From Boston.com…:

On August 17th, near Sayanogorsk in south central Russia, a catastrophic accident took place in the turbine and transformer rooms of the hydroelectric plant of the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam. The exact cause is still under investigation, but what is known so far is that a tremendous amount of water from the Yenisei River flooded the turbine room, causing at least one transformer explosion and extensive damage to all ten turbines, destroying at least three of them. 74 workers are known to have lost their lives in the accident, while one remains missing. Additionally, 40 tons of transformer oil were spilled into the river, killing an estimated 400 tons of trout in two fisheries. Investigators plan to release findings in two months, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for a nationwide infrastructure inspection. (32 Photos Total)

More pics below the fold:

I picked just three photos from the 32 at the site.

Go have a look at the rest.

To give you some sense of the size of the dam, here is a full shot with the damaged portion circled.

Having posted this idea four years ago myself, I have to admit it’s a bit wacky. On the other hand, Hurricane Katrina devastated a substantial chunk of my country, so anything that MIGHT be able to slow these monsters down ought to at least be talked about.

The Gates scheme is lumbering and passive. My Hurricane Stopper is agile and active, giving it a better chance of being practical. My idea was to have wind-turbine powered jet-boats suck their propellant water from the cold depths and spread it around in the hurricane’s path. Think of barge-like wind-farms, big enough to ride out hurricane seas.

Downsides: Might not be possible to build a wind-farm barge capable of riding out hurricane winds and seas; would kill a lot of birds and fish; possible ill effects from changing the temperature gradient in the Gulf, if used on massive scale.

Gate’s scheme is similar to mine in that it also uses the hurricane’s own energy, but it does so passively. He would dot the Gulf with giant tubs, ballast-regulated to ride so that hurricane seas would lap over the edges of the tubs, raising the water level in the tub above the surrounding sea level. Gravity would then drive the water in the tub down through a drain in the bottom that extends down to the cold depths:

At whatever rate the waves lap over the top, the same amount of water should flow out the bottom. But is it really possible to in this way get the warm top-water off of the cold water below?

The patent claim is that when the top-water gets pushed down to the cold depths, it pushes the cold water up, but will it? How can cold rise through warm? It seems more likely that the warm water exiting the drain will float back up, but not all the way because it has been cooled by its exposure to deep water, with the warm top-water continuing to sit as a lid on the cold water below.

The only way any cold water would make it to the surface is by roiling of the waters from below, but this roiling would be originating 155 feet down, and only by passive means. If it brings any cold water to the surface, it won’t be much.

Neither will these giant tubs be very mobile, meaning the Gulf would have to be pre-saturated with these lap-tubs. FAIL.

In sum, Gates claim to the general idea of stopping hurricanes by bringing cold water to the surface is pre-empted by my four year old scheme, and his “best embodiment” of this general idea is far inferior to my embodiment, leaving him with nothing. Sorry Bill. You should have been reading my blog. I’d have been glad to work with you on a patent claim before the one year post-publication deadline for filing.

Let that be a lesson to everyone. Read my blog!

Another freebie: mitigate global cooling with sooty coal

With the earth cooling rapidly (by historical standards) for 10 years now, and with our quiescent sun guaranteeing a significantly extended cooling phase going forward, we need to start figuring out how to mitigate the growing cold, because unlike global warming, global cooling is actually dangerous. Cold really does feed on itself in a way that can get away from us, and it directly constricts the space available for living things, both seasonally and absolutely. Nothing gobbles up the biosphere like glaciation.

It is the feedback mechanism that creates the danger. Spreading snow and ice increase the earth’s “albedo,” or reflectivity, bouncing sunlight away and cooling the earth, creating yet more snow and ice. Of course this feedback cycle also works in the warming direction, but with a big difference. In the warming direction, the albedo feedback effect gets smaller and smaller as warming progresses. Once snow and ice have shrunk back to arctic regions, they are that point only reflecting away a small amount of sunlight, so further melting cannot shrink the albedo much further.

In the cooling direction, the albedo feedback effect gets larger and larger as cooling progresses. When snow and ice come down to lower latitudes, they cover progressively larger swaths of land and they reflect away sunlight that is progressively more direct. This is why the earth regularly experiences runaway cooling, and spends most of its time in 100,000 year long glacial periods, but has never experienced run-away warming. Warming feedbacks diminish as they progress. Cooling feedbacks build.

The last two years are illustrative, as near record snow- cover in Asia and North America have spawned our present cool summer. We are seeing right now just how fast cooling feedbacks can ramp up, but there may be something we can do about it.

We just need to darken the snow. Where oh where can we get our hands on a massive steady supply of black sooty stuff that we can pump out onto the snow all winter long across the great white north?

Just build, build, build coal burning electric plants across North America, Scandinavia and Asia, and leave the scrubbers off the smokestacks. As a handy by-product, the resulting cheap energy will bring our “green”-around-the-gills economy rocketing back from its current death spiral.

If we would de-regulate energy development (real energy development, not the phony “green” garbage), our economy would start booming tomorrow, and there is absolutely no reason to regulate CO2.

The facts are in: the CO2 theory of late 20th century warming has been debunked

There are two competing theories of 20th century warming. One, backed by the known history of correlation between solar activity and global temperature, says it was caused by the extraordinarily high levels of solar activity between 1930 to 2000. The other, formulated by anti-capitalist ideologues who claimed in the 1970’s that fossil fuels were causing global cooling, says that fossil fuels caused the warming from 1980-1998.

With both candidate causes galloping along at high levels until 2003, both theories claimed validation. Then the sun went quiet, as atmospheric CO2 continued to grow apace–the perfect experiment for finding which theory is correct–and the results are in. The planet is cooling, supporting the solar warming theory and debunking the CO2 warming theory.

The alarmist theory is not just wrong, but is actually an obvious case of omitted variable fraud. The only way the CO2 alarmists could pretend that the tiny CO2 greenhouse effect could cause runaway global warming was by completely omitting the known solar-magnetic warming influence from their models and misattributing this warming effect to CO2. As NASA climate-modeler Gavin Schmidt puts it:

[T]here is no obvious need for ‘new’ or unknown physics to explain what [is] going on.

Schmidt feels no “need” to account a known warming effect when he can make his model work just as well (even better, for his purposes) by misattributing this warming effect to CO2. Dirtbag.

Solar warmists never behave in this anti-scientific way. They never omit CO2 greenhouse effects from their calculations, but only do what scientists are supposed to do: use reason and evidence to gauge the magnitude of the different warming effects as best as they can. Their calculation that the dominant climate driver is solar activity has now been confirmed. That means CO2 cannot cause run-away warming, which means that whatever warming effect it has is all to the good. In general, warming is good for people and other living things, while cooling is bad. Mankind and the biosphere both thrived when Greenland was green.

Now that we are entering a cooling phase, people may start wishing that CO2 had a significant warming effect, but it doesn’t. The one place where CO2 can be of significant help is as a fertilizer for plant growth. With the shorter growing seasons that go with global cooling, we need as much of that effect as we can get. Thus there is a non-negligible grounds for subsidizing CO2, and no reason to suppress it, as our demented Democrats are doing.

Dirty coal might actually require subsidization

When the eco-religionists talk about “clean coal,” they are not talking about soot at all, but are talking about sequestering the colorless, odorless, harmless plant-food called CO2. What we need is not just “dirty coal” in the CO2 emitting sense, but real dirty coal, chock full of good old fashioned snow-darkening soot.

Getting genuinely dirty coal power probably will require subsidization, because old-time soot is the byproduct of an inefficient burning process. It will take some R & D to develop plants that can be switched back and forth between fully efficient summer-mode burning, sans soot and sulpher, and “inefficient” winter burning, with black soot intact (efficient once the external value of soot is counted as an output).

Massive expansion of dirty northern coal-fired electrical generation will kill several birds with one stone: it will rejuvenate the world economy; it will decrease wintertime albedo cooling feedbacks, significantly mitigating global cooling; the release of CO2 from coal-burning will give some relief from cold-driven crop shrinkage; and it will contribute very slightly to the earth’s blanket of greenhouse gases, mitigating global cooling itself by a very slight amount.

So that’s my freebie. Dig here. Back to the future. Return to dirty coal. Hard to patent the past, but I predict that at least a few hefty diamonds will be pulled from this ash heap.

oh noooooo… say it ain’t so?! What, no mass death headed our way? What will Kathleen Sebelius do now after her “expect many more deaths” prediction… “twitter” her thumbs?

Why just last week, here’s a breathless Anderson Cooper on CNN

Over “1000″ people in Mexico back on April 24th, and “68″ people have died…..

A day later, the New York Times chimes in:

Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 61 people and infected possibly hundreds more in recent weeks, closed museums and shuttered schools for millions of students in and around the capital on Friday, and urged people with flu symptoms to stay home from work.

~~~

Mexico’s flu season is usually over by now, but health officials have noticed a significant spike in flu cases since mid-March. The W.H.O. said there had been 800 cases in Mexico in recent weeks, 60 of them fatal, of a flulike illness that appeared to be more serious than the regular seasonal flu. Mr. Córdova said Friday that there were 1,004 possible cases.

The WHO… that would be the same group, hyping the fear by notching up the Phase levels first to Phase 4, and then up to Phase 5 on Friday, warning of a world wide pandemic.

Now how foolish do all these people look with the real truth starts slithering out? Take Mexico, the “epicenter” with the thousands infected and over 160 deaths by the time the media was finished embellishing.

Of 908 suspected cases that were tested, only 397 people turned out to have the virus, officially known as influenza A(H1N1), Mexican health officials reported at a news conference. Of those, 16 people have died.

Mexico had reported about 2,500 suspected cases as of Friday, but the number of real cases could turn out to be less than half the suspected number if further testing follows the same pattern as the original round. Officials said that the tests were being done quickly, and that 500 more would be completed Friday.

~~~

The W.H.O. said that 15 countries had reported a total of 615 cases of infection with the A(H1N1) influenza virus, up from 367 cases late Friday. But Mexico has also found that a little more than half of its suspected cases subjected to detailed tests so far did not actually involve the virus. José Ángel Córdova, Mexico’s health minister, said, “This is a new epidemic, and we can’t predict exactly” what it will do. “We need more days to see how it behaves,” he said.

“Apparently the rate of infection is not as widespread as we might have thought,” he added. The materials needed for the test were provided to Mexico by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Officials at the centers declined to say what the new numbers might mean.

