Bristol Bashing Reflects The Left’s Ongoing Fear of Her Mother

It was clear from the moment Gov. Sarah Palin appeared on the national scene as McCain’s vice-presidential choice that the Left was terrified of her charismatic appeal, effortless (and teleprompter-less) articulateness, formidable track record in political life, beautiful family, can-do American optimism, and also her success in actualizing what the largely-leftist feminist movement has advocated for since the 1960s, the notion that women could “have it all.” Palin’ genuinely self-made-woman status embodied the arch-goal of feminism – its paltry stats notwithstanding – but the tolerant feminists attacked her anyway.

It is columnist Wesley Pruden, however, who sums it up hilariously:

“Not only was she bereft of an Ivy League credential…she didn’t have a master’s degree in women’s studies from Harvard, nor had she ever taken a course in art appreciation at Stanford. She didn’t have a doctorate from Yale in the poetry of Nineteenth-Century Romania, nor had she written a learned paper for the Council on Foreign Relations on the politics of the Third Ten-Year Plan for Agricultural Reform in Uzbekistan. She was begging feminists with fancy credentials who had never accomplished anything to hate her, and they did.”

Yes, the Left’s snobbish fealty to the Ivy League was on full display during the 2008 campaign. But while the Ivy Leaguer ultimately won, the public cast a thunderous “no” vote against the so-called mainstream media’s blatantly biased – indeed, fawning – coverage, which can now be seen in the current demise of major liberal media.

Meanwhile, the lovely, modest, well-spoken, intelligent, humble, and well-brought-up Bristol Palin, and her mother, blithely ignore the rabid ravings of The Huffington Post, The Daily Kos, and the shrikes on “The View”.

The harder they try, the clearer it is that Gov. Palin’s popularity and clout is impervious to their efforts. And their dread is sure to increase as the truth of Ruth S. King’s words finally sink in:

“We have not seen the last of her."

[And that's what scares them most. Recommended > ]

READ MORE

Palin to Keynote Senate-House GOP Dinner

The chairs of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee today announced that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will deliver the keynote address at the annual Senate-House Dinner. The dinner will be held on June 8 at the Washington Convention Center.

READ MORE

Formerly Useful Idiots

Lenin famously said of liberals in the West that they were "useful idiots."

A number of really smart (go ahead, ask them) people endorsed Obama only to find out that they were hoodwinked. He's not the guy they fell in love with. It's the morning after, and they've been forced to confront the fact that he's a fraud. A forgery.

In John LeCarre's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" master spy George Smiley points out that "the more one has paid for a forgery, the more one defends it in the face of all the evidence to the contrary." And, these people have paid plenty for their forgery.

They fell in love with the idea of Obama and that blinded them to the reality of the man Obama. The hard leftist. The man with no management skills. The man with no knowledge of history. The man who insults our allies. Now, as the reality of what they have done is hitting them in the face, they are painfully coming to grips with their colossal gullibility.

Alec Guinness brilliantly portrayed the moment of clarity when he contemplated the bridge he had built for the Japanese over the River Kwai and said,
"What have I done?"

READ MORE

[HT:DT]

Hundreds attend global warming protest.

image photo - grn fnn - HT:SL = Hundreds Attend Global Warming Protest

image toon - 1st mny sclm - OB = Mission Accomplished re economy = spend

GOP to Provide Alternative Budget to Obama's

The No. 2 House Republican says the president's budget plan doesn't address the needs of small businesses and that the GOP will put forward an alternative.

Rep. Eric Cantor is warning that President Barack Obama's spending proposal would raise taxes on every American by $800 -- the result of new taxes on polluting energy companies and manufacturers.

Cantor says the administration's long-term view ignores the country's immediate needs...

READ MORE

'For the Top Earners, There Will Be Blood'

Daniel Henninger’s Thursday column in The Wall Street Journal – "The Obama Rosetta Stone" – suggested all Americans should read Obama’s budget document, 141 pages, printed by the Government Printing Office. Henninger instructed:

Turn to page five of Mr. Obama's federal budget, and one may read these commentaries on the top 1% datum:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."

"Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected."

"There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."

....Mr. Obama made clear in the campaign his intention to raise taxes on this income class by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. What is becoming clearer as his presidency unfolds is that something deeper is underway here than merely using higher taxes to fund his policy goals in health, education and energy.

The "top 1%" isn't just going to pay for these policies. Many of them would assent to that. The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to "pay for" the fact of their wealth -- no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit.....

The White House says its goal is simple "fairness." That may be, as they understand fairness. But Figure 9 makes it clear that for the top earners, there will be blood.

This presidency is going to be an act of retribution.

READ MORE

Obama Adviser: U.S. Is in 'Economic War'

A top presidential adviser says the U.S. is in an "economic war" -- one that is not being won yet.

Economic aide Christina Romer says she agrees with investment mogul Warren Buffett, who used the "economic war" phrase last week to describe the nation's economic woes.

In Romer's words, "We haven't won yet. We have staged a wonderful battle."

Romer heads the president's Council of Economic Advisers. She says the White House believes the fundamentals of the economy are strong.* Romer says the administration is looking at the long-term view, not the daily ups and downs on Wall Street.

[*Was this not the phrase the MSM (and Obama) bludgeoned Bush with again and again when our economic situation was unquestionably better than it is now?

Sand by for a 24/7 MSM-storm over this administration's identical claim. Right?]

READ MORE

image toon - 1st mny - OB hitching economy to huge spending cars

Beijing raises stakes with tit-for-tat deployment in South China Sea

[HT:BM]
Beijing - Beijing has increased tension in a disputed part of the South China Sea by sending a patrol ship to protect fishing boats after the United States deployed a destroyer in the area. The American move was in response to alleged Chinese harassment of one of its surveillance vessels.

READ MORE

Russia weighs Cuba, Venezuela bases: report

Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.

"This is possible in Cuba," General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of the Russian air force's strategic aviation staff, told the Interfax-AVN military news agency.

