J's Cafe Nette

Archive for August 16th, 2007

A few days ago J posted this video of a Marine who has obvious, strong feelings about the defense of our country.

When the video was being widely circulated, no one seemed to know the identity of this Marine but now thanks to Blackfive we have a name to put with the face.

Most of you saw this video when we posted it earlier this week, and most of you wrote to say how wonderful it was. It contained many heartfelt sentiments about what being an American and an American fighting man means. The artist was unknown, until now. Ladies and Gentlemen I introduce you to SSGT Lawrence E. Dean II. A reader who may claim her kudos in the comments if she wants to, alerted us that SSgt Dean was the artist and he worked with her husband. She sent along B5 contact info and then let me know we needed to coordinate with the Cherry Point PAO and Mr. Mike Barton was very helpful and facilitated a phone interview w/ SSGT Dean. Here is the coolest thing, the piece is titled And She Called, well She is his Grandma and the piece is his explanation to her of why he would go to war. She inspired the video, but the reference in the video itself is about America calling. WOW! It was great to talk with him and I wish him the best in what could be a second career. Semper Fi!

Let me say thanks to SSGT Dean for reminding us why our military fights for freedom.

Head on over to Blackfive to hear an interview with this Marine which explains his video even further. Congrats and thanks to them for locating SSGT Dean and sharing him with all of us.

Tweet This Post

In very short order the verdict in the Jose Padilla case has been rendered.

MIAMI (AP) – Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration’s zeal to stop homegrown terror.

The Chicago native was once accused of being part of an al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the U.S., but those allegations were not part of his trial with two co-defendants.

Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face life in prison because they were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts that carry potential 15-year sentences each.

Perhaps if this judge is tough when sentencing occurs, it will encourage others to not follow the same path.

Read more

Tweet This Post

I was not going to post on the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley (as so much has been written or said over the past thirty years), until I saw a post this morning at Powerline.

The piece affords lots of tidbits about the King of Rock and Roll but what intrigued me was a meeting Elvis had with President Nixon.

Presley indicated to the President in a very emotionial manner that he was “on your side.” Presley kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore some respect for the flag, which was being lost. He mentioned he was just a poor boy from Tennessee who had gotten a lot from his country, which in some way he wanted to repay.

Elvis thought he could be helpful to Nixon “in his drug drive” and Nixon expressed “his concern that Presley retain his credibility.” It was at this point that Elvis made his pitch for the BNDD badge. Nixon told Krogh that he would like Elvis to receive a badge. Krogh wrote in a subsequent account of the meeting:

Elvis was smiling triumphantly. “Thank you very much, sir. This means a lot to me.”…Elvis then moved up close to the President and, in a spontanous gesture, put his left arm around him and hugged him.

Check out the story and its links for the information behind that BNDD badge which Presley coveted. Ironic isn’t it, that eradicating drugs was such an important issue to him early in his career and took on an entirely different meaning in the latter stages of his life.

For Elvis fans out there, this piece also has a great picture of former President Nixon and Elvis in the Oval Office. Enjoy!

Tweet This Post

With millions of people world-wide going hungry and being malnourished, it’s hard to get my arms around the reasoning CARE is using to decline $45 million a year in federal financing.

They say it hurts the people it’s supposed to help because the farmers can’t sell their products when competing with subsidized U.S. farm products. HUH?

CARE’s decision is focused on the practice of selling tons of often heavily subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases, it says, compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.

The charity says it will phase out its use of the practice by 2009. But it has already deeply divided the world of food aid and has spurred growing criticism of the practice as Congress considers a new farm bill.

“If someone wants to help you, they shouldn’t do it by destroying the very thing that they’re trying to promote,” said George Odo, a CARE official who grew disillusioned with the practice while supervising the sale of American wheat and vegetable oil in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

Under the system, the United States government buys the goods from American agribusinesses, ships them overseas, mostly on American-flagged carriers, and then donates them to the aid groups as an indirect form of financing. The groups sell the products on the market in poor countries and use the money to finance their antipoverty programs. It amounts to about $180 million a year.

But then we read this in the article:

The Christian charity World Vision and 14 other groups, which call themselves the Alliance for Food Aid, say that CARE is mistaken; they say the system works because it keeps hard currency in poor countries, can help prevent food price spikes in those countries and does not hurt their farmers. Not least, they argue, it also pays for their antipoverty programs.

And then this example of how CARE has helped people:

The experiences of Walter Otieno, a grizzled Kenyan farmer in mud-stained pants, illustrate the paradoxes of paying for rural development through sales of American farm goods.

Over the years, he had watched 4 of his 12 children die of measles, which is more often fatal for the malnourished. He has had difficulty growing enough to feed his family. “My children were skinny, and their skin was dull,” he said.

Then last year he began growing a small patch of sunflowers on a hill sloping down to Lake Victoria in the village of Malela, with help from a program that CARE finances through the sale of American farm goods here.

