source : Iowahawk
It’s in the way you dress. The way you boogie down. The way you sign your unemployment check. You’re a man who likes to do things your own way. And on those special odd-numbered Saturdays when driving is permitted, you want it in your car. It’s that special feeling of a zero-emissions wind at your back and a road ahead meandering with possibilities. The kind of feeling you get behind the wheel of the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition from Congressional Motors.
All new for 2012, the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition is the mandatory American car so advanced it took $100 billion and an entire Congress to design it. We started with same reliable 7-way hybrid ethanol-biodeisel-electric-clean coal-wind-solar-pedal power plant behind the base model Pelosi, but packed it with extra oomph and the sassy styling pizazz that tells the world that 1974 Detroit is back again — with a vengeance.
Wild Thing’s comment………
LOL this is funny. I can see it now, one of these cars pulling up and all the democrats in Congress getting out of it, like a clown car.
……Thank you RAC for sending this to me. RAC has a website that is awesome.336th Assault Helicopter Company 13th Combat Aviation Battalion – 1st Aviation Brigade – Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam
Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Neil Ambrose, member of Port Security Unit 305 currently stationed in support of Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay, received a presidential phone call this morning with holiday greeting from President Bush, Dec. 24. Ambrose was selected as one of ten military service members world-wide to receive the call on Christmas Eve. The call, a tradition of President Bush, is express his appreciation for deployed members’ service and to wish them a Merry Christmas. JTF Guantanamo conducts safe, humane, legal and transparent care and custody of detained enemy combatants, including those convicted by military commission and those ordered released. The JTF conducts intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination for the protection of detainees and personnel working in JTF Guantanamo facilities and in support of the Global War on Terror. JTF Guantanamo provides support to the Office of Military Commissions, to law enforcement and to war crimes investigations. The JTF conducts planning for and, on order, responds to Caribbean mass migration operations.
Port Call; President Bush Wishes Guantanamo Troopers a Merry Christmas
Joint Task Force Guantanamo
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – It’s not every day a trooper receives a phone call from President George W. Bush. For Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Neil Ambrose, however, Dec. 24, was that day.
“It was an honor,” said Ambrose of speaking with President Bush. “I was shocked that I was selected out of hundreds of thousands of deployed members.”
“At first he called me by my name,” he continued. “He said, ‘Neil, this is President Bush, how are you today?’”
Ambrose replied that he was fine, and thanked President Bush for “all he’s done for the Coast Guard and military members over the past eight years.”
Ambrose chatted with the president, with Bush asking, “How’s the weather down there?”
“It’s warm,” Ambrose replied. “How would you like to join us?”
The call lasted a moment longer before President Bush delivered his traditional Christmas message.
According to Ambrose, President Bush said, “On behalf of Laura and myself, I want you to pass along to other deployed members that we appreciate your service and wish you a Merry Christmas, especially to the Mighty Coast Guard.”
“I specifically remember him saying, ‘the mighty Coast Guard,’” Ambrose said, smiling.
The Christmas Eve phone call has become a tradition for President Bush. Each year, he calls ten service members from all branches of the armed forces around the world to thank them for their service and pass on holiday wishes.
“Ambrose was selected above his peers because he’s a high performer and the right one to be chosen to receive a call from the president,” said Coast Guard Cmdr. Steven H. Pope, commanding officer of Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s Port Security Unit 305.
“I submitted his packet in October of this year,” Pope continued. “[It] had all the information that made him competitive to be selected out of all the other Coast Guard members.”
This isn’t the first time Coast Guard Port Security Unit 305 has answered the call. In 2005, Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis Johnston was one of the lucky service members selected to speak to the president.
Pope was not the commanding officer of PSU 305 when the last presidential call to Guantanamo was received. However, he was thrilled to learn they were selected again.
“It’s a high honor to receive a call from the president,” said Pope. “Our unit is a tight family, and we’re all very proud and very happy that Petty Officer Ambrose was selected.”
Wild Thing’s comment…….
I really am going to miss this, having Bush as CIC. I just want to enjoy each day for our troops with Bush as CIC until the dreaded day January20th.
House plans to fast-track Obama plan Politico President-elect Barack Obama’s record-setting stimulus plan — the biggest special spending bill in history — is getting such astonishingly quick treatment from House Democrats that officials say it could go from draft to final passage in one week.
The bill has no text or details yet, but it does have a name: Obama revealed Saturday in his YouTube/radio address that it will be called the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.”
The 111th Congress begins Tuesday with the swearing-in of new members. The stimulus plan — with a price tag of up to $850 billion — is likely to be ready for a vote the following week, officials said.
