LINE DRAWN IN THE SAND – U.S NOT WELCOME TO FIGHT AL-QAIDA IN PAKISTAN

Pakistan’s beleaguered president, Pervez Musharraf, has made it clear that the U.S. is not welcome in the Pakastani tribal regions to continue the fight against Al-Qaida. Bush had been considering expanding the authority of the CIA and U.S. military to launch aggressive covert operations in tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghan border which has long been considered a hiding place for Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The regions are also home to Taliban militants planning attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Photo Credit: CNN

Musharraf said every tribe in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) has its own armory, and they don’t like intrusions into their privacy at all. The FATA is an area encompassing about 10, 700 square miles where the Pakistan government controls only nominally by working through a combination of effective Political Agents and tribal elders.

The Tribes are governed by the Frontier Crimes Regulation introduced under the British Raj and are represented both in Pakistan’s lower house and in its upper house of parliament. Years of isolation coupled with high illiteracy rates, scarcity of water, no banking system, and little health care have left the area lagging behind socially and economically.

Photo Credit: Fata.gov

$736,000,000 BAGHDAD BEMEMOTH CALLED A “FIRE RISK”

The firefighting system in the massive $736 million embassy complex in Baghdad has potential safety problems that top U.S. officials dismissed with a “not to worry” attitude. In their rush to declare construction largely completed by the end of last year, officials ignored defects according to internal State Department documents, e-mails and interviews.

Some officials assert that in the push to complete the long-delayed project, potentially life-threatening problems have been left untouched. A State Department official who spoke anonymously because he feared retaliation said the problems are serious enough to get someone killed. The fire systems are the tip of the iceberg; no one has ever inspected the electrical system, the power plant and other parts of the embassy complex, which will house more than 1,000 people and is vulnerable to mortar attacks.

Other sources involved in the project, also requesting anonymity, insisted that disputes involve technical paperwork issues, largely because the contractor had never built an embassy and did not realize that under State Department rules it needed approval for substituting certain materials. Much of that work needs to be reexamined and checked, delaying the project even further. A Congressional Services Research report provides the breakdown in expenditures accumulating under the Bush administration.

But, heck, what’s a billion dollars more when Bush has already sunk close to 500 billion dollars trying to make Iraq safe for the largest U.S. embassy in the world. Looks like Bush is anticipating an unending presence in Iraq and the Middle East.

Yep, build it, and we will stay.

The unfinished embassy in Baghdad

Photo Credit: MSNBC

JOHN McCAIN – INSANITY AT ITS WORST

John McCain is really coming across as a war-monger. In a video caught, apparently, by a camera phone, he jokingly sings “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Iran” to the tune of the old Beach Boys hit, “Barbara Ann.” Chuckling as he takes the microphone, he cheerfully converts the words of the Beach Boys’ hit to accommodate his future Middle East strategy.

How grown up, and just think, there are thousands of voters out there ready to throw their support behind him. If you want more war and more conflicts, then you want John McCain in the White House. Personally, I think he is insane. He may be a Vietnam veteran and hero, but he has certainly lost his grip on reality.

How can anyone who went through what he went through want to be a part of a continuing boondoggle in Iraq and then ramp it up to include Iran? And, if that isn’t convincing, he told a crowd in New Hampshire on January 4, 2008, that he is fine with staying in Iraq for 100 years.

So, all you McCainites out there, if you want war, war, war, and death, death, death, vote for John McCain; he doesn’t sound like he will let you down. Sort of reminds me of the Johnson – Goldwater contest back in 1964. The fear was that if Goldwater was elected, he would lead us into nuclear war. The famous ad below was one of the most effective ads ever in a campaign.

Either senility has surely set in or his advisers couldn’t get to him before he opened his mouth. If McCain gets elected, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel because he will never let a tunnel be built.

