I have long been a fan of UFC and MMA fights and congrats to CBS for realizing what this sensation is. I have never been a boxing fan even though I loved the Rocky movies, I liked Jean Claude Van Damme's and Chuck Norris' more. These fighters are awesome athletes and deserve the recognition they are finally getting besides being exciting to watch.
Via Ace and Hotair, CNN is reporting that the Obamas are quitting the TUCC congregation after 20+ years of sitting in the pews hearing the same rhetoric that has now become public knowledge. Why would they leave now I wonder after being married there and having their daughters babtized there? Could it be politically motivated? Cap't Ed thinks it will hurt him more than it helps,
The big problem is that the Obamas sat in that church for 20 years listening to these sermons and finding nothing objectionably about them until they got disseminated to the nation.
Second, and potentially more damaging, it shows Obama’s willingness to throw anyone over the side when the boat starts sinking. That won’t go over very well with his core supporters who have admired his loyalty to TUCC, who excused Wright by pointing out that he had retired, and who bought Obama’s explanation of the “wonderful community” and great works of TUCC. Is that now nothing more than a convenient lie?
If the Obamas quit TUCC, they will confirm it as a political problem, and the act won’t convince anyone that they disagree with its rhetoric. They may convince people that he only joined TUCC for its political connections in Chicago — but that doesn’t exactly reflect well on Obama, either.
Much has been written by pundits and blabbed by talking heads across the alphabet networks about how smart Barack Obama is after all he graduated from Harvard Law and was president of the esteemed Harvard Law Review. I have begun to wonder though as he piles gaffe upon gaffe when he attempts to speak from the cuff away from the teleprompter and prepared remarks of hope and change. When answering questions in his rare press avails he often resorts to tired left wing talking points about the failure of the Bush administration's policies and how McCain is just the same without offering anything of substance of his own or dismisses legitimate criticisms as distractions from the real issues. Gone is the eloquence of his prepared speeches and he speaks haltingly with lots of ahhhs and ummms and very often ends up saying nothing at all or getting his facts completely wrong. I am not saying he is stupid but that he is not as smart as his handlers have made him out to be.
Pamela Gellar has posted a devastating article by one of her readers that examines just how Obama came to be president of the Law Review, affirmative action, what he did while there, nothing, and what he did afterwards, not what one who holds that position usually does. The people that have held the prestigious position in the past have gone on to clerk for Supreme Court Justices or at least the DC Appeals Court and then to the top law firms in the country because they want the best and brightest and Obama did not even get an offer. He instead went to a no name firm in Chicago and got involved in socialist community organizing and shady land deals with Tony Rezko.
Go read the whole thing but here is a key excerpt.
Once the glitter and glisten of that title had worn off, the bare reality beneath was that Obama was nothing a politically glib individual able to talk well in abstract - but not produce in concrete. And the judges had recognized that fact by refusing to give him a clerkship. The brutally competitive law firms had also recognized that by not giving him a position at their firms. Therefore, there was only one venue open to him - politics. As the NY Times put it, Obama would be returning to Chicago to "re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing."
Such then is the smoke and mirrors of Obama's vaunted 'intelligence'. To this day, he has blown that smoke skillfully in the faces of the liberals to lull them into not asking questions - much the same way the ancient Kings of France blew smoke into the faces of their hunting birds to quieten and lull them into inaction. The terrible problem is that modern bloody birds of prey like Ahmadinijad, Chavez and the Taliban, etc. are not lulled by smoke. To the contrary, these terrorists have mastered the art of blowing their own smoke into the world's face to lull it into submission and inaction. Such years of mastery means these terrorists will make short shrift of the untested Junior senator from Illinois's huffing and puffing. Obama's smoke will be blown back instantly into his face by the hot breath of their hate and insane contempt for human life.
Which will leave Obama with only his intelligence to defend him - and us. Unfortunately, as the above arguments sadly prove, Obama's intelligence itself appears to be smoke. Thus leaving us with a potential Commander in Chief able to defend this country with --- what?
Via AoSHQ side bar odd links, the late great Dan Osman doing in a few minutes what would take my partner and me over an hour. I know the cliff well and have done some climbing there. This is an easy climb by his standards.
He was one of the best climbers to have ever put on climbing shoes and died in '82doing something stupid stuff like this.
Dang watching some of the climbing videos at You Tube makes me want to get back on the rock and climb again now that my hands have finally healed. They had gotten so bad I could not form a fist anymore.
This fits the Barnyard pretty well and its main denizen, a grumpy Goat, but I don't drive a Ford, I drive a Dodge 4x4 truck.
Via Hotair and Dangerroom is the next generation exoskeleton, I want one since my back problems limit my backpacking enjoyment.
There are so many great applications for this technology for those confined to crutches, canes and wheelchairs, good work guys. I guess Berkeley is good for something.
When someone who's actual resume` is as shallow as Barack Obama's runs for higher office on his judgement alone chooses such people as the Revs. Wright and Pfleger as his spiritual mentors for more than two decades and subjects his young daughters to this type of vile racist rhetoric preached from the pulpit one has to wonder about his vaunted judgement. Michael Pfleger has also called for a Chicago gun store owner to be "snuffed out" and here he is at the pulpit of Trinity United this past weekend.
HT: Hotair.
Obama claims he did not know about the vile rants that these men seem to spew on a regular basis but how is that after knowing them for so long? Maybe he paid as much attaention in church as he did in history class yet somehow I seriously doubt that. He has chosen to surround himself with radicals of the far left for most of his life and has indeed sought them out as he wrote in his first book. The amount of information that is starting to come out now that he is the presumptive nominee about his connections to radical communists, the corrupt Illinois Combine, racial grievance mongers and terrorist sympathizers is quite astounding. He is a good looking fellow with a handsome family that delivers prepared speeches with a rare elonquence for sure but when it comes to actual substance there is only air there or typical failed socialist policies of the past.
