J's Cafe Nette

Archive for July 18th, 2007

Yesterday in Washington, we had a slumber party in the Senate, Code Pink in the parking lot at Capitol Hill and anti war activists meeting with US Senators. I know because I endured endless stories about the first and a few stories about the second and third.

But somehow, the importance of the Vets For Freedom meeting with Senators and attending a press conference was not to be found.

Vets for Freedom expresses disappointment that veterans were not able to meet with Congressional leadership from both sides of the aisle in Congress today. While many Republican Senators, including leadership, made themselves available for questions and input, interaction from Democratic leadership was noticeably absent. In spite of that, Vets for Freedom members remain committed to speaking with elected leaders on both sides of the aisle.

This trip had been planned in advance of Senator Reid announcing his all nighter, so I find no excuse for leadership on either side to not make time for this group of veterans. There’s more.

I was thankful that Power Line was able to secure a copy of Lt. Hegseth’s remarks at the actual press conference. I will only post his final two paragraphs.

So what we do in Iraq and in the Senate chamber tonight and in the weeks to come will reverberate for generations. But you’re not going to have to stay up all night to figure out what leaving before the job is done does. It weakens American interests, it emboldens America’s enemies and it would leave behind one heck of a bloodbath for Abdul Kattar and millions of Iraqis.

So the vets standing here behind me, I’m proud to say, understand this firsthand. We lived it. We breathed it. Our buddies died for it. And we ask Congress to stand with us, just as these senators are standing with us today, and stand with the troops in Iraq.

Read further and find the reaction of the press to this group of Veterans. If Code Pink makes for better press..to me we really are headed in the “wrong direction.”

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CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) — A military jury on Wednesday convicted a Marine of kidnapping and conspiring to murder an Iraqi man in a bungled attempt to abduct and kill a suspected insurgent in Hamdania.

Cpl. Trent Thomas was acquitted of premeditated murder, making a false official statement and housebreaking. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, according to his defense attorney, Victor Kelley.

Thomas, 25, was the first of seven Marines and a Navy corpsman to go to trial in the killing, which squad members tried to cover up by planting a gun near the victim after he was gunned down in a ditch.

All but two of the others have entered guilty pleas. Thomas withdrew his guilty plea on the eve of sentencing after having an “epiphany.” His lawyer claimed Thomas was only following orders.

Prosecutors said that during a nighttime patrol on April 26, 2006, Thomas’ squad hatched a plan to kidnap and kill a suspected insurgent from his house. When they couldn’t find him, they instead kidnapped a man identified by prosecutors as Hashim Ibrahim Awad, a retired policeman and father of 11 who lived nearby.

Thomas, of Madison, Ill., the senior corporal in the squad and a fireteam leader, led a four-man team to take Awad from his home, prosecutors said.

During the eight-day court-martial, Thomas’ attorneys argued that he was following orders of squad leader Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III. Thomas did not address the court during his trial, but made similar statements when he changed his plea.

Story here.

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You talk about a screw up. I just can’t believe this. He goes all over the world preaching conservation and how endangered species should be paid more attention to. Well, I guess this is his way of doing it.
Idiot.

ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore’s green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter’s wedding in Beverly Hills.

Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass – arguably one of the world’s most threatened fish species.

Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks.

The species is currently managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources, the body which introduced a catch and trade documentation scheme as an attempt to tackle illegal poaching of this species.

Working with non-government organisations, the Humane Society International’s focus is now on pursuit of illegal fishing operators who, in the rush to cash in on the highly valued species, plunder stocks with no regard for sustainability.

It has been estimated that more than 50 per cent of toothfish traded is illegally caught, and includes juveniles vital to the ongoing toothfish population.

Story

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This is all I could find on this story. They are calling it breaking news in Great Britain.

US forces say they have arrested a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group accused of being behind some of Iraq’s deadliest violence.
The man was named as Khaled Mashhadani. He was captured earlier in July in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.

US military officials said he had told interrogators that the group’s supposed leader, Omar al-Baghdadi, was a front.

They added Mashhadani was a “conduit” between its real Egypt-born leader in Iraq and top al-Qaeda figures globally

Story

~J~ adds: US command is verifying the story.

