TINLEY PARK, Ill. – A woman from Tinley Park has been charged with a hate crime after she yanked on the head scarf of a Muslim woman. Police say Valerie Kenney passed the woman in a grocery store two days after the Fort Hood shootings, and shouted that the shooter was from the Middle East. A few minutes later, Kenney approached the woman from behind in the checkout lane and tugged on her head scarf. Kenney declined to comment after court. She’s out on bail, and faces up to three years in prison and a $25,000 fine if convicted. She is due in court next month. This incident is the second race-related crime in Tinley Park since the Fort Hood shootings. A Muslim family found racist graffiti on their home on November 8. The person rang the doorbell, but ran away.
We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and being considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on Washington! This Congress and whoever on their staffs that write this junk are truly out to destroy the middle class of the USA….
A License Required for your house
Thinking about selling your house – A look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and trade bill) This is unbelievable!
Only the beginning from this administration! Home owners take note & tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!
Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the “Cap & Trade” bill passed by the House of Representatives, if also passed by the Senate, will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced.
The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year.
No one is excluded.
However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets, you can be sure these voters get a tax refund (even if they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost. Thus, you Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class America will have to pay even more since additional tax dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else.
But wait. This awful bill (that no one in Congress has actually read) has many more surprises in it. Probably the worst one is this:
A year from now you won’t be able to sell your house. Yes, you read that right.
The caveat is (there always is a caveat) that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes (“mobile homes”) are included.
In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.
To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured.
Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be forced to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements.
Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a “label” in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner.
If you don’t get a high enough rating, you can’t sell. And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act.
The EPA administrator, appointed by the President, will run the Cap & Trade program (AKA the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″) and is authorized to make any future changes to the regulations and standards he alone determines to be in the government’s best interest. Requirements are set low initial y so the bill will pass Congress; then the Administrator can set much tougher new standards every year.
The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings.
However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any time.
Sect. 202: Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America .
Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act.
You had better sell soon, because the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard (i.e., ex$pen$ive) to meet in a few years. Oh, goody! The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements if you meet certain energy efficiency levels. But, wait, the State can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the grants.
You should expect requirements such as “can’t have an income of more than $50K per year”, “home selling price can’t be more than $125K”, or anything else to target the upper middle class (and that’s YOU) and prevent them from qualifying for the grants. Most of us won’t get a dime and will have to pay the entire cost of the retrofit out of our own pockets. More transfer of wealth, more “change you can believe in.”
Sect. 204: Building Energy Performance Labeling Programestablishes a labelingprogram that for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy efficiency performance for “at least 90 percent of the residential market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act.”
This means that within 5 years 90% of all residential homes in the U.S. must be measured and labeled. The EPA administrator will get $50M each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help enforce the labeling program. Some of this money will, of course, be spent on coming up with tougher standards each year.
Oh, the label will be like a license for your car. You will be required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this label. And, just like your car license, you will probably be required to get a new label every so often – maybe every year. But, the government estimates the cost of measuring the energy efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time.
Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they first started: that in California it would only cost $15. That was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the inspection and certificate; a 333% increase. Expect the same from the home labeling program.
Sect. 304: Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energyefficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates at 304(d), Application of National Code to State and Local Jurisdictions, that 1 year after enactment of this Act, all state and local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the federal government that their state and/or local codes have been brought into full compliance with the National Building Code energy efficiency standards.
Dead Man Walking: The Chicago cabal walks Craig (2nd from left) to his fate. (AP/Monsivais)
According to POLITICO, Obama’s fans in the Beltway are shocked, shocked that he and his White House minions scapegoat White House General Counsel Greg Craig for Obama’s failed promise to close Guantanamo in one year.
The closing of Guantanamo – as Obama’s critics have long predicted – ain’t gonna happen, because there’s no place else to put the hardcore terrorists currently housed there. When Obama announced his dubious executive order closing Guantanamo by January 2010, the Kool-Aid drinkers were ecstatic. “See?” they said, “This is why we elected him. We were so right.”
No, they were so wrong. It was a boneheaded, half-baked plan then, and it still is. The order was issued with nary a thought as to where to move Guantanamo’s detainees – another example of the President making moves just for show.
WHEAT RIDGE – The owner of a local auto dealership has gotten international attention after putting up a controversial billboard about President Barack Obama.
Phil Wolf, the man behind the billboard and Wolf Interstate Leasing and Sales says he wishes he was better prepared for the flood of reaction to the sign.
The sign asks if President Obama is a terrorist and if he’s really an American citizen by birth. Part of the sign also references the recent tragedy at Fort Hood.
The question of Obama’s citizenship has been an issue since early in his presidential campaign.
Hawaiian officials have inspected his original birth certificate, proving he was born in the United States. The conspiracy theory has persisted, in part, because Hawaiian officials won’t release the president’s original birth certificate.
There’s other evidence out there that he was indeed born in Hawaii – birth announcements in both of Honolulu’s major newspapers in August 1961, and a teacher who says she discussed his birth with Dr. Rodney West, the obstetrician who delivered Obama.
Wolf says he initially drew the billboard on a napkin and then had an artist paint it. The sign, which was completed Friday, is visible to drivers on Interstate 70 near Kipling Street.
“I can’t say I expected everything that’s been going on with the responses we got,” Wolf said.
He says his business has been overwhelmed with phone calls. Some callers have threatened both Wolf and his employees.
Wolf says he’s accepting the risk and the backlash he may receive.
“We’ve had calls as far as Canada to Florida. We’ve had calls all over the country,” Wolf said. “I didn’t expect employees to leave scared going home from work that were threatened, death threats and attempts to bomb the place. It’s been pretty crazy out there.”
WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (Reuters) – A sweeping healthcare overhaul narrowly cleared its first hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Saturday, with Democrats casting 60 party-line votes to open debate on the biggest healthcare changes in decades.
In the first Senate test for President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority, Democrats unanimously backed a procedural motion to open Senate debate over the opposition of 39 Senate Republicans. One Republican did not vote.
The Democrats’ victory was assured earlier in the day when the last two Democratic holdouts, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, said they would support the motion but would not commit to backing the final bill without significant changes.
“I believe that it is more important that we begin this debate to improve our nation’s healthcare system for all Americans rather than just simply drop the issue and walk away,” Lincoln, the last holdout, said in a speech hours before the vote.
The Senate debate will begin on Nov. 30 and is expected to last at least three weeks. The House of Representatives has passed its own version, and differences in the two would have to be reconciled in January before Obama could sign a final measure.
The Rev. James David Manning is the pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church in Harlem. He has been outspoken in his criticisms of Barack Hussein Obama’s unwillingness to prove that he is in fact eligible under the Constitution to serve as president of the United States. He has accurately described Obama’s intention to overthrow the Constitution and establish a national socialist dictatorship over the American people. He has presented scripturally based arguments aiming to show that Obama represents the evil whose emergence in human affairs Christ prophesied as one of the hallmarks of the last days. He has criticized the Congress, the Supreme Court and the media for their collusive failure to investigate the possible fraud involved in Obama’s occupation of the office of president of the United States.
Rev. Manning produces a daily video series in which he has repeatedly and consistently aired these views. Now it appears that the YouTube account through which he shared these videos with the public has been suspended on the grounds that his views are too controversial. Close on the heels of this obvious effort to limit his ability to communicate with the public, he now reports that he has been visited by federal agents who questioned him about statements he made regarding “the birth certificate issue” and his opinion that Obama is an illegal alien, not qualified to be president of the United States. As a result of this visit, Rev. Manning says that he expects to be arrested and charged with making threats against the president.
I have followed Rev. Manning’s broadcasts and statements for some time. He is forthright and outspoken in his religious and political views. He speaks with a boldness that is surely offensive to people who believe that civility requires silence even in the face of the stratagems of deception now being perpetrated against the American people. But I see nothing that he has said or done that warrants interference with his freedom of speech. Both YouTube’s actions and those of the federal and New York City officials who visited his church appear to be in clear violation of his constitutional rights and part of an effort to intimidate him and others who are outspoken critics of the coup d’état being perpetrated by the Obama faction and its fellow travelers among the elites, who are working to accomplish the overthrow of our constitutional republic.
