Emirates Airline Bringing A380 To U.S.

Emirates airline said Monday it would launch nonstop service between Dubai and New York on August 1, the first service to the United States with the new Airbus A380 superjumbo.

"The United States represent a key focus area in Emirates' route development plans, and we are delighted to be the first airline to launch commercial A380 services to the continent," said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of the largest airline in the Middle East.

"We are confident that Emirates' customers traveling to and from North America will welcome the A380's additional space and capacity, as well as our luxurious onboard amenities which will provide a very high quality travel experience previously associated only with private jets."

Emirates has announced that it will start daily nonstop service from Los Angeles to Dubai on September 1 and from San Francisco to Dubai on October 26.

In addition to twice-daily service from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the airline has daily non-stop service from Houston, Texas, to Dubai.

Emirates, the largest customer of the Airbus A380, announced last week that it would receive the first of 58 superjumbos in July.

It plans to deploy its first A380 aircraft on routes from Dubai to New York, London Heathrow and Sydney-Auckland.

AFP

Is the Emirates the only company that can afford to fly these beasts?

High fuel costs were expected to help Boeing and their two engine models, particularly the high tech upgrades and composites. I haven't been able to find anything recent published about this, but I found this pdf from 2006 that reinforced this opinion.

Thomas Litson at American Thinker Blog was doing Airbus/Boeing updates regularly but I haven't seen any recently -- If I get a chance I will Email him and see if he can update us.

DKK

Columbia Professor, Obama Friend -- Ahmadinejahad Was Right, Gays Are Western Nations Fault!

Columbia University professor Joseph Massad numbers one more mark against the West. This professor hails from the same department that hosted Edward Said and now hosts, in the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies chair, Barack Obama friend and fierce critic of Israel Rashid Khalidi.

Jamie Sneider of the Weekly Standard captures the madness:

...Massad belongs on a psychiatrist's couch, not behind a podium. In Desiring Arabs, Massad asserts that the West "produces homosexuals as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist." But for colonialism, Massad contends, there would be no gay people in the Middle East for the tyrannical governments of Egypt and Iran to persecute. Although Massad says he opposes hanging gay people, he shifts the blame from the hooded executioners to the United States.

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Columbia last fall and made a similar claim ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country."), students laughed and booed. They recently, however, elected to award Massad the Lionel Trilling Book Award for making the nearly identical claim.

DKK
American Thinker Blog -- Columbia University MidEast Studies professor blames West for gays in Muslim lands

Obama Position Shift -- It's All About Politics!

Yet Another Major Obama Flip-Flop

Lately he's knocking McCain for supporting the Bear-Sterns "bailout."

At the time, he said it was different than a bailout -- he said it was intended (as it was) to forestall a "domino effect" that could have taken out the entire financial system in the US -- and that he would not "challenge" it.

But now that that crisis seems averted, he feels free to change his old position and attack McCain for a "bailout."

You're not supposed to say this, of course.... but Barack Obama is dumb. He just doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about most of the time -- pretty much any time he moves away from childish slogans about hope and change.

Is he being treated differently because he's a liberal, or because he's black? Probably both.

DKK

Ace Of Spades HQ --Yet Another Major Obama Flip-Flop

An Open Letter To The President -- Slublog

These oil prices are cutting deeply into the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans, and your administration is letting the Democrats block increased production instead of using the bully pulpit to push for more domestic drilling. It's time to stop being meek, stop allowing the Democrats to block progress and start throwing punches on behalf of the American people.

Let me just add that the President's refusal to do this has played directly into the left's concept of Bush being an Oil Man!
You have to read the entire thing!
DKK
Slublog -- Ace of Spades HQ -- Dear Mr. President

New Allies Refuse To Accept The Left's Characterization Of Bush

In an interview, Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi told The New York Sun that in April he prepared a 47-page study on Afghanistan and its tribes for the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Kabul, Christopher Dell. When asked if he would send military advisers to Afghanistan to assist American troops fighting there, he said: "I have no problem with this; if they ask me, I will do it."

(...)

"Al Qaeda is an ideology," Sheik Ahmad said. "We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country." The tribal leader arrived in Washington last week. All of his meetings, including an audience with President Bush, have been closed to the public, in part because the Anbari sheiks, while likely to win future electoral contests, are not themselves part of Iraq's elected government.

Of his meeting with Mr. Bush, Sheik Ahmad said he was impressed. "He is a brave man. He is also a wise man. He is taking care of the country's future, the United States' future. He is also taking care of the Iraqi people, the ordinary people in Iraq. He wants to accomplish success in Iraq."
(...)
In Washington, Sheik Ahmad also met with some members of Congress. He said he told them that American soldiers should stay in Iraq for at least as long as it takes to rebuild Iraq's national army. The Democratic majority in Congress has tried and failed to mandate deadlines for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground.

