Gitmo prisoners sent to Bermuda

After announcing in his first week in office that he was closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, president Obama was faced with the reality of not having a plan for the inmates once he fulfilled his promise. He hinted that he might bring the terrorists to the United States and house them in US prisons or perhaps try them in American criminal courts alongside common criminals, thieves and liquor store stick-up artists. This brought such a public outcry that he shelved that idea and went looking for other places to put them. It was announced a few days ago that he had found new homes for several Chinese Uighurs in Bermuda, a self-governing British overseas territory. Obama said that these men were no longer considered a threat and the island of Bermuda had agreed to take 4 of them. That’s because US lawmakers cut off funds to resettle them in the United States, saying they could pose a risk.

The four men, who were captured on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2001 claimed that they were all innocent itinerant workers who were wrongly turned in by bounty hunters. That is the official line that the Obama administration is taking. However, it was reported in The Weekly Standard, that the men weren’t quite what they claim. Thomas Joscelyn wrote on June 11:

“All four of them are members or associates of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (otherwise known as the Turkistan Islamic Party). The ETIM/TIP is a U.S. and UN designated terrorist organization affiliated with al Qaeda and has attacked civilians in China, as well as reportedly plotted against other targets elsewhere, including the U.S. embassy in Kyrgyzstan. According to the State Department, ETIM/TIP members have also fought alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And last year the organization threatened to attack the Olympic Games in China.

The four Uighurs attempted to deny any relationship with the ETIM/TIP, the Taliban, and al Qaeda during their CSRTs. But their denials are not credible. In the context of their denials they made important admissions. For example, all four of the Uighurs admitted during their Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) at Gitmo that they received training in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. And all four of them received this training at an ETIM/TIP terrorist training facility in Tora Bora, a key area once controlled by the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Three of the four Uighurs transferred to Bermuda also admitted that they had firsthand ties to senior terrorists such as Hassan Mahsum and Abdul Haq – the leaders of the ETIM/TIP. Haq was recently designated an al Qaeda terrorist by the Obama administration’s Treasury Department, which noted that he is also a member of al Qaeda’s elite Shura council. Mahsum was killed in a Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold in northern Pakistan in 2003.”

Oh well, if the Bermuda Prime Minister had known the truth, he might not have agreed to take the men while keeping the now furious British government in the dark about the negotiations.

Presently the men are staying in a first class holiday resort hotel and the American taxpayers are picking up the tab. I’m wondering if I could get such a deal. I’ve always wanted to visit Bermuda. Maybe if I grew a bushy chin beard and wore a turban…

Other Uighurs have been sent to the Pacific island of Palau. It’s located about one thousand miles SE of Manila and 800 miles SW of Guam. It’s been reported that the tiny island nation will be getting $200 million from the US government as part of the deal. Isn’t it nice to have unlimited funds with which to solve pesky problems?

The U.S. would not send the Uighurs back to China, where they came from, for fear they will be tortured or executed. Beijing says Uighur insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in China's far west and wants those held at Guantanamo to be returned to China. I don’t suppose China is buying their claims of being merely innocents who were arrested while just walking along minding their own business.

Italy has agreed to accept three detainees from Guantanamo Bay, President Barack Obama said Monday, following a visit by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. I suppose that’s some sort of progress, but it seems a little slow. How many presidents, prime ministers and friendly dictators will Obama have to meet with before he finds countries that will take the rest of them? There are still over 200 to go and he hasn’t even started trying to fob off the really bad ones.

The new Czarist

By my count, President Obama has appointed about 20 Czars in his five months in office. Obama’s czars report directly to him. These people are supernumerary to the usual make up of a presidential administration and assigned to oversee a variety of agencies that already exist within the government beauracracy.

Previous presidents have had one or two czars, but haven’t gone hog wild with them like this guy. Unlike cabinet officers, they are neither required to be approved by the Senate nor accountable to anyone but the president.

So far, Obama has appointed a drug czar, a U.S. border czar, an urban czar, a regulatory czar, a stimulus accountability czar, an Iran czar, a Middle East czar, a czar for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, an Infotech czar, a Faith-based czar, a Health reform czar, TARP czar, a Non-proliferation czar, a Guantanamo closure czar, a Great Lakes czar and is planning to anoint a pay czar in the near future. Obama has more czars than Russia ever had. I expect there’ll be a Misery Czar before long to enforce a uniform sharing of fairness--and misery. This president is all about what he reckons is "fair."

