"Gone" Barack Obama

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Elder of Ziyon: A proud member of the International Zionist Web

Elder of Ziyon: A proud member of the International Zionist Web

Susan Roesgen is a hack and a cunt

...and CNN can suck my balls.

Show Us The Money

So I'm reading about the new plan proposed to help those who face the risk of defaulting on their home loans and losing those homes through foreclosure. Without even getting into the very thorny issue of how dangerous it is for the government to intervene in free markets to eliminate risk and its consequences (and I'm talking about the banks, the automakers and other companies too), I think that when the economy stabilizes and starts to improve, the government is going to be sitting on a ton of cash.

First, the government received preferred equity stakes in the companies that it bailed out over the last few months. Those interests that the government holds will be paying rich returns, assuming that the banks, etc. return to profitability.

Second, the government is now going to own a preferred equity stake in millions, perhaps more than 10 million, single family residences. Now the government will have a stake in the next housing boom!

What? You say that Obama isn't requiring homeowners to give up the same preferred equity stake that the corporations gave up in order to get bailed out?

Never mind...

Life imitating art, and not in a good way

I was shocked to see this story linked to on Drudge today:

Revealed: the letter Obama team hope will heal Iran rift
Symbolic gesture gives assurances that US does not want to topple Islamic regime

* Robert Tait and Ewen MacAskill in Washington
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 January 2009 01.44 GMT


Officials of Barack Obama's administration have drafted a letter to Iran from the president aimed at unfreezing US-Iranian relations and opening the way for face-to-face talks, the Guardian has learned.

The US state department has been working on drafts of the letter since Obama was elected on 4 November last year. It is in reply to a lengthy letter of congratulations sent by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on 6 November.

Diplomats said Obama's letter would be a symbolic gesture to mark a change in tone from the hostile one adopted by the Bush administration, which portrayed Iran as part of an "axis of evil".

It would be intended to allay the ­suspicions of Iran's leaders and pave the way for Obama to engage them directly, a break with past policy.

State department officials have composed at least three drafts of the letter, which gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Islamic regime, but merely seeks a change in its behaviour. The letter would be addressed to the Iranian people and sent directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or released as an open letter.

One draft proposal suggests that Iran should compare its relatively low standard of living with that of some of its more prosperous neighbours, and contemplate the benefits of losing its pariah status in the west. Although the tone is conciliatory, it also calls on Iran to end what the US calls state sponsorship of terrorism.

The letter is being considered by the new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, as part of a sweeping review of US policy on Iran. A decision on sending it is not expected until the review is complete.

There's more to the story, but I couldn't stomach having the rest of it printed here.

So we are now at a crossroads in history, where the United States goes from waging war against its enemies to...writing letters to them.

You know where this is going. Obama has become...yes...Hans Blix.

Duck, Duck, Goose...In that order

So we're coming up on the end of duck season and Sunday will be the Zhid's last hunt. So far this season has not been great but there have been some good takes. Earlier in the week the Zhid went up around Colusa and found the ducks hard to come by. The geese, however, were turning the sky dark. After much waiting for ducks, the Zhid picked off one low flying goose (his first goose ever) and is now hooked on goose hunting.

I sort of blew the goose's head entirely off..



But it was still a good size specklebelly (i.e., white fronted) goose.


I butchered it right in the driveway when I got home and fried up the liver and heart within 10 minutes of taking it out of the goose. Mmmmmm

The Farewell Speech President Bush Should Have Made

I support President Bush more than the average American but I think he's done a pretty poor job overall. His major failing was his reliance on a small group of people who he allowed to run things without significant oversight (e.g., Rumsfeld). I think that Bush was a very poor commander in chief of the military and made just about every wrong move possible in managing the wars.

But I do think that President Bush was stellar in one regard, and it is such an important area that it goes a long way towards making up for his other flaws. He is perhaps the only American leader who grasped the magnitude of the threat posed by radical Islam and he is surely the only world leader who has ever had the courage to do the only thing appropriate in the face of such a threat-wage a relentless and thorough war against the enemy.

So with that, I think that his farewell speech from yesterday should have gone like this:

"My fellow Americans. I know that I'm leaving the country in pretty bad shape, but I want to explain something to you. Most of you are naive. When Islamic terrorists first attacked the World Trade Center in the early 1990s, you didn't understand how serious the threat was. When Islamic terrorists attempted to destroy numerous passenger jets and assassinate the pope as part of Operation Bojinka in the mid 1990s most of you shrugged it off as an unlikely plot by a group of harmless bumblers. Later in the 1990s, as Islamic terrorists launch successful attacks on Americans at the Khobar towers and the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, you showed little concern as the attacks were so far from our soil.

And then, September 11 came and you saw with your own eyes how serious our enemies are. But in the days, weeks and months following September 11, the images of thousands of American corpses on the streets of American cities faded from your consciousness. Those images, and the threat posed by Islamic terrorists, never faded from my consciousness.

Many of you believe that the war in Iraq was and is unjustified and oppose the actions we've taken to discover the plans of those who seek to attack us again.

Seven plus years have passed since 9/11/01 and we haven't had a single terrorist attack in the United States. Do you think that our enemies have given up?

Just as you underestimated the threat posed by Islamic terror before 9/11, you have underestimated the continuing threat after 9/11. The strict measures we implemented, which included renditions, setting up the facilities at Guantanamo Bay and even subjecting certain suspected terror leaders to extreme interrogation measures, were necessary to keep you safe.

I was charged with making a choice on 9/11: Does the United States allow its citizens to be put at risk in order to maintain the moral and ethical high ground, or does the United States put the safety of its citizens first and undertake certain actions, repugnant as they may be to the traditions and history of this country, to ensure that we are not attacked again?

I made the hard choice and kept you safe for the past seven years. Some of you, perhaps many of you, would have rather seen me make the easy choice. Had I done that, thousands of you would likely have perished after 9/11.

So I made a tough decision that put lives ahead of principles. You can complain about torture from now until the end of days, but it was my position that I'd rather torture the guilty than allow the innocent to be slaughtered.

This is all hindsight, but I believe that in the next four years you will see that the words I've just spoken are the truth. A new President will be leading this country and he has pledged to not make the choices that I've made. Let's see if four years of terrorist attacks will be preferable to seven years of waterboarding our enemies."

Clarification on the prior post

A big thanks to National Review's The Corner for the link.

An anonymous commenter to the prior post read my reference to "occupied Gaza" to mean that I believed Israel was occupying Gaza. To clarify, my reference was to the Palestinian Arab occupation of Gaza. Israel can not occupy land which is rightfully its own.

Also, I've received a number of emails complaining about the alleged slaughter of Palestinian Arab children by Israel (as if that were justification for attacks on Jews around the world). Let me remind those of you with short memories of the slaughter of eight Jewish rabbinical students in Jerusalem in March 2008.

Story here

Video here
A few points on this.

First, Hamas and the residents of Gaza (not all of them, but a large number) praised the slaughter of the Jewish students and promised that more such acts would occur in the future.

Second, it's quite well known that many rabbinical students receive an exemption from serving in the Israeli military.

My point is that there already is a long history of Muslims and those who support the Palestinian Arab position attacking Jews, rather than Israeli targets (e.g., if you go to a yeshiva to slaughter people, you are going there to kill the people who are LEAST likely to be connected to Israel's military). There's also a long history of Hamas, and Palestinian Arabs in occupied Gaza, celebrating the slaughter of Jewish civilians.

So to me, it's quite clear that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and many other Muslims and their supporters are very happy to ignore all distinctions between Israel and Jews in general and as long as Jewish blood is shed the mission has been accomplished. It's also clear that whatever civilian casualties are inflicted by Israel, they are absolutely not intentional and thus can not be seen as the type of collective punishment that Hamas, Palestinian Arabs and their supporters inflict on Jews.

I just wish that some government (other than Israel) and the media would acknowledge the double standard that exists between the collective punishment that Muslims are protected from and that which is inflicted upon Jews.

Why can't Jews be treated like Muslims?

I'm just wondering when someone is going to treat Jews like Muslims. Right now there are protests around the world against Israel's defensive military action in occupied Gaza and without exception you will find the protesters attacking (verbally, though sometimes physically as well) Jews as part of the protests.

After the 9/11 terror attacks we were told that we must not condemn Islam and Muslims when we express our anger at the acts of terror. The government bent over backwards to call Islam a "religion of peace" and the media went so far as to embark on a multi-year, gratis public relations campaign to put a positive face on Islam and Muslims (see, e.g., the New York Times).

So I'm just waiting for all of these entities to condemn anyone who would say negative things about Jews in connection with protests against Israel.

I'm going to not hold my breath...

For those of you wondering whether this hunting season was better than last...

The answer is yes.

Here's the first pheasant kill, courtesy of the awesome flushing skills of my beloved lab



And here's the result of yesterday's duck hunt, from field to freezer
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While we're waiting for the end of the world to end...

...here's a picture of the Zhid's new rifle, bought on election day, 2008 (at least the lower was). Sun Devil made the lower, Del-Ton supplied the rest (directly or as a reseller, like for the Magpul CTR stock) and the Zhid built it over about an hour last week.

Seems to be quite solid, compared to the last AR class weapon the Zhid had extended experience with (that would be circa 1986 in the IDF, and the M16 did not impress the Zhid).

NOT MY PRESIDENT

Next year in Washington

Assuming that Obama "wins" the election and takes office next year, I'm wondering whether these things, which were a centerpiece of opposition party politics over the past eight years, will still be acceptable...

Can we still refer to the President as "chimpy"?

Will dissent still be the highest form of patriotism?

Will it be permissible to state that Obama is "Not My President"?

Will we be able to claim that everything Obama does is a lie?

Can we insist that Obama stole the election?

Can we plaster our cars with "IMPEACH OBAMA" stickers?

Can we call him "Worst. President. Ever" from the day he takes office?

I'm betting that any of the above will be met with allegations of racism by the press and the rest of the left wing.

I'm also betting that all of a sudden no one blames the President for the problems in the economy or the world or society in general once Obama takes office. Of course, the fact that Congress has been controlled by Democrats for the last two years seems to have been lost on most pundits anyway.

Dump Jerry McNerney

It's time for change. Let's take back the 11th District. DUMP JERRY MCNERNEY.

Spring Valley Ranch

Vote Democrat

A public service announcement from Vengeful Zhid

What about the children?

With all the talk about how many kids Palin has, and that Palin's daughter is pregnant, I have to wonder what the Democrats are trying to say.

Let me remind my readers of the exchange (the subject was the war in Iraq) between Senator Boxer and Secretary of State Rice during a Senate hearing in early 2007 (Boxer is the speaker, referring to Rice)

Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.

Hmmm. As I recall, not only does Palin have kids (and soon a grandchild), she has a son who is in the military and headed to Iraq. And, I believe, McCain has two sons in the military.

I guess this means that Boxer is going to come out in support of the McCain/Palin ticket, right?

Sarah Connor for VP

My old liberal pal from Marin county has been sending me countless emails attacking McCain's choice for VP, so I thought I'd vent a bit here.

This is to all you libtards...

First, stop trying to compare Palin to Obama. One is a candidate for VICE President, the other is the candidate for President. Compare her to Biden. Obama has virtually no experience as a leader or as a politician and comparing him to the other candidate's VP choice is just plain STUPID. Palin is not running for the Presidency. Got it?

Second, the idiotic "one heartbeat away from the Presidency" line is getting to me. When was the last time a President died in office? Kennedy, and he was a young President who was assassinated, not an old President who died of natural causes. The odds of a President dying in office are very low.

Third, with all the racist lunatics running around, there is a far greater chance that Obama will die in office than that McCain will. So the real question is who would you rather have running the country-Palin or Biden? I'd be much more comfortable with Palin.

Fourth, we've had plenty of Presidents who had extensive experience and qualifications and they have all been pretty crappy Presidents. While I don't like either McCain or Obama, I would not withhold a vote for Obama because of his lack of experience. Likewise, I wouldn't care what the experience level of the VP pick was. I would care about his or her positions, and I like Palin's positions.

In many ways, I think that the best thing the country could have is a real change, and that means a total outsider as President. If this election is to hinge on the VP choices, I'm going with the hunting, fishing, smart hockey mom who has five kids, one in the military and one with Downs Syndrome, over the career politician with a history of plagiarism and liberal nannystateism.

Chickens Coming Home To Roost On McNerney's Doorstep

Not long after Jerry McNerney took over from Pombo in the House of Representatives I* wrote him a letter outlining my concerns about the unchecked development in the central valley/tri valley area. Among my points was that neither the cities nor the developers were thinking about the long term effects of putting up so many new houses. In particular, I asked McNerney to consider using his influence to slow down growth, as the cities and developers had no idea what they were going to do when the housing market slowed down.

Of primary importance to me was the destruction of farmland and open space for the horrendous developments, especially since most of the demand for the things was being fueled by speculation.

McNerney did respond and promised to do absolutely nothing.

Well, much as I hate the NY Times, they have an article in today's business section that provides an outstanding chronicle of how my fears turned into reality and how Jerry McNerney's inaction has caused permanent damage to the environment.

Had McNerney stepped in over a year ago when I asked him to provide oversight to the greedy and short sighted cities and developments we wouldn't have to read stories about ghost towns that have replaced open space and farmland.

It's a long article but well worth a read.

* If you click on the link and read the post it is important to note that I may or may not be my neighbor.

August 24, 2008
In the Central Valley, the Ruins of the Housing Bust
By DAVID STREITFELD

MERCED, Calif.

ELLIE WOOTEN, the likable mayor of this likable Central Valley city, is on her way to the office when her cellphone rings. A constituent wants her mortgage payments reduced, and is hoping that the mayor has some clout with her lender.

Although Merced has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, this borrower isn’t in such dire straits. She’s not even behind on her mortgage. But her oldest daughter is turning 18, which means an end to $500 a month in child support. She just wants a better deal.

The mayor hangs up and shrugs: “It’s a surprise her daughter is turning 18? You’d think she could have planned ahead.”

But hardly anyone in Merced planned very far ahead.

Not the city, which enthusiastically approved the creation of dozens of new neighborhoods without pausing to wonder if it could absorb the growth.

Certainly not the developers. They built 4,397 new homes in those neighborhoods, some costing half a million dollars, without asking who in a city of only 80,000 could afford to buy them all.

Obviously not the speculators turned landlords, who thought that they could get San Francisco rents in a working-class agricultural city ranked by the American Lung Association as having some of the worst air in the nation.

And, sadly, not the local folk who moved up and took on more debt than they could afford. They believed — because who was telling them differently? — that the good times would be endless.

“Owning a home is the American dream,” says Jamie Schrole, a Merced real estate agent. “Everybody was just trying to live out their dream.”

