Insider Report
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. RFK Jr. Said Global Warming Means No Snow in D.C.
2. Adm. Mullen Played a Big Role in New Gay Policy
3. Toy Globe Wipes Israel Off the Map
4. Poll: Americans Favor Cutting Government Jobs
5. Was Coke’s Superbowl Ad a Knockoff?
6. We Heard: John McCain, Body Scanners, NBC
1. RFK Jr. Said Global Warming Means No Snow in D.C.
Back in September 2008, environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote an article raising the alarm about global warming and the resultant lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.
On Monday, Feb. 8, as the nation’s capital dug out from under a ferocious snowstorm, The Washington Examiner reran an article from last Dec. 21, published as Washington was struggling to dig out from under an earlier snowstorm.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.,” wrote The Examiner’s Online Opinion Editor David Freddoso.
He quoted from the article written by Kennedy, a lawyer specializing in environmental law, which ran in the Los Angeles Times: “Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean [Va.], with a rope tow and local ski club.
“Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled.”
He reminisced about ice skating on a Washington canal, “which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate."
“Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.”
Freddoso observed on Dec. 21: “Having shoveled my walk five times in the midst of this past weekend’s extreme cold and blizzard, I think perhaps RFK Jr. should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.”
Last weekend’s snowstorm paralyzed the Washington area, knocking out power to thousands of homes, closing schools and businesses, and shutting down the federal government.
Dulles International Airport near Washington received a record 32.4 inches of snow, and a town in Maryland close to D.C. was blanketed by 40 inches.
Another snowstorm walloped Washington on Wednesday. As of 2 p.m. that day, the snowfall total for the season had surpassed the 54.4-inch record set in 1899, and it rose to 55.6 inches by 4 p.m. in the city and to 72 inches at Dulles.
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2. Adm. Mike Mullen Played a Big Role in New Gay Policy
Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a major force behind new efforts to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military.
Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 2, Mullen called for the end of the 16-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, saying “allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”
But Mullen’s statement, which surprised many observers, was not the result of a sudden change of heart — he had been mulling over the issue for years.
“It’s not the kind of thing where there’s an epiphany and he wakes up and says, ‘OK, I’m in favor,’” an adviser told The New York Times.
Mullen reportedly began considering the impact of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about five years ago, when he was chief of Naval Operations, and he met with high-ranking military officials to discuss how a new policy could be implemented.
“The discussion was never ‘should we or shouldn’t we,’” said Gen. Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine who talked with Mullen about the issue several times last year.
Mullen is “reflecting the broad shifts in society — and to some degree within the military itself — since 1993,” the Times observed.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates also supports President Obama’s decision to seek the repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And Gen. Colin Powell, who in the early 1990s opposed allowing gay men and women to serve openly, now supports efforts to change the policy.
Mullen was appointed chief of the Joint Staff by Gates in 2007, and reappointed to a second two-year term last year. Obama met with Mullen within days of his 2008 election victory, and Mullen is now the president’s chief military adviser.
Mullen dismisses the notion that growing up in a show business household — his father was a Hollywood press agent whose clients included Anthony Quinn and Julie Andrews — has influenced his position on “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“He has described his upbringing as one of Catholic schools and relatively modest means,” the Times reported, “requiring him to jump at the chance of a free education when he was recruited to play basketball for the Naval Academy.”
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3. Toy Globe Wipes Israel Off the Map
Much has been made of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s infamous quote: “Israel must be wiped off the map.”
That objective has already been accomplished, according to a Chinese-made toy globe that went on sale at Target stores across the U.S.
On the spot where Israel should be, the word “Palestine” is printed instead.
“They’re teaching kids there is no Israel, only Palestine,” Rabbi Gary Moskowitz, who bought a globe for his daughter, told Andrea Peyser of the New York Post. “This foments hatred.”
Amy Reilly of Target customer relations initially said the omission of Israel was due to lack of space on the globe. To which Peyser responded: “Isn’t ‘Palestine’ a longer word?”
After receiving complaints, Target began pulling the globe from its 1,744 stores.
A spokesman for New Jersey-based Devrian Global Industries, which imported tens of thousands of globes from China, said: “Obviously, it was a mistake. We obviously offended some people.”
