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Interesting read on Chuck Schumer...
I have not checked the writers points...any comments would be welcomed...
Liberal Chuck Schumer Hauls in Cash from Corporate America
by Timothy P. Carney
Posted Jun 24, 2005
If you believe the mainstream media, the Republican Party is the party of big business. If you look at the facts, though, you see a different story. Actually, perhaps the favorite politician of big business is also one of the most liberal members of Congress: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.).
That Schumer is a liberal is well known. The American Conservative Union gives him a lifetime rating of only 6%. The National Taxpayers’ Union has given Schumer an F every year he’s been in the Senate. Schumer’s score with the Family Research Council was 14% last year. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) gave him a 100% last year, and his lifetime ADA score is 98%.
Most important to the left, Schumer has led the assault on President Bush’s judicial nominees, many of whom, including Priscilla Owen, have come under attack for being too favorable to big business.
But Schumer clearly is doing something big business likes, as his campaign finance records show. According the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a George Soros-funded non-profit that tracks money in politics, Chuck Schumer was the top recipient of campaign cash from many industries in 2004 among all politicians aside from presidential candidates.
Since the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance laws, corporations may not make contributions to federal candidates. But CRP tracks political donors’ employers, and breaks individual contributions down by industry. Each industry tends to have favorite lawmakers.
Setting aside the myth that the suits on Wall Street are all free-market capitalists, it’s no surprise that Schumer is the favorite lawmaker of the securities and investment industry. The $1.3 million he received in 2003 and 2004 alone was bested only by Kerry’s $4.4 million. In fact, among senators besides Kerry, the top five beneficiaries of Wall Street’s contributions were all Democrats. Number six was liberal Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
The accounting industry, at the heart of the Enron and WorldCom scandals of 2002, has Schumer at the top of their list. His $191,474 from accountants was again exceeded only by Kerry in the upper chamber.
Real state was also very generous with Schumer, lavishing $704,551 on him in the 2004 cycle, putting him ahead of all politicians besides a few of the presidential candidates (and ahead of many of the lesser presidential hopefuls).
Schumer was in the top three lawmakers for gifts from architects, the liquor industry, commercial banks, the dairy industry, software, subcontractors, and textiles. Most surprisingly, perhaps, Schumer received more money from the much-maligned tobacco industry than any other senator, including Kentucky’s Jim Bunning, who faced a very tough reelection in 2004.
All of this money came in a year when Schumer was never truly threatened by his Republican opponent. From his arrival in the Senate in 1999 to his reelection last year, Schumer raised a startling $27.5 million. While most of that money was from big business, much of it was from the most liberal special interest groups. Among gay and lesbian groups, for example, Schumer was the No. 2 recipient, and the same was true among pro-choice groups in 2003 and 2004.
‘Group of 35’
It is this fundraising skill that made Schumer the natural choice of his colleagues to head the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). It has proven to be a wise choice. While the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are being severely outpaced by their Republican counterparts, Schumer’s DSCC, at the end of the first quarter of 2005, had twice the cash on hand as the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
While Schumer is an unabashed advocate of big government, he is also a dedicated ally of big business. For him, government intervention and the success of big business go hand-in-hand.
For example, in 2001, Schumer and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin formed a “Group of 35,” business, political, and labor leaders in New York City. They advocated the use of condemnation and eminent domain takings along with special targeted tax breaks for developers in order to increase the commercial capacity of Manhattan.
As the Democrats try to make a dent in the GOP Senate majority, they will benefit in 2006 from having big business’s favorite senator heading the effort.
Mr. Carney is a contributing editor to HUMAN EVENTS, and a Phillips Fellow.
linked from Boortz: http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
tis
This is why I like...
Neal Brootz....
SO .. NOW I "HATE" REPUBLICANS
There are a lot of listeners out there who really need to make some attempt at growing up. Well, maybe not a lot of listeners .. but quite a few.
Yesterday I spent some time on the air detailing the spending habits of the Republicans since they gained control of both the legislative and executive branches of our Imperial Federal Government. Federal government spending has gone up by 33 percent since George W. Bush took office. For those of you who think that we were spending enough when Clinton was president ... just imagine spending one-third more! Think about this one ... During every year that Clinton was president and the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives the final budget was less than the budget proposed by Clinton. Congressional Republicans at least put some effort into holding back spending. But what about the Bush years? Every single year since George W. Bush was sworn in the Republican congress has passed a final budget that spent more than Bush requested. More, not less.
Now don't give me that nonsense about defense and homeland security spending. When you back out the numbers for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and homeland security spending Bush and the Republicans are still spendthrifts. You might be interested in knowing that there have only been two presidents in the last 40 years under whom both discretionary non-defense spending and defense spending have gone up. Those two presidents are Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.
The truth here is that the Republicans are no longer the party of less government and less government spending. When it comes to government spending and the growth of government there seems to be no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Now ... to get to the point here. As soon as I went on the air to detail the heavy spending habits of the Republicans I started getting the email messages telling me what a evil person I am because of my "hatred" of Republicans. That's right. I "hate" Republicans because I don't like the way they spend money.
Some of you need to grow up. Do you realize how silly and childish you look when you stumble forth with that "hate" nonsense? Is that the intellectual contribution you have to make to this debate? Someone makes you a bit uncomfortable by detailing the profligate spending habits of your political party, and all you can come up with is "I'm never going to listen to you again because you hate Republicans." What are you going to do next? Stomp your feet and hold your breath until you turn blue? Face it .. your political party has some pretty big zits. The solution is not to break the mirror.
http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
tis
If posted prior...
my apologies...
Marines See Signs Iraq Rebels Are Battling Foreign Fighters
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: June 21, 2005
KARABILA, Iraq, June 20 - Late Sunday night, American marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: in the distance, mortar and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them.
In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer.
"Red on red," he said, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire.
Marines patrolling this desert region near the Syrian border have for months been seeing a strange new trend in the already complex Iraqi insurgency. Insurgents, they say, have been fighting each other in towns along the Euphrates from Husayba, on the border, to Qaim, farther west. The observations offer a new clue in the hidden world of the insurgency and suggest that there may have been, as American commanders suggest, a split between Islamic militants and local rebels.
A United Nations official who served in Iraq last year and who consulted widely with militant groups said in a telephone interview that there has been a split for some time.
"There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."
The nationalist insurgent groups, "are giving a lot of signals implying that there should be a settlement with the Americans," while the Jihadists have a purely ideological agenda, he added.
The insurgency is largely hidden, making such trends difficult to discern. But marines in this western outpost have noticed a change. For Matthew Orth, a Marine sniper, the difference came this spring, when his unit was conducting an operation in Husayba. Mortar shells flew over the unit, hitting a different target.
"The thought was, "They're coming for us. But then we saw they were fighting each other," he recalled during a break in Monday's operation. "We were kind of wondering what happened. We were getting mortared twice a day, and then all of a sudden it stopped."
Access for the foreign fighters is easy through the porous border with Syria, where the main crossing, Husayba, has been closed for seven months to stem their flow. "They will come from wherever we are not," said Col. Stephen Davis, the commander of the Second Regimental Combat Team of the Second Marine Division. "Clearly there are foreign fighters here and quite clearly they are coming in from Syria."
Marines have conducted several offensives in villages along the Euphrates, including one over the past few days in Karabila, to disrupt the fighters' networks. During raids on mostly empty homes, they found nine foreign passports, and of about 40 insurgents killed, at least three were foreign, marines said.
Capt. Chris Ieva, a fast-talking 31-year-old from North Brunswick, N.J., said he could tell whether an area was controlled by foreign insurgents or locals by whether families had cellphones or guns, which foreign fighters do not allow local residents to have for fear they would spy on them. Marines cited other tactics as being commonly employed by foreigners. Sophisticated body armor, for example, is one sign, as well as land mines that are a cut above average, remote-controlled local mines, and well-chosen sniper positions.
When the marines were fighting in an operation in the area in early May, five marines were killed after their tank rolled over a mine that had been set for vehicles with large distances between the treads.
In Karabila, marines picked their way through empty houses over the past four days, looking in closets and behind closed doors, into the hidden lives of insurgents who had left behind caches of weapons, medical supplies and Jihadist literature, including an inspirational guide that attempted to justify beheading by using Islamic scripture.
As the operation ended about 6 p.m. Monday, marines, successful in their mission, lined the roof of the last house they took against the backdrop of plumes of smoke. Captain Ieva said: "Will some come back? Yes. But the bigger fruit is disrupting them. We've made them uncomfortable in their own system."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/international/middleeast/21spear.html
Also:
Foreign Fighters Now Reviled
by Fallujah Residents
By Hannah Allam - Knight Ridder Newspapers
SAKHLAWIYA, Iraq - The fighters came to Fallujah last year with piles of cash, strange accents and a militant vision of Islam that was at once foreign and fearsome to residents emerging from nearly 30 years of Saddam Hussein's secular regime.
Yet out of custom and necessity, tribal locals offered their Arab guests sanctuary and were repaid with promises to help keep American forces out of the town. This week, with U.S. troops battling their way through the Sunni Muslim stronghold, several Fallujah residents said it had been a grave mistake to trust the foreigners who turned their humble stand against foreign occupation into a sophisticated terror campaign.
Once admired as comrades in an anti-American struggle, foreign fighters have become reviled as the reason U.S. missiles are flattening homes and turning Iraq's City of Mosques into a killing field. Their promises of protection were unfulfilled, angry residents said, with immigrant rebels moving on to other outposts and leaving besieged locals to face a superpower alone.
The fact that Iraqis are turning away from foreign terrorists, however, doesn't necessarily mean that they're turning toward the United States and Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government.
"We didn't want the occupation and we didn't want the terrorists, and now we have both," said a Fallujah construction worker who gave his name as only Abu Ehab, 30. "I didn't think the Arabs would be so vicious, and I never thought the Americans would be so unmerciful."
