President Barack Obama waves and learns the door on Marine One is much shorter than he is, and bumps his head as he leaves for a trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md. (ap)
Monday, February 9, 2009
so much 'cooler' than bush
President Barack Obama waves and learns the door on Marine One is much shorter than he is, and bumps his head as he leaves for a trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md. (ap)
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The Stimulus Tragedy
unfortunately, it appears as if the stimulus package is set to pass - throwing away a large amount of money on pet programs of the left. obama is showing that he understands only the economics taught in academia and has no understanding of reality. his soaring rhetoric is backed by a hollow understanding of how things work. if, and by if, i mean when, this bill passes - get ready to see inflation that will make the carter years look like a booming economy. this is the result of what happens when people prefer having their ears tickled rather than dealing in reality.
The Stimulus Tragedy
President Obama has started to play the "catastrophe" card to sell his economic stimulus plan, using yesterday's terrible January jobs report to predict doom unless Congress acts. No doubt he'll get his way, but the tragedy of this first great effort of the Obama Presidency is what a lost opportunity it is.
Everyone agrees that some kind of fiscal stimulus might help the economy, and that running budget deficits is appropriate in a recession. The stage was thus set for the popular President to forge a bipartisan consensus that combined ideas from both parties. A major cut in the corporate tax favored by Republicans could have been added to Democratic public works spending for a quick political triumph that might have done at least some economic good.
Instead, Mr. Obama chose to let House Democrats write the bill, and they did what comes naturally: They cleaned out their intellectual cupboards and wrote a bill that is 90% social policy, and 10% economic policy. (See here for a case study.) It is designed to support incomes with transfer payments, rather than grow incomes through job creation.
This is the reason the bill has run into political trouble, despite a new President with 65% job approval. The 11 Democrats who opposed it in the House didn't do so because they want to hand Mr. Obama a defeat. The same is true of the Senate moderates of both parties working to trim their $900 billion version. They've acted because they can't justify a vote for so much spending for so little economic effect. You know a piece of legislation is in trouble when even its authors begin to deny paternity, as economist Martin Feldstein has recently done.
Speaking to a House Democratic retreat on Thursday night, Mr. Obama took on those critics. "So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point. (Applause.)"
So there it is: Mr. Obama is now endorsing a sort of reductionist Keynesianism that argues that any government spending is an economic stimulus. This is so manifestly false that we doubt Mr. Obama really believes it. He has to know that it matters what the government spends the money on, as well as how it is financed. A dollar doled out in jobless benefits may well be spent by the worker who receives it. That $1 of spending will count as economic activity and add to GDP.
But that same dollar can't be conjured out of thin air. The government has to take that dollar away from someone else -- either in higher taxes, or by issuing new debt in the form of a bond. The person who is taxed or buys the bond will have $1 less to spend. If the beneficiary of that $1 spends it on something less productive than the taxed American or the lender would have, then the net impact on growth will be negative.
Some Democrats claim these transfer payments are stimulating because they go mainly to poor people, who immediately spend the money. Tax cuts for business or for incomes across the board won't work, they add, because those tax cuts go disproportionately to "the rich," who will save the money. But a saved $1 doesn't vanish from the economy, unless it is stuffed into a mattress. It enters the financial system, where it is lent to others; or it is invested in the stock market as capital for businesses; or it is invested in entirely new businesses, which are the real drivers of job creation and prosperity.
At the current moment, amid a capital strike, the latter is the kind of fiscal stimulus we really need. Yet there is virtually none of it in the bills now moving through Congress. Senate moderates may succeed in cutting $100 billion or so in spending from the bill, which is political window dressing. Even they aren't talking about adding the kind of tax cuts that would really help the economy now.
We should add how different this is from the 1980s or even the 1960s. Democrats added business tax cuts to the Reagan package of 1981, while Jack Kennedy's chief economist (Walter Heller) promoted marginal rate tax cuts on stimulus grounds in the 1960s. Yet Mr. Obama, on Thursday, dismissed any such tax cuts as "the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis." That's rhetoric for a campaign, not for a President hoping to rally bipartisan support.
The biggest gamble with this stimulus is what it means if the economy doesn't recover. Monetary policy is already as stimulative as it can safely get, and the Obama Administration is set to announce its big financial fix on Monday. Stocks rallied Friday on expectations of the latter, despite the job loss report, with big bank stocks leading the way. If done right, this will help reduce risk aversion and gradually restore financial confidence.
We hope it does, because the size and waste of the stimulus means we won't have much ammunition left. The spending will take the U.S. budget deficit up to some 12% of GDP, about double the peak of the 1980s and into uncharted territory. The tragedy of the Obama stimulus is that we are getting so little for all that money.
The Stimulus Tragedy
President Obama has started to play the "catastrophe" card to sell his economic stimulus plan, using yesterday's terrible January jobs report to predict doom unless Congress acts. No doubt he'll get his way, but the tragedy of this first great effort of the Obama Presidency is what a lost opportunity it is.
Everyone agrees that some kind of fiscal stimulus might help the economy, and that running budget deficits is appropriate in a recession. The stage was thus set for the popular President to forge a bipartisan consensus that combined ideas from both parties. A major cut in the corporate tax favored by Republicans could have been added to Democratic public works spending for a quick political triumph that might have done at least some economic good.
Instead, Mr. Obama chose to let House Democrats write the bill, and they did what comes naturally: They cleaned out their intellectual cupboards and wrote a bill that is 90% social policy, and 10% economic policy. (See here for a case study.) It is designed to support incomes with transfer payments, rather than grow incomes through job creation.
This is the reason the bill has run into political trouble, despite a new President with 65% job approval. The 11 Democrats who opposed it in the House didn't do so because they want to hand Mr. Obama a defeat. The same is true of the Senate moderates of both parties working to trim their $900 billion version. They've acted because they can't justify a vote for so much spending for so little economic effect. You know a piece of legislation is in trouble when even its authors begin to deny paternity, as economist Martin Feldstein has recently done.
Speaking to a House Democratic retreat on Thursday night, Mr. Obama took on those critics. "So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point. (Applause.)"
So there it is: Mr. Obama is now endorsing a sort of reductionist Keynesianism that argues that any government spending is an economic stimulus. This is so manifestly false that we doubt Mr. Obama really believes it. He has to know that it matters what the government spends the money on, as well as how it is financed. A dollar doled out in jobless benefits may well be spent by the worker who receives it. That $1 of spending will count as economic activity and add to GDP.
But that same dollar can't be conjured out of thin air. The government has to take that dollar away from someone else -- either in higher taxes, or by issuing new debt in the form of a bond. The person who is taxed or buys the bond will have $1 less to spend. If the beneficiary of that $1 spends it on something less productive than the taxed American or the lender would have, then the net impact on growth will be negative.
Some Democrats claim these transfer payments are stimulating because they go mainly to poor people, who immediately spend the money. Tax cuts for business or for incomes across the board won't work, they add, because those tax cuts go disproportionately to "the rich," who will save the money. But a saved $1 doesn't vanish from the economy, unless it is stuffed into a mattress. It enters the financial system, where it is lent to others; or it is invested in the stock market as capital for businesses; or it is invested in entirely new businesses, which are the real drivers of job creation and prosperity.
At the current moment, amid a capital strike, the latter is the kind of fiscal stimulus we really need. Yet there is virtually none of it in the bills now moving through Congress. Senate moderates may succeed in cutting $100 billion or so in spending from the bill, which is political window dressing. Even they aren't talking about adding the kind of tax cuts that would really help the economy now.
We should add how different this is from the 1980s or even the 1960s. Democrats added business tax cuts to the Reagan package of 1981, while Jack Kennedy's chief economist (Walter Heller) promoted marginal rate tax cuts on stimulus grounds in the 1960s. Yet Mr. Obama, on Thursday, dismissed any such tax cuts as "the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis." That's rhetoric for a campaign, not for a President hoping to rally bipartisan support.
The biggest gamble with this stimulus is what it means if the economy doesn't recover. Monetary policy is already as stimulative as it can safely get, and the Obama Administration is set to announce its big financial fix on Monday. Stocks rallied Friday on expectations of the latter, despite the job loss report, with big bank stocks leading the way. If done right, this will help reduce risk aversion and gradually restore financial confidence.
We hope it does, because the size and waste of the stimulus means we won't have much ammunition left. The spending will take the U.S. budget deficit up to some 12% of GDP, about double the peak of the 1980s and into uncharted territory. The tragedy of the Obama stimulus is that we are getting so little for all that money.
obama mythology could use some stimulus...
Mark Steyn is genius - and this column proves it. classic Steyn humor
Mark Steyn: Obama mythology could use some stimulus
Far from walking on water, president seems all at sea.
In The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne tried to break it gently to us:
"No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water."
Yeah, sure, no previousoccupant of the White House has been able to walk on water – your Eisenhowers and Roosevelts, your Chester Arthurs and Grover Clevelands and whatnot. But Barack didn't run as just another of those squaresville losers. He was gonna heal the planet and lower the oceans. So, even if he couldn't walk on water, he should at least be able to paddle in it. "He is a community organizer like Jesus was," said Susan Sarandon, "and now we're a community, and he can organize us."
