Interesting Items
Alex Gimarc
<[email protected]>
Monday, March 1, 2010
Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Fines
2. Killer Whale
3. Fort Jackson
4. FDA
5. Taliban
6. Crist
7. Spamming
8. Falklands
1. Fines. The Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) levied a $100,000 fine
against Bob Gilliam and a group of environmentalist organizations that were
behind a clean water initiative aimed directly at blocking mining at the
trillion-dollar Pebble prospect. Gilliam is a wealthy lodge owner who has been
fighting the mine for year. His lodge sits a few tens of miles from the
proposed mine site and he is not interested in new neighbors. Gilliam backed a
clean water ballot initiative in 2008 that would have shut down most if not all
hard rock mining in the state. He laundered at least $2 million of his own
personal money through various environmentalist organizations including the
Renewable Resources Coalition. The fine was levied as part of an agreement
which Gilliam did not admit guilt, but did promise not to do it again. The
loss at the ballot box did not deter Gilliam or the anti-Pebble greens, who
have been busily running ads in fly
fishing magazines, the Alaska magazine, and in local media. Their ads have
even showed up in fly fishing catalogs from manufacturers in the Lower 48.
They will not give up.
2. Killer Whale. A trainer lost her life last week at Seaworld in Orlando
when a killer whale did what killer whales do – kill things. The whale
apparently grabbed the trainer from the side of the pool and played with her
underwater until she didn’t move any more. This particular whale has been
implicated in two other drownings over the last decade or so. Of course,
Seaworld (not like the Army with Major Hassan) did not want to place any blame
on the animal or rush to any judgment. When they decide to destroy it, we have
people up here who know how to kill and dress out whales. I hear that muktuk
(whale blubber) is a great delicacy in some places.
3. Fort Jackson. While the Army has not filed any charges against the five
Arabic translators under investigation for plotting to poison food at Fort
Jackson, four of the young Islamists were mustered out of the Army last week.
Interesting reaction, that. These guys are not sufficiently dangerous to
investigate, charge or prosecute for plotting mass murder against our active
duty military. But they are sufficiently dangerous to be removed from active
duty. Sounds like there is far more to this story than the Army is willing to
discuss publicly.
4. FDA. John Stossel has started going after the FDA and DEA as needless and
hugely damaging impediments to the development of new foods and drugs here in
the US. He suggests that the marketplace ought to be the ultimate
determination of what is dangerous and what is not dangerous. Ed Morrissey
writing in Hot Air Friday suggests a version of the insurance companies’
Underwriter’s Labs ought to be created by the health care insurance industry
and provide testing and analysis of new drugs and treatments. The Big
Government types rail against Stossel, making all the expected claims that this
will simply be a payoff to the pharmaceutical corporations and needlessly kill
people. But the FDA by slow-rolling drug approvals, forcing new products
through a very long, expensive and uncertain approval process also ends up
killing tens of thousands of people every year. Additionally, when the lawyers
get involved and the drug gets needlessly pulled
from the marketplace, people who actually need the drug and are dealing well
with it also are hurt, but sadly they have no recourse. If the corporations
are forced to go through this approval process, government approval ought to
mean something, perhaps protection from lawsuits afterwards. The marketplace
always works. And both Stossel and Morrissey make a good, conservative point.
The DEA’s participation in this is putting strict limits on the use of narcotic
based drugs in the treatment and management of pain. They default to strict,
non-therapeutic limits on narcotics used for pain control because their focus
is simply controlling the use of the narcotics. Not content with mucking up
the development of new drugs here in the US, the FDA is branching out, and now
interested in regulating dietary supplements like vitamins, fish oil,
pomegranate juice, etc. Things have gotten so bad, that drug manufacturers are
finding it easier to find
new uses for existing drugs than to create and get approval of new drugs at a
billion dollars a pop.
5. Taliban. Something is going on in Pakistan, with the announcement of many
arrests and capture of Taliban leaders in western Pakistan. As of today, it is
not clear whether or not American interrogators have had access to these newly
captured Taliban leaders. More interesting is the fact that this has been
happening at all, especially given the long-term close working relationship
between the Taliban and the Pakistani ISI (CIA equivalent). The ISI has long
been infiltrated and controlled by Islamist-friendly officers and has backed
the Taliban at some level for decades. The fact that they are now running an
offensive against the Taliban is most curious. The best guess out there on the
blogs is that the Taliban has splintered into several factions and at least one
of those factions has become too independent of the ISI for their own good, and
the ISI is now removing them from the gene pool. My dime says that the Taliban
will continue to
splinter and that the ISI will be no more successful than the US military in
removing the threat from their territory. The difference here is that the ISI
is not constrained by the same sort of PC garbage as our troops are in
Afghanistan. They are also not constrained by collateral damage. Finally, any
Taliban removed from “active duty” is a very good thing indeed.
6. Crist. Florida governor Charlie Crist is losing a nomination for US Senate
from Florida. He replaced Jeb Bush several years ago and has been a great
disappointment to conservatives. His primary opponent is a member of the state
senate and pretty good conservative Marco Rubio. Crist has thoroughly embraced
his liberal side over the years by doing everything possible to “RINO” out.
Florida conservatives are in the process of rejecting him with Rubio now
polling 18% ahead of Crist. Crist supporters trotted out the idea that he
would drop out of the Republican primary and run as an independent, which is
something he may do should he lose the primary. Crist supporters also released
confidential financial records last week from the state Republican Party that
showed that Rubio had used the party credit card to buy things with the
accusation of malfeasance. No word in the early reports whether Rubio had
reimbursed the Party after the
purchases, which is the normal routine for the use of a corporate credit
card. However, this leak has strongly boomeranged against Crist, painting him
as simply another leftist dirty tricks artist to conservative voters in the
state. The leak smells like an act of desperation. It will not be the last
one.
7. Spamming. The DNC’s Organizing for America is setting up yet another
initiative to create pro-Obama / pro-democrat seminar callers to popular talk
shows. The group set up a web site with a script, current talking points, and
instructions on how to bypass the call screeners and get to the host and get
their message out there. I don’t know why this is necessary, as both Limbaugh
and Hannity put liberal callers at the top of their list of calls to put on the
air. Levin talked about this a bit last week also.
8. Falklands. The Argentineans, fresh off trashing their economy and raiding
their central bank decided to make a second run at the Falklands Islands 300
miles east of the country. The last war fought between Great Britain and
Argentina in 1982, with Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher choosing to defend their
national sovereignty. President Reagan supported her completely, much to the
chagrin of UN Ambassador Jeanne Kilpatrick. This time around, President Obama
simply voted present and has refused to support Great Britain, setting the
stage for the thug-ocracies in Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil to declare war
on our closest friend in the world. This is not going to end well for any of
the three parties involved – Argentina, Great Britain or the US. The only
funny thing out of the whole sorry affair has been the leftist British press
wondering why they supported Obama for president. Good question, that.
More later -
- AG
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better
than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not
your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your
chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia
State House, August 1, 1776.
Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuvalleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column:
http://www.thevanguard.org/
To read Alex Gimarc’s columns, go to http://home.gci.net/~agimarc/
To stay abreast Pro Life news, go to http://www.listcast.com/x?oid=20000g
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