March 22, 2006
L.A. Bus Worker Retiring on 100th Birthday
Mar 21 LOS ANGELES- After more than three-quarters of a century working for public transit angencies, a bus maintenance worker will retire Wednesday on his 100th birthday.
For decades, Arthur Winston reported to work at a bus yard at the crack of dawn. By 6 a.m. he would be supervising a crew of workers as they cleaned and refueled the region's bus fleet.
But on Tuesday, Winston abandoned his routine and put on a suit, tie and black fedora and headed downtown to meet the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. There, he was lauded for his nearly perfect work record and decades of service with what is currently called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
...Winston has missed only one day of work in his entire career, transit officials say. That was in 1988, when his wife of 65 years died.
...Winston said he was born in Oklahoma and began picking cotton when he was 10. When droughts and storms ruined several crop seasons, his family headed west and in 1924 he found work with the Pacific Electric Railway Co. He left the company in 1928, and returned six years later. Local transit has operated under various names since then.
Winston credited his father for teaching him a strong work ethic.
"My dad got us out of bed whether it was raining or snowing. We got up at 6 o'clock, no matter what," he said.
...He said he plans to keep busy in his retirement by doing charity work and taking advantage of his free bus pass to explore the city...
He was also offered a new job Monday: to serve as honorary spokesman for the 99 Cents Only stores.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/21/D8GGCVUG6.html
Gladiator, American Style
http://patriotfiles.org/GladiatorAmericanStyle.htm
American Deaths over the Last Three Years Put in Perspective:
• Auto Accidents: 120,000
• Falling Down: 45,000
• Poisoning: 27,000
• Drowning: 12,000
• War in Iraq: 2,300
Islamic Advocacy Group Silent on Afghan Apostasy Trial
March 22, 2006- What does the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to say about the trial of an Afghan Muslim who may get the death penalty for converting to Christianity? Nothing so far, noted a conservative, pro-family group.
"Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations so far has been silent," the Family Research Council said in an email message on Tuesday.
"Hooper is usually quick to decry any anti-Muslim slight. By not speaking out against this outrageous action, CAIR is dealing with the issue," said FRC President Tony Perkins.
CAIR, in an email message of its own on Tuesday, did not mention the case of Abdul Rahman, who converted to Christianity 16 years ago. The judge hearing Rahman's case was quoted as saying that Rahman could face the death penalty if he refused to return to Islam.
Some of CAIR's leaders, along with other Muslims, met on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes and top officials of the National Security Council. But the meetings focused on outreach efforts to the Muslim world and "how to address growing levels of Islamophobia in the West," CAIR said.
...The apostasy trial of Abdul Rahman has rallied American Christians. The American Family Association is circulating an online petition, urging readers to contact President Bush and request his intervention in the case...
"The judge in Rahman's case soothingly assures us that all will be forgiven if he renounces his Christianity because 'Islam is a religion of tolerance.' Really?" asked Perkins.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200603\CUL20060322a.html
GALLUP POLLING DROPS CNN AFTER 'LOW RATINGS'; FULL MEMO REVEALED
Mar 21 2006- The GALLUP polling company has dropped CNN as its outlet for electronic distribution...
...CNN tells TVNEWSER.COM, which first reported the split: "We want to make it clear that the decision to not renew our polling arrangement had to do with GALLUP's desire to produce their own broadcasts and not about CNN viewership figures. In fact, GALLUP had negotiated with us for four months in an effort to extend the partnership."
In the memo, by Jim Clifton, Chairman & CEO of GALLUP:
We have chosen "not" to renew our contract with CNN... [because] the #1 reason:
1) CNN has far fewer viewers than it did in the past and we feel that our brand was getting lost and diluted combined with the CNN brand. We have only about 200 thousand viewers during our CNN segments...
http://drudgereport.com/flash2cnn.htm
'Diversity Day' canceled over 'ex-gay' speakers
Homosexual couple didn't want Christian viewpoint represented
March 22, 2006- Amid controversy over a homosexual speaker, a high school in Wisconsin has canceled its "Diversity Day" event scheduled for tomorrow.