So how's that going? Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic Party interest groups. Jesus picked twelve disciples. Barack seems to have gone more for one of those "Dirty Dozen" caper-movie lineups, where the mission is so perilous and so audacious that only the scuzziest lowlifes recruited from every waterfront dive have any chance of pulling it off. The ends justify the mean SOBs: "Indispensable Tim" Geithner, wanted in 12 jurisdictions for claiming his kid's summer camp as a business expense, is the only guy with the savvy to crack the code of the U.S. economy. Tom "Home, James!" Daschle is the ruthless backseat driver who can figure out how to steer the rusting gurney of U.S. health care through the corridors of power. Charles Bronson is the hardbitten psycho ex-con who can't go straight but knows how to turn around the Department of the Interior.
And, of course, there's the lovable dough-faced shnook in the front office, Robert "Fall Guy" Gibbs. He didn't do nuthin' wrong, but, when seven nominees die in a grisly shootout with a Taxable Benefit Swat Team in the alley behind the Senate, he makes the mistake of looking sweaty and shifty answering routine questions.
A president doesn't have to be able to walk on water. But he does have to choose the right crew for the ship, especially if he's planning on spending most of his time at the captain's table, schmoozing the celebrity guests with a lot of deep thoughts about "hope" and "change." Far worse than his Cabinet picks was President Obama's decision to make the "stimulus" racket the all-but-sole-priority of his first month and then outsource the project to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid.
Appearing on "The Rush Limbaugh Show" last week, I got a little muddled over two adjoining newspaper clippings – one on the stimulus, the other on those octuplets in California – and for a brief moment the two stories converged. Everyone's hammering that mom – she's divorced, unemployed, living in a small house with parents who have a million bucks' worth of debt, and she's already got six kids. So she has in vitro fertilization to have eight more. But isn't that exactly what the Feds have done? Last fall, they gave birth to $850 billion of bailout they couldn't afford and didn't have enough time to keep an eye on, and now, four months later, they're going to do it all over again, but this time they want trillionuplets. Barney and Nancy represent the in vitro fertilization of the federal budget. And it's the taxpayers who'll get stuck with the diapers.
Those supporters who were wary of touting Obama as the walk-on-water Messiah did their best to lower expectations by hailing him merely as the new FDR. You remember the old FDR – "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Ha! With the new New Deal, we have everything to fear. As President Obama warned Tuesday, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." If you're of those moonstruck Obammysoxers still driving around with the "HOPE, NOT FEAR" bumper stickers, please note that, due to an unfortunate proofreading error at the printing plant, certain nouns in that phrase may have become accidentally transposed.
As it happens, the best way to ensure catastrophe is to "act now." It would be nice if the world could all prance along in regimented unison like the Radio City Changettes. But, alas, the foreigners made the mistake of actually reading the "stimulus" bill, and the protectionist measures buried on page 739 subsection XII(d) ended, instantly, the Obama honeymoon overseas. The European Union has threatened a trade war. Up in Canada, provincial premiers called it "a march to insanity." Wait a minute, I thought the Obama era was meant to be the retreat from insanity, a blessed return to multilateral transnational harmony.
As longtime readers will know, I'm all in favor of flipping the bird to the global community. But at least, when Rummy was doing his shtick about "Old Europe," he did it intentionally. To cheese off the foreigners entirely accidentally before you've even had your first black-tie banquet is quite an accomplishment. Protectionism is serious business to the Continentals. Oh, to be sure, if the swaggering unilateralist Yank cowboy invades some Third World basket-case they'll seize on it as an opportunity for some cheap moral posturing. But in the end they don't much care one way or the other. Plunging the planet into global depression, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
The bloated nonstimulus and the undertaxed nominees are part of the same story. I'm with Tom Daschle: I understand why he had no desire to toss another six-figure sum into the great sucking maw of the federal Treasury. Who knows better than a senator who's voted for every tax increase to cross his desk that all this dough is entirely wasted? Tom and Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel and all the rest are right: They can do more good with the money than the United States government can. I only wish they followed the logic of their behavior and recognized that what works for them would also work for every other citizen. Instead, they insist that the sole solution to our woes is a record-setting wasteful government spending spree.
Maybe it's time for President Obama to come out and give one of his big hopey-changey speeches. It's been a few weeks now, and I kinda miss them. You know – "We are the change we've been waiting for." "We have nothing to hope for but hope itself." "Ask not what your hope can change for you, ask what you can hope for your change." Etc.
But I wonder if the old songs from last month's hit parade would play as well today. On Wednesday, Salon headlined a story on Obama: "The New Great Communicator … Isn't." Oh, dear. It's early days yet, but the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality, between the audacity of hope and the reality of pork, yawns ever wider. Right now, it's the Obama mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. Some of us never expected him to walk on water. But we didn't think he'd be all at sea taking on quite so much of it after a mere two weeks.
Mark Steyn: Obama mythology could use some stimulus
Far from walking on water, president seems all at sea.
In The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne tried to break it gently to us:
"No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water."
Yeah, sure, no previousoccupant of the White House has been able to walk on water – your Eisenhowers and Roosevelts, your Chester Arthurs and Grover Clevelands and whatnot. But Barack didn't run as just another of those squaresville losers. He was gonna heal the planet and lower the oceans. So, even if he couldn't walk on water, he should at least be able to paddle in it. "He is a community organizer like Jesus was," said Susan Sarandon, "and now we're a community, and he can organize us."
So how's that going? Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic Party interest groups. Jesus picked twelve disciples. Barack seems to have gone more for one of those "Dirty Dozen" caper-movie lineups, where the mission is so perilous and so audacious that only the scuzziest lowlifes recruited from every waterfront dive have any chance of pulling it off. The ends justify the mean SOBs: "Indispensable Tim" Geithner, wanted in 12 jurisdictions for claiming his kid's summer camp as a business expense, is the only guy with the savvy to crack the code of the U.S. economy. Tom "Home, James!" Daschle is the ruthless backseat driver who can figure out how to steer the rusting gurney of U.S. health care through the corridors of power. Charles Bronson is the hardbitten psycho ex-con who can't go straight but knows how to turn around the Department of the Interior.
And, of course, there's the lovable dough-faced shnook in the front office, Robert "Fall Guy" Gibbs. He didn't do nuthin' wrong, but, when seven nominees die in a grisly shootout with a Taxable Benefit Swat Team in the alley behind the Senate, he makes the mistake of looking sweaty and shifty answering routine questions.
A president doesn't have to be able to walk on water. But he does have to choose the right crew for the ship, especially if he's planning on spending most of his time at the captain's table, schmoozing the celebrity guests with a lot of deep thoughts about "hope" and "change." Far worse than his Cabinet picks was President Obama's decision to make the "stimulus" racket the all-but-sole-priority of his first month and then outsource the project to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid.
Appearing on "The Rush Limbaugh Show" last week, I got a little muddled over two adjoining newspaper clippings – one on the stimulus, the other on those octuplets in California – and for a brief moment the two stories converged. Everyone's hammering that mom – she's divorced, unemployed, living in a small house with parents who have a million bucks' worth of debt, and she's already got six kids. So she has in vitro fertilization to have eight more. But isn't that exactly what the Feds have done? Last fall, they gave birth to $850 billion of bailout they couldn't afford and didn't have enough time to keep an eye on, and now, four months later, they're going to do it all over again, but this time they want trillionuplets. Barney and Nancy represent the in vitro fertilization of the federal budget. And it's the taxpayers who'll get stuck with the diapers.
Those supporters who were wary of touting Obama as the walk-on-water Messiah did their best to lower expectations by hailing him merely as the new FDR. You remember the old FDR – "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Ha! With the new New Deal, we have everything to fear. As President Obama warned Tuesday, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." If you're of those moonstruck Obammysoxers still driving around with the "HOPE, NOT FEAR" bumper stickers, please note that, due to an unfortunate proofreading error at the printing plant, certain nouns in that phrase may have become accidentally transposed.
As it happens, the best way to ensure catastrophe is to "act now." It would be nice if the world could all prance along in regimented unison like the Radio City Changettes. But, alas, the foreigners made the mistake of actually reading the "stimulus" bill, and the protectionist measures buried on page 739 subsection XII(d) ended, instantly, the Obama honeymoon overseas. The European Union has threatened a trade war. Up in Canada, provincial premiers called it "a march to insanity." Wait a minute, I thought the Obama era was meant to be the retreat from insanity, a blessed return to multilateral transnational harmony.
