Once considered an exotic treat, this tasty fruit is suddenly popping up everywhere—with good reason
Gorgeous Clouds Over Africa. From NASA, Expedition 16 [PIC] October 30, 2008
Photographed by astronauts, part of Int’l Space Station-Earth Observatory program. Here dense, thick rain clouds (“cumulonimbus”) shot in early 2008.
The L.A. Times gives readers the finger October 28, 2008
The L.A. Times gives readers the finger
Check it out: Obama/Khalidi tape? What Obama/Khalidi tape?
Check it out: The Tribune Co.’s stock chart over the last eight years…
Bleeding newspapers really shouldn’t be pissing off readers.
Perhaps if they reported the news instead of suppressing it…
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Andy McCarthy walks you through a thought experiment.
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Previous:
Oct. 25 – L.A. Times sits on video of Obama toasting radical Jew-basher
A Clockwork Obama October 26, 2008
“The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.” -Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
“When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints.” – Barack Obama
From: “A Clockwork Obama”
You can read more at: http://aclockworkobama.com/
Technorati Tags: Kenya, Obama, A Clockwork Obama, Ayers, Jeremiah Wright
L.A. Times sits on video of Obama toasting radical Jew-basher October 26, 2008
L.A. Times sits on video of Obama toasting radical Jew-basher
Jim Hoft has the story on the damning video of Barack Obama that the L.A. Times refuses to release.
Writes Jim: “It’s hard to imagine that the LA Times would hold onto a video of Sarah Palin praising an anti-Semitic radical and former PLO operative…”
Exactly. Guess the reporter doesn’t want to open himself up to the Joe the Plumber treatment.
Automatic Solar Powered Lawnmower October 26, 2008
Being the worlds first fully automatic, robotic lawn mower, the Auto Mower is the ultimate user friendly mower. You don’t have to lift a finger to get a perfect lawn.
Meteor ‘Fireball’ Caught on Video October 25, 2008
Early Wednesday morning, Oct.15, a network of all-sky cameras captured a bright, slow fireball in the sky near Guelph, Ontario.
US Fighter Pilot ordered to shoot down UFO October 25, 2008
A fighter pilot breaks 30 years of silence about an incident over the UK involving an object that on the radar appeared as “a flying aircraft carrier.” This is among many stories now released involving government knowledge of UFOs.
Proselytizing Islam at Penn October 24, 2008
Proselytizing Islam at Penn
by Cinnamon Stillwell
Fri, 24 Oct 2008 at 2:44 PM
http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2008/10/proselytizing-islam-at-penn.html
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Islam Awareness Week 2008 is underway at the University of Pennsylvania. Organized by the Muslim Students Association, Islam Awareness Week also has academic sponsors, including the university’s Middle East Center.
While “awareness” may be a laudable goal, blatant proselytizing is another matter entirely. Yet today’s event, “State and Need for Dawah in the West,” promises just that. Here is the description (received by e-mail; emphasis added):
Harvard Chaplain and well-studied individual of Islam, Taha Abdul-Basser will deliver the Friday sermon on the lack of Dawah (invitation) on the part of Muslims in North America, not only to convey a message of submission to God alone but also to wash away misconceptions some share about Islam. Seven years after 9/11, Taha Abdul-Basser will elucidate on the importance of such education, sharing important Prophetic narratives and other occurrences in Islamic tradition that epitomize the magnitude of this act. We expect many non-Muslims to observe our Jummah outside, visually understanding the importance of this holy day.
Clearly, the “need for Dawah in the West” is being met at the University of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, it’s coming courtesy of the Muslim Students Association, an organization tainted by Saudi/Wahhabi funding, ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and a history of inviting radical and anti-Semitic speakers to its events.
Moreover, why would the Middle East Center cosponsor such an event given its overtly religious nature? It amounts to the Middle East Center doing its own version of Dawah. Would the same Center, or any academic department, co-sponsor an event involving evangelical Christian proselytizing? I very much doubt it. But when it comes to Islam, propriety goes out the window.
Technorati Tags: University of Penn, Saudi, Wahhabi
Obama Office Operates in Philly’s Islamist Corridor October 24, 2008
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Obama Office Operates in Philly’s
Islamist Corridor by David J. Rusin When Barack Obama’s campaign needed a base for harvesting votes from the southern precincts of Philadelphia, it set up shop in a building owned and managed by controversial real estate baron Kenny Gamble. Also known as Luqman Abdul Haqq, Gamble holds a senior position with the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), whose founding is traced to a convicted cop-killer and whose leadership is stacked with radicals. He likewise serves as a community organizer of sorts — one who has been accused of slowly transforming his neighborhood into a “black Muslim enclave.” The office opened on August 21 at 1501 Christian Street, with Gamble himself cutting the ceremonial ribbon. Makeshift banners proclaim it the “South Philly Obama Headquarters,” the address of which is listed on the Obama-Biden website as a field office for the Pennsylvania Campaign for Change. Philadelphia tax records identify Gamble as the owner of the property, while signage indicates that the building is home to Universal Educational Management, part of his Universal Companies conglomerate. Gamble’s associates and agendas expose him as a dubious figure that politicians seeking to present an image of inclusion would be wise to avoid. This is doubly true for a campaign like Obama’s that already has suffered serious missteps in its interaction with the Muslim community. Best known for his work in the music business, Gamble has held high-ranking posts with the Muslim Alliance in North America, which focuses on African-American converts to Islam. That description fits Gamble and most of the group’s senior members, some of whom also have roots in the Nation of Islam and Black Panther movement. Indeed, the formation of MANA was inspired by Jamil Al-Amin, the onetime Panther “justice minister” H. Rap Brown. MANA’s enthusiasm for Al-Amin remains untainted in the wake of his conviction for the 2000 murder of a sheriff’s deputy. He has even addressed, by telephone, MANA meetings at Gamble’s United Muslim Masjid. MANA’s governing bodies teem with Islamists: Siraj Wahhaj, the organization’s amir, was named as a potential unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, supports Shari’a-prescribed punishments, and predicts America’s demise unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” Johari Abdul-Malik directs outreach activities for a Virginia mosque repeatedly tied to terrorism cases. Abdul Alim Musa promotes anti-Semitic and anti-American conspiracy theories and has expressed admiration for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Osama bin Laden. Musa’s radical As-Sabiqun group advises Muslims to assemble self-contained strongholds, a strategy similar to what Gamble is pursuing in Philadelphia. As he explained in an interview with Saudi TV, “One of the intentions that we had from the beginning was to create a model, so that, in the coming years, Muslims would be able to live close to each other, that they would live closer to the masjid [mosque], that they would eventually be able to open up businesses so that they would be able to employ each other and develop community life.” More darkly, Philadelphia magazine has reported that some South Philly denizens “fear that Gamble, a convert to Islam, is inclined toward racial and religious segregation” and aims to carve out a “black Muslim enclave.” The Obama office resides at the center of this storm. Gamble’s mosque is just a few doors to the north. On the same block stands the headquarters of his Universal Companies, a local giant that specializes in urban renewal projects and runs a vast array of housing, businesses, and other facilities — even a charter school. Records of 1501 Christian also highlight Gamble’s modus operandi for growing his empire: get land and buildings dirt cheap from the city, which often seizes them through eminent domain for the express purpose of having Universal renovate them. According to the Board of Revision of Taxes website, Gamble bought the property now hosting Team Obama for one dollar in 1991. (The database labels the plot as 822 South 15th, but