No draft or outline or outline was circulating this weekend, but House Democratic officials said they hope to have one by early next week.
“We are hoping for a House vote on Week 2 (week of Jan. 12),” a House official said. “It could slip if we decide to hold regular approps hearings. But I think a vote is likely the week of Jan. 12.”
Republicans are suggesting that’s too hasty. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a statement Friday headlined, “Protect the Taxpayer Against the Rush to Spend Their Money.”
“Every dollar needs to be spent wisely and not wasted in the rush to get it spent,” McConnell said.
And House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement that he was concerned the legislation would get “little debate or public scrutiny.”
“Congress should have public hearings in the appropriate committees,” Boehner said.
House Ways and Means Committee staff members worked through the holidays to prepare a framework and options. And the president-elect will travel to Capitol Hill on Monday to tell leaders what he wants included in the bill.
Obama aides want a starting point of $675 billion to $775 billion over two years, but say they recognize it could grow to $850 billion as legislators add goodies. Obama aides want to keep it under $1 trillion, although some lawmakers think the final bill could be nearing that psychological barrier.
Theoretically, that could mean 600,000 new government jobs. But aides say that probably a lot more than 80 percent of the new jobs would be in private industry. And a lot of the government jobs would be state and local workers whom the plan saves from layoffs.
Wild Thing’s comment………
I keep feeling like if Obama could get away with it he would bump President Bush right out of his chair and kick him out of the White House early.
I don’t like that feeling at all, but it gets stronger every time I hear how anxious Obama is to get started.
MK Candidate Dr. Ben Ari: Follow King David’s Advice on Gaza
by Gil Ronen Israel National News
Rabbi Dr. Michael Ben-Ari, the Number Four man on the National Union’s Knesset list, thinks the leaders of Israel should follow King David’s advice from the Eighteenth Psalm regarding Gaza:
“I will chase my enemies and catch up to them and I shall not return until I annihilate them.”
“This should be the slogan of every leader and IDF commander,” he said. “The enemy must know that whoever raises his hand on Israel, we will teach him a lesson and annihilate him as well as all his helpers and supporters, and only thus will we take out their will to fire missiles at us.”
However, he is under no illusions that the present government will do so.
Ben-Ari, a proud disciple of former Knesset Member Rabbi Meir Kahane, supports the troops fighting in Gaza but says the operation is “like giving aspirin to a patient who is in serious condition.”
“It is a sedative but it does not address the root of the problem,” he said Friday. “Everyone knows this and that is why they were so hesitant to begin this operation. That is why I believe that sooner or later we will return to Gaza and Gush Katif,” he added.
‘It will end with a ceasefire’
“The conflict will be decided on the political level,” Ben-Ari predicted. “In the end, the Arabs’ pleas for a ceasefire will be heeded before we break the enemy’s will to fight, just like our humiliating defeat in the Second Lebanon War and Resolution 1701.”
“There will probably be an agreement on some kind of ceasefire but the enemy will never agree to lose their ability to rearm. Their entire existence depends on their ability to keep on hurting us,” he said. “Their motivation is to one day be able to chase us out and return to Ramle and Lod.”
“The operation is beginning to teach the public that the statement ‘it’s either us or them’ [which was used by Rabbi Kahane – ed.] is not an election slogan but is a very existential one.”
International solution?
The solution to the Gaza problem, said Ben-Ari, should be an international one.
“The international community needs to find the Arab population in Gaza a spacious area somewhere in which they can live and where they will have something to lose,” he explained. As things are, the enemy in Gaza “is dreaming of the nice houses in Ashkelon and Ashdod as it lives in the impossibly crowded and run-down streets of Gaza.”
We need to understand that “a few bombs or diplomatic talks or ‘lulls’ will only make the problem worse, not solve it,” he explained. The enemy within
If Rabbi Kahane were alive today, he said, “he would remind us that after the Holocaust we vowed never again to let Jews live in fear. He would say – ‘A Jew who lives in fear is a great chilul Hashem’ [desecration of G-d’s Name – ed].” Ben-Ari is also gravely worried about “the internal enemy” – the Arabs with Israeli citizenship. “The enemy is waking up and getting stronger and the danger will only become greater unless we have leadership that is not afraid of the Supreme Court, of the United Nations and of the deranged people in the Left, but is only committed to the survival of the Jewish people.”
“When the enemy raises signs saying ‘death to the Jews’ in Sakhnin, it brings the catastrophe nearer,” he warned. “It reminds me of the Jews’ disregard of all the signs that preceded the Holocaust.”