The comments were the latest signal that Moscow intends to project its military capability in far-flung corners of the globe [snip]

Zhikharev said Cuba had a several air bases equipped with the long runways needed by the heavy bombers and said the facilities there were "entirely acceptable" for use by the Russian aircraft during long-distance patrols.

"If the will of the two states is there, the political will, then we are prepared to fly there" to the bases in Cuba, the agency quoted Zhikharev as saying.

Last July however, a top US air force officer warned that Russia would cross "a red line" if it were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba.
"If they did, I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America," said General Norton Schwartz said on July 23.

READ MORE

image toon - nsec = Dem lumberjerks re cutting defense spending

Bolton: Obama Turns on Israel

Bolton writes in an opinion column appearing in the New York Post that U.S. pressure to find a solution to the decades-old conflict will be the greatest on Israel, because it is an ally.

"How will diplomatic pressure work to change Hamas or Hezbollah, where even military force has so far failed? If anything, one can predict coming pressure on Israel to acknowledge the legitimacy of these two terrorist groups, and to negotiate with them as equals"

"Why would America subject a close ally to this dynamic, playing with the security of an unvarying supporter in world affairs? For America, Israel's intelligence-sharing, military cooperation and significant bilateral economic ties, among many others, are important national-security assets that should not lightly be put at risk."

Bolton argues that America's focus should instead

"be on Iran and the manifold threats it poses to Israel, to Arab states friendly to Washington and to the United States itself."

READ MORE

United States can’t ignore Iran’s genocidal incitement

The enduring lesson of the Holocaust and that of the genocides that followed is that they occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of the state-sanctioned incitement to hatred.

As international tribunals have recognized, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; it began with words. These are the chilling facts of history...

READ MORE

Kudos to those who will not embrace annual hate fest

For the past week, events marking Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) have taken place at virtually every major university in Canada. Among the noteworthy exceptions are the University of Calgary and the University of Western Ontario.

Students and faculty on these campuses have distinguished themselves by unanimously refusing to take part in this festival of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Israel Apartheid Week was initiated five years ago by the Arab Students' Collective at the University of Toronto. Since then, the annual hate fest has spread to universities in more than 40 cities around the world. [snip]

At the Muslim Al Quds University near Jerusalem, IAW has been extended for a full month, during which the university's students' council is urging a boycott of Israeli goods on campus and seeking international support for the alleged right of Palestinian refugees to return in overwhelming numbers to Israel.

How ironic. Here we have students living in Israeli-Palestine openly advocating a policy that would spell the end of Israel as an independent state. Imagine the fate of any Jew in Gaza who dared to speak out against Islamist terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli civilians... [snip]

Incidentally, out of 15,000 students at Ben-Gurion, 1,000 are Arabs, including many low-income Bedouin on full scholarships. Is that the generosity one would expect of a government-funded institution in a real apartheid state?

READ MORE

image toon - bdd edu - William Ayers - EDUCATOR

Venezuela's Chavez takes over opposition-run ports

CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered the military to take over the country's ports and airports, a move aimed at gaining control of installations run by opposition-ruled state governments.

The self-styled revolutionary in recent months has removed regional leaders' control of services such as hospitals and police forces, sparking accusations he is undermining opposition elected officials and concentrating his hold on power.

READ MORE

My Socialist Past

Anyone who has lived inside the demoralized, unproductive, gray prison of a communist state, as I did in the mid-1980s, knows to what depths of impoverishment the egalitarian fantasies of socialism inevitably lead. They lead to decades of frustrated poverty and lifetimes of untreated illness culminating in early death. I remember the columns of death notices for men and women in their forties and fifties that appeared in the local newspaper. Gradually I learned to associate those death notices with the lack of fresh foodstuffs, the travesty of state health care, and the pervasive demoralization of an enslaved population... [snip]

Socialism always stifles talent and ambition, and the more it does so, the more squalid things get. It is no accident that socialism always fails. It fails because of its fundamental assumption that self-interest can be suppressed in human relations. Socialism fails every time because of the arrogant lie upon which it rests. The reality is that it is free market capitalism that has been responsible for the explosive increases is wealth and productivity in America during the past two hundred years. This explosive growth could never be achieved in a society of utopian social planners because the goals of socialist planners do not correspond with the actual motives of human beings in the real world. [snip]

All socialist experiments, from the high-minded 19th-century utopianism of Robert Owen or Charles Fourier to the vicious authoritarian nightmare of Mao Tse-tung or Pol Pot, have been the product of middle- or upper-class fantasies, the underlying feature of which is the megalomaniac intention to "save" the working class from its own bad habits. Paul Johnson observed in his superb book, Intellectuals, that saving the working classes from themselves has been the ruinous ambition of middle- and upper-class intellectuals for over two hundred years, and the result has - in every case - been calamitous.

[Very long - but very good at conveying the seemingly benign but inescapably causative effects overtime of socialist experiments - as well as their relevance to our current situation -- Highly Recommended > ]

READ MORE

Something Wicked This Way Comes

[HT:JV]
The darkest times in human history have all begun when someone decided "not to let a serious crisis go to waste". In fact, it is in times of economic crisis that folks are most susceptible to the ideas of tyrants. We look for an answer, any port in a storm that will shield us from the unknown.

And in our desire to be safe, we open ourselves up to things that we would never have dreamed of allowing in normal times...

READ MORE

image toon - libs sclm - OB's stairway to heaven

Reason #1287 why you're a chump if you pay your mortgage responsibily

We were promised when the Democrats took over the White House and the Congress that a new era of transparency, honesty, openness was upon America.

Not true.

The Democrats are seemingly intent on destroying the financial system of America through a variety of ill-considered steps. One is giving bankruptcy judges the ability to “cramdown” mortgages (allowing bankruptcy courts to unilaterally cut the value of mortgages held by financial companies, thereby damaging their balance sheets, capital ratios and ability, and willingness, to lend in the future).
That at least is reasonably visible and has led to opposition.

But when Democrats take steps that are all but invisible that could have hugely damaging consequences, they should be called on the carpet. This is especially true when provisions are slipped into bills that become law. Laws are very hard to overturn or to change and by the time they can be altered, vast damage has often occurred.