What it means is that it was all hysterical hype…. and so embarrassing to see how sheeple the world’s population has become.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan declared the phase 5 alert after consulting with flu experts from around the world. The decision could lead the global body to recommend additional measures to combat the outbreak, including for vaccine manufacturers to switch production from seasonal flu vaccines to a pandemic vaccine.

“All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans,” Chan told reporters in Geneva. “It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic.”

Adding to the fear mongering is newly appointed U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, predicting the lone death in the world outside of Mexico… a Mexican toddler with underlying health problems”, visiting relatives in Houston… would not be the last death from the virus.

Per a SeattlePI report on the 2 year old:

The state’s health director, Dr. David Lakey, at an Austin news conference, called it “highly likely” that the boy contracted the disease in Mexico before his trip to the U.S.

Officials in Brownsville are trying to trace his family’s trip to find out how long they were in the area, who they visited and how many people were in the group, said Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos.

The boy, who was 23 months old, had “underlying health issues” before he flew to Matamoros, Mexico, on April 4 and crossed into Brownsville to visit relatives, state health officials said.

He developed flu symptoms four days later and was taken to a Brownsville hospital April 13 and transferred the following day to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, where he died Monday night.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday confirmed that he had been infected with the swine flu virus. The cause of the death was pneumonia caused by the virus, Cascos said.

Health officials insisted the boy posed no contagion threat to Houston. He had no contact with other patients at Texas Children’s Hospital and none of the staff was exposed, said Dr. Jeffrey Starke, the hospital’s director of infectious disease.

This case “shouldn’t trigger any undue alarm in the community,” Starke told a news conference. “The child did not acquire the virus in Houston, Texas.”

The family was given antiviral treatments. Dr. Brian Smith, regional director of the Texas Department of State Health Services, noted that any secondary cases would have appeared by now…. there have been none.

As of this writing, 10 nations have had cases ID with the virus, but no deaths outside of Mexico. Egypt, with not one case reported, has been slaughtering pigs as a precaution.

In the US, cases have been reported in 11 States, and the number “surged” (I kid you not… “surged” is what the AP writer said in the Seattle account) to 100.

Considering that, according to the CDC statistics on their site, 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu; more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related complications; and about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes, it seems counterproductive for Chan to urge vaccine producers to turn away from seasonal flu vaccines, dropping everything to address a virus that appears to be running it’s course without the large fatality numbers. But logic doesn’t seem to be playing into the WHO’s PR campaign.

While officials are stressing the community doesn’t need to be alarmed, Sebelius – perhaps needing a big start to her career – can be heard about 1:40 min into the below video, gravely predicting more US deaths. Or would that be deaths of visiting Mexican nationals in US hospitals? Hard to figure..

Simultaneously Janet Napolitano is insisting that closing the Mexican border is without merit.

“Closing our nation’s borders is not merited here,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at a mid-afternoon briefing, echoing comments she made earlier in the day while being pressed by senators at a hearing.

She said closing borders or U.S. ports would have enormous adverse economic consequences and would have “no impact or very little” to help stop the spread of the virus.

“This virus is already in the United States. Any containment theory … is really moot at this time,” Napolitano said.

The POTUS? He vows “vigilence”… Not sure what his definition of vigilience is, but if it’s akin to his protests of being clueless to where his Air Force One #2 plane was when it was buzzing Ground Zero in NYC, count me unimpressed with his staff communication.

But in a moment of rare praise for his predecessor, he credited the Bush admin for stockpiling 50 million doses of antiviral meds. I think he should add additional praise for Bush not taking the path of Gerald Ford, and setting out to immunize the nation in a panic.

Now we wait to see if Obama and his staff are astute to history.

What with Sebelius’s doom ‘n’ gloom, and Chan’s insistance that a vaccine be found pronto, I again find my mind wandering back to 1976 and Fort Dix, and the panic that also launched a hasty immunization program in the event of an anticipated pandemic. A summary of the consensus of thought? Prevention…

ACIP recommended that an immunization program be launched to prevent the effects of a possible pandemic. One ACIP member summarized the consensus by stating “If we believe in prevention, we have no alternative but to offer and urge the immunization of the population.” One ACIP member expressed the view that the vaccine should be stockpiled, not given.

Making this decision carried an unusual urgency. The pharmaceutical industry had just finished manufacture of the vaccine to be used in the 1976–1977 influenza season. At that time, influenza vaccine was produced in fertilized hen’s eggs from special flocks of hens. Roosters used for fertilizing the hens were still available; if they were slaughtered, as was customary, the industry could not resume production for several months.

On March 13, an action memo was presented to the Secretary of the Department of Health Education and Welfare (DHEW). It outlined the problem and presented 4 alternative courses of action. First was “business as usual,” with the marketplace prevailing and the assumption that a pandemic might not occur. The second was a recommendation that the federal government embark on a major program to immunize a highly susceptible population. As a reason to adopt this plan of action, the memo stated that “the Administration can tolerate unnecessary health expenditures better than unnecessary death and illness if a pandemic should occur.” The third proposed course of action was a minimal response, in which the federal government would contract for sufficient vaccine to provide for traditional federal beneficiaries—military personnel, Native Americans, and Medicare-eligible persons. The fourth alternative was a program that would represent an exclusively federal response without involvement of the states.

The proposal recommended by the director of CDC was the second course, namely, for the federal government to contract with private pharmaceutical companies to produce sufficient vaccine to permit the entire population to be immunized against H1N1. The federal government would make grants to state health departments to organize and conduct immunization programs. The federal government would provide vaccine to state health departments and private medical practices. Since influenza caused by A/Victoria was active worldwide, industry was asked to incorporate the swine flu into an A/Victoria product to be used for populations at high risk.

After high level meetings with “well-known and respected scientists (Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk had to be included) and public representatives” (aka, politicians), President Gerald Ford made an ill fated decision to launch The National Influenza Immunization Program.

After the necessary hoops thru Congress and legislation, and appropriation of $137 million for costs, the US government set to work to get every man, woman in child in the US vaccinated.

In what could be considered divine intervention, this plan was crippled by two events. First, the private pharmeceutical manufacturers wanted the government to guarantee immunity from litigation for adverse reactions before releasing the vaccine. The Government capitulated. But still many elderly died after receiving the initial vaccinations.

Between Oct 1 and Dec 16th, 40 million “volunteers” received the vaccine. From the Suburban Emergency Management Project’s historic review:

Then President Ford, on the same March 24, 1976, only one day after his surprise loss to Ronald Reagan in the North Carolina Republican presidential primary, announced on national television his recommendation to the American public for a crash nation-wide influenza vaccination program to include “every man, woman and child.” Congress responded promptly to the president’s call for funds (appropriations were voted by the Senate April 9, by the House April 12, and signed into law April 15, 1976). Vaccine was produced, field tested, and evaluated in April, May and June. There were problems with producing the vaccine.

Nevertheless, between October 1 and December 16, 1976, the U.S. Public Health Service, through state and local public health department “public sector providers,” rapidly spread out among the citizenry to successfully vaccinate 85% of 40 million voluntary vaccinees in 10 weeks (the other 15% of the 40 million voluntary vaccinees received their vaccinations from “private sector providers”). There was great variation among states in vaccinating their citizenry. For example, a skeptical New York City held off on vaccinations, preferring to wait for a shred of evidence that a pandemic was materializing, whereas always dutiful Minnesota immunized two-thirds of eligible adults.

It was a Minnesota physician that noticed his patient who contracted an ascending paralysis, called Guillain-Barré syndrome, following swine flu immunization. By then, physicians utilizing the vaccine were distributing taped discussions of it’s side effects.

When all was said and done, there was no pandemic and the rushed vaccine wasn’t necessary. This after 532 cases of vaccine-related Guillain-Barré syndrome, and at least 25 deaths occurred on otherwise healthy individuals.

The hasty interference by government was not long on many.

One observer of the swine flu affair, Dr. Russell Alexander of the Public Health School at the University of Washington, expressed his view that the clinical side of medicine had been shortchanged in the decision making processes. He told federal investigators after the fact: “My general view is that you should be conservative about putting foreign material into the human body. That’s always true…especially when you are talking about 200 million bodies. The need should be estimated conservatively. If you don’t need to give it, don’t.” (P. 13)

Indeed, Sencer ignored the case for “watchful waiting” before proceeding with the vaccination program, even though no swine flu had shown up anywhere, not even in the southern hemisphere where flu season was reaching its peak. Even Sabin, who had earlier advocated universal vaccination, later argued for stockpiling the vaccine and, if a pandemic began, to keep ahead of the spread by vaccinating quickly. He called this stockpiling “active, not passive, not mere warehousing of vaccine.” Proper measures, he said, included both planning and training of volunteers ready to immunize their neighborhoods the moment CDC should pass the word. (**, p. 11)

Sencer (and Salk) said “No!” to this idea, saying that the flu would move too fast in a pandemic. Vaccine should be stored in people, not warehouses!

The quotes from the above article at SEMP were in Feb, 2005. Why? They saw the repeat of such decisions evident in attitudes towards an “imminent” avian bird flu – the fear mongering that was all the rage in that era.

Today’s hype is met with the same caution and warning by SEMP… or, as they put it today, we’re about to be taken on another wild ride. They have reposted their sister article to the one about the 1976 NIIP disasters, What is the Swing Flu?

Swine flu (also called swine influenza, or simply, flu) is an acute respiratory disease of pigs (also called hogs or swine) caused by a tiny spheroid virus that belongs to the Influenza A virus group. Symptoms of swine flu in swine herds include fever, inactivity, nasal discharge, labored breathing, mouth breathing, and paroxysmal coughing when the pigs are moved. All ages are susceptible. Mortality rates are generally low and pigs recover within 5 to 7 days after initial symptoms.

It appears that most reasonably healthy humans also live through the virus. Like the common cold that still has no cure, it simply has to run it’s course, and the infected – plus those in their proximity – must take normal precautions.

But is this enough to demand attentions are divered from R&D of seasional flu vaccines – which kill in the tens of thousands without Chan and Sebelius saying a word – for this vaccine? Tell you what… *I’m* not volunteering…

I guess I had it right in my previous post… let no crisis go to waste.

President Barack Obama said Monday that he is closely monitoring the swine flu, and the global outbreak is cause for concern but not alarm.

“We face more complex challenges than we have ever faced before,” Obama said.

“If there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it’s today,” Obama said. “We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm.”

Obama made the remarks during a speech to the National Academy of Sciences, pointing to the potential flu pandemic as reason why the U.S. needed to boost its investment in the sciences.