How foreign jihadists came to make Fallujah their base is a cautionary tale for other Iraqi cities that might receive fighters in search of a new place to plot bombings and beheadings. The most notorious foreign rebel, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al Zarqawi, is still at large despite a $25 million price on his head. The violence that's rocked several other Sunni areas since the Fallujah battle began also suggests that insurgents are broadening the battleground now that they've lost one of their havens.
American-led forces launched Operation Dawn, so named to signal a new day for Fallujah residents, to wrest control of the dusty city 40 miles west of Baghdad from rebels. U.S. military officials believed the insurgents' leaders were foreign fighters who earned their stripes in Afghanistan and were importing their guerrilla war to Fallujah.
Within the first hours of battle, top military officials predicted that most foreign insurgents, including al Zarqawi, had left the area. So far, the military has confirmed only a handful of foreign nationals among the 600 fighters it estimates have been killed in Fallujah.
"I personally believe some of the senior leaders probably have fled," Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told reporters on Tuesday.
The Bush administration has faced criticism that it overstated the presence of foreign fighters in Fallujah to justify a prolonged occupation of Iraq, minimize Iraqi resentment of the American presence in Iraq and tie its war in Iraq to its battle against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization.
Likewise, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has blamed much of Iraq's mayhem on al Zarqawi and other foreigners, minimizing homegrown opposition to his government. He's drawn condemnation from prominent Sunni politicians and clerics who've withdrawn from his government and announced a boycott of national elections set for January.
Fallujah residents, most of them now displaced by the fighting, said there were hundreds of non-Iraqi Arabs in town before the offensive began on Monday. However, they added, the ties of brotherhood had mostly unraveled and the remaining foreign fighters had tried to intimidate residents into staying as human shields.
A rebel-allied cleric who goes by the name Sheik Rafaa told Knight Ridder that Iraqi rebels were so infuriated by the disappearance of their foreign allies that one cell had "executed 20 Arab fighters because they left an area they promised to defend."
Other residents said foreign militants wore out their welcome months ago, when they imposed a Taliban-like interpretation of Islamic law that included public floggings for suspects accused of drinking alcohol or refusing to grow beards. Women who failed to cover their hair or remove their makeup were subjected to public humiliation. Those accused of spying for Americans were executed on the spot, residents said.
The turning point for a young man named Hudaifa came the day he saw a Yemeni fighter whipping an Iraqi in a public square. He recalled his humiliation this week in a conversation with other Fallujah residents now in Baghdad. Still fearful, the men asked that their last names not be published.
"An outsider beating an Iraqi in his own town?" Hudaifa asked, outrage still in his voice. "It's such a shame for us."
His friend Amer interrupted: "But we have to respect them. They left their families to come fight with us."
When they swept into Fallujah from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and North Africa, the Arab fighters told wary residents that God favors believers who give up their homes and travel to defend Islam.
"God has preferred the strivers above the sedentary with a great reward," they quoted from the Quran, Islam's holy book. "Whoever emigrates in the cause of God will find in the earth many a refuge, wide and spacious."
The Arab visitors portrayed themselves as the Muhajireen, the storied emigrants who in ancient times journeyed with the Prophet Muhammad to the holy city of Medina in what's now Saudi Arabia. The tribes of Fallujah were cast as the Ansar, the legendary "helpers" who offered the prophet's people refuge and loyalty.
Several rebel sources confirmed that al Zarqawi had settled in Fallujah until recently, running his group, which recently said it had allied itself with al-Qaida, from farmhouses and even downtown buildings. Some even claimed to have seen al Zarqawi; others only know him as a myth spoken about in hushed conversations as Sheik Ahmed or The Emir, the leader.
In a Sept. 11 audio recording posted on the Internet, al Zarqawi boasted that Muslim holy warriors had humiliated the Americans through "the brotherhood of jihad, both Muhajireen and Ansar."
Indeed, al Zarqawi loyalists won favor during the first U.S. invasion of Fallujah, an April offensive that ended with Marines withdrawing and installing an Iraqi proxy force. Foreign fighters took credit for the outcome and invited more outsiders into the city, residents said.
"When the Marines stepped back in April, the foreigners grew stronger, so they persuaded their friends to come and help them hold the victory," said Ali Jarallah, 32, a Fallujah resident now living in a cramped camp with other displaced locals.
But then came the wave of foreign hostage-takings, many ending with gruesome beheadings broadcast for the world to see. Zarqawi also claimed responsibility for massive bombings that spilled the blood of hundreds of innocent Iraqis.
Aghast, Fallujah residents began drawing distinctions between their own fighters, who favored mainly military and police targets, and foreigners encouraged by the fear they inspired through spectacular attacks.
When the military build-up for Operation Dawn began, local tribes and Iraqi fighters wanted to negotiate with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. In several interviews, Iraqi rebels, negotiators and residents insisted that it was the foreign elements who scotched a peaceful settlement.
U.S. air strikes began pounding their city, and hopes of peace evaporated. Families fled to nearby villages. When they returned to check on their homes, many found small groups of foreign fighters camped out in their living rooms.
Abu Omar Daoud, for example, opened his front door this week to the surprise of eight militants hiding in the house that his family had fled. Only two were Iraqis, said the 35-year-old truck driver. The rest were Syrians.
Daoud said he demanded that the men leave immediately. The fighters rose, reached for their guns and told him he was being impolite. They said they'd come to "defend Iraqis and their honor and their families," Daoud recalled Thursday.
"I yelled at them, `don't you know where my family is, the ones you came to defend? We're refugees,'" Daoud said. "We are living in a school. If my house is destroyed, who will fix it?"
If he kicked them out, Daoud figured, he faced two choices: die in a U.S. air strike or be killed as a traitor by the militants. He shut his front door and walked away.
---
(A Knight Ridder special correspondent in Fallujah contributed to this report. He is not named for security reasons.)
http://www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/Foreign%20Fighters%20Reviled.htm
As with any article/articles...one may wish to obtain more information before drawing a conclusion...
tis
Evening Bull...
My Aunt worked for him for years...
He is concerned with what the people of NC voice...
He is also very effective in getting things done...as I have found out...
Senator Dole has also assisted me...she was very effective...
Hope yours are well...shall let you know when I get up your way and we shall have a beer or two :)
tis
P.S...this is the message I edited on the other broad...
edit...
wrong broad...my apologies...
tis
Evening Irish...
Have any Tesla?
Peace...
tis
Evening Peg...
Hope your weekend was/is enjoyable...
I disagree on hrc chewing up Condi...hrc has too many ghost...and those will come into full view before long...if those ghost are true or not will not matter to many of the voters in this country...
As far as hrc being a fighter...I can think of many words describing hrc...though fighter isn't one of them...
Condi being a follower...such may be true to some extent in the eyes of some...but I for one admire her accomplishments...
Best to you and yours :)
tis
Evening 4God...
I too like reading/listening to Brootz...Micheal Savage as well...
Concerning Libertarians...please see the link below...better to see all angles then just a few... :)
http://www.profusion.com/results?queryterm=libertarians&querytype=all&rpe=10&timeout=30&...
Hope you enjoyed a Great Fathers Day...
tis
Actually...
I am registered as a Rep...a friend of mine was running for office locally (he is a Rep)...hence why I am reg as a Rep...
Most of my immediate Family are reg Dem's...
The Libertarian party is how I voted more then once...the two major parties are not concerned with the average American (simply my views)...granted there are those within the two parties that place their interest where it should be...I search those out and vote accordingly...party lines are not an issue with me...the intention of the candidate is...(hope that makes some sense :)
tis
I think Condi...
Would take Hillary easily...
But if the same people are behind the scene's (either party)...then it matters not who wears the name...shall be the same ole ch*t...
Best to you on Fathers Day :)
tis
Evening 4God...
If the Rep's go with Jeb in 2008...then they will lose...imo...
I for one will not vote for him...the Presidency is becoming a family event...which I disagree with...
Course...since Hillary will probably be running on the Dem's ticket...I shall be voting the other Lib. ticket...
Hope all is well :)
tis
Hey Bull...
Found this article that made a mention of Coble...
"I do not believe the taxpayers of this country owe me a congressional pension because I have chosen to pursue a career in public service," said Coble, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative who tried unsuccessfully in the mid-1990s to get Congress to phase out congressional pensions by eliminating pensions for newly elected members.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/03/MNGK1C2HA71.DTL
Enjoy Fathers Day ;)
tis
Xcelent article from...
Thomas Sowell
The high cost of nuances
June 14, 2005
The Supreme Court's recent decision saying that the federal government can prosecute those using marijuana for medical purposes, even when state laws permit such use, has been seen by many as an issue of being for or against marijuana. But the real significance of this decision has little to do with marijuana and everything to do with the kind of government that we, our children, and our children's children are going to live under.
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution says that all powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states or to the people.
Those who wrote the Constitution clearly understood that power is dangerous and needs to be limited by being separated -- separated not only into the three branches of the national government but also separated as between the whole national government, on the one hand, and the states and the people on the other.
Too many people today judge court decisions by whether the court is "for" or "against" this or that policy. It is not the court's job to be for or against any policy but to apply the law.
The question before the Supreme Court was not whether allowing the medicinal use of marijuana was a good policy or a bad policy. The legal question was whether Congress had the authority under the Constitution to regulate something that happened entirely within the boundaries of a given state.
For decades, judges have allowed the federal government to expand its powers by saying that it was authorized by the Constitution to regulate "interstate commerce." But how can something that happens entirely within the borders of one state be called "interstate commerce"?
Back in 1942, the Supreme Court authorized the vastly expanded powers of the federal government under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration by declaring that a man who grew food for himself on his own land was somehow "affecting" prices of goods in interstate commerce and so the federal government had a right to regulate him.
Stretching and straining the law this way means that anything the federal government wants to do can be given the magic label "interstate commerce" -- and the limits on federal power under the 10th Amendment vanish into thin air.
Judicial activists love to believe that they can apply the law in a "nuanced" way, allowing the federal government to regulate some activities that do not cross state lines but not others. The problem is that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's nuances are different from Justice Antonin Scalia's nuances -- not only in the medical marijuana case but in numerous other cases.
