Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is telling President Barack Obama that she's anxious for details on how his administration's plans to tighten border security will apply to Arizona.
Brewer tells Obama in a letter released Thursday that she'd like specifics on National Guard deployments and other steps to be taken in Arizona before a planned Monday visit to Phoenix by Obama administration officials to discuss his plans.
The meeting is an outgrowth of Brewer's June 3 visit to the White House where she and Obama discussed border security and immigration.
The Republican governor also renews her invitation to have the Democratic president visit the U.S.-Mexico border to get a firsthand look at conditions. And she says lunch would be on her.
At NYT, "Lose a General, Win a War." Not enough heads roll at the top level of the military, apparently:
Back in World War II, the Army had no qualms about letting officers go; at least 16 of the 155 generals who commanded divisions in combat during the war were relieved while in combat. George Marshall, the nation’s top general, felt that a willingness to fire subordinates was a requirement of leadership. He once described Gen. Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, as a fine man, but one who “didn’t have the nerve to get rid of men not worth a damn.”
Marshall had plenty of nerve: in 1940 and ’41, as war loomed, he forced into retirement several hundred officers he deemed too old and slow to be effective. When the commandant at Leavenworth, Brig. Gen. Charles Bundel, told him that updating the complete set of Army training manuals would take 18 months, Marshall offered him three months, and then four months, to do the job. It can’t be done, Bundel twice responded.
“You be very careful about that,” Marshall told him in a telephone conversation.
“No, it can’t be done,” Bundel repeated.
“I’m sorry, then you are relieved,” Marshall said.
About a year ago, I wrote a post called "What's Up With David Weigel?" That was when Weigel was writing at the Washington Independent, a far-left online newspaper.
It was a speculative post, but as I conclude about Weigel, "Folks need to be careful about their allegiances."
So now it turns out that Weigel's gotten himself into a bit of a jam. He's a contributor to the left wing press collective, "JournoList" (founded by hard-lefty Ezra Klein), and some his own intemperate e-mails published there have been made public. The problem's not so much what he wrote, but where. As Will Collierpoints out:
Weigel's personality aside, the fact that he's a contributing member of Klein's liberal propaganda-coordination clique should have been disclosed from the very beginning of Weigel's "reporting" on conservatives. It says nothing good about either Weigel or his bosses at the WaPo that none of the above thought Weigel's membership in a glorified version of Media Matters would be something worth notifying readers about.
I've given Weigel the benefit of the doubt in the past, largely because Robert Stacy McCain has vouched for him. But no more. If you're mostly hanging out with lefties (which is what a wrote about a year ago) you're mostly going to echo left-wing talking points. On occasion Weigel's bucked the stereotype, but I think this episode pretty much destroys what little credibility among those on the right who might otherwise have trusted him.
ADDED: I almost spoke too soon. If Wonkette's going to bat for Weigel ... well, the cat's really out of the bag.
The lack of a $15 fishing license cost the Citation $912,825, not to mention first place and a spot in the record books in the 52nd annual Big Rock Blue Marlin Fishing Tournament.
Ouch? You bet so.
“It hurts,” said angler Andy Thomossan, who caught a record 883-pound blue marlin Monday that he and everyone else bet would win the $1.66 million tournament. “No record. No money. No fish. No nothing. Yep, it’s a nice ending to the story, isn’t it?”
Not for Thomossan and Co.
The Citation’s victory was initially put on hold Saturday night during the awards banquet and a day later erased by Big Rock officials because a crew member didn’t have a fishing license, said Thomossan, 63, who lives in Richmond, Va.
The former Beatle predicted in an interview that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might expedite a move to cleaner, renewable energy sources in the world.
Sir Paul could have stopped while he was ahead, but McCartney went on to compare people who don't believe in global warming to "those who don't believe there was a Holocaust."
"Sadly we need disasters like this to show people," McCartney said in an exclusive interview with The Sun. "Some people don't believe in climate warning -- like those who don't believe there was a Holocaust."