The Democrats (which ones, one might ask) slipped into the House bill dealing with mortgages a sneaky, near invisible provision, that would allow failing borrowers the right to outright own a house for a fraction of the purchase price if the lender makes even minor errors in federal disclosure rules :

[T]he American Bankers Association on Friday raised alarms about a little-noticed part of the bill, saying it would let a borrower end up owning a house for a fraction of the purchase price if the lender breaches certain federal disclosure rules.

The industry said the House version of the bill would force judges to invalidate a lender's claim in bankruptcy for committing minor and accidental errors, such as understating a finance charge by as little as $36.

Wonderful. Small, innocent errors can lead to a homeowner-who may have decided not to meet his debt obligations-to own a home, free and clear of any debts.

So everyone else has to pay their mortgages responsibly but if someone can find an innocent error made by a bank employee-a typo, for example-they can win a house?

The Truth In Lending Laws are important laws and have helped protect borrowers. They need to be strengthened.

How about a Truth in Legislating Law?

Source

55% Say Government Mortgage Help Rewards Bad Behavior

Fifty-five percent (55%) of American adults say the federal government would be rewarding bad behavior by providing mortgage subsidies to financially troubled homeowners. Among investors, 65% hold that view.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that, among all adults, just 32% disagree.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans and 60% of those not affiliated with either major political party believe the mortgage help subsidizes bad behavior. Most Democrats (51%) disagree.

READ MORE

Nobody listens to the real climate change experts

The minds of world leaders are firmly shut to anything but the fantasies of the scaremongers [because it's in their intere$t]

Considering how the fear of global warming is inspiring the world's politicians to put forward the most costly and economically damaging package of measures ever imposed on mankind, it is obviously important that we can trust the basis on which all this is being proposed. Last week two international conferences addressed this issue and the contrast between them could not have been starker.

The first in Copenhagen, billed as "an emergency summit on climate change" and attracting acres of worldwide media coverage, was explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch. As one of the organisers put it,

"this is not a regular scientific conference: this is a deliberate attempt to influence policy".

What a striking contrast this was to the second conference, which I attended with 700 others in New York, organised by the Heartland Institute under the title Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis?. In Britain this received no coverage at all, apart from a sneering mention by the Guardian, although it was addressed by dozens of expert scientists, not a few of world rank, who for professional standing put those in Copenhagen in the shade. [snip]

Led off with stirring speeches from the Czech President Vaclav Klaus, the acting head of the European Union, and Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, perhaps the most distinguished climatologist in the world, the message of this gathering was that the scare over global warming has been deliberately stoked up for political reasons and has long since parted company with proper scientific evidence.

Far from rising with CO2, as the models are programmed to predict they should, the satellite-measured temperature curve has flattened out and then dropped. If the present trend were to continue, the world in 2100 would not in fact be hotter but 1.1C cooler than the 1979-1998 average... [snip]

...there seems little doubt that global warming is leading the world towards an unprecedented catastrophe. But it is not the Technicolor apocalypse promised by the likes of Al Gore.

The real disaster hanging over us lies in all those astronomically costly measures proposed by politicians, to meet a crisis which in reality never existed.

[More, Highly Recommended > ]

READ MORE

California's Wet Dream

I live in a state managed by a pack of damned lunatics. Not only have the spendaholics who comprise the California legislature submerged us with an unsustainable budget deficit and then swamped us with the largest combined tax increase in the Golden state's history to attempt to pay for it -- now they have spent money on gawd-awful 'research' which proclaims the state is about to go under water -- literally.

According to yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:

"Driven by global warming, the ocean is expected to rise nearly 5 feet along California's coastline by the end of the century, hitting San Francisco Bay the hardest of all, according to a state study released Wednesday."

"Rising seas, storms and extreme high tides are expected to send saltwater into low-lying areas, flooding freeways, the Oakland and San Francisco airports, hospitals, power plants, schools and sewage plants. Thousands of structures at risk are the homes of low- and middle-income people, the study said."

This so-called "study" was concocted by the Pacific Institute (www.pacinst.org), a nonprofit propaganda outfit in Oakland. The hogwash was paid for by the California Energy Commission, Caltrans and the state Ocean Protection Council. The Pacific Institute's mission statement says,

"We envision a world where the basic needs of all people are met, where resources are managed sustainably and the natural world protected, and where conflicts over resources are resolved in a peaceful and democratic fashion."

Wonderful. My beloved California is purchasing purposefully misleading goo-goo eco-doctrine from a leftist group. It gets even worse. On the Pacific Institute's Board of Directors is Anne Ehrlich, wife of Paul Population Bomb Ehrlich...

[Yet there it is in the The SF Comical without a word of background on its source.]

READ MORE

image toon - grn - record snow in Spokane on TV

Justice Dept. Investigates Arizona Sheriff for Enforcing Immigration Law

- The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona following requests by congressional Democrats and allegations by liberal activists that the department has violated the civil rights of illegal aliens.

Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Robert Scott (D-Va.) requested the investigation, and activists groups such as National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN launched petition drives and rallies in support of the probe. [snip]

"The investigation will focus on alleged patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures conducted by the MCSO, and on allegations of national origin discrimination, including failure to provide meaningful access to MCSO services for limited English proficient (LEP) individuals." [snip]

The press release goes on to say that 20 percent of inmates in the Maricopa County Jail are illegal aliens and that of those, 2,000 illegal aliens - 70 percent - were arrested for felony crimes.

Those felony crimes committed included the following: forgery, 12 percent; kidnapping, 10 percent; aggravated assault, 7 percent; driving under the influence, 7 percent; drug charges, 27 percent; robbery, 3 percent; murder, 3 percent; and theft, 4 percent.

The Democratic Congress members have also asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to launch an investigation into the training provided by ICE.

READ MORE

Harassing A Lawman

Immigration: At a time when our border is becoming a war zone, something's a bit suspect about the Justice Department suddenly harassing a border-state sheriff who zealously enforces the law.