Senator Robert Byrd (born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr.), a crusty old partisan who usually defends the most indefensible activities of his fellow Democrats, isn’t at all happy with the new czar system. In a letter to Obama he wrote, “The rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and balances.” Byrd quoted from a House study from the Watergate era regarding Nixon appointees, which stated:

"Whatever their other duties and roles, each of these individuals, as White House personnel, held a high degree of political immunity from accounting for their activities before Congressional Committees. The shadow of executive privilege beclouded normal accountability arrangements." Most people know that Senator Byrd was an Exalted Cyclops or something like that in the KKK before getting into national politics. It’s possible that his previous affiliation may have something to do with his criticism of the dark one in chief.

Most of the other Democrats are saying little and nodding their heads in the affirmative direction lest they say something that displeases our new super-czar lest they appear to disagree with his sweeping changes in government. Perhaps they fear a new czar will be appointed to keep track of wavering Democrats that aren’t toeing the mark.

The so-called Mainstream Media are mostly quiet about all these czars. To find critics of czarmania, one must either go to the Fox News Channel or the Internet where there are plenty of political pundits that owe no loyalty to the current administration.

Writing about a pay czar in the Fox Forum, Dan Gainor, VP for the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture said, “In “Fiddler on the Roof,” the hero Tevye sang of how he wished he were wealthy. “If I Were a Rich Man” became a Broadway and movie favorite as a catchy tune and even catchier sentiment. As the struggling Russian peasant explained, “It’s no shame to be poor, but it’s no great honor either.”

No, today, the shame is being rich, and President Obama seems determined to bestow the ‘honor’ of poverty on as many as possible. Forget the horrendous tax-and-spend policies that gradually impoverish us all. Obama’s new target is a direct one – the evil, greedy CEO. To do so, he is set to appoint Kenneth Feinberg as his new ‘Pay Czar’….. The New York Times portrayed it as a new offensive against CEOs earning more than Obama likes, saying the administration is taking action as ‘part of a broad set of regulations on executive compensation expected to be announced by the administration as early as this week.’”

Having people roaming around and meddling with various aspects of government, people with allegiance only to the president, reminds me a little of totalitarian regimes. Since the Obama administration seems to have an affinity for Russian job titles, it would be more truthful if these czars were renamed commissars.

This country was set up as a way to escape the tyranny of kings and dictators. The plan balanced power between three branches of government. This we call checks and balances. Czars are not part of the arrangement. Combining all this power into the oval office appears to be bringing us dangerously close to an all powerful ruler, rather than a leader. None of his former colleagues in congress have the courage to stand up to this patent power grab.

As a blogger who calls himself “The Historian” wrote in “The Real World” the other day, “Here is the ugly truth: Barack Obama is nobody special. He is proving to be a self-serving, self-absorbed elitist who very mistakenly believes he knows better than the rest of us. But his ongoing accumulation of power is just another example of his Chicago "mob rule" mindset. The wild eyed far left screamed about this idea during the Bush years. They are silent on the matter today.

If this nation is not careful, all those little czars will eventually lead to tyranny.” I, for one, am more than a little uneasy about what appears to be too much power being accumulated by one man, too fast. Moreover, I'm concern about what he intends to do with all this power.

Follow the money

It’s been a few weeks since the country was in an uproar over bonuses paid to AIG executives after company had received of a large chunk of taxpayer’s money. It was eventually disclosed that the clause put into the agreement with AIG that authorized the bonuses was put there by Senator Chris Dodd (D) CT. He initially denied being the culprit until it was proven. Then he owned up, meaning he had been caught in a lie, but claimed that he had been ordered to do so by the White House. Naturally, the White House denied it. While I’m sure it was a mere coincidence, AIG gave Senator Dodd $103,100 in campaign donations. An even bigger coincidence is that AIG also gave then Senator Obama $100,332. These things happen all the time. Politicians receive large campaign donations from certain donors and then something good happens to the donors as a result of federal legislation or other action. Is it magic, or is it something else? While I certainly wouldn’t intentionally besmudge the escutcheons of our honorable elected officials, it would seem that such things happen all too often to be just chance.

Another seemingly strange thing that happens to many long-term elected officials in Washington is that they arrive with very little money and retire wealthy. I think many, if not most, get into it thinking they can make a difference. But once in office, they become addicted to the power. Almost any politician that makes it to the national level can become very wealthy if so inclined—and they are.