The repression of Rev. Manning’s views is an intolerable assault on the constitutional freedom of every American. However disagreeable his voice may be to others, including the present occupant of the White House, his right to voice his criticisms is clear and undeniable. So is his right to seek redress of grievances that threaten the sovereignty of the American people and of every American as a member of the sovereign body of the people. Respect for these rights is one of the bedrock prerequisites of government of, by and for the people. Efforts to thwart and repress their exercise constitute a clear and present danger to the liberty of all Americans. Like the darkening skies and rising winds that announce the landfall of a hurricane, this move to silence Rev. Manning ominously foreshadows the next phase of the elite assault against the Constitution and people of the United States.
The U.S. Constitution clearly protects the freedom of political expression and information vital to sustaining the constitutional self-government of the people. However, from motives of greed and ambition, the dominant media outlets of our day seem uniformly to have fallen under the sway of political control and manipulation. They now behave with regularity like the politically dictated media outlets characteristic of Communist China or the now defunct Soviet Union. For the time being the Internet offers hope that an alternative media, directly arising from the people themselves, can assure that the dark arts of political repression and persecution will feel the glare of public scrutiny and reaction. I pray that people of goodwill, who still love liberty and understand the prerequisites for its survival, will use all the networks of friends and associates at their disposal to spread the word. The Obama faction has apparently decided to move from ridicule and legal maneuvering to intimidation involving the open abuse of law-enforcement power. They seem desperate to suppress the rising demand for evidence and truth with regard to Obama’s eligibility for office, as well as other constitutionally questionable features of his rise to and use of the office he now occupies.
(Column continues below)
“This would do irreparable harm to her child. I think they are doing this to punish her.”
VENTURA, California – U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, was threatened with a military court-martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas. Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system. Hutchinson was threatened with a court martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail. The military backed off from deploying her on Nov. 15, after enough media attention came to Hutchinson’s case. She is still to be deployed, likely immediately after she is able to find someone to care for her infant while she is in Afghanistan. Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, told the Associated Press he didn’t know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child. “I don’t know what transpired and the investigation will get to the bottom of it,” Larson said. “If she would have come to the deployment terminal with her child, there’s no question she would not have been deployed.” According to the family care plan of the U.S. Army, Hutchinson was allowed to fly to California and leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland. However, after a week of caring for the child, Hughes realized she was unable to care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister. In late October, Angelique Hughes told Hutchinson and her commander that she would be unable to care for Kamani after all. The Army then gave Hutchinson an extension of time to allow her to find someone else to care for Kamani. Meanwhile, Hughes brought Kamani back to Georgia to be with his mother.
Information: The newly-forged 1990-page “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (HR 3962) offered by the House of Representatives is filled with mental health provisions intended to prop up psychiatry as well as the pharmaceutical industry with billions in future income. Key mental health components of this House bill:
MOTHERS Act
The bill includes the language of the MOTHERS Act, to “expand treatment for postpartum conditions” and calls for the development of “improved screening and diagnostic techniques,” but makes no provisions to ensure any entities doing such research are free from conflicts of interest or pharmaceutical funding. For example, Screening for Mental Health, Inc., and its sub-organization Signs of Suicide, who heavily promote and conduct mental health screening, received $4,985,925 from pharmaceutical companies prior to 2008, and ten leading psychiatric researchers have been exposed in the last year for failing to disclose millions of dollars in pharmaceutical payments. Despite their conflicts of interest and biased research, many pharma funded psychiatrists and researchers have been used by so-called advocacy groups (Screening for Mental Health, NAMI, etc which are also heavily funded by Pharma) to promote the need for federal laws that will only increase the number of Americans being needlessly targeted for psychiatric treatment and drugged. Yet this bill contains no provisions for full disclosure of conflicts of interest for any “entity” that could receive federal taxpayer funded grants, do research or promotional campaigns – such as the provision in the bill calling for a national PR campaign using TV, radio public and other public service announcements to urge women be screened and seek treatment for postpartum depression. The bill also calls for “clinical research” for the development of new treatments (drugs), but again, no guidelines for ensuring that any researchers/research entities are free from pharmaceutical funding or conflicts of interest. Section 2529, Page 1418
Mental Health Parity
The bill mandates Mental Health Parity, or equal insurance coverage for mental disorders as what are covered for physical diseases, whether under their regular health insurance or whether a person gets their new coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange. Psychiatric patients are traditionally “cured” when their insurance benefits run out. In this bill, those benefits never run out. Considering there are no medical tests to verify the existence of any psychiatric disorder, and without anything other than a psychiatrist’s opinion about whether or not the person’s “illness” is “cured,” this legislation becomes nothing more than taxpayer funded billions to the psycho/pharmaceutical industry who will continue their jihad of mass drugging of Americans. This provision could easily encompass all 374 diagnoses in psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, covering everything from Phase of Life Problem to Arithmetic Disorder. Section 214, Page 100
More than 150 leaders across a spectrum of conservative Christianity on Friday released a 4,700-word document vowing civil disobedience if they are forced to take part in “anti-life acts” or bless gay marriages.
Called the “Manhattan Declaration,” the six-page, single-spaced document was drafted by Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson, an evangelical, and Princeton University professor Robert P. George, a Roman Catholic, and included a bevy of Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox bishops, archbishops and cardinals as signatories along with dozens of clergy and laity.
Archbishop of Washington Donald W. Wuerl is one of the signatories.
“Throughout the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required,” says the document which cited civil rights icon Martin Luther King and his willingness to go to jail for his beliefs.
“Because we honor justice and the common good,” it states, “we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide or euthanasia or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.”
When pressed to say what sorts of civil disobedience the writers were proposing, its originators were vague on the details at Friday’s news conference during which the document was released.
“We certainly hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Mr. George, who added that he has represented a West Virginia resident who has refused to pay a portion of her state income tax that funds abortions. “However, we see case after case of challenges to religious liberty,” such as compelling pharmacists to carry abortifacient drugs or health care workers to assist in abortions, he added.
“When the limits of conscience are reached and you cannot comply, it’s better to suffer a wrong than to do it,” he said.
There are at least 224 million Christians in the United States, according to the Web site Adherents.com.
The document, which was drafted over the summer, is being released at a time of high stress for many of the groups that signed it. The Archdiocese of Washington is under fire for saying it will not comply with a pending D.C. law that would force the Catholic Church to give health benefits or adoption services to same-sex couples.Source
The Army Times is reporting exclusively that an anonymous note threatening a massacre similar to the Nov. 5 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, was discovered Thursday — along with a box of 20 hollow-point bullets — in a motor pool area at Columbus’ Fort Benning.
The discovery coincided with a visit from Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, who was in town for Officer Candidate School graduation. The threat prompted a criminal investigation and greater police presence on the Army base, the Army Times reports.
According to a witness on the scene, a box of 20 hollow-point shells and a handwritten note were found under the 197th Infantry Training Brigade.
“The note said ‘tell the commanding general to call off all charges or there will be a re-enactment of Fort Hood,’ ” a witness told Army Times. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan is charged in the Nov. 5 shooting deaths of 13 fellow service members.
The newspaper, which serves an audience of Army personnel, active and retired, said military police acted quickly on the threat, cordoning off a 20-foot perimeter around the box.
“They’re talking with anyone with a pending [Uniform Code of Military Justice] charge and people who are getting chaptered out to see if they can find out who it is,” the witness told the Army Times.
Fort Benning officials refused comment on the specifics of the letter but confirmed “an ongoing investigation into a general threat at Fort Benning.”
“A suspicious package and note were found,” post spokeswoman Elsie Jackson said. “The soldier notified a noncommissioned officer, who alerted 911. The area was secured as is normal in these types of incidents.”
Soldiers in the unit are being questioned about the threat, the witness told the Army Times. The Kelley Hill area of Fort Benning was on lockdown for part of the day Friday, according to the witness, who noted an increase in military police patrols on the post.
The Fort Benning spokeswoman said “appropriate force protection measures are in place while an investigation is underway to determine if this is a viable threat.”
Despite ever rosier economic predictions and a surging stock market, the body count from the economic crisis is destined only to grow in the weeks and months ahead.
