J's Cafe Nette

Archive for August 23rd, 2007

Speaks for itself.

One of the Senate’s top Republicans has called on President Bush to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq by Christmas, telling reporters Thursday that a pullout was needed to spur Iraqi leaders to action.

Sen. John Warner, the influential former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he has recommended that Bush announce the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal in mid-September, after a report from the top U.S. officials in Iraq.

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I guess that they take care of their own.

Florida’s top police agency said Wednesday its investigation into former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s lurid Internet communications with teenage boys has been hindered because neither Foley nor the House will let investigators examine his congressional computers.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says it hopes to conclude its investigation next week. Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned from Congress on Sept. 29 after being confronted with the computer messages he sent to male teenage pages who had worked on Capitol Hill.

“We have requested to review federally owned computers that Mr. Foley used during his time as a representative, but the U.S. House of Representatives … cited case law restrictions that prohibited them from releasing those computers,” said Heather Smith, an FDLE spokeswoman.

Smith said that the House claims the computers are considered congressional work papers, and that only Foley can release them for review.

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This is Guss’ and my great-aunt. She was also a surrogate mother to us, hence we called her Mama-Auntie.

She was kind but very strict. In this photo you see her sitting on the front deck of her basket shop making a shopping basket.

From the looks of the shawl around her I would think this picture was taken in late summer or early fall.

Today is the 115th anniversary of her birth and I still miss her tremendously.

I also want to mention that Guss’ beloved is celebrating a birthday today. Happy birthday to her. You’re the best thing that ever happened to Guss.

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I’ve been stressed out all week because my favorite dog has been sick and we don’t know why.

She is a cancer survivor and when she began to vomit for no apparent reason the doctors and we were quite concerned.

She’s been in the hospital since Monday.

Yesterday she had exploratory surgery and no cancer or blockages were found in any of her abdominal cavity. That was the greatest news I had heard in a long time!

Her sinuses were X-rayed to rule out a sinus tumor and that came back clean.

The only thing they can find wrong with her is her jaw doesn’t open as widely as it should, but they say that can be treated with prednisone.

Today they are going to re-evaluate her and possibly change her medications. They are in hopes of starting her on some bland foods since she hasn’t eaten in several days.

I want to thank Sue and Guss for being so busy with the blog since I’ve taken the time off to tend to our pup. Today I feel like someone pulled the plug out of me and I’m like a wet dish cloth. I hope to get back to blogging on Friday, but it seems we have more hits when I don’t.

That’s it for now.

Update: I just got a call from our vet. Our dog is not interested in eating today. That could be from the surgery yesterday and her prednisone has been increased to see if it will get the inflammation down faster in her jaw.

In a couple of days they may try to feed her some gruel via syringe down her throat, but if that’s the life she’s going to live it’s probably time to let her go.

We’ll give the new meds a chance to work and see what happens. As the vet said, at least we have given her every chance possible and should have no regrets. She has eight vets in that practice all stumped.

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What an interesting take on our two party system at The Evangelical Outpost.

United by Our Differences:Electoral Politics in an Age of Choice

Almost everywhere I go I am faced with vast array of options: I can choose between 180 channels on my television, 170 stations on my satellite radio, 10,000 books at my local bookstore, and millions of blogs on the internet. But when I enter the voting booth I am presented with only two real choice: I can vote for a Democrat or I can vote for a Republican.

In an age when even ice cream comes in 31 flavors, having only two choices in electoral politics seems anachronistic. But the limitation has a ironically beneficial effect. For as divisive as politics can be, nothing else has such power to unite our pluralistic nation.

Perhaps the day will come when a third party will become a real force. We have seen a few Independents manage to pull out a victory but I think we are a long way from seeing that happen in a Presidential election. Until that time, I also agree with this:

*Casting a “protest” vote for third-party candidates is essentially casting a vote for the party you like the least. For example, say you prefer the Democrats to the Republicans but choose to vote for the Green Party candidate. Since the Green candidate will not win, you vote effectively reduces the vote for the Democratic candidate (your second favorite choice) by one. Had you cast the vote that way, it would have offset a vote for the Republican.

Just some food for thought.

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May be we’ll have mini protests.

A day after George Bush compared the potential consequences of exiting Iraq to the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, US intelligence will today warn that extremists could create a “mini-Tet” in the country, an official revealed.
The defence official said the national intelligence assessment, due to be released later today, warned extremists could attempt sensational attacks in an attempt to replicate the 1968 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Tet offensive, which decisively undermined public support for the Vietnam war in the US.