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Oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing “Iraqis and other Middle Eastern” individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico.

An FBI intelligence report distributed by the Washington, D.C. Joint Terrorism Task Force, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the illegal ring has been bringing Iraqis across the border illegally for more than a year.

Border Patrol officials in the area said they were unaware of the specifics of the FBI’s report, and federal prosecutors in New Mexico told ABCNews.com they had no current cases involving the illegal smuggling of Iraqis.

Story

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I hope our local Wal-Mart is part of the test market to purchase biblical action figures.

Wal-Mart said Tuesday it will test sales in some stores of biblical action figures whose makers say they are aimed at Christian parents who prefer their children play with Samson, David or Noah rather than with a comic book character or Bratz doll.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien said the toys made by One2believe, a Valencia, Calif., company, will be offered in 425 of Wal-Mart’s 3,376 discount stores and Supercenters.

One2believe Chief Executive David Socha said his products were part of a “battle for the toy box” with dolls and figures that he said carry negative messages.

“If you’re very religious, it’s a battle for your children’s minds and what they’re playing with and pretending. There are remakes out there of Satan and evil things,” Socha said.

Wal-Mart’s O’Brien said the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer believes there is demand for faith-based toys.

The toy line will be on some Wal-Mart shelves starting in August, mainly in the Midwest and South but also in California and as far northeast as Pennsylvania, O’Brien said.

With a five year old grandson who loves action figure toys and goes to church, I would love to have these action figures available so he can apply what he learns in Sunday School in his play time.

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I can’t begin to imagine what a group therapy session on this topic would be like. I know I’d be embarrassed to talk about such a private topic.

Men who participate in group psychotherapy sessions and take medication to treat erectile dysfunction have better success than those who take medication alone, a new study shows.

A team of Cochrane researchers used data from nine randomized trials and two quasi-randomized trials involving 398 men with erectile dysfunction who had been given just psychotherapy, just medication, or psychotherapy and medication, or vacuum devices. Another 59 men with ED were placed in non-treatment control groups.

The Cochrane Systematic Review found that 95 percent of the men who received group psychosocial therapy benefited from the treatment. There was no benefit in the control group. Psychotherapy coupled with the drug sildenafil, more commonly known as Viagra, worked better than just using Viagra alone, the study also showed.

Researchers believe psychotherapy benefited the men because sexual function relies “on the coordination of psychological, endocrine, vascular and neurological factor.”

Story.

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Editorial by Ruth Marcus.
Now I know how the Republicans felt about Bill Clinton.
I just can’t let this go. It’s like an addiction.

Forgive me if I opt out of the “whatever happened to privacy” pity party that’s convened in the aftermath of the Sen. David Vitter sex scandal.

The arc of the press reaction to these episodes echoes the acts themselves — first comes the fun, then the regret.

The fun is self-evident, and the story of the Louisiana senator is especially delectable: the sanctimonious family-values politician caught with his hypocrisy showing. Vitter — the man who called for President Bill Clinton to resign because he was “morally unfit to govern” — was back at work yesterday, a week after he was linked to a D.C. escort service.

The regret, this time around, has been expressed by two of my fellow columnists, E.J. Dionne Jr. and David Ignatius.

Dionne offered a ” qualified defense” of Vitter. A “big part of me is rooting for Vitter to survive because I so want to return to a time when we . . . chose to pay little attention to the extracurricular sexual activities of our politicians,” he wrote.

Ignatius followed with a musing about the sadly diminished right to privacy. “Well, fine, you say, Vitter is a noisy ‘family values’ conservative, who should be indicted for hypocrisy if nothing else,” he wrote. “But what about the thousands of other people whose phone numbers are on the D.C. Madam’s call list?” he asked. “Are they fair game?”

My colleagues left out one key fact: This isn’t just a moral transgression. If Vitter cheated on his wife, that would be a private matter of seeking, as he put it, “forgiveness from God and my wife.”

But Vitter didn’t just cop to a “very serious sin.” It’s a fair inference that he committed a crime. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam” in whose phone records Vitter’s number turned up, is facing federal charges of running a prostitution ring.