In 2007, Jason Rodriguez was fired from his position at an Orlando, Florida engineering firm and ended up taking a job as a “sandwich artist” at a Subway restaurant. His salary was cut nearly in half and his debts mounted until, last May, he filed for bankruptcy, listing his assets at just over $4,600 and his liabilities at nearly $90,000. Although he lived only 30 minutes away, according to his former mother-in-law, America Holloway, Rodriguez barely saw his son. When the boy asked why his father didn’t visit, Holloway said Rodriguez told him: “‘Because I don’t have any money. I don’t have a job. I don’t have anything to eat. When things get better, I’ll come see you.’”
Things never got better. On November 6th, the 40-year-old Rodriguez went back to the downtown high-rise office building where he had worked and reportedly opened fire, killing one person and wounding five others at his old firm. Asked to comment following the shooting, a local lawyer who represented Rodriguez in his bankruptcy proceedings, said “That’s how it is right now. He’s a very typical client. Of people that are suffering through the economy right now, there’s nothing extraordinary about him… except that.”
WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. – A billboard showing President Barack Obama wearing a turban has sparked a lot of attention at the suburban Denver used car dealership that put it up.
The sign, completed Friday by artist David Lee, shows a grinning, cartoonish Obama and bears the words “PRESIDENT or JIHAD?”
Underneath the president’s image is a big yellow square with the phrase, “BIRTH CERTIFICATE, PROVE IT!”
The words “WAKE UP AMERICA! REMEMBER FT. HOOD” appear at the bottom of the billboard at Wolf Interstate Leasing and Sales, about seven miles west of Denver. The sign is visible from Interstate 70.
Lee said there were plenty of honks as he painted it.
“One lady came by and gave me the ’shame, shame’ look,” said Lee, of Arvada, another suburb of Denver.
Dealership owner Phil Wolf was unavailable for comment Friday, but General Manager Wayne Means said the business has seen strong opinions about its sign.
“We’ve had people come by and say, ‘Keep it up.’ We’ve had people come by and say, ‘Take it down,’” Means said. “We can have differences of opinion. This is America.”
The left-leaning advocacy group MoveOn.org called the billboard “racist” and was asking customers to boycott the dealership.
Lee said the billboard has previously held other slogans questioning the president’s citizenship, along with routine ads for cars.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The mother of the man former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol had planned to marry has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Sherry Johnston was sentenced Friday in Palmer, about 45 miles northeast of Anchorage. She pleaded guilty in August to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin. Five other felony counts were dropped in the deal, which called for a five-year prison sentence with two years suspended.
The 43-year-old Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston. He and 18-year-old Bristol Palin were engaged but called off the wedding after their son, Tripp, was born in December.
The Anchorage Daily News reports that Sherry Johnston will serve her sentence at Alaska’s only female prison.
Never shy about $eeking money, Democratic President Obama’s Organizing for America is now using the threat of Republican Sarah Palin as an opportunity to acquire more.
It has just sent an e-mail out to its millions of supporters today pleading for urgent donations to fight the mother of five, now on her heavily-publicized, cross-country book promotion bus tour. She holds no political office currently; in fact, she’s among America’s unemployed, though doing quite well financially.
Perhaps you’ve heard a little something about Palin in recent days.
The former governor of Alaska has written a book called “Going Rogue” that details her experiences in last year’s presidential campaign, her values and thoughts on various issues.
Some people (bipartisan) think (fear) she may become a candidate for the 2012 presidential election.
Since the Republican Party that chose her as its first female presidential ticket member last year has such a glaring national leadership vacuum these days, she’s getting tons of publicity in her symbiotic hate-hate relationship with the media, which doesn’t mind attracting crowds with her name either (see headline above).
Although the Democratic National Committee dismisses Palin as an ignorant non-factor, it’s invested way more time and effort this week attacking Palin than selling Obama, who was on another overseas publicity trip of his own.
Attempting to use Palin as a lucrative opportunity, too, today’s e-mail plaintively asks: “Please chip in $5 to help.”
The committee says its goal is a half-mill in one week, chump change for the one-time senator’s $750-million presidential campaign.
Today’s electronic missive calls Palin “dangerous,” blames (credits) her for the term “death panels,” and says it needs the money to combat her lies (claims), which will be magnified in coming weeks by well-known complicit conservatives in the media.
The donation plea also warns ominously that “the rest of our opponents will likely parrot those attacks.”
It says the money will be used for event organizing, advertising and funding calls to Congress in support of Obama’s beleaguered healthcare legislation to counter “right-wing attack groups.”
BTW, even Palin is playing off of Palin’s publicity. If you give $100 to her SARAHPac here by midday next Wednesday, she’ll give you a free signed copy of “Going Rogue.”
Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) — Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for additional troops sent to Afghanistan and that NATO should provide half of the new soldiers.
An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000,” could fund more troops, Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are added.
That cost, Levin said, should be paid by wealthier taxpayers. “They have done incredibly well, and I think that it’s important that we pay for it if we possibly can” instead of increasing the federal debt load, the senator said.
Other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should bear responsibility for delivering half the additional troops needed to secure the conflict zone and train Afghan forces, Levin said. He didn’t predict how many troops President Barack Obama would add.
Levin also said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who has faced calls for his resignation from Republicans in Congress, should stay as long as he has Obama’s confidence. The six-term senator said the administration was right to move the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to federal court in New York from a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Breitbart: There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it’s link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape.
Hannity: Are you saying, Andrew, that there are more tapes?
Breitbart: Oh my goodness there are! Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.
Hannity: This is a blockbuster, what you’re saying here. You guys have more tapes, you’ll release them before the election, that could have a big impact on the election, obviously…
A congressional investigation of the volunteer organization AmeriCorps contains charges that D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee handled “damage control” after allegations of sexual misconduct against her now fiance, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and a prominent ally of President Obama, The Washington Examiner has learned.The charges are contained in a report prepared by Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.The investigation began after the AmeriCorps inspector general, Gerald Walpin, received reports that Johnson had misused some of the $800,000 in federal AmeriCorps money provided to St. Hope, a non-profit school that Johnson headed for several years.Walpin was looking into charges that AmeriCorps-paid volunteers ran personal errands for him, washed his car, and took part in political
activities. In the course of investigating those allegations, the congressional report says, Walpin’s investigators were told that Johnson had made inappropriate advances toward three young women involved in the St. Hope program — and that Johnson offered at least one of those young women money to keep quiet.
Johnson’s office did not respond to calls for comment Friday morning.
At the time, Rhee was on the board of St. Hope. A former St. Hope employee who reported one of the allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Johnson told Walpin’s investigators that Rhee “learned of the allegations and played the role of a fixer, doing ‘damage control,’” the congressional report says.
Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration
Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home. They also underscored the stiff headwinds that the administration faces as it pushes to enact sweeping changes to the financial regulatory system while also trying to create jobs for ordinary Americans. President Obama’s allies in the Congressional Black Caucus, exasperated by the administration’s handling of the economy, unexpectedly blocked one his top priorities, using a legislative maneuver to postpone the approval of financial reform legislation by a key House committee. Two buildings away, at a session of the Joint Economic Committee, Republicans escalated their attacks on Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, including a call for his resignation. “Conservatives agree that as point person, you failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.). “For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?” Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.) took a different tack. “I don’t think that you should be fired,” he told Geithner. “I thought you should have never been hired.” Even Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a friend of the administration, suggested that Geithner had been inconsistent in addressing China’s practice of keeping its currency low against the dollar. And Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Wednesday on MSNBC that he thinks Geithner should step down, pointing to his handling of the aftermath of American International Group’s meltdown. Across Capitol Hill, senators signaled their opposition to rushing regulatory reform. While some Democrats voiced reservations about parts of the bill, Republicans went further, faulting Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) for pushing ahead before the roots of the crisis were understood.
What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?
Here’s a case study.
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.
“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
The remark stirred a murmur at the reception, held by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation as part of a series of events revolving around the 25th anniversary of Jackson’s run for president. Several CBC members were in attendance, including Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who’d introduced Jackson.
Davis, who is running for governor, is the only black member of Congress from Alabama.
He is also the only member of the CBC to have voted against the healthcare bill earlier this month.
Davis referred to Jackson’s 1988 run for president in a statement, issued through his office, that said he would not engage Jackson on his criticism.