The belief that this dream could be achieved with no risk, no worry and no money down was at the center of the American romance with real estate in the early years of this decade, and not just in Merced.

How long will the economy have to pay the price for that illusion? The experience of Merced, which rose higher and fell faster than nearly anywhere else, suggests that recovery from the national real estate debacle will be painful and protracted.

In the three years since housing peaked here, the median sales price has fallen by 50 percent. There are thousands of foreclosures on the market. The asking prices on those properties are so low that competitive bidding, a hallmark of the boom, is back.

But almost no homeowner can afford to sell. If you cannot go as low as “the foreclosure price” — the cost of a comparable bank-owned house — real estate agents say you might as well not even bother listing your home.

And so most people do not: three out of four existing-home sales in Merced County are now foreclosures, the highest percentage in the state, according to DataQuick Information Systems. The only group for whom selling makes sense, real estate agents here say, are the elderly entering assisted-living facilities, who often have decades of appreciation built into their home’s value.

As Merced goes, so might go much of the nation. With as many as 2.5 million homes in the United States entering foreclosure this year and, at best, sales of only five million existing houses, the foreclosure price is becoming the rule in many areas. In Los Angeles County, whose 10 million people make it the most populous county in the United States, a third of the sales are foreclosures.

Local markets will not truly begin to recover until their foreclosures are absorbed, but just as few in Merced saw reasons for caution at the height of the boom, hardly anyone is optimistic now. Bank repossessions are accelerating as overleveraged owners see the value of their properties sink. Merced County had a record 523 foreclosures in July, quadruple the rate of a year earlier, according to DataQuick.

The repossessions are accelerating as overleveraged owners see the value of their properties sink and can find no way out.

Beverly Red, the woman who called the mayor to get a better deal, says she started working months ago to renegotiate her loan into something she could better afford on her receptionist’s salary. No one takes her seriously, she says, because she is not behind on her payments, which, of course, is exactly what she is trying to avoid.

“This has been my home for 10 years,” says Ms. Red, a divorced mother of three. “It won’t be good for me, or my neighbors, or the bank, or Merced, if I lose it. Yet that’s where I’m headed. It’s very frustrating.”

THE boom here allowed some people to become rich overnight and gave many more the idea that they could do it, too. Ms. Schrole, a single mother of four, succumbed to temptation too late: she bought a home as an investment, sold her own home, bought a much more expensive one, and lost both. “I was stupid,” she says. “I didn’t get in until things started to tank.”

Ms. Schrole is in bankruptcy. Other homeowners are taking their declining fortunes into their own hands. On a recent Sunday evening, an extended family of a dozen children, teenagers and adults is unloading a U-Haul into a house in a two-year-old subdivision called Summer Creek. The patriarch takes a break from wrestling with a refrigerator to explain he has abandoned his house a few miles away and is now renting this nearly-new five-bedroom.

The result, he says happily, is a drop in his monthly housing bill to $1,200 from $3,400. Somewhere a lender is recording yet another foreclosure.

Businesses in Merced are struggling. Downtown buildings are festooned with “for lease” signs. Unemployment, consistently high here, rose to 12.1 percent in July.

Among those trying to adapt to this miserable new time is the mayor. Mrs. Wooten, 74, has been selling real estate for three decades. In the old days, she worked for people selling their boom-inflated homes and moving into something better. Now she mostly represents banks, selling their foreclosures. She has 27 at the moment.

In her windowless city office, she takes a call from a man in Seattle who is interested in a 1947 home in bad repair in a bad neighborhood, but which has a large yard for his dogs.

In November 2005, the house sold for $126,000. The bank, which took it back last spring, is asking $59,000. The Seattle man offers $40,000.

The mayor says the lender is not desperate enough to take that big a haircut. “Not going to happen,” she says. “Not this year.” She laughs. “Call me in January and I’ll let you know.” Mrs. Wooten is wearing a red shirt that says, “Merced: Invest in California’s Future.” Which is pretty much how all the trouble began.

Starting in 2000, investors came over the mountains from San Francisco, up Interstate 5 from Los Angeles and out of the woodwork from many a surrounding hamlet. Over the next five years, prices in Merced rose 142 percent, a growth rate that ranked it in the top five communities in the country, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

One thing above all drew the investors: the prospect of a University of California campus on the edge of Merced, the first new campus in the state system in 40 years. They envisioned something resembling Davis, another Central Valley university town.

The University of California, Davis, however, has more than 30,000 students and is within easy reach of San Francisco and Sacramento. U.C. Merced, which opened in 2005, has fewer than 2,000 students and isn’t near much except Modesto. Instead of students or professors renting their houses, speculators say, they had welfare recipients or no one.

Many in Merced blame out-of-town buyers, who at the peak made up more than a quarter of the local market, for their current woes.

Now there are investors again. Mark Seivert, an accountant who lives in the neighboring town of Atwater, didn’t buy anything during the boom. Anyone, he says, “could have figured out that too much inventory and not enough bodies was a recipe for disaster.”

This summer, the numbers are sweet. He is working on a deal for a short sale, in which a lender agrees to let a house go for less than it is owed in return for getting the property off its books immediately.

Mr. Seivert is going after a house that the owners bought 13 years ago for $86,000 and refinanced six times, taking advantage of rising values to get cash that, in part, they spent on the house. It has a pool with a small waterfall, a TV room in the converted garage, a deluxe outdoor barbecue setup and a kitchen with all the latest gadgets.

The owners, who owe $350,000, can no longer make their mortgage payments. Mr. Seivert is negotiating to buy the house for $170,000 and then rent it back to the couple, who have jobs in the area. They will pay $1,100 instead of their current $2,600 a month.

“This could be a win-win,” the accountant says. “In four or five years, when their credit is better and the market has recovered, I’ll sell the house back to them.”

Longtime renters are also seizing the moment. Sally Johnson just bought a house that had been foreclosed at the edge of Bellevue Ranch, a huge master-planned community north of town. She paid $164,900, half the price the previous owners paid two years ago.

The market is “probably going to go lower,” says Ms. Johnson, who works at a local jewelry store. But time is on her side: She got a 30-year fixed-rate loan. The landscapers will be by shortly to breathe new life into her golden lawn.

Next door is Sheng Lee, who bought at the top with a “pick a payment” loan, which allows borrowers to make less than their fully amortized payments, but only for a few years. Since Mr. Lee, a high school aide, doesn’t have enough equity to refinance, he now needs a loan modification or a miracle. “I’ll try my best to pay my mortgage, but if not I’ll have no choice to leave like the other people,” he says.

Mr. Lee harbors no bitterness that his new neighbor got a slightly smaller house for half the price. “It’s her luck. Why would I be mad at her?” he asks. He brought her fried rice and noodles as a house-warming gift.

Another neighbor, Van Lewis, fits somewhere in between Mr. Lee and Ms. Johnson. He also bought two years ago, but says he is in a position to ride out the slump. “You have to plan for the long term,” he says. “If you don’t, the short term can kill you.” In any case, he adds, he has “too much stuff” to ever go back to an apartment.

Opposite their houses is an immense scrubby field. Until recently, it was overgrown, and Mr. Lewis says he has seen evidence of fires started by youths or vagrants. “There were supposed to be stores and a fire station over there,” he says with more resignation than anger. “We could all march down to city hall and picket, but what’s really going to happen with that?”

Things could be worse. Crime is up only marginally. There has been no major upswing in homelessness; the theory around city hall is that foreclosed families are either renting or have left the area.

Yet things may well become worse soon. During the good times, Merced built up a $17 million rainy-day fund. Now the city has a revenue shortfall. “We’ll bridge that gap by using the reserves,” says James Marshall, the city manager, “but over time the bridge ain’t long enough.”

FLIPPERS and speculators who had nothing invested in Merced beyond money were the first to abandon the community.

Many real estate agents and loan brokers, their customers gone, soon followed. So did commuters who thought they could spend four hours a day making round trips to the San Francisco Bay Area. And the spinners, young men and women hired by the developers to stand at intersections and literally point the way to the new developments, disappeared.

Now developers are pulling out.

Pacific Pride, a Central Valley developer, announced plans to build a 124-house neighborhood but gave up after paving streets and installing a wall as a partition from the railroad tracks. Graffiti runs the length of the wall. The site was declared a public nuisance by the city last winter. Messages left on a voice-mailbox belonging to Pacific Pride were not returned.

Moraga, built by Lakemont Homes of Roseville, Calif., was designed to include 500 luxury homes that ranged in size up to 3,500 square feet, boasting such amenities as butler pantries, double ovens, master suites with walk-in closets, five-foot-long soaking tubs and three-car garages.

The subdivision centerpiece, completed first, is an expansive and pleasant park, with two baseball fields, basketball courts, a picnic area and children’s playground. All that’s missing are many houses. Only about 24 were built. One was just listed as a foreclosure for $219,000, a deep discount to the already discounted price of $310,000 for that model. The Lakemont agent says that there have been no sales for a long time.

At least Lakemont is still keeping up appearances. At Gardenstone, part of the Bellevue Ranch development, the doors of the sales office are covered with plywood, as if a big storm were coming. A few blocks away is Riverstone, probably the bleakest Merced subdivision. A dozen houses were started here and then the construction workers went away. The wooden frames have been bleaching in the sun and sand for more than a year.

Both Gardenstone and Riverstone are the work of Crosswinds Communities, a developer based in Novi, Mich., that is owned and run by Bernie Glieberman. Reached at his office, Mr. Glieberman is asked if he and his fellow developers perhaps got a bit —

“No question,” he interrupts enthusiastically. “I would never deny we all got greedy. Everyone was setting records. Nobody was there to take away the punch bowl.”

He was selling houses for $300,000. That means a buyer would have needed a household income of about $100,000 to comfortably make the payments. But Merced’s per capita income of $23,864 ranks among the lowest for metropolitan areas in the country. “None of us paid much attention,” Mr. Glieberman says.

Yet he says the real problem was not over-eager developers but underhanded buyers — which is to say investors.

“We didn’t know we were selling to speculators,” the builder says. “They swore they were going to live in the houses.” He says he found out otherwise only after the plunge began and people started trying to get refunds on deposits of as much as $60,000.

Some said that they had lost their jobs, others that there were illnesses in their families. And some said they should get a refund because, as investors instead of owner-occupants, they should never have been allowed to buy the house in the first place. By then, it didn’t matter. Crosswinds didn’t refund any deposits.

Mr. Glieberman says that he intends to come back and finish those houses, that he is confident Merced will turn around.

For that to happen, banks will have to become more willing to lend. At the moment, however, they’re growing ever more reluctant.

Consider the experience of a couple moving to Merced last month from a nearby town. Their mortgage broker set up a Federal Housing Administration loan for them, which meant that it would be guaranteed by the federal government.

To finance the loan, the broker went to the HSBC Mortgage Corporation. At the last minute, HSBC said no, giving reasons that had nothing to do with the couple’s finances or their new house.

“Property is unacceptable due to high foreclosure rate and volatility of subject market,” HSBC informed the couple via fax. Apparently, even a government guarantee wasn’t enough.

Such emphatic declarations bode ill for a recovery, says Robert Gnaizda, general counsel of the Greenlining Institute, a housing advocacy group. “If a few institutions take the position that prices in the Central Valley are still excessive and they need to wait to finance houses there, you’ll have the total collapse of the market.”

A spokeswoman for HSBC says it has financed 36 mortgages in Merced County this year but declined to comment on the fax.

THE real estate boom, while it lasted, made Merced prosperous. Now the question is what can make it thrive once more, presumably on a more sustainable basis.

The university is an asset that will take time to develop. This is excellent farm country, but these days agriculture is not an occupation that creates a broad middle class.

Wal-Mart Stores is proposing to build a distribution center in Merced, but there is a movement against it among residents who say that trucks shuttling around the complex will worsen the breathing problems of the city’s children. Merced County has one of the highest percentages of asthmatic children in the state, according to a 2001 state health survey. Many children carry inhalers to help them breathe.

In the midst of all the wreckage caused by the real estate boom and bust, some think that they have found a way forward: build more houses, thousands and thousands of them.

On the western edge of Merced County, near the Diablo Range that separates the Central Valley from the Pacific Coast, is a stretch of empty land that a coalition of landowners has wanted to build on for years. The plan calls for the eventual construction of a city of 16,000 houses called the Villages of Laguna San Luis.

In many ways, the idea makes sense. The pass over the mountains is winding and slow, but if a proposed high-speed train is ever built, the Villages could end up being a bedroom community for San Jose. By 2025, California is projected to grow to 44 million people from the current 37 million. They will need somewhere to live.

This summer, the Villages came up for a vote with the Merced County Planning Commission. Cindy Lashbrook, a commissioner who is a fruit-and-nut farmer, says the project was basically well thought out. But all the cars that came with all those new houses would cause even more pollution. And in a state suffering from drought, where would the water come from?

“We have to stop thinking that more growth is always the answer,” Ms. Lashbrook says. “We have more housing than we need. We need jobs.”

She voted against the project, which faltered on a 2-to-2 split, with one commissioner absent. That meant supporters could bring it up again before the full commission, which they did. They won the second round, 4 to 1.

Rudy Buendia, the commissioner who dissented along with Ms. Lashbrook on the first vote, was in favor the second time around. Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Buendia said he was out hanging drywall on a construction project and did not have time to talk.

A picture is worth...less.

Following up on my post of a year or so ago where the Zhid took the city of Oakland to task for its idiotic anti-gun laws that left its citizens unable to defend themselves from rampant crime, we have a story in today's Chronicle bemoaning the string of armed robberies at Oakland restaurants.

My favorite line from the story is this from the esteemed mayor of Oakland:

Mayor Ron Dellums, speaking with reporters Thursday, urged people not to develop a siege mentality and said police and city officials are moving swiftly to make the city's commercial areas safe.

"There's no magic answer," Dellums said. "There's no silver bullet. When people are desperate, they take desperate acts. We've got to keep trying as diligently as we can. ... We've got to solve this problem. We can stop it."

First, if Dellums knows so much about the robbers that he can say they are desperate perhaps he should have the police pick them up...

Second, how is the city moving swiftly to restore safety if there is no magic answer?

Third, did Dellums try to find a non-magical answer before he went looking for the magic answer?

And finally, I would like to pose a question to Mayor Dellums:

Do you think that the robbers would be so willing to storm into restaurants if they knew that the patrons were armed?

Another example of how a crime ridden city's refusal to allow its citizens to carry weapons makes the crime problem worse.

What to expect when you're expecting

Ron Dellums, the current mayor of Oakland, CA, is a lot like Obama...both are on the left, they have a love for high taxes and the typical liberal agenda and neither really had any experience prior to taking the leadership job they ran for.

