J's Cafe Nette

Archive for October 1st, 2007

You’ve now heard the tape and heard it in context of a man who lied about his military service and made up stories of horrors committed by our troops.

He claimed to be an Army Ranger who served in the Iraq war but actually washed out of boot camp after 44 days.

Now Harry Reid has written a letter to Clear Channel asking that Rush Limbaugh be reprimanded for what he said.

The problem is Rush has the tapes to back up what was said and the context in which it was said.

Tweet This Post

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace had his say before he left the spotlight today.

In a parting shot to Bush administration opponents and antiwar protesters, newly retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace on Monday scolded Americans who use the war debate to try to debase the efforts of military leaders and civilian decision-makers.

Delivering his last speech as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pace said he is proud to live in a country in which military leaders are required to answer difficult questions from the press and Congress, but when that conversation turns belligerent and destructive, the foundation of democracy is lost.

“Our democracy is strengthened by divergent views and dialogue about those views when that dialogue is conducted in a civil manner, in a gentlemanly way, in a way that allows people to argue on the merits of what they believe and to understand that what they believe is part of the answer and if they have the willingness to cooperate to find the right answer for our country,” he said during a Pentagon ceremony held at nearby Fort Myers.

“And what worries me is that in some instances right now we have individuals who are more interested in making somebody else look bad than they are in finding the right solution. They are more interested in letting their personal venom come forward instead of talking about how do we get from where we are to where we need to be,” the general continued….

…”I just want everyone to understand that this dialogue is not about ‘Can we vote our way out of a war.’ We have an enemy who has declared war on us. We are in a war. They want to stop us from living the way we want to live our lives.

“So the dialogue is not about ‘Are we in a war’ but how and where and when to best fight that war to preserve our freedom and to preserve our way of life and to do so with the least damage to our own society and the least damage to those who we’re fighting against so we can put the pieces back together on the end of this. We will prevail. There’s no doubt about that.”

Well said, sir! Because of partisanship we have lost a great military leader.

Tweet This Post

Why would any adult, regardless of color, put a noose around a small child’s neck to show why nooses are important to their history and because some stupid rednecks put up nooses in Jena?

GRAMBLING, La. — Officials at Grambling State University were meeting Monday after the school newspaper ran photographs of adults at a campus-run elementary school putting a noose around at least one child’s neck.

Kindergarten and first-grade students at Alma J. Brown Elementary School were being taught why nooses are a symbol of racism, an article from the historically black university’s student newspaper said.

The article said the children also were being taught about the “Jena Six” — black high-school students who are accused of beating a white schoolmate. Court proceedings brought about 20,000 to 25,000 people to Jena, about 70 miles from Grambling, for a civil rights march in September.

A press release posted on the Gramblinite’s Web site said three photographs from the event were removed after a staff conference call. Ten others were re-posted to the site Monday after the university’s president ordered the removal of all the photos and the story over the weekend, according to the Gramblinite press release.

I can understand teaching children about racism, but this doesn’t help us to fulfill Martin Luther King’s dream of everyone working and playing together regardless of the color of their skin.

This is an outrage! What do the parents think of their child being put into a noose?

How much fear did they put into this little girl, all to prove a senseless point that could have been discussed and shown in drawings for illustration purposes?
Shame on the lot of them! The whites who did what they did with nooses and the African-Americans who did what they did to this little girl and how many others?

Tweet This Post

Kim from Schratwieser Consulting and Musing Minds has made the new design for our blog.

I think it gives the flavor of an internet cafe now and wish to thank her for her creativity and her quick turnaround on the job.

I love it, Kim! Thanks!

Tweet This Post

This video segues well into at least the title of this piece.

Clinton’s cackle may give opponents the last laugh

They call it the Clinton cackle. It comes out of the blue, lasts a few seconds and leaves those who witnessed it wondering if they have missed a joke. Hillary Clinton’s deployment of the full belly laugh is the latest weapon used by the leading Democratic presidential candidate when she is being pummelled by reporters or rivals.

Friends say the cackle is her way of deflecting aggressive questioning. It may also be a sign of nervousness over Iowa, where she is now running second to Barak Obama, according to one weekend poll….

