For some, Apple’s brand is already losing its luster. George F. Colony, Chairman and CEO of Forrester Research, says Apple is a "charismatic organization" but lost that edge when the co-founder Steve Jobs died. Without Jobs, he believes the company’s momentum will only last for another 24 to 48 months. Russell Saint Cyr, a Montreal-based IT consultant, recently swapped his iPhone for a Samsung Nexus S. He says it allows him to back up his music without connecting his phone to his PC, it’s cheaper and has a bigger screen. That, and he didn’t want to follow the herd. Among techies, Saint Cyr says, the iPhone is already uncool: "It’s marketed towards simple folk who like shiny objects and dislike complexity, like Mac users who can’t handle two buttons on a mouse." Source
From the Wall Street Journal...The White House distanced itself Thursday from comments made in 2010 by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency's Dallas regional office, but didn't indicate the Obama appointee would be fired. In a video released this week, Al Armendariz, chief of the EPA office that oversees Texas, Oklahoma and three other states, compared his "philosophy of enforcement" to Roman conquerors who would "find the first five guys they saw and they'd crucify them. And that town was really easy to manage for the next few years."
Just as U.S. tax dollars have gone to subsidize electric cars made in Finland by Fisker Automotive, state-of-the-art technology developed by Ener1, which was also supposed to rejuvenate the American auto industry, is now owned outright by Boris Zingarevich, a Russian businessman with ties to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Story
Symptoms of the illness called Liberalism?...far lower levels of happiness by those on the left, much lower fertility by those without spiritual values, and outright national decline among nations that swallow leftism. Leftism is rebellion. It is by definition a counterpoint, defined by what it is against rather than being something itself. If it actually wins, it brings its own destruction.
Headline of the day..."Protestors Who Attended Second-Rate College Would Like People Who Only Finished Second-Rate High School To Pay Their Loans"
Runnerup headline of the day..."Has America been Crippled by Intellectual Idiots?"
Third best headline of the day..."Is Slow Growth Actually Good for the Economy?"
Yahoo had a poll of whether Michelle Obama would make a good president. 70% said no, she doesn't have what it takes.
A black man in suburban Chicago told police he jumped a white man last week because he was upset about the Trayvon Martin case, police said. Hayes was charged with committing a hate crime Wednesday, as well as attempted robbery and aggravated battery. Story
Woman kills man by squeezing his testicles over parking dispute
When the Spanish online voting company SCYTL bought the largest vote processing corporation in the United States, it also acquired the means of manufacturing the outcome of the 2012 election. For SOE, the Tampa based corporation purchased by SCYTL in January, supplies the election software which records, counts, and reports the votes of Americans in 26 states–900 total jurisdictions–across the nation. Story
Did you know?...It took from 1776 to 1982 to rack up the first trillion dollars in debt. Today we're looking at over $15 trillion in debt.
Bumper sticker..."Promise you'll vote in November. Don't renege"
Congressman Allen West (R-FLA)..."The American people … want a constitutional republic, not a socialist, egalitarian welfare nanny state ... The American people want an economic future so bright that they will have to wear sunglasses."
Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign director, said in 2000..."The Democratic Party is the party of blacks, women and gays."
Unemployment rate in Spain is at 24.4 percent, the highest rate in the EU.
Tropical diseases invading Texas...Houston scientists have launched an attack against little-known tropical diseases, scourges of the developing world, increasingly showing up in poor areas of Texas. Story
Chaperones for Secret Service agents? We need chaperones for all our congressmen and senators!
George W. Bush on a bike ride with wounded warriors. Fuck you, Leftists.
Tim McCarver said one of the stupidest things ever spoken on a television broadcast today, blaming global warming for "making the air thin" and thus leading to a rise in home runs. Story
The federal government has been investigating Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona's Maricopa County for three and a half years and still haven't charged him with anything. Sounds like a Keystone Kop witchhunt to me. Hang in there, Joe.
The EPA is supposed to protect the environment, not crucify industries that which it dislikes. But as the sensational video that recently surfaced shows, all too often the agency does the latter. Story
Attorney Pidgeon claims he found a record for a name change from "Barak Mounir Ubayd" to "Barack Hussein Obama" on October 14th, 1982 in Skookumchuck, British Columbia. Source
A $231 million public employee pension fund has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The assets on hand cannot pay the $931 million in claims the fund faces, and the trustees plan to "restructure" their obligations under bankruptcy law. In other words, they will be cutting the benefits they pay to a level the fund can afford. Story
Last year, a record 120 Americans were killed in Mexico, compared with just 35 in 2007. Most happened in areas bordering the U.S. But for the first time, a significant number of murders occurred in previously peaceful areas like Jalisco state, where 14 Americans were killed, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. State Department data.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Cocaine One
Ever since he swept to power on a Left-wing, "anti-imperialist" ticket, it has been one of the bitterest points of contention between Hugo Chavez and his Norteamericano foes.
Claims that Venezuela has deliberately turned a blind eye to the trafficking of vast quantities of US-bound cocaine have been furiously denied by the country's president, who insists it is just another Washington plot to discredit him.
Now, though, backing for the US version of events has come from an unlikely, if arguably well-informed source - an alleged Venezuelan drug lord who claims that dozens of "top level" figures in the Chavez government, including ministers, generals and judges, were on his payroll.
Walid "The Turk" Makled, a portly Venezuelan of Syrian descent described as "the king of kingpins" by US officials, went on trial in Venezuelan earlier this month, where he faces indictment over a $1.4 billion (£1 billion) drug empire that he claims was built with help from Chavez officials.
A part-owner in a Venezuelan airline, "Aeropostal", Mr Makled, 48, is said to have pioneered the use of passenger airliners to export cocaine out of Latin America, a bigger, faster shipping method than the small private jets and boats traditionally used by smugglers.
One of his planes, a DC-9 nicknamed "Cocaine One" by drug enforcement officials, had nearly six tonnes of the drug on board when it was searched by police in Mexico; the drug was stashed in 120 suitcases scattered across the 90 passenger seats, according to a separate indictment brought in New York.
More here
Claims that Venezuela has deliberately turned a blind eye to the trafficking of vast quantities of US-bound cocaine have been furiously denied by the country's president, who insists it is just another Washington plot to discredit him.
Now, though, backing for the US version of events has come from an unlikely, if arguably well-informed source - an alleged Venezuelan drug lord who claims that dozens of "top level" figures in the Chavez government, including ministers, generals and judges, were on his payroll.
Walid "The Turk" Makled, a portly Venezuelan of Syrian descent described as "the king of kingpins" by US officials, went on trial in Venezuelan earlier this month, where he faces indictment over a $1.4 billion (£1 billion) drug empire that he claims was built with help from Chavez officials.
A part-owner in a Venezuelan airline, "Aeropostal", Mr Makled, 48, is said to have pioneered the use of passenger airliners to export cocaine out of Latin America, a bigger, faster shipping method than the small private jets and boats traditionally used by smugglers.
One of his planes, a DC-9 nicknamed "Cocaine One" by drug enforcement officials, had nearly six tonnes of the drug on board when it was searched by police in Mexico; the drug was stashed in 120 suitcases scattered across the 90 passenger seats, according to a separate indictment brought in New York.
More here
Green Scots
The residents of Foula, Scotland’s most remote inhabited island which achieved a remarkable first by becoming 100 per cent self-sufficient with renewable energy, are now forced to endure black-outs.
An all-night black-out has had to be brought into force for the 22 homes on the isolated Shetland community, because of teething problems in the island’s £1.5 million hydro and solar power schemes.
Foula’s three wind turbines have been out of action since Christmas, when 100mph winds damaged the blades of one of the turbines.
Now islanders are back to relying on costly diesel generator until the faults can be rectified.
Two years ago the islanders, who live 20 miles from the Shetland mainland, were awarded £200,000 in funding from the Big Lottery Fund towards their combination of wind, solar and hydro power, enabling Foula to become the first Shetland community to become self-sufficient in energy. The final phase was completed last October.
But it has been revealed a series of problems with the pioneering green energy scheme has left the islanders having to rely on back-up diesel generators to power their homes.
And, because of crippling fuel costs, they are operating a blackout from 12:30am to 7am.
Frank Robertson, the councillor for Shetland West and a member of the Foula Electricity Trust, insisted yesterday the breakdown was a "teething problem" and round-the-clock power could be restored to the island by the end of next week.
More here
An all-night black-out has had to be brought into force for the 22 homes on the isolated Shetland community, because of teething problems in the island’s £1.5 million hydro and solar power schemes.
Foula’s three wind turbines have been out of action since Christmas, when 100mph winds damaged the blades of one of the turbines.
Now islanders are back to relying on costly diesel generator until the faults can be rectified.
Two years ago the islanders, who live 20 miles from the Shetland mainland, were awarded £200,000 in funding from the Big Lottery Fund towards their combination of wind, solar and hydro power, enabling Foula to become the first Shetland community to become self-sufficient in energy. The final phase was completed last October.
But it has been revealed a series of problems with the pioneering green energy scheme has left the islanders having to rely on back-up diesel generators to power their homes.
And, because of crippling fuel costs, they are operating a blackout from 12:30am to 7am.
Frank Robertson, the councillor for Shetland West and a member of the Foula Electricity Trust, insisted yesterday the breakdown was a "teething problem" and round-the-clock power could be restored to the island by the end of next week.
More here
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Hunting partner
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has found himself a new enthusiastic hunting partner in fellow Justice Elena Kagan. We know what you're thinking: "Wait a second, isn't Kagan that new judge Obama appointed?" Yep, that's the one. We're just as surprised (and delighted) as you are.
We have to give some kudos to Scalia, but it looks as though we have Sen. James Risch of Idaho to ultimately thank for this fortunate turn of events. Back in 2010 when Obama nominated Kagan for the Supreme Court position, Risch asked Kagan about her views on gun rights. She admitted that she'd never fired a gun before, but made a promise to go hunting with Scalia if she were confirmed.
Kagan kept her promise and went on a hunting trip with her philosophical opposite. The pair took a quick trip to a Virginia shooting range, followed by a hunting trip in the Washington area. When asked about the experience, Kagan replied, "It turns out, it's really good fun." The pair are planning on hunting again in Montana this October.
We can't be certain if Justice Scalia was motivated by political reasons or simply by a desire to find a new hunting pal, but we're not complaining. Another Supreme Court justice discovering her newfound love of guns is music to our ears. It's all a bit ironic considering that Kagan came off as a unsympathetic to gun rights a few years ago. As it turns out, all it took to get her to change her mind about guns was to actually pick one up.
Source
We have to give some kudos to Scalia, but it looks as though we have Sen. James Risch of Idaho to ultimately thank for this fortunate turn of events. Back in 2010 when Obama nominated Kagan for the Supreme Court position, Risch asked Kagan about her views on gun rights. She admitted that she'd never fired a gun before, but made a promise to go hunting with Scalia if she were confirmed.
Kagan kept her promise and went on a hunting trip with her philosophical opposite. The pair took a quick trip to a Virginia shooting range, followed by a hunting trip in the Washington area. When asked about the experience, Kagan replied, "It turns out, it's really good fun." The pair are planning on hunting again in Montana this October.
We can't be certain if Justice Scalia was motivated by political reasons or simply by a desire to find a new hunting pal, but we're not complaining. Another Supreme Court justice discovering her newfound love of guns is music to our ears. It's all a bit ironic considering that Kagan came off as a unsympathetic to gun rights a few years ago. As it turns out, all it took to get her to change her mind about guns was to actually pick one up.
Source
Rendezvous with reality
After trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says "our rendezvous with reality has arrived." Actually, Illinois is still reality-averse, so Americans may soon learn the importance of the freedom to fail in a system of competitive federalism.
Illinois was more heavily taxed than the five contiguous states (Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin) even before January 2011, when Quinn got a lame-duck legislature (its successor has fewer Democrats) to raise corporate taxes 30 percent (from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent), giving Illinois one of the highest state corporate taxes and the fourth-highest combination of national and local corporate taxation in the industrialized world. Since 2009, Quinn has spent more than $500 million in corporate welfare to bribe companies not to flee the tax environment he has created.
Quinn raised personal income taxes 67 percent (from 3 percent to 5 percent), adding about $1,040 to the tax burden of a family of four earning $60,000. Illinois’ unemployment rate increased faster than any other state’s in 2011. Its pension system is the nation's most underfunded, and the state has floated bond issues to finance pension contributions — borrowing money that someday must be repaid, to replace what should have been pension money that it spent on immediate gratifications.
Quinn’s recent flirtation with realism — a plan to raise the retirement age to 67 and cap pension cost-of-living adjustments — is less significant than the continuing unrealistic expectation that some of Illinois’ pension investments will grow 8.5 percent annually. Although the state Constitution mandates balancing the budget, this is almost meaningless while the state sells bonds to pay for operating expenses (in just 10 years the state’s bonded debt has increased from $9.4 billion to $30 billion), underfunds pensions and other liabilities, and makes vendors wait (they are owed $5.6 billion).
More here
Illinois was more heavily taxed than the five contiguous states (Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin) even before January 2011, when Quinn got a lame-duck legislature (its successor has fewer Democrats) to raise corporate taxes 30 percent (from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent), giving Illinois one of the highest state corporate taxes and the fourth-highest combination of national and local corporate taxation in the industrialized world. Since 2009, Quinn has spent more than $500 million in corporate welfare to bribe companies not to flee the tax environment he has created.
Quinn raised personal income taxes 67 percent (from 3 percent to 5 percent), adding about $1,040 to the tax burden of a family of four earning $60,000. Illinois’ unemployment rate increased faster than any other state’s in 2011. Its pension system is the nation's most underfunded, and the state has floated bond issues to finance pension contributions — borrowing money that someday must be repaid, to replace what should have been pension money that it spent on immediate gratifications.