He speaks of hope and change but has done nothing to bring actual change in either Senate seat he has held at the state or federal level just happily following along with party line votes as the most liberal member, never reaching across the aisle or doing any actual work on tough issues. He labels every criticism as a distraction from the real issues or a distortion without ever taking a stance on any tough issue other than being a strong advocate for socialism and retreat and appease in the face of our enemies abroad that want to see America crumble and fall. Why else would folks like Hamas, FARC, Castro and Chavez be rooting for him to win? They know he actually believes as they do, America, Israel, freedom and capitalism are the root of all that ails the world, as does much of the Democrat party. He is not as the MSM paints him as some sort of post-racial, post-partisan messiah, he is exactly the opposite, a hyper-partisan far left socialist grievance monger who's supporters call those that don't bow down in awe of the Obamassiah, racists.
Update: Hotair has more, Pfleger and "surprise" from the Chosen One.
I have wondered how Barack could seem so ignorant of current events particularly in the Middle East but now it comes out in a profile of his "body man" Reggie Love in the NYT. Dean Barnett and Abe Greenwald picked up on this little nugget that sheds alot of light on the subject. I hear he doesn't read blogs either so where does he get his news?
Along the way, some unofficial rules have emerged between the candidate and his aide. From Mr. Obama: “One cardinal rule of the road is, we don’t watch CNN, the news or MSNBC. We don’t watch any talking heads or any politics. We watch ‘SportsCenter’ and argue about that.”
John McCain’s proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don’t need any more ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don’t want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.
Hmm, I have spent a little time on a couple pro-Clinton blogs, notably Larry Johnson's No Quarter since his readers have linked to me a few times, and reading through the comments they seem to dislike Obama as much as those of us on the Right do. This is not the irrational spewing I have seen at Kos or other pro-Obama sites but solid pragmatic support for their girl, Hillary, along with an overwhelming dislike for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the do nothing Congress with strong support for McCain if Obama gets the DNC nomination.
I am not part of Rush's Operation Chaos and did not particularly agree with it since I don't like it when they play in our primary process but this is really interesting in that the Democrats are really tearing apart at the seams over the Obama Clinton split. I guess noone likes to be called a racist just because they don't fall down in awe of the Obamassiah, from what I have seen it looks like Hillary has what is left of the old school Scoop Jackson Democrats while Obama represents the noisy moonbats of the new old left socialist democrats of the Euroblend.
Kyle-Anne Shriver has an excellent article in National Review today detailing all the old communist revolutionaries in America flocking to Obama's side in this year's elections and why. From Obama's work with Saul Alinsky right out of Harvard to Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakan, the Black Panthers and their Marxism based Black Liberation Theology. I have been writing about this for weeks now but Ms Shriver sums it all up perfectly and why Barack has become the one they have been waiting for.
For a Boomer like me, following the threads of the Obama movement is like a flashback from a bad 60s drug trip — an old, unwelcome nightmare.
Whether it’s Billy Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn, Tom Hayden or Jane Fonda, or any of the other lesser-knowns, 60s Marxist radicals are lining up behind Obama.
Obama’s young worshippers think they see something altogether new, a unique persona, seemingly magically transported to this moment in history to help them finally be the ones to net the elusive butterfly of socialism’s never-realized promise.
The kids think they see something new. But do they?
Sixties’ radicals see their as yet unfulfilled yearning for socialist utopia in a well-groomed, glittery, establishment-approved package.
The college kids today, flocking to Obama rallies, don’t look much like we did, with our tie-dyed shirts and frayed bellbottoms, our waist-length hair or wild Afros. And they seem to see Obama as the antithesis of 60s’ madness, with a been-there-done-that-want-something-new kind of thirst, a quest for which youth has always been known.
Obama is clean-cut. He talks unity, not subversion. He promises equal outcomes without resorting to violence to get them. He endorses marriage and fidelity for himself, without condeming other lifestyle choices. He speaks in highbrow English, rather than the 60s revolutionary slogans
In a must read essay for The New Yorker Lawrence Wright examines the split developing between Dr. Fadl and Dr Zawahiri two of the founders of Al Jihad, while Fadl lanquishs in an Egyptian prison and Zawahiri continues the murderous rampage of Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fadl has come around to seeing how violent jihad has harmed islam and its standing in the world far more than it has helped through its indiscriminate killing of innocents whether they are infidels or other muslims. Indeed Sunni Al Qaeda and its Shiite equivalents have killed far more muslims than infidels in the Iraq and Afghan wars by bombing markets full of women, children and elderly or sectarian cleansing in order to intimidate them into compliance with their radical ideology. Zawahiri disagrees and says it is OK as long as the main target is the infidel crusaders. It is a fairly long essay but it is a must read to understand the rift taking place in the muslim world, here is the introduction.
Last May, a fax arrived at the London office of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat from a shadowy figure in the radical Islamist movement who went by many names. Born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, he was the former leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Al Jihad, and known to those in the underground mainly as Dr. Fadl. Members of Al Jihad became part of the original core of Al Qaeda; among them was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant. Fadl was one of the first members of Al Qaeda’s top council. Twenty years ago, he wrote two of the most important books in modern Islamist discourse; Al Qaeda used them to indoctrinate recruits and justify killing. Now Fadl was announcing a new book, rejecting Al Qaeda’s violence. “We are prohibited from committing aggression, even if the enemies of Islam do that,” Fadl wrote in his fax, which was sent from Tora Prison, in Egypt.