Speakers at Viroqua High School in Viroqua, Wisc., for the biannual event were to include Hmong, Jewish, Muslim, American Indian, African American, Latino, Buddhist, physically handicapped and poor people, the La Crosse Tribune reported.
The paper said, however, the event was called off late last week after the Florida-based public-interest legal group Liberty Counsel raised a potential challenge, insisting the program include the viewpoint of a former homosexual...
"By excluding the Christian and ex-gay viewpoints, the (Viroqua) District violates the Establishment Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection," the group said.
Greven, 61, told the paper diversity means, "in our understanding, that the various views are presented, and that was lacking."
Gregg Attleson, a teacher on the Diversity Day planning committee, told the LaCrosse paper the intent is to introduce students to minorities and people with alternative lifestyles.
...Attleson said the homosexual couple scheduled to speak refused to be on the program alongside an "ex-gay" viewpoint, saying they would be uncomfortable...
..."It's ironic, because we're trying to be tolerant and at the same time we might be accused of being intolerant, said Byers, an English teacher.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49386
Pakistani Women Victims of Islamic Ordinances
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200603\FOR20060321b.html
New Orleans spurned offer of cash for cars
March 19, 2006- Katrina turned New Orleans into an auto junkyard and the flooded cars are still everywhere, mementos of the storm and of the city's continuing failure to clean itself up.
Almost seven months after Hurricane Katrina, the Nagin administration still dickers over details of a contract that would gradually rid the cityscape of these vehicular eyesores -- at a cost of $23 million over another six months.
Which makes it of more than passing interest to discover that the largest car crusher east of the Rockies, K&L Auto Crushers of Tyler, Texas, offered in October to do the job in 15 weeks and actually pay the city for the privilege of hauling the junk away. How much? How about $100 per flooded car. With an estimated 50,000 vehicles on the street at that time, the city would have netted $5 million, rather than shelling out four times that sum, as it plans to do now.
K&L's Dan Simpson said he first made his pitch five weeks after Katrina, on a piece of paper that he slipped to Mayor Ray Nagin at one of his boisterous post-flood town hall meetings. Simpson said he'd bring in between five and 10 mobile crushers. Working them six days a week at scattered sites around the city, K&L offered to crumple and haul the vehicles and handle the "remediation," or environmental disposal of gasoline, oil and other hazardous wastes and do all the paperwork.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1142756254289760.xml
What about censure?
Asked about recent calls for his censure, President Bush said during these difficult times, the American people expect the debate to be honest and open - without "needless partisanship."
Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, introduced a resolution last week to censure President Bush for allegedly ignoring the Constitution and violating the law with his "domestic spying" program.
On Tuesday, President Bush noted that no one in the Democrat Party has stood up and called for an end to the "terrorist surveillance program." That's what Democrats ought to do, he said:
"They ought to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used. They ought to take their message to the people - and say 'Vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program. That's what they ought to be doing. That's part of an open and honest debate."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200603\NAT20060321a.html
Ignorance Pervasive in Reporting From Iraq
March 21, 2006- My friend Bill Roggio, an Army veteran and Web logger who was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq last fall, was a guest Saturday on a segment of the CNN show "On the Story." The topic was news coverage from Iraq.
...The latest example of what bugs Bill has been the coverage of a U.S.-Iraqi operation which began Thursday with an air assault.
"Operation Swarmer, a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive around the northern Iraqi city of Samarra went into its fourth day Sunday with very little to verify why it has been described as the largest assault operation since the American-led invasion of Iraq three years ago," wrote UPI correspondent Sana Abdallah.
"Contrary to what many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of air power since the start of the war," said Time magazine.
A journalist friend of former paratrooper W. Thomas Smith wanted to know: "Why are we launching a massive bombing campaign in Iraq?"
The dimwits have confused an air assault (where infantry is moved by helicopter into contested territory to conduct an operation) with an air strike (where fighter-bombers blow up something) or a ground assault.
