I guess they ran out of rocket-propelled grenades...

Hamas votes to bring back cruxifiction in its Palestinian-controlled territories...

National Review has the full story here.




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Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 8

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Secretary of Energy:Steven Chu
Born February 28, 1948. Chu is an American experimental physicist. He is known for his research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.

Chu, a Chinese American, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1970 from the University of Rochester, and his doctorate degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1976. He then joined Bell Labs where he and his several co-workers carried out his Nobel Prize-winning laser cooling work. He then left Bell Labs and became a professor of physics at Stanford University in 1987. He was appointed as the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004, during which time he also accepted a position as a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chu has been a vocal advocate for more research into alternative energy and nuclear power, arguing that a shift away from fossil fuels is essential to combat global warming. He has pushed scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and in industry to develop technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He has joined the Copenhagen Climate Council, an international collaboration between business and science, established to create momentum for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Chu was instrumental in founding the Energy Biosciences Institute, which brings together biologists, chemists, physicists, and engineers to work together on energy-related molecular research in a rare collaboration between UC Berkeley, the oil major BP, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the University of Illinois. This has drawn controversy with some of Berkeley's faculty voicing their concerns that the university was selling out to the industry giant.
He is an early signatory to "Project Steve," an educational campaign supporting the conventional scientific understanding of evolution.

Chu comes from a family of scholars. His father earned an advanced chemical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, while his mother studied economics. His mother's grandfather earned advanced civil engineering degrees at Cornell University and his mother's granduncle studied physics at the Sorbonne before they returned to China. His older brother Gilbert Chu is a professor and researcher of biochemistry and medicine at Stanford University.

Chu married Jean Fetter, a British American and an Oxford-trained physicist, in 1997. He has two sons from a previous marriage.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Chu will be the first Chinese American to hold the office of Energy Secretary and the first person appointed to the Cabinet after having won a Nobel Prize.




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Ebisu-Sama: Sushi order or Japanese financial god?

As Reuters reports, thousands of Japanese business executives visited "a shrine dedicated to commerce" to kick off 2009, praying to the god Ebisu-Sama for financial prosperity.

At the alter of the 1,300-year-old Kanda Myojin shrine, the pilgrims prayed and paid as if Jim and Tammy Bakker were passing the plate.

From Reuters (not Ebisu-Sama): "The economic outlook in export-reliant Japan is gloomy, where industrial output fell at a record pace in November and the job market is shrinking, threatening to crush consumption and depress prices."
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More Change We Can Believe In!

Obama Economic Plan to add 600,000 new government jobs!

Do the math: "The No. 1 goal of my plan ... is to create three million new jobs, more than 80 percent of them in the private sector.”

Read the full report from ABC News here.

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Another One Bites the Dust (an update to the Obama underling list will be forthcoming)

Bill Richardson Withdraws Nomination as Commerce Secretary


Bill Richardson has withdrawn his nomination to be commerce secretary.

Richardson, who will remain governor of New Mexico, is facing a federal grand jury investigation into whether he exchanged government contracts for contributions to three Richardson political committees.

Richardson denies any wrongdoing but the investigation won't be finished before he has to go to a Senate confirmation hearing.

"Let me say unequivocally that I and my administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact," Richardson said in a statement. "But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process."

Obama said he was accepting Richardson's request to withdraw with "deep regret."

It is a measure of his willingness to put the nation first that he has removed himself as a candidate for the Cabinet in order to avoid any delay in filling this important economic post at this critical time," the president-elect said in a statement. "I look forward to his future service to our country and in my administration."

The Associated Press reported last month that a grand jury is investigating whether the California firm CDR Financial Products paid to push through a contract with the state of New Mexico.

State documents show CDR was paid a total of $1.48 million in 2004 and 2005 for its work on a transportation program.

CDR and its CEO, David Rubin, have contributed at least $110,000 to three political committees formed by Richardson, according to an AP review of campaign finance records.

