were operating in a very different regulatory environment than that existing in Communist China, to file anti-trust suits. In the end the suits hardly mattered; the last U.S. vitamin-C plant closed in 2006.

China has since captured much of the world’s pharmaceutical market, producing 70 percent of the world’s penicillin, 50 percent of its aspirin, and most of its vitamins. There are already signs that Chinese-produced vitamins suffer from the same type of quality assurance problems affecting Chinese food and goods exports. Recently, the European Union discovered Enterobacter sakazakii, a lethal bacterium that causes meningitis in infants, in imported batches of vitamin A. In America, traces of arsenic, lead, and iron have shown up in discount products containing vitamin C.

Not surprisingly, Chinese authorities dismiss claims that they are not following international standards, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile millions of unsuspecting Americans consume both food and vitamins of a dubious nature without even realizing it.

As the level of Chinese imports continues to hit record highs, Americans will be potentially exposed to even greater risks. Even as it stands now, Gary Weaver, director of the Program on Agriculture and Animal Health Policy at the University of Maryland, estimates that the average American consumes approximately 260 pounds of imported food annually. Annual imports of agricultural products currently top $70 billion, twice the level of 1997. But unlike playthings or clothes, the Chinese origin of the food is typically not included on the labeling and American consumers are forced to play Russian roulette when they buy their groceries.

Behind the Problem

What is the underlying problem behind unsafe and hazardous food from China? Is the problem largely localized to a few local or regional officials in the vast country? Is China experiencing growing pains as it rapidly increases its market share over the food that we consume? If it’s bureaucratic ineptness, can that ineptness be corrected through more regulation and oversight from the central government in Beijing? Or is the Beijing regime itself the problem? Put simply: should we trust the communist giant to make and keep its food imports safe as it amasses more and more control over our food supplies on the way to monopoly control?

Of course, the Chinese regime blames a few corrupt officials, not the regime. Tan Jiangying, an official of China’s food and drug agency, parroted the official party line recently when he said: “The few corrupt officials of the State Food and Drug Administration are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems.” Mr. Tan is right in one sense. The scandals have revealed some serious problems. But the problems go much deeper than just a few corrupt officials.

The conventional wisdom, espoused by trade specialists and supported by the mainstream media, is that Chinese central government control over manufacturers is lax. According to David Fernyhough, of Hill and Associates, a risk-management firm providing services to corporations operating in Asia, “The further you get away from Beijing, the more opaque things get, and at a provincial and municipal level, the corruption, the influence of the people involved, quite often officials themselves,... it makes it a very, very difficult environment.” Ian Coxhead, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Why Files that China fits the typical pattern of an emerging economy: “China, like other fast growing economies, is undergoing a transition in which the opportunities created by markets are expanding much faster than the institutions that govern them, especially accountability in corporate and public sector behavior, and governmental capacity for design and implementation of regulations covering health, occupational safety, etc. Under these conditions, fraud and corporate irresponsibility are to be expected, and these traits are hardly unique to China, or even to low-income countries.”

Academics and experts may be willing to give China a free pass for its continued transgressions, but it is doubtful that Americans will react with such insouciance now that Chinese imports are nearing the $1 trillion mark.

The reputed lack of central government control to rein in corruption on the part of individual bureaucrats may be a contributing factor in the eyes of most experts, but to focus on that individual corruption is to miss the point. Lord Acton famously remarked, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The totalitarian communist regime that has ruled China with an iron fist for almost 60 years has had a major corrupting influence on those who wield power from top to bottom. But the power vested in the top officials puts them in a position to blame their underlings for the corruption, deflecting attention from the fact that the system itself is corrupt and will not be changed by replacing one corrupt official with another.

Despite China’s integration into the world economy, it remains a communist model of brute authority and moral ambiguity — one that, by the way, is openly hostile to the United States.

Chinese ethical transgressions are mainly designed to gain an unfair advantage over the West, and they show the disdain communist leaders have for people. Since instituting market reforms, China has manipulated currency (which forces them to keep the bulk of the populace at poverty wages), erected importation roadblocks (which lead to higher prices of Chinese goods for already poor people), and employed slave labor camps to reduce labor costs, the most recent example discovered in China’s northern Shanxi province that involved 576 involuntary workers.

Communist China is arguably one of the most brutal “post-Cold War” regimes. The central government persecutes Buddhists, Roman Catholics, and other religious groups, and Beijing imprisons an estimated eight million persons — many of them political dissidents. In a display of utter brutality, Chinese authorities openly engage in organ harvesting. According to the BBC, the British Transplantation Society maintains that the organs of executed prisoners are routinely harvested without consent. China’s brutal “one child” policy and its practice of forced abortions are well known and require little elaboration here. But it is part and parcel of the lack of respect for human life that seems to permeate Chinese political will, extending to their trade dealings with the West.

Questionable Policy

The extent of the problem with China and the cause of the problem and the low likelihood of change leads us to ask: “Why is our government sitting on its hands while we give a monopoly on production to China for items ranging from food to drugs to clothes — all to a country that is an avowed enemy of the United States?”

Despite our efforts to engage China, first starting with President Nixon, and carried on by successive administrations, the communist giant remains a military threat. The People’s Liberation Army has developed and published plans that include an attack on Taiwan. The PLA plan includes threatening the United States with nuclear war to sway public opinion before staging an attack on Taiwan. The plan includes strategies that seek to isolate the United States from its Pacific allies, leaving Japan and others defenseless in the face of Chinese aggression. According to Philippine authorities, the Chinese have begun to establish outposts on uninhabited islands near the island nation. Meanwhile, Los Angeles and Alaska remain in the sights of a highly advanced Chinese cruise and ballistic missile system. In a perversely ironic twist, it is American trade dollars that subsidize China’s military build up. Joint venture investments allow the Chinese to enter the U.S. bond market. There they borrow millions from U.S. mutual and pension funds and invest the cash in their armed forces.

The world sees that the Chinese are capable of monstrous acts of brutality such as forced abortions, organ harvesting, religious and political persecution, and deliberate food contamination. Likewise, their push for Pacific Rim hegemony and global trade domination is manifest. Given those realities, is it paranoia to question the prudential nature of allowing such a nation to gain control of much of our food and drug supply?

Country-of-origin Labeling

As already indicated, you cannot escape consuming contaminated Chinese products by avoiding those marked with “China” as the country of origin. This is despite the fact that five years ago President Bush signed into law the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, which included a provision establishing the requirement for country-of-origin labeling for beef, lamb, pork, seafood, perishable agricultural commodities, and peanuts. Republicans, prodded by retailers who claim the provision is burdensome, delayed implementation.