That Operation Swarmer has so far been bloodless by no means indicates it is a failure or "overblown," Smith said. Dozens of suspected terrorists -- including one thought to be a ringleader of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra last month -- have been captured, and several large caches of weapons have been seized...
"The reporting on Operation Swarmer is a microcosm of the sub-par reporting on the Iraq war," Mr. Roggio said. "Events are immediately placed into a political context. Commentary is often mixed in with reporting. There is little understanding of operational intent or how the military even works. Operations are viewed as individual events, and not placed in a greater context. Failure and faulty assumptions are the baselines for coverage and analysis. Success is arbitrarily determined by a reporter or editor's biases. The actions of the U.S. and Iraqi military are viewed with suspicion and even contempt."
CNN correspondent Abbi Tatton implied that because Bill is a former soldier, his view is biased. "Are you not too close to this to be objective yourself?" she asked.
Consider the implications of this attitude. Would a reporter who is a lawyer (such as Fox News' Megyn Kendall) be considered biased in covering the courts simply because she actually knows something about the law? Would a reporter who is a doctor (such as CNN's Sanjay Gupta) be considered biased simply because he actually knows something about medicine? Yet news organizations consider it proper to have our wars covered by people who are unclear about from which end of the rifle the round comes.
Journalists could overcome some of their massive ignorance of matters military if more would embed with U.S. troops. But apparently they fear being tainted by the association. So they rely on Iraqis like the AP stringer who "reported" an uprising in Ramadi last December which never occurred.
Actor and antiwar activist Richard Belzer said he knows more about the war in Iraq than do U.S. servicemen in Iraq because he "reads 20 newspapers a day." But 20 biased, shallow and incomplete accounts don't add up to the truth.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/ignorance_pervasive_in_iraq_re.html
Surprise: Rainforest Grows When It's Dry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600375/posts
Who Will Save Abdul Rahman?http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/michellemalkin/2006/03/22/190774.html
David<><
http://freewill-predestination.com/
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove/
Mar 21 LOS ANGELES- After more than three-quarters of a century working for public transit angencies, a bus maintenance worker will retire Wednesday on his 100th birthday.
For decades, Arthur Winston reported to work at a bus yard at the crack of dawn. By 6 a.m. he would be supervising a crew of workers as they cleaned and refueled the region's bus fleet.
But on Tuesday, Winston abandoned his routine and put on a suit, tie and black fedora and headed downtown to meet the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. There, he was lauded for his nearly perfect work record and decades of service with what is currently called the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
...Winston has missed only one day of work in his entire career, transit officials say. That was in 1988, when his wife of 65 years died.
...Winston said he was born in Oklahoma and began picking cotton when he was 10. When droughts and storms ruined several crop seasons, his family headed west and in 1924 he found work with the Pacific Electric Railway Co. He left the company in 1928, and returned six years later. Local transit has operated under various names since then.
Winston credited his father for teaching him a strong work ethic.
"My dad got us out of bed whether it was raining or snowing. We got up at 6 o'clock, no matter what," he said.
...He said he plans to keep busy in his retirement by doing charity work and taking advantage of his free bus pass to explore the city...
He was also offered a new job Monday: to serve as honorary spokesman for the 99 Cents Only stores.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/21/D8GGCVUG6.html
Gladiator, American Style
http://patriotfiles.org/GladiatorAmericanStyle.htm
American Deaths over the Last Three Years Put in Perspective:
• Auto Accidents: 120,000
• Falling Down: 45,000
• Poisoning: 27,000
• Drowning: 12,000
• War in Iraq: 2,300
Islamic Advocacy Group Silent on Afghan Apostasy Trial
March 22, 2006- What does the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to say about the trial of an Afghan Muslim who may get the death penalty for converting to Christianity? Nothing so far, noted a conservative, pro-family group.
"Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations so far has been silent," the Family Research Council said in an email message on Tuesday.
"Hooper is usually quick to decry any anti-Muslim slight. By not speaking out against this outrageous action, CAIR is dealing with the issue," said FRC President Tony Perkins.