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department notified Joe Arpaio, the top lawman in Maricopa County, Ariz., including Phoenix, that his department is under investigation for "patterns" of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.

The letter offered zero specifics.

READ MORE

A Ph.D. in Every Pot

Obama's diploma mill.

... And as you might expect, the people who stand to receive the most money under the president's proposal are adamant in their belief that the country probably will not survive unless it is enacted at once. The president of the American Council on Education could barely contain herself.

"The education components of the new economic stimulus package prove that President Obama will back his words with resources and action,"
said Molly Corbett Broad. This is lobbyist talk for ka-ching! [snip]

The assumption here is that the way to make somebody a competitive worker is to send him to college, an idea that will astonish anyone who's ever been served in a restaurant by a waiter with a master's in art history. [snip]

When you expand the cohort to those between the ages of 25 and 65, the U.S. participation rate jumps and the United States ranks fifth among the 30 OECD countries. It turns out that lots of Americans earn their degrees after they've passed college age and even the middle years.

As a vocational matter, late learners are more likely to concentrate attention on abilities that the current marketplace needs, unlike kids who have to predict what jobs this finicky global economy of ours will be rewarding 10 years from now. And the learning is more likely to stick. Adults are smarter than teenagers. In general. [snip]

When he included four-year schools in his list of higher-ed options, the president was being very generous. (Why wouldn't he be? It's not his money.) But the traditional college was only one of four options.

In practice the three others--postsecondary education understood as job training--will be where the action is and, if we're lucky, where the students are.

[If our President was serious about expanding higher learning, he'd move it to the internet for its rudimentary baseline. Dissemination of information is exactly what the internet does - and can do so for anyone, of any age, at any time, as many times over their careers as necessary - for virtually (comparably speaking) FREE.

And that's the rub: there's not enough money to be made in 'free' - and our education system has a hammer lock on our President's party.

The vast majority of Americans aren't interested in a classic liberal arts indoctrination, they need marketable skills and (if free on the internet) probably want a fair amount of 'other' learning they find interesting (i.e., still not liberal indoctrination).

This is nothing more than yet another pay off to a special interest group that supports him - and an example of no-change-whatsoever when it comes to things liberal.

Our education challenges are overwhelming with the state-backed education industry currently highjacking it. We need to liberate it at both ends by a) universal vouchers for K-12 and b) and internet buffet for higher learning - and make it "all you can eat".]

READ MORE

image toon - fnn edu - Obama girls take issue with longer school days

No choice

If consistency is really the hobgoblin of little minds, then Hilda Solis and George Miller must be America's top ghostbusters. They think the secret ballot is the cornerstone of democracy -- except for American workers deciding whether to join a labor union. [snip]

Oddly enough, Miller and Solis used to think secret ballots were the very lifeblood of democracy. In 2001, introducing himself as someone "deeply concerned with international labor standards," Miller wrote Mexican officials urging them to allow workers to vote on unionization with secret ballots.

"The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose," Miller said, adding that the practice "will help bring real democracy to the Mexican workplace."

The American work place, apparently, is quite another matter...

[Criminal hypocrisy - which, if they're successful, you will pay for.]

READ MORE

image toon - crption - Card Check goons intimidate Joe re being intimidated

LA Times Columnist Cheap Shots CNBC’s Larry Kudlow

Could this be a sign of things to come?

Now that CNBC Chicago Mercantile Exchange reporter Rick Santelli has mysteriously disappeared from the spotlight after his criticism of President Barack Obama's mortgage proposal in February and now that CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has been marginalized after his lackluster appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" on March 12, could the new target of the Obama machine and the left and their accomplices in the media be CNBC "The Kudlow Report" host Larry Kudlow? [snip]

Rainey suggested as a credibility measuring stick, that Cramer and Kudlow should have to reveal their financial portfolios and if they weren't at least keeping pace with a major stock index, they should voted off "the CNBC island."

"I see CNBC running a bar graph with a composite of Kudlow and Cramer's portfolios (no dollar amounts necessary) right alongside a graph tracking a broad stock index," Rainey wrote. "If the TV touts fall more than 10% behind? We vote them right off the CNBC island. Then there'd be more room for me and my timeless, slightly cowardly style of money management."

Perhaps Rainey is on to something here. We could apply his standard to the entire Los Angeles Times as a business model and if his newspaper's parent company's stock, the Tribune Company (PINK:TRBCQ), wasn't keeping pace with the major indices, we could vote it off of "mainstream media island," or at least its business coverage and the analysis of business coverage.

[Again and again, don't debate the idea - attack the proponent personally. I wonder who's setting the example for such behavior?]

READ MORE

California Teachers Rally as 26,000 Job Cuts Loom

California teachers organized protests in more than a dozen cities today as about 26,000 may lose their jobs because of spending cuts the Legislature approved last month to keep the state from running out of money.

School districts across the most-populous U.S. state have been warning thousands of teachers that they may be fired as a result of California’s declining tax collections.

[Blatant inaccuracy: our tax load was just raised to the highest in the country - it just didn't deliver the increases wanted, hence 'cuts' to the MSM.

Recall, we literally give our broken public education system more money from our state taxes than everything else combined.

Will we ever recognize it for the abysmal failure it is and give our children a future by privatizing it?]

READ MORE

Train thief took a 120-ton joy ride

The heist from a Kendall sidetrack was revealed on a Sunday, shortly before midnight. A railroad crew came out to crank up locomotive No. 2617 -- a 120-ton blue and yellow behemoth that has snaked up and down the East Coast, hauling loads for CSX. But somehow, it had vanished. They called 911 with a most unusual and alarming request:

We need your help finding our missing locomotive.

READ MORE

image toon - 1st fnn msm bias libs othr - Reid's FAILS ignored but Rush's unpatriotic

Obama: Economic crisis 'not as bad as we think'

Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation's "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn't be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

READ MORE

Soldiers Treat Ailing Iraqis

The soldiers wanted to provide medical assistance, but there was no clinic in the area available to the Iraqi citizens. So the soldiers made it their mission to establish one. In the meantime the “Top Gun” troops pushed out into the area and held six combined medical engagements, working side by side with Iraqi physicians to treat ailing Iraqis. [snip]

Just as the Top Gun troops have done for the last year, Treadway said he is keen to treat medical conditions and help the Iraqis avoid future ailments through preventive medicine. As his medics hit the streets daily on patrols, he said, he is eager to have them do all they can to help the people, no matter how severe the case.

