OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL
Encore! Obama repeats appearance on 'most corrupt' list
Joined by Boxer, Emanuel, Ensign, Pelosi, Rangel, Waters
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Bob Unruh
Barack Obama has been encored on the "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2010, a list published annually by the a Washington-based organization that focuses on transparency, accountability and integrity in the government, politics and law of the United States.
"Remember the promise President Obama made just after his inauguration in 2009? 'Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,'" said Judicial Watch in today's announcement.
"Instead, Americans have suffered through lies, stonewalling, cover-ups, corruption, secrecy, scandal and blatant disregard for the rule of law … this has been the Obama legacy in its first two years."
The full list, in alphabetical order, names:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.;
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel;
Sen. John Ensign, R-N.V.;
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.;
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill.;
Barack Obama,
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.;
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.;
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.; and
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
About Obama, the report said he was "caught in a lie" over what he knew about Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's "scheme to sell the president's vacated Senate seate."
The report explained, "Blagojevich's former Chief of Staff John Harris testified that Obama had personal knowledge of Blago's plot to obtain a presidential cabinet position in exchange for appointing a candidate handpicked by the president. In fact, according to Harris's court testimony, Obama sent Blagojevich a list of 'acceptable' Senate candidates to fill his old seat. Obama was interviewed by the FBI even before he was sworn into office. He claimed he and his staff had no contact with Blagojevich's office."
The White House did not respond to a WND request for comment.
According to Judicial Watch, "Unfortunately federal prosecutors never called the president or his staff to testify under oath."
Further, Obama broke "his famous pledge to televise health-care negotiations."
"In 2010, we learned why he broke his pledge. In what is now known as the 'Cornhusker Kickback' scheme, Obama and the Democrats in the Senate 'purchased' the vote of one of the last Democrat hold-outs, Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who opposed Obamacare over the issue of covering abortions with taxpayer funds," the report said.
"Nelson abandoned his opposition to Obamacare after receiving millions of dollars in federal aid for his home state, helping to give the Democrats the 60 votes they needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Same goes for Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who received a $100 million payoff in what has been called 'The Louisiana Purchase.' (The Kickback was so corrupt that Democrats stripped it out at the last minute. The Louisiana Purchase, on the other hand, became law of the land.)" the report said.
"Obama lied about his White House's involvement in this legislative bribery that helped lead to the passage of the signature policy achievement of his presidency," the report said.
Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch describes itself as a constitutionally conservative, nonpartisan education foundation that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law."
The other celebrities "honored" on the list:
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. – who, it appears, "still needs an ethics lesson," the report said. She's chair of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, and presided over a year-long investigation into the "preferential treatment" Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., may have gotten from Countrywide Financial. Senate rules prohibit members from getting loan terms not available to the general public, Judicial Watch said.
"The evidence clearly showed that Dodd and Conrad knew they were receiving preferential treatment despite repeated denials. Yet Boxer's Senate Ethics Committee allowed Dodd and Conrad to wriggle off the hook with a light admonition that suggested the two senators should have exercised better judgment.
But that's not all, the report said. "Boxer failed to mention (or disclose on her official Senate Financial Disclosure documents) that she and her husband have signed no less than seven mortgages with Countrywide! At the time of the hearing, Boxer reportedly indicated she had paid off two Countrywide mortgages, but did not mention the others.
Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel – who "didn't earn the nickname 'Rahmbo' for being a mild-mannered shrinking violet," Judicial Watch said. Among his issues cited: He served as Bill Clinton's chief money-man when the Clinton campaign was "corrupted by foreign money." He was a "ruthless political combatant" in defending Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal. He allegedly interfered with Senate elections in Pennsylvania and Colorado by offering federal appointments to Rep. Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff and participated "in the Blagojevich scandal."
"According to sworn testimony during the 'Blago' trial, Emanuel served as Obama's chief negotiator with the Blagojevich team as the former Illinois governor attempted to illegally sell Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the federal prosecutor cut short the case against Blagojevich and Emanuel and other Obama insiders were never called to testify," Judicial Watch reported.
And, regarding the elections, "Sestak and Romanoff were not Obama's favored candidates, so Emanuel and Messina apparently attempted to unlawfully persuade them to abandon their campaigns.
"Emanuel left the White House under an ethical cloud and has decided to throw his hat in the ring for mayor of Chicago, where he again stands accused of ignoring the rules and violating the law regarding candidate residency requirements," the report said.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. – publicly admitted an affair with the wife of a staff member, and evidence "indicates" he tried to cover up his shenanigans "by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors," Judicial Watch said.
The New York Times said, JW reported, that, "Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by Sen. Ensign's parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued to help [Doug] Hampton, advocating his clients' cases directly with federal agencies."
But Judicial Watch reported not only did the lobbying apparently violate Senate rules, the "$96,000 in 'gifts' provided to the Hamptons were clearly hush payments."
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. – Where to start? He allegedly "intervened" for Rep. Waters on behalf of his home-state OneUnited Bank to get Troubled Asset Relief Program money, and "to this day, Barney Frnak continues to defend his role in the meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying he was just as blindsided as the rest of America when the two government sponsored enterprises collapsed, triggering the financial crisis."
But the report said The Boston Globe documented that Frank should have known.
"Frank wasn't wrong," said Judicial Watch. "He was just lying through his teeth. Frank claims that he 'missed' the warning signs with Fannie and Freddie because he was wearing 'ideological blinders,' which was just his lame attempt to blame Republicans. But he did not miss them. According to evidence uncovered by Judicial Watch, he just chose to ignore them," the report said.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. – was described by the Chicago Sun-Times as directing "a major political fundraiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate." Judicial Watch said while "Blago" was convicted on one of 24 charges related to the scheme, it is Jackson "who should be on the hot-seat."
"According to Jackson's fundraiser, Raghuveer Nayak, the Illinois congressman asked him to offer not $1.5 million, but a whopping $6 million in campaign cash to Blagojevich to secure the Senate seat!" Judicial Watch said. "In addition to his corrupt deal-making, in 2010 Jackson was also nailed for conducting an improper and potentially criminal relationship with a female 'social acquaintance.'"
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – Judicial Watch said "Air Pelosi" now is grounded.
"Judicial Watch uncovered documents back in 2009 detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft for herself and her family as well as the speaker's 11th-hour cancellations and changes. In 2010, Judicial Watch kept the pressure on Pelosi, uncovering documents that demonstrated the speaker was using U.S. Air Force aircraft as her own personal party planes. Overall, the speaker's military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol," the report said.
Among the purchases were Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey's Irish Cream, Maker's Mark whisky, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewar's scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.
"Moreover, Pelosi also abused the rules by allowing members of her family to join her on taxpayer-funded Air Force flights. For example, on June 20, 2009, Speaker Pelosi's daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons joined a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to San Francisco International Airport. That flight included $143 for on-flight expenses for food and other items. On July 2, 2010, Pelosi took her grandson on a flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, which is northeast of San Francisco," the report said.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., – Earlier this month the U.S. House voted 333-79 to "censure" Rangel, which, the report said, is next to expulsion as the most serious sanction that can be taken. Judicial Watch said Rangel's ethics violations included forgetting to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income, misusing his congressional office to raise money for his private center, misusing his residentially zoned Harlem apartment as a campaign headquarters and failing to report $600,000 in income.
"It is worth noting that the [House] committee did not consider other serious corruption charges against Rangel. For example, it has been alleged that Rangel preserved a tax loophole for an oil company in exchange for a Rangel Center donation. The committee also did not consider the charge that Rangel used improper influence to maintain ownership of his highly coveted rent-controlled apartment – the same apartment he improperly used for campaign activities," Judicial Watch said.
"As this is Washington, politicians of both parties will pretend that censure is a serious punishment. But it is a 'punishment' that simply requires Rangel to come to the well of the House and hear a disapproving statement read by lame-duck House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the real world, you get fired or thrown in jail for abusing your office and not paying your taxes," the report said.
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky. – Judicial Watch said Rogers, even though the 2010 election focused on cutting government spending, was named chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and according to ABC, "In two years, Rogers pushed through 135 earmarks worth $246 million. He's brought tens of millions of dollars into his hometown of Somerset, Ky., so much so that the town has been dubbed 'Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.'" Judicial Watch said those earmarks included $17 million for an airport that is so disused the last commercial airline pulled out in February [2010].
Other expenditures he sought included $5 million for a Namibia-based group that employs his daughter.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. – The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known informally as the House Ethics Committee) plans to hold hearings on Waters, according to the AP, on allegations "Waters broke the rules in requesting federal help for a bank where her husband owned stock and had served on the board of directors."
Judicial Watch has investigated the Waters/OneUnited Bank scandal for months. In fact, JW successfully sued the Obama Treasury Department to get documents and obtained explosive e-mails from the Treasury that provide documented evidence to support the charges against Waters.
It also reported a lobbyist reportedly paid Waters' husband $15,000 in consulting fees at the time she was co-sponsoring legislation that would help save a client.
Judicial reported among those listed on the "most wanted" list in earlier years was former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, later sentenced to nearly six years in prison for a fraudulent casino deal.
Another individual previously cited was former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who recently was convicted of funneling corporate money to Texas candidates. He's planning an appeal.
A third is Dodd, who announced he would not run for re-election and as of January, will be out of office.
The 2009 list included Dodd, Obama, Frank, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Attorney General Eric Holder, Pelosi, Rep. John Murtha, Ensign, Jackson and Rangel.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
IS OBAMACARE ON ITS DEATHBED?
WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration presses ahead with the new health care law, officials are bracing for the possibility that a federal judge in Virginia will soon reject its central provision as unconstitutional and, in the worst case for the White House, halt its enforcement until higher courts can rule.
The judge, Henry Hudson of U.S. District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law's requirement that most Americans obtain insurance, which does not take effect until 2014.
Although administration officials remain confident that it is constitutionally valid to compel people to obtain health insurance, they also acknowledge that Hudson's preliminary opinions and comments could presage the first ruling against the law.
"He's asked a number of questions that express skepticism," said one administration official who is examining whether a ruling against part of the law would raise questions about whether other provisions would automatically collapse. "We have been trying to think through that set of questions," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case freely.
While many newly empowered Republican lawmakers have vowed to repeal the health care law in Congress, a more immediate threat may rest in the federal courts in cases brought by Republican officials in dozens of states. Not only would an adverse ruling confuse Americans and attackthe law's underpinnings, but it could frustrate the steps hospitals, insurers and government agencies are taking to carry out the law.
"Any ruling against the act creates another PR problem for the Democrats, who need to resell the law to insured Americans," said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina political scientist, who wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine last week that such a ruling "could add to health care reform's legitimacy problem."
So far, there has been only one ruling on the merits among nearly two dozen legal challenges to the act. Last month, a U.S. district judge in Michigan upheld the law. Another judge, Roger Vinson of U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., has joined Hudson in writing preliminary opinions that seemingly accept key arguments made by state officials challenging the law.
Unlike the judge in Michigan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, both Hudson and Vinson were appointed by Republican presidents.
"We are not operating under the assumption that those two judges are inevitably going to rule against us," the administration official said. "But of course we're planning for the possibility that judges will reach different conclusions."
The novel question before the courts is whether the government can require citizens to buy a commercial product like health insurance. Because the Supreme Court has said the commerce clause of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate "activities that substantially affect interstate commerce," the judges must decide whether the failure to obtain insurance can be defined as an "activity."
Administration officials, as well as some lawyers for the plaintiffs, agree that Hudson seems unlikely, based on his comments from the bench, to enjoin the entire law. The judge volunteered at a hearing last month that his courtroom was "just one brief stop on the way to the Supreme Court."
If he does not enjoin the law, the immediate impact of a finding against the insurance mandate would be limited because that provision, and others that might fall with it, do not take effect for more than three years.
Virginia's attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli II, a Republican who filed the Richmond lawsuit, argues that if Hudson rejects the insurance requirement he should instantly invalidate the entire act on a nationwide basis.
Cuccinelli and the plaintiffs in the Florida case, who include attorneys general or governors from 20 states, have emphasized that congressional bill writers did not include a "severability clause" that would explicitly protect other parts of the sprawling law if certain provisions were struck down.
The administration argues that other key provisions do not depend on the insurance mandate. Those provisions include establishing health insurance exchanges, subsidizing premiums through tax credits and expanding Medicaid eligibility, all scheduled for 2014.