McCartney continued, "But the facts indicate that there's something going on and we've got to be aware of it if we want our kids to inherit a decent world, not a complete nightmare of a planet -- clean, renewable energy is for starters."
Check Henry Olsen, at National Affairs, "Populism, American Style." Olsen contrasts the millenarian populism of modern totalitarian regimes to the historically moderate populism of the American case:
American populism shares with its classical cousin the use of heated rhetoric against an unjust "other," and the idea that popular control of the state is essential to the restoration of justice. But it breaks from the classical model in three significant respects.
First, successful populist movements tend to characterize the American people not as helpless victims, but as honest folk dispossessed of their right to achieve prosperity and happiness through self-improvement and hard work. As such, American populists seek not a charismatic leader who will bring them order and justice, but rather a re-opening of the avenues to self-advancement and self-reliance.
Second, the "other" in American populism tends not to be vilified as an implacable enemy without rights. Instead, he is an adversary: one who might be corrupt or acting unjustly at the moment, but still a fellow citizen who retains his basic American goodness, is capable of redemption, and is secure in his rights. Despite some reckless accusations to the contrary, today's populist movement seems no different on this front.
Third and most important, effective American populists generally do not seek to take the enemy's property to redistribute it to the people....
This passage might raise an eyebrow for folks today looking for lessons from the past:
In the '60s, many Americans grew uneasy with the course the country seemed to be taking, both politically and socially. The America of farms and small towns was giving way to a nation of suburbs; the growth of large corporations, the rise of television, and the sharp increase in internal mobility were eroding the cohesiveness of local communities. Accompanying these changes was the growth of the national government, which had continued apace even under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower. Despite increasing affluence and relative peace abroad, an ever-larger number of Americans felt their country was becoming unrecognizable — and they wanted to take it back.
So it was that intellectual conservatism and popular anxiety joined forces in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign to create a crude populism of the right. But despite what would appear to have been a favorable political climate, this amalgam proved dismally unpopular. While the rhetoric of Goldwater's campaign was generally fairly measured, that of his backers was too often not. Much like the Populist farmers in the late 1890s, Goldwater's supporters felt themselves to be oppressed. Many railed against elites, sometimes crossing the line from battling an adversary to assaulting an enemy; they argued, for instance, that there was a conscious conspiracy between business, government, and intellectuals to end American freedom and to yield to communist ambitions at home and abroad ....
Ronald Reagan, then an increasingly political Hollywood actor, entered the fray near the end of the campaign with a nationally televised speech on Goldwater's behalf. Casting the election as a choice between "up or down — up to man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism," Reagan accused incumbent president Lyndon Johnson of spreading socialism. Johnson's administration, Reagan said, was seeking to "trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state" and engaging in "appeasement" with our enemies. Noting that he was a former Democrat, Reagan closed with a conscious invocation of Franklin Roosevelt: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness." The movie star's message roused the faithful, but fell flat among the voting masses.
Goldwater's crushing defeat seemed to all but the most die-hard conservatives to be the death knell of this nascent movement. Viewed against the backdrop of American political history, it is not hard to see why Goldwater lost: The tone and ideas of some of his extreme backers were viewed as odd and frightening by most voters ....
But check this passage on the prospect for upcoming elections:
Those who believe that the aggressive, angry pitch of the Tea Partiers' rhetoric will automatically alienate independent voters should think again. As we have seen, successful populist movements define adversaries in stark and often abrasive terms. Skilled political leaders in a democracy — figures like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan — know what pundits and academics often overlook: that they must move the heart before they can persuade the mind. In our modern mass democracy especially, this often requires a simple narrative: an easily identifiable "good" hero, a "bad" villain, and an unambiguous moral arc — one that shows how society can be redeemed from its current, fallen state, and how average Americans can flourish under the reformed regime. Such an appeal obviously requires sharp rhetoric and clear divisions.
