J's Cafe Nette

Archive for July 7th, 2007

Have we forgotten those serving in Afghanistan (both our forces and those of other nations)?

I know I am guilty of focusing primarily on Iraq, as that is where the news seems mired daily.

Via, US Central Command one of those feel good stories we seldom see.

THE REAL KITE RUNNERS FLYING THE AFGHAN SKIES

Even though best-selling books have painted pictures of Afghan children flying colorful kites high in blue skies against backdrops of snow-capped mountains that tower over quaint villages, not all Afghan children are fortunate enough to own such simple, yet wonderful toys.

However, when the Polish Battle Group arrived in Ghazni province’s Andar district near the end of June, the local children were finally able to take part in an activity shared by children in almost all countries in the world: flying kites.

Please take a few minutes to read the entire press release. If you have children or grandchildren, it is sure to put a smile on your face especially when you read how the simplest things we take for granted are cherished by these youngsters.

Everywhere they went, children crowded around the vehicles as the smiling soldiers pulled out boxes of shoes, clothes, school supplies and toys. But the biggest hit of all were the multi-colored kites that the soldiers unfolded for them.

With big grins and excited chattering, the children jumped up and down shouting, “Patang! Patang!” (the Pashto word for kite.)

Soon the sky had several of the yellow, green and red kites with International Security Assitance Forces logos flying, much to the delight of the children dancing around below.

“These kites are so much fun,” said Mahmad-Amid Hahn, a 12-year- old boy, as he made whooping sounds while his kite dipped and swerved in the air. “The Taliban would never give us these things.”

Thanks to the troops who gave these children a little bit of sunshine..that should be a basic right of every child.

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Simply said and perhaps music to the ears Americans weary of this long Presidential campaign.

While I may not favor the candidate, I definitely agree with the brevity of this statement:

“Well, my campaign,” said Obama, “is not premised on running against the past. My campaign is based on what we can accomplish in the future.”

Well said Mr. Obama. All in under 25 words. Now, please explain your platform and how you hope to move this country forward in less than 50 words and I may have to rethink my position on your candidacy.

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The Live Earth concerts are taking place this weekend purportedly to save the planet from global warming.

I don’t claim to be an expert on global warming, but the Daily Mail reports the following:

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

The most conservative assessment of the flights being taken by its superstars is that they are flying an extraordinary 222,623.63 miles between them to get to the various concerts – nearly nine times the circumference of the world. The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher.

The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists’ and spectators’ travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations.

Throw in the television audience and it comes to a staggering 74,500 tonnes. In comparison, the average Briton produces ten tonnes in a year.

This means nearly 7.5 Britons would each generate as much waste in a year to equal the amount of waste in these concerts.

Dr Andrea Collins, an expert in sustainability from Cardiff University, has researched the impact of such mass gatherings on the environment.

“An event of this size at Wembley – which holds 65,000 at a rock concert, will generate around 59 tonnes of waste,” she says. “That is largely composed of the rubbish from food and drink consumption.”

She found that a Wembley-sized football match generated an ‘ecological footprint’ of 3,000 global hectares – an area the size of 4,166 football pitches. This is the amount of bioproductive land required to absorb the C02 emissions produced by such an event.

3,000 global hectares would be equal to 7,413 acres. Does this not seem to be an exhorbitant waste for a group of people who claim they want to cut down on CO2 emissions?

Dr Collins estimates that the global audience for Live Earth will generate some 1,025 tonnes of waste. An extraordinary one million people are expected at the free concert at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach, featuring Lenny Kravitz, Macy Gray and Pharrell Williams.

Live Earth say that they will recycle much of the waste generated. Fine talk, but in fact some of the concert venues are struggling to keep up with their commitments.

A spokesman for Wembley says they only have the capacity to recycle around a third of waste produced – the rest will go into landfill sites.

One third of the waste in London will be recycled. Is it environmentally friendly to dump the other two-thirds in landfills?

But wait! Live Earth has an explanation:

Andrea Robinson, Live Earth’s green manager, says her message to celebrities is: “Leave the Learjet at home – fly commercial.”