Recently, he said, one child approached him and said when he grows up he wants to be a doctor just like him. Braverman said the soldiers are having a great impact on the children, the sheiks and the local council, who all appreciate what they have done to aid the community...

READ MORE

image c-art heroes gwot nsec - no-border soldier-child: US military: true American heroes

Barak: Time running out on stopping Iranian nuke program

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday evening that the Iranian announcement that it had increased the number of centrifuges enriching uranium at the Bushehr plant to 6,000 constitute a stage in the creation of a substantial existential threat to Israel, adding that time was running out on stopping Iran becoming a nuclear power.
READ MORE


Nuclear Iran? Decision time is here

Barack Obama’s foreign policy team knew that sooner or later they would face a crisis over Iran. Unfortunately for the new US president, the crisis is already upon them.

On Friday, the Financial Times reported that “Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb”. That same day, Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to form Israel’s next government

It is time for the Obama administration to launch a last big push to head off the Iranian bomb – and for the rest of the world to line up in support of that effort.

READ MORE


Not Merely Wrong, but Unprofessional
Every time you think the New York Times cannot sink any lower, you open the paper and find something else that leaves you wondering about the lack of editorial judgment at the Grey Lady.

Today’s Op-Ed page is, on the surface, clear evidence of the paper’s editorial agenda with regard to the Islamist regime in Iran. Of the three pieces on the page, two are devoted to the cause of appeasing Iran.

One is by Ali Reza Eshraghi, an Iranian “journalist” currently playing the role of “visiting scholar” at Berkeley’s School of Journalism. His article puts forward a thesis that must be considered original if unpersuasive: that Mahmoud Ahmadinjad is a true moderate and that the Obama administration must seize the opportunity to negotiate with him now lest he be replaced by someone more hard-line.

One shudders to think what someone less moderate than Ahmadinejad would sound like. Would he advocate denial of the Holocaust? Threaten to wipe Israel off the map? Launch an all-out push for nuclear capability? Fund Hezbollah and Hamas? Oh right, that was Ahmadinejad–the moderate.

The idea that we should ignore all that and focus instead on a few throwaway lines about wanting to talk to Obama is comical...

[But it will be repeated, without comment, by the over-600 TV news stations that receive NYT 'feeds' directly to comprise their 'news']

READ MORE

Shari'a making inroads in the West

Shari'a is making inroads into the West. One area particularly touched by this phenomenon is the judicial system in Europe. Two recent cases in Italy and France are particularly troublesome.

In Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating their daughter/sister Fatima because she had wanted to live a "Western" life. In the first trial, the three were sentenced for abuse. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman had been beaten for "her own good." [snip]

In France a widely publicized case last June had a French judge rule in favor of a Muslim man who wanted the annulment of his marriage because his wife had turned out not to be a virgin. The decision triggered a huge outcry and was later overturned, Interestingly, a large majority of French Muslims, about 80 percent, are very secular and totally reject any kind of Shari'a law being implemented in France.

But the United Kingdom is a different story; indeed, close to 40% of young Muslims there are in favor of Shari'a law being implemented...

READ MORE

No Honor in This
It really was two crimes in one. When Aasiya Hassan was allegedly beheaded by her husband in upstate New York, the response by many Muslim groups was to make sure that no one connected the murder to Islam, rather than to be concerned that a man may have brutally murdered his wife in the name of Islam.

Unfortunately, none of this came as any surprise to feminist Phyllis Chesler...

READ MORE

Heads Roll in Havana, Baffling 'Cuba Experts'

The very week Obama proposed cozying up to Castro by dropping some economic and travel sanctions, the biggest political shake-up in twenty years rattled Cuba's regime. Last week Raul Castro purged almost twenty regime officials.

The most prominent among the purged were the youngest and most reform-minded (as these things are measured within a Stalinist regime), and they've all been replaced by diehard Stalinist septuagenarians with military and secret police backgrounds.

READ MORE


The U.S. Needs a Reset Button for Britain
While President Barack Obama tries to improve U.S. relations with rogue states like Syria and Iran, he might want to ensure ties with our closest ally aren’t strained in the meantime.

Damascus and Tehran will remain hostile as long as they’re ruled by Bashar Assad and Ayatollah Khamenei, but Britain has long been a reliable friend no matter who is in charge...

READ MORE

image toon - vals libs intl fnn - They knighted Ted Kennedy

Dictatorial Trade

[HT:PL]
Trade: USTR nominee Ron Kirk mocked the U.S.' expansion of free trade as "deal fever" at his confirmation Monday and vowed to force "social" diktats on trade partners before new pacts can be signed. This isn't free trade. Unfortunately, dour statements on trade from the man who would be the U.S. trade representative are not surprising.
READ MORE

RON KIRK: NO TRADE
U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) nominee Ron Kirk mocked the U.S.' expansion of free trade as "deal fever" at his confirmation Monday and vowed to force "social" diktats on trade partners before new pacts can be signed.

To start, Kirk dismissed existing free trade treaties as mindless chits instead of carefully negotiated pacts done on an equal basis with other countries. That ignores the fact that free trade has opened vast markets for U.S. companies, whose exports will be key to our economic recovery:

• Free trade with Mexico increased trade fourfold over the last decade, making it our third-largest trading partner and enabling U.S. companies to sell a billion dollars worth of goods to Mexicans each day.
• It has put an extra $2,000 in every American family's pocket and increased jobs — one out of four jobs here is now linked to global trade.

Kirk also dismissed treaties awaiting passage:

• South Korea's pact, which would open a market to U.S. exporters as big as Mexico's, was called "simply unfair."
• Kirk said the United States would "step away from that" if South Korea didn't bow to new terms dictated by the Obama administration (and its Big Labor financiers).

