J's Cafe Nette

Archive for September 26th, 2007

Much to my pleasant surprise the UAW and GM have reached a tentative agreement on their labor talks and are encouraging members to go back to work immediately.

It seems the union lost out on the health care benefits for the retirees, though:

A person briefed on the contract told The Associated Press earlier that the agreement would shift the burden of retiree health care from GM to the union and give workers bonuses and lump-sum payments. The person requested anonymity because the contract talks are private.

That puts a heavy burden on the union, but they can always raise the dues.

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I admit to eagerly awaiting this day so I could read Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times for free.

Now my curiosity is satisfied that their knives are still out for President Bush from everything pertaining to Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia to Wal-Mart cutting green house gasses all caused by President Bush in a negative way.

Don’t ask me how they got from point A to point Z because it seemed just a mixture of opinion with GWB thrown in as the bad guy.

One of these days they’ll be longing for the good old days of GWB.

No more need for me to read them again. Ever.

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When I returned from my trip a couple of weeks ago, my husband told me late in the week we had received a card inviting us to have breakfast with John McCain and attend a rally.

I’m not a supporter of any candidate right now and 8 o’clock in the morning seemed early when we had our grandchildren here that weekend.

The other day I received an email inviting me to a Mitt Romney Townhall meeting in a community not ten minutes from me. It was to have been held this Saturday afternoon at 5 PM, but I got an email yesterday telling me he was on a fund-raising trip out west and it’s delayed until sometime in October. The new schedule calls for it to be held on a Thursday night at 6 o’clock, which is more reasonable for me.

When I RSVP’d to the invitation I made it clear I was supporting no candidate at this time and wanted the opportunity to ask questions and see what the candidates have to say.

If I get to go I intend to take my tape recorder if they will allow me to use it and I will transcribe it and let you know what was said, which will be the same old stump speech, but I have a question up my sleeve I intend to press to get an answer.

Sue and I will be watching, reading and paying attention to the Republican debates and will most likely not come out with our favored candidate before mid-December or January.

We think a lot alike and are leaning toward one candidate now, but we also want to be better informed before declaring our allegiance.

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If you have read or listened to Hillary Clinton’s speeches and answers to questions about the war in Iraq lately, you have probably noticed she is backing away from saying she will make a quick withdrawal from Iraq if she is elected president.

The reason may be some advice and information she and other Democratic candidates are getting from President Bush himself.

President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event of a Democratic victory in November 2008.

“It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.

“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”

A man who is concerned for his country above party is one who would advise potential presidents to give themselves wiggle room on the Iraqi question so they don’t make fools of themselves in front of their electorate the way Pelosi and Reid have done.

I remember President Bush saying in one of his State of the Union addresses that he didn’t want to leave a mess for the next person to have to clean up.

I believe that’s why he says he’s doing the heavy lifting now, and is willing to take any blame heaped on him by too many who are willing to see him as an evil man.

It is my belief President George W. Bush will go down in history as one of our greats, along with Roosevelt and Truman, but that will happen long after he leaves office.

It is also contingent on the fact that the Islamist radicals do not establish their world caliphate by having a new president or congress somewhere down the line caving in to their demands and therefore having our history re-written to suit their means.

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NPR turned down an exclusive interview with the President of the United States because it was requested Juan Williams present the questions.

The White House reached out to National Public Radio over the weekend, offering analyst Juan Williams a presidential interview to mark yesterday’s 50th anniversary of school desegregation in Little Rock.

But NPR turned down the interview, and Williams’s talk with Bush wound up in a very different media venue: Fox News.

Williams said yesterday he was “stunned” by NPR’s decision. “It makes no sense to me. President Bush has never given an interview in which he focused on race. . . . I was stunned by the decision to turn their backs on him and to turn their backs on me.”

Ellen Weiss, NPR’s vice president for news, said she “felt strongly” that “the White House shouldn’t be selecting the person.” She said NPR told Bush’s press secretary, Dana Perino, that “we’re grateful for the opportunity to talk to the president but we wanted to determine who did the interview.” When the White House said the offer could not be transferred to one of NPR’s program hosts, Weiss took a pass.

Perino said she called Williams with the offer Saturday because of the Little Rock anniversary and the racial controversy over charges of excessive prosecution in Jena, La.

I bet Mr. Williams was stunned. I’m shocked. We all know that NPR slants left but why would you deny your listeners an opportunity to hear the President live? Were they afraid some of them might appreciate what they heard? Shame on NPR.

If you are interested in the complete transcript of this interview the only location in which I could locate it this morning was at Captains Quarters.

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John Bolton was one of the most intelligent, honest Ambassadors to the United Nations the United States has ever had.