A CARE extension worker, Rosemary Ogala, taught him and dozens of farmers in his group where to buy sunflower seed, when to plant it, how to space the rows and when to harvest.

CARE has also connected them to a ready market: the Kenyan company Bidco Oil Refineries, whose managers say they could more than quintuple the amount of sunflower seed they buy from Kenyan farmers to process into vegetable oil.

The profit Mr. Otieno earned from the crop rescued his family from dire poverty. Now, with his new earnings, he is able to play with his sons and daughters, who are plump on eggs and milk, at the family’s general store, a tiny shack stocked with goods financed by the sunflower sales.

It appears the well-fed and well-nourished people overseeing CARE don’t see the forest for the trees and are hurting the very people they are supposed to be trying to help.

Tweet This Post

Reuters writer Ed Stoddard has written an article titled “Religion and culture behind Texas execution tally”

Great eye-catching headline there, Mr. Stoddard.

Like his predecessor, Governor Perry is a devout Christian, highlighting one key factor in Texas’ enthusiasm for the death penalty that many outsiders find puzzling — the support it gets from conservative evangelical churches.

This is in line with their emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their own salvation, and they also find justification in scripture.

“A lot of evangelical Protestants not only believe that capital punishment is permissible but that it is demanded by God. And they see sanction for that in the Old Testament especially,” said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Yessir, we evangelicals go to church and stand around after hearing the pastor tell us weekly we should kill people on death row and talk about killing more people on death row just because.

Instead of going to a professor of theology or a well-known minister, Reuters goes to a political scientist at SMU to discover Christianity is the cause of all those executions in Texas.

He then goes on to tell us the cultural problems with the death penalty, but for purposes of this post I’m sticking with the religion aspect of what he alleges.

I am an evangelical Christian of the Baptist variety. I am not 100% in favor of the death penalty and wish sometimes we didn’t have one.

Then there are circumstances such as Ted Bundy or the brutal killing of a child that make me feel human justice demands the death penalty because if the perpetrators were ever to escape they would continue with their killing sprees.

I have also said if someone is to be executed we had better be 100% dead certain he is guilty of the crime for which he is being executed, because there is no “oops” possibility here if we are wrong.

I had read several articles yesterday in the Washington Post which had to do with religion, and I had planned to write them in a positive way until I made the mistake of reading the comments on the posts there.

I knew our country was slipping spiritually, but when you read it and see how rampant it is, you really don’t understand it. I guess I’ve just led a sheltered life as far as what I have seen and heard, but to see and read what some of the awful things these people say is just mind-boggling.

In every thread it always got around to politics and beating on Republicans for being Christians. I won’t be writing that post, but I wanted to mention it here.

As for Reuters, well the disrespect for their news coverage I had before is even higher now.

Tweet This Post

In middle school we were taught to report the five W’s—Who, What, When, Where and Why. This was taught to us as the basics of writing or reporting.

A lot of newspapers and news outlets have strayed from the five W’s and added an “O” for opinion to it instead.

Reading this article has given me pleasure to see at least one newspaper editor in the United States still remembers what it takes to make a good reporter and a good newspaper.

No matter what you think of Karl Rove — or anyone else in politics — please keep it to yourself, or at least falrly quiet. That was the message in a note sent to staffers at the Seattle Times by Executive Editor Dave Boardman after what he called “an awkward moment at yesterday’s news meeting.”

What happened? According to Boardman in the latest email installment of what he calls “Dave’s Raves” it was this: “When word came in of Karl Rove’s resignation, several people in the meeting started cheering. That sort of expression is simply not appropriate for a newsroom….As we head into a major political year, now’s a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself.”

The incident was described in a blog by chief political reporter David Postman. He comments: “I wasn’t there, but I’ve talked to several people who were. It was only a couple of people who cheered and they, thankfully, are not among the people who get a say in news play. But obviously news staff shouldn’t be cheering or jeering the day’s news, particularly as Boardman points out, ‘when we have an outside guest in the room.’

“Jokes get made in newsrooms, of course — even what you would call gallows humor. And Boardman wrote that he was ‘all for equal-opportunity joking at both parties’ expense.’ But he was clearly ticked off by yesterday’s display.”

Here’s the quote I love:

The postings nearly everywhere speak not to the fundamental issues around newsroom decorum, but instead spring from one’s place on the spectrum of Bush/Rove “Bad” or Bush/Rove “Good.”

I ask you all to leave your personal politics at the front door for one simple reason: A good newsroom is a sacred and magical place in which we can and should test every assumption, challenge each other’s thinking, ask the fundamental questions those in power hope we will overlook. [Emphasis mine]

If we wore our politics on our sleeves in here, I have no doubt that in this and in most other mainstream newsrooms in America, the majority of those sleeves would be of the same color: blue. Survey after survey over the years have demonstrated that most of the people who go into this business tend to vote Democratic, at least in national elections. That is not particularly surprising, given how people make career decisions and that social service and activism is a primary driver for many journalists.