“One of the reasons that I like and admire Rev. Jesse Jackson is that 21 years ago he inspired the idea that a black politician would not be judged simply as a black leader,” Davis’s statement said. “The best way to honor Rev. Jackson’s legacy is to decline to engage in an argument with him that begins and ends with race.”
Jackson said later that he “didn’t call anybody by name and I won’t.”
He added that he wasn’t saying that black lawmakers must vote a certain way. Instead, they should vote the interests of the people in their districts, and he said the healthcare bill would help Alabama because it’s one of the poorest states in the country.
More than a dozen people were arrested at UCLA during heated protests over a two-tiered, 32 percent fee increase.
The University of California Board of Regents committee on Wednesday approved the increase, which would raise tuition to more than $10,000 — marking the first time tuition would reach a five-digit price tag. The proposal drew an estimated 500 protestors outside of UCLA’s Covel Commons, according to UCLA:
Spectators erupted in chants and shouts several times before Wednesday’s vote. The UC Police Department declared an unlawful assembly in the morning and cleared the room of protesters. The disruptions continued after the audience was permitted back inside, leading police to clear the room again.
Before the meeting, protesters formed outside Covel Commons. Signs crafted by employee unions leaned upside-down against planter boxes, with messages such as “Yes, we can take back our university,” in preparation for a series of protests.
Students from UCLA and other UC campuses continued to gather as the crowd reached an estimated 500. Police in riot gear lined up to keep the crowd under control.
Fourteen people, including 12 students, were arrested and cited, according to UCLA. Two students suffered minor injuries and “a few UC Police officers were hurt by thrown objects,” according to the university.
// <![CDATA[//
Cops Break Up UCLA Crowd
The proposal would increase tuition at UC campuses by $585 in the spring and an additional $1,344 in the fall. The full Board of Regents will consider the proposed tuition increase Thursday.
“None of us want fee increases,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “This was a painful decision to make, but the Regents have their backs to the wall in trying to restore the fiscal health of the university. Unfortunately, this means that everyone — faculty, staff and students — is forced to share the pain. This crisis is truly unprecedented and requires drastic measures. It’s important to note, though, that financial aid packages will close the gap for the most needy.”
Some protesters planned to remain at UCLA as part of a 24-hour demonstration, City News Service reported.
SEOUL — President Barack Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said on Thursday.
The news came as the president greeted 1,500 troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, just before boarding Air Force One and heading back to Washington after an eight-day Asia trip.
Obama and his top military and diplomatic aides have been deliberating for months over how to proceed in Afghanistan, where the United States and its partners have sought for eight years to defeat the Taliban and deny al-Qaeda a safe haven from which it can plan and launch attacks.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has stated that without the deployment of up to 40,000 additional of troops within the next year, the mission “will likely result in failure.” But some aides are arguing for a much smaller troop increase, and the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, has questioned whether the Afghan government can be a reliable partner.
Obama said in interviews Wednesday that he would reveal his decision within the next several weeks. On Thursday, aides clarified that there would be no announcement before Thanksgiving, one week away. Senior administration officials said Obama intends to meet with his national security team again before going public with his plans.
Obama did not mention the looming decision in his remarks to U.S. troops, referring to the Afghan conflict only by thanking South Korea for its efforts and expressing gratitude to the American soldiers who have served there.
But he did discuss the region in his meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, whose government has is sending 150 civilian aid workers to Afghanistan.
Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures.
“You guys make a pretty good photo op,” the president said.
Standing on a riser wearing a blue suit and red tie, with a cluster of troops and a large American flag behind him, Obama expressed “the gratitude of the American public” and said his meetings in four countries over eight days in Asia will help deliver a “safer more prosperous world for all of us.”
He got a huge cheer when he told them he was increasing military pay. “That’s what you call an applause line,” he said, before boarding his jet and taking off at 4:11 p.m.
Germany’s premier news magazine Der Spiegel has a hard-hitting piecepost, the disillusionment with Obama among European liberals is widespread and growing. by one of its own editors, Christian Schwaegerl, condemning Barack Obama’s handling of global warming. The article is significant because it demonstrates the depth of anger and sense of betrayal among Left-wing intellectuals in Europe over Obama’s failure to deliver what they expected in advance of next month’s UN Climate Change jamboree in Copenhagen. As I noted in a previous
Here are some excerpts from the Spiegel commentary:
US President Barack Obama came to office promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Now, should the climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with Obama.
Barack Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world” when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health-care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats.”
The US is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably – for the umpteenth time.
Schwaegerl’s op-ed contains a good deal of unpleasant anti-American rhetoric, which had previously been reserved for the likes of President Bush or Vice President Cheney. It is dripping with the kind of venomous hatred aimed at the United States that was commonplace in the aftermath of the Iraq War:
Obama has proven himself to be unable to put an end to the lies that modern American society is based on. He is unable to overcome the entrenched lobbyists of the oil and coal industries and make the reality clear to his compatriots: They are the worst energy wasters on the planet — and are thus, indirectly, a major threat to world peace in the 21st century. Although they do not enjoy a higher quality of life than Europeans, Americans consume twice as much fossil fuel per capita. Their cars are too big, their homes are not energy-efficient, and they have yet to focus their talents for innovation away from trivial entertainment gadgets and toward renewable energy-technologies.
America will be seen as the primary culprit of global warming — and this after the US, with its rampant real estate speculation, has given us a global economic crisis that has not only destroyed assets, but pushed 100 million people worldwide into hunger. With that kind of track record, the US hardly has a claim any more to the leadership of the Western world.
The Spiegel piece should be required reading in the White House for President Obama’s cloistered speechwriters, who naively believe that apology-laden rhetoric on European soil atoning for America’s past will end anti-Americanism. The brutal fact remains that no matter who resides in the White House, envy and hatred of American global power will always be there, bubbling just under the surface. Ironically, Barack Obama’s weakness as a world leader, and his quintessentially European-style approach to world leadership, will only encourage even greater levels of sneering anti-American vitriol.
George W. Bush may not have been loved in Europe and across much of the world, but at least he was feared by his enemies and grudgingly respected by his competitors, and could count on the close political support and personal friendship of several key European allies. Increasingly Obama is being derisively mocked by European elites, whether in the pages of Spiegel or by political leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
It all now seems a million miles away from his soaring, almost messianic speech to hundreds of thousands of swooning Berliners at the start of his election campaign last year. Schwaegerl’s article is the shape of things to come for the Obama administration – the shattering of illusions across Europe, and a growing recognition that Obama will end up sorely disappointing the “citizens of the world”.
Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman on Wednesday accused ACORN and union interests of stealing the upstate New York special election that he conceded on Nov. 3.
Hoffman on Monday “unconceded” after recanvassing of votes across the district showed Democratic Rep. Bill Owens’ margin of victory narrowing. Hoffman originally conceded after trailing Owens by 5,335 votes, but further counts showed him trailing by 3,176 votes. A recent count of absentee ballots in three counties showed Hoffman still trailing by 2,951.
“As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens,” Hoffman wrote in an internet message to supporters. “Recent developments leave me to wonder who is scheming behind closed doors, twisting arms and stealing elections from the voters of NY-23.”
The message asks supporters for donations to “ensure every vote is counted.”
In the letter, Hoffman touts a new lead in Jefferson County where Owens had won on Election Night. Hoffman, however, still trails in other counties. Hoffman would need to overcome a 3,176 deficit out of the 7,419 absentee ballots returned, a highly unlikely feat. In the letter, Hoffman says the outcome would be decided by the 10,200 absentee ballots distributed. Not all of them, however, were returned.
Joseph Moshe (Microbiologist): “Swine flu vaccine is bio-weapon”
Friday, August 21, 2009
Joseph Moshe, MOSSAD
Today, the MSM are not talking about this case any more. Yesterday, they wanted us to believe that Joseph Moshe was a nutcase and a terrorist, arrested for threatening to bomb the White House. Interesting detail about his arrest (the “Westwood standoff”) was that he seemed to be immune to the 5 cans of tear gas and 5 gallons of law-enforcement grade pepper spray they pumped into his face. He very calmly remained in his car, as the video footage of his arrest shows.