If you want to know what Obama will do to the US, just take a look at what Dellums had done for Oakland. For example...

Oakland deficit could reach $50 million

Christopher Heredia, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, July 19, 2008


Oakland's budget deficit is on course to more than triple the $15 million shortfall that former City Administrator Deborah Edgerly figured in the city's current spending plan, according to new projections obtained by The Chronicle.

Edgerly, whom Mayor Ron Dellums fired July 1 amid a police investigation into whether she tipped her nephew to a gang probe, may have overestimated city revenues for the current fiscal year by $38 million, according to a July 17 finance department report.

In addition, the city would not receive $12 million in planned revenue if the recent mail vote approving an increase in the city's lighting and landscaping tax is invalidated - bringing the city's revenue shortfall this year to nearly $50 million, or 10 percent of Oakland's $500 million general fund.

City Council members Ignacio De La Fuente and Jean Quan, as well as Acting City Administrator Dan Lindheim, said Friday that they thought Edgerly's budget projections had been overly optimistic.

The council and mayor approved the budget after agreeing to close Edgerly's projected $15 million deficit by cutting costs in all departments, leaving 28 vacant jobs unfilled and forcing all nonessential city employees to take five days off without pay in December.

But officials said Friday that the dire forecast may force them to lay off employees and cut services, difficult decisions they say they will make after returning from summer recess and begin poring over Oakland's finances.

"We're waiting anxiously for some of the real balances," Council President De La Fuente said Friday. "We're going to have to prioritize and remember (that) we're responsible for providing the basics - with public safety being No. 1. We're going to have to make some tough decisions."

Edgerly's office in May projected that revenue from sales taxes, property taxes and real estate transfer taxes would increase this fiscal year from 2007-08.

Lindheim, at Dellums' direction, has ordered a complete review of the city's budget situation. Dellums' office will announce changes in the city's financial plans next week, Lindheim said Friday.

"I've told council and department directors I expect we will come back in the fall with a revised budget," Lindheim said. "I'm presuming we're going to be making additional cuts."

Oakland, like cities across the nation, is feeling the pinch of the downturn in the housing market and a softening in consumer spending. City officials said the recent sale of Brandywine Realty Trust, a real estate investment firm with a regional office in Oakland, could net the city $6 million in property transfer taxes, lessening the blow a bit.

Quan, who chairs the council's Finance and Management Committee, said she has been saying for months that Edgerly was overly optimistic in her budget projections, a point she said fell on deaf ears.

"I warned the council, but the response I got was people were OK with it," Quan said Friday. "They said she had been right in the past.

"If these numbers hold, we're talking about cutting city staff by 5 to 10 percent," Quan said. "We'll keep safety first. You're not going to see a reduction in police officers, but we may have to cut support staff, such as technicians, who are a critical component in helping with investigations."

Library staff may also be cut, along with programs for senior citizens and pothole repairs, Quan said.

Before she was fired, Edgerly had planned to retire July 31, a month after the city's new budget took effect.

"There is an incentive for all public figures to make things look better than they may be," Lindheim said Friday. "The problem anyone dealing with budgets has to confront is that the worse you portray the situation, the greater the cuts you have to make. No one wants to make major cuts."

Meanwhile, the council will meet in closed session Tuesday to discuss a citizen challenge to the vote count in the spring election to raise the lighting and landscaping property tax to pay for the upkeep of parks, medians and streetlights. At issue is whether city ballot-counters gave too much weight to the vote of the Port of Oakland.

"There are very serious concerns and allegations by citizens that the vote count was not accurate," De La Fuente said. "We're taking it very seriously."

Lindheim said Dellums believes the election was valid and the vote should stand.

Oakland's new budget woes

Former City Administrator Deborah Edgerly may have overstated revenue projections for the current fiscal year by $38 million, a new city report says. Here are her estimates for three key revenue sources, compared with those made by county officials and city consultants:

Edgerly's projections

-- Sales tax: $51.8 million

-- Property tax: $136.3 million

-- Property transfer tax: $44.9 million

Projections by city consultants and Alameda County assessor's office

-- Sales tax: $43.8 million

-- Property tax: $129.7 million

-- Property transfer tax: $27.2 million

Source: Oakland Finance and Management Agency

Is this the change we should expect?

By now we've all heard about Barack Obama's reaction to a recent cover of New Yorker magazine. As a reminder, Obama called the cover "offensive".

I don't understand what is offensive about a political cartoon depicting a candidate for President of the United States. If the past eight years has shown us anything, it's that all depictions of the President are sacred objects and political cartoons are the top of the sacred heap (see, e.g., Ted Rall, who penned cartoons depicting President Reagan burning in hell, Condi Rice as a "house nigga" and Pat Tillman as an "idiot" and "sap).

So how is it that any cartoon of a candidate for President can be offensive?

Oh, right...in the same way that some cartoons are so "offensive" as to justify murderous riots and beheadings...



He may not be a Muslim but he seems to think that he should be treated more like Mohammed than the President of the United States when it comes to cartoons.

Anyone But Mary Nejedly Piepho

The Zhid has been pretty vocal in his opposition to Jerry McNerney, primarily as a result of McNerney being an absolute sellout on the environment.

Just to show that the Zhid's pro-environment agenda ignores party lines, the Zhid is announcing his opposition to the re-election of Contra Costa County District 3 Supervisor Mary Nejedly Piepho.

Piepho, a Republican, is up for re-election this year and the Zhid considers her to be one of the most vile enemies of the local environment.

Why?

This is why.

Piepho makes the following claim as her campaign statement:

As a co-author of the county’s Urban Limit Line, I am protecting open spaces and controlling sprawl to maintain our high quality of life.

While she may have been a co-author of the Urban Limit Line, she also is one of the four Contra Costa County Supervisors who immediately authorized a study that would lead to the absolute evisceration of the Urban Limit Line.

Now, after years of often contentious political battles to limit suburban sprawl, four of the five Contra Costa County supervisors are considering a loophole that could lead to numerous residential developments outside the limit line.

The supervisors voted 4-1 to proceed with a study that would allow 193 mostly luxury homes to be built on 770 acres of land in the Tassajara Valley, east of Danville and San Ramon.

Any politician who helps to author law, that is approved by voters in overwhelming numbers, and then goes behind the backs of the voters to collaborate with and aid the developers who are trying to act in contravention of that law is a hypocrite, a shill and an enemy of the voters and the environment.

As the Contra Costa County Times said about Piepho's actions:

This is an issue that deserves far more public attention as the study moves forward. Voters need to be fully aware of what is going on and not allow their elected supervisors to undermine Measure J and Contra Costa County's urban limit line.

That Piepho acted to subvert the will of the voters by authorizing the New Farm study is bad enough; that she now claims she is protecting open spaces and controlling sprawl as part of the Urban Limit Line is an outright lie and an affront to all voters.

Piepho must go.

And for those of you who would like to get up to speed on the attempts to undermine the Urban Limit Line, and Piepho's refusal to support the clearly stated will of the voters who overwhelmingly approved the Urban Limit Line, this article is quite good.

Assemblyman decries city's effort to control Tassajara
Jeanine Benca

Assemblyman Guy Houston on Tuesday publicly lambasted San Ramon's advance on the Tassajara Valley and challenged his political rival, Contra Costa County Supervisor Mary Piepho, to rein in the city's efforts to control the large undeveloped area.

"The city of San Ramon is going about this all wrong," said Houston of San Ramon's recent attempt to bring the 4,900-acre Tassajara Valley under its "sphere of influence."

He said Piepho, who represents San Ramon on the Board of Supervisors -- and with whom Houston hopes to battle this fall for that seat -- should "ask San Ramon to withdraw its (sphere of influence) application" from the Local Agency Formation Commission.

"In addition, I call on Supervisor Piepho to go to the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors and rescind any current studies or actions

that infringe on the voter-approved urban limit line," Houston said.

He referred to New Farm, a controversial mixed residential/ agricultural development of 194 housing units proposed in the Tassajara Valley.

Supervisors approved in July a study to determine whether the project violates the county's voter-approved urban limit line, which bars development from the Tassajara Valley until at least 2026.

Piepho reiterated Tuesday her position that the study is just that -- a study, and not a guarantee that the development will be approved.

"I do support the urban limit line. I have not said I support New Farm or any other development in the Tassajara Valley, and I do have great concerns about the infrastructurenot supporting further development in that area," she said.

"The question before us is, does (New Farm) meet the county's general plan, and that's what we're looking at." [Gee, Piepho, you claim co-authorship of the law and you are now saying that you don't understand something as obvious as what would constitute an obvious breach of the law??? Ed.]

About San Ramon's sphere of influence attempt, Piepho said, "I understand that San Ramon is acting upon the vote of their community and what their voters have said they want for their future planning, and I respect that. I respect the vote of the people." [No, Piepho, the county as a whole voted to stop development in the Tassajara Valley and a small constituency, San Ramon, is attempting to undermine the will of the county's voters. You should respect THAT will of the people, you hypocrite. Ed.]

San Ramon's current general plan calls for the city to re- evaluate its urban growth boundary in 2010. Residents will be asked to vote on whether they would support annexation and eventual development of the rural stretch east of city lines.

But Houston, a San Ramon resident, said residents of his city already have declared their intent to leave the Tassajara Valley as is -- through their support of Measure L, the 2006 measure that extended the county's urban line to 2026.

"I respect what the voters did," said Houston, a former mayor of Dublin. [Note to Piepho-this is how you respect the will of the voters. Ed.]

He criticized San Ramon's leaders for not including input from Dublin or Danville -- neighboring cities that border the Tassajara Valley -- in an environmental report for the city's sphere of influence application.

Last week, staff of LAFCO sent San Ramon leaders a letter criticizing the city's environmental report as incomplete in its failure to address the potential for "future development" of the Tassajara Valley.

San Ramon Mayor H. Abram Wilson said Tuesday that, in response to LAFCO's letter and concerns aired by neighboring jurisdictions, the city's planned March 11 public hearing on the environmental report has been canceled.

The city will postpone its sphere of influence application until the City Council, San Ramon staff and officials from neighboring jurisdictions have had a chance to "sit down and talk," Wilson said.

"More than anything else, I do believe that there is and has been a misunderstanding of San Ramon's position, so I will do everything I can to make sure that everyone feels a comfort level."

He reiterated that San Ramon officials have "no intention of trying to develop the Tassajara Valley.

"We don't have any thoughts of building anything. We're not in a rush to do anything. We're very cognizant that everyone has a say."

And Piepho, if you find anything inaccurate in this post, you are welcome to advise the Zhid at vengefulzhid@yahoo.com

Turkey hunting pics

Though no turkeys lost their miserable lives, the Zhid spent the morning at Running Deer Ranch, up in the hills above Lake Berryessa hunting the evil fowl beasts. Wilderness Unlimited gets kudos for the beautiful hunting grounds.

Because Affe has a thing for heavy breathing, here's the topo map of the area hunted. I started at about lake level and went up anderson canyon into the hills, following a creek and climbing up deer trails to the peaks and traversing them back towards the lake. I went through a 70 ounce camelback before noon...

View Larger Map


As always, click each picture for an enlargement. And in one of the pics, the Zhid, in full camo, is visible! Jerry McNerney, eat your heart out!

And if you even think about touching our sheep...

Osama bin Laden released an audiotape yesterday that may have been the most brilliant summary of how things rank in the scale of Islamic "Oh no you didn't!"

Here's his quote:

"Although our tragedy in your killing of our women and children is a very great one, it paled when you went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings," he said. "This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe."

Ok, so let's make sure everyone understands.

In Islam, it's bad to kill women and children.

But to give you some perspective on HOW bad it is, killing women and children "pales" in comparison to reprinting cartoons.

Now, as far as I can tell, printing cartoons, even offensive ones, is pretty much at the bottom of the list of things you shouldn't do for most other cultures.

So either Islam has virtually no concern for women and children or Islam knows something about cartoons that we don't know.

I wonder what reaction they'd have to a cartoon of Mohammed flying a jetliner into a kindergarten? Would it matter if it was a Jewish kindergarten?

Heckuva sense of priority in Islam...

You Have The Right To Remain Silent.

From CNN's coverage of the Supreme Court arguments on the Heller case:

But Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pennsylvania, said before the hearing that the government had the right to limit gun ownership.

"There should be reasonable control for access to guns and particularly handguns," he said. "Even if [the Supreme Court finds] that people have the right to bear arms, governments have a right to reasonable controls on firearms -- where and under what circumstances people have a right to have them."

The emphasis is mine.

Does anyone else see the problem with Fattah's statement? He says that if the Supreme Court finds that gun ownership is a right, the government should still have the power to dictate who can have a gun and under what circumstances.

WHAT KIND OF RIGHT IS THAT?

It's like saying "you have a right to free speech, so long as the government can dictate who says what and under what circumstances they speak."

I am never surprised by how clueless Democrats are. What surprises me is that people actually listen to what they say.

Speaking of which, I read the text of Obama's speech today. I have to say that the speech definitely changed my mind. The problem for Obama is that it changed whatever positive feelings I had about him into negative ones.

Obama's speech starts out with the right approach, but instead of absolutely distancing himself from Reverend Wright, he first wags his finger at the reverend and then says, in essence, that he's not going to abandon the reverend any more than he'd abandon the black community and spells out all the wonderful things the reverend and church have done. In many ways, he seems to have engaged in a backdoor defense of what the reverend said (and also doesn't even address the most shocking thing that the pastor said with regard to 9/11 being a time when America's chickens came home to roost).

If this is Obama's way of providing comfort, it has backfired. I now think that this man supports black radicalism and is so arrogant that he thinks he can tell us "I am what I appear to be" and we have to accept it.

Worse, though, was the pandering to the white community. I have never before seen Obama bring up the white side of his family so much. It's pretty clear that in trying to prove that he isn't a black radical, like his pastor, Obama will hold up the side of the family that he has so conveniently ignored throughout the campaign.

I am left with the impression that Obama is a man who will excuse the most heinous and inflammatory statements of a certain segment (either radical black or leftist, I'm not really sure which) and tell us that we're not seeing what we think we're seeing.

Overall, a very disingenuous, and very frightening, speech.

McNerney for Congress?

I know that Jerry McNerney's staff reads this blog, so I am going to give Jerry one final chance to convince me and the rest of the moderate/conservative voters in his district that he is worth re-electing.

At this point I am inclined to not vote for McNerney, for the reasons that are discussed in this post. Jerry took a hard turn to the left after he was put in office by the San Francisco leftists and he has done nothing to show us that he is anything other than Nancy Pelosi's liberal lap dog.

As I've pointed out before, McNerney is the worst kind of liberal, as he supports the distasteful policies of the left but he refuses to do anything to protect the environment in his district. He has sold out to developers.

