J's Cafe Nette

Archive for August 17th, 2007

After nine frantic days of trying rescue efforts on the six miners trapped in Utah, and the deaths of three of the rescuers last night due to a mountain bump, or cave-in, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration chief Richard Stickler called at least a temporary halt to the rescue operations.

I hate to say it, but reality says after what is now ten days with no fresh water or food the operation is probably more of a recovery effort now than a rescue effort.

HUNTINGTON, Utah — A rescue effort to find six missing Utah miners came to a halt Friday when officials suspended the underground search after a second cave-in killed three rescue workers.

A team of experts will review whether or not it is safe for rescue workers to return to underground rescue efforts, said Richard Stickler, spokesman for the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. called the rescue workers who died Thursday night heroes, adding that worker safety must come first in the ongoing rescue operation.

“We want to make sure that the lives that were lost last night were not in vain,” Huntsman said at a press conference.

I pray for all the rescuers, the families of the miners trapped and the families of the dead rescuers who gave their lives trying to save the lives of others.

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Please pray for the Anchoress. I received an email from her and I am not at liberty to tell you the details except she is sick and is at the ER.

Please pray that God, with the help of her doctors, will heal her body.

And go over to her site and give her a few hits while she’s unable to blog.

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Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has announced he will not run for re-election in next year’s race.

“It was a great personal privilege and honor for this former teacher and wrestling coach to have been elected and to have served the American people,” Hastert said in a news release.

Hastert was scheduled to speak publicly about his decision at an event for supporters outside the Kendall County courthouse.

The L A Times reports this discussion in today’s edition, in which Hastert talks candidly about how he felt as Speaker of the House.

Rep. J. Dennis Hastert on Thursday said he had felt like a “prisoner” of his office as House speaker, unable to enjoy the camaraderie of his fellow lawmakers.

As Hastert prepares to formally announce today his decision not to seek reelection to the Illinois seat he first won in 1986, he reflected on a political career in which he became the longest-serving Republican speaker.

After the 2006 election gave Democrats the majority, ending Hastert’s eight-year reign as speaker, he lost the trappings of a grand office, plane service to and from Washington, and the security detail provided to the second in the succession line to the presidency (after the vice president).

But returning to the life of a simple congressman from Plano has been rewarding, Hastert said, letting him renew friendships with other members that hadn’t been possible when lawmakers were looking to him for favors.

“When you are speaker, you’re almost a prisoner in that office,” Hastert said. “You really didn’t go out of your office, because they had 26 people asking you for something without an appointment, just trying to grab you. You were vulnerable every time you walked out.”

Now, he said, “I can get on the floor and talk with people and kind of touch everybody without the same people in your face asking for something all the time.”

Still, Hastert said it was time to leave Washington and his diminished role in shaping policy.

“I see an awful lot of policy being made that, you know, I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “But that’s what being in the majority and the minority are all about.”

He said he planned to serve his full term, but he wouldn’t rule out leaving early.

The only thing I’ll say is if he didn’t like the trappings of the office he should have stepped down and let someone else do the job. No one forced him to remain Speaker.

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This is indeed good news.

South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson will face his constituents for the first time since suffering a brain hemorrhage last December, making a long-awaited public appearance in his home state later this month.

Johnson, a Democrat, will appear in Sioux Falls on Aug. 28, his office announced Thursday. He is expected to return to the Senate in September.

A release from Johnson’s office said the event will be “a welcome home celebration in which Sen. Johnson will personally thank the people of South Dakota for their support.”

Political views should be put aside when it comes to a life and death situation such as the one Senator Johnson has faced.

Well done on your recovery Senator, and may you continue to progress and you and your family have many happy years together.

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There was news late yesterday of another accident at the Utah mine where workers have been trapped for over a week.

A seismic “bump” in a coal mine injured nine people working to find trapped miners, sending at least four rescue workers to hospitals, authorities said.

One rescue worker was in very serious condition at Castleview Hospital, and two were in serious condition there, said Jeff Manley, hospital chief executive.

At least one rescue worker was flown from the Crandall Canyon mine to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, said Jess Gomez, a spokesman for Salt Lake City’s LDS Hospital, which dispatches medical helicopters in Utah.

“It is believed that the accident was caused by a bump. … We are in the process of doing a head count to ensure that everyone is accounted for,” said Dirk Fillpot, spokesman for the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

A bump commonly refers to pressure inside the mine that shoots coal from the walls with great force, which seismologists believe caused the Aug. 6 cave-in that trapped six men inside the central Utah mine.

A “final count” determined that nine workers were injured, he said. The agency had earlier said at least 10 were injured. The bump occurred about 8:30 p.m. EDT.

This has been such a tragedy for the workers, the rescuers, and their families. How disheartening it must be to believe you are making progress toward a rescue or recovery only to be disappointed many times over. This accident during the recovery process once again proves the dangers associated with the mining industry.

Prayers go out today for those still trapped, those injured in this latest accident, the rescue crews and their families.