In a March 2008 Reuters News Agency article, Kevin Drawbaugh wrote, “The personal wealth of members of the U.S. Congress has soared in recent years, leaving lawmakers on average far more well-to-do than most Americans as of 2006, said a study on Thursday.
The median net worth of senators was estimated at $1.7 million and House of Representatives members at $675,000, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington watchdog group that monitors the influence of money on government.
The center released a report saying that until the recent economic slowdown, lawmakers ‘enjoyed an extraordinary run in their personal investments and other finances.’
The report said, ‘Members of Congress, who are now paid about $169,000 annually, saw their net worths soar 84 percent from 2004 to 2006, on average.
They have millions of dollars invested in politically influential industries that they also regulate," such as real estate, banking, pharmaceuticals and energy, the center said.’"

Although it will never happen, it would be a good idea to require elected members of congress and former elected officials serving in the current administration to dress in uniforms similar to NASCAR race car drivers. Like racers with patches of their sponsors sewn all over their fire suits, the politicians would have to display patches showing logos of their major campaign contributors. Once those we have entrusted to run the country are suitably credentialed, it would become easier to understand that the reason why certain new laws seem to benefit certain companies is neither magic nor coincidence. It would be easier to follow the money.

March Madness--ZZzzzzzzz

I don’t like basketball. While I’m not disparaging anyone who does, to me it’s boring. The image of seven footers loping from one end of the court to the other, dropping the ball into the net then repeating the sequence all night puts me to sleep. The yearly practice of devoting nine hours a day to basketball games for days on end, omitting the six and ten o’clock news and all programs in between, gets me riled to some degree. If you are a big basketball fan, imagine that the only thing on the sports channels was eight hours of tiddlywinks or maybe back to back biographies of noted bird watchers. You’d probably be looking for something else to do.

This annual ritual they call March Madness on CBS kicked off yesterday afternoon. I had forgotten about it until I turned to the Channel 12 news at six and found no news but a basketball game instead. That wasn’t too bad; I watched the news on Channel 10. After that I watched O’Reilly on Fox News then an old documentary about noodlin’ for catfish on PBS. I figured the ball games would have been over by eight because I wanted to watch CSI. Nope, more basketball. A check again at nine, and what do you know, more BBall.

At ten, they were still at it. I usually watch Leno at 10:30, but Obama was on and I've had about as much of his face and his speechfying as I can take. So I listened to a radio episode of Dragnet, first recorded in 1948. It was the best entertainment of the night.

Tonight promises more of the same, so it’ll either be old radio programs or one of the 8 DVDs of English murder mysteries that I got for Christmas.

The Tenth Amendment movement

Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution are two of the least well-known and perhaps the two most ignored by the federal government—particularly the tenth. The reason for these amendments goes back to the beginning of our republic. The founding fathers believed in a balance between state and federal power and didn’t want a federal government that dictated to the states. James Madison, one of the driving forces behind the Constitution, wrote "The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people." Thomas Jefferson said that the states are not "subordinate" to the national government, but rather the two are "coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government." Alexander Hamilton wrote that ‘this balance between the national and state governments forms a double security to the people. If one [government] encroaches on their rights, they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from over-passing their constitutional limits by [the] certain [rivalry] which will ever subsist between them.’”
To a large degree, states' sovereignty has been eroded by the federal government, particularly during and since the FDR administration. Whether by giving money with strings attached or by unfunded mandates, Washington has been calling the tune for decades. State governments are in continual need of money to fund their various projects and have mostly surrendered their sovereignty in order to get “free money.” Of course there’s no such thing. There is always a price to be paid where Washington is concerned. Some of you may recall the controversy in Texas forty something years ago over “federal aid to education.” In the end, the schools got the money and the federal government started dictating how to run the schools.

In recent years, there have been moves by several states to reassert their sovereignty and halt the expansion of federal government power. Just lately, since the inauguration of the Obama administration, a number of other states have joined in the effort; these moves are being called “The Tenth Amendment Movement.”
Dave Nalle, of The Tenth Amendment Center writes, “The founding fathers believed in a balance between state and federal power. This state sovereignty movement clearly arises from the belief that the balance of power has tilted too far and for too long in the direction of the federal government and that it’s time to restore that close balance.
The emergence of this movement is a hopeful sign of the people asserting their rights and the rights of the states and finally crying ‘enough’ to runaway government. With the threat of increasingly out of control federal spending, some of these sovereignty bills may stand a fair chance of passage in the coming year.”
As A.W.R. Hawkins wrote recently, “Our rights as citizens are under assault by an administration of leftist ideologues with an insatiable appetite for power. There is little difference between them and the appeasement-drunken, government-expanding leftists in Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration of whom Ronald Reagan said in 1964, “Inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government…and freedom is close to slipping from our grip.”
Even if the resolutions by all the states involved are adopted, it remains to be seen what good, if any, it will do. The new administration has so far indicated that it intends to overturn the American system of government and change it into a European style welfare state. That’s Change you can believe in.