So we have a perfect test to see whether Jerry is really willing to protect the interests of the people in his district. The City of San Ramon recently launched an attack on rural Tassajara Valley. Read the article at the link, as it's a very good overview of the situation

Jerry now has a chance to rescue his reputation. Come on, Jerry, speak out on this issue. Tell San Ramon to back off and respect the urban limit line. If you again remain silent, we have no choice but to go with Dean Andal.

Maybe Andal will be just as bad for the environment as you are, Jerry, but at least he isn't Nancy Pelosi's puppet.

Jerry's staff can send me an outline of his plan to stop San Ramon's attempt to destroy the Tassajra Valley via email at vengefulzhid@yahoo.com.

No, I'm not surprised, but it still pisses me off.

So a Palestinian Arab terrorist goes into a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem and slaughters 8 or more Jewish boys and wounds at least that many and what are the mainstream media sources saying?

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The attack was greeted with celebrations in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after a recent Israeli offensive there that killed more than 120 Palestinians, about half of them civilians.

or how about this

The seminary is the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe quarter at the entrance to Jerusalem, a prestigious center of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank.

It was founded by the late Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Hacohen Kook, the movement's spiritual founder, and serves some 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, and many of them carry arms.

It's pretty clear that there will be no reporting on this story unless the readers are forcefed the ideas that the terrorist attacks are actually justifiable revenge and that every Jew in Israel is either a settler or a soldier or both, so there are no innocent civilians.

Fucking media, I swear...

UPDATE

Several of the Zhid's dense readers didn't quite understand the point. Let the Zhid give an example...

Had the AP covered the Israeli strikes in Gaza in the same manner as they covered the Palestinian Arab terrorist attack in Jerusalem, it would have read something like this...

"Israeli military forces launched raids in Gaza today against Palestinian targets in response to the slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians, killing nearly 120 Palestinians. Approximately half of the Palestinian casualties were members of Hamas' armed units while the other half of the Palestinian casualties were civilians, all of whom attend mosques and schools that support and provide training for terror attacks against Jews."

Confused

Just some random, Saturday morning musings.

Liberals say that there is no legitimate need for individual gun rights, as the government is there to protect us.

Liberals say that Bush has repeatedly violated law and the constitution and has stripped us of our civil rights.

Liberals say that informal militias in Iraq have beat the US military.

And then, the liberals conclude that only the government has a right to be armed.

What am I missing?

Going a bit further with this, if you ever dig into the "foodie" culture, you'll see that the people who are really into exotic food, especially meats, with wild game being prized, tend to be liberal.

And liberals are opposed to...hunting.

Again, what am I missing?

If conservatives really wanted to deprive the population of civil rights and oppress minorities, wouldn't the conservatives want an unarmed populace?

So, could it be that the policies speak louder than the stereotypes?

Eclipse pics

Taken on a cheap digital camera with the lens shoved against the eyepiece of a cheap telescope...click on individual pictures for enlargements.

Jerry McNerney Hates The Bill Of Rights

55 Senators and 250 Representatives signed an amici curiae brief in support of a challenge to the Bill of Rights by the District of Columbia. 305 members of Congress had the courage to stand firm in protecting your constitutional rights.

Jerry McNerney refused to sign the brief.

Remember when McNerney refused to sign a farm support reform bill that would have provided federal funds to protect the local environment?

Remember how McNerney embraced the Code Pink leftists, the very ones who are currently attacking the US Marines in Berkeley?

Remember how McNerney refused to speak up to stop an attempt to violate the will of the voters in the 11th District?

Seems like McNerney has a clear pattern of not supporting anything that is important to the core constituency of his district.

McNerney, the lapdog of Pelosi...This man represents San Francisco or Berkeley, but he doesn't represent the good people of the 11th District.

They didn't even get to wander there for 40 years...

This makes the Zhid's heart flutter. Egypt declares "Get these bloodthirsty, parasitic hate mongering terrorists out of our territory and back into Gaza, where they can be poor, oppressed victims again!"

'Get Hamas gunmen out of Sinai'
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 30, 2008

Egypt has issued an ultimatum to Hamas to pull back dozens of Gazan gunmen who are reported to have crossed into Egypt over the past week.

Palestinian Authority security officials in Ramallah said 300-500 gunmen, most of them belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were refusing to return to the Gaza Strip.

The officials said the gunmen had sought refuge with Beduin tribes and Egyptian families in a number of places in Sinai.

"The Egyptian authorities have issued an ultimatum to Hamas to return all the gunmen by this weekend," the officials told The Jerusalem Post. "According to our sources, the Egyptians are very serious this time."

In the past few days, the officials added, the Egyptian authorities had detained more than 100 armed Palestinians. Most of the detainees were returned to the Gaza Strip after their weapons were confiscated, officials said.

According to the officials, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had succeeded in bringing tons of explosives and various weapons into Gaza over the past week. They said tons of drugs had also made their way into the Strip from Sinai.

The Egyptians have also foiled an attempt by Hamas members to raise Palestinian and Hamas flags on top of several government institutions in Sinai's Rafah and el-Arish.

The semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper reported that the attempt to place the flags was seen as a serious "provocation" by many Egyptians.

Hassan Issa, a member of the Egyptian parliament, accused Hamas of jeopardizing his country's security. "Hamas has violated our sovereignty and this is totally unacceptable," he said. "This move poses a real threat to Egypt's national security."

Arab diplomats in Cairo estimated that around 10,000 Palestinians were still in Sinai, six days after the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt was destroyed.

One diplomat told the Post that Hamas supporters were trying to create the impression that they had succeeded in "liberating" Egyptian territory.

"The Hamas people apparently forgot that they had invaded Egypt, and not Israel," he said. "The Egyptians are running out patience."

The diplomat predicted that the Egyptians would rebuke Hamas leaders who were due to arrive in Cairo on Wednesday for talks on the border crisis. The delegation will be headed by Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas is also due to visit Cairo on Wednesday. However, his aides said he had no intention of meeting with Hamas representative.

The talks in Cairo will focus on ending the anarchy along the Gaza-Sinai border. The Egyptians will try to persuade Hamas to agree to the return of Abbas's forces to the Rafah border crossing. But Hamas reiterated Tuesday its opposition to such a move. The Islamist group also opposes the presence of international monitors at the border.

What is the nutritional value of a pack of Marlboros?

I'm sure you've read all about the horrible suffering of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza. How they are being starved to death by Israel. How the evil Israelis are denying them access to essentials. How they had to blow up the border with Egypt, out of desperation, to feed their hungry children.

Let's go to the video to see how that's working out...

Wow, I had no idea Marlboro made baby formula.

A weekend off road

This weekend consisted of a fruitless duck hunt at Grizzly (where I walked up to a number of pheasant, who seemed to know that the season for them was over), and then a lot of bashing the truck through the muddy trails at Grizzly, and topped off by a mt bike ride on muddy Mt. Diablo

President Bush in Israel

So President Bush was in Israel and made a trip to the Wailing Wall. As he stood there, he thought for a moment about the purpose of his trip and how he wanted to create a lasting legacy for his Presidency.

With that, he turned to the crowd gathered behind him and called out "MR. OLMERT, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"

The Sound of One Zhid Quacking

I went duck hunting yesterday. I forgot how calling ducks takes a lot of practice/skill.

See for yourself.

The Real Environmentalists

Something that I've noticed in the course of hunting this year is the amount of natural habitat that has been preserved in the local area. I've been hunting a lot at Grizzly and some other places in the delta and it's pretty impressive to see the thousands of acres that are untouched, though surrounded by the ravages of urban development.

The thing that came to mind is who is behind the protection of the environment.

Gun owners.

Yep, hunters are the ones who are responsible for the preservation of the environment. While the liberals talk a good game, they're the ones who are behind a lot of the destruction of land in this area (see, e.g., the way Jerry McNerney and other Democrat politicians have been bought off by developers or how the most liberal of cities, such as Oakland, have allowed developers to pave over every inch of open space).

Meanwhile, we conservative gun owners (and it is the case that most, though not all, hunters are conservative) are the ones who depend on land being preserved and directly fund and otherwise contribute to the well being of wildlife stocks and their habitat.

We gun owners pay dues to groups, like Ducks Unlimited, that protect the environment and wildlife. We buy hunting licenses and stamps, which directly fund environmental preservation of game habitats. We use the state lands to hunt and pay the use fees, which go, again, to protecting and expanding the game habitat. We are out there monitoring the environment and are the first line of defense against attacks on the environment.

Meanwhile, the liberals are the ones who are doing things like selling off open space to developers to fund special interest social programs. Just look at how McNerney has sold us out to the developers if you want an example of this (just do a search for McNerney on this blog).

Funny, ain't it, liberals of the Bay Area, that as you try to grab our guns and pave over our land, destroying the last bits of habitat for wildlife, under the banner of being green and environmentally friendly, it is actually us, the conservative gun owners, who are the guardians of the environment.

That's All She Wrote

The 2007 pheasant season is now in the books for the Zhid and unfortunately it was a total zero. The Zhid went out to Grizzly Island today for the last weekend of the season and while there was plenty of mud to have fun with in the truck,

the Zhid was again able to only kick up a hen. Though the Zhid would have liked to have brought back birds, there is no such thing as a bad day hunting, so the season was a success.

Along the way the Zhid scouted some placed to hunt ducks (hence the waders and decoys in the picture...since the ducks were not in good numbers today there was no chance to use said waders and decoys). Next week the Zhid will likely try a mid-week duck hunt.

And in the meantime, here's a video to amuse the Zhid's loyal readers. The Zhid tends to start shooting at anything after it looks like the hunt will not be successful. In this case, the Zhid propped up the camera on his knee while shooting into a mound of dirt and the effect of the camera falling off the knee is a bit of comedy to this Zhid's mind.

The Wall Street Journal Lays Out The Facts On The Rich And Taxes

Outstanding work.

REVIEW & OUTLOOK


Taxes and Income
December 17, 2007; Page A20

Every Democrat running for President wants to raise taxes on "the rich," but they will have to do something miraculous to outtax President Bush. Based on the latest available tax data, no Administration in modern history has done more to pry tax revenue from the wealthy.

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with adjusted gross incomes of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.


For the political left and most of the media, this means only that the rich are getting richer, so of course they're paying more taxes. And it is true that the top earners have increased their share of total income. Yet, as the nearby table shows, the rich showed more rapid gains in reported income shares in the 1990s than in the first half of this decade. The share of the richest 1% jumped to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990, but increased only slightly to 21.2% in 2005. This makes it hard to pin their claim of "rising inequality" on the Bush tax cuts, though the income redistributionists are trying. By this measure, the Clinton years were far worse for "inequality."

Notably, however, the share of taxes paid by the top 1% has kept climbing this decade -- to 39.4% in 2005, from 37.4% in 2000. The share paid by the top 5% has increased even more rapidly. In other words, despite the tax reductions of 2001 and 2003, the rich saw their share of taxes paid rise at a faster rate than their share of income. How could this be?

One explanation is that the Bush tax cuts reduced the income tax liability of middle and lower income households by more proportionately than the rich. The average family of four with an income of $40,000 saw its income tax liability fall by about $2,052 a year from the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

The IRS statistics also tell a more complicated economic story than the media claim. First, America continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,000 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm.

Liberals decry this as proof of a new "gilded age." But we'd say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent. More than 13 million American households, or about one in 10, had an income of more than $100,000 a year in 2005. This is the kind of upward mobility that a dynamic society should want because it means that incomes aren't stagnant and opportunity continues to exist.

Keep in mind as well that the IRS only records the income that taxpayers report. Its data don't include income that the rich hide in tax shelters or otherwise defer. And there is evidence that lower tax rates since 1981 have caused the rich to declare more of what they earn. In 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% paid only 19% of all income taxes; now, with a top rate of 35%, they pay more than double that share. With lower rates and fewer tax loopholes after the 1986 reform, there is less incentive to shelter income to avoid tax.

The IRS figures are also misleading because they include income that can make many Americans rich for only a single year. In 2005, for example, taxpayers earned an estimated $600 billion in income from capital gains, which is reported on tax forms as part of adjustable gross income. But that might include the one-time gain from a middle-class senior couple that has lived modestly for decades but suddenly retires and sells the family business or home for $1 million or more. They may be "rich" in Hillary Clinton's definition of the term, but in fact they are benefiting in one tax year from a lifetime of hard work and thrift.

The amount of capital gains declared on tax forms has doubled since the tax rate was cut to 15% from 20% in 2003, which has also contributed to more Americans being "rich." Dividend income has also increased by at least 50% since that rate was cut to 15% from nearly 40% in 2003. So part of the income gains of the rich are simply a result of assets that have been converted into taxable income -- in part because of lower tax rates.

We hate to break up the media's egalitarian chorus with these details, but facts are facts. If Democrats really want to soak the rich, they'll keep tax rates where they are, or, better, lower them some more.

Still 0 for the Pheasant Season, but better results on paper

Affe dragged me out to the Sacramento Valley Shooting Center, where we shot beyond 100 yards for the first time.

Though I believe I pissed off some of the other long range shooters with my rapid fire on the M1A and Garand, that was only after I had some nice precision shooting with the new GA Precision Rock. Here are the results from the first time at 200 yards, shooting 168 gr Black Hills. I had to adjust the scope for the first three shots but then I shot two groups of five and I think it's pretty clear that they were two very nice, tight groups.



Oh, by the way, Jerry McNerney continues to be an enemy of the environment.

Still 0 for the Pheasant Season

I went hunting this morning at Twitchell Island. No dog, no Affe, no birds. I did see a fat rooster running through the brush, but without a dog or Polak it was the bird's lucky day. Beautiful area (a recently harvested corn field of about 1,000 acres)


and a lot of migrating waterfowl overhead.

Affe and I went Pheasant Hunting Today and One Picture Tells It All

And a few others, just to provide a bit of the flavor of the day.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

So after a long time talking about it, I finally gave in and bought a GA Precision rifle. It's a Rock model in an AICS 1.5 chassis and a deeply fluted Mike Rock barrel (hence the name, The Rock).

I ended up taking the Leupold Mark 4 scope off of the M1A (which was worked on by GA Precision, though not built by them) and putting it on the Rock, not knowing whether I wanted to stay with that scope or maybe get a nicer scope for the new rifle. The truth is that I've never been totally thrilled with the performance of the M1A and wasn't sure whether perhaps the scope was partially the problem.

To tell even more truth, I've never really bought into the hype about custom rifles being so much better than production rifles. For example, I think my Sig SHR 970 is a damn good shooting rifle and it's not a custom piece. But because I'm lucky enough to have some cash to spare and the Rock was being sold by GAP as a used rifle, I jumped on it and figured if it wasn't anything special I'd have learned my lesson.