Nor, administration officials said, would an adverse ruling necessarily undermine certain insurance regulations that recently took effect, like the requirement that insurers cover children younger than 26 on their parents' policies.
Any illusion the cases are not highly politicized was lost when Republican leaders raced this month to file friend-of-the-court briefs in Pensacola, and Democrats responded with briefs from state legislators and supportive economists. Among the Republicans intervening in the case are Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the future speaker; 32 U.S. senators; and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a possible presidential candidate.
The judge, Henry Hudson of U.S. District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law's requirement that most Americans obtain insurance, which does not take effect until 2014.
Although administration officials remain confident that it is constitutionally valid to compel people to obtain health insurance, they also acknowledge that Hudson's preliminary opinions and comments could presage the first ruling against the law.
"He's asked a number of questions that express skepticism," said one administration official who is examining whether a ruling against part of the law would raise questions about whether other provisions would automatically collapse. "We have been trying to think through that set of questions," said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case freely.
While many newly empowered Republican lawmakers have vowed to repeal the health care law in Congress, a more immediate threat may rest in the federal courts in cases brought by Republican officials in dozens of states. Not only would an adverse ruling confuse Americans and attackthe law's underpinnings, but it could frustrate the steps hospitals, insurers and government agencies are taking to carry out the law.
"Any ruling against the act creates another PR problem for the Democrats, who need to resell the law to insured Americans," said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina political scientist, who wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine last week that such a ruling "could add to health care reform's legitimacy problem."
So far, there has been only one ruling on the merits among nearly two dozen legal challenges to the act. Last month, a U.S. district judge in Michigan upheld the law. Another judge, Roger Vinson of U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., has joined Hudson in writing preliminary opinions that seemingly accept key arguments made by state officials challenging the law.
Unlike the judge in Michigan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, both Hudson and Vinson were appointed by Republican presidents.
"We are not operating under the assumption that those two judges are inevitably going to rule against us," the administration official said. "But of course we're planning for the possibility that judges will reach different conclusions."
The novel question before the courts is whether the government can require citizens to buy a commercial product like health insurance. Because the Supreme Court has said the commerce clause of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate "activities that substantially affect interstate commerce," the judges must decide whether the failure to obtain insurance can be defined as an "activity."
Administration officials, as well as some lawyers for the plaintiffs, agree that Hudson seems unlikely, based on his comments from the bench, to enjoin the entire law. The judge volunteered at a hearing last month that his courtroom was "just one brief stop on the way to the Supreme Court."
If he does not enjoin the law, the immediate impact of a finding against the insurance mandate would be limited because that provision, and others that might fall with it, do not take effect for more than three years.
Virginia's attorney general, Kenneth Cuccinelli II, a Republican who filed the Richmond lawsuit, argues that if Hudson rejects the insurance requirement he should instantly invalidate the entire act on a nationwide basis.
Cuccinelli and the plaintiffs in the Florida case, who include attorneys general or governors from 20 states, have emphasized that congressional bill writers did not include a "severability clause" that would explicitly protect other parts of the sprawling law if certain provisions were struck down.
The administration argues that other key provisions do not depend on the insurance mandate. Those provisions include establishing health insurance exchanges, subsidizing premiums through tax credits and expanding Medicaid eligibility, all scheduled for 2014.
Nor, administration officials said, would an adverse ruling necessarily undermine certain insurance regulations that recently took effect, like the requirement that insurers cover children younger than 26 on their parents' policies.
Any illusion the cases are not highly politicized was lost when Republican leaders raced this month to file friend-of-the-court briefs in Pensacola, and Democrats responded with briefs from state legislators and supportive economists. Among the Republicans intervening in the case are Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the future speaker; 32 U.S. senators; and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a possible presidential candidate.
Monday, November 8, 2010
TARZAN
This is a naughty joke ! But in the interest of humor and freedom of speech, it is my duty not to censure, nor censor the Email we received.
I asked him how it was going and if he was into making anymore movies.
He told me that he could no longer make any more movies as he had severe arthritis in both shoulders and could no longer swing from vine to tree.
I asked how Jane was doing, he told me she was in bad shape, in a nursing home, has Alzheimer's and no longer recognizes anyone.
How sad.
I asked about Boy, and he told me that Boy had gone to the big city, got hooked up with bad women, drugs, alcohol, and the only times he heard from him was when he was in trouble or needed something.
I was at the store yesterday, and I ran into Tarzan!
I asked him how it was going and if he was into making anymore movies.
He told me that he could no longer make any more movies as he had severe arthritis in both shoulders and could no longer swing from vine to tree.
How sad.
I asked about Cheeta. He beamed and said she was doing good.
She married a lawyer, had gotten some plastic surgery, and now lived in the White House!!!
She married a lawyer, had gotten some plastic surgery, and now lived in the White House!!!
I'm so ashamed of myself!
Sunday, October 31, 2010
OBAMA SPENDING LIKE A DRUNKEN SAILOR ON JUNKETS
COST OF TWO DAY INDIA JAUNT
My guess would be WELL OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS - OR MORE when one considers these details:
Did I not hear something about selling India about $127 million worth of aircraft? Spending $100 million or more to achieve this means you have already spent all or more of the project INCOME let alone any profit.
On a trip to take your wife and kids to see the Taj Mahal?
And visit a Moslem mosque?
And a Brothel? Yes! See itinerary below. Good grief!
I was questioning who paid for his partisan campaign trips all around America.
It's understandable that Obama wants to be on the other side of the world when results from the mid-term elections are being realized.
But, in a time of hardship for so many Americans, one can only wonder what the extravagance of his November 6th trip to India will cost. Here are a few highlights:
- The President has booked all 570 rooms, banquet rooms, and restaurants at the 5-star Taj Mahal hotel.
- In addition to the Taj Mahal Hotel, 125 rooms at the Taj President, and 80 to 90 rooms at each the Grand Hyatt and Oberoi Hotels have been booked for his additional entourage.
- In addition to Air force one, two jumbo jets and military figher escorts will be usd to ferry his staff.
- 45 cars will be used in his motorcade.
- 40 military fighter aircraft to provide air protection.
- Because the Taj Mahal Hotel is seaside, the U.S. Navy will be patrolling the waters out to 330 km off the coast.
- The administration has booked the entire India National Center for the Performing Arts to meet with business leaders.
- The security detail will be HUGE.
- Michelle is going to meet with 'commercial sex workers'. (Brothels) Why, I don't know. But the additional cost of her security to enter the seediest areas of Mumbai must be quite a bit.
- The distruption of life and traffic in Mumbai will cost the locals plenty.
Read the article from the Economic Times here:
"US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit. As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight .
Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO. The highprofile visit is likely to inconvenience the citizens, as there could be a complete clampdown on traffic on some main roads of south Mumbai and sanitisation of buildings flanking them.
The Obamas will stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and his itinerary practically means Marine Drive will be shut for vehicular traffic on the day of the President’s visit, while buildings flanking it will be sanitised with security personnel manning them until Obama has left the place. Same would be the case with Obama’s visit to Mani Bhawan and Michelle going to Kamathipura.
An officer with the security establishment said, “Several other arterial roads in south Mumbai will also see restricted traffic movement, with tight security all around. The Obamas are not expected to schedule any engagements in the night due to security reasons.”
Since Obama is expected to arrive in the afternoon on November 6, and will travel by road to the Taj Mahal Hotel, the entire stretch from airport to the hotel will be under heavy security. The officer said, “There will be no vehicular movement on Western Express Highway at that time. Traffic on roads leading up to the highway will also be stopped. All buildings flanking the entire stretch will be sanitised.
However, there is no threat from the snipers as the President will travel in a bullet-proof car with 4.5-inch thick sheets, which are impenetrable for any gun.”
Obama’s personal security staff itself will be huge, and it has already started making its own arrangements in Mumbai. “A team of secret service agents has already arrived, and has surveyed the areas of his stay and the roads and places on his itinerary,” the officer said.
To ensure fool-proof security, the President’s team has booked the entire the Taj Mahal Hotel, including 570 rooms, all banquets and restaurants. Since his security contingent and staff will comprise a huge number, 125 rooms at Taj President have also been booked, apart from 80 to 90 rooms each in Grand Hyatt and The Oberoi hotels. The NCPA, where the President is expected to meet representatives from the business community, has also been entirely booked. The officer said, “Obama’s contingent is huge.
There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One, which will be flanked by security jets. There will be 30 to 40 secret service agents, who will arrive before him. The President’s convoy has 45 cars, including the Lincoln Continental in which the President travels.”
Since Obama will stay in a hotel that is on sea front, elaborate coastal security arrangements have been made by the US Navy in consonance with the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. “There will be US naval ships, along with Indian vessels , patrolling the sea till about 330-km from the shore. This is to negate the possibility of a missile being fired from a distance,” the officer said.
The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savour Indian cuisine, but to ensure his food is not spiked.
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are scheduled to land in Mumbai on November 6."
My guess would be WELL OVER ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS - OR MORE when one considers these details:
TO DO WHAT?
Did I not hear something about selling India about $127 million worth of aircraft? Spending $100 million or more to achieve this means you have already spent all or more of the project INCOME let alone any profit.
On a trip to take your wife and kids to see the Taj Mahal?
And visit a Moslem mosque?
And a Brothel? Yes! See itinerary below. Good grief!
It's understandable that Obama wants to be on the other side of the world when results from the mid-term elections are being realized.
But, in a time of hardship for so many Americans, one can only wonder what the extravagance of his November 6th trip to India will cost. Here are a few highlights:
- The President has booked all 570 rooms, banquet rooms, and restaurants at the 5-star Taj Mahal hotel.
- In addition to the Taj Mahal Hotel, 125 rooms at the Taj President, and 80 to 90 rooms at each the Grand Hyatt and Oberoi Hotels have been booked for his additional entourage.
- In addition to Air force one, two jumbo jets and military figher escorts will be usd to ferry his staff.
- 45 cars will be used in his motorcade.
- 40 military fighter aircraft to provide air protection.
- Because the Taj Mahal Hotel is seaside, the U.S. Navy will be patrolling the waters out to 330 km off the coast.
- The administration has booked the entire India National Center for the Performing Arts to meet with business leaders.
- The security detail will be HUGE.
- Michelle is going to meet with 'commercial sex workers'. (Brothels) Why, I don't know. But the additional cost of her security to enter the seediest areas of Mumbai must be quite a bit.
- The distruption of life and traffic in Mumbai will cost the locals plenty.
Read the article from the Economic Times here:
"US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit. As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight .
Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO. The highprofile visit is likely to inconvenience the citizens, as there could be a complete clampdown on traffic on some main roads of south Mumbai and sanitisation of buildings flanking them.
The Obamas will stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and his itinerary practically means Marine Drive will be shut for vehicular traffic on the day of the President’s visit, while buildings flanking it will be sanitised with security personnel manning them until Obama has left the place. Same would be the case with Obama’s visit to Mani Bhawan and Michelle going to Kamathipura.
An officer with the security establishment said, “Several other arterial roads in south Mumbai will also see restricted traffic movement, with tight security all around. The Obamas are not expected to schedule any engagements in the night due to security reasons.”
Since Obama is expected to arrive in the afternoon on November 6, and will travel by road to the Taj Mahal Hotel, the entire stretch from airport to the hotel will be under heavy security. The officer said, “There will be no vehicular movement on Western Express Highway at that time. Traffic on roads leading up to the highway will also be stopped. All buildings flanking the entire stretch will be sanitised.
However, there is no threat from the snipers as the President will travel in a bullet-proof car with 4.5-inch thick sheets, which are impenetrable for any gun.”
Obama’s personal security staff itself will be huge, and it has already started making its own arrangements in Mumbai. “A team of secret service agents has already arrived, and has surveyed the areas of his stay and the roads and places on his itinerary,” the officer said.
To ensure fool-proof security, the President’s team has booked the entire the Taj Mahal Hotel, including 570 rooms, all banquets and restaurants. Since his security contingent and staff will comprise a huge number, 125 rooms at Taj President have also been booked, apart from 80 to 90 rooms each in Grand Hyatt and The Oberoi hotels. The NCPA, where the President is expected to meet representatives from the business community, has also been entirely booked. The officer said, “Obama’s contingent is huge.
There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One, which will be flanked by security jets. There will be 30 to 40 secret service agents, who will arrive before him. The President’s convoy has 45 cars, including the Lincoln Continental in which the President travels.”