MEA CULPA! BIG TIME! WOMEN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

I am usually very careful in my fact checking and my research before I post an article. But in my hurry to publish the “Iron My Shirt” post, I failed to research the issue of women presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton’s run for the office has generated so much publicity that I really didn’t realize other women had blazed a path before her. And for that, I am chagrined.

Not long after I published the post, I received a couple of comments referring me to women who had, indeed, run for president. So I did what anyone would in this situation, I researched the issue and gained valuable insight into the lives of some of the earlier presidential contenders. For your enjoyment, I have listed them and provided a short statement about each.

• Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1872) pictured to the right- Ms. Woodhull was the first woman to run for president. Woodhull ran as the candidate on the Equal Rights Party opposing Ulysses S. Grant (R) and Horace Greeley (D). Woodhull fought for women’s rights and was the first woman to own a Wall Street investment firm.
• Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood (1884, 1888) pictured below – Ms. Lockwood ran for president on the Equal Rights Party and was opposed by Grover Cleveland (D) and James G. Blaine (R). Lockwood was educated in New York and Washington, D.C. She was admitted to the D.C. bar and drafted the law passed by Congress which admitted women to practice before the Supreme Court. She then became the first woman lawyer to practice before the Court.
• Margaret Chase Smith (1964) – Margaret Chase Smith (R) was the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president. Although she received 27 first ballot votes, she removed her name from contention after the first ballot.
• Shirley Anita Chisholm (1972) – Shirley Chisholm (D) was the first African-American woman to seek a major party’s nomination for president. She was on the ballot in 12 primaries and received 151.25 delegate votes at the national convention. Chisholm served in the House of Representatives from 1969 until 1083.
• Patsy Takemoto Mink (1972) – Mink (D) ran as an anti-war candidate winning 2% of the vote.
• Ellen McCormack (1976, 1980) – Ms. McCormack (D) ran as an anti-abortion candidate winning 22 convention votes. She was the first woman to qualify for federal campaign matching funds and qualified for for Secret Service protection.
• Sonia Johnson (1984) – Johnson ran on the Citizens Party; she also received federal matching funds.
• Patricia S. Schroeder (1988) – Schroeder (D) took preliminary steps toward making a run for the presidency but dropped out before the primaries because she could not raise the necessary funds.
• Lenora Fulani (1988, 1992) – Fulani ran on the New Alliance Party ticket twice and qualified for federal matching funds.
• Elizabeth Dole (2000) – Elizabeth Dole (R) resigned her position as president of the American Red Cross to consider a run for the Republican nomination for the presidency. She dropped out of the race in October, 1999.
• Carol Mosley Braun (2004) – Carol Mosley Braun (D) was among ten Democrats seeking the 2004 presidential nomination.
• Hillary Rodham Clinton (2008) – Clinton (D) was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000 and re-elected in 2006. She is the only First Lady to ever be elected to public office.

All of the women who had the courage to take on the run for president deserve recognition. My mistake was that I assumed that Clinton was the only woman to take on the challenge, probably because she is considered to actually have a shot at it and has received the most support.

Some of the women who preceded Clinton, though, struggled through a much more difficult time period when equality for women was considered a joke. They certainly deserve recognition for the struggles and hardships they endured in seeking the highest office in this country and opening the doors for future women to run for the presidency.

Belva Ann Lockwood (D)

Equal Rights Party

Photo Credits: Wikipedia

LONG THOMPSON TO REPORT $700,000 IN CONTRIBUTIONS

Howey Politics Indiana is reporting that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson is expected to report around $700,000 in the reporting period ending December 31, 2007 .

A large contribution of $200,000 from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will not be included since it came in after the filing deadline of December 31, 2007. The SEIU contribution was reported on January 4, 2008, which will place it in the next reporting period.

Although JLT’s Democratic competition for Governor, Jim Schellinger, appears to still be in the lead financially, Jill is closing the gap. Schellinger’s campaign cannot quite seem to hit home with all Hoosiers. For all his fundraising and his traveling the state, he is still behind in name recognition.