Critics of the Tea Partiers and other conservative populists are right, however, in their concerns that aggressive rhetoric can go too far. William Jennings Bryan lost because he painted a portrait of his time that voters didn't recognize, and because he made a majority afraid. Some libertarian populists, with their rejection of every facet of the modern welfare state, are likely to do the same — because even this center-right nation does not want to see the welfare state dismantled. And just as some of Barry Goldwater's supporters tainted his campaign with their accusations of communist conspiracies reaching even to the presidency, the conspiracy theorists who insist that President Obama was not born in America risk damaging conservative populism today.
Sound statements.
A skilled conservative/libertarian might do well to ponder them as we head into 2012's "invisible primary," which launches almost as soon as the votes from this November midterms are counted. But who might be that skilled, that is, "Reaganesque"?
Lot's of people have a blog, does that make them bloggers?
I don't think so. Bloggers have, as their primary focus, blogging. They specialize in the sort of short-form journalism and commentary that is blogging. Most of the people on the list started blogging but to call them bloggers now would be to strain the definition of the word.
Maybe the blogging world has so transformed that the people listed should be called New Journalists. I don't know. Just because someone hasn't attended J-School does not mean that they're not journalists. And just because they work at the Weekly Standard, or National Review Online, or some other paid conservative online weekly doesn't, by definition, make them non-journalists.
I'm just posting the conclusion, so be sure to RTWT:
McChrystal shouldn’t have given that interview. But whether or not he is sacked will make little difference to the real issue here. For what the article has confirmed is that the American prosecution of the Afghanistan war is flawed, chaotic, and incompetent and will hit the buffers unless someone gets a grip. And that means fighting this war as if it really is a war and not a ‘nation-building’ exercise; and saying unequivocally that America is there for as long as it takes because, however awful and bloody this conflict is, the alternative – a jihadi-boosting defeat for the west and the Talebanisation of Pakistan – is infinitely worse.
RELATED: For once, a decent editorial at the Los Angeles Times, from yesterday:
Unfortunately, McChrystal's remarks are distracting attention from the graver question of whether this country's increasingly costly involvement in Afghanistan is stabilizing that country and neutralizing the threat posed by terrorists to the United States. The best reason to bring McChrystal home for consultations Wednesday is not to upbraid him about his loose tongue; it's to press him on whether the strategy he sold the president is working.
Holding off again on the SoCal punk roundups for a bit. Haven't seen ace commenter Kreiz for a while, so maybe some vintage Rod Stewart will bring back out a bit. Enjoy Stewart and The Faces, "You Wear It Well" and "Maggie May":
Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the country and less confident in President Barack Obama's leadership than at any point since Mr. Obama entered the White House, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The survey also shows grave and growing concerns about the Gulf oil spill, with overwhelming majorities of adults favoring stronger regulation of the oil industry and believing that the spill will affect the nation's economy and environment.
Sixty-two percent of adults in the survey feel the country is on the wrong track, the highest level since before the 2008 election. Just one-third think the economy will get better over the next year, a 7-point drop from a month ago and the low point of Mr. Obama's tenure.
Amid anxiety over the nation's course, support for Mr. Obama and other incumbents is eroding. For the first time, more people disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance than approve. And 57% of voters would prefer to elect a new person to Congress than re-elect their local representatives, the highest share in 18 years.
The results show "a really ugly mood and an unhappy electorate," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "The voters, I think, are just looking for change, and that means bad news for incumbents and in particular for the Democrats."
Leaders of the international Rock'n'Roll community voiced their outrage today over the news that one of their own, who they always thought was a dependable degenerate extraordinaire, turned out to be a double agent, possibly working for the Reactionary Conservative Cabal Internationale.
Sir Elton John, who had been recently put on probation for singing at Rush Limbaugh's wedding, violated his parole and defied the progressive community by flying to Israel, where he played Thursday night to a crowd of 50,000 screaming occupiers of Palestine at a Tel Aviv stadium, thus breaking the international blockade aimed at sensory deprivation and cultural disorientation of the Zionist entity.