Fadl’s fax confirmed rumors that imprisoned leaders of Al Jihad were part of a trend in which former terrorists renounced violence. His defection posed a terrible threat to the radical Islamists, because he directly challenged their authority. “There is a form of obedience that is greater than the obedience accorded to any leader, namely, obedience to God and His Messenger,” Fadl wrote, claiming that hundreds of Egyptian jihadists from various factions had endorsed his position.
FINAL INSPECTION
The Marine stood and faced his God, which will always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining, just as brightly as his brass.
Step forward now you Marine, how shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek and to my church been true?
The marine squared his shoulders and said, “No, Lord, I guess I ain’t,
Cause those of us who carry guns can’t always be a saint.
I’ve had to work on Sundays and at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I’ve been violent cause the world is awfully rough.
But I never took a penny that wasn’t mine to keep,
Though I worked a lot of overtime when the bills just got too steep,
And I passed a cry for help though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God, forgive me, I wept unmanly tears.
I know I don’t deserve a place among the people here.
They never wanted me around except to calm their fears.
If you’ve a place for me here, Lord, it needn’t be so grand.
I never asked or had too much. If you don’t, I’ll understand.
There was silence all around the throne, where saints had often trod,
As the Marine waited quietly for the judgment of his God.
Step forward now, you Marine. You’ve borne your burdens well.
Walk peacefully on heaven’s streets. You’ve served your time in hell.
The NASA Phoenix Lander has made a successful landing on Mars in a mission to explore for signs of life and water in one of the polar regions. My uncle worked for NASA's Huntsville, Al. installation for years before, during and after the Apollo program and visiting there with the exclusive guided tours was a big thrill as a kid during that time so I have long followed NASA space news. This is from the article linked above since NASA's site seems to be down at the moment.
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft appeared Sunday to have made a safe, flawless landing on Mars.
In the mission support room during the final, tense minutes before the landing, long stretches of quiet were punctuated by cheers and clapping as confirmation of crucial events like the deployment of the parachute were confirmed.
Then, at 7:53 p.m. Eastern time, Richard Kornfeld, the lead communications officer for entry, descent and landing, announced: "Touchdown signal detected." The mission controllers erupted in cheers and began hugging one another in congratulations.
Because the signal was relayed via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the controllers would have to wait a couple of hours, until Odyssey's next pass over the landing site, for additional word of the Phoenix's condition, including whether it had successfully unfolded its solar panels, and possibly for the first photographs of its landing site in the frigid plains above the arctic circle of Mars.
If all is operating properly, the next few days will be spent checking out the lander's instruments. Then it will begin the first up-close investigation of Mars's northern polar regions. That area became a prime area of interest for planetary scientists after Odyssey discovered in 2002 vast quantities of water ice lying a few inches beneath the surface in Mars's polar regions.
Coming on the heels of calling Sunrise, Florida,"sunshine" several times in one speech he delivers another doozy that shows how weak his knowledge of history is. Will the MSM report it? I doubt it but if it had been McCain or any other Republican the clip would be running nonstop on MSNBC with doctor after doctor speculating about what it might indicate. Speaking to a Cuban group the Obamassiah had this to say about Hugo Chavez another dictator he wants to sit down with to discuss the finer points of communist totalitarianism.
Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region. No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum.
Obama has made so many gaffes of incredible stupidity recently that he is either stupid, ignorant or high as a kite, like his 57 state comment or Kennedy's meeting with Kruschev well before the Cuban missile crisis and constantly forgetting where he is.
So Obambi has been gaffe-ridden for some time. Another beauty occurred on May 8, 2007: In a campaign speech, he said 10,000 people had died in a tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas a few days earlier. The death toll was 12.
In the past few weeks, however, the O-gaffes have been proliferating.
On April 28 in Wilmington, North Carolina, he thought the month was "March" and that it was "nine months to November."
On May 13 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he claimed the war in Iraq was responsible for a shortage of interpreters in Afghanistan: "We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it is harder for us to use them in Afghanistan." Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. Afghans don't, speaking Pushtu, Dari, and various tribal languages.
On May 16 in a press conference, he claimed, "When Kennedy met Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear war." The two met in Vienna in June, 1961. The Cuba Missile Crisis, which Obambi claimed was resolved by the meeting, was in October 1962.
On May 18 in an interview to the Lexington (Ky) Herald-Leader, he said: "I'm not very well known" in Kentucky compared to Hillary because of her husband and "her coming from a nearby state of Arkansas." Illinois - the state he's a senator of - borders Kentucky; Arkansas does not (Tennessee's in between).
The champion O-gaffe was committed on May 9 in Beaverton, Oregon. You have to see it to believe he actually said that during his campaign, "I have now been to 57 states with one left to go," then says that one is "Alaska and Hawaii."
A neuroscientist with years of research into drug abuse and brain chemistry tells To The Point that the behavior exhibited by Obama is consistent with the use of either amphetamines or cocaine.
"His campaign's almost impossibly high level of activity, mental and physical, unrelenting day after day for month upon month is incredibly hard to maintain," he says. "The temptation to maintain it psycho-pharmacologically is great, especially for someone with a history of drug use. The drugs of choice would be amphetamines or cocaine, which can cause amazing mistakes, errors of incredible stupidity."
Mark in his usual brilliant way totally rips Congress for its incredible hypocrisy in his latest column and here he gets right to the heart of the matter but go read the whole thing.