President Bush, supported by a Republican majority, effectively nullified the provision by delaying its implementation until September 2008. Political pressure in the wake of the recent scandals appears to have moved Congress to revisit the provision. Until it is revisited, however, there is simply no way of knowing whether your food item originates in China. Not long after the pet food scandal receded from the news cycle, Food and Drug Administration officials reported that rejections of Chinese food products reached 257 for the month of April. In contrast, Mexico and Canada had 140 and 23 respectively. Among the offending Chinese food items were salted bean curds, which were rejected for being “filthy,” and frozen channel catfish, which were infected with salmonella and laced with “a new animal drug” considered unsafe for consumption! The FDA refusal-actions list includes dried fruits, apple flavored jelly, olives, frozen seafood, and sardines.

The government’s reluctance to enforce labeling laws has encouraged savvy farmers and independent ranchers to take matters into their own hands and to market farm-direct products in the wake of the Chinese import scandals. By marketing directly off the farm, owners can eliminate the middle man, thereby reducing mark-up. While farm-direct sales have always existed, increased consumer awareness about Chinese food products has led to an increase in activity throughout the country, and many Americans are taking control of their food sources.

One U.S. health food company has taken the country-of-origin label concept a step further. Orem, Utah’s Food for Health International intends to label its products “China-Free.” President Frank Davis recently told Reuters that “It is a response to the (headlines) coming out, and we are taking a position that we are not the only ones reading them.”

A comprehensive country-of-origin law would greatly enhance the consumer’s ability to choose, and might even result in a voluntary boycott of Chinese goods, providing a boost to domestic producers. But country-of-origin labeling would not be a panacea. For starters, false labeling, a favorite trick of the Chinese, was discovered on boxes marked “tangerine candy,” and in a number of other instances. In May, U.S. officials warned Americans to beware of imported fish labeled as monkfish. It seems that the Chinese exporter mislabeled puffer fish, whose flesh contains deadly toxin, as the popular monkfish. The tail of the monkfish is especially prized for its delicate flavor, while ingesting puffer fish flesh can lead to serious illness or even death from tetrodotoxin poisoning. According to an FDA press release, a total of 282 22-pound boxes labeled as monkfish were distributed to wholesalers in Illinois, California, and Hawaii beginning in September 2006. These fish were then sold to restaurants or sold in stores.

Degrease the Skids

But even more important than requiring country-of-origin labeling, or labeling products “China-free,” is changing those U.S. government policies that have greased the skids for China’s rapidly increasing market share of what we buy from toys to food. Those policies include encouraging American corporate interests to do business with China and to establish operations there, and providing U.S. taxpayer-subsidized and -backed loans and loan guarantees through agencies such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the World Bank.

Meanwhile, operations that remain in the United States are compelled to comply not only with an unfavorable tax situation but with a massive regulatory system that squeezes profits and forces owners to pass the costs on to the consumer. The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently released a report entitled Ten Thousand Commandments 2007: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State. Its preparator, Clyde Wayne Crews, lays out a picture of a federal regulatory system that cost Americans $1.14 trillion last year!

America has traditionally been committed to maintaining a policy of competitive enterprise. In 1952, Harold R. Bruce, government professor at Dartmouth, wrote in American National Government: “This policy has its roots both in the democratic political tradition of equality of opportunity and in the belief that economic progress and efficiency are promoted by the spur of competition.” Unless America returns to its tradition of “equality of opportunity” by de-regulating the business environment and seeks to seriously address the trade imbalance, it will become increasingly dependent upon China at its own peril.

The stakes are high. The ease with which the Chinese are now able to flood our market with substandard and highly dangerous consumer and food products gives rise to the question — how hard would it be to use the current import system to introduce harmful elements into the food supply as an asymmetrical warfare technique? Given China’s record of brutality and military aggression, is there any reason to believe that China might not employ such measures in the future, particularly if its market share of our food supplies continues expanding? For Americans the possibility seems less fantastic with each new headline. Until the United States strengthens its ability to prevent the importation of dangerous goods, and significantly reverses the trade imbalance through a reduction in regulatory requirements and other measures, American consumers will be left to their own devices.

Michael Totten's "An Iraqi Interpreter's Story"

August 07, 2007

An Iraqi Interpreter’s Story

By Michael J. Totten

“Please, sir, can you help me? I must work with Americans, because my psychology is demolished by Saddam Hussein. Not just me. All Iraqis. Psychological demolition.” – Iraqi woman to New Yorker reporter George Packer.

“The Hammer,” Titan Company Badge # S-10296

Iraqis who are not American citizens and who work as interpreters for the American military cover their faces when they work outside the wire. Mahdi Army militiamen and Al Qaeda terrorists accuse of them of collaboration with the enemy. They and their families are targetted for destruction.

Here is the story of one such interpreter who works with the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad. He calls himself “Hammer.”

MJT: Why do you work with Americans?

Hammer: When I was 14 years old all I liked was American cars and American movies. America was my dream. It was a dream come true when the United States Army came to Iraq. It was a nightmare in 1991 when they left again.

Maybe someone will think I’m lying, that I’m just saying this. If my friends say something like Russian weapons are the best or German cars are the best I say, no, Americans are. Everyone who knows me knows this about me.

If anyone says Arabs will win against the U.S. they are wrong. The leaders don’t want to be like Saddam. But if the US leaves Iraq it will be a big failure, especially for me. I don’t want to see this. Never.

MJT: Do you like working with Americans?

Hammer: A lot. Especially when I go outside the wire. I feel like a stranger here. When I go back inside I’m home. I have no friends outside, only family. When I go home I stay in my house. I don’t go out on the streets.

MJT: Why don’t you have any friends?

Hammer: I don’t feel like I belong to this society. They think like each other, but they don’t think like me. I can’t continue with them.

I like to know something about everything, to learn as much as I can. In Iraq if you know too much they will laugh and call you a liar.

When I was 20 I liked American music. They don’t like it. (Laughs.)

I don’t like Saddam. I hate his family.

MJT: Why do you have to cover your face?

Hammer: To protect my family. My family lives in Iraq. If they go to the U.S. I won’t have to do it. But I don’t want anyone to know me, to follow me and see where I live and kill my wife and son.

MJT: How did you feel when the U.S. invaded Iraq?

Hammer: Happy. It was like I was living in a jail and somebody set me free. I don’t want Saddam ruling me. Never. I was just waiting and waiting for this moment.