As longtime readers will know, I'm all in favor of flipping the bird to the global community. But at least, when Rummy was doing his shtick about "Old Europe," he did it intentionally. To cheese off the foreigners entirely accidentally before you've even had your first black-tie banquet is quite an accomplishment. Protectionism is serious business to the Continentals. Oh, to be sure, if the swaggering unilateralist Yank cowboy invades some Third World basket-case they'll seize on it as an opportunity for some cheap moral posturing. But in the end they don't much care one way or the other. Plunging the planet into global depression, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
The bloated nonstimulus and the undertaxed nominees are part of the same story. I'm with Tom Daschle: I understand why he had no desire to toss another six-figure sum into the great sucking maw of the federal Treasury. Who knows better than a senator who's voted for every tax increase to cross his desk that all this dough is entirely wasted? Tom and Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel and all the rest are right: They can do more good with the money than the United States government can. I only wish they followed the logic of their behavior and recognized that what works for them would also work for every other citizen. Instead, they insist that the sole solution to our woes is a record-setting wasteful government spending spree.
Maybe it's time for President Obama to come out and give one of his big hopey-changey speeches. It's been a few weeks now, and I kinda miss them. You know – "We are the change we've been waiting for." "We have nothing to hope for but hope itself." "Ask not what your hope can change for you, ask what you can hope for your change." Etc.
But I wonder if the old songs from last month's hit parade would play as well today. On Wednesday, Salon headlined a story on Obama: "The New Great Communicator … Isn't." Oh, dear. It's early days yet, but the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality, between the audacity of hope and the reality of pork, yawns ever wider. Right now, it's the Obama mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. Some of us never expected him to walk on water. But we didn't think he'd be all at sea taking on quite so much of it after a mere two weeks.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
the sad state of life in the united states
this is just sickening. and sad. i hope the people responsible are charged and prosecuted. terrible.
Fla. doctor investigated in badly botched abortion
Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.
Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.
Only Renelique didn't arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.
What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.
"I don't care what your politics are, what your morals are, this should not be happening in our community," said Tom Pennekamp, a Miami attorney representing Williams in her lawsuit against Renelique (ren-uh-LEEK') and the clinic owners.
The state Board of Medicine is to hear Renelique's case in Tampa on Friday and determine whether to strip his license. The state attorney's homicide division is investigating, though no charges have been filed. Terry Chavez, a spokeswoman with the Miami-Dade County State Attorney's Office, said this week that prosecutors were nearing a decision.
Renelique's attorney, Joseph Harrison, called the allegations at best "misguided and incomplete" in an e-mail to The Associated Press. He didn't provide details.
The case has riled the anti-abortion community, which contends the clinic's actions constitute murder.
"The baby was just treated as a piece of garbage," said Tom Brejcha, president of The Thomas More Society, a law firm that is also representing Williams. "People all over the country are just aghast."
Even those who support abortion rights are concerned about the allegations.
"It really disturbed me," said Joanne Sterner, president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women, after reviewing the administrative complaint against Renelique. "I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep (women) from going to these types of clinics."
According to state records, Renelique received his medical training at the State University of Haiti. In 1991, he completed a four-year residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Interfaith Medical Center in New York.
New York records show that Renelique has made at least five medical malpractice payments in the past decade, the circumstances of which were not detailed in the filings.
Several attempts to reach Renelique were unsuccessful. Some of his office numbers were disconnected, no home number could be found and he did not return messages left with his attorney.
Williams struggled with the decision to have an abortion, Pennekamp said. She declined an interview request made through him.
She concluded she didn't have the resources or maturity to raise a child, he said, and went to the Miramar Women's Center on July 17, 2006. Sonograms indicated she was 23 weeks pregnant, according to the Department of Health. She met Renelique at a second clinic two days later.
Renelique gave Williams laminaria, a drug that dilates the cervix, and prescribed three other medications, according to the administrative complaint filed by the Health Department. She was told to go to yet another clinic, A Gyn Diagnostic Center in Hialeah, where the procedure would be performed the next day, on July 20, 2006.
Williams arrived in the morning and was given more medication.
The Department of Health account continues as follows: Just before noon she began to feel ill. The clinic contacted Renelique. Two hours later, he still hadn't shown up. Williams went into labor and delivered the baby.
"She came face to face with a human being," Pennekamp said. "And that changed everything."
The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.
Williams' lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby's umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
No working telephone number could be found for Gonzalez, and an attorney who has represented the clinic in the past did not return a message.
At 23 weeks, an otherwise healthy fetus would have a slim but legitimate chance of survival. Quadruplets born at 23 weeks last year at The Nebraska Medical Center survived.
An autopsy determined Williams' baby - she named her Shanice - had filled her lungs with air, meaning she had been born alive, according to the Department of Health. The cause of death was listed as extreme prematurity.
The Department of Health believes Renelique committed malpractice by failing to ensure that licensed personnel would be present when Williams was there, among other missteps.
The department wants the Board of Medicine, a separate agency, to permanently revoke Renelique's license, among other penalties. His license is currently restricted, permitting him to only perform abortions when another licensed physician is present and can review his medical records.
Should prosecutors file murder charges, they'd have to prove the baby was born alive, said Robert Batey, a professor of criminal law at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport. The defense might contend that the child would have died anyway, but most courts would not allow that argument, he said.
"Hastening the death of an individual who is terminally ill is still considered causing the death of that individual," Batey said. "And I think a court would rule similarly in this type of case."
Fla. doctor investigated in badly botched abortion
Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.
Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.
Only Renelique didn't arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.
What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.
"I don't care what your politics are, what your morals are, this should not be happening in our community," said Tom Pennekamp, a Miami attorney representing Williams in her lawsuit against Renelique (ren-uh-LEEK') and the clinic owners.
The state Board of Medicine is to hear Renelique's case in Tampa on Friday and determine whether to strip his license. The state attorney's homicide division is investigating, though no charges have been filed. Terry Chavez, a spokeswoman with the Miami-Dade County State Attorney's Office, said this week that prosecutors were nearing a decision.
Renelique's attorney, Joseph Harrison, called the allegations at best "misguided and incomplete" in an e-mail to The Associated Press. He didn't provide details.
The case has riled the anti-abortion community, which contends the clinic's actions constitute murder.
"The baby was just treated as a piece of garbage," said Tom Brejcha, president of The Thomas More Society, a law firm that is also representing Williams. "People all over the country are just aghast."
Even those who support abortion rights are concerned about the allegations.
"It really disturbed me," said Joanne Sterner, president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women, after reviewing the administrative complaint against Renelique. "I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep (women) from going to these types of clinics."
According to state records, Renelique received his medical training at the State University of Haiti. In 1991, he completed a four-year residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Interfaith Medical Center in New York.
New York records show that Renelique has made at least five medical malpractice payments in the past decade, the circumstances of which were not detailed in the filings.
Several attempts to reach Renelique were unsuccessful. Some of his office numbers were disconnected, no home number could be found and he did not return messages left with his attorney.
Williams struggled with the decision to have an abortion, Pennekamp said. She declined an interview request made through him.
She concluded she didn't have the resources or maturity to raise a child, he said, and went to the Miramar Women's Center on July 17, 2006. Sonograms indicated she was 23 weeks pregnant, according to the Department of Health. She met Renelique at a second clinic two days later.
Renelique gave Williams laminaria, a drug that dilates the cervix, and prescribed three other medications, according to the administrative complaint filed by the Health Department. She was told to go to yet another clinic, A Gyn Diagnostic Center in Hialeah, where the procedure would be performed the next day, on July 20, 2006.
Williams arrived in the morning and was given more medication.
The Department of Health account continues as follows: Just before noon she began to feel ill. The clinic contacted Renelique. Two hours later, he still hadn't shown up. Williams went into labor and delivered the baby.
"She came face to face with a human being," Pennekamp said. "And that changed everything."
The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.
Williams' lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby's umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
No working telephone number could be found for Gonzalez, and an attorney who has represented the clinic in the past did not return a message.
At 23 weeks, an otherwise healthy fetus would have a slim but legitimate chance of survival. Quadruplets born at 23 weeks last year at The Nebraska Medical Center survived.
An autopsy determined Williams' baby - she named her Shanice - had filled her lungs with air, meaning she had been born alive, according to the Department of Health. The cause of death was listed as extreme prematurity.
The Department of Health believes Renelique committed malpractice by failing to ensure that licensed personnel would be present when Williams was there, among other missteps.
The department wants the Board of Medicine, a separate agency, to permanently revoke Renelique's license, among other penalties. His license is currently restricted, permitting him to only perform abortions when another licensed physician is present and can review his medical records.
Should prosecutors file murder charges, they'd have to prove the baby was born alive, said Robert Batey, a professor of criminal law at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport. The defense might contend that the child would have died anyway, but most courts would not allow that argument, he said.
"Hastening the death of an individual who is terminally ill is still considered causing the death of that individual," Batey said. "And I think a court would rule similarly in this type of case."
peaceful religion raping men..
the religion of peace scores a new hit with their new single:
Raping Men as a Terrorist Recruiting Tool
Fancy that! Al Qaeda does not discriminate on the basis of gender or religion. They not only kill both men and women, Muslim and infidel alike, they also recruit men and women by raping them!
