Archive for July 23rd, 2007
Expanded recall of Castleberry Canned Food
July 23rd, 2007
Please read both this story
A recall of canned meat products and dog food made at a Georgia plant due to botulism fears could involve tens of millions of cans that pose an urgent public health threat, U.S. officials said on Monday.
U.S. food regulators appealed to consumers and retailers to find and dispose of the cans.
and check this website to be certain you do not have any of these products on your shelves at home and do not purchase them at the store.
The brands have been expanded from what was originally only Castleberry to include several others.
When the FDA issues a warning such as this:
“This is a very big recall,” David Elder of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s office of regulatory affairs told reporters, deeming it an “urgent public health matter.”
“These products can hurt people. And they have to be off the store shelves. And consumers have to discard any that they have at home,” Elder added.
it is probably time to take this matter seriously.
Posted in 
My sentiments exactly
July 23rd, 2007
The Anchoress has returned and I find her latest post echoing a feeling I have had for some time now about the daily news.
As I said, nothing has changed. All the stories are the same, we can simply re-file them and change the dates. It almost feels like the press and the whole world are in a holding pattern – there is no news, there are only re-framed, re-worked narratives – until George W. Bush gets out of office and the new narratives are permitted to form.
If memory serves me correctly, I recently mentioned to a friend how difficult it is to find news where real sources are actually the subject of an article.
That fact in and of itself leads me away from the “major news sources” to those who fisk those columns and articles and ferret out all the inconsistencies and half-truths.
I for one am just plain tired of all the negativity spewed daily by the press especially about leaders of this country on both sides of the aisle.
We have our problems yes, but the pictures painted repeatedly in the press make the leaders in this country look like bumbling fools..that really helps with that “world image” thing we hear about so often, don’t you think?
I suppose for now I will continue to search for the few items that come straight from the “horses mouth.” Sadly, at least for me, that is becoming increasingly difficult.
Former Speaker Gingrich has his say.
July 23rd, 2007
I wish Newt Gingrich would tell us exactly how he feels.
In this article at Eaminer.com he gives us his perception of candidates for the Presidency on the Republican side.
Dismissing the GOP presidential field as a “pathetic” bunch of “pygmies,” Newt Gingrich hinted Monday he might step in to beat Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
While I might believe there is some truth to the former Speakers words, I do not perceive him as the saviour of the Republican party.
What I found most interesting and agree with 100%, is his assessment of these “debates” we are being subjected to.
“You’re watching an utterly irrelevant, shallow television celebrity dominate everybody who claimed they want to lead the most powerful nation in the world,” he said.
Gingrich ridiculed “the idea of 10 or 11 people standing passively at microphones,” and said he refused to “shrink to the level of 40-second answers, standing like a trained seal, waiting for someone to throw me a fish.”
He added: “These are not debates, these are auditions. By definition, the psychology of an audition reduces the person auditioning and raises the status, for example, of Chris Matthews.”
Well said Mr. Gingrich, well said.
Michael Yon on the Glenn and Helen Show
July 23rd, 2007
It has been one thing to read Michael Yon’s dispatches, (there is a new one posted today), but quite another to hear him in a live podcast linked at Instapundit.
How interesting it is to listen to Michael speak from first hand experience about the successes of the surge, General Petraeus, Iraq citizens and their opinions of al Qaeda, and his overall take from his first report when arriving in country to present.
I have always maintained one of the reasons I have such respect for Michael is his ability to report as he sees and if that means bucking the powers in Washington from the President down he has done so.
Thanks to the Glenn and Helen Show for providing us the opportunity to share a bit of time with a man many of us have come to trust and admire.
Death All Around Us
July 23rd, 2007
Today Sue commemorates the first anniversary of her beloved mother’s death in this life and her entry into eternal life with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Sue, her Dad and family on this first anniversary of her mother’s homecoming.
Last night I got a telephone call from my and Guss’ precious Aunt Marge, who just lost our beloved uncle last October.
She asked me if I was sitting down and I told her yes. Then she began to cry almost to the point of not being able to understand her. She told me “Something terrible has happened!”
I asked her what was wrong and she told me to wait a minute. She tried to compose herself and I asked again what was wrong. Then she sobbed, “Matthew died this afternoon at 6:30!”
Matthew is her oldest grandchild, and was only 24 years old. We don’t know yet what happened as he seemed in good spirits and good health when he got back home Sunday afternoon.