While the more disciplined rockers like Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, and The Pixies obediently canceled their concerts for Jews in compliance with the above directive, the soon-to-be ex-star Elton John told the Zionist audience those cancellations "ain't gonna stop me from playing here, baby." According to one informant, "non-person John then put on sunglasses of the color of the Israeli flag, and aggravated his treasonous rhetoric by adding, 'We do not cherry-pick our consciences,' before hitting the opening chords of his 1972 hit 'Crocodile Rock.'"
It turns out that Ms. Davies has "introduced two bills in the House of Commons to change the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to prohibit discrimination against a person based on their social condition."
This bill would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of social condition. In doing so it would protect from discrimination people who are experiencing social or economic disadvantage, such as adequate housing, homelessness, source of income, occupation, level of education, poverty, or any similar circumstance. As the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation and many other organizations have pointed out, a person's standing in society is often determined by his or her occupation, income, education level or family background.
Legislation such as this is a grave danger to a free society, grave danger to morals, ethics and commonsense ... they want to eradicate personal reponsibility and place the burden on the fabric of society.
Maywood's $10.1-million general fund budget has a deficit of at least $450,000, officials said. Beyond that, the city has been unable to obtain insurance because of a history of lawsuits, many involving its Police Department, which also patrols Cudahy. Operating without insurance would make even routine government services highly risky.
"We're limited on our choices and limited on what we can do," Councilman Felipe Aguirre said. "We don't want to file for bankruptcy. We don't want to disappear as a city."
Aguirre said filing for bankruptcy was not an option for Maywood because its problems were related specifically to insurance coverage and not cash flow.
But during a contentious City Council meeting that stretched late into Monday night, opponents of the plan accused council members of managing the city incompetently by failing to maintain the city's insurance coverage.
"You single-handedly destroyed the city," Lizeth Sandoval, the city treasurer, told the City Council ....
The action is yet another blow for the predominantly Latino city of 45,000 residents densely packed into about 1.2 square miles in the heavily industrial southeast part of Los Angeles County. Officials estimate about half the city's residents are illegal immigrants.
Maywood has had a contentious history for years. In the last decade, shouting matches have erupted during council meetings, election campaigns have been marked by political hit pieces, and even an accusation was made that a city clerk tried to have a councilman killed.
The Police Department has been the focus of troubles as well. Four years ago, the department faced a political outcry when it began running checkpoints that resulted in hundreds of cars being taken away from unlicensed illegal immigrants. Critics charged the checkpoints were an attempt to make money off Maywood's large illegal immigrant population.
The checkpoint sparked a political movement that brought a new council that was more sympathetic to illegal immigrants. But Maywood was back in the headlines when it declared itself a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, making the town a target of conservative talk radio and TV news shows.
And at KTLA, "City of Maywood is on the verge of complete financial collapse":
A majority of Americans disapprove of the way President Barack Obama is handling the oil spill off the Gulf Coast, but a majority of Americans also said BP hasn’t done enough to stop the spill.
Some 69% said BP has done less — or much less — than what should be expected of the oil company. However, Americans don’t think much of the president, Congress, or the federal government’s response, either.
President Barack Obama is briefed on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico aboard Air Force One en route to New Orleans, La., Sunday, May 2, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama listens to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, right, during a briefing on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, aboard Air Force One en route to New Orleans, La., Sunday, May 2, 2010. Also participating in the meeting are, from left, John Brennan, assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism, Carol Browner, assistant to the President for energy and climate change, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen, left, who is serving as the National Incident Commander, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, right, brief President Barack Obama about the situation along the Gulf Coast following the BP oil spill, at the Coast Guard Venice Center, in Venice, La., Sunday, May 2, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, and Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph look at the effect the BP oil spill has had on Fourchon Beach in Port Fourchon, La., May 28, 2010. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)
One of the Presidential helicopters flies over southern Louisiana as President Barack Obama returns to New Orleans after visiting Grand Isle, May 28, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy
President Obama removed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander of American forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday, and tapped as his replacement the general’s boss, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the 2007 surge in Iraq.
Mr. Obama, standing with General Petraeus and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the White House Rose Garden to underline the continuity and solidity of his Afghan policy, said that he had regretfully accepted General McChrystal’s resignation.