MJT: What do you think about the possibility of Americans leaving?

Hammer: It is like bad dream. Very bad dream. A nightmare. Worse than that. Like sending me back to jail. Like they set me free for four years then sent me back to jail or gave me a death sentence.

MJT: Tell us about living under Saddam Hussein.

Hammer: It was crazy life, like feeling safe inside a jail. If they sent you to an actual jail nothing changed. They arrested everyone, literally everyone, for no reason and sent them to jail for two weeks just so they could see the jail.

I went there three times. The first time because I worked for a movie company. They sent all of us to jail. It had nothing to do with me.

I was given a three year sentence. My family has money, so I paid the judge 50,000 dollars. I gave it directly to the judge, plus four new tires for his car and a satellite TV. He gave me a three month sentence instead of a three year sentence. He scratched “3 years” off my sentence and wrote “3 months” in by hand.

They sent me to Abu Ghraib. I saw so many things. If you want me to talk about that I would need a whole newspaper.

MJT: Tell us a little about Abu Ghraib.

Hammer: On the bus to the jail I didn’t have handcuffs. I asked why. The guard said “Look behind you.”

The first guy behind me got a 600 year sentence.

The next guy got six hanging sentences.

The third guy was sentenced to be thrown blindfolded out of a second story window. Twice.

Another guy f*cked his mother and sisters three times. He was freed on Saddam’s birthday.

Another guy had his hand cut off.

There was this last guy. He went to the market with his wife. She waited in the car when he went to buy something. When he came back to the car his wife was screaming. Two guys were in the car with her. One held her arms and the other was raping her. He grabbed his AK-47 and chased them away. They ran to their car and he shot them. Their car blew up. They were mukhabarat [Saddam’s secret police]. He got a death sentence. On his second day in Abu Ghraib they killed him and sent the mother- and sister-f*cker free for the fourth time.

The guards who ran Abu Ghraib sold hallucinagenic drugs to prisoners for money. They forced me to take them.

You need protection in there. You find someone and give him drugs and cigarettes. You pay off the guards to just punch you in the face or move you to a different cell instead of kill you.

I was freed 26 days after I arrived, on Saddam’s birthday before I finished the three months.

I can’t live with this nightmare anymore.

MJT: What’s it like out there now for the average Iraqi?

Hammer: If you give average Iraqis electricity right now it will be enough. This is the most important thing. Give them power for seven days in a row and there will be no fights.

After the US came and Saddam fell they earned 3 dollars a month. Now they earn between 100 and 700 dollars a month.

Giving them electricity would reduce violence. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what would happen to this Army base if the power was cut off forever and the soldiers had to spend the rest of their lives in Iraq. Do think think these soldiers would still behave normally?

Iraqis are paid to set up IEDs. They do it so they can buy gas for their generator and cool off their house or leave the country. Their hands do this, not their minds.

TV is the most interesting thing to Iraqis. They learn everything from the TV. Right now they only have one hour of electricity every day. Do you know what they watch? Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera pushes them to fight. If they got TV the whole day they would watch many things. Their minds would be influenced by something other than terrorist propaganda.

Right now they have no electricity. They have no dreams. Nothing. And Saddam messed with their minds. For more than 30 years he poisoned their minds.

You can’t understand Iraq because you can’t get inside their mind. When you get inside their mind…it is a crazy mind.

MJT: Why is Iraq such a mess? Is it the Americans’ fault?

Hammer: No. You can’t blame it on the Americans. Iraqis are number one at fault for this mess. They are greedy and will do anything for money. They are like people who were in jail for 30 years, were suddenly set free, were given money, then had their money taken away. What will they do next? They will kill for money. They are selfish.

They got selfish from Saddam. Iraqi people used to be different. I am the same person I always was, but most Iraqi people are different now. They feel that no one will help them so they help themselves.

MJT: Is there a solution to the problem in this country?

Hammer: Nuke Iraq.

MJT: Be serious.

Hammer: I am serious. If you screen all Iraqis, 5 million of them would be good people. Clear them out, then kill everyone else. Syria and Iran would surrender. [Laughs.]

Right now they see 100 corpses every day in the streets. It’s not okay to kill the bad people who do that?

Ok, if you want a serious solution try this:

Charge money to the families of insurgents. Fine them huge amounts of money if anyone in their family is captured or killed and identified as an insurgent. Make them pay. You can put it into law. Within one week they won’t do anything wrong because they want money. Their familes will make them stop.

The militias pay them 100 dollars to set up IEDs. Fine them thousands of dollars if they are caught and their families will make them stop. Give them that law. Go ahead. Try it.

MJT: What will happen if the Americans leave next year?

Hammer: Rivers of blood everywhere. Syria and Iran will take pieces of Iraq. Anti-American governments will laugh. You will be a joke of a country that no one will take seriously.

I will kill myself if it happens. I am completely serious. The militias will hunt down and kill me and my family. I will beat them to it by killing myself.

I worked for the U.S. government for four years. Everyone who works as an interpreter for four years and gets a signature from a General or a Senator gets a Green Card. My hope is to get this somehow. I will do anything for this.

I am doing this for my son. Everything for my son. I don’t want my son living here getting into religion and militias and Al Qaeda. I want my son to be free, to have a girlfriend, to get married, and to be a good citizen.

MJT: How often do you get to see him?

Hammer: Two days a month. Sometimes two days every two months. I leave this base without my uniform and dress like them, wearing filthy jeans and a t-shirt, so they don’t know I work here. Then drive to my house and hug my wife and son.

MJT: What does he want to do when he grows up?

Hammer: He wants to be an American soldier. He has his chair in his room with an American flag on it. Has a toy M-4. He has a little uniform that I got at the P/X.

When he sees Saddam he curses Saddam. I never told him to do that. He does this himself. When he holds his toy gun he says he will kill the insurgents. He wants to go to Disneyland. His hero is Arnold Schwartznegger – not the Terminator, but Arnold Schwartznegger. He has all his movies.

Bill Gates is my hero. [Laughs.]

MJT: Do you ever get death threats?

Hammer: Seven times. Once I had to sell my car because of it. Some come from Shia militias, others from Al Qaeda. I had two IEDs in front of my car and was shot at with an RPG when I was working in Kirkuk for Bechtel at an oil plant.

MJT: Why is there peace in Kurdistan but not in this part of Iraq?

