J's Cafe Nette

Archive for August 30th, 2007

If this report is true Fred Thompson will finally announce his entry into the presidential race on next Thursday, Sept. 6.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican Fred Thompson, whose entry into the presidential race has been long anticipated, will officially launch his candidacy Sept. 6 in a webcast on his campaign site, followed by a five-day tour of early primary states, The Associated Press has learned.

The preliminary campaign of the former Tennessee senator and “Law & Order” actor is to disclose details about how he will formally enter the race in a Thursday afternoon conference call with supporters.

House parties will be held nationwide on Sept. 6. A tour of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will quickly follow the Internet announcement on www.imwithfred.com, with later stops in Florida, and a homecoming event in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., on Sept. 15.

Now let’s just see if it’s true.

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For those who wish for a little humor injected into their Thursday, check out this article from todays Daily Mail.

They’ve become de rigueur for churches around the world: the signs carrying snappy advertising slogans to attract worshippers.

Many show a surprising sense of humour, and here we present a collection of the funniest.

Enjoy!

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Maybe we should call for a complete investigation of the UN and their practices for storing WMD.

At the very least the weapons inspectors should be asked to explain the presence of an extremely dangerous chemical stored in the building in New York.

According to Reuters:

United Nations officials found vials of dangerous chemicals, which had been removed from Iraq a decade ago, in a U.N. building in New York, but U.N. officials said on Thursday there was no danger.

The FBI was called in to help remove the substances.

The material was phosgene, a chemical warfare agent, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe told a news conference.

Why on earth were these vials stored in any office at the UN? Was this just sloppy work or will we find other WMD weapons inspectors managed to store improperly or not dispose of?

Just one more reason to distrust one of the most corrupt organizations allowed to house themselves on American soil.

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China says the problems with the Mattel toys is the fault of Mattel and U.S. protectionism.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Mattel has only itself to blame for a huge toy recall that has stoked global alarm about Chinese-made goods, state media said on Thursday, charging that a slew of foreign safety scares had exposed a protectionist agenda.

Mattel Inc, the world’s largest toymaker, recalled over 18 million Chinese-made toys this month because of risks from small magnets that can injure children if swallowed, just two weeks after it recalled 1.5 million toys due to fears over lead paint.

Coming in the wake of warnings over Chinese-made toothpaste, pet food, tires, eels and seafood, and lethal chemicals that had found their way into medicine, the toy recall has magnified calls in Washington for much tougher scrutiny of such imports.

The overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official paper, continued Beijing’s recent counter-offensive, putting the spotlight on multinationals that have used China as a production base.

“If it comes down to blame, then it all lies with the U.S. side,” the paper said of the Mattel magnet recall, noting that the problem was a design defect. “The Chinese manufacturer only produced according to those specifications.”

A China-based company that let lead in the toy paint would be punished, but even here Mattel must share blame, the paper said, noting that the U.S. firm had worked with it for over a decade.

The paper said foreign media reports about unsafe Chinese food and products were exaggerated and ignored the good record of nearly all the country’s exporters.

“People have reason to fear that some government officials and media in the United States hope to use doubts about the overall quality of Chinese goods to press for narrow trade protection.”

In a way they’re right about it being the fault of the companies because if they had made sure of quality control or used a company in our country the money they saved on labor wouldn’t have been lost in recalls, so I have no pity for Mattel.

I have said before and I’ll say it again, I will not buy anything that has a label that indicates any part of it was made in China.

I may have to pay four times as much for an American made item or may have to go without the product, but at least they won’t get a chance to poison me or my loved ones again.

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Unnamed sources have told the AP the GAO will give a mostly negative report about the progress made by the Iraqi government in the benchmarks set by Washington in January.

WASHINGTON — Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush’s Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure progress in the rush into Iraq of increased numbers of U.S. troops are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline for Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report is not yet public, also said the administration is preparing a case to downplay its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, “all or nothing” standards when compiling the document.

The GAO is to give a classified briefing about its findings to lawmakers on Thursday. It is not yet clear when its unclassified report will be released, but it is due Sept. 1 amid a series of assessments called for in January legislation that authorized Bush’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq. The Americans already have more than 160,000 in-country.

I guess it all depends on how one measures progress. How much legislation the people wanted when we elected our Congress has been passed since January?

We’re heading into September and no sign of an official budget has been seen as ready by our Congress.

What major accomplishments have our experienced Congress members made since January? Can you name them? Some would say the minimum wage increase but that was tacked onto a war funding bill and not done as a standalone.

The pork has been sliced pretty well for all those folks back home though. Served with gravy and all the other trimmings.

So far what I’ve seen from our Congress are members standing on steps or in offices or hallways to proclaim there’s a new sheriff in town or a new investigation being launched or they have a mandate to do certain things such as stop the war, and that’s all they’ve done.

If we compare the two maybe Iraq’s government comes out ahead or at least is equal to the dismal job our Congress has done.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going to give the contributions received from Norman Hsu to charity.

She didn’t have much choice after it was revealed in the Los Angeles Times he’s a fugitive.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign announced late Wednesday that it will give all money donated by a leading contributor to charity after it was revealed that the donor, Norman Hsu, was a fugitive from the law.