He said he had done so not out of personal insult, but because a magazine article featuring contemptuous quotes from the general and his staff about senior administration officials had not met standards of behavior for a commanding general, and threatened to undermine civilian control of the military.
“War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or president,” Mr. Obama said. “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for national security.”
Parents are outraged after young teenagers were instructed on graphic sexual acts during a Planned Parenthood sex education class at the local high school in Shenandoah, Iowa.
“It was horribly inappropriate,” Colleen Dostal told Fox News Radio. “To do that in a mixed-gender classroom, — I truly believe it was inappropriate.”
Dostal’s 14-year-old son was one of a handful of eighth graders in the class. The students, she said, were given instruction on how to perform female exams and the instructor used a 3-D, anatomically correct male sex organ to explain how to use a condom.
But Dostal said she was most upset over the instructor simulating sexual acts using stuffed animals designed to resemble STD’s.
“I do not understand why any adult with a classroom of children would show them sexual positions,” she told Fox News Radio. “I think that’s horribly inappropriate.”
As for the photographs, “I believe some of those photos were pornographic,” she said.
“Had we known this was going on, I would have sat in the classroom or I would have pulled him out,” Dostal said.
Yeah. Well.
I'll bet she bans MTV from the house as well. Hard to keep those Gaga and Katy Perry viddies away from the kiddies these days, and that to say nothing of those dawg bump-and grind viddies that show up on the BET-style cable outlets.
Yeah, that sounds about right. A little roundup, at WSJ:
President Barack Obama and U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal will meet in person today at the White House. The president said Tuesday that he had not yet made up his mind if he would ask for the general’s resignation for disparaging comments he made about the Obama administration’s national security team to Rolling Stone magazine.
ON Tuesday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, was called back to Washington to explain disparaging comments he and his aides made to a Rolling Stone reporter about senior administration officials. The general’s ill-advised remarks, which have prompted him to prepare a letter of resignation, will only feed the general sense of despair and impatience that Americans seem to feel about our progress in Afghanistan.
Great comparative analysis of Afghanistan and Iraq, and then:
By letting his aides mouth off to a reporter, General McChrystal has displayed a potentially fatal lack of media savvy. But he deserves credit for energizing a lethargic command and putting in place the right strategy to turn around a failing war effort. Whether or not he carries it out, his plan can work. We just need to give it a little time.
A couple of weeks back, Rob at Say Anything suggested the potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitch Daniels' call for a "truce" on social issues was a "breath of fresh air."
I can understand the sentiment, but I'm certain that the other side won't observe a truce. The radical left's degradation and decay has made long inroads in society. There's never a breather in the battle for right and goodness. And in thinking about this I'm reminded of the most powerful political ad from campaign '08, and perhaps of all time. "Life, faith, and family ... now more than any other time in history ... a new generation must stand for truth ...
Eliot Cohen, who is not kind to Obama (and his strategic blunders in Afghanistan), puts the burden on McChrystal's breach of civilian control, "Why McChrystal Has to Go":
It is intolerable for officers to publicly criticize or mock senior political figures, including the vice president or the ambassador (who is, after all, the president's personal representative to a foreign government). It is intolerable for them to publicly ridicule allies. And quite apart from his own indiscretions, it is the job of a commanding general to set a tone that makes such behavior unacceptable on the part of his subordinates.
RELATED: Some interesting links at Instapundit, here and here.
At CNN: And be sure to read the Rolling Stone piece, for example:
Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as "shortsighted," saying it would lead to a state of "Chaos-istan." The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile
Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. "I never know what's going to pop out until I'm up there, that's the problem," he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.
"Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal says with a laugh. "Who's that?"
"Biden?" suggests a top adviser. "Did you say: Bite Me?"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently blamed Bush appointees who “burrowed in” at the Minerals Management Service for the regulatory failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But as it turns out, not one of the officials responsible for overseeing the exploded rig was a Bush political appointee.