Pink News, which bills itself as “Europe’s largest gay news,” outlet has just confirmed that al-Qaeda uses male rape as a tactic to recruit male human bombers in Algeria.
We have just learned about a Sunni al-Qaeda related plot in Iraq in which terrorists raped eighty Muslim girls and women, then turned them over to Samira Jassim who patiently and persistently persuaded the rape victims, (many of whom had been targeted because they were depressed or mentally ill), to cleanse their shame by blowing themselves and other Muslims up. Twenty eight women did so.
In a terrible sense, Jassim only exaggerated what is routinely and normatively done to many girls and women today in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and increasingly in countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, etc. After all, Jassim did her Evil Stepmother maternal dirty work in a culture which fears, despises, shrouds, genitally mutilates, force-marries girls to their first cousins, and perpetrates honor killings. How different is raping them so that they may find glory through jihad? In a sense, isn’t this a quantum career leap and sacred opportunity?
I have written about the routine rape of both male and female children by older boys and men in Arab and Muslim societies many times in the past, in both books and articles. This is one factor which may account for a characteristic life-long “paranoia” and a super-vigilance about shame and honor which afflicts these cultures.
According to Pink News, an Algerian militant, Abu Baçir El Assimi, confirmed in the pages of The Sun that:
“The sexual act on young recruits aged between 16 to 19 was a means to urge them to commit suicide operations…that “intense social stigma and fear of more gay sex attacks leaves Muslims prepared to die.”
Apparently, a suspected 22 year-old terrorist bomber was killed in an attempted attack on a security installation in the Tizi Ouzou province of Algeria last month. The ongoing autopsy has revealed that he may have been raped. “There was a large tear in the anus of the terrorist, (as well as semen), which confirms the sexual abuse.”
We can’t say we didn’t know, that no one told us. We now know–I am telling you–that we are dealing with terrorists who engage in the human sacrifice of their own people, including their own children; who hide behind their own civilian populations whom they force into becoming their “human shields;” who use rape as a systematic weapon of war in Darfur, (I have called this “gender cleansing”), and who now use rape as a way to recruit young men and women into becoming human homicide bombers.
But as important: The life work of many ordinary civilians–say off the coast of Somalia, in the Khyber Pass between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Kandahar, or working the tunnels and alleys of Gaza, is a life in which raped/shamed boys and men spend their entire lives “working” as pirates, smugglers, petty criminals, gun-runners, kidnappers-for-ransom, traumatized, repeat rapists, and soldier-mercenaries.
This is the army America, Israel and Europe now faces. The combatants, often called “militants,” but not “terrorists” or “soldiers,” are often dressed in rags, sometimes in suits, rarely in uniforms. When captured, they will claim civilian status and deny everything.
I hope that the media can wake itself from its’ Hundred Year Spell and refuse to be fooled by fake photos or fake statistics about alleged Israeli “massacres” or “disproportionate” Israeli responses to the non-stop aggression and innate criminality of this new kind of army.
While we may wish to create a new kind of peace or even a military-diplomatic alliance with moderate Muslims who themselves are being held hostage by Islamist terrorists, America owes no apology to the Muslim world. Only America, (not Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, not Egypt, etc.), shed blood for the civilian Muslims of Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Semper Fi!
Raping Men as a Terrorist Recruiting Tool
Fancy that! Al Qaeda does not discriminate on the basis of gender or religion. They not only kill both men and women, Muslim and infidel alike, they also recruit men and women by raping them!
Pink News, which bills itself as “Europe’s largest gay news,” outlet has just confirmed that al-Qaeda uses male rape as a tactic to recruit male human bombers in Algeria.
We have just learned about a Sunni al-Qaeda related plot in Iraq in which terrorists raped eighty Muslim girls and women, then turned them over to Samira Jassim who patiently and persistently persuaded the rape victims, (many of whom had been targeted because they were depressed or mentally ill), to cleanse their shame by blowing themselves and other Muslims up. Twenty eight women did so.
In a terrible sense, Jassim only exaggerated what is routinely and normatively done to many girls and women today in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and increasingly in countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, etc. After all, Jassim did her Evil Stepmother maternal dirty work in a culture which fears, despises, shrouds, genitally mutilates, force-marries girls to their first cousins, and perpetrates honor killings. How different is raping them so that they may find glory through jihad? In a sense, isn’t this a quantum career leap and sacred opportunity?
I have written about the routine rape of both male and female children by older boys and men in Arab and Muslim societies many times in the past, in both books and articles. This is one factor which may account for a characteristic life-long “paranoia” and a super-vigilance about shame and honor which afflicts these cultures.
According to Pink News, an Algerian militant, Abu Baçir El Assimi, confirmed in the pages of The Sun that:
“The sexual act on young recruits aged between 16 to 19 was a means to urge them to commit suicide operations…that “intense social stigma and fear of more gay sex attacks leaves Muslims prepared to die.”
Apparently, a suspected 22 year-old terrorist bomber was killed in an attempted attack on a security installation in the Tizi Ouzou province of Algeria last month. The ongoing autopsy has revealed that he may have been raped. “There was a large tear in the anus of the terrorist, (as well as semen), which confirms the sexual abuse.”
We can’t say we didn’t know, that no one told us. We now know–I am telling you–that we are dealing with terrorists who engage in the human sacrifice of their own people, including their own children; who hide behind their own civilian populations whom they force into becoming their “human shields;” who use rape as a systematic weapon of war in Darfur, (I have called this “gender cleansing”), and who now use rape as a way to recruit young men and women into becoming human homicide bombers.
But as important: The life work of many ordinary civilians–say off the coast of Somalia, in the Khyber Pass between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Kandahar, or working the tunnels and alleys of Gaza, is a life in which raped/shamed boys and men spend their entire lives “working” as pirates, smugglers, petty criminals, gun-runners, kidnappers-for-ransom, traumatized, repeat rapists, and soldier-mercenaries.
This is the army America, Israel and Europe now faces. The combatants, often called “militants,” but not “terrorists” or “soldiers,” are often dressed in rags, sometimes in suits, rarely in uniforms. When captured, they will claim civilian status and deny everything.
I hope that the media can wake itself from its’ Hundred Year Spell and refuse to be fooled by fake photos or fake statistics about alleged Israeli “massacres” or “disproportionate” Israeli responses to the non-stop aggression and innate criminality of this new kind of army.
While we may wish to create a new kind of peace or even a military-diplomatic alliance with moderate Muslims who themselves are being held hostage by Islamist terrorists, America owes no apology to the Muslim world. Only America, (not Saudi Arabia, not Jordan, not Egypt, etc.), shed blood for the civilian Muslims of Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Semper Fi!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
iran sees weakness in hopey hopey change change..
I guess they didn't watch enuff msnbc or couldn't translate the memo... thou art not to act like this in front of the obama.
Iran says Obama's offer to talk shows US failure
US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.
"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
"Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change," he added.
After nearly three decades of severed ties, Obama said shortly after taking office this month that he is willing to extend a diplomatic hand to Tehran if the Islamic republic is ready to "unclench its fist".
In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh tirade against the United States, demanding an apology for its "crimes" against Iran and saying he expected "deep and fundamental" change from Obama.
Iranian politicians frequently refer to the US administration as the "global arrogance", "domineering power" and "Great Satan".
Tensions with the United States have soared over Iran's nuclear drive and Ahmadinejad's vitriolic verbal attacks against Washington's close regional ally Israel.
Former US president George W. Bush refused to hold talks with the Islamic republic -- which he dubbed part of an "axis of evil" -- unless it suspended uranium enrichment, and never took a military option to thwart Tehran's atomic drive off the table.
The new administration of Obama has also refused to rule out any options -- including military strikes -- to stop Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Iran denies any plans to build the bomb and insists its nuclear programme is solely aimed at peaceful ends.
Iran says Obama's offer to talk shows US failure
US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.
"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
"Negotiation is secondary, the main issue is that there is no way but for (the United States) to change," he added.
After nearly three decades of severed ties, Obama said shortly after taking office this month that he is willing to extend a diplomatic hand to Tehran if the Islamic republic is ready to "unclench its fist".
In response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a fresh tirade against the United States, demanding an apology for its "crimes" against Iran and saying he expected "deep and fundamental" change from Obama.
Iranian politicians frequently refer to the US administration as the "global arrogance", "domineering power" and "Great Satan".
Tensions with the United States have soared over Iran's nuclear drive and Ahmadinejad's vitriolic verbal attacks against Washington's close regional ally Israel.
Former US president George W. Bush refused to hold talks with the Islamic republic -- which he dubbed part of an "axis of evil" -- unless it suspended uranium enrichment, and never took a military option to thwart Tehran's atomic drive off the table.
The new administration of Obama has also refused to rule out any options -- including military strikes -- to stop Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Iran denies any plans to build the bomb and insists its nuclear programme is solely aimed at peaceful ends.
Friday, January 23, 2009
losing columbia...
in what is sure to be a long line of terrible decisions by this administration...
hillary comes out and tells columbia that they will be our friend whether we sign a free trade agreement with them or not. unfortunately, they don't hold that same opinion. why these foolish tactics by our new government? it's because they don't understand economics.