Courts that go in for nuanced applications of the law can produce a lot of 5 to 4 decisions, with different coalitions of Justices voting for and against different parts of the same decision.
A much bigger and more fundamental problem is that millions of ordinary citizens, without legal training, have a hard time figuring out when they are or are not breaking the law. Nuanced courts, instead of drawing a line in the sand, spread a lot of fog across the landscape.
Justice Clarence Thomas cut through that fog in his dissent when he said that the people involved in this case "use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana."
Instead of going in for fashionable "nuance" talk, Justice Thomas drew a line in the sand: "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything -- and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."
In short, the kinds of limitations on the power of the national government created by the Constitution are being nuanced out of existence by the courts.
Ironically, this decision was announced during the same week when Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the complaints against her was that she had criticized the 1942 decision expanding the meaning of "interstate commerce." In other words, her position on this was the same as that of Clarence Thomas -- and both are anathema to liberals.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050614.shtml
tis
Whether the following is...
is true/has any truth/or is completely false...but a good read...
MEET THE BIN LADENS
Osama's Road to Riches and Terror
By Georg Mascolo and Erich Follath
The Bin Laden family disowned black sheep Osama in 1994. But have they really broken with the mega-terrorist? Recently revealed classified documents seem to suggest otherwise. Osama's violent career has been made possible in part by the generosity of his family -- and by his contacts with the Saudi royals.
Osama bin Laden remains at large. More questions are now being asked as to exactly how much help he has received from his family.
Zoom
AFP
Osama bin Laden remains at large. More questions are now being asked as to exactly how much help he has received from his family.
In early spring 2002, American intelligence agents tipped off authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina that something wasn't quite right with the "Benevolence International Foundation." Their reaction was swift; special forces stormed eight offices of the Islamic foundation in Sarajevo and in Zenica. They found weapons and explosives, videos and flyers calling for holy war. More importantly, however, they discovered a computer with a mysterious file entitled "Tarich Osama" -- Arabic for "Osama's Story."
After printing out the file -- close to 10,000 pages worth -- the intelligence experts quickly realized they had stumbled upon a true goldmine. They were looking at nothing less than the carefully documented story of al-Qaida, complete with scanned letters, minutes of secret meetings, photos and notes -- some even written in Osama Bin Laden's handwriting. CIA experts secured the highly sensitive material, dubbed "Golden Chain," and took everything back to the United States. To this day, only fragments of the material have been published. Now, however, SPIEGEL magazine has been given complete access to the entire series of explosive documents dating from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.
During that time, Osama bin Laden, known as "OBL" in CIA parlance, was primarily interested in "preserving the spirit of jihad" that had developed during the successful Afghanistan campaign -- a fight which saw an international group of Muslim fighters stand up to the mighty Soviet army. Bin Laden wanted to expand the group's activities to battle "the infidels" in the West. A full decade before the attacks on the Twin Towers, the documents make horrifyingly clear, bin Laden was already dreaming of "staging a major event for the mass media, to generate donations."
Meet the bin Ladens
This is the first installment of a two-part series on the family of Osama bin Laden. You can read the second here.
CONTINUE>>
Finances are the focal point in these early al-Qaida documents. OBL, as one of the heirs of a large construction company, had a substantial fortune at his disposal, but it was still not enough to finance global jihad. The Saudi elite -- and his own family -- came to his assistance.
"Be generous when doing God's work"
The evidence lies in the most valuable document investigators managed to acquire: a list of al-Qaida's key financial backers. The list, titled with a verse from the Koran, "Let us be generous when doing God's work," is a veritable who's who of the Middle Eastern monarchy, including the signatures of two former cabinet ministers, six bankers and twelve prominent businessmen. The list also mentions "the bin Laden brothers." Were these generous backers aware, at the time, that were not just donating money to support the aggressive expansion of the teaching of the Islamic faith, but were also financing acts of terror against non-believers? Did "the bin Laden brothers," who first pledged money to Al-Qaida and then, in 1994, issued a joint press statement declaring that they were ejecting Osama from the family as a "black sheep," truly break ties with their blood relatives -- or were they simply pulling the wool over the eyes of the world?
Bin Laden became a household name after the dramatic Sept. 11 attacks.
Zoom
REUTERS
Bin Laden became a household name after the dramatic Sept. 11 attacks.
Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism for the CIA, says, "I tracked the bin Ladens for years. Many family members claimed that Osama was no longer one of them. It's an easy thing to say, but blood is usually thicker than water."
Carmen bin Laden, a sister-in-law of the terrorist, who lived with the extended family in Jeddah for years, says, "I absolutely do not believe that the bin Ladens disowned Osama. In this family, a brother is always a brother, no matter what he has done. I am convinced that the complex and tightly woven network between the bin Laden clan and the Saudi royal family is still in operation."
French documentary filmmaker Joël Soler even goes so far as to refer to the family as "A Dynasty of Terror," in his somewhat speculative made-for-TV piece.
But could this really be possible? Are the bin Ladens (or "Binladins," as they more commonly spell it), with their 25 brothers, 29 sisters, in-laws, aunts and, by now, at least 15 children of Osama, nothing but a clan of terrorists? Or are relatives being taken to task for the crimes of one family member, all on the strength of legends and conspiracy theories?
American celebrity attorney Ron Motley plans to file a lawsuit against alleged Saudi backers of al-Qaida on behalf of hundreds of families who lost relatives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Listed among the defendants summoned by federal judge Richard Casey at Motley's request in January 2005 were Osama and one of his brothers, as well as the family's billion-dollar business in Jeddah, the "Saudi Binladin Group."
Tracking the bin Ladens across the globe
To form an impression of this rather unique extended family, one would have to travel to the desert kingdom, where it has its roots, as well as to Washington, Geneva, London and the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- in other words, to all those places where the bin Ladens have left their tracks or where they live today. And the best way to get to the bottom of this clan is to piece together its many parts. Only then will it become more apparent whether the bin Ladens are a clan of terrorists or (with one well-known exception) a terribly affable family.
The bin Laden story, with its dramatic twists and turns, almost comes across as an Arab version of Thomas Mann's novel "Buddenbrooks." In both cases, it's the story of an imposing patriarch, who has managed to hold the clan together, and of his sons, who cannot or do not wish to stop the family's moral decline.
Al-Qaida has supporters the world over.
Zoom
AP
Al-Qaida has supporters the world over.
JEDDAH, ON THE RED SEA, IS A MAJOR CITY AND AN IMPORTANT TRANSIT PORT FOR SAUDI ARABIA. It's also one of the main ports of entry for pilgrimages to the Muslim holy city of Mecca -- and to the headquarters of the family dynasty, the Saudi Binladin Group (SBG).
"We have a mayor and all kinds of political heavyweights. But the truly ruler of Jeddah is Bakr bin Laden," says an informer who agreed to speak only under condition of anonymity. "But Bakr is never seen in public, and when he does occasionally go to the Intercontinental Hotel for dinner -- usually with Osama's son Abdullah -- he has the entire restaurant closed. During a tour of the city, the source points out a glass and steel palace not far from the city's downtown area, with its twisting alleyways and smattering of restored old houses. It's the headquarters of SBG, the secretive realm of Bakr Bin Laden, 58, the son of the family's patriarch and chairman of the company's board of directors.
Jeddah is the place where the clan's founding father began his astonishing career. And it's also the place where the first family member became connected with Islamic terrorism -- not Osama, but his older brother, Mahrus bin Laden. US authorities have also clearly linked another member of the clan, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who is married to one of Osama's sisters, to terrorist attacks abroad.
Although Bin Laden senior -- Mohammed bin Laden -- was practically illiterate, he was blessed with tremendous energy and keen sense of business. In 1930, he left his village, Ribat, in the desperately poor Yemeni region of Hadramaut, and headed north. In Jeddah, then a small city, he eked out a living as a porter for pilgrims, steadfastly saving his earnings to start his own company.
A year later, when the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia gained its independence, the immigrant from the south was still struggling to make ends meet. But he quickly recognized the two factors that were becoming increasingly important in his adopted country: oil, which had been flowing from Saudi wells since 1938, and, with its enormous profits, was revolutionizing the country's traditional society and causing nomadic tribes to take up roots; and the country's authoritarian king, whose patronage sometimes determined survival, but always determined social advancement.
Despite a worldwide manhunt -- and an assault on Tora Bora in Afghanistan, bin Laden has managed to evade capture.
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AFP
Despite a worldwide manhunt -- and an assault on Tora Bora in Afghanistan, bin Laden has managed to evade capture.
A third factor that was critical to the success of the state, and was symbiotically linked with the monarchy from the very beginning, was the religious establishment in its uniquely Saudi form. The principles of Wahhabism-- as Saudi Islam is known -- have their roots with the 18th century radical zealot Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the Sauds' most powerful ally in their efforts to take control of the peninsula. After the founding of the Saudi state, fundamentalism became the official religion.
The royal court builder
Mohammed bin Laden had no quarrels with either the preachers or the princes; his only goal was to make it to the top, and the construction business was the ideal launching pad. The kingdom needed roads, railroads and airports. Bin Laden senior built ramps in the palace for the handicapped King Abd al-Aziz's wheelchair and highways into the mountains for his luxury cars. Bin Laden was later named Minister of Public Spending, and the royal family even awarded him the contract to renovate the country's holy sites. The family business, SBG, quickly developed into the court builder for the entire Saudi infrastructure.
Following an old Islamic tradition, the bin Laden senior kept numerous wives. In 1956, he sired child number 17 with a Syrian woman from Latakia, and the boy was named Osama. It must have been difficult for the patriarch to keep track of his family; ten years later, child number 54 was born -- Mohammed bin Laden's last offspring. In 1968, the patriarch was killed when his Cessna, piloted by an American, crashed -- a foreshadowing of things to come.