The Washington Examiner has obtained biographic information on the MMS officials responsible for overseeing BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig at the time it exploded, from the Gulf Region Director to the last inspector to set foot on the rig. Most of these federal employees started with the agency decades ago. Not one was a presidential appointment of George W. Bush, although one longtime MMS employee in question was promoted to his current position during the Bush Administration.
I saw these guys play so many times it's ridiculous. "Amoeba's" essential, one of the most fun-packed punk jams EVAH (stay away from the mosh pit if you know what I'm saying, LOL!!) --- and local to the O.C to boot. Give it up for The Adolescents. Still playing too. They're headlining the Vans Skateboards Warped Tour 2010. Gotta be a blast:
We are the scientists in the lab Looking through a microscope Those little glass slides they never lie How can this small mind cope?
I've never seen anything like it before This amoeba's got a mind of it's own But don't turn your back you stupid science world This is reaching for the telephone
A one celled creature a one celled thing It hardly knows it's alive ...
In a world that's overly focused on body image, Jennifer Love Hewitt is urging young women not to obsess about weight – because it's simply not worth it.
At Father's Day dinner, my wife mentioned that she'd never seen the "stars" on Hollywood Boulevard. I told her that I was just up there in February, when I covered the communist protest against "Obama's wars."
If you're not careful, you'll miss some of the cooler stars on the sidewalk, which are often located where you least expect them. Below, just reading their names was breathtaking. At bottom, the parking attendant took my picture (the ANSWER commie stickers on my shirt are part of my "cover" for my inside reporting). I parked at Hollywood and Vine, across from the Capitol Records building. I think I'll take my family up there one of these weekends. It's much more family friendly than it was in the 1980s, when I used be in Hollywood all the time for punk rock concerts:
They said it couldn't be done. Now they're proving themselves wrong.
For years, auto executives—especially those from Detroit—insisted it wasn't possible to build high-mileage cars at reasonable prices that Americans would want to drive. Thrifty drivers were stuck with weezy econoboxes like the Ford Escort or Chevy Cavalier, designed not to delight drivers but to raise the automakers' fleetwide fuel economy, assuage regulators, and compensate for gas-guzzling SUVs. Early hybrids from Toyota and Honda upped the ante, with mpg in the 40s and 50s, but their high mileage required tradeoffs that produced a mediocre driving experience, at best.
But over the last few years, automakers have kicked their engineering departments into high gear, and they're starting to turn out some truly fun cars that get eye-popping mileage. It's not happening by accident. New gas-mileage requirements passed by both the Bush and Obama administrations are forcing automakers to either downsize their cars or come up with technology that will dramatically boost mileage. The carmakers are doing both. Most of them now build hybrids, which J.D. Power estimates will comprise a sizeable 8.6 percent of the market by 2015. And many automakers will soon be rolling out electric vehicles that can be charged more cheaply from a receptacle at home. But other types of technology are pushing mileage higher for traditional gas-powered engines, with less complexity than a hybrid or electric, lower costs, and practically no driving tradeoffs. Here are some of the vehicles proving that cars can be cool and thrifty at the same time ...
Overwhelmingly, Americans think the nation needs a fundamental overhaul of its energy policies, and most expect alternative forms to replace oil as a major source within 25 years. Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources.
Those are among the findings of the latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll, which examines the public’s reaction to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, highlights some of the complex political challenges the Obama administration faces. For instance, despite intense news coverage and widespread public concern about the economic and ecological damage from the gulf disaster, most Americans remain far more concerned about jobs and the nation’s overall economy.
And in that regard, President Obama does not fare well: 54 percent of the public say he does not have a clear plan for creating jobs, while only 34 percent say he does, an ominous sign heading into this fall’s midterm elections.
Well, ominous for the Democrats, but RTWT. Americans remain optimistic that the Gulf Coast ecology will quickly recover from the spill, and check the in-depth findings on those in states most directly affected ...
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke got a up close look at the Afghan war today, including gunfire at his aircraft and suicide bombers.
He visited Marja, a key town, to assess whether the new U.S. counter insurgency strategy is working or falling short.