Kirk also said that the Korea and Colombia pacts will be subject to "benchmarks" of unspecified detail if they are ever to be approved, adding new conditions onto done deals.

It's not as if these nations haven't jumped through hoops already. Colombia altered its constitution and revamped its court system on the promise of the deal's passage; now, it's getting new orders.

If the United States foists social projects on friends, rejects new markets and lets China snap away the spoils, it will be the biggest loser.

READ MORE

NEVER ENOUGH BEAUTY OR TRUTH

.
American philanthropy is the envy of the world. Americans have evolved a unique civic culture of giving and entrepreneurial problem solving, says Heather Mac Donald, the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. For example:

• From 1995 to 2002, charitable donations as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) were nearly six times as high in the United States as in France and 14 times as high as in Germany.
• In 2007, America's charitable giving amounted to $306 billion. [as usual]
• No wonder that European universities and arts organizations look first to their American alumni and patrons for support when their government funding dries up.

Yet American generosity is under fire, says Mac Donald:

• A growing number of activists and politicians argue that foundations should meet diversity targets in their giving and on their staffs.
• If foundations fail to diversify "voluntarily," threaten the race, ethnicity and gender enforcers, they risk legislation requiring them to do so.

In other words, the diversity police, having helped bring on the subprime meltdown through mortgage-lending quotas, now want to 'fix' philanthropy. And instead of rebuffing this power grab, the leaders in the field have rolled over and played dead.

The idea that foundations should view the world through the trivializing lens of identity politics dates back to the 1980s, when some liberal foundations, including the Ford Foundation, started asking groups seeking grants to report the race and sex of their staff and board members. But today, politicians are getting into the act; this latest diversity push began in 2005, when the Greenlining Institute, a "multiethnic advocacy group" in Berkeley, Calif., started pumping out studies claiming that foundations were ignoring "communities of color."

• This despite the fact that in California, 39 percent of large foundations' grants primarily benefit minorities, according to the Foundation Center, a respected research body.
• Greenlining's definition of helping a community of color: bestowing foundation grants on a nonprofit whose staff and board are at least 50 percent minority.

In other words, the Greenlining effort is purely a jobs racket, says Mac Donald. The racial composition of a nonprofit's staff and board has exactly zero relation to whether it is actually helping minorities.

[If they're 'minorities', is not 50% representation over-representation?]

READ MORE

The Entrepreneur's Moment

The question facing America is: who will lead us out of this economic crisis? George Washington answered this question for us in a letter to Benjamin Harrison in 1784. He wrote:

“A people... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything.”

Unfortunately, today, many elected officials, the media, and even big business have lost confidence in “the spirit of commerce” – in the American free enterprise system - and are looking to government for the answer. A recent Newsweek cover declared “We are all Socialists now” and Congress and President Obama just passed a stunningly partisan $787 billion “stimulus” bill. From the TARP to special loans to GM and Chrysler to a new $275 billion mortgage entitlement program, bailout nation is in full swing.

Yet if more government spending could spark sustained economic growth, we'd be in a boom right now from the reckless expansion of spending over the last six years.

That is why it must stop, now. It is time for America to return to its roots and look to entrepreneurs in the private sector to lead us back to prosperity.

READ MORE

image toon - 1st mny - Money flying out of wallet after Oby signs porkulus bill

LET'S GET REAL ABOUT RENEWABLE ENERGY

During his address to Congress, President Obama declared, "We will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."

We need slow down for a moment and get realistic about this country's energy future. Consider two factors that are too-often overlooked: George W. Bush's record on renewables, and the problem of scale.

By promising to double our supply of renewables, Obama is only trying to keep pace with his predecessor:

• From 2005 to 2007, the former Texas oil man oversaw a near-doubling of the electrical output from solar and wind power.
• And between 2007 and 2008, output from those sources grew by another 30 percent.

President Bush's record aside, the key problem facing President Obama, and anyone else advocating a rapid transition away from the hydrocarbons that have dominated the world's energy mix since the dawn of the Industrial Age, is the same issue that dogs every alternative energy idea: scale.

Let's start by deciphering exactly what Obama includes in his definition of "renewable" energy:

• If he's including hydropower, which now provides about 2.4 percent of America's total primary energy needs, then the president clearly has no concept of what he is promising.
• Hydro now provides more than 16 times as much energy as wind and solar power combined.
• Yet more dams are being dismantled than built. Since 1999, more than 200 dams in the U.S. have been removed.

If Obama is only counting wind power and solar power as renewables, then his promise is clearly doable. But the unfortunate truth is that even if he matches Bush's effort by doubling wind and solar output by 2012,

the contribution of those two sources to America's overall energy needs will still be almost inconsequential.

READ MORE

VICTIMS OF SOCIALISM

What's a life worth? Apparently not much in Great Britain.

• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the government agency that decides which treatments the National Health Service will pay for, has effectively banned Lapatinib, a drug that was shown to slow the progression of breast cancer, and Sutent, which is the only medicine that can prolong the lives of some stomach cancer patients.
• Banning beneficial drugs due to cost is nothing new in Britain; NICE forbade the use of Tarceva, a lung cancer drug proven to extend patients' lives, and Abatacept, even though it's one of the only drugs that has been shown in clinical testing to improve severe rheumatoid arthritis.

Once again, we have to ask: Do we really want to use the British system as the model for a U.S. health care regime?

Promises of an effective, cost-effective health care system operated by the federal government are cruel fabrications.

The British system shows that the state makes a mess of health care. So does the Canadian plan, which is plagued with unhealthy and often deadly waiting times for treatment.

The Swedish government system is no better. It also refuses to provide some expensive medication and, inhumanely, refuses to let patients buy the drugs themselves. Why? According to a Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons article, bureaucrats believe doing so

"would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine."

A reasonable person would see the record of repeated failures in government-run medicine as evidence that such a system is not sustainable.

Yet every central planner thinks he or she -- or his or her immediate group -- is smart enough to correct the flaws of socialist programs and therefore has the moral authority to force others to participate in his experiments.

