J's Cafe Nette

Archive for July 20th, 2007

I do not care what the reason was for this behavior.

It was not acceptable when Ms. McKinney tussled with a Capitol Police officer, and it is certainly not acceptable in this instance.

On Thursday afternoon, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) got into a loud, angry dispute with a U.S. Capitol Police officer at the security checkpoint inside the entrance of the West Side of the Capitol. On Friday, Shays, a veteran lawmaker, offered a public apology for the incident, and said that he wants to meet with the officer personally to reiterate how sorry he is.

Shays reportedly grabbed the officer during the dispute over whether the officer should allow a group of tourists to enter the building, said several sources. Tourists are not allowed to use the West Front entrance, but Shays was trying to bring the group through that entrance anyway. The officer refused to allow them to come inside, and Shays then “yelled and screamed” at the officer, with one source claiming Shays “grabbed his [the officer's] collar.”

Congressman Shays should be ashamed of himself, and while I am glad he has apologized for the incident and accepted responsibility for his actions, I cannot condone this behavior under any circumstances.

Imagine being a member of that party of constituents he was attempting to usher in that entrance..how embarrassing.

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Michael Yon posted two interesting articles yesterday with the first being relatively short with a video included. (This is a follow up to his piece “Bless the Beasts and Children”

His second dispatch “7 Rules: 1 Oath” can be found here, and I found this one particularly informative.

Michael attended a meeting in Baqubah with American and Iraqi Commanders but also a group calling themselves the “Baqubah Guardians.” If the initiatives pointed out in the article are followed up by action, this could be an impressive success for the population of this city.

Today Colonel Steve Townsend, the American commander of the 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, presided over a meeting with Iraqi Army officers and former insurgent leaders. The insurgent leaders who seem to be sincerely working toward peace are now collectively referred to as “the Baqubah Guardians.” I was allowed to attend the meeting, but was—understandably—not permitted to photograph or videotape the proceedings.

The rules and oath referred to in the title of this article are all spelled out in the piece itself. My hope would be that if this is successful in Baqubah, it would become a model for the rest of the country.

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A Jersey City, N.J., woman who lives in the flight path of the Newark airport, woke up this morning to find what appears to be a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher on her front lawn.

Niranjana Besai was leaving her house, located at 88 Nelson Street, to go to work just after 8 this morning when she spotted the launcher on her front lawn. “I read it and it [said] ‘missile,’” Besai told CBS 2 HD. “There was little ‘missile’ [writing] on it.”

She immediately called police.

Sources tell CBS 2 HD that the device is the type used to shoot shoulder-fired rockets and is capable of taking down an aircraft.

What’s more troubling, sources add, is that Besai’s house is located along flight path for Newark Liberty International Airport.

Besai’s neighbor, Joe Quinn, saw her pointing at the equipment from her front porch. When he walked over to see what the fuss was about, he was just as shocked to see the six-foot-long weapon.

“She’s pointing that there’s something in the front,” he told CBS 2 HD. “I said, ‘Let me come down and take a look,’ and I saw a little soldier on it and I said, ‘Whoa, that’s a missile launcher or something!’”

Jersey City Police removed the launcher, and the incident is now being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI.

Sources say Besai is not involved in the investigation as a suspect.

Jersey City Police could not confirm whether the device was actually operable.

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We have always heard the Senate is an exclusive club and the world’s most deliberative body. Our founders pictured the House of Representatives as a cup of hot tea, while the Senate was the saucer to cool that tea.

That was then. This is now:

Arlen Specter is a senior United States senator who expects to be allowed his say on the Senate floor. So he bristled when Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, brusquely cut him off at the end of the Iraq debate.

“The leadership is setting a dictatorial tone,” Mr. Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Thursday, still furious over his treatment the day before. “Senators didn’t get here to be pushed around.”

It may seem small-minded to bicker over a few words at the end of a 24-hour debate. But the clash between the two veteran senators is evidence of a larger breakdown in relations in the Senate, a deterioration in cooperation that is hobbling the Senate’s ability to get things done. The situation is not likely to improve with a presidential election on the horizon.

To read the full exchange and background on Specter’s remarks go to the Las Vegas Review/Journal.

Some have argued that the problem is caused by having a 51-49 Senate, but we have had close Senates before and we have not seen the lack of comity that we are now seeing.