Taliban gunmen tried to shoot down Holbrooke's V22 Osprey as it approached for a landing, triggering a gunbattle with the insurgents that lasted for about 10 minutes. And a trio of suicide bombers detonated themselves during an attack on the U.S. base as Holbrooke was leaving.
Holbrooke, the White House's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, visited Kandahar and Marja today to see for himself what progress looks like here. He was traveling with Karl Eikenberry, the former Army general who is now U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman is gaga for Gaga -- saying yesterday that the half-dressed singer did nothing wrong when she infiltrated the players' clubhouse after a game over the weekend, causing a stir among team brass.
Instead, Cashman put the blame on his own employees for allowing the outrageous "Poker Face" singer to make her uncomfortable, boozy visit to the clubhouse Friday night after the Yanks' Subway Series loss to the Mets.
"She didn't do anything wrong," Cashman said.
The GM said celebrities are allowed to mingle with players in a designated area adjacent to the locker room -- but only after Yankee victories. They are not usually allowed in the clubhouse, he said.
"She's not banned" from Yankee Stadium and the VIP area, Cashman said.
The player-celeb issue came to a head after Lady Gaga infuriated Yankee brass with her antics in the clubhouse Friday night.
A liquored-up, half-naked Gaga could barely string together coherent sentences as she fawned over several players near the locker room -- causing team co-chairman Hal Steinbrenner to become unglued and ban the singer permanently from the team's clubhouse, according to sources close to the boss.
Gaga's pals and rent-a-cops walked right past Yankee security on their way into the clubhouse.
Gaga was wearing an unbuttoned pinstripe jersey over her bra and bikini bottom -- and nothing else -- as she struck up conversations with some of the Bronx Bombers. She gushed about what a Yankee fan she is, all while groping her breasts during the cringe-inducing visit.
A rep for Gaga did not return a call for comment.
Cashman said the team would step up enforcement of its existing clubhouse rules, which limit VIP access to players to a mingling area adjacent to the locker room.
"There is a time and a place for that, and it's certainly not after a loss and not at the expense of the media doing their job," Cashman said.
At theviddy, Solis argues that "every working in the U.S. has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not."
Okay, no worry about illegal workers? Not going after employers who hire illegals? Solis came off way more tough last month on the subject of child labor, maybe the standards are different. Adult illegals: No crackdown. Child illegals: Crackdown:
"With the goal of ending illegal child labor as a top priority, our investigators are using every tool available — from imposing civil money penalties to using the ‘hot goods’ provision — to end these violations. In the coming agricultural seasons, the department plans to increase both outreach to workers and investigations of U.S. farms. After all, those farmers who follow the law deserve a level playing field.
Hmm. Maybe we should just end illegal labor, period.
The most interesting voice in all the fallout surrounding the Gaza flotilla incident is that sanctimonious and meddling voice known as "world opinion." At every turn "world opinion," like a school marm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation.
Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel (Elvis Costello, the Pixies, the Gorillaz, the Klaxons). A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word "Israel." White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.
This is something new in the world, this almost complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations. And if Helen Thomas's remarks were pathetic and ugly, didn't they also point to the end game of this isolation effort: the nullification of Israel's legitimacy as a nation? There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.
‘Jordan is Palestine,’ said Wilders, who heads the third-largest party in Holland. ‘Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland...There has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946, and it is the kingdom of Jordan.’ Wilders also called on the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.
Wilders has spoken the big inconvenient truth. As a result, it is inevitably being dismissed as merely what ‘the right’ regularly says. So of course it's untrue, on the grounds that, by definition, everything ‘the right’ says is untrue. Yadda yadda.
But it is not untrue. It is correct. Anyone familiar with the history knows it is correct. Immediately after World War One ...
Vans Skateboards' Warped Tour 2010kicks off this Friday at the Home Depot Center in Carson. Below is Cassadee Pope of Hey Monday. Hey, get rockin', 'cause this stuff looks hot! (The list of bands is here, and some of punk's greatest from the '70s and '80s --- my generation, LOL!! --- are headlining. Expect video updates.)
