Democratic Rep. Bobby Bright (Ala.) on Wednesday ducked a question on whether or not he would vote for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) by joking that she “might even get sick and die.”
Bright, a centrist Blue Dog who voted against the healthcare reform law, made the comments in response to a question about whether he’d support Pelosi to retain the Speaker’s gavel.
Speaking at a local Chamber of Commerce event, Bright “joked that Pelosi might lose her own election, decide not to run for the speaker’s job or otherwise not be available,” the Montgomery Advertiser wrote.
He then suggested “jokingly” that Pelosi could fall ill and die in the coming months, thus preventing him from having to vote for her as Speaker. His remarks reportedly drew laughter from the audience.
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Conservative Dem lawmaker jokes about Speaker Pelosi dying
Obama Admin report to the UN: US has human rights shortcomings
AP,
The Obama administration has told the United Nations that America’s human rights record is less than perfect but stressed that the U.S. political system has built-in safeguards that promote improvements.
In its first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on conditions in the United States, the State Department said Monday that some Americans, notably minorities, are still victims of discrimination. Despite success in reforming such inequities as slavery and the denial of women’s right to vote, the department said, considerable progress is still needed.
“Although we have made great strides, work remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all,” it said.
The report noted that although the U.S. now has an African-American president and that women and Hispanics have won greater social and economic success, large segments of American society suffer from unfair policies and practices.
Intel CEO: Democrats’ Keynesian experiment is not working
CNET,
Intel chief executive Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.
Otellini’s remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”
Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”
72 bodies found 90 miles from US border
AFP,
Troops uncovered at least 72 bodies, including those of 14 women, on a ranch in northeastern Mexico after a clash with gunmen, the Mexican military said early Wednesday.
The gruesome find came after a shootout between troops and suspected drug traffickers near the town of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state, in which one member of the military and three gunmen were killed, according to the Mexican Navy.
Tamaulipas, which borders the southern US state of Texas, is the scene of brutal confrontations between the Gulf drug cartel and its former allies, the Zetas, as they fight for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.
The navy said “the lifeless bodies of 72 people were found” after the military went to the ranch when a man suffering from gunshot wounds approached a nearby military checkpoint and said he had been attacked on the ranch by members of a drug gang.
Microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf
AP,
A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., reported Tuesday in the online journal Sciencexpress.
“Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest” a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.
Traffic jam in China could last weeks
A 60-mile traffic jam near the Chinese capital could last until mid-September, officials say.
Traffic has been snarled along the outskirts of Beijing and is stretching toward the border of Inner Mongolia ever since roadwork on the Beijing-Tibet Highway started Aug. 13. The following week, parts of a major road circling Beijing were closed, further tightening overburdened roadways.
As the jam on the highway, also known as National Highway 110, passed the 10-day mark Tuesday, local authorities dispatched hundreds of police to keep order and to reroute cars and trucks carrying essential supplies, such as food or flammables, around the main bottleneck. There, vehicles were inching along little more than a third of a mile a day. Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou city’s Traffic Management Bureau general office, said in a telephone interview he didn’t expect the situation to return to normal until around Sept. 17 when road construction is scheduled to be finished and traffic lanes will open up.
Villagers along Highway 110 took advantage of the jam, selling drivers packets of instant noodles from roadside stands and, when traffic was at a standstill, moving between trucks and cars to hawk their wares.
Marine Corps Commandant: Obama’s Afghanistan withdrawal gives the Taliban “sustenance”
The commandant of the Marine Corps said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan was “probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
The remark was by far the most sharply worded public remark from a senior military commander about the White House’s timetable for starting to wind down the war.
But the commandant, Gen. James Conway, said he thought the deadline might not ultimately comfort the insurgents, who could find that only a small number of U.S. forces leave Afghanistan next July, a scenario that is increasingly set forth by senior military commanders. Conway predicted that Taliban fighters, who he said have been told repeatedly by their commanders that the Americans would leave en masse, would be demoralized when they realize that the United States is staying.
State Department: Imam’s controversial remarks taken out of context
State Department officials say they are aware of the controversial remarks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf made in 2005. Rauf is the Imam of the controversial so-called Ground Zero mosque and is presently on a State Department funded outreach tour of Middle Eastern countries.
During a 2005 conference in Australia, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf compared the United States to Al Qaeda and said, “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”
Rauf made the comments while speaking at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center during a question and answer session, as part of what sponsors say was a dialogue to improve relations between America and the Muslim world.
