Degree of Madness

Murder in Pelham

The victim of Sunday night's murder in Pelham, Alabama has been identified as 32 year old Maria Garcia of El Salvador:

Garcia was also known by the following aliases: Maria Luz Ortiz, Luz Rivera DeGarcia, and Daisy Xiomara De-Rivera.

Police have not released the cause of death, Garcia was found dead in a car parked on Stonehaven Trail Sunday morning:

Stonehaven Trail is a relatively busy street used as a shortcut between Shelby County 52 and U.S. 31 to avoid crossing railroad tracks closer to downtown Pelham.

My sister and I took that shortcut Monday afternoon specifically to avoid the train that always seems to show up when you're in a hurry.  It was shocking to see policeman investigating a murder in that area.  Or actually a murder anywhere in Pelham.  Murder is rare here, Garcia's is the first in two years and only the fourth since 2000. 

Garcia's legal status has not been mentioned but considering she had three aliases one can reasonably assume she is here illegally.  And she's from El Salvador and when I think of El Salvador I can't help but think of MS-13.  Police are playing this close to the vest and aren't releasing many details.  Hopefully this is not gang related.  If it is, our safe little city could be in trouble.  However this turns out, it is shocking.  My niece and her husband recently bought a house in the Stonehaven neighborhood.  Although Garcia's murder is likely an isolated case, it's still cause for concern.  I trust the police will get to the bottom of it - and soon.

RIP Maria Garcia (Maria Luz Ortiz, Luz Rivera DeGarcia, and Daisy Xiomara De-Rivera).

Cindy McCain

This diary is from John McCain's daughter Meghan's blog, McCain Blogette.  It describes, with many great photos, the humanitarian trip she and her mother, Cindy McCain, took last month to Southeast Asia:

Vietnam 6-18-08

We started off the day in Singapore and flew to Ho Chi Minh City where we spent some quality time in the airport before flying to Nha Trang.

[...]

Tomorrow we will accompany my mom on a visit to an Operation Smile post in the region.  Operation Smile is a global children’s medical charity that repairs childhood facial deformities.  I am so excited to be sharing a different aspect of my family, especially my mom’s work with this important humanitarian organization that changes so many lives around the world.

Operation Smile 6-19-08 (Scroll down):

We started our day in Nha Trang and visited the nearby Operation Smile clinic, where the dedicated doctors and nurses from the U.S. and many other countries arrange for local children with facial deformities to receive free plastic surgery. After touring the facilities and meeting the remarkable staff, my mom and I were able to reconnect with Phuoc Thi Le, a little girl for whom my mom helped facilitate cleft palate surgery in 1997. I still remember her as a baby when she came to Phoenix for her surgery.  She is a very sweet, poised 11 year-old girl who looks absolutely beautiful!

The World Food Programme in Bangkok 6-21-08:

Yesterday we flew from Little Saigon to Bangkok and toured a major distribution center for the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations food aid agency that has been helping people in need since 1963...

Touring Bangkok 6-22-08 (Scroll down):

Between our visits with various charities with Mom, we had some free time and went on a boat tour of Bangkok...

Cambodia 6-25-08:

I have been profoundly affected by our experiences over the last few days and can't help but feel that this has changed the way in which I view the world.  We visited an inspiring Cambodian school that offers vocational training in cosmetology and other hospitality services for young adults who live in desolate conditions next to a landfill.  The training not only provides the students with the education they need to help improve their dire living conditions, it gives them hope and confidence to pursue their dreams. To ensure that each student experiences success after completion of the program, the teachers follow-up with each student.  As a result, 100 percent of the school's graduates are employed!  It was very humbling to meet so many people who are making a difference in such a challenging part of the world.

Cambodia 6-27-08:

Continuing our travels in Cambodia, we paid a heart-breaking visit to an enormous garbage landfill where indigent families seek shelter and scavenge for food. It was very disturbing to see the living conditions these impoverished families endure, and was an indelible reminder of the importance of the work of global charities like the Cambodian Children's Fund and Pour un Sourire d'Enfant ("For a Smile of a Child").  This wonderful organization provides nutrition and housing, medical treatment, and educational opportunities to these children and families in critical need. The photo speak for themselves, so we've omitted any captions this time.