Medicine needs experimentation to progress. But experiments need to stay in the laboratories, not spread to the domain of public policy.

['unequal' - sounds a lot like 'fair'...]

READ MORE

George Soros: International Man of Misery

The term “euphemism” refers to the substitution of a vague or milder term for one that may be considered harsh, offensive or blunt. Example: George Soros is a “philanthropist”.

If by “philanthropist” we mean one who creates chaos, destruction and financial ruin for his own personal gain, it’s a perfect fit. Calling Soros a philanthropist is rather like referring to the Nazi block wardens as Neighborhood Watch.

[If you don't know why he's loathed, despised and dangerous, read > ]

READ MORE

Flashback: Carville Wanted Bush to Fail

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters:

"I certainly hope he doesn't succeed."

READ MORE

TOO MUCH LAW GUARANTEES UNFAIRNESS

It's no secret that America's public schools, health care system and lawsuit industry are broken. After decades of alarming reports and reform efforts, they still cost far more, and with worse results, than those of almost all other developed countries. Why? Because our institutions and their leaders are paralyzed by tangles of legal rules and a fear of being unfairly hauled into court, says lawyer-author-civic leader Philip Howard in his forthcoming book, "Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law."

We will never fix our system unless American law is rebuilt to protect freedom in our daily choices, Howard continues. Take for example, America's public schools:

• Despite massive reform efforts, reading scores in elementary and high schools have stayed flat for almost 40 years; in that period, the ranking of American students has consistently fallen relative to their peers in other developed countries.
• More than 40 percent of high school teachers have said they sometimes spend more time trying to keep order than teaching, and nearly 80 percent of middle and high school teachers said they have been threatened with lawsuits or accused of rights violations by students.
• Another survey found that one in seven teachers in urban schools had been physically assaulted by students, some have been seriously injured.

How to fix all this? Legislatures should "shove the rulebooks aside" and purge law from the routine daily life of schools, and liberate teachers and principals to act on their own best judgment, says Howard.

Would this risk unfairness to some? Sure. But that would beat the unfairness to all students of disorderly classrooms and bad teachers. As a check, independent committees of parents and teachers could be created to overturn disciplinary decisions and overrule unfair teacher firings, says Howard.

READ MORE

America under Obama will see one crisis after another

We interrupt this financial crisis to bring you a gargantuan federal power grab masquerading as an economic stimulus. Tell me, does the following sound at all familiar?

We've GOT to act. NOW! There's NO TIME for debate. We're on the PRECIPICE. We're staring into the ABYSS. The government has to spend BIG and it has to spend FAST, before it's TOO LATE!

Yes, yes. We heard it just a few weeks ago, remember? Right before the government spent big and fast so it could avert the financial crisis. Which continues today, quite unaverted, because no one bothered to require that the government spend WELL or -- yes, I know this was always a long shot -- WISELY.

So we're still in the same mess. And we're not trying to get out of it yet, because for some among us, messes -- especially messes that can be credibly described as crises -- have their uses. When Joe Biden said during the campaign that President Barack Obama was going to face a crisis right out of the gate, it wasn't a wild guess.

He was stating half of the elemental strategy of the Obama administration: Have a crisis. So, have a crisis and use it to get things you want that you couldn't have gotten from people who weren't frightened. Repeat as necessary.

Want to appoint a tax cheat secretary of the treasury? Just tell everyone you're in a big hurry because of the financial crisis.

Want to hand out, in one fell swoop, more pork and more paybacks to more favored political constituencies than anyone has ever handed out before? Write a spread-the-wealth bill like the one the House of Representatives just passed. Just be sure to call it a stimulus.

Want to grow government beyond comprehension and make it the master of health care, energy, education, finance and, through regulation, business? Don't declare the crisis solved until you've passed enough phony stimuli to complete your whole hidden agenda.

There is only one thing that can be done to block the socialist agenda that's so clearly visible just beneath the Rahm Emanuel useful-crisis strategy. Fortunately, it's something every American can do.

Refuse to fear.

If your congressional representative voted for the stimulus, call him up and chew him out. If he voted against it, call to say thanks. Then get on the horn to your senators and demand that they do whatever it takes to stop this cynical power grab. You can get to every one of them through the U.S. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121...

[my kinda guy]

READ MORE

image toon mny reps - obama = speed of light = no deficits visible

"Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied."

Otto Von Bismark.

.

Bernard Madoff and the Democratic Party scandal

In a country with an unbiased, watchdog press corps, the Bernie Madoff scandal would have Democrat pols in Washington shaking in their suits, fearing hearings, as many Republicans did during the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Instead, you probably don't even know that Madoff is a big supporter of the Democratic Party.

Could the Charles Ponzi of today thrive in any party other than the party that memorialized the Ponzi Scheme forever, with Social Security?

READ MORE

Barack Obama welcomes Brad Pitt to White House

President Barack Obama has welcomed actor Brad Pitt into the White House for a secret meeting to discuss the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Pitt (Snip)became the second member of the cast of the "Ocean's Eleven" to talk to Obama about policy. Last month, George Clooney called on Mr Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to discuss how to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

[Twilight Zone]

READ MORE

One-legged criminal roaming free

An investigation has been launched after a man convicted of possessing cannabis was fitted with a tracking device attached to his false leg.

A security worker failed to spot his left leg was made of metal and detachable when they attached the tag.

READ MORE

image toon 1st fnn mny - Bank teller wears mask to take customer's money

Watch the Video
Watch our commercial featuring ASPCA supporter Sarah McLachlan.

DONATE NOW

Invite five friends to watch our commercial.


thank you

.

image toon - 1st fnn othr msm - Whole family's hair going gray

Obama Signs Spending Bill as He Criticizes Earmarks

President Obama on Wednesday signed an ''imperfect''spending bill packed with special projects in order to keep government running*, but he vowed that it will be the last one and proposed ways to curb lawmakers from abusing the process in the future.