Since Obama will stay in a hotel that is on sea front, elaborate coastal security arrangements have been made by the US Navy in consonance with the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. “There will be US naval ships, along with Indian vessels , patrolling the sea till about 330-km from the shore. This is to negate the possibility of a missile being fired from a distance,” the officer said.
The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savour Indian cuisine, but to ensure his food is not spiked.
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are scheduled to land in Mumbai on November 6."
HAT TIP - FreeRepublic contributor "IbJensen" (Our government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.)
Saturday, October 30, 2010
47% OF DEMS WANT A 2012 PRIMARY CHALLENGER AGAINST OBAMA
By ALAN FRAM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic voters are closely divided over whether President Barack Obama should be challenged within the party for a second term in 2012, an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks Poll finds.
That glum assessment carries over into the nation at large, which is similarly divided over whether Obama should be a one-term president.
A real Democratic challenge to Obama seems unlikely at this stage and his re-election bid is a long way off. But the findings underscore how disenchanted his party has grown heading into the congressional elections Tuesday.
The AP-KN poll has tracked a group of people and their views since the beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign. Among all 2008 voters, 51 percent say he deserves to be defeated in November 2012 while 47 percent support his re-election _ essentially a tie.
Among Democrats, 47 percent say Obama should be challenged for the 2012 nomination and 51 percent say he should not be opposed. Those favoring a contest include most who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton's unsuccessful faceoff against Obama for the 2008 nomination. The poll did not ask if Democrats would support particular challengers.
Political operatives and polling experts caution that Obama's poll standings say more about people's frustrations today with the economy and other conditions than they do about his re-election prospects. With the next presidential election two years away _ an eon in politics _ the public's view of Obama could easily improve if the economy revives or if he outmaneuvers Republicans on Capitol Hill or in the presidential campaign.
"Democrats currently disappointed with Obama will likely be less disappointed if he spends the next two years fighting a GOP Congress" should Republicans do well on Election Day, said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor and polling analyst.
Even so, the poll illustrates how Obama's reputation has frayed since 2008. It suggests lingering bad feelings from Democrats' bitter primary fight, when he and Clinton _ now his secretary of state _ roughly split the popular vote. Political professionals of both parties said the findings are a warning for the president, whose formal re-election effort is expected to begin stirring next year.
"It's an indicator of things he needs to address between now and then," said Kiki McLean, a Democratic strategist who worked in Clinton's 2008 campaign.
The White House declined comment on the results.
Alan note: something that could knock Obama down, maybe out, has started to brew in South Carolina. Watch the news.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic voters are closely divided over whether President Barack Obama should be challenged within the party for a second term in 2012, an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks Poll finds.
That glum assessment carries over into the nation at large, which is similarly divided over whether Obama should be a one-term president.
A real Democratic challenge to Obama seems unlikely at this stage and his re-election bid is a long way off. But the findings underscore how disenchanted his party has grown heading into the congressional elections Tuesday.
The AP-KN poll has tracked a group of people and their views since the beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign. Among all 2008 voters, 51 percent say he deserves to be defeated in November 2012 while 47 percent support his re-election _ essentially a tie.
Among Democrats, 47 percent say Obama should be challenged for the 2012 nomination and 51 percent say he should not be opposed. Those favoring a contest include most who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton's unsuccessful faceoff against Obama for the 2008 nomination. The poll did not ask if Democrats would support particular challengers.
Political operatives and polling experts caution that Obama's poll standings say more about people's frustrations today with the economy and other conditions than they do about his re-election prospects. With the next presidential election two years away _ an eon in politics _ the public's view of Obama could easily improve if the economy revives or if he outmaneuvers Republicans on Capitol Hill or in the presidential campaign.
"Democrats currently disappointed with Obama will likely be less disappointed if he spends the next two years fighting a GOP Congress" should Republicans do well on Election Day, said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor and polling analyst.
Even so, the poll illustrates how Obama's reputation has frayed since 2008. It suggests lingering bad feelings from Democrats' bitter primary fight, when he and Clinton _ now his secretary of state _ roughly split the popular vote. Political professionals of both parties said the findings are a warning for the president, whose formal re-election effort is expected to begin stirring next year.
"It's an indicator of things he needs to address between now and then," said Kiki McLean, a Democratic strategist who worked in Clinton's 2008 campaign.
The White House declined comment on the results.
Alan note: something that could knock Obama down, maybe out, has started to brew in South Carolina. Watch the news.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
ILLEGAL ACTIVITY BY PRO-OBAMA UNIONS UNDER WAY
AND OTHER ITEMS........
PERSONAL RECORDS (HOW ABOUT OBAMA'S?)
Right? I mean, all we now have to do is to run to this Judge in Alaska and point out that if Joe Miller's confidential personnel file from a prior employer needs to be made public because running for Senate is so important, certainly we are entitled to more information about Obama than he tells us in his books, right? From the Anchorage Daily News, Judge orders Miller documents released: In an unusual weekend hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public's right to know about candidates outweighed Miller's right to privacy.
============
Mr. Andy Martin, JD, will be holding a “Third National Conference on Barack Obama’s Missing Birth Certificate, College Records and Religion” in Honolulu on November 9-16, 2010. ...On October 17, 2008, Mr. Martin filed a lawsuit in Hawaii to obtain access to Barack Obama’s original long-form, typewritten birth certificate. He has stated that Hawaii officials admitted that the online COLB which has been presented as a “birth certificate” by Factcheck.org and Politifact.com is not the same as “the original” which the Department of Health has on file....Mr. Martin has filed a second lawsuit against Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle
===========
Another election related lawsuit states that three vans of Hughes High school students were taken to the polls to vote last week during school hours. They were given sample ballots only for Democratic candidates and then taken for ice cream. The suit goes on to allege that the students were chaperoned by campaign workers for U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-West Price Hill. Brinkman is demanding a restraining order from Common Pleas Court Judge Beth Myers.
============
THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO LOAD UP YOUR CAR LIKE WHEN YOU WHERE IN SCHOOL AND TAKE ALL YOUR CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS TO THE POLLS...We need to turn out in mass numbers to counter the corruption
Do you remember when Barack Obama said “The SEIU Agenda Is My Agenda”? Now we know why.
The same SEIU offshoot group that is accused of turning in thousands of bogus voter registrations in Arizona has come under fire in Colorado. Mi Familia Vota is accused of turning in 6,000 bogus voter registrations in Colorado. The Denver Post reported:
A federal judge declined to force the secretary of state to reactivate approximately 6,000 new voters whose registrations were canceled under Colorado’s 20-day rule.
In a decision issued Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane denied a motion for a preliminary injunction that was requested by several labor and voting-rights groups.
===================
LEFT WING INTOLERANCE OF FREE SPEECH
A stagehand working on the stage set up for President Obama's appearance in Los Angeles was told to go home when he refused to remove his hat and shirt honoring the aircraft carrier named USS George H. W. Bush. His son is in the US Navy and serves on the ship.
================
"The Post & Email has been requesting Certificates of Nomination from the Hawaii Elections Office since July but has been denied access, even though the documents in question have been in the public domain for many months and have been reported on extensively by other researchers and bloggers. We previously reported that our requests to both the Department of Health and the Elections Office and those of many other citizens have been stonewalled, denied, ignored, or responded to by an attempt to bill the other party for an item that was never produced."
=================
A few weeks ago, I referred to President Obama as a “dhimmi president,” a subservient kowtower to Islamic power. Maybe it’s time to rethink that designation. He’s not a dhimmi. He’s a spineless, supine, surrendering subject of submission – in other words, a dhimmi-plus.
How else to explain Obama’s complacency with regard to a crescent-shaped monument (which Alec Rawls advances in “Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes” his claim that the memorial is in fact the world’s largest open-air mosque), being built on National Park Service federal land at the Shanksville, PA Flight 93 crash site, while at the same time ignoring the desecration, theft and need to replace the Mojave Desert War Memorial Cross (our nation’s sole WWI federal memorial) also on National Park Service federal land? And how else to explain Obama’s stumping on behalf of the Ground Zero mosque while at the same time ignoring multiple written requests from veterans’ organizations and a host of distinguished American citizens including Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senator Rick Santorum, a few Medal of Honor recipients, Major Generals, Vice Admirals and many other esteemed citizens, asking that he restore the Memorial Cross?
==================
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE AMUCK!
A civil rights complaint has been filed against a woman in Grand Rapids, Mich., who posted an advertisement at her church last July seeking a Christian roommate. The ad "expresses an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths,” according to the complaint filed by the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan. "It's a violation to make, print or publish a discriminatory statement," Executive Director Nancy Haynes told Fox News. "There are no exemptions to that." Haynes said the unnamed 31-year-old woman’s case was turned over to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights.
==============
800 HOTEL ROOMS, TWO EXTRA 747 AIRCRAFT AND A HUGE RETINUE FOR HIM AND HIS WIFE - ON A TWO DAY VISIT! MORE COLLOSAL SPENDING OF OUR MONEY ON THEIR PLEASURE TRIPS TO A TEMPLE AND A LOCAL SEX PLEASURE PROVIDING LOCATION (BROTHEL?).
"Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO".
As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight .
Frantic preparations are underway for US president Barack Obama’s visit to Mumbai. Sources in the security establishment said 547 rooms and all banquet halls at the Taj Mahal hotel near the Gateway of India are likely to be booked for the president’s visit. Apart from this, 125 rooms at the Taj President in Cuffe Parade and 80-90 rooms in ITC Grand Hyatt will be booked for Obama’s entourage.
The US president is expected to arrive in the city on the afternoon of November 6 and is likely to leave the next day in the evening. “Michelle, Obama’s wife, is expected to visit an NGO in Kamathipura on the second day. We have to chalk out security plans for her visit since the area is densely populated,” a source from the security establishment said.
“Rooms at the Hyatt are for the air crew and other members who will accompany Obama. The US president will also bring his chef along,” he said.
“Three theatres at the NCPA have also been booked as Obama is expected to visit the place. He will also go to the Police Gymkhana, which has a memorial for policemen killed in the 26/11 terror attack.”
An officer told DNA that Obama would travel to the hotel from the airport via road instead of a chopper. He travels in a Lincoln Continental, which has a thickness of four-and-a-half inches of metal. “Two jets and 45 cars will be part of Obama’s convoy. The jets will be armed with highly-advanced communication and security system,” he said.
Advance Security Liaison officers have conducted a recce of the places Obama is likely to visit. They will conduct another recee and submit a report to their bosses.
PERSONAL RECORDS (HOW ABOUT OBAMA'S?)
Right? I mean, all we now have to do is to run to this Judge in Alaska and point out that if Joe Miller's confidential personnel file from a prior employer needs to be made public because running for Senate is so important, certainly we are entitled to more information about Obama than he tells us in his books, right? From the Anchorage Daily News, Judge orders Miller documents released: In an unusual weekend hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public's right to know about candidates outweighed Miller's right to privacy.
============
Mr. Andy Martin, JD, will be holding a “Third National Conference on Barack Obama’s Missing Birth Certificate, College Records and Religion” in Honolulu on November 9-16, 2010. ...On October 17, 2008, Mr. Martin filed a lawsuit in Hawaii to obtain access to Barack Obama’s original long-form, typewritten birth certificate. He has stated that Hawaii officials admitted that the online COLB which has been presented as a “birth certificate” by Factcheck.org and Politifact.com is not the same as “the original” which the Department of Health has on file....Mr. Martin has filed a second lawsuit against Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle
===========
Another election related lawsuit states that three vans of Hughes High school students were taken to the polls to vote last week during school hours. They were given sample ballots only for Democratic candidates and then taken for ice cream. The suit goes on to allege that the students were chaperoned by campaign workers for U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus, D-West Price Hill. Brinkman is demanding a restraining order from Common Pleas Court Judge Beth Myers.
============
THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO LOAD UP YOUR CAR LIKE WHEN YOU WHERE IN SCHOOL AND TAKE ALL YOUR CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS TO THE POLLS...We need to turn out in mass numbers to counter the corruption
Do you remember when Barack Obama said “The SEIU Agenda Is My Agenda”? Now we know why.
The same SEIU offshoot group that is accused of turning in thousands of bogus voter registrations in Arizona has come under fire in Colorado. Mi Familia Vota is accused of turning in 6,000 bogus voter registrations in Colorado. The Denver Post reported:
A federal judge declined to force the secretary of state to reactivate approximately 6,000 new voters whose registrations were canceled under Colorado’s 20-day rule.