The largest donation, $75,000, was made by CDR in June 2004 -- a couple of months after the transportation financing arrangement won state approval -- to a political committee that Richardson established before the Democratic National Convention that year.

Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh told FOX News that with the cloud lingering over the Obama transition because of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged attempts to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat, the Richardson nomination would have been another unwanted distraction.

Richardson "was going to have a very difficult time getting through this nomination," Marsh said. "People really haven't looked at the Richardson situation and the more they looked at it, the more they realized" confirmation was going to be a problem.

Richardson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination last year and later endorsed Obama, is currently in his second term as governor of New Mexico. He served seven terms as a U.S. representative and was energy secretary and U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Clinton administration.



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Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 7

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Interior Secretary:Ken Salazar
Born March 2, 1955. Salazar has been the junior Senator from Colorado since January 2005. A Democrat of Mexican descent, Salazar was born in the town of Alamosa, Colorado. He attended St. Francis Seminary and Centauri High School in La Jara, graduating in 1973. He later attended Colorado College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1977, and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. After graduating, Salazar started private law practice, and in 1986, Salazar became chief legal counsel to then Governor Roy Romer.

In 1990, Romer appointed him Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. In this position, he authored the Great Outdoors Colorado Amendment, which created a massive land conservation program of which he became chairman. In 1994, Salazar returned to private practice. In 1998, he was elected state attorney general; he was reelected in 2002. Police operations were streamlined under Salazar, and serveral new branches of law enforcement were created: the Gang Prosecution Unit, the Environmental Crimes Unit, and the General Fugitive Prosecutive Unit, which targeted murderers.

As Colorado's Attorney General, Salazar actively opposed endangered species listing of the black-tailed prairie dog, which, despite its population declines, is still listed as a "pest" by Colorado. In 2004, Salazar declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Salazar considers himself a moderate and has at times taken positions that are in disagreement with the base of his party — for a number of years he opposed gay adoption, for example. Salazar lost to Mike Miles at the State nominating convention. In spite of this loss, the national Democratic Party backed Salazar with contributions from the DSCC and promotion of Salazar as the only primary candidate. Salazar came back to defeat Miles in the Democratic primary,and he narrowly defeated beer executive Pete Coors to win the general election. Salazar and his wife Esperanza "Hope" Salazar have two daughters.

Soon after arriving in the Senate, Salazar generated controversy within his party by introducing Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales and sitting by his side during Gonzales' confirmation hearings. On May 23, 2005, Salazar was among the Gang of 14 moderate senators to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the filibuster against judicial appointments, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called "nuclear option". In 2005, Salazar voted against increasing fuel-efficiency standards (CAFE) for cars and trucks. In the same year, Salazar voted against an amendment to repeal tax breaks for ExxonMobil and other major oil companies.

In August 2006, Ken Salazar supported fellow Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman in his primary race against Ned Lamont in Connecticut. In 2006, Salazar voted to end protections that limit off-shore drilling in Florida's Gulf Coast. In 2007, Salazar was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote against a bill that would require the US Army Corps of Engineers to consider global warming when planning water projects.



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So he huffed...and he puffed...and he huffed...

Jimmy Carter & Habitat for Humanity: Celebrity slum lords?
By Michelle Malkin

The road to hell is paved with good intentions — and, apparently, the homes in the neighborhoods along that hellish path are built by Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. The Times of London reports on one of the celebrity charity’s biggest showcase projects in Jacksonville, Florida, Fairway Oaks, where residents claim their houses are crumbling due to shoddy construction.

Read the rest of Michelle's diatribe here.

[end]




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Okay: Now, Everything You Need to Know About Gaza

A Public Service of the Rapier
The Gaza Strip is a coastal strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea currently governed by Hamas. It borders Egypt on the south-west and Israel on the north and east. It is about 25 miles long, and between 4 and 7.5 miles wide, with a total area of 139 sqaure miles. The area is not recognized internationally as part of any sovereign country but is claimed by the Palestinian National Authority as part of the Palestinian territories. Since the June 2007 battle of Gaza, actual control of the area is in the hands of the Hamas de facto government.