Ben Ari also blasted “those who deride the ‘hilltop youth’ and the outposts'” – in an apparent reference to recent comments by the Jewish Home leadership. “The people who say this will unintentionally cause the enemy to sit in those hilltops, and Hadera, Kfar Saba and the Azrieli Towers will be the next targets for Grad missiles,” he warned.
Wild Thing’s comment………
The Knesset is excellent and this man says a lot ot things that he is absolutely right about.
I especially agree with this like he said to be a slogan: “I will chase my enemies and catch up to them and I shall not return until I annihilate them.”
….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Roseanne Barr blasts Israel as ‘Nazi state’ Accuses Jews bombing Gaza of learning from their German ‘mentors’ wnd
Roseanne Barr, herself of Jewish ancestry, has nonetheless blasted Israel for its recent attacks on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, calling Israel a “Nazi state” bent on torturing “the Jewish soul.”
“The destruction of the Jews in Israel has been assured with this inhuman attack on civilians in Gaza,” Barr writes on her blog. “Exactly as its Nazi mentors did to the Jews of Warsaw, Israel now bombs innocent civilians who have been imprisoned in concentration camps in Gaza!”
She continues, “The Zionists look German! The Palestinians look like the Jews of Poland! The Jewish people have destroyed themselves in Gaza.”
Her venom over the attacks, however, has not been reserved only for the Israeli state, but stings American Christians, too.
Her blog posts a picture of a bloodied and bandaged boy reportedly wounded in the recent days’ airstrikes with the caption, “This is what the pro-life, right wing, neo con, evangelical, Zionist, Bible-banging Americans really mean when they say: ‘America is a Christian nation,’ or when they say: ‘Israel must defend itself,’ or when they say: ‘The Bible is the Word of God.'”
Wild Thing’s comment…….
She is your typical Obama supporter.
AUGH! People like this really disgust me!!!! I swear I would aim and fire if someone like this stepped one foot on our property.
….Thank you Mark for the link.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Iraqis say Americans shot woman without warning cnn
An Iraqi TV employee who was shot and critically wounded on New Year’s Day said the U.S. soldiers who fired at her gave no warning, her supervisor said Saturday.
Hadil Emad, a videotape editor with Beladi Satellite TV, was crossing a bridge over the Tigris River on her way to work when she was shot, the channel’s editor-in-chief, Assam Sada, told CNN. He said Emad told him she heard no warning from the soldiers. The U.S. military said in a statement the woman was acting suspiciously and failed to respond to warnings before she was shot.
“We condemn this criminal act and demand an explanation from the U.S. military,” said Saied Abdul Hadi, the director of Beladi’s news department.
The U.S. military said it is investigating the incident, which happened just outside the Green Zone, two hours after the United States handed authority of the zone to Iraq. Watch why the transfer is a milestone »
The bullet that hit Emad, 31, entered the lower half of her body, Sada said. The hospital removed her left kidney after the shooting and she remains in unstable condition, with damage to part of her liver and the lower part of her lung, he said.
U.S. soldiers left Emad on the ground after they shot her, Hadi said, but minutes later Iraqi security forces picked her up and took her to a hospital.
Emad was shot on the al-Jadriya Bridge that connects Baghdad’s Karrada district, on a peninsula that juts out into the Tigris, within the western part of the city, Beladi TV and the U.S. military said.
The soldiers “followed approved defensive measures after the woman failed to heed repeated warnings by both Iraqi police and [U.S.] soldiers,” the U.S. military said.
“The Iraqi police and soldiers observed the woman acting erratically. Concerned by the danger she might present to the security forces and civilians, given her repeated failure to respond to warnings, [U.S.] soldiers fired two rounds, wounding the woman.”
The military said the area had been the target of car bombs and suicide bombings. The shooting happened while the U.S. and Iraqi forces were on a joint patrol, Beladi and the military said.
“Hadil Emad walks every day to work using the same road, but all of a sudden there was a U.S. patrol,” Hadi said.
Wild Thing’s comment…….
I call BS on this ! Our troops are highly trained and they have know better then anyone what they are doing.
This is not going to go anywhere, not only were our soldiers there but also with them ” Iraqi police and soldiers observed the woman acting erratically”….plenty of eye witnesses that WILL tell the truth.
The war did not just start that day, it has been going on for several years, this woman to walk in a dangerous area then or anytime had to know to be careful, to be aware and STOP when the soldiers warned her.
….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Prayer for the Welfare of Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces:
He Who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – may He bless the fighters of the Israel Defense Force, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God from the border of the Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea unto the approach of the Aravah, on the land, in the air, and on the sea.