But if we allowed our news meetings to evolve into a liberal latte klatch, I have no doubt that a pathological case of group-think would soon set in. One of the advances of which I’m most proud over the years is our willingness to question and challenge each other as we work to give our readers the most valuable, meaningful journalism we can.

Mr. Boardman goes on to describe organizations his newspaper has investigated for the betterment of the community and announces the readership on Seattletimes.com is up this year and more copies of the newspaper are being sold now than last year.

With an editor like Mr. Boardman I can see why.

Tweet This Post

The United States has launched a new assault on Tora Bora.

A US military spokeswoman, Captain Vanessa Bowman, said the assault was launched against targeted positions:

“The targets were carefully chosen to pinpoint enemy positions and eliminate the likelihood of harming innocent civilians.”

“This region has provided an ideal environment to conceal enemy support bases and training sites, as well as plan and launch attacks aimed at terrorizing innocent civilians, both inside and outside the region,” she said.

She did not say how long the operation would continue for.

The Tora Bora region, a complex of caves, is known as the last stronghold of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Maybe they have some intelligence that there is a gathering of Al Qaeda and/or Taliban there again.

Tweet This Post

The White House and the president have confirmed former Sec/Def Rumsfeld actually resigned the day before last November’s election and not the day after as previously believed.

The president actually received the resignation letter on the day of the election and chose not to interfere with the ongoing vote by announcing it the next day instead of the day it was received and accepted.

Donald H. Rumsfeld, who came to symbolize the Bush administration’s problems in the war in Iraq, resigned as secretary of defense one day before last fall’s elections, although President Bush did not announce the move until the day after the elections.

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Rumsfeld’s letter of resignation was dated Nov. 6, 2006, the day before voters — many of them furious about the war in Iraq — evicted Republicans from the leadership of the House and Senate.

Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino said that Bush received the letter and accepted Rumsfeld’s resignation on Election Day. The president waited until the next day to announce that he was replacing Rumsfeld with former CIA chief Robert M. Gates.

Bush said that the decision to oust Rumsfeld had come after a series of conversations with the then-defense secretary.

…

Not only did Bush not telegraph his intention to replace Rumsfeld, but he also publicly stated in the days before the elections that he envisioned Rumsfeld serving in his administration for the foreseeable future.

“I didn’t want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign,” Bush said when asked about the statement by reporters. “And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer.”

In his four-paragraph resignation letter, which emerged after multiple Freedom of Information requests by the Associated Press, Rumsfeld does not mention the war in Iraq. The letter salutes Bush for his leadership and praises the troops for their courage.

Asked why the president did not announce Rumsfeld’s resignation as soon as he learned of it, Perino said that Bush was wary of influencing the ongoing vote.

“I know that one of the things that the president wanted to avoid was the appearance of trying to make this a political decision,” she said. “And that was very important to him, and I think that the American people can appreciate not playing politics with such an important decision.”

Some Republicans are going to be furious about this because they feel if Rumsfeld had resigned earlier they wouldn’t have lost Congress. I’m kind of on the side of not letting things like this influence an ongoing national congressional election, and it is one more thing that makes me personally admire this president.

He could have made the resignation request a week earlier and maybe held onto congress but decided to let the American public decide its own fate. Politically smart or not I find that to be admirable.

To see Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation letter and the confirmation of the date the president saw it go here. (PDF viewer needed)

Tweet This Post

Senior congressional aides are saying the White House wants to limit the Petraeus report to a private congressional briefing, while the White House says that has been considered but they will not shield Gen. Petraeus from public testimony to the Congress and will abide by the legislation passed in May.

The congressional aides say the White House wanted the Secretaries of State and Defense to deliver the public testimony, but since the White House acknowledged making the proposal and still says Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will make the public testimony, it seems like much ado about nothing at this point. In other words, it seems settled it will be public testimony by the General and the Ambassador in addition to a private briefing, so why go public with the argument when it was already decided?

Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.

White House officials did not deny making the proposal in informal talks with Congress, but they said yesterday that they will not shield the commanding general in Iraq and the senior U.S. diplomat there from public congressional testimony required by the war-funding legislation President Bush signed in May. “The administration plans to follow the requirements of the legislation,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in response to questions yesterday.

Gen. Petreaus is quoted by the AP in the same article as stating that by about a year or so from now we will have a smaller troop presence in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Iraq yesterday, Petraeus said he is preparing recommendations on troop levels while getting ready to go to Washington next month. He declined to give specifics.

“We know that the surge has to come to an end,” Petraeus said, according to the Associated Press. “I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we’ve got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now. The question is how do you do that . . . so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going.”

Tweet This Post