the available information makes it the only possible match for 1501 Christian.) It is not just the heavily Islamic atmosphere of the surrounding neighborhood — complete with men in traditional dress praying on the sidewalks — that feeds speculation about a veiled agenda. Gamble’s bizarre statements to Philadelphia magazine last year added more fuel to the fire: “You don’t see the lion with the tiger. You don’t see the tiger with the panther,” he said. “You don’t have people selling goods and services in the Irish community from some other community. In the Russian community, you don’t have people from other communities. In the Puerto Rican community, the Puerto Ricans have their own economy, they have their own stores.” The article notes that Gamble’s musings sound like an endorsement of segregation and a desire to engineer a zone exclusively for black Muslims. The placement of an Obama field office in Philly’s Islamist corridor is not the first link between questionable representatives of Muslim America and the senator’s presidential campaign. Mazen Asbahi, Obama’s initial Muslim-outreach coordinator, stepped down in August for connections to a controversial Islamic investment fund and Illinois imam. His successor, Minha Husaini, then “accidentally” attended a meeting with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Muslim American Society, two groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, Muslim-Americans for Obama has peddled a policy wish list colored with Islamism and run partisan voter registration drives from swing state mosques, which would appear to violate their tax-exempt status. Obama’s staff could be forgiven for accepting contributions from Gamble, but renting office space from him at the heart of his troubling socioreligious enterprise falls well beyond the boundaries of good judgment. Simply put, the campaign is doing business with someone who may embody the type of change that Islamists and racial separatists can believe in. Originally published at: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-office-operates-in-phillys-islamist-corridor/
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Technorati Tags: Kenny Gamble, Universal Educational Management
What’s the Matter With Free Elections? October 24, 2008
THE MORNING BELL
FRIDAY, OCT. 24, 2008
FRIDAY, OCT. 24, 2008
What’s the Matter With Free
Elections?
In his 2004 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” social critic Thomas Frank accuses conservatives of distracting blue-collar Americans from economic issues that matter to them with “the illusory threat of gay marriage.” Let’s stipulate for right now that Frank is right and that the issue of gay marriage is largely irrelevant to the lives of blue-collar workers. Why then, may we ask, is the California Teachers Association (CTA), one of the state’s largest unions, spending $1.25 million of its members’ dues to defeat Proposition 8 , an initiative on the California ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman? How, pray tell, does Lindsay Lohan’s ability to marry her current girlfriend help California public school children learn?
The answer is that unions, as they exist today, have nothing to do with protecting the interests of those they supposedly represent. The Wall Street Journal reports: “The CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association, have used tens of millions of dollars in mandatory teachers’ dues to advance all manner of left-wing political causes. … In some years barely a third of the NEA’s budget has gone toward improving the lot of teachers themselves. In addition to vigorously fighting school choice and other reforms that benefit underprivileged children but threaten the public education monopoly, the NEA has directly (or via state affiliates) bankrolled ACORN, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and, naturally, the Human Rights Campaign.”
Organized labor has become indistinguishable from the Democratic Party. Union-backed groups have given $52.3 million directly to Democrat campaigns this year and also spent about $6 million on advertisements in close Senate races since Labor Day. Their goal: a permanent leftist majority in Washington. And they may well have identified the tool to realize their dreams — the Orwellian named “Employee Free Choice Act.” This legislation, also known as card check, replaces secret ballot elections — the method by which most workers join unions — with publicly signed union cards. This is a recipe for intimidation and corruption . Just ask 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern:
As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor. … The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. Instead of a private election with a secret ballot overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50% of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as “card-check.” There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.
Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.
Recent polling shows that 71% of union members believe that the current private-ballot process is fair, versus only 13% who disagree. Fully 78% of union members favor keeping the current system in place rather than replacing it with one that provides less privacy. But union leadership does not care what their members want. They only want more union members and more union dues to funnel into the left’s crony capitalist machine.
Obama Would Fail Security Clearance October 24, 2008
Obama Would Fail Security Clearance
by Daniel Pipes
Philadelphia Bulletin
October 21, 2008
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5983
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Obama’s Indonesian school registration listing him as Muslim. Click to enlarge |
With Colin Powell now repeating the lie that Barack Obama has “always been a Christian,” despite new information further confirming Obama’s Muslim childhood (such as the Indonesian school registration listing him as Muslim), one watches with dismay as the Democratic candidate manages to hide the truth on this issue.
Instead, then, let us review a related subject – Obama’s connections and even indebtedness, throughout his career, to extremist Islam. Specifically, he has longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the U.S. government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of Islam (NoI), condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its “consistent record of racism and anti-Semitism.”
First, Obama’s ties to Islamists:
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The Khalid al-Mansour connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Al-Mansour “was raising money for” Obama’s expenses at Harvard Law School. Al-Mansour, a black American (né Don Warden), became advisor to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal, CAIR’s largest individual donor. Al-Mansour holds standard Islamist views: he absolves the Islamist government in Sudan of sponsoring slavery, he denies a Jewish tie to Jerusalem, and he wrote a booklet titled “Americans Beware! The Zionist Plot Against S. Arabia.” (Both Obama and al-Mansour deny Sutton’s account.)
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The cover of one of Khalid al-Mansour’s books, “The Mind and the Mindless – Will the West Rule Forever.”
The Kenny Gamble (also known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq) connection: Gamble, a once-prominent pop music producer, cut the ribbon to the Obama campaign headquarters housed in a south Philadelphia building he owns. Gamble is an Islamist who buys large swaths of real estate in Philadelphia to create a Muslim-only residential area. Also, as the self-styled “amir” of the United Muslim Movement, he has many links to Islamist organizations, including CAIR and the Muslim Alliance in North America. (MANA’s “amir” is Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)
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The Mazen Asbahi connection: The Obama campaign’s first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored North American Islamic Trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR’s Chicago and Detroit offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial, and to other Islamist organizations.
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The Minha Husaini connection: The campaign’s second Muslim outreach coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with a group of about thirty Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR’s Nihad Awad; the Muslim American Society’s Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups; and Johari Abdul Malik of the Dar Al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Va., who has advised American Muslims: “You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work.”