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I love a good family fight.

                                                                         Guess who?

                                                                     

If President Bush is serious about getting tough on U.S. employers who hire illegal aliens, he can start with his own administration, which employs thousands of unauthorized workers, says the top Republican on the House immigration subcommittee.

A 2006 audit showed federal, state and local governments are among the biggest employers of the half-million persons in the U.S. illegally using “non-work” Social Security numbers — numbers issued legally, but with specific instructions that the holders are not authorized to work in the U.S.

“Let’s clean up our own house, let’s especially clean up the federal employment of all those working for the federal government,” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee.

The Social Security Administration used to, but no longer does, issue non-work numbers to legal aliens who were not authorized to work but needed a number to obtain a federal or state benefit or service. Still, hundreds of thousands of those immigrants used the numbers to get a job.

According to the 2006 audit by the Social Security inspector general, 17 of the 100 worst employers using employees with non-work numbers were government agencies: seven federal agencies, seven state agencies and three local governments. That means the government knows who those employees are, but usually does not go after them.

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Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jennifer wrote a piece about Michelle Obama on the campaign trail and quoted her as saying:

At another stop, in Atlantic, Michelle said she travels with her husband in part “to model what it means to have family values,” adding “if you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.” She didn’t elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.

That one statement in the entire article got a lot of press, with people surmising she was specifically talking about the Clintons.

Today she has a piece up that talks about the controversy surrounding her first piece.

But in the fifth paragraph of the story, I suggested that during an introduction to a speech by her husband, something she said could be interpreted as a swipe against the Clintons, and that set the tongues wagging, hit Drudge’s Web site, was discussed on CNN, ABC and MSNBC and prompted an e-mail from Michelle Obama’s communications director, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, who said I had completely misunderstood what Michelle Obama had said.

This is from Michelle Obama’s introduction to her husband’s speech: “. . . part of what we want to do as a family is to make sure that our children are sane, but also to model what it means to have family values in this country, and we haven’t seen that for a long time . . . [applause].

“One of the most important things that we need to know about the next president of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values, is he somebody that respects family, is a good and decent person? So our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.

“So we’ve adjusted our schedule to make sure that our girls are first, so when he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning. I get the girls ready. I get them off. I go and do trips. I’m home before bedtime.”

Lelyveld told me in a phone conversation that Michelle Obama “was only referring to her family and making sure her girls are guided and strong.” It was not a jab at the Clintons, Lelyveld said.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Barack Obama told the Associated Press that his wife “has been making that speech constantly about the decision we made to make sure that our family was strong because if our family wasn’t that strong then we couldn’t be a strong leader in the White House.”

”The whole thing about Hillary has been completely fabricated,” Obama added. ”You guys have got to get it off your minds.”

…

”The whole thing about Hillary has been completely fabricated,” Obama added. ”You guys have got to get it off your minds.”

OK, but as I stood there in Atlantic, Iowa, listening to Michelle Obama talk and hearing the cadence of her speech, my immediate reaction was that she was obliquely referring to the Clintons.

Why did I think that?

Well, she said she and Barack were modeling “what it means to have family values in this country and we haven’t seen that for a long time” [emphasis added]. Wasn’t Bush the family values guy? What did Michelle mean by “we haven’t seen that [family values] for a long time”?

Then she talked about the future president being someone who “respects family . . .” Did Bill Clinton show respect for his family with his bimbo eruptions? Did he consider the impact on his child, let alone his wife?

Michelle Obama added: “So our view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.”

Bang!

The Clintons certainly did have a hard time running the White House and their own house during the Monica Lewinsky affair as independent counsel Kenneth Starr and his henchmen began snooping around and President Clinton was impeached by Congress.

So you can see where I was going with this. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic. My mistake was not grabbing Michelle Obama when she left to ask for further elaboration — I was waiting to hear her husband speak.

When public people speak they should be clear in what they are saying so there is no doubt about the meaning of their words.

Michelle Obama may have been tired and not expressed herself fully, or she may have meant it the way it sounded.

It’s up to the individual to decide, but we have had family values in the White House for the last almost seven years at least. There has been no scandal regarding this president or his family, except when his girls were partying while they were in college, and many college kids do that. Doesn’t make it right, but it’s not a scandal. At least not in my eyes.