[*untrue: the default was a 'continuation resolution' which would have funded all activity at last year's levels]

READ MORE


Obama & Earmarks: One Year Ago This Week
Then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., one year ago this week, swooped in from the campaign trail to vote for an amendment to impose a one-year moratorium on earmarks for fiscal year 2009. All three then-presidential candidates voted for the amendment. It failed. Obama said then

"we can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress’ seniority, rather than the merit of the project."

[LDot: "And the MSM media continues to bat their eyes and swoon"]

READ MORE

N Korea to test Obama's resolve

NORTH Korea says it is making "brisk headway" towards launching a satellite into space, the clearest indication that the Pyongyang regime will defy a warning from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to test a long-range missile.

The launch vehicle, likely to be a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile theoretically capable of reaching the US west coast, could be fired within a week, some analysts say.

READ MORE

The writing is on the synagogue wall

[HT:BN]
The periodic crises that have shaken world capitalism in the century and a half since Marx wrote Das Kapital are marked by a common political phenomenon. It is the rise of political anti-Semitism. Attacks on Jews and Jewishness constitute the canary in the coal mine that tells us something is going seriously wrong.

... London School of Economics - “Kill the Jews” or “Jihad 4 Israel” .... In Milan, streets are daubed with slogans urging Italians not to buy goods at Jewish shops ... In Berlin, placards stating “It was a good idea to use gas” ... [snip]

The economic crises of the 1970s led to a marked increase in the vote for the National Front in Britain and the openly anti-Semitic BNP, its successor extreme party, is doing very well in local elections - below the radar of the national press... [snip]

Terrible massacres of Muslims have taken place in different parts of the world so far this century, from Kashmir to Gujarat. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Nato soldiers are accused of brutality but the men with the most blood on their hands of fellow Muslims have been Islamist ideologues.

Yet there is no outrage against the perpetrators of those attacks compared with the onslaught on Israel and on Jews. Jews are again made to feel they are not full citizens of the countries of their birth because they refuse to support the right of Hamas and Hezbollah to use terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

The canary in the coal mine seems in danger of its life once again.

READ MORE

image toon - bdd gwot israel - Peace pact = agree to leave Gaza and be bombed again

UN demands explanation from Iran and Syria on arms ship

Iran and Syria have until next week to explain to a United Nations sanctions committee how they were involved with a ship detained off Cyprus found to be loaded with explosives believed to be bound for Gaza.

The ambassadors of France and Britain described the episode at a Security Council meeting held Tuesday in New York as a "gross violation" of existing resolutions banning Iranian arms exports.

Both countries are required to respond within ten working days, according to a statement from Japanese ambassador Yukio Takasu, who chairs the Security Council committee set up in 2006 to oversee Iran sanctions.

The committee determined February 6 that Iran was in violation of existing sanctions but has not taken any punitive action.

READ MORE

Labour's disastrous policy is radicalising a whole new generation of Muslims

[UK {both}]

The repellent spectacle of Muslims demonstrating in Luton against the British soldiers returning from Iraq does more than turn our stomach. It tells us in graphic form that this country has not only utterly failed to combat a threat to itself from within but — astoundingly — turns not against those who threaten it but against those who seek to defend it.

READ MORRE


Stop pandering to enemies of our way of life
Radical Muslims get special treatment, says Ruth Dudley Edwards

The Government's neurotic placating of Islamists has not yet led to the censorship of tabloids for giving vent to occasional outrage. "Hate for Heroes: Muslims in vile demo", declared yesterday's Sun, rightly furious that in Luton 15 or so youths had screamed "terrorists" at a homecoming parade of the Royal Anglia's 2nd Battalion and waved banners calling the soldiers baby-killers and butchers. Other newspapers showed a group of watching women enveloped in abayas and niqabs.

In some ways the silent women were the more potent image of what disturbs readers of broadsheets as well as tabloids, their dress providing an in-your-face statement that they consider themselves proudly separate from the rest.

That the police arrested only counter-demonstrators will increase the average Joe's belief that radical Muslims have reason to think of themselves as not only separate but privileged.

"I am worried at how Bedfordshire police allowed this type of protest with offensive banners to take place," said Margaret Moran, the Labour MP for Luton South. "It seems to me that this amounted to huge provocation and was potentially racially divisive."

She's right, of course, but she must know that in agreeing in advance to what was bound to be an offensive protest, the police were only following what they believe to be government policy: don't upset radical Muslims in case they blow us up.

READ MORE

The New Battle for Britain

Despite the Thatcher reforms, government spending was only reduced to about 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) while the United States was able to keep government spending at about one-third of GDP for the last quarter-century.

The British public sector is almost certain to grow to about 48 percent of GDP, while the U.S. government spending will grow to the old British level of 40 percent of GDP.

The large countries within the EU that had government sectors approaching 50 percent of GDP (i.e., France, Germany and Italy) grew at about half the rate of the United States over the last 25 years, with Britain falling in between.

Thus it is reasonable to expect British growth to fall to the anemic levels of the other big EU countries and the United States. to drop to the old British levels...

READ MORE

image toon - vals sclm reps - Dems = blowing up Reagan era

NJ comptroller: Stimulus funds 'ripe' for misuse

New Jersey officials must carefully monitor the economic stimulus cash flow to guard against theft or mismanagement, the state comptroller warned Monday. Comptroller Matt Boxer said federal dollars will flow into the Garden State from nearly 100 different sources, making the situation "ripe" for misuse.....
READ MORE


Second stimulus idea
Republican leaders today slammed the idea of a second economic stimulus package, just one day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was open to such a bill.

“I think the fact that they are already talking about stimulus two indicates they already think stimulus one has failed,”

House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told reporters.

“We don’t even know what was in the first stimulus yet.”

READ MORE


Cabinet short on managerial experience
For a president set on changing the way Washington works, Barack Obama has depended upon current or former members of Congress for initial cabinet appointments more than any elected president since at least the 1950s.

During a time of economic crisis, Obama has no former company chief executive officer or cabinet member or nominee with significant private business experience...

READ MORE

image toon - 1st mny sclm - OB = another 30B to AIG = broker jumps