He went to his room to lie down and locked the door. Sometime later his step-father tried to awaken him and had to break the door down. That’s when he found him, lying in bed, covered with a sheet with his foot outside the sheet, looking as though he had gone to sleep and just didn’t wake up.
It had been a number of years since I had seen Matthew until his Pap-Paw died in October. He was a grown man, very clean-cut and very polite and friendly.
Now, he’s left us to wonder what happened, at least until the autopsy results are known.
His mother is beside herself and will take no comfort from anyone except her father.
As a born-again Christian I find deaths the hardest things to try to deal with and to try to comfort people because it is such an emotional time for those closest to the departed one that no amount of reasoning or saying “I’m sorry” can”t help and I know that.
I go to the Bible (King James version this time) and find Scriptures that talk of death and dying.
We die because we inherited the sinful nature of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden.
The unknown human author of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 9:27:
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
A biographer gains rare access to Vice President Cheney—but little insight into his psyche.
July 23rd, 2007
This is an interesting read. If you have time check it out.
July 30, 2007 issue – Dick Cheney may be a taciturn man, writes author Stephen F. Hayes, but the vice president can become animated discussing doomsday scenarios. In his new biography, “Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President” (578 pages. HarperCollins. $27.95), Hayes tells the story of the Cheney family, sitting around their new big-screen TV in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on a recent Fourth of July, watching the 1997 movie “The Peacemaker.” Starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, the film is about a plot to blow up New York with a nuclear bomb. Partway through the movie, Cheney’s wife, Lynne, entered the room and asked what was happening. The question was directed at no one in particular, but the vice president launched into “a 10-minute, scene-by-scene synopsis of the action,” according to Lynne’s brother Mark Vincent. She interrupted to clarify her question: “What’s happening now?”
Cheney, writes Hayes, woke up on the morning of September 12, 2001, asking: when is the next attack? A lot of Americans woke up that day asking the same question, but while many have been lulled back into semicomplacency, Cheney has never stopped worrying and wondering and—it must be said—trying to do something about it. The vice president has become a kind of modern-day prophet of doom. He is seen by many Americans as slightly creepy, if not sinister. Of course, he could be right: Al Qaeda may well be, as recent intelligence reports suggest, gearing up for another and possibly more catastrophic attack. But what makes Cheney so dire, so animated by gloom?
For Clinton, debate could turn into 7 against 1.
July 23rd, 2007
WoW! CNN the most trusted name in news=)) reports that the seven men are going to gang up on Hillary Clinton.
She’ll wipe the floor with them.
South Carolina primaries are all about the base. That’s true for both parties.
For Republicans that means conservatives. It’s the conservative firewall state, where George W. Bush put out the John McCain brush fire in 2000.
For Democrats, it means African-Americans, who make up about half of the voters in the South Carolina Democratic primary. The main reason the Democratic Party is allowing South Carolina to hold an early primary is to give African-American voters a bigger voice.
As a result, South Carolina could be crucial in the selection of the Democratic nominee, just as it has been for Republicans for many years.
Unlike the turmoil in the Republican contest, the Democratic race has been fairly stable all year. Sen. Hillary Clinton has maintained a lead in the national polls, with Sen. Barack Obama second and former Sen. John Edwards third. No other candidate has made double digits.
The Clinton campaign has been trying to surround its candidate with the aura of inevitability: “Face it, she’s going to be nominated. Better get on the bandwagon now.”
The CNN-YouTube debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Monday night could look like seven against one: seven Democratic contenders trying to challenge Clinton as “The Inevitable” — and competing with each other to become “The Alternative.”
How about a Censure for Feingold
July 23rd, 2007
Here is an interesting twist.
Read the post at Macsmind.
Here is part of it.
I gave away the Elmer Fudd award too soon. Russ Feingold – the Senator title isn’t warranted – announced that he wants yet again to censure President Bush.
“Liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold said Sunday he wants Congress to censure President Bush for his management of the Iraq war and his “assault†against the Constitution.
But Feingold’s own party leader in the Senate showed little interest in the idea. An attempt in 2006 by Feingold to censure Bush over the warrantless spying program attracted only three co-sponsors.
Feingold, a prominent war critic, said he soon plans to offer two censure resolutions — measures that would amount to a formal condemnation of the Republican president.
