Rev Al Sharpton's Driver Arrested for Speeding

AP

Sharpton Driver Arrested for SpeedingAug 29 5:46 PM US/Eastern

WAXAHACHIE, Texas
A car carrying the Rev. Al Sharpton led sheriff's deputies on a nine- mile chase at speeds up to 110 mph before state troopers stopped the vehicle and arrested the driver, authorities said.
The civil rights activist called the sheriff's report "ludicrous" and accused the Ellis County officers of "embellishing the story."

"That nine-mile chase is news to me," Sharpton told The Associated Press. "All I know is that the police pulled us over because they wanted to talk to the driver about speeding."

Chief Deputy Charles Sullins said driver Jarrett B. Maupin, 43, was rushing Sharpton to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after Sharpton visited anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan on Sunday at her camp outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford.

Because the 2005 Lincoln was rented to Maupin, of Phoenix, sheriff's deputies impounded the car. Maupin posted a $1,000 bond on charges of evading arrest with a vehicle and reckless driving, authorities said.

The car carrying Sharpton and two other passengers was clocked doing 110 mph in a 65 mph zone on the interstate south of Dallas, Sullins said.
He said the driver ignored deputies' attempts to stop it and weaved in and out of traffic before state troopers were able to get in front of the car.

Sharpton caught a lift from a passing driver and made his scheduled flight to New York.

Comment by Pete: He He Hee Hee Haaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

GOP Fears Gas Price Anger May Spill Over

WASHINGTON — As consumers feel pain at the pump, record high gas prices are registering as a political problem with congressional Republicans.

Read More [Link Me]

Comment by Pete: Yes they should be worried because the general perception is that they are not doing anything about it. And what can they do now? We have been caught with our pants down once again like a bunch of gas junkies waiting for our fix. Even though there are some promising technologies for the future, in the short term we are pretty much screwed and tattooed. I think this country should have started a Manhattan like project to ween ourselves from dependence on foreing oil 20 years ago. If we start one now, it may be 10 years before we start seeing the results. There will not be the immediate gratification we are used too. With gas nearly at $3.00 per gal. we are at a crossroads and something needs to be done. The politicians need to do more than just pay lip service to the problem, get out of the pockets of the oil companies and encourage the entrepreneurial engine that put men on the moon to finally solve the energy problem.

US general sees significant withdrawal in Iraq

The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country.

Read More [Link Me]

Sheehan Calls Son's Killers 'Freedom Fighters'

In an interview earlier this month, Bush-bashing Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan referred to terrorists allied with the Iraqi insurgents who killed her GI son Casey as "freedom fighters."

"Now that we have decimated [Iraq], the borders are open, freedom fighters from other countries are going in, and [U.S. troops] have created more terrorism by going to an Islamic country," Sheehan complained to CBS Newsman Mark Knoller.


Knoller, as well as other reporters who heard Sheehan's remarks, declined to include the outburst in his coverage.
But a video unearthed Tuesday by FreeRepublic.com captured Sheehan's comments on tape.

KNOLLER: You know that the president says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, don't you believe that?

SHEEHAN: No, because it's not true. You know Iraq was no threat to the United States of America until we invaded. I mean they're not even a threat to the United States of America. Iraq was not involved in 9-11, Iraq was not a terrorist state.

But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open, freedom fighters from other countries are going in, and [U.S. troops] have created more terrorism by going to an Islamic country, devastating the country and killing innocent people in that country. The terrorism is growing and people who never thought of being car bombers or suicide bombers are now doing it because they want the United States of America out of their country.

Sent by Sr. Cohiba

Comment by Pete: Unnnnnbelievable. Yes they are all freedom fighters and we are Bad, Bad America. We are the terrorists. These people just don't have a clue. Hopefully her two weeks of fame are almost over. Book deal and made for TV movie next.

Liberal Media Hypocrisy

Stephanopoulos Urged Foreign Assassination

Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson prompted a firestorm of media outrage on Tuesday after he suggested that the Bush administration should assassinate a foreign leader who posed a threat to the U.S. - in this case, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

But when senior Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos publicly argued for the same kind of assassination policy in 1997, the press voiced no objection at all.

Fresh from his influential White House post, Stephanopoulos devoted an entire column in Newsweek to the topic of whether the U.S. should take out Saddam Hussein.

His headlined? "Why We Should Kill Saddam."

"Assassination may be Clinton's best option," the future "This Week" host urged. "If we can kill Saddam, we should."

Though Iraq war critics now argue that by 1997, the Iraqi dictator was "in a box" and posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S., Stephanopoulos contended that Saddam deserved swift and lethal justice.

"We've exhausted other efforts to stop him, and killing him certainly seems more proportionate to his crimes and discriminate in its effect than massive bombing raids that will inevitably kill innocent civilians," the diminutive former aide contended.

