Charlie's Angles

Make Saudis think twice

So, the Saudis are refusing to increase oil production, which would help reduce prices at the pump in the United States.

This country should respond in kind, but it probably doesn't have the guts. Senate Democrats have constructed a measure that would cut off $1.4 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia unless the Saudis agree to increase oil production by 1 million barrels per day. Something like that, of course, should have been put in place long ago.

Wouldn't be long before the oil-sated sheiks would start shivering in fear that another Saddam or an Ahmadinejad might have designs on them, their country and their oil. Where would they turn? Guess.
They wouldn't be able to turn up production fast enough if they saw their security threatened.

Let's use whatever pressure we can muster. We don't have a whole lot to lose.

The way it is

Wish I had thought this up, but I didn't ... got it in an e-mail:

A taxpayer voting for a Democrat is like
A chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

In a word ...

Commissioner Dan Haggerty was the lone member of El Paso Commissioners Court to vote against a resolution decrying the border wall.

Haggerty said, "I'm opposed to a border wall, but I believe we need to support the laws of this country."

No. We need to obey the laws of this country, but we don't have to support them.

But, nice political weasel job.

At last, a stance

Why's everyone so uptight about Hillary Clinton saying that if she were president and Iran decided to use nuclear weapons in an attack on Israel, we'd attack them and "...we would be able to totally obliterate them." Iran, that is.

No. 1: It's true.

No. 2: It's refreshing to hear a candidate come so tantalizingly close to taking a definite stand on an important issue.

Horse sense

All the sobbing, hand-wringing, chest-beating, self-recrimination and second guessing going on about the euthanization of Kentucky Derby runner-up Eight Belles is strange.

What do you expect when people exploit animals for money and pleasure?

Torch of shame

The Olympic Torch Relay, which is supposed to showcase the Olympic flame as a symbol of peace, hope, unity and the challenge of pure athletic competition, has been reduced to a dirty, barely glowing ember that is in real danger of extinction, thanks to Communist China.

When the flame arrived in Australia Wednesday, it was immediately taken to a secret location. As in other locations, the once-proud flame had to be hidden and protected by more security than any president or potentate

The torch relay in particular, and the Olympics in general, are backfiring on the Chinese and are bringing even more focus on a brutal, oppressive and intolerant regime so basically weak that it cannot tolerate dissent of any kind.

Worse, it has made a mockery of the once-proud Olympics. If the Olympics still take place in Beijing this summer, and there's no reason they should, the Games will be severely tainted, perhaps fatally.

Naked Olympics

President Bush should boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and he's using a ludicrous argument to avoid making that decision.

He's saying he won't boycott because the Olympic Games aren't about politics, they're about athletes and athletics. What a crock! The Olympics haven't been about athletes and athletics since the prizes for winning were the adulation of the populace and an olive branch baseball cap that signified hope and peace.

It's all about politics today. It's certainly not about hope and peace. Nor is it really about athletics and athletes, because they're just political foils.

The only hope for salvaging the approaching Olympics is if all the athletes perform naked, as they did back in B.C. Greece. If the world's Olympians are running and jumping and hopping and throwing with stuff hanging out and bouncing around, politics wouldn't bare its ugly, er, face and television ratings would probably exceed any of the three best Super Bowls added together. It would make Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" look like a parka advertisement, but things sure would be loose. Literally and figuratively, come to think of it.

And give the winner an olive branch. At least olive branches aren't selling for $933 an ounce.

Bonding with the city

You think your taxes are high now? You think your budget is being strained now?

Word around City Hall is that planning has begun or is about to begin on a humongous bond issue for 2010.

Live long and prosper.

Quadruple doubletalk

Controversy surrounding Barack Obama's stance on his former paster, spiritual adviser, mentor, baptizer of his kids and whatever else he was, continues.

In an interview broadcast Friday on ABC's "The View," Obama said, "Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying at the church.”

OK, but ... would you have left, or not?

Depends on your definition of 'success'

We keep seeing signs of the success of the "surge" in Iraq and the increasing competence, quality and effectiveness of the Iraqi military and government.

On Friday the U.S. military had to come to the aid of the Iraqi military, flying air strikes in the southern city of Basra. Meanwhile, personnel in the fortified and supposedly relatively safe Green Zone in Baghdad have been told to leave fortified areas only on urgent business because that stronghold is increasingly under fire.

All this is merely a snapshot of what will happen when and if American troops ever actually leave Iraq. Whether that's next year or in 20 years, when the last American soldier leaves, the rival tribal factions will reduce Iraq to anarchy within weeks.

Meanwhile, we can enjoy all these "success" stories.

Take THAT!

Apparently in a fit of pique about some tough remarks by South Korean officials, North Korea launched a bevy of short-range missiles in a "test" Friday. That sure put the South in its place!