“One thing is clear — our capacity to deal with a public health challenge of this sort rests heavily on the work of our scientific and medical community,” Obama said. “And this is one more example of why we cannot allow our nation to fall behind.”

“Fall behind”?? This is nothing short of a breathtaking piece of crap considering that the antidote for swine flu already exists.

No preventative vaccine for the current strain exists yet, but then it takes a particular strain to manifest before that can happen. Afterall, how does one “prevent” what does not yet exist? But the antidotes in existance work to shorten the illness once one has been infected.

Then again, considering the tragic results of the last US swine flu outbreak in 1976 at Fort Dix Army installation, vaccines (i.e. preventative flu shots) aren’t necessarily such a good alternative…. as President Gerald Ford found out the hard way.

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. –The last time swine flu made headlines, the virus itself didn’t spread far but the fallout from the health emergency did.

A vaccination program set up in response to the 1976 outbreak on Fort Dix was blamed for more than two dozen deaths and paralyzing hundreds more people. The director of the then-Center for Disease Control was forced to resign and tens of millions of vaccine doses went undistributed.

~~~

Hodder, now retired from the Northeast Center for Special Care in Lake Katrine, N.Y., said scientists in 1976 believed that the swine flu might return in 50- to 60-year cycles.

Hodder and other investigators headed to Fort Dix to test soldiers. Between Jan. 19 and Feb. 9, they found as many as 230 soldiers were infected.

Thirteen were hospitalized for respiratory illness.

By late February, health officials were warning that the outbreak on the base could be deadly if the disease moved into the general population.

The timing was a concern: New flu viruses tend to show up early in the year, then come back more forcefully the next winter.

So that March, President Gerald Ford announced a plan to immunize all Americans – about 200 million at the time – against the influenza strain seen at Fort Dix.

But the virus never spread off the base.

Researchers believe that’s partly because the soldiers in basic training had contact with only the 49 other members of their platoons and their trainers for a time.

They also believe that a more common strain of seasonal flu virus that was prevalent that winter dominated the swine flu strain.

“The swine flu strain had to compete with the A/Victoria strain for its victims,” said Franklin Top, another scientist at Walter Reed who responded to the outbreak and now a vice president of Medimmune Ventures, a subsidiary of AstraZenica. “Not very successfully.”

Top said it was clear in 1976 that the virus could spread from person to person, but it wasn’t clear how easily spread it was. The symptoms then-high fever, severe coughing and lethargy- were similar to symptoms usually seen with seasonal flu and now seen with the current swine flu, which is caused by a virus closely related to the 1976 and 1918 strains.

The vaccinations began in October 1976. But reports of people dying within days of being vaccinated brought the program to a halt within weeks.

The vaccine was later blamed for causing more than 400 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disease that causes paralysis.

About 43 million doses of the vaccine were given before the efforts ended in what one New York Times op-ed writer later called “a fiasco, a debacle, a ghastly mistake, a medical Vietnam.”

In 1977, then-CDC Director David J. Sencer was forced to resign over the vaccine controversy.

Yeah… that’s what happened the last time the government tried to help… IMPORTANT: Remember this story when the history-challenged POTUS starts talking about preventative vaccines to push his spending agenda.

The current outbreak has helped bolster the antidote manufacturers’ stocks… . Coincidently, the venture capital company poised to benefit from this outbreak happens to be one of everyone’s favorite fear-mongering deity, Al Gore’s… specifically his prolific firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

But back to that “let no hyped crisis go to waste” bit. It might behoove Obama to realize that the antidote to the swine flu, already in existance, managed to get developed pre-Obama presidency. Gosh darn… how strange that happened without his government heavy proposed spending for any and every science project. How have we survived and fought down previous medical woes before Obama?

Of course the fact that the antidote does exist doesn’t stop the liberal machine from attacking GOPers Susan Collins and Arlen Spector for their attempts to shave down Obama’s whoppin’ “porkulus legislation” by trimming the $780 million in pandemic planning funds. Yup… how did we ever do this without Obama and his big spending buddies? What is it the O’faithful like to say about Obama’s delayed decisions on the Richard Phillip rescue from pirates? Something about “it’s the result that counts”?

The WHO (World Health Organization, not the classic British rockers, of course….) has raised the pandemic alert level to phase four out of a six point scale – meaning sustained human to human contact can cause the outbreak. The percentage of deaths to infected in hardest hit Mexico is about .09% (149 deaths to 1600 reported infected, at this writing), and no deaths among those infected in the US.

If you’re a hobbyist germ tracker, you’ll love this Google RealTime tracking map.

Obama’s admin has declared a public national emergency, and defacto head for handling the health scare – Homeland Security czar, Janet Napolitano – has decided to proceed as if it were an existing pandemic. (No doubt she’s welcoming the diversion from her report on the “extreme radical right” in the recent news…)

Well… sorta, anyway. Were it truly a pandemic, borders would need to be shut down, not monitored by people looking for travelers with sniffles and symptoms.

U.S. customs officials began checking people entering U.S. territory. Officers at airports, seaports and border crossings were watching for signs of illness, said Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lloyd Easterling.

If a traveler says something about not feeling well, the person will be questioned about symptoms and, if necessary, referred to a CDC official for additional screening, Easterling said. The customs officials were wearing personal protective gear, such as gloves and masks, he said.

Besser described the new U.S. border initiative as “passive screening.” He said authorities were “asking people about fever and illness, looking for people who are ill.”

This outbreak proves inconvenient for the O’admin, catching Obama once again with his pants down on cabinet appointees. In subordinate position for fielding the (almost) pandemic is acting Director of the CDC, Richard Besser. Since Obama has yet to appoint a permanent director, who then selects his underlings, we’re stuck with that brain trust, Ms. Napolitano, as the head honcho, hunter/gatherer of data and PR.

Being as there’s quite the vacancy rate at the wrong time in the CDC, part of Ms. Napolitano’s reasoning for treating the outbreak as a public national emergency was mostly to free up resources from other departments to cover the gaps in the glaringly empty Obama CDC. As the LA Times blog (linked above) points out (also citing a Politico post):

As politico.com… pointed out, the potential crisis finds gaping holes in the administration’s health team.

Not only is the Obama administration without a HHS secretary, but 19 of the agency’s key posts are still unfilled. Obama has not yet selected a surgeon general — this after CNN’s Sanjay Gupta backed out. And Obama’s choice to run the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, has still not been confirmed. Republicans balked at considering the nomination last Thursday, saying they needed more time to study the nomination, but finally agreed to an eight-hour debate tomorrow.

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted the delay has not hindered the administration’s response to the threat of a swine flu epidemic.

I want to be very clear here: There is a team in place…. This notion that somehow if there is not currently a secretary, that there is not the function that needs to take place to prepare for either this or any other situation is just simply not the case. I think it’s all hands on deck, and we’re doing fine.

In the meantime, Congressional physicians are working on a plan in case all of Congress gets the sniffles…. in the meantime passing out that gem of wisdom… wash your hands and leave work if you feel ill. Okay…

Obama did travel to Mexico just a little over a week ago. During his visit, he met with the director of the National Museum of Anthropology… who did die the next day. However the LA Times reports that was from a pre-existing pneumonia, and not the swine flu. Robert Gibbs assures us that the POTUS is fit as a fiddle, and demonstrates no symptoms. Then again, we still have the TOTUS… preferable to ol’ slow Joe as a fill in.

All in all, I sure wish the media would learn to multi-task, and quit blowing up everything out of proportion. Then again, maybe it’s a blessing for the Obama admin, getting all the talking head and blog chit chat off of his assault on the CIA and our national security.

My heart pours out to them all. And yet, I salute their courage and sense of community as the town and Guard all joined together to build up a dam, and brace for the worst.

Makes you wonder why Obama needs his National Civilian Community Corp, eh?

The above photo comes from a story in the NY Daily News on how Obama was “monitoring”. Still, this didn’t stop the ever campaigning TOTUS/POTUS from getting in a few digs on his Saturday radio address by saying he’d avoid “Katrina-like missteps”… then reminding everyone about his economic plans and focus.

“Even as we face an economic crisis which demands our constant focus, forces of nature can also intervene in ways that create other crises to which we must respond – and respond urgently,” Obama said.

“I will continue to monitor [Mata add:... from Europe next week...] the situation carefully,” he pledged. “We will do what must be done to help.”

Boy… ain’t that going the extra mile. Like Bush was oblivious to Katrina? Cheap shot, and truly uncalled for. Especially since the ones truly derelict in their leadership duties were the local and state officials.

More photos showing what the sturdy Dakotans are up against… and remember, this water is icy cold! Something we Oregonians were spared with the warmer temps.

[Mata Musing: my back aches just looking at moving around that sand bag!]

And a MUST VISIT is to Dave Arntson’s site for amazing shots (i.e. the two below) Mr. Arntson is a professional photojournalist who works both North Dakota and Minnesota.

Good luck, Fargo and other areas affected. We in the nation are pulling for you!

CNN:

Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN’s Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer Wednesday that he was responsible for adding the bonus loophole into the stimulus package that permitted AIG and other companies that received bailout funds to pay bonuses.

On Tuesday, Dodd denied to CNN that he had anything to do with the adding of that provision.

…but the video is priceless (look how red his face is).

Also, note that he says he did the discreet removal-not because he’s the largest campaign recipient of money from AIG (noooooooo), but because Obama’s Treasury Dept urged him to do it. That’s the same Treasury Dept that claims they were shocked and surprised, and the same Administration that says it was shocked and surprised…all while we’re supposed to ignore that they knew about the Bonuses months ago. Apparently, not only did the Obama Admin KNOW about the bonuses, but they went out of their way to covertly get them allowed!

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’ He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go – when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

What’s the gotcha from TPM? That the visit didn’t occur the day after Katrina but a few days after Katrina.

Yup, some gotcha.

But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone “days later.” The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

Pathetic.

Oh, here is the Sheriff in his own words describing the help Jindal gave to him:

I can tell you first hand that with Hurricane Katrina, the day after, Bobby was in my office and said “what do you need?” And it wasn’t phone calls, he was in my office.”

Pathetic libs….just pathetic.

UPDATE

Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said Jindal appeared at the sheriff’s offices on the east and west banks several times in the days after the storm. The boat rescue holdup by federal response officials did occur initially as citizens brought their watercraft to a staging area in Jefferson Parish, he said. But the problem was resolved and the great majority of boats were deployed to the flooded areas of New Orleans later that day.

Teepell, who after the storm drove with Jindal to visit various sheriffs’ offices in his district, said he recalled being in Lee’s office in west Jefferson on several occasions in the days after the storm. Teepell said he remembers the phone conversation but did not know who was talking to Lee.

Lee was recounting the boat rescue story to the caller on the line, Teepell said. The phone call was not taking place while the boats were attempting the rescue operation, but some days afterward, Teepell said.

WASHINGTON – The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Meanwhile, in Kentucky…

Gov. Steve Beshear called up his entire Army National Guard on Saturday, tripling his troops with his state still reeling from a deadly ice storm that knocked out power from the Midwest to the East Coast.

More than half a million homes and businesses, most of them in Kentucky, remained with out electricity from the Ozarks through Appalachia, though temperatures creeping into the 40s helped a swarm of utility workers make headway. Finding fuel – heating oil along with gas for cars and generators – was another struggle for those trying to tough it out at home, with hospitals and other essential services getting priority over members of the public.

The addition of 3,000 soldiers and airmen makes 4,600 Guardsmen pressed into service. It’s the largest call-up in Kentucky history, which Beshear called an appropriate response to a storm that cut power to more than 600,000 people, the state’s largest outage on record. Many people in rural areas cannot get out of their driveways due to debris and have no phone service, the governor said.

“With the length of this disaster and what we’re expecting to be a multi-day process here, we’re concerned about the lives and the safety of our people in their own homes,” Beshear said, “and we need the manpower in some of the rural areas to go door-to-door and do a door-to-door canvass … and make sure they’re OK.”

And it’s not like this “let them eat cake” attitude is new. It’s been going on for a while.

Sidwell Friends, the private school his daughters attend, was among area schools that closed or started late Wednesday after a 2-inch snowfall and freezing rain overnight. D.C. schools opened two hours late.
…
When it comes to winter, “Folks in Washington don’t seem to be able to handle things,” he joked. Maybe, he suggested, they need some “flinty Chicago toughness.”

Obama’s heated Hawaiian attitude goes beyond mocking those who are reluctant to cast send little girls out into the cold, and his deliberate ignorance at and silence at the suffering of the million people in Kentucky who have been without power or heat for days. No, in times of “national economic crisis” [Obama's own words], he’s called upon us all to sacrifice (while he turns the Oval Office into a greenhouse). Yet, even the far left greeniacs like Al Gore are somehow too self-conscious to point out the new President’s hypocrisy. There was no mention of a new style of green-living at the White House when Al Gore was on Capitol Hill (down the street from The White House) testifying about Global Warming. Even he didn’t want to point out the snuggle-buggle factor at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Sad. Since the media at large is silent on the arrogant duplicity, one might wonder about the reaction if President Bush had done this?

Plus: A poll for Obama voters only!
Wordsmith set the ball rolling today on the story that has profound dangers for Americans in the war on terror. Both he and Curt cited the Washington Post story in which reporter Dana Priest gushed:

With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

With the stroke of a pen terrorists around the world were put on notice that the most successful anti-terrorism strategy that has saved thousands of American lives and resulted in the capture of kill of thousands of terrorist scum worldwide was coming to an end.

No doubt there will be a moment of celebration in the caves of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and many European capitals tonight. Note: I didn’t mention Iraq. There, we can expect our sworn ally to continue the fight as they have all these many years.

Where’s the Beef?

The executive order Obama signed which attracted the most attention was his decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within one year; thus fulfilling at least one campaign pledge after breaking so many more.

And yet the order is short on details as to how exactly Obama expects to meet that deadline. At the signing ceremony he had to turn to Greg Craig ,Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer and now White House Counsel, and confirm that the details will only be forthcoming later. Obama may need Craig’s experience with Bill Clinton if things go wrong.

After years of Democrats complaining that President Bush had not adequately thought out the steps necessary to handle the problem of captured terrorists, does it not strike readers as odd that President Obama would dive into this pool head first without considering the details?

Republicans in the House Pounce

Speaking on behalf of Congressional Republicans, House Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement:

“The Guantanamo Bay prison is filled with the worst of the worst – terrorists and killers bent on murdering Americans and other friends of freedom around the world. If it is closed, where will they go, will they be brought to the United States, and how will they be secured? Will they be released by the courts, despite reports that more than 60 former terrorist detainees have already returned to battlefields to fight us again? Unfortunately, in briefings yesterday the new Administration did not have any real answers to these concerns.

Along with House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) was joined by Judiciary Committee Members Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) Daniel Lungren (R-Calif.), Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Ted Poe (R-Texas), Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), Howard Coble (R-NC), and Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) as they introduced a bill named The Enemy Combatant Detention Review Act (H.R. 630) which establishes clear rules regarding the detention of known terrorists.

Unfortunately, House Republicans have NO power to advance any legislation in a House controlled by Nancy Pelosi and in which the previous rules enacted by a GOP majority giving the minority greater rights has been abolished. So much for bipartisanship when Democrats are in control. So much for tens of millions of Americans with a different point of view being given a voice in their legislature.

Gitmo Killers Free to Kill Again?

House Leader Boehner cited the Pentagon report which states: “61 detainees who have been held and then released from Guantanamo Bay are suspected or confirmed to be ‘returning to the fight.’”

That’s no surprise to anyone. I’m reminded of the story of one American working at Guantanamo Bay who got to know one of the inmates. Asked what he would do if he got out the inmate said he would kill the man’s family and other Americans. But added: “it’s nothing personal.” It’s what these monsters do.

And so many of them have done just that:

Guantánamo detainee resurfaces in terrorist group
By Robert F. Worth
International Herald Tribune
January 23, 2008

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order that President Barack Obama signed that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Obviously the plan President Bush had in place to process detainees had flaws. But the Obama plan promises to be much worse with immense consequences for Americans whose lives may be placed in danger.

Will Obama face the same accountability that President Bush did these past eight years? What if terrorists do strike the U.S. on our soil or overseas and we learn that we could have stopped the attack if Bush’s policy was still in place? Will Obama attorney Greg Craig once again be called on to perform the same services he did for Bill Clinton?

A Poll for Obama Voters Only

Since Obama provided no details on how he would fulfill his campaign promise, let’s ask those who voted for him what should be done with Gitmo detainees”

In wake of Hurricane Katrina (which “hated” white people more, or in Kanye’s language, “George Bush hates white people”), let’s revisit the ever-so-politically astute and eloquent Kanye West:

Given the opportunity to rethink that comment and do some research, did Kanye retract his on-air smear:

He could take some notes from Bob Geldof and Bono.

Investors Business Daily:

George W. Bush has been singled out as the American president who has done the most for Africa. So where’s the recognition, both in the media and the black community, of this worthy achievement?

Bill Clinton might have been America’s first black president, but it seems he didn’t do as much for Africa as Bush has. Bob Geldof, Irish rocker and Africa activist, says the Texas oilman, who is wrapping up his second trip to the continent, “has done more than any other president so far.”

That’s high praise from Geldof, a man who has spent much of the last 20 years fixated on Africa’s many problems. He sees Bush’s efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa as “the triumph of American policy.” Though he says it was “unexpected of the man,” Geldof admits both the president and the nation “rose to the occasion.”

Geldof rightly chastises the American media for ignoring Bush’s contributions to Africa.

But it would be unrealistic to have expected otherwise. This is a national press corps that seems to notice homelessness and poverty only when a Republican is in the White House, and which itself votes heavily Democratic.

Meanwhile, African-Americans give little support to Bush — he got 11% of their vote in 2004 after taking 8% in 2000. Black leaders — such as NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, who has called Bush a liar, compared his judicial nominees to the Taliban and equated the GOP to Nazis — continue their shrill verbal assaults on the man.

Yet under Bush, the U.S. has boosted development and humanitarian aid to Africa from $1.4 billion in his first year in office to $4 billion a year today. He’s also sought $30 billion to fight AIDS.

Trade — far more efficient than aid — between our country and Africa has more than doubled during his terms. This administration has also actively sought to stop the genocide in Darfur and has led in attempts to end wars in Sierra Leone, Sudan and Congo.

As the U.S. press swoons over Barack Obama and his bromidic promise of “change” to the exclusion of almost all else, the African media have noticed Bush’s work.

It wasn’t the New York Times or ABC, but AllAfrica.com… that gratefully acknowledged that Bush’s policies “have saved millions of (African) lives and lifted many others from abject poverty.“

James Munyaneza:

Tatu Msangi, a single Tanzanian mother, took the story of the success of PEPFAR to Congress during a State of the Union address last month.

She is a living testimony of just how, through PEPFAR, the Bush administration has saved a life deep in a remote African village.

Msangi testified how despite living with HIV, she received the necessary counseling and Nevirapine (medication) during her pregnancy, and subsequently delivered a bouncing HIV-free baby girl. Now, her daughter Faith Mang’ehe has a future, and Msangi hope, thanks to Bush’s Emergency Plan.

This is not the only success story of its kind. In Rwanda and in other benefiting countries, such achievements are there although many remain publicly unnoticed.

“Thank you so much for the initiative. It has done so much for our people. It has given us a future,” Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kiwete told Bush on Sunday at a Dar es Salaam hospital which was partly built by the American people.

Under Bush presidency, a number of African countries have continued to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) although not many Africans have benefited yet due to a number of factors.

Africans will remember that in 2004, President Bush signed into law the AGOA Acceleration Act, which extended the legislation to 2015. The initiative has helped triple African total exports to the US since 2001 – the year Bush came to power.

