White House green jobs adviser Van Jones resigned in the middle of the Labor Day weekend following persistent controversy over his past remarks and associations.

Jones, who served as an adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, had generated mounting criticism over the past week. He earlier issued back-to-back apologies — first, for calling Republicans “assholes” during a videotaped address earlier in the year, and second for signing a petition in 2004 supporting the “9/11 truther” movement, which believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The latter development, which came on top of several others, was perhaps the most devastating and led to calls for his resignation.

Jones stepped down late Saturday.

Good riddence to bad rubbish!

President Hugo Chávez scored a major victory Sunday when Venezuelans lifted term limits so he can run for reelection in 2012 and perhaps beyond.

Chávez’s measure won 54.3 percent of the vote, according to the national election board. Televised images showed Chávez supporters celebrating while fireworks boomed across the Caracas sky.

”Chávez, friend, the people are with you,” the president’s adoring supporters, wearing their trademark red T-shirts, chanted outside the presidential palace. Standing on a balcony, Chávez led the festive crowd in singing Venezuela’s national anthem. ”It is a clear victory for the people!” an exultant Chávez said. “It is a clear victory for the Revolution!”

Poor Venezuela.

Fidel Castro said Thursday he doubts he’ll make it to the end of Barack Obama’s four-year term and instructed Cuban officials to start making their decisions without taking him into account.

One can only hoope he’s right.

Pennsylvania Democrat Philip J. Berg, who filed a lawsuit demanding Sen. Barack Obama present proof of his American citizenship, now says that by failing to respond Obama has legally “admitted” to the lawsuit’s accusations, including the charge that the Democratic candidate was born in Mombosa, Kenya.

And the point is? If true, B.O. is not Constitutionally qualified or eligible to be president.

Muggers for B.O.:
Woman Attacked, Letter Scratched Into Her Face

UPDATE:  IT TURNS OUT THAT THIS WAS A FAKE REPORT.  THE ALLEGED VICTIM WILL NO DOUBT BE CHARGED FOR FILING A FALSE REPORT…THE POLICE FROWN ON THAT SORT OF THING.The first “Four Year Plan” – B.O.’s 1st term?
“Trickle-Up” Poverty: The New Economics of Barack Obama

The liberal media talking heads are already proclaiming that a Barack Obama victory will be revolutionary. Revolutionary is right.

The last great revolution took place in Russia. Within a year of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the communist leader Lenin brought the Russians change they could believe in. He created an economic system in which:
* All industry was nationalized and strict centralized management was introduced.
* Obligatory labor duty was imposed onto “non-working classes” or people who had money. Food was rationed and centrally distributed.
* Military-like control of railroads was introduced.
* Private enterprise became illegal.

After Stalin took over the Soviet Union, he:
* Imposed a state-run system of socialized medicine
* Formed a strict, centralized cultural administration and ideological control system – in other words, reeducation.

There is every reason to believe that some kind of socialist revolution will occur under B.O. Bush has already imposed socialism on the banks, and Obama promises to do more of the same. The Soviets put people with money to work in factories.

Under Obama, the business owners in this country who drive the economy will be put to work by being forced to pay crushing taxes that will fund gold-plated healthcare for illegal aliens and welfare cases. Private enterprise may not actually be made illegal, but so many businesses will die under an Obama administration that the same goal will be accomplished. Instead of trickle-down economics, we’ll have trickle-up poverty.

We already know Obama will impose socialized medicine – that is a given. And reeducation will come in the form of the Fairness Doctrine, which Nancy Pelosi will push through the Congress by stressing the need to foster unity and avoid destabilizing the markets with hurtful and unbalanced commentary.This is what the future holds under B.O.

’nuff said there, from radio talker Michael Savage. The Chief fears too true to be funny.

…and a Glowbull Warming note from the Great White North:
Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up.

The Chief has posted on this before, and will no doubt do so again, not being an acolyte of the Great Green Orthodox Church of Gaia.

What’s the point anymore? If there isn’t any difference between the Republocratic and Demmican candidates, then what’s
the advantage of electing one party over the other?

Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, indicated on Tuesday that the Bush administration could simply bypass Congress, if necessary, to begin dealing with the nation’s financial crisis. “The Treasury has at its disposal about a trillion dollars that they could begin, without congressional authority, buying up some of these terrible mortgages and help stabilize the situation,” Sen. John McCain told Fox & Friends.

In other words, “Hey, we HAVE the money (or at least the printing press!), so who’s going to stop us from spending it? Screw teh will of Congress, who has the gall to actually listen to their constituents on this. What do THOSE bozos know anyway?”

At this point, as far as the Chief is concerned the ONLY two things that John McCainiac has going for him are
(a) National security issues, and
(b) Sarah Palin. (She would be an improvement if he were to die…she’s more conservative than he is by a long shot.)
IT’s not a

First off – it ISN’T a battleship, except perhaps generically as a ship built to participate in battles. Nobody at present has any active battleships (BB types)… we still have a few that in a pinch COULD be reactivated, and there are some reasons why this would be a good idea…but that’s another story, and I digress.

What is being discussed here is effectively a guided missile battlecruser (BCG), and is a very impressive looking package, although it may be subject to some technical and maintenance issues. These ships are significantly larger than the current USN cruiser classes, and for that reason are very effective at “showing the flag” exercises and activities, if not combat.