Fatal Naivete On Free Trade
The Hemisphere: At her Senate confirmation hearing last week, Hillary Clinton expressed confidence the U.S. alliance with Colombia will always be good, free-trade treaty or not. But growing signs show she's got it wrong.
Asked about pending free-trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea — and what would happen if they continued to languish (in Colombia's case, for a third year) — the new secretary of state told the Senate: "Obviously, these nations would be pleased by ratification, but I believe that we have — and can continue to have — productive friendships even without FTA's in force."
Answering tough questions from members of both parties in hearings, Clinton generally signaled good intentions on trade. But her casual assertion that U.S. relations with Colombia will always be good, even without a free-trade treaty, is naive.
It reflects a fallacy common among the many Democrats who believe ties with Colombia will always be strong and that Colombia's critical help in the war on drugs and terror can be taken for granted.
The attitude was summed up as follows in 2007 by Natalie Cardona, a free-trade foe with the American Friends Service Committee: "I doubt the U.S. would lose an ally. We're giving them billions of dollars of aid."
But signs are flashing that this is a miscalculation.
Although Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe sent a courteous message to welcome President Obama, Colombian officials have grown frustrated in the last two years, warning Democrats their friendship, which has cost them much blood and treasure, had limits.
Referring to a rejection of free trade, Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, said last year: "Colombia plays such a vital role in the continent for U.S. interests that it would be geostrategic suicide to make a decision like that. I wonder who wants to be the one who loses Colombia like they lost China in the 1950s."
Also last year, Trade Minister Luis Plata warned IBD that denying free trade to Colombia in a hemisphere full of U.S. free-trade treaties amounted to sanctions on an ally because the other countries with which America has agreements are its competitors.
In Santos' view, it would be "an insult" and a "slap in the face." Failure to pass the treaty, he said, "I'm sure will lead to a fundamental repositioning of relations between Colombia and the U.S."
The matter is urgent, because the global economic downturn is hitting Colombia hard now. With Colombia's joblessness hitting 10.8% and industrial output down more than 13% in November, it can't wait much longer. What's more, the absence of a free-trade deal has driven much of the country's trade to Venezuela, an economy that faces a massive collapse as falling oil prices, waste, corruption and Hugo Chavez's hostile investment climate take their course. Colombia's economy could go down down with it.
Colombia already has tariff-free trading on its exports to the U.S. for its cooperation in the war on drugs. It collects $1 billion in tariffs on U.S. imports, but would gladly give that up to draw foreign investment that would flow under the trade treaty.
Colombia has begun a $16 billion stimulus package, attempting to boost investment in upgrades for private industry to make it more competitive globally. But this amounts to sloppy seconds compared with what real foreign investment would do.
When IBD visited Colombia a year ago as part of a congressional delegation led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, we asked Uribe why the treaty was so urgent. His answer: "So we can have more investment — to create good jobs, and foster development. This is the message I want to give from Colombia."Clinton may believe the U.S. relationship with Colombia is based on the U.S.' $500 million aid under Plan Colombia. But that misunderstands the "shared responsibility" of the drug war.
Santos says U.S. aid in the drug war is still important, but not as relevant as it was six years ago. Colombia could live without it. If it halts the drug war because the U.S. has broken its promises to give it free trade, other Andean states, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, might also lessen their already wavering cooperation in the war on drugs. That would leave the U.S. without a single ally on the continent.
It also would be a disaster for Mexico, which is fighting a live-fire war against the drug trade at a time when the Pentagon worries it could collapse. If Colombia drops out of the drug-fighting alliance, the flood of illegal immigrants could damage Obama's presidency.
The last thing the U.S. should be doing at a time like this is taking Colombia's friendship for granted. This ally needs our help, and free trade may be the only thing that will save it.
hillary comes out and tells columbia that they will be our friend whether we sign a free trade agreement with them or not. unfortunately, they don't hold that same opinion. why these foolish tactics by our new government? it's because they don't understand economics.
Fatal Naivete On Free Trade
The Hemisphere: At her Senate confirmation hearing last week, Hillary Clinton expressed confidence the U.S. alliance with Colombia will always be good, free-trade treaty or not. But growing signs show she's got it wrong.
Asked about pending free-trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea — and what would happen if they continued to languish (in Colombia's case, for a third year) — the new secretary of state told the Senate: "Obviously, these nations would be pleased by ratification, but I believe that we have — and can continue to have — productive friendships even without FTA's in force."
Answering tough questions from members of both parties in hearings, Clinton generally signaled good intentions on trade. But her casual assertion that U.S. relations with Colombia will always be good, even without a free-trade treaty, is naive.
It reflects a fallacy common among the many Democrats who believe ties with Colombia will always be strong and that Colombia's critical help in the war on drugs and terror can be taken for granted.
The attitude was summed up as follows in 2007 by Natalie Cardona, a free-trade foe with the American Friends Service Committee: "I doubt the U.S. would lose an ally. We're giving them billions of dollars of aid."
But signs are flashing that this is a miscalculation.
Although Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe sent a courteous message to welcome President Obama, Colombian officials have grown frustrated in the last two years, warning Democrats their friendship, which has cost them much blood and treasure, had limits.
Referring to a rejection of free trade, Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, said last year: "Colombia plays such a vital role in the continent for U.S. interests that it would be geostrategic suicide to make a decision like that. I wonder who wants to be the one who loses Colombia like they lost China in the 1950s."
Also last year, Trade Minister Luis Plata warned IBD that denying free trade to Colombia in a hemisphere full of U.S. free-trade treaties amounted to sanctions on an ally because the other countries with which America has agreements are its competitors.
In Santos' view, it would be "an insult" and a "slap in the face." Failure to pass the treaty, he said, "I'm sure will lead to a fundamental repositioning of relations between Colombia and the U.S."
The matter is urgent, because the global economic downturn is hitting Colombia hard now. With Colombia's joblessness hitting 10.8% and industrial output down more than 13% in November, it can't wait much longer. What's more, the absence of a free-trade deal has driven much of the country's trade to Venezuela, an economy that faces a massive collapse as falling oil prices, waste, corruption and Hugo Chavez's hostile investment climate take their course. Colombia's economy could go down down with it.
Colombia already has tariff-free trading on its exports to the U.S. for its cooperation in the war on drugs. It collects $1 billion in tariffs on U.S. imports, but would gladly give that up to draw foreign investment that would flow under the trade treaty.
Colombia has begun a $16 billion stimulus package, attempting to boost investment in upgrades for private industry to make it more competitive globally. But this amounts to sloppy seconds compared with what real foreign investment would do.
When IBD visited Colombia a year ago as part of a congressional delegation led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, we asked Uribe why the treaty was so urgent. His answer: "So we can have more investment — to create good jobs, and foster development. This is the message I want to give from Colombia."Clinton may believe the U.S. relationship with Colombia is based on the U.S.' $500 million aid under Plan Colombia. But that misunderstands the "shared responsibility" of the drug war.
Santos says U.S. aid in the drug war is still important, but not as relevant as it was six years ago. Colombia could live without it. If it halts the drug war because the U.S. has broken its promises to give it free trade, other Andean states, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, might also lessen their already wavering cooperation in the war on drugs. That would leave the U.S. without a single ally on the continent.
It also would be a disaster for Mexico, which is fighting a live-fire war against the drug trade at a time when the Pentagon worries it could collapse. If Colombia drops out of the drug-fighting alliance, the flood of illegal immigrants could damage Obama's presidency.
The last thing the U.S. should be doing at a time like this is taking Colombia's friendship for granted. This ally needs our help, and free trade may be the only thing that will save it.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
the misguided.. the foolish..
some items of note as the world rushes to embrace it's secular messiah..
fools rush in
“I would say any one of the Biblical leaders,” said Denzel Washington’s mother, Lennis Washington, who was attending the inauguration with her son on Tuesday. “The apostle Paul, Moses, John the Baptist – any one of them. Seriously, he is like one of those apostles for our day. He came to lead us to the original design of what we are supposed to do on this earth.”
“I would say that he would be Joshua going across to the Promised Land,” King told CNSNews.com. “Martin Luther King Jr. went to the mountaintop like Moses, and he said, ‘I might not get there with you, but I can see the Promised Land.’ But we gonna’ get to the Promised Land. So Joshua carried them across. Martin Luther King, Jr. was prevented from going into the Promised Land.”
a kenyan savior..
“This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
Israeli fools...
"Today is a great day not only for the United States of America, but for the entire world," President Shimon Peres wrote in a letter addressed to Barack Obama on the day of his inauguration as president of the United States.
"Obama was elected by the United States, but as a matter of fact, he was chosen by the whole of humankind," Peres continued, "His election is the correction of one of the greatest wrongs in the annals of history… - slavery."
