Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
It is historic for America to advance a Middle Eastern Muslim agenda and in that I agree with Davutoglu.
Security Council Resolution 1718 was passed in 2006 to force North Korea to halt nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches, but sanctions have been suspended or loosely applied since North Korea joined disarmament talks.
Although Obamabow will push the issue of more sanctions against North Korea for this act of defiance, the last sanctions clearly did not work.
Theoretically the missile launched by North Korea, could reach Alaska or Hawaii and the import of the test is that the U.S. is not defending itself.
The little thug Kim Jong-Il has tested an effective missile and now we will see if the international leaders respond with more than just words or watered down resolutions guaranteed to be nothing more that attempts to make the public think something is being done.
Resolutions with no teeth do nothing as we have seen with previous resolutions against North Korea as well as the pathetic resolutions against Iran.
Capitulating is not an effective counter-measure.
Canada's Prime Minister Stephan Harper is in the background, looking amazed, and Sarkozy from France looks just delighted.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
The U.S. is sending 21,000 additional troops.
The Anti-Countering Trade Agreement is a national security issue according to Obama and he will not release a draft of the bill for perusal according to Executive Order.
Obama, center, back to camera, greets King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, center, before the official G20 leaders group photo with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at London's Buckingham Palace, Wednesday, April 1, 2009. Graphic source: AP Photo/John Stillwell/pool
During the heroic generation of the 1930s and 1940s, not that long ago, Americans would bow to no one. They were watched closely during the Olympic Games for any sign of obeisance.
"The American team was also watched closely for their etiquette as they marched passed the reviewing stand. Led by AOC head MacArthur, the Yankee squad continued the American custom of refusing to bow to or salute any foreign monarch." (Cf. Encyclopedia of the modern Olympic movement, John E. Findling, Kimberly D. Pelle).
At :53 Obama bows low before his King; then, at 2:25, the leader of the free world is relegated to the back 2nd row off to the right. The King, the Queen, and the Chinese are all seated in the middle, front row, in the power positions.
The full tape was inadvertently filmed by a Spanish station and has the advantage of being unscripted: it was not featured on American TV or commented about in any appreciable amount.
The "red herring" tape has been analyzed to death on CNN and on the talk shows. Did he bow or not to the Queen of England is the important question of the hour? It does not matter.
Obama bowed to his King who is the protector and defender of the holiest sites of Islam. Bear in mind that an early act of Obama was to support the 2002 Saudi Plan upon assuming office. Obama decides in deference to Saudi wishes.
In one generation Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus which was a great day for America and for Civil Rights. Americans were offended in 1994 when Bill Clinton came close to a bow when meeting the Emperor of Japan. Clinton did not quite bow, but he inclined his head and shoulders forward, and he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot. Today, in three months with Obama all of America has been relegated to second-rank status as he visibly humbled himself well below protocol and it should
Obama (L), Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (C) and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (R) pictured in the 2nd row behind the Saudi and Chinese representatives and the British host.
be noted that other leading heads of state did not bow to the King at all. The appropriate protocol is to simply extend and then shake hands between men. Obama did not perform as an equal man; he demonstrated that he was the subject of the King.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, will throw down the gauntlet today by staging a joint press conference in London demanding the G20 summit usher in a new era of global regulation of banks, executive bonuses, hedge funds and
offshore tax havens.
In what will be seen as a challenge to Obama, they will also insist nobody at the summit should discuss a fresh stimulus package, despite a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that "world trade is now in freefall".
Saberi grew up in Fargo and is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Iran and has reported for several news organizations.
The American reporters detained earlier this month will be tried for illegal entry and hostile acts.
I am not aware of any official American demand for their release.
Note the questions about hating Jews and Christians and the little girl answers correctly.
The man who created two phenomenally successful "We The People" YouTube videos urging Americans to stand up against Congress and reclaim their republic now – or perhaps lose it forever – reportedly has been summoned to the White House by Obama to discuss the subject matter of the short films.
Bob Basso, who posts videos under the name funbobbasso on YouTube, has created videos in which he portrays Thomas Paine, author of the "Common Sense" pamphlet that made the case for independence during the American Revolution.
A former award winning news director for NBC TV and visiting professor at UCLA, Basso has a PhD in communications.
Doyle's distinctive repertoire includes former Wall Street insider, TV star and jet pilot. He has starred in many made-for-TV movies, but is best known as the character Michael Garibaldi on the Emmy winning Sci-fi television series "Babylon 5," which ran for five years.
History does not repeat itself but there are echoes; Obama asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed.
In the meantime, Obama has ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and Friday he ordered 4,000 more trainers. History has numerous echoes.
The New York Times has reported that the "GhostNet" operation, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York. The intrusions do not seem to be severely impacted the U.S. but NATO computers have been breached.
When will the U.S. leave Afghanistan?
No word on an exit strategy at all.
Graphic source: Google's cached page
On the Pakistani source an Assistant Director of the Emigration & Overseas Employment for Pakistan's Test & Scrutiny Wing of the Federal Public Service Commission posted information to help students that want to apply to work for the Pakistani Federal goverment study and pass their tests.
A Safdar Mehmood contributed to the forum a list of world leaders.
Obama's mother lived and worked in Pakistan. She was a consultant to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) working on a project in Gujranwalla; and, Obama visited there for three weeks in 1981 after General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had overthrown the previous leader (Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) in a military coup d'état on July 5, 1977 and then advanced the Islamization and radicalization of Pakistan. (We're way past 'Spring Break' here.)Obama was able to enter and spend three weeks there during a period of martial law.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House on August 1, 1776.
