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5/16/08 May 17 Socastee library meeting The public is invited to a May 17 1:30 p.m. South Strand Republican Club Socastee Library meeting tomorrow. It will feature an Horry County Council district 4 debate between the primary candidates, Mike Ryan (incumbent) and Gary Loftus. Horry County Treasurer candidates Roddy Dickinson (incumbent) and Benji Allen and Coroner candidates Robert Edge (incumbent) and Dan Bellamy will face off.

 

 5/15/08 Iraqi forces mount al-Qaida hunt in Mosul "U.S. and Iraqi troops moved against al-Qaida on two separate fronts Thursday, with house-to-house searches in Mosul and an operation in the desert to stanch the flow of insurgents and weapons to that northern city.

  "With the new sweep, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is aiming to put down Sunni extremists after launching two other major offensives elsewhere in as many months targeting Shiite militants. Mosul, a key transport crossroads between Baghdad, Syria and other points, is considered the last major urban base of al-Qaida in Iraq after the group lost strongholds in western Anbar province."

 

5/15/08 House rejects bill funding Iraq, Afghanistan wars

 

5/15/08 U.S. Colonel Says Iran Is Assassinating Iraqi Officials "Iran has been directing assassination operations in Iraq using trained snipers, in some cases killing Iraqi officials opposed to Iran, according to an officer who has recently served as a senior adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

  "Army Col. H.R. McMaster, who has served multiple tours in Iraq, yesterday described Iran's activities as part of an unofficial talk on the evolution of the Iraq war he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute here. Although he emphasized that 'Iraq's communities have largely stopped shooting at each other' and that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq 'is on its way to defeat,' he said Iraq remains a 'weak state,' and that Iranian involvement was intended to keep it so.    

  "Iran's activities are 'obvious to anyone who bothers to look into it,' and should no longer be 'alleged,'"

 

5/15/08 President Bush Addresses Members of the Knesset    "We believe in the matchless value of every man, woman, and child. So we insist that the people of Israel have the right to a decent, normal, and peaceful life, just like the citizens of every other nation. (Applause.)

  "We believe that democracy is the only way to ensure human rights. So we consider it a source of shame that the United Nations routinely passes more human rights resolutions against the freest democracy in the Middle East than any other nation in the world. (Applause.)

  "We believe that religious liberty is fundamental to a civilized society. So we condemn anti-Semitism in all forms -- whether by those who openly question Israel's right to exist, or by others who quietly excuse them.

  "We believe that free people should strive and sacrifice for peace. So we applaud the courageous choices Israeli's leaders have made. We also believe that nations have a right to defend themselves and that no nation should ever be forced to negotiate with killers pledged to its destruction. (Applause.)

  "We believe that targeting innocent lives to achieve political objectives is always and everywhere wrong. So we stand together against terror and extremism, and we will never let down our guard or lose our resolve. (Applause.)

  "The fight against terror and extremism is the defining challenge of our time. It is more than a clash of arms. It is a clash of visions, a great ideological struggle. On the one side are those who defend the ideals of justice and dignity with the power of reason and truth. On the other side are those who pursue a narrow vision of cruelty and control by committing murder, inciting fear, and spreading lies. . . .

  "This struggle is waged with the technology of the 21st century, but at its core it is an ancient battle between good and evil. The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men. No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers. In truth, the men who carry out these savage acts serve no higher goal than their own desire for power. They accept no God before themselves. And they reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis. . . .

  "Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States of America stands with you." I thought you deserved this transcript portion, and with the link access to the full transcript, before reading the hysterical self-centered outcry of the Obama campaign and the media.

 

5/15/08 President Bush Blasts Appeasers; Messiah Campaign Goes Ballistic "RUSH: The big news today is that George Bush is over in Israel, and in a speech at the Knesset he made some comments about how talking to tyrants is not the way to defeat them.  Magic words are not going to convince your enemies to all of a sudden realize they are wrong.  He said this is appeasement.  The Obama campaign is erupting.  They all think it's about them.  Puff Daschle went, for him, what is ballistic on Fox today on the phone.  I think the Puffster was actually spitting and might have shorted out his phone.  Then they got the haughty John Kerry on the phone to talk about this.  Howard Dean has said that McCain should denounce Bush's remarks from Israel.  Nancy Pelosi says Bush's comments are beneath the dignity of the office.  Here's what Bush said this morning in Jerusalem, a portion of his remarks.  This is a Limbaugh echo, by the way.  This is the kind of language that he should have been using about Democrats for all these years."