Hammer: The Kurds got rid of Saddam earlier. They fought against Saddam just like the Shia fought against Saddam, but the Kurds won their war and the Shia lost. In 1991 the Americans were heroes to the Kurds, but they disappointed the Shia and left them to Saddam. They were not reliable. So the next time, in 2003, some Shia thought they should get help from Iran. They know Iran is not going anywhere. Iran is a more reliable ally than the Americans.

The Shia never forgot being abandoned by the Americans. They talk about this all the time, still. They know the U.S. will leave Iraq and they will face Al Qaeda alone.

Shia people here are very simple, very easy. They are easy to control. They don’t need too many things. Just electricity, rights, a decent life, a good opportunity to get a job.

MJT: Would it be possible to flip the Shia supporters of Moqtada al Sadr into supporting Americans instead?

Hammer: Yeah, it’s easy. Just give them those things. You will push away all the reasons for this trouble. 16 percent of the Shia support Moqtada al Sadr. They have no education. They don’t know what to do. I know how these people think. Give them a good reason to join your side and they will do it.

MJT: What is the worst thing you have ever seen in this country.

Hammer: 60 guys from Al Qaeda kidnapped an interpreter’s sister. She had a baby boy, six months old. They raped her, all 60 guys. Then they cut her to pieces and threw her in the river. They left the six month baby boy to sleep in her blood.

We found him on a big farm south of Baghdad. All that was left was his legs and his shoes. The dogs ate him.

I don’t want this for my family.

These people are like animals who came from another planet.

MJT: What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in this country?

Hammer: In all my life? When I was seven years old I heard the sound of wild pigeons every morning. Then something happened and I never heard them again.

Then, on the morning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I heard the pigeons again.

Really, I am not joking. I can see you don’t believe me, but I am not faking it.

MJT: What is the most important thing about Iraq that the Americans don’t understand?

Hammer: Don’t just open the jail after 25 years. Let people out step by step. Iraqis need rehab. Give them instant direct freedom and they are going to go crazy. That’s what the U.S. did.

MJT: Will the Americans win this war?

Hammer: I hope it’s going to happen. But it’s not going to happen if the Americans keep doing what they are doing unless they are a lot more patient.

MJT: Anything you want to say that I didn’t ask you about?

Hammer: Because of the few bad Iraqis who work as interpreters for the U.S., no one trusts us. But if you give me a gun I will fight harder than the Americans. You can go home. I can’t. I have to live in this country. If the Americans don’t give a Green Card to me and my family, I have to stay in this prison.

At Camp Taji the First Cavalry Division thinks interpreters are the enemy. They decided that interpreters who aren’t American citizens have to take the American flag off their uniforms before they are allowed to enter the dining facility.

I cried that day.

I wasn’t supposed to, but I complained. I said It’s okay for me to die outside wearing the American flag, but I can’t eat wearing the American flag with Americans? That was the worst day of my life with the American Army.

I’ll tell you what I tell my family. If I die here, wrap me in the American flag when you bury me. I don’t want to be wrapped in the flag of Iraq.

PJ: Check out Totten's site here.

(Great story!  Copied here for archiving)

LUNCH AT DASCHLE’S DINER

(This has been around and I like this version - PJ)

Every day at a few minutes past noon ten men walk into Daschle’s Diner on the outskirts of Washington D.C. These are men of habit, a habit which dictates that they will all order the exact same meals every day, and every day the final tab will come to the exact same total.  The ten meals are priced at  $10 each, so the tab was $100.  One hundred dollars each and every day.

Does every man pay the price of his $10 meal as he leaves?  Not at Daschle’s Diner.  No sir!  At Daschle’s Diner the motto is “From each according to their ability, to each according to their hunger.”  So, each man was charged for his meal according to his ability to pay!

So, every day the ten diners would finish their lunch and line up in exactly the same order as they pass the cashier and leave.  The first four men would walk right past the cashier without paying a thing.  A free meal!

The fifth man in line would hand over $1 as he left.  At least he was paying something.

Diner number six would hand over $3 to the cashier.  Number seven would pay $7.

Diner number eight paid $12.  That was more than the value of his meal, but he, like those who followed him in line, had been very lucky in life and was, therefore, he was in a position to pay for his meal and for a part of someone else’s.

Diner number nine paid $18.

Then comes diner number 10.  He is the wealthiest of the ten diners.  He’s taken some real chances and has worked well into the night when the other diners were home drinking beer, and it has paid off.  When number 10 gets to the cashier he pays the balance of the bill.  He forks over $59.

One day an amazing thing happens.  It seems that Daschle has a partner in Daschle’s Diner.  The partner runs an upscale restaurant,  Lott's Luncheonette, located in a wealthier section of D.C.  Times have been good and the partnership has been raking in record profits, so the partner, who controls 51% of the partnership, orders a 20% reduction in the price of meals.

The next day the ten diners arrive on schedule.  They sit down and eat their same meals.  This time, though, the 20% price cut has gone into effect and the bill comes to $80.  Eight bucks per diner.

The diners line up at the cashier in the same order as before.  For the first four diners, no change.  They march out without paying a cent.  Free meal.

Diner number five and six lay claim to their portion of the $20 price cut right away. Five used to pay $1.  Today, though, he walks out with the first four and pays nothing. That’s one more diner on the “freeloader’s” list.

Diner number six cuts his share of the tab from $3 to $2.  Life is good.

Diner number seven?  His tab before the price cut was $7.  He now gets by with just $5.

Diner number eight lowers his payment from $12 to $9.  He moves ever-so-slightly into the freeloading category.

Next is diner number nine.  He’s still paying more than his share, but that’s OK, he’s been successful ("lucky") and can afford it.  He pays $12.

Now --- here comes diner number ten.  He, too, wants his share of the $20 price cut, so his share of the tab goes from $59 to $52.  He saves $7.00 per day!

Outside the restaurant there is unrest.  The first nine diners have convened on the street corner to discuss the events of the day.  Diner six spots diner ten with $7 in his hand.  “Not fair!” he screams. “I only got one dollar.  He’s got seven!”

Diner five, who now eats for free, is similarly outraged.  “I only got one dollar too!  This is wrong!”   Diner seven joins the rumblings; “Hey!  I only get two bucks back!  Why should he get seven?”

The unrest spreads.  Now the first four men - men who have been getting a free ride all along - join in.  They demand to know why they didn’t share in the savings from the $20 price cut!  Sure, they haven’t been paying for their meals anyway, but they do have other bills to pay and they felt that a share of the $20 savings should have gone to them.

Now we have a mob.  The laws of Democracy - mob rule - take over and they  turn on the tenth diner.  They grab him, tie him up, then take him to the top of a hill and threaten to lynch him.