Stephanopoulos even offered a way to get around the presidential ban on foreign assassinations:

"If Clinton decides we can and should assassinate Saddam, he could call in national-security adviser Sandy Berger and sign a secret National Security Decision Directive authorizing it."

The Stephanopoulos plan: "First, we could offer to provide money and materiel to Iraqi exiles willing to lead an effort to overthrow Saddam. . . . The second option is a targeted airstrike against the homes or bunkers where Saddam is most likely to be hiding."

The one-time top Clinton aide said that, far from violating international principles, assassinating Saddam would be the moral thing to do, arguing, "What's unlawful - and unpopular with the allies - is not necessarily immoral."

Stephanopoulos also noted that killing Saddam could pay big political dividends at home, saying the mission would make Clinton "a huge winner if it succeeded."

Sent by Sr.Cohiba

Pat Robertson Calls for Assassination of Hugo Chavez

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying the leftist leader wanted to turn his country into "the launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
Read More [Link Me]

Comment by Pete: Now this guy has balls. A round of applause please. What? Like half the country hasn't thought about it already. They just can't say it. Why can't we just kill him and take all the oil? Sounds good to me. Brace yourself Pat here comes the tar and the feathers. It's like Fidel all over again. I think Pat was just thinking out loud and now he will have to say 24 "Our Fathers" as penance. Seriously now, as much as I would like it, it's illegal, and it just wouldn't be conduct becoming our great nation. What happened to "Thou shall not murder"

Update: U.S. Dodges Robertson Comments on Chavez
The Bush administration swiftly and unequivocally distanced itself Tuesday from a suggestion by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson that American agents assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a frequent target of U.S. foreign policy.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, appearing at a Pentagon news conference, said when asked: "Our department doesn't do that kind of thing. It's against the law. He's a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time."

The Best Movie Quote Ever

From the Bob Hope Movie, The Ghost Breakers (1940)

Geoff: "When a person dies and is buried, it seems there's certain voodoo priests who have the power to bring him back to life. "
Mary: "How horrible. "
Geoff: "It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes, walking around with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring. "
(The Bob Hope Character) Larry: "You mean like democrats?"

[Link] to the actual clip

Sent by Sr.Cohiba

Chavez Blasts U.S. Alongside Castro

Sunday, August 21, 2005
HAVANA — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez criticized the United States for recent remarks about his role in Latin America, saying in a Sunday broadcast from Cuba that it is the policies of the U.S. government that are harming the world, not his own.
Chavez spoke alongside Cuban President Fidel Castro during his weekly television and radio show from the western tip of the island, flaunting the close ties between the two leftist leaders that U.S. leaders say are threatening democracy in the region.
"The grand destroyer of the world, and the greatest threat ... is represented by U.S. imperialism," Chavez said.

Chavez was responding to remarks Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made on his way home from visits to Paraguay and Peru last week. Referring to social uprisings in Bolivia that have pushed out two presidents in less than two years, Rumsfeld told reporters that Venezuela and Cuba have been influencing the Andean nation "in unhelpful ways."

Uneasy about the close relationship between Castro and Chavez, Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have repeatedly said the two men are fomenting instability in Latin America. Both leaders have consistently denied the accusations.
Chavez gave a new vote of confidence to Castro's communist government Sunday, calling it a "revolutionary democracy" in which the Cuban people rule.
People "have asked me how I can support Fidel if he's a dictator," Castro said. "But Cuba doesn't have a dictatorship — it's a revolutionary democracy."
Television footage showed Chavez and Castro together in the streets of Pinar del Rio earlier in the day, standing on the back of a jeep wearing olive green military uniforms and saluting hundreds of shouting residents waving Cuban and Venezuelan flags.

During the nearly six-hour show, Castro and Chavez talked mainly about their joint social ventures, particularly in the health sector. Cuba has sent a fifth of its doctors to work in poor communities in Venezuela, in gratitude for massive shipments of Venezuelan oil under preferential terms.

The leaders praised each other throughout the show and took phone calls and messages from supporters in both countries. They also received praise from the audience, which included Castro's Cabinet members, the ex-Salvadoran guerrilla leader Shafick Handal and former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

"It is a great privilege for all of us to see you here together," said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, dressed like the other officials in a bright red shirt. "We feel like we are living a special moment, and that, in Latin America, Cuba is not alone."

The visit marked Chavez's fourth to Cuba in the last nine months. He arrived Saturday to attend the first graduation of the Latin American School of Medicine, a regional initiative launched in 1998 after two hurricanes devastated Caribbean and Central American nations. Chavez announced he would create a second such school in Venezuela.