DKK

NY Sun -- Iraqi Sheik Offers To Take Fight To Bin Laden

Which Part of Raising Minimum Wage Will Cost Jobs Didn't Democrats Believe?

Finals week is over; summer is here. And thanks to misguided politicians, your teenager is more likely to be sitting in front of the television than waiting tables or scooping ice cream.

This year, it’s harder than ever for teens to find a summer job. Researchers at Northeastern University described summer 2007 as “the worst in post-World War II history” for teen summer employment, and those same researchers say that 2008 is poised to be “even worse.”

According to their data, only about one-third of Americans 16 to 19 years old will have a job this summer, and vulnerable low-income and minority teens are going to fare even worse.

The percentage of teens classified as “unemployed” — those who are actively seeking a job but can’t get one — is more than three times higher than the national unemployment rate, according to the most recent Department of Labor statistics.

One of the prime reasons for this drastic employment drought is the mandated wage hikes that policymakers have forced down the throats of local businesses. Economic research has shown time and again that increasing the minimum wage destroys jobs for low-skilled workers while doing little to address poverty.

According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5 percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States’ minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount.

This is after one year os a Democratically controlled Congress. What would four years of Carter II be like on top of that.

DKK

Examiner -- Kristen Lopez Eastlick -- Dude, where's my summer job?

Not Only Are Democrats Pushing Up Gas Prices, They Prove Selfish Uncaring Citizens of The World!

Tens of thousands of Spanish lorry drivers have begun an indefinite strike over the soaring price of diesel, which has risen by 20% this year.

After stopping work at midnight, many disrupted traffic at one of the border crossings between Spain and France.

A number of lorries crossing the picket lines had their windscreens broken, lights ripped out and tyres slashed.

The government is preparing a package to assist the sector, with emergency loans and more flexible contracts.

It would also offer cash payments to older lorry drivers who are willing to retire.

French fishermen from Mediterranean ports have, meanwhile, joined fleets from other French ports in suspending their action pending an EU summit in Brussels later this month.

This is becoming an ongoing event in Europe! There will come a time and a price per barrel when the world looks at the US and wonders why we let the Democrats drive the world into recession for political gains. And they won't be able to blame George Bush, this one is all on them and their enviro-wacko allies.

DKK

BBC News

That Fabled Judgment™ At Work Again

MICKEY KAUS: "Barack Obama's choice of Jim Johnson to vet his VP prospects is already embarrassing his campaign . . . Johnson was an atrocious, tin-eared choice on many other grounds. He's symbol of old Democratic elites--the Mondale Restoration!--and of Beltway business as usual. He's gotten obscenely rich off of public service while pursuing a failed liberal antipoverty theory (community develpment) and taking credit for spreading around other peoples money. . . . Why would Obama, in his first big personnel decision, choose a paleoliberal greedhead with a track record of failure? You tell me. He's described Johnson as "a friend." It looks as if he was at best highly susceptible to amicable overtures from someone he should have had some critical perspective on."

I think we're seeing a pattern of poor judgment here.

He didn't have a history to show where his core beliefs were (that hurt Hillary), but he sure is making up for it!

DKK

Instapundit

Democrats Vote To Raise Gas Prices -- Putting Party Over The People!

You'd think this would be oil shale's moment.

You'd think with gas prices topping $4 and consumers crying uncle, Congress would be moving fast to spur development of a domestic oil resource so vast - 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone - it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

You'd think politicians would be tripping over themselves to arrange photo-ops with Harold Vinegar (whom I profiled in Fortune last November), the brilliant, Brooklyn-born chief scientist at Royal Dutch Shell whose research cracked the code on how to efficiently and cleanly convert oil shale - a rock-like fossil fuel known to geologists as kerogen - into light crude oil.

You'd think all of this, but you'd be wrong.

Last month, the U.S. Senate's Appropriations Committee voted 15-14 to kill a bill that would have ended a one-year moratorium on enacting rules for oil shale development on federal lands (which is where the best oil shale is located). Most maddening of all - at least to someone like myself not steeped in the wacky ways of Washington - the swing vote on the appropriations committee, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., voted with the majority even though she actually opposes the moratorium.

"Sen. Salazar asked me to vote no. I did so at his request," Landrieu told The Rocky Mountain News. A Landrieu staffer contacted by Fortune doesn't dispute this, but notes that Landrieu did propose a compromise which Republicans rejected.

This is just disgusting -- when will the Republicans put the pressure on them that we all have on our pocketbooks! If they don't push this and get exploration here they will find themselves looking for jobs come November -- it is already being spun as the President's fault.

DKK

Fortune Magazine -- The Politics Of Oil Shale

Bernanke Says Economic Downturn Risk Avioded

The US economy may have avoided a major decline, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said.

Mr Bernanke said the risk of a substantial downturn had "diminished over the past month or so".

DKK

BBC News