In 1517 Gaza fell to the Ottomans and was part of the Ottoman Empire until the First World War. Starting in the early 19th century, Gaza was culturally dominated by neighboring Egypt. Though it was part of the Ottoman Empire, a large number of its residents were Egyptians who had fled political turmoil.

Following World War I, Gaza became part of the British Mandate of "Palestine" (today's Jordan, Gaza, Israel and "West Bank") was mandated to Great Britain under the authority of the League of Nations. In 1923, the British divided the "Palestine" portion of the Ottoman Empire into two administrative districts, a "Jewish" area west of the Jordan River (this area included Gaza and was called "Palestine"), and a Palestinian area to the east. The eastern territory was renamed Trans-Jordan (Trans-Jordan and would again be renamed "Jordan" in 1946).

Jews were present in Gaza until the 1929 Palestine riots, when Jews were forced to leave. British rule of Palestine ended with the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.




According to the terms of the 1947 United Nations partition plan, Gaza was to become part of a new Arab state. Following the dissolution of the British mandate of Palestine and 1947-1948 Civil War in Palestine, Israel declared its independence in May 1948. The Egyptian army invaded the area from the south, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Gaza Strip as it is known today was the product of the subsequent 1949 Armistice Agreements between Egypt and Israel.
Egypt occupied the Strip from 1949 (except for four months of Israeli occupation during the 1956 Suez Crisis) until 1967.



Towards the end of the 1948 war, an All-Palestine Government was proclaimed in Gaza City by the Arab League (a regional alliance of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen). It was conceived partly as an attempt to limit the influence of the British-created entity of "Transjordan" over the Palestinian issue. The government was not recognized by Transjordan or any non-Arab country. Egypt never annexed the Gaza Strip, but instead treated it as a controlled territory and administered it through a military governor.
Refugees from the area were never offered Egyptian citizenship.

During the Sinai campaign of November 1956, the Gaza Strip was overrun by Israeli troops. International pressure soon forced Israel to withdraw.

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip again in June 1967 during the Six-Day War. The military occupation lasted for 27 years, until 1994. However, according to the Oslo Accords, even after relinquishing control, Israel retains control of air space, territorial waters, offshore maritime access, the population registry, entry of foreigners, imports and exports as well as the tax system.

During the period of Israeli occupation, Israel created a settlement bloc in the southwest corner of the Strip near the Egyptian border. In total Israel created 21 settlements, comprising some 20% of the total Gaza Strip territory. Besides ideological reasons for being there, these settlements also served Israel's security concerns. In March 1979 Israel and Egypt signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, but the final status of the Gaza Strip as with relations between Israel and Palestinians was not dealt with in the treaty. The treaty did settle the international border between Gaza Strip and Egypt. Egypt renounced all territorial claims to the region beyond the international border.

In 1987, and continuing through 1993, the First Intifada ("war of the stones") took place. This was a mass popular uprising against Israeli rule that quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In May 1994, a phased transfer of governmental authority to the Palestinians took place. Much of the Strip (except for the settlement blocs and military areas) came under Palestinian control. Israeli forces left Gaza City and other urban areas, leaving the new Palestinian Authority ("PA") to administer and police the Strip. The PA rule of the Gaza Strip and West Bank under leadership of Yasser Arafat suffered from serious mismanagement and corruption.

A Second Intifada broke out in September 2000. In February 2005, the Israeli government voted to implement a unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip. Under the plan, all Israeli settlements and military basesin the Gaza Strip (and four in the West Bank) were dismantled. However, Israel maintained it's control over the crossings in and out of Gaza.

In accordance with the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority took over the administrative authority of the Gaza Strip in 1994. In the Palestinian parliamentary elections held on January 25, 2006, the radical party Hamas("Islamic Resistance Movement") won 74 out of 132 total seats. When Hamas assumed power the next month, it refused to recognize international demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel, and in April, several nations, including the United States and the collective nations of the European Union, responded by cutting off direct aid to the Palestinian government. The resulting political disorder and economic stagnation led to many Palestinians emigrating from the Gaza Strip.