“It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act,” declared the House of Representatives, “to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product… or to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States.”
Er, okay. But, before we start suing distant sheikhs in exotic lands for violating the NOPEC act, why don’t we start by suing Congress? After all, who “limits the production or distribution of oil” right here in the United States by declaring that there’ll be no drilling in the Gulf of Florida or the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge? As Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz herself told Neil Cavuto on Fox News, “We can’t drill our way out of this problem.”
Well, maybe not. But maybe we could drill our way back to three-and-a-quarter per gallon. More to the point, if the House of Representatives has now declared it “illegal” for the government of Saudi Arabia to restrict oil production, why is it still legal for the Government of the United States to restrict oil production? In fact, the government of the United States restricts pretty much every form of energy production other than the bizarre fetish du jour of federally mandated ethanol production.
Via Newsbusters and Fox is this touching story of a soldier's homecoming surprise.
Have a tissue handy.
I tried to embed the video but it messed up the site so follow the link to see it.
Via Hotair, wow the Democrat from the socialist republic of California has her plan to lower fuel costs.
Link: sevenload.com
Thanks to Democrat Congressman Janjorski Jeff Emmanuel is able to blow a major hole in their facade about ending the war in Iraq. The money quote from Kanjorski:
"I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we...the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn't say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up."
The truth in Mr. Kanjorski's statement is both evident and obvious, and has been )to any who have been paying attention) since the Democrat out-of-Iraq-now campaigns began in early 2006. It has become more obvious with every bill the Democrat-led Congress passed that, rather than ending the war, simply gave the President nearly every single thing he asked for, without putting up any real fight (as opposed to the semifrequent, yet brief, preening-for-the-cameras moments of solely rhetorical dissent).
The impression the Democratic Congress gave during those minor-at-best wars over the continuation of the War was that it was simply incompetent. Reps. Pelosi, Hoyer, et al wanted to end the war as soon as possible -- at least, that's what they kept saying. Unfortunately for those who largely elected them on that basis, the best and brightest Democrats in elective office were simply unable to figure out any way to outsmart and outmaneuver the buffoon in the White House on the issues of wartime budget and policy, instead (inadvertently, I'm sure) ending every fight on the wrong side from their point of view, having yet again given the President every single thing he was asking for.
Via Dangerroom is a mini-documentary about the satelite shoot down a few months ago. I would say the Navy has the right to do a little chest thumping for the effort's success.
The solution is actually quite simple, drill and pump more of it to increase supply but no Congress won't allow us to process our domestic oil. Their absolutely insane solution, sue OPEC which will only piss them off and cause prices to go higher. The same idiots voted to block the development of the massive oil shale deposits in the Green River formation in Colorado and Utah, won't allow us to drill of the coasts or in Alaska and won't allow us to build more refineries.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.
The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.
"This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities," said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.
The lawmaker said Americans "are at the mercy" of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.
The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards "would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners."
Via Gateway Pundit, coming on the heels of the major successes in Basra and Sadre City by the Iraqi security forces President Jalal Talabani has announced that all provinces should be under Iraqi control by the end of the year. From what I have gathered thousands of insurgent rebels from both JAM and Al Qaida have been eliminated in just the last few months and the people are grateful to be able to live in peace finally.
From Aswat Aliraq News:
The Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Tuesday expected Iraqi forces would take control of security by the end of this year.
Speaking in press briefing at Suleimaniya airport before flying to Baghdad, Talabani said “Iraqi forces have been progressing and enhancing their combat capabilities to take control of security of all Iraqi territories.”
“Next year will witness a remarkable improvement in security across the country,” he added.
When asked about the proposed cabinet of Kurdistan’s regional government, he said “we must have patience,” noting “it would be formed soon.”
President Talabani held talks with Kurdistan’s regional President Massoud Barazani on the new cabinet for the Kurdish region.
Congressman John Campbell reports and it ain't pretty.
Raises taxes by at least $683 billion over the next 5 years. These include increases in marginal tax rates; elimination of the 10-percent bracket for lower-income taxpayers; restore the marriage penalty, the death tax, as well as install higher tax rates on investments.
Authorizes More Than $1 Trillion over and above entitlements. The conference report increases so called “discretionary spending” by $21 above the President’s request, pushing it above $1 trillion for 2009. This translates to a spending increase of $241 billion when extended over 5 years.
Entitlements Continue on Automatic Pilot. This budget does nothing to address the growing entitlement problem. Medicare and Social Security alone currently face $40 billion in unfunded liabilities, and that figure is growing unchecked every year.
Record Debt Increase. Although Democrats claim to balance the budget by 2012, the conference report results in the largest debt increase in history – from $8.951 trillion in 2007 to $9.575 trillion in 2008 – and increase of $624 billion this year.
No Earmark Reform. Having repeatedly decried the scandal of earmarks, the Majority does nothing in the budget to address them. Last year’s appropriations bills included some 11,000 earmarks totaling $14.8 billion – and under this budget, the trend will continue.
With about 85% counted in Kentucky it's Hillary by 35% with an almost 200,000 vote lead. I guess they didn't appreciate Barack writing them off as one of those states in the middle of the country that didn't know him despite the fact his state borders theirs and Arkansas doesn't.
Can Hillary keep it close in Oregon? It's possible but at this point I would rather run against Barack than Hillary and just want to see CHAOS at their convention in Denver. The two camps are building tremendous animosity between them and it is sweet to behold, the Democrat's long lived identity grievance victim politics at its best, err worst.
Update: As I was typing Hillary increased her lead to over 200,000.