May Hashem cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them. May the Holy One, Blessed is He, preserve and rescue our fighting men from every trouble and distress and from every plague and illness, and may He send blessing and success in their every endeavor. May He lead our enemies under their sway and may He grant them salvation and crown them with victory. And may there be fulfilled for them the verse: For it is Hashem, your God, Who goes with you to battle your enemies for you to save you. Now let us respond: Amen.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Capt. Benjamin Rutland announces the entrance of IDF forces into Gaza with the objective of dealing a heavy blow to Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and rocket-launching capability.
IDF confirms at least 20 gunmen killed in ground offensive’ The Jerusalem Post
At least 30 Hamas gunmen were reported killed as IDF troops swept into the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday night, encountering fierce resistance from Hamas forces entrenched in fortifications just over the border.
IDF sources said that the goal was to conquer territory in northern Gaza, including rocket launch sites. Soldiers from the Armored Corps, Engineering Corps, and Paratroopers, Givati, Golani brigades were participating in the fighting, with at least four brigades’ worth of troops inside the Gaza Strip.
The sources said that a majority of the rockets fired into Beersheba and Ashdod were launched from the northern Gaza Strip.
One of the major aims of the operation was also to deliver a serious blow to the Hamas military wing, which the IDF estimated had not been severely weakened under the air campaign.
The IDF would not enter Gaza City or the refugee camps, defense officials said, and it was likely that on Monday – when French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives and the international pressure is expected to escalate – Israel would begin scaling back the operations.
“We know there will be dangers, difficulties and victims… It must be said that the ground operation entails dangers to the lives of soldiers,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. “We must end the hostile actions against Israel… We will not abandon our citizens.”
On Saturday, the air force bombed dozens of targets throughout the Strip, including several homes of senior Hamas terrorists as well as bridges and roads connecting northern and southern Gaza.
At least 40 Kassam and Katyusha rockets pounded the South, scoring direct hits on homes in Netivot and Ashdod, and striking Ashkelon, Yavne and Sderot.
“This will be a lengthy operation and there will likely be casualties on our side,” a senior defense official said. “But our mission is to defend the home front. The purpose is to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure and impair its ability to fire rockets into Israel.”
Before the ground incursion began, IDF artillery, for the first time in several years, began pounding open areas in northern Gaza to “soften up” the area and destroy land mines and Hamas fortifications.
Terrorists using civilians as human shields would bear full responsibility for their fate, the army warned.
“Anyone who hides a terrorist or weapons in his house is considered a terrorist,” but “the residents of Gaza are not the target of the operation,” the IDF Spokesman’s Office said.
The army reiterated that the operation was in line with “decisions of the security cabinet,” saying that this new stage was “part of the IDF’s overall operational plan, and will continue on the basis of ongoing situational assessments by the IDF General Staff.”
The cabinet also approved the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, mostly from combat units, but also from the Home Front Command. Already on Saturday night, several thousand emergency orders were issued.
Fighter jets, missile ships and artillery struck more than 40 Hamas targets on Saturday, including Hamas’s central intelligence headquarters in Sha’ati, weapons storage facilities, training centers and leaders’ homes.
Israeli air strikes that had waned during the day gathered pace after dark. One bomb hit a mosque in Beit Lahiya, killing 14 people and wounding 33, seven critically, according to a Palestinian health official.
The IAF also hit the home of senior Hamas commander Abu Zacharia al-Jamal. A Hamas spokesman announced that Jamal was killed, which would make him the third senior operative of the group to be killed in three days.
In addition, Palestinians reported four dead from an IAF strike in the Rafah area.
On Saturday morning, the air force struck the homes of two Hamas operatives used to store weapons and plan attacks. Hamas outposts, training camps and rocket launching sites also were targeted, the army said.
The IDF also struck the American International School in Beit Lahiya, the most prestigious educational institution in Gaza. The school is not connected to the US government, but teaches an American curriculum in English. The IDF said the campus was used to fire rockets and was a legitimate target.
The air strike demolished the school’s main building and killed a night watchman. Two other Palestinians were killed in a separate air strike, while three others died of wounds sustained earlier, Gaza health officials said. Earlier, the army dropped leaflets in downtown Gaza City ordering people off the streets. The warnings were followed by the air strikes.
Wild Thing’s comment…..
Pray for the IDF…. for strength and safety of the soldiers.
My page on Israel at my website.
….Thank you Mark for the article.
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
……Thank you RAC for sending this to me.
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