~~~

Bush’s speeches have also increasingly been characterized by a positive shift in policy towards Africa. In a statement he delivered in Washington D.C shortly before embarking on his second African tour last week, he underlined that it was significant for developed countries to treat African nations not as “charity cases” but as “equal partners”.

Such school of thought is what is on the mind of a new breed of revolutionary African leaders including our own President Paul Kagame, who on several occasions, has blamed some western powers for approaching African matters in a bullish manner.

Therefore such African leaders would not agree more with Bush when he says: “We (United States) have also revolutionized the way we approach development. Too many nations continue to follow either the paternalistic notion that treats African countries as charity cases, or a model of exploitation that seeks only to buy up their resources. America rejects both approaches.

Instead, we are treating African leaders as equal partners, asking them to set clear goals, and expecting them to produce measurable results.”

Observers have said such statements from US politicians are interlaced with their fear for competition from other emerging world economies especially China, but whatever the reason, at least Bush’s statement is right.

Secondly, many African leaders will agree with the US President that what Africans need today is not aid but investment.

“America is serving as an investor, not a donor,” Bush said. This remark was last week re-echoed by an Ethiopian government official during a Reuters interview when he said: “What many African government officials want to see is less aid from Western powers like the US and more investment. This is the way forward for the continent…”

And of course, President-Elect Obama will be a beneficiary of Bush’s legacy:

It is also worth noting that Bush is passionately pushing for several pro-Africa initiatives that will live longer than his presidency – in other words, which will extend the often talked-about American generosity towards the disadvantaged world inhabitants, to the next US administration.

Brookings senior fellow Homi Kharas thinks the U.S. contribution under Bush’s leadership to improving Africa is inflated praise:

* U.S. economic aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased from $2.1 billion to $5.4 billion between 2000 and 2005. But EU countries gave $21.9 billion to Africa in 2006, and the United Kindgom alone gave $5.2 billion — with an economy one-sixth of the size of the U.S. economy.
* $1.3 billion in U.S. aid to Africa was in the form of food aid, which Kharas describes as “a form of assistance which is so questionable in terms of its impact on development that several large U.S. charities, including CARE, have stopped dealing with it.”
* The United States’ economic assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006 (and this isn’t even touching upon the enormous military expenditures on this region) was more than $6 billion, which is more than what was given to all 45 sub-Saharan African countries combined.

~~~

So while we should celebrate the U.S. contributions to Africa, we should also keep in mind the fact that it is Europe, not the United States, that is leading the international fight against African poverty.”

But I think Kharas misses the overall contributions of President Bush, including initiatives designed to help African nations grow their economies, rather than merely flushing money down the “feel-good” charity-drain.

Last November, President Bush was distinguished with the Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award:

“We are pleased this year to have the President of the United States, George W. Bush, as the recipient of the Bishop John T. Walker Service Award,” Julius E. Coles, President of Africare remarked. “I cannot think of a more deserving person for this award given the tremendous increase in development and humanitarian resources that President Bush has provided to the continent of Africa to improve the quality of life for the people of Africa.”

Since taking office in 2001, President Bush has transformed the way development assistance is carried out [emphasis, mine] on the African continent by creating partnerships with African governments, businesses and civil society organizations to promote economic growth. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has committed over 60 billion dollars to fight global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. In addition, his administration has facilitated $34 billion to diminish debt, over $14 billion to invest in economies, nearly $4.5 billion to fight poverty and $10 million for clean water on the African continent.

3-and-a-half years ago, I wrote:

Recently, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair met to draw up a policy (prayers out to the Londoners, this morning), forgiving African debt and pledging $674 million in emergency humanitarian aid. The US already donates a quarter of all foreign assistance to Africa. There have been several Marshall Plans over the past 40 years, amounting to what? The end to poverty? No. Just money squandered to corrupt regimes. And how can we forget all the private donations of charity over the years, and past events like “We are the World”? 1985 Live Aid raised close to $150 million for famine relief; yet the majority of that went to a corrupt Ethiopian government and the propping up of yet another brutal dictator, Mengistu. Good intentions with bad results. Do we ever learn?

I have mixed feelings about the amount of financial aid we give to other nations- especially when it seems to be money squandered rather than money invested toward securing our best interests. And I question the gravity of the AIDS epidemic when there are other ills worth tackling using American tax dollars.

Marshall Plan for reconstructing Europe worked 60 years ago. But today’s Africa is not 1947 Europe. Europe was about rebuilding; Africa is about building. A European-style Marshall Plan doesn’t apply to Africa. Waste and corruption abounds when it comes to the financial assistance squandered by the U.S. and other nations over the decades on failed African states and corrupt regimes. It’s a perfect model for how simply throwing more money at the problem is not an effective solution.

It is with this understanding, that President Bush sought a more innovative approach to bringing aid to the continent of Africa, at least in one respect:

The Food for Peace Program was started in 1954, and for over 50 years, America has helped to feed over 3 billion people in 150 countries. More than 60% of international emergency food aid comes from the United States. What President Bush has come to realize, is that simply "throwing free food" at the problem, doesn’t help to lessen the problem. Our requirement for the program has always been that if we are to send food abroad, it had to have been grown in the U.S. This ends up hurting local farmers in Africa, who are trying to get a start at growing food. So what President Bush has proposed, in an attempt to get to root causes of hunger, is that 1/4th of all the food aid given by the U.S. has to be bought by the U.S. from local farmers. From the NYTimes:

It was here in Kansas City, at the 2005 food aid conference, that the Bush administration pushed for a fundamental change in food aid that would have diminished profits to domestic agribusiness and shipping companies. It proposed allowing a quarter of the Food for Peace budget to be used to buy food in poor countries near hunger crises, rather than buying only American-grown food that had to be shipped across oceans.

And Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns spoke at the conference on Wednesday to again make the administration’s case for the same idea, contending that such a policy would speed delivery, improve efficiency and save many lives.

This is compassionate conservatism. Finding practical solutions that go beyond creating "feel-good" policies that achieve nothing, and sometimes only succeeds in making matters worse. I believe that both liberals and conservatives care about the environment, want to be charitable to those less fortunate, etc. We just have different ideas on how best to make the world a better place. It is worth noting, as Medved does, that

Former President Bill Clinton recently said at a fund-raiser for Bread for the World, a Christian group that lobbies on hunger issues, that it was to Mr. Bush’s "everlasting credit" that he had proposed buying food aid in poor countries. Such a policy had never crossed his mind when he was president, Mr. Clinton said, but he thought it was a great way to help farmers in Africa and buy food more efficiently.

In a speech last February at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art:

in one of the major priorities of my Presidency, the United States has fundamentally altered our policy toward Africa.

America’s approach to Africa stems from both our ideals and our interests. We believe that every human life is precious. We believe that our brothers and sisters in Africa have dignity and value, because they bear the mark of our Creator. We believe our spirit is renewed when we help African children and families live and thrive.

Africa is also increasingly vital to our strategic interests. We have seen that conditions on the other side of the world can have a direct impact on our own security. We know that if Africa were to continue on the old path of decline, it would be more likely to produce failed states, foster ideologies of radicalism, and spread violence across borders. We also know that if Africa grows in freedom, and prosperity, and justice, its people will choose a better course. People who live in societies based on freedom and justice are more likely to reject the false promise of the extremist ideology. Citizens who see a future of opportunity are more likely to build hopeful economies that benefit all the people. Nations that replace disease and despair with healing and hope will help Africa do more than just survive — it will help Africa succeed.

For all these reasons, America has dramatically increased our commitment to development in Africa. We have also revolutionized the way we approach development. Too many nations continue to follow either the paternalistic notion that treats African countries as charity cases, or a model of exploitation that seeks only to buy up their resources. America rejects both approaches. Instead, we are treating African leaders as equal partners, asking them to set clear goals, and expecting them to produce measurable results. For their part, more African leaders are willing to be held to high standards. And together, we’re pioneering a new era in development.

The new era is rooted in a powerful truth: Africa’s most valuable resource is not its oil, it’s not its diamonds, it is the talent and creativity of its people. So we are partnering with African leaders to empower their people to lift up their nations and write a new chapter in their history.

First, we are working to empower Africans to overcome poverty by helping them grow their economies. After a long period of stagnation, many of Africa’s economies are springing to life. As a whole, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow nearly 7 percent this year. The economies of Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Tanzania are among the fastest-growing in the world. And across Africa, poverty is beginning to decline. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a poor place, but poverty is beginning to decline.

This resurgence shows the strength of the entrepreneurial spirit in Africa. America is working to help unleash that spirit across the continent. Along with our fellow G8 nations, we have relieved some $34 billion in debt from African nations in the past 18 months. (Applause.) That is roughly the same level of debt that was cancelled in the previous 11 years combined. We have also made historic increases in foreign aid. In my first term, we more than doubled development assistance to Africa — part of the largest expansion of American development assistance since the Marshall Plan. (Applause.) At the beginning of my second term, I promised to double our assistance again by 2010. And the budget I sent Congress last week will ensure that we meet this commitment.

And just as important, we’re changing the way we deliver assistance. We created what’s called the Millennium Challenge Account, which offers financial support to the world’s most promising developing nations — nations that fight corruption, nations that govern justly, nations that open up their economies, and nations that invest in the health and education of their people.
America is serving as an investor, not a donor. We believe that countries can adopt the habits necessary to provide help for their people. That’s what we believe. And we’re willing to invest in leaders that are doing just that. So far, more than two-thirds of the MCA’s $5.5 billion is being invested in Africa. And on my trip next week, I will sign the largest project in the program’s history — nearly $700 million compact with Tanzania. (Applause.)

Other nations are seeing the benefits of these agreements. They are moving ahead with the tough economic, political, and social reforms necessary to compete for a compact of their own. In fact, there is now more competition for funds than there are funds available, which ought to say two things: One, that this is evidence that the American taxpayers are getting good value for their dollars. In other words, if nations are willing to fight corruption, work on rule of law, support their people and not theirselves, then it makes sense to invest with them. And secondly, it is evidence that Congress needs to fully fund this important initiative.

The best way to generate economic growth in Africa is to expand trade and investment. When businesses in Africa can sell their products and services around the globe, they create a culture of self-reliance and opportunity. One of the most powerful incentives for trade is the African Growth and Opportunity Act. And I appreciate the fact that Congress has extended this good law. Since 2001, exports from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States have tripled. It’s also important for our citizens to know that U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa have more than doubled.

~~~

Last year, we launched the Africa Financial Sector Initiative. As part of this effort, our Overseas Private Investment Corporation mobilized $750 million in investment capital for African businesses. Today, I’m announce that OPIC will support five new investment funds that will mobilize an additional $875 million, for a total of more than $1.6 billion in new capital.

And next week, I’m going to sign a bilateral investment treaty with Rwanda. This will be America’s first such treaty in sub-Saharan Africa in nearly a decade. It reflects our shared commitment to systems of fair and open investment. It will bring more capital to Rwanda’s dynamic and growing economy. Look, the idea of somehow being able to help people through just giving them money isn’t working. That’s why I appreciate the efforts of Rob Mosbacher and OPIC, recognizing that when you invest in capital — invest capital, you create jobs. Paternalism has got to be a thing of the past. Joint venturing with good, capable people is what the future is all about. (Applause.)