Second, Obama’s ties to the Nation of Islam:
Obama’s long-time donor and ally Antoin “Tony” Rezko partnered for nearly three decades with Jabir Herbert Muhammad, a son of NoI leader Elijah Muhammad, and says he gave Jabir and his family “millions of dollars over the years.” Rezko also served as executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation, a rogue organization that, without Ali’s permission, exploited the name of this CAIR awardee.
Kenny Gamble |
Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s esteemed pastor for twenty years, came out of a Nation background, recently he accepted protection from an NoI security detail, and has praised Louis Farrakhan, the NoI’s leader, as one of the “giants of the African American religious experience.” Wright’s church celebrated Farrakhan for his having “truly epitomized greatness.”
Farrakhan himself endorsed Obama, calling him “the hope of the entire world,” “one who can lift America from her fall,” and even “the Messiah.”
That Obama’s biography touches so frequently on such unsavory organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them? John McCain charitably calls Obama “a person you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States,” but Obama’s multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees.
Islamic aggression represents America’s strategic enemy; Obama’s many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America’s commander-in-chief.
Technorati Tags: Daniel Pipes, CAIR, John McCain
The future of women in a Muslim world… October 23, 2008
The future of women in a Muslim world.
The woman above was begging beside the
highway. And she was not the only one. I (Michael
Yon) was a passenger driving through Taliban country
in a pickup truck when I took her photo. Car bombs
detonate on that road all the time.
Americans and others die there. And this woman,
covered as most women in Afghanistan whom I see
are, probably a widow, was begging just beside a
police checkpoint, which, sooner or later, likely will get
attacked. She might get blown to pieces by a car
bomb. She apparently has no money,probably no
family, nowhere else to go, and no other
way to live. Still, she endures.
Photo by Michael Yon
Technorati Tags: Taliban, Afghanistan
Pause a moment and reflect before you vote … October 23, 2008
Pause a moment and reflect before you vote …
A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality
that they imagine that America can suffer defeat
without any inconvenience or costs to themselves.
Pause a moment, reflect back.
These events are actual events from history..
They really happened!!!
Do you remember?
1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by a Muslim male extremist.
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by Muslim male extremists.
3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by Muslim male extremists.
4. During the 1980’s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by Muslim male extremists.
5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by Muslim male extremists.
6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by Muslim male extremists.
7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens , and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by Muslim male extremists. ( remember the pilot of this flight was from Richmond , MO )
8. In 1988 , Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by Muslim male extremists.
9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by Muslim male extremists.
10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim male extremists.
11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take down the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by Muslim male extremists.
12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against Muslim male extremists.
13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Muslim male extremists.
Now, I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? We are at war, but we must assure that we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people… Absolutely No Profiling!
Screeners must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President’s security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males alone lest they be guilty of profiling or offending a Muslim.
And Now: The People of America are about to elect a person to the most powerful position on the face of the Planet — The Presidency of the United states of America. Who will best lead in this time of war? A man who writes in his book Audacity of Hope, “I will stand with them (Muslims, pg. 261) should the political winds shift in an ugly direction” or a man with an unquestioned record of devotion and loyalty to the United States of America.
Pause a moment and reflect on this war before you vote …
Technorati Tags: muslin male, Pan Am Flight 103, Daniel Pearl,
Deregulation Didn’t Do It October 23, 2008
THE MORNING BELL
THURSDAY, OCT. 23, 2008
THURSDAY, OCT. 23, 2008
Deregulation Didn’t Do It
Listening to politicians on the left speak about the current financial turmoil, one gets the impression that when President Bush took office in 2001 there was a perfect financial regulatory system in place. Only since then, they claim, has it been systemically destroyed by the Bush administration. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says, “the Bush Administration’s eight long years of failed deregulation policies have resulted in our nation’s largest bailout ever, leaving the American taxpayers on the hook potentially for billions of dollars .” Barack Obama echoed this sentiment in the final presidential debate when he said, “the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system.” There’s just one problem with this analysis. There has been no deregulation of the financial sector during the Bush administration.
In fact, the largest legislative action in financial services during the Bush years was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which increased regulation and drove capital markets overseas . Furthermore, according to data from the Government Accountability Office, of the 23 major regulatory actions (defined as an economic effect of $100 million or more) taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission since Bush took office, only eight lessened regulatory burdens. Compare that to President Bill Clinton’s second term, which lessened burdens in almost half of rulemaking proceedings. But maybe the problem wasn’t bad regulations, but bad regulators. Maybe the Bush administration weakened financial regulators? This isn’t true either. The SEC’s budget jumped from $357 million in 2000 to a whopping $629 million in 2008.
Another favorite target of the left has been the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which ended the Depression-era prohibition on banks engaging in the securities business. Clinton was the one who signed this law, so we will let him defend it:
I don’t see that signing that bill had anything to do with the current crisis. Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn’t signed that bill.
All of this is not to say our current regulatory framework is perfect. Far from it. There are far too many different regulatory agencies trying to regulate the same activities. We need regulatory cuts and consolidation. Unfortunately, Congress cannot be trusted to come up with solutions. Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) is the biggest recipient of campaign cash from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. House Banking Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) said this about Fannie and Freddie in 2003: “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis .” These two men epitomize why only 12% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. The American people deserve an independent commission to explain what caused the financial meltdown and recommend reforms to keep it from happening again. Heritage president Ed Feulner writes:
A recent Rasmussen poll found that 59 percent of Americans agree with Ronald Reagan’s statement that “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” A fair and complete investigation seems likely to confirm that wisdom by revealing that many of today’s problems were triggered by our elected officials — not by a failure of the free market. It’s time for some real oversight of our congressional overseers.
Technorati Tags: deregulation, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae
A Message from the Ghost of General Patton…. October 22, 2008
I HATE TO SAY IT, BUT WE NEED ANOTHER PATTON NOW MORE THAN EVER. I WONDER HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE AMERICA TO WAKE UP! WILL IT BE TOO LATE THEN?
Ghost of Patton!
I think this is how General George S. Patton would sum things up…. and then catch holy hell from Ike. He sure had a unique way of expressing his thoughts.
Ghost of General Patton
A Message from the Ghost of General Patton….
ATTENTION!
To ALL those whining, panty-waisted, pathetic Maggots, it’s time for a little refresher course on exactly why we Americans occasionally have to fight wars.
See if you can tear yourself away from your ‘reality’ TV and Starbucks for a minute, pull your head out of your flabby ass — and LISTEN UP!!
Abu Ghraib is not ‘torture’ or an ‘atrocity’. This is the kind of thing frat boys, sorority girls, and academy cadets do to newcomers
A little fun at someone else’s expense.
Certainly no reason to wring your hands or get your panties in a wad.
Got that?
THIS IS an atrocity!
So Was This!!!
WHICH PART DON’T YOU GET?
Islam a peaceful religion???
My Ass!
Millions of these sons-of-bitches are plotting, as we speak, to destroy our country and our way of life any way they can.
Some of them are here among us now.