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I love football and I can never wait for the preseason to start in August. If anything will turn me against the NFL it will be if they let Vick play again.

An NAACP leader said Michael Vick should be allowed to return to the NFL, preferably the Atlanta Falcons, after serving his sentence for his role in a dogfighting operation.
“As a society, we should aid in his rehabilitation and welcome a new Michael Vick back into the community without a permanent loss of his career in football,” said R.L. White, president of the NAACP’s Atlanta chapter. “We further ask the NFL, Falcons, and the sponsors not to permanently ban Mr. Vick from his ability to bring hours of enjoyment to fans all over this country.”

White said the Falcons quarterback made a mistake and should be allowed to prove he has learned from that mistake.

On Monday, Vick said through a lawyer that he will plead guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and conspiracy to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture.

Three Vick associates have pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge and say Vick provided nearly all the gambling and operating funds for the “Bad Newz Kennels” dogfighting enterprise. Two of them also said Vick participated in executing at least eight underperforming dogs, raising the possibility of the animal cruelty charges.

Last month, state and local leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People urged the public not to rush to judgment in the Vick case. The civil rights organization said animal rights groups, talk radio and the news media were vilifying the embattled athlete, and that his team and corporate sponsors were prematurely punishing Vick.

White said the Atlanta chapter supports Vick’s decision to accept a plea bargain if it’s in his best interest, but he questioned the credibility of Vick’s co-defendants, saying an admission of guilt might be more about cutting losses than the truth.

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I don’t know about you but I think what he is doing is just fine but I do think he is going from one extreme to the other.

A year ago, in the middle of the nation’s most bitterly fought union organizing drive of the past decade, management at the Smithfield Foods pork slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina, sent a letter to 300 workers. The company, Smithfield claimed, had been notified by the Social Security Administration that the workers’ numbers didn’t match the SSA database. Come up with new numbers, the company ordered, that could pass the “no-match check,” or they’d be fired within two weeks.

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My heart goes out to the families of the missing miners.

The Utah coal mine where three rescuers were killed and six men remained trapped will cease operations when the flagging effort to locate the missing is finally called off, mine operator Robert E. Murray said Wednesday. The statement by the combative chief executive of Murray Energy reversed earlier company statements that held the possibility of continued mining in a mountain that is coming to be regarded as a tomb.

In a lengthy telephone interview after several days away from the public eye, Murray both accepted personal responsibility “for what I’ve done to these miners and these families” and said he was unaware of key details about the risks of mining in the area of the huge Aug. 6 cave-in.

Despite statements by a company vice president over the weekend, Murray said he made the decision to shutter the entire Crandall Canyon mine last Friday, the morning after helping to pull dead and injured rescuers from the shaft that exploded onto them as they burrowed through the earlier collapse.

“I told Mr. Richard Stickler the next morning, ‘I’m submitting to you a plan to seal this mine. This mountain is alive,’ ” Murray said, referring to the head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is part of the Labor Department.

Murray, 67, was by turns unapologetic and remorseful in the interview. He said he was under a doctor’s care for a day and a half after helping to carry the dead and injured from Thursday’s catastrophic cave-in.

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Congratulations, let’s throw a party.

Texas, which leads the nation in carrying out the death penalty, on Wednesday executed the 400th person since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Johnny Ray Conner, 32, who was convicted in the shooting death of a convenience store owner in Houston in 1998, was the 21st man put to death by lethal injection in Texas this year. He spent nearly eight years on death row.

Texas resumed the practice after the Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on it in 1976. Since then, 1,092 people have been executed in the United States, including Conner, according to statistics from the Death Penalty Information Center.

Conner’s execution in Huntsville, located north of Houston, has drawn sharp criticism from death penalty opponents who argue that the practice is inhumane and does not serve as a deterrent to crime.

“It’s a pretty sad day for the progression — or lack thereof — for human rights in this state,” said Rick Halperin, president of the non-profit Texas Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty. He called the state-ordered executions “barbaric and outdated.”

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What’s new?

Failure to end the Iraq war has so divided Democrats it could jeopardize their chances of consolidating power in U.S. elections in November 2008, analysts said.

Nearly a year since the party parlayed discontent over the unpopular war into a majority in Congress, liberal Democrats, prodded by influential Internet bloggers, are pressing harder than ever for action to bring U.S. troops home.

Centrists, concerned about alienating conservative voters in swing districts, are wary of moving too precipitously, the analysts say.