Quinn’s recent flirtation with realism — a plan to raise the retirement age to 67 and cap pension cost-of-living adjustments — is less significant than the continuing unrealistic expectation that some of Illinois’ pension investments will grow 8.5 percent annually. Although the state Constitution mandates balancing the budget, this is almost meaningless while the state sells bonds to pay for operating expenses (in just 10 years the state’s bonded debt has increased from $9.4 billion to $30 billion), underfunds pensions and other liabilities, and makes vendors wait (they are owed $5.6 billion).
More here
Where's the profits?
Contrary to the Obama administration's claims, the bailouts of the financial and auto industries have not turned a profit for the U.S. government and may never turn a profit, according to a grim new assessment by the bailout's watchdog.
Even by non-financial standards the bailout has been less than a roaring success and may be helping to lay the groundwork for future financial disasters and bailouts, writes Christy Romero, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in her latest quarterly report to Congress, released Wednesday morning.
"It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit," she writes right at the top of her 327-page report. "The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost)."
That directly contradicts the Treasury Department's repeated claims that the government will eventually at least break even on the bailout. So far, the government has gotten back about $300 billion of the $414 billion it has paid out to banks, but some banks paying back TARP have simply used other government money to do so, as The Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal have reported.
More here
Even by non-financial standards the bailout has been less than a roaring success and may be helping to lay the groundwork for future financial disasters and bailouts, writes Christy Romero, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in her latest quarterly report to Congress, released Wednesday morning.
"It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit," she writes right at the top of her 327-page report. "The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost)."
That directly contradicts the Treasury Department's repeated claims that the government will eventually at least break even on the bailout. So far, the government has gotten back about $300 billion of the $414 billion it has paid out to banks, but some banks paying back TARP have simply used other government money to do so, as The Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal have reported.
More here
All cultures equal?
Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death.
The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.
It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.
Egypt's National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that 'marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country's human development'.
Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.
Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under 'alleged religious interpretations'.
The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.
He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.
More here
The blogger Ann Barnhardt says..."A culture of people who are so far gone that they literally see nothing wrong with copulating with dead bodies is a culture that is capable of any evil imaginable, and cannot be stopped with any appeal to decency, morality, or shame. What we are seeing in the Muslim world is the final descent of a human society into hell itself, and they will attempt to take as many others with them as they possibly can."
The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament.
It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.
Egypt's National Council for Women is campaigning against the changes, saying that 'marginalising and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country's human development'.
Dr Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, wrote to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker Dr Saad al-Katatni addressing her concerns.
Egyptian journalist Amro Abdul Samea reported in the al-Ahram newspaper that Talawi complained about the legislations which are being introduced under 'alleged religious interpretations'.
The subject of a husband having sex with his dead wife arose in May 2011 when Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari said marriage remains valid even after death.
He also said that women have the right to have sex with her dead husband, alarabiya.net reported.
More here
The blogger Ann Barnhardt says..."A culture of people who are so far gone that they literally see nothing wrong with copulating with dead bodies is a culture that is capable of any evil imaginable, and cannot be stopped with any appeal to decency, morality, or shame. What we are seeing in the Muslim world is the final descent of a human society into hell itself, and they will attempt to take as many others with them as they possibly can."
Friday, April 27, 2012
War on Terror is over?
Obama has declared that the War on Terror is over. If that is true then we should dissolve the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Agency, right? And how do we know the terrorists have ended their war on us?
According to Olivier De Schutter... "We can overcome the problems of delivering collective action on climate change by treating mining, deforestation, ocean degradation and more as violations of human rights" Source
Headline of the day...Florida man mistakes girlfriend for hog, shoots her
New Zealand is considering raising cigarette prices to about $100 per pack by 2020. Damn, that would sure make me want to quit.
The Wall Street Journal says...Standards & Poor's put India's sovereign rating on negative watch Wednesday. But foreign investors are already voting with their feet. Foreign institutional investment into the Indian markets is drying up: FII equity inflows so far in April total just $171.8 million, down from more than $5 billion in February.
Italy's workers saw a drop of 2.1% in inflation-adjusted income during the month of March. It was the greatest drop in 17 years.
"It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t want to know who’s here illegally," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. remarked during Supreme Court proceedings on Tuesday.
Justice Scalia asked Obama's solicitor general at the Supreme Court hearing, "What does sovereignty mean if it doesn't include the ability to defend your borders?"
Sheila Jackson Lee, A woman of a certain rage. She provides a lot of comic relief in the Houston area.
Time-lapse video (2 minutes) of new World Trade Center being built.
Car bomb in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
Marine criticizes Obama, gets Other than Honorable Discharge
"We know who the active [climate-change] denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices…. They broke the climate." Story
The Department of Education and the Department of Justice say that 1,183,700 violent crimes were committed at American public schools during the 2009-2010 school year, but that only 303,900 of these violent crimes were reported to the police. By this government estimate, 879,800 violent crimes committed at U.S. public schools in the 2009-2010 school year were not reported to police. Story
In what some are calling an epidemic of unreported sex crimes, an estimated 600,000 rapes occur every year in South Africa. Story
Things I didn't know...The Uganda proposal for a Jewish homeland in 1903.
More than 1 million Americans who have taken out mortgages in the past two years now owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, and Federal Housing Administration loans that require only a tiny down payment are partly to blame. Story
For more than a year, European Union officials have called for austerity, austerity and more austerity as a means to solve Europe's debt crisis. Now people who don't want to pay the price are taking their fight from the streets to the ballot box. Governments have fallen, more are at risk, and in some places, a stark streak of nationalism is on the rise that could swing Europe ever deeper into a fortress mentality. Story
According to Olivier De Schutter... "We can overcome the problems of delivering collective action on climate change by treating mining, deforestation, ocean degradation and more as violations of human rights" Source
Headline of the day...Florida man mistakes girlfriend for hog, shoots her
New Zealand is considering raising cigarette prices to about $100 per pack by 2020. Damn, that would sure make me want to quit.
The Wall Street Journal says...Standards & Poor's put India's sovereign rating on negative watch Wednesday. But foreign investors are already voting with their feet. Foreign institutional investment into the Indian markets is drying up: FII equity inflows so far in April total just $171.8 million, down from more than $5 billion in February.
Italy's workers saw a drop of 2.1% in inflation-adjusted income during the month of March. It was the greatest drop in 17 years.
"It seems to me the federal government just doesn’t want to know who’s here illegally," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. remarked during Supreme Court proceedings on Tuesday.
Justice Scalia asked Obama's solicitor general at the Supreme Court hearing, "What does sovereignty mean if it doesn't include the ability to defend your borders?"
Sheila Jackson Lee, A woman of a certain rage. She provides a lot of comic relief in the Houston area.
Time-lapse video (2 minutes) of new World Trade Center being built.
Car bomb in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
Marine criticizes Obama, gets Other than Honorable Discharge
"We know who the active [climate-change] denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices…. They broke the climate." Story
The Department of Education and the Department of Justice say that 1,183,700 violent crimes were committed at American public schools during the 2009-2010 school year, but that only 303,900 of these violent crimes were reported to the police. By this government estimate, 879,800 violent crimes committed at U.S. public schools in the 2009-2010 school year were not reported to police. Story
In what some are calling an epidemic of unreported sex crimes, an estimated 600,000 rapes occur every year in South Africa. Story
Things I didn't know...The Uganda proposal for a Jewish homeland in 1903.
More than 1 million Americans who have taken out mortgages in the past two years now owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, and Federal Housing Administration loans that require only a tiny down payment are partly to blame. Story
For more than a year, European Union officials have called for austerity, austerity and more austerity as a means to solve Europe's debt crisis. Now people who don't want to pay the price are taking their fight from the streets to the ballot box. Governments have fallen, more are at risk, and in some places, a stark streak of nationalism is on the rise that could swing Europe ever deeper into a fortress mentality. Story
The Order
In 1990, the FBI began picking up on rumors about an effort to reconstitute a notorious terrorist-criminal gang known as The Order.
During the 1980s, extremists inspired by the book began robbing banks and armored cars, stealing and counterfeiting millions of dollars and distributing some of the money to racist extremist causes. Members of The Order assassinated Jewish talk radio host Alan Berg in 1984, before most of its members were arrested and its leader killed in a standoff. Less than 10 percent of the money stolen by The Order was ever recovered, and investigators feared members of the group who were still at large would use it to further a campaign of terrorism.
To prevent the rise of a "Second Order," FBI undercover agents would become it.
Starting in April 1991, three FBI agents posed as members of an invented racist militia group called the Veterans Aryan Movement. According to their cover story, VAM members robbed armored cars, using the proceeds to buy weapons and support racist extremism. The lead agent was a Vietnam veteran with a background in narcotics, using the alias Dave Rossi.
Code-named PATCON, for "Patriot-conspiracy," the investigation would last more than two years, crossing state and organizational lines in search of intelligence on the so-called Patriot movement, the label applied to a wildly diverse collection of racist, ultra-libertarian, right-wing and/or pro-gun activists and extremists who, over the years, have found common cause in their suspicion and fear of the federal government.
The undercover agents met some of the most infamous names in the movement, but their work never led to a single arrest. When McVeigh walked through the middle of the investigation in 1993, he went unnoticed.
More here
During the 1980s, extremists inspired by the book began robbing banks and armored cars, stealing and counterfeiting millions of dollars and distributing some of the money to racist extremist causes. Members of The Order assassinated Jewish talk radio host Alan Berg in 1984, before most of its members were arrested and its leader killed in a standoff. Less than 10 percent of the money stolen by The Order was ever recovered, and investigators feared members of the group who were still at large would use it to further a campaign of terrorism.
To prevent the rise of a "Second Order," FBI undercover agents would become it.
Starting in April 1991, three FBI agents posed as members of an invented racist militia group called the Veterans Aryan Movement. According to their cover story, VAM members robbed armored cars, using the proceeds to buy weapons and support racist extremism. The lead agent was a Vietnam veteran with a background in narcotics, using the alias Dave Rossi.
Code-named PATCON, for "Patriot-conspiracy," the investigation would last more than two years, crossing state and organizational lines in search of intelligence on the so-called Patriot movement, the label applied to a wildly diverse collection of racist, ultra-libertarian, right-wing and/or pro-gun activists and extremists who, over the years, have found common cause in their suspicion and fear of the federal government.
The undercover agents met some of the most infamous names in the movement, but their work never led to a single arrest. When McVeigh walked through the middle of the investigation in 1993, he went unnoticed.
More here
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Iraqi break down
As the Obama Administration tries to hammer together an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the body count from his disastrous retreat from Iraq is swiftly rising. Last week alone there were fourteen car bombings orchestrated by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose goal has always been a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. The bombings, which received only light coverage in a media unwilling to talk about anything that might show their candidate in a bad light, are only one of the fracture points.
A united Iraq died a few days after the withdrawal. The only people who still believe in the fiction of a centrally governed Iraq are holding down desks in the State Department. There are several Iraqs now. There is Iran’s Iraq, the one overseen by Tehran’s puppet in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki. Then there is Iraqi Kurdistan which stands on the verge of declaring its independence, an act that will touch off a violent territorial dispute accompanied by ethnic cleansing.
Iraqi federalism is only popular among some in the Shiite majority, for whom it means majority rule. Maliki’s warrant for Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and the latter’s subsequent flight and sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan has ended the fiction of joint rule in Iraq. The Kurds have branded Maliki a dictator and are swiftly breaking their remaining ties to Baghdad.
President Barzani of Iraqi Kurdistan declared that, "Power-sharing and partnership between Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and others is now completely non-existent and has become meaningless" and concluded his speech by hinting at an independence referendum, a move almost certain to touch off a violent conflict, particularly in oil rich Kirkuk.
More here
Before the Supremes
The Supreme Court justices, hearing arguments Wednesday over Arizona’s tough immigration law, suggested they were inclined to uphold parts of the state’s law but may block other parts.
The Obama administration lawyer who wanted the entire law struck down ran into skeptical questions from most of the justices, who said they saw no problem with requiring police officers to check the immigration status of people who are stopped.
But the justices also said they were troubled by parts of the Arizona law that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not carry documents or seek work. The stop-and-arrest provision has been the most contested part of the law.
Before U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. could deliver his opening comments, chief justice John Roberts in an unusual move interrupted to say that "no part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling."
Verrilli agreed and said Arizona’s law should be struck down because it conflicts with the federal government’s "exclusive" power of immigration.
But he ran into a barrage of skeptical questions, including from some of the court’s liberals. Justice Stephen Breyer said he did not see why Arizona’s police would violate federal immigration law if they simply notified federal agents they had a possible illegal immigrant in custody. Breyer said he would be concerned only if the state said it could arrest and jail illegal aliens on its own.
More here
The Obama administration lawyer who wanted the entire law struck down ran into skeptical questions from most of the justices, who said they saw no problem with requiring police officers to check the immigration status of people who are stopped.
But the justices also said they were troubled by parts of the Arizona law that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not carry documents or seek work. The stop-and-arrest provision has been the most contested part of the law.
Before U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. could deliver his opening comments, chief justice John Roberts in an unusual move interrupted to say that "no part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling."
Verrilli agreed and said Arizona’s law should be struck down because it conflicts with the federal government’s "exclusive" power of immigration.
But he ran into a barrage of skeptical questions, including from some of the court’s liberals. Justice Stephen Breyer said he did not see why Arizona’s police would violate federal immigration law if they simply notified federal agents they had a possible illegal immigrant in custody. Breyer said he would be concerned only if the state said it could arrest and jail illegal aliens on its own.