…Mrs Clinton’s friends say she has a terrific sense of humour. But her sarcastic tendencies do not go down well with Mid Western voters. So she has turned to laughter. When attacked about her many flip-flops – she voted for war in Iraq but now opposes it and she opposed universal healthcare but now wants it – she now bursts out laughing….

…The questions about her judgement are coming thick and heavy. This week there will be more as her adversary Mr Obama tours Iowa to mark the fifth anniversary of a speech he gave opposing the war in Iraq. Even Bill Clinton seems nervous about Mr Obama and said publicly last week that he was too inexperienced to run for the White House.

You can read this New York Times piece about her laugh.

It was January 2005, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had just finished a solemn speech about abortion rights — urging all sides to find “common ground” on the issue and referring to abortion as “a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.”

Stepping offstage, she took questions from reporters, and found herself being grilled about whether she was moderating her own pro-choice position. And suddenly it happened: Mrs. Clinton let loose a hearty belly laugh that lasted a few seconds. Reporters glanced at one another as if they had missed the joke.

But nothing particularly funny had occurred; it was, instead, a deployment of the Clinton Cackle.

I quit giggling when I was an early teen. It just seemed so silly to me.

Whether you call it a cackle, a screech or a combination it seems to come at inopportune times and grates on my nerves.

If she wins the presidency does she intend to laugh her way through her term?

Apparently she thinks going to war with Iran would be funny too:

Do we want a giggly middle-aged woman as our president or do we want someone who takes the world a bit seriously?

Tweet This Post

It’s difficult to fathom that someone could work for fifty years in the political arena, be a vital player in major elections and not be a household word nationally. Well, Tom Ellis, appears to have managed to do just that.

Few people have had a chance to grasp the levers of history.
Tom Ellis saw his chance, and he took it.

Which is one reason why Ellis, the 87-year old pipe-puffing Raleigh barrister, will be honored Wednesday by the conservative movement he helped build.

Ellis never held elective office, nor has he ever been a public figure. But for the past 50 years, arguably, no Tar Heel has been more politically influential than he — as the chief strategist for Sen. Jesse Helms, helping elect John East and Lauch Faircloth to the Senate, elevating his friends and proteges to the federal bench and shaping the modern conservative movement.

Ellis’ signal moment occurred in 1976, when he almost single-handedly rescued the career of Ronald Reagan.

At the time, Reagan’s political career seemed near an end. He had lost a string of GOP primaries to President Ford, and it seemed likely that the North Carolina primary would provide another nail in his coffin.

Ellis thought Reagan’s campaign was being mismanaged by his national staff, who were portraying Reagan as a pragmatic California governor. So Ellis, who headed Helms’ political organization, commandeered the state Reagan campaign and began running ads highlighting Reagan’s conservatism, most notably his opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty. Ellis let Reagan be Reagan.

Reagan won North Carolina — the first time a sitting president had been upset in a primary. The victory reinvigorated Reagan. Although he did not win the 1976 Republican nomination, it set the stage for Reagan to capture the White House four years later.

Lou Cannon, a Reagan biographer, wrote that North Carolina’s primary was “the turning point” of Reagan’s political career.

Imagine half a century in the political arena, surrounded by what were and are major players in our history. Oh the stories this man could probably tell.

HT: Lucianne

Tweet This Post

The latest dispatch from Michael Totten has been posted.

RAMADI, IRAQ – Now that major combat operations are finished almost everywhere in Iraq’s Anbar Province, the United States Army and Marine Corps are more like a United Nations peacekeeping force with rules of engagement that allow them to kill if they have to. “We’re like the Peace Corps with muscles,” is how one soldier put it when I left with his unit at 4:00 in the morning to deliver food stuffs and toys to needy families in the countryside on the edge of the desert.

A realistic read laden with excellent photography.

Tweet This Post

I saw this editorial in the Washington Times on Friday and saved it so I could share it with you.

When Ahmadinejad and President Bush were at the UN last week Mrs. Bush had to take a seat that was somewhere behind Ahmadinejad’s seat.

