Jan 24 2006
Fly By 01/24/06
Brief posting this morning, so I only have time for a Fly By.
The Canadian elections yesterday culminated the year plus decline of the corrupt Martin Liberal government. The Liberals should have understood that taking tax payer money to shore up their elections and bribe people to launder that election money was going to end up this way. The results were not as strong as I expected, but the Tories have a chance to gain trust and increase their margins through a simple process: do the people’s work, and make the system work – efficiently. Ed Morrissey has been following this like a bull dog and commented here after the results were in. He also had a huge live blog audience last evening.
The Bush administration is drawing the line in the sand over Iran.
US President George W. Bush will not accept a nuclear Iran, John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday.
Bolton, speaking from New York via video hook-up to the Interdisciplinary Center’s Herzliya Conference, said that Bush was determined to pursue the issue through peaceful and diplomatic means, “but has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable.”
According to Bolton, Bush worries that a nuclear-equipped Iran under its current leadership could well engage in a nuclear holocaust, “and that is just not something he is going to accept.”
The Mad Mullah’s and wannabe savior-at-the-end-of-time Ahmadinejad are just not the kind of people you allow to have weapons of mass destruction. For those on the left not paying attention, Bush is not making this up or spinning or lying. He is just listening to the Iranians and taking what they say at face value.
Iran’s response is just another indicator that they are just too unstable for nuclear weapons:
Iran upped the ante Monday in its nuclear standoff, warning that it will immediately begin developing a full-scale uranium enrichment program if it is referred to the United Nations Security Council.
Like Saddam, Iran is being given the chance to work this in a way that guarantees they will not be a risk to the world of nations, and like Saddam their refusal to make any real concessions can only lead rational people to one conclusion.
And apparently some of those rational people live in Iran. Seems there was a bombing near the wannabe-martyred Iranian President:
Two bombs killed at least six people and wounded 35 others in the oil-rich Iranian city of Ahvaz in Khuzestan province, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was due to give a speech today.
Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi said those responsible for the “terrorist” acts were trained “outside” Iran’s borders. One explosion occurred in a bank in Kianpour district in the southwestern city, and the other in Manabe Tabiee, state television said. Ahvaz is near the Iraqi border.
President Ahmadinejad canceled his visit to Ahvaz because of bad weather, his press office said. The bombs didn’t explode at the location where he was due to speak, the office said.
Interesting. Seems Ahmadinejad is not so fearless after all. A little bad weather and he turns tail. Also of interest is where these bombings occurred, and that these are not the first:
Iran holds the world’s second-largest oil reserves and is the No. 2 producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Khuzestan, its largest oil-producing province, has witnessed unrest in recent months that the government attributes to ethnic Arab separatists. Arabs, who make up the majority in Ahvaz, account for 3 percent of Iran’s population.
Most of Iran’s crude oil reserves are in Khuzestan, which is located close to the border with Iraq and to the Persian Gulf.
…
In October, four people were killed in two explosions that left 86 injured. Iran at the time accused British agents of detonating the bombs. The U.K. Embassy in Iran rejected the charge.In early September, a series of bomb blasts in Khuzestan halted crude transfers from onshore wells. In June, one week before the country’s presidential election, six people died after a series of explosions in Ahvaz. At least another five died in clashes in April in riots sparked by alleged plans to change the area’s ethnic makeup.
It is always important to understand Iran is a Persian country, not Arab. There is not a lot of comeraderie between the two.
The NY Times is learning a harsh lesson about how well Liberal propaganda sells.
The Times, which also publishes The Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, earned $64.8 million or 45 cents per share in the three months ending in December, compared to $110.2 million or 75 cents per share a year ago.
That is darn close to a 50% loss in revenue ( 58%). I have been saying for over a year it would be wise to dump stock in the NY Times and other Liberal news media houses. Liberals only make up 20% of the electorate and it is clear that to target their message alone is a path to marginal market share. What is stunning to me is all the major share holders seem to don’t mind losing 40 cents on the dollar. Because if they did mind, they would oust all the management of the Old Grey Corpse.
And on the Global Warming front we have this news:
Officials closed the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano to the public after a snowstorm shut down access for the first time this winter season.
…
The heavy snowfall was a rare sight, even for those who are up there almost every day.“The snow began to accumulate very quickly and we had to evacuate to prevent being trapped on the summit,” telescope operator Paul Sears said.
Snow fell on a tall mountain….OK.
Some links were passed along for our readers to peruse. Reader Harold has provactive post up today on immigration reform. My views are illegal immigrants are guilty of (a) being too far back in the line and (b) guilty of incomplete paperwork. Like having a car unregistered, having your self unregistered is not the level of crime that dictates eviction and loss of job. I agree with Harold on much of this (though not all). What I want is the number of people allowed to be guest workers raised, so people here working are covered. I want them to be allowed to register themselves for a small fine. And I want all who break are laws or cannot remain employed to lose their slot and be sent home.
And Stop The ACLU has a great post on the amdinistration’s push back on terrorist surveillance (not domestic spying!). Thankfully this provides me the opportunity to not write a post saying the same thing!
UPDATE:
And Clarice Feldman sent me this post listing the EIGHT terrorist leaders killed in that predator attack in Pakistan. I would call that a huge success. Where is our news media???