More here
Arab Spring
The much vaunted and praised "Arab Spring," which took the world by surprise in December 2010, is slowly but surely turning into an Arab winter, which will inexorably become an Arab Islamic Ice Age in the near future. Already, the icicles of pan-Islamism are beginning to form throughout the Maghreb (North Africa), and the West best come to terms with the reality that the mantra of "free and fair elections" does not translate into Arabic as Western-style democracy.
Ironically, it is the birthplace of the "Arab Spring"—Tunisia—which is already in the midst of turning from Arab secular tyranny, into Arab Islamist domination. The largest party in the Tunisian parliament is the "moderate" Islamist party known as Ennahda (Hizb an Nahda), meaning the "Renaissance Party." When elections were held in October 2011, the party gained a plurality of 90 seats in the 217 member Constituent Assembly.
Ennahda was formed by Rashid Ghannouchi, who after 22 years in exile, returned to a hero’s welcome in January 2011, after the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Mr. Ghannouchi, who has been described as a "moderate" by many political pundits, has already called for the "end of Israel". He has compared his party with that of Turkey’s Islamist AKP ("Justice and Development Party") led by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has practically turned Turkey into a de facto Islamic republic and brought relations with Israel to the brink of severance. Alas, the much hailed (and perhaps failed) "Jasmine Revolution" might well have paved the way for the beginning of Arab "Islamocracies." That is, Islamic republics replacing secular pan-Arab socialist regimes, via "free and fair elections."
More here
Ironically, it is the birthplace of the "Arab Spring"—Tunisia—which is already in the midst of turning from Arab secular tyranny, into Arab Islamist domination. The largest party in the Tunisian parliament is the "moderate" Islamist party known as Ennahda (Hizb an Nahda), meaning the "Renaissance Party." When elections were held in October 2011, the party gained a plurality of 90 seats in the 217 member Constituent Assembly.
Ennahda was formed by Rashid Ghannouchi, who after 22 years in exile, returned to a hero’s welcome in January 2011, after the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Mr. Ghannouchi, who has been described as a "moderate" by many political pundits, has already called for the "end of Israel". He has compared his party with that of Turkey’s Islamist AKP ("Justice and Development Party") led by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has practically turned Turkey into a de facto Islamic republic and brought relations with Israel to the brink of severance. Alas, the much hailed (and perhaps failed) "Jasmine Revolution" might well have paved the way for the beginning of Arab "Islamocracies." That is, Islamic republics replacing secular pan-Arab socialist regimes, via "free and fair elections."
More here
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Where are all the dead Jews?
The Washington Post recently dispatched a reporter to Gaza who spoke to many ordinary Gazans and asked them what they thought about Hamas’s performance since it was elected in 2006. The response was overwhelmingly negative. Hamas was elected because it promised to provide clean government free of corruption and to carry out unrelenting terrorist acts against Israel. It has not lived up to either one of these promises and the people the Post reporter interviewed were clearly angry, frustrated and disappointed. Surveys have shown that their views are widespread and that Hamas would not be re-elected if an election were held today.
Ordinary Gazans want clean, uncorrupted government because they draw a straight line between government corruption and the poverty and lack of goods and services in their society, not because they value clean, uncorrupted government as an end in itself. They know that Hamas is corrupt through and through and that this corruption causes their penury. They don’t blame Israel because they understand that Israel is not at fault. Hamas is at fault because it is corrupt and ordinary Gazans are fully aware of this…they see the results of the corruption every day and know full well that they suffer because of it.
It’s not Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza that causes economic hardship there, despite what Israel bashers say. It’s corruption, Hamas’s corruption, and ordinary Gazans know it, even if Israel bashers don’t, or even worse if they do and refuse to admit it.
Gazans are disappointed that Hamas has not carried out more terrorist acts against Israel because they are unalterably opposed to Israel’s existence and are consumed by Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism. They want nothing more than to see Israel destroyed and Israelis driven from the land and they view Israel’s existence and the Jewish presence there as an insult and an affront to them and their religion, Islam, which is full of Jew hatred and exhortations for the faithful to murder Jews and rid the world of them. Terrorist acts are seen as a means of doing this, and ordinary Gazans are disappointed that Hamas has not committed many more of them.
A young mother who was interviewed asked "Where are all the dead Jews we were promised?" and blamed Hamas for not killing more Jews than it has, for not providing her with more Jewish corpses than it has. Ordinary Gazans in their multitudes are asking the same question.
More here
Ordinary Gazans want clean, uncorrupted government because they draw a straight line between government corruption and the poverty and lack of goods and services in their society, not because they value clean, uncorrupted government as an end in itself. They know that Hamas is corrupt through and through and that this corruption causes their penury. They don’t blame Israel because they understand that Israel is not at fault. Hamas is at fault because it is corrupt and ordinary Gazans are fully aware of this…they see the results of the corruption every day and know full well that they suffer because of it.
It’s not Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza that causes economic hardship there, despite what Israel bashers say. It’s corruption, Hamas’s corruption, and ordinary Gazans know it, even if Israel bashers don’t, or even worse if they do and refuse to admit it.
Gazans are disappointed that Hamas has not carried out more terrorist acts against Israel because they are unalterably opposed to Israel’s existence and are consumed by Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism. They want nothing more than to see Israel destroyed and Israelis driven from the land and they view Israel’s existence and the Jewish presence there as an insult and an affront to them and their religion, Islam, which is full of Jew hatred and exhortations for the faithful to murder Jews and rid the world of them. Terrorist acts are seen as a means of doing this, and ordinary Gazans are disappointed that Hamas has not committed many more of them.
A young mother who was interviewed asked "Where are all the dead Jews we were promised?" and blamed Hamas for not killing more Jews than it has, for not providing her with more Jewish corpses than it has. Ordinary Gazans in their multitudes are asking the same question.
More here
Illegal immigration
The net flow of Mexicans into the US has dwindled to a trickle and may now be in reverse, giving the lie to right-wing warnings of an "invasion" of illegal immigrants and bringing to an end four decades of inward migration.
A survey from the Pew Hispanic Center finds that the largest wave of immigration in American history to have taken place from a single country has now been brought to a virtual standstill. In the five years from 2005 to 2010, about 1.4m Mexicans immigrated to the US – exactly the same number of Mexican immigrants and their US-born children who quit America and moved back or were deported to Mexico.
By contrast, in the previous five years to 2000 some 3m Mexicans came to the US and fewer than 700,000 left it.
The latest figures signify the end of an era. From 1970, the Mexican-born population of the US has risen steeply, reaching a peak of more than 12m in 2010.
Now it is falling, with the decline including undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the US who now number about 6.1m – 58% of the total unauthorised immigrant population of the country.
In an election year in which immigration policy has provided a sharp divide between the presidential candidates, evidence that illegal Mexican immigration has dried out is of immeasurable significance. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, has backed hardline anti-immigration clampdowns introduced by states around the country, promising to make them federal policy should he win the presidency.
President Obama, on the other hand, has said he supports the "Dream Act" that would provide a path to citizenship to law abiding Hispanic college students, though he has failed to put that into effect. He has also stepped up deportations of Mexicans who have infringed the law, with about 300,000 illegal immigrants deported back to Mexico in 2010 alone.
The new statistics take the wind out of the sails of those who have targeted illegal Mexican immigrants for taking jobs away from unemployed Americans – the Pew study suggests that the flow of immigrants has decreased largely because under the economic downturn incoming Mexican immigrants can no longer find work.
More here
(I'm not sure I believe this story. It sounds like something the Democrats would come up with to sway the anti-illegal immigration voters)
-----
A survey from the Pew Hispanic Center finds that the largest wave of immigration in American history to have taken place from a single country has now been brought to a virtual standstill. In the five years from 2005 to 2010, about 1.4m Mexicans immigrated to the US – exactly the same number of Mexican immigrants and their US-born children who quit America and moved back or were deported to Mexico.
By contrast, in the previous five years to 2000 some 3m Mexicans came to the US and fewer than 700,000 left it.
The latest figures signify the end of an era. From 1970, the Mexican-born population of the US has risen steeply, reaching a peak of more than 12m in 2010.
Now it is falling, with the decline including undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the US who now number about 6.1m – 58% of the total unauthorised immigrant population of the country.
In an election year in which immigration policy has provided a sharp divide between the presidential candidates, evidence that illegal Mexican immigration has dried out is of immeasurable significance. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, has backed hardline anti-immigration clampdowns introduced by states around the country, promising to make them federal policy should he win the presidency.
President Obama, on the other hand, has said he supports the "Dream Act" that would provide a path to citizenship to law abiding Hispanic college students, though he has failed to put that into effect. He has also stepped up deportations of Mexicans who have infringed the law, with about 300,000 illegal immigrants deported back to Mexico in 2010 alone.
The new statistics take the wind out of the sails of those who have targeted illegal Mexican immigrants for taking jobs away from unemployed Americans – the Pew study suggests that the flow of immigrants has decreased largely because under the economic downturn incoming Mexican immigrants can no longer find work.
More here
(I'm not sure I believe this story. It sounds like something the Democrats would come up with to sway the anti-illegal immigration voters)
-----
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Just rambling
According to emails obtained by WikiLeaks, which is led by the embattled Julian Assange, Republican Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign staff allegedly had evidence that Democrats stuffed ballot boxes in Pennsylvania and Ohio on election night. However, the candidate chose not to pursue voter fraud, according to internal emails obtained from the private intelligence and analysis firm, Stratfor. Story
Candidate Obama in 9/12/2008..."I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." President Obama in 2/24/2009..."If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."
It's getting so bad that even a liberal Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, is saying that he may not vote for Obama. Senator Manchin campaigned for Obama in 2008.
Quote of the day by Senator Boxer..."If you're a self-respecting human being, vote for Obama."
Meanwhile, a "self-respecting human being" who defends abortion at the Daily Kos website says "The fetus is a parasite."
The Wall Street Journal reports that...North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller recently said that "we would all have been better off—President Obama politically, Democrats in Congress politically, and the nation would have been better off" if his party had tabled ObamaCare. Even bellwether liberal Barney Frank recently chimed in that "I think we paid a terrible price for health care" and suggested Democrats should have done something else after Republican Scott Brown's January 2010 Senate election victory. Now Mr. Brown's November opponent is recanting as well. Yes, none other than progressive heartthrob and presumptive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren....
IPCC predicted accelerating sea level rises due to human CO2 emissions – real scientists examine the tide gauge station empirical evidence and find recent sea level increases not unusual. The evidence continues to pour in discrediting the IPCC’s fabricated disaster claims of catastrophic sea level rises. Researchers from the around the world have documented that the predicted "accelerating" and "dangerous" sea level increases are not happening. Story
Why do men become communists? And more particularly, why do they become communists despite everything that we know about communism? In the last century, as many as 120 million people were murdered by Marxist-inspired regimes. And yet, certainly in the United States and in Western Europe, we have the remarkable spectacle of virtually an entire intellectual class that has been seduced by the allure of Marx’s ideas…It seems to me one can’t explain the appeal of Marxism without addressing the psychological license that it offers, specifically for coercion and petty malice. It’s a golden ticket for a certain kind of sadist. Why Marxism? Start with rationalised envy and a vindictive desire for power over others, wrap it in a drag of altruism, and then take it from there. Source
A black conservative Mormon lady won the GOP's nomination for Utah's 4th Congressional District. Story
Australia has green energy screwups also.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress are under a "reign of terror" imposed by the party's conservative wing that also has pushed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to the right, President Barack Obama's senior campaign strategist said on Sunday. David Axelrod, in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" program, cited the Obama administration's plans for immigration reform as an example of Republican intransigence in Congress. Story
It's only money...The American public for years paid physicians millions of dollars in Medicare bonuses to treat the medically needy in parts of Texas and across the country - even though many doctors no longer qualified for the cash and federal officials knew it, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found. Story
The dumbing down of America is continuing...The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments. Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely? Story
True or False?...All socialist/communist systems begin with theft and end in mass murder.
The blog, Gates of Vienna, asks...If Breivik is judged to be sane he will thus get just a few months in a comfortable jail for each of the 77 murders he committed. Is that a sign of a society that values human life, or is it a sign of a society putting the rights of criminals above those of their victims?
Headline of the day...Company names sunglasses line for Helen Keller
Attorney General Eric Holder is just weeks away from Contempt of Congress charges. Congressman Issa says officials of the Justice Department are obstructing justice in the Fast and Furious scandal.
According to the London Evening Standard...Muslim students at a university considering banning alcohol from parts of its campus have hit out at the plan — fearing they will be blamed for the move. Students at London Metropolitan University said banning alcohol in the name of Muslims will cause tension on campus, divide the community, and could be exploited by far-Right groups such as the English Defence League.
On this weekend's Meet the Press, Keith Olbermann said that gas prices have been manipulated to be so high as to embarrass Obama before the elections in November. Typical liberal. They forget that Bush was blamed for driving up prices to benefit his friends in the oil business. And back in 2004 Bush was even blamed for LOW prices. He was keeping the price down because he wanted Americans to be addicted to cheap oil.
Former Palestinian intelligence official Muhammad Abu Shahala has reportedly been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority for selling a Hebron home to Jews. In response, Jewish officials from the community in Hebron are calling for international officials now to get involved—in order to save Abu Shahala’s life. Source
Google, which sits atop more data than anybody outside the NSA, is presenting Bill Ayers as the author of Barack Obama's purported first autobiography, Dreams from My Father. Source
The state verb of Texas is....fixin' to (example..He's fixin' to go home)
Tweet of the day..."I still got a warrant in Pearland…Those pigs will NEVER catch me!!!…NEVER!!!!" Story
Candidate Obama in 9/12/2008..."I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." President Obama in 2/24/2009..."If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."
It's getting so bad that even a liberal Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, is saying that he may not vote for Obama. Senator Manchin campaigned for Obama in 2008.