"I pray here in Jerusalem that Barack Obama will be a great President of the United States. If he will be a great President of the United States, he will serve all humankind, all nations and all persons.
fools rush in
“I would say any one of the Biblical leaders,” said Denzel Washington’s mother, Lennis Washington, who was attending the inauguration with her son on Tuesday. “The apostle Paul, Moses, John the Baptist – any one of them. Seriously, he is like one of those apostles for our day. He came to lead us to the original design of what we are supposed to do on this earth.”
“I would say that he would be Joshua going across to the Promised Land,” King told CNSNews.com. “Martin Luther King Jr. went to the mountaintop like Moses, and he said, ‘I might not get there with you, but I can see the Promised Land.’ But we gonna’ get to the Promised Land. So Joshua carried them across. Martin Luther King, Jr. was prevented from going into the Promised Land.”
a kenyan savior..
“This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
Israeli fools...
"Today is a great day not only for the United States of America, but for the entire world," President Shimon Peres wrote in a letter addressed to Barack Obama on the day of his inauguration as president of the United States.
"Obama was elected by the United States, but as a matter of fact, he was chosen by the whole of humankind," Peres continued, "His election is the correction of one of the greatest wrongs in the annals of history… - slavery."
"I pray here in Jerusalem that Barack Obama will be a great President of the United States. If he will be a great President of the United States, he will serve all humankind, all nations and all persons.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
shorting the british economy..
So, the Brits have seemed to have it in reverse for some time now... sharia courts, underfunded military, bombs in the streets and now the country may go broke. The ramifications of this are immense.. the bad thing is that obama, from all signs, will do the same to the US economy. Borrowing trillions and trillions with no accountability = disaster. Following in Roosevelt's footprints after the market crash of 1929 demonstrates not even the slightest understanding of history. Wanting a bottom up economy doesn't demonstrate even the slightest understanding of basic economic principles. Combined, they equal a looming economic disaster.
Gordon Brown brings Britain to the edge of bankruptcy
They don't know what they're doing, do they? With every step taken by the Government as it tries frantically to prop up the British banking system, this central truth becomes ever more obvious.
Yesterday marked a new low for all involved, even by the standards of this crisis. Britons woke to news of the enormity of the fresh horrors in store. Despite all the sophistry and outdated boom-era terminology from experts, I think a far greater number of people than is imagined grasp at root what is happening here.
The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of bankers, the possibility of national bankruptcy is not unrealistic.
The political impact will be seismic; anger will rage. The haunted looks on the faces of those in supporting roles, such as the Chancellor, suggest they have worked out that a tragedy is unfolding here. Gordon Brown is engaged no longer in a standard battle for re-election; instead he is fighting to avoid going down in history disgraced completely.
This catastrophe happened on his watch, no matter how much he now opportunistically beats up on bankers. He turned on the fountain of cheap money and encouraged the country to swim in it. House prices rose, debt went through the roof and the illusion won elections. Throughout, Brown boasted of the beauty of his regulatory structure, when those in charge of it were failing to ask the most basic questions of financial institutions. The same bankers Brown now claims to be angry with, he once wooed, travelling to the City to give speeches praising their "financial innovation".
Does the Prime Minister realise the likely implications when the country joins the dots? He has never been wild on shouldering blame, so I doubt it. But Brown is a historian. He should know that when a nation has put all its chips on red and the ball lands on black, the person who made the call is responsible. Neville Chamberlain discovered this in May 1940 with the German invasion of France.
We're some way from a similar event. But do not underestimate the gravity of the emergency and potential for disgrace.
The Government's bail-out of the banks in October with £37 billion of taxpayers' money was supposed to have "saved the world", according to the PM, but now it is clear that it has not even saved the banks. Our money kept the show on the road for only three months.
As the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman Vince Cable asks: where has the £37 billion gone? The answer, as Cable knows, is that it has disappeared down the plug hole.
It is finally dawning on the Government that the liabilities of the British banks grew to be so vast in the boom years that they now eclipse the entire economy. Unfortunately, the Treasury is pledged to honour those
liabilities because it has guaranteed not to let a British bank go down. RBS has liabilities of £1.8 trillion, three times annual UK government spending, against assets of £1.9 trillion. But after the events of the past year, I wager most taxpayers will believe the true picture is worse.
Meanwhile, the assets are falling in value. This matters, because post-nationalisation these liabilities are now yours and
mine.
And they come piled on top of the rocketing national debt, charitably put at £630 billion, or 43 per cent of GDP. The true figure is much higher because the Government has used off-balance sheet accounting to hide commitments such as PFI projects.
Add to that record consumer indebtedness and Britain becomes extremely vulnerable. The markets have worked this out ahead of the politicians, as usual, and are wondering what to do next. If they decide our nation is a basket case, they will make it so.
The PM and the Chancellor , both looking a year older every day, tell us that for their next trick they will buy more bank shares, create a giant insurance scheme for bad debt, pledge to honour liabilities without limit, cross their fingers and hope it all works. The phrase "bottomless pit" springs to mind for a reason: that is what they have designed.
In this gloom, the Prime Minister has but one slender hope: that somehow, by force of personality, the new President Obama engineers a rapid American recovery restoring global confidence, energising the markets and making us all forget this bad dream.
Obama is talented but he is not a magician. Instead, Gordon Brown's nightmare, in which we are all trapped, is going to get much worse.
Gordon Brown brings Britain to the edge of bankruptcy
They don't know what they're doing, do they? With every step taken by the Government as it tries frantically to prop up the British banking system, this central truth becomes ever more obvious.
Yesterday marked a new low for all involved, even by the standards of this crisis. Britons woke to news of the enormity of the fresh horrors in store. Despite all the sophistry and outdated boom-era terminology from experts, I think a far greater number of people than is imagined grasp at root what is happening here.
The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of bankers, the possibility of national bankruptcy is not unrealistic.
The political impact will be seismic; anger will rage. The haunted looks on the faces of those in supporting roles, such as the Chancellor, suggest they have worked out that a tragedy is unfolding here. Gordon Brown is engaged no longer in a standard battle for re-election; instead he is fighting to avoid going down in history disgraced completely.
This catastrophe happened on his watch, no matter how much he now opportunistically beats up on bankers. He turned on the fountain of cheap money and encouraged the country to swim in it. House prices rose, debt went through the roof and the illusion won elections. Throughout, Brown boasted of the beauty of his regulatory structure, when those in charge of it were failing to ask the most basic questions of financial institutions. The same bankers Brown now claims to be angry with, he once wooed, travelling to the City to give speeches praising their "financial innovation".
Does the Prime Minister realise the likely implications when the country joins the dots? He has never been wild on shouldering blame, so I doubt it. But Brown is a historian. He should know that when a nation has put all its chips on red and the ball lands on black, the person who made the call is responsible. Neville Chamberlain discovered this in May 1940 with the German invasion of France.
We're some way from a similar event. But do not underestimate the gravity of the emergency and potential for disgrace.
The Government's bail-out of the banks in October with £37 billion of taxpayers' money was supposed to have "saved the world", according to the PM, but now it is clear that it has not even saved the banks. Our money kept the show on the road for only three months.
As the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman Vince Cable asks: where has the £37 billion gone? The answer, as Cable knows, is that it has disappeared down the plug hole.
It is finally dawning on the Government that the liabilities of the British banks grew to be so vast in the boom years that they now eclipse the entire economy. Unfortunately, the Treasury is pledged to honour those
liabilities because it has guaranteed not to let a British bank go down. RBS has liabilities of £1.8 trillion, three times annual UK government spending, against assets of £1.9 trillion. But after the events of the past year, I wager most taxpayers will believe the true picture is worse.
Meanwhile, the assets are falling in value. This matters, because post-nationalisation these liabilities are now yours and
mine.
And they come piled on top of the rocketing national debt, charitably put at £630 billion, or 43 per cent of GDP. The true figure is much higher because the Government has used off-balance sheet accounting to hide commitments such as PFI projects.
Add to that record consumer indebtedness and Britain becomes extremely vulnerable. The markets have worked this out ahead of the politicians, as usual, and are wondering what to do next. If they decide our nation is a basket case, they will make it so.
The PM and the Chancellor , both looking a year older every day, tell us that for their next trick they will buy more bank shares, create a giant insurance scheme for bad debt, pledge to honour liabilities without limit, cross their fingers and hope it all works. The phrase "bottomless pit" springs to mind for a reason: that is what they have designed.
In this gloom, the Prime Minister has but one slender hope: that somehow, by force of personality, the new President Obama engineers a rapid American recovery restoring global confidence, energising the markets and making us all forget this bad dream.
Obama is talented but he is not a magician. Instead, Gordon Brown's nightmare, in which we are all trapped, is going to get much worse.
obamunism...
MySpace Celebrity and Katalyst present The Presidential Pledge
the cult and the kool aid drinkers.. i pledge allegiance to the obama...
your one world religion has a face
the cult and the kool aid drinkers.. i pledge allegiance to the obama...
your one world religion has a face
Monday, January 12, 2009
we desire death like you desire life...
this pretty much sums it all up
[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.”
Saturday, January 10, 2009
the oldest hatred..