In January 2007, fighting errupted between Hamas and Fatah ("Palestine Liberation Movement"), the center-left Palestinian party. In May 2007, new fighting broke out between the factions. In June 2007, the Palestinian Civil War between Hamas and Fatah intensified. Hamas routed Fatah after winning the democratic election. Hamas then proclaimed itself to be the legitimate government of Gaza.

Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas's government, operating from the West Bank of Jordan, won widespread international support, however. In late June 2008 Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia said that the West Bank-based Cabinet formed by Abbas was the sole legitimate Palestinian government, and Egypt moved its embassy from Gaza to the West Bank. Since then, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has faced international, diplomatic, and economic isolation.

Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have pressed Abbas to start serious talks with Hamas. Abbas had always conditioned this on Hamas returning control of the Gaza Strip to his Palestinian Authority. Hamas was supported by Syria and Iran. Since taking control of Gaza, Hamas has continued to fire rockets from the Strip across the border into Israel. According to Israel, between the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip and the end of January 2008, 697 rockets and 822 mortar bombs were fired at Israeli towns.

In response, Israel targeted military targets and declared the Gaza Strip a hostile entity, to make it possible to cut fuel and electricity supplies. In January 2008 the situation escalated; Israel curtailed travel from Gaza, the entry of goods, and cut fuel supplies to the Strip, resulting in power shortages. This brought charges that Israel was inflicting collective punishment on the Gaza population, but Israel countered that Gaza had enough food and energy supplies for weeks. In the ensuing months, rocket attacks and military responses continued.

At the end of December 2008, Israeli F-16 strike fighters launched a series of airstrikes against targets in Gaza. Struck were militant bases, a mosque, various Hamas government buildings, and a science building in the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip. The attack was a response to Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, which totaled over 3000 in 2008 and which intensified during the few weeks preceding the operation.


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Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 6

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Secretary of Education:Arne Duncan
Born November 6, 1964. Duncan was raised in Hyde Park, Chicago, where his father Starkey Duncan was a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, and mother Susan Morton runs The Sue Duncan Children's Center for African American youth on Chicago's South Side. Duncan spent a great deal of his free time in his youth sharpening his basketball skills with the neighborhood children. Duncan's spoken accent at this time led at least one college basketball coach to assume that he was of African-American descent. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in sociology in 1987. His senior thesis, for which he took a year's leave to do research in Kenwood, in inner-city Chicago, was entitled The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass. At Harvard, Duncan became co-captain of the varsity team and named a first team Academic All-American. From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia. He currently resides with his Australian wife, Karen, and his two children in Hyde Park.

Duncan has extensive experience in educational policy and management, but has not been a teacher. In 1992 Duncan became director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program to enhance educational opportunities for children on Chicago's South Side. Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Duncan to serve as CEO of Chicago Public Schools on June 26, 2001.


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The other 4 were too busy being shot at to give an answer...

6 in 10 Soldiers Wary About Obama as Commander in Chief.

Read the poll data from the Army Times here.


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"Yeah, but I'm sure the guy was ABOUT to commit SOME crime..."

Blago Appointee Once Prosecuted Innocent Man.

Roland Burris, the man appointed to Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, once drew heavy criticism for his decision to seek the death penalty for a defendant despite evidence supporting his innocence.

Read more about it here.

[end]




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Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 5

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Ambassador to the United Nations:Dr. Susan Rice

Born November 17, 1964, in Washington, DC, daughter of a former governor of the Federal Reserve. Rice was a three-sport athlete in high school, and attended Stanford University, where she graduated with a BA in History. Awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, the Chatham House-British International Studies Association honored her dissertation as the UK's most distinguished in international relations. Rice is married to Canadian-born ABC News producer Ian Officer Cameron. They have two children.

Rice was a foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential election. Rice served in the Clinton administration in various capacities: at the National Security Council from 1993 to 1997; as Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995; and as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs from 1995 to 1997.