But in the long run, the best way to lift lives in Africa is to tear down barriers to investment and trade around the world. And we have an opportunity to do that through the Doha Round of trade talks. Look, Doha is important to enhance trade, but if you’re truly interested in eliminating poverty, we ought to be reducing tariffs and barriers all across the globe. The United States stands ready to cut farm subsidies, and agricultural tariffs, and other trade barriers that disadvantage developing countries. On the other hand, we expect the rest of the world — especially the most advanced developing countries –to do the same. And if we both make good-faith efforts, we can reach a successful Doha agreement this year.

Secondly, we’re working to empower Africans to alleviate hunger, expand education, and fight disease. America is proud to be the world’s largest provider of food assistance, including emergency food stocks that have saved lives in places like Ethiopia, or Sudan, and other African nations. It’s a noble effort on our people’s part. I don’t know if — most Americans don’t understand that we’re the world’s largest provider of food to feed the hungry, but we are. (Applause.)

Yet our ultimate objective is to do more than respond to the hungry — it is to help African countries feed their own people. So I have proposed that America purchase crops directly from farmers in Africa, instead of just shipping food assistance from the developed world. (Applause.) This initiative would build up local agriculture markets. It would help break the cycle of famine. And it deserves the full support of the United States Congress.

We’re also focusing on education. I’m looking forward to seeing the President of Tanzania, he’s a good guy. Here’s what he said; he said “It’s an indisputable fact that education is key to development.” Across Africa, students are eager to learn, and often they lack quality teachers and just basic supplies. Things we take for granted in America are just lacking in parts of Africa. So in 2002, I launched the Africa Education Initiative, the goal of which is to distribute more than 15 million textbooks, train nearly a million teachers, and provide scholarships for 550,000 girls by 2010. And we’re headed to achieving that goal. In other words, these just weren’t empty words, these were concrete, solid goals, being funded as a result of the generosity of the Congress and the American people.

Last year, I also announced a new International Education Initiative, which will help make basic education available to 4 million people in Ghana, Liberia, and other nations. Laura and I are looking forward to talking to the leaders of Ghana and Liberia about this important, transformative initiative. With both these steps, we are matching the enthusiasm of African educators with the generosity of our taxpayers — and we believe strongly that this will open up the door to opportunity for millions. The good news is, so do the leaders of the countries we’re going to visit.

The greatest threat to Africa is disease. The greatest threat for a successful Africa is the scourge of HIV/AIDS and malaria. Two out of every three people afflicted with HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease is the leading cause of death in the region. Just a few years ago, there were fears that HIV/AIDS could wipe out much of the continent’s population, with death rates that would rival the Black Plague of the Middle Ages.

We responded. We responded with the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. It’s the largest international health initiative in history to fight a single disease. (Applause.) In 2002, we pledged $15 billion over five years to support HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care. We set some clear principles on how that money would be spent. We put local partners in the lead, because they know their people and their needs. We opened the funding to faith-based groups — healers willing to deliver medicine to remote villages by bicycle or on foot. We stressed the importance of changing behavior, so that fewer people are infected in the first place.

And the results are striking. When I visited sub-Saharan Africa five years ago, or when we visited five years ago, 50,000 people were receiving medicine to treat HIV/AIDS. And when we return this week, there will be more than 1.3 million. (Applause.) One person who knows the benefits of the Emergency Plan is Tatu Msangi. She’s a single mother from Tanzania. When she became pregnant, Tatu went to a clinic run by a Christian group. Souls showing up to love a neighbor just like they’d like to be loved themselves. You know, it didn’t take a federal law to say, go to Africa to provide love for Tatu, it took a higher calling. These goals responded.

She learned she was HIV-positive, and enrolled in a program designed to prevent mother-to-child transmission. She went on to deliver a healthy, HIV-free girl, named Faith. I will see Tatu next week in Tanzania, but it’s not going to be the first time I met her. See, a few weeks ago, she and Faith endured a rather windy State of the Union address. She sat with Laura in the box, here in the capital of the nation that helped save their lives.

In all, the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has benefited tens of millions in Africa. Some call this a remarkable success. I call it a good start. Last May, I proposed to double our nation’s initial pledge, to $30 billion over the next five years. (Applause.) The people on the continent of Africa have to know they’re not alone. The G8 has shown leadership by agreeing to match our $30 billion pledge. The private sector has made generous contributions as well. Think of what Warner Brothers has done, for example. And now the time has come for Congress to act. Members of both parties should reauthorize the Emergency Plan, maintain the principles that have made it a success, and double our commitment to this noble cause.

Malaria is another devastating killer. In some African countries, malaria takes as many lives as HIV/AIDS. And the vast majority of those taken by malaria are children under the age of five. Every one of these deaths is unnecessary, because the disease is entirely preventable and treatable. So in 2005, America launched a five-year, $1.2 billion initiative to provide the insecticide-treated beds, indoor spraying, cutting-edge drugs that are necessary to defeat this disease. It’s not a complicated strategy. It doesn’t take a lot of medical research. We know how to solve the problem. That’s why I put the Admiral there. He knows how to solve problems. He can get us from point A to point B in a straight line. Well, nearly straight line. (Laughter.) And so we set a historic goal — if you have a treatable problem on hand, then you’re able to set measurable goals. And the goal is to cut the number of malaria-related deaths in 15 African nations by half. That’s the goal.

Like the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the malaria initiative empowers leaders on the ground to design strategies that work best for their nations. For example, President Yayi of Benin has called the fight against malaria “a fight against misery.” With the help of the malaria initiative, he’s leading a campaign to deliver insecticide-treated bed nets to children under five in Benin. I’m looking forward to hearing how that’s going when we meet him on Benin on our first stop. I can’t wait to find out how well this initiative is doing.

Like the Emergency Plan, the malaria initiative has been matched by G8 nations, which have pledged to cut malaria deaths by half in an additional 15 countries. This initiative has also been greeted with generous support from the private sector, faith-based groups, and Americans who want to do something to save somebody’s life. You can buy a $10 bed net and ship it to Africa to save a life. It doesn’t take much money, but it takes a big heart. One of the interesting gifts Laura and I got a couple of years ago for Christmas was bed nets in our name. It made us feel great.

Like the Emergency Plan, the malaria initiative is producing undeniable results. In just over two years, the initiative has reached more than 25 million people. (Applause.) According to new data, malaria rates are dropping dramatically in many parts of Africa. If we stay on this path, an extraordinary achievement is within reach — Africa can turn a disease that has taken its children for centuries into a thing of the past. And wouldn’t that be fantastic? And so Laura and I are going to spend time with these leaders, saying, what a noble opportunity; what a great goal; what a great way to serve humankind.

Finally, we’re working to empower Africans to end conflicts, strengthen democracy, and promote peace. When I took office, Africa was home to six major conflicts — in Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and southern Sudan. We concluded that the best way to broker peace was to support the efforts of African leaders on the ground, instead of dictating solutions from Washington, D.C. And today, every one of them has made progress toward peace and stability.

For example, the United States worked closely with Nigeria to help end the Liberian civil war. When the international community called for Charles Taylor to step down in 2003, the President of Nigeria provided a plane to take him in exile. When U.S. Marines deployed to Liberia, Nigerian peacekeepers deployed at the same time. And today, Liberia’s long war is over. And next week in Monrovia, Laura and I will meet with Africa’s first democratically-elected woman President: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. (Applause.)

Even without major conflict or civil war, security challenges remain in Africa, and we’re working closely with local partners to address them. The Department of Defense has established a new African Command, which will work closely with African governments to crack down on human trafficking, piracy, and terrorism across the continent. We are employing diplomatic tools as well. In Eastern Congo, we worked with leaders on the ground to broker the recent agreements to demobilize all remaining armed groups. And we stand ready to help all sides to implement them. In Kenya, we are backing the efforts of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to end the crisis.

And when we’re on the continent I’ve asked Condi Rice — that would be Secretary Rice — to travel to Kenya to support the work of the former Secretary General, and to deliver a message directly to Kenya’s leaders and people: There must be an immediate halt to violence, there must be justice for the victims of abuse, and there must be a full return to democracy. (Applause.)

In Darfur, the United States will continue to call the killing what it is – genocide. We will continue to deliver humanitarian aid. We will continue to enforce sanctions, tough sanctions, against the Sudanese government officials, rebel leaders, and others responsible for violence. We expect other nations to join us in this effort to save lives from the genocide that is taking place. We will use all our diplomatic resources to urge full deployment of an effective United Nations force. The decision was made to count on the United Nations to provide the force necessary to protect people, and so we’re going to support their efforts. I must confess, I’m a little frustrated by how slow things are moving. And yet we will support their efforts to find forces necessary to make a robust contribution to save lives.

On this trip, I’m going to visit with brave peacekeepers from Rwanda, a nation that knows the pain of genocide and was the first country to send troops into Darfur. Other nations need to follow Rwanda’s example. Other nations need to take this issue seriously, just like the United States does, and provide more manpower for this urgent mission. And when they do, I pledge America will provide the training and equipment necessary to deploy the peacekeepers to Darfur. (Applause.)

America also stands with all in Africa who live in the quiet pain of tyranny. We will confront tyranny. In Zimbabwe, a discredited dictator presides over food shortages, staggering inflation, and harsh repression. The decent and talented people of that country deserve much better. America will continue to support freedom in Zimbabwe. And I urge neighbors in the region, including South Africa, to do the same. We look forward to the hour when this nightmare is over, and the people of Zimbabwe regain their freedom.

These are great challenges, but there is even greater cause for hope. In the past four years alone, there have been more than 50 democratic elections in Africa. Thriving free societies have emerged in nations with Islamic majorities, Christian majorities, majorities of other beliefs — which is a powerful rebuke to the ideology of the extremists. In many nations, women have exercised the right to vote and run for office. Rwanda now has the highest percentage of female legislators in the world. (Applause.) Overall, more than two-thirds of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa are free. And for the rest, the direction of history is clear, so long as the United States does not lose its nerve, and retreat into isolationism and protectionism. The day will come when a region once dismissed as the “dark continent” enjoys the light of liberty.

The United States must remain fully committed to the new era of development that we have begun with our partners in Africa. It’s in our national interest we do so. I’m going to work closely with the G8 nations to ensure they keep their promises as well. Congress must continue to show its commitment by fully funding the development programs I described today. You see, saving lives is a calling that crosses partisan lines. It remains equally worthy in both good economic times and times of economic uncertainty.

