The story never published about the liberal millionaire who ruined the LA Times and Times-Mirror empire – Otis Chandler

Today the newspaper industry bible–Editor & Publisher was shut down.

The 12-page 8×10 inch magazine was a joke inside the industry it covered. Not always, of course, or the trade mag covering mini-monopolies wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. The past five years, E&P’s circulation was mainly online and didn’t earn the money to pay for postage or the paper it was printed on. Many blogs earn more in advertising revenue than E&P did the past five years.

The same week with the earliest snowfall on record for Houston – the first wave of elite liberals fly to Denmark for the Global Warming Summit to drink Champagne.

Now another wave of layoffs begin at newspapers large newspapers. With more copy editor and page design jobs going to India at about 60 percent less, in the age of Web-based publishing.

 

Imagine if newspapers had been more balanced in their coverage and actually had moderate and conservative content? Would readers and advertisers be dropping off like they are? Or is it just the medium that is the problem?

 

Liberals at the Los Angeles Times and the vast Times-Mirror media holdings have long praised the legacy of an eccentric, big game hunter, millionaire, car collector and liberal Democrat,  publisher Otis Chandler, the surfing heir to an empire that he knew nothing about. Otis set the liberal sharp turn left at the  LA Times, which was immediately followed by the media giant’s other holdings: The Dallas-Times Herald, Denver Post, Houston Post, Baltimore Sun and New York’s Newsday, soon after the title was granted to him by his father.

Otis like many spoiled trust fund kids turned on dear old dad and granddad and imitated the New York Times leftist, socialist dogma. It started in the late ’60s and kept up the pace until the mid-’80s when the Times-Mirror board finally fired him.  The board remained out of the public eye and sat on their hands watching the largest, most profitable media company attack the  advertisers in Dallas, Denver and Houston who had a choice, they easily moved all their advertising and public event support to the  more dominant papers in the markets: then the Dallas Morning News, Denver Post and Houston Chronicle. Liberals hate business and economics with a passion. 

The Chandler’s board got rid of the brat and some 15 years later sold out to Sam Zell of Chicago. They unloaded well before the death spiral of the industry. 

Sam Zell is playing out a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western on the bloated staff at the once glorious flagship, the LA Times.

“Sudden Sam” Zell fired more than 400 employees since assuming ownership of the paper a few years ago. You know there are some hearty laughs over fine cigars and California merlot in the the rolling ranch lands of Southern Cal.

Unlike Otis Chandler, Zell has no regard for the Pulitzer Prize committee, the supreme soviets of mainstream journalism, who only bestow honors on the most progressive and liberal newspapers left in the land. Zell made it clear right off the bat,  that he found the paper’s New-York-Times-of-the-West pretensions, worthless and boring. He has said openly that he doesn’t even bother to read the paper unless he happens to be passing through L.A.

In a New Yorker Magazine profile, Zell described himself as an “economic conservative” and confessed that he likes the columns of Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks but thought the “rest of the New York Times’s columnists are preposterous.” He had no use for Hillary Clinton either, according to the piece: “At a recent dinner party, the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name prompted him to use a four-letter obscenity to describe her.”

Times staffers must have shivered when they read in the New Yorker profile that Zell once sent a music box as a gift to friends and colleagues that played a song deriding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: “Sarbanes-Oxley/ They’ve got moxie/ But for businesses/ Their act is toxic/ It’s not rocket science/ We’re killing profits with compliance.”

Addressing a University of Hawaii business class a few years back, Zell said: “The idea that somehow or other the business community is full of all these greedy characters — you should see the greed in teachers’ unions! You should see the greed in any political organization!”

Chandler’s era was  ”hyperpartisan,” biased and “parochial” in support of Jimmy Carter and on constant attack mode against California Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. That was the final straw for Otis.

Otis went on to killing real elephants and lions on extravagant safaris. Did you know that? Google it, there may be some bits and pieces on the web. 

Chandler and his liberal successor, Tom Johnson, (who was publisher at the Dallas Times-Herald) focused on winning the approval of East Coast socialites/socialists, had endlessly commissioned left-wing articles, boring local readers who dropped their papers in droves for the more moderate Orange County Register and in Dallas, the more conservative Dallas Morning News. In Houston, the readers left the Post and went with the Houston Chronicle. (The Post is long gone and the Houston Chronicle is among the most profitable major newspapers in America). 