 

  "Message to Chris Matthews: when ripping a guest for his lack of historical knowledge, try to avoid making a history mistake of your own in the same segment.

  "It happened on this afternoon's Hardball. After lambasting a guest for not knowing his Neville Chamberlain history, Matthews surmised that the attack on the USS Cole in October, 2000 happened under . . . President Bush."

 

5/15/08 US warns China over weapon links in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan "The United States has warned Beijing over reported use of Chinese weapons by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Asian giant's continued sale of arms to Iran, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said Thursday.

  "He said he conveyed the concerns personally to Chinese officials during his visit to Beijing this week."

 

 5/15/08 Computer Verified, Chavez Implicated "Terrorism: Interpol's authentication of FARC computer data Thursday leaves little doubt about Venezuela's bid to destabilize Colombia. So should the U.S. declare it a terror sponsor and stop buying its oil? Or do nothing?"

 

5/15/08 Pork Farm "The House (318-106) and Senate (81-15) have passed a new $300 billion farm bill by veto-proof margins this week. The bill is worse than the 2002 farm bill, which at the time was considered the most bloated and wasteful in history. President Bush should not only veto it, he should take his time in doing so. We have a feeling that the more time the public has to get to know this bill, the less they will like it.
  "For starters, the bill extends the direct-payment program at a time when farm incomes have reached record highs. Direct payments are government payments intended to supplement farmers’ incomes. Farmers receive these payments whether they grow anything or not. Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin, was absolutely right when he said of this provision, 'It’s not a safety net — it’s an entitlement program.'”

 

5/15/08 McCain: I will win Iraq, kill bin Laden and start President's Question Time "Washington - John McCain declared yesterday that within four years of being elected president he would have won the Iraq war, killed or captured Osama bin Laden, halted the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and introduced British-style Prime Minister’s Questions in Congress. The Republican nominee-elect, setting out his stall for a general election campaign against the Democrats, used an ambitious speech to define their differences and look back on his first term from the vantage point of 2013."

5/14/08 Maliki's Victory "When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered a military offensive against rogue Shiite militias in March, it was widely panned as a failure that was one more reason the U.S. needed to abandon Iraqis to their own 'civil war.' Well, several weeks later the battle for Basra and Baghdad against Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army looks to be both a military and political success."

 

5/14/08 Remember Those Massive Illegal Immigrant Rallies? "When my father came from Germany as a 19-year old the very first thing he did was to enroll in a class taught at a local public school to learn English. My aunt told me that he became proficient in English in only six weeks. He wanted to be an American and to do so he had to learn the language. Of course, he retained his German heritage.  However, assimilation was important to him, as it was to most immigrants. 

  "For years America has drifted away from assimilation, which has become an unspeakable word among the cultural elite.  Instead, we are told that we must recognize and celebrate the diversity of various groups without demanding any compromise from them.  This has hurt immigrants more than anyone else because many have become isolated in cultural ghettos without a proper command of English, the American political and legal systems or American history and culture.  That said, it also has fractured American society."

 

5/14/08 Dems and High Oil Prices

  "While oil and gasoline prices continue to rise, the rhetoric and actions of Democrats in Congress seem destined to push those costs even higher, contrary to the Dems' promise that they used to get elected to majorities in 2006 that they had 'a common-sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.'"

 

 5/14/08 Drill in ANWR! "In 2005, Obama voted just like Clinton to outright ban drilling in ANWR. And later that year he voted, again just as Clinton voted, to forbid even an oil leasing program for ANWR. Like-minded senators include Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, John Kerry and, well, you get the idea. All Democrats, and all irresponsible.

  "Sanity remains absent from the House leadership as well. Finally passing in the Senate, the whiny Nancy Pelosi claimed that the other chamber voted 'to sacrifice the majestic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for an insignificant amount of oil.'"