The king placed the family business, SBG, under the management of a trustee, making the bin Laden sons the de facto wards of the monarch. Osama was ten years old at the time and he was occasionally allowed to ride along on the company's bulldozers. But he had hardly known his father -- a deficit he recognized only later in life when he elevated the family's patriarch to the status of Spiritus Rector in matters of Islamic fundamentalism.
Even as a boy, Osama was always considered the "holy one" in the family. He drew attention to himself when he denounced school soccer tournaments as a godless waste of time and assiduously monitored the houses of neighbors, taking it upon himself to enforce the state's prohibition of music. He enrolled in the economics program at Jeddah's King Abd al-Aziz University, where the curriculum was determined by anti-Western agitators from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Bin Laden with some of his top deputies.
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AP
Bin Laden with some of his top deputies.
The family became divided, into a more stationary branch, and an "international" branch that settled across the globe. One member of the latter camp was Salem bin Laden. He attended a British university, married a woman from an upper-class British family, and vacationed in Disneyland. In 1972, when the Saudi government relinquished control over SBG, Salem, as the family's eldest son, was named head of the company and quickly made it clear that he had no compunctions about doing business with the United States.
Salem bin Laden established the company's ties to the American political elite when, according to French intelligence sources, he helped the Reagan administration circumvent the US Senate and funnel $34 million to the right-wing Contra rebels operating in Nicaragua. He also developed close ties with the Bush family in Texas. But Salem's successors, not Salem, were the ones who were able to fully capitalize on these connections. In 1988, Salem died in a plane crash near San Antonio, Texas, when the aircraft he was piloted became entangled in a power line. After Salem's death, Bakr took control of SBG.
Brother terrorist
In the meantime, trouble was brewing at home in Saudi Arabia -- in Mecca, of all places, and with the presumed involvement of a family member. In November 1979, insurgents occupied and barricaded themselves into Islam's holiest site, demanding an end to corruption and wastefulness in Saudi Arabia and charging the royal family with having lost its legitimacy by currying favor with the West. It was an act of terror that foreshadowed every major plank of the al-Qaida platform of radical fundamentalism -- and it was no coincidence that this radical group was lead by members of the Muslim Brotherhood with ties to Osama's professors.
At the time, Osama was still entrenched in Saudi society, but his older brother, Mahrus, maintained ties to the fanatics. It's even speculated that he may have used his access to SBG's offices to obtain the renovation plans for the Great Mosque, together with all its secret passageways, and handed them over to the radicals. In any event, the fanatics forced their way onto the mosque's grounds in a truck that was later identified as a Binladin company vehicle.
Mahrus bin Laden was arrested, but was then released for lack of evidence. The terrorist attack turned into a nightmare for the authorities. With the help of French special forces, the Saudis managed to overcome the attackers, but only after a two-week siege and a bloody battle claiming more than a hundred lives. For Mahrus's career, however, the affair proved to be nothing more than a minor speed bump and he later resurfaced as head of SBG's office in Medina.
In late 1979, Osama, with the royal family's blessing, set off for Afghanistan to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union, which had invaded its neighbor to the south. Both the CIA and Saudi Arabia helped fund the Mujahedeen's armed struggle against the communist "infidels." Prince Turki, head of the Saudi secret service, visited Osama several times in Afghanistan and heavy equipment provided by the SBG family business was used to excavate secret tunnels. For Osama, the support of the Saud family and the bin Ladens became a reliable source of funding.
Osama bin Laden with his son Mohammed and Mohammed Atif.
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AFP
Osama bin Laden with his son Mohammed and Mohammed Atif.
In 1990, after his triumph in Afghanistan, OBL offered the Saudi royal family the use of his troops to battle Saddam Hussein, whose forces had invaded Kuwait. But King Fahd decided instead to bring in American forces. The decision proved to be a financial coup for the family business, which helped build military bases for the outsiders, but it was turning point in Osama's life. Embittered, he went to Sudan in 1992, where he built training camps and organized attacks with his al-Qaida group, especially against "infidels" from the United States. He also made sure that the planning of terrorist activities remained in the family. His brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, was involved in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. On his visa application for the United States, he had listed his occupation as an "employee of the Saudi Binladin Group." Khalifa was briefly detained in the United States, but was then deported to Jordan, where he was released because of formal legal errors. In the past, he had also been implicated as a financial backer of the Philippine Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization.
Part II of "Osama's Road to Riches and Terror" can be read here.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0%2C1518%2C359690%2C00.html
tis
Interesting article...
My apologies if posted before...
Illiberal aspects of illegal immigration rarely voiced
Victor Davis Hanson
June 10, 2005
A group of citizens calling themselves the Minutemen patrols the border looking to stop illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, states that Mexican migrant workers in the U.S. are "are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do."
Meanwhile, many Republicans think President George W. Bush's guest-worker program either mocks the law or is unworkable, while in California a frustrated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger blurts out, "Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and the United States."
Illegal immigration is again in the headlines, but the debate isn't going anywhere. Instead, all the tired controversies are again being aired.
Some believe illegal immigration is a win-win bargain: An impoverished Mexico obtains critical dollars, while job-hungry America receives industrious unskilled workers. Critics counter that millions of illegal workers undermine the sanctity of the law, and only abet a corrupt Mexican government that uses remittances to avoid needed reform.
Both sides agree that when newcomers arrive legally from Mexico in the thousands, rather than unchecked in the millions, these immigrants become among our best American citizens.
The politics are by now surreal. Those of the corporate right want cheap labor. So they join the self-interested multicultural left in politics, journalism and academia who don't mind seeing a growing presence of unassimilated and dependent constituents.
Contradictory statistics - showing illegal immigration resulting in either a net gain or loss to the U.S. economy - are used by both sides. Human-interest anecdotes circulate about both the amazing successes and abject failures of individuals who came here illegally.
Yet rarely mentioned in the debate are the illiberal aspects of millions coming to the U.S. in violation of the law.
For starters, take remittances. Billions of dollars are sent annually back to Mexico from its citizens who come to the United States - one of the largest sources of foreign exchange for the Mexican economy.
But that cash does not come out of thin air. If such transfers aid depressed parts of Mexico, they also drain capital from struggling immigrant communities in the United States. Workers without high school diplomas who send back much of their wages often cannot pay for their own proper heath care, education or housing here.
In the American Southwest, entire towns are deprived of critical revenues that could be invested in infrastructure, alleviating the need for state and federal intervention to ensure some sort of parity with American citizens.
Second, when employers hire millions of young laborers from Mexico - often off the books and in cash - poorer American workers cannot organize and thus are left to watch their own static wages eaten up by rising costs.
Third, what do we tell the millions of equally poor immigrants from Asia, Latin America and Africa who wait years to come here legally? It is not especially liberal to require an indigent Filipino or Ethiopian to learn English, find a sponsor, hire a lawyer and queue up for years, while others simply break the law and come here illegally.
Fourth, progressives are understandably proud of environmental legislation, zoning laws and the culture of recycling in states such as California. But when millions in this country don't speak English, are impoverished and uneducated, and live outside the
law, it is only natural that they do not have the money to worry about how many families live in a single house, whether cars meet emission standards, or whether discarded furniture is disposed in authorized landfills rather than on roadsides.
Fifth, the question of concern for the underprivileged seems not always to extend to our own citizens. California, for example has over 14,000 illegal aliens incarcerated in its prisons, costing yearly more than 20 times the annual budget of the under-funded new University of California at Merced - a college located where it could best serve underrepresented poor and minorities.
Finally, there is something elitist in this new idea that American youth should no longer work summers and after-school hours in agriculture, hotels, restaurants and landscaping. These hard jobs were once seen as ways to gain experience and understand the nobility of hard physical work. An entire generation of Americans is growing up that has never mowed a lawn, pruned a bush or washed a dish.
For too long the debate over illegal immigration has been demagogued on hot-button issues of economics, ethnicity and relations with Mexico. The subtext always has been that those who support open borders are somehow more caring or ethical than their purportedly insensitive opponents who wish a return to measured and legal immigration.
In fact, the opposite is true. More frequently it is an uncaring elite - made up of both Democrats and Republicans - that advocates not enforcing immigration laws. And it is past time for them to explain why it is moral or liberal, rather than merely convenient, to import millions outside the law to do the jobs we supposedly cannot.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Hanson20050610.shtml
The desecration of Ground Zero
Michelle Malkin
June 8, 2005
Most Americans have not been paying attention to the bureaucratic wrangling and political jockeying that has plagued the construction of the World Trade Center Memorial at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. But it’s not just New Yorkers and developers and 9/11 families who should care.
A good portion of the project is federally subsidized. All of us have not only a financial stake, but also a moral stake, in protecting the honor of the victims and the dignity of our country.
A Blame America Monument is not what we need or deserve. But it looks like one is already in the works.
In a startling op-ed printed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Debra Burlingame exposed the “Great Ground Zero Heist.” Burlingame is on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which terrorists crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She reports that the World Trade Center memorial will encompass a “cultural complex” whose primary tenant will be something called the “International Freedom Center.”
According to an IFC fact sheet, the project “will be an integral part of humanity’s response to September 11.” An educational and cultural center will host exhibits, lectures, debates, and films “that will nurture a global conversation on freedom in our world today.” Tellingly though, as Burlingame notes, early plans for the center that included a large mural of an Iraqi voter were scratched in favor of a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs went public. So much for nurturing that global conversation.
The center’s “civic engagement network” will connect visitors to “service” opportunities. Translation: Left-wing activist recruitment center. As the fact sheet notes, “leading NGOs (non governmental organizations) will be offered outposts at the Center to reach out to its visitors.”
On its face, the project may seem fairly unobjectionable enough (putting aside how far afield it all seems from the task of remembering the victims and heroes of 9/11)until, that is, you take a closer look at the chief movers and shakers behind the project.
Tom Bernstein, a deep-pocketed Hollywood financier and real estate mogul, is the primary driver behind the IFC. Bernstein’s longtime friendship and business partnership with Yale classmate George W. Bush gives cover to his radical activism as president of Human Rights First. The group opposed Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez over the administration’s preventive detention policies and has joined with the ACLU in mau-mauing the Pentagon over alleged prisoner abuse.