I've had a long term fascination with the AICS chassis, so I didn't think there was a lot to lose.

Fast forward the 10 days for the idiotic California waiting period and we arrive at yesterday, when Affe and I picked up the rifle from the FFL transfer dealer. Oh, yeah, Affe also bought a new rifle yesterday, but I'll wait for him to break that news.

Last night I worked on getting the scope set up and after a fitful night sleeping and thinking about the first range day with the new rifle I headed out to my range late this afternoon. It was pretty windy and quite warm for November (83 degrees, in fact), and the target stands were dancing around a bit. You can see how the wind was blowing in this picture of the Zhid's truck, with the range flag (and Mt. Diablo) in the background. As always, click on a picture for an enlargement.




















I set up at the bench and knew that dialing in this scope was going to take a while, as I always have trouble with scopes on the first shoot.



















It did take me a good number of shots before I had the scope dialed in, and to cut to the chase, here's how it ended up shooting. I was using Black Hills 168 gr.

That seems to me to be a three shot group of at or less than .5 MOA, which is what GAP guarantees (the shot to the right in the picture is part of my scope dialing in string, it wasn't a flyer from the group under the micrometer).

Here's a picture of the string of shots I took to get the scope dialed in (they're the ones in and around the center diamond) along with the three shot group from the picture above and the second three shot group I took subsequently (in the right circle). Pretty amazing performance, once I got the scope set up right it was printing three shot groups of .5 moa or less.



















To say I am pleased is a dramatic understatement. I actually was pissed off at first, as I was getting the scope set up, as I thought the rifle was shooting all over the place. The first shot I took was off the shoot n see part of the target and the second shot seemed to be off the target entirely. Only when I went to the target in the change period did I see that the second shot was in the same hole as the first shot.

Jeezuz kee-rist, GAP rifles are amazing.


Speaking of which, as I was driving back home from the range I saw these two bulls in a field and one of them was popping wood. In honor of Affe, I stopped the truck and snapped a picture. If you click on the picture you may be able to see the bullcock on the one at the right of the picture.

The Media Betray Us

It's been quite some time since I ripped on the NY Times. In part, this is due to the fact that I canceled my subscription and thus am not given reason to be outraged on a daily basis.

In any event, I just saw the piece, below, come through on the AP wire and thought how interesting it is that the story, even though it tries hard to avoid crediting President Bush's "surge" strategy, provides a general tone of "holy shit, things in Iraq have really improved!" For example, look at this line:

The claim could not be independently verified, but, if true, it would represent a dramatic end to the sectarian cleansing that has shredded the fabric of Baghdad's once mixed society.

It made me think back to when the surge started. What was it the NY Times editorialized in response to the surge? Hmmm. Let's check. Here are a few of the Times' editorials since the surge started:

September 5, 2007
Editorial
Another Iraq Photo Op
Iraq is a long way to go for a photo op, but not for President Bush, who is pulling out all the stops to divert public attention from his failed Iraq policies and to keep Congress from demanding that he bring the troops home. As Americans and Iraqis continue to die — and Iraqi politicians refuse to reconcile — Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to recognize that what both countries need is a responsible exit strategy for the United States, not more photo ops and disingenuous claims of success.

With Congress launching a series of pivotal hearings this week, Mr. Bush’s eight-hour stopover in Iraq on Sunday won him major play in the news media, including photos of smiling American military forces with their commander in chief. But the facts of the visit undermined his claims that his troop escalation is working and deserves more time and more lives to bear fruit.

Mr. Bush’s only destination was an isolated, well-fortified air base in Anbar Province, not Baghdad where his so-called surge was supposed to bring stability and persuade Iraqi politicians that they had more to gain from reconciliation than score-settling. We suppose Mr. Bush could claim one success for his visit: he did manage to get Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to visit the Sunni-dominated province.

Mr. Bush pumped up his headlines by suggesting continued gains in security could allow for a reduction in troops as his critics have been demanding and most Americans desperately want. But this is a cruel tease and a pathetic attempt to repackage old promises. Mr. Bush has been dangling that same as-soon-as-possible drawdown for years. The Pentagon had a plan to do just that in 2004. Today, the troop level stands at 160,000, up 30,000 from the start of this year.

Despite all Mr. Bush’s cheerleading, a new report by nonpartisan Congressional investigators tells a much grimmer and closer to reality tale, concluding that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 of 18 military and political benchmarks to which it had agreed.

The report by the Government Accountability Office said that Iraq’s government has failed to eliminate militia control of local security forces, failed to increase the number of army units capable of operating independently, failed to enact long-promised legislation essential for political reconciliation and even raised doubts whether the government is capable of spending $10 billion in reconstruction funds.

And that was the buffed-up version. An earlier draft of the G.A.O. report had the Iraqis failing on 15 of the 18 goals, until the Pentagon protested that the grading was too harsh.

Mr. Bush clearly has no strategy to end this conflict, which has no end in sight. The American people deserve considered judgments not come-ons from their leaders. Congress needs to insist on a prudent formula that will withdraw American forces and limit the hemorrhaging.

September 11, 2007
Editorial
Empty Calories
For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.

It was just another of the broken promises and false claims of success that we’ve heard from Mr. Bush for years, from shock and awe, to bouquets of roses, to mission accomplished and, most recently, to a major escalation that was supposed to buy Iraqi leaders time to unify their nation. We hope Congress is not fooled by the silver stars, charts and rhetoric of yesterday’s hearing. Even if the so-called surge has created breathing room, Iraq’s sectarian leaders show neither the ability nor the intent to take advantage of it.

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would bring American troops only to the level of troops that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity. The military does not have the troops to sustain these high levels without further weakening the overstretched Army and denying soldiers their 15 months of home leave before going back to war.

The general claimed a significant and steady decline in killings and deaths in the past three months, but even he admitted that the number of attacks is still too high. Recent independent studies are much more skeptical about the decrease in violence. The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and make decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted. But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqué in which Iraqi leaders promised to talk more.

General Petraeus admitted success in Iraq would be neither quick nor easy. Mr. Crocker claimed that success is attainable, but made no guarantee. With that much wiggle room in the prognosis, one would think American leaders would start looking at serious alternative strategies — like the early, prudent withdrawal of troops that we favor. The American people deserve more than what the general and the diplomat offered them yesterday.

For that matter, they deserve more than what was offered by Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. When protesters interrupted the hearing, Mr. Skelton ordered them removed from the room, which is understandable. But then he said that they would be prosecuted. That seemed like an unnecessarily authoritarian response to people who just wanted to be heard.

September 14, 2007
Editorial
No Exit, No Strategy
This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of Congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cut-to-order statistics and a speech from the Oval Office — and none of it either straight or clear.

The White House insisted that President Bush had consulted intensively with his generals and adapted to changing circumstances. But no amount of smoke could obscure the truth: Mr. Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos he unleashed.

Last night’s speech could have been given any day in the last four years — and was delivered a half-dozen times already. Despite Mr. Bush’s claim that he was offering a way for all Americans to “come together” on Iraq, he offered the same divisive policies — repackaged this time with the Orwellian slogan “return on success.”

Mr. Bush’s claim that things were going so well in Iraq that he could “accept” his generals’ recommendation for a “drawdown” of forces was a carnival barker’s come-on. The Army cannot sustain the 30,000 extra troops Mr. Bush sent to Iraq beyond mid-2008 without serious damage to its fighting ability. From the start, the president said that the increase would be temporary. That’s why he called it a “surge.”

Before he spoke, Iraq’s brutal reality had debunked the claims of political and military success made by Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad. First, The Times reported that the only sliver of political progress — a tortuous compromise on sharing oil revenues — was evaporating. Then came news of the assassination of the Anbar tribal leader whose decision to fight alongside the Americans was cited by Mr. Bush as proof that the war’s tide was turning — even though it had nothing to do with the increase in forces.

Mr. Bush’s claims last night about how well the war is going are believable only if you use Pentagon numbers so obviously cooked that they call to mind the way Americans were duped into first supporting this war.

There will be a lot said in coming days about Mr. Bush’s “new strategy,” just as there was after each of his previous major addresses on the war. If there was a new strategy, it would be easy to recognize. Mr. Bush would drop the meaningless talk of victory and stop trying to sell Americans the fiction that the war keeps them safe from terrorism. (To his credit, General Petraeus declined to adopt that bit of propaganda.) Instead, Mr. Bush would do what the vast majority of Americans want — plan an orderly withdrawal while doing what he can to mitigate the consequences of the war.

Mr. Bush was right when he said last night that the aftermath of withdrawal would be bloody and frightening, but that is a product of his invasion and his gross mismanagement of the aftermath. Mr. Bush’s endless insistence on staying the course will only make Iraq more bloody and frightening.

If Mr. Bush had a new strategy, he would have talked to the American people last night about what he would do to draw Iraq’s neighbors into a solution. Last January, when he announced the troop increase, Mr. Bush promised to “use America’s full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East.” The world is still waiting.

A strategy for ending the war would include real efforts to hold Iraq’s government to verifiable measures of political conciliation — and make clear to Iraq’s leaders that they cannot count on America’s indefinite and unquestioning protection.

A real shift in strategy would have included an effort to deal with the massive problem of refugees. Nine months after the surge began, ever more Iraqis are being driven from their homes — and Mr. Bush never even mentioned them last night.

If Mr. Bush were serious about ending the war, rather than threatening Iran and Syria, he would make a serious effort to persuade them that they too have a lot to lose from a disintegrating Iraq. And he would enlist the help of the leaders of Britain, France and Germany for serious negotiations. Then, perhaps, Mr. Bush’s promise from January to stanch the flow of men and weapons into Iraq from Iran and Syria would not have sounded so hollow.

Once again, it is clear that Mr. Bush refuses to recognize the truth of his failure in Iraq and envisions a military commitment that has no end. Congress must use its powers to expose the truth and demand a real change in strategy. Democratic leaders, forever parsing polls, are backing away from proposals to impose a deadline for withdrawal and tinkering with small ideas that mostly sound like ways to enable the president’s strategy of delay.

The presidential candidates, as well, have a duty to take Iraq head-on. Some Democrats have started to talk in some detail about how they would end the war, but the burden is not just on the war critics. Republicans like Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain, who love to proclaim their support for the president and hide behind the troops, need to explain their vision as well. What do they think would constitute victory in Iraq, and how, precisely, do they intend to achieve it?

After all, it seems the burden of ending the war will fall to the next president. Mr. Bush was clear last night — as he was when he addressed the nation in January, September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 — that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.

Now please note the text in bold, above, and the headline of the story, below. When, oh when, will we see the NY Times give the mea culpa editorial "we were wrong about being wrong on the war"?

Thousands return to safer Iraqi capital By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
34 minutes ago



In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts — west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region.

The family had been living inside a vicious and bloody turf battle between al-Qaida in Iraq and Mahdi Army militiamen. But Azawi said things began changing, becoming more peaceful, in August when radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to stand down nationwide.

About the same time, the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal al-Qaida control — the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.

The uprising originated in Iraq's west and flowed into the capital. Earlier this year, the Sunni tribes and clans in the vast Anbar province began their own revolt and have successfully rid the largely desert region of al-Qaida control.

At one point the terrorist group virtually controlled Anbar, often with the complicity of the vast Sunni majority who welcomed the outsiders in their fight against American forces.

But, U.S. officials say, al-Qaida overplayed its hand with Iraq's Sunnis, who practice a moderate version of Islam. American forces were quick to capitalize on the upheaval, welcoming former Sunni enemies as colleagues in securing what was once the most dangerous region of the country.

And as 30,000 additional U.S. forces arrived for the crackdown in Baghdad and central Iraq, the American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, began stationing many of them in neighborhood outposts. The mission was not only to take back control but to foster neighborhood groups like the one in Khadra to shake off al-Qaida's grip.

The 40-year-old al-Azawi, who has gone back to work managing a car service, said relatives and friends persuaded him to bring his family home.

"Six months ago, I wouldn't dare be outside, not even to stand near the garden gate by the street. Killings had become routine. I stopped going to work, I was so afraid," he said, chatting with friends on a street in the neighborhood.

When he and his family joined the flood of Iraqi refugees to Syria the streets were empty by early afternoon, when all shops were tightly shuttered. Now the stores stay open until 10 p.m. and the U.S. military working with the neighborhood council is handing out $2,000 grants to shop owners who had closed their business. The money goes to those who agree to reopen or first-time businessmen.

Al-Azawi said he's trying to get one of the grants to open a poultry and egg shop that his brother would run.

"In Khadra, about 15 families have returned from Syria. I've called friends and family still there and told them it's safe to come home," he said.

Sattar Nawrous, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, said the al-Azawi family was among 3,100 that have returned to their homes in Baghdad in the past 90 days.

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

The claim could not be independently verified, but, if true, it would represent a dramatic end to the sectarian cleansing that has shredded the fabric of Baghdad's once mixed society.

The head of the ministry is Abdul-Samad Rahman, a Shiite appointed to his job by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is accused of promoting the Shiite cause to the detriment of Sunnis. Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority ruled and heavily oppressed many in the Shiite majority.

Part of the inflow can be attributed to stiffening of visa and residency procedures for Iraqis by the Syrian government.

Mahmoud al-Zubaidi, who runs the Iraqi Airways office in Damascus, the Syrian capital, the flow of Iraqis has almost reversed.

What were once full flights arriving from Baghdad now touch down virtually empty, he told Al-Sabah, the government funded Iraqi daily newspaper. Now the flights are leaving Damascus with more passengers but the volume of travel is off considerably.

On average, 56 Iraqis — civilians and security forces — have died each day so far in this very bloody year. Last month, however, the toll fell to just under 30 Iraqis killed daily in sectarian violence.

More than four months after U.S. forces completed a 30,000-strong force buildup, the death toll for both Iraqis and Americans has fallen dramatically for two months running.

Across Iraq Saturday, 18 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence, well below the year's daily average.

It all makes me wonder whether the last paragraph in the following Times editorial was prescient, if you change "American Presidents" to "American media" and swap failure for victory...

August 31, 2007
Editorial
More Realism, Less Spin
A new report from Congress’s investigative arm provides a powerful fresh dose of nonpartisan realism about Iraq as President Bush tries to spin people into thinking that significant — or at least sufficient — progress is being made. With a crucial debate on Iraq set for next month, the report should be read by members of Congress who may be wavering in the fight with the White House over withdrawing American troops.

The Government Accountability Office, in a draft assessment reported yesterday, determined that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 benchmarks for political and military progress mandated by Congress. Laws on constitutional reform, oil and permitting former Baathists back into the government have not been enacted. Among other failings, there has been unsatisfactory progress toward deploying three Iraqi brigades in Baghdad and reducing the level of sectarian violence.