 
 5/14/08 Warming to McCain "It's good to see a politician rewarded for a courageous and unpopular stand, as John McCain has been over Iraq. History will show he was as central to the battle of Washington as Gen. David Petraeus has been to the battle of Baghdad. Our enemies strategized that America lacks staying power. Mr. McCain's role deprived them of their plan for victory.  "But honor, the value that underlined Mr. McCain's stand, is no use on an issue like global warming. Here, he could use a little more Mitt Romney, his vanquished nemesis whose name has now resurfaced in the veep 'sweepstakes.'"

 

5/14/08 Gore Financially Invested in Climate Cause
  "Weeks before announcing a $300-million, three-year advertising campaign to raise awareness about global warming, Al Gore was conducting a slide show for a group of investors in Monterey, Calif., touting companies such as Bloom Energy, Amryis , Mascoma and other firms that are not household names -- yet.
  "These bio-fuel and green technology firms could be poised to take off, Gore told his audience."
 

5/13/08 Bush disappointed with intel before Iraq war  "President Bush said Tuesday he was disappointed in 'flawed intelligence' before the Iraq war and was concerned that if a Democrat wins the presidency in November and withdrew troops prematurely it could 'eventually lead to another attack on the United States.'" . . .

  "'Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion,' he added." (Quotes on other topics follow.)

 

5/13/08 N. Korea to cooperate on verification

  "North Korea has agreed to cooperate fully on verifying its nuclear declaration, a US official said today as he displayed some of the 18,822 documents Pyongyang has given Washington about its plutonium program. Obtaining the documents last week was a victory for the Bush administration, which has struggled to persuade the secretive communist nation to produce a 'complete and correct' declaration of its nuclear programs that was due on December 31. The declaration is part of a broader multilateral deal."

 

5/13/08 Myanmar police block aid workers, food piles up   

  "YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Police barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in hard-hit areas Tuesday, while emergency food shipments backed up at the main airport for Myanmar's biggest city.

  "Some storm survivors were reportedly being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance."

 

5/13/08 Palestinians in Gaza Are Phonebanking for Barack Obama "Phil Klein calls our attention to an al-Jazeera news report that sounds like a parody, but is genuine: A report on Palestinians in Gaza who are phonebanking in support of Barack Obama's campaign.

  "I transcribed the most jaw-dropping parts:

REPORTER: It may be hard to believe, but working in this tiny Internet cafe in Gaza City may just be one of Barack Obama's biggest fans.
Before every U.S. primary, 23-year-old Ibrahim Abu Jayyab gathers 17 of his friends to try and rally support for Obama's campaign in the U.S."

5/13/08 In Defense of ‘Big Oil’ "Where is it written that the cost for a product or service should be frozen in place and in time, never to rise again, or to rise at a pace commensurate with our incomes? People who think this way know little to nothing about supply and demand and less than nothing about the profit motive. . . . According to government estimates, there is enough oil in areas accessible to America — 112 billion barrels — to power more than 60 million cars for 60 years. . . .

  "No, we can't "drill our way out" of our addiction to oil, but we can make the transition to other energy sources easier while lessening our dependence on foreign oil and propping up dictators who use our money to subsidize terrorists. A slow transition will also give us time to consider more fuel-efficient cars and greater use of public transportation, even bicycles for short trips. Bikes would help more of us lose weight and get in shape. A friend bikes to work every day, saving gas, car payments, insurance and repair costs.

  "The specter of a president of the United States going hat-in-hand to Saudi Arabia to plead for more (and more expensive) oil from the dictatorship that underwrites an extreme form of Islam that is out to kill us is obscene. President Bush ought to be rallying Americans, not embracing people who don't allow women to drive cars."

 

5/13/08 Who Will Pay For Promises Of Politicians?

  By WALTER E. WILLIAMS  [Economist] 

  "Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place. Politicians and a large percentage of the public lose sight of the unavoidable fact that for every created benefit, there's also a created cost, or, as Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman put it, 'There's no free lunch.'"

  "While the person who receives the benefit might not pay or even be aware of the cost, as sure as night follows day, there is a cost borne by someone. Let's look at a couple of congressionally created problems. . . . The Community Reinvestment Act encouraged banks and thrifts to make so-called "no doc" and "liar" loans to customers who had no realistic ability to pay them back. Congress, doing the bidding of environmental extremists, created our energy supply problem.