He proves it once again in his commentary last night on Hannity and Colmes in reference to Ahmadinejad.

HT:Little Green Footballs

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I must admit that until reading the following article, I had not had much interest in learning about Facebook. From this article at Politico and the bit of research I did, it appears to be the place to be on the web, primarily for college students.

This particular age group has been chastised in the past for the fact that they do not vote, not only in local elections but at the national level, (I am certain there are those who have voted in every election since they became of age) but it seems at least at Facebook, there is a candidate who may just stir up enough emotion in them to send more young people to the polls.

As the new school year gets fully under way and presidential hopefuls work the young voter circuit via social networking websites, one online group — Facebook’s “Stop Hillary Clinton (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)” — is seriously outpacing its pro-candidate rivals in attracting new members.

With more than 418,000 members, Stop Hillary Clinton has now surpassed “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)” as the largest group for or against a presidential candidate on Facebook. (The pro-Obama group has 355,000 members.)

The anti-Clinton group is growing at 10 percent per month, said Micah Sifry, co-director of Tech President, a blog group that tracks and studies how political candidates use the Web.

And, while there are dozens of pro-Clinton groups on Facebook, they tend to be much smaller. The two largest — “Hillary Clinton for President — One Million Strong” and “Hillary ’08” — have a combined membership of just fewer than 10,000. When asked if there were any pro-Clinton groups on Facebook comparable in size to Stop Hillary Clinton, Facebook spokesman Matt Hicks said, “I haven’t seen any.”

Political analysts aren’t surprised. Clinton has had a polarizing effect on voters since her days as first lady. “Hillary Clinton is one of the most divisive political figures of our time,” veteran GOP consultant Rick Wilson said. “People feel empowered by the Facebook effect. This group is growing organically. It’s not some sort of Republican plan by Karl Rove in the background.”

Are these young people joining just because it is “the thing to do” or are they seriously motivated to see Mrs. Clinton defeated? If the following statements by just a few are any indication, it seems they have at least given the issue some thought before answering questions about the Senator when being interviewed.

Politico contacted several members through the Facebook website to find out why they joined the anti-Clinton group, and their political views are not easily categorized.

While leaning Republican, Texas A&M sophomore Cody Karasek describes himself as a moderate who “wouldn’t mind seeing another Democratic president.” Yet, he said he joined Stop Hillary Clinton because “almost any other person in the running would do a better job running the country.”

Pennsylvania State University alum Megan Preuss chooses candidates based on a variety of issues. She’s a strong supporter of gay marriage, for example. But despite Clinton’s embrace of gay rights — although not gay marriage specifically — Preuss won’t vote for Clinton because it “would be putting [Bill Clinton] back in the White House.”

Sierra Garcia, a freshman at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas, signed up because she believes Clinton “is too much of a feminist Democrat.”

If I were a candiate running for office in 2008 I think I just might be keeping a close eye on this site. The web is providing outlets which may just measure the temperature across this nation better than any poll or major publication.

“There are those that say that our group isn’t an effective political tool,” DeMaura said. “But I’ve yet to see a group grow so organically and quickly. If there’s a platform that is as effective in getting people involved who wouldn’t normally be, I’d like to see it.”

It would be wonderful if through the use of the internet we could encourage additional young people to participate in the electoral process. After all, they are the future of our country.

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I had this in my stack of stuff to post, but the Anchoress beat me to it and did it much better than I would have.

According to IBD it was George Soros who funded all those anti-American rallies last year that drove the right wing nuts crazy, and they fell into his trap.

Here’s part of what the Anchoress has to say:

Didn’t the mainstream media report that 2006’s vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?

Turns out that wasn’t what happened, either. Soros’ OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.

So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI’s glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI’s 2006 annual report….

…It can’t feel good to realize you have been played by George Soros and pals, and while you were being played, you weakened your president, lost a good deal of power in Congress (not that your party was using it, but still…) and drew inflexible battle lines flanked by impossible demands and pipe dreams, while – in the end – nothing actually changed. Played by George Soros, your party became divided, some of you literally became one-issue haters of everything and everyone who did not join in your daily chant; “illegal is illegal.” And being played by George Soros, you’ve managed to make a fast-growing segment of the voting populace suspicious of conservatives on the eve of an election wherein literally every vote and every voter is going to count. And fraud may well be rampant.

I have been loath to write about the ‘08 election because the campaigns began too soon. But it is not too early to say that I cannot recall a more urgent or important election in my lifetime. The ‘08 election is going to be the one that determines whether the America you love will be recognizable in twenty years. I know I’m not alone in thinking so.

Now, go read the entire post and see how we’ve been played like a fine violin by George Soros and the various scummy organizations he funds.

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