Mark Steyn hits it out of the park with this piece... again - no other country in the world is expected to just sit back and take it until they are gone like Israel. If the things Israel is subjected to happened to the United States, there would be war. (and there is) Yet the world just expects the Jewish state to sit back and take it..
The Oldest Hatred
In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”
In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”
In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”
In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”
In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”
In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.
In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports “fears” that “Islamic extremists” are drawing up a “hit list” of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse’s record producer, and the late Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic non-extremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable “moderate” groups have warned the government that the Israelis’ “disproportionate force” in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, “reviving extremist groups,” and provoking “UK terrorist attacks” — not against Amy Winehouse’s record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest.
Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the “global community” — and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don’t deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the “Palestinian Authority” has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian “nationalist movement” has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.
So, as I said, forget Gaza. And instead ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch. Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let’s take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.
But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just last month terrorists attacked Bombay, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading:
“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.’
“Mumbai terrorist 2: ‘We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.’
“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill them.’
“(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)”
“Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims.” Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto, and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted “Muslims must die!” or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups’ eternal bleating about “Islamophobia” is in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, “moderate Muslims” in London warn the government: “I’m a peaceful fellow myself, but I can’t speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.”
But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class essentially shares the same view of the situation — to the point where state TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli “war crimes.” As I always say, the “oldest hatred” didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they’re hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else. So it goes.
But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada:
O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness
You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness. The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is even more deranged — and in the end will prove just as self-destructive.
The Oldest Hatred
In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.”
In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”
In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!”
In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”
In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”
In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.
In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports “fears” that “Islamic extremists” are drawing up a “hit list” of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse’s record producer, and the late Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic non-extremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable “moderate” groups have warned the government that the Israelis’ “disproportionate force” in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, “reviving extremist groups,” and provoking “UK terrorist attacks” — not against Amy Winehouse’s record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest.
Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the “global community” — and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don’t deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the “Palestinian Authority” has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian “nationalist movement” has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.
So, as I said, forget Gaza. And instead ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch. Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let’s take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.
But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just last month terrorists attacked Bombay, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading:
“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.’
“Mumbai terrorist 2: ‘We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.’
“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill them.’
“(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)”
“Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims.” Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto, and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted “Muslims must die!” or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups’ eternal bleating about “Islamophobia” is in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, “moderate Muslims” in London warn the government: “I’m a peaceful fellow myself, but I can’t speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.”
But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class essentially shares the same view of the situation — to the point where state TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli “war crimes.” As I always say, the “oldest hatred” didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they’re hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else. So it goes.
But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada:
O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness
You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness. The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is even more deranged — and in the end will prove just as self-destructive.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
mystery roar...
Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected
LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.
The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.
Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can.
Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.
Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.
But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.
There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission).
In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.
ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.
"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."
Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.
Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.
"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."
The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.
For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.
"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe.
"This is what makes science so exciting," Seiffert said. "You start out on a path to measure something – in this case, the heat from the very first stars – but run into something else entirely, some unexplained."
LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.
The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.
Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can.
Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.
Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.
But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.
There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission).
In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.
ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.
"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."
Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.
Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.
"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."
The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.
For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.
"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe.
"This is what makes science so exciting," Seiffert said. "You start out on a path to measure something – in this case, the heat from the very first stars – but run into something else entirely, some unexplained."
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
the images they show...
This is a powerful example of the media bias against Israel...
it really makes one wonder why Israel is the target of such media bias.. especially given that Israel is the only western-style democracy in the area. Israel lets arabs live in peace in Israel. arab countries prevent Jews from living a normal life in them. Why the double standard? We know why.
it really makes one wonder why Israel is the target of such media bias.. especially given that Israel is the only western-style democracy in the area. Israel lets arabs live in peace in Israel. arab countries prevent Jews from living a normal life in them. Why the double standard? We know why.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
yellowstone quake swarms..
very interesting
Yellowstone Lake Earthquake Swarm Update: 2 January 2008
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that as of 1800 MST on 2 January 2009, seismicity of the ongoing Yellowstone earthquake swarm continues. Over 500 earthquakes, as large as M 3.9, have been recorded by an automated earthquake system since the inception of this unusual earthquake sequence that began Dec. 27, 2008. More than 300 of these events have been reviewed and evaluated by seismic analysts. Depths of the earthquakes range from ~ 1km to around 10 km. We note that the earthquakes extend northward from central Yellowstone Lake for ~10 km toward the Fishing Bridge area, with a migration of recent earthquakes toward the north. Some of the dozen M3+ earthquakes were felt in the Lake, Grant Village and Old Faithful areas. Personnel of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory continue to evaluate this earthquake sequence and will provide information to the NPS, USGS and the public as it evolves.
This earthquake sequence is the most intense in this area for some years. No damage has been reported within Yellowstone National Park, nor would any be expected from earthquakes of this size. The swarm is in a region of historical earthquake activity and is close to areas of Yellowstone famous hydrothermal activity. Similar earthquake swarms have occurred in the past in Yellowstone without triggering steam explosions or volcanic activity. Nevertheless, there is some potential for hydrothermal explosions and earthquakes may continue or increase in magnitude. There is a much lower potential for related volcanic activity.
The University of Utah operates a seismic network in Yellowstone National Park in conjunction with the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. These three institutions are partners in the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Seismic data from Yellowstone are transmitted to the University in real-time by radio and satellite links from a network of 28 seismographs in the Yellowstone area and are available on the web.
Seismologists continue to monitor and analyze data from this swarm of earthquakes and provide updates to the NPS and USGS and to the public via the following web pages.
Information on U.S. earthquake activity including Yellowstone can be viewed at the U.S. Geological Survey web site: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/.
Information on earthquakes can also be viewed at the University of Utah
Seismograph Stations web site: http://www.seis.utah.edu/.
Seismographic recordings from Yellowstone seismograph stations can be
viewed online at: http://www.quake.utah.edu/helicorder/heli/yellowstone/index.html.
Yellowstone Lake Earthquake Swarm Update: 2 January 2008
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that as of 1800 MST on 2 January 2009, seismicity of the ongoing Yellowstone earthquake swarm continues. Over 500 earthquakes, as large as M 3.9, have been recorded by an automated earthquake system since the inception of this unusual earthquake sequence that began Dec. 27, 2008. More than 300 of these events have been reviewed and evaluated by seismic analysts. Depths of the earthquakes range from ~ 1km to around 10 km. We note that the earthquakes extend northward from central Yellowstone Lake for ~10 km toward the Fishing Bridge area, with a migration of recent earthquakes toward the north. Some of the dozen M3+ earthquakes were felt in the Lake, Grant Village and Old Faithful areas. Personnel of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory continue to evaluate this earthquake sequence and will provide information to the NPS, USGS and the public as it evolves.
This earthquake sequence is the most intense in this area for some years. No damage has been reported within Yellowstone National Park, nor would any be expected from earthquakes of this size. The swarm is in a region of historical earthquake activity and is close to areas of Yellowstone famous hydrothermal activity. Similar earthquake swarms have occurred in the past in Yellowstone without triggering steam explosions or volcanic activity. Nevertheless, there is some potential for hydrothermal explosions and earthquakes may continue or increase in magnitude. There is a much lower potential for related volcanic activity.
The University of Utah operates a seismic network in Yellowstone National Park in conjunction with the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. These three institutions are partners in the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Seismic data from Yellowstone are transmitted to the University in real-time by radio and satellite links from a network of 28 seismographs in the Yellowstone area and are available on the web.
Seismologists continue to monitor and analyze data from this swarm of earthquakes and provide updates to the NPS and USGS and to the public via the following web pages.
Information on U.S. earthquake activity including Yellowstone can be viewed at the U.S. Geological Survey web site: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/.
Information on earthquakes can also be viewed at the University of Utah
Seismograph Stations web site: http://www.seis.utah.edu/.
Seismographic recordings from Yellowstone seismograph stations can be
viewed online at: http://www.quake.utah.edu/helicorder/heli/yellowstone/index.html.
it's on...
Israel launches a ground invasion of Gaza..
I'm sure they wish they would have never given Gaza to the palestinians. Interesting to have watched the palestinians destroy everything good that Israel had left them and then begin an organized terror attack on Israel for giving the land to them. It's apparent to anyone not deceived that hamas and many of the palestinians have no desire for peace. Hopefully Israel does not lose it's will and takes it to hamas in such a way to completely neuter their capacity to do anything in the region. There is (or at least should be) a severe price for killing the innocent civilians of a country far more capable militarily than yourself. hamas needs to pay that price dearly.
"The objective is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations," said Israel Defense Forces Major Avital Leibovitch, a military spokeswoman, confirming that incursions were under way. "We are going to take some of the launch areas used by Hamas."
The IDF Spokesperson's office issued a statement, emphasizing that this stage of the operation will further the goals of the eight-day offensive as voiced by the IDF until now: To strike a direct and hard blow against the Hamas while increasing the deterrent strength of the IDF, in order to bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of Southern Israel over the long term.