UPDATE II:
NBC has decided it cannot repulse its viewers with low-brow liberal propaganda and has decided to pull the plug on The Book Of Daniel. It was a really dumb concept to start with.
END UPDATE
Have a great day everyone.
Walking into Starbucks this morning I couldn’t help but notice that the stack of NY Times dailies was overflowing, whereas, the stack of Chicago Sun-Times’ was just about empty.
It’s probably the price that matters because we know the major concern of customers at Starbucks is the cost of goods.
Interesting that the Liberals of Canada should have understood “The Liberals should have understood that taking tax payer money to shore up their elections and bribe people to launder that election money was going to end up this way.” Of Course America is different when its the Republicans doing the same thing. Can anyone mention DeLay?
I can mention Delay..What is your point? The Abramoff scandal will turn out to be less a case of bribery than one of his screwing his clients..Watch. And the recipients of his (and his clients’ largesse) was bipartisan.
If I were the opposition I’d no more count on this scandal than they others they dreamed up-They really have to change to a coherent position on national security acceptable to a majority and they can’t–Soros owns the party.
AJ–
It is also possible that the Iranians did this “terrorist bombing” themselves and blamed it on “outsiders” so they could whip up flagging popular support.
What was so special about the bank that was bombed?
Clarice–
I have read that Abramoff stole a lot from his Indian clients.
One article said 50 million and another said 60 million.
It doesn’t seem that anyone but Abramoff saw a lot of it. The bribes/contributions are not that huge, actually.
The thing I don’t get is why didn’t the Indians notice what was happening to all this money? They have professional organizations who help them with this.
I think there are some things we don’t know yet about what Abramoff was up to.
I have no idea. Maybe they made as bad a choice of advisors as they did lobbyists. I have looked at this carefully, and I see a guy who wasn’t far from the mark until Scanlon linked up with him–Did they go mad? Were they on drugs? Were they mobbed up? I have no idea. It is an utter mystery to me.
On the bombing in Iran, I saw a report, and think I posted a link to it on JihadWatch, I’ll check; but the gist was that at least one of Ahmadinjad’s bodyguards was killed, and it was an attempt on him — he’s frightening some of the whackos who see him as waaaay too far around the bend, especially since his speech to the UN about his connection to the 12th prophet/Mahdi, then his reported statements that the UN bureaucrats ‘saw for themselves with awe that he (Ahmadinjad) was surrounded by the Mahdi’s light…’
The theory is that the rest of the (ruling) Iranians may also be crazy, but they aren’t stupid — they see Ahmadinjad’s rhetoric as bringing on a US and/or Israel bunker busting party near Tehran.
Clarice and Snapple, some of the Abramoff thing has to do with a casino-boat deal, and there was a peripheral connection to an alleged mobbed-up partner that Abramoff and, could’ve been Scanlon, wanted to get rid of — that was what the two speeches read into the Congressional Record by the Republican congressman, Ohio or PA, was about. But that wasn’t client money, it was Abramoff’s own deal.
Merry Whitney
Found it. It was from NewsMax:
“In a country of religious zealots, the extremism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has even his own countrymen sounding alarms
Dissidents within Iran say their country’s president is such a crazed fanatic that he will try to usher in the end of the world as we know it.
On Dec. 16, gunmen opened fire on the motorcade of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he toured the southeastern province of Sistan, along Iran’s border with Pakistan.
According to news reports, Ahmadinejad’s personal bodyguard and driver were killed in the ambush, although the president was unhurt. The government-controlled media in Tehran attributed the attack to “bandits,” a term used to denote a wide range of armed groups, from drug dealers to opposition guerrillas.”
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/1/23/173442.shtml?s=et
Bush spoke today about the Terrorist Surveillance Program. He explained that writing a law and speelling everything out would help the enemy know what we are doing.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/26/D8FCG4P8E.html
“Asked if he would support efforts in Congress to spell out his authority to continue the eavesdropping program, Bush cited what he said was the extreme delicacy of the operation.
“But it’s important for people to understand that this program is so sensitive and so important that if information gets out to how we run it or how we operate it, it’ll help the enemy,” he said. “Why tell the enemy what we’re doing?”
“We’ll listen to ideas. But I want to make sure that people understand that if the attempt to write law makes this program — is likely to expose the nature of the program, I’ll resist it.”
AJ–
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/26/115712.shtml?s=ic
This article claims that the Iraqis sent their WMD to Syria.
SNIP
The former number two official in Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi air force claims the former Iraqi dictator moved weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria in the months preceding the current Iraq war.
Georges Sada revealed the charges in an interview Wednesday with the New York Sun. They are detailed in his new book, “Saddam’s Secrets.â€
“Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming,” Sada told the Sun. “They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians.â€
The former Iraqi general said Special Republican Guard brigades loaded WMDs onto two converted Iraqi Airways planes.
He said he was told of the operation by two pilots that helped transport the materials. Sada says 56 flights were made, and were accompanied by a ground convoy of trucks carrying similar materials.
The Sun reports that the flights attracted scant international attention because they occurred at the same time that Iraq was sending relief to Syria for a dam collapse.
Sada’s claims echoed those made by Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s top general in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yaalon told the Sun in December that Saddam had “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.â€