Quote of the day by Senator Boxer..."If you're a self-respecting human being, vote for Obama."
Meanwhile, a "self-respecting human being" who defends abortion at the Daily Kos website says "The fetus is a parasite."
The Wall Street Journal reports that...North Carolina Democrat Brad Miller recently said that "we would all have been better off—President Obama politically, Democrats in Congress politically, and the nation would have been better off" if his party had tabled ObamaCare. Even bellwether liberal Barney Frank recently chimed in that "I think we paid a terrible price for health care" and suggested Democrats should have done something else after Republican Scott Brown's January 2010 Senate election victory. Now Mr. Brown's November opponent is recanting as well. Yes, none other than progressive heartthrob and presumptive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren....
IPCC predicted accelerating sea level rises due to human CO2 emissions – real scientists examine the tide gauge station empirical evidence and find recent sea level increases not unusual. The evidence continues to pour in discrediting the IPCC’s fabricated disaster claims of catastrophic sea level rises. Researchers from the around the world have documented that the predicted "accelerating" and "dangerous" sea level increases are not happening. Story
Why do men become communists? And more particularly, why do they become communists despite everything that we know about communism? In the last century, as many as 120 million people were murdered by Marxist-inspired regimes. And yet, certainly in the United States and in Western Europe, we have the remarkable spectacle of virtually an entire intellectual class that has been seduced by the allure of Marx’s ideas…It seems to me one can’t explain the appeal of Marxism without addressing the psychological license that it offers, specifically for coercion and petty malice. It’s a golden ticket for a certain kind of sadist. Why Marxism? Start with rationalised envy and a vindictive desire for power over others, wrap it in a drag of altruism, and then take it from there. Source
A black conservative Mormon lady won the GOP's nomination for Utah's 4th Congressional District. Story
Australia has green energy screwups also.
Republicans in the U.S. Congress are under a "reign of terror" imposed by the party's conservative wing that also has pushed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to the right, President Barack Obama's senior campaign strategist said on Sunday. David Axelrod, in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" program, cited the Obama administration's plans for immigration reform as an example of Republican intransigence in Congress. Story
It's only money...The American public for years paid physicians millions of dollars in Medicare bonuses to treat the medically needy in parts of Texas and across the country - even though many doctors no longer qualified for the cash and federal officials knew it, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found. Story
The dumbing down of America is continuing...The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments. Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely? Story
True or False?...All socialist/communist systems begin with theft and end in mass murder.
The blog, Gates of Vienna, asks...If Breivik is judged to be sane he will thus get just a few months in a comfortable jail for each of the 77 murders he committed. Is that a sign of a society that values human life, or is it a sign of a society putting the rights of criminals above those of their victims?
Headline of the day...Company names sunglasses line for Helen Keller
Attorney General Eric Holder is just weeks away from Contempt of Congress charges. Congressman Issa says officials of the Justice Department are obstructing justice in the Fast and Furious scandal.
According to the London Evening Standard...Muslim students at a university considering banning alcohol from parts of its campus have hit out at the plan — fearing they will be blamed for the move. Students at London Metropolitan University said banning alcohol in the name of Muslims will cause tension on campus, divide the community, and could be exploited by far-Right groups such as the English Defence League.
On this weekend's Meet the Press, Keith Olbermann said that gas prices have been manipulated to be so high as to embarrass Obama before the elections in November. Typical liberal. They forget that Bush was blamed for driving up prices to benefit his friends in the oil business. And back in 2004 Bush was even blamed for LOW prices. He was keeping the price down because he wanted Americans to be addicted to cheap oil.
Former Palestinian intelligence official Muhammad Abu Shahala has reportedly been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority for selling a Hebron home to Jews. In response, Jewish officials from the community in Hebron are calling for international officials now to get involved—in order to save Abu Shahala’s life. Source
Google, which sits atop more data than anybody outside the NSA, is presenting Bill Ayers as the author of Barack Obama's purported first autobiography, Dreams from My Father. Source
The state verb of Texas is....fixin' to (example..He's fixin' to go home)
Tweet of the day..."I still got a warrant in Pearland…Those pigs will NEVER catch me!!!…NEVER!!!!" Story
Monday, April 23, 2012
Planet Liberal
On Planet Liberal this man (George Zimmerman) is the embodiment of white racism. On Planet Earth, he came into the courtroom much as you would expect a man who had not wanted to be in a lethal confrontation and did not spend his time licking his chops at the prospect of killing a black teenager.
On Planet Liberal this was supposed to be some inverse version of To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill and every other of the numerous entries in that genre. On Planet Earth, it's looking like a weak case with an incompetent and unethical prosecutor whose own team is unable to answer the question of who started the fight between Martin and Zimmerman.
But living on Planet Liberal requires believing twelve impossible things before breakfast.
To live on Planet Liberal, you have to believe that only white people can be racist, that going deep into debt is the only way to fix the economy and that freedom means forcing other people to do things for you.
To live on Planet Liberal you have to believe that sexual orientation is fixed permanently in an individual's genetic code and can never be altered, but that gender is a fluid social construct that can be swapped with a little mutilation and some hormone shots, or just with a change of outfit.
To live on Planet Liberal, you have to believe that America, Europe and Israel have no right to sovereignty over their territory, but that Saddam's Iraq and Ahmadinejad's Iran do.
To live on Planet Liberal, you have to believe that every breath you take helps raise planetary temperatures but that buying carbon credits is the only way to save earth.
To live on Planet Liberal you have to believe that despite Lee Harvey Oswald, the People's Temple, the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Anarchist Bombings of 1919, the real threat to this country comes from right wingers.
To live on Planet Liberal you have to believe that wealth redistribution from the people to the government is social justice.
More here
On Planet Liberal this was supposed to be some inverse version of To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill and every other of the numerous entries in that genre. On Planet Earth, it's looking like a weak case with an incompetent and unethical prosecutor whose own team is unable to answer the question of who started the fight between Martin and Zimmerman.
But living on Planet Liberal requires believing twelve impossible things before breakfast.
To live on Planet Liberal, you have to believe that only white people can be racist, that going deep into debt is the only way to fix the economy and that freedom means forcing other people to do things for you.
To live on Planet Liberal you have to believe that sexual orientation is fixed permanently in an individual's genetic code and can never be altered, but that gender is a fluid social construct that can be swapped with a little mutilation and some hormone shots, or just with a change of outfit.
To live on Planet Liberal, you have to believe that America, Europe and Israel have no right to sovereignty over their territory, but that Saddam's Iraq and Ahmadinejad's Iran do.
To live on Planet Liberal, you have to believe that every breath you take helps raise planetary temperatures but that buying carbon credits is the only way to save earth.
To live on Planet Liberal you have to believe that despite Lee Harvey Oswald, the People's Temple, the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Anarchist Bombings of 1919, the real threat to this country comes from right wingers.
To live on Planet Liberal you have to believe that wealth redistribution from the people to the government is social justice.
More here
Medical care without insurance
Fed up with increased paperwork, red tape and delays in getting paid by health insurance companies, San Antonio primary-care physicians Simone Norris and John Rodriguez have come up with an offbeat solution: Don't accept insurance.
Norris and Rodriguez are part of a small but expanding segment of primary-care physicians who have ditched health insurance for a "direct pay" model because of what they consider to be an expensive and bloated bureaucracy that drives financial reimbursements.
"Obviously, doctors are very frustrated," Rodriguez says. "I'm really trying to create a different model."
About a dozen Bexar County physicians specializing in internal or family medicine accept only "self-pay patients," according to the Bexar County Medical Society. That's less than 3 percent of members who are primary-care doctors.
In addition to being worn out from wrestling to get insurance reimbursements, primary- care doctors complain about having to see so many patients a day — as many as 30 — because reimbursements are based on those "encounters."
More here
Norris and Rodriguez are part of a small but expanding segment of primary-care physicians who have ditched health insurance for a "direct pay" model because of what they consider to be an expensive and bloated bureaucracy that drives financial reimbursements.
"Obviously, doctors are very frustrated," Rodriguez says. "I'm really trying to create a different model."
About a dozen Bexar County physicians specializing in internal or family medicine accept only "self-pay patients," according to the Bexar County Medical Society. That's less than 3 percent of members who are primary-care doctors.
In addition to being worn out from wrestling to get insurance reimbursements, primary- care doctors complain about having to see so many patients a day — as many as 30 — because reimbursements are based on those "encounters."
More here
Pakistan fail
Five years ago on a trip to South Asia, I asked a former Pakistani ambassador where Osama bin Laden was hiding. The ambassador replied that he would be found in a safe house built by Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI near a military headquarters. I was taken aback, but the ambassador expressed complete confidence in this speculation. Clearly, Pakistanis understood their complex relationships with terror and with Washington; Americans took years to catch up.
Ahmed Rashid, one of Pakistan's premier journalists and analysts, knows the region's pressures better than most. He literally wrote the book on the Taliban and now has added a superb work on the future of Pakistan, a country many people deem the world's most dangerous. "Pakistan on the Brink" depicts a country with a severe socio-economic crisis, a political leadership that has neither the courage nor the will to carry out essential reforms and that is building the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal on the globe. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is in a state of virtual meltdown, Rashid rightly contends, with both sides to blame.
The relationship is so bad that "the United States and Pakistan are just short of going to war," Rashid writes. Much of the growing enmity between the two countries can be traced to the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden — and that's where Rashid begins his tale. It did not enhance trust for the United States to discover that bin Laden was hiding less than a kilometer from Pakistan's premier military academy and had been there running his global terror network for at least five years. According to The Post's reporting on the material found in his hideout, he was in regular communication with other jihadists, including the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. His hideout had been built by a contracting firm often used by the ISI.
Rashid argues that there is a complex syndicate of jihadi terrorists operating today in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda gets the most attention in the United States, but it is only a relatively small organization in a much larger network of terror. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant Islamist terror group that attacked Mumbai in 2008, for example, has a much bigger and very overt presence in Pakistan. It routinely holds large demonstrations in Pakistan's cities that attract tens of thousands of supporters. Its leader, Hafiz Saeed, openly mourned bin Laden's death last May and called for revenge on America. He and bin Laden were close partners in terror for decades stretching back to the 1980s, when the Saudi helped fund creation of Lashkar-e-Taiba. The two men were in communication right until the SEALs killed bin Laden in his hideout in Abbottabad, according to the materials found there. So while al Qaeda might be on the defensive now thanks to the drones and SEALs, Rashid writes that its much larger allies are thriving and widening the terrain for its operations.
More here
Ahmed Rashid, one of Pakistan's premier journalists and analysts, knows the region's pressures better than most. He literally wrote the book on the Taliban and now has added a superb work on the future of Pakistan, a country many people deem the world's most dangerous. "Pakistan on the Brink" depicts a country with a severe socio-economic crisis, a political leadership that has neither the courage nor the will to carry out essential reforms and that is building the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal on the globe. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is in a state of virtual meltdown, Rashid rightly contends, with both sides to blame.
The relationship is so bad that "the United States and Pakistan are just short of going to war," Rashid writes. Much of the growing enmity between the two countries can be traced to the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden — and that's where Rashid begins his tale. It did not enhance trust for the United States to discover that bin Laden was hiding less than a kilometer from Pakistan's premier military academy and had been there running his global terror network for at least five years. According to The Post's reporting on the material found in his hideout, he was in regular communication with other jihadists, including the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. His hideout had been built by a contracting firm often used by the ISI.
Rashid argues that there is a complex syndicate of jihadi terrorists operating today in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda gets the most attention in the United States, but it is only a relatively small organization in a much larger network of terror. Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant Islamist terror group that attacked Mumbai in 2008, for example, has a much bigger and very overt presence in Pakistan. It routinely holds large demonstrations in Pakistan's cities that attract tens of thousands of supporters. Its leader, Hafiz Saeed, openly mourned bin Laden's death last May and called for revenge on America. He and bin Laden were close partners in terror for decades stretching back to the 1980s, when the Saudi helped fund creation of Lashkar-e-Taiba. The two men were in communication right until the SEALs killed bin Laden in his hideout in Abbottabad, according to the materials found there. So while al Qaeda might be on the defensive now thanks to the drones and SEALs, Rashid writes that its much larger allies are thriving and widening the terrain for its operations.
More here
Saturday, April 21, 2012
All the news unfit to print
A new robopoll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling shows Gov. Scott Walker (R) with a slim lead over both likely Democratic rivals in the June Wisconsin recall election. Walker leads Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett 50 percent to 45 percent and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk 50 percent to 43 percent. Source
I hate to admit it but I agree with John McCain..."The Joint Strike Fighter program has been both a scandal and a tragedy. We are saddled with a program that has little to show for itself after 10 years and $56 billion in taxpayer investment that has produced less than 20 test and operational aircraft." Story
Photo of the day...Space shuttle cockpit.
Rush Limbaugh on the Left...Liberals don't want "equality." They claim they do, but they don't. They don't want "fairness." They claim they do, but they don't. They want inequality, and they want unfairness on the people they wanna punish, which is most everybody.
Dumbass of the week...A Taliban militant turned himself into an Afghanistan police station in order to collect the $100 bounty that the U.S. military had offered for his capture.
From the One Cosmos blog...You will note that the "birthers" seem obsessed with the idea that if we can only rid ourselves of Obama, then our problems will be solved. This is silly, for it leaves untouched the spiritual rot of a people who could elect such a half-educated and nasty but (so they say) charismatic demagogue.
Headline of the day..."Obama, as a Black Man, Was Forced by Media to Sit With Racist Police at Beer Summit"
Obama has spent 5$ Trillion in 3-1/2 years which is about what Bush spent in 8 years.
Ted Nugent says Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a brain-dead, soulless, heartless idiot.