Professor Moshe had called into a live radio show by Dr. A. True Ott, (explanation of Joseph Moshe’s call at 06:00) broadcast on Republic Broadcasting claiming to be a microbiologist who wanted to supply evidence to a States Attorney regarding tainted H1N1 Swine flu vaccines being produced by Baxter BioPharma Solutions. He said that Baxter’s Ukrainian lab was in fact producing a bioweapon disguised as a vaccine. He claimed that the vaccine contained an adjuvant (additive) designed to weaken the immune system, and replicated RNA from the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic Spanish flu, causing global sickness and mass death.
Sources tell us that Bar-Joseph Moshe made no threat against the President or the White House. He did not mention any bomb or attack. He then proceeded to inform the White House he intended to go public with this information. When he noticed men in suits in front of his house and feared that the FBI was about to detain him, he packed some belongings into his car and, him being a dual Israeli citizen, tried to reach the Israeli consulate located in close proximity to the federal building where the standoff took place. The FBI and the bomb squad prevented him from reaching it. Who is this man? His profile on biomed experts.com says he is a plant disease expert with many publications on his name involving the genetic manipulation of virii. Photographic evidence that Moshe is who he says he is can be found here.
White House officials told the New Republic magazine this week that the Obama administration has been embarrassed at least twice by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for revealing in public information and policies that the State Department was supposed to keep private between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the U.S.
According to the sources, Clinton was not supposed to reveal publicly the U.S. demand that Israel institute a total building freeze in Judea and Samaria, fearing that it would lead to a confrontation with Israel – which it did, after U.S. President Barack Obama publicly backed Clinton. The second instance was the famous statement by Clinton in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on October 31, when Clinton said that Netanyahu had undertaken “unprecedented concessions,” a comment that angered the PA leadership. According to the sources, Clinton has been getting bad advice from her advisers.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) pledged on Tuesday morning to defeat healthcare reform legislation if his abortion amendment is taken out, saying 10 to 20 anti-abortion-rights Democrats would vote against a bill with weaker language.
“They’re not going to take it out,” Stupak said on “Fox and Friends,” referring to Senate Democrats. “If they do, healthcare will not move forward.”
Stupak’s amendment prohibits any insurance plan on a potential healthcare exchange from accepting federal subsidies if it covers abortion. Pro-abortion-rights lawmakers say that language is too broad and would drastically reduce access to abortion.
White House senior adviser David Axelrod said over the weekend that he expected Stupak’s language to be “adjusted.”
Stupak disagreed.
“We won fair and square,” Stupak said of the House vote. “[T]hat is why Mr. Axelrod is not a legislator — he doesn’t really know what he is talking about.”
President Obama stated last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will face “the most exacting demands of justice” during his trial on federal terrorism charges. But justice is a two-way street. The trial can only be considered fair if there is a presumption of innocence and the possibility of acquittal. The defense team will use every avenue available to see to it that the Sheikh walks.
In the American legal system, the exacting demands of justice apply most importantly to the government. This was why the previous administration established a rule set appropriate to a global war against violent non-state actors who operated in legal gray areas. The Obama team has denounced the George W. Bush administration’s approach, but previous actions cannot be wiped away, and under current policies, the Sheikh has been granted a bevy of rights that the defense will claim have already been violated.
The defense can argue that the entire process leading up to the trial has been illegal and everything derived from it is the “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The Sheikh was picked up in March 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, by a combined team of Pakistan Military Intelligence and CIA operatives. The legality of his transfer to U.S. custody is murky. He reportedly was not read Miranda rights at that time and was refused a lawyer when he asked for one.
This is critical because in May 2009, the Obama administration instructed the FBI to begin giving Miranda warnings to terrorists captured overseas as part of the “global justice” initiative. It would be difficult for the prosecution to justify how the Sheikh was treated when it contradicts current administration policy.
A mother was found dying in a street with serious head wounds and her right hand cut off as she went to pick up her children after work.
Geeta Aulakh, who has two young sons, died four hours later in hospital from her horrific injuries.
Police later arrested her estranged husband, 31-year-old Harpreet Aulakh, along with five other men.
Separated: Harpreet has now been arrested by police investigating the death of his wife Geeta Aulakh
Mrs Aulakh was on her way home from her job as a receptionist at community radio station Sunrise Radio when she was attacked.
The 28-year-old was ambushed just yards from the home of her sons’ childminder at about 7pm on Monday.
A passer-by found her unconsciousness and bleeding heavily, and called an ambulance to the street in Greenford, West London.
But Mrs Aulakh died in the early hours of yesterday, just as her mother arrived at her bedside at Charring Cross Hospital in West London.
She was separated from her husband, whom she had married against her parents’ wishes, and friends described him as a ‘waste of space’. The couple were believed to be in the middle of divorce proceedings.
Blood stains on the wall close to where the 28-year-old was found
Police are investigating several theories behind the murder, including jealousy, access to the children or bringing dishonour on the family.
A friend said: ‘It’s horrific but hugely symbolic that Geeta’s right hand was cut off.
‘She was a Sikh and all Sikhs wear a metal bangle, the kara, on their right wrist.
‘It is a permanent reminder to live a moral and good life and once it’s on you can’t get it off. So her murderer was both dishonouring her and perhaps tryingto show she had been dishonourable – which is just barbaric.
‘We are all shocked and distraught by her murder as she was such a warm and friendly person, who lived for her sons.’
Mrs Aulakh grew up in Southall, West London, in a middle-class family with two brothers and two sisters.
Police officers search the area for clues close to where Mrs Aulakh’s was attacked on her way home from work
At the family home last night, a large number of relatives had gathered.
One said: ‘This has been a huge shock and we’re all extremely upset.’ Mrs Aulakh had moved out last year with the couple’s two young sons, nine-year-old Karan and Tejdeep, eight.
But friends said jobless Mr Aulakh was devastated when she left and was trying to win his wife back.
Dr Avtar Lit, chairman of Sunrise Radio in Southall, said Mrs Aulakh had married her estranged husband against the
wishes of her family. ‘She was strong willed and didn’t want an arranged marriage,’ Dr Lit added.
‘She fell for this man when she was very young. Her parents didn’t think he was good enough for her, and they said he was ” unproductive”.
‘Her parents felt Geeta could do a lot better, and her father even told her he was not good enough.
Police at the scene in Greenford. Mrs Aulakh died hours later in hospital
‘The couple fled to Sweden when they first got married and came back a year later.
‘Geeta was very hardworking and was the breadwinner and Sunny, as he was known, never seemed to have a job.
‘This created quite a few problems in their marriage and they argued a lot.’
He added that Mr Aulakh was not happy when his wife and children left.
‘I only found out today that he wanted her back,’ added Dr Lit. ‘That was the kind of person Geeta was, she held everything inside.
‘She was lovely girl, intelligent and hardworking, cheerful, happy and always smiling.
‘She was very grounded and displayed the best of East and Western values.’
News producer and friend Seema Sidha said: ‘I was with her on Monday night when we walked home together before I caught the train.
‘She said she was going to pick her children up from the childminder’s. That is the last time I saw her and it was about 6.30pm.
‘That was her normal routine. She would drop her kids off in the morning and pick them up after work.
‘She was a very helpful, very happy person, always smiling. Everyone is devastated,’ the 31-year-old added.
The Metropolitan Police are appealing for witnesses.
Anyone with information should call the incident room on 0208 358 0200 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
It’s mathematically possible that Douglas L. Hoffman could pass Rep. William L. Owens when all absentee ballots in the 23rd Congressional District race are counted, although the Conservative Party candidate’s deficit is likely too large to overcome.
Mr. Owens has garnered 68,963 votes, according to the most recent unofficial results in the 11-county district, and leads Mr. Hoffman by 3,176 votes. There are at least 7,178 absentee ballots districtwide that have been received by elections officials and will be opened Tuesday. That count likely will take at least three days.
For Mr. Hoffman, the math is daunting.
When the ballots were sent out, the race also included Republican Assemblywoman Dierdre K. Scozzafava. After suspending her campaign with three days remaining in the race, Ms. Scozzafava still earned 6,903 votes, or 4.9 percent of the total vote cast on Election Day.
If Ms. Scozzafava takes only that same percentage of the absentee vote, many of which were returned before she withdrew from the race, Mr. Hoffman will need 4,998 votes, or 69.6 percent of the absentee ballots, to Mr. Owens’s 25.5 percent in order to come out on top.