The first would seek to reprimand Bush for, as Feingold described it, getting the nation into war without adequate military preparation and for issuing misleading public statements. The resolution also would cite Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps other administration officials.
The second measure would seek to censure Bush for what the Democrat called a continuous assault against the rule of law through such efforts as the warrantless surveillance program against suspected terrorists, Feingold said. It would also ask for a reprimand of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and maybe others.
“This is an opportunity for people to say, let’s at least reflect on the record that something terrible has happened here,†said Feingold, D-Wis. “This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful.â€
The genocide-ocrats?
July 23rd, 2007
This is an editorial by Suzanne Fields of the Washington Times.
Although the Senate’s refusal on Wednesday to permit the Democratic leadership to attach a surrender timeline to the defense authorization is welcome news, congressional Democrats remain convinced that opposing the war is a politically popular position, and they plan to milk defeatism for all it’s worth. That’s why Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry decided to pick a fight with the Bush administration over a senior Pentagon official’s commonsense warning that “premature and public discussion” about withdrawing from Iraq would raise fears that Washington will abandon that country and would exacerbate sectarian tensions there.
Impeachment question divides Democrats.
July 23rd, 2007
I know the press loves to keep repeating this story but I don’t think there is a chance in hell that Democrats are going to commit suicide by trying to impeach President Bush.
While most Democratic activist eyes will be on the first ever YouTube debate in South Carolina on Monday, an equally novel and potentially more consequential clash will be taking place that day in Washington, when peace queen Cindy Sheehan comes to town to declare war on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Two weeks ago, Sheehan threatened to launch a primary campaign against Pelosi in her San Francisco district unless Pelosi agreed to begin the process of impeachment against President Bush by July 23—the day Sheehan wraps up her latest anti-war protest tour with a publicity raid on the Capitol.
The speaker’s spokesman confirmed a few days ago that impeachment remains “off the table.†So on Monday, we can expect the gloves to come off between the left’s two leading ladies.
White House: U.S. Attorney May Not Prosecute Contempt of Congress Against Subpoenaed Former Officials
July 23rd, 2007
Maybe they’ll have to wait until his administration is over and then prosecute. What do you think?
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.
The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissal
Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, “whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”
But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege.
Chavez to expel foreign critics.
July 23rd, 2007
What a wonderful idea.
No foreigner can come here to attack us. Anyone who does must be removed from this country,” he said during his weekly TV and radio programme.
Mr Chavez also ordered officials to monitor statements made by international figures in Venezuela.
His comments came shortly after a senior Mexican politician publicly criticised the Venezuelan government.
“How long are we going to allow a person – from any country in the world – to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?” Mr Chavez said during his “Hello, President” broadcast on Sunday.
Iraqi tribes reach security accord.
July 23rd, 2007
This is good news for the administration.
U.S. forces have brokered an agreement between Sunni and Shi’ite tribal leaders to join forces against al Qaeda and other extremists, extending a policy that has transformed the security situation in western Anbar province to this area north of the capital.
The extremists struck back yesterday with a suicide car bomb aimed at one of the Sunni tribes involved in the deal, killing three militiamen and wounding 14.
Members of the First Calvary Division based at nearby Camp Taji helped broker the deal on Saturday with the tribal leaders, who agreed to use members of more than 25 local tribes to protect the area around Taji from both Sunni and Shi’ite extremists.
Yesterday’s suicide attack took place at a checkpoint that was set up under the security plan and run by members of the al-Zobaie tribal militia, nicknamed “Freedom Fighters” by the U.S. troops. The Americans say they were attacked daily in the area 12 miles north of Baghdad before Saturday’s deal.
“We want to protect innocent civilians from killing and kidnapping,” said Nadeem al-Tamimi, a Shi’ite tribal leader. “We have been working against al Qaeda for two years and paying for it from our own pocket. But we’re not just against al Qaeda. We’re against all murderers and thieves.”
Shortly after that meeting, Mr. al-Tamimi received a call saying one of his relatives had been assassinated in what was described as a “warning” from the Mahdi Army, a Shi’ite militia nominally loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The Mahdi Army fought U.S. troops openly in 2004 when Sheik al-Sadr openly opposed participation in the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. But the militia splintered as sectarian violence increased, and Sheik al-Sadr allowed his followers to participate in the government as an opposition party.