In a decision issued Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane denied a motion for a preliminary injunction that was requested by several labor and voting-rights groups.
===================
LEFT WING INTOLERANCE OF FREE SPEECH
A stagehand working on the stage set up for President Obama's appearance in Los Angeles was told to go home when he refused to remove his hat and shirt honoring the aircraft carrier named USS George H. W. Bush. His son is in the US Navy and serves on the ship.
================
"The Post & Email has been requesting Certificates of Nomination from the Hawaii Elections Office since July but has been denied access, even though the documents in question have been in the public domain for many months and have been reported on extensively by other researchers and bloggers. We previously reported that our requests to both the Department of Health and the Elections Office and those of many other citizens have been stonewalled, denied, ignored, or responded to by an attempt to bill the other party for an item that was never produced."
=================
A few weeks ago, I referred to President Obama as a “dhimmi president,” a subservient kowtower to Islamic power. Maybe it’s time to rethink that designation. He’s not a dhimmi. He’s a spineless, supine, surrendering subject of submission – in other words, a dhimmi-plus.
How else to explain Obama’s complacency with regard to a crescent-shaped monument (which Alec Rawls advances in “Crescent of Betrayal: Dishonoring the Heroes” his claim that the memorial is in fact the world’s largest open-air mosque), being built on National Park Service federal land at the Shanksville, PA Flight 93 crash site, while at the same time ignoring the desecration, theft and need to replace the Mojave Desert War Memorial Cross (our nation’s sole WWI federal memorial) also on National Park Service federal land? And how else to explain Obama’s stumping on behalf of the Ground Zero mosque while at the same time ignoring multiple written requests from veterans’ organizations and a host of distinguished American citizens including Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senator Rick Santorum, a few Medal of Honor recipients, Major Generals, Vice Admirals and many other esteemed citizens, asking that he restore the Memorial Cross?
==================
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE AMUCK!
A civil rights complaint has been filed against a woman in Grand Rapids, Mich., who posted an advertisement at her church last July seeking a Christian roommate. The ad "expresses an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths,” according to the complaint filed by the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan. "It's a violation to make, print or publish a discriminatory statement," Executive Director Nancy Haynes told Fox News. "There are no exemptions to that." Haynes said the unnamed 31-year-old woman’s case was turned over to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights.
==============
800 HOTEL ROOMS, TWO EXTRA 747 AIRCRAFT AND A HUGE RETINUE FOR HIM AND HIS WIFE - ON A TWO DAY VISIT! MORE COLLOSAL SPENDING OF OUR MONEY ON THEIR PLEASURE TRIPS TO A TEMPLE AND A LOCAL SEX PLEASURE PROVIDING LOCATION (BROTHEL?).
"Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO".
As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight .
Frantic preparations are underway for US president Barack Obama’s visit to Mumbai. Sources in the security establishment said 547 rooms and all banquet halls at the Taj Mahal hotel near the Gateway of India are likely to be booked for the president’s visit. Apart from this, 125 rooms at the Taj President in Cuffe Parade and 80-90 rooms in ITC Grand Hyatt will be booked for Obama’s entourage.
The US president is expected to arrive in the city on the afternoon of November 6 and is likely to leave the next day in the evening. “Michelle, Obama’s wife, is expected to visit an NGO in Kamathipura on the second day. We have to chalk out security plans for her visit since the area is densely populated,” a source from the security establishment said.
“Rooms at the Hyatt are for the air crew and other members who will accompany Obama. The US president will also bring his chef along,” he said.
“Three theatres at the NCPA have also been booked as Obama is expected to visit the place. He will also go to the Police Gymkhana, which has a memorial for policemen killed in the 26/11 terror attack.”
An officer told DNA that Obama would travel to the hotel from the airport via road instead of a chopper. He travels in a Lincoln Continental, which has a thickness of four-and-a-half inches of metal. “Two jets and 45 cars will be part of Obama’s convoy. The jets will be armed with highly-advanced communication and security system,” he said.
Advance Security Liaison officers have conducted a recce of the places Obama is likely to visit. They will conduct another recee and submit a report to their bosses.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
WHITE HOUSE INSIDER - LAZY PRESIDENT IS LOSING IT!
Published by Ulsterman on September 7, 2010 in Opinions [WSJ]
A longtime Washington D.C. insider, and former advisor to the Obama election campaign and transition team, speaks out on an administration in crisis, and a president increasingly withdrawn from the job of President.
2008 gave America an incredibly charismatic candidate for President of the United States. Speech after speech showed a candidate with increasing momentum as primary race after primary race concluded. And then came the nomination, more speeches, culminating in an election night victory.
According to the person sitting across from me, those were incredibly exciting times, even for one who had been a participant with three previous presidential hopefuls. Barack Obama appeared to move from one city to the next effortlessly, gaining confidence and motivation with each campaign stop. He was remarkable to watch . He took the script, elevated it with his oration, left the crowds screaming for more, and then would do it all over again, time after time after time. On the campaign trail, Obama is a machine.
When I asked this insider if the media gave candidate Obama an assist throughout his campaign, it elicits a sly smile.
Sure – we definitely had people in the media on our side. Absolutely. We went so far as to give them specific ideas for coverage. The ones who took that advice from the campaign were granted better access, and Obama was the biggest story in 2008, so yeah, that gave us a lot of leverage.
Could Obama have succeeded without the media’s help?
Yeah, I think so. As I said, on the campaign trail he is very-very good. The opposition didn’t have near the energy, or the celebrity attraction that Obama brings. Plus, the country was burned out after eight years of Bush. We knew that going in. We knew that if we won the Democrat nomination, we were likely going to cruise our way to the White House – and that is exactly what we did.”
But after Obama was sworn in, things began to change?
Almost immediately. Obama loved to campaign. He clearly didn’t like the work of being President though, and that attitude was felt by the entire White House staff within weeks after the inauguration.
Obama the tireless, hard working candidate became a very tepid personality to us. And the few news stories that did come out against him were the only things he seemed to care about. He absolutely obsesses over Fox News. For being so successful, Barack Obama is incredibly thin-skinned. He takes everything very personally.
And you state he despises Joe Biden?
Oh yeah. That is very well known in the White House. Obama chose Biden for one reason – to have an older white guy with some international policy credentials. Period.
If Biden has all of this international experience that Obama found so valuable, why has he buried him under the pile of crap that became the stimulus bill? What does Joe Biden know about budgets and economics ? Not much – but Obama didn’t care.
Give Joe a job and get him the hell out of my hair – that pretty much sums up the president’s feelings toward Joe Biden.
What about Hillary Clinton?
Obama is scared to death of Hillary. He doesn’t trust her – obsesses over her almost as much as he does Fox News. He respects her though, which might be why he fears her so much as well.
He talks the game, but when it comes down to it, she has played the game on a far tougher level than he has, and Obama knows that.
How about Bill Clinton?
I never heard Obama say anything about Bill Clinton personally, though I was told he has cracked a few jokes about the former president since getting into the White House. I have heard that Bill Clinton does not like Barack Obama.
That really started when Obama played the race card against him during the primary campaign. Apparently Clinton was apoplectic over that and still hasn’t gotten over it. If there is one thing I have learned in this town – don’t make an enemy of Bill Clinton.
So if Obama doesn’t appear interested in the job of president, what does he do day after day?
Well, he takes his meetings just like any other president would, though even then, he seems to lack a certain focus and on a few occasions, actually leaves with the directive that be given a summary of the meeting at a later date.
I hear he plays a lot of golf, and watches a lot of television – ESPN mainly. I
’ll tell you this – if you want to see President Obama get excited about a conversation, turn it to sports.
That gets him interested. You start talking about Congress, or some policy, and he just kinda turns off. It’s really very strange. I mean, we were all led to believe that this guy was some kind of intellectual giant, right? Ivy League and all that. Well, that is not what I saw. Barack Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of intellectual curiosity.
When he is off script, he is what I call a real “slow talker”. Lots of ummms, and lots of time in between answers where you can almost see the little wheel in his head turning very slowly. I am not going to say the president is a dumb man, because he is not, but yeah, there was a definite letdown when you actually hear him talking without the script.
That sounds like you are calling Obama stupid to me.
No – I am not going to call him stupid. He just doesn’t strike me as particularly smart. Bill Clinton is a smart guy – he would run intellectual circles around Barack Obama. And Bill Clinton loved the politics of being president. Obama seems to think he shouldn’t have to be bothered, which has created a considerable amount of conflict among his staff.
So how bad are things at the White House these days?
I don’t know about right now, because I have not been there in over a month. But I still hear things, and I know what it was like when I left. It’s not good.
As bad as it might look to voters based on what they do know, it’s much worse.
The infighting is off the charts. You got a Chief of Staff who despises cabinet members, advisors who despise the Chief of Staff, a President and First Lady having their own issues…
Come again – what about the First Lady?
(The insider takes a deep breath) Ok, look, just like any other marriage, folks have issues. The Obamas are no different, except of course they are very high profile. I was told they were having issues before the campaign, and they have even more issues now. Maybe that is why Obama seems so detached – not so much the stress of the White House, but the stress of personal issues. I can certainly relate to that kind of situation.
Care to clarify some more on the Obama marriage?
No. That is all I will say about that. Don’t ask again.
Ok, back to President Obama then. In just a few words, how would you describe him these days?
Like I said, it’s been a while since I was last at the White House, but I don’t have a problem saying that the president is losing it. I don’t mean he is like losing his mind. I mean to say that he is losing whatever spark he had during the campaign.
When you take away the crowds, Obama gets noticeably smaller. He shrinks up inside of himself. He just doesn’t seem to have the confidence to do the job of President, and it’s getting worse and worse.
Case in point – just a few days before I left, I saw first hand the President of the United States yelling at a member of his staff. He was yelling like a spoiled child. And then he pouted for several moments after.
I wish I was kidding, or exaggerating, but I am not. The President of the United States threw a temper tantrum. The jobs reports are always setting him off, and he is getting increasingly conspiratorial over the unemployment numbers. I never heard it myself, but was told that Obama thinks the banking system is out to get him now. That they and the big industries are making him pay for trying to regulate them more. That is the frame of mind the President is in these days. And you know what? Maybe he is right, who knows?
Will Obama run again in 2012?
I don’t know. That subject was never brought up again after 2008, at least not around me. If he does, I think it would have more to do with allowing him another year and a half of campaigning again.
He just loves it so much. He really needs the crowds, the cheering, the support of the people. (Alan note: narcissist moron?)
Can he win in 2012?
Oh – absolutely. Who else campaigns as well as Barack Obama? Nobody. What politician is more loved and supported by the media? Nobody. I don’t see the Republicans offering up a candidate as powerful as Obama.
I mean Sarah Palin? Really? Obama would defeat her by a 20 point landslide!
Romney? The Republicans will enjoy these midterm elections, but 2012 is Obama’s year if he chooses to run again.
As a president, Obama has many flaws, but as a candidate, he is near flawless.
But would another four years of an Obama presidency be the best thing for America?
(Long pause) Now that is a much more interesting question right there, and a question I think more and more Democrat Party insiders are asking themselves these days, myself included.
I am going to come right out and say it – No. Obama is not up to the job of being president. He simply doesn’t seem to care about the work involved.
You want to know what? Obama is lazy. He really is. And it is getting worse and worse.
Would another four years of Obama be the best thing for America? No it would not.
What this country needs is a president who is focused on the job more than on themselves. Obama is not that individual. I actually hope he doesn’t run again. Looking back, as much fun as the campaign in 2008 was, Hillary Clinton should have been the nominee. Hillary was ready to be president. Obama was not ready.
He had never lost a campaign. Everything was handed to him. He doesn’t really understand the idea of work – real, hard, get your heart and soul into it work. And frankly, that is very disappointing to a whole lot of us…
'Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional,
illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream
media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible
to pick up a turd by the clean end.’
AG
A longtime Washington D.C. insider, and former advisor to the Obama election campaign and transition team, speaks out on an administration in crisis, and a president increasingly withdrawn from the job of President.
2008 gave America an incredibly charismatic candidate for President of the United States. Speech after speech showed a candidate with increasing momentum as primary race after primary race concluded. And then came the nomination, more speeches, culminating in an election night victory.