Britain could be facing the coldest May for 100 years, with snow, bitter winds and freezing temperatures putting summer on hold. Story (I like to think of this as an example of God's humor)
Top tweet of the day..."Romney put a dog on top of a car. Obama put a dog on top of rice"
Ten years ago, Senate Democrats blocked energy production in a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). At the time, they claimed that ANWR should be off limits because the oil would take 10 years to reach the market. Ten years later, ANWR remains closed, gas prices have skyrocketed, and Democrats continue to block additional energy production. Source
30% of Mexicans are obese and 70% are overweight. And the U.S. is right behind them in second place. Source
As the world commemorates the centenary of the Titanic's sinking, thousands of people have taken to the internet to discuss the historic anniversary. But the event has evidently proven more educational for some than others. A number of tweeters have used the micro-blogging site to confess that they were unaware that the Titanic was a real ship. Story
The mainstream media was loathe to publish the Mohammed cartoons that caused muslims to riot worldwide a few years ago. But they were more than willing to publish the Abu Ghraib photos weren't they? Now they are happy once again to publish the photos of U.S. soldiers posing next to the bodies of suicide bombers.
The District’s attorney general said Wednesday that he will sue former city employees who collected unemployment benefits while working. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan said his office will begin filing civil suits "in the next few weeks" to recover the city’s money. District officials have estimated that the city had paid as much as $800,000 in jobless benefits to working city employees since 2009. Story
Advice from Barack Obama on the campaign trail in 2008 "... if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone that people should run from. You make a big election about small things. And you know what it’s worked before — because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty."
Photos have been released showing injuries to the back of George Zimmerman's head. These photos support his side of the story. But it won't shut up the racists who want to punish someone for actually fighting back when confronted by a thug. And no, it's not true, that Dick Cheney is somehow involved in this mess.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has conducted air pollution experiments on live human subjects that discredit its claims that fine particulate matter kills people. Story
It really isn’t unfair at all to bring Obama’s canine consumption to public attention. The president isn’t really one of us. He’s a dog-eater. He tells the story in his memoir to emphasize that viscerally, Obama identifies with the Third World of his upbringing more than with the America of his adulthood. It is our great misfortune to have a president who dislikes our country at this juncture in our history. Source
Democrats are truly spooky...House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday endorsed a movement announced by other congressional Democrats on Wednesday to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged in by corporations as opposed to individuals. (The First Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…")
Obama says, "Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth." Ann Coulter says, "Obama's silver spoon was an affirmative action silver spoon."
You can throw away your X-ray glasses now...Researchers at a Texas university have designed a chip that could give smartphones the long-envied ability of comic book her Superman to see through walls, clothes or other objects. Story
I hate to admit it but I agree with John McCain..."The Joint Strike Fighter program has been both a scandal and a tragedy. We are saddled with a program that has little to show for itself after 10 years and $56 billion in taxpayer investment that has produced less than 20 test and operational aircraft." Story
Photo of the day...Space shuttle cockpit.
Rush Limbaugh on the Left...Liberals don't want "equality." They claim they do, but they don't. They don't want "fairness." They claim they do, but they don't. They want inequality, and they want unfairness on the people they wanna punish, which is most everybody.
Dumbass of the week...A Taliban militant turned himself into an Afghanistan police station in order to collect the $100 bounty that the U.S. military had offered for his capture.
From the One Cosmos blog...You will note that the "birthers" seem obsessed with the idea that if we can only rid ourselves of Obama, then our problems will be solved. This is silly, for it leaves untouched the spiritual rot of a people who could elect such a half-educated and nasty but (so they say) charismatic demagogue.
Headline of the day..."Obama, as a Black Man, Was Forced by Media to Sit With Racist Police at Beer Summit"
Obama has spent 5$ Trillion in 3-1/2 years which is about what Bush spent in 8 years.
Ted Nugent says Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a brain-dead, soulless, heartless idiot.
Britain could be facing the coldest May for 100 years, with snow, bitter winds and freezing temperatures putting summer on hold. Story (I like to think of this as an example of God's humor)
Top tweet of the day..."Romney put a dog on top of a car. Obama put a dog on top of rice"
Ten years ago, Senate Democrats blocked energy production in a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). At the time, they claimed that ANWR should be off limits because the oil would take 10 years to reach the market. Ten years later, ANWR remains closed, gas prices have skyrocketed, and Democrats continue to block additional energy production. Source
30% of Mexicans are obese and 70% are overweight. And the U.S. is right behind them in second place. Source
As the world commemorates the centenary of the Titanic's sinking, thousands of people have taken to the internet to discuss the historic anniversary. But the event has evidently proven more educational for some than others. A number of tweeters have used the micro-blogging site to confess that they were unaware that the Titanic was a real ship. Story
The mainstream media was loathe to publish the Mohammed cartoons that caused muslims to riot worldwide a few years ago. But they were more than willing to publish the Abu Ghraib photos weren't they? Now they are happy once again to publish the photos of U.S. soldiers posing next to the bodies of suicide bombers.
The District’s attorney general said Wednesday that he will sue former city employees who collected unemployment benefits while working. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan said his office will begin filing civil suits "in the next few weeks" to recover the city’s money. District officials have estimated that the city had paid as much as $800,000 in jobless benefits to working city employees since 2009. Story
Advice from Barack Obama on the campaign trail in 2008 "... if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone that people should run from. You make a big election about small things. And you know what it’s worked before — because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty."
Photos have been released showing injuries to the back of George Zimmerman's head. These photos support his side of the story. But it won't shut up the racists who want to punish someone for actually fighting back when confronted by a thug. And no, it's not true, that Dick Cheney is somehow involved in this mess.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has conducted air pollution experiments on live human subjects that discredit its claims that fine particulate matter kills people. Story
It really isn’t unfair at all to bring Obama’s canine consumption to public attention. The president isn’t really one of us. He’s a dog-eater. He tells the story in his memoir to emphasize that viscerally, Obama identifies with the Third World of his upbringing more than with the America of his adulthood. It is our great misfortune to have a president who dislikes our country at this juncture in our history. Source
Democrats are truly spooky...House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday endorsed a movement announced by other congressional Democrats on Wednesday to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged in by corporations as opposed to individuals. (The First Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…")
Obama says, "Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth." Ann Coulter says, "Obama's silver spoon was an affirmative action silver spoon."
You can throw away your X-ray glasses now...Researchers at a Texas university have designed a chip that could give smartphones the long-envied ability of comic book her Superman to see through walls, clothes or other objects. Story
Demographics
The world is heading for demographic catastrophe. Fertility rates have been falling across the globe for 40 years, to the point where, today, Israel is the only First World country where women have enough babies to sustain their population. The developing world is heading in the same direction, fast. Only 3 percent of the world’s population live in a country where the fertility rate is not dropping.
As fertility falls, populations shrink. As populations shrink, economies will sputter. Western countries will struggle to support too many retirees without enough workers, and the rest of the world (particularly places such as China and Russia) will be challenged just to maintain order as societies change in unprecedented ways: Most people will have neither brothers, sisters, aunts, nor uncles, and there will be no such thing as an extended family.
This forecast may sound apocalyptic, but it’s nearly conventional wisdom among the demographers and economists who study such things. However, the conventional wisdom also sees a silver lining to the world’s demographic decline: a "geriatric peace." As fertility rates decline, and babies become relatively scarce, the average age of societies increases. In many countries the median age is already over 40, with geezers outnumbering children. And once the entire world looks like Florida, the thinking goes, we’ll all be more peaceable, because countries full of old men don’t go to war.
Unfortunately, Susan Yoshihara and Douglas A. Sylva suggest that geriatric peace may be elusive, and in Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics they have collected essays from an all-star squad of demographers, historians, and military strategists—Phillip Longman, Nicholas Eberstadt, Toshi Yoshihara, and Murray Feshbach are among their Murderers’ Row—who argue that a shrinking world may be more dangerous than we might expect.
In 1950, Japan was the fifth-most populous nation on earth, Germany was the seventh, and the United Kingdom the ninth. By 2050 these countries will rank twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second, respectively. Population is the wellspring of power, both economic and military, and the reordering of global power is, Yoshihara and Sylva argue, inherently destabilizing.
More here
As fertility falls, populations shrink. As populations shrink, economies will sputter. Western countries will struggle to support too many retirees without enough workers, and the rest of the world (particularly places such as China and Russia) will be challenged just to maintain order as societies change in unprecedented ways: Most people will have neither brothers, sisters, aunts, nor uncles, and there will be no such thing as an extended family.
This forecast may sound apocalyptic, but it’s nearly conventional wisdom among the demographers and economists who study such things. However, the conventional wisdom also sees a silver lining to the world’s demographic decline: a "geriatric peace." As fertility rates decline, and babies become relatively scarce, the average age of societies increases. In many countries the median age is already over 40, with geezers outnumbering children. And once the entire world looks like Florida, the thinking goes, we’ll all be more peaceable, because countries full of old men don’t go to war.
Unfortunately, Susan Yoshihara and Douglas A. Sylva suggest that geriatric peace may be elusive, and in Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics they have collected essays from an all-star squad of demographers, historians, and military strategists—Phillip Longman, Nicholas Eberstadt, Toshi Yoshihara, and Murray Feshbach are among their Murderers’ Row—who argue that a shrinking world may be more dangerous than we might expect.
In 1950, Japan was the fifth-most populous nation on earth, Germany was the seventh, and the United Kingdom the ninth. By 2050 these countries will rank twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second, respectively. Population is the wellspring of power, both economic and military, and the reordering of global power is, Yoshihara and Sylva argue, inherently destabilizing.
More here
Friday, April 20, 2012
Black boxes
The big news in automotive privacy this week is that Congress is on the verge of passing a transportation bill that will make "big brother" black boxes mandatory in all new cars. InfoWars is encouraging drivers to freak out about the horrific invasion of privacy represented by the government’s insisting that all Americans have event data recorders that reveal exactly what happened before and after a crash. But the truth of the matter is that most Americans already have black boxes in their cars. They’ve been around since 1996, are found in at least 60 million vehicles, and are a feature in 85% of new cars every year.
"Virtually every car that has an air bag has some kind of recording ability," says James Casassa, of Wolf Forensics which specializes in downloading crash information from vehicles made by GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda. The recorders capture information about how fast you were going and whether you slammed on the brakes in the seconds before and after a crash. They capture just a snapshot, not a continual record of your driving activity — which would be far more concerning for privacy. (But don’t worry! You can get a far more invasive event recorder from your insurance company if you’re looking to lower your car insurance rates.)
Many drivers don’t realize they already have a black box, though the law does require that manufacturers provide notice in a car’s manual (which I’m sure most car owners read ever so closely). Black boxes have been a source of info in countless criminal cases to show how fast a driver was going when he or she slammed into pedestrians or another car. Though, in one recent case, a court threw out the black box evidence used against a California man to convict him of vehicular manslaughter because the police pulled the data from the black box of his SUV without getting a warrant first.
More here
"Virtually every car that has an air bag has some kind of recording ability," says James Casassa, of Wolf Forensics which specializes in downloading crash information from vehicles made by GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda. The recorders capture information about how fast you were going and whether you slammed on the brakes in the seconds before and after a crash. They capture just a snapshot, not a continual record of your driving activity — which would be far more concerning for privacy. (But don’t worry! You can get a far more invasive event recorder from your insurance company if you’re looking to lower your car insurance rates.)
Many drivers don’t realize they already have a black box, though the law does require that manufacturers provide notice in a car’s manual (which I’m sure most car owners read ever so closely). Black boxes have been a source of info in countless criminal cases to show how fast a driver was going when he or she slammed into pedestrians or another car. Though, in one recent case, a court threw out the black box evidence used against a California man to convict him of vehicular manslaughter because the police pulled the data from the black box of his SUV without getting a warrant first.
More here
Mitt
Mitt Romney is not John McCain. That is something that Obama and company discovered in the "War of the Dogs." Obama has used the fact that Romney, loading five kids, himself, and his wife in a station wagon, put the family dog in a dog carrier on the top of the car during a family vacation. It polled horribly in focus groups, and made the participants immediately have negative feelings about Romney. So, Romney’s aides went on Twitter and posted Obama’s own words in "Dreams from My Father: A Story of RACE AND INHERITANCE" about eating dog. Also, snake and grasshopper. While growing up in Indonesia. While that revelation makes Obama seem even cooler to SWPL-hipsters, for everyone else it is repulsive and more evidence of how alien and out of touch Obama is. Game, set, and match to Romney. Even the MSNBC morning crew were laughing at Obama. Eating dog beats putting the family dog on top of a crowded station wagon, in a carrier. What kind of American eats Dog? No kind, and that was the message of the laughter.
Obama is in trouble. He might still win (White professional women still love him) but he’s up against a guy who is not John McCain. I’ve often wondered if McCain threw the election. There was a story that appeared briefly in the Obama-NY Times, about an alleged affair with McCain and some campaign aide. That was quickly dropped, right around the time McCain stopped attacking Obama. If so, that would be par for the course with Obama. He got the Jack and Jeri Ryan divorce records unsealed to reveal the tawdry allegations of Jack Ryan forcing Jeri into swinging, sex clubs, and the like. Giving him the weak, disorganized Alan Keyes as an opponent. Obama disqualified his mentor Alice Palmer, easily winning the election after that sleazy, Nixonian move. Obama’s only loss came against Bobby Rush, who in that district, as an ex-Black Panther, and ex-con, was scandal-proof. There was plenty of dirt of course, but it was all out in the open, to the approval of the all-Black district: the weapons charges, the violent rhetoric against Whites, and so on.