Despite yesterday’s attack, U.S. troops believe they are making headway.
Unlikely Adversary Arises to Criticize Detainee Hearings.
July 23rd, 2007
Speaks for it self.
Stephen E. Abraham’s assignment to the Pentagon unit that runs the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, seemed a perfect fit.
A lawyer in civilian life, he had been decorated for counterespionage and counterterrorism work during 22 years as a reserve Army intelligence officer in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His posting, just as the Guantánamo hearings were accelerating in 2004, gave him a close-up view of the government’s detention policies.
It also turned him into one of the Bush administration’s most unlikely adversaries.
In June, Colonel Abraham became the first military insider to criticize publicly the Guantánamo hearings, which determine whether detainees should be held indefinitely as enemy combatants. Just days after detainees’ lawyers submitted an affidavit containing his criticisms, the United States Supreme Court reversed itself and agreed to hear an appeal arguing that the hearings are unjust and that detainees have a right to contest their detentions in federal court.
Some lawyers say Colonel Abraham’s account — of a hearing procedure that he described as deeply flawed and largely a tool for commanders to rubber-stamp decisions they had already made — may have played an important role in the justices’ highly unusual reversal. That decision once again brought the administration face to face with the vexing legal, political and diplomatic questions about the fate of Guantánamo and the roughly 360 men still held there.
“Nobody stood up and said the emperor’s wearing no clothes,†Colonel Abraham said in an interview. “The prevailing attitude was, ‘If they’re in Guantánamo, they’re there for a reason.’ â€
Al Qaeda Sympathizers Fed Up With Barbaric Tactics
July 23rd, 2007
It appears the surge is working now that the full complement of troops is in place.
Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood.
The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement.
“They are turning. We are talking to people who we believe have worked for al-Qaeda in Iraq and want to reconcile and have peace,†said Colonel Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, which oversees the area.
The sewage-filled streets of Doura, a Sunni Arab enclave in south Baghdad, provide an ugly setting for what US commanders say is al-Qaeda’s last stronghold in the city. The secretive group, however, appears to be losing its grip as a “surge†of US troops in the neighbourhood – part of the latest effort by President Bush to end the chaos in Iraq – has resulted in scores of fighters being killed, captured or forced to flee.
“Al-Qaeda’s days are numbered and right now he is scrambling,†said Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Michael, who commands a battalion of 700 troops in Doura.
A key factor is that local people and members of al-Qaeda itself have become sickened by the violence and are starting to rebel, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael said. “The people have got to deny them sanctuary and that is exactly what is happening.â€
Read the rest.
Loophole Lets Candidates Skirt Donation Limit.
July 23rd, 2007
Speaks for it self.
Real estate executive Jack Rosen has given Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton $8,800 since last November, nearly double the amount individuals can donate to any single presidential candidate this election.
He is able to do so because of a loophole in political fundraising laws — one that is allowing several presidential candidates to simultaneously collect donations for their presidential bid and other political entities connected to them.
One contender, Democrat Bill Richardson, has even collected corporate contributions, forbidden at the federal level, by using his New Mexico gubernatorial campaign account, which faces no such prohibition.
In all, 2008 presidential candidates have already raised more than $2 million outside of their official presidential campaigns since the Nov. 7 election, using congressional or state campaign committees, political action committees or IRS Section 527 political groups to do so, a Washington Post computer analysis found.
None of the money raised for that second committee or group can be spent in pursuit of the presidency, but a former elections official says the extra dollars nonetheless benefit presidential candidates
A fight for GOP ‘family values’ banner
July 23rd, 2007
They’re going to try and bully you out but hang in there.
The emergence of Fred Thompson as a top contender in the Republican presidential race has sparked a clash with rival Mitt Romney over the social conservatives who are crucial to winning the GOP nomination.
In his opening salvo, Romney has seized upon Thompson’s work as a lobbyist who tried to lift federal restraints on abortion counseling in the early 1990s.
Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, describes himself as “pro-life.” But billing records released Thursday confirmed that — contrary to his initial denial — he charged $4,790 for lobbying and legal work he did for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn.
Thompson has not formally entered the White House race, but he is expected to do so soon. He would be the only prominent Southerner in the contest, and polls have found that he has a strong appeal to religious conservatives.
That dynamic poses a threat to Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who has tried to position himself as the party’s most viable “family values” candidate.