According to the person sitting across from me, those were incredibly exciting times, even for one who had been a participant with three previous presidential hopefuls. Barack Obama appeared to move from one city to the next effortlessly, gaining confidence and motivation with each campaign stop. He was remarkable to watch . He took the script, elevated it with his oration, left the crowds screaming for more, and then would do it all over again, time after time after time. On the campaign trail, Obama is a machine.
When I asked this insider if the media gave candidate Obama an assist throughout his campaign, it elicits a sly smile.
Sure – we definitely had people in the media on our side. Absolutely. We went so far as to give them specific ideas for coverage. The ones who took that advice from the campaign were granted better access, and Obama was the biggest story in 2008, so yeah, that gave us a lot of leverage.
Could Obama have succeeded without the media’s help?
Yeah, I think so. As I said, on the campaign trail he is very-very good. The opposition didn’t have near the energy, or the celebrity attraction that Obama brings. Plus, the country was burned out after eight years of Bush. We knew that going in. We knew that if we won the Democrat nomination, we were likely going to cruise our way to the White House – and that is exactly what we did.”
But after Obama was sworn in, things began to change?
Almost immediately. Obama loved to campaign. He clearly didn’t like the work of being President though, and that attitude was felt by the entire White House staff within weeks after the inauguration.
Obama the tireless, hard working candidate became a very tepid personality to us. And the few news stories that did come out against him were the only things he seemed to care about. He absolutely obsesses over Fox News. For being so successful, Barack Obama is incredibly thin-skinned. He takes everything very personally.
And you state he despises Joe Biden?
Oh yeah. That is very well known in the White House. Obama chose Biden for one reason – to have an older white guy with some international policy credentials. Period.
If Biden has all of this international experience that Obama found so valuable, why has he buried him under the pile of crap that became the stimulus bill? What does Joe Biden know about budgets and economics ? Not much – but Obama didn’t care.
Give Joe a job and get him the hell out of my hair – that pretty much sums up the president’s feelings toward Joe Biden.
What about Hillary Clinton?
Obama is scared to death of Hillary. He doesn’t trust her – obsesses over her almost as much as he does Fox News. He respects her though, which might be why he fears her so much as well.
He talks the game, but when it comes down to it, she has played the game on a far tougher level than he has, and Obama knows that.
How about Bill Clinton?
I never heard Obama say anything about Bill Clinton personally, though I was told he has cracked a few jokes about the former president since getting into the White House. I have heard that Bill Clinton does not like Barack Obama.
That really started when Obama played the race card against him during the primary campaign. Apparently Clinton was apoplectic over that and still hasn’t gotten over it. If there is one thing I have learned in this town – don’t make an enemy of Bill Clinton.
So if Obama doesn’t appear interested in the job of president, what does he do day after day?
Well, he takes his meetings just like any other president would, though even then, he seems to lack a certain focus and on a few occasions, actually leaves with the directive that be given a summary of the meeting at a later date.
I hear he plays a lot of golf, and watches a lot of television – ESPN mainly. I
’ll tell you this – if you want to see President Obama get excited about a conversation, turn it to sports.
That gets him interested. You start talking about Congress, or some policy, and he just kinda turns off. It’s really very strange. I mean, we were all led to believe that this guy was some kind of intellectual giant, right? Ivy League and all that. Well, that is not what I saw. Barack Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of intellectual curiosity.
When he is off script, he is what I call a real “slow talker”. Lots of ummms, and lots of time in between answers where you can almost see the little wheel in his head turning very slowly. I am not going to say the president is a dumb man, because he is not, but yeah, there was a definite letdown when you actually hear him talking without the script.
That sounds like you are calling Obama stupid to me.
No – I am not going to call him stupid. He just doesn’t strike me as particularly smart. Bill Clinton is a smart guy – he would run intellectual circles around Barack Obama. And Bill Clinton loved the politics of being president. Obama seems to think he shouldn’t have to be bothered, which has created a considerable amount of conflict among his staff.
So how bad are things at the White House these days?
I don’t know about right now, because I have not been there in over a month. But I still hear things, and I know what it was like when I left. It’s not good.
As bad as it might look to voters based on what they do know, it’s much worse.
The infighting is off the charts. You got a Chief of Staff who despises cabinet members, advisors who despise the Chief of Staff, a President and First Lady having their own issues…
Come again – what about the First Lady?
(The insider takes a deep breath) Ok, look, just like any other marriage, folks have issues. The Obamas are no different, except of course they are very high profile. I was told they were having issues before the campaign, and they have even more issues now. Maybe that is why Obama seems so detached – not so much the stress of the White House, but the stress of personal issues. I can certainly relate to that kind of situation.
Care to clarify some more on the Obama marriage?
No. That is all I will say about that. Don’t ask again.
Ok, back to President Obama then. In just a few words, how would you describe him these days?
Like I said, it’s been a while since I was last at the White House, but I don’t have a problem saying that the president is losing it. I don’t mean he is like losing his mind. I mean to say that he is losing whatever spark he had during the campaign.
When you take away the crowds, Obama gets noticeably smaller. He shrinks up inside of himself. He just doesn’t seem to have the confidence to do the job of President, and it’s getting worse and worse.
Case in point – just a few days before I left, I saw first hand the President of the United States yelling at a member of his staff. He was yelling like a spoiled child. And then he pouted for several moments after.
I wish I was kidding, or exaggerating, but I am not. The President of the United States threw a temper tantrum. The jobs reports are always setting him off, and he is getting increasingly conspiratorial over the unemployment numbers. I never heard it myself, but was told that Obama thinks the banking system is out to get him now. That they and the big industries are making him pay for trying to regulate them more. That is the frame of mind the President is in these days. And you know what? Maybe he is right, who knows?
Will Obama run again in 2012?
I don’t know. That subject was never brought up again after 2008, at least not around me. If he does, I think it would have more to do with allowing him another year and a half of campaigning again.
He just loves it so much. He really needs the crowds, the cheering, the support of the people. (Alan note: narcissist moron?)
Can he win in 2012?
Oh – absolutely. Who else campaigns as well as Barack Obama? Nobody. What politician is more loved and supported by the media? Nobody. I don’t see the Republicans offering up a candidate as powerful as Obama.
I mean Sarah Palin? Really? Obama would defeat her by a 20 point landslide!
Romney? The Republicans will enjoy these midterm elections, but 2012 is Obama’s year if he chooses to run again.
As a president, Obama has many flaws, but as a candidate, he is near flawless.
But would another four years of an Obama presidency be the best thing for America?
(Long pause) Now that is a much more interesting question right there, and a question I think more and more Democrat Party insiders are asking themselves these days, myself included.
I am going to come right out and say it – No. Obama is not up to the job of being president. He simply doesn’t seem to care about the work involved.
You want to know what? Obama is lazy. He really is. And it is getting worse and worse.
Would another four years of Obama be the best thing for America? No it would not.
What this country needs is a president who is focused on the job more than on themselves. Obama is not that individual. I actually hope he doesn’t run again. Looking back, as much fun as the campaign in 2008 was, Hillary Clinton should have been the nominee. Hillary was ready to be president. Obama was not ready.
He had never lost a campaign. Everything was handed to him. He doesn’t really understand the idea of work – real, hard, get your heart and soul into it work. And frankly, that is very disappointing to a whole lot of us…
'Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional,
illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream
media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible
to pick up a turd by the clean end.’
AG
Sunday, October 3, 2010
HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS PRINCE REZA PAHLAVI RECENT MINDSETS
When he turned 21, Reza Cyrus Pahlavi publicly declared himself Shahanshah (King of Kings). He became Reza Pahlavi II and formally staked his claim to the Peacock Throne, after the death of his father, the exiled Shah of Iran.
Now, 29 years later, the tall, dark and silver-haired resident of Potomac, Va., on the suburban outskirts of Washington, simply signs himself "Mister."
His office's press releases refer to him as "the former Crown Prince of Iran," but his staff privately persists in referring to him as "His Majesty."
At 50, Mr. Pahlavi dismisses talk of restoring the monarchy in Iran and says his life is now dedicated to creating a non-violent, democratic revolution there.
"The choice of future government should be left to the Iranian people to decide in a free election," he says. "What form it ultimately takes is up to them. The essential point to me is that there is no way we can achieve our aspirations as a nation unless we have a secular regime, as opposed to this theocracy."
"Without a clear separation of the state and religion you cannot have the beginning of any form of democratic system," he adds.
Mr. Pahlavi was 17 the last time revolution swept over Iran. He was studying to be a fighter pilot at a U.S. Air Force base in Lubbock, Tex., when his father, sick with cancer, fled and surrendered Iran to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic fundamentalist leader.
"Whatever happened in 1979, today people see the net results," he says. "Where the country was going; where are we now. Whatever analysis is made of Iran — positive, negative, good or bad — it is something for history to decide and for Iranians to draw their conclusions."
"Are we better off today than we were 30 years ago?" he asks.
"We know the country, its potential, its resources, where it was and where it could have been. We should be at the level of a Taiwan or a South Korea today, not ranked 150th in the world, even though we are an oil-producing country...
"We should not have our Iranian rap artists say the regime is promising us yellow cake when we don't even have bread to eat."
His disdain for Iran's current rulers is evident, but the anger is touched by the pain and longing of separation and the loneliness of 33 years of exile.
"I don't doubt ever that this regime will end," he says. "There is no question about that. The question is when and at what cost and how can we help expedite the process to reduce the toll and the cost to our nation."
In the years immediately after the 1979 revolution, Mr. Pahlavi promoted the case of monarchy and kept his claim to the Peacock Throne alive through books, a website and personal appearances.
Now, he says he promotes nothing more than what he calls the common denominator of Iranian politics: demands for a secular democratic state that observes and protects human rights.
"Every circumstance around the world has its own time in history," he says, shoving any further discussion of monarchy into the background.
"Those who have been able to move on and adjust to today's reality will not render the best service to the cause by rekindling issues that are no longer relevant to today's predicament."
Iran's future, he insists, will be determined by a massive generation of young people who have all been born since the 1979 revolution.
Exiles like himself can only offer them assistance and advice in trying to overthrow a repressive theocracy.
"I don't want anything in return," he says. "I do it because it is my duty."
While he urges foreign governments to come to the aid of Iran's fledgling internal opposition movements, he insists regime change must be internally induced to be legitimate.
He also warns the West not to harm Iranian society while trying to destabilize the Iranian government.
"Sanctions in themselves can not be enough," he says. "Because if you weaken society, while you weaken the regime, it has less means to really combat [the government]. If [the opposition] is reinforced and reinvigorated, then the whole dynamics of the situation is changed."
Mr. Pahlavi rejects all talk of outside military intervention or a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear programs. Such moves would alienate potential democratic allies within its government and could jeopardize the lives of thousands of innocent people.
"What I am saying to heads of state and decision-makers around the world is that it would be historically criminal for you not to let the Iranian people stand for themselves and give them their day in court before you adopt much more dire measures," he says.
"We need to draw lessons from the past," adds the man who once stood to inherit a kingdom. "We all do."
"Sometimes people ask me who are the future leaders of Iran," he says.
"I say I don't know who they are, but I know that they exist by the thousands. They are the artists and engineers; they are poets and businessmen; they are entrepreneurs and they are there — waiting to inherit this future.
"And it is, by God, our obligation, our duty to the nation, to help them the best way possible to minimize the toll and the cost of change."
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/duty/3577579/story.html#ixzz11LtViYSE
Now, 29 years later, the tall, dark and silver-haired resident of Potomac, Va., on the suburban outskirts of Washington, simply signs himself "Mister."
His office's press releases refer to him as "the former Crown Prince of Iran," but his staff privately persists in referring to him as "His Majesty."
At 50, Mr. Pahlavi dismisses talk of restoring the monarchy in Iran and says his life is now dedicated to creating a non-violent, democratic revolution there.
"The choice of future government should be left to the Iranian people to decide in a free election," he says. "What form it ultimately takes is up to them. The essential point to me is that there is no way we can achieve our aspirations as a nation unless we have a secular regime, as opposed to this theocracy."
"Without a clear separation of the state and religion you cannot have the beginning of any form of democratic system," he adds.
Mr. Pahlavi was 17 the last time revolution swept over Iran. He was studying to be a fighter pilot at a U.S. Air Force base in Lubbock, Tex., when his father, sick with cancer, fled and surrendered Iran to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic fundamentalist leader.
"Whatever happened in 1979, today people see the net results," he says. "Where the country was going; where are we now. Whatever analysis is made of Iran — positive, negative, good or bad — it is something for history to decide and for Iranians to draw their conclusions."