Do my colleagues bemoaning the loss of privacy think those charges should be dropped? Dionne says we should “grant Vitter our collective absolution and move on.” Does he want to do the same for Palfrey? What makes Palfrey “fair game” for prosecutors, in Ignatius’s words, but puts her client list off-limits?

Perhaps my colleagues are sexual supply-siders, uninterested in the demand part of the prostitution equation.

editorial

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See Mr. Vice President , it wasn’t that bad.

At 10 a.m. on April 4, 2001, representatives of 13 environmental groups were brought into the Old Executive Office Building for a long-anticipated meeting. Since late January, a task force headed by Vice President Cheney had been busy drawing up a new national energy policy, and the groups were getting their one chance to be heard.

Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up “about half the meeting,” recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, “It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us.”

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001. For six years, those names have been a closely guarded secret, thanks to a fierce legal battle waged by the White House. Some names have leaked out over the years, but most have remained hidden because of a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that agreed that the administration’s internal deliberations ought to be shielded from outside scrutiny.

One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country’s biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.

Story

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This article speaks for itself.

President Bush’s top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged Tuesday that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden’s leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan had failed, as the White House released a grim new intelligence assessment that has forced the administration to consider more aggressive measures inside Pakistan.

The intelligence report, the most formal assessment since the Sept. 11 attacks about the terrorist threat facing the United States, concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years.

In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence, intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an effort to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.

“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.

Story

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I guess they are human.

Forty-eight members of the House and three from the Senate had more than $10,000 in family credit card debt last year, with some carrying balances totaling more than $50,000, according to their personal financial disclosure reports.

The recent filings reflect both one-time large charges paid off promptly and longstanding debts carried on the same cards over years. In the latter cases, credit cards are often a poor choice because of their high interest rates and hidden fees, personal finance experts said. The average interest rate paid on credit cards nationally in 2005 was 14 percent, according to creditcards.com, well above the rate for other forms of personal debt.

Most of the lawmakers with high card debt, though, denied they were poorly managing their own finances, saying they were beating the prevailing rates and avoiding the high fees. Although most said they were keeping a close eye on their credit scores, some said the rating was not a concern to them because they weren’t planning to borrow money soon.

Story

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While barbecuing some chicken a man heard the cries of a seven year old boy for help. He went to investigate and found a teen-aged boy raping the younger boy. He yelled to his mom to call the police, which she did, and then he punched the pervert in the face, wrestled with him and held him down.

His mom came along and stuck the barbecue fork in his butt for good measure.

An outdoor barbeque became a rescue mission this weekend when John Jennings heard cries for help coming from a young boy behind his house. Jennings and his mom showed FOX 4’s Saul Garza how they used whatever was at hand to stop a suspected rapist in his tracks until police arrived.

Watch the local news video here.

Read more details here.

“Since he was down, I took the fork and stuck him and I told him, ‘Don’t you move,’” recalled Linda Rhodes. “He was struggling and I got mad and I stuck him again. I grabbed his belt and tied it around his legs and I pulled the belt tight so he couldn’t move. I took my foot and put it on him and said, ‘Don’t you move!’”

They held the suspect, 17-year-old Deshaun Ridge, until police arrived and make the arrest.

“They were citizens that jumped in, most definitely, and did a good deed,” said Joe Harn, spokesman for the Garland Police Department. “These people are heroes.”

“I stuck him in his butt!” Linda said, adding in a joking manner that the when she stuck him, the suspect was “done.”

“Yes, he was well done,” she laughed.

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What possesses a human to buy puppies for the sole purpose of making them mean and fighting to the death or almost death? And if they don’t perform well in “trials” they are killed by electrocution, hanging, drowning or slamming the dog to the ground.

This is what NFL quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons Michael Vick has been indicted for doing.