Mr. Hoffman, Lake Placid, received 46.4 percent of the vote on Election Day. Mr. Owens, a Plattsburgh Democrat, received 48.7 percent of the vote.
At the low point of her support during her active campaign, a Siena Research Institute poll released the day Ms. Scozzafava suspended her run suggested she had support from 20 percent of voters. If Ms. Scozzafava takes 20 percent of the absentee vote, Mr. Owens will need just 1,282 votes, or 18 percent, to hold off Mr. Hoffman.
The gap between Mr. Owens and Mr. Hoffman has shrunk by 2,159 since election night, after Oswego and Jefferson elections commissioners discovered human error had led to inaccurate reporting of results.
Mr. Hoffman trailed in Jefferson County on election night by 557 votes. Now he’s up here by 424 votes. The Conservative candidate led in Oswego County by 500 votes on election night. Now he leads by 1,748 votes.
Sean M. Hennessey, Jefferson County Democratic elections commissioner, said poll inspectors in four districts reported Mr. Hoffman had received zero votes after inadvertently reading the wrong line of the poll system’s printout. The commissioner said results in some other districts were either incorrectly relayed by the poll worker or incorrectly typed by the part-time staff answering phones at the county department.
Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back. There’s really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers. Helping the unemployed just by extending unemployment benefits is necessary not sufficient; it leads to persistent unemployment rather than job creation. The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost More Here
We’re playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers,
Planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the mantra, peace on earth
-John Lennon
It’s a chilling moment when the light goes out in someone’s eyes. A once-radiant child hardens from abuse. A woman’s heart shrinks after her husband’s abandonment.
The person looks the same, maybe acts the same. But something is gone, and what’s lost is irretrievable. It’s like when a person dies: in a heartbeat, the soul vanishes.
I witnessed this alteration recently when I visited my goddaughter, a radiant girl. Her mom, a hardcore progressive, has started exposing her to the darkest elements of the left. And the last time I looked in the girl’s eyes, the light had gone out. Disappeared. Just like that.
I see this phenomenon every day: a light dimming. The friendly shopkeeper snaps at me. My cheerful neighbor seems flattened.
And you hear it in the news: people acting strangely, going off the deep end. The most bizarre behavior becoming the new normal.
A thug bites off a finger. Sarah Palin’s church is torched. Bullies intimidate voters.
Last week, an esteemed Columbia University black architecture professor punched a white female coworker in the eye for not doing more about white privilege.
He has no history of violence. So why now?
Why now? This may be the most important question of our time. Why are some people reaching the boiling point? Why do many others look vacant, like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The shootings at military bases, from Little Rock to Fort Hood — why now?
It’s Obama, of course.
Liberals will excoriate me for writing this. They’ll insist that bad behavior is not Obama’s fault. He’s a man of peace.
But study the phenomenon of cults, and the dynamics are always the same. The leader can incite violence without ever getting his hands dirty. Obama is controlling the marionette of the masses.
If Obamamania is a cult, then Obama is the cult leader. Cult leaders routinely pull the strings of their followers. The most extreme example is Charles Manson. He rots in prison for murders he never committed. He didn’t have to do the dirty work. His brainwashed charges did his bidding.
I’m not saying Obama is a Charles Manson. There are varying degrees of manipulation, from using sexy blondes to entice men to buy cars all the way to hypnotizing them to drink poisoned Kool Aid. But there’s a common denominator in all mind control: manipulating people through mind games.
As soon as Obama came on the scene, the programming began. His face was plastered everywhere like Mao. In his speeches, Obama lulled audiences with a melodious voice and feel-good phrases repeated over and over. And he began inciting people with his charming smile.
First, the vultures starting swooping down on Hillary. Obama chose not to call off the dogs.
Then thugs invaded caucuses. Again, silence.
Which led to vicious misogyny against Sarah Palin and threats on her life. From Obama: not a peep.
We even saw armed thugs at polling places. Ignored and not prosecuted by Obama’s Attorney General.
White House officials told the New Republic magazine this week that the Obama administration has been embarrassed at least twice by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for revealing in public information and policies that the State Department was supposed to keep private between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the U.S.
According to the sources, Clinton was not supposed to reveal publicly the U.S. demand that Israel institute a total building freeze in Judea and Samaria, fearing that it would lead to a confrontation with Israel – which it did, after U.S. President Barack Obama publicly backed Clinton. The second instance was the famous statement by Clinton in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on October 31, when Clinton said that Netanyahu had undertaken “unprecedented concessions,” a comment that angered the PA leadership. According to the sources, Clinton has been getting bad advice from her advisers.
Unemployment is foremost on everyone’s mind today. Yet jobs can continue to leave the U.S. because of the threat of new taxes, the convergence of technology, the ease of digital collaboration and ready access to abundant foreign engineering talent.
Multinational corporate executives may have to move R&D, product development, management and manufacturing overseas when there is no longer a comparative advantage to staying in the United States. A shocking thought for sure, but it’s the new reality.
After Japan, the U.S. has the world’s highest corporate tax rate, and there is seemingly no willingness by Washington to bring rates down.
In fact, the Obama administration recently proposed taxing the foreign profits of U.S.-based multinationals even when those profits were not repatriated, but backed away when executives threatened to move offshore. Obama aides acknowledge that the administration has set aside the idea for now, but plans to revisit it in a broader tax overhaul sometime next year.
This ambiguity and the threat of new taxes from Washington, such as cap-and-trade, have already prompted 11 major U.S. companies to move offshore in the past year.
Tyco International, Foster Wheeler, Weatherford International, Nabors Industries, Noble Corp., TransOcean International, United America Indemnity, Cooper Industries, Covidien, Ingersoll-Rand and Accenture have all completed or taken steps to change their domicile of incorporation, with Switzerland and Ireland as the most popular relocation destinations.
Commenting on his company’s decision, an Accenture board member asked, “What shareholder would ever vote to incorporate in a country that taxes your worldwide income?”
But it is not just taxation that is chasing corporations out of America. Another top consideration is access to talent. The U.S. now spends more per capita on public education than any other OECD country, but its students test in the bottom decile.
The U.S. Government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress generates the “Nation’s Report Card” annually. For the last 10 years, less than 25% of American high school seniors achieved a rating of “proficient” in either math or science. In August 2009, the ACT test service announced that only 23% of this year’s high school graduates tested adequately in reading, writing, math and science to succeed in college. This is a national embarrassment.
Everyone understands teacher quality is the key determinant of academic success. However, teachers’ unions don’t allow performance appraisals and merit pay. So, many top-performing teachers get frustrated and opt out, leaving behind the less competent who keep the bar low.
The Senate Armed Services Committee postponed its Monday briefing on the deadly Fort Hood massacre at the request of the White House — despite calls from some lawmakers to press forward with a congressional investigation into the shooting rampage that killed 13 and wounded 29.
The Senate Armed Services Committee postponed its Monday briefing on the deadly Fort Hood massacre at the behest of the White House, despite calls from some lawmakers to press forward with a congressional investigation into the shooting rampage that killed 13 and wounded 29.
An aide to committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., told Fox News that the meeting is delayed “at the request of the administration.” Army Secretary John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff Gen George Casey were to have briefed committee members privately on the shooting.
Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was charged on Thursday with the deadly shooting spree. Army investigators have said Hasan is the only suspect and could face additional charges.
Obama already had ordered a review of all intelligence related to Hasan and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies. Several members of Congress, particularly Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have also called for a full examination of what agencies knew about Hasan’s contacts with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen and others of concern to the U.S.
Hoekstra confirmed this week that government officials knew of about 10 to 20 e-mails between Hasan and Anwar al-Aulaqi, beginning in December 2008.
A joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned late last year of Hasan’s repeated contact with the cleric, who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The FBI said the task force did not refer early information about Hasan to superiors because it concluded he wasn’t linked to terrorism.
Department of Defense spokesman Gary Comerford declined to confirm Monday whether the department is conducting its own investigation, referring Fox News to speak with the department’s head of public affairs.