Large numbers of forces are taking part in this stage of the operation including infantry, tanks, engineering forces, artillery and intelligence with the support of the Israel Air Force, Israel navy, the Shin Bet security service and other security agencies.
Meanwhile, the cabinet has authorized an emergency call up of tens of thousands of IDF reservists.
The invasion was preceded by the firing of artillery shells into the strip from military preparation sites dotted along the Gaza-Israel border.
The artillery fire aimed to detonate Hamas explosive devices and mines planted along the border area before troops marched in.
Palestinian witnesses said the artillery barrage caused a large explosion in Gaza City as well as a series of blasts stitching the nearby frontier with Israel.
Channel 10 television quoted a witness as saying that Israel was shelling targets along the entire length of the shared border.
At one tank base along the border, the roar of tank engines and the rumble of their movements toward the border could be heard after dark, though none moved across the frontier. Hamas officials also reported tank movement toward the border near the northern Erez crossing point.
Defense officials said some 10,000 troops, including tank, artillery and special operations units, were massed on the Gaza border and prepared to invade. They said top commanders were split over whether to send in ground forces, in part because such an operation could lead to heavy casualties but also because they believe Hamas already has been dealt a heavy blow.
A family in Beit Lahiya said that an Israeli artillery shell had hit a house there, wounding many people. Ambulances could not immediately reach
them because of the resulting fire, they said.
Meanwhile, Israel Air Force warplanes stepped up airstrikes on Gaza, bombing the main road that runs throughout the strip in three different spots, making travel from one side of the Strip to the other close to impossible.
Palestinian health officials in Gaza reported Saturday evening that 13 people had been killed in another IAF bombing of a mosque in Beit Lahiya. They said that 26 Palestinians had died in IAF raids after dark Saturday.
The air force struck more than 40 Hamas targets over the course of Saturday, killing the third senior Hamas official since Israel's aerial assault began.
On Saturday morning, Israel Radio quoted a spokesman for the Hamas military wing as saying it had repelled an attempt by Israel Defense Forces soldiers to infiltrate the Shajaiyeh section of Gaza City.
According to Israel Radio, Hamas said that its militants detected the soldiers and fired six mortar shells. Hamas said the soldiers reportedly opened fire and then returned to Israeli territory.
I'm sure they wish they would have never given Gaza to the palestinians. Interesting to have watched the palestinians destroy everything good that Israel had left them and then begin an organized terror attack on Israel for giving the land to them. It's apparent to anyone not deceived that hamas and many of the palestinians have no desire for peace. Hopefully Israel does not lose it's will and takes it to hamas in such a way to completely neuter their capacity to do anything in the region. There is (or at least should be) a severe price for killing the innocent civilians of a country far more capable militarily than yourself. hamas needs to pay that price dearly.
"The objective is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations," said Israel Defense Forces Major Avital Leibovitch, a military spokeswoman, confirming that incursions were under way. "We are going to take some of the launch areas used by Hamas."
The IDF Spokesperson's office issued a statement, emphasizing that this stage of the operation will further the goals of the eight-day offensive as voiced by the IDF until now: To strike a direct and hard blow against the Hamas while increasing the deterrent strength of the IDF, in order to bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of Southern Israel over the long term.
Large numbers of forces are taking part in this stage of the operation including infantry, tanks, engineering forces, artillery and intelligence with the support of the Israel Air Force, Israel navy, the Shin Bet security service and other security agencies.
Meanwhile, the cabinet has authorized an emergency call up of tens of thousands of IDF reservists.
The invasion was preceded by the firing of artillery shells into the strip from military preparation sites dotted along the Gaza-Israel border.
The artillery fire aimed to detonate Hamas explosive devices and mines planted along the border area before troops marched in.
Palestinian witnesses said the artillery barrage caused a large explosion in Gaza City as well as a series of blasts stitching the nearby frontier with Israel.
Channel 10 television quoted a witness as saying that Israel was shelling targets along the entire length of the shared border.
At one tank base along the border, the roar of tank engines and the rumble of their movements toward the border could be heard after dark, though none moved across the frontier. Hamas officials also reported tank movement toward the border near the northern Erez crossing point.
Defense officials said some 10,000 troops, including tank, artillery and special operations units, were massed on the Gaza border and prepared to invade. They said top commanders were split over whether to send in ground forces, in part because such an operation could lead to heavy casualties but also because they believe Hamas already has been dealt a heavy blow.
A family in Beit Lahiya said that an Israeli artillery shell had hit a house there, wounding many people. Ambulances could not immediately reach
them because of the resulting fire, they said.
Meanwhile, Israel Air Force warplanes stepped up airstrikes on Gaza, bombing the main road that runs throughout the strip in three different spots, making travel from one side of the Strip to the other close to impossible.
Palestinian health officials in Gaza reported Saturday evening that 13 people had been killed in another IAF bombing of a mosque in Beit Lahiya. They said that 26 Palestinians had died in IAF raids after dark Saturday.
The air force struck more than 40 Hamas targets over the course of Saturday, killing the third senior Hamas official since Israel's aerial assault began.
On Saturday morning, Israel Radio quoted a spokesman for the Hamas military wing as saying it had repelled an attempt by Israel Defense Forces soldiers to infiltrate the Shajaiyeh section of Gaza City.
According to Israel Radio, Hamas said that its militants detected the soldiers and fired six mortar shells. Hamas said the soldiers reportedly opened fire and then returned to Israeli territory.
Friday, January 2, 2009
former hamas member: islam is not the word of God
It's good to see the truth being told. Unfortunately the majority of media types is complicit in labeling hamas as victims and Israeli's as the aggressor. The truth is - none of the palestinian groups want a state next to Israel. They want a state INSTEAD of Israel. It's good to see a former member of hamas speaking out that the God of the Bible is not the allah of the koran.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475226,00.html
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other world leaders try to broker a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, one former member of the militant Islamic organization said there will never be lasting peace between the two groups.
"There is no chance. Is there any chance for fire to co-exist with the water?" said Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the group's founding members.
Yousef added: "It's not about Israel, it's not about Hamas: it's about both ideologies."
Yousef, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the most influential leaders of the militant group, said the organization betrays the Palestinian cause and tortures its own members.
Hamas, formed in the late 1980's as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, is considered a terror organization by the U.S. government. Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip in 2007 in a violent coup against the more moderate Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas.
Yousef said he was indoctrinated at an early age to use violence to challenge Israeli control in the region. As a teenager he moved up within the organization and became the leader of the radical Islamic Youth Movement that fought Israeli tanks and troops in the streets, celebrated suicide bombings and recruited young men to the cause.
Yousef, 30, said he realized the true nature of Hamas and radical Islam during a stint in an Israeli prison. He renounced his Muslim faith, left his family behind in Ramallah and converted to Christianity.
"Islam is not the word of God," said Yousef. "If you want to be offended it's your problem. But you know something? Go study. Think for a second that I might be right. So wake up, look at your path, see where you're going. Are you really going to heaven with 72 virgins after you kill yourself and kill another 20 people?"
Yousef has sought asylum in the United States and now attends an evangelical Christian church in San Diego, Calif.
"The Hamas leadership, including my father, they're responsible; they're responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization. I know they describe it as reaction to Israeli aggression, but still, they are part of it and they had to make decisions in those operations against Israel (for) which there was the killing of many civilians."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,475226,00.html
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other world leaders try to broker a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, one former member of the militant Islamic organization said there will never be lasting peace between the two groups.
"There is no chance. Is there any chance for fire to co-exist with the water?" said Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the group's founding members.
Yousef added: "It's not about Israel, it's not about Hamas: it's about both ideologies."
Yousef, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the most influential leaders of the militant group, said the organization betrays the Palestinian cause and tortures its own members.
Hamas, formed in the late 1980's as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, is considered a terror organization by the U.S. government. Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip in 2007 in a violent coup against the more moderate Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas.
Yousef said he was indoctrinated at an early age to use violence to challenge Israeli control in the region. As a teenager he moved up within the organization and became the leader of the radical Islamic Youth Movement that fought Israeli tanks and troops in the streets, celebrated suicide bombings and recruited young men to the cause.
Yousef, 30, said he realized the true nature of Hamas and radical Islam during a stint in an Israeli prison. He renounced his Muslim faith, left his family behind in Ramallah and converted to Christianity.
"Islam is not the word of God," said Yousef. "If you want to be offended it's your problem. But you know something? Go study. Think for a second that I might be right. So wake up, look at your path, see where you're going. Are you really going to heaven with 72 virgins after you kill yourself and kill another 20 people?"
Yousef has sought asylum in the United States and now attends an evangelical Christian church in San Diego, Calif.
"The Hamas leadership, including my father, they're responsible; they're responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization. I know they describe it as reaction to Israeli aggression, but still, they are part of it and they had to make decisions in those operations against Israel (for) which there was the killing of many civilians."
holy exploding mosques, batman
we see what happens when palesinian's store explosives in mosques.. they go boom.
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