They don’t want to convert you and don’t want to rule you. You are a vile infestation of Allah’s paradise . They don’t give a shit how ‘progressive’ you are, how peace-loving you are, or how much you sympathize with their cause.
They want your ass dead , and they think it is God’s will for them to do it.
Some think if we give them a hug or listen to them, then they’ll like us. and if you agree? Then you are a pathetic dumb ass!
If they manage to get their hands on a nuke, chemical agents, or even some anthrax — you will wish to God we had hunted them down and killed THEM while we had the chance.
How many more Americans must be beheaded ??
You’ve fallen asleep AGAIN, maggots!
And you may not get another chance!
NOW GET OFF YOUR SORRY ASS –
and pass this on to any and every person you give a damn about.. if you ever gave a damn about anything
DISMISSED!
Do you have enough balls to forward this email.. The truth shall set you free!!
Technorati Tags: Patton, Abu Ghraib
Giant Spider Eating a Bird caught on Camera October 22, 2008
Photographs of a giant spider eating a bird in an Australian garden have stunned wildlife experts. The pictures show the spider with its long black legs wrapped around the body of a dead bird suspended in its web.
Bird travels 7,000 miles nonstop to break flying record October 22, 2008
A bar-tailed godwit has been crowned the endurance champion of the animal kingdom after completing an epic 7,200 mile nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to New Zealand.
The wading bird’s journey lasted more than eight days with no rest or food, and took it into a place in the record books.
Top Ten Water Saving Tips October 22, 2008
We are reacting to our current financial crisis after it became a crisis. This reactionary style is very “American”. Therefore, I propose we do something “un-American” and attack the looming water crisis with more of a preventative strategy.
Hydrogen-Powered Fuel Cell Wheelchairs October 22, 2008
Hydrogen-Powered Fuel Cell Wheelchairs from Japan.
Sarah Palin’s Future Alaska’s most valuable resource. October 22, 2008
Sarah Palin’s Future
Alaska’s most valuable resource.
by Fred Barnes
10/27/2008, Volume 014, Issue 07
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Elon, North Carolina
Six thousand tickets were grabbed up in three hours for Sarah Palin’s speech here at the baseball field of Elon University. An even larger crowd–9,000 inside, 3,000 outside–showed up across the state in Greenville a few days earlier. But impressive attendance isn’t the half of it. What’s extraordinary is the effect Palin has on crowds. “When she hits the stage audiences erupt and they don’t calm down,” says Republican senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, who appeared with Palin here and in Greenville. “I’ve been with Bush, Clinton, 41–and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Her speech–a standard stump speech extolling John McCain and zinging Barack Obama–hardly matters. People not only want to see her, Burr says, “they want to touch her. Their perception is she’s one of them. It has nothing to do with ideology. It’s not about Christian conservatives. It goes far beyond all that.”
Whatever else the 2008 presidential campaign may produce, it has created a new Republican star–Palin–a political natural who’s at ease in front of crowds and whose cheerfulness, self-confidence, and optimism haven’t slackened in the face of unusually harsh–and often highly personal– attacks by Democrats and the mainstream media.
Palin can’t explain the exuberant crowds or is too modest to try. She “didn’t know what to expect” once she began campaigning as McCain’s vice presidential running mate, she told me last week. The enthusiasm is “encouraging and energizing,” she says, and “the most pleasant surprise has been independents and Democrats who’ve shown such great enthusiasm.”
Palin’s appeal is not that hard to define. She’s neither outspoken nor eloquent. And the conservatism she espouses is fairly conventional. It’s who she is–her story, her biography–that has stirred fascination and enables her to connect with voters. She’s a mother of five, a serious Christian, a tough-minded governor of Alaska, a fearless slayer of (male) political bigwigs, a beauty queen, a hunter. Palin, as best I can describe it, exudes a kind of middle-class magnetism. It’s subdued but nonetheless very powerful.
Republicans, even some McCain advisers, have yet to realize the enormous asset they have in Palin: She’s the party’s most crowd-pleasing and exciting figure since Ronald Reagan. Okay, she’s not a “new Reagan.” That role will remain eternally unfilled. Palin lacks Reagan’s decades of political involvement, his knowledge, and especially his grounding in conservative thought.
Her conservatism is more instinctive. Her Republican heroes, besides McCain, come to a grand total of two, Reagan and Lincoln. And for now, she’s a neophyte in national politics, having been picked by McCain less than two months ago.
But Palin does have a few of Reagan’s skills. Reagan used to say that having been an actor often came in handy in politics. Palin tosses off corny lines like “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” the one she ad-libbed in her debate with Joe Biden. She knows how to speed to the end of a sentence when a burst of applause is coming. She’s adept at accentuating a point–for instance, the “news flash” for the media in her convention speech. She can act. And of course she winks.
Several of the Palin tales I’ve heard from those who’ve worked with her in the campaign are quite revealing. She famously kept going without a hitch in her convention address despite a TelePrompTer that rushed past paragraphs before she could read them.
When she left the stage, Fred Thompson, the actor and former Republican presidential candidate, asked about the problem, one that might have rattled a veteran speaker. “It was okay,” she said matter-of-factly. “I had the script in front of me.”
Palin’s stage presence and an Obama-like composure while in the spotlight surprised her campaign handlers. She practiced the convention speech more than a dozen times. But her best performance by far came when she actually delivered the speech before more than 20,000 people at the convention and a national television audience of roughly 37 million. “It was like she’d been doing this all her life,” a Republican associate said. His point was that she had never before done anything even close to that.
Another Republican (a Palin admirer) told me that in a room of 20 women, you’d never pick out Palin as the one who’s the elected governor. “She doesn’t stand out in a group the way Reagan did,” the Republican said. “But when she goes into these places [for campaign rallies], it’s different. She’s got this extra thing.”
The campaign advisers assigned to prepare Palin for media interviews and the veep debate couldn’t have missed this quality. But they simply didn’t trust her to perform adequately in those settings. She
would need weeks of intense training and study. They were wrong, and at Palin’s expense.
In the weeks after the convention, she was limited to two major TV interviews. When she did poorly in one–the Katie Couric interview–Democrats and hostile columnists unloaded, calling her unqualified to be vice president. There was little contrary evidence in the press by which to judge her or defend her.
I asked Palin whether she’d do things differently if she could repeat those weeks. She answered by silently mouthing “yes.” When two aides–we were on a McCain-Palin bus with staff and security–said “yes” aloud, she chimed in, “Yes yes, yes, yes.”
The alternative would have been what she’s doing now: three or four talk radio shows a day, plus interviews on local TV and cable news, appearances on some national shows such as Saturday Night Live, and chats with local print reporters and a few national political writers.
It should have been obvious she could handle the media. When I spent nearly two hours with Palin last year at the governor’s house in Juneau, I was struck by three things. She’s very smart, brimming with self-confidence, and not intimidated by the media.