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4. Poll: Americans Favor Cutting Government Jobs
Nearly 6 in 10 Americans support cutting the size of the government workforce to reduce the deficit — and a majority favor cutting pay for non-military government employees, according to a new poll by Rasmussen Reports.
The survey found that 58 percent of respondents think the government workforce should be trimmed; 22 percent are opposed to the idea; and the rest are “not sure.”
The poll disclosed that 51 percent favor cutting government employees’ pay; 32 percent oppose it; and 17 percent are not sure.
Nearly 60 percent of those polled said government workers earn more money than the average taxpayer, while 15 percent believe they do not, and 26 percent are undecided.
Another Rasmussen survey disclosed that by a 3-to-1 margin, Americans think it would be better for the U.S. if most incumbents in Congress are not re-elected this November.
Sixty-three percent said it would be better for the country; 19 percent said it would be better if most incumbents are re-elected; and 18 percent are not sure. And just 27 percent of respondents said their representative in Congress is the best possible person for the job.
Rasmussen observed, “The latest numbers are explained in part by new findings that show voters are madder than ever at the current policies of the federal government.”
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5. Was Coke’s Superbowl Ad a Knockoff?
Coca-Cola’s “sleepwalker” ad that aired during the Superbowl ranked 5th in popularity on USA Today’s Superbowl ad meter. But the spot bore an uncanny resemblance to an eight-year-old ad from Israel promoting a dairy drink.
Both ads begin with a man rising from bed and sleepwalking outdoors, in the Coke ad through the wilds of Africa, in the Israeli ad the Negev Desert.
Both ads cut at the same point to the inside of a refrigerator, with the American ad showing bottles of Coke and the Israeli ad, bottles of Yotvata dairy drinks.
Both ads then cut, again at the same point, to the sleepwalkers taking a sip from the bottles and grinning in satisfaction, and then to the companies’ logo.
What’s more, both ads use an excerpt from the same piece of music, Ravel’s “Bolero.”
Copying in the advertising industry is not uncommon, said Dr. Yaron Timmor, head of the marketing communications program at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. But for a company with the stature of Coca-Cola to copy an Israeli ad would be “puzzling and strange,” he told the Jerusalem Post.
The defense against accusations of copyright infringement is to assert that the original was not known to the accused, the Post reported. But in this case, using the same music as the earlier ad weakens that defense.
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6. We Heard . . .
THAT John McCain’s fellow Republican senator from Arizona and all three of his state’s Republican congressmen have endorsed his re-election bid.
Sen. Jon Kyl and Reps. Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, and John Shadegg are backing the former GOP presidential candidate, who is being challenged in the Republican primary by former congressman and radio commentator J.D. Hayworth, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.
“John’s leadership has been critical to stopping President Obama’s misguided government takeover of our healthcare system dead in its tracks,” Kyl said in a statement released by the McCain campaign on Wednesday.
“Arizona needs John McCain’s leadership in the U.S. Senate to stop the wasteful spending, get our economy moving again, and protect our national security.”
THAT an Islamic organization asserts that the use of full body scanners for security at airports and other places violates the teachings of Islam.
The scanners show nude images of the human body.
The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) — an affiliate of the Islamic Society of North America — posted a statement on the Islam Online Web site. It said the organization “emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty."
“It is a clear violation of Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women . . .
“The FCNA recommends that instead of producing and displaying a picture of the body, software should be designed to produce only the picture of questionable materials on an outline of the body.”
The group urges Muslims to choose pat-down searches instead of scanner images when searches are necessary.
THAT NBC overpaid for the rights to the Winter Olympics and expects to lose at least $250 million on its coverage of the Games that began Friday night in Vancouver, Canada.
Back in 2003, NBC’s parent General Electric bid $2 billion for the TV rights for Vancouver and the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. That bid was $900 million higher than the next closest bidder, the Fox network, the Los Angeles Times reported.
NBC executives concede that their estimates for 2010 revenue were erroneous — they expected continued ad growth, not a recession that would reduce ad budgets, according to the Times.
NBC has scheduled 835 hours of coverage over 17 days on the NBC broadcast network, and on cable channels MSNBC, CNBC, USA, and Universal HD.
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