The bottom line for Democrats was that they won a majority by picking up seats in marginal or nominally Republican districts, said Ethan Siegal, an analyst for The Washington Exchange, which monitors Congress for institutional investors.

“If the Democrats want to keep control of the House in the 2008 elections, they can’t force those members to take certain Iraq votes, he said.

Democratic divisions may grow after Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, reports to Congress in September on the results of President George W. Bush’s policy of building up troops as a way to stabilize Iraq.

Even a positive report is unlikely to sway the anti-war liberal Democrats, but it will make it difficult for centrist Democrats from more conservative districts to support pulling out troops, the analysts said.

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Speaks for itself.

U.S. troops in Iraq will receive at least 1,000 fewer special armored vehicles than expected this year due to the amount of time needed for shipment, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Defense Department expected defense contractors to produce 3,900 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles this year. But only 1,500 would make it to the war zone — down from the Pentagon’s previous shipment target of 2,500 to 3,000.

“If we could get 1,500 to theater by the end of this year, that would be a positive development,” Morrell said.

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Speaks for itself.

Al Qaeda fighters kidnapped 15 Iraqi women and children after rival Sunni Arab militants repelled their attack on two villages in a fierce battle on Thursday in which 32 people were killed, police said.

The fighting, rare on such a large scale, underscored the growing split between Sunni Arab militant groups and al Qaeda that U.S. forces have sought to exploit as they try to quell sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands.

U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure to show progress in the war or start bringing troops home, on Wednesday compared Iraq to Vietnam in urging Americans to be patient. His administration had previously avoided such comparisons, saying there were few parallels.

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Speaks for itself.

The American withdrawal from Vietnam is widely remembered as an ignominious end to a misguided war — but one with few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.

Now, in urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, President Bush is challenging that historical memory.

In reminding Americans that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of bloody upheaval in Southeast Asia, Mr. Bush argued in a speech on Wednesday that Vietnam’s lessons provide a reason for persevering in Iraq, rather than for leaving any time soon. Mr. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and the mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people.

President Bush is right on the factual record, according to historians. But many of them also quarreled with his drawing analogies from the causes of that turmoil to predict what might happen in Iraq should the United States withdraw.

“It is undoubtedly true that America’s failure in Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia,” said David C. Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

“But there are a couple of further points that need weighing,” he added. “One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam — this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war. The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred.”

The record of death and dislocation after the American withdrawal from Vietnam ranks high among the tragedies of the last century, with an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, about one-fifth of the population, dying under the rule of Pol Pot, and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese and other Indochinese becoming refugees. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese who were sent to prison camps after the war have ranged widely, from 50,000 to more than 400,000, and some accounts have said that tens of thousands perished, a figure that Mr. Bush cited in his speech, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Mr. Bush did not offer a judgment on what, if anything, might have brought victory in Vietnam or whether the war itself was a mistake. Instead, he sought to underscore the dangers of a hasty withdrawal from Iraq.

But the American drawdown from Vietnam was hardly abrupt, and it lasted much longer than many people remember. The withdrawal actually began in 1968, after the Tet offensive, which was a military defeat for the Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese sponsors. But it also illustrated the vulnerability of the United States and its South Vietnamese allies.

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It’s like they are making up the rules as they go.

The Bush administration argued in court papers this week that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act as part of its effort to fend off a civil lawsuit seeking the release of internal documents about a large number of e-mails missing from White House servers.

The claim, made in a motion filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, is at odds with a depiction of the office on the White House’s own Web site. As of yesterday, the site listed the Office of Administration as one of six presidential entities subject to the open-records law, which is commonly known by its abbreviation, FOIA.

a nonprofit group, filed a lawsuit in May seeking Office of Administration records about the missing e-mails, including when they were deleted from government computer files. CREW said it understood that internal White House documents had estimated at least 5 million e-mails were missing from March 2003 to October 2005.

The Bush administration has not provided a number publicly. Some of the records may have been subject to a document preservation law administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Congress has sought access to them as part of its probe into the administration’s firing of nine U.S. federal prosecutors in 2006.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said that “one has to wonder if this is an effort by the White House to keep secret the details of how millions of White House e-mail suddenly went missing. The OA’s disingenuous claim that it is not subject to the FOIA is contradicted by its own actions and statements.”

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to comment yesterday.

Much of the White House, including the offices of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, is not subject to FOIA, which allows the media and the public to demand disclosure of federal public records. But the Office of Administration, which was formed in 1977 and handles various administrative and technology duties, responded to 65 FOIA requests last year and even has its own FOIA officer, records show.