Now, despite her political talent, Palin’s future is unclear. If McCain wins the election, that will simplify her political life. She’ll be America’s first female vice president and the most prominent national leader aside from McCain. And she’ll be heir apparent to President McCain.
If McCain loses, she’ll still be governor of Alaska. In fact, she’ll be the state’s most famous governor ever and its first political celebrity. That won’t be enough to make her an influential player in national affairs. Palin, by the way, is unsure about her ultimate role in national politics even if McCain wins, but it’s bound to be more complicated if he loses.
“I don’t know what kind of role the Republican party would want me to play,” she told me. “In the past, I have not been one to be considered for anything by the hierarchy of the party. Certainly not in my state. In some sense, I ran against my party.”
Palin remains skeptical of Republicans. “I would love to promote the party ideals if we’re going to live out the ideals and maybe allow other American voters to understand what the principles of the party are,” she says. “We’ve got to be assured we have enough people in the party who will live out those ideals and it’s not just rhetoric. Otherwise, I’d be wasting my time. There are a lot of things I would and should be doing.”
There’s a model, however, for a small state governor who wants to be a national politician. It’s the Bill Clinton model. While he was merely governor of Arkansas, he spoke all over the country, headed a moderate Democratic organization, courted national political reporters, and connected with a group of smart, young political operatives.
Palin could do the same, but not easily. She has young children, no team of political strategists to advise her, and is from a state even more remote than Arkansas. Whether they know it or not, Republicans have a huge stake in Palin. If, after the election, they let her slip into political obscurity, they’ll be making a tragic mistake.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin, Fred Barnes
UK Becomes World’s Biggest Producer of Offshore Wind Power October 22, 2008
The UK government announced today that Britain has overtaken Denmark to become the world
’s biggest producer of offshore wind power. The rise to the top of the global league table follows the construction of a new wind farm off the coast of Skegness, Lincolnshire.
The Left’s Fraudulent, Embezzling, Illegal Vote Stealing Machine October 22, 2008
THE MORNING BELL
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 22, 2008
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 22, 2008
The Left’s Fraudulent, Embezzling,
Illegal Vote Stealing Machine
Project Vote claims it is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is also a nonprofit corporation organized under Louisiana law but, since it actively “carries out multiple issue campaigns,” it is a partisan organization that is subject to federal taxation. This election year Project Vote and ACORN partnered to file 1.3 million new voter registrations, many of which have been proven to be utterly fraudulent . Project Vote proudly claims to have added large numbers of new voters to the rolls in 16 states. ACORN is now currently under investigation for encouraging vote fraud in 12 of them. Now the New York Times is reporting the Project Vote/ACORN partnership “may have led to violations of federal law.” Apparently, Project Vote isn’t exactly nonpartisan.
The Times has obtained an internal report by a lawyer representing ACORN detailing “potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things.” It turns out that while Project Vote is supposed to have an independent board, only one board member has not been either an ACORN staff member or ACORN dues contributor. Contacted about his listed membership on the board, ACORN member George Hampton told the Times: “I don’t know anything about this.” The Times reports that “the same people appeared to be deciding which regions to focus on for increased voter engagement for Acorn and Project Vote” and notes the internal report concludes “the tight relationship between Project Vote and Acorn made it impossible to document that Project Vote’s money had been used in a strictly nonpartisan manner.”
ACORN is just the tip of the left’s vote fraud efforts. After all, it is hard to get away with vote fraud if the media are investigating it. Enter the professional vote fraud deniers at Talking Points Memo who have defended ACORN’s fraudulent voter registration efforts and repeatedly denied that vote fraud exits. For example, when Heritage fellow Hans von Spakovsky published a paper detailing the recent history of voter fraud , Talking Points Memo responded by noting that the main case documented in the paper happened 24 years ago. Talking Points Memo completely ignored the other more recent cases of vote fraud that von Spakovsky documents, including incidents from Hoboken, N.J., and Noxubee, Miss., in 2007.
But those are just the examples von Spakosky can fit into one paper. Since 2003, 38 people have been convicted of vote fraud in Indiana alone. And a 1998 House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight report identified 624 invalid votes by non-citizens and another 124 improper absentee ballots in a single House race alone. Those 624 illegal votes were identified only by matching Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) database records on citizen applications with voter roles. The House investigation did not have the resources to detect if any illegal aliens, not in INS databases, had voted. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report concluded that many district attorneys will not devote resource to prosecuting what they see as a “victimless and non-violent” crime. But this is not just the fault of local officials. Federal agencies make it next to impossible to prosecute possible illegal voting by refusing to cooperate.
The left’s efforts to cover up vote fraud extend past liberal activists like Talking Points Memo. ABC News has hired Talking Points Memo alum Justin Rood, who is now filing “straight news” stories propagating the liberal myth that vote fraud never happens. Conservatives have had to fight a biased media for years. Truly frightening is the efforts by Democrat officeholders to silence all dissent on the issue. Last week Obama for America general counsel Bob Bauer sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey directing him to investigate any Republican who mentioned ACORN’s vote fraud efforts.
This was not the first time Obama worked with ACORN. In 1995 Obama served as ACORN’s lead counsel in its suit to make it easier to file fraudulent voter registrations. In fact, Obama and ACORN share a common ideological: 1960s community organizer Saul Alinsky, who once wrote: “A People’s Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. … A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play.” No fair play indeed.
Conservation October 20, 2008
New Solar Power Material Can Capture Every Color of the
Rainbow
Published on October 19th, 2008
Posted in solar energy
Scientists have created a new material that could dramatically increase the efficiency of solar cells, by literally capturing every color of the rainbow.
Whereas other materials only catch a small range of light
frequencies, and therefore only a small fraction of the potential
energy, the new invention is capable of absorbing all the energy contained in sunlight.
According to team leader, Prof. Malcolm Chisolm, “There are other such
hybrids out there, but the advantage of our material is that we can cover the entire range of the solar spectrum.”
The discovery, made by an elite team at Ohio State University, opens the door to the development of a new generation of hyper-efficient solar cells.
Although at this point the material is said to be some years from
commercial development, the university has enough confidence in its
potential to commit a large slice of its $100 million ‘high impact’ research budget to the research team over the next five years.
Such long-term investment lends a great deal of credibility to the
project, and is likely to increase the chances of the invention moving from the laboratory towards commercial development.
Image Credit – Sylvar via flickr.com on a Creative Commons license
UK Wind Farm Plans on Brink of Failure October 19, 2008
Planning delays, long delivery times, escalating costs, 10-year hold-ups in connection to the national grid and technical problems in building offshore wind farms all threaten to derail PM Brown’s ambitions.
The New Mini E (lectric) – Emissions Free Car October 19, 2008
The BMW Group is about to become the first manufacturer of premium automobiles to deploy a fleet of nearly 500 all electric vehicles for private use in daily traffic. Powered by a 150 kW (204 hp) electric motor and fed by a high-performance rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the vehicle will be nearly silent and emissions free.