According to prosecutors, Vick and his cohorts began purchasing pit bull puppies in late-2001 and would eventually “sponsor” individual dog fights with purses as high as $26,000. In the indictment’s most harrowing parts, federal investigators describe what happened to some Bad Newz Kennels dogs that either lost matches or did not perform well in test fights. After a March 2003 loss by a female pit bull, codefendant Purnell Peace, “after consulting with Vick,” electrocuted the animal. In April, prosecutors allege, Vick, Peace, and Quanis Phillips, “executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well in ‘testing’ sessions.” These animals, the indictment claims, were killed “by various methods, including hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground.”

According to this story, if found guilty he could be sentenced to up to six years in prison, $350,000 in fines and restitution.

John Goodwin of the Humane Society said the manner in which losing or unwilling dogs were killed was especially troubling.

“Some of the grisly details in these filings shocked even me, and I’m a person who faces this stuff every day,” he said. “I was surprised to see that they were killing dogs by hanging them and one dog was killed by slamming it to the ground. Those are extremely violent methods of execution — they’re unnecessary and just sick.”

Restitution to whom? Certainly not the dogs, and the dogs are known to be vicious anyway, but with the extra “training” they have had the remaining dogs have probably had to be euthanized because they wouldn’t be safe for anyone to keep.

Everyone is presumed innocent unless found guilty in a court of law, but if anyone is found guilty of this crime against animals I hope he gets the full sentence with no mercy shown.

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For those interested in information on yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings regarding Border Patrol Agents Compeon and Ramon this was the one site which I found offered information and links early this morning.
(This link is not broken..just loading rather slowly.)

It amazes me that this was not more widely publicized yesterday. Perhaps as the day unfolds today full transcripts will become available.

Update: More here.

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Cindy Sheehan, the wacky woman who has tried for several years to force her will on the president and now the Congress, was scheduled to make an appearance yesterday in Charlotte, NC, but skipped it when she found out some members of the “Gathering of Eagles” group would be there.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan disappointed some of her supporters during her first visit to Charlotte on Tuesday. Sheehan did not show up to address her rally at Bryant Park.

One of Sheehan’s representatives told WCNC that the “peace mom” feared for her safety and the safety of her supporters.

Counter protestors known as the “Gathering of Eagles” were at the rally. Sheehan’s representative said members of that group had sent threatening letters to Sheehan in the past.

Earlier in the day, about 50 of her supporters gathered outside the offices of Congressman Mel Watt. Sheehan was there to continue her campaign to pressure Democrats.

“Congressman Watt needs to sign on to the resolution that’s out there to impeach Dick Cheney and needs go ahead with a resolution with George Bush,” said Sheehan.

Not to worry. When Sheehan was interviewed by the local television station she made sure they photographed her sign demanding Nancy Pelosi start impeachment proceedings against President Bush or she would run against her.

Who knows? In Pelosi’s crazy district it’s possible Sheehan could win. Not probable, but possible.

At the peaceful evening rally where Sheehan failed to show, counter protestors said they worry her message means trouble for the troops and a repeat of Vietnam.

“When we got back from Vietnam they called us baby killers. They didn’t accept us,” said Jim Brannon, Vietnam veteran and member of the “Gathering of Eagles.”

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I just finished reading this story of a man who found out long after his divorce and child support payments that his youngest “son” was not his son at all, but was the biological son of the child’s godfather.

The NJ Supreme Court unanimously rejected the divorced non-biological father’s request for a refund of his child support for that child because the child in question was over 23 years old and it was beyond the statute of limitations.

Tuesday a very good friend of mine emailed me and told me her son has found out the baby his girlfriend had and said was his is not his biological child.

He returned mother and baby to the mother’s father, which is where the biological father apparently lived.

He questioned his parentage because they had been separated for several months while she visited her father and it didn’t add up. So now a little girl over a month old who was loved by Jon is without a man who loved her since before she was born. Jon loved that baby, and his mother told me he cried hard the day he told her he had taken them back to the mother’s father.

In the New Jersey incident the mother knew or she wouldn’t have told her ex-husband he wasn’t the biological father. In the other incident the mother knew because she knew she was sleeping around and Jon couldn’t have been the father.

In both cases men have been deeply hurt, thinking these children were their biological children, and in both cases two innocent children have been the center of this smut of their mothers.

I pray for all of them.

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