These conclusions are in line with a recent National Intelligence Estimate that found that violence in Iraq remained high, terrorists could still mount formidable attacks and the country’s leaders “remain unable to govern effectively.”

Mr. Bush earlier this year ordered a massive buildup of American troops in Iraq in a desperate attempt to salvage his failed strategy and stave off Congressional moves to bring the forces home. Despite the cost of more American lives, he argued that he was buying a period of relative calm for Iraqi politicians to achieve national reconciliation.

The top American officials in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, are to present their assessments on how calm things are at eagerly awaited Congressional hearings in mid-September. Their findings, and a White House report due Sept. 15, are seen as a potential trigger for a change in Iraq strategy.

Two things, however, are already clear. Iraq’s leaders have neither the intention nor the ability to take advantage of calm, relative or otherwise. And a change in strategy seems the farthest thing from Mr. Bush’s mind.

He used the August vacation — when lawmakers were largely laying low at home — to reassert his determination to stay the course. The White House also let it be known that it plans to ask Congress for more money — perhaps another $50 billion — beyond $600 billion already requested to maintain the counteroffensive in Iraq into spring 2008. Some people think the administration will get it.

The White House tried to discredit the ominous G.A.O. assessment by saying the standards set by Congressional investigators were too high. It may be unrealistic to expect that Iraq’s weak and dysfunctional government could meet all the targets by September, but a serious, conscientious effort across the board was needed, and would be apparent to all.

Mr. Bush has invoked Vietnam to argue against leaving Iraq. That argument is specious, but there is a chilling similarity between the two American foreign policy disasters. In Vietnam, as in Iraq, American presidents and military leaders went to great lengths to pretend that victory was at hand when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Sunday Morning Ride on Diablo

A short (very short) video from my ride on Diablo this morning. The knocking sound is the camera banging against the handlebar when I hit the brake, as I was holding the camera against the bar as I rode.

Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for the lapdog of the left to do even ONE thing that protects the local environment. So, Jerry McNerney, what is taking you so long? Weren't you the candidate who promised to save the environment? Name one thing you've done to help your district. I'm waiting.

Did Jerry McNerney Really Deliver On His Environmental Promises?

First, sorry for the lack of posting lately, work has been all-consuming.

I've been going through some of the news from the past few weeks and came across this interesting article from the Contra Costa Times.

The article covers the story of Jill Buck, a Republican from Pleasanton who is urging the GOP to focus on the environment as part of the "Go Green" initiative. Overall, the article is inoffensive and has some good points.

However, this line made me cringe:

Once elected, McNerney did not disappoint environmentalists.

He successfully advocated for increased investment in alternative and renewable sources of energy, supported a rollback of oil company subsidies and was appointed to serve on a House committee on energy independence and global warming.

I strongly disagree with this claim. McNerney has most certainly disappointed real environmentalists.

Take a look at the list of things that are purported to be environmental successes from McNerney and you'll see that it's all about energy.

I'm not trying to argue that energy has nothing to do with environmentalism, but it's a very small part of the greater issue of preserving and protecting the environment.

What we've seen in the last few years is the environmental movement taken over by the likes of Al Gore, people who deal in slogans and narrow issues. Ever since Al Gore arrived on the scene with his focus on global warming the environmental mission has been reduced to green energy issues.

This is a terrible mistake and it's why I don't support McNerney. McNerney has neglected the terrible environmental disaster taking place in his own backyard (and, in fact, has perpetuated it) while standing on his energy soapbox. I understand why he's doing this, as he makes his living in alternative energy projects, but that doesn't mean we, the voters, should accept the situation.

Every time a new housing development is allowed to take the place of open space or ag land we suffer an environmental disaster far greater than the burning of fossil fuels. In Contra Costa and Alameda counties we have developers who are targeting every bit of undeveloped land.

I've previously posted about McNerney's total capitulation on these types of environmental issues here and here.

Jerry likes to obfuscate the environment issue by getting people to focus on energy only. We must remind Congress that preservation of undeveloped and ag land is just as much a part of environmentalism. I'm not sure whether Dean Andal is any better than McNerney on this point, but I do know that I'd rather vote a guy out of office (ala Pombo) who is not part of the solution than let him continue to neglect these very important issues.

Fall is in the air

Credit where credit is due

"brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

"I feel the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for"

With those and a few other words, I was taught a lesson about the importance of allowing a person to hang themselves with their own publicity.

I will be the first to admit that I was opposed to Columbia University hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I still think that the motivation behind the invitation was without merit, but I also think that in this case the end justified the means.

In one afternoon, the President of Iran removed any doubt about his agenda and mental stability. The man self destructed, in front of a bunch of Jews in New York City, no less.

And we can thank, in large part, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. I don't think Bollinger planned to deliver one of the most civilized, stern and well deserved public bitchslappings of a tyrant ever seen in modern times, but he ended up doing that and more. As Ahmadinejad stood there, the President of Columbia University clearly and thoroughly delivered a J'accuse moment for the 21st century.

To preserve the moment, here is the full text of Bollinger's introduction.

President Lee C. Bollinger's Introductory Remarks at SIPA-World Leaders Forum with President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad



Sept. 24, 2007

I would like to begin by thanking Dean John Coatsworth and Professor Richard Bulliet for their work in organizing this event and for their commitment to the role of the School of International and Public Affairs and its role in training future leaders in world affairs. If today proves anything it will be that there is an enormous amount of work ahead for all of us. This is just one of many events on Iran that will run throughout this academic year, all to help us better understand this critical and complex nation in today’s geopolitics.

Before speaking directly to the current President of Iran, I have a few critically important points to emphasize.

First, since 2003, the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

Second, to those who believe that this event never should have happened, that it is inappropriate for the University to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable. The scope of free speech and academic freedom should itself always be open to further debate. As one of the more famous quotations about free speech goes, it is “an experiment, as all life is an experiment.” I want to say, however, as forcefully as I can, that this is the right thing to do and, indeed, it is required by existing norms of free speech, the American university, and Columbia itself.

Third, to those among us who experience hurt and pain as a result of this day, I say on behalf of all of us we are sorry and wish to do what we can to alleviate it.

Fourth, to be clear on another matter - this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any “rights” of the speaker but only with our rights to listen and speak. We do it for ourselves.

We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now. We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers. It is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament. In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self- restraint against the very natural but often counter-productive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear. In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.

Lastly, in universities, we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth. We do not have access to the levers of power. We cannot make war or peace. We can only make minds. And to do this we must have the most full freedom of inquiry.

Let me now turn to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

THE BRUTAL CRACKDOWN ON SCHOLARS, JOURNALISTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES
Over the last two weeks, your government has released Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Parnaz Axima; and just two days ago Kian Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia with a PhD in urban planning. While our community is relieved to learn of his release on bail, Dr. Tajbakhsh remains in Teheran, under house arrest, and he still does not know whether he will be charged with a crime or allowed to leave the country. Let me say this for the record, I call on the President today to ensure that Kian Tajbaksh will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes. Let me also report today that we are extending an offer to Dr. Tajbaksh to join our faculty as a visiting professor in urban planning here at his Alma Mater, in our Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. And we hope he will be able to join us next semester.

The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today’s speaker to even appear on this campus.

But at least they are alive.

According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executed in Iran so far this year – 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone. This annual total includes at least two children – further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.

There is more.

Iran hanged up to 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more open, democratic society in Iran. Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.

These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called “soft revolution”. This has included jailing and forced retirements of scholars. As Dr. Esfandiari said in a broadcast interview since her release, she was held in solitary confinement for 105 days because the government “believes that the United States . . . is planning a Velvet Revolution” in Iran.

In this very room last year we learned something about Velvet Revolutions from Vaclav Havel. And we will likely hear the same from our World Leaders Forum speaker this evening – President Michelle Bachelet Jeria of Chile. Both of their extraordinary stories remind us that there are not enough prisons to prevent an entire society that wants its freedom from achieving it.

We at this university have not been shy to protest and challenge the failures of our own government to live by these values; and we won’t be shy in criticizing yours.

Let’s, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.

And so I ask you:

Why have women, members of the Baha’i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?

Why in a letter last week to the Secretary General of the UN did Akbar Gangi, Iran’s leading political dissident, and over 300 public intellectuals, writers and Nobel Laureates express such grave concern that your inflamed dispute with the West is distracting the world’s attention from the intolerable conditions your regime has created within Iran? In particular, the use of the Press Law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system.

Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?

In our country, you are interviewed by our press and asked that you to speak here today. And while my colleague at the Law School Michael Dorf spoke to Radio Free Europe [sic, Voice of America] viewers in Iran a short while ago on the tenets of freedom of speech in this country, I propose going further than that. Let me lead a delegation of students and faculty from Columbia to address your university about free speech, with the same freedom we afford you today? Will you do that?

THE DENIAL OF THE HOLOCAUST
In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as a “fabricated” “legend.” One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda. When you come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.

You should know that Columbia is a world center of Jewish studies and now, in partnership with the YIVO Institute, of Holocaust studies. Since the 1930s, we’ve provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the “debate” over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity’s capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue’s first line of defense.

Will you cease this outrage?

THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL
Twelve days ago, you said that the state of Israel “cannot continue its life.” This echoed a number of inflammatory statements you have delivered in the last two years, including in October 2005 when you said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

Columbia has over 800 alumni currently living in Israel. As an institution we have deep ties with our colleagues there. I personally have spoken out in the most forceful terms against proposals to boycott Israeli scholars and universities, saying that such boycotts might as well include Columbia. More than 400 college and university presidents in this country have joined in that statement. My question, then, is: Do you plan on wiping us off the map, too?

FUNDING TERRORISM
According to reports by the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent group as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, the Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

While your predecessor government was instrumental in providing the US with intelligence and base support in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming, and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces.

There are a number of reports that also link your government with Syria’s efforts to destabalize the fledgling Lebanese government through violence and political assassination.

My question is this: Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and civil society in the region?

PROXY WAR AGAINST U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQ
In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240mm rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to “a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support.”

A number of Columbia graduates and current students are among the brave members of our military who are serving or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They, like other Americans with sons, daughters, fathers, husbands and wives serving in combat, rightly see your government as the enemy.

Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi’a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?

FINALLY, IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM AND INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS
This week the United Nations Security Council is contemplating expanding sanctions for a third time because of your government’s refusal to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. You continue to defy this world body by claiming a right to develop peaceful nuclear power, but this hardly withstands scrutiny when you continue to issue military threats to neighbors. Last week, French President Sarkozy made clear his lost patience with your stall tactics; and even Russia and China have shown concern.

Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification in defiance of agreements that you have made with the UN nuclear agency? And why have you chosen to make the people of your country vulnerable to the effects of international economic sanctions and threaten to engulf the world with nuclear annihilation?

Let me close with this comment. Frankly, and in all candor, Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do. Fortunately, I am told by experts on your country, that this only further undermines your position in Iran with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there. A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country (as in your meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations) so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party’s defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.

Jerry McNerney's Vote Not Only Set Back Environmentalism In The 11th District, It Cost Us $24 Million

As I wrote a few months ago, there was a proposal by an environmental group, Environmental Defense, to revise the traditional farm spending bill going through Congress to provide more focus on conservation and supporting farming over development. It was a proposal that would have resulted in great benefits to the 11th District, as it would have provided federal funds for small farms in the area, allowing them to have a viable alternative to selling out to the developers.

Here's what the SF Chronicle wrote about the proposal:

East Bay farmers in the sprawling district of Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, would get a lot more federal money if the government shifted farm spending from traditional crop subsidies to conservation, according to a report released Monday by the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

And here's what Environmental Defense said about the proposal:

Farmers, ranchers and private forest landowners manage more than half of America's lands, so it's no surprise that agriculture dramatically shapes the environment. The fate of America's rivers, lakes and bays and the survival of many rare species of wildlife largely depends upon farmers, ranchers and private forest owners. Farmers, ranchers and forest landowners also serve as the frontline against sprawl.

We should reward landowners when they offer to help protect the environment, not reject them. Unless we provide landowners with adequate tools and incentives, many of the nation's biggest environmental challenges will not be met. That's why Environmental Defense is working with farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to develop new approaches that balance the needs of agriculture and the environment.

Renewal of federal farm programs and policies in 2007 is a chance to reward farmers, ranchers and forest land owners when they help meet our environmental challenges.

As I reported in my earlier post, Jerry McNerney, our left wing lapdog, didn't support the proposal. McNerney's position was totally at odds with his campaign positions on the environment. Why would McNerney oppose a proposal that would have preserved agriculture land, local farms and the environment and food supply generally? The only answer is that he is in the pocket of the developers and corporate farmers.

So I checked in on the status of the proposal (known as the "Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment) recently and was sad to see two things. First, the amendment was defeated. Second, McNerney was one of those who voted against the amendment.

As a result, we lost $24 million in federal funding that would have been allocated to the 11th District. That $24 million would have gone to preserve our local farms and keep them out of the hands of the developers.

Someone remind me how Pombo was worse than McNerney.

Can there be any question about McNerney's loyalties? His votes speak louder than his rhetoric: He's a tool of the developers and a foe of the environment.

New York City needs a zhid with a rifle

So Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is going to be in New York City next week. Having lived in New York for a bit over seven years, this Zhid knows that NYers are generally a gun averse group (calm down, affe), but isn't there one determined Zhid with, oh, say, a Springfield M1A with National Match barrel and Leupy Mark 4 scope who could do the world a favor? There are plenty of good snipers hides in the urban jungle, I bet the deed could be done without much risk.

The Prophet Fido

Another Mohammed cartoon, another threat to behead an infidel (Lars Vilks this time).

Full story here. Funny line at the end by the target of Islamic terror.

Shills

I am still trying to go through all of the comments that have piled up over the past few weeks (see the post immediately preceding this one for an explanation) but one of the comments that I took a look at accused me of working for Dean Andal's campaign.

The comment came from someone who is a Jerry McNerney shill, so I understand why he would think that anyone who is an advocate must be doing it as a front for a campaign.

I, however, am not like McNerney's shills. I have no agenda to support any particular candidate. I have no connection whatsoever with any candidate or party. This blog existed well before McNerney came to office and it will exist well after he leaves.

I would have supported McNerney, in fact, had he lived up to his promises to protect the environment. My opposition to McNerney was formed as a result of his refusal to take any action to protect the environment in his district. We are under attack by developers and are losing the last bits of open space and agricultural land and Jerry McNerney does nothing to intervene. You can find the details either in the post linked to here or in links embedded within that post.

Jerry McNerney is a fraud.