3M taps into wind-power business with new `Wind Tape’ October 18, 2008
3M Co., best known for its Scotch Tape, Post-it brand notes and adhesives, is going into the wind-energy business, with a new line of fillers and protective coverings that can extend the life of wind turbine blades.
Incredible secret world at the bottom of the sea (photos) October 18, 2008
In a year-long mission, a BBC team probed a small part of the earth’s undersea world. They completed 1000 dives and explored seven different oceans across the globe. What they found was extraordinary. To most of us, seas and oceans are featureless expanses. Yet these glassy waters hide an extraordinary world…
Bill Ayers at University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Canceled October 18, 2008
Bill Ayers at University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Canceled
Continuing coverage of the developing controversy over the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s decision to reward Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers with a prestigious speaking gig during the school’s 100th anniversary…
Jim in Omaha emails:
Michelle,
Great post on the Bill Ayers situation in Nebraska. Without your post yesterday, this would have gone unnoticed. As you can see from the following Omaha World Herald story, this situation has erupted into a major political issue, with the governor calling on the university to cancel the invitation. The World Herald story also points out that this issue may cost the university a substantial amount of financial support (see the highlighted portions of the story below). Finally, this situation has become an issue in a current race for University of Nebraska regent. ([I]ncidentally, the regent candidate who sent the press release, Tim Clare, is a rock solid conservative who could use some support).
Keep up the good work.
Here’s the lowdown on the governor’s call to cancel Ayers’ invitation and Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson’s statement of disappointment over the speaking gig:
Just 11 days after next month’s election, the University of Illinois-Chicago professor, William Ayers, is scheduled to speak at a student research conference held by the UNL College of Education and Human Science.
Gov. Dave Heineman released a statement saying that UNL leaders should not allow Ayers, a 1960s radical-turned-professor at the University of Illinois, to talk during a campus event on Nov. 15.
“Chairman of the Board of Regents Chuck Hassebrook and President of the University J.B. Milliken should immediately rescind the invitation extended to Bill Ayers to speak at the University,” the governor said. “This is an embarrassment to the University of Nebraska and the State of Nebraska. Bill Ayers is a well known radical who should never have been invited to the University of Nebraska.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, today said in a statement that he is disappointed that UNL invited William Ayers to speak on campus Nov. 15.
“His past involvement in a violent protest group and incendiary comments are not consistent with the agenda of unity that we need in America today,” Nelson said. “I encourage the university to reconsider this decision.”
And just in from the Omaha World-Herald, Ayers has been canceled.
University officials said in a news release Friday evening that “the university’s threat assessment group monitored e-mails and other information UNL received regarding Ayers’ scheduled Nov. 15 visit and identified safety concerns which resulted in the university canceling the event.”
“Safety concerns.”
Whose safety?
Waiting for someone to scream “RAAAAACIST” or something.
Technorati Tags: Bill Ayers, Nebraska, Weather Underground
Socialism Comes to America October 16, 2008
Socialism Comes to America
AIM Report | By Cliff Kincaid | October 15, 2008
But many conservatives understood that, by capitulating to the political Left, McCain and the Republican Party were ceding unnecessary ground to Barack Obama and his “progressive” Democrats.
<!–[if !mso]> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } <![endif]–> In his classic 1932 book, Toward Soviet America, Communist Party boss William Z. Foster wrote about how “The United Soviet States of America” would come about. As a result of various capitalist crises, the national government would assume more and more control over the economy. “In finance,” he wrote, “it will mean the nationalization of the banking system and its concentration around a central State bank…”
It would be an exaggeration to say that we are getting close to anything resembling the Soviet system. But it is also a big mistake to call massive federal intervention in the economy a “rescue” or even a “bailout.”
Over at Political Affairs Magazine, a publication of the Communist Party USA, writer John Case was gloating. His article about the crisis was headlined, “A Dose of Socialism to Forestall Disaster.” He thought that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke had been reading the works of closet Marxists.
Read more of this article at AIM: http://www.aim.org/aim-report/socialism-comes-to-america/
Technorati Tags: AIM, socialism, Obama, McCain, finance, economy
US Troika of Obama, Pelosi, Reid October 16, 2008
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A general meaning of the Russian word troika (Cyrillic alphabet: тройка) is threesome, a collection of three of any kind (except the Holy Trinity). The following particular meanings entered into other languages:
- A three-horse drawn sled or carriage
- Troika (dance), a folk dance
- Troika (triumvirate) of judges or political leaders
- NKVD troika, a commission of three for express judgment in the Soviet Union during the time of Joseph Stalin
Could we have a liberal tribunal running our country…you decide this November.
Taiwanese Students Invent Wind-Powered Bicycle Headlights October 15, 2008
The wind-powered bicycle headlight utilizes head-on wind while the bike is in motion to generate electricity as a source of energy for the headlight. The electricity is saved in rechargeable batteries and is used to power the headlight when the cyclist stops at traffic lights.
John Murtha: My constituents are RAAAACIST October 15, 2008
Michelle Malkin » John Murtha: My constituents are RAAAACIST
Jack Murtha, the pork-stuffed corruptocrat infamous for libeling our troops, has now moved on to libeling voters in his own district.
He agrees with Barack Obama’s assessment that Pennsylvanians are nothing but a bunch of bitter, clingy, bigoted rednecks.
Why is this man still in office?
U.S. Rep. John Murtha said today he expects Democratic nominee Barack Obama to carry Pennsylvania in next month’s presidential election.
Mr. Murtha, a 17-term Democrat from Johnstown, told the Post-Gazette’s editorial writers he sees momentum building in Mr. Obama’s campaign across the state for the general election after he lost his party’s April primary to Hillary Clinton. He thinks Republican John McCain’s efforts have been stymied by the country’s economic crisis.
“I think Obama is going to win, but I don’t think it’s going to be a runaway,” he said. “I think he wins Pennsylvania.”
Mr. Murtha said it has taken time for the state’s voters embrace a black presidential candidate.
“There’s no question Western Pennsylvania is a racist area,” said Mr. Murtha, whose district stretches from Johnstown to Washington County. “The older population is more hesitant.”
(Link)
Reminder: Boot John Murtha. Support Bill Russell.
Join the Russell Brigade here.
Technorati Tags: John Murtha, Obama, racist
Barney Frank’s own words to haunt him … October 15, 2008
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Note the date of this NYT article…
September 11, 2003
New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae
By STEPHEN LABATON
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt — is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.
”There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,” Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan.
Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies.
The administration’s proposal, which was endorsed in large part today by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would not repeal the significant government subsidies granted to the two companies. And it does not alter the implicit guarantee that Washington will bail the companies out if they run into financial difficulty; that perception enables them to issue debt at significantly lower rates than their competitors. Nor would it remove the companies’ exemptions from taxes and antifraud provisions of federal securities laws.
The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session.
