J's Cafe Nette

Archive for April 12th, 2007

Thank you Jeanette, Tonto and JaneAir for the warm welcome.

It will be a pleasure and a privilege to join your blog family . I only hope I can meet both your expectations and those of your readers.

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I am pleased to announce we have a new blogger on js cafenette. Please join Tonto, Jane Air and me in welcoming Sue to our blog.

She’ll be writing about what happens to be on her mind at the time and is a great addition to our team.

Welcome, Sue!

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says President Bush is as isolated as Richard Nixon during Watergate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) compared President Bush to former President Nixon today, suggesting Bush is “as isolated” now over the Iraq war as Nixon was during the Watergate scandal, reports Politico’s Carrie Budoff.

Reid was responding to questions over what Senate Democrats will do if Bush, as promised, vetoes the Iraq funding bill being crafted by Congress. Bush has said he will block the legislation from becoming law because both the House and Senate versions of the legislation include withdrawal timetables for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Bush also objects to $20 billion-plus in “pork” spending programs that Democrats have included in the bill, although Democratic leaders defend the funding as need emergency spending for Hurricane Katrina victims, child health programs, and veteran care.

Bush has invited Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to come to the White House next week to negotiate on a “clean” Iraq funding bill with no withdrawal language or pork spending, but Reid has said the president should instead come to Capitol Hill this Friday to meet with lawmakers.

If the president is serious, and not as isolated as people think he is, maybe he will take us up on it,” Reid said of his offer to meet with Bush on Capitol Hill. Reid and Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) sent a letter to Bush today repeating the invitation, which Democrats first raised in late March.

“The president is as isolated, I believe, on the Iraq issue as Richard Nixon was when he was hunkered down in the White House.”

When asked whether he would accept a funding bill with political benchmarks for the Iraqi government but no withdrawal language, Reid said he would insist on specified deadlines for redeployment and withdrawal from Iraq because both the House and Senate have approved such requirements.

Both the House and Senate have approved such requirements with 2 Republicans providing the margin in the House and a close vote in the Senate. Neither looks like they can override Bush’s veto, so my thinking is some negotiations are going to have to take place, but it will not include a date for withdrawal.

And, though Mr. Reid may have forgotten, I haven’t. President Bush is not hunkered down in the Oval Office or Rose Garden the way Nixon was. He’s going out in public and making a case for his position, hoping it will be fairly reported.

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Durham, NC, DA Mike Nifong has apologized to the three Duke lacrosse players whose lives he made a virtual hell for the past 13 months.

“To the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved to be incorrect, I apologize to the three students that were wrongly accused,” Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong said in a statement.

“I also understand that whenever someone has been wrongly accused, the harm caused by the accusations might not be immediately undone merely by dismissing them,” Nifong said. “It is my sincere desire that the actions of Attorney General Cooper will serve to remedy any remaining injury that has resulted from these cases.”

He knew they were wrongfully accused almost from the beginning, if not from the beginning itself. He knew he was hiding exculpatory evidence and that he was railroading these young men for political gain.

He just didn’t count on them having the means to be able to fight this battle and win it. Which makes me wonder about justice for those who are not as fortunate.

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I was just coming home and heard the CBS News special announcement that Don Imus has been fired from CBS as well as being fired from MSNBC yesterday.

Nothing significant on the news sites yet.

Now that Sharpton and Jackson have their pound of flesh I wonder who the next target will be.

Imus said something stupid and has apologized all over the place this week, but nothing would satisfy Sharpton and Jackson but Imus’ firing.

CBS said the language wasn’t good for young people, but don’t they hear the same thing with rap?

What Imus said was wrong, but I think the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

Others blogging on this: Musing Minds, Sister Toldjah

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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, lagged behind her main competitors, as well as some lower-tier candidates, in a straw poll taken after a virtual town hall meeting on Iraq.
Seven Democratic White House hopefuls participated in the April 10 event, sponsored by the influential MoveOn.org Political Action PAC, and MoveOn members picked Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) as the candidate who “would be best able to lead the country out of Iraq.”

Obama received 27.87 percent of the vote, followed closely by former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards with 24.84 percent. A total of 42,882 MoveOn members participated in the vote.

Clinton finished a distant fifth with 10.7 percent, also trailing Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) with 17.18 percent and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson with 12.26 percent.

The vote could indicate trouble for Clinton, who is criticized by liberals for not having been more outspoken about the war when Congress authorized it.

If she’s lost the MoveOn people she might as well kiss the nomination good-bye.

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We have our grandchildren with us all day today and tomorrow, although Friday I will be going to a Bible Study event and will not be back until sometime early to mid-afternoon on Saturday.

I’ll post as I have the time today and tomorrow morning.

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Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi have reconsidered and have accepted the president’s invitation to the White House to talk about several items, including the supplemental military spending bill.

Democratic leaders last night accepted President Bush’s offer to discuss the war-funding standoff, capitulating to the White House request after a day of alternately snubbing the invite and proposing meetings on their own turf.

“We will be at the White House on Wednesday to talk with the president,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a joint statement released last night.

“We will listen to his position, but in return we will insist that he listen to concerns of the American people that his policies in Iraq have failed and we need to change course,” they said.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Reid balked when the White House announced that the Nevada Democrat had agreed to attend the meeting and discuss the $100 billion war-funding bill that Mr. Bush has vowed to veto.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley had said the Nevada Democrat would rebuff offers to talk until he gets “a signal from the White House that they are prepared to drop their demand that this meeting is a listening session only and this meeting will not include negotiations.”

Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, also began the day declining Mr. Bush’s invitation — reiterating the stance the leaders took Tuesday after the White House characterized Congress’ role in the meeting as listeners not negotiators.

There was no indication from the White House last night that the president had altered the terms of his invitation.

The White House had said it was “perplexed” by the dispute over the regularly scheduled Wednesday meeting with congressional leaders, which it said would focus on the war-funding bills with veto-provoking timetables to pull out troops from Iraq.

“Our legislative affairs staff was explicit when extending the invitations,” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino told The Washington Times. “The meeting on Wednesday is a meeting to discuss the supplemental.”

Yesterday’s confusion highlights the difficulty for both the White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress to determine how to resolve their fight over $100 billion in emergency war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s good to see the leadership has decided to meet with the president and will finally have an opportunity to discuss this issue, but I doubt I would want to be in that meeting.

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The United Nations, the organization that seems to despise the US, has asked New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg if he would allow the U.N. to use some of New York’s Finest to be sent abroad as peacekeepers!

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday whether some of the city’s police officers could be deployed with U.N. peacekeeping missions.
Recruiting police for the U.N.’s 16 peacekeeping missions around the globe has been historically challenging.

“New York City has one of the most diversified police forces around and I think the secretary-general would like to explore possibilities,” U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said before the meeting. “Getting police to join peacekeeping operations is one of the high priorities for the U.N.”

Bloomberg left the meeting without speaking to reporters. Stu Loeser, the mayor’s spokesman, said his office had no comment.

New York City has recently fallen short of its police recruiting goals so it’s unclear if it would have any officers to spare for international peacekeeping.

I thought the U.N. had blue-helmeted military people from the armies of the world to do peace-keeping operations. I was wrong.

The U.N. peacekeeping department said 321 American police officers are currently involved in missions abroad, primarily training local police

That’s kind of nice of the police departments, but I wonder who picks up the check for their pay and benefits. Not to mention how their cities can do without all the allotted police officers.

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