More here
Obama is in trouble. He might still win (White professional women still love him) but he’s up against a guy who is not John McCain. I’ve often wondered if McCain threw the election. There was a story that appeared briefly in the Obama-NY Times, about an alleged affair with McCain and some campaign aide. That was quickly dropped, right around the time McCain stopped attacking Obama. If so, that would be par for the course with Obama. He got the Jack and Jeri Ryan divorce records unsealed to reveal the tawdry allegations of Jack Ryan forcing Jeri into swinging, sex clubs, and the like. Giving him the weak, disorganized Alan Keyes as an opponent. Obama disqualified his mentor Alice Palmer, easily winning the election after that sleazy, Nixonian move. Obama’s only loss came against Bobby Rush, who in that district, as an ex-Black Panther, and ex-con, was scandal-proof. There was plenty of dirt of course, but it was all out in the open, to the approval of the all-Black district: the weapons charges, the violent rhetoric against Whites, and so on.
More here
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Battery costs
One of the auto industry's most closely guarded secrets—the enormous cost of batteries for electric cars—has spilled out.
Speaking at a forum on green technology on Monday, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally indicated battery packs for the company's Focus electric car costs between $12,000 and $15,000 apiece.
"When you move into an all-electric vehicle, the battery size moves up to around 23 kilowatt hours, [and] it weighs around 600 to 700 pounds," Mr. Mulally said at Fortune magazine's Brainstorm Green conference in California.
"They're around $12,000 to $15,000 [a battery]" for a type of car that normally sells for about $22,000, he continued, referring to the price of a gasoline-powered Focus. "So, you can see why the economics are what they are."
Ford is currently promoting its $39,200 Focus EV at events around the country. It has a 23 kilowatt-hour battery pack. A Ford spokeswoman said Mr. Mulally's comments were designed to provide a indication of the car's battery costs.
Based on the price range that Mr. Mulally indicated, Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford appears to pay between $522 and $650 a kilowatt-hour for its electric-vehicle batteries. In the past, auto makers and battery makers have been reluctant to disclose the cost per kilowatt hour. Analysts have made projections that battery costs are between $500 and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour.
More here
Speaking at a forum on green technology on Monday, Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally indicated battery packs for the company's Focus electric car costs between $12,000 and $15,000 apiece.
"When you move into an all-electric vehicle, the battery size moves up to around 23 kilowatt hours, [and] it weighs around 600 to 700 pounds," Mr. Mulally said at Fortune magazine's Brainstorm Green conference in California.
"They're around $12,000 to $15,000 [a battery]" for a type of car that normally sells for about $22,000, he continued, referring to the price of a gasoline-powered Focus. "So, you can see why the economics are what they are."
Ford is currently promoting its $39,200 Focus EV at events around the country. It has a 23 kilowatt-hour battery pack. A Ford spokeswoman said Mr. Mulally's comments were designed to provide a indication of the car's battery costs.
Based on the price range that Mr. Mulally indicated, Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford appears to pay between $522 and $650 a kilowatt-hour for its electric-vehicle batteries. In the past, auto makers and battery makers have been reluctant to disclose the cost per kilowatt hour. Analysts have made projections that battery costs are between $500 and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour.
More here
Defaults
America's swelling ranks of fallen municipal borrowers have been blamed in the past year on 'what-were-they-thinking' causes, be it a Taj Mahal sewer system in Alabama or an overpriced trash incinerator in Pennsylvania's capital city of Harrisburg.
But the next series of major cities and counties in danger of defaulting on their debt can hardly point to one single decision for their malaise. Whether it be Detroit, Miami or Providence, Rhode Island, their problems have a lot more to do with financial policies that put them on course to live well beyond their means.
Municipal defaults have shot up since 2007 and are on pace for another high year in 2012, according to Richard Lehmann, publisher of the Distressed Securities Newsletter.
Many failures will be due to local politicians' willingness to give unionized local government workers lucrative pensions and health care benefits when times were good. For others, the housing bust was enough to destroy their real estate tax base. They almost all share the failure to prepare for a rainy day.
Now, belt tightening by state and federal governments is adding to the pain - as contributions to governments at city and county levels get squeezed. Many of the places in the worst condition are in the Northeast, Midwest, California and Florida.
More here
But the next series of major cities and counties in danger of defaulting on their debt can hardly point to one single decision for their malaise. Whether it be Detroit, Miami or Providence, Rhode Island, their problems have a lot more to do with financial policies that put them on course to live well beyond their means.
Municipal defaults have shot up since 2007 and are on pace for another high year in 2012, according to Richard Lehmann, publisher of the Distressed Securities Newsletter.
Many failures will be due to local politicians' willingness to give unionized local government workers lucrative pensions and health care benefits when times were good. For others, the housing bust was enough to destroy their real estate tax base. They almost all share the failure to prepare for a rainy day.
Now, belt tightening by state and federal governments is adding to the pain - as contributions to governments at city and county levels get squeezed. Many of the places in the worst condition are in the Northeast, Midwest, California and Florida.
More here
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Midweek musings
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the United Nations should adopt a treaty giving everyone on the planet the right to bear firearms. The GOP presidential candidate told the National Rifle Association convention Friday in St. Louis that the group has been too timid in promoting gun rights. Gingrich said there would be fewer women raped, children killed and villages destroyed if everyone had the right to carry a gun.
For more than a decade, physicists have been developing quantum mechanical methods to pass secret messages without fear that they could be intercepted. But they still haven’t created a true quantum network — the fully quantum-mechanical analog to an ordinary telecommunications network in which an uncrackable connection can be forged between any two stations or "nodes" in a network. Now, a team of researchers in Germany has built the first true quantum link using two widely separate atoms. A complete network could be constructed by combining many such links, the researchers say. Story
Democrats never seem to remember that America was founded by a tax revolt.
Comment seen over the weekend..."The Trayvon Martin case is being framed as a civil right and a race case. Poor Zimmerman has been painted as a White racist vigilante. The best defense strategy for him would have been to come out on television and ask for help in Spanish to his Hispanic brothers. "Los negros me quieren matar!" It would have been very ugly and mean, but then he would not be in jail awaiting trial for the murder of an unarmed schoolboy who looks like the President's dream son. Zimmerman will be punished for his unawareness of the central role of race in America and/or his timidity."
A top Justice Department official recently said the amount of money that drug traffickers launder in the U.S. approaches $100 billion a year.
In other news, the notorious British peer Lord Ahmed was suspended from the Labour Party after he offered a £10 million bounty for the capture of President Obama and former President Bush. (Lord Ahmed!? What's next? Sultan Bubba? Sheik Billy Bob?)
Headline of the day..."ICE Officials Begin Process to Deport Obama's Illegal Drunk-Driving Uncle Omar"
Runnerup headline of the day..."Obama as a boy ate dog meat"
The current speaker of the House is the most-liked congressional leader, but he's even more disliked. However, his predecessor, who hasn't been in charge of the House for well over a year, remains the least-liked leader by far. Story
You didn't hear about this is the media, but on the weekend of March 24th and March 25th at least seven white people were brutally beaten by mobs of blacks in Grand Rapids, MI. Five of the victims filed police reports. At least two other victims exist, and there are probably others. The local media has refused to report the cruel attacks and the authorities are resisting any serious charges. Story
Tombstone, Arizona is located in a desert. As such, water supplies for the historic frontier town are pretty important. A lot of Tombstone’s water comes from water infrastructure located on federally-managed park land, as has been the case for roughly a century. Recently, though, forest fires and inclement weather has destroyed or damaged a lot of that infrastructure and local officials want the federal government to let them go in and repair it. But the federal government won’t let them do it…unless they use horses and hand tools. Story
Mr. Obama ought to be worried. Sixty-four percent also say the country is on the wrong track; 76% say we're still in recession; and only 25% believe the Supreme Court ought to uphold the entire health-care law. In other words, on the top issue of this election—the economy—a number of Americans who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 are open to the idea that someone else could do a better job.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday said he wanted "at least $2 billion" a year from the United States after it withdraws its troops in 2014.
Rush Limbaugh asks..."After years of cultural rot, why are we surprised by the Secret Service scandal?" On a roll, he also says, "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of American life." Still not finished, he asks, "Why does Mitt Romney have to explain his wealth when John Kerry didn't have to explain his?"
A judge is treading cautiously in a high-stakes case that pits the University of Virginia against a conservative institute seeking thousands of records related to climatologist Michael Mann. Story
Black Men Who Could Look Like Obama’s Son Arrested For Murder of White Mississippi State Student Story
Obama mistakenly referred to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives. Story
ExxonMobil in 2011 made $27.3 billion in cash payments for income taxes. Chevron paid $17 billion and ConocoPhillips $10.6 billion. And not only were these the highest amounts in absolute terms, when compared with the rest of the 25 most profitable U.S. companies, the trio also had the highest effective tax rates. Exxon’s tax rate was 42.9%, Chevron’s was 48.3% and Conoco’s was 41.5%. That’s even higher than the 35% U.S. federal statutory rate, which is already the highest tax rate among developed nations. Story
Take your pick...Gallup poll has Romney at 48 and Obama at 43. The Pew Poll has Obama at 49 and Romney at 45.
Since 2009, the wind industry has lost 10,000 jobs, even as the energy capacity of wind farms has almost doubled. By contrast, the oil and gas industry have created 75,000 jobs since Mr. Obama took office. Story
Michelle Obama gets the coveted Quote of the Year..."This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light."
The mutilated bodies of 14 people were discovered Tuesday morning in downtown Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Story
For more than a decade, physicists have been developing quantum mechanical methods to pass secret messages without fear that they could be intercepted. But they still haven’t created a true quantum network — the fully quantum-mechanical analog to an ordinary telecommunications network in which an uncrackable connection can be forged between any two stations or "nodes" in a network. Now, a team of researchers in Germany has built the first true quantum link using two widely separate atoms. A complete network could be constructed by combining many such links, the researchers say. Story
Democrats never seem to remember that America was founded by a tax revolt.
Comment seen over the weekend..."The Trayvon Martin case is being framed as a civil right and a race case. Poor Zimmerman has been painted as a White racist vigilante. The best defense strategy for him would have been to come out on television and ask for help in Spanish to his Hispanic brothers. "Los negros me quieren matar!" It would have been very ugly and mean, but then he would not be in jail awaiting trial for the murder of an unarmed schoolboy who looks like the President's dream son. Zimmerman will be punished for his unawareness of the central role of race in America and/or his timidity."
A top Justice Department official recently said the amount of money that drug traffickers launder in the U.S. approaches $100 billion a year.
In other news, the notorious British peer Lord Ahmed was suspended from the Labour Party after he offered a £10 million bounty for the capture of President Obama and former President Bush. (Lord Ahmed!? What's next? Sultan Bubba? Sheik Billy Bob?)
Headline of the day..."ICE Officials Begin Process to Deport Obama's Illegal Drunk-Driving Uncle Omar"
Runnerup headline of the day..."Obama as a boy ate dog meat"
The current speaker of the House is the most-liked congressional leader, but he's even more disliked. However, his predecessor, who hasn't been in charge of the House for well over a year, remains the least-liked leader by far. Story
You didn't hear about this is the media, but on the weekend of March 24th and March 25th at least seven white people were brutally beaten by mobs of blacks in Grand Rapids, MI. Five of the victims filed police reports. At least two other victims exist, and there are probably others. The local media has refused to report the cruel attacks and the authorities are resisting any serious charges. Story
Tombstone, Arizona is located in a desert. As such, water supplies for the historic frontier town are pretty important. A lot of Tombstone’s water comes from water infrastructure located on federally-managed park land, as has been the case for roughly a century. Recently, though, forest fires and inclement weather has destroyed or damaged a lot of that infrastructure and local officials want the federal government to let them go in and repair it. But the federal government won’t let them do it…unless they use horses and hand tools. Story
Mr. Obama ought to be worried. Sixty-four percent also say the country is on the wrong track; 76% say we're still in recession; and only 25% believe the Supreme Court ought to uphold the entire health-care law. In other words, on the top issue of this election—the economy—a number of Americans who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 are open to the idea that someone else could do a better job.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday said he wanted "at least $2 billion" a year from the United States after it withdraws its troops in 2014.
Rush Limbaugh asks..."After years of cultural rot, why are we surprised by the Secret Service scandal?" On a roll, he also says, "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of American life." Still not finished, he asks, "Why does Mitt Romney have to explain his wealth when John Kerry didn't have to explain his?"
A judge is treading cautiously in a high-stakes case that pits the University of Virginia against a conservative institute seeking thousands of records related to climatologist Michael Mann. Story
Black Men Who Could Look Like Obama’s Son Arrested For Murder of White Mississippi State Student Story
Obama mistakenly referred to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives. Story
ExxonMobil in 2011 made $27.3 billion in cash payments for income taxes. Chevron paid $17 billion and ConocoPhillips $10.6 billion. And not only were these the highest amounts in absolute terms, when compared with the rest of the 25 most profitable U.S. companies, the trio also had the highest effective tax rates. Exxon’s tax rate was 42.9%, Chevron’s was 48.3% and Conoco’s was 41.5%. That’s even higher than the 35% U.S. federal statutory rate, which is already the highest tax rate among developed nations. Story
Take your pick...Gallup poll has Romney at 48 and Obama at 43. The Pew Poll has Obama at 49 and Romney at 45.
Since 2009, the wind industry has lost 10,000 jobs, even as the energy capacity of wind farms has almost doubled. By contrast, the oil and gas industry have created 75,000 jobs since Mr. Obama took office. Story
Michelle Obama gets the coveted Quote of the Year..."This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light."