Cambodia 6-29-08 (Scroll down):

We're concluding our Cambodian trip coverage with some very emotional and uplifting images from our visit to an orphanage that provides shelter for abandoned children who are afflicted with HIV. Much of this work is coordinated by the Wat Opot Project of Partners in Compassion. Wayne Matthysse, the director, was wounded in action as a medic in Viet Nam, and is a heroic, compassionate man who has dedicated his life to these children whose parents have died of AIDS, and many who are living with this disease. It was overwhelming to see so many innocent children in that situation. However, everywhere we looked, there were glimmers of hope - from the artwork created by the students and the trade classes offered by the staff, to the children's smiling faces showing typical curiosity about our video equipment...

In April 2008, Karl Rove, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

...1991 Cindy McCain was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh when a dying infant was thrust into her hands. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save her life, so Mrs. McCain brought the child home to America with her. She was met at the airport by her husband, who asked what all this was about.

Mrs. McCain replied that the child desperately needed surgery and years of rehabilitation. "I hope she can stay with us," she told her husband. Mr. McCain agreed. Today that child is their teenage daughter Bridget.

[...]

...there was a second infant Mrs. McCain brought back. She ended up being adopted by a young McCain aide and his wife.

"We were called at midnight by Cindy," Wes Gullett remembers, and "five days later we met our new daughter Nicki at the L.A. airport wearing the only clothing Cindy could find on the trip back, a 7-Up T-shirt she bought in the Bangkok airport." Today, Nicki is a high school sophomore. Mr. Gullett told me, "I never saw a hospital bill" for her care.

Here is a photograph of Bridget and Meghan with their father in New Hampshire, via Gateway Pundit, who notes:

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time? 

Barack Obama
Campaign Speech in Berlin, Germany
July 24, 2008

Barack Obama talks.
Barack Obama talks about lifting the child from Bangladesh from poverty.
John McCain already did it.

Here is a little more about Cindy McCain from the John McCain website:

As an advocate for children's health care needs, Cindy founded and ran the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT) from 1988 to 1995. AVMT provided emergency medical and surgical care to impoverished children throughout the world. Cindy led 55 medical missions to third world and war-torn countries during AVMT's seven years of existence. On one of those missions, Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States. One of those babies is now their adopted daughter, 16-year-old Bridget McCain.
 
In recent years, three organizations in particular have been the subject of her international focus: HALO, Operation Smile, and CARE.

As a member of the Board of Trustees for the HALO Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to landmine removal and weapons destruction in war-torn countries, Cindy has traveled to numerous countries to see firsthand the impact HALO has had by removing landmines. She recently returned from her second visit to Cambodia. She has also traveled to Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and Angola.

Cindy also serves on the Board of Directors for Operation Smile, a non-profit organization whose mission is to repair cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities for children around the world. Since 1982, Operation Smile has provided free reconstructive surgery to more than 100,000 children and young adults in 25 countries. Cindy has assisted on volunteer missions to Morocco, India, and Vietnam. She is scheduled to return to Vietnam on another mission during the summer of 2008.
 
Cindy is currently on a leave of absence from the Board of Directors of CARE, USA, which works to fight global poverty, particularly among women. She traveled to Tanzania in February 2007 with CARE.

"Five loaves and a couple of frankfurters"

And He fed the multitudes.

Barack Obama's Banking Committee

This is not the Senate Banking Committee Barack Obama knew, my emphasis:

Responding to an Israeli reporter’s question Wednesday on his commitment to protect the Jewish state, Barack Obama pointed to a bill “we passed” in the U.S. Senate Banking Committee that tightens sanctions and authorizes divestment from Iran. “My committee,” he called it.

Except that he isn’t a member of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

“Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel.

Considering Obama has spent so little time in the Senate since he's been in the Senate, who could blame him for getting a little mixed up? 

An Obama spokesman tells CNN “it was his bill, not his committee,” referring to the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act that the Illinois senator sponsored and introduced in May 2007. The measure was then referred to the Banking Committee, and passed a vote of 19-2 on July 17.

I checked and Obama did indeed sponsor said bill.  So glad that's all cleared up.  Now we can resume the groupie position for Obama's World Tour, next stop Germany:

In the build-up to what is probably the most anticipated American campaign speech ever held on foreign soil, one of Berlin's main city magazines offered its readership cut-out American flags to wave at Barack Obama's planned address.

The presumed Democratic nominee plans to arrive in the German capital on Thursday morning. Not much of his agenda for the day has been made public, but he is set to speak at Berlin's Victory Column -- formally the main site of the Love Parade -- at 7PM local time.

