Since my blog has moved, I can no longer use Bloggers "Follower" gadget. If you are a part of NetWorked blogs, which includes a Facebook page, you can follow through NetworkedBlogs, and I can follow you back. Please come to my new blog - MaggiesNotebook.com, see the NetworkedBlogs widget in the right sidebar and click follow. I will follow back.
"I learned that in extreme situations when human lives and dignity are at state, neutrality is a sin. It helps the killers, not the victims." Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor who lost his family in the Holocaust - Nobel Prize Author
Socialism - Liberalism Quotation
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." – Norman Thomas
Last week the news was all about Tiffany and David Hartley and their ill-fated venture on Lake Falcon, into Mexican waters on jet skis. David Hartley, 30, is believed to have died in Mexican waters of a gun shot to the head. Yesterday, Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, a Mexican Homicide Investigator left his home to search for David. He did not return. Today his head was found in a suitcase outside a military compound in Miguel Aleman, Mexico.
Tiffany and David Hartley
According to Mrs. Hartley, the couple were chased by Mexicans in boats, who were shooting at them. David Hartley was trying to shield his wife and was shot in the head. Mrs. Hartley tried to get him on her jet ski but could not and eventually made it back to the Texas shore, where a man who actually saw the boats chasing her, called 911.
The U.S. and the Hartley family was upset that Mexico maybe did not believe Mrs. Hartley, and it seemed a search was not happening at all. Some on both sides of the border hinted that Tiffany's story might not be true.
After a police video showed the Hartley's pulling their jet skis on the way to Falcon Lake, and with the man who called 911 speaking out, Mexico began to search. They also named two brothers, members of the "Zeta drug cartel, as suspects.
On Monday, Tamaulipas state officials continued to deny U.S. and Mexican news reports over the weekend that a Tamaulipas official — one of Flores' subordinates — had identified two brothers as the men responsible for Hartley’s death.
The Associated Press reported that Tamaulipas State Police unit chief Juan Carlos Ballesteros said investigators believe brothers Juan Pedro and Jose Manuel Saldivar Farias may have killed Hartley as he snapped photos of a partiall submerged church from his personal watercraft at Old Guerrero.
Today came the news that Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, the head of border city of Ciudad Miguel Aleman, with the title of State Police Commandant, lost his life and his head. A spokesman in the area's Attorney General's office said the murder of Villegas "had nothing to do with the Hartley probe."
Mexican authorities want Tiffany Hartley to file a complaint in the Mexican city of Miguel Aleman. I have to believe entering a border town in Mexico is the last thing she wants to do. If the State Police Commandant is not safe, why would Mrs. Hartley believe the could protect her?
Breaking news of an oil rig or platform explosion and fire somewhere in the area of Grand Isle, Louisiana, or 80 miles south of Vermillion. According to a report on Fox News, the rig is owned by Mariner Energy. According to a Coast Guard spokeswoman, 13 people were on the rig at the time of the explosion and 13 people were plucked from the water by rescuers. At this time there is no oil seen in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The platform is identified as Vermillion Oil Rig 360Stay tuned for ongoing updates. See new video below, first posted at about noon EDT.
In this update stamp-dated 1:23 p.m. CDT the Coast Guard reports seeing a mile-long oil "sheen." One injury is reported in the explosion that happened at about 9 a.m. EDT. At 1 p.m. the platform was still burning. Mariner Energy is disputing the Coast Guard report of seeing oil.
Coast Guard officials described the burning structure as a platform, not a rig, which means it was not actively engaged in drilling. However, it was actively producing oil and gas from seven different wells, Jindal said. The fire was sparked at one of those wells, and all seven of them have since been shut in, Jindal said....
Many of the crews that responded to the blast are those in the area for the cleanup of the BP oil spill, which followed the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.
Those rescued will be taken to Terrebonne Genearl Medical Center in Houma.
I've heard two estimates of the depth of the underwater operations: the first was 350' below the surface of the water, and the second is 2500' underwater.
Yesterday, the Financial Times reported employees from Apache and Mariner, along with thousands of oil industry workers, rallied in Houston to protest the Obama administration's offshore drilling moratorium.