“The last vestiges of courtesy seem to be going out the window,” said Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican who has served as majority and minority leader. “Every time I think the Senate — Republican or Democrat — has gone to a point where you can’t go any lower, we go lower.”

It is hardly startling that members of the two parties do not see eye to eye. And the spirit of bipartisanship in the Senate always rises and falls depending on the subject and the election calendar. But seven months into the new Democratic regime, the environment seems unusually hostile. Occasionally, senators do, too, as exhibited in a Sunday television exchange between Senators Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, that looked for a moment as if it might turn physical as the two men argued about the war in Iraq.

It’s sad for me, as an American citizen raised to love her country and respect its institutions of government, to see what this Senate has become.

It’s sadder yet that I make the comment that I would not be surprised to see the Senators come to fisticuffs the way we see it happen in the Japanese legislature and other countries in the world.

This is not the America I want. I want a government I can be proud of—a government that can work together as co-equal branches. Party affiliation should not matter.

What do you want? Bickering for sport or meaningful legislation that is passed regardless of political agendas for the good of the country?

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This is an editorial by Charles Krauthammer who is known to be conservative.
That doesn’t make it any less of a good editorial.
I don’t agree or disagree with his conclusions. I’ll leave that up to you.

Amid the Senate’s all-night pillow fight and other Iraq grandstanding, real things are happening on the ground in Iraq. They consist of more than just a surge of U.S. troop levels. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have engaged us in a far-reaching and fundamental political shift. Call it the 20 percent solution.

Ever since the December 2005 Iraqi elections, the United States has been waiting for the central government in Baghdad to pass grand national accords on oil, federalism and de-Baathification to unify and pacify the country. The Maliki government has proved too sectarian, too weak and perhaps too disposed to Iranian interests to rise to the task

The Democrats cite this incapacity as a reason to give up and get out. A tempting thought, but ultimately self-destructive to our interests. Accordingly, Petraeus and Crocker have found a Plan B: pacify the country region by region, principally by getting Sunnis to join the fight against al-Qaeda.

This has begun to happen in Anbar and Diyala. First, because al-Qaeda are foreigners. So are we, but — reason No. 2 — unlike them, we are not barbarous. We don’t amputate fingers for smoking, decapitate with pleasure and kill Shiites for sport.

Third, al-Qaeda’s objectives are not the Sunnis’. Al-Qaeda adherents live for endless war and a reborn caliphate. Ultimately, they live to die. Iraqi Sunnis are not looking for a heavenly date with 72 virgins. They are looking for a deal, and perhaps just survival after U.S. troops are gone.

editorial

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I guess you could say that this is some of the things liberals are asking.
This is an op-ed by Eugene Robinson who is known to be somewhat liberal.
I’m not saying he is right or wrong. I think you should read it and decide for yourself.

One hopes the leader of the free world hasn’t really, truly lost touch with objective reality. But one does have to wonder.

Last week, George W. Bush invited nine conservative pundits to the White House for what amounted to a pep talk, with the president providing the pep. Somehow I was left off the list — must have been an oversight. But some columnists who attended have been writing about the meeting or describing it to colleagues, and their accounts are downright scary.

Kate O’Beirne, who joined the presidential chat in the Roosevelt Room, told me that the most striking thing was the president’s incongruously sunny demeanor. Bush’s approval ratings are well below freezing, the nation is sooooo finished with his foolish and tragic war, many of his remaining allies in Congress have given notice that come September they plan to leave the Decider alone in his private Alamo — and the president remains optimistic and upbeat.

Bush was “not at all weary or anguished” and in fact was “very energized,” wrote Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report. He was “as confident and upbeat as ever,” observed Rich Lowry of National Review. “Far from being beleaguered, Bush was assertive and good-humored,” according to David Brooks of the New York Times.

Excuse me? I guess he must be in an even better mood since the feckless Iraqi government announced its decision to take the whole month of August off while U.S. troops continue fighting and dying in Baghdad’s 130-degree summer heat.

It’s almost as if Bush were trying to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, the system psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck developed in the 1960s. Beck found that getting patients to banish negative thoughts and develop patterns of positive thinking was helpful in pulling them out of depression. However, Beck was trying to get the patients to see themselves and the world realistically, whereas Bush has left realism far behind.

editorial

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They are doing something.