Update: This is a real trouncing in Kentucky as I looked through county by county votes Barack was unable to break out of the single digits percentage wise in many precincts. Obama is going to have real problems in a rural America that sees him as a big city elite liberal snob.
Update: Obama is leading in Oregon by 16% and about 60,000 votes with the bulk of that number coming from Portland and Eugene, like I said, big city liberal. Hillary is winning alot of the more rural counties but they don't have the population numbers. I loved Oregon when I went there because it is largely wilderness.
Update: It looks like Hillary will win the popular vote tonight by about 150,000 as the turnout in Oregon is well below expectations though Obama will win the state. This is going to the convention in August, break out the peanuts and beer, grin.
So Obama had this massive rally in Portland, Oregon over the weekend that the swooning MSM reported as having nearly 75,000 people in attendance which is impressive if all those people showed up to see Barack. What the MSM didn't tell us is that a very popular Portland based indy-rock band The Decemberists gave a free hour long concert to open the event so how many of those people just showed up for the concert I have to wonder. The rather ironic thing is the band is named after the Bolshevic decemberist revolution and they open their concerts with the Soviet national anthem very fitting for the socialist Obama.
Hugh Hewitt has had a couple callers into his show that went to the concert unaware that Obama was going to be there or that it was a rally for him, the funny part is that they were Obama fans before the event and left with changed minds and no longer support him.
It seems the more Obama talks and demonstrates how little he knows the less people like him. He cannot run on the empty rhetoric of hope and change without telling thinking people what that change they hope for is.
This is sad news and my prayers go out to him and his family as the prognosis is very bad. From the AP story:
Malignant gliomas are a type of brain cancer diagnosed in about 9,000 Americans a year — and the most common type among adults. It's an initial diagnosis: How well patients fare depends on what specific tumor type is determined by further testing.
Average survival can range from less than a year for very advanced and aggressive types — such as glioblastomas — or to about five years for different types that are slower growing.
He is out to make John Kerry look solid and consistent by comparison especially in regards to Iran. Yesterday was Iran is not a threat, today Iran is a grave threat.
The Obama's went on Good Morning America today for a typical cheese and whine fest about the rapid right wing attack machine and Barack in all his chivalrous hopeness declared criticism of his wife as out of bounds. Sorry Barack but when you send her out as a surrogate of the campaign to make stump speeches for you her words from the stump are very much in bounds and open for scrutiny. Geeze every time the Obamas receive critical scrutiny they whine that its not relevant to the issues or its an unfair attack, get over it or don't send your wife out as a surrogate. He constantly whines about remarks being taken out of context and twisted but then he turns right around and does the same thing to John McCain's remarks, hypocrite. If Obama's skin is so thin you can see through it how in the heck will he be able to handle all the vaunted diplomacy he touts?
The man is clueless about foreign policy, economics, the military, history, geography or how America thinks and works, I guess that is to be expected after spending years in the echo box with radical leftists that see America as the cause to all the world's ills and not the greatest force for good in history. He loves to rail against the war in Iraq but does he think the Iraqi people don't deserve a chance to be free of a ruthless dictator and the brutality of radical islamo-fascists? The more I listen to he and his wife speak the less respect I have for them, they lie, complain and paint a very gloomy portrait of an America that has given them so much without the faintest clue about reality. I swear I am so sick of these elitist snobs that think they know what's best for the rest of us I could puke.
One of the favorite memes of the the anti=war liberals like Obama is that we are spending billions of dollars in the Iraq war that we could be using to fund all their groovy socialist programs instead. What they don't tell you is that the vast majority of those funds goes to pay the soldiers and to purchase the necessary equipment needed. The last time I checked that means that money is going right back into the US economy and helps create and maintain manufacturing jobs here. A large portion of the money that does go to Iraq is used to purchase military equipment and other goods and services from American suppliers. Even if we did bring all those soldiers home from Iraq we would still be paying them a salary and purchasing equipment so there would not be any great amount of money being saved to spend on all those nifty programs that Obama has proposed so it is a false meme.
Lots and lots of meat on those bones in Obama's closet and his ties to Tony Rezko the now infamous Chicago fixer. I stumbled on this link to an Evelyn Pringle, an investigative journalist for opednews, in the comments at ABC's Political Radar's blog post about more Obama whining. She has done extensive research into Rezko and the depth of the corruption that is Illinois politics that extends even to the Middle-East. It will take hours to get through all the pieces of the puzzle that she has assembled in eight multi page expose`s that look into all the connections Obama has to the Combine. I can't tell if she is a Clinton supporter or not but she appears to be and the only reason I can see why Hillary has not used this is much of it is very new and would only invite inquiries into the Clintons' own deep seated corruption. She seems to think Obama will be indicted in this ever widening scandle before November and that Rezko was just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway, dig in there is tons of tasty red meat here.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Curtain Time for Barack Obama - Part V
(1 comments) If the Combine's plot to get rid of Patrick Fitzgerald and shut down Board Games had worked, Rezko would have landed an office right smack in the middle of the White House.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Curtain Time for Barack Obama - Part IV
(18 comments) The solution to the problems arising from the unsuccessful attempts to shut down Operation Board Games would be for Barack Obama to become president and issue a bipartisan pardon to all members of the "Combine" who funded his seat in the US Senate. The scam worked when Scooter Libby took the fall for the Bush administration.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Curtain Time for Barack Obama - Part III
(11 comments) Three days after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Aiham Alsammarae, the former electricity minister convicted of corruption in Iraq, put up $2.7 million in property to help raise $8.5 million to free Tony Rezko from jail in Chicago, the Times reported that Alsammarae had contributed six times to Obama's presidential campaign.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Curtain Time for Barack Obama - Part II
(13 comments) If the Combine's plot with the Bush administration to shut down Operation Board Games had worked, Obama would be home free. But it failed and the Republicans are just waiting to air the roadmap of dirt pieced together from Fitzgerald's investigation if Obama is nominated. McCain is in the clear because there is no sign of his involvement anywhere.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Curtain Time For Barack Obama - Part I
(32 comments) Republicans have enough damaging information against Barack Obama to knock him off the ballot before the November election. Those at the top of the Democratic Party know this by now and voters need to recognize that if they nominate him they are throwing the election. Nothing else can explain why they would allow this disaster to happen.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Barack Obama - Subplots of Operation Board Games - Part I
(9 comments) If Obama becomes the nominee, the Republicans will unleash a non-stop expose of Obama in the mainstream media that will make the swift boat attacks against John Kerry seem trivial. Only this time, they won't have to make lies because the truth will be on their side
He gets off some pretty good lines with his advice to the Democrats.