Hsu, who may have raised more than $1 million for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, said he had done nothing wrong and had asked no favors in return.

A California prosecutor says Hsu pleaded no contest to grand theft and was facing a sentence of up to three years in prison when he disappeared, The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

“In light of the new information regarding Mr. Hsu’s outstanding warrant in California, we will be giving his contributions to charity,” Phil Singer, from the Clinton Presidential Exploratory Committee, told FOX News.

This didn’t get a lot of attention from the newspapers or networks until it broke in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday and the LA Times did a story on Wednesday, but the bloggers kept the story alive and in this new medium it’s hard to keep anything quiet anymore.

Mrs. Clinton is right to donate the funds to charity and needs to be checking her donor lists for any other fraudulent activity just in case.

Update: It seems as though Mrs. Clinton, while she was a major benefactor of these funds, was not the only Democrat to receive campaign contributions from Mr. Hsu:

Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota, Reps. Michael Honda and Doris Matsui of California and Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania said they would divest their campaigns of Hsu’s donations.

Hsu is a fundraiser for Clinton and is described as a devoted fan of the presidential candidate and New York senator. He had planned to co- host a money event for Clinton on Sept. 30. In a statement Wednesday, Hsu said he believed he had resolved his legal issues, but said he would halt his work raising political money.

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To view the entire video visit Townhall.

There has been no word to my knowledge from either of these camps as to their thoughts concerning this endorsement.

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is tipping Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to team up and win the U.S. presidential election.

Clinton leads Obama in the race to be the Democratic nominee for the November 2008 election, and Castro said they would make a winning combination.

“The word today is that an apparently unbeatable ticket could be Hillary for president and Obama as her running mate,” he wrote in an editorial column on U.S. presidents published on Tuesday by Cuba’s Communist Party newspaper, Granma.

Full printed story here.

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Yesterday I wrote about John Edwards saying we should sacrifice SUV’s in order to save on fuel.

Here are the cars in his driveway at his home. Four are circled but if you look closely around the barn and in the front driveway you will notice other SUV’s there.

Looks like gas-guzzling SUV’s to me. [-x :-\

Hat Tip to Hedgehog Report for the photo.

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Richard Jewell, the security guard at the Atlanta Olympics, who was praised as a hero and then vilified as the press as the primary suspect in the bombing at the Olympics has died at the age of 44.

Richard Jewell, the former security guard once suspected of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing — then cleared — died at his home Wednesday morning in Woodbury.

For the past three years, Jewell, 44, worked as a deputy sheriff for the Meriwether County Sheriff’s department, said Sheriff Steve Whitlock. He said Jewell had been out on medical leave.

Meriwether County coroner Johnny Worley said Jewell’s wife, Dana, discovered him unconscious at about 10:30 a.m. Worley said an autopsy would be performed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to determine how Jewell died, but there was “no suspicion of foul play.

“He had been having some pretty serious medical problems,” Worley said.

He said Jewell had been diagnosed with diabetes in February and had a couple of toes amputated. “He had been going downhill ever since,” Worley said.

Whitlock described Jewell as “a good officer. A go-getter.”

“You know how they say people live their work. Richard ate and drank his job. He loved it,” Whitlock said.

Jewell was initially lauded as a hero after a bomb went off on July 27, 1996, during an Olympic celebration in Atlanta. He called attention to the suspicious knapsack that held a bomb and helped evacuate the area.

Days later, he became the FBI’s chief suspect, as The Atlanta Journal Constitution and other media outlets reported. The FBI cleared Jewell of any wrongdoing. He was never charged with a crime.

Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombing in 2005 and is serving life in prison for it and other attacks.

After he was cleared, Jewell sued the AJC and other media outlets for libel, arguing that their reports defamed him. Several news organizations settled, including NBC and CNN.

The Journal-Constitution did not settle. The newspaper has contended that at the time it published its reports Jewell was a suspect, so the articles were accurate. The newspaper also has asserted that it was not reckless or malicious in its reports regarding Jewell. Much of Jewell’s case was dismissed last year. One claim, based on reports about a 911 call, is pending trial.

How ironic that the one newspaper that didn’t settle with him for making him look like a bomber is the one announcing his death.

Rest in peace, Mr. Jewell. Our prayers go out to your family and loved ones.

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Yesterday, Guss surprised all of us by saying he was going to stay away from blogging on this blog until after the election due to the tit for tat that has been going on.

We are in the process of setting up a separate blog for Guss that will be his alone to manage.

The URL for the new blog will be http://gussescoffeehouse.com, but we have to wait up to 72 hours for the name to be usable in order for anything to be uploaded to Word Press and get his theme up and running.

We will be linking to that blog from here as it will be our sister (brother?) blog.

Guss is very excited about it and says he will probably be asking if there are any Independents or moderates from ether side who would like to blog with him.

If you know of any, you can contact me at j@jscafenette.com and I’ll pass the information along to him. He still needs to set up an alternate email address so everyone doesn’t have his personal email and know his real name.

I’ll be putting up a post as soon as Kim from Musing Minds and Schratwieser Consulting has the site ready to go live.

We are still going to be under the same principles and Guss will probably operate under the same rules we do although you will probably see a few cuss words over there.

We look forward to this new endeavor and hope you will all go visit him and make comments as soon as he is up and running.

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