Secretary of State Madeline Albright is a longtime mentor and family friend to Rice, who urged Clinton to appoint Rice as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 1997. In that job, Rice was viewed by many officials and diplomats as very bright, but also as inexperienced and inflexible. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Rice served as a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry.

On December 1, 2008, she was nominated by President-elect Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a position which he also upgraded to cabinet level. Rice will be the second youngest[21] and first African American woman US Representative to the UN. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.


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Sputtering to a Stop

The number miles Americans travel in their cars is dropping at a record rate. In a new report, D.C. think-tank Brookings Institution provides the first-ever ranking of 50 states and top 100 metro areas.

Among states, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Georgia and Tennessee are breaking from the car culture fastest. Click here for the Brookings press release. Or here for a summary of the report.

From the Brookings report: "The number of miles that Americans have traveled in their cars (“Vehicle Miles Traveled” or VMT)started to slow as far back as 2004 - long before the extreme fluctuation in gas prices and the start of the economic slowdown - and has been falling since 2007. From October 2007 to September 2008, for
example, we drove 90 billion fewer miles than the same time period the year before. For the first time in our history, the amount of roadway available to drivers is outpacing the number of miles we actually drive. Transit use, interestingly, is at its highest level since the 1950’s, and Amtrak just set a ridership record this year."
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"To prepare, I would carefully examine each and every page..."

Bill Clinton A Possible N.Y. Senate 'Caretaker?'

Democrats Pushing Paterson To Name Temp Replacement For Hillary; Scenario Sets Up Wild Election In 2010

The former president is among several boldface names being touted as possible "caretakers" for New York's Senate seat -- people who would serve until the 2010 elections but wouldn't be interested in running to keep the job.

Read the full story here.

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Know Your Obama Underlings, Part 4

Editor's Note: This is another installment in the Rapier's daily profiles of one of Barack Obama's nominees to a cabinet or high-level administration post.
Today's Profile
Secretary of Transportation:Raymond H. "Ray" LaHood
Born December 6, 1945. LaHood is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1995, representing the downstate 18th district of Illinois.

He is well-known, especially among C-SPAN viewers, as the presiding officer of more debates than any other member. Most notably, he presided over the impeachment vote against President Bill Clinton. LaHood was born in Peoria, Illinois. He was educated at Bradley University in Peoria, from which he earned a degree in education. He was a high school teacher, and an aide to Representatives Tom Railsback and Robert Michel before running for office himself. LaHood served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives for one term between 1982 and 1983. He is of Jordanian and Lebanese descent.

Elected as part of the Republican Revolution of 1994, he was one of only three Republican candidates who did not sign on to the Contract with America, Newt Gingrich's manifesto for a Republican majority. LaHood was said to be considering a challenge to Governor Rod Blagojevich's re-election bid in 2006, but on August 18, 2005 he ruled out a run, saying few outside his district knew him.

LaHood received a 0% rating from the conservative and anti-earmark Club for Growth 2007 RePORK Card. He received an 11% rating from Citizens Against Government Waste for 2007 and holds a lifetime 49% rating from the group. Lahood's son, Sam Lahood, worked on John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008.
LaHood is one of two Republican members of President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet (along with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is a registered independent but has publicly referred to himself as a Republican).

LaHood's resume on transport matters is seen as thin by some critics. He does not currently serve on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, although he has in the past. While picking LaHood drew praise for its bipartisan symbolism there was also a sense that LaHood’s lack of expertise would diminish the department’s role in 2009 major policy debates and leave him as more of a ceremonial figure. James Oberstar, the Democratic Congressman who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is expected to hold more influence and will likely play a stronger leading role. Oberstar praised LaHood’s “temperament” and “managerial talent,” but when asked to cite an issue LaHood championed during his time on the Transportation Committee in the 1990s, Oberstar seemingly drew a blank. “I can’t point to any specific legislation that he authored,” he said. “He was a team player all the way through.”



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