The LA Times  acquired a reputation as the “velvet coffin,” a place where liberal reporters could leisurely cover topics of interest to them, (smear energy companies, HMOs, etc.)  and paint beautiful portraits of their elite friends, but of little interest to the paper’s readers and local businesses.

I know plenty of stories abut the velvet coffin. I was young bastard who worked tirelessly for the honor of being in the inner court of the Times-Mirror estate. I stood shoulder to shoulder with the powers that were. They were a smug group, flying off to Davos every year with Pinchy of the NY Times and George Soros. 

I admire the intelligent courage of the Chandlers for giving Otis the boot and later dumping the media mess he left behind. They could see that the entire industry was following the liberal lead of Otis. There are better investments to be made such as in Apple, HP, or any number of consumer products.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/12/next-for-outsource-news-production-jobs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004052655

Al Gore and the Entire Democrat Party/Media Machine Pump Out Global Warming Propaganda

Copenhagen is the Mecca for Big Brother/Big Sis government elitists this month. It’s being called Dopenhagen. 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe will have speaking slots at the podium in Copenhagen this week.

Well, why not? They are doing their part in population control. And the Democrats in the US will go along with Cap and Trade taxes on America and pass on some of the windfall to these dictators. This is getting ugly. 

Mugabe may have to apologize for burning his oppenant’s wives alive.

Here is a flash back to last year’s election from Zimbabwe.

The Mugabe political team who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday – one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 – was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.

Mrs Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; his six-year-old son perished in the flames.

That news report was from London. You may not have read that in the U.S. newspapers. 

Back to Global Warming. I doubt that burning bodies alive cause that much CO2. Al Gore and the UN can forgive this one transgression from President Mugabe. 

Mick Gregory

Volcanoes put out 1,000 times more CO2 than all of the autos in the world (excluding China, Russia and India). In deed, Mount Pinatubo pumped out more CO2 in its 1991 erruption than all of the man-made emmissions since the beginning of time. And there are volcanic erruptions occuring daily all over the world. That proof is graphiclly displayed in glacier ice core drillings that go back 300,000 years. The year after Pinatubo, the CO2 frozen in the ice spiked to astounding levels.

Did Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” mention any of this? More importantly, did your daily LA Times, New York Times, SF Chronicle or Houston Chronicle report this?

This is a weekly report from Universal Weather, a Houston-based, high-tech air and weather service:

Etna, Italy has an ash cloud from 18,000 feet to the surface, moving toward the north at 25 knots. Ubinas, Peru has an ash cloud from 27,000 to 18,000 feet, moving toward the west at 15 knots. Tungurahua, Ecuador has an ash cloud from 20,000 to 16,000 feet, moving toward the southwest at 10 knots. Batu Tara, Lesser Sunda Island, Indonesia has an ash cloud from 5,000 feet to the surface, moving toward the northeast at 10 knots.

These are just the volacones that are in aviation traffic lanes. There are in fact 25 volcanoes errupting every week throughout the planet every week. This has been recorded since 1965.

Isn’t it time to call your local Democrat party politician and tell him/her that you are sick and tired of the propaganda and that you will never vote for the party of Big Brother/Big Sis government again?

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30511.html

SEIU Union Joins Forces with the World Workers United and ACORN

Elections have consequences

World Workers United and the SEIU working with ACORN together to achieve their mutual goal of bringing dignity, power  and high wages to unskilled union members and workers in the garment, textile, laundry, distribution, property services and hospitality industries. 

Obama was elected with the full-time support of the SEIU, ACORN and World Workers United.

Now he has to pay back the favor and push his Democrat/Socialist machine to pass the union empower act “free choice.” 

Here is the copy from one of the union’s flyers:

Hundreds of state leaders are in Washington DC, fighting for theEmployee Free Choice Act - so workers can fix our economy from the bottom up.

We need to make our voices heard on Capitol Hill. Can you join us in calling your senators right now?

Just call 1-866-311-3405 and you’ll be connected to your senator’s office. Ask your senator to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

How about calling the number and telling them what you think of unskilled labor rackets taking over the US government? 

House of Representatives takes historic Leap toward clean energy economy; empowering service workers in a new green economy. Waxman-Markley bill passes. Cap, Tax & Trade is another big win for the SEIU. Now, on to the Senate. 