Those who want to hear Obama live have been told to start arriving three hours earlier. Berlin authorities say that as many as a million people could attend. Four TV stations are broadcasting the entire speech, and the rest are scrambling to secure prime locations at the site.

Anticipation.

Goodnight Sweetheart

Over a million hits but I had not seen it.  Thanks to Jonah Goldberg for the tip:

YMCAmazing

(Click through the video for info.  Hint, four are dummies)

H/T:  Lucianne

Barack Obama and the Democrats dead wrong on the surge

Obama, of course, is backtracking, going so far as to "scrub" criticism of the surge from his campaign website.  Barack Obama's message of hope and change, believe, we are the ones we've been waiting for, etc., sorely lack any substance whatsoever.  The adoring multitudes don't seem to care or even to notice.  Obama can't win with just his adoring followers, however.  He needs something to attract independent voters so now he's thrown in "judgment to lead". Politicians are just like the rest of us.  They make mistakes in judgment from time to time.  But as Obama now surely realizes he made a serious misjudgment on the surge in Iraq.  Maybe he truly believed the surge was a mistake or maybe he was just trying to appease the far left wing of his party.  Either way he was "spectacularly wrong".  Being spectacularly wrong on national security can have deadly consequences for the American people and our allies around the world.  Especially so for our men and women in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Obama is not alone in the Democratic Party

In  July, after evidence was amassing that the surge was working, Obama said, "My assessment is that the surge has not worked."

Obama, then, was not only wrong about the surge; he was spectacularly wrong. And he continued to remain wrong even as mounting evidence of its success gave way to overwhelming evidence of its success.

But Obama is not alone. Virtually the entire Democratic party, including every Democrat running for president, opposed the surge. For example, Senator Joseph Biden--considered by some pundits a foreign policy sage--declared, a few days before the surge was announced, "If he surges another 20, 30 [thousand], or whatever number he's going to, into Baghdad, it'll be a tragic mistake."

So much for judgment:

Hillary Clinton, on the night the surge was announced, said, "Based on the president's speech tonight, I cannot support his proposed escalation of the war in Iraq."

Senator John Kerry said this in February 2007: "The simple fact is that sending in over 20,000 additional troops isn't the answer--in fact, it's a tragic mistake. It won't end the violence; it won't provide security;  .  .  .  it won't turn back the clock and avoid the civil war that is already underway; it won't deter terrorists, who have a completely different agenda; it won't rein in the militias."

Kerry's fellow Massachusetts senator, Ted Kennedy, declared that any troop increase would be "an immense new mistake."

Representative Dennis Kucinich, in this instance speaking for the mainstream of his party, put it this way: "It has been proven time and time again that troop surges don't work."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in April 2007, declared the war lost. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put in her two cents in February of this year:

In February of this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer about the success of the surge in Iraq. "Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?" Blitzer asked.

"There haven't been gains, Wolf," Pelosi replied. "The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure."

Bill Richardson chimes in:

And as recently as last month, Governor Bill Richardson, when asked if he was ready to concede that John McCain had been right in proposing the surge because it seemed to be having a positive impact, answered, "Absolutely not."

In the face of overwhelming evidence that the surge in Iraq is working, candidate Obama has no choice but to acknowledge it:

Obama, in typical fashion, is trying to use the success of the surge he opposed to justify his long-held commitment to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq as quickly as possible. But turning Iraq into a winning political issue won't be nearly as easy as Obama once thought. He has stepped into a trap of his own making.

The trap was set when Obama repeatedly insisted that his superior "judgment" on Iraq is more important than experience in national security affairs. Judgment, according to Obama, is what qualifies him to be commander in chief...

If Obama insists on making this election about "judgment", he should lose.  Spectacularly.  And take more than a few Democrats in Congress down with him.

This man does not belong in the White House.  "Eh... uh... I... uh..."  (Or the Senate for that matter).  Judgment to lead? 

Nancy Pelosi, No class act

House Speaker Pelosi calls Bush "a total failure":

In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill.

[...]

"You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject," Pelosi replied. She then tsk-tsked Bush for "challenging Congress when we are trying to sweep up after his mess over and over and over again."