In a video and Internet address released by the White House on Saturday, President Obama urged Congress to hold off on any investigation of the Fort Hood rampage until federal law enforcement and military authorities have completed their probes into the shootings.
While on an eight-day trip to Asia, Obama called on lawmakers to “resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater.”
“The stakes are far too high,” he said. “There is an ongoing investigation into this terrible tragedy. That investigation will look at the motives of the alleged gunman, including his views and contacts.
“We must compile every piece of information that was known about the gunman, and we must learn what was done with that information. Once we have those facts, we must act upon them,” he added.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking to reporters aboard his plane last week, said all those privy to details on the ongoing investigation into the shooting “should just shut up.”
But Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he will proceed with his committee’s investigation into the shooting, saying Obama did not indicate on Saturday that it should push back Thursday’s scheduled testimony.
“We saw nothing in the president’s transcript from Saturday that asked Congress to hold back,” an aide speaking on condition of anonymity told Fox News.
“We very much agree with President Obama’s sentiments that the full story behind the murderous act at Fort Hood must be told,” Lieberman along with Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee, said in a joint statement over the weekend. “Our goal, and the purpose of this inquiry, is to make as certain as possible that no such attack ever occurs again on an American military base. We will focus on national and homeland security and will not compromise the criminal case being conducted by law enforcement.”
There’s one problem, though: There is no 9th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight Congressional Districts.
There’s no 86th Congressional District in Arizona either, but the government’s recovery.gov Web site says $34 million in stimulus moneyhas been spent there.
In fact, Recovery.gov lists hundreds of millions spent and hundreds of jobs created in Congressional districts that don’t exist.
In Oklahoma, for example, the site lists more than $19 million in spending — and 15 jobs created — on Congressional districts that don’t exist. In Iowa, it shows $10.6 million spent – and 39 jobs created — in non-existent districts.
In Connecticut’s 42nd District (which also does not exist), the website claims 25 jobs created with zero stimulus dollars.
A DEADLY plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbours into a state of panic.
A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.
President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation and a team of nine specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv to identify the virus. Samples have been sent to London for analysis.
President Yushchenko said: “People are dying. The epidemic is killing doctors. This is absolutely inconceivable in the 21st Century.”
In a TV interview, the President added: “Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine – two seasonal flus and the Californian flu
“Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an even more aggressive new virus as a result of mutation.”
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been touring hospitals where victims are being treated and presidential elections in January could be cancelled .
Four men and one woman have died from the flu in Lviv, said emergency hospital chief doctor Myron Borysevych. Two of the dead patients were in the 22-35 age group, with two others over 60. He diagnosed the disease as viral pneumonia.
“We have sent the analyses to Kiev. We don’t believe it’s H1N1 swine flu. Neither do we know what kind of pneumonia it is.”
This is a bill in the U.S. Congress originating in the House of Representatives (“H.R.”). A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate and then be signed by the President before it becomes law.
Bill numbers restart from 1 every two years. Each two-year cycle is called a session of Congress. This bill was created in the 111th Congress, in 2009-2010.
The titles of bills are written by the bill’s sponsor and are a part of the legislation itself.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
May 21, 2009
H.R. 2596 – No Child Left Unimmunized Against Influenza
To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to carry out a demonstration program to test the feasibility of using the Nation’s elementary and secondary schools as influenza vaccination centers.
Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas (for himself and Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Education and Labor, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
The Congress finds as follows:
(1) The influenza is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. The best way to prevent the influenza is by getting a influenza vaccination each year.
(2) Every year in the United States, on average, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from influenza-related complications, and about 36,000 people die from influenza-related causes.
(3) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends routine influenza vaccination for all children aged 6 months through 18 years with influenza vaccine, effective July 1, 2008.
(4) Children 2 to 17 years of age are twice as likely to get influenza as adults, including the elderly.
(5) School-aged children are the population group most responsible for transmission of contagious respiratory viruses, including influenza.
(6) The elderly and young children are the most vulnerable population to severe illness from influenza due to weaker immune response to vaccination. Experts have recognized that the best way to protect the elderly from influenza may be to vaccinate children.
(7) School-based vaccination programs are effective and cost-saving ways to vaccinate children while reducing transmission and infection rates to the larger community and at the same time reducing rates of school absenteeism due to influenza.
(8) Increased focus on providing influenza vaccine to children targeted for immunization will also help efforts to build a sound foundation for future vaccination efforts.
(9) School-based vaccination programs also potentially represent the most feasible mechanism for community-based pandemic vaccination.
(10) Increased participation in annual influenza vaccination programs builds the infrastructure necessary for pandemic vaccination.
(11) School-based programs will investigate the feasibility of conducting mass immunization clinics and build partnerships with local public health teams, in the event of a public health emergency.
An old friend — an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire, and in general a supporter of President Obama — sends me the following note, relating to photographs of President Obama bowing to Emperor Akihito of Japan.
“This picture shows two things,” my friend writes.
“1) The ‘right’ is wrong about Obama’s bow.
“2) The ‘left’ is wrong about Obama’s bow.
“His bow is neither (1) unprecedented nor (2) a sign of cultural understanding.
“At their 1971 meeting in Alaska, the first visit of a Japanese Emperor to America, President Nixon bowed and referred to Emperor Hirohito and his wife repeatedly as ‘Your Imperial Majesties.’”
“Yet, (and?) Nixon gets the bow right. Slight arch from the waist hands at his side.
“Obama’s handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate it recalls Bush’s back-rub of Merkel.
“Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs.
“The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.
“BTW, Obama’s bow at Suntory Hall was much better. Correct angle, slight bow. His hands were wrong but the physical tone was correct and appropriate.
“But if Obama can get the dollar to stop bowing to the Yen I take it all back.”
Did President-elect Barack Hussein Obama commit a federal crime in September of this year? Or did he never actually register and, instead, did friends of his in the Chicago federal records center, which maintains the official copy of his alleged Selective Service registration commit the crime for him?
It’s either one or the other, as indicated by the release of Barack Obama’s official Selective Service registration for the draft. A friend of mine, who is a retired federal agent, spent almost a year trying to obtain this document through a Freedom of Information Act request, and, after much stonewalling, finally received it and released it to me.
But the release of Obama’s draft registration and an accompanying document, posted below, raises more questions than it answers. And it shows many signs of fraud, not to mention putting the lie to Obama’s claim that he registered for the draft in June 1979, before it was required by law.
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Pete Yost, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – In courtrooms barred to the public, dozens of terror suspects are pleading for their freedom from the Guantanamo Bay prison, sometimes even testifying on their own behalf by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
Complying with a Supreme Court ruling last year, 15 federal judges in the U.S. courthouse here are giving detainees their day in court after years behind bars half a world away from their homelands.
The judges have found the government’s evidence against 30 detainees wanting and ordered their release. That number could rise significantly because the judges are on track to hear challenges from dozens more prisoners.
Scooped up along with hard-core terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, these 30 detainees stand in stark contrast to the 10 prisoners whom the Obama administration targeted for prosecution Friday for plotting the Sept. 11 and other terrorist attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission.
More detainees are expected to soon be added to the prosecution list. But there will still be plenty of cases left among the 215 detainees now at Guantanamo to keep the judges here busy as they work to clear a legal morass the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“Anyone wishing to participate in the heady gold rally should therefore consider the following- it isn’t the price of gold that is worth watching, but rather the value.”
By Chan Akya
11/15/2009
I don’t think the question really is what is gold worth but what are currencies not worth. – Shayne McGuire, director of Global Research at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, October 2009.
My title’s awful pun on a recent Hollywood movie (No country for old men, directed by the Coen Brothers in 2007) represents not so much an environment associated with the lack of places for Austrian economists to hide; indeed it is meant to suggest the opposite result, namely that all users of fiat money will eventually lose faith and turn to the one commodity that cannot be mal-adjusted by central banks, namely gold.
Just over two years ago, when gold was still trading at US$600 or so an ounce, I wrote an article titled In gold we trust (Asia Times Online, September 8, 2007), the title of that article being a wordplay on the motto on all US dollar currency notes (“In God We Trust”). As the precious metal has now gone to new stratospheric levels since then, reaching a high of over $1,118 this week, the question is raised – what is the future?