As she passed his seat he looked up at her in anticipation of her saying something maybe, but instead she put her hand on his desk, looked straight ahead and kept on going, never making eye contact.

The editorial says Ahmadinejad looked down afterward in what appeared to be an embarrassed look.

Good for Mrs. Bush!

Welcome to the Anchoress readers.

Tweet This Post

With all the verbal sparring occurring in the presidential campaign, when I saw the following headline, I thought the former President might be able to distinguish the policies of Mrs. Clinton from those of Senator Obama.

Bill Clinton wades in to defend Hillary’s reputation

Okay, I thought, maybe I will learn something of the Senator’s planned healthcare program which has been promoted by her campaign or her stance on the War on Terror, or maybe something about her plans for Social Security. Wrong again. Instead, according to the quotes available it was no more than a she’s better than him interview.

Moving past that, something else caught my eye. Did you know that terrorism did not exist in 1992? I recall terrorist attacks far earlier than that but it seems former President Clinton has no recollection of there being any such thing.

Asked about his own experience when he became President aged 46 – the same age as Mr Obama is now – Mr Clinton said that in contrast to 1992, “we didn’t have the terror threat. We didn’t have the troops in Iraq.

Alright then, no troops in Iraq, I’ll give to that but no terror threats? I wonder if he remembers the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Ramzi Yousef entered this country in 1992..I consider that a terror threat.

And, whether purveyors of terrorism commit their acts on US soil or abroad should have no distinction to a sitting President, so let’s consider this list:

1992
January 17: Eight Protestant British army contractors are killed by an IRA bomb on their way to work at an Army base near Omagh.
February 5: Three civilians were killed and 29 injuried by East Turkestan Islamic Movement two bus bombs in Urumqi (see: 5 February 1992 Urumqi Bombings)
February 28, 1992: A bomb explodes at London Bridge station injuring 29 people.
March 17: Israeli Embassy bombing by “Islamic Jihad” in Buenos Aires, Argentina; 29 killed, 242 injured.
April 5, 1992: The Iranian embassy in Ottawa is stormed by members of MEK, an Iraq-supported religious right group.
April 10, 1992: A large bomb explodes in St Mary Axe in the City of London killing three people and injuring 91. Many buildings are heavily damaged and the Baltic Exchange is completely destroyed.
September 1: Nine die, including a six-month old baby, and seven are injured when a bomb explodes in a suburb of Medellín.[76]
October 12, 1992: A device explodes in the gents’ toilet of the Sussex Arms public house in Covent Garden killing one person and injuring four others.
November 11: Bombs explode in nine Colombian cities, leaving one person dead and 35 injured. The Medellín Cartel is held responsible for the attacks.[77]
December 3: Ten police officers and four civilians die when a bomb planted by drug traffickers explode in Medellín.[78]
December 29: Two police officers and 50 civilians wounded when a car bomb explodes at a party in a suburban area of Medellín.[79

The citizens of Israel suffered at the hands of terrorists in 1992, and I would bet there were many other incidents which either were not reported or I simply have neglected to locate through limited research.

Terrorism existed long before President Clinton took the Oath of Office and will exist long past the time President Bush retires to Texas. I suppose it just depends on what your definition of terror is….in the US terror, abroad??????.

Tweet This Post

New Mexico Governor and presidential hopeful Bill Richardson has had a good third quarter in fund-raising, raising about $5.2 million, bringing his yearly total to about $18 million.

The third quarter is usually a slow quarter in fund-raising because everyone is already tapped out.

This puts Richardson in a strong fourth place for the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.

This comes after news that John Edwards will accept matching funds for his lowly funded campaign.

Edwards and Obama are expected to do well in Iowa, which should put more money into their coffers, but Iowa is still a few months away.

This pretty much puts Richardson even with Edwards for third place as far as money goes.

Tweet This Post

Two high school boys in Waterford, CA, were fighting. The punishment is normally suspension. Instead of suspending the students the principal made them get down on their hands and knees, look at each other through a chair and promise they would not engage in that behavior again.

One mother is suing.

Take a look at this video discussion and tell us what you think.

Story.

Tweet This Post