Story

Update: It appears three of the rescue workers have lost their lives attempting to save their friends and co-workers. More on this tragic occurrence.

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Within the past couple of days an obscure Dutch bishop suggested it was OK for Christians to call God (Jehovah, Yweh, I AM etc.) Allah.

How about if your name is John and someone who poses as you is called James. Would you want to be called James if the two of you were exact opposites?

Thursday’s Omega Letter written and owned by Jack Kinsella, gives a better explanation:

The Doctrine of Demons

A Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands made headlines this week when he issued a statement urging Catholics to refer to God as “Allah.”

Martinus “Tiny” Muskens, the bishop of Breda, argues that there is no difference between God and Allah, and anyway, God doesn’t mind what you call Him. According to Muskens, “the Almighty is above such discussion and bickering.”

He says the Netherlands should look to Indonesia, where the Christian churches already pray to Allah. It is also common in the Arab world, where he said that Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably.

“Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years,” Muskens said. “In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can’t we start doing that together?”

According to Bishop Muskens, “Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? … What does God care what we call Him? It is our problem,” Muskens told Dutch television.

Bishop Muskens is not without allies in his quest to rename God: Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations backs the idea as a way to ‘help interfaith understanding’ — or something.

“It reinforces the fact that Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God,” Hooper told FOXNews.com. “I don’t think the name is as important as the belief in God and following God’s moral principles. I think that’s true for all faiths.”

Christians who are Arabic speakers speak of Allah when they speak of God, Hooper added.

“There’s not a theological leap to make on the part of Christians,” Hooper said.

The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago supports the idea.

“I think it will open up doors,” said Janaan Hashim, a spokeswoman for the group representing more than 400,000 Muslim Americans in the Chicago area. “Language is a man-made limitation. I think what God cares about is how we fulfill our purpose in life.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Politico has an interesting post talking about all the candidates pretty much singing off the same page according to party:

Ever think that presidential candidates sound pretty much the same?

It’s an inevitable by-product of the rigors of this race and additional, unique pressures facing each party.

Republicans must rhetorically pick their way around President Bush’s unpopular policies and, almost by definition, end up focusing on the few Bush mantras that voters seem to still like. It’s no coincidence that the one Bush phrase some in the GOP field are echoing, “follow us home” (or “follow us here”), refers to the one issue on which the GOP still retains an advantage over Democrats: fighting terrorism.

Democrats are more guilty of succumbing to the perils of habit. For the third cycle in a row, they are running on basically the same issues, using the same consultants, against the same opponent: George W. Bush.

The problem with this is that President Bush is not running and will not be president after noon on January 20, 2009.

Of course policies are going to change in 2009 regardless of who gets elected president, so running the same campaign for the third time when you lost it twice already seems to be the definition of insanity: doing over and over again the same thing, expecting a different result.

Here’s another piece of interesting information:

Another reason why Democrats sound the same is because of a seemingly widespread habit of ticking through a laundry list of issues – education, health care, middle-class tax cuts, the environment – in explaining to voters how they’ll provide them with a better future.

Don’t forget Social Security and Mediscare.

The Politico piece picks on Republicans too, but we’ve heard the same song from the two parties for so long (even when they had the White House they didn’t always deliver) why should we believe it all now?

I don’t want slogans or campaign songs. I want to hear a candidate’s real talk about solutions to real problems described in real terms and not the utopia they wish for. This goes for both Republicans and Democrats.

I’m tired of the same tried and true lines they use every four years and every four years the voter still doesn’t know what he or she is going to get when pulling the lever in the voting booth.

I don’t want 30 second sound bites posing as debates, but real debates with a moderator for time only and not asking questions that are favorable to one candidate or another.

Let the candidates duke it out and see how they are judged by the populace.

Isn’t that the way it was done once upon a time?

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President Bush’s twin daughter Jenna is engaged to Henry Hager of Virginia.

No plans for the marriage date have been announced, but I’d like to see a Rose Garden wedding. We haven’t seen one of them since Tricia Nixon married Christopher Cox, and for at least one day, everyone was happy and partisianship took a back seat.

“President and Mrs. George W. Bush are happy to announce the engagement of their daughter, Jenna Bush, to Mr. Henry Hager, son of the Honorable and Mrs. John H. Hager of Richmond, Virginia. Miss Bush and Mr. Hager became engaged Wednesday, August 15, 2007,” reads a release issued from the White House.

No wedding date has been set for the 25-year-old former school teacher and Hager, a former White House intern who worked for Karl Rove. Hager’s father was a Bush administration official in the Education Department.

Hager, 29, and Bush were first seen out together at the inaugural balls in 2005. He is currently in his second year of grad school at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. The two became engaged while vacationing in Maine.

Jenna and her mother are currently working on a children’s book together.

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I guess if you live in Iowa or New Hampshire you think you have the right to ask a candidate any personal questions you care to ask.

Well, on Thursday Rudy Giuliani let it be known that some questions are off limits.