Water, water every where, and not a drop of oil...in the Gulf of Mexico. This is bad news for Obama, as people in the area are angry and motivated to get the administration's moratorium on drilling rescinded.
The BP oil spill is capped - after 86 days of releasing some 200 million gallons of the inky black crude into the Gulf of Mexico, there appears to be no oil. Clean up crews are on the scene and are finding mostly nada. In those worrisome Louisiana marshes, no oil to be found.
The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.
Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.
"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.
The light crude began to deteriorate the moment it escaped at high pressure, andthen it was zapped with dispersants to speed the process along. The oil that did make it to the ocean's surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.
Either the oil has degraded both on the surface and below, or it is lurking. What do you think is going on beneath the warm waters of the Gulf?
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindah speaks forcefully without a teleprompter or notes in sight. He demonstrates how out of touch with Americans, Obama and his administration are. The president is trying to organize Louisiana workers, like the community organizer he is, and they want none of it. See the video below.
Bobby Jindahl
Jindahl quotes Obama saying, "Governor, if people lose their jobs because of the [drilling] moratorium, they can file a BP claim. I said, with all due respect, what if BP doesn't pay. He said don't worry Governor, they can file an unemployment claim. I said with all due respect Mr. President, we don't want a BP check or an unemployment check, we want to go back to work."
Obama also told Jindahl if the drilling rigs leave, meaning if they are taken to other locations because of a lack of operation in the Gulf of Mexico, "the rigs will just come back." Jindahl tells the crowd - "as if you can turn it on and off like a switch." Jindahl said the rigs are gone for years, two are on their way to Africa right now.
Has there ever been a president in our history, besides Obama, who equates an unemployment check with a "real" check?
Since the Gulf spill, the Obamas have vacationed in North Carolina, Chicago and this weekend in Maine. Karen at The Lonely Conservative has the real story. InfoWars has some interesting commentary about the beach and MO's visit.
Marguerite Cravatt along with a co-producer and cameraman have traveled the Gulf coast area extensively. On what should have been a busy beach day, the only activity is that of the BP cleanup and "a medical emergency" needing ambulance and a fire truck.
The video below is of an Alabama beach in Gulf Shores. As Cravatt tried to video the action, out of the way of the "emergency," but in camera range and on public property, an Alabama police officer tried to stop her. During that time, more paramedics arrive, and another ambulance arrives and eventually takes someone out on a stretcher.
Marguerite says she is an "independent producer," and with her small crew is traveling the Gulf Coast area and documenting the oil spill:
We collected video footage from the epicenter - Venice, as well as Grand Isle, New Orleans, the French Quarter, and we toured the swamps and the marshes of Louisiana. We drove the coastline of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and we saw oil, oil, and more oil. Hundreds of miles of beaches destroyed.
The Pensacola Journal has a Gulf spill story from June 26th that has had only a smattering of attention by the mainstream media, from which at least one report was taken down shortly after it went up. We know that Captain Allen Kruse took his life aboard his own boat while working for BP, using his own craft to clean up the spill. What we haven't heard is that BP and their pathetic response to the clean up, their treatment of those working for them, and inane processes to get paid so the family can eat, is perhaps the bigger story. The beautiful beaches of Pensacola are now black with oil. The second video below is a local filming the waters, churning and bubbling as though they contain "acid." When he turns and walks toward the beautiful sugar sand beach, I had to ask, where are the photos of this.
Allen Kruse
The other story is that the White House is nowhere to be found, other than threatening BP just before a round of golf. The press is not allowed in the area now, so what will we not know? Residents are in need of counseling. Churches have added prayer times. And then there are conjectures that Kruse's death was not suicide. The coroner has only said it is "likely" a suicide. Kruse left no note behind.
A charter boat captain for 25 years, Allen Kruse, 55, left behind a wife and three children. I don't know how he thought his death might help his family. But all that aside, Tracy Kruse says he told her he had to "get out of this. I can't take it."
About 7 a.m., after a BP training meeting, he climbed into the wheelhouse of his 46-foot charter boat and ended his worry, his frustration and his anger with a single bullet to the head.
"Nothing was easy working with BP. Everything was hard, and it consumed him. He wasn't crazy," said his wife, Tracy, 41, sitting outside the couple's home in Foley on Thursday.