"Are we better off today than we were 30 years ago?" he asks.
"We know the country, its potential, its resources, where it was and where it could have been. We should be at the level of a Taiwan or a South Korea today, not ranked 150th in the world, even though we are an oil-producing country...
"We should not have our Iranian rap artists say the regime is promising us yellow cake when we don't even have bread to eat."
His disdain for Iran's current rulers is evident, but the anger is touched by the pain and longing of separation and the loneliness of 33 years of exile.
"I don't doubt ever that this regime will end," he says. "There is no question about that. The question is when and at what cost and how can we help expedite the process to reduce the toll and the cost to our nation."
In the years immediately after the 1979 revolution, Mr. Pahlavi promoted the case of monarchy and kept his claim to the Peacock Throne alive through books, a website and personal appearances.
Now, he says he promotes nothing more than what he calls the common denominator of Iranian politics: demands for a secular democratic state that observes and protects human rights.
"Every circumstance around the world has its own time in history," he says, shoving any further discussion of monarchy into the background.
"Those who have been able to move on and adjust to today's reality will not render the best service to the cause by rekindling issues that are no longer relevant to today's predicament."
Iran's future, he insists, will be determined by a massive generation of young people who have all been born since the 1979 revolution.
Exiles like himself can only offer them assistance and advice in trying to overthrow a repressive theocracy.
"I don't want anything in return," he says. "I do it because it is my duty."
While he urges foreign governments to come to the aid of Iran's fledgling internal opposition movements, he insists regime change must be internally induced to be legitimate.
He also warns the West not to harm Iranian society while trying to destabilize the Iranian government.
"Sanctions in themselves can not be enough," he says. "Because if you weaken society, while you weaken the regime, it has less means to really combat [the government]. If [the opposition] is reinforced and reinvigorated, then the whole dynamics of the situation is changed."
Mr. Pahlavi rejects all talk of outside military intervention or a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear programs. Such moves would alienate potential democratic allies within its government and could jeopardize the lives of thousands of innocent people.
"What I am saying to heads of state and decision-makers around the world is that it would be historically criminal for you not to let the Iranian people stand for themselves and give them their day in court before you adopt much more dire measures," he says.
"We need to draw lessons from the past," adds the man who once stood to inherit a kingdom. "We all do."
"Sometimes people ask me who are the future leaders of Iran," he says.
"I say I don't know who they are, but I know that they exist by the thousands. They are the artists and engineers; they are poets and businessmen; they are entrepreneurs and they are there — waiting to inherit this future.
"And it is, by God, our obligation, our duty to the nation, to help them the best way possible to minimize the toll and the cost of change."
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
.
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/duty/3577579/story.html#ixzz11LtViYSE
Saturday, September 18, 2010
OBAMA REMOVES GOD/CREATOR FROM PREAMBLE TO THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
 |
| PICTURE DEPICTS OBAMA AT THE VERY MOMENT HE REMOVED GOD/CREATOR |
"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..... endowed with certain unalienable rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
After President Obama says "created equal...", there is a long pause during which he scowls and blinks several times.
For once, he may actually have opted to not read something that was on the teleprompter. Is looks like he is disgusted and decided it would be better not to read what the preamble actually says.
President Obama, if our Creator is not the purveyor of our human rights, then who is? The government? Allah?
FULL VIDEO SO YOU CAN SEE FOR YOURSELF
Monday, September 6, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
OBAMA ADMINSTRATION A CORRUPT CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION
FEC allows SEIU's illegal political fund-raising scheme with unethical trickery .
NOTE: SEIU boss one of the most frequent visitors to the White House
Rick Moran
This is just a bit heavy handed, even from the thugs at SEIU:
Imagine the outcry if McDonalds executives demanded that franchise owners collect "voluntary" contributions totaling $25,000 for the company's Political Action Committee (PAC) from employees at every restaurant.
What if the fast food titan's headquarters followed up with a threat - pay us, or face a $37,500 fine? Do you think this heavy-handed scheme would raise a few eyebrows at the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?
Replace "McDonalds" with "SEIU" in that description and you've got a pretty good idea of Big Labor's latest political fundraising strategy. To meet their ambitious fundraising targets, Service Employees International Union bosses are now threatening to fine any local affiliate that doesn't meet its PAC contribution requirements.
The only problem with this racket is that FEC guidelines explicitly prohibit organizations from collecting PAC funds by threatening members with financial reprisals. SEIU bosses aren't exactly hiding their intentions, either - they actually wrote this fundraising provision into the union's constitution at their annual convention.
Despite a complaint filed by the Right to Work Foundation with the FEC, the union appears to have gotten away with their fund raising skulduggery.
How they did it is an object lesson in power politics.
When unions run the government, we get this kind of powerplay by an agency supposedly "independent of politics":
Although the FEC dismissed the Foundation's complaint in April, Foundation attorneys were only notified of the decision 23 days after the fact.
Adding insult to injury, the FEC finally got around to releasing the reasoning behind its dismissal in August, 111 days after the original decision was made.
Coincidentally, all FEC appeals must be filed within 60 days of any ruling.
By delaying its announcement and only releasing its reasoning until well after the window period had expired, the FEC effectively made it impossible to appeal the decision to federal court.
Thus endeth the lesson. Now sit down, shut up, and take it.
NOTE: SEIU boss one of the most frequent visitors to the White House
Rick Moran
This is just a bit heavy handed, even from the thugs at SEIU:
Imagine the outcry if McDonalds executives demanded that franchise owners collect "voluntary" contributions totaling $25,000 for the company's Political Action Committee (PAC) from employees at every restaurant.
What if the fast food titan's headquarters followed up with a threat - pay us, or face a $37,500 fine? Do you think this heavy-handed scheme would raise a few eyebrows at the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?
Replace "McDonalds" with "SEIU" in that description and you've got a pretty good idea of Big Labor's latest political fundraising strategy. To meet their ambitious fundraising targets, Service Employees International Union bosses are now threatening to fine any local affiliate that doesn't meet its PAC contribution requirements.
The only problem with this racket is that FEC guidelines explicitly prohibit organizations from collecting PAC funds by threatening members with financial reprisals. SEIU bosses aren't exactly hiding their intentions, either - they actually wrote this fundraising provision into the union's constitution at their annual convention.
Despite a complaint filed by the Right to Work Foundation with the FEC, the union appears to have gotten away with their fund raising skulduggery.
How they did it is an object lesson in power politics.
When unions run the government, we get this kind of powerplay by an agency supposedly "independent of politics":
Although the FEC dismissed the Foundation's complaint in April, Foundation attorneys were only notified of the decision 23 days after the fact.
Adding insult to injury, the FEC finally got around to releasing the reasoning behind its dismissal in August, 111 days after the original decision was made.
Coincidentally, all FEC appeals must be filed within 60 days of any ruling.
By delaying its announcement and only releasing its reasoning until well after the window period had expired, the FEC effectively made it impossible to appeal the decision to federal court.
Thus endeth the lesson. Now sit down, shut up, and take it.
Friday, August 27, 2010
SCIENCE POINTING TO ACCURACY OF MAYAN 2012 PREDICTION
"BE HAPPY, DON'T WORRY" goes the Caribbean song from some years back and this is now my advice to you AND TO MYSELF. This article reminded me to remember.
With Obama uncaringly taking our country and possibly the world to hell in a handbasket probably on an Islamic built slide to oblivion, the Mayan Calendar or more closely their several combined calendars had long predicted the 2012 Winter Solstice to be the end of the world.
In their calculations the alignment of the Sun with a Black Hole in that part of 2012 would create a devastating electro-magnetic, solar wind storm - sucked from the Sun into that Black Hole and this time the Planet Earth would be directly in between and the blast would be strong enough to move oceans, change gravity and level mountains. So imagine what it will do to cities, humanity or animals.
There won't be much left to worry about - nor probably anyone left to worry.
That's all only a bit over a year from now! In that scenario who cares about what Obambi and his wrecking crew do?
Well, it depends.
While my advice is to be happy and not worry, I still would not want to see this piece of evil go out triumphantly instead of November elections totally paralyzing his activities. And making him as miserable in his last year or so as he is making all of us "we the people".
However he seems to have received and accepted the Mayan message and plans to spend his days vacationing, living high off the hog and not worrying about anything other than inflicting his hate of America onto all of us while he still can.
Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012 with 'force of 100 MILLION HYDROGEN bombs'
Melbourne: Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet's power grid.
Despite its rebuttal, NASA's been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates - 2012.
Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale. The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive.
"The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years," News.com.au quoted astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke as saying.
"A bold statement and one taken seriously by those it will affect most, namely airline companies, communications companies and anyone working with modern GPS systems.
"They can even trip circuit breakers and knock out orbiting satellites, as has already been done this year," added Reneke.
No one really knows what effect the 2012-2013 Solar Max will have on today's digital-reliant society.
Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics division, told Reneke the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightning", causing catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
NASA said that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause "1 to 2 trillion dollars in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery".
100 MILLION hydrogen bombs will do only this amount of infrastrcture damage? ARE YOU KIDDING?
The reason for the concern comes as the sun enters a phase known as Solar Cycle 24.
Most experts agree, although those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press.
They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever, and the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
"We know it is coming but we don't know how bad it is going to be," Fisher told Reneke.
"Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the Earth and it's rapid, just like a lightning bolt. That's the solar effect," he added.
The findings are published in the most recent issue of Australasian Science. (ANI)
With Obama uncaringly taking our country and possibly the world to hell in a handbasket probably on an Islamic built slide to oblivion, the Mayan Calendar or more closely their several combined calendars had long predicted the 2012 Winter Solstice to be the end of the world.
In their calculations the alignment of the Sun with a Black Hole in that part of 2012 would create a devastating electro-magnetic, solar wind storm - sucked from the Sun into that Black Hole and this time the Planet Earth would be directly in between and the blast would be strong enough to move oceans, change gravity and level mountains. So imagine what it will do to cities, humanity or animals.
There won't be much left to worry about - nor probably anyone left to worry.
That's all only a bit over a year from now! In that scenario who cares about what Obambi and his wrecking crew do?
Well, it depends.
While my advice is to be happy and not worry, I still would not want to see this piece of evil go out triumphantly instead of November elections totally paralyzing his activities. And making him as miserable in his last year or so as he is making all of us "we the people".
However he seems to have received and accepted the Mayan message and plans to spend his days vacationing, living high off the hog and not worrying about anything other than inflicting his hate of America onto all of us while he still can.
=================================
Massive solar storm to hit Earth in 2012 with 'force of 100 MILLION HYDROGEN bombs'
Melbourne: Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet's power grid.
Despite its rebuttal, NASA's been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates - 2012.
Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale. The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive.
"The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 2013) will be the most violent in 100 years," News.com.au quoted astronomy lecturer and columnist Dave Reneke as saying.
"A bold statement and one taken seriously by those it will affect most, namely airline companies, communications companies and anyone working with modern GPS systems.
"They can even trip circuit breakers and knock out orbiting satellites, as has already been done this year," added Reneke.
No one really knows what effect the 2012-2013 Solar Max will have on today's digital-reliant society.
Dr Richard Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics division, told Reneke the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightning", causing catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.
NASA said that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause "1 to 2 trillion dollars in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to 10 years for complete recovery".
100 MILLION hydrogen bombs will do only this amount of infrastrcture damage? ARE YOU KIDDING?
The reason for the concern comes as the sun enters a phase known as Solar Cycle 24.
Most experts agree, although those who put the date of Solar Max in 2012 are getting the most press.
They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever, and the blast will have the equivalent energy of 100 million hydrogen bombs.
"We know it is coming but we don't know how bad it is going to be," Fisher told Reneke.
"Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the Earth and it's rapid, just like a lightning bolt. That's the solar effect," he added.
The findings are published in the most recent issue of Australasian Science. (ANI)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
WITHOUT A REVOLUTION WE ARE A COOKED GOOSE
Founder Of Reaganomics Says That "Without A Revolution, Americans Are History"
By Tyler Durden
The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”
As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation. Warnings by Williams, Gerald Celente, and myself have gone unheeded, but our warnings recently had echoes from Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff and from David Stockman, who excoriated the Republican Party for becoming big-spending Democrats.
It is encouraging to see some realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore.