*---- Quote of the Day ----*

"Mental toughness is many things. It is humility because it behooves all of us to remember that simplicity is the sign of greatness and meekness is the sign of true strength. Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is love."
--Vince Lombardi

GOP Senator Says Iraq Looking Like Vietnam

WASHINGTON (AP) - A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.

Comment by Pete: He's obviously full of it. What he's not telling you is that he wants to run for President. In Vietnam we were losing hundreds of men a week. thousands a month with no clear strategy. No comparison period. We lose more people everyday in highway accidents here in the states everyday. Stop critizicing the war and instead come up with some ideas, because leaving Iraq now is not an option.

Read More [Link Me]

Cindy Sheehan: Commander in grief

Cindy Sheehan: Commander in grief

Ann Coulter (archive)

August 18, 2005

To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.

Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on "Entertainment Tonight," you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show.

We're sorry about Ms. Sheehan's son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9-11. This isn't about her personal loss. America has been under relentless attack from Islamic terrorists for 20 years, culminating in a devastating attack on U.S. soil on 9-11. It's not going to stop unless we fight back, annihilate Muslim fanatics, destroy their bases, eliminate their sponsors and end all their hope. A lot more mothers will be grieving if our military policy is: No one gets hurt!

Fortunately, the Constitution vests authority to make foreign policy with the president of the United States, not with this week's sad story. But liberals think that since they have been able to produce a grieving mother, the commander in chief should step aside and let Cindy Sheehan make foreign policy for the nation. As Maureen Dowd said, it's "inhumane" for Bush not "to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

I'm not sure what "moral authority" is supposed to mean in that sentence, but if it has anything to do with Cindy Sheehan dictating America's foreign policy, then no, it is not "absolute." It's not even conditional, provisional, fleeting, theoretical or ephemeral.

The logical, intellectual and ethical shortcomings of such a statement are staggering. If one dead son means no one can win an argument with you, how about two dead sons? What if the person arguing with you is a mother who also lost a son in Iraq and she's pro-war? Do we decide the winner with a coin toss? Or do we see if there's a woman out there who lost two children in Iraq and see what she thinks about the war?

Dowd's "absolute" moral authority column demonstrates, once again, what can happen when liberals start tossing around terms they don't understand like "absolute" and "moral." It seems that the inspiration for Dowd's column was also absolute. On the rocks.

Liberals demand that we listen with rapt attention to Sheehan, but she has nothing new to say about the war. At least nothing we haven't heard from Michael Moore since approximately 11 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001. It's a neocon war; we're fighting for Israel; it's a war for oil; Bush lied, kids died; there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Turn on MSNBC's "Hardball" and you can hear it right now. At this point, Cindy Sheehan is like a touring company of Air America radio: Same old script and it's not even the original cast.

These arguments didn't persuade Hillary Clinton or John McCain to vote against the war. They didn't persuade Democratic primary voters, who unceremoniously dumped anti-war candidate Howard Dean in favor of John Kerry, who voted for the war before he voted against it. They certainly didn't persuade a majority of American voters who re-upped George Bush's tenure as the nation's commander in chief last November.

But now liberals demand that we listen to the same old arguments all over again, not because Sheehan has any new insights, but because she has the ability to repel dissent by citing her grief.

On the bright side, Sheehan shows us what Democrats would say if they thought they were immunized from disagreement. Sheehan has called President Bush "that filth-spewer and warmonger." She says "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started" and "the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." She calls the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system" and says, "This country is not worth dying for." I have a feeling every time this gal opens her trap, Michael Moore gets a residuals check.

Evidently, however, there are some things worth killing for. Sheehan recently said she only seemed calm "because if I started hitting something, I wouldn't stop 'til it was dead." It's a wonder Bush won't meet with her.

ABC Station Refuses to Air Cindy Shehan Anti-War Ad

SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah television station is refusing to air an anti-war ad featuring Cindy Sheehan, whose son's death in Iraq prompted a vigil outside President Bush Texas ranch.

The ad began airing on other area stations Saturday, two days before Bush was scheduled to speak in Salt Lake City to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

However, a national sales representative for KTVX, a local ABC affiliate, rejected the ad in an e-mail to media buyers, writing that it was an "inappropriate commercial advertisement for Salt Lake City." In the ad, Sheehan pleads with Bush for a meeting and accuses him of lying to the American people about Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction and its connection to al-Qaida.

[Link Me]to the full article

THE SUBTLE DIFFERENCES OF WOMEN IN POLITICS

ANOTHER PREZ BUBBA BLUNDER

Newly declassified documents show that the Clinton administration was warned up to 5 years prior to the terrorists attack in New York of imminent terrorist activity in the United States.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam "well beyond the Middle East," but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.

[LINK ME] TO THE FULL ARTICLE