Military Credentials

Things like this always irritate me. There is no requirement for military service to be president and such criticism from fools like Clark should be turned back on themselves for application to their supported candidate. Note that Barry's credentials can't even stand near this type of criticism without looking completely pathetic.

The retired general Wesley Clark said McCain had not "held executive responsibility" and had not commanded troops in wartime.

McCain's experience in Vietnam, where he was a prisoner of war for five years, has seemed at times almost to grant him invulnerability to criticism of his security background. But on Sunday he was assailed by a fellow military man, a highly decorated one who was once the NATO supreme commander.

McCain frequently points out that he led "the largest squadron in the U.S. Navy," but Clark said on CBS television that that was not enough to support a claim to the presidency.

Clark might want to note that McCain has received the majority of the votes from his party to run for president, which is far more than Clark ever did in his lame ass run. Oh, and how much command experience does Barack "present" Obama have? NONE maybe?

I don't follow the McCain campaign counter that Barry doesn't follow his described "new" politician description. That's a true statement, but a different argument.

The usual lame Liberal arguments. Don't like that he has credentials? Well, just assure the public that they aren't really any good anyway.

Whining on FISA

Let the Whining begin!

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," Rep Trent Franks (R-AZ) intoned on the floor of the House of Representatives, purporting to invoke the authority of Thomas Jefferson on behalf of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which passed the House by a 293–129 vote yesterday.

If we wanted to pick nits, we could note that this is a misquotation, that Jefferson didn't write it, and that the "eternal vigilance" alluded to in that hoary aphorism is most assuredly not the government's unfettered power to eavesdrop on Americans' international communications without a warrant. But forget it, he's rolling. Why spoil such a rare bipartisan lovefest with quibbling over details?

Floor debate on the measure, which expands executive branch surveillance authority and provides retroactive amnesty for telecoms implicated in warrantless NSA wiretapping, consisted largely of mutual congratulation. Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) lauded the bill as a shining example of "what we can do when we come together," a sentiment echoed by Rep James Langevin (D-RI), who said that the compromise "illustrates what this House can do when it deliberates with care, holds steady against fearmongering, and acts in the best interests of the country and its citizens."

Hmm. I guess I'd say that if he doesn't want to pick nits he may wish to get his facts straight. First there isn't any expansion of power to the executive branch. He may wish to note that the power merely carries over from the last FISA legislation. And I still haven't heard any logical explanation for allowing the telecoms to be punished for good faith actions when required by the government.

You'd think this was a libertarian tirade, except its not. It's just poorly thought out whining.

Read it yourself. Then go out and get facts from someone that has a clue.

Nuclear Proliferation

Just to show how much damage a single person can do, here's a report on nuclear proliferation to the really bad guys.

The Bush administration and Western governments are voicing renewed fears that advanced nuclear-weapon designs may have been provided to Iran and North Korea through the smuggling network run by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

These fears have been stoked by evidence obtained by Swiss authorities who are prosecuting three European members of Mr. Khan's network in Bern, Western diplomats said.

Swiss President Pascal Couchepin announced last month that his government had destroyed computer files and other data seized from these men because they posed a national-security risk. The Swiss leader noted that the files contained "detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile-delivery systems."

In 2003, the U.S. and allied governments broke up Mr. Khan's smuggling network, which had delivered centrifuge equipment for uranium-enrichment work to Tehran and Pyongyang and Chinese-based nuclear-weapons designs to Libya.

And this note on how the Pakistani government will now deal with Kahn.

U.S. counterproliferation officials said the intelligence highlighted why additional efforts needed to be made to interview Mr. Khan in Islamabad to get a greater understanding of his network's activities. Mr. Khan is under house arrest, but Pakistan's newly elected civilian government has suggested that the scientist could be released.

"We don't know for certain if Khan gave the designs to Iran or North Korea," said a U.S. counterproliferation official who worked extensively on the Libya case. "But why would you give them to the Libyans and not the North Koreans?"

Brilliant. Next they'll be giving him his computers back and sending him on trips to Iran.

Well, maybe he and Barry will have time to get together with the Ayatollahs next year.

Moron of the Year

I'm nominating Dennis Kucinich for again proving that someone standing in wings hasn't a clue as to what the audience is doing.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential candidate from Ohio, introduced a resolution to impeach President Bush into the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Kucinich announced his intention to seek Bush's impeachment Monday night, when he read the lengthy document into the record.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she would not support a resolution calling for Bush's impeachment, saying such a move was unlikely to succeed and would be divisive.

Most of the congressman's resolution deals with the Iraq war, contending that the president manufactured a false case for the war, violated U.S. and international law to invade Iraq, failed to provide troops with proper equipment and falsified casualty reports for political purposes.

Yes, the Iraq war, APPROVED by the senate was illegal. Sorry, if they weren't smart enough to do their due diligence and verify Bush's claims on the case for removing Sadam, then that doesn't make it illegal. And frankly, international law is irrelevant.

Pelosi is correct of the divisiveness of such a resolution. It was proven with force during the Clinton impeachment and that had more grounds in fact even if the reasoning wasn't very good. No doubt we'll be hearing cheers from the left wing losers on this one. No doubt this will churn up lots of Republican support in time for the elections should they decide to actually move ahead. Good plan Dennis Dipshit.

Kucinich also charges that Bush has illegally detained without charge both U.S. citizens and "foreign captives" and violated numerous U.S. laws through the use of "signing statements" declaring his intention to do so.

Other articles address global warming, voting rights, Medicare, the response to Hurricane Katrina and failure to comply with congressional subpoenas.

That list really should make you wonder. What didn't the president cause to go wrong? As for the signing statements, I don't like that they are used, but he isn't the first to use them and the legality of them is not in question. They just aren't the most honest method of dealing with legislation that doesn't pass the sniff test.

I hope Ohio is happy with this jackass. No doubt he's a star from their state.

Cap and Tax

Here's a wonderful new tax. It's also nice to see that it's being hidden as a market control mechanism.

An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system to ration carbon emissions. The plan is co-authored (with John Warner) by Joe Lieberman, an ardent supporter of John McCain, who supports Lieberman's legislation and recently spoke about "the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring."

Speaking of endless troubles, "cap-and-trade" comes cloaked in reassuring rhetoric about the government merely creating a market, but government actually would create a scarcity so government could sell what it has made scarce. The Wall Street Journal underestimates cap-and-trade's perniciousness when it says the scheme would create a new right ("allowances") to produce carbon dioxide and would put a price on the right. Actually, because freedom is the silence of the law, that right has always existed in the absence of prohibitions. With cap-and-trade, government would create a right for itself -- an extraordinarily lucrative right to ration Americans' exercise of their traditional rights.

Well, McCain is proving his statement about not knowing anything about economics. This rotten egg will, with luck, die quietly in the senate.

If you want to read more on this type of silliness, go and read Krauthammer's Op-Ed. Here's a taste:

Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

What a brilliant solution. Wonder who is going to get damaged the most by such rationing? I'm also betting that the Brits will be considering taxing anyone who desires to go over their carbon ration. I've been told by a British friend that gasoline (petrol) is so expensive in Great Britain because they tax it at around 80% of the cost.