Gordon “Toast” Brown and his government, such as it is, released convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi on “compassionate” grounds because the bomber had three months to live.
That was in August.
Instead, three months later, Megrahi was just released from the hospital.
The row over the release of the Lockerbie bomber was reignited last night after it emerged he has been released from hospital.
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds in August after a medical assessment concluded he had only three months to live because of his prostate cancer.
But the 57-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent and his family now say that, while weak and terminally ill, he is not close to death, and continues to work on clearing his name.
What a proud chapter in British history.
…The Western media would have been rolling on the floor laughing at the latest claim from the Chinese. Now, however, the claims of the Chinese government that they made it snow are treated as straight news.
The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.
Besides falling in the north-eastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.
“We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought,” the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.
Or any opportunity to claim a widespread natural phenomenon as the work of the government, apparently.
The real story is the early snowfall. Much like what has already hit the US.
Incidentally, Beijing is about to get hit with a really cold snap for this time of year, according to Accuweather.
Just kidding! CIT just filed for bankruptcy. The major source of funding for small business just went under. The major source for short-term loans for wholesalers who supply more than 300,000 retailers just bit the dust.
Analysts have warned that already ailing sectors, like retailers, could be hit especially hard, since CIT serves as the short-term financier for about 2,000 vendors that supply merchandise to more than 300,000 stores.
Consumer spending drives more than 2/3 of the American economy. Things just got a lot worse.
Expect the Wizard of O’s munchkin chorus to redouble their chorus of “You’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark” until the veins stand out in their necks. But the fact is, this is a major, major blow to the very sector of the economy that must recover.
The economy may be out of the woods as Obama and his diminutive brain trust aver, but if so, it just took a swan dive into a septic tank.
So much for remaining a proud Republican. Scozzafava has turned her coat and endorsed the Democrat in NY-23.
It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.
It’s not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh’s lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress. John and I worked together on the expansion of Fort Drum and I know how important that base is to the economy of this region. I am confident that Bill will be able to provide the leadership and continuity of support to Drum Country just as John did during his tenure in Congress.
Longtime readers know that I hail from those parts. In fact, I went to college in Oswego at one time. My wife’s mother still owns a home in that area, up near Gouverneur, New York. But it has been a few years, so I’m not sure how much out of date some of my opinion on this might be. I think this actually ends up hurting Owens. The hardcore Republicans will now go over to Hoffman completely. They will NOT like what Dede just did. When I lived up there, there were a lot of real hardcore Republicans. We’ll see. Maybe it has changed too much.
But a lot of the older folks will have been solid Republicans for a long, long time. And they vote – in large numbers – even in off-year elections. And they won’t have a lot of tolerance for a turncoat.
(It was Robert Stacy McCain who sort of suggested the title to this post. His quip: “If Dede keeps up the good work, she’s a shoo-in for the Arlen Specter Award for Deeply Held Principles.” I referred to Specter as Benedict Arlen at the time of his ultimately useless defection.)
For fun and profit. Tax and spend is literally killing this country. Bruce Kesler, writing at Maggie’s Farm looks at why:
It’s not just California, or New York City, but throughout much of America today that we’re seeing the hollowing out of the infrastructure and services and opportunities that built America’s uniqueness and success compared to the rest of the world. And, big-government advocates are clamoring for yet higher taxes. The New York Times reports today that “Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats” the White House and congressional Democrats are seeking some way to reduce the huge federal deficits they have created, and that more taxes are their prescription.
Government workers and their unions are prime beneficiaries of our heavy taxes. Most of even the made-up stats recently released about jobs saved or created by the federal appropriation of the near $1-trillion “stimulus” show relatively few and most of those among government workers.
Please go read the whole piece. It’s well worth your time.
More and more state governments are in serious trouble because of out of control spending. They only lag behind California by a few years. Commenter crosspatch is being perfectly reasonable in his fear that the clowns in Sacramento will eventually decide to “borrow” even more from the taxpayers. Eventually, they won’t bother paying it back.
And, surprise! The Democrats in Washington are plotting to raise taxes even higher. That would be on top of raising taxes for health care “reform” and raising taxes for “energy reform”. They’re spending the money already, just in case.
World news | Gaius November 1, 2009 | 
Comments (6) 