Graphic source: JANE'S INTELLIGENCE REVIEW/DIGITALGLOBE
Commercially available satellite imagery appears to confirm that North Korea is preparing to launch a space-launch.
Here are the 18 times Obama used the words “invest” or “investment” to refer to government spending during his March 24 press conference. (The quotes are from the transcript of the press conference that CNN posted on Tuesday night.)
1. We invest in the renewable sources of energy that will lead to new jobs, new businesses and less dependence on foreign oil.
2. We invest in our schools and our teachers, so that our children have the skills they need to compete with any workers in the world.
3. We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses and our government.
4. It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.
5. We’ve got to make some tough budgetary choices. What we can't do, though, is sacrifice long-term growth, investments that are critical to the future, and that's why my budget focuses on health care, energy, education, the kinds of things that can build a foundation for long-term economic growth, as opposed to the fleeting prosperity that we've seen over the last several years.
6. And what we have to do is invest in those things that will allow the American's capacity for ingenuity and innovation, their ability to take risks, but make sure that those risks are grounded in good products and good services that they believe they can market to the rest of the country, that those models of economic growth are what we're promoting, and that's what I think our budget does.
7. We've got to invest in education, K through 12 and beyond, to upgrade the skills of the American worker so we can compete in--in the international economy.
8. Here's what I do know: If we don't tackle energy, if we don't improve our education system, if we don't drive down the costs of health care, if we're not making serious investments in science and technology and our infrastructure, then we won't grow 2.6 percent, we won't grow 2.2 percent. We won't grow.
9 & 10. And so what we've said is, let's make the investments that ensure that we meet our growth targets that put us on a pathway to growth as opposed to a situation in which we're not making those investments and we still have trillion-dollar deficits.
11. And so what we're trying to emphasize is, let's make sure that we're making the investments that we need to grow to meet those growth targets, at the same time we're still reducing the deficit by a couple of trillion dollars, we are cutting out wasteful spending in areas like Medicare, we're changing procurement practices when it comes to the Pentagon budget, we are looking at social service programs and education programs that don't work and eliminate them.
12. But it is going to be an impossible task for us to balance our budget if we're not taking on rising health care costs, and it's going to be an impossible task to balance our budget or even approximate it if we are not boosting our growth rates. And that's why our budget focuses on the investments we need to make that happen.
13. Look, I'm not going to lie to you. It is tough. As I said, that's why the critics tend to criticize, but they don't offer an alternative budget. Because even if we were not doing health care, we were not doing energy, we were not doing education, they'd still have a whole bunch of problems in those out-years, according to CBO projections. The only difference is that we will not have invested in what's necessary to make this economy grow.
14. And so what we've said is, look, let's invest in health information technologies.
15. Let's invest in preventive care.
16. Let's invest in mechanisms that look at who's doing a better job controlling costs while producing good quality outcomes in various states and let's reimburse on the basis of improved quality, as opposed to simply how many procedures you're doing. Let's do a whole host of things, some of which cost money on the front end, but offer the prospect of reducing costs on the back end.
17. Now, the alternative is to stand pat and to simply say, "We are just going to not invest in health care."
18. And that's why the recovery package said, as a first priority, how are we going to save or create 3.5 million jobs? How can we prevent layoffs for teachers and police officers? How can we make sure that we are investing in the infrastructure for the future that can put people back to work right away?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis of Obama’s budget proposal, concluding that it would result in an increase in the national debt that is unprecedented in the post-World War II era.
traded their Blackberries.
Freedom of the Press & Jefferson
A press that is free to investigate and criticize the government is absolutely essential in a nation that practices self-government and is therefore dependent on an educated and enlightened citizenry. On the other hand, newspapers too often take advantage of their freedom and publish lies and scurrilous gossip that could only deceive and mislead the people. Jefferson himself suffered greatly under the latter kind of press during his presidency. But he was a great believer in the ultimate triumph of truth in the free marketplace of ideas, and looked to that for his final vindication.
"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57
"The press [is] the only tocsin of a nation. [When it] is completely silenced... all means of a general effort [are] taken away." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802. (*) ME 10:341
"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491
"The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384
"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632
"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
"I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78
"The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Paganel, 1811. ME 13:37
"The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world... And while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:465
"The art of printing alone and the vast dissemination of books will maintain the mind where it is and raise the conquering ruffians to the level of the conquered instead of degrading these to that of their conquerors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:334
"[The] literati [of Europe are] half a dozen years before us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to us and communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay compensated by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of nonsensical publications which issues daily from a thousand presses and perishes almost in issuing?" --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Bellini, 1785. ME 5:153, Papers 8:569
"I cannot live without books." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1815. ME 14:301
"To preserve the freedom of the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement." Thomas Jefferson to William Green Munford, 1799.
"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33
"Weighing all probabilities of expense as well as of income, there is reasonable ground of confidence that we may now safely dispense with... the postage on newspapers... to facilitate the progress of information." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Annual Message, 1801. ME 3:331
The number to call is: 202-514-2203.
Elena Kagan, Office of Solicitor General
Officer Giaccino at the Supreme Court also updated Taitz. Both pleadings have been received and being analyzed. All the documents that were given to Chief Justice Roberts at Idaho University are now at the Supreme Court and are also being analyzed. We will be notified tomorrow after 1:00pm EST as to whether they will be on the docket at the Supreme Court.
"If you get a fire hose, put it out on the [expletive] stinger. You can get a [expletive] better shot at the [expletive]," said another man, watching as the trawler crosses behind the Impeccable's stern. A stinger is a structure that projects from the ship's stern to guide the cable connected to the array of sonar equipment that the Impeccable tows.
The Chinese issued a clear statement denouncing the U.S. patrol.
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