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a wide-ranging overhaul of student loan programs early today that would pay for more than $17 billion in grants and other student aid by slashing subsidies to lending companies.

Democrats and student advocates said the legislation, which passed in a 78 to 18 vote, would help millions of Americans pay for college in a time of steady and often steep tuition increases. But lenders and some Republicans said the measure would hurt students by making it unprofitable for many companies to issue such loans.

Story

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This story speaks for itself.

Seventy House members, nearly all liberal Democrats, vowed today that they would not support any more funding for Iraq military operations unless tied to a complete withdrawal of combat troops.

This is a big development. Earlier this year, liberals grudgingly voted for Iraq funding bills because they didn’t want to give Nancy Pelosi a defeat. Now it seems that their patience has run out.

The next Iraq funding bill won’t come up until the fall, so this showdown won’t happen for a few months, but it appears to be shaping up as an epic battle between liberals in Congress and President Bush. This may be the beginning of the end for the Iraq War

Letter to the President

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As I’ve said many times on this blog I don’t usually watch TV, but last night my aunt called me and told me to turn my TV set to CNN and watch Larry King because Tammy Faye Messner was on.

I turned on the screen and I was shocked! She had colon cancer several years ago and it was thought cured until she found it had spread to her lungs.

She now weighs 65 pounds and says she has gained 5 pounds since her last appearance on the show.

I’ve seen movies and still pictures of Holocaust survivors and she looks like one of them. You can see every bone in her body and she says her back and stomach ache constantly.

She gasps for breath and yet she still has her smile and sense of humor. She has an unwavering faith in Jesus as her Savior and said when she dies she knows she is going straight to heaven, as she pointed her index finger upward.

I live about 10 miles from where PTL was in its hey day. I remember all the hateful press that dogged her as well as her first husband Jim Bakker.

I worked right down the street from the federal courthouse where he was tried and taken out in shackles and handcuffs, begging not to be treated that way.

I have seen closely how these two people hit rock bottom and had no way to look but up.

I saw the T shirts in the malls that had an imprint of makeup all over the front with the words “I ran into Tammy Faye at the mall today.” Funny then. She joked about it too, but it was cruel.

Through all of it Tammy was solid as a rock in her faith in Jesus. It was there for all of us to see, but we were too busy mocking her to see it.

She didn’t change, but I did.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I admire her after seeing the Larry King show last night.

Watch the video for yourself to see how thin she is, how she gasps for breath, and her smile and upbeat attitude based on her love and blessed assurance from Jesus Christ Himself.

May God forgive me for any laughing I did at her. I ask you all to pray that God will ease her pain and suffering and will be with her family when that pain and suffering are finished.

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Your taxpayer dollars hard at work.

The NYT The Caucus column has a headline that perfectly describes the Senate in this session of Congress:

The peas, carrots and kernels of corn weren’t flying in the Senate chamber, but that’s only because dinner is served elsewhere — otherwise democracy descended into a near-food fight as a Republican effort to block a vote on a higher education bill turned into a fusillade of politically charged amendments to the bill with no other purpose than to insult and infuriate the other side of the aisle.

Then, Mr. Salazar rose to speak: “It is regrettable that we work here, regrettable that we work here on the future of our country for our children…

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Sen. Salazar. It is regrettable that you all work there.

Meanwhile, the senators milled about like guests at a cocktail party with no drinks.

Did the Senate run out of Juicy-Juice and sippy cups?

For a good Friday morning laugh, follow the link in the above paragraph.

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Somewhere in my vain search for actual news stories yesterday I ran across a little column that says as of Aug. 4 the Dept. of Homeland Security and TSA are going to allow people to carry cigarette lighters on planes again.

As you know, I flew to Texas last week. What I haven’t said, and I wasn’t going to say until I read the article I can’t find now is that after arriving we stopped at a convenience store to pick up a cigarette lighter for me.

When I got to my hotel room and started emptying things from my purse I noticed I had another cigarette lighter at the bottom of my purse.

I had passed through security with this in my purse. On the way home I figured I’d just toss the new one in there too and see what happened.

I was able to return with both cigarette lighters in my purse.

So much for all the security and X-rays done at the airports.

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