At the basic level, and before delving into the outlook for financial instruments and their opposite (namely gold), it must be stated quite clearly that this article isn’t about providing investment advice. Rather, it is meant to highlight certain arguments in favor of, as well as against, the notion of using gold as a replacement for everyday financial instruments.
The most common financial instrument of all is the US dollar (see The dead dollar sketch, March 4, 2008). The problem is that the US dollar does not carry the purchasing power associated with currency when that dollar was first granted to you.
In other words, if you were to rifle through grandpa’s old trench coat pockets and find a US dollar note from the 1950s, one can be sure of only one thing – what the US dollar would have purchased in the 1950s would be far in excess of what it could purchase today, pretty much anywhere in the world.
On the other hand, while the price of gold has moved around a fair bit over the intervening period, it is unlikely that you will find many countries in which an ounce of gold today purchases markedly fewer items than it did in the 1950s. At the very least, it would reflect the same purchasing power of an equalized basket of goods (example – an average household’s monthly expenses on food and clothing) as it did back then. In effect, it is a true store of purchasing power.
This is an important distinction to make between any notion of price changes as we look ahead: the point about gold is not whether its price will go up or down; but that the value at the end of the cycle would likely be equal to the same purchasing power as it has today. Likely, not positively.
What do central bankers want?
If the notion of defining what gold is proves difficult, then perhaps a negative feedback loop addressing what other alleged stores of value (that is, fiat currencies) are not would prove useful.
The one thing that fiat currencies are not is a hedge against inflation. The person who is most likely the world’s most cerebral central banker, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, made a remarkable speech on November 11 wherein he stated the bank’s intention to adopt an easy monetary policy over the near term.
As a famously inflation-targeting central banker of the school of Paul Volcker, the former US Fed chairman, these comments were clearly in need of explanation, which King provided:
U.S. health authorities have made pregnant women one of the highest priority groups for getting the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, but is it actually safe for pregnant women and their babies? Well, the truth is that miscarriage reports from pregnant women who have taken the H1N1 swine flu vaccine are starting to pour in from all over the nation. Vaccines and pregnancy simply do not mix safely. In fact, the package inserts for the swine flu vaccines actually say that the safety of these vaccines for pregnant women has not been established.
What you are about to read below should shock and anger you. If they are telling us that the swine flu vaccine is not safe for children under 6 months of age, then why in the world would it be safe for pregnant women and their babies? That doesn’t make an ounce of sense, does it?
I am so upset. I was so excited to be pregnant after trying for a year. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I joined this birth club and I was due June 25th. We have two healthy boys with no history of miscarriage. Everything was going great. Last Monday, I got the H1N1 vaccine thimerosal reduced (mercury reduced for pregnant women). On Tuesday morning, I started cramping and on Wednesday I started bleeding heavily. My hcg was 50 on Wednesday and I was almost 6 weeks along so it was low. They still thought that I might be pregnant but on Friday my hcg was down to 22. I am an emotional wreck. I feel like I had a healthy baby and I caused this by getting the H1N1 vaccine. My doctors pushed it. I researched online and there have been many miscarriages after the H1N1 vaccine but they haven’t been reported since it is hard to say what caused the miscarriages. I hope that I did not cause this. I wish everyone the best.
Tayla08
I don’t have an answer for you, but a friend of a friend just had a miscarriage 2-3 days after getting the shot. She was 7weeks. She had no previous history of m/c… No one can answer if they’re related…it hasn’t been out long enough and there haven’t been any studies done on pregnant women. I will tell you, that it has made up my mind on getting it…I won’t and I’m not going to get it for my DD either. My daughter and I both had H1N1 last week, and although it truly sucks…I think I’ll take my chances. One doctor will tell you to get it and the next will tell you not too…you have to do what’s in your heart.
90707
my heart goes out to you as i recently miscarried as well and was due in june. i had a healthy heart beat at 6wks. then at 7.5 wks my son got the h1n1 mist vaccine which has live vaccine in it. the nurse said to be careful b/c it could technically spread if he rubbed his nose and touched a surface etc. the next night i miscarried and 5 days later was diagnosed with h1n1.
WebNote from Linda: Well that’s it. Now there is never any reason to watch CNN again. After Pat Buchanan left CNN, Lou Dobbs was the only patriot left standing to have a full time news anchor position – on any network.
Nightly he exposed corruption in state and federal government. Dobbs stood strong against the New World Order, Global Government, NAFTA, the WTO, CAFTA, the North American Union and all anti-sovereignty trade pacts.
Lou was always on the front lines in the battle against Illegal Immigration, Government Surveillance of the American people, Imminent Domain laws forcing property owners out of their family residences, Banker and Big Business Bailouts, massive Tax Swindles on the Middle Class, gun-grabbing Second Amendment legislation and the list goes on and on. We can only hope that he will continue with his exposés and focus heavily on the corporate/government official propaganda agent – the Main Stream Media. God speed to Lou and his continuing efforts to bring some sanity back to American government.
Why would OBOTS hate Lou Dobbs? Maybe because he discussed this:
Mar. 30, 2007
Lou Dobbs: Income Disparity Widens to Levels Not Seen Since Great Depression
“The rich are reaping financial benefits in this economy that are disproportionate to what is happening to our middle class, who are being pressured to work for lower wages.
New data shows that the top 1 percent of Americans are now 400 times richer than average Americans. Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said: “We have not seen these kinds of gaps since before the Great Depression. We have now had two years in a row in which we had huge income gains at the top, and people in the middle and below did not share.”
Watchdog groups say big corporate chains like Wal-Mart and Circuit City make an effort to squeeze out older, long-term workers, who cost the company more in wages and health care. All of this is especially outrageous at a time when the CEOs of Wal-Mart and Circuit City are compensated in millions of dollars….” SOURCE
Dozens of Gitmo detainees finally get day in court
by Pete Yost, 11/15/09
WASHINGTON – In courtrooms barred to the public, dozens of terror suspects are pleading for their freedom from the Guantanamo Bay prison, sometimes even testifying on their own behalf by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
Complying with a Supreme Court ruling last year, 15 federal judges in the U.S. courthouse here are giving detainees their day in court after years behind bars half a world away from their homelands.
The judges have found the government’s evidence against 30 detainees wanting and ordered their release. That number could rise significantly because the judges are on track to hear challenges from dozens more prisoners.
Scooped up along with hard-core terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, these 30 detainees stand in stark contrast to the 10 prisoners whom the Obama administration targeted for prosecution Friday for plotting the Sept. 11 and other terrorist attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission.
More detainees are expected to soon be added to the prosecution list. But there will still be plenty of cases left among the 215 detainees now at Guantanamo to keep the judges here busy as they work to clear a legal morass the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once promised Guantanamo held “the worst of the worst.” The judges here have rejected pleas for release from eight detainees, but they have concluded the government doesn’t even have enough evidence to keep 30 other detainees behind bars.
“There is absolutely no reason for this court to presume that the facts contained in the government’s exhibits are accurate,” District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote in ordering the release of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed. He was repatriated to Yemen after a seven-year stay at Guantanamo, where he was brought as a teenager.
“Much of the factual material contained in those exhibits is hotly contested for a host of different reasons ranging from the fact that it contains second- and third-hand hearsay to allegations that it was obtained by torture to the fact that no statement purports to be a verbatim account of what was said,” Kessler said. She ruled the government failed to prove the detainee was part of or substantially supported Taliban or al-Qaida forces.
The evidentiary record “is surprisingly bare,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in ordering the release of Fouad Mahmoud Al Rabiah, a 50-year-old father of four from Kuwait who had been an aviation engineer for Kuwaiti Airways for 20 years. He has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since 2002.
Rabiah is one of dozens of men who won their cases in court or who have been cleared for transfer by the Obama administration who are still among the 215 detainees at Guantanamo. Finding countries willing to take the detainees has proved difficult. Since Obama took office, only 25 detainees have actually left.
Separated: Harpreet has now been arrested by police investigating the death of his wife Geeta Aulakh
Blood stains on the wall close to where the 28-year-old was found
Police officers search the area for clues close to where Mrs Aulakh’s was attacked on her way home from work
Police at the scene in Greenford. Mrs Aulakh died hours later in hospital
$68.3 million spent and 72.2 million spent in the 1st Congressional District of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