I like his ability and ease with self-deprecating humor.
Now I am pissed, the ethanol bull crap, failure to drill for domestic oil and refine it and lack of nuclear power is now driving up beer prices not to mention the moonbats in charge here in Sacramento want to tack on 30 cents a can in taxes. We had a "Tea Party" to found America, time to have a "Beer Party" to save it and not the frat boy kind. If the government doesn't want a serious revolt by beer lovers everywhere they need to change some policies advocated by the Democrats. Yeah I can put it in terms us good ole boy rednecks can understand, more corn going for fuel means less to make whiskey and feed the cows, chickens and pigs we eat thus higher prices and less acreage for barley driving up the cost of beer and thanks to the polar bear and the idiots in the NFWS the greeny nuts will now try to take away our BBQ grills. Time to wake up folks ! Don't blame me when you are waiting in lines to get a ration of gas and bread and beer is a benefit for the bureaucrats, I have warned you all along.
Via Gateway Pundit, the UN Human Rights Commission chaired by Libya and Cuba is going to research racism, xenophobia and intolerance in America. I guess we are not suffiently socialist for them and don't have a benevolent dictator like Castro or Ghadafi ruling us. Al-Reuters has the story.
A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.
"The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," a U.N. statement said on Friday.
His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation, will cover eight cities -- Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Race has become a central issue in the U.S. election cycle because Sen. Barack Obama, the frontrunner in the battle for the Democratic nomination battle, stands to become the country's first African American president.
His campaign has increased turnout among black voters but has also turned off some white voters in a country with a history of slavery and racial segregation.
Diene, a Senegalese lawyer who has served in the independent post since 2002, will report his findings to the U.N. Human Rights Council next year.
If you are interested in what is happening in Lebanon the best place to look is Michael Totten's blog and Rick Moran's for coverage of the conflict and Obama's incredibly boneheaded statements on it. It looks like the Iranian and Syrian backed thugs of Hezballah painted themselves into a corner and are now looking for a way out. When Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon they lost the raison d'etre , their reason to be and are now seen by the majority of the Lebanese people for exactly what they are, proxies for Iran and its puppet Syria and a threat to Lebanon's sovereignty. Lebanon has one of the most diverse populations in the Middle-East and they have no desire to be ruled by a Tehran style Mullacracy or by the kleptocratic thugs in Damascus that Obama wants to sit down with for tea and crumpets. Mark Steyn says with it best with his usual style.
It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they’re talking about me. Actually, he wasn’t — or, to be more precise, he wasn’t talking only about you. Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too — President Bush’s pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair’s former cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada’s New Democratic party, and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It’s not a Democrat-election policy, it’s an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can’t be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here] concept is an original idea.
Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It’s one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that’s what civilized nations like doing — chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It’s easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything. And, as the Iranians understand, talks provide a splendid cover for getting on with anything you want to do. If, say, you want to get on with your nuclear program relatively undisturbed, the easiest way to do it is to enter years of endless talks with the Europeans over said nuclear program. That’s why that Hamas honcho endorsed Obama: They know he’s their best shot at getting a European foreign minister installed as president of the United States.
Via Hotair, blasting Obama on the Second Ammendment, he can run, spin and dribble but he can't shoot straight.
Barack Obama seems to think so in this interview with David Brooks.
The U.S. needs a foreign policy that "looks at the root causes of problems and dangers." Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that "they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims." He knows these movements aren't going away anytime soon ("Those missiles aren't going to dissolve"), but "if they decide to shift, we're going to recognize that. That's an evolution that should be recognized."
Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe." (Obama has also reportedly spoken at fundraisers for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms refugee camps.)
The co-founder of the Arab group, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who reportedly worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was labeled a terror group by the State Department.
Khalidi held a fundraiser in 2000 for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, at which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
(That is the Obama mailer in Kentucky)
Remember all that outrage from the moonbats about that Mike Huckabee Christmas ad with the bookshelf in the background that resembled a cross, well where is the outrage over all the Obamesiah imagery being shoved down our throats? Well I hate to inform the moonbats that Obama is not the saviour of anything but the socialists' hope for change to Marxism and faith in big government which is what the moonbats want.
Cap'n Ed posted this amusing parody.
Here is that Huckabee ad for reference
Via Hotair, is this an attack on Michelle Obama? The whiners in the Obama camp are sure busy playing victim again over it.
Are you proud of America?
Meanwhile President Bush made a wonderful speech to the Israeli Knesset today and the moonbats are going nuts over this statement.
Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is–the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
They overturned a voter approved intiative that defined marriage as being between one man and one woman to allow gay marriage. We voted a few years back to uphold the traditional definition of marriage with 61% of the vote and more than a 1 mil vote margin but the Courts decided we were wrong and that it's against our State constitution but this was foreseen by traditional marriage proponents and we will get the chance to amend the constitution this November. This will help Republicans across the state as it will help draw conservatives to the polls and possibly help John McCain return the Golden State to the red column since Obama wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and appoint very liberal justices to the courts.
Another reason for conservatives to support McCain, the National Abortion Rights Action League has endorsed Obama while McCain has a 100% pro-life voting record. McCain is a social conservative he just doesn't talk about or make a big deal about it. I guess unborn babies have no hope for change under Obama who voted against a born alive bill as a state senator that would have protected babies born alive after a failed abortion.
I mentioned this the other day and now it has come to pass, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the polar bear as a threatened species based on the flawed science of anthropogenic global warming and what MIGHT happen IF the polar ice were to melt. Hugh Hewitt and Icecap are the only folks that have talked about this and Hugh is uniquely qualified to discuss its ramifications as an environmental attorney when he's not on the radio or teaching Constitutional law. The green nuts will now use this listing to challenge any activity that produces greenhouse gasses under the Endangered Species Act and thus cripple the energy and development sectors of the economy thus the rest of it, forget drilling for domestic oil in Alaska or elsewhere, building coal fired electricity plants or building new manufacturing plants. This will cost the economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs as they go to India and China.
Granted that being listed as threatened is different than being listed as endangered but that will not stop the environuts from filing lawsuit after lawsuit to stop any activity they deem to threaten a species that is not threatened at all. Just like they used the spotted owl to severely curtail the timber industry in the North-West and kill many communities in California, Oregon and Washington. I used to be a member of the Sierra Club so I know how they work and think and that is exactly what they will do but this will effect everyone in the US and not do a damn thing to affect the climate that has been changing since God created it. Well the polar bear has been around for a very long time and survived when the climate was much warmer than it is today long before the industrial age or SUVs even predating modern man. Oh well they have long advocated we live in caves eating nuts and reducing the world population and that is exactly what their moonbat policies will do.
Update: I had a fun discussion at Michelle's on this topic mainly about eating bear and the right ale to serve with it.
They seem to think Obama will be able to bring peace but if they want peace all they have to do is accept Israel's right to exist, stop launching rockets indiscriminately into Israeli towns and reject the terrorism of Hamas, etal. Despite what their agitprop and many in the western press say it is not Israel's fault the Gazans are suffering, it is their very own leadership's fault and the hatred spewed in the mosques and on their TVs daily. Israel wants peace, the palestinians don't. If they can't run Gaza how could they run their own country?
HT: Mary Katherine Ham and Amanda Carpenter.
After years of cavorting with palestinian activists on Chicago's south side like Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah, getting the endorsement of Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Yousef, and having as a Middle East advisor, Robert Malley, a known anti semite that has met with Hamas on numerous occasions, he is now trying to say he is a big supporter of Israel. Not to mention that his pastor has printed Hamas propaganda in the church bulletin or Nahdmi Auchi a Saddam Hussien sycophant. In a recent interview with Jeff Goldberg for "The Atlantic" Obama claims his friendship with a couple Jews hurt his early standing with his church and that because of those associations he is vindicated in his support for Israel but then shouldn't his other associates also be open for examination as he dismisses, Ayers, Dohrn, Rezko and the above mentioned?
The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.
THROUGHOUT THE CAMPAIGN, Obama and his staffers have dismissed any scrutiny of his views on Israel with a blend of outrage and sarcasm, as if his record of support for Israel is so extensive, so undeniable, that anybody who raises doubts about his actual views is launching an inquisition.
But as is the case with most issues, Obama is such a blank slate, and has such a thin public record, that voters are forced to parse his statements, sift through his past, and examine those he chooses to associate with to get a better sense of his underlying philosophy.
Obama has touted his foreign policy approach as a break from "conventional Washington thinking." As part of this approach, Obama has boasted of his willingness to engage in direct talks with our enemies, including Iran, without preconditions.
Iran has consistently been deemed the leading state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department, has vowed to annihilate Israel within the context of seeking nuclear weapons, and has helped finance Hamas. Why should it be beyond the pale to question the earnestness of Obama's vow not to negotiate with Hamas, when he has promised, as part of his sweeping program for change, to negotiate with its patron, which shares the same ultimate goal?
It's no secret that within elite liberal foreign policy circles, one of the primary laments is that the United States hinders peace in the Middle East by being too reflexively pro-Israel.
(1) a condescending assumption that the so-called hawkish position on the Arab-Israeli dispute is "blind" and adopted by US politicians only because they seek political safety - there's no acknowledgement that the dovish position was ever tried or that it in fact produced a terrible war in 2000-2003;
(2) the attitude, common on the Democratic left, that real friendship to Israel consists in compelling Israeli governments to do things that most Israelis regard as dangerous;
(3) acceptance of the red herring that it is "settlements" that are the source of the Arab-Israeli dispute;
(4) enormous and unexplained confidence that he can solve a problem through his personal intervention.
*
I do not believe that Obama is in any sense hostile to Israel. I am certain that he would be honestly disgusted by anti-semitism in any form. But do I believe that he would be cavalier with Israel's security? That his belief that anything can be negotiated and that dialogue is always the answer exposes America's allies to risks? That his understanding of the origins and causes of the Arab-Israeli dispute is dangerously wrong? That he will "engage" Hamas and Hezbollah for exactly the same reasons that he will seek to "engage" Iran and Syria? Yes I do. He may consider himself Israel's friend. But he will be a dangerous friend - made all the more dangerous by the reluctance of many in the pro-Israel community to ask searching questions of this supremely evasive politician.