“In many ways, the Romney campaign and the emerging Thompson campaign are on a collision course when it comes to campaigning for this constituency of conservative Christians,” said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
For weeks, Thompson has targeted the party’s conservative wing as the foundation of his nascent candidacy, using talk radio and blogs to build grass-roots support as he has traveled the nation raising money.
But disclosure of his lobbying to ease a rule that barred abortion counseling at federally funded clinics gave Romney an opening to try to block Thompson’s momentum.
When the Los Angeles Times reported Thompson’s lobbying for the family-planning group earlier this month — based on minutes of one of the organization’s board meetings and several interviews with those familiar with the matter — his spokesman, Mark Corallo, denied it had taken place. “There’s no documents to prove it, there’s no billing records, and Thompson says he has no recollection of it — says it didn’t happen,” Corallo said.
Since then, Thompson and his spokesmen have been more coy on the subject. In an interview with the conservative RedState Radio, Thompson questioned the authenticity of the board minutes. “It’s like, I come up with a piece of paper and say it’s true because I wrote it down here,” Thompson said, adding that he would not “respond to client matters or alleged client matters.”
Even in Arizona, McCain’s political hold loosens.
July 23rd, 2007
Speaks for it self.
Gary Godsey liked all that “Straight Talk Express” stuff from John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, liked that he seemed to make up his own mind on issues and not bend with the poll-driven winds. But these days, Godsey is less sure.
The same straight-talking, no-nonsense traits that Godsey once admired in the Vietnam War hero have morphed, in his mind, into intransigence. It’s a fine line, Godsey acknowledges, but a line nonetheless, and it is evidence of how McCain’s national political troubles have begun seeping into his support at home in Arizona’s parched landscape.
“I think he’s losing who he really is,” said Godsey, 64, a retiree from San Diego who lives in a new subdivision in Tolleson, Ariz., just outside Phoenix. Godsey said he voted for McCain, the Republican incumbent, in the state’s 2004 Senate race.
“He doesn’t come across like he used to. He’s too much like a control freak: ‘My way is the right way.’ He’s not going to bend,” Godsey said last week as he tucked away groceries in his tract house at the desert’s edge.
No one is ready to declare McCain vulnerable in Arizona — he won 76.7% of the vote in 2004 and doesn’t face reelection until 2010 — but, for the first time in a long time, political analysts and watchers say they see signs of weakness.
The cause is the same force weighing down McCain nationally: The war in Iraq is just as unpopular in Arizona as elsewhere, and it has cost McCain support among independents, the state’s fastest-growing block of voters.
At the same time, McCain’s immigration reform proposal has alienated Arizona conservatives, who believe the senator supports amnesty for undocumented immigrants already in the United States — a top issue here, where every year more than 100 people die trying to cross Arizona’s deserts from Mexico.
“It’s kind of like the dike is broken” for McCain’s support, said Earl de Berg, a Phoenix pollster and analyst. “He was the most well-regarded politician in Arizona for a long time because of his national image. But some people who were not really all that enthusiastic are beginning to cut loose…. Anti-immigration people are going so far as to call him a traitor. That’s pretty tough language to level against a war hero.”
Mitt Catches S**t Over Hillary-Bashing Sign
July 23rd, 2007
This has got to be the stupidest things he could have done.
It might please a few out on the far right wing but it wont get him elected.
Not everyone is a fan of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but comparing them to one of the most dastardly pieces of human excrement of all time — that might be bit much. Especially for a presidential candidate.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice finds that her star is fading
July 23rd, 2007
Condoleezza Rice falls from grace.
I remember the heady days for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
About 2 1/2 years ago, when she was new in office, I accompanied her on her first trip around the world, with stops in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan and China. Crowds gathered to see her limousine drive past; people whistled, waved and cheered. Interviewers routinely asked her whether she was planning to run for president. One TV reporter in India told her she was “arguably the most powerful woman in the world.” She chuckled but did not exactly agree — or disagree.
How things change.
A few months ago, she decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon. She enlisted John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems as a co-author, and they wrote about public/private partnerships and how they might be of use in rebuilding Lebanon after last summer’s war. No one would publish it.
Think about that. Every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state. Price Floyd, who was the State Department’s director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.
As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. “I kept hearing the same thing: ‘There’s no news in this.’ ” Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership. “It read like a campaign document.”