In its 20-page motion, the Justice Department argues that past behavior is irrelevant, pointing to a 1996 appellate court ruling that found the White House-based National Security Council was not covered by FOIA even though it had complied with the law previously.

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Do Republicans have a counting problem? At the rate he’s going, Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, might wind up a dollar short and a month late come Election Day.

Cole (Okla.) this week e-mailed a fundraising letter, laden with exclamation points, to GOP supporters asking them to join the NRCC’s “Campaign for 16″ — named for, among other things, the number of seats needed to regain the majority and the number of months (he thought) until the election.

Cole explained that a donation of $16 a month would help target 16 Democrats who “have gone the extra mile for illegal immigrants” and who “voted against funding for a border fence!”

“We only need to win back 16 Congressional seats,” Cole declared in his e-mail, and “we have only 16 months in which to make it happen!”

No, Mr. Cole, you don’t have 16 months. Ya barely got 15! Sixteen months from the date you sent your letter, it’ll be Dec. 21, and the ballots will have been cast and counted.

Cole’s enemy combatants over at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were delighted to intercept the NRCC chairman’s arithmetic-challenged e-mail. “With the NRCC’s new election math, it’s no wonder veteran Republican members are retiring,” DCCC spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said. “We wish Tom Cole and the NRCC luck in their December 21st election efforts.”

NRCC spokesman Ken Spain gave Crider a run for her money in the snarky department: “We must have confused the number of months left until Election Day with the Democrats’ approval rating.”

(For the record, he said, it was 16 months to Election Day when the NRCC formulated its “Campaign for 16″ strategy.)

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Speaks for itself.

Democrats Wednesday strongly rejected President Bush’s comparison of the Vietnam War to the conflict in Iraq, saying that drawing parallels is inaccurate and irresponsible.

Bush, in a speech to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, used the example of the Vietnam War to show the possible consequences of withdrawing troops from Iraq. The president said that millions of people “paid the price” when the U.S. left Vietnam.

But Democratic leaders insisted that was a false comparison.

“Invoking the tragedy of Vietnam to defend the failed policy in Iraq is as irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars,” said Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate.

Democrats were also quick to point out that the White House had in the past rejected comparisons between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. Among others, they point to a statement from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said during a visit to Vietnam in 2006 that “historical parallels of that kind are, I think, not very helpful, and I don’t think they happen to be right” when asked to compare the conflicts.

“If anything, an examination of history and the situation on the ground shows us the importance of creating a new direction in Iraq,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “We must initiate a strategic redeployment from Iraq so that we may focus our resources on the greatest danger — the war on terror — rather than keep our military mired in Iraq’s sectarian war.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said that Bush, “instead of providing the country with a history lesson … should be reevaluating his flawed strategies that have led to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our nation’s history.”

The president, in his speech, said “one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields.’”

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) said that the “disastrous consequences described by President Bush are already in motion and are a direct result of a war that should never have been authorized.”

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The Pentagon will fall far short of its goal of sending 3,500 lifesaving armored vehicles to Iraq by the end of the year. Instead, officials expect to send about 1,500.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that while defense officials still believe contractors will build about 3,900 of the mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles by year’s end, it will take longer for the military to fully equip them and ship them to Iraq.

“Production is on pace, the issue is delivery,” he said, adding that the lag is a disappointment and the Defense Department is still committed to getting as many of the vehicles to the war as quickly as possible.

The vehicles _ known as MRAPs _ have a special V-shaped hull that provides greater protection against roadside bombs. According to the military, no troops have been killed while riding in one.

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Speaks for itself.

According to the Evans-Novak Political Report, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will be resigning from Congress in November, instead of retiring at the end of his term. If true, this could have significant ramifications in determining his successor.

A shortened special election campaign would likely benefit the candidates with the highest name recognition and the deepest pockets. Among Republicans, that status belongs to dairy owner Jim Oberweis, who has run unsuccessfully in three previous statewide bids for governor and for the Senate.

Conservative state Sen. Chris Lauzen is Oberweis’ main challenger, but he has feuded with Hastert in the past. Several Illinois Republicans speculate that Hastert’s decision to resign stems from wanting to help Oberweis win the nomination.

The flipside is that Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) could opt to hold the special general election on the same day as the presidential primary in Illinois, where home-state Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is on the ballot.

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