DERRY, N.H. (AP) – Republican Rudy Giuliani said Thursday that people should “leave my family alone” when asked by a New Hampshire woman why the presidential candidate should expect loyalty from voters when he doesn’t get it from his children.

Giuliani has a daughter who has indicated support for Democrat Barack Obama and a son who said he didn’t speak to his father for some time. His ugly divorce from their mother, Donna Hanover, was waged publicly while Giuliani was mayor of New York. Giuliani has since remarried.

Answering questions at a town-hall meeting, Giuliani was asked why he should expect loyalty from GOP voters when his children aren’t backing him.

“I love my family very, very much and will do anything for them. There are complexities in every family in America,” Giuliani said calmly and quietly. “The best thing I can say is kind of, ‘Leave my family alone, just like I’ll leave your family alone.’”

His comments were greeted with a smattering of applause from the audience of about 120 people. Giuliani urged them to judge him based on his performance as mayor and a federal prosecutor, and he launched into a list of his successes such as reducing crime and welfare and prosecuting organized crime figures and drug dealers.

When I step into the voting booth to vote for someone I am voting for person whose name is on the ballot.

I’m not voting for his or her spouse, parents, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, or cousins.

Every family has its problems and not every child is especially supportive of either or one parent, especially if that child is still quite young and in his or her early 20s.

Ronald Reagan’s two children with Nancy had a running feud going with their parents during his entire presidency and before and after, but it didn’t affect the job he did as president.

Judge the candidate by his or her record and not by his or her relationship with his or her children, because in five or ten years those children more than likely will defend their father to the death.

It’s none of my business what goes on in a candidate’s family and it’s none of the business of the woman who was rude enough to ask the question. Neither is it the business of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire who get to be in the spotlight once every four years, and they don’t always pick a winner.

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Yesterday I wrote in admiration a story about the executive editor of the Seattle Times chastising his newsroom for cheering when they heard Karl Rove resigned.

Apparently, it impressed MSNBC personality and former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough, who is quoted here on what happened his first night at MSNBC, which also happened to be the night of the president’s State of the Union address in 2003.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: There was a story out of Seattle, and the reason I love it is that it’s transparency in the news. You have an editor who was actually outing his own people. The Seattle Times newsroom broke into applause when Karl Rove resigned. And of course that’s bad. What I like about it is that the editor actually wrote about it and went in and told the people in the newsroom that was unacceptable.

And I’ve got to say, my first night here at MSNBC was the President’s State of the Union address in 2003, and I was shocked because there were actually people in the newsroom that were booing the president actually from the beginning to the end. And I actually talked to [NBC/MSNBC executive] Phil Griffin about it, and he said “how was it last night?” Because he was the one that called me out of the Ace Hardware store, got my vest on. He said “how was it last night?” I said “well, it’s OK, I understand it’s a little bit different up here than it is down in northwest Florida, but you had people in the newsroom actively booing the President of the United States. Phil turned red very quickly. That didn’t happen again.

SCARBOROUGH: Chris [MJ producer Chris Licht] told me something in my ear during break, that we talked at 6:02 about the Seattle Times and back in 2003, back in 2003, the newsroom at MSNBC booing George Bush . . .

BRZEZINKSI: Some people, yeah [Mika wanting to make clear it wasn't unanimous.]

SCARBOROUGH: A lot of the people that were actually charged with the coverage.

BRZEZINKSI: Oh dear!

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, that’s bad. And I talked about how Phil Griffin found out, got very angry,

BRZEZINKSI: Right, as he should.

SCARBOROUGH: And cleaned that up. That never happened again.

BRZEZINKSI: N-o-o-o.

SCARBOROUGH: And this whole place has changed an awful lot since then. But NewsBusters, already has a story at like 6:30.

BRZEZINKSI: Oh my God!

SCARBOROUGH: Ruthless efficiency!

BRZEZINKSI: I try not to look there. They don’t like me.

SCARBOROUGH: They said I pulled back the curtain. You know what? Sunlight’s the best disinfectant.

BRZEZINKSI: Darn right.

Almost everyone has a personal view on politics, but if someone is in the news business it’s his or her duty to remain neutral when reporting the news. If a personality has a discussion show then his or her political opinion should be acceptable to state publicly.

My problem is I don’t want to know the political affiliation of a news reporter by reading what he or she reports if it’s news and not opinion.

The news should be neutral in how it is reported and this is where the major media has gone wrong. It reminds me of what we heard called “Yellow journalism” in school.

To read that an entire newsroom, consisting of some of the very people who would report on the story, were booing the president’s speech during the entire speech gives me less faith in our news organizations than I previously had, and my opinion of them was already low.

I want news that presents the facts in a neutral way, and if I want an analysis of what I’m supposed to think about what I saw in a neutral way I’ll read the op-eds or listen to the opinion shows. Is that too much to expect?

Go here to see a partial video of Scarborough explaining what you read him saying in this post.

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