After the hearing, Representative Michael G. Oxley, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, announced their intention to draft legislation based on the administration’s proposal. Industry executives said Congress could complete action on legislation before leaving for recess in the fall.
”The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,” Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ”We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,” the independent agency that now regulates the companies.
”These irregularities, which have been going on for several years, should have been detected earlier by the regulator,” he added.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was created by Congress in 1992 after the bailout of the savings and loan industry and concerns about regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.
At the time, the companies and their allies beat back efforts for tougher oversight by the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the Federal Reserve. Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families. This year, however, the chances of passing legislation to tighten the oversight are better than in the past.
Reflecting the changing political climate, both Fannie Mae and its leading rivals applauded the administration’s package. The support from Fannie Mae came after a round of discussions between it and the administration and assurances from the Treasury that it would not seek to change the company’s mission.
After those assurances, Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chief executive, endorsed the shift of regulatory oversight to the Treasury Department, as well as other elements of the plan.
”We welcome the administration’s approach outlined today,” Mr. Raines said. The company opposes some smaller elements of the package, like one that eliminates the authority of the president to appoint 5 of the company’s 18 board members.
Company executives said that the company preferred having the president select some directors. The company is also likely to lobby against the efforts that give regulators too much authority to approve its products.
Freddie Mac, whose accounting is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and a United States attorney in Virginia, issued a statement calling the administration plan a ”responsible proposal.”
The stocks of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fell while the prices of their bonds generally rose. Shares of Freddie Mac fell $2.04, or 3.7 percent, to $53.40, while Fannie Mae was down $1.62, or 2.4 percent, to $66.74. The price of a Fannie Mae bond due in March 2013 rose to 97.337 from 96.525.Its yield fell to 4.726 percent from 4.835 percent on Tuesday.
Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence over their regulators.
”The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,” said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ”Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie’s operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.”
Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
Technorati Tags: Barry Frank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
What Would ACORN Do? October 15, 2008
THE MORNING BELL
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15, 2008
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15, 2008
What Would ACORN Do?
Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention infuriated the left for many reasons, but one of the barbs that seemed to upset them the most was her extended attack on community organizers. Weeks later, liberals settled on a retort to Palin that Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) voiced from the House floor: “Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor .” We’ll let Palin explain why she is no Pilate, but rest assured, comparing today’s “community organizers” to Jesus is an insult to Christians everywhere.
Community organizing might sound like pauper’s work, but in today’s professionalized advocacy world, it is not. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), had an operating budget of $37 million in 2006. ACORN is spending $16 million this year alone to register new Democrats nationwide. In today’s world, community organizing is big business, and that business is extortion. ACORN’s scam works like this: 1) identify deep pocket corporation; 2) protest that corporation; 3) sign a partnership with the corporation to end protest in exchange for money. From 2004 through 2006, ACORN won six-figure payments from Ameriquest Mortgage, Citibank, Washington Mutual and M&T Bank. It even won million-dollar payments from JP Morgan and Bank of America.
When ACORN is not extorting money from corporations, it is pressuring politicians for taxpayer dollars. ACORN has been winning federal money since the Carter administration, and the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) estimates ACORN has received $16 million in federal tax dollars since 1997. In the 1990s, ACORN began shaking down local business communities and has established local “Housing Trust Funds” in more than 300 counties, cities and towns. The funds funnel money through groups like ACORN to produce new homes and refurbish existing ones . The holy grail for ACORN has been the establishment of a National Housing Trust Fund, and when the federal government was forced to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this summer, ACORN’s allies in Congress succeeded in making that slush fund part of the deal.
In addition to the extortion and swindling of taxpayers, ACORN also practices outright fraud. In 1986 a dozen ACORN members were convicted of vote fraud. In 2007, eight ACORN employees pleaded guilty to election fraud. This year ACORN has outdone itself. It is under investigation for vote fraud in a dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida, Indiana , Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Last but not least, let’s not forget the hypocrisy. In 2001, when ACORN members tried to turn the group’s tactics on itself and organize its employees, the upstart members were summarily fired. And ACORN is not the only suspect community organizer. Just this past summer federal investigators raided a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina . The agency had been hired by the city to run a $3.6 million program intended to help elderly and poor New Orleans residents gut and board up their storm-damaged houses. Instead, the money appears to have gone to politically connected contractors who did little or no work on the houses. Is this how community organizers want to be known? Fraud, extortion and hypocrisy — all on the taxpayers’ dime.
Technorati Tags: ACORN, Palin, community organizer
The jihadist vote October 14, 2008
The jihadist vote
From The Washington Times
by Frank Gaffney Jr.
Last week, Barack Obama’s campaign was burned yet again for its dalliance with Islamists – those who embrace Islam’s repressive theo-political-legal code known as Shariah and who are working for its triumph in the West in general and the United States in particular. The episode is but the latest indication that the Democratic candidate hopes to win the White House by relying, in part, on the Jihadist vote.
NBC reported Thursday that the Obama campaign’s latest radical “Muslim outreach coordinator,” Mouha Husaini, met last month in one of Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs – the heart of what has been dubbed the “Wahhabi Corridor” – with her predecessor, Mazen Asbahi (who had to resign this summer due to his own associations with Shariah). Even more problematic was the presence at the Springfield event of two prominent Muslim Brotherhood operatives: Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society (MAS) and Nihad Awad of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
As I pointed out in a debate on Tuesday (for a transcript, go to http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1447/pub_detail.asp) with a man associated with both organizations and arguably the Bush administration’s senior Muslim official, Suhail Khan, the Brotherhood is an instrument the Islamists have been using to foster a Fifth Column in America. Its stated purpose in this country is to “destroy Western civilization from within.”
According to NBC, even other attendees expressed concern that the Obama campaign was reaching out to such “politically radioactive” individuals as Messrs. Bray and Awad.
Unfortunately, this is hardly the only association of this type. Others include the following:
- A Federal Election Commission (FEC) employee has reportedly been warning for months about evidence that the Obama campaign has received as much as $200 million almost half of his total donations, in amounts less than $200. That is below the threshold for donor information Mr. Obama has chose to report to the FEC – unlike the Clinton and McCain campaigns which have reported all donor information.
Of the $200 million, between $30 million and $100 million are from the Mideast, Africa and other places Islamists are active. It is unclear whether – as seems likely – these funds come not only from Wahhabis, Muslim Brotherhood types and jihadists of other stripes but from non-U.S. citizens. Such contributions would be not only worrying but illegal.
Although the FEC has studiously ignored the problem to date, the matter finally appears to be the subject of a formal complaint by the Republican National Committee. Unfortunately, even if the commission finally bestirs itself to investigate the facts, it seems unlikely to render a finding before the jihadists’ and others’ votes are counted.
- Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii. There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian. If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.
Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.