Across Africa, people have begun to speak of the “Lazarus effect,” where communities once given up for dead are coming back to life. This work of healing and redemption is both a matter of conscience and a wise exercise of American influence. The work is not done. In the face of the needs that remain, it’s important for the African people to believe the American people are not going to turn away. That’s part of the purpose of our trip. The changes taking place in Africa don’t always make the headlines. So don’t be frustrated, Mark. That means the work is quiet, but it is not thankless.

Last November, I met a woman from Zambia named Bridget Chisenga. Bridget’s husband died of AIDS, and she expected to meet the same fate. Then she went to a clinic operated by Catholic Relief Services, funded by the American people. Today, Bridget is healthy. She has a job at the clinic, where she helps provide AIDS medicine to others. I want our fellow citizens to hear what she said: “This face is alive and vibrant because of your initiative. I would like to thank you.”

Americans have heard similar words of gratitude and hope in the past. They were said about the people who liberated the concentration camps, and saved the blockaded city of Berlin, and stood firm until the prisoners in the gulags were set free. This spirit of purpose and compassion has always defined America. And that is why the people of Africa can be certain they will always have a friend and partner in the United States of America.

God bless. (Applause.)

5 days later, while in Rwanda, WaPo reports:

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 20, 2008; A09

KIGALI, Rwanda, Feb. 19 — He looked shaken, as anyone would visiting a genocide memorial with a picture of a 12-year-old girl and a plaque with her vital information.

Favourite sport: Swimming.

Favourite food: Eggs and chips.

Cause of death: Hacked by machete.

For President Bush, a visit to the Kigali Memorial Center evokes not just stomach-churning visions of what happened here 14 years ago but haunting questions about what is happening even now on another part of the African continent. A president who once scribbled “not on my watch” in the margins of a report on Rwanda finds himself still unable to stop what he has termed genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

“This is a moving place that can’t help but shake your emotions to your very foundation,” Bush said after touring the museum to the 1994 genocide, built on grounds that include mass graves with more than 250,000 bodies. “It reminds me that we must not let these kind of actions take place.”

But unlike Bill Clinton, who came here in 1998 to admit he should have done more to stop the Rwanda genocide, Bush said he feels no guilt and harbors no regret over Darfur — except regret that others have not done what he has pressed them to do. He opted not to send U.S. troops unilaterally into Sudan and instead has tried to help assemble an international peacekeeping force that has yet to fully deploy.

“I still believe it was the right decision,” he said, “but having done that, if you’re a problem-solver, you put yourself at the mercy of decisions of others — in this case, the United Nations. And I’m well known to have spoken out [about] the slowness of the United Nations. It seems very bureaucratic to me, particularly with people suffering.”

He came back to the question of personal regret. “I’m comfortable with the decision I made,” he said. “I’m not comfortable with how quickly the response has been.”

Darfur has always been a crucible of American power under Bush, testing the obligations and limitations of the world’s last superpower striving to dictate events in faraway lands. For Bush, it has been a singular frustration, one he rails about in private with aides even as he has settled for a multilateral effort that sputters inconclusively.

Bush was quick to call the killing in Darfur genocide, a term others still resist, and he organized a massive humanitarian response, imposed sanctions against Sudanese officials and promoted a plan for a 26,000-strong U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force. He announced Tuesday that the United States would spend another $100 million to train African peacekeepers for Darfur, including $12 million for 2,400 more Rwandan troops.

“President Bush did more than any other world leader to try to stop the deaths in Darfur,” said Andrew S. Natsios, who was the president’s envoy to Sudan until December. “He called it what it was when it was happening and then with other countries organized the African Union force.” The humanitarian aid effort, he added, “saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”

Yet activists say it has not been enough. “There is a lot about Darfur that all of us, the president included, should regret now,” said Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition. “Hopefully, the president shares our regret that there isn’t a lasting peace and security in Darfur and that the Darfuri people continue to face violence and suffering.”

So far, just 9,000 peacekeepers are on the ground and major military powers have yet to come up with needed helicopters. China has blocked sanctions at the U.N. Security Council. And Sudan continues to defy the international community as militias renew violence and burn down villages. “How can anyone have a clear conscience about what’s happening in Darfur?” Fowler asked.

Many asked similar questions in April 1994 when this lush, green country known as the land of a thousand hills descended into a frenzy of death. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, touched off a wave of violence against minority Tutsis and sympathetic Hutus. An estimated 800,000 people were killed over 100 days. With bodies still being found today, some put the toll as high as 1 million.

The president and first lady remained grimly silent as they made their way through the museum Tuesday, guided by its manager, Freddy Mutanguha, whose parents and four sisters were killed.

“The U.N. knew about what was going on in our country,” he told the president.

The White House press corps headquartered for the day at the Hotel Des Mille Collines, made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” which depicted a hotel manager who sheltered 1,200 from the violence. But the former manager, Paul Rusesabagina, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush in 2005, was disappointed by the president’s visit. In a letter to Bush, Rusesabagina complained that the current government in Rwanda, led by President Paul Kagame, a general in the Tutsi rebel force that toppled the Hutu government in 1994, has its own ties to mass killings.

A Spanish judge this month issued arrest warrants for 40 current or former members of the Rwandan military on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, although he did not indict Kagame because he has immunity as a head of state. “Mr. President,” Rusesabagina wrote, “the whole world will be watching and wondering in disbelief why you have decided to go and shake the hands of suspected terrorists when fighting terrorism was one of the cornerstones of your outstanding presidency.”

Rwanda’s government has dismissed the judge’s actions as unwarranted. Bush had nothing but praise for Kagame, calling him a “personal friend” as they signed an investment treaty.

He hailed Kagame for contributing the largest share of peacekeepers now in Darfur, where as many as 450,000 people have died, mostly from disease, starvation and dehydration caused or exacerbated by the attacks of Arab militias tied to Sudan’s government.

Like everything else, it’s complicated. Certainly, if America is not directly threatened, we should not follow the Clinton model (Bosnia-Kosovo); we simply don’t have the resources and probably lack the American public will and trust in endangering American soldiers’ lives.

But clearly the President has done more than any other world leader.

Sure I wish President Bush spoke out about Darfur more often. Slide it in there, in every interview, press conference and in more speeches. In some cases, he does, yet those moments get very little airplay. If the MSM is so concerned, they could do more themselves by broadcasting in bold headlines, PRESIDENT SPEAKS OUT ON DARFUR:

Speaking on soil once stained with the blood of Rwanda’s genocide, U.S. President George W. Bush called Tuesday on all nations to step up efforts to end “once and for all” the ethnic slaughter still continuing in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

The president said the U.S. is using sanctions, pressure and money to help resolve the Darfur crisis. But Bush, frustrated at the lack of willingness of some other countries to do the same, sought to give his campaign for their increased involvement added weight by making pointed remarks on it from the Rwandan capital.

“The Rwanda people know the horrors of genocide,” Bush said. “My message to other nations is: ‘Join with the president and help us get this problem solved once and for all.’ And we will help.”