Just what did the Obamas know about their church and its pastor Jeremiah Wright and when? Stanley Kurtz got a years worth of back issues of Wright's magazine "The Trumpet" and took a close look and concludes that either Barack is either blind, deaf and stupid or he knew it all from the beginning. This issue is not going to go away no matter how much BO wishes it would because he heard twenty plus years of Wright decrying that America is a country built on and sustained by racism and white supremacy yet his beloved Africa still has pockets of slavery and real genocide that have nothing to do with America. Does he not know that it was Arab muslims that ran the slave trade and still practice it today? Go read the whole piece but here is a snip.
I obtained the 2006 run of Trumpet, from the first nationally distributed issue in March to the November/December double issue. To read it is to come away impressed by Wright's thoroughgoing political radicalism. There are plenty of arresting sound bites, of course, but the larger context is more illuminating--and more disturbing--than any single shock-quotation. Trumpet provides a rounded picture of Wright's views, and what it shows unmistakably is that the now-infamous YouTube snippets from Wright's sermons are authentic reflections of his core political and theological beliefs. It leaves no doubt that his religion is political, his attitude toward America is bitterly hostile, and he has fundamental problems with capitalism, white people, and "assimilationist" blacks. Even some of Wright's famed "good works," and his moving "Audacity to Hope" sermon, are placed in a disturbing new light by a reading of Trumpet.
The article, for all of its flaws, reveals Obama as someone who purposefully sought to associate himself with with Leftists and radicals. The paper allows Obama to obscure the depth of those relationships, while suggesting that Obama has been willing to ditch his Leftist allies as he relentlessly climbs the political ladder. Whether Obama would leave his Leftist buddies in the lurch if he became President cannot be known. But the NYT profile gives little reason for anyone to believe he would be a great unifier or reformer in that office.
First daughter Jenna Bush was married today at the Bush ranch in Crawford Texas and I am glad they did not allow the media to make a spectacle of their special day. I wish the young couple all the best and good on them for giving the hostile MSM the cold shoulder.
Nancy Pelosi is caught in McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform trap for appearing in climate change ad less than 90 days before primary. Hmm, did Newt know this when he participated in the ad with her? He isn't running foe office so it won't affect him in any way. This could also force Al Gore to reveal his donors, HAH.
HT: AoSHQ
The spot, which shows Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Gingrich seated on a couch in front of the Capitol, is being questioned because the California Democrat faces a primary election June 3 in her San Francisco district.
“It’s prohibited,” a Republican campaign finance lawyer, Jan Baran, said. He said the ad constitutes a “coordinated” expenditure on behalf of Ms. Pelosi’s campaign by the group sponsoring the ad, the Alliance for Climate Protection. Any ad of that sort distributed in a candidate’s district within 90 days of a congressional primary or general election is deemed a campaign donation, Mr. Baran said.
“She’s in the ad. That means it’s coordinated,” a Republican attorney who battles to overturn campaign finance laws, James Bopp Jr., said. “I’m a guy that specializes in loopholes. I don’t know of any loopholes.”
There is an effort underway by warm-monger greenies to have the USFWS list the polar bear as an endangered species as a result of anthropogenic global warming that doesn't exist when in fact the bear population has been growing and is seen as very healthy since hunting was largely stopped. This is nothing but a back door route to have any activity that produces that dreaded plant food, carbon dioxide, and other "green house" gasses run through the Endangered Species Act and all the government restrictions and regulations that will come with it. This will cause a major problem in the creation of just about anything that needs energy. The polar bear is not endangered and neither is the polar ice they claim the bears need to survive as despite the continued rise of atmospheric co2 the planet has warmed zero in the last decade but has in fact cooled off a little.
Icecap as always has lots of good information and this report is also a very interesting read and details how political "solutions" to a problem that is scam and a myth don't work, like cap and trade or carbon taxing, but actually do devastating harm to the poor and developing nations as we are witnessing with the folly of ethanol.
Icecap Note: The environmentalists are worried with recent news of cooling, talk of future cooling due to the multidecadal ocean cycles and the sun, an arctic ice that has bounced back to highest level in 4 years and off western Greenland in 15 years. This push is not at all motivated by concern for the polar bears but as a maneuver to block any drilling for oil off Alaska and to facilitate state and federal government legislation action against the power industry and other sources carbon dioxide, now incorrectly listed as a pollutant. Technically this would even allow the government to tax you for using your lawnmower. Hopefully the Interior Department decision makers will see past the seriously flawed papers presented in support of the danger and heed the real experts and the real peer reviewed papers on this issue and have the courage to make the right decision
Unbelievable but real, Obama wrote s2433 the Global Poverty Act that would turn over a certain percentage of our GDP to the useless UN kleptocrats to supposedly help fight global poverty in a serious redistribution of wealth from first world nations. Via the Jawa Report and Four Winds is this little item the MSM will never tell us.
Obama's bill S2433 would require the U.S. to initially direct .7 percent of our GNP into the United Nations coffers for distribution as they see fit, for "food" to third world nations. Under earlier agreements this would evolve into a national tax on the U.S. with the UN attempting to levy this on all first world nations.
The U.N. would have the power to increase this rate of taxation.
The U.S. would be required to surrender some of its sovereignty over foreign aid by putting it under UN control. The bill would force the U.S. to sign onto the U.N.'s Millennium Declaration, which would commit us not only to "banning small arms and light weapons" but also to adhere to the International Criminal Court Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol.