Among the many supposedly respectable scholars consulted on the project is Eric Foner. He’s the unhinged Columbia University professor who reacted to 9/11 by griping: "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." The IFC’s list of scholars and advisors also includes left-leaning elites such as Henry Louis Gates at Harvard University; Stephen B. Heintz, IFC secretary and president of the Rockefeller Bros. Fund; Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute; and Michael Posner, Executive Director of Human Rights First.
Burlingame also reports that Anthony Romero, ACLU executive director, “is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.” Then there’s billionaire Bush-basher George Soros, who Burlingame reports is an early funder and supporter of the IFC and whose spirit infuses this grievance-mongering enterprise.
Do we really want Ground Zero to be the playground of anti-war financiers, moral equivalence peddlers, and Guantanamo Bay alarmists? As Burlingame told me yesterday, “Ground Zero belongs to all the American people. If Ground Zero is lost, whether through negligence or malfeasance, it will be a loss that is felt for generations to come.”
Richard Tofel, IFC president, is minimizing dissenters. In a statement, he told me that “we understand that a few do not” agree with the project’s stated mission of promoting the “cause of freedom.” The question is not whether most Americans support a monument to freedom, but whether they will stand by while saboteurs convert it into The Ultimate Guilt Complex.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20050608.shtml
tis
Liberals, race, and history
Thomas Sowell (archive)
May 24, 2005
If the share of the black vote that goes to the Democrats ever falls to 70 percent, it may be virtually impossible for the Democrats to win the White House or Congress, because they have long ago lost the white male vote and their support among other groups is eroding. Against that background, it is possible to understand their desperate efforts to keep blacks paranoid, not only about Republicans but about American society in general.
Liberal Democrats, especially, must keep blacks fearful of racism everywhere, including in an administration whose Cabinet includes people of Chinese, Japanese, Hispanic, and Jewish ancestry, and two consecutive black Secretaries of State. Blacks must be kept believing that their only hope lies with liberals.
Not only must the present be distorted, so must the past -- and any alternative view of the future must be nipped in the bud. That is why prominent minority figures who stray from the liberal plantation must be discredited, debased and, above all, kept from becoming federal judges.
A thoughtful and highly intelligent member of the California supreme court like Justice Janice Rogers Brown must be smeared as a right-wing extremist, even though she received 76 percent of the vote in California, hardly a right-wing extremist state. But desperate politicians cannot let facts stand in their way.
Least of all can they afford to let Janice Rogers Brown become a national figure on the federal bench. The things she says and does could lead other blacks to begin to think independently -- and that in turn threatens the whole liberal house of cards. If a smear is what it takes to stop her, that is what liberal politicians and the liberal media will use.
It's "not personal" as they say when they smear someone. It doesn't matter how outstanding or upstanding Justice Brown is. She is a threat to the power that means everything to liberal politicians. The Democrats' dependence on blacks for votes means that they must keep blacks dependent on them.
Black self-reliance would be almost as bad as blacks becoming Republicans, as far as liberal Democrats are concerned. All black progress in the past must be depicted as the result of liberal government programs and all hope of future progress must be depicted as dependent on the same liberalism.
In reality, reductions in poverty among blacks and the rise of blacks into higher level occupations were both more pronounced in the years leading up to the civil rights legislation and welfare state policies of the 1960s than in the years that followed.
Moreover, contrary to political myth, a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But facts have never stopped politicians or ideologues before and show no signs of stopping them now.
What blacks have achieved for themselves, without the help of liberals, is of no interest to liberals. Nothing illustrates this better than political reactions to academically successful black schools.
Despite widespread concerns expressed about the abysmal educational performances of most black schools, there is remarkably little interest in those relatively few black schools which have met or exceeded national standards.
Anyone who is serious about the advancement of blacks would want to know what is going on in those ghetto schools whose students have reading and math scores above the national average, when so many other ghetto schools are miles behind in both subjects. But virtually all the studies of such schools have been done by conservatives, while liberals have been strangely silent.
Achievement is not what liberalism is about. Victimhood and dependency are.
Black educational achievements are a special inconvenience for liberals because those achievements have usually been a result of methods and practices that go directly counter to prevailing theories in liberal educational circles and are anathema to the teachers' unions that are key supporters of the Democratic Party.
Many things that would advance blacks would not advance the liberal agenda. That is why the time is long overdue for the two to come to a parting of the ways.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050524.shtml
This article is rather old...if posted before...my apologies...(edited)
tis
There's No Place Like Home
What I learned from my wife's month in the British medical system.
BY DAVID ASMAN
Wednesday, June 8, 2005 12:00 a.m. EDT
"Mr. Asman, could you come down to the gym? Your wife appears to be having a small problem." In typical British understatement, this was the first word I received of my wife's stroke.
We had arrived in London the night before for a two-week vacation. We spent the day sightseeing and were planning to go to the theater. I decided to take a nap, but my wife wanted to get in a workout in the hotel's gym before theater. Little did either of us know that a tiny blood clot had developed in her leg on the flight to London and was quietly working its way up to her heart. Her workout on the Stairmaster pumped the clot right through a too-porous wall in the heart on a direct path to the right side of her brain.
Hurrying down to the gym, I suspected that whatever the "small" problem was, we might still have time to make the play. Instead, our lives were about to change fundamentally, and we were both about to experience firsthand the inner workings of British health care.
We spent almost a full month in a British public hospital. We also arranged for a complex medical procedure to be done in one of the few remaining private hospitals in Britain. My wife then spent about three weeks recuperating in a New York City hospital as an inpatient and has since used another city hospital for physical therapy as an outpatient. We thus have had a chance to sample the health diet available under two very different systems of health care. Neither system is without its faults and advantages. To paraphrase Thomas Sowell, there are no solutions to modern health care problems, only trade-offs. What follows is a sampling of those tradeoffs as we viewed them firsthand.
As I saw my wife collapsed on the hotel's gym floor, my concern about making the curtain was replaced by a bone-chilling recognition that she was in mortal danger. Despite her protestations that everything was fine, her left side was paralyzed and her eyes were rolling around unfocused. She was making sense, but her words were slurred. Right away I suspected a stroke, even though she is a young, healthy nonsmoker. Over her continuing protests, I knew we had to get her to a hospital right away.
The emergency workers who came within five minutes were wonderful. The two young East Enders looked and sounded for all the world like a couple of skinhead soccer fans, cockney accents and all. But their professionalism in immediately stabilizing my wife and taking her vitals was matched with exceptional kindness. I was moved to tears to see how comforting they were both to my wife and to me. As I was to discover time and again in the British health system, despite the often deplorable conditions of a bankrupt infrastructure, British caregivers--whether nurses, doctors, or ambulance drivers--are extraordinarily kind and hardworking. Since there's no real money to be made in the system, those who get into public medicine do so as a pure vocation. And they show it. In the case of these EMTs, I kick myself for not having noticed their names to later thank them, for almost as soon as they dropped us off at the emergency room of the University College of London Hospital, they disappeared.
Suddenly we were in the hands of British Health Service, and after a battery of tests we were being pressured into officially admitting my wife to UCL. As we discovered later, emergency care is free for everyone in Britain; it's only when one is officially admitted to a hospital that a foreigner begins to pay. I didn't know that. But I did know that I was not about to admit my wife to a hospital that could not diagnose an obviously life-threatening affliction. And even after having given her an MRI, the doctors could not tell if she had a stroke.
Now, the smartest thing I did before we left the hotel was to delay the ambulance driver long enough to run back to my room and grab my wife's cell phone. With that phone I began making about a thousand dollars worth of trans-Atlantic calls, the first of which was to the world-renowned cardiologist Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, who I'm lucky enough to have as my GP. As it turned out, not only did Izzy diagnose the problem correctly, he even suggested a cause for the stroke, which later turned out to be correct. "There's no reason for her to have a stroke except if it's a PFO." I didn't know what Izzy meant, but I wrote down the initials and later found out that a PFO (a patent foramen ovale) is a flap-like opening in the heart through which we get our oxygen in utero. For most of us, the opening closes shortly after birth. But in as many as 30% of us, the flap doesn't seal tight, and that can allow a blood clot to travel through the heart up to the brain. Izzy agreed that I should not admit my wife to UCL but hold out for a hospital that specialized in neurology.
As it happened, the best such hospital in England, Queen's Square Hospital for Neurology, was a short distance away, but it had no beds available. That's when I started dialing furiously again, tracking down contacts and calling in chits with any influential contact around the world for whom I'd ever done a favor. I also got my employer, News Corp., involved, and a team of extremely helpful folks I'd never met worked overtime helping me out.
Suddenly, a bed was found in Queen's Square, and by 2 a.m. my wife was officially admitted to a British public hospital. The neurologist on call that night looked at the same MRI where the emergency doctors had seen nothing and immediately saw that my wife had suffered a severe stroke. It was awful news, but I realized we were finally in the right place.
That first night (or what was left of it) my wife was sent off to intensive care, and the nurses convinced me that I should get a few hours sleep. We found a supply closet, in which there was a small examination table, and the nurses helped me fashion fake pillows and blankets from old supplies. The loving attention of these nurses was touching. But the conditions of the hospital were rather shockingly apparent even then.
The acute brain injury ward to which my wife was assigned the next day consisted of four sections, each having six beds. Whether it was dumb luck or some unseen connection, we ended up with a bed next to a window, through which we could catch a glimpse of the sky. Better yet, the window actually opened, which was also a blessing since the smells wafting through the ward were often overwhelming.
When I covered Latin America for The Wall Street Journal, I'd visit hospitals, prisons and schools as barometers of public services in the country. Based on my Latin American scale, Queen's Square would rate somewhere in the middle. It certainly wasn't as bad as public hospitals in El Salvador, where patients often share beds. But it wasn't as nice as some of the hospitals I've seen in Buenos Aires or southern Brazil. And compared with virtually any hospital ward in the U.S., Queen's Square would fall short by a mile.
The equipment wasn't ancient, but it was often quite old. On occasion my wife and I would giggle at heart and blood-pressure monitors that were literally taped together and would come apart as they were being moved into place. The nurses and hospital technicians had become expert at jerry-rigging temporary fixes for a lot of the damaged equipment. I pitched in as best as I could with simple things, like fixing the wiring for the one TV in the ward. And I'd make frequent trips to the local pharmacies to buy extra tissues and cleaning wipes, which were always in short supply.
In fact, cleaning was my main occupation for the month we were at Queen's Square. Infections in hospitals are, of course, a problem everywhere. But in Britain, hospital-borne infections are getting out of control. At least 100,000 British patients a year are hit by hospital-acquired infections, including the penicillin-resistant "superbug" MRSA. A new study carried out by the British Health Protection Agency says that MRSA plays a part in the deaths of up to 32,000 patients every year. But even at lower numbers, Britain has the worst MRSA infection rates in Europe. It's not hard to see why.
As far as we could tell in our month at Queen's Square, the only method of keeping the floors clean was an industrious worker from the Philippines named Marcello, equipped with a mop and pail. Marcello did the best that he could. But there's only so much a single worker can do with a mop and pail against a ward full of germ-laden filth. Only a constant cleaning by me kept our little corner of the ward relatively germ-free. When my wife and I walked into Cornell University Hospital in New York after a month in England, the first thing we noticed was the floors. They were not only clean. They were shining! We were giddy with the prospect of not constantly engaging in germ warfare.
As for the caliber of medicine practiced at Queen's Square, we were quite impressed at the collegiality of the doctors and the tendency to make medical judgments based on group consultations. There is much better teamwork among doctors, nurses and physical therapists in Britain. In fact, once a week at Queen's Square, all the hospital's health workers--from high to low--would assemble for an open forum on each patient in the ward. That way each level knows what the other level is up to, something glaringly absent from U.S. hospital management. Also, British nurses have far more direct managerial control over how the hospital wards are run. This may somewhat compensate for their meager wages--which averaged about £20,000 ($36,000) a year (in a city where almost everything costs twice as much as it does in Manhattan!).
There is also much less of a tendency in British medicine to make decisions on the basis of whether one will be sued for that decision. This can lead to a much healthier period of recuperation. For example, as soon as my wife was ambulatory, I was determined to get her out of the hospital as much as possible. Since a stroke is all about the brain, I wanted to clear her head of as much sickness as I could. We'd take off in a wheelchair for two-hour lunches in the lovely little park outside, and three-hour dinners at a nice Japanese restaurant located at a hotel down the street. I swear those long, leisurely dinners, after which we'd sit in the lobby where I'd smoke a cigar and we'd talk for another hour or so, actually helped in my wife's recovery. It made both of us feel, well, normal. It also helped restore a bit of fun in our relationship, which too often slips away when you just see your loved one in a hospital setting.
Now try leaving a hospital as an inpatient in the U.S. In fact, we did try and were frustrated at every step. You'd have better luck breaking out of prison. Forms, permission slips and guards at the gate all conspire to keep you in bounds. It was clear that what prevented us from getting out was the pressing fear on everyone's part of getting sued. Anything happens on the outside and folks naturally sue the hospital for not doing their job as the patient's nanny.
Why are the Brits so less concerned about being sued? I can only guess that Britain's practice of forcing losers in civil cases to pay for court costs has lessened the number of lawsuits, and thus the paranoia about lawsuits from which American medical services suffer.
British doctors, nurses and physical therapists also seem to put much more stock in the spiritual side of healing. Not to say that they bring religion into the ward. (In fact, they passed right over my wife's insistence that prayer played a part in what they had to admit was a miraculously quick return of movement to her left side.) Put simply, they invest a lot of effort at keeping one's spirits up. Sometimes it's a bit over the top, such as when the physical or occupational therapists compliment any tiny achievement with a "Brilliant!" or "Fantastic!" But better that than taking a chance of planting a negative suggestion that can grow quickly and dampen spirits for a long time.
Since we returned, we've actually had two American physical therapists who did just that--one who told my wife that she'd never use her hand again and another who said she'd never bend her ankle again. Both of these therapists were wrong, but they succeeded in depressing my wife's spirits and delaying her recovery for a considerable period. For the life of me, I can't understand how they could have been so insensitive, unless this again was an attempt to forestall a lawsuit: I never claimed you would walk again.
Having praised the caregivers, I'm forced to return to the inefficiencies of a health system devoid of incentives. One can tell that the edge has disappeared in treatment in Britain. For example, when we returned to the U.S. we discovered that treatment exists for thwarting the effects of blood clots in the brain if administered shortly after a stroke. Such treatment was never mentioned, even after we were admitted to the neurology hospital. Indeed, the only medication my wife was given for a severe stroke was a daily dose of aspirin. Now, treating stroke victims is tricky business. My wife had a low hemoglobin count, so with all the medications in the world, she still might have been better off with just aspirin. But consultations with doctors never brought up the possibilities of alternative drug therapies. (Of course, U.S. doctors tend to be pill pushers, but that's a different discussion.)
Then there was the condition of Queen's Square compared with the physical plant of the New York hospitals. As I mentioned, the cleanliness of U.S. hospitals is immediately apparent to all the senses. But Cornell and New York University hospitals (both of which my wife has been using since we returned) have ready access to technical equipment that is either hard to find or nonexistent in Britain. This includes both diagnostic equipment and state-of-the-art equipment used for physical therapy.
We did have one brief encounter with a more comprehensive type of British medical treatment--a day trip to one of the few remaining private hospitals in London.
Before she could travel back home, my wife needed to have the weak wall in her heart fortified with a metal clamp. The procedure is minimally invasive (a catheter is passed up to the heart from a small incision made in the groin), but it requires enormous skill. The cardiologist responsible for the procedure, Seamus Cullen, worked in both the public system and as a private clinician. He informed us that the waiting line to perform the procedure in a public hospital would take days if not weeks, but we could have the procedure done in a private hospital almost immediately. Since we'd already been separated from our 12-year-old daughter for almost a month, we opted to have the procedure done (with enormous assistance from my employer) at a private hospital.
Checking into the private hospital was like going from a rickety Third World hovel into a five-star hotel. There was clean carpeting, more than enough help, a private room (and a private bath!) in which to recover from the procedure, even a choice of wines offered with a wide variety of entrees. As we were feasting on our fancy new digs, Dr. Cullen came by, took my wife's hand, and quietly told us in detail about the procedure. He actually paused to ask us whether we understood him completely and had any questions. Only one, we both thought to ask: Is this a dream?
It wasn't long before the dream was over and we were back at Queen's Square. But on our return, one of the ever-accommodating nurses had found us a single room in the back of the ward where they usually throw rowdy patients. For the last five days, my wife and I prayed for well-behaved patients, and we managed to last out our days at Queen's Square basking in a private room.
But what of the bottom line? When I received the bill for my wife's one-month stay at Queen's Square, I thought there was a mistake. The bill included all doctors' costs, two MRI scans, more than a dozen physical therapy sessions, numerous blood and pathology tests, and of course room and board in the hospital for a month. And perhaps most important, it included the loving care of the finest nurses we'd encountered anywhere. The total cost: $25,752. That ain't chump change. But to put this in context, the cost of just 10 physical therapy sessions at New York's Cornell University Hospital came to $27,000--greater than the entire bill from British Health Service!
There is something seriously out of whack about 10 therapy sessions that cost more than a month's worth of hospital bills in England. Still, while costs in U.S. hospitals might well have become exorbitant because of too few incentives to keep costs down, the British system has simply lost sight of costs and incentives altogether. (The exception would appear to be the few remaining private clinics in Britain. The heart procedure done in the private clinic in London cost about $20,000.)
"Free health care" is a mantra that one hears all the time from advocates of the British system. But British health care is not "free." I mentioned the cost of living in London, which is twice as high for almost any good or service as prices in Manhattan. Folks like to blame an overvalued pound (or undervalued dollar). But that only explains about 30% of the extra cost. A far larger part of those extra costs come in the hidden value-added taxes--which can add up to 40% when you combine costs to consumers and producers. And with salaries tending to be about 20% lower in England than they are here, the purchasing power of Brits must be close to what we would define as the poverty level. The enormous costs of socialized medicine explain at least some of this disparity in the standard of living.
As for the quality of British health care, advocates of socialized medicine point out that while the British system may not be as rich as U.S. heath care, no patient is turned away. To which I would respond that my wife's one roommate at Cornell University Hospital in New York was an uninsured homeless woman, who shared the same spectacular view of the East River and was receiving about the same quality of health care as my wife. Uninsured Americans are not left on the street to die.
Something is clearly wrong with medical pricing over here. Ten therapy sessions aren't worth $27,000, no matter how shiny the floors are. On the other hand my wife was wheeled into Cornell and managed to partially walk out after a relatively pleasant stay in a relatively clean environment. Can one really put a price on that?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006785
linked from: http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
tis
Evening Ergo...
Wanting more war is not what I took from the article/wanting more war is not what I wish...
I cannot say what Mr. Sowells true intentions are within the words of the article...I read...and draw my own conclusions from there...
It is getting late here and I wish to post some articles I ran across...
I ask that you give me another night to post my views of the article...if in fact you are interested...
Best to yours...
tis
Sexperts, porn, and guns, oh my!
Mike S. Adams
June 7, 2005
A couple of days ago, bird watcher and forest conservation advocate, Rita Dean of Greenville, SC, wrote a letter complaining about me to the chancellor (and nearly every other administrator) of my university. She was shocked at some comments she heard when she saw me speaking on Capitol Hill (broadcast live on C-Span) in affiliation with the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. Here's part of what Rita had to say:
"Carrying the banner of higher education, Mr. [sic] Adams today promoted the proliferation of firearms and tied this policy directly to the credentials and advancement of college Republicans. He encouraged conservative college students to promote the establishment of campus chapters of the National Rifle Association, and to align themselves on the other hand with pro-life advocates. I fail to understand the natural relation between guns and a "pro-life" position. It seems to be a progression in logic that is understandable only to Mr. [sic] Adams and his young acolytes. Mr. [sic] Adams reflects poorly on the entire University of North Carolina academic community..."
Ms. Dean's complaint suggests that the focus of my speech was the 2nd Amendment. The focus of my speech was actually the 1st Amendment.
Specifically, I suggested strategies to combat the efforts of liberal administrators to censor conservative speech on campus. After hearing my speech accusing liberal administrators of trying to censor conservative speech, Ms. Dean suggested that the liberal administrators should try to censor my conservative speech. Bird watchers like Rita make my job easy.
It is worth noting that my "offensive" speech criticized two UNC campuses-one for showing a porn movie to students (on campus) and another for hiring a porn star to lecture on safe anal sex. That was right before I told an LSU student (during "Q and A") that taking people "plinking" in the woods with a .22 was a good way to get them interested in firearms.
And that was the start of the problem, I suppose. You rarely hear so-called liberals (I call them neo-libs) like Rita discuss the dangers of porn and sodomy. But they are terrified of .22 rifles. And many neo-libs expect everyone to tolerate government funding of pornography and sodomy education while they refuse to tolerate gun ownership by private citizens.
And, of course, there is no inconsistency between my opposition to abortion and my opposition to gun control. Put simply, I am committed to the protection of innocent life. I want the fetus to be protected from the abortionist who seeks to take an innocent life. I also want adults to be protected from the murderer who seeks to take an innocent life.
Of course, critics of my response to Rita will argue that a fetus is not a person in order to rebut my assertion that "the abortionist...seeks to take an innocent life." But the real issue, the one that my critics will not touch, regards the status of the college student.
Whenever neo-libs seek to distribute condoms on campus, to show porn movies, to encourage sodomy, or to encourage "reproductive choice," they assert that college students are adults. But when it comes to gun ownership, they portray college students as children. And these children must be kept away from firearms, just as they must be shielded from any speech that might make them feel uncomfortable or wound their inner child.
The neo-libs claim a right to abortion they cannot identify in the constitution. But NRA members claim a right to bear arms, which is spelled out clearly below the 1st Amendment. It is no accident that the neo-libs seek to suppress knowledge of one amendment through the destruction of another.
And that is where I come in. You won't find me fighting for the right of government offices to spend my tax dollars on porn and sodomy lectures, just as you will never see me bother adults who want to watch porn or engage in sodomy. Instead, I will spend my time encouraging adults to learn to use firearms safely. I will do that by encouraging student NRA chapters on campuses across the country.
In the future, every time I make a speech on a college campus in South Carolina, I intend to donate one Remington shotgun to each host campus with an NRA chapter. The guns, which I will call Rita's Remingtons, will be given along with a contribution to the National Rifle Association. I will also provide the students with 250 rounds of 12 gauge ammunition.
Neo-libs like Rita Dean don't understand that I am proud to be a member of the NRA. I am also proud to have worked for www.NRANews.com during the last election year. I am only ashamed that I work for a university system that has sponsored $3000 lectures (at UNC-G) on safe sodomy and rejected my offer for a free lecture (at N.C. State) on firearm safety.
I hope you have fun watching birds, Rita. I'm coming down to South Carolina with my 45-70 to kill a hog in your honor. I look forward to reading your next letter to the chancellor. Pork chops, anyone?
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/ma20050607.shtml
tis
Something to ponder...
Looking back
Thomas Sowell
June 6, 2005
We may look back on some eras as heroic -- that of the founding fathers or "the greatest generation" that fought World War II -- but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or blundered into wars in which every country involved ended up worse off than before.
How will people a century from now look back on our era? Fortunately, most of us will be long gone by then, so we will be spared the embarrassment of seeing ourselves judged.
What will future generations say about how we behaved when confronted by international terrorist organizations that have repeatedly demonstrated their cut-throat ruthlessness and now had the prospect of getting nuclear weapons from rogue nations like Iran and North Korea?
What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention?
During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.
This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.
What will those who look back on these times think when they see that the American Civil Liberties Union, and others who have made excuses for all sorts of criminals, were pushing for the prosecution of our own troops for life-and-death decisions they had a split second to make in the heat of combat?
The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us.
It is impossible to fight a war without heroism. Yet can you name a single American military hero acclaimed by the media for an act of courage in combat? Such courage is systematically ignored by most of the media.
If American troops kill a hundred terrorists in battle and lose ten of their own men doing it, the only headline will be: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."
Those in the media who have carped at the military for years, and have repeatedly opposed military spending, are now claiming to be "honoring" our military by making a big production out of publishing the names of all those killed in Iraq. Will future generations see through this hypocrisy -- and wonder why we did not?
What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?
Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not.
Nothing will more painfully reveal the irresponsible frivolity of our times than the many demands in the media and in politics that we act only with the approval of the United Nations and after winning over "world opinion."
How long this will take and what our enemies will be doing in the meantime while we are going through these futile exercises is something that gets very little attention.
Do you remember Osama bin Laden warning us, on the eve of last year's elections, that he would retaliate against those parts of the United States that voted for Bush? The United States is not Spain, so we disregarded his threats.
But what of future generations, after international terrorists get nuclear weapons? And what will our descendants think of us -- will they ever forgive us -- for leaving them in such a desperate situation because we were paralyzed by a desire to placate "world opinion"?
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050606.shtml
linked from: http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
tis
Thank you...
for that clarification...
Peace...
tis
Help me out here...
Where in what you have posted states "intentional"...
I see a post listing conditions/possible conditions...
Maybe I have missed something...
tis
Evening Easy...
I have heard of the "kicking of the Quran"...
My intentions of posting that article was concerning the International version of newsweek dated 2/2005...
Hope all is well...
tis
Evening Bull...
I like Coble...one can always count on his office for the answers to ones questions...
I imagine the t-ball is fun :)
One of these days we need to meet and have a cold one...will have to be your county though lol...
tis
I found this interesting...
This may have already been discussed...
Newsweek to America: Stop dreaming
Larry Elder (archive)
June 2, 2005
Newsweek strikes again!
No, not the now-discredited, U.S.-military-flushed-the-Koran-down-the-toilet story. For its Feb. 2, 2005, issue, Newsweek's Asian international edition ran a cover showing a garbage pail with a large American flag inside. The caption read, "The Day America Died." Inside, an article that severely criticizes America, by Princeton Professor Andrew Moravcsik, who, among other things, serves as nonresident senior fellow with the liberal Brookings Institution (a relationship not disclosed).
That week's Newsweek European international edition ran a cover of President George W. Bush at the presidential podium. The caption read, "America Leads . . . But Is Anyone Following?" Again, Professor Moravcsik's article ran inside.
What about that week's American edition? No cover showing Bush at the podium or an American flag in a garbage pail. No Professor Moravcsik article. Instead, the American edition ran a cover with Jamie Foxx, Hilary Swank and Leonardo DiCaprio, under the caption, "Oscar Confidential: Hollywood's Hottest Stars Together -- A Candid Talk About Acting, Fear, and Fame." That's right, American readers saw an entirely different cover, with Moravcsik's article AWOL.
According to Investor's Business Daily, an editor's note accompanied the Asian and European international editions. It read: "Verified facts, not opinions from any viewpoint, are laid out in this issue."
Verified facts, not opinions?
Moravcsik writes that, contrary to what Americans think, the American Dream no longer exists: "But the greater danger may be a delusional America, one that believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the American Dream lives on, that America remains a model for the world... "
America's 2004 unemployment rate was 5.5 percent, lower than Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the combined European Union. American GDP grew at 4.4 percent in 2004, versus United Kingdom's 3.2 percent, Japan's 2.9 percent, Spain's 2.6 percent, France's 2.1 percent, Germany's 1.7 percent, Italy's 1.3 percent and the European Union's 2.4 percent. America has the second highest GDP per capita in the world (Luxembourg is first), more than 30 percent higher than both Japan and the United Kingdom.
Professor Moravcsik doesn't much care for the Bush administration's foreign policy: "The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq."
Swaggering administration? Please note that the president got a U.N. resolution telling Saddam Hussein to disarm or else. Congress passed a resolution supporting the war. The majority of Americans supported the war effort, re-electing George W. Bush. Even now, with the persistence of the so-called "insurgency," the majority of Americans want us to stay the course. Does that make most Americans "swaggerers"?
Moravcsik condemns America for not expanding its welfare state: "Once most foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the Europeans in treating the provision of adequate social welfare is [sic] a basic right." A reasonable level of affluence?' What is reasonable? Defined by whom? Apparently Professor Moravcsik prefers a command-and-control economy -- maybe the appointment of a wage or benefits czar -- to determine the deserving and the undeserving.
Moravcsik berates American health care: "'Americans have the best medical care in the world,' Bush declared in his Inaugural Address. Yet, the United States is the only developed democracy without a universal guarantee of health care, leaving about 45 million Americans uninsured." But British media consider their country's state-run health care system in "crisis." Their National Health Service (NHS) is heavily in debt, despite huge taxes and a doubling in spending over the last seven years. The U.K.'s press reports that twice as many bureaucrats now join NHS than doctors and nurses, and that 858,000 people were on a waiting list for an operation at the end of 2004, some of them waiting over a year!
For those still in denial about leftist bias in mainstream news, these must be tough times.
Consider the Associated Press story on Janice Rogers Brown, the black conservative California Supreme Court jurist nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The AP wire story began: "Blacks decried Janice Rogers Brown's nomination to a federal appeals court . . . " Blacks? All blacks? Nobody dissented? All 30-plus million blacks held a straw vote, with Brown getting zero votes? About an hour-and-a-half later, a "recast" AP story came over the wire. Same article, only this time the first line read, "Civil rights lawyers here decried Janice Rogers Brown's nomination . . . " Maybe somebody felt guilty.