The mutilated bodies of 14 people were discovered Tuesday morning in downtown Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Story
Obama's legacy
We know for a fact that enormous sums of money legally off limits have disappeared into the maw of disgraced Senator John Corzine’s gambling counterparties, all of whom seem to have taken the oath of omerta. We know that Corzine personally asked employees at MF Global, the financial firm he headed until recently, to transfer the funds. We know that his underlings balked at signing false statements attesting the transfers to be legal. So how is it that the man ultimately responsible for this brazen theft and spectacular bankruptcy gets away with performing a perfunctory Sergeant Schultz "I know nothing" routine in front of his old Senate buddies, after which he is left free to walk out the door without handcuffs?
Meanwhile, marine biologist and whale watching ship captain Nancy Black faces 20 years in prison, not for "harassing" whales (which believe it or not is a crime), but because she has been charged with lying to Justice Department prosecutors investing allegations that some of her crew members whistled at a whale to keep it hanging around their boats.
Story
Meanwhile, marine biologist and whale watching ship captain Nancy Black faces 20 years in prison, not for "harassing" whales (which believe it or not is a crime), but because she has been charged with lying to Justice Department prosecutors investing allegations that some of her crew members whistled at a whale to keep it hanging around their boats.
Story
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
CO2 fail
So far this month, the public has learned that the Arctic is overrun with polar bears, according to a Canadian study. The poster child for fear-warmongering by junk-science global warmists not only survives but thrives.
Then an actual count of penguins found that there are twice as many Emperor Penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, a second study found.
Then, another study found that far from melting in 23 years as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC report predicted, the glaciers of the Himalaya mountains are doing just fine.
The time has come to investigate James Hansen, Michael Mann, Al Gore and other global warming stars for fraud. They lied. They manipulated data. They made false predictions of doom in their over-heated sales pitches. I know that Hansen and Gore made millions off these false alarms of ecological doom. We must now hold them accountable for false claims and the spreading of rumors.
Not once have these fakes ever said a darned word about the benefits of global warming. Instead, they spin hysteria about melting icebergs flooding the Earth from a vengeful Gaea, who hates the SUV, punishing us for our sins.
They laugh at these "journalists" who repeat their talking points. The carbon footprint of Al Gore is bigger than Sasquatch’s.
Actual scientists are beginning to speak out — albeit a decade late — about the nonsense about carbon dioxide killing us all.
More here
Then an actual count of penguins found that there are twice as many Emperor Penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, a second study found.
Then, another study found that far from melting in 23 years as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC report predicted, the glaciers of the Himalaya mountains are doing just fine.
The time has come to investigate James Hansen, Michael Mann, Al Gore and other global warming stars for fraud. They lied. They manipulated data. They made false predictions of doom in their over-heated sales pitches. I know that Hansen and Gore made millions off these false alarms of ecological doom. We must now hold them accountable for false claims and the spreading of rumors.
Not once have these fakes ever said a darned word about the benefits of global warming. Instead, they spin hysteria about melting icebergs flooding the Earth from a vengeful Gaea, who hates the SUV, punishing us for our sins.
They laugh at these "journalists" who repeat their talking points. The carbon footprint of Al Gore is bigger than Sasquatch’s.
Actual scientists are beginning to speak out — albeit a decade late — about the nonsense about carbon dioxide killing us all.
More here
Luddites fail
The environmental left views the incredible rebirth of the American fossil fuel industry, wrought by unconventional methods (fracking and horizontal drilling), with alarm and disgust. The idea that the United States could easily fulfill all of its energy needs by utilizing its great domestic reserves of fossil fuels arouses their collective anger, and they have been battling this technology via every means at their disposal.
The enviros have run a massive and effective propaganda campaign with documentaries and advertising suggesting that fracking contaminates water supplies and is killing animals and people. They have waged interminable lawsuits at the local, state, and federal level to stop or slow the expansion of the extraction of unconventional oil and gas. And they have used the regulatory agencies -- especially the EPA, Department of the Interior, and Department of the Agriculture -- to halt the use of this technology on private lands and to keep it from expanding onto public hands.
There should be no sniffing at this latter point. The federal government currently owns huge chunks of land, including: 85% of Nevada; 69% of Alaska; 57% of Utah; 53% of Oregon; 50% of Idaho; 45% of California; 42% of Wyoming; 42% of New Mexico; and 37% of Colorado. All of these states are huge repositories of fossil fuel reserves, all crying out for development. But these riches will not ever be developed under this administration.
But the forces of Enlightenment are fighting back against the environmentalist nature-worshipers, and the former are beginning to win some major victories.
Start with the happy news that the EPA has been forced to back off on its aggressive war on fracking. It has withdrawn its lawsuit against Range Resources Corporation wherein, it had alleged that the company was polluting water wells near Fort Worth, Texas.
More here
The enviros have run a massive and effective propaganda campaign with documentaries and advertising suggesting that fracking contaminates water supplies and is killing animals and people. They have waged interminable lawsuits at the local, state, and federal level to stop or slow the expansion of the extraction of unconventional oil and gas. And they have used the regulatory agencies -- especially the EPA, Department of the Interior, and Department of the Agriculture -- to halt the use of this technology on private lands and to keep it from expanding onto public hands.
There should be no sniffing at this latter point. The federal government currently owns huge chunks of land, including: 85% of Nevada; 69% of Alaska; 57% of Utah; 53% of Oregon; 50% of Idaho; 45% of California; 42% of Wyoming; 42% of New Mexico; and 37% of Colorado. All of these states are huge repositories of fossil fuel reserves, all crying out for development. But these riches will not ever be developed under this administration.
But the forces of Enlightenment are fighting back against the environmentalist nature-worshipers, and the former are beginning to win some major victories.
Start with the happy news that the EPA has been forced to back off on its aggressive war on fracking. It has withdrawn its lawsuit against Range Resources Corporation wherein, it had alleged that the company was polluting water wells near Fort Worth, Texas.
More here
Monday, April 16, 2012
Get a clue, Barry
Does President Obama have the foggiest idea how jobs are created in America? There’s not much evidence he does, beyond lip service to the helpfulness of the private sector.
When the president begins a speech these days with praise for free markets, look out! What comes next are proposals for more government intervention in the economy and higher taxes. That’s the recipe, Obama says, to "encourage our long-term economic growth and stabilize our budget."
He said so in his Republicans-are-Social-Darwinists speech in Washington two weeks ago to newspaper editors. Near the outset, Obama declared: "I know that the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector, not Washington, which is why I’ve cut taxes for small-business owners 17 times over the last three years."
Those cuts have had minimal effect, and not surprisingly. They were tiny and temporary, and few small-business owners bothered to claim them, if indeed they were eligible to do so. Meanwhile, the president has persistently sought to raise their income taxes.
In Washington, Obama didn’t suggest, much less propose, a single incentive or spur to private investment, yet he insisted "we continue to make investments in growth today." These consist solely of government-funded jobs, such as "putting some of our construction workers back to work" and "helping states to rehire teachers."
Obama yearns for a hefty increase in hiring by state and local governments. If hiring were "on par to past recoveries, the unemployment rate would probably be about a point lower than it is right now." Restoring "huge cuts in state and local government" is "part of the challenge we have in terms of growth."
Source
When the president begins a speech these days with praise for free markets, look out! What comes next are proposals for more government intervention in the economy and higher taxes. That’s the recipe, Obama says, to "encourage our long-term economic growth and stabilize our budget."
He said so in his Republicans-are-Social-Darwinists speech in Washington two weeks ago to newspaper editors. Near the outset, Obama declared: "I know that the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector, not Washington, which is why I’ve cut taxes for small-business owners 17 times over the last three years."
Those cuts have had minimal effect, and not surprisingly. They were tiny and temporary, and few small-business owners bothered to claim them, if indeed they were eligible to do so. Meanwhile, the president has persistently sought to raise their income taxes.
In Washington, Obama didn’t suggest, much less propose, a single incentive or spur to private investment, yet he insisted "we continue to make investments in growth today." These consist solely of government-funded jobs, such as "putting some of our construction workers back to work" and "helping states to rehire teachers."
Obama yearns for a hefty increase in hiring by state and local governments. If hiring were "on par to past recoveries, the unemployment rate would probably be about a point lower than it is right now." Restoring "huge cuts in state and local government" is "part of the challenge we have in terms of growth."
Source
Los Angeles fail
Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in a race against the clock. Two years ago, he declared at a press conference that city finances were sound and would stay that way: "The fact of the matter is this city will never go bankrupt." Then he hedged a bit, adding, "It will never go bankrupt under my watch." Villaraigosa’s watch—his second mayoral term, after which the law obliges him to leave office—ends just over a year from now, on July 1, 2013. He may be able to keep his (amended) promise, but perhaps not by much.
Miguel Santana, the city’s top budget officer, has just released a fiscal forecast that confirms what critics of Villaraigosa and the city council have been saying for some time: If Los Angeles continues on its present course, it will go broke. This is not a prediction buried in the charts and footnotes, either. It’s right up front, in a preface titled "A Cautionary Tale: The City of Stockton, California." Santana notes that Stockton has entered a state-mandated mediation period—in essence, the last chance for the city unions and bondholders to work out a deal—after which it will be officially in default. "Stockton’s story provides a cautionary tale for the City of Los Angeles and other cities struggling to remain solvent," he says.
Santana is right, and his report offers some compelling numbers to prove it. Over the next four years, he notes, the average annual growth in the city’s general-fund expenditures is expected to top 3.8 percent. The projected increase in salaries, pensions, and health care is even greater—at least 4.7 percent. But the city expects revenue to increase by only 2.3 percent annually over the same period. This is the picture of a structural deficit, which no economic recovery is likely to erase. Santana expects the city’s general-fund deficit to rise from $222 million in the coming fiscal year to $427 million by fiscal year 2015. He suggests raising some taxes, mainly on property sales, to close the gap partly. But Santana also warns that city officials must do more to control spending, especially labor costs, which consume 93 percent of general-fund spending. Layoffs aren’t enough. The real trouble, in Los Angeles as in other cities, is with pensions and health benefits. The city in five years expects to spend $943 million more in labor costs—and that’s without adding a single new employee.
At least some Los Angeles officials are speaking seriously about the city’s fiscal solvency, even if their sense of urgency comes a bit late. Others, most notably former mayor Richard Riordan, have been sounding the alarm for at least two years. In fact, Villaraigosa delivered his May 2010 no-bankruptcy pledge in response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed, coauthored by Riordan and investment advisor Alex Rubalcava, predicting that L.A. would likely declare bankruptcy by 2014. Riordan and Rubalcava argued that the city’s finances were set to collapse under the weight of pensions and retiree health costs. At the time, Santana countered with a point-by-point rebuttal, disputing Riordan’s numbers and the ex-mayor’s charge that the city under Villaraigosa had done a poor job controlling labor costs. Santana also tried to shift the blame to Riordan, who left office four years before Villaraigosa took over. "We’re having to clean up after the lack of pension reform from the [Riordan] administration," he said.
More here
Miguel Santana, the city’s top budget officer, has just released a fiscal forecast that confirms what critics of Villaraigosa and the city council have been saying for some time: If Los Angeles continues on its present course, it will go broke. This is not a prediction buried in the charts and footnotes, either. It’s right up front, in a preface titled "A Cautionary Tale: The City of Stockton, California." Santana notes that Stockton has entered a state-mandated mediation period—in essence, the last chance for the city unions and bondholders to work out a deal—after which it will be officially in default. "Stockton’s story provides a cautionary tale for the City of Los Angeles and other cities struggling to remain solvent," he says.
Santana is right, and his report offers some compelling numbers to prove it. Over the next four years, he notes, the average annual growth in the city’s general-fund expenditures is expected to top 3.8 percent. The projected increase in salaries, pensions, and health care is even greater—at least 4.7 percent. But the city expects revenue to increase by only 2.3 percent annually over the same period. This is the picture of a structural deficit, which no economic recovery is likely to erase. Santana expects the city’s general-fund deficit to rise from $222 million in the coming fiscal year to $427 million by fiscal year 2015. He suggests raising some taxes, mainly on property sales, to close the gap partly. But Santana also warns that city officials must do more to control spending, especially labor costs, which consume 93 percent of general-fund spending. Layoffs aren’t enough. The real trouble, in Los Angeles as in other cities, is with pensions and health benefits. The city in five years expects to spend $943 million more in labor costs—and that’s without adding a single new employee.
At least some Los Angeles officials are speaking seriously about the city’s fiscal solvency, even if their sense of urgency comes a bit late. Others, most notably former mayor Richard Riordan, have been sounding the alarm for at least two years. In fact, Villaraigosa delivered his May 2010 no-bankruptcy pledge in response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed, coauthored by Riordan and investment advisor Alex Rubalcava, predicting that L.A. would likely declare bankruptcy by 2014. Riordan and Rubalcava argued that the city’s finances were set to collapse under the weight of pensions and retiree health costs. At the time, Santana countered with a point-by-point rebuttal, disputing Riordan’s numbers and the ex-mayor’s charge that the city under Villaraigosa had done a poor job controlling labor costs. Santana also tried to shift the blame to Riordan, who left office four years before Villaraigosa took over. "We’re having to clean up after the lack of pension reform from the [Riordan] administration," he said.
More here
Stuxnet worm
An Iranian double agent working for Israel used a standard thumb drive carrying a deadly payload to infect Iran's Natanz nuclear facility with the highly destructive Stuxnet computer worm, according to a story by ISSSource.
Stuxnet quickly propagated throughout Natanz -- knocking that facility offline and at least temporarily crippling Iran's nuclear program -- once a user did nothing more than click on a Windows icon. The worm was discovered nearly two years ago.
ISSSource's report yesterday was based on sources inside the U.S. intelligence community.
These sources, who requested anonymity because of their close proximity to investigations, said a saboteur at the Natanz nuclear facility, probably a member of an Iranian dissident group, used a memory stick to infect the machines there. They said using a person on the ground would greatly increase the probability of computer infection, as opposed to passively waiting for the software to spread through the computer facility. "Iranian double agents" would have helped to target the most vulnerable spots in the system," one source said. In October 2010, Iran's intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi said an unspecified number of "nuclear spies" were arrested in connection with Stuxnet.33 virus.