Russia will send a nuclear-powered battleship to the Caribbean for a joint naval exercise with Venezuela, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday. The maneuvers later this year will be the first Russia has conducted in Washington’s traditional sphere of influence since the end of the Cold War.

So…Putin figures apparently that turn about is fair play, since the Black Sea has been as much of a Russian “lake” as the Caribbean has been for us.

Russia has heavily criticized the United States for sending a sophisticated command ship and two other naval vessels to Georgia, on its southern border, to deliver aid and show support for President Mikheil Saakashvili after Moscow sent troops into Georgia.

Nothing to be concerned about however, according to the Soviets Russians:

Russia denied that the move amounted to retaliation against the United States over its action Georgia. “We are talking about a planned event not linked with current political circumstances and not in any way connected to events in Georgia,” he told a news briefing. The exercises “will in no way be directed against the interests of a third country.”

You can believe as much of that as you want to, but the Chief isn’t buying it!

What are the Obamanistas attitude toward minor details of the Constitutional Law, like say, the 1st Amendment? “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

SHOCKING! Someone from the MSM that hasn’t bought into B.O.’s prospective ascension to the Imperial Throne? What else could they do than to attempt to cut out the heresy, root and branch, and cast the perpetrators into outer darkness – or at least off the air.

“WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears,” Obama’s campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.”

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama’s ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical who later emerged as a school reform advocate in Chicago.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding a school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded.

Obama critics were quick to suggest that political clout could be involved in seeking to protect Obama from embarrassment. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.

After noting more of the details of the situation, the posting concludes with “Obama’s campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.”

NRO has some more information…this is an op-ed, but it DOES also report some additional information about what’s going on.

Barack Obama, Aspiring Commissar

While the Obama coronation proceeds apace in Denver, it is in Chicago that Americans are getting a disturbing demonstration of his thuggish methods of stifling criticism.

They go on to conclude with this:

Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as “post-partisan.” He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.

CRIMINAL charges? Hello? What happened to the 1st Amendment?

“Post-partisan?” Logically, this has to mean “one-party rule” (or is it “The One’s Party Rules”?)

Meanwhile, this stuff isn’t the only attempt to “control” the news that has affected the MSM:

ABC Reporter Arrested in Denver Taking Pictures of Senators, Big Donors
Asa Eslocker Was Investigating the Role of Lobbyists and Top Donors at the Convention

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Looks like the fix is in… it apparently wouldn’t do to show up Donk connections with the very same ilk of big-money types that their class-warfare neo-Bolshevik rhetoric loves to castigate.

What’s the flap about anyway?

Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson.”

Must be some real news in danger of actually being reported for a change.

If they are this aggressive now, can you imagine what these totalitarian minded apparatchiks would do if they were in charge of the FBI, BATF, CIA, etc.???

Yikes! Keep your powder dry!

This goes along with previous posting here, talking about Soviet…er…Russian talk about moving nuclear bombers to Cuba and Venezuela.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said it was time for Russia to rebuild links with former Cold War ally Cuba, news agencies reported.

The Kremlin is angry at U.S. plans for a missile defence system in Eastern Europe, and last month a news report suggested Russia might use Cuba, a thorn in America’s side for half a century, as a refueling stop for nuclear-capable bombers.

Keep your powder dry.

The Chief has been on the road for about the last 10 days for a summer teachers’ institute for a program called Teaching American History. As part of the program, the group had the chance to visit a number of SD historic sites. One of these was a Minuteman Missile site in western South Dakota, which is preserved (without a live missile, of course) as a site and artifact of historical significance in the context of the Cold War.

Very interesting to see, and contemplate the destructive energy that was (and still is to a lesser degree) ready to be unleased if required by the US and USSR if there was a REALLY bad day.

Now comes this little reminder that those sorts of concerns are, or certainly should be, still part of the international landscape.

Russia would cross “a red line for the United States of America” if it were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba, a top US air force officer warned on Tuesday. “If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America,” said General Norton Schwartz, nominated to be the air force’s chief of staff.

He was referring to a Russian news report that said the military is thinking of flying long-range bombers to Cuba on a regular basis. It was unclear from the report whether that would involve permanent basing of nuclear bombers in Cuba, or just use of the island as a refueling stop. In his confirmation hearing to become the air force’s chief of staff, Schwartz was asked what he would recommend if Russia were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba.

“I would certainly offer the best military advice that we engage the Russians not to pursue that approach,” he said.

The newspaper Iszvestia on Monday cited an unnamed senior Russian air force official in Moscow as saying that Russia may start regular flights by long-range bombers to Cuba in response to US plans to install a missile defense system in eastern Europe.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the Russian report because there had been no “official response from the Russian government.”

Ingrid Betancourt, who has been held hostage by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels for six years, has been freed in a cunning military operation in the Colombian jungle.

Colombian security forces rescued the French-Colombian politician, 11 Colombian police and three US intelligence operatives in an operation in the eastern jungle province of Guaviare which saw the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) lose their negotiating trump cards.

Read the story…it sounds like an operation out of a Tom Clancy scenario…except this time for real!

Score this one for the good guys, for sure!