Rwanda was the first to deploy peacekeepers to the violent Darfur region in a joint African Union-UN mission. The United States has trained nearly 7,000 Rwandan troops and spent more than $17 million to equip and airlift them into the region. The U.S. has committed $100 million to train and provide equipment for peacekeepers from several African nations deploying to Darfur.

~~~

“There is evil in the world and evil must be confronted.”

How was President Bush received in February during his trip to Africa?

Jon Ward, Washington Times:

Eric Draper, Mr. Bush’s chief photographer, rode with the president in his limousine as he made his way into Monrovia, Liberia, on the last leg of a five-country African trip last February.

“That was just an amazing experience, to watch this reaction, the emotion on the streets, people crying and on their knees … screaming thank you,” Mr. Draper said in a recent interview with The Washington Times. “It was just incredible.”

I know his African trip was mentioned about by the press; but not the details. The coverage seemed more like pg A18 news, mentioned in passing. An incurious media makes for an ill-informed public. Many people only vaguely know that there is great suffering in Darfur and other parts of Africa. The MSM press could drum up more support for direct action; more political pressure by the public on the White House, giving President Bush the political capital and green light for perhaps even sending troops. But, no. Public opinion has all but muzzled the liberator of 60 million people. Bush critics say it’s not the job of the U.S. to be the world’s policeman and we have no legal right to invade sovereign nations (*cough*UNSCR 687*cough*); and then they demand President Bush “do something”. He’s been going to the UN like they want; and perhaps that’s part of the problem. Not part of the solution: Example via Michael Totten:

There is no love for the United Nations in Kosovo.

Kosovo is the fourth country I’ve visited where the UN has or has had a key role, and in only one of them – Lebanon – is the UN not despised by just about everyone. In Lebanon the UN has so little power to make a difference one way or the other that any anger at the institution would largely be pointless. In Bosnia, though, UN “peacekeepers” stood by impotently while genocide and ethnic-cleansing campaigns were carried out right in front of them. The UN’s Oil for Food program was thoroughly corrupted by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq at the expense of just about everybody who lives there. Kosovo, meanwhile, declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008, but the elected government is still subordinate to the almost universally despised UN bureaucrats who are the real power. Many Kosovars insist the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is actually a dictatorship.

Minor Thoughts (the link I provided for the above Totten excerpt) includes this gem:

[citing Totten again]

“The government of Iraq has more sovereignty than you do,” I said.

That shocked them. Iraq is in vastly worse shape overall than Kosovo. And yet Iraq regained much more of its sovereignty in a shorter amount of time, even while fending off a ferocious insurgency and civil war.

[/Totten]

Right now, the Kosovars would love to have been occupied by the United States. If they had, they’d have more control over their own country, they’d have a functioning economy, and the Americans would have sent trained and competent administrators. Not only that, the American administrators would have been eager to pass their expertise and knowledge along to the Kosovars.

Why does the American left hate American interventions but love United Nations interventions?

Just this past Monday, President Bush signed a waiver to airlift equipment and supplies to Darfur:

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, who made the airlift announcement shortly before the Oval Office meeting, said that Bush waived congressional notification requirements because “failing to do so would pose a substantial risk to human health and welfare.” Hadley cited the immediate need to improve the security situation in west Darfur to allow for aid deliveries.

Hadley also lashed out at critics, singling out New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who have argued that President Bush did not do enough under his watch to end the violence in Darfur. “President Bush has been committed to resolving the crisis there since the United States first labeled it genocide in 2004,” Hadley said.

Kristof wrote in a blog entry following the announcement that the airlift “sure smells of a desperate effort to burnish the administration’s legacy on Darfur, but better late than never.”

The United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was established in July 2007, but the peacekeeping force has struggled to secure the region due to a lack of troops and equipment. Bush has reportedly grown impatient with the lack of progress UNAMID has made since being deployed.

Bush said “it’s going to be very important for the United States to pay attention to the implementation” of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which he called ‘vital’. The White House meeting was arranged to mark the fourth anniversary on January of the signing, which some observers consider one of the Bush administration’s major foreign policy accomplishments.

It is deplorable that there are probably a significant number of Americans- especially black Americans- who feel as Kanye does regarding President Bush’s attitudes toward blacks; and who have fallen for the propagandistic myth that the Republican Party itself is inherently racist.

For whatever polls are worth, an NBC/WSJ poll in 2005 (as blockquoted earlier, Bush received 11% of the black vote in 2004 after taking 8% in 2000) measured a 2% approval rating for President Bush amongst African-Americans (I hate that hyphenation, as how many black Americans actually come directly from the continent of Africa?):

The poll also revealed overwhelming opposition to Bush among African-Americans. Only two percent said they approved of his performance as president, the lowest level ever recorded in that category, NBC television reported.

This is interesting, since some polls measure Bush’s approval rating is in the 80 percentiles:

I mentioned some of Bush’s liberal accomplishments in Africa, before. Danny Huddleston at American Thinker says President Bush’s approval rating in Africa is 80%:

Also, few people are aware of the help Bush has provided to Africa. He has an astonishing approval rating of 80% on that continent. The NY Sun reported on this back in February:

President Bush’s sense of mission to improve the lives of the people of the Middle East has attracted so much attention that the Wall Street Journal called him “Bush of Arabia” the other day over an article by Fouad Ajami. Less widely appreciated are Mr. Bush’s achievements in Africa, which are worth marking as the president embarks today on a visit that is scheduled to include trips to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia. Mr. Bush has committed $15 billion to fight AIDS and HIV in Africa, and the result is that the number of Africans benefiting from anti-retroviral drugs has soared to 1.3 million today from 50,000 a few years ago. A similar effort is under way to fight malaria, with similarly promising results.

Mr. Bush hasn’t gotten much credit for this among the American public, but, as a BBC interviewer noted yesterday, his approval rating in Africa is in the 80% range, which is astonishingly high. [....]

Asked about all this yesterday, Mr. Bush characteristically looked beyond the poll numbers to the broader principles. “I believe to whom much is given, much is required. It happens to be a religious notion. But, it should be a universal notion as well,” the president said. “I believe America’s soul is enriched, our spirit is enhanced when we help people who suffer.”

Also read: Countries that will miss George Bush

President Bush treated like a rock star:

In the week his approval ratings slumped to the lowest level in history for a serving US president – with just 19 per cent of the electorate approving of his actions – George Bush has found an entire continent willing to laud his achievements.

His six-day tour of Africa has seen George W Bush Day proclaimed in Benin, brought tens of thousands of jubilant Tanzanians onto the streets of Dar-es-Salaam and led to a road in Ghana being rechristened the George Bush Motorway.

Bush ended the trip in Liberia, where he met Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the country’s president and the first woman to lead an African nation. The US has invested more than $1bn in aid in the country so Bush was greeted like a pop star – perhaps to the chagrin of ex-rocker Bob Geldof who accompanied the president on his African tour – and presented with a ceremonial robe by a Liberian woman (above).

So, the President who has surrounded himself with the most diverse cabinet in U.S. history (soon to be succeeded by an Obama Administration), which includes the appointment of the first black Secretary of State and first black (female) National Security Advisor (and subsequently, the next Secretary of State), apparently “hates black people”? Well, he sure has a funny way of expressing it.

Maybe Kanye West could take the time to visit war-torn Darfur and tell the parents there who named their children after Bush, our 43rd president hates them:

And so, as his administration comes to an end, how’s this for a great irony: In Africa, newborn sons are named after George W. Bush. Yet his legacy to this country is the election of a black man — whose father was a true son of Africa.

Global warming was blamed for everything from beasts gone wild to anorexic whales to the complete breakdown of human society this year — showing that no matter what it is and where it happens, scientists, explorers, politicians and those who track the Loch Ness Monster are comfortable scapegoating the weather.

FOXNews.com… takes a look back at 10 things that global warming allegedly caused — or will no doubt soon be responsible for — as reported in the news around the world in 2008.

1. Cannibalism
In April, media mogul Ted Turner told PBS’s Charlie Rose that global warming would make the world 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable,” he said. Turner blamed global warming on overpopulation, saying “too many people are using too much stuff.” Crops won’t grow and “most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” Turner said.

2. The Death of the Loch Ness Monster
In February, Scotland’s Daily Mirror reported that 85-year-old American Robert Rines would be giving up his quest for Scotland’s most famous underwater denizen. A World War II veteran, Rines has spent 37 years hunting for Nessie with sonar equipment. In 2008, “despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming.”

3. Beer Gets More Expensive
In April, the Associated Press reported that global warming was going to hit beer drinkers in the wallet because the cost of barley would increase, driving up the price of a pint. Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said Australia would be particularly hard hit as droughts caused a decline in malting barley production in parts of New Zealand and Australia. “It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up,” Salinger said at a beer brewer’s convention, the AP reported.

4. Pythons Take Over America
Giant Burmese pythons – big enough to eat alligators and deer in a single mouthful – will be capable of living in one-third of continental U.S. as global warming makes more of the country hospitable to the cold-blooded predators, according to an April report from USAToday.com…. The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the spread of “invasive snakes,” like the pythons, brought to the U.S. as pets. The Burmese pythons’ potential American habitat would expand by 2100, according to global warming models, the paper reported. “We were surprised by the map. It was bigger than we thought it was going to be,” says Gordon Rodda, zoologist and lead project researcher, told USAToday.com…. “They are moving northward, there’s no question.”

5. Kidney Stones
A University of Texas study said global warming will cause an increase in kidney stones over the next 30 years, the Globe and Mail reported in July. Scientists predict that higher temperatures will lead to more dehydration and therefore to more kidney stones. “This will come and get you in your home,” said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. “It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they’re doing to the climate.”

6. Skinny Whales
Japanese scientists, who have claimed that the country’s controversial whaling program is all in the name of science, said in August that if they hadn’t been going around killing whales, they never would have discovered that the creatures were significantly skinnier than whales killed in the late 1980s, the Guardian reported in August. The researchers said the study was the first evidence that global warming was harming whales by restricting their food supplies. As water warmed around the Antarctic Peninsula, the krill population shrank by 80 percent as sea ice declined, eliminating much of the preferred food of the minke whale. The whales studied had lost the same amount of blubber as they would have by starving for 36 days, but the global warming connection couldn’t be proven because no krill measurements are taken in different regions.

7. Shark Attacks
A surge in fatal shark attacks was the handiwork of global warming, according to a report in the Guardian in May. George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert that maintains an attack database, told the Guardian that shark attacks were caused by human activity. “As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites,” he said. Shark attacks could also be the result of global warming and rising sea temperatures, the Guardian said. “You’ll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn’t in the past with some regularity,” Burgess said.

8. Black Hawk Down
Although it happened in 1993, the crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Mogadishu that became the film “Black Hawk Down” was blamed on global warming by a Massachusetts congressman in 2008. “In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine,” Rep. Edward Markey told a group of students who had come to the Capitol to discuss global warming, according to CNSNews.com…. “That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down.”

9. Frozen Penguin Babies
Penguin babies, whose water-repellant feathers had not grown in yet, froze to death after torrential rains, National Geographic reported in July. “Many, many, many of them—thousands of them—were dying,” explorer Jon Bowermaster told National Geographic. Witnessing the mass penguin death “painted a clear and grim picture” of global warming. “It’s not just melting ice,” Bowermaster said. “It’s actually killing these cute little birds that are so popular in the movies.”

10. Killer Stingray Invasion
Global warming is going to drive killer stingrays, like the one that killed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, to the shores of Britain after a 5-foot -long marbled stingray was captured by fishermen, the Daily Mail reported in June. A single touch can zap a man with enough electricity to kill, the Mail said, and global warming is bringing the Mediterranean killers north. “Rising sea temperatures may well have brought an influx of warm water visitors,” sea life curator Alex Gerrard told the Mail. “Where there’s one electric ray, it’s quite likely that there are more.”

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How do the Democrats get away with this? Leaders always want the ball. They don’t run from it.

Why did it fail?
The reason for the bi-partisan opposition to the $700billion dollar Wall Street bailout package was because there was no $700billion dollar MAIN STREET BAIL OUT PACKAGE. While Barack Obama is on the trail complaining that trickle-down economics don’t work, his party is on The Hill trying to say, if we don’t make things better at the top of the financial food chain, then nothing will trickle down to the rest of America; ie, money does trickle down from investors on Wall Street to people on Main Street. You cannot have it both ways.

How to get it passed?
The solution is simple and three fold
1) The Democratic Party leadership has to act bi-partisan, and that means stop finger-pointing at Republicans for allegedly creating the problem all by their lonesomes (lack of Democrats’ Congressional oversight comes to mind). No way are they going to get support from Republicans while bitching about Republicans
2) The American people have to be convinced that money trickles down from mega investment groups like Freddie and Fannie down to Joe’s Plumbing, and that means Senator Obama’s gonna have to shut up with his ranting about raising taxes on investors, business owners, etc as if it’s not going to have a negative effect on investing, hiring, and pay for average Americans
3) If they want to give $700billion to Wall Street, then they’ve got to give as much to Main Street. There are 102million households in the country that are not owned/paid off. Give each one a tax credit of say…$7000, and bammo! People aren’t in foreclosure, spending goes up, govt doesn’t have to buy the homes ’cause now the owners can make their payments, and everyone’s happy.

Barack Obama talks about pain trickling up to Wall Street. Ok, step up Big O. Give the money to Main Street so they can pay Wall Street, and that will buy the Congress time to re-regulate (more regs or less regs) and solve the problem.

And by the way……!
Could someone give Senator Obama the memo from the DNC (or Congressional Accounting Office) that the war in IRAQ DOES NOT COST $10, 12, or 20billion a week as he claims. It’s about $550billion over 5yrs, and while that sounds like a lot, it’s nothing compared to $700billion in one week that the Democrats’ Congress wants to give to Wall Street so it can trickle down to Main Street.

QUESTION:
While Barack Obama is saying that he’s going to tax the highest earning 5%, and make them pay hundreds of billions of dollars for his littany of programs and giveaways…isn’t it odd that we’re supposed to believe those same 5% need $700billion right now?