However, the solutions offered by those who are beginning to recognize that there is a problem are discouraging. Kotlikoff thinks the solution is savage Social Security and Medicare cuts or equally savage tax increases or hyperinflation to destroy the vast debts.
Perhaps economists lack imagination, or perhaps they don’t want to be cut off from Wall Street and corporate subsidies, but Social Security and Medicare are insufficient at their present levels, especially considering the erosion of private pensions by the dot com, derivative and real estate bubbles. Cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15 per cent of their earnings all their lives, would result in starvation and deaths from curable diseases.
Tax increases make even less sense. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of households cannot survive on one job. Both husband and wife work and often one of the partners has two jobs in order to make ends meet. Raising taxes makes it harder to make ends meet–thus more foreclosures, more food stamps, more homelessness. What kind of economist or humane person thinks this is a solution?
Ah, but we will tax the rich. The rich have enough money. They will simply stop earning.
Let’s get real. Here is what the government is likely to do. Once Washington realize that the dollar is at risk and that they can no longer finance their wars by borrowing abroad, the government will either levy a tax on private pensions on the grounds that the pensions have accumulated tax-deferred, or the government will require pension fund managers to purchase Treasury debt with our pensions. This will buy the government a bit more time while pension accounts are loaded up with worthless paper.
The last Bush budget deficit (2008) was in the $400-500 billion range, about the size of the Chinese, Japanese, and OPEC trade surpluses with the US. Traditionally, these trade surpluses have been recycled to the US and finance the federal budget deficit. In 2009 and 2010 the federal deficit jumped to $1,400 billion, a back-to-back trillion dollar increase. There are not sufficient trade surpluses to finance a deficit this large. From where comes the money?
The answer is from individuals fleeing the stock market into “safe” Treasury bonds and from the bankster bailout, not so much the TARP money as the Federal Reserve’s exchange of bank reserves for questionable financial paper such as subprime derivatives. The banks used their excess reserves to purchase Treasury debt.
These financing maneuvers are one-time tricks. Once people have fled stocks, that movement into Treasuries is over. The opposition to the bankster bailout likely precludes another. So where does the money come from the next time?
The Treasury was able to unload a lot of debt thanks to “the Greek crisis,” which the New York banksters and hedge funds multiplied into “the euro crisis.” The financial press served as a financing arm for the US Treasury by creating panic about European debt and the euro. Central banks and individuals who had taken refuge from the dollar in euros were panicked out of their euros, and they rushed into dollars by purchasing US Treasury debt.
This movement from euros to dollars weakened the alternative reserve currency to the dollar, halted the dollar’s decline, and financed the US budget deficit a while longer.
Possibly the game can be replayed with Spanish debt, Irish debt, and whatever unlucky country is eswept in by the thoughtless expansion of the European Union.
But when no countries remain that can be destabilized by Wall Street investment banksters and hedge funds, what then finances the US budget deficit?
The only remaining financier is the Federal Reserve. When Treasury bonds brought to auction do not sell, the Federal Reserve must purchase them. The Federal Reserve purchases the bonds by creating new demand deposits, or checking accounts, for the Treasury. As the Treasury spends the proceeds of the new debt sales, the US money supply expands by the amount of the Federal Reserve’s purchase of Treasury debt.
Do goods and services expand by the same amount? Imports will increase as US jobs have been offshored and given to foreigners, thus worsening the trade deficit. When the Federal Reserve purchases the Treasury’s new debt issues, the money supply will increase by more than the supply of domestically produced goods and services. Prices are likely to rise.
How high will they rise? The longer money is created in order that government can pay its bills, the more likely hyperinflation will be the result.
The economy has not recovered. By the end of this year it will be obvious that the collapsing economy means a larger than $1.4 trillion budget deficit to finance. Will it be $2 trillion? Higher?
Whatever the size, the rest of the world will see that the dollar is being printed in such quantities that it cannot serve as reserve currency. At that point wholesale dumping of dollars will result as foreign central banks try to unload a worthless currency.
The collapse of the dollar will drive up the prices of imports and offshored goods on which Americans are dependent. Wal-Mart shoppers will think they have mistakenly gone into Neiman Marcus.
Domestic prices will also explode as a growing money supply chases the supply of goods and services still made in America by Americans.
The dollar as reserve currency cannot survive the conflagration. When the dollar goes the US cannot finance its trade deficit. Therefore, imports will fall sharply, thus adding to domestic inflation and, as the US is energy import-dependent, there will be transportation disruptions that will disrupt work and grocery store deliveries.
Panic will be the order of the day.
Will farms will be raided? Will those trapped in cities resort to riots and looting?
Is this the likely future that “our” government and “our patriotic” corporations have created for us?
To borrow from Lenin, “What can be done?”
Here is what can be done. The wars, which benefit no one but the military-security complex and Israel’s territorial expansion, can be immediately ended. This would reduce the US budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars per year. More hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved by cutting the rest of the military budget which, in its present size, exceeds the budgets of all the serious military powers on earth combined.
US military spending reflects the unaffordable and unattainable crazed neoconservative goal of US Empire and world hegemony. What fool in Washington thinks that China is going to finance US hegemony over China?
The only way that the US will again have an economy is by bringing back the offshored jobs. The loss of these jobs impoverished Americans while producing oversized gains for Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate executives. These jobs can be brought home where they belong by taxing corporations according to where value is added to their product. If value is added to their goods and services in China, corporations would have a high tax rate. If value is added to their goods and services in the US, corporations would have a low tax rate.
This change in corporate taxation would offset the cheap foreign labor that has sucked jobs out of America, and it would rebuild the ladders of upward mobility that made America an opportunity society.
If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history.
Obviously, the corporations and Wall Street would use their financial power and campaign contributions to block any legislation that would reduce short-term earnings and bonuses by bringing jobs back to America. Americans have no greater enemies than Wall Street and the corporations and their prostitutes in Congress and the White House.
The neocons allied with Israel, who control both parties and much of the media, are strung out on the ecstasy of Empire.
The United States and the welfare of its 300 million people cannot be restored unless the neocons, Wall Street, the corporations, and their servile slaves in Congress and the White House can be defeated.
Without a revolution, Americans are history.
By Tyler Durden
The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”
As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation. Warnings by Williams, Gerald Celente, and myself have gone unheeded, but our warnings recently had echoes from Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff and from David Stockman, who excoriated the Republican Party for becoming big-spending Democrats.
It is encouraging to see some realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore.
However, the solutions offered by those who are beginning to recognize that there is a problem are discouraging. Kotlikoff thinks the solution is savage Social Security and Medicare cuts or equally savage tax increases or hyperinflation to destroy the vast debts.
Perhaps economists lack imagination, or perhaps they don’t want to be cut off from Wall Street and corporate subsidies, but Social Security and Medicare are insufficient at their present levels, especially considering the erosion of private pensions by the dot com, derivative and real estate bubbles. Cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15 per cent of their earnings all their lives, would result in starvation and deaths from curable diseases.
Tax increases make even less sense. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of households cannot survive on one job. Both husband and wife work and often one of the partners has two jobs in order to make ends meet. Raising taxes makes it harder to make ends meet–thus more foreclosures, more food stamps, more homelessness. What kind of economist or humane person thinks this is a solution?
Ah, but we will tax the rich. The rich have enough money. They will simply stop earning.
Let’s get real. Here is what the government is likely to do. Once Washington realize that the dollar is at risk and that they can no longer finance their wars by borrowing abroad, the government will either levy a tax on private pensions on the grounds that the pensions have accumulated tax-deferred, or the government will require pension fund managers to purchase Treasury debt with our pensions. This will buy the government a bit more time while pension accounts are loaded up with worthless paper.
The last Bush budget deficit (2008) was in the $400-500 billion range, about the size of the Chinese, Japanese, and OPEC trade surpluses with the US. Traditionally, these trade surpluses have been recycled to the US and finance the federal budget deficit. In 2009 and 2010 the federal deficit jumped to $1,400 billion, a back-to-back trillion dollar increase. There are not sufficient trade surpluses to finance a deficit this large. From where comes the money?
The answer is from individuals fleeing the stock market into “safe” Treasury bonds and from the bankster bailout, not so much the TARP money as the Federal Reserve’s exchange of bank reserves for questionable financial paper such as subprime derivatives. The banks used their excess reserves to purchase Treasury debt.
These financing maneuvers are one-time tricks. Once people have fled stocks, that movement into Treasuries is over. The opposition to the bankster bailout likely precludes another. So where does the money come from the next time?
The Treasury was able to unload a lot of debt thanks to “the Greek crisis,” which the New York banksters and hedge funds multiplied into “the euro crisis.” The financial press served as a financing arm for the US Treasury by creating panic about European debt and the euro. Central banks and individuals who had taken refuge from the dollar in euros were panicked out of their euros, and they rushed into dollars by purchasing US Treasury debt.
This movement from euros to dollars weakened the alternative reserve currency to the dollar, halted the dollar’s decline, and financed the US budget deficit a while longer.
Possibly the game can be replayed with Spanish debt, Irish debt, and whatever unlucky country is eswept in by the thoughtless expansion of the European Union.
But when no countries remain that can be destabilized by Wall Street investment banksters and hedge funds, what then finances the US budget deficit?
The only remaining financier is the Federal Reserve. When Treasury bonds brought to auction do not sell, the Federal Reserve must purchase them. The Federal Reserve purchases the bonds by creating new demand deposits, or checking accounts, for the Treasury. As the Treasury spends the proceeds of the new debt sales, the US money supply expands by the amount of the Federal Reserve’s purchase of Treasury debt.
Do goods and services expand by the same amount? Imports will increase as US jobs have been offshored and given to foreigners, thus worsening the trade deficit. When the Federal Reserve purchases the Treasury’s new debt issues, the money supply will increase by more than the supply of domestically produced goods and services. Prices are likely to rise.
How high will they rise? The longer money is created in order that government can pay its bills, the more likely hyperinflation will be the result.
The economy has not recovered. By the end of this year it will be obvious that the collapsing economy means a larger than $1.4 trillion budget deficit to finance. Will it be $2 trillion? Higher?
Whatever the size, the rest of the world will see that the dollar is being printed in such quantities that it cannot serve as reserve currency. At that point wholesale dumping of dollars will result as foreign central banks try to unload a worthless currency.
The collapse of the dollar will drive up the prices of imports and offshored goods on which Americans are dependent. Wal-Mart shoppers will think they have mistakenly gone into Neiman Marcus.
Domestic prices will also explode as a growing money supply chases the supply of goods and services still made in America by Americans.
The dollar as reserve currency cannot survive the conflagration. When the dollar goes the US cannot finance its trade deficit. Therefore, imports will fall sharply, thus adding to domestic inflation and, as the US is energy import-dependent, there will be transportation disruptions that will disrupt work and grocery store deliveries.
Panic will be the order of the day.
Will farms will be raided? Will those trapped in cities resort to riots and looting?
Is this the likely future that “our” government and “our patriotic” corporations have created for us?
To borrow from Lenin, “What can be done?”
Here is what can be done. The wars, which benefit no one but the military-security complex and Israel’s territorial expansion, can be immediately ended. This would reduce the US budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars per year. More hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved by cutting the rest of the military budget which, in its present size, exceeds the budgets of all the serious military powers on earth combined.
US military spending reflects the unaffordable and unattainable crazed neoconservative goal of US Empire and world hegemony. What fool in Washington thinks that China is going to finance US hegemony over China?
The only way that the US will again have an economy is by bringing back the offshored jobs. The loss of these jobs impoverished Americans while producing oversized gains for Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate executives. These jobs can be brought home where they belong by taxing corporations according to where value is added to their product. If value is added to their goods and services in China, corporations would have a high tax rate. If value is added to their goods and services in the US, corporations would have a low tax rate.
This change in corporate taxation would offset the cheap foreign labor that has sucked jobs out of America, and it would rebuild the ladders of upward mobility that made America an opportunity society.
If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history.
Obviously, the corporations and Wall Street would use their financial power and campaign contributions to block any legislation that would reduce short-term earnings and bonuses by bringing jobs back to America. Americans have no greater enemies than Wall Street and the corporations and their prostitutes in Congress and the White House.
The neocons allied with Israel, who control both parties and much of the media, are strung out on the ecstasy of Empire.
The United States and the welfare of its 300 million people cannot be restored unless the neocons, Wall Street, the corporations, and their servile slaves in Congress and the White House can be defeated.