Forms drive me crazy

Seems like everything I want to do on the internet requires me to “register.” I know that all they really want is my email address so they can send me spam and try to get me to buy something. Of course I delete their spam without a glance. Getting registered has turned into a big pain in the ass. The problems are caused by the programmers who create the electronic forms.

This morning I got an email from a guy who makes cartoons and writes songs. He contacted all the serious music critics he knew and wanted us to listen to his new song, compare it with other songs entered in a competition and vote for his song. The title of his composition is “Doo Doo Man.” It was just as good as the other entries, so I attempted to give him my vote.

This afternoon I attempted to register my new GPS receiver with Garmin. Like the song competition, the registration turned into more of an ordeal than I was prepared to endure.

Step one is to enter a user name, make up a password and re-type it to confirm it. Then it wants my email address, my zip code, the year I was born and my sex. Then it wants me to type in the characters in a box. After all that, I click on Enter and it sits there for a while. Finally it gives me a list of errors I have committed. User name must be longer than four characters. My password doesn’t agree with the confirmation. It clears the entry boxes and I have to do it all over again. After re-entering all the data it says that my username is already in use. It shouldn’t matter so long as the user name and the password are correct. All I can think of for a unique password is something akin to screwyoucharlie with a password just as rude, but by then I’m completely fed up with the whole exercise. So I cuss the computer and click the X to leave that website. I’d send them an email pointing out my displeasure but that would probably require that I register first. There ought to be some sort of rules for friendly electronic form design that doesn’t drive the user up the wall.

Ingrate survivors sue USAir

Two weeks ago everyone was talking about the USAir ditching into the Hudson River, which was caused when a gaggle of Canadian geese were ingested into the aircraft’s two engines. There were no fatalities and only one passenger was seriously injured. The pilot’s skill and a lot of luck have been credited with the survival of the passengers and crew.

As a gesture of goodwill, USAir also gave the passengers $5000 to compensate them for their inconvenience, loss of luggage and personal items as well as giving them “Chairman’s Preferred” status, which usually requires earning 100,000 qualifying miles—for a year. This entitles customers to a number of perks, including priority check-in and boarding, priority security lanes, and the head of the line on standby seats. They also refunded the passengers ticket price for the ill-fated flight and their insurance carrier promised to cover any property losses exceeding $5000. This sounds more than fair to me. They could have been fish food, but instead they got an invigorating bath, a free scenic boat ride and something to tell their grandkids.
But as one might expect, a few passengers weren’t satisfied and decided to sue the airline. One of them told a reporter, “I just want to be made whole.” Apparently his idea of being made whole is being made rich. While most people would be grateful just for getting out alive and in fact, whole; there are a few like this guy who see the accident as an opportunity to win the litigation lotto.

As seems to be part of American culture these days, everything that happens is seen as someone else’s fault and a chance, with the help of the right scumbag lawyer, for a big pay off—greed pure and simple. The concept of ordinary bad luck has gone out of fashion. This is no shortage of law firms that specialize in suing railroads, cruise ships and airlines.

I don’t have anything against lawyers. I have several friends who are attorneys and my daddy practiced law for 64 years. I know for a fact that my old man wouldn’t have taken a case like this. The lawyers I know aren’t greedy or sorry enough for this kind of litigation-most of them anyway.

It isn’t as if this particular accident was the airline’s fault. Nothing vital fell off the airplane, there was no apparent pilot error nor has the incident been tied to any terrorist activity. It’s clear that USAir did everything right and the survivors should be kissing the pilot’s shoes, not trying to shake down the airline. I suppose the geese could be sued—or maybe Canada, since they were Canadian Geese. It’s plain to me that the airline is blameless. That doesn’t mean they will win though. If a judge doesn’t toss the case out of court and warn the lawyer against frivolous litigation; if it gets to a jury the verdict might well go to the plaintiff. Juries are unpredictable and all too many of them these days are only too happy to give away copious amounts of other people’s money no matter what the evidence. Whatever happened to gratitude?