"He'd been a charter boat captain for 25 years, and all of the sudden he had people barking orders at him who didn't know how to tie up a boat to a pier. I think he thought, 'I've got to get out of this. I can't take it.' "
Mrs. Kruse said the paperwork to file a claim to be paid for his time was overwhelming. One invoice was 52 pages, and once a claim was completed, she says it was difficult to get it to BP. He had lost 30 pounds and wasn't sleeping.
American Everyman says BP owed Allen Kruse $70,000 [also reported in the Washington Post article below], and this blog appears to have been following this story closely, including watching and reporting on the media-scrub.
"We're helping cover up the lie. We're burying ourselves. We're helping them cover up the [expletive] that's putting is out of work... "
A spokesman for the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans said angst and domestic violence is rising in the area, including increased drinking. A social worker who "helps fishermen's wives said:
The oil spillis like a cancer or tumor. It is creeping and unpredictable from whether people will have livelihoods or health issues from helping clean it up. You just don't know whether it is benign or malignant.
Oil is still pouring out, spreading, with an unmanageable toxicity that evokes comparisons to disease.
Another fishing boat captain, Tom Ard, told the Washington Post everyone looked up to Kruse, who was known as "Rookie," after the name of his boat. He believes Kruse had no hope that any cleanup would work:
His quote to me was, 'Don't try to rationalize it...just sign you name and get on your boat, and don't try to tell anybody how to run the program, and don't try to tell 'em what the local knowledge is....the point was The cleanup is hopeless, and you'll just tire yourself out trying to improve the situation.
The two men agreed it was like being in prison. Churches in the area are offering daily prayer and Masses
Tracey Kruse said in the minutes when her husband was preparing to shoot himself in the head, she does not believe he was thinking of his family, and she didn't think he was thinking of suicide. A friend of Mr. Kruse's said he passed the Captain as he left the BP Captain's meeting, and Kruse "had a look of horror" on his face.
In the first video below, you'll hear an interview with Allen Kruse, and how the area has survived hurricanes, and tropical storms, yet residents knew they would get past it. Today the future is murky, or worse. Many question if there can be future for these areas where most make their living by tourism and the seafood industry. Take a look at the beach pic above. How often have we seen that? I thought tarballs in Pensacola were the problem. See more of Pensacola beach in the second video. The narrator, apparently a local, ends with "God help us all.
Allen Kruse Suicide over BP's Lack of Action? (video)
We can send our press into the heat of Iraq and Afghanistan, but their presence in the Gulf is forbidden by the administration - it's all about their "personal safety" dontcha know. This is outrageous, as you will see in the video. Is air space still closed?
Obama is still looking for some ass to kick. He chose the press. If you don't see it, it didn't happen. I'd love to see Anderson Cooper this pumped about the border. We could sure use some press about the Arizona and Texas problem. Cooper says "we are not the problem here," but he and others in the mainstream media have become the problem because they won't tell the stories with any sense of thoroughness or urgency. Seriously, does anyone know if the airspace over the spill has been opened?
Thanks to my sculptor friend David Lemon for the First Amendment video. Have you ever traveled the Old Bozeman Trail along the Madison River in SW Montana? David says it has been traveled for 11,000 years. He videoed it for you. Also video of the bronzing of his War Medicine piece. Awesomely beautiful. If you haven't seen this process, you must. At about 3 minutes into this video you see David in the foundry, and the bronzing is going on, and in the background you hear Rush Limbaugh. Gotta love it!
The A Whale oil skimming rig arrived in the Gulf and is said to be about 6 miles out from the spill site. Today the vessel is undergoing tests of a 25 mile area. See the video of this giant ship below
A Whale Oil Skimmer
A Whale's project manager says the rig can skim up to 300,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil out of the water daily (a max of 21 million gallons), depending on weather conditions. God help him if his projections come in low. The government has had a bit of an attitude about it. The EPA and the Coast Guard have delayed the A Whale's arrival while checking procedure manuals to determine whether the giant vessel may damage the environment:
The ship arrived in the Gulf on Wednesday, but officials have wanted to test its capability as well as have the federal Environmental Protection Agency sign off on the water it will pump back into the gulf.