Wembley Stadium will be lit using low energy fluorescent lightbulbs, while the backdrop is composed of recycled tyres and oil drums. The organisers tried to introduce re-usable cups for interval refreshments, but found that – like many green strategies – this was not practical on such a huge scale.

Some bio-produced plastic, made from corn, will be used, and artists’ changing rooms will be fitted with energy-saving lightbulbs – all rather a drop in the ocean compared to the pollution generated by fans traveling across the UK to the concert or using the stadium’s 2,618 toilets. Plans to ask the British public to turn off their electrical appliances during the Live Earth broadcast were scuppered when the National Grid pointed out that as everyone switched on again, a giant power surge could cripple the country.

Some stadiums are greener than others. The Aussie Stadium in Sydney will run the event on 100 per cent green energy supply. Each Australian Live Earth ticket comes with a free public transport voucher, while all the bathrooms will be waterless with waste being composted into fertiliser.

Conversely, in New York’s Giants Stadium, trade unions have blocked Live Earth’s attempts to recycle, and the 52,000-seater arena is not situated near public transport. The smallest – and least polluting – concert will be held at the British Antarctic Survey’s base in Rothera.

It appears from reading this article only the site in Australia will be completely green.

So just how does Gore claim that Live Earth will be carbon neutral? He does so by convenient use of ‘carbon offsetting’ – a trendy new method of absolving yourself of guilt.

[...]

However, critics say that the practice is simply a way for consumerist industries and nations to export their responsibility to developing countries. Others say it simply does not work.

Carbon-offsetting is, it turns out, how celebrities square green issues with their extravagant lifestyles and use of private jets.

To buy your carbon offsets go to Generation Investment Management a company in which Al Gore is the chairman, partner and co-owner.

According to The Tennessean as quoted in Bill Hobbs’ blog that’s where Mr. Gore purchases his carbon footprint offsets.

The following quote seems to say it all:

Dr John Barrett, from the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, says: “There is a huge irony in flying halfway across the globe in a private jet, eating up fossil fuel.

“The idea that you can offset the pollution you cause is just ridiculous. What these people at Live Earth have done is defined their boundaries to suit themselves, but there is no sense in which this concert is carbon neutral.

“Planting trees or investing in renewable energy does not reverse the damage of releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the environment.

“It is far better not to pollute in the first place. Carbon offsetting can be a removal of guilt, but it is not an effective one.”

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I don’t even know how to categorize this. I don’t know about you but this is one man I can’t stand. I know the Republicans did it too, but it seems dirtier when it comes from my party. Like I said anything for a buck.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), has turned the commutation of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence into a political pitch to its supporters. The pitch landed in Capitol Briefing’s personal e-mail inbox at 1:28 p.m. EDT, less than 20 hours after President Bush announced his decision to stay the prison sentence Libby was set to begin serving. (view the full e-mail below)

“I’m outraged,” Schumer writes, kicking off his short missive trying to start an online petition stating one’s similar outrage at the action. Well before he ever chaired the DSCC, Schumer was the first senator to call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the allegations that White House officials leaked the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson as payback to her husband Joseph Wilson’s public opposition to the Iraq war.

Shameless son of a gun.

Dear _____,

I’m outraged. President Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence wiping away two and half years of jail time with the stroke of a pen. President Bush ignored Libby’s felony conviction for lying to investigators, ignored the jury’s guilty verdict, and ignored the rule of law that governs our nation.

We expect more from our President. We expect honor and integrity, we expect moral leadership. We expect our President and his staff to be held to a higher standard.

Tell President Bush that you are appalled by his actions. Sign our petition today letting President Bush know that this outrageous conduct won’t be tolerated by the American people.

Sincerely,

Chuck Schumer

P.S. It’s at times like these that I realize just how important a strong Democratic Senate is to our nation. Democrats are fighting the Republican’s abuse of power but we can’t do it without your help. Tell President Bush that you are appalled by his actions. Sign our petition today letting President Bush know that this outrageous conduct won’t be tolerated by the American people.

I’m getting tired of the the whole Damn bunch.

Story

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Maybe she should move to India and run for president over there.

– Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is wooing wealthy entrepreneurs with ties to India, seeking to tap the growing political clout of Indian-Americans in California’s Silicon Valley.