North Korea also blamed the United States for the stalled talks on North Korean nuclear matters.

What's it going to take before the United States realizes that the North Korean officials have no desire to negotiate about their nuclear facilities, capabilities or weapons? They have no intention of disarming and we shouldn't be wasting our time and resources trying to bring them into line. Negotiating with the North Koreans is useless. Yet, we always go crawling back, begging the Communist officials to talk with us. It's exactly what they want, exactly the way they want us to look in the world's eyes.

North Korean Communists will pursue their nuclear ambitions, whether in the open or under cover. Some day, some country or group of countries will have to take out those facilities. Meanwhile, it's a waste of time talking with them.

Latest poop on airline delays

You may recall the horror stories from Valentine's Day 2007, when hundreds of airline passengers were stuck aboard JetBlue airliners for up to 10 hours at Kennedy International. They complained about being given no food or water and the toilets overflowed. A month later it happened again on planes at JFK.

On Tuesday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a New York law requiring airlines to give food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers stuck on delayed planes. The reason? The state law trampled on federal law, the court opining that only the federal government can pass such regulations.

By the times the feds get around to doing anything about a passenger bills of rights, we'll all be using "Beam me up, Scotty" transporters.

Someone needs to shut the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judges on a plane for 10 hours (in economy, not the luxurious first-class in which they're no doubt used to sitting), not giving them food or water, letting the air get stale and letting toilets overflow down the aisles. Betcha they'd find a different interpretation of the law.

Define 'better'

4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq.

Mahdi Army commanders say money from Iran has been used to acquire new communication centers sporting fax machines, internet connections and mobile satellite phones.

Those same commanders say Iran is pouring fresh supplies of weapons into Iraq to the militia, weapons that include rockets, weapons for taking down low-flying helicopters, and armor-piercing roadside bombs.

The bodies of a couple of U.S. civilian contractors have been found. Four others are still missing, but a finger from each of them was sent to the military.

Over the weekend the supposedly safe (safe relative to what is a bit unclear) Green Zone in Baghdad was rocketed.

A nationwide volley of attacks Sunday killed more than 60 Iraqi civilians.

The Mahdi Army, now observing an exceedingly tenuous truce with American and Iraqi government forces, has apparently regrouped.

It's so good to see things getting better in Iraq.

After all, they're only animals

A recent Associated Press story out of Chicago notes that zoos are really getting into nutrition and fitness for their prisoners.

Jennifer Watts, staff nutritionist at Brookfield Zoo, was quoted as saying that, like humans, many zoo animals "like the good stuff. They like the sugary, high-fat food, and they're not moving as much as they're genetically programmed to."

Seems like they're not moving as much as they're genetically programmed to because they're shut in cages or areas that don't give nearly the space, flora and fauna and other environmental conditions that they would enjoy if they were free. Don't blame the problems on diet. Blame them on incarcerating innocent animals in limited spaces so people can gawk at and tease them, all under the guise of "education" or "preserving the species," two of the latest favorite excuses of zoos, private or public. But public or private, all are intent on making money at the expense, comfort and too often the lives of the animals.

Watts also said, "One of the challenges of being a zoo nutritionist is that we cannot replicate an animal's natural diet. We can't go to South America and collect the figs or the branches or the beetles that an animal eats there."

It occurs that there is a simple solution to that and other nutrition problems: Leave the animals in their natural habitat, in the midst of their natural nutrition, and don't imprison them in zoos.

Continued betrayal

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality commissioners, who have never met a polluter they didn't love, have done it again.

You might recall that recently the commissioners, against science, evidence, common sense and the will of the people, gave Asarco a renewed air permit that would allow the smelter to dump tons of additional pollution into El Paso's air.

Now the executive director of the TCEQ has recommended that a license be granted to Waste Control Specialists to dump radioactive byproduct material at a site in West Texas' Andrews County. This, despite protests that it will be too near an underground water supply.

Listening only to the siren song of business interests, TCEQ commissioners are assiduously working to destroy the very environment they are sworn to protect. And it looks like they have their eyes on West Texas to be the state dump for whatever comes along.

What we need to to is pipe El Paso air into their offices and homes and bury the nuclear waste a few miles from their homes and offices — and water supply. Betcha they'd discover real quickly what the E and Q in their title really mean.

Piling on

Gas prices heading for $4 a gallon. The dollar's value plummeting. Oil prices skying out. Mortgage crisis. The government using money it can't afford for an economic stimulus program that won't work. A bailout for Bear Stearns. Prices going up for almost everything. Record numbers of foreclosures.

But Democrats aren't satisfied with the financial disasters being visited on America and Americans. So what did they do?

Democrats in the House voted to approve $683 billion in tax increases.

Wow, what a brilliant, insightful solution.

And a heart-warming insight into what a Democratic administration and Democrat-controlled Congress would do to Americans for the next four years.