Rauf added, “You remember that the U.S. led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations.”
“We are aware of those remarks,” said State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley. “I would just caution any of you that choose to write on this that once again you have a case where a blogger has pulled out one passage from a very lengthy speech, if you read the entire speech, you will discover exactly why we think he is rightfully participating in this international speaking tour.”
Counter-terrorism adviser Brennan storms out of interview
Mr. Brennan cut the meeting short and stormed out of our offices thereafter following a question posed by senior editorial writer Jim Robbins (transcript and video below). Referring to a quote Mr. Brennan said in May, calling jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” Mr. Robbins looked to discuss the concept of jihad further with the Obama administration adviser.
Imam thanks Obama
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf used his taxpayer-funded Mideast tour yesterday to praise President Obama’s qualified support for the mosque near Ground Zero.
“I am grateful to President Barack Obama and all those who expressed support for our project,” Abdul Rauf said at a dinner for student leaders in the Gulf state of Bahrain. the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain reported.
Obama fueled the debate over the mosque with a White House speech defending the right to build the project, but hedged by saying he wouldn’t comment on the “wisdom” of its location.
Abdul Rauf also wryly noted that “We are in the media a lot these days due to one of our initiatives,” a reference to the planned Islamic cultural center including a mosque on Park Place two blocks north of Ground Zero.
Ebay, Adobe, EA Games leaving California over confiscatory tax rate
Computer software giant Adobe, computer game monster EA Games, and Internet auction king ebay are abandoning California to set up shop in Utah. Why? California’s horrid business climate and high taxes.
Adobe Systems, maker of a suite of graphics programs such as Adobe PDF, Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, have announced that they are building a $100 million facility in either Salt Lake City or in nearby Utah County, Utah. The facility will bring thousands of jobs to Utah over the next few decades.
In May the Internet auction company ebay also announced a major new facility to be built in Salt Lake City. The $287 million data center will also bring hundreds of new jobs to the Bee Hive State.
Not to be forgotten, games maker Electronic Arts opened its new facility in July in Salt Lake City where around 100 employees are already at work.
These companies fleeing California’s horrid business climate are not alone. There has been a steady flow of businesses out of California for the better part of a decade. As California’s political morass worsens, as its budget woes increase, and as her politicians are proven incapable of making the hard budgetary decisions to take power from unions and chop unnecessarily lavish social programs, the state’s jobs are bleeding out. California is an a freefall the end of which is still unseen.
Ground Zero mosque developer: US is worse than Al Qaeda
“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims,” Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia.
Obama’s failed stimulus program cost more than Iraq war
Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.
The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush’s economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker’s Randall Hoven points out, that’s the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation’s Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.
The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict.
Carbon credit scam: UN board could rein in $2.7 billion
AP,
An obscure U.N. board that oversees a $2.7 billion market intended to cut heat-trapping gases has agreed to take steps that could lead to it eventually reining in what European and U.S. environmentalists are calling a huge scam.
At a meeting this week that ended Friday, the executive board of the U.N.’s Clean Development Mechanism said that five chemical plants in China would no longer qualify for funding as so-called carbon offset credits until the environmentalists’ claims can be further investigated.
The “CDM” credits have been widely used in the carbon trading markets of the European Union, Japan and other nations that signed onto the 1997 Kyoto Protocol requiring mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.
Rather than cut their own carbon emissions, industrialized nations can buy the credits which then pay developing countries to cut their greenhouse gases instead.
But environmentalists say rich nations could be wasting billions of dollars on what some are calling “perverse financial incentives,” because some of the largest projects funded by the U.N.-managed CDM are a golden goose for chemical makers without making meaningful cuts in emissions.
Iran is nuclear
Israel said Saturday the fueling of Iran’s first nuclear reactor was “totally unacceptable” and urged greater world pressure to force Tehran to cease any uranium enrichment.
“It is totally unacceptable that a country that so blatantly violates (international treaties) should enjoy the fruits of using nuclear energy,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy said in a statement.
With Russian help, Iranian engineers began loading fuel into the country’s first nuclear power plant Saturday, marking a milestone in Tehran’s development of what it insists is a peaceful nuclear energy program.
A top Iranian official, however, was quoted saying Iran will continue to enrich uranium on the side — despite a White House warning that Iran does need the enrichment program once the new Bushehr reactor is online if its intentions are indeed peaceful.