- Then there is the Democratic candidate’s get-out-the-vote effort. In addition to the prospect that its “Arab-Americans for Obama” effort is recruiting Muslim Brotherhood elements to enhance turnout, the Obama campaign is trolling for voters in problematic places. Some are felons in prison systems long used by Islamists as centers for recruiting converts to their causes.
Some – thanks to a radical group known as ACORN with which Barack Obama has had ties for many years and that has a serial problem with vote-registration fraud – are homeless. Their attitude toward the Islamist agenda, or for that matter any other aspect of national policy, can only be surmised.
- Finally, there are the various well-known Islamists with whom Barack Obama has long had ties and/or who are actively promoting his campaign. These include: a former Black Panther convert to radical Islam who calls himself Khalid al-Mansour; an aggressive promoter of Wahhabi influence operations, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; a virulently anti-Israel and pro-suicide bomber Palestinian professor named Rashid Khalidi; and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who in a speech last February called Sen. Obama “the messiah” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OowxMcVTjTE).
Even Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has got into the act, describing Mr. Obama in a videotaped speech transcribed by MEMRI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7xjcuCuCtI) as “a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim” (Philip Berg’s contention) and declares ominously that “people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa … may even have been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to Obama.”
The next three weeks afford the American people – and the media, the courts and the FEC – an opportunity to get to the bottom of Barack Obama’s ties to and affinity for jihadists who have their own reasons for relishing his promise of “change” for this country. Unfortunately, the change his Islamists supporters have in mind is for global theocratic rule under Shariah, and the end of our constitutional, democratic government.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.
Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Frank Gaffney Jr., The Washington Times
Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright’s anti-Americanism October 14, 2008
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October 14, 2008 4:00 AM
Wright 101
Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright’s anti-Americanism
By Stanley Kurtz
It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.
Read the rest of the story here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTQ0YjhlOGVhYjQ0OWRhZjI2MmM4NTQ4NGM5Mjg0MzU=
Technorati Tags: Obama, Rev. Wright, Annenberg Challenge
House Uses Hydrogen For Power October 14, 2008
Hydrogen power is usually associated with vehicles, but a house in the UK is showing that there are a multitude of uses for fuel cells. The grid-connected West Midlands home is powered by hydrogen as part of a £2 million University of Birmingham and Black County Housing Group (BCHG) project.
Free Speech 3, Canadian Islamic Congress 0 October 13, 2008
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by David J. Rusin
After a weeklong hearing in June and months of deliberation, a human rights court announced Friday that a venerable Canadian newsweekly will not be sanctioned for publishing a piece by Mark Steyn that at least one Muslim lobby group had failed to enjoy:
The article is an excerpt of America Alone, which considers the impact that growing Muslim populations may have on the West. The victory was the third for Maclean’s this year. Previous Islamic Congress complaints in Ontario and at the federal level had already been dismissed. Yet Steyn was not in a celebrating mood, as he believes that a lesser-known author would have been convicted, like many times before: “Life was chugging along just fine, chastising non-entities nobody had ever heard about,” he said. “Once they got the glare of publicity from the Maclean’s case, the kangaroos decided to jump for the exit.” He may have a point, given that the equally high-profile suit against Ezra Levant was tossed out by an Alberta panel in August. Steyn’s disillusion was shared by Maclean’s columnist Andrew Coyne. In a blog post that begins, “Aw nuts, we won,” he notes:
Writing at Pajamas Media, Kathy Shaidle nicely captures the insanity:
And if they do appeal, the freedom of Canadians will once again be victimized by their 1970s-era leaders, who, in the words of Shaidle, set up these courts to “silence citizens who declined to embrace the new vision of Canada being foisted upon them by then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau: multicultural, pacifist, and militantly tolerant.” With the Human Rights Commissions having endured multiple blows, now is the time for Canadians to be militantly intolerant of quasi-judicial bodies designed to abridge their rights. |
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Technorati Tags: IslamistWatch
Airlines could save $10 billion a year with GPS October 13, 2008
A World War II-era air traffic network that often forces planes to take longer, zigzagging routes is costing U.S. airlines billions of dollars in wasted fuel while an upgrade to a satellite-based system has languished in the planning stages for more than a decade.
The Left’s Official News Service October 13, 2008
THE MORNING BELL
MONDAY, OCT. 13, 2008
MONDAY, OCT. 13, 2008
The Left’s Official News Service
The left is beginning to realize that its credibility on economic matters has been seriously compromised by its 40-year relationship with the government mortgage financing duopoly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Witness Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) lying on HBO’s “Real Time” about how much money she accepted from the two mortgage giants. Enter McClatchy’s David Glodstein and Kevin Hall. McClatchy operates 32 daily newspapers in 29 markets, with a total circulation of 3.3 million. There are few better outlets through which one can propagate leftist lies.
Goldstein and Hall have written an article , “Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis,” which is a masterpiece in half-truths and opinion journalism disguised as hard news. Goldstein and Hill cite “Federal Reserve Board data” that show “More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.” This are the first and most prominent example Goldstein and Hill use to support their thesis. It is also completely irrelevant. As Goldstein and Hill later admit much later in their own article, Freddie and Fannie “don’t lend money, to minorities or anyone else.” Exactly. So the fact that 84% of subprime loans were made by private institutions is completely irrelevant. So why is it the first “fact” Goldstein and Hill cite?
Goldstein and Hill then describe a little of what else Fannie and Freddie do in the real estate market: “They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans. It’s a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.” Goldstein and Hall then begin to try and absolve Fannie and Freddie from their role in the subprime mess. They write: “Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent. … During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie.”
So, according to Goldstein and Hill, Fannie and Freddie are innocent in the subprime mess because it was private banks that securitized most subprime loans during the height of the boom. But this Disney version of the truth leaves one huge question unanswered: Who bought all those subprime securities from the investment banks who were securitizing them? You will not learn this in Goldstein and Hill’s hackjob, but according to the Washington Post, at the height of the subprime boom Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased 44% of the entire subprime security market.
Remember what Goldstein and Hill mentioned earlier: “It’s a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.” In other words, every government subsidized dime that Fannie and Freddie spent buying up subprime securities is another dime private banks had to make bad subprime loans. Countrywide Financial was among the biggest players in the subprime market. It has lost $2.5 billion in just the past year and has another $6 billion in nonperforming assets on its books. Fannie Mae was Countrywide’s biggest customer . This means that, through Fannie and Freddie, you the taxpayer helped subsidize Countrywide’s subprime loan underwriting.
Fannie and Freddie played a primary role in creating our current financial crisis. Just ask Warren Buffet and George Soros. Despite these facts, politicians on the left such as Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) want to preserve Fannie and Freddie in their current form. The U.S. economy cannot afford their continued existence, and dishonest “journalism” from the likes of Goldstein and Hill only provide cover for the left’s crony capitalism. Check this list of McClatchy owned newspapers. If you’re local paper is on the list, write McClatchy and demand the truth is added to Goldstein and Hill’s story.
Technorati Tags: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae
