Follow up - Trust But Verify, Um Never Mind

A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.

The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel's decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.

In a follow up to this note (Trust But Verify, Um, Never Mind) is this report from the Washington Post.

DKK

What Could You Really Do With All That Money?

As it turns out -- EVERYTHING important!

If you had all the money that plans like Kyoto would cost the world what could you do with it and how effective could you be? Remember, for all the hype of Kyoto it would have only put off any increase in warming by a decade.

Here is a very persuasive video and the description:

Economist Bjorn Lomborg makes a persuasive case for prioritizing the world's biggest problems, asking "If we had $50 billion to spend over the next four years to do good in the world, where should we spend it?" His recommendations - based on the findings of the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus - controversially place global warming at the bottom of the list (and AIDS prevention at the top). Lomborg was named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine after the publication of his controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist which challenged widely-held beliefs that the environment is getting worse. Now the Danish economist is taking on the world's biggest problems with his Copenhagen Consensus. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:27)

Humans have a wonderful way of inventing and adapting and if there really is a global warming crisis (way overused term) then perhaps one of the people saved by following the advice here of feeding, educating, and providing clean water to every human on the planet (instead of blowing it on AGW scams) might be the savior or Einstein of climate.
DKK
(That was very poorly worded, sorry my mind isn't firing correctly tonight).

Holy Cow -- Hell Must Be COLD

Wow, if Terry McAullife thinks MSNBC is, "in the tank," for Obama and Fox is truly fair and balanced there is something really wrong. I don't think any Republican could have caused this type of damage to the psyche of the Democrats.

Johnny Dollar has the video of McAullife unloading on Chris Matthews.
DKK

Running the Gauntlet

Republican Sen. John McCain sought white votes, not black.

Not that he would turn down any black votes.

But McCain realizes that is not going to happen. 90% or more of the black vote goes to the Democratic presidential candidate automatically.

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times got it wrong:

“But the Democrats watch in horror as Hillary continues to scratch up the once silvery sheen on Obama, and as John McCain not only consolidates his own party but encroaches on theirs by boldly venturing into Selma, Ala., on Monday to woo black voters.”

McCain’s objective was to assure white voters that voting for McCain is not racist. He has to show that there is no stigma attached to a McCain bumper sticker.

Because as Bill Clinton learned the hard way in South Carolina, race is the fire no white candidate wants to play with.

Don Surber

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Bagman Or Mortgage Broker?

Federal prosecutors recently revealed that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire who lives in London, wired $3.5 million to the financially strapped Rezko in Chicago less than a month before the Obama-Rezko purchases. James Bone, investigative reporter for the Times of London, wrote last Tuesday that "the money transfer raises the question of whether funds" from Auchi "helped" Obama buy his house.
(...)
While his friends describe Auchi and his family as victims of Saddam Hussein's tyranny, Pentagon sources call him a "bagman" who laundered money in London for the Iraqi dictator.

DKK

Obama's Former Friend --Real Clear Politics - Robert Novak

King Of Clubs Behind Bars!

Iraqi security forces claim that they have captured the Saddam Hussein’s most senior regime ally.

A man resembling Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the vice-chairman of Saddam’s Ba’ath party and the King of Clubs on America’s “deck of cards” most-wanted list, was said to have been taken into custody by Iraqi forces.

Al-Arabiya television said that the man was caught in Hamrin between the provinces of Salaheddin and Kirkuk and was moved to Baghdad where he was said to have been handed over to US forces. DNA tests are being conducted to confirm his identity, the report added
Via Hot Air who is reporting that Syria may have handed al-Duri over.
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Guns and God -- Stevenson Act-a-like

And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.

His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.

Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their too-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.

Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.

Karl Rove WSJ - Is Obama Ready for Prime Time?
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Who Is Their Ad Guy?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Seems Like Old Times

On this Earth Day 2008, a new Gallup Poll finds that only about one-third of Americans say they worry a great deal about global warming — roughly the same percentage as in a similar poll 19 years ago.

In May of 1989, 35 percent of respondents expressed serious concern about global warming. The current figure is 37 percent.

The numbers are similar when asked whether immediate, drastic action is necessary: 35 percent said yes in April of 1995; 34 percent said yes last month.

And global warming is nowhere near the top of the environmental problems people worry a great deal about. No. 1 is drinking water pollution, followed by several other water concerns. The loss of natural habitat for wildlife, air pollution, rain forests and the ozone layer all top global warming, which comes in tied for ninth.

Chill in the Air

Of course a major focus of Earth Day is global warming. But it turns out about 40 people at an Earth Day celebration Sunday in Edmonton, Canada, had to cram themselves into a single tent after a blizzard forced them to abandon their outside locations.

The organizer of the event says, "Obviously we'll have fewer people than we would have liked, but to cancel an Earth Day event because of weather would kind of be the antithesis of what this is all about."

Said one of the vendors, "We're here to raise the awareness of the problem, even though on a day like today you don't necessarily think of global warming."

Inconvenient Untruth

There is new evidence of misleading information in Al Gore's Oscar-winning global warming film "An Inconvenient Truth."

ABC News reports one of the most famous shots in the movie — of Antarctic ice shelves — is a fake. The film's visual effects supervisor says the film took the shot from the fictional movie "The Day After Tomorrow," which created it from Styrofoam and scanned it into a computer.

"Yeah, that's our shot," she says. "That's a fully computer-generated shot. There's nothing real in there."

ABC wanted to ask Gore whether it was wrong for a documentary to use a fabricated shot to make a point, but says he did not return their calls.

Since the AGW warm-mongers have spent a whole lot of money for little or no end result it's only fair they force us to do the same -- after all why should they they be the only ones throwing their money down a sink whole.

DKK

The Grapevine -- Fox News Special Report -- via Ace of Spades HQ

I Think That's My Cellphone!

From Fox News:

“Whether he was up to no good or simply desperate to play BrickBreaker, a Mexican press attache was caught on camera by Secret Service pocketing several White House BlackBerries during a recent meeting in New Orleans, FOX News has learned.

Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, whose first name is Rafael, took six or seven of the handheld devices from a table outside a special room in the hotel where the Mexican delegation was meeting with President Bush.

Everyone entering the room was required to leave their cell phones, BlackBerries and other such devices on the table, a commonplace practice when high-level meetings are held. American officials discovered their missing belongings when they were leaving the session.

It didn’t take long before Secret Service officials reviewed videotape taken by a surveillance camera and found footage showing “Rafael” absconding with the BlackBerries.

Sources said “Rafael” made it all the way to the airport, where the Mexican president was preparing to leave New Orleans, before Secret Service officers caught up with him. He was forced to return the BlackBerries.”

DKK
Paterico's Pontifications

According to a 1982 New York Times report, Broadway Baby was implicated in an investigation of a series of violent armed robberies in New York—netting more than $2 million over a two-year span—committed by former Black Panthers and Weather Underground members in the early ’80s.

Their aim? Global revolution, naturally. They needed cash, but the rich white parents weren’t in a giving mood. So their privileged offspring grabbed guns, pointed them at the faces of the working man and, sometimes, they pulled the trigger.

At Broadway Baby, customers often paid by check and used driver’s licenses for identification. On Dec. 28, 1979, information from two customer files was used to apply for two driver’s licenses at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. The fraudulent licenses were used to rent getaway cars for the gang.

Investigators tracked the identities on two licenses for the getaway cars. The names belonged to women who had shopped at Broadway Baby in December 1979. But they weren’t robbers.

And who was the manager of Broadway Baby during that period of the customer ID theft?

Dohrn, the future wife of Ayers, identified by investigators as taking customer information from one, and possibly both, of the women shoppers. Dohrn was never charged in that case.

But how can he be held accountable for something that happened when Barack Obama was eight er, in his twenties!
DKK
Via - Hot Air