On top of that, McNerney has sold out to the Pelosi leftists and he is utterly out of step with the majority of people in his district. He was put into office by outsiders with a far left agenda and it's time we took back our representation.

McNerney Fiddles While The Environment Is Under Attack

Jerry McNerney, our lapdog of the left, sure doesn't hesitate to get involved when his puppetmaster Pelosi and his San Francisco liberal supporters tell him to undermine the security of the US or attack our troops.

Yet, somehow, Jerry remains silent about the attack on the environment happening in his very own district.

Why so quiet, Jerry?

Could it be that Jerry cares more about appeasing the left wing zealots who financed his last election than about protecting the people in his own district?

***As an aside, for those of you who have been leaving comments I apologize for how slow I've been in approving them for publication. Because of the massive amounts of spam-bot type of comments that get left on blogger blogs I had to implement the approval system for comments and I've just been really slow in paging through to separate the real comments from the spam ones and approving the real ones for posting. If you really want me to get to a comment quicker, you can always email me at the link in the upper right corner of this page.***

The Pursuit of Accuracy

Earlier this week the NY Times made a laughable error in an editorial about guns. It's no surprise that the NY Times would do everything possible to undercut the right to firearms ownership-we all know that, as Affe said, the NY Times' Bill of Rights reads "First Amendment: Freedom of Speech: Second Amendment: Right to Abortion; Third Amendment: Right to Gay Marriage..." It's hard to overlook that the Times, which is so haughty about the Constitution when it comes to attacking President Bush, simply disregards the Second Amendment.

The error that the Times made this week was to claim that the Constitution provided a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The entire episode, including the Times' failure to provide a correction, is well chronicled here.

So the Times confused the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution, which is shameful enough for an enterprise that uses the Constitution as a mace against the administration.

What I think is even more interesting is that the Constitution does have a provision that includes the lines "life, liberty..." It's part of the 14th Amendment and what it says is this:

"nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"

See, Times' editors, it's property that is protected, not happiness.

Here's the part that makes me laugh. In an editorial arguing for the right of government to deprive a group of people of a property right, the NY Times quoted a constitutional provision that restricts government's ability to do that very thing.

That's gold, Jerry! Gold!

(That's a Seinfeld reference, not a reference to the liberal puppet, environment hating Representative Jerry McNerney).

Update:

Affe insisted that I point out something...yesterday, the NY Times did print a correction to an editorial that ran earlier in the week. The error? In an editorial about a new contract entered into by the creators of the cartoon South Park (and for the life of me, I can't figure out why the editors thought the subject matter was worth an editorial), the Times made the following mistake:

Tuesday’s editorial about “South Park” should have said the television show is in its 11th season, not its 12th.

Good to see that the Times editors have their priorities straight. Errors about the longevity of a cartoon merit correction; errors about the Constitution get swept under the rug.

Jerry McNerney hates the troops and the environment

Our left wing lapdog of a Representative is at it again. Apparently he was threatened by his SF liberal puppetmasters for recent statements that were not 100% critical of the war in Iraq and he put out a clarification statement.

Jerry took a harsh, left wing tone, very similar to that of Pelosi and the Kos crowd, in denying that he wanted anything less than the defeat of the US in Iraq. What was most curious, though, is that he ended up saying nothing when he clarified his statement about defeat in Iraq. To counter claims that he had said that he was willing to allow the US to win the war in Iraq, he wrote:

As many foreign policy experts agree, setting a date certain for withdrawal is fundamental to forcing George W. Bush to bring our troops home from Iraq and ensuring the Iraqis step up and defend their own country. That's why -- even as I consider all proposals as a matter of due diligence -- I am standing strong on setting a definite redeployment end date (as an example, I recently voted for the "Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act" to safely draw down our troops over the course of nine months).

Note that all Jerry is saying is that he wants a begin and end date for our defeat in Iraq. He didn't say WHAT the dates should be.

This is typical, sleazy McNerney...similar to his "I don't support and I don't oppose" attack on the local environment. He's hedging his bets...to his defeatist liberal base he can say he has demanded the withdrawal of our forces. To the majority in his district that support the war, he'll say that he didn't call for an immediate withdrawal, just a withdrawal once we were victorious.

Oh, and McNerney had the gall to say this on his website:

For a grounded perspective on the war from those who are on the front lines, I urge you to read this critical first-hand account in the New York Times by a group of infantrymen just returning from serving in the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq

and then linked to a NY Times op-ed. What McNerney didn't do is provide a link to an OPPOSING view from seven other Iraq vets, reprinted below. Guess what? The NY Times refused to print this op-ed.

Jerry McNerney is a pathetic left wing puppet. He does not represent the people of his district. In fact, if you look at the comments to his post you'll see that most of the people admit that they worked to get McNerney into office and are not from his district.

Iraq Vets Respond
...to the New York Times seven.
by David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally, Joe Worley
08/24/2007 12:00:00 AM



ON SUNDAY, seven soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Iraq penned a passionate opinion piece in the New York Times that further illustrates the complexity of what is "really" happening in Iraq. Of the almost 3,000 soldiers from the Army's storied 82nd Airborne Division currently serving in the hottest of Iraqi neighborhoods, seven felt confident enough in their misgivings to sign an opinion piece. They should not be surprised that many of their comrades--including the seven undersigned here--find their work to be misguided.

The 2nd Brigade is responsible for two dangerous areas of Baghdad: Adihamiyah and Sadr City. Airborne troopers there have seen the worst al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army can throw at them and the Iraqi people. But the whole story is that the Iraqis and soldiers in their sector have not yet been fully affected by the surge of troops and operations, which have barely been in place two months.

Currently, American and Iraqi Forces are clearing sections of southern Baghdad before turning north to the 82nd Airborne's neighborhoods. As such, the portrait these soldiers painted, while surely accurate and honest, is more representative of pre-surge Baghdad: sectarian strife, lawlessness, and indiscriminate slaughter.

This is not, however, the picture elsewhere in Iraq, or even most of Baghdad. Additional American combat brigades first surged to the outlying areas around the capital, disrupting the flow of suicide bombers and car bombs and denying haven to al Qaeda.

The result? Attacks against civilians are at a six-month low and large al Qaeda-style truck and suicide bombings have dropped 50 percent in Baghdad. With additional troops and a sound strategy, the same results can occur in even the worst areas of Baghdad, including the 82nd Airborne's sector.

Take Anbar Province. In 2006, al Qaeda controlled the capital of Ramadi and Marine intelligence officers declared the province effectively lost. A leaked Marine Corps report concluded, "the prospects for securing western Anbar province are dim and there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there."

Today Ramadi is peaceful and Anbar no longer a haven for al Qaeda. The tribal awakening that brought about political reconciliation and stability in Ramadi and Anbar primarily resulted from an improved security environment provided by American forces. Americans not only cleared Ramadi, they also held it by occupying over 65 outposts.

This security environment allowed local tribal leaders to stand up to their former al Qaeda occupiers, and now American and Iraqi forces are improving security beyond Anbar in places like Diyala and Babil Provinces.

The 82nd Airborne soldiers quoted an Iraqi saying, "We need security, not free food." We could not agree more, and what American and Iraqi forces are doing now--for the first time in this war--is providing lasting security at the neighborhood level after driving insurgents out.

It's true that political reconciliation has not suited so-called "benchmarks," but political progress will only happen when the battlefield and political realities are congruent. We know that street level security is a necessary precondition for real political progress, and as such, the preconditions are finally being fulfilled. And as we've seen, Iraqi leaders--whether Sunni or Shia--will stand up for moderation and stability only when provided with a secure environment in which to do so.

We understand the frustration our fellow soldiers feel. All of us were in Iraq before the "surge" and lament never seeing a coherent, security-based counterinsurgency strategy. In truth, we were only clearing--not holding.

But we also know what's possible when even small portions of counterinsurgency strategy are applied. Insurgents are exposed, leaders stand up, and stability occurs. General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker understand the principles of counterinsurgency and are applying them up and down the chain of command. It's unfortunate that soldiers in the 82nd Airborne have not yet benefited from the new strategy, but it will ensure that their actions, and those of their fallen brethren, will not have been in vain.

Meanwhile, we applaud our brothers in the 82nd Airborne for their courage under fire, thank them for their commitment to our nation, and pray for the recovery of their injured co-author.

David Bellavia, Pete Hegseth, Michael Baumann, Carl Hartmann, David Thul, Knox Nunnally, and Joe Dan Worley all served with either the Army or Marine Corps in Iraq, and are all members of Vets for Freedom. This Op-Ed was originally submitted to the New York Times, which declined to publish it.

The Sound of Silence

I haven't given up blogging, I've just been busy with other things and decided to let the Jerry McNerney posts ripen a bit, especially since I am still waiting for Jerry to take a position on the attack on the environment discussed in the last post. It's unfortunate that McNerney has decided to crawl into bed with the developers.

Speaking of the environment, the Concord grapes I planted a few years ago have produced a bumper crop. Here's a picture of today's harvest. They're amazingly good grapes, for grapes with seeds, and we have so many of them that I am turning a good portion into jam (it's actually boiling on the stove as I write this).

Jerry's Last Chance To Win Us Over

The editorial, below, is from today's Contra Costa Times on a new plan to violate the letter and spirit of the urban limit line outside of Danville. The editorial is one of the best I have read anywhere on any topic. It covers the underlying facts and it clearly explains the problem and impact of the subject matter.

What is going on is that not long after we voters approved an urban limit line to protect our open space and rural land, developers are trying to thwart the will of the voters with a lot of cash and some devious characterizations of a development plan. There is no doubt about it, Save Mt. Diablo's spokesman nailed the intent of the developers. They are trying to undermine the urban limit line.

Since the county doesn't seem to have the guts to say no to developers this is a perfect opportunity for Jerry McNerney to apply pressure to the county.

As I've explained before in numerous posts, Jerry McNerney has significant powers over local matters if he would choose to exercise those powers. He's already earned a reputation as someone who has given developers a free pass in this area, so this issue would be ideal for him to prove us wrong.

Jerry, if you truly care about preserving the environment, respecting the will of the voters and stopping sprawl, get involved in this issue. Contact the Contra Costa supervisors and tell them you are watching them on this issue and that you support the will of the voters when they approved the urban limit line.

If Jerry were to take a stand similar to the one in the editorial, below, and work with Save Mt. Diablo to protect the land in question he would earn my vote in 2008. This is the moment for Jerry to prove to us that he cares about preserving the environment and the political process that resulted in the urban limit line.

If you do nothing on this one, Jerry, as you did with the farm program, your reputation as the anti-environment Representative will be sealed and you will have lost the vote of a large segment of your district in 2008.

Threat to Contra Costa's urban limit line
Contra Costa Times
Article Launched:07/29/2007 02:59:29 AM PDT

WHEN VOTERS PASSED MEASURE J in 2004 and Measure L last fall, it is most likely that they supported the full intent of each measure.
The first is a transportation sales tax that also requires voter approval on any urban development on 30 acres or more outside the urban limit line. The second created the current urban limit line to preserve open space.

Now, after years of often contentious political battles to limit suburban sprawl, four of the five Contra Costa County supervisors are considering a loophole that could lead to numerous residential developments outside the limit line.

The supervisors voted 4-1 to proceed with a study that would allow 193 mostly luxury homes to be built on 770 acres of land in the Tassajara Valley, east of Danville and San Ramon.

The number of homes planned for the "New Farm" project is far fewer than the 6,000 once proposed for the area. But if the new development is allowed, it would set a troublesome precedent for similar developments on open land outside the urban limit line.

At question is whether the development would violate the county's general plan and the urban limit line voters approved last November.

Supporters of the plan argue that the New Farm project is not really urban development, but rural residential, and thus is consistent with the general plan and Measures J and L.

They point out that the land is zoned to allow 5-acre parcels, thus 154 homes or ranchettes could be built. Supporters say that if there is an affordable home element, that number increases to 169 single-family homes and 24 multifamily units reserved as affordable housing.

However, the homes would not be 5-acre ranchettes spread out over the property. Instead, they would be large homes clustered on a small percentage of the land, along with 24 attached homes. The rest or the acreage would be open space or agriculture.

Dennis Barry, the county's community development director, said developer FT Land LLC of Hillsborough is "going to need to convince me that the density and uses will work with the urban limit line. ... Some multifamily housing units are proposed. If that's not urban, I'm not sure what is."

We concur with Barry and doubt that voters envisioned clusters of luxury home developments scattered about open land when they approved Measure J or the urban limit line. Nor do we believe they expected multifamily housing to be built outside the limit line.

Supervisors expressed caution when they voted to go ahead with a study to determine whether the Tassajara project violates the county general plan or Measures J and L and whether it would need a vote of the people.

Supervisor Susan Bonilla of Concord, the lone opponent of the study, was on target in saying that although doing the study doesn't necessarily imply support of the project, it is a first step toward approval.

One also has to wonder why the developer is willing to pay $1 million for a study unless the prospects for eventual project approval are relatively high.

Regardless of what the project study concludes, and it isn't difficult to predict the outcome, there is likely to be litigation, another ballot initiative or both.

Seth Adams, program director of Save Mount Diablo, said voters would need to alter the urban limit line before New Farm could be built. We believe he is right. We also agree that if the project is approved, there will be many more like it across the county.

This is an issue that deserves far more public attention as the study moves forward. Voters need to be fully aware of what is going on and not allow their elected supervisors to undermine Measure J and Contra Costa County's urban limit line.

Jerry McNerney, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi Walk Into A Bar And Surrender To Islamic Terror

I'll let the writer of an Op-Ed from the Tracy Press, the paper of record for McNerney's district, do the honors:

Steve Wampler Friday, 20 July 2007

Clinton, McNerney aren't listening to Iraqis

It is becoming clear that most congressional Democrats, from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, have no idea who America is fighting in Iraq, or they’re misleading the public.

In a July 10 op-ed in the New York Daily News, Clinton contends America’s military is caught in a civil war. McNerney also claims the conflict in Iraq is a civil war and that President Bush should withdraw our troops and pursue "diplomatic and political solutions."

They and other Democrats ought to spend more time listening to the Iraqis, who want our military to stay until Iraq is secure, and our top military officials, who argue that a premature withdrawal would lead to chaos in Iraq and the region.

In the most exhaustive post-March 2003 poll taken in Iraq earlier this year by Opinion Business Research, 73 percent of Iraqis said Iraq is not in a civil war and preferred their current government by a nearly 2-1 margin to Saddam Hussein.

Possibly blinded by their anti-war pasts or their lack of concern about U.S. national security, Clinton and McNerney seem unable to recognize that two of the main foes beyond Shiite militias the U.S. faces in Iraq are al-Qaida and Iranian terrorists.