This woman is a joke.  Maybe instead of bashing President Bush the Speaker could defend Congress with a few facts?  Maybe list a few accomplishments?  I can help her out here.  "I am so proud of the House of Representatives.  Under my watch we have done absolutely nothing but it's Bush's fault.  We have the majority but how can we be expected to pass bills when there's so much Bush bashing to do?  We have our priorities, you know.  Bless his heart, he must think he's President or something."

Oh, and Nancy, if you can spare some time from your Housekeeping duties, check out those approval ratings.  Apparently the American people don't think too much of your sweeping skills.

Cost of Government Day is Today! You can now start working for yourself!

Americans for Tax Reform:

Cost of Government Day (COGD) is the date of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government on the federal, state and local levels.

Cost of Government Day for 2008 is July 16.  Working people must toil on average 197 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government.  In other words, the cost of government consumes 53.9 percent of national income.

So year after year we give more of our hard earned money to a bunch of nitwits lawyers and they dole it back out at their pleasure.  Such good stewards of our tax money they are.

Happy COGDay! 

Israeli President Shimon Peres pardons child killer

Charles Johnson:

I believe this is the first time Israel has released an Arab terrorist with actual blood on his hands—an unrepentant child killer—in exchange for two soldiers who are already dead...

Israel to Swap Prisoners With Hezbollah Wednesday:

The Israeli government said it will swap prisoners with the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah on Wednesday, closing a chapter between the enemies two years after they fought an inconclusive war.

The prison service said Sunday Israel would free five Lebanese, including the perpetrator of one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. In exchange, Hezbollah will return two soldiers it captured in a cross-border raid that sparked the 2006 war. Israel believes the soldiers are dead.

Swap prisoners?  This is not a prisoner swap.  This is Israel handing over a child killer for two dead soldiers.   And on top of that, President Shimon Peres has pardoned Samir Kuntar, "the perpetrator of one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history":

In (a) letter addressed to Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann, Peres wrote "I want to stress the obvious – in this decision there is no forgiveness or absolution for the murderer's heinous actions. I will not forget, and I won't forgive."

He will not forgive?  But he will pardon.  I don't think Kuntar will notice the difference.  Or care:

Meanwhile, final preparations were being made Tuesday evening on the Lebanese side of the border for the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hizbullah, with gunmen belonging to the Shiite group setting up a stage adorned with the photos of Kuntar and the four other terrorists who are slated for release.

Kuntar's brother, Bassam, told Reuters "after 30 years of waiting - I was only a year and a few months old (when he was captured), I never knew him except through pictures and letters. The moment I meet him will be exceptional".

"It's a moment I've always dreamed of and that stayed in my imagination," he said, adding that fireworks, gatherings and billboards had been prepared to mark his brother's return.

There will be no fireworks for the Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.  There will be a gathering.  For the funerals.  Hezbollah's plan worked:

Samir Kuntar, in case you didn't know, is the main guy that Hezbollah kidnapped the 2 israeli soldiers to get back.

As part of the deal, Israel was supposed to receive information on missing airman Ron Arad:

Israel also will receive a report on missing airman Ron Arad, whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986, and body parts of other Israeli soldiers.

Well, they got the report, for what it's worth:

After nearly two years of negotiations through German mediators, Israel's government approved the release on June 29, but it took several weeks to work out final arrangements. The Israeli announcement came a day after the government received a report from Hezbollah on a missing Israeli soldier who disappeared in Lebanon two decades ago. That report was one of the last sticking points.

In the report, Hezbollah said it does not know what happened to Ron Arad, an Israeli air force navigator who was captured alive after his fighter jet went down in Lebanon in 1986, Israeli officials said.

According to the document, Hezbollah believes that Arad is dead, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the report was not released to the public. The Israeli Cabinet is expected to discuss the report on Tuesday.

Israeli officials said the report contains two new pictures of Arad and parts of a diary he kept in the 1980s. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the material has not been made public, said the diary and the pictures had only "sentimental value" and did not shed light on Arad's fate. The Hezbollah report offered some new lines of inquiry, but no definite information, they said.

Almost laughable.  This was a sticking point but when Hezbollah said, hey we don't know what happened to him, Israel said, OK, just wondering.  Here's your terrorist back.

Charles Johnson:

It’s hard to imagine any way this can result in anything good. It will encourage the terrorists to continue taking more hostages, and lets them know they don’t even have to keep their hostages alive.

When you reward certain behavior, you will get more of it.  Israel needs a change in leadership, and soon.