Proprietor Daschle watches the goings-on, smiles, and offers to spare the tenth diner's life in return for the seven dollars, which he re-distributes among the first nine.

The next day nine men show up at Daschle’s Diner for their noon meal.

Daschle frowns, as he doesn't know how to charge for it.

Apparently diner ten has fled the country.

TANSTAAFL.

Spin

Drudge: BROWN PRAISES BUSH LEADERSHIP

Fox: Bush, Brown Best Buds

MSNBC: Bush, U.K.'s Brown seek rapport

CNN: Iraq to dominate Bush-Brown talks

ABC:  United Front: Bush, Brown Agree on Iraq

CBS: U.K.'s Brown Affirms Commitment To Iraq

USA Today: Bush, Brown tout common ground on efforts in Iraq

WSJ: British Prime Minister Brown told Bush he shares the U.S. view that there are "duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep" in Iraq.

WaPost:Brown, Bush, Reaffirm Shared Values

Boston Globe: Bush and Brown meet at Camp David

AP: Brown, Bush reaffirm shared values

Reuters: Brown, Bush meet - Brown underscored the UK's commitment to preserving a close bond with the U.S.

From Capt. Ed - on Things Are Getting Better in Iraq

They've Got To Admit, It's Getting Better

By Ed Morrissey on Iraq

Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the center-left Brookings Institution take to the pages of the solidly-left New York Times with an unusual mission. The pair have recently returned from Iraq to study the military effort by the US, and they have some bad news for the Gray Lady's readers. We really have turned the corner in Iraq:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

O'Hanlon and Brookings point out the differences that created the shift in fortunes. The chief change comes at the top. General David Petraeus has transformed the mission, the strategy, and the tactics, which has transformed morale and set the US on track to building the Iraqi nation from the bottom up, instead of the top down. The men and women on the ground understand and appreciate the difference, and they have responded with enthusiasm.

The Iraqi Army has also greatly improved. While a few units remain "useless", the authors found this to be the exception rather than the rule, as they observed before. It also has integrated to a far greater degree. During previous visits, the armed forces were almost exclusively Kurdish, but now represents the rough proportions of the Iraqi nation. They operate much more effectively, as do the Americans, who have learned how to interact with the local populace and to guide the Iraqi security forces.

They also note the effectiveness of the EPRTs, which came up in our conference call on Friday. Col. Stephen Twitty called them a "great asset", and these authors agree. When fully staffed, these reconstruction teams coordinate with local Iraqis to restart their community economies effectively. This will have to happen quickly in order to put Iraqis back to work and give them a real stake in success -- and the administration should ensure that the EPRTs remain fully staffed.

In fact, O'Hanlon and Pollack recommend that Congress stop talking about withdrawal. They conclude with a near-heresy: they recommend sustaining the current effort until 2008. Now that we have found a formula for success, have brought the Iraqis on board with our focus on their worst enemy, and have figured out the nation-building process, it would be a tragedy to throw all of this success away.

PM hails Bush's leadership

Let's see how US-MSM spins it this week!

Tee cosy ... Brown & Bush in Camp David golf buggy

From GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON
Political Editor, at Camp David
July 30, 2007

GORDON Brown last night praised George Bush for leading the global war on terror — saying the world owed America a huge debt.

The Prime Minister vowed to take Winston Churchill’s lead and make Britain’s ties with America even stronger.

Mr Brown stunned critics by THANKING President Bush for the fight against Islamic extremism, and insisted the UK-US relationship will be his No1 foreign policy priority.

He said on his first visit to the President’s US retreat at Camp David: “Winston Churchill spoke of the ‘joint inheritance’ of our two countries.”

The PM said that meant “a joint inheritance not just of shared history but shared values founded on a shared destiny”.

He added: “America has shown by the resilience and bravery of its people from September 11 that while buildings can be destroyed, values are indestructable.

“We acknowledge the debt the world owes to the US for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism.”

Mr Brown’s two-day summit is his most important diplomatic hurdle.

He must show the Americans he is every bit as trustworthy with the Special Relationship as Tony Blair.

Washington feared he would weaken ties over the Iraq War and rising anti-Americanism in the Labour Party and Europe.

The appointment of the anti-US Lord Malloch Brown as a Foreign Office minister has been a major headache.

But the PM stressed America and Britain will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder.

He said: “I have always been an Atlanticist and a great admirer of the American spirit of enterprise and national purpose and commitment to opportunity to all.

“And as Prime Minister I want to do more to strengthen even further our relationship with the US.”

Last night he and Mr Bush had dinner at Camp David. Today they will be joined by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

They will discuss the pullout of British troops from Iraq, though Mr Brown will stress he does not intend to speed it up.

Mr Bush will get the thumbs-up from Mr Brown for taking a tough line on Iran over its nuclear programme.

The pair will also take a fresh look at the Darfur crisis.

It All Depends On Whose Church Is Being Separated

He Only Saved a Billion People (1,000,000,000)

 

Alex Wong / Getty Images

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Norman who? Few news organizations covered last week's Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for Borlaug, which was presided over by President Bush and the leadership of the House and Senate. An elderly agronomist doesn't make news, even when he is widely credited with saving the lives of 1 billion human beings worldwide, more than one in seven people on the planet.

Borlaug's success in feeding the world testifies to the difference a single person can make. But the obscurity of a man of such surpassing accomplishment is a reminder of our culture's surpassing superficiality. Reading Walter Isaacson's terrific biography of Albert Einstein, I was struck by how famous Einstein was, long before his role in the atom bomb. Great scientists and humanitarians were once heroes and cover boys. No more. (Why is that?  Does it really trace back to the liberal educators who's agenda is only to to perpetuate their own?)

For Borlaug, still vital at 93, to win more notice, he would have to make his next trip to Africa in the company of Angelina Jolie.

The consequences of obscuring complex issues like agriculture are serious. Take the huge farm bill now nearing passage, a subject Borlaug knows a thing or two about. Because it seems boring and technical and unrelated to our busy urban lives, we aren't focused on how it relates directly to the environment, immigration, global poverty and the budget deficit, not to mention the highly subsidized high-fructose corn syrup we ingest every day. We can blame the mindless media for failing to keep us better informed about how $95 billion a year is hijacked by a few powerful corporate interests. But we can also blame ourselves. It's all there on the Internet (or in books like Daniel Imhoff's breezy "Food Fight"), if we decide to get interested. But will we? Sometimes it seems the more we've got at our fingertips, the less that sticks in our minds.