Raising the stakes involved in the scandal surrounding the anti-poverty group ACORN, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging a “full investigation” by California Attorney General Jerry Brown into ACORN’s California activities.

 

The governor sent a letter Wednesday to Brown, referring to “news stories regarding the ACORN organization that have concerned me greatly.”

 

ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The group has come under fire after employees were caught on tape giving tax advice to conservative operatives posing as prostitutes and pimps.

 

The most recent video surfaced this week in San Bernardino and has been used extensively by Fox News and conservative Web sites.

 

“You can hear on the tape, the ACORN worker offering advice as to how to lie, how to claim that the house is a business, not a brothel,” KTKZ talk show host Eric Hogue said Wednesday on his radio broadcast in Sacramento.

 

Callers weighed in, one saying, “It just makes me sick.”

 

At ACORN’s Sacramento offices on Florin Road, a worker who answered the door said she couldn’t answer questions. Ronald Coleman, ACORN’s legislative director in Sacramento, later confirmed that tax and mortgage services were being suspended for now.

 

“This is not how we should handle ourselves. We need to take this time to re-evaluate,” Coleman said.

 

Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s chief executive officer, called the action of the workers in the video “indefensible” and said an independent review would be launched.

 

It’s unclear just how much federal money goes to ACORN in California. The state Department of Housing and Community development said it had no records of any state grants being awarded to ACORN.

 

The Sacramento ACORN office’s budget is $300,000, according to state field director Christina Livingston. Many of those funds come from membership and fundraising, she said.

 

Outside the Sacramento office, Ruby Bradley said she was highly skeptical of the organization. She said she once applied for help with a housing loan with ACORN, but never got a response.

 

“I think it was poor business,” Bradley said.

 

That complaint was echoed by Demario Anthony of Sacramento, who said his aunt’s application was ignored.

 

“She stopped dealing with them,” Anthony said. “We asked what happened, and she said she didn’t want to talk about it.”

What is a community organizer? ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles expose ACORN fraud

Citizen journalists exposed ACORN on camera. Now the Obama/Democrat politicians have to sever their ties with the socialist group famous for ballot stuffing, voter registrations by the tens of thousands and illegal loans by the thousands (helping fuel the financial meltdown).  The two citizen journalists asked for tax advice on opening up a house of prostitution and got some good tips from ACORN staff members. 

 

The interview was taped and now Obama has some explaining to do. Why did he pick 9-11 for the first annual day of service? Now ACORN will forever be tied to a tragic day in American history. ACORN is a brownshirt political activist group hired to rig local elections and beef up poor and illegal numbers for federal aid.  What a shitty organization? My god! 

 

Two employees at the Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the liberal community organizing group ACORN were caught on tape allegedly offering advice to a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute on setting up a prostitution ring and evading the IRS.

The video  was recorded and and posted online Thursday by James O’Keefe, a conservative activist. He was joined on the video by another conservative, Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute in the filmmakers’ undercover sting.

Wonder why the New York Times or Washington Post didn’t think of doing this kind of real journalism? I think you know the answer.

The video shows the pair approaching two women working at the ACORN Baltimore office and asking them for advice on how to set up a prostitution ring involving more than a dozen underage girls from El Salvador. One of the ACORN workers suggests that Giles refer to herself as a “performing artist” on tax forms and declare some of the girls as dependents to receive child tax credits.

“Stop saying prostitution,” the woman, identified by the filmmaker as an ACORN tax expert, tells Giles. The other woman tells them, “You want to keep them clean … make sure they go to school.”

Both woman appear enthusiastic to help. The tape is on YOUTUBE. Google it. 

James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles visited one of ACORN’s New York offices in August, where they picked up handy tips on how to lie on housing forms to cover up a prostitution business (”Honesty is not going to get you the house,” one ACORN official advises) and how to hide cash from their illicit business (”When you buy the house with the backyard, you get a tin…and you bury it down in there…cover it…and put the grass over it…”).

Watch the whole thing at Big Government. This is now the third videotaped sting exposing the ACORN racket’s law-undermining, truth-sabotaging counseling sessions.

If the Census Bureau no longer trusts ACORN to collect data as a result of these videotapes, why is Congress still allowing taxpayer money to be funneled to the ACORN Housing Corporation?

AHC has received an estimated $16 million in taxpayer funds between 