  "Oil and gas exploration in a tiny portion of the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, according to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey's estimate, increase our proven domestic oil reserves by approximately 50%. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas. These energy sources of oil have also been placed off-limits by Congress. Because of onerous regulations, it has been 30-plus years since a new refinery has been built. Similar regulations also explain why the U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of what it might be. . . .

  "Congress' proposed 'solutions' to the energy and food mess it has created include a windfall profits tax on oil companies, a gasoline tax holiday for the summer, increases in the food stamp program and foreign food aid. These measures will not solve the problem, but will create new problems."

 

5/13/08 Britain Opens Up Secret UFO Files

LONDON  —  The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. "What they saw has never been explained. And they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official reports.

  "No one, they knew, would believe their claim that an unidentified flying object landed at the airfield they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed.

  "But that's what they reported happening at four in the afternoon on April 19, 1984, at an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England."

 

5/13/08 The pot holes on the high road "Barack Obama, fortified with 92 percent of the black vote, talks about transcending race to impose 'unity' and 'change.' (He took the precaution yesterday in West Virginia of showing up with a new flag pin, bigger than the one he wouldn't wear last week.) Cindy McCain, who heard it from her pillow, says her husband had rather lose than emphasize the considerable Obama 'negatives.' All this is happy talk for April and May. Mr. Obama must contend with a color problem that won't go away: Voters aren't concerned that he's too black to be president, but that he's too green. Such 'experience' as he has is experience only in 'activism' in shady precincts far out in left field. . . .

  "John McCain, who just the other day completed a tour to convince conservatives that he really and truly is one of them, is regarded by many swing voters as a 'centrist,' far closer to the mainstream than Mr. Obama. Not only that, he's perceived as tough enough and then some to defend the nation's security, and Mr. Obama isn't. The likes of Iran are not likely to intimidate a man who showed his grit hanging by his arms on the wall of a prison cell in Hanoi. The prospect of dealing with the likes of Iran already intimidates Mr. Obama, who says he'll offer supplications to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with or without his demonstration of good faith.

  "More trouble. Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, says his polls find that Mr. Obama's first problem is that he's perceived as a liberal. Indeed, he has the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. 'He is perceived by many voters as not well-grounded on foreign policy and not tough enough and he has a potential problem, distinct from race, of being an elitist, an intellectual.'" . . .

  "[W]rites Edward N. Luttwak in the New York Times, 'Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as [he] has written, his father said he renounced his religion.' His conversion in Muslim law is a crime worse than murder, and in radical Muslim quarters the punishment is beheading (though certain Muslim moderates say stoning and hanging would suffice). The Secret Service, charged with the senator's safety, has taken due note."

5/12/08 Air Combat by Remote Control

  "The sniper never knew what hit him. The Marines patrolling the street below were taking fire, but did not have a clear shot at the third-story window that the sniper was shooting from. They were pinned down and called for reinforcements.

  "Help came from a Predator drone circling the skies 20 miles away. As the unmanned plane closed in, the infrared camera underneath its nose picked up the muzzle flashes from the window. The sniper was still firing when the Predator's 100-pound Hellfire missile came through the window and eliminated the threat."

 

5/12/08 Warring History Rethinking the Iraq critics

  "The claim is that “neocons,” including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have concluded already. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam’s hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.
  "Unfortunately — and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush — the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren’t found."

5/12/08 Israeli woman killed by Gaza rocket fire

  "A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip has killed an Israeli woman, hours after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set conditions for a truce with Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled territory.

  "The projectile slammed into a house in a small farming community near the Gaza border, killing an elderly woman, an Israeli army spokeswoman said, adding that the victim was around 70 years old."

 

5/15/08 In Burma, a U.N. Promise Not Kept  "When a parent abuses or neglects a child, government steps in to offer protection. But who steps in when government abuses or neglects its people?

  "Nearly three years ago, the United Nations announced an answer to that question: It would. At a summit celebrating the organization's 60th birthday, 171 nations agreed that they would intervene, forcefully if necessary, if a state failed to protect its own people. . . . It's hard to imagine a government more deserving of losing the national equivalent of its parental rights; yet it seems more likely that hundreds of thousands of people will die needlessly than that the United Nations will act."