Born poor in Iowa and turned down at first by the University of Minnesota, Borlaug brought his fingertips and mind together in rural Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s to develop a hybrid called "dwarf wheat" that tripled grain production there. Then, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, he brought agronomists from around the world to northwest Mexico to learn his planting and soil conservation techniques. "They [academic and U.S. government critics] said I was nutty to think that it would work in different soil," Borlaug told me last week. The resulting "nuttiness" led to what was arguably the greatest humanitarian accomplishment of the 20th century, the so-called Green Revolution. By 1965 he was dodging artillery shells in the Indo-Pakistan War but still managed to increase Indian output sevenfold.

The experts who said peasants would never change their centuries-old ways were wrong. In the mid-1970s, Nobel in hand, Borlaug brought his approach to Communist China, where he arguably had his greatest success. In only a few years, his ideas—which go far beyond seed varieties—had spread around the world and disproved Malthusian doomsday scenarios like Paul Ehrlich's 1968 best seller "The Population Bomb." Now the Gates Foundation is helping extend his innovations to the one continent where famine remains a serious threat—Africa.

Borlaug, who launched the prestigious World Food Prize, has little patience for current agricultural policy in the developed world. "The claims for these subsidies today by the affluent nations are pretty silly," he says. So far, Congress isn't listening. The octopus-like farm bill does little to curb the ridiculous corporate welfare payments to a tiny number of wealthy (and often absentee) "farmers" who get more than $1 million a year each for subsidized commodities that make our children obese. (Did you ever wonder why junk food is cheaper than nutritious food? Because it's taxpayer-funded).

Borlaug scoffs at the mania for organic food, which he proves with calm logic is unsuited to fight global hunger. (Dung, for instance, is an inefficient source of nitrogen.) And while he encourages energy-conscious people to "use all the organic you can, especially on high-end crops like vegetables," he's convinced that paying more for organic is "a lot of nonsense." There's "no evidence the food is any different than that produced by chemical fertilizer."

In 1960 about 60 percent of the world's people experienced some hunger every year. By 2000 that number was 14 percent, a remarkable achievement. But as Borlaug cautioned at the ceremony in his honor, that still leaves 850 million hungry men, women and children. They are waiting for the Norman Borlaugs of the future to make their mark, even if they aren't likely to get famous for it.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

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I inserted some emphasis and comments. 

I'm actually surprised Newsweek printed this.

Hell Yes - I'm With Fred!

"Social" Security - (Bogus Post!!)

I should have read "SNOPES" before I posted this - Oh well!!!

Some is true, some is not quite.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/sschanges.asp

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program.  He promised:

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,
3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent "Trust Fund" rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income. 

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month -- and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to "put away" -- you may be interested in the following:
Q:  Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent "Trust Fund" and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?

A:  It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding? 

A: The Democratic Party.

Q:  Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities????

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking" deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US.

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

This is MY FAVORITE:
A:  That's right! Jimmy Carter! And the Democratic Party, of course! Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it! Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violating of the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is - uninformed citizens believe it! 

I Wish Leno Would Say This!

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Made in the USA: Spoiled brats

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Posted: November 20, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right? The same magazine that employs Michael (Qurans in the toilets at Gitmo) Isikoff. Here I promised myself this week I would be nice and I start off in this way. Oh what a mean man I am.

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3s of the citizenry just ain't happy and want a change.

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I starting thinking, ''What we are so unhappy about?''

Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all involved. Whether you are rich or poor they treat your wounds and even, if necessary, send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home, you may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of having a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes; an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of teenagers own cell phones and computers.

How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67 percent of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.

I know, I know. What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled brats safe from terrorist attacks? The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me?

Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an ''other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a ''dishonorable'' discharge after a few days in the brig.

So why then the flat out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans? Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells. Just ask why they are going to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book and do a TV special about how he didn't kill his wife but if he did … insane!

Stop buying the negative venom you are fed everyday by the media. Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad.

I close with one of my favorite quotes from B.C. Forbes in 1953:

''What have Americans to be thankful for? More than any other people on the earth, we enjoy complete religious freedom, political freedom, social freedom. Our liberties are sacredly safeguarded by the Constitution of the United States, 'the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.' Yes, we Americans of today have been bequeathed a noble heritage. Let us pray that we may hand it down unsullied to our children and theirs.''

I suggest this Thanksgiving we sit back and count our blessings for all we have. If we don't, what we have will be taken away. Then we will have to explain to future generations why we squandered such blessing and abundance. If we are not careful this generation will be known as the ''greediest and most ungrateful generation.'' A far cry from the proud Americans of the ''greatest generation'' who left us an untarnished legacy

Ben Stein's Last Column

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
=========================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end..
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad .
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

Ben Stein

Why Fred Thompson?

By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON -- Fred Thompson sat at the end of a long table in The Monocle restaurant on Capitol Hill Tuesday night for dinner with some 20 fellow conservatives, mostly journalists. He sent two signals. First, he sounded like a man who has decided to run for president. Second, his candidacy will be something different from other Republicans, in both substance and style.

This was one of the irregular sessions of the Saturday Evening Club, which is not a club and never meets on Saturday. The name was purloined from H.L. Mencken's Baltimore discussion club by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. Tyrrell arranges and presides over these events, always featuring a guest newsmaker -- usually a Republican presidential hopeful over the past two years. Former Sen. Thompson was the most intriguing of them because he has become a leading prospect for president even though he has not announced his candidacy and has no real campaign.

Thompson's performance Tuesday night, with his remarks off the record, helped show why many Republican insiders are ready to support him. Thompson is winning straw polls at Republican conferences and running well in polls mainly because of dissatisfaction, for varying reasons, with the three leading GOP candidates -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. But Thompson at the dinner table confirmed the widespread perception inside the party of his potential to be an extraordinary candidate.

Thompson disappointed in his first speech as a prospective candidate, addressing the Lincoln Club of Orange County, Calif., on May 4. Discarding a speech he had written himself, Thompson ad-libbed from handwritten notes, a performance that placed him in the usual run of Republican after-dinner speakers. This was not the second coming of Reagan that Californians envisioned. Was all the excitement about Thompson merely engendered by his television role as the formidable Manhattan district attorney on "Law and Order"?

He stuck to his prepared cards for his second speech, at a Republican state party function in Stamford, Conn., last week, and it was a considerable improvement. It sounded more like an off-the-record conversation he had with me in Orange County, Calif., before his speech there, and his Saturday Evening Club conversation.