CAIR, in an email message of its own on Tuesday, did not mention the case of Abdul Rahman, who converted to Christianity 16 years ago. The judge hearing Rahman's case was quoted as saying that Rahman could face the death penalty if he refused to return to Islam.
Some of CAIR's leaders, along with other Muslims, met on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes and top officials of the National Security Council. But the meetings focused on outreach efforts to the Muslim world and "how to address growing levels of Islamophobia in the West," CAIR said.
...The apostasy trial of Abdul Rahman has rallied American Christians. The American Family Association is circulating an online petition, urging readers to contact President Bush and request his intervention in the case...
"The judge in Rahman's case soothingly assures us that all will be forgiven if he renounces his Christianity because 'Islam is a religion of tolerance.' Really?" asked Perkins.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200603\CUL20060322a.html
GALLUP POLLING DROPS CNN AFTER 'LOW RATINGS'; FULL MEMO REVEALED
Mar 21 2006- The GALLUP polling company has dropped CNN as its outlet for electronic distribution...
...CNN tells TVNEWSER.COM, which first reported the split: "We want to make it clear that the decision to not renew our polling arrangement had to do with GALLUP's desire to produce their own broadcasts and not about CNN viewership figures. In fact, GALLUP had negotiated with us for four months in an effort to extend the partnership."
In the memo, by Jim Clifton, Chairman & CEO of GALLUP:
We have chosen "not" to renew our contract with CNN... [because] the #1 reason:
1) CNN has far fewer viewers than it did in the past and we feel that our brand was getting lost and diluted combined with the CNN brand. We have only about 200 thousand viewers during our CNN segments...
http://drudgereport.com/flash2cnn.htm
'Diversity Day' canceled over 'ex-gay' speakers
Homosexual couple didn't want Christian viewpoint represented
March 22, 2006- Amid controversy over a homosexual speaker, a high school in Wisconsin has canceled its "Diversity Day" event scheduled for tomorrow.
Speakers at Viroqua High School in Viroqua, Wisc., for the biannual event were to include Hmong, Jewish, Muslim, American Indian, African American, Latino, Buddhist, physically handicapped and poor people, the La Crosse Tribune reported.
The paper said, however, the event was called off late last week after the Florida-based public-interest legal group Liberty Counsel raised a potential challenge, insisting the program include the viewpoint of a former homosexual...
"By excluding the Christian and ex-gay viewpoints, the (Viroqua) District violates the Establishment Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection," the group said.
Greven, 61, told the paper diversity means, "in our understanding, that the various views are presented, and that was lacking."
Gregg Attleson, a teacher on the Diversity Day planning committee, told the LaCrosse paper the intent is to introduce students to minorities and people with alternative lifestyles.
...Attleson said the homosexual couple scheduled to speak refused to be on the program alongside an "ex-gay" viewpoint, saying they would be uncomfortable...
..."It's ironic, because we're trying to be tolerant and at the same time we might be accused of being intolerant, said Byers, an English teacher.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49386
Pakistani Women Victims of Islamic Ordinances
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200603\FOR20060321b.html
New Orleans spurned offer of cash for cars
March 19, 2006- Katrina turned New Orleans into an auto junkyard and the flooded cars are still everywhere, mementos of the storm and of the city's continuing failure to clean itself up.
Almost seven months after Hurricane Katrina, the Nagin administration still dickers over details of a contract that would gradually rid the cityscape of these vehicular eyesores -- at a cost of $23 million over another six months.
Which makes it of more than passing interest to discover that the largest car crusher east of the Rockies, K&L Auto Crushers of Tyler, Texas, offered in October to do the job in 15 weeks and actually pay the city for the privilege of hauling the junk away. How much? How about $100 per flooded car. With an estimated 50,000 vehicles on the street at that time, the city would have netted $5 million, rather than shelling out four times that sum, as it plans to do now.