As CNET first reported in August 2010, Stuxnet, as a worm intended to hit critical infrastructure companies, wasn't meant to remove data from Natanz. Rather, it left a back door that was meant to be accessed remotely to allow outsiders to stealthily control the plant.
The Stuxnet worm infected industrial control system companies around the world, particularly in Iran and India but also companies in the U.S. energy industry, Liam O'Murchu, manager of operations for Symantec Security Response, told CNET. He declined to say how many companies may have been infected or to identify any of them.
"This is quite a serious development in the threat landscape," he said. "It's essentially giving an attacker control of the physical system in an industrial control environment."
According to ISSSource, the double agent was likely a member of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a shadowy organization often engaged by Israel to carry out targeted assassinations of Iraninan nationals, the publication's sources said.
More here
Stuxnet quickly propagated throughout Natanz -- knocking that facility offline and at least temporarily crippling Iran's nuclear program -- once a user did nothing more than click on a Windows icon. The worm was discovered nearly two years ago.
ISSSource's report yesterday was based on sources inside the U.S. intelligence community.
As CNET first reported in August 2010, Stuxnet, as a worm intended to hit critical infrastructure companies, wasn't meant to remove data from Natanz. Rather, it left a back door that was meant to be accessed remotely to allow outsiders to stealthily control the plant.
"This is quite a serious development in the threat landscape," he said. "It's essentially giving an attacker control of the physical system in an industrial control environment."
According to ISSSource, the double agent was likely a member of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a shadowy organization often engaged by Israel to carry out targeted assassinations of Iraninan nationals, the publication's sources said.
More here
Blagojevich
Looks like we may not have heard the last from the Rod Blagojevich corruption scandal after all. The former Illinois governor got a 14-year prison sentence in December on federal charges, following the career path forged by more than one of his predecessors in the office. His brother Robert, however, is still free to travel — and will apparently visit Washington DC to tell the House Ethics Committee what he knows about an alleged deal between his brother and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. for Barack Obama’s then-vacant Senate seat:
As Rod Blagojevich serves a 14-year sentence for trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat, the former governor’s brother is headed to Washington to talk about who he says offered to buy it.
The U.S. House Committee on Ethics, which is investigating U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), is expected to interview Robert Blagojevich later this month, sources tell the Chicago Sun-Times. …
Rob Blagojevich — a former military man whose life was upended after being charged along with his brother — has said he has more to tell Congress about Jesse Jackson Jr.’s alleged involvement in the Senate seat sale. Some of the information about the case has not been made public, he has said.
Robert Blagojevich has been very public in attempting to get their attention. The corruption case itself, as the Chicago Sun-Times recalls in its article, had evidence that the disgraced governor understood that Jackson would give Blagojevich $1.5 million to bolster his campaign coffers in exchange for the appointment. Presumably, the governor’s brother has some dots that he can connect in this regard.
The Ethics Committee has had this case since 2009. At the same time that Rod Blagojevich got convicted, the Office of Congressional Ethics reported publicly that they found "probable cause" that Jackson had either known of a pay-for-play proposal, or was directly involved in it. Earlier, the Sun-Times also reported that one of Jackson’s donors told federal investigators almost two years ago that Jackson had told him to make an offer of $6 million, although Raghuveer Nayak might also be bargaining to get out from underneath a separate and unrelated federal investigation. Testimony from the governor’s brother might tend to corroborate Nayak’s account of the proposal, which would put Jackson in rather deep trouble, and not just with the Ethics Committee.
More here
The U.S. House Committee on Ethics, which is investigating U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), is expected to interview Robert Blagojevich later this month, sources tell the Chicago Sun-Times. …
Rob Blagojevich — a former military man whose life was upended after being charged along with his brother — has said he has more to tell Congress about Jesse Jackson Jr.’s alleged involvement in the Senate seat sale. Some of the information about the case has not been made public, he has said.
Robert Blagojevich has been very public in attempting to get their attention. The corruption case itself, as the Chicago Sun-Times recalls in its article, had evidence that the disgraced governor understood that Jackson would give Blagojevich $1.5 million to bolster his campaign coffers in exchange for the appointment. Presumably, the governor’s brother has some dots that he can connect in this regard.
The Ethics Committee has had this case since 2009. At the same time that Rod Blagojevich got convicted, the Office of Congressional Ethics reported publicly that they found "probable cause" that Jackson had either known of a pay-for-play proposal, or was directly involved in it. Earlier, the Sun-Times also reported that one of Jackson’s donors told federal investigators almost two years ago that Jackson had told him to make an offer of $6 million, although Raghuveer Nayak might also be bargaining to get out from underneath a separate and unrelated federal investigation. Testimony from the governor’s brother might tend to corroborate Nayak’s account of the proposal, which would put Jackson in rather deep trouble, and not just with the Ethics Committee.
More here
Saturday, April 14, 2012
China recession
The Wall Street Journal reported that...Sales of new commercial and passenger vehicles in China shrank in the first quarter as slowing economic growth chipped away at demand, adding to concerns about the full-year sales outlook in the world's largest auto market. In the first quarter, total vehicle sales in China fell 3.4% from a year earlier to 4.79 million vehicles, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Wednesday. Sales of passenger cars fell 1.3% to 3.77 million vehicles. For March, passenger-car sales rose 4.5% from a year earlier to 1.4 million vehicles, while total auto sales increased 1% to 1.84 million vehicles.
Meanwhile, the Norwegian shooter, Anders Behring Breivik, has been declared sane and will be tried in court for the murder of over 70 people. I'm not a psychiatrist but killing over 70 people doesn't really seem like something a sane person would do.
Elsewhere, closer to home..."Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes." Story
Under pressure from vengeful blacks the state of Florida has caved...George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder. I would bet money he will be acquitted. But then again, since he's been labelled a "white" hispanic, he may be given the electric chair. And isn't that special prosecutor the ugliest woman you've ever seen?
Ronald Reagan, the Magnificent..."I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born."
...consider, for instance, that when Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright accused white people of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color," he was not expressing a new belief in the black community. After Hurricane Katrina, Louis Farrakhan claimed that the breached levees had been blown up by the government; Spike Lee said that his theory wasn't "far-fetched"; and even before Looney Louie had weighed in, black residents on the street stated that the flooding was part of a conspiracy to rid New Orleans of black people. On a more frivolous but equally ridiculous note, I've heard black golf fans claim that the late-1990s equipment revolution that enabled players to hit the ball farther, and the subsequent lengthening of golf courses, were engineered for the purposes of undermining Tiger Woods, a black man dominating a white game. Of course, given what we now know about Woods' extra-curricular activities, targeting him with HIV might have been easier. Story
The heated and ever-expanding national rage over racism is now spilling into the America’s large chain restaurants where African-Americans say everything from their tipping to tableside etiquette is dissed by white waitstaff, according to an in-depth survey for the Journal of Black Studies provided to Secrets. Story
Quote of the day from Mark Twain..."It's Easy to Quit Smoking! I've Done It Thousands of Times!"
Runnerup quote of the day from columnist Mona Charen..."Hugo Chavez is ailing. But his spirit is thriving in the White House."
Ann Romney is being attacked by the Leftists by saying she has "never worked a day in her life." Truth alert...she raised five kids. FIVE BOYS. If that isn't work then I'm a monkey's uncle.
La Raza President Janet Murguia appeared on Al Sharpton's radio show Wednesday and called on blacks and hispanics to team up against the common enemy. She's referring to those evil white devils of course. And when exactly have they NOT been teamed up against Whitey? Jeez, who needs the Comedy Channel when you get stuff like this?
Ain't it the truth?..."In politics, few talents are as richly rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims. Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensation for injustices – leading to worsening behavior by the recipients." -- Thomas Sowell
A rapidly growing Alberta firm has cornered the market for waterless fracking just as environmental issues begin to dominate the discussion of fracturing deep rock to free vast supplies of natural gas and oil. Using propane instead of water, GasFrac Energy Services is able to inject a jelled-propane mixture under pressure that contains sand and chemicals into deep vertical and horizontal wells to open up cracks in a formation. Story (Attention EPA! The ball is now in your court)
From the "all cultures are equal" department...In a shocking incident on Friday, two youths allegedly ran their car over a school teacher in the town of Sonepat in Haryana, for not allowing one of their friends, a Class 12 student, to cheat in board examinations. Story
Behold the wisdom of Mike Tyson, speaking of George Zimmerman..."It’s a disgrace that man hasn’t been shot yet. Forget about him being arrested—the fact that he hasn’t been shot yet is a disgrace. That’s how I feel personally about it."
Left wing professor Alan Dershowitz says the charges against Zimmerman are "irresponsible and unethical." Did I mention that he's a left winger?
Conservative wags are referring to Trayvon Martin as Saint Skittles.
She's been a called everything from an "angry perm," to a "hair hero" and now the Democrats' chief soundbite peddler Debbie Wasserman Schultz has a new look. Story and photo here
12 Ways To Use Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals Against Liberals here
I'll bet you didn't know that Jesus was a black muslim.
From the Wall Street Journal...Air travel would be safer if we allowed knives, lighters and liquids on board and focused on disrupting new terrorist plots, writes a former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley.
So, how many moons does Saturn have? So far 62 have been discovered.
From the Rush Limbaugh show..."President Obama’s sales pitch for the so-called Buffett Rule is simple: It’s only fair that those who make more than $1 million a year should pay a higher tax rate than middle-class workers. Here’s what he tends not to mention: for the most part, they already do."
Meanwhile, the Norwegian shooter, Anders Behring Breivik, has been declared sane and will be tried in court for the murder of over 70 people. I'm not a psychiatrist but killing over 70 people doesn't really seem like something a sane person would do.
Elsewhere, closer to home..."Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes." Story
Under pressure from vengeful blacks the state of Florida has caved...George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder. I would bet money he will be acquitted. But then again, since he's been labelled a "white" hispanic, he may be given the electric chair. And isn't that special prosecutor the ugliest woman you've ever seen?
Ronald Reagan, the Magnificent..."I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born."
...consider, for instance, that when Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright accused white people of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color," he was not expressing a new belief in the black community. After Hurricane Katrina, Louis Farrakhan claimed that the breached levees had been blown up by the government; Spike Lee said that his theory wasn't "far-fetched"; and even before Looney Louie had weighed in, black residents on the street stated that the flooding was part of a conspiracy to rid New Orleans of black people. On a more frivolous but equally ridiculous note, I've heard black golf fans claim that the late-1990s equipment revolution that enabled players to hit the ball farther, and the subsequent lengthening of golf courses, were engineered for the purposes of undermining Tiger Woods, a black man dominating a white game. Of course, given what we now know about Woods' extra-curricular activities, targeting him with HIV might have been easier. Story
The heated and ever-expanding national rage over racism is now spilling into the America’s large chain restaurants where African-Americans say everything from their tipping to tableside etiquette is dissed by white waitstaff, according to an in-depth survey for the Journal of Black Studies provided to Secrets. Story
Quote of the day from Mark Twain..."It's Easy to Quit Smoking! I've Done It Thousands of Times!"
Runnerup quote of the day from columnist Mona Charen..."Hugo Chavez is ailing. But his spirit is thriving in the White House."
Ann Romney is being attacked by the Leftists by saying she has "never worked a day in her life." Truth alert...she raised five kids. FIVE BOYS. If that isn't work then I'm a monkey's uncle.
La Raza President Janet Murguia appeared on Al Sharpton's radio show Wednesday and called on blacks and hispanics to team up against the common enemy. She's referring to those evil white devils of course. And when exactly have they NOT been teamed up against Whitey? Jeez, who needs the Comedy Channel when you get stuff like this?
Ain't it the truth?..."In politics, few talents are as richly rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims. Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensation for injustices – leading to worsening behavior by the recipients." -- Thomas Sowell
A rapidly growing Alberta firm has cornered the market for waterless fracking just as environmental issues begin to dominate the discussion of fracturing deep rock to free vast supplies of natural gas and oil. Using propane instead of water, GasFrac Energy Services is able to inject a jelled-propane mixture under pressure that contains sand and chemicals into deep vertical and horizontal wells to open up cracks in a formation. Story (Attention EPA! The ball is now in your court)
From the "all cultures are equal" department...In a shocking incident on Friday, two youths allegedly ran their car over a school teacher in the town of Sonepat in Haryana, for not allowing one of their friends, a Class 12 student, to cheat in board examinations. Story
Behold the wisdom of Mike Tyson, speaking of George Zimmerman..."It’s a disgrace that man hasn’t been shot yet. Forget about him being arrested—the fact that he hasn’t been shot yet is a disgrace. That’s how I feel personally about it."
Left wing professor Alan Dershowitz says the charges against Zimmerman are "irresponsible and unethical." Did I mention that he's a left winger?
Conservative wags are referring to Trayvon Martin as Saint Skittles.
She's been a called everything from an "angry perm," to a "hair hero" and now the Democrats' chief soundbite peddler Debbie Wasserman Schultz has a new look. Story and photo here
12 Ways To Use Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals Against Liberals here
I'll bet you didn't know that Jesus was a black muslim.
From the Wall Street Journal...Air travel would be safer if we allowed knives, lighters and liquids on board and focused on disrupting new terrorist plots, writes a former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley.
So, how many moons does Saturn have? So far 62 have been discovered.
From the Rush Limbaugh show..."President Obama’s sales pitch for the so-called Buffett Rule is simple: It’s only fair that those who make more than $1 million a year should pay a higher tax rate than middle-class workers. Here’s what he tends not to mention: for the most part, they already do."
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