The Connecticut Republicans, down to one seat in Congress after 2006 election losses, cheered when Thompson told them: "I think the biggest problem we have today is what I believe is the disconnect between Washington, D.C., and the people of the United States. People are looking around at the pork barrel spending and the petty politics, the backbiting. The fighting over all things, large or small, is creating a cynicism among our people." That cynicism, Thompson contends, mandates a different kind of campaign for 2008.

Thompson implied at Stamford that Republicans, along with Democrats, are responsible for making Americans cynical. While so far not spelling this out publicly, he deplores ethical abuses, profligate spending and incompetent management of the Iraq war. He becomes incandescent when considering abysmal CIA and Justice Department performance under the Bush administration. He is enraged by Justice's actions in decisions leading to Scooter Libby's prison sentence.

In his Senate voting record and his public utterances, Thompson is more conservative than Giuliani, McCain or Romney. He takes a hard line on the war against terror (referring in Connecticut to the danger of "suicidal maniacs" crossing open borders) and worries about immigration policy creating a permanent American underclass. His one deviation from the conservative line has been support for the McCain-Feingold campaign reform, much of which he now considers overtaken by current fundraising practices and perhaps irrelevant. Overall, his tone, in a soft Tennessee drawl, is less harsh than that of other Republican candidates -- a real-life version of the avuncular fictional D.A. he plays on TV.

Beyond ideology, Thompson envisions a 21st-century campaign, utilizing the Internet more and spending less money than his opponents. When speaking to a friendly audience or ruminating off the record, the 6-foot-7 actor-politician does not look or sound like the GOP's announced candidates for president. His challenge will be to convey that impression when he appears with opponents on the same stage in the immediate future.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

A Few Good Things - (source)

A Few Good Things

(Stolen from Chris Muir)

Today in Iraq:

1. 47 Countries have re-established embassies
2. 38 New schools have been completed
3. 268 New schools are under construction
4. 364 Schools are being renovated
5. 3,100 Schools have been renovated
6. 20 Universities are open
7. 40 Colleges are operating
8. 4 Research centers are also open
9. 3,500 New Iraqi police officers graduate every 8 weeks
10. 1,100 Building projects are underway
11. 96% of Iraqi children under age 5 have received polio vaccinations
12. 4,300,000 Iraqi children are in primary school right now
13. 2,000,000 New phone subscribers
14. 180 Newspapers
15. 75 Radio stations
16. 10 TV stations

Just thought it should be recorded...

Dear Mr. Ex President Clinton:

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore." So, I sat down and reflected on that, and I am sending my "Thank you" for what you have done, specifically:

1. Thank you for introducing us to Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broderick. Did I leave anyone out?
2. Thank you for teaching my 8 year old about oral sex. I had really planned to wait until he was a little older to discuss it with him, but now he knows more about it than I did as a senior in college.
3. Thank you for showing us that sexual harassment in the work place (especially the White House) and on the job is OK, and all you have to know is what the meaning of "it" is. It really is great to know that certain sexual acts are not sex, and one person may have sex while the other one does NOT have sex.
4. Thank you for reintroducing the concept of impeachment to a new generation and demonstrating that the ridiculous plot of the movie "Wag the Dog" could be plausible after all.
5. Thanks for making Jimmy Carter look competent, Gerald Ford look graceful, Richard Nixon look honest, Lyndon Johnson look truthful, and John Kennedy look moral.
6. Thank you for the 73 House and Senate witnesses who have pled the 5th Amendment and 17 witnesses who have fled the country to avoid testifying about Democratic campaign fund raising.
7. Thank you, for the 19 charges, 8 convictions, and 4 imprisonment's from the Whitewater "mess" and the 55 criminal charges and 32 criminal convictions (so far) in the other "Clinton" scandals.
8. Thanks also for reducing our military by half, "gutting" much of our foreign policy, and flying all over the world on "vacations" carefully disguised as necessary trips.
9. Thank you, also, for "finding" millions of dollars (I really didn't need it in the first place, and I can't think of a more deserving group of recipients for my hard-earned tax dollars) for all of your globe-trotting. I understand you, the family and your cronies have logged in more time aboard Air Force One than any other administration.
10. Now that you've left the White House, thanks for the 140 pardons of convicted felons and indicted felons-in-exile. We will love to have them rejoin society. (Not to mention the scores you pardoned while Governor of Arkansas)
11. Thanks also for removing the White House silverware. I'm sure that Laura Bush didn't like the pattern anyway. Also, enjoy the housewarming gifts you've received from your "friends."
12. Thanks to you and your staff in the West Wing of the White House for vandalizing and destroying government property on the way out. I also appreciate removing all of that excess weight (China, silverware, linen, towels, ash trays, soap, pens, magnetic compass, flight manuals, etc.) out of Air Force 1. The weight savings means burning less fuel, thus less tax dollars spent on jet fuel. Thank you!
13. And finally, please ensure that Hillary enjoys the $8 million dollar advance for her "tell-all" book and you, Bill, the $10 million advance for your memoirs. Who says crime doesn't pay!
14. The last and most important point - thank you for forcing Israel to let Mohammed Atta go free. Terrorist pilot Mohammed Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners". However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands. The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released. Thus Mohammed Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center. This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified. It was censored in the US from all later reports.

Why shouldn't Americans know the real truth?

 

What a guy!!

SINCERELY,
A US Citizen

 

PS.
Please pass along a special thank you to Al Gore for "inventing" the Internet, without which I would not be able to send this wonderful, factual e-mail.

AND THE REST OF THE STORY Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a New York State Senator, now comes under the "Congressional Retirement and Staffing Plan," which means that even if she never gets reelected, she STILL receives her Congressional salary until she dies. (Would it not be nice if all Americans were pension eligible after only 4 years?)

If Bill outlives her, he then inherits HER salary until HE dies. He is already getting his Presidential salary until he dies. If Hillary outlives Bill, she also gets HIS salary until she dies. Guess who pays for that?

WE DO!

It's common knowledge that in order for her to establish NY residency, they purchased a million dollar-plus house in upscale Chappaqua, New York. Makes sense. They are entitled to Secret Service protection for life. Still makes sense.

 

Here is where it becomes interesting. Their mortgage payments hover at around $10,000 per month. BUT, an extra residence HAD to be built within the acreage to house the Secret Service agents.

The Clintons charge the Federal government $10,000 monthly rent for the use of that extra residence, which is just about equal to their mortgage payment. This means that we, the taxpayers, are paying the Clinton's salary, mortgage, transportation, safety and security, as well as the salaries for their 12 man staff -- and, this is all perfectly legal!