Without a revolution, Americans are history.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
"CORDOBA" EXPLAINED
What the Ground Zero, terror sponsoring, Imam wanted ignorant Americans to believe:
For hundreds of years during the middle ages, Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain. During much of its “golden age” from the 8th to 12th centuries, the Cordoba Caliphate witnessed a great flowering of culture, art, and philosophical inquiry amid a remarkable climate of religious tolerance. Religious freedom, while not perfect, was sufficient that many Jewish and Christian intellectuals emigrated to Cordoba, where they lived, wrote and flourished side by side with their Muslim counterparts in a strikingly pluralistic society. The Cordoba name reminds both Muslims and non-Muslims that a great Islamic civilization was once the most open and tolerant of its era.
The Cordoba Caliphate? An Islamic civilization?
That’s right. As Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch pointed out, Rauf has already abandoned the Cordoba name, Ground Zero mega-mosque group ditches name redolent of Islamic supremacism:
The name “Cordoba” has been marketed to gullible Americans as being a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived in harmony and peace, but actually Medieval Muslim Spain enforced the dhimma and systematically oppressed the Jews and Christians, and was the site of a Muslim pogrom against the Jews in the year 1011
Maybe enough people caught on to the name’s bitter irony, and the deceivers decided it was best deep-sixed.
Maybe. Jihad Watch points to an article by Raymond Ibrahim for more detail:
Oddly enough, the so-called “tolerant” era of Cordoba supposedly occurred during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) – well over a thousand years ago. “Eight hundred years ago,” i.e., around 1200, the fanatical Almohids–ideological predecessors of al-Qaeda–were ravaging Cordoba, where “Christians and Jews were given the choice of conversion, exile, or death.” A Freudian slip on the part of the Cordoba Initiative?
At any rate, the true history of Cordoba, not to mention the whole of Andalusia, is far less inspiring than what Western academics portray: the Christian city was conquered by Muslims around 711, its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba–the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque–was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church.
Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such is the true–and ominous–legacy of Cordoba….
More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was conquered, one of the first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the vanquished:
the pagan Ka’ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the mosque of Mecca;
the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built atop Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem;
the Umayyad mosque was built atop the Church of St. John the Baptist; and
the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople.
So, why the name change after touting it as such a model of historical tolerance? Why did Rauf flush his Cordoba explanation down the memory hole prior to announcing his plans for a mosque at Ground Zero?
Then flush the name too?
Screen shot here in case they flush the memory hole down the memory hole.
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/why-is-the-ground-zero-mosque-removing-web-pages-and-changing-its-name/
For hundreds of years during the middle ages, Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain. During much of its “golden age” from the 8th to 12th centuries, the Cordoba Caliphate witnessed a great flowering of culture, art, and philosophical inquiry amid a remarkable climate of religious tolerance. Religious freedom, while not perfect, was sufficient that many Jewish and Christian intellectuals emigrated to Cordoba, where they lived, wrote and flourished side by side with their Muslim counterparts in a strikingly pluralistic society. The Cordoba name reminds both Muslims and non-Muslims that a great Islamic civilization was once the most open and tolerant of its era.
The Cordoba Caliphate? An Islamic civilization?
That’s right. As Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch pointed out, Rauf has already abandoned the Cordoba name, Ground Zero mega-mosque group ditches name redolent of Islamic supremacism:
The name “Cordoba” has been marketed to gullible Americans as being a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived in harmony and peace, but actually Medieval Muslim Spain enforced the dhimma and systematically oppressed the Jews and Christians, and was the site of a Muslim pogrom against the Jews in the year 1011
Maybe enough people caught on to the name’s bitter irony, and the deceivers decided it was best deep-sixed.
Maybe. Jihad Watch points to an article by Raymond Ibrahim for more detail:
Oddly enough, the so-called “tolerant” era of Cordoba supposedly occurred during the caliphate of ‘Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) – well over a thousand years ago. “Eight hundred years ago,” i.e., around 1200, the fanatical Almohids–ideological predecessors of al-Qaeda–were ravaging Cordoba, where “Christians and Jews were given the choice of conversion, exile, or death.” A Freudian slip on the part of the Cordoba Initiative?
At any rate, the true history of Cordoba, not to mention the whole of Andalusia, is far less inspiring than what Western academics portray: the Christian city was conquered by Muslims around 711, its inhabitants slaughtered or enslaved. The original mosque of Cordoba–the namesake of the Ground Zero mosque–was built atop, and partly from the materials of, a Christian church.
Modern day Muslims are well aware of all this. Such is the true–and ominous–legacy of Cordoba….
More pointedly, throughout Islam’s history, whenever a region was conquered, one of the first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the vanquished:
the pagan Ka’ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the mosque of Mecca;
the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built atop Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem;
the Umayyad mosque was built atop the Church of St. John the Baptist; and
the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople.
So, why the name change after touting it as such a model of historical tolerance? Why did Rauf flush his Cordoba explanation down the memory hole prior to announcing his plans for a mosque at Ground Zero?
Then flush the name too?
Screen shot here in case they flush the memory hole down the memory hole.
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/why-is-the-ground-zero-mosque-removing-web-pages-and-changing-its-name/
Friday, July 30, 2010
WRIT OF MANDAMUS
Case Against Arizona AND Governor Brewer
ONLY the US Supreme Court has Constitutional Authority to Conduct the Trial
By Publius Huldah Thursday, July 29, 2010
Does anyone read the U.S. Constitution these days? American lawyers don’t read it. Federal Judge Susan R. Bolton apparently has never read it. Same goes for our illustrious Attorney General Eric Holder. But this lawyer has read it and she is going to show you something in Our Constitution which is as plain as the nose on your face.
Article III, Sec. 2, clause 2 says:
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction…
“Original” jurisdiction means the power to conduct the “trial” of the case (as opposed to hearing an appeal from the judgment of a lower court). You all know quite well what a “trial” is - you see them all the time on TV shows: Perry Mason, Boston Legal, The Good Wife, etc. Witnesses testify and are cross-examined, etc.
The style of the Arizona case shows quite clearly that the named defendants are:
State of Arizona; and Janice K. Brewer,
Governor of the State of Arizona, in her
Official Capacity, Defendants.
Judge Susan R. Bolton has no more authority to preside over this case than do you
See where it says, “State of Arizona”? And “Janice K. Brewer, Governor of the State of Arizona, in her official Capacity”? THAT (plus Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2) is what gives the US Supreme Court “original Jurisdiction”, i.e., jurisdiction to conduct the trial of this case. THAT is what strips the federal district court of any jurisdiction whatsoever to hear this case. Judge Susan R. Bolton has no more authority to preside over this case than do you (unless you are a US Supreme Court justice).
In Federalist No. 81 (13th para), Alexander Hamilton commented on this exact provision of Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2:
...Let us now examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed between the supreme and the inferior courts of the Union. The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only “in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which A STATE shall be a party.”
Public ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of their sovereigns. All questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the public peace, that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and proper that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to the highest judicatory of the nation.
Though consuls have not in strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are the public agents of the nations to which they belong, the same observation is in a great measure applicable to them. In cases in which a State might happen to be a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior tribunal….[boldface added, caps in original]
Yet Attorney General Eric Holder filed the case in a court which is specifically stripped of jurisdiction to hear it!
So! Counsel for the State of Arizona should consider:
1. File a Petition for Removal before federal district court Judge Susan R. Bolton demanding that the case be removed to the Supreme Court on the ground that under Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2, US Constitution, only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to conduct the trial of this case.
2. If Judge Bolton denies the Petition for Removal, file a Petition for Writ of Mandamus in the Supreme Court asking that court to order Judge Bolton to transfer the case to the Supreme Court.
A Petition for Writ of Mandamus is an old common-law “extraordinary writ”: It asks a court to ORDER a lower court or other public official to something which it is its duty to do. In Kerr v. US District Court for Northern District of California (1976), the Supreme Court said, respecting the propriety of issuing writs of mandamus:
....the fact still remains that “only exceptional circumstances amounting to a judicial ‘usurpation of power’ will justify the invocation of this extraordinary remedy.”...(para 13)
When a federal district court judge presides over a case which the Constitution specifically prohibits her from hearing, and even issues a ruling enjoining the enforcement of a State Law, then that federal district court judge usurps power. She is specifically stripped - by Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2 - of jurisdiction to preside over the case against the STATE of Arizona and against THE GOVERNOR of the STATE of Arizona.
For procedures for filing the Petition for Writ of Mandamus, see Supreme Court Rule 20.
Article IV, Sec. 4, requires the federal government to protect each of the States against invasion.Not only is the Obama regime refusing to perform this specific Constitutional duty - it seeks to prohibit the Sovereign STATE of Arizona from defending itself! This lawlessness on the part of the Obama regime is unmatched in the history of Our Country.
OK, counselors - Go for it! PH
For live links in the article, visit:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25983
ONLY the US Supreme Court has Constitutional Authority to Conduct the Trial
By Publius Huldah Thursday, July 29, 2010
Does anyone read the U.S. Constitution these days? American lawyers don’t read it. Federal Judge Susan R. Bolton apparently has never read it. Same goes for our illustrious Attorney General Eric Holder. But this lawyer has read it and she is going to show you something in Our Constitution which is as plain as the nose on your face.
Article III, Sec. 2, clause 2 says:
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction…
“Original” jurisdiction means the power to conduct the “trial” of the case (as opposed to hearing an appeal from the judgment of a lower court). You all know quite well what a “trial” is - you see them all the time on TV shows: Perry Mason, Boston Legal, The Good Wife, etc. Witnesses testify and are cross-examined, etc.
The style of the Arizona case shows quite clearly that the named defendants are:
State of Arizona; and Janice K. Brewer,
Governor of the State of Arizona, in her
Official Capacity, Defendants.
Judge Susan R. Bolton has no more authority to preside over this case than do you
See where it says, “State of Arizona”? And “Janice K. Brewer, Governor of the State of Arizona, in her official Capacity”? THAT (plus Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2) is what gives the US Supreme Court “original Jurisdiction”, i.e., jurisdiction to conduct the trial of this case. THAT is what strips the federal district court of any jurisdiction whatsoever to hear this case. Judge Susan R. Bolton has no more authority to preside over this case than do you (unless you are a US Supreme Court justice).
In Federalist No. 81 (13th para), Alexander Hamilton commented on this exact provision of Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2:
...Let us now examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed between the supreme and the inferior courts of the Union. The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only “in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which A STATE shall be a party.”
Public ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of their sovereigns. All questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the public peace, that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and proper that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to the highest judicatory of the nation.
Though consuls have not in strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are the public agents of the nations to which they belong, the same observation is in a great measure applicable to them. In cases in which a State might happen to be a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior tribunal….[boldface added, caps in original]
Yet Attorney General Eric Holder filed the case in a court which is specifically stripped of jurisdiction to hear it!
So! Counsel for the State of Arizona should consider:
1. File a Petition for Removal before federal district court Judge Susan R. Bolton demanding that the case be removed to the Supreme Court on the ground that under Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2, US Constitution, only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to conduct the trial of this case.
2. If Judge Bolton denies the Petition for Removal, file a Petition for Writ of Mandamus in the Supreme Court asking that court to order Judge Bolton to transfer the case to the Supreme Court.
A Petition for Writ of Mandamus is an old common-law “extraordinary writ”: It asks a court to ORDER a lower court or other public official to something which it is its duty to do. In Kerr v. US District Court for Northern District of California (1976), the Supreme Court said, respecting the propriety of issuing writs of mandamus:
....the fact still remains that “only exceptional circumstances amounting to a judicial ‘usurpation of power’ will justify the invocation of this extraordinary remedy.”...(para 13)
When a federal district court judge presides over a case which the Constitution specifically prohibits her from hearing, and even issues a ruling enjoining the enforcement of a State Law, then that federal district court judge usurps power. She is specifically stripped - by Art. III, Sec. 2, clause 2 - of jurisdiction to preside over the case against the STATE of Arizona and against THE GOVERNOR of the STATE of Arizona.
For procedures for filing the Petition for Writ of Mandamus, see Supreme Court Rule 20.
Article IV, Sec. 4, requires the federal government to protect each of the States against invasion.Not only is the Obama regime refusing to perform this specific Constitutional duty - it seeks to prohibit the Sovereign STATE of Arizona from defending itself! This lawlessness on the part of the Obama regime is unmatched in the history of Our Country.
OK, counselors - Go for it! PH
For live links in the article, visit:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25983
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