K&L's Dan Simpson said he first made his pitch five weeks after Katrina, on a piece of paper that he slipped to Mayor Ray Nagin at one of his boisterous post-flood town hall meetings. Simpson said he'd bring in between five and 10 mobile crushers. Working them six days a week at scattered sites around the city, K&L offered to crumple and haul the vehicles and handle the "remediation," or environmental disposal of gasoline, oil and other hazardous wastes and do all the paperwork.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1142756254289760.xml
What about censure?
Asked about recent calls for his censure, President Bush said during these difficult times, the American people expect the debate to be honest and open - without "needless partisanship."
Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, introduced a resolution last week to censure President Bush for allegedly ignoring the Constitution and violating the law with his "domestic spying" program.
On Tuesday, President Bush noted that no one in the Democrat Party has stood up and called for an end to the "terrorist surveillance program." That's what Democrats ought to do, he said:
"They ought to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used. They ought to take their message to the people - and say 'Vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program. That's what they ought to be doing. That's part of an open and honest debate."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200603\NAT20060321a.html
Ignorance Pervasive in Reporting From Iraq
March 21, 2006- My friend Bill Roggio, an Army veteran and Web logger who was embedded with U.S. Marines in Iraq last fall, was a guest Saturday on a segment of the CNN show "On the Story." The topic was news coverage from Iraq.
...The latest example of what bugs Bill has been the coverage of a U.S.-Iraqi operation which began Thursday with an air assault.
"Operation Swarmer, a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive around the northern Iraqi city of Samarra went into its fourth day Sunday with very little to verify why it has been described as the largest assault operation since the American-led invasion of Iraq three years ago," wrote UPI correspondent Sana Abdallah.
"Contrary to what many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of air power since the start of the war," said Time magazine.
A journalist friend of former paratrooper W. Thomas Smith wanted to know: "Why are we launching a massive bombing campaign in Iraq?"
The dimwits have confused an air assault (where infantry is moved by helicopter into contested territory to conduct an operation) with an air strike (where fighter-bombers blow up something) or a ground assault.
That Operation Swarmer has so far been bloodless by no means indicates it is a failure or "overblown," Smith said. Dozens of suspected terrorists -- including one thought to be a ringleader of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra last month -- have been captured, and several large caches of weapons have been seized...
"The reporting on Operation Swarmer is a microcosm of the sub-par reporting on the Iraq war," Mr. Roggio said. "Events are immediately placed into a political context. Commentary is often mixed in with reporting. There is little understanding of operational intent or how the military even works. Operations are viewed as individual events, and not placed in a greater context. Failure and faulty assumptions are the baselines for coverage and analysis. Success is arbitrarily determined by a reporter or editor's biases. The actions of the U.S. and Iraqi military are viewed with suspicion and even contempt."
CNN correspondent Abbi Tatton implied that because Bill is a former soldier, his view is biased. "Are you not too close to this to be objective yourself?" she asked.
Consider the implications of this attitude. Would a reporter who is a lawyer (such as Fox News' Megyn Kendall) be considered biased in covering the courts simply because she actually knows something about the law? Would a reporter who is a doctor (such as CNN's Sanjay Gupta) be considered biased simply because he actually knows something about medicine? Yet news organizations consider it proper to have our wars covered by people who are unclear about from which end of the rifle the round comes.
Journalists could overcome some of their massive ignorance of matters military if more would embed with U.S. troops. But apparently they fear being tainted by the association. So they rely on Iraqis like the AP stringer who "reported" an uprising in Ramadi last December which never occurred.
Actor and antiwar activist Richard Belzer said he knows more about the war in Iraq than do U.S. servicemen in Iraq because he "reads 20 newspapers a day." But 20 biased, shallow and incomplete accounts don't add up to the truth.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/ignorance_pervasive_in_iraq_re.html
Surprise: Rainforest Grows When It's Dry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1600375/posts
Who Will Save Abdul Rahman?http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/michellemalkin/2006/03/22/190774.html
David<><
http://freewill-predestination.com/
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove/
posted by David Bennett | 10:28 AM
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