 

When she runs for President, will you vote for her?

The Imus Lynch Party

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Posted: April 13, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

In the end, it was not about Imus. It was about us.

Are we really a better country because, after he was publicly whipped for 10 days as the worst kind of racist, with whom no decent person could associate, he was thrown off the air?

Cards on the table.

This writer works for MSNBC, has been on the Imus show scores of times, watches Imus every morning, and likes the show, the music and the guys: the I-Man, Bernie, Charles and Tom Bowman.

And Imus is among the best interviewers in our business. Not only does he read and follow the news closely, he listens and probes as well as any interviewer in America. Because he is a comic, people mistake how good a questioner he is.

Is "Imus in the Morning" outrageous? Over the top at times? Are things said every week, if not every day, where you say, "He's going too far"? Yeah. But outrageousness is part of the show, whether the skits are of "Teddy Kennedy," "Reverend Falwell," "Mayor Nagin" or "The Cardinal."

And when Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team "tattooed ... nappy-headed hos," he went over the top. The women deserved an apology. There was no cause, no call to use those terms. As Ann Coulter said, they were not fair game.

But Imus did apologize, again and again and again.

And lest we forget, these are athletes in their prime, the same age as young women in Iraq. They are not 5-year-old girls, and they are capable of brushing off an ignorant comment by a talk-show host who does not know them, or anything about them.

Who, after all, believed the slur was true? No one.

Compare, if you will, what was done to them – a single nasty insult – to the savage slanders for weeks on end of the Duke lacrosse team and the three players accused by a lying stripper of having gang-raped her at a frat party.

Duke faculty and talking heads took that occasion to vent their venom toward all white "jocks" on college campuses. Where are the demands for apologies from the talk-show hosts, guests, Duke faculty members and smear artists, all of whom bought into the lies about those Duke kids – because the lies comported with their hateful view of America?

And hate is what this is all about.

While the remarks of Imus and Bernie about the Rutgers women were indefensible, they were more unthinking and stupid than vicious and malicious. But malice is the right word to describe the howls for their show to be canceled and them to be driven from the airwaves – by phonies who endlessly prattle about the First Amendment.

The hypocrisy here was too thick to cut with a chainsaw.

What was the term the I-Man used? It was "hos," slang for whores, a term employed ad infinitum et ad nauseam by rap and hip-hop "artists." It is a term out of the African-American community. Yet, if any of a hundred rap singers has lost his contract or been driven from the airwaves for using it, maybe someone can tell me about it.

If the word "hos" is a filthy insult to decent black women, and it is, why are hip-hop artists and rap singers who use it incessantly not pariahs in the black community? Why would black politicians hobnob with them? Why are there no boycotts of the advertisers of the radio stations that play their degrading music?

Answer: The issue here is not the word Imus used. The issue is who Imus is – a white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity.

Whatever Imus' sins, no one deserves to have Al Sharpton – hero of the Tawana Brawley hoax, resolute defender of the fake rape charge against half a dozen innocent guys, which ruined lives – sit in moral judgment upon them.

"It is our feeling that this is only the beginning. We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves," says Sharpton. It says something about America that someone with Al's track record can claim the role of national censor.

Who is next? And why do we take it?

I did a bad thing, but I am not a bad person, says Imus. Indeed, whoever used his microphone to do more good for more people – be they the cancer kids of Imus Ranch, the families of Iraq war dead now more justly compensated because of the I-Man or the cause of a cure for autism?

"We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality," said Lord Macaulay. Unfortunately, Macaulay never saw the likes of the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson.

Imus threw himself on the mercy of the court of elite opinion – and that court, pandering to the mob, lynched him. Yet, for all his sins, he was a better man than the lot of them rejoicing at the foot of the cottonwood tree.

What Your High School Answering Machine Should Have

They implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework. The school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes. This was voted unanimously by the office staff as the actual answering machine message for the school:

"Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting the right staff member, please listen to all your options before making a selection:

• To lie about why your child is absent, press 1
• To make excuses for why your child did not do his work, press 2
• To complain about what we do, press 3
• To swear at staff members, press 4
• To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you, press 5
• If you want us to raise your child, press 6
• If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone, press 7
• To request another teacher for the third time this year, press 8
• To complain about bus transportation, press 9
• To complain about school lunches, press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework, and that it's not the teachers' fault for your children's lack of effort ... hang up and have a nice day!"

Another Bush Moment You Won't See In The MSM

By Dave Hinz - Publisher
04/02/07

I would like to thank the Anchoress for pointing out this photo from the Daily Mail of President Bush aiding Robert Byrd to his seat at the ceremony for the awarding of a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served our country so nobly during WWII.

George W Bush is the President of the United States, not an usher. Robert Byrd is a former Ku Klux Klan member-turned elder statesman of the US Senate, a Democrat who has said that the President lied about the reasons for invading Iraq. “Eventually, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.”

So why then did this President take the time and trouble to take the hand of his political enemy, a man who has said, “We have heard a lot about revisionist history from the White House of late in answer to those who question whether there was a real threat from Iraq. But, it is the President who appears to me to be intent on revising history.”

Why would this President show such deference and respect to a man who has suggested that he, the President, has been guilty of impeachable offenses?

 

The answer is as simple as the humility of this President. He took the hand of Robert Byrd, to help him into his seat, because Byrd is approaching 90 years of age, and this President is respectful of his elders. He took his hand because he needed help, and this President is not the type of person to turn his back on a fellow human being in need. He took his hand as an act of friendship, because this President does not take his politics personally. He understands that his political enemies are not his personal enemies.

As we have chronicled before, this President is a true man of compassion, not a phony politician. Both the President and Senator Byrd have secret service people who could have aided the Senator. There is staff at such a ceremony that could have done the same thing.

 

Other Presidents would have let them. But President George W Bush is not just any President. He came to Washington as a "Compassionate Conservative." He was ridiculed for that phrase. The bipartisanship he envisioned has never emerged from a city divided along ideological lines for decades.

But this President will not himself change, simply because the establishment refuses to meet him halfway. He will continue in his way, to promote a "new tone" in Washington. His political enemies will continue to ridicule him. Meanwhile the MSM will, for the most part, ignore this photo, and more importantly, the compassion of the man that the photo implies. He will be vilified as a liar who took this nation into an unnecessary war, for the profit of his friends. Today's MSM might ignore the humanity of this man, but history will be kind to President George W Bush.