All posts by Ross

DNC May Blank Florida For ‘08 Convention

Howard Dean and the DNC would consider denying Florida slots at their ’08 presidential national convention. Its tantamount to not having a vote because that would be the result. Funny what happens to the democratic process when political pressure comes from the bottom up. Howard Dean likes it the other way around. Our Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) is all but threatening to sue.

This is all interesting to witness. I don’t recall ever seeing something like this happen before and am not sure exactly what the problem is, from a Joe citizen’s point of view. And of course, Republicans will be accused of creating the whole debacle “To sow discord and frustration among Florida Democrats and dampen Democratic turnout for a property tax ballot initiative that could drastically affect funding for education and public safety.” That according to The Campaign Manager blog. But if it isn’t the way Dean wants it then it probably isn’t the way that his donors and other special interest groups (the net-roots, or nut-roots) want. Of that you can be sure.

update: The DNC tonight did it. Florida will lose all its delegates unless they push back their primary date by at least one week.

Bu Bye Manuel

Losing his case to block extradition to France, Panamanian dictator and drug dealer Manuel Noriega could be going to France to face charges of money laundering millions of dollars of drug money during his bad boy days.

Noriega, 72, is to be released from a U.S. prison Sept. 9 after serving 15 years for drug trafficking and racketeering. He faces up to 10 more years in prison in France.


Frank Rubino, Noriega’s attorney, claims he has immunity because he is a prisoner of war, which he isn’t, and should be returned to Panama. It is not expected that an appeal would yield a different decision. He has one appeal left before he starts a French diet.

Fossil Fuels Out-Green Biofuels

You gotta love this. If they would ever see it, it would just drive the environmental wackos (you know who you are) nuts. Did you know that it is greener to burn our fossil fuels than to produce and burn biofuels? I think this would be a hard sell to Robert Kennedy Jr. but if it’s the environment that we’re trying to impact less, then we need to get serious about actually getting more of our own oil and gas so we can be less dependent on foreign suppliers. All in one fell swoop we could increase our national security, lower the price of gasoline at the pump, and help the environment. It’s a win win win.

Increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release between two and nine times more carbon gases over the next 30 years than fossil fuels, according to the first comprehensive analysis of emissions from biofuels.

Biofuels look good in climate change terms from a Western perspective, said Dr Spracklen, but globally they actually lead to higher carbon emissions.

The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilizers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game.”

NewsBusters: New Study Recommends Against Burning Biofuels to Solve Global Warming

Will be interesting to see what play, if any, this gets in your mainstream media. And I wouldn’t hold my breath for Kennedy to get on board either. Not with BIG OIL.

h/t Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog

And Then There’s Pakistan

In a geopolitical sense, I don’t think there has been a more sensitive time with so much at stake. Like in Pakistan for example. A nuclear (bomb) power. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is not popular and both the good guys and the bad guys want him gone, one way or the other, depending on the critic.

Flogging Of The Day

You get 80 lashes with a cane stick if you are caught abusing alcohol and having sex.  If this were the United States, well, the line forms here.  But this is Iran.  And from the pictures of the crowd present, how much of it is fascination and how much of it is for religious consumption?  The laws demanding this punishment were issued by a “religious” court.  Would that be the so-called religion of peace, Islam?

Moose Adds To Global Warming

Imagine that. You have to admire the talent and scientific acumen required to determine that aNow poor moose are being blamed for global warming. moose burp affects the earth’s climate. What a genius. He must be related to the guy who figured that if we all change our clocks we’ll have an effect on the global climate. Frankly, it’s intimidating knowing that there are such smart people walking the streets. Here it is under Global Warming Fears, Norway’s Moose Population in Trouble for Belching.

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year — equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey. Now poor moose are being blamed for global warming.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.

Spiegel Online link

Filed under MRIOTD, most ridiculous item of the day.

Stupidest Question Ever

Especially for a man who wants to be President and change the health care system in the country. At a Democrat debate over the weekend, John Edwards took a question whether he liked the Cuban model of health care. His response . . .

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports, “When an Iowa resident asked former Senator John Edwards whether the US should follow the Cuban health care model, Edwards deflected the question, saying he didn’t know enough to answer it.” The Breck Girl said, “Well, I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know a lot about Cuba’s health care system. Is it a government-run system?”

Is the Cuban governments health care system run by the government? Fidel Castro’s Cuba? Forget about how to spell potato(e). Wonder what his wife will say in defense of such a stupid statement?

Desperate Socialists

And socialism marches on, speaking about the dictator in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez. Affectionately called here the hemisphere’s idiot. Now he is clearing way to be president for life, ending term limits for himself by changing the constitution he made in 1999. The changes . . .

would strip the Central Bank of all autonomy, allowing the government to spend the country’s foreign reserves. The government would be given power to expropriate private property by decree, and to promote co-operatives and state enterprise.

State governors and mayors will still be subject to term limits—otherwise they might become caudillos, Mr Chávez said recently, without irony. They will be sidelined by new communal councils, dependent on the presidency. Another proposal is to reduce the maximum working day to six hours. “Now we are headed straight towards socialism,” Mr Chávez said. But first the plans must be approved by referendum.

Chavez has come a long way since the corrupted election that put him in office. Jimmy Carter will tell you how corrupt it was, even though he didn’t have the courage to tell the Venezuelan people and the U.N. the truth about it at the time he was ‘overseeing’ it. He took it upon himself to deceive the entire country. But that’s another story. So, one would expect this referendum to pass with a 99 % majority.

Here’s Chavez record on freedom. In his own words. . .

“We have broken the chains of the old, exploitative capitalist system,” said Mr Chavez. “The state now has the obligation to build the model of a socialist economy.”

He has nationalized the oil and energy industries, same with the communications industry including the press and on-air broadcast, put price controls in place on everything from food to fuel. No such thing as private property any more. The result is predictable, no food on the shelves, high (for them) fuel prices. A suppressed media that supports only the Chavez administration keeps the people ignorant and riled up.

Of course there’s no domestic media that considers this newsworthy. It’s the Desperate Socialists club of Chavez, Castro and Putin.

Law & Order 1, Anarchy 0

Somehow, and after a full year of being holed up in a sanctuary church in Chicago, illegal alien Elvira Arellano was finally arrested and deported to Mexico again, the place she calls ‘her country.’ Curious distinction since we are told how illegals want to assimilate and be American. Her actions and words prove otherwise. This woman was merely using America, not living it.

So she gets deported to Tijuana, which means she’s probably back in Los Angeles by now.  With all the bleeding heart talk about how deporting illegals separates families, that’s not an immigration problem.  That’s an unfit parents’ problem.  She should have taken her son with her and kept her own family together.  She chose not to do that.   As do all the other illegals that put their families presence at risk by being illegal from the start.  The only anchor in your ‘anchor baby’ is in your mind.  A loving mother doesn’t abandon her kid to use as a political tool.  You take your American citizen child with you.  Instead she left him with the preacher at the church where she was holed up for the last year.  He is now the legal guardian of her son.

I love legal aliens.  Its the illegal ones and their depraved notion of right and wrong and entitlement that has no place in an American society.  The illegals need to fight their fight where the problem is.  Mexico.

Debbie Schlussel link