Clinton spoke Friday by live video feed from New Orleans to nearly 4,000 businesspeople in Santa Clara attending the annual alumni conference of the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the world’s most elite university systems.

Clinton _ the only Republican or Democratic presidential candidate to accept an invitation from the IIT _ reiterated her call for more H-1B work visas for highly educated immigrants, an issue of deep concern to the Indian and Indian-American executives and engineers in the audience.

She did not shy from characterization of the pain of offshore outsourcing, the exporting of technology jobs to low-cost workers in countries such as India, China and Russia. The United States has sent tens of thousands of high-paying computer programming and engineering jobs to developing countries in recent years.

Story

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I knew this was going to happen and am surprised it didn’t start earlier. I guess everyone is for sale if the price is right.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy but if he is this shady maybe I’m going to take another look.

Former Senator Fred D. Thompson, who has positioned himself as an opponent of abortion rights as he prepares to run for president, was hired as a lobbyist 16 years ago by a group on the other side of the issue, according to documents and people involved with his hiring.

The group, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, hired Mr. Thompson in 1991, three years before he was elected to the Senate from Tennessee, as part of the group’s effort to overturn a ban on federally financed family planning clinics giving women information about abortion, according to the group’s board minutes and former president. The association’s president at the time, Judith DeSarno, said she was looking for a Republican lobbyist who could help find a compromise at a time when the first President George Bush was opposed to lifting the ban, put in place during the Reagan administration. Mr. Thompson, then a lobbyist at a prominent Washington law firm, fit the bill, she said.

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Not looking good for the President.

After the recent defection of prominent Republicans on the Iraq war, the big question in Washington is who might be next.

More than a dozen Republican senators who are running for re-election next year head the list of lawmakers to watch. But others, too, have expressed concerns that the GOP has grown increasingly vulnerable on the issue. As the clock ticks toward Election Day, voter pressure is building against any lawmaker still standing with President Bush on the war.

Potential wildcards include members up for re-election who have broken with the president on other issues such as immigration or who face growing anti-war sentiment in their home states. Those include Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Michael Enzi of Wyoming, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Norm Coleman of Minnesota already has expressed grave doubts about the president’s Iraq policies, but he hasn’t signed on yet to legislation calling for a change in strategy.

Story

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Mona Charen has a column up at Townhall.com declaring she is a “mushy moderate on immigration”.

I think she spells out some of the conflicting feelings I’ve had about immigration, legal or illegal.

It won’t surprise regular readers that I consider myself to be moderate to liberal on some social issues, and I am evolving on my strict position of immigration reform.

Let me quote Mona:

I’ve been quiet on this debate because I find myself in the unfamiliar position of moderate. I cannot rejoice with so many of my conservative friends over the defeat of immigration reform, yet neither would I have been happy to see the legislation passed in the form it was offered. I don’t think we have begun to deal properly with the immigration problem because I believe it implicates other questions, like those of education, welfare and national identity.

[...]

I have heard nothing to convince me that the illegal immigration problem is not a reflection of legal immigration quotas that are too low. We have a full employment economy and a poor neighbor to the south. Is it any shock that employers are loath to turn away willing workers or that impoverished people are streaming across the Rio Grande? Are these low-skilled workers? You bet. Do we need them? Arguably yes.

[...]

If I were writing the law all by myself, I’d increase the legal immigration levels, beef up border enforcement, establish a national ID card so that we could really know who is here, and reform welfare so that only those who truly want to work would be tempted to immigrate. I’d also reform education to convey the greatness of this nation (warts and all). So here I am, in the awkward middle.

When all is said and done we do have to face reality, and reality is we have an illegal immigration problem that hasn’t been fixed and doesn’t look as though it will be for at least a couple of more years.

Kids who are in high school will do the jobs Mona says the graduates won’t do, and I know for a fact our landscaper went to trade school to learn how to be a good landscaper.

I also know he hires all American help. Whether they graduated from high school or not I can’t tell you, but they are all adults.

Maybe we all need to cool down and think this problem through. There has to be a solution; we just need to find it.

Mark me down as against the bill as it was written, but willing to try for a bill that is fair for everyone and protects our country.

If that makes me a mushy moderate too, then so be it.

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