Although the ship cleans most of the oil from seawater, trace amounts of crude remain.
The wait has frustrated some local officials, who say the mammoth skimmer would be a game-changer in preventing drifting streams of oil from washing ashore on vulnerable coastlines.
During a Thursday tour of the inlet to Barataria Bay, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said it was exasperating to have A Whale anchored offshore instead of being put to immediate use.
“They’ve used the war rhetoric,” Jindal said aboard a Louisiana state wildlife boat floating in oil-slicked waters near Grand Isle. “If this is really a war, they need to be using every resource that makes sense to fight this oil before it comes to our coast.”
Last week, Palquemines president Billy Nungesser said with the A Whale in the area, we could be "kicking butt," and also said, if we lose this war, it will be the President's fault. This is a great video.
The mammoth A-Whale Oil Skimmer is creeping toward the Gulf area, but has still not received the red light from the EPA or the Coast Guard. The Plaquemines Parish president, Billy Nungesser, says with the A-Whale, they could be "kicking butt." Nungesser says if we lose this war, it will be the President's fault. Biden walked in for a photo op and left. The parish prez had 30 seconds with the Veep. Day 71! See the video below.
Near the coast line of Chadeleur Islands, LA on June 23, 2010
"No sense of urgency to get it to work"
NORFOLK - After making a brief stop in Norfolk for refueling, U.S. Coast Guard inspections and an all-out publicity blitz intended to drum up public support, a giant tanker billed as the world's largest oil skimming vessel set sail Friday for the Gulf of Mexico where it hopes to assist in the oil-cleanup effort.
The Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship dubbed the "A Whale" stands 10 stories high, stretches 1,115 feet in length and has a nearly 200-foot beam. It displaces more water than an aircraft carrier.
Built in South Korea as a supertanker for transporting oil and iron ore, the six-month-old vessel was refitted in the wake of the BP oil spill with 12, 16-foot-long intake vents on the sides of its bow designed to skim oil off surface waters
The vessel's billionaire owner, Nobu Su, the CEO of Taiwanese shipping company TMT Group, said the ship would float across the Gulf "like a lawn mower cutting the grass," ingesting up to 500,000 barrels of oil-contaminated water a day.
But a number of hurdles stand in his way. TMT officials said the company does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work. Source.
Also see the A-Whale at sea. The project manager says the ship can take in up to 500,000 barrels a day, and all the oil gathered so far is only 600,000 barrels.
A-Whale Oil Skimmer should be "kicking butt" (video)
In a move that a New Orleans publication is calling "bold," - presumably for standing up to Eric Holder, the Judge who overturned Obama's moratorium on Gulf drilling, is receiving death threats. Judge Martin Feldman is now accompanied by a federal marshal security team.
Judge Martin Feldman
After Feldman's initial decision came down, the government asked for a "stay" of the decision until they can get their case through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Feldman refused the "stay."
The Judge noted that just because the BP well was beset with problems and resulted in a massive oil spill, there is no reason to believe other wells would have similar problems. "If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are? Are all airplanes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed, and rather overbearing,” Feldman wrote.
While the Judge said there was no "rational connection between the facts found and the choice made," distractors questioned Feldman's integrity. At one time he held stock in Transocean and Halliburton. According to Bayoubuzz News, he owned those stocks in 2008 and sold them long before issuing the ruling.
The 5th District Court uses a sophisticated computer system to check whether judges have a conflict of interest in any legal proceeding. This system automatically determines whether a judge needs to be recused from a particular case. In this lawsuit, Feldman was allowed to take the case because he did not own any stock related to the parties involved.
To the dismay of coastal residents, overwhelmed with the BP oil spill, Obama's moratorium on drilling has further threatened any chance of a livelihood in the area:
I think he's lost his mind. If they shut down the oil fields, I might as well shut down," said Joan Strohmeyer, who owns a hotel in Venice, Louisiana.
Before the moratorium, Obama instructed Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to convene a panel of experts to determine what needed to be done now to further protect the Gulf area. After the panel signed off on the final report, Salazar and Obama changed the report, indicating the panel agreed with to a moratorium. In fact, they did just the opposite and a Berkley professor (yes, Berkley!) called Salazar on it, who then admitted he AND Obama changed the report to suit their preference for a moratorium:
If anyone should be questioned, it is the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who disregarded the advice of his own scientific experts in declaring the deep water drilling moratorium. In the wake of the Judge’s ruling, Salazar said he would issue a “refined” moratorium, ask for a stay of the ruling and appeal the decision. Some legal experts predicted the preliminary injunction would lead the government to compromise on the moratorium. In fact, Salazar decided to be confrontational instead of working with business interests in Louisiana to find common ground.
The lawsuit was brought against the U.S. Department of the Interior by "more than a dozen companies involved in offshore drilling operations.
Joe Bastardi, one of the AccuWeather forecasters disputing the plethora of global warming claims, is predicting at least two hurricanes in Gulf oil spill area between now and the end of hurricane season. Three additional storms are predicted close enough to the spill area to affect clean-up areas. See a video below.
AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center meteorologists, led by Chief Long-Range Meteorologist and Hurricane Forecaster Joe Bastardi, are calling for a much more active 2010 season with above-normal threats on the U.S. coastline.
"This year has the chance to be an extreme season," said Bastardi. "It is certainly much more like 2008 than 2009 as far as the overall threat to the United States' East and Gulf coasts."
Bastardi is forecasting seven landfalls. Five will be hurricanes, and two or three of the hurricanes will be major landfalls for the U.S.
He is calling for 16 to 18 tropical storms in total, 15 of which would be in the western Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, and therefore a threat to land.
There are a number of physical drivers that have Bastardi concerned for this upcoming hurricane season. These include:
--The rapidly weakening El Niño.
--Warmer ocean temperatures in the typical Atlantic tropical breeding grounds compared to last year (tropical storms draw energy from warm water).
--Weakening trade winds which reduce the amount of dry air injected into the tropics from Africa.
--Higher humidity levels which provide additional upward motion in the air and fuel tropical storm development.
Bastardi compared a number of years to the upcoming season in terms of storm setup, including 1964, 1995, and 1998. All were major impact seasons for the U.S. coast.
Drug cartels are both calling and firing the shots in Nogales, Arizona. Police are threatened by Mexican drug cartel snipers practically in their own backyards. Off-duty officers, through informants, have been directly advised to mind their own business or face a bullet. See the video:
Drug Cartels Calling and Firing the Shots in Nogales, AZ (video)
The View panel is apparently talking about prayer in the Gulf Coast region, although that is not made completely clear. Behar says faith is not logical, and Hasselbeck says Behar is bigoted, and explains how prayer really works. Behar seems unfamiliar with the whole process. See the video.
Joy Behar Says Prayer is Illogical - Faith is not Logical (video)
Carl-Henric Svanberg, the BP head who has enormous empathy for the "small people" of the U.S. will replace CEO Tony Hayward as the face of the Oil Spill Slayer.
Oil Boom Skimmer Ship
Hayward prompted the manufacturing of small fabric self-images, pierced with very long pins, when he infamously said: "I want my life back." Hayward enraged our Imperial U.S. Congress yesterday when he refused to say that BP had been reckless in their handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In other words, the facts are not yet in, but BP has consistently said they will pay all claims.
Here are a few undisputed facts:
1) Obama turned down help offered from the Netherlands three days after the spill. The Dutch government, with much of their country below sea level, offered to fly their oil-boom-skimming ships to the Gulf. They also offered a plan for building sand barriers to protect the marshlands. We turned it all down. The ships wouldn't work because American union workers would not be manning the boat. However, two months later, Obama is accepting the offer of the ships and oil skimming booms.
See video of the oil skimmer ships and a new invention to greatly pick up the pace of oil collection here.
2) The Dutch were not the only countries to offer aid. Thirteen countries offered, and Obama turned them all down.
3) Governor Jindahl tired to build 128 miles of sand berms to protect Louisiana's marshlands. The idea was rejected by the Army Corps of Engineers - because of environmental concerns. Dumping sand in the ocean must be a terrible threat. Forty-five miles of berm have now been approved. According to this report, even a low-intensity tropical storm will break-down the berms, but Jindahl will give it a try, because there are no more ideas:
Jindal said Friday: “We are moving ahead without BP. We gave them two choices: They can either send us a check, get out of the way and let us start this work, or they can sign a contract and do it themselves. We are going ahead without them.”
Although the berms will be 300 feet wide at their base, tapering to 25 feet at the top, a sand wall is not considered a robust structure under the Gulf’s extreme summer conditions.
4) Obama refused to utilize the help offered by the State of Alaska - who experienced and dealt with the largest oil spill in American waters.
5) Obama lied about the advice of his own panel of experts, changed a report after experts had already signed off on it, and called for a moratorium of drilling, leaving the Gulf Coast economy, and the quality of life of residents, further depressed by shutting down thousands of jobs and, of course, ending household income.
6) Escambia County, Florida, the home of some of Florida's most beautiful beaches tells us how the government red tape works, and shows the lack of respect of this administration for the people actually doing the hard lifting:
Santa Rosa Island Authority Buck Lee: “Escambia County sends a request to the Mobile, Ala., Unified Command Center. Then, it’s reviewed by BP, the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. If they don’t like it, they don’t tell us anything.”
7) Only one very controversial dispersant is being used. This subject would take a book to explain, but the bottom line is, there are many, many dispersants out there, some with substantial claims of their effectiveness, without toxicity. It appears the White House and BP have ignored them all.
Tony Hayward has his life back, and I bet this is one demotion he accepted willingly.
Megyn Kelly plays a clip of Robert Redford smacking BP for the oil spill - says he wants to throw up. No mention of Obama's handling of the "man-made disaster." Kelly interviews Pajamas TV's Steven Crowder about Hollywood and their response to what is happening in the Gulf. See the video below.
Megyn Kelly with Robert Redford clip - Interview with Steven Crowder (video)
What on earth would make previously-thought conservative Brit, Daniel Hannan, burst our bubble and tell us he supported Barack Obama, or remind those who did know, more than a year later?
Daniel Hannan
Karen at The Lonely Conservative has a shorter and pithier rant than mine. I know, I do go on.
Hannan doesn't like Obama's foreign policy. He didn't like the offensive gifts to Queen Elizabeth or returning the historic bust of Winston Churchill on the second day Barack took office, but those were "minor irritants," he says. He didn't mention Michelle's inappropriate cardigan at Buckingham Palace, or her shocking (to Queen Elizabeth) hug of the reigning Royal.
No, he is troubled about the dangerous foreign policy, unknown in any other modern day American administration:
...the Obama administration is backing Peronist Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands, or as Obama's people call them, "the Malvinas." British troops were the only sizable contingent to support the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have fought alongside America in most of the conflicts of the past hundred years. Yet when the chips are down, Obama lines up with Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega against us.
It has alienated Israel and India. It has even managed to fall out with Canada over its "Buy American" rules and its decision to drill in disputed Arctic waters. Never has there been a worse time to be a US ally.
No one denies that Obama was dealt a rotten economic hand; but he has played it ineptly. His policies are serving to make his country poorer, and less free and less respected. And that is a problem for all of us.
Well, yes, Mr. Hannan - he had no foreign policy experience. Running the streets of Chicago is a bit different than running the U.S. We conservatives knew it. We thought you were of similar mind.
Hot Air pointed out that Hannan feels good about Obama's commitment to school choice. I said "What?" Hot Air said," huh?" Now that's a stunner. Hannan didn't pay attention in 2008, and isn't paying attention now unless it affects his own country:
In February 2009, one month after infiltrating the Oval Office, the Wall Street Journal muses:
So we'll be curious to see how he handles the dismaying attempt by Democrats in Congress to crush education choice for 1,700 poor kids in the District of Columbia.
The answer came in May of the same year. Obama provided the vouchers for the 1,716 students already in the Washington D.C. program, and will allow them all to finish through graduation, but that's the end.
No more children in disadvantaged areas, attending miserable excuses for schools, will receive vouchers or grants as long as Barack Obama has a say - including the students wanting to enter his own daughters' school, the prestigeous Sidwell Friends. None of that riff-raff sitting side-by-side the Obama girls.
We can we forgive the New York Sun for believing Obama on the campaign trail in February 2008, even though he had already promised the National Education Association (NEA) he would not support vouchers. After all, BO was handsome, spoke so beautifully, had a mouthful of pearly whites, and a long history of lying through them - but in those early days, who knew?
He [Obama] said he was astonished to learn that a voucher program in Milwaukee had never been tested in a longitudinal study to find out whether it had helped children or not. "If there was any argument for vouchers it was, all right, let's see if this experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids," Mr. Obama said.
Did Hannan know anything about Obama's failed leadership of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge? How he scammed millions, at least $50 million - maybe $110 million, from deserving schools and funneled it to Flag-stomping, Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers?
Does he know that funds were used for ethnic studies, leaving white children to flounder, with grants going to the South Shore African Village Collaborative to celebrate Juneteenth, while The Chicago Algebra Project request for a grant was rejected. The District 5 Math Initiative request for a grant was also rejected. It goes on and on.
Daniel Hannan is a financial genius. He "gets" the pounds sterling and the U.S. dollars. He understands redistributing wealth, and sees it happening in his own country. He doesn't like it. He doesn't understand Obama's willingness to turn over the Falkland Islands to Argentina, even though the people are happy being a part of the U.K., and have been for over 175 years.
Now Hannan can understand how we feel. Obama doesn't discriminate. He takes land, including national forests, 80 miles from the U.S. Mexico border, and turns it over to Mexican drug thugs and smugglers, bandits, rapists, human traffickers, pedophiles and murders, as happened today, Hannan's disgust doesn't come close to mine/ours.
Did you know you can read Al Gore's Journal? There's nothing there about Laurie David, but he does talk about censoring the news and he wants it to stop. It's disturbing, he says, and the behavior is "unacceptable." I agree that any kind of censorship is wrong and unAmerican, including trying to hide Climate-Gate emails, and his reported affair with Laurie David.
Access by reporters should be as unfettered as possible. This de facto form of censorship needs to stop.
Remember this, when his goons silenced filmaker and journalist, Phelim McAleer - and they did it quite rudely too. See the video below, The Inconvenient Question.
Phelim McAleer Interviews Al Gore (video)
Related and Background: Al and Tipper Gore Separate - Update to the first news of the separation: I heard Tipper left him for bringing copious amount of hot air into the marriage. She was forced to use an inhaler. He was cruel beyond belief, and insisted she wear green - all the time, and when she refused to let him bring the Nobel to bed with them, that did it. She filed claiming irreconcilable carbon credits.
I understand Obama's affection for Czars now. What better way to place the blame than to turn a gunky mess over to someone else. Still looking for his bullhorn moment, which up to today has been only moments of bull crap, he will appoint an Oil Recovery Czar from the Oval Office - his first speech given from that vaunted and historic room.
The Bush playbook is still present in this administration. Bush gave the 9/11 speech to the nation from the Oval Office on the night of the terror attacks. Now Obama says he has his own 9/11 with the Oil Spill, but he missed the moment and forgot the bullhorn. And so the Oval Office image tonight should bring us all together, as we were when our nation was attacked almost nine years ago.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who was a former staffer for Bob Etheridge, the South Carolina Congressman who punched a student in the face two days ago, says Obama will "seek" to reassure anxious Americans over the Gulf catastrophe. An apology, like Etheridge's would be the Democrat way, and a czar should do it.
Just heard a Fox News radio report. Lightening has apparently struck one of the ships siphoning the oil off of, and/or, out of the Gulf of Mexico. Efforts to recover the mess have been halted. Numerous observations come to mind. If the situation were not so dire for our country, our friends in the effected areas, and sea life, I would share them with you, but...
FAIR USE: This blog may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner or may be authorized or licensed for publication at this site only. Permission to copy, republish or reproduce such material must be obtained from the original copyright owner.
Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Important Notice
Patrons of this Blog are advised that they will be held responsible for any unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, or harmful material of any kind or nature posted by their respective ISP. Patrons are cautioned not to transmit via comments, including links to any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation. Comments here are typically unmoderated and unedited. The fact that particular comments remain on the site in no way constitutes the site owner's endorsement of commenters' views.
![Twitter](<a href="http://www.twitter.com/maggiesnotebook"><img src="http://twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com/follow_me-b.png" alt="Follow maggiesnotebook on Twitter"/></a>){kind=small}