The Newsweek affair and the AP story serve as a window into how many in mainstream media view our country. They celebrate the welfare state, consider health care a right, while downplaying the worldwide threat posed by extremist Islam. If, as Newsweek's editor note claims, Professor Moravcsik's article simply advances the truth, why not let Americans, the people who stand to benefit the most, read it? After all, it is we Americans who "are living in a dream world." Please, wake us up.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/le20050602.shtml
linked from: http://boortz.com/nuze/200506/06022005.html
tis
Evening Bull...
Hope all is well :)
Niters...
tis
Ch*t Alex...
I never said he was perfect...
But there are issues that he will bring up that I like to consider/look into...
He is by no means my "instructor of how to" think in life...
Course...it would be nice to blame my f-ups on someone...but alas...I understand that is simply life...
Peace to You and Yours...
tis
Concerning Rall...
Tillman is one scenario...but there are others...
The Tillman Family has every right to ask questions about their son...and every right to get the answers they deserve...hopefully such will come to pass...any Parent that lose's a Son/Daughter deserves that...
I shall look at the documentary perhaps next week...
tis
Rall...
Steps over the line from the liberal side...
There is bias in the media...depending on the network...there are views that will attack one bias...and not the other...
I can see to which way a network/journalist leans...as I am sure so many others can...reason I do not watch the "Big Media"...
I do like listening to Micheal Savage...yes...he is a conservative that dislikes liberals...but he gives a great take of the Rep's in office at the present time...a talk show host that will disagree with their own party is good listening to me...
Time to call it nite...take care...
tis
Was there any mention...
of Ted Rall within that documentary...
tis
Legislation would prevent 'global welfare' payments...
Someone please tell me this is not so...
'Paying Social Security to people in Mexico is the last thing we should be doing'
Posted: May 27, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Ron Strom
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
A Republican congressman is pushing a bill that would prohibit the federal government from paying Social Security benefits to non-citizens living in other countries.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, re-introduced his bill, the Social Security for American Citizens Only Act, H.R. 858, in February after sponsoring a similar piece of legislation last year.
"Please protect Social Security from being transformed into a system of global welfare by cosponsoring my Social Security for American Citizens Only Act," Paul wrote to his colleagues.
The bill amounts to a pre-emptive strike against any efforts by the Bush administration to allow non-citizens in Mexico who worked for a time in the U.S., most illegally, to collect Social Security. Paul's legislation would prohibit all non-citizens from receiving the benefit regardless of where they live.
Currently the bill has nine co-sponsors and has been referred to the House Ways and Mean Committee.
The bill also ends the practice of totalization, which allows certain non-citizens to collect Social Security even though they have not worked in America (and thus not paid payroll taxes) as long as American citizens must to qualify for Social Security.
In 2003, U.S. and Mexican officials were actively discussing a deal that would allow legal and illegal immigrants to return home but still collect U.S. benefits. Such an agreement could mean the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in payments south of the border.
Supporters say the move would improve the daily lives of Mexican citizens.
"Let's be honest, there are millions of Mexican immigrants contributing to the Social Security system and the U.S. economy," Katherine Culliton, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, told Gannett News Service in 2003. "It's only fair they get back a benefit they deserve that will keep them from dying in poverty."
Social Security Administration officials estimate about 50,000 Mexicans would collect $78 million in the first year of a U.S.-Mexican agreement. By 2050, the number is predicted to swell to 300,000 Mexicans collecting $650 million in benefits a year.
But that number doesn't include the potentially eligible, illegal Mexican immigrants. Accounting for illegals, the agreement could cost U.S. taxpayers $750 million within five years of implementation.
"If you look back to when Social Security was created, it was never intended to be an individual foreign-aid program," Jeff Deist, a spokesman for Paul, told WND. "It was intended to provide money to keep old people in the U.S. out of poverty."
If it became law, Deist noted, Paul's bill would encourage aliens who come to the U.S. legally to become citizens.
"It's good to encourage people, if they're going to come here and reap the benefits of our economy, to have an allegiance to the United States," he said.
Deist said the reason Mexico is such a concern is because of the huge monetary impact it represents compared to other nations.
"We do have totalization agreements with some countries," Deist explained, "but signing such an agreement with Mexico opens a much larger can of worms.
"Paying Social Security to people in Mexico is the last thing we should be doing. … We're already scrambling to figure out how we're going to pay benefits 10, 20, 30 years from now. Surely we ought not to be adding to that by putting a bunch of new people on the rolls."
While Deist admits the issue of a possible agreement with Mexico has died down, he says Paul will attempt to add his legislation to the Social Security reform bill that is expected to be acted on by Congress, possibly later this year.
Said Deist: "We're going to add this issue to the mix."
tis
Evening Alex...
Your assumption is correct (big media)...
Alex...you know as well as myself that if "white" was replaced with "hispanic" or "black" the NN would be all over it...basically that was my point...
Concerning your post...
Was not the serial killer issue on America's most wanted...or is this case a different one...anyrate...it does deserve NN attention...hopefully it will...
Concerning the Ponchatoula issue...one would figure this one would also get some NN attention (maybe as of today it has)...
On another note...is it crawdad (crayfish) season down there yet... :)
tis
WG...
I never said/stated that h-h combat was/is the main tactic of warfare...but it is used...and its use is effective...
Believe/state what you wish of concerning the Seals...believe/state what you wish concerning me...
Bottom line is...there are some in this world that might give a ch*t/interested in what you speak...I for one have found your convs quite boring...
I of course cannot speak for the Seals...but when I do speak to one...I shall forward your message...
tis
By the way...you mentioned something of the VC=83,000,000...was Kerry worth that much before Teresa?
He told a dispatcher that several unknown "white men" had entered the apartment, abducted the girl, and escaped in a brown station wagon. Cunningham and the girl are black.
Has this been reported in "big media"??
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2005/05/23/c1a_rape_0523.html
tis
China's threat to N Korea over test
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
May 26, 2005
CHINA has reportedly warned its ally North Korea of the "grave consequences" of conducting a nuclear weapons test.
Quoting sources from the stalled six-party negotiations, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported the Chinese had delivered the Pyongyang regime its sharpest warning against exploding a nuclear device.
"The Chinese Government has strongly warned and urged against the carrying out of a nuclear test," according to a source quoted by Kyodo, who also said the diplomatically menacing phrase "grave consequences" had been used.
That report follows a meeting in Beijing between South Korean opposition leader Park Geun-hye and two key Chinese officials - Wang Jiarui, head of the Communist Party of China's international department and Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan - where Ms Park said they described a North Korean nuclear test as a red line.
Neither account suggests what action Beijing would take if the red line were crossed, though dropping Chinese opposition to UN Security Council sanctions against the North is generally assumed to be an immediate consequence.
It now appears both South Korea and China have privately but clearly warned Pyongyang against a test explosion, though both governments publicly downplay the risk.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun confirmed yesterday he would make a special trip to Washington on June 10 to discuss with President George W. Bush a strategy for bringing North Korea back into the six-party talks it has boycotted since September.
"President Roh's visit to the United States is expected to be an important opportunity for the two leaders to discuss and seek a peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, as close consultations among related countries continue," a South Korean presidential spokesman said.
The visit also appears to be part of an attempt at South Korean bridge-mending after months of tension between the Bush and Roh administrations.
The South Koreans have persistently criticised US refusals to make concessions to Pyongyang to get the six-party talks back on track and rejected proposals for direct economic or Security Council sanctions agains Pyongyang.
US and Japanese officials have privately criticised South Korean "appeasement" which they say has complicated efforts to confront Pyongyang with a credible ultimatum to return to talks over its nuclear weapons programs.
South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who is also Mr Roh's top national security official, will visit Tokyo tomorrow to discuss nuclear developments in North Korea.
Meanwhile the Americans are awaiting the Pyongyang regime's promised response to a proposal for resuming the six-party talks put by US special envoy Joseph DeTrani at a New York meeting with the North's UN ambassador, Pak Kil-yon.
The meeting on May 13 was the first direct contact between US and North Korean officials in more than six months.
US officials said they had made no concessions but repeated assurances by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Bush administration recognised North Korea's sovereignty and had no intention to invade.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15407124%255E2703,00.html
tis
From what...
has been documented...the Seals lost 46 men in Nam...their kill ratio was 200 times that amount...
The SEAL teams experienced this war like no others. Combat with the VC was very close and personal. Unlike the conventional warfare methods of firing artillery into a coordinate location, or dropping bombs from thirty thousand feet, the SEALs operated within inches of their targets. SEALs had to kill at short range and respond without hesitation or be killed. Into the late sixties, the SEALs made great headway with this new style of warfare. Theirs were the most effective anti-guerrilla and guerrilla actions in the war.
http://www.navyseals.com/community/navyseals/history_vietnam.cfm
Many of the SEALs traveled through the bush barefoot, so as not to leave a trail. They would sometimes lie still for hours waiting for the enemy to come long to ambush.
http://www.fatherryan.org/navyvietnam/seals.htm
If you would read up some on the Seals...your ignorance of them being only "strong" men would get chiseled down...
Your arrogance is another matter...
Tis
Never cared...
for the aclu...but if it takes the ch*t out of gov...so be it...
Hope to see the Hilda and Berger charges work out as well...
tis
From he Navy site...
The first three weeks of First Phase will prepare you for the fourth week, better known as "Hell Week." During this week, you will participate in five and one-half days of continuous training, with a maximum of four hours sleep total. This week is designed as the ultimate test of one's physical and mental motivation while in First Phase. Hell Week proves to those who make it that the human body can do ten times the amount of work the average man thinks possible. During Hell Week, you will learn the value of cool headedness, perseverance, and above all, TEAMWORK. The remaining four weeks are devoted to teaching various methods of conducting hydrographic surveys and how to create a hydrographic chart.
http://www.seal.navy.mil/seal/tra_nswc.asp
also...
http://www.navyseals.com/community/navyseals/navysealworkout_main.cfm
tis
Thanks Easy...
tis