Archive for May, 2009

Bush’s folly to be replaced by Obama’s folly

12:53 am, May 27th, 2009 on White House

Obama is playing the race card very nicely by nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The NYT gleefully declares that Obama has once again proved to be The One by

“choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.”

First of all, justices to the Supreme Court should be nominated on their legal acumen, experience and intellect, not on race, religion, gender or any other factor. NY Senators Schumer and Gillibrand apparently consider only race to be the deciding factor as to who should be nominated. In a letter to Obama, the two claim:

“It’s long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court.” Read on »

Obama, sotomayor, supreme court

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A Privilege to Enter Canada?

6:15 am, May 26th, 2009 on Canada

This past weekend I was told by a Canadian Border Patrol officer at the Point Roberts, WA, border crossing that it was a “privilege” for American citizens to enter Canada. This was after we were asked to pull over for some additional checking.

Now, I wasn’t surprised that those Cannucks at Point Roberts wanted to show their importance by pulling over and harassing Americans. I noticed that all cars waiting for “additional checks” at the crossing were Americans. The officers were rude and there wasn’t even enough room for the 8 or 10 Americans waiting inside their shit-hole. Read on »

immigration

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Finish the wall, please

7:28 pm, May 20th, 2009 on Israel/Palestine, Middle East

The BBC is reporting that Israel no longer finds it necessary to continue building the wall. The Shin Bet head honcho Yuval Diskin feels “that Israel had enough capabilities to prevent attacks from the Palestinian territory.”

Israel has always claimed that it has the capabilities to contain Palestinian terrorists and that it continuously strives to improve its defenses. Israel has pledges from the US to receive almost $30 billion dollars over the next few years. Accoring to the CRS, Israel has received almost $3 billion a year from the US [PDF]. Almost 2 billion of this is for military purposes. It is already one of the largest receipients of US aid, military and otherwise. Read on »

israel, netanyahu, palestinians, wall

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Re-creating the big-tent Republican Party

7:47 pm, May 19th, 2009 on GOP

Michael Steele, the new GOP Chairman, feels that the Republican Party is ready to turn a corner under his recently re-energized leadership. He feels that following his 3 fluffy ideas will help the Grand Old Party return to majority status:

1. Becoming the party of “new ideas”

2. Opposing Obama

3. Seizing the momentum of his so-called resurgence among GOP supporters across the country.

It is not quite that simple, Mr. Steele. Read on »

conservative politics, michael steele

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Making sense of the Indian elections

7:33 pm, May 18th, 2009 on India

I was waiting till the Congress actually formed the government to comment on the recent elections in India. Apparently, the INC has the support of 322 members of parliament to form the government, well over the requirement of 274 out of 527. Manmohan Singh will remain as Prime Minister, shockingly the first PM to get re-elected since Nehru way back when! Even the iconic Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, didn’t manage to win 2 elections in a row.

Let’s take a closer look at the results, courtesy Times of India: Read on »

BJP, congress, elections

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Obama flip-flops (again) on military tribunals

7:17 am, May 16th, 2009 on Foreign Policy, Politics, White House

Last year, I was telling everybody that Barack Hussein Obama was not going to be too different from Bush or McCain on foreign policy or on national security, but I was ridiculed for being naive and uninformed. Now, I feel like saying: “I told you so.”

Obama had railed against everything Bush on the campaign trail, especially the military tribunals and Guantanamo bay, calling it all:

“an enormous failure”

He has now decided to revive these same military tribunals for those same detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Well, what has changed since he was a candidate? Read on »

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Ahh, so we are not going to sink after all…

6:12 am, May 15th, 2009 on Global Warming

The BBC is now reporting that a scientific team led by Jonathan Bamber has found that melting ice in the Antarctic may lead to 3.3m rise in sea level, about half of what all doomsayers have been claiming all this time and scaring the hell out of us. Of course, this is still very bad apparently:

“the rise would still pose a serious threat to major coastal cities, such as New York…A sea level rise of just 1.5m would displace 17 million people in Bangladesh alone… “

Now, the question really is whether human activity has caused this melting. Or, are 100,000 year glacial cycles to blame?

Apparently, we are currently near a peak of a glacial cycle, during which glaciers are supposed to melt to some extent. Even within each glacial cycle, there is expected to be immense variation. Al Gore’s buddies don’t want us to talk about the Little Ice Age in Europe only a 150 years ago. We’ve been warming up since then.

And, apparently, we may begun cooling again. 2008 was the coldest year since 2000 and 2009, so far, doesn’t seem to be too much warmer.

BBC, climate change

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Obama to withhold detainee abuse photos

7:01 pm, May 13th, 2009 on Human Rights, Politics, White House

The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama Administration is changing its position on releasing photos of abuse of detainees held in military custody abroad, claiming that it:

“strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing US forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Earlier, Obama had earlier pledged to release all photos:

“The parties have reached an agreement that the Defense Department will produce all the responsive images by May 28, 2009.”

Now that the deadline is approaching, Obama has changed his mind. Apparently, he’s afraid that Cheney may prove to be right that we may not be safe under Obama:

“I think to the extent that those [Bush-era] policies were responsible for saving lives, that the administration is now trying to cancel those policies … means in the future we’re not going to have the same safeguards we’ve had for the last eight years.”

Public release of those photos will not serve any purpose. The world now knows that detainee abuse was committed at military prisons across the world, some even approved by the Pentagon. The photos will only incite violence against American soldiers and allies abroad, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq, placing them in further danger.

As far as the ACLU and the American plaintiffs of the lawsuit are concerned, they too are aware of the abuse. The photos will serve no purpose, apart from the gratuitous satisfaction of being righteous.

detainees

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The U.N. Farcical Rights Council

3:48 am, May 13th, 2009 on Human Rights, UN

The US has taken its rightful place at the U.N. Human Rights Council, joining such human rights stalwarts as Cuba, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, China and Saudi Arabia. US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, claims ecstatically: