Obama camp ‘prepared to talk to Hamas’
Obama camp ‘prepared to talk to Hamas’
Incoming administration will abandon Bush’s isolation of Islamist group to initiate low-level diplomacy, say transition sources
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington guardian.co.uk
The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s *doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.
The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush *presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 *Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.
The Guardian has spoken to three *people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp.
You don’t ‘talk’ to terrorists, you eliminate them. The only reason a terrorist would ‘talk’ to you is so he could buy time or gain information for his next attack to kill you.
Only a total and complete fool and idiot would ‘talk’ to terrorists. But then Hussein Obama fits that bill perfectly well.
Rifts show as Obama urges quick action on stimulus
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press
January 9, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are under orders to finish action on President-elect Barack Obama’s nearly $800 billion economic recovery plan by mid-February. But already it is plain that a set of serious fissures need to be bridged if the bill is to be completed within five weeks.
Obama urged Congress on Thursday to “act boldly and act now” to fix an economy growing perilously weaker, even as top Democrats said they dislike key provisions, especially the design of his tax cuts.
Democrats such as Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad complained openly that many of the incoming administration’s proposed tax cuts wouldn’t work. Republicans warned against excessive new spending, with both parties signaling the incoming president they intend to place their own stamp on the economic recovery effort.
Can anybody else see the Great Depression repeating itself in history? I see the Dimocraps doing the exact same things they did in the 30’s to create one and exacerbate it endlessly.
Missouri senator’s exit alters political landscape
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
Associated Press
January 9, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The decision by Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri to end more than a two-decade run in the Senate had an immediate impact on the political outlook for his home state and made the next election cycle tougher for the national GOP.
Republicans lost three of the five Senate seats opened by retirements last year and are facing at least one more retirement in Florida, a swing state.
Bond already was headed toward a highly competitive, highly watched re-election bid in 2010. By announcing Thursday that he would not seek re-election when his current term ends, Bond accelerated the ground game for the candidates that will vie for his seat.
I sense our 40 seat filibuster margin in terrible danger unless the electorate wakes up from the Obama dream they have been having and realizes it is the Dimocraps who are leading our country to ruin.
Sarkozy, Merkel, Blair call for new capitalism
By EMMA VANDORE
Associated Press
January 9, 2009
PARIS (AP) — The leaders of France and Germany appeared to put disagreements over economic policy behind them Thursday, calling on the U.S. to join global efforts to address the financial crisis.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, leading a two-day conference with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the future of capitalism, said the crisis has shown that no country can go it alone on economic policy.
“In the 21st century, there it is no longer a single nation who can say what we should do or what we should think,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the system “cannot continue as it is” and called for better-regulated financial markets.
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“New Capitalism” = World Government Socialism. The US will be required to surrender its national sovereignty to its enemies in the world under this program. I don’t see that France, Britain, and Germany are in any better shape to be able to tell the US what to do. They certainly aren’t an example to follow.
If the US would leave capitalism alone and shun socialism, the ship will right itself in time.
Democrats strike early with labor rights bills
By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press
January 9, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats are wasting no time in promoting labor rights issues they argue have been thwarted during eight years of the Bush administration.
Two pay discrimination bills on the House floor Friday could be among the first that labor-friendly Barack Obama signs into law when he becomes president later this month.
“It is of the highest priority to us,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in explaining why the House is taking up the bills in the first week of the new session.
Anybody want to bet the unions won’t get everything they want in exchange for faithfully supporting the Dimocraps all these years?
The worst part is the loss of a secret ballot to initiate unions. Union thugs and bullies will ensure everyone votes to certify the union or they will get their heads busted, like in the old days. Loss of the secret ballot is an affront to democracy everywhere, yet since it favors their supporters, the Dims will allow it.
To Your Battle Stations, Conservatives
By David Limbaugh
January 9, 2009
The best long-term solutions for our ailing economy are to restore market forces in every possible sector, reduce the crippling tax burden, and restore responsible fiscal practices to the federal government. Sadly, the incoming Obama administration plans on moving in the opposite direction in all these areas and believes it has a mandate to do so. Are conservatives asleep or just worn down?
Too many Americans have succumbed to the propaganda that the market is inherently evil and fraught with excesses fueled by “capitalistic greed” and that such systemic corruption has led to our economic woes. Only large-scale government intervention can rescue us from this pernicious system.
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/dlimbaugh/2009/dl_01091.shtml
What do you expect? Americans have been brainwashed with these liberal, utopian ideas for years in the public education and university system. Everything Limbaugh says in this article is true. The current crisis is a construct of the liberals and socialist to allow them to grab the power they have been craving for generations and change America forever.
Malkin: Who’s Afraid Of Joe The Journalist?
By Michelle Malkin
January 9, 2009
If a community organizer can be president and a Saturday Night Live comedian can be a U.S. Senator, why can’t a plumber be a reporter?
Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, is headed to Israel to interview ordinary citizens about life in the crosshairs of jihad. He’ll be filing dispatches for conservative Internet video broadcasting site PJTV.com (to which I also contribute). Predictably, the very idea of a non-credentialed public figure attempting to “do journalism” has catty elite journalists hacking up hairballs.
Just about any “average Joe” that I know would make a better journalist and/or news reporter than the liberal scum that are in the “profession” now, and I use the term very loosely because the current crop of reporters, all educated and brainwashed under the liberal education and indoctrination system, have no idea of what unbiased, fair and objective journalism is supposed to entail.
To them journalism is just another tool to advance their socialist, liberal agenda to overthrow the traditional American way of life.
I hope Joe stays safe in Israel and no errant bullet or rocket finds him and he comes back safely to tell Kyra Phillips, “In your face.”
Bozell: A Porn Stimulus Package?
By Brent Bozell
January 9, 2009
The new Congress has arrived in Washington with grand plans to spend a trillion dollars in an endless Christmas, a bailout for anyone in need, in want, and in line. Now that America has seen how easy it was for the financial powerhouses to walk away with hundreds of billions, one segment of the population after another is getting into the queue.
The auto industry drove itself into the ground and wants billions. The mayors mismanaged their cities, and they want billions. It was only a matter of time before the governors would wave their “me, too!” voices, with California’s being the loudest and most obnoxious.
Reminds me of the Fall of Babylon. The barbarians are at the gates. Nero fiddles. The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization. The End of Times as foretold in the Book of Revelation.
Chavez: Hoist On Their Own Petard
By Linda Chavez
January 9, 2009
Rod Blagojevich may look like one of the dim bulbs from Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing, but the guy’s a political genius. Who could imagine that a month after U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald signaled that the Illinois governor was about to be indicted for trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat, the man would not only remain un-indicted and un-impeached, but he’d manage to make the entire Democratic congressional leadership look like chumps? In naming former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to the vacant seat, Blagojevich has hoist the Dems on their own petard.
Blagojevich knew exactly what he was doing by naming Burris. Like any urban Democrat, the governor knew how potent an advantage Burris’ race would be. Blacks may be only 15 percent of the Illinois population, but they represent about half of the Democratic Party’s base in the state. And nationally, the figures are just as skewed.
I, too, have had a sneaking admiration for Blago, even if he is as crooked and corrupt as the day is long, to have the audacity, if I can borrow that word, to appoint Burris in defiance of his own party as he is taken down.
If is also very gratifying to see the Dims with egg on their face and squirm as they are exposed for the two-faced, racist hypocrites they are. To blacks they are sending the signal that ‘you are good enough to vote for me, but not good enough to be in the Senate with me.’
It is too bad too many blacks will not listen or get it and the liberal media will wash it under the table. In a few more crises generated and orchestrated by the Dims, all will be conveniently forgotten.
Video: Sarah Palin Strikes Back At Biased Media
NewsBusters
Documentarian John Ziegler has posted at Andrew Breitbart’s new website Big Hollywood a fabulous video of an interview he did Monday with Gov. Sarah Palin (embedded right).
In it, Palin answers — with her characteristically delicious candor! — how she felt about the media’s coverage of her family, as well as the Katie Couric interview and Tina Fey’s parodies.
In his article about his meeting with Palin, Ziegler offered his own castigation of the press’s abysmal performance during the 2008 presidential campaign:
The media should be taken out back and flogged mercilessly for the merciless way they treated Sarah in the election, and for their undeniable, outrageous bias anyway. I can’t stand anything about the MSM.
NYPD Eyes Disrupting Cell Phones in Event of Terrorist Attack
Fox News
The New York Police Department is looking for ways to disrupt cell phone calls and other forms of electronic communication among terrorists in the event of another terror attack in New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says.
The need to disrupt communications is one of several conclusions that the NYPD has drawn from studying the November attack in Mumbai, India, a three-day rampage by machine gun and grenade-wielding Islamic militants in which at least 165 people were killed and 304 were wounded.
Kelly is scheduled to discuss this and other “lessons learned” in testimony Thursday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. A draft copy of his statement was shared with FOX News in advance of his appearance.
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Sounds a little bit too high handed. The Dims and Libs will never allow this.
If the authorities disrupt cell phone service the terrorist perps will just find another way to communicate, such as radios, and regular people would not be able to call for help or notify relatives they are OK.
What I would support would be a mandatory media blackout so that the terrorist handlers or commanders cannot communicate to the terrorists or terrorists to other terrorists what countermoves and countermeasures the response teams initiate just by watching TV or listening to the radio, as was done in Bombay or Mumbai or whatever they want to call it now.
The news could always be reported accurately later, or as accurately as the inept, biased MSM can do, and lives might be saved in the bargain if the terrorists are blinded and their plans thwarted.
Buchanan: Israel’s staging a “blitzkrieg” on its Gaza “concentration camp”
Hot Air
Not the first time a Nazi analogy has tripped lightly from his lips in this area, although like Cardinal Martino, he doesn’t quite have the stones to own up to what he means. He’s not comparing Gaza to a German death camp, you see, just to your average, run-of-the-mill concentration camp. The fact that he coughed up the word “blitzkrieg” literally in the same breath is but an unhappy coincidence.
Anti-Semitism here, Anti-Semitism there, Anti-Semitism everywhere. No wonder all media and world sentiment is against Israel.
Daschle floats through Senate hearing
Politico
For Tom Daschle and his former Senate colleagues, it appears absence does make the heart grow fonder.
The former Senate majority leader and one-time Republican target floated through his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday with friendly questioning in the first public test of any of President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet selections.
Both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee treated Obama’s pick for health and human services secretary with the deference and collegiality they often show to one of their own.
The Republican contingent in the Senate is an irresponsible collection or wimps with no morals, strictures, or backbone. They let themselves get run over by the Dims and Libs and played like a Harp from Hell. And then they get up, laugh, shake it off, and “make-nice” with the Dims all over again so the Dims can steamroll them over and over. They never learn their lessons.
We need to seriously clean house some way. The GOP is not an opposition party, they are junior partners in government like you have in parliamentary systems, always supporting and acquiescing to the majority.
In politics, as in football, it doesn’t pay to be nice. Like Leo Durocher said, Nice guys finish last.
Sowell: Manufacturing A Crime
By Thomas Sowell
January 9, 2009
In December, I was asked to file a second report on an automobile accident that took place back in September, during a visit to Los Angeles. A truck slammed into my car from behind while I was stopped at a traffic light.
As I sat down to write a new report, I tried to recall the details, beginning with where the accident took place, which I remembered as having been on Wilshire Boulevard.
Fortunately, I had saved a copy of my first report on this same accident, which showed that it took place on Santa Monica Boulevard, not Wilshire, which was the street up ahead.
TS is the best! And he is absolutely right. Sometimes I can’t remember what happened 5 minutes ago, much less 8 months ago. I believe that is part of being human. Nobody’s perfect. To be prosecuted for a faulty memory is a crime in itself.