In a July 11 Baghdad press conference, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner called al-Qaida in Iraq "the principal near-term threat." Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by foreign-born al-Qaida terrorists, Bergner said.

In May and June, coalition and Iraqi forces killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaida in Iraq, including 26 of its "high-value" leaders and a would-be bomber. They were 11 local al-Qaida leaders and five of their terrorist unit commanders, seven facilitators who smuggled foreign fighters, weapons and money into Iraq; and three car-bomb network chiefs.

In a July video, al-Qaida’s deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, described Iraq as the centerpiece of its anti-American terror campaign and insisted the Iraqi insurgency is under its direct leadership.

Al-Zawahri’s assertions are backed by the April announcement that U.S. forces had captured a senior al-Qaida operative and lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who had been "personally chosen by bin Laden’s to monitor al-Qaida operations in Iraq." It is believed that al-Hadi may have been meant to mount operations outside Iraq against Western targets.

Despite knowing that al-Qaida sees Iraq as the central front and the same people who helped kill nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11 are helping direct the insurgency in Iraq, Clinton and McNerney want to surrender as soon as possible.

The "cut and run" approach favored by most Democrats would, says Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), represent "an epic victory for al-Qaida as significant as their attacks on 9/11." And it could lead to more attacks in America.

"(Our soldiers) want to fight terrorists here, so they don’t have to fight terrorists back home," said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division Center and the 3rd Infantry Division.

U.S. military officials stated in February that forensic evidence has implicated Iran in the deaths of at least 170 U.S. soldiers and the wounding of 620 soldiers.

A special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has taken groups of up to 60 Iraqi terrorists at a time and brought them to three camps near Tehran, where they have received training in mortars, rockets and improvised explosive devices. Iran has also funded terrorists at $3 million per month.

Sunday, the U.S. Army announced that its troops in Iraq uncovered a field containing 50 Iranian-made rocket launchers aimed at a U.S. Army base.

Just as a number of Democrats have sought to undermine this war almost from the start and to use it for political ends, along with insulting our troops in the field, today some Republicans — Sens. George Voinovich, Pete Domenici, Richard Lugar and John Warner — have supported retreat.

Analyst and former U.S. military officer Ralph Peters put it this way: "(If) Republicans are rushing to desert our troops and spit on the graves of heroes, the Democratic Party at least has been consistent — they’ve supported our enemies from the start, undercutting our troops and refusing to explain in detail what happens if we flee Iraq."

The party of surrender, with Clinton and McNerney, and the thankfully few wobbly Republicans, need to understand reality. America can’t wave the white flag in Iraq before Iran, which has been at war with our nation for nearly 30 years, or al-Qaida, which has been at war with us for nearly a decade, without grave consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and our security.

What can I say? The writer speaks for the 11th District and Jerry McNerney doesn't. McNerney should represent Berkeley or San Francisco, not the 11th District.

Mein Kampf

I was going to write something along the lines of a Zhid manifesto but decided against it.

The motivation for writing such a thing was not only the state of the world at the present time but also the state of the world at previous times, and the implications for, in particular, my fellow Jews in future times.

One doesn't have to look far to see how much hate is directed at Jews. Many people thought that after WWII, there could never again be persecution of Jews. They were, of course, wrong. While there are not death camps sprouting up to process Jews into soap, Jews are under attack around the world.

Radical Islam delights in slaughtering Jews and increasingly motivates its followers to put the Jew on top of the hit list (which is a bit odd, historically, because Islam was never as hostile to Jews as it is now).

Europe, it appears, is gearing up for yet another round of Jew slaughter, providing cover, excuses and support to anyone who would shed Jewish blood, particular the most radical of Muslims.

Things aren't so great in the US either, with the left wing doing as Europe is doing with regard to anti-Jew elements (again, in particular, radical Muslims).

The one thing that most people don't understand is that radical Islam's hate of the west, and of Jews, isn't something that came into being as a result of the founding of Israel or US support of Israel or anything else within the last 100 years.

Radical Islam has been at war with the west and Jews since before the founding of the US. Read "Hatred's Kingdom" by Dore Gold if you want more on this.

So without going through the history and explanation for why Jews are facing more of a existential threat now than at any time before, I was going to explain what I thought Jews today should be doing.

I was going to explain that every Jew should be armed, have training in the use of arms and be prepared to use the arms. This means that Jewish children should be introduced to weapons at an early age and taught how to use them as they are taught how to use other tools.

One of the things that I was going to focus on was the bizarre way that Jews have adopted the liberal hate of self defense, even though Jews, of all people, should appreciate the need for self defense.

Perhaps one day I will write this manifesto. With bin Laden sticking his head out of his cave again today and giving what is apparently an order to launch new attacks it would be timely for me to write the manifesto today.

But I won't, because I think that right now Jews still don't get the magnitude of the threat we face. Instead, I will continue to buy good quality weapons and store ammo, I'll continue to train in the use of these arms and I'll wait until there have been enough attacks by radical Islam to make Jews realize the urgency of this subject.

Right now, though, I think I'd be pissing in the wind.

If Jerry McNerney Had His Way There Would Be No Small Farms In the 11th District

I was out in the yard just now, picking some lettuce and blackberries from the garden (pictures below) and as I snacked on some of the berries off the vine it got me to thinking about the joy of the small farm roadside vegetable and fruit stands that are becoming a thing of the past in this area.

Some of my fondest memories are of going on weekend drives with the parents and siblings and stopping off at a roadside stand to pick up the local bounty (as the Zhid grew up on the San Mateo County coast, the bounty was, in particular, peas and artichokes). We'd get big bags of fruits and vegetables and by the time we got home a good part of the ready to eat produce was gone (the Zhid had a thing for fresh peas, in particular).

As the Zhid alerts 11th District voters in this post, Jerry McNerney had a perfect opportunity to direct federal funds into the 11th District for the specific purpose of preserving small farms and open space. Rather than embrace the program, Jerry has effectively voted against it by refusing to take a stand in support of it.

What this means, of course, is that sooner rather than later the 11th District is going to be paved over, thanks to McNerney, and farms will disappear, to be replaced by dense urban development. Since most new housing is of the disgusting "big house on a small lot" variety, there's usually precious little opportunity to have a home garden.

The legacy of Jerry McNerney will be the destruction of the small farm, and with it the roadside stand, and the development of dense housing without space for gardens.

Thanks to McNerney's extreme anti-environmental stance, say goodbye to nature's bounty, 11th District.

(click on the pics for supersized berry images)

The votes are in and McNerney is out

The Zhid has closed the polls on the three questions he posed here.

The 11th District has sent a near unanimous message:

1. McNerney is more liberal than the typical 11th District voter.
2. The destruction of open space and ag land in the district is now worse than it was under Pombo.
3. 11th District voters would vote for anyone but McNerney and want a Republican back in office.

Approximately 180 11th District voters participated in this poll and it appears that other than the few McNerney shills who couldn't resist attempting to perpetrate a fraud in the vote it was unanimous among actual 11th District Voters: McNerney is worse than Pombo.

Jerry McNerney really brought this upon himself. As is detailed in posts below, McNerney has recently

• embraced Code Pink leftists who call our soldiers terrorists,
• supported and participated in events from the left wing Daily Kos crowd,
• refused to support a federal program that would provide federal funds to conserve open space and ag land in the 11th District ,
• generally refused to do anything to stop the attack on the environment in the 11th District, and
• has become Nancy Pelosi's lap dog, voting lockstep with her and the San Francisco liberal agenda.

The Zhid has said that Jerry McNerney is out of step with his district and his district now repeats that statement.

Well, Jerry, are you going to continue to hitch your wagon to outsiders who don't reflect your district and who can't vote for you or will you pull yourself away from the teat of left wing influence and money to become a man of integrity who speaks for the ones he is supposed to represent?

2008 is right around the corner, Jerry.

Put up or shut up, Jerry

We now have the ultimate test for the faux environmentalist, Jerry McNerney. If he truly did care about preserving ag and open space in his district the program described below is the perfect way for him to prove his intentions.

We all know that Jerry wrote to my neighbor and claimed that he (Jerry) didn't have control over local land use issues. And we know that that claim was utter bull crap.

So from today's SF Chronicle, a story about a federal funding program that would immediately and directly help to preserve open and ag space in the 11th District.

What did Jerry McNerney say about the program? Did he immediately pledge full support for it? Of course not. This is Jerry "Stealth SF Liberal" McNerney.

According to the Chronicle, "McNerney neither endorsed nor rejected the idea."

That's our rep, fellow 11th District voters. The man who was backed by SF liberals, the man who votes lockstep with Nancy Pelosi, the man who attends Daily Kos functions, the man who caters to Code Pink leftists...is also the man who refuses to take a stand to support a program that would provide federal funds for protecting ag and open space in the 11th District.

Let's be clear about this-McNerney is playing sleazy politics with this program. He's not coming out against it, but this program is opposed by the big corporate farmers and unless it gets the support of Congressmen who are willing to go against the anti-environment party line of the corporate farmers it will fail. So by coming out with the no-position position, Jerry McNerney is effectively supporting the big corporate farmers and anti-environment forces while preserving his ability to say "I didn't vote against it." This is ugly politics, folks.

How was Pombo any worse than McNerney??? Here is a perfect way for Jerry McNerney to step in and direct federal funds specifically for the preservation of ag and open space and he refuses to support the program!

UPDATE: Read the comments from Affe for more color on this issue. To wit: "Jerry and Nancy - supporting self-perpetuating pork for the wealthy via the current farm bill. Oink oink! More here"

California group pushes for conservation to be added to farm subsidies
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

(07-10) 04:00 PDT Washington -- East Bay farmers in the sprawling district of Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, would get a lot more federal money if the government shifted farm spending from traditional crop subsidies to conservation, according to a report released Monday by the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

The report is part of an orchestrated rebellion by a loosely knit insurgency of organic growers, urban lawmakers, Bay Area health advocates, California fruit and vegetable growers, Republican free-market types and environmentalists against traditional farm interests in the mammoth five-year farm bill up for renewal this year.

By all indications, the establishment farm lobby is winning the early rounds [with Jerry McNerney's help!-ed], as House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., promised to move a bill through his panel next week that preserves the status quo.

But Scott Faber, farm policy campaign director for Environmental Defense, predicted a free-for-all if such a bill reaches the House floor this month.

"Chairman Peterson has described writing the farm bill on the floor as recipe for chaos, but he probably needs to go back into the kitchen and cook up a better stew if he wants to avoid that," Faber said.

Faber's study focused on potentially vulnerable House freshmen such as McNerney, who upset incumbent Republican Richard Pombo in November in a district that still leans toward the GOP. With Democrats aiming to retain their House majority next year and Republicans looking to recapture it, both parties measure policies against how they will affect freshmen Democrats in swing districts.

The study found that 36 of the 55 newly elected House members of both parties would see more federal farm money in their districts if part of the $5.2 billion a year the government spends on direct payments to farmers were diverted to water and air quality programs or habitat conservation.

McNerney's 11th Congressional District includes parts of Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Joaquin counties, and has received an average of $6.3 million a year in farm subsidies for traditional commodity crops. That would rise to $8.6 million if $10 billion in direct farm payments were diverted to conservation over the next five years, and more if more money were diverted, the study found.

McNerney neither endorsed nor rejected the idea.

"Since coming to Washington, I have worked to support the agriculture industry in the 11th District, including growers of specialty crops like grapes, almonds, and asparagus -- whose efforts have been overlooked in past farm bills," McNerney said in a statement. "Some of these growers and ranchers have already conducted conservation projects on their land and voluntarily engage in sustainable agriculture practices. I believe it is important to address access to conservation, wildlife, and wetland programs in this year's farm bill." [Jerry has become a typical politician...he spews a lot of meaningless talking points but refuses to address the issue. THIS IS A SIMPLE, JERRY. EITHER YOU SUPPORT THE PROGRAM OR YOU DON'T. He's caving in to the forces that want to destroy our open and ag space!-ed]

California is the nation's largest farm producer, but traditionally has played only a bit part in the giant farm programs that were created as an emergency response to the Great Depression in the 1930s. The fruits, nuts and vegetables that California grows never received direct subsidies.

Midwestern and Southern farm interests still dominate the sprawling farm subsidy programs, which to this day grant their greatest largesse to the staples of the 1930s: corn, wheat, feed grains, rice, cotton, milk and peanuts.

Some traditional farm-state lawmakers, such as Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., proposed a major overhaul of the traditional subsidies this year, but the agriculture committees in the House and Senate are dominated by lawmakers wedded to the traditional programs who have derided the concept as "a threat to rural America."

Do 11th District Voters Consider US Solders To Be Terrorists?

Do 11th District voters think that our soldiers are terrorists? If not, then perhaps we should consider who our Congressional Representative is supporting. Take a look at this video.

It's a video showing Code Pink operatives calling US soldiers "terrorists" at Walter Reed Hospital.

What does that have to do with the 11th District?

A lot.

Jerry McNerney recently met with representatives of Code Pink and as he was spewing his San Francisco liberal talking points (fed to him, of course, by Nancy Pelosi), our little lapdog of the left got cozy enough with the Code Pink leftists to earn their respect. Don't trust me, read their own report of their meeting with McNerney, excerpts of which are pasted below.

Code Pink, the pro-terror group that spits on our soldiers, and Jerry McNerney...this follows on the earlier meeting that the Zhid documented between McNerney and the far left Daily Kos crowd.

There can be no doubt about it, Jerry McNerney is a tool of the San Francisco left wing, totally out of step with the district he is supposed to represent.

Think about it, 11th District voters. Do you want to be represented by a man who not only defrauded voters about his environmental credentials but also has become close pals with leftists who call our soldiers terrorists? Is this a man who reflects the values of the 11th District???

CODEPINK has Pizza with Jerry McNerney
by Janet Weil, Kathy Greene, Nancy L. Mancias
Sunday May 27th, 2007 11:12 AM
...
After the group discussion, CODEPINK activist Janet Weil met with McNerney and introduced herself as the aunt of a young man who has just joined the Marines. She told him, “It makes me sick to think of him dying for a war for oil profits.” She further urged with McNerney to expose the Oil (Theft) Law, saying that in her opinion it is the core, structural reason for the war/occupation of Iraq. She also brought up the issue of war profiteering, particularly Halliburton and Blackwater USA – “nearly half the boots on the ground in Iraq,” as she told him. He acknowledged that he’s just learning about what he called, “These oil laws,” but promised to work on it. Very sincerely he assured her more than once he would work hard and expeditiously to end the war in Iraq.
...

Overall the CODEPINK women were impressed with the Congressman’s intelligence, sincerity and attention to a wide range of constituents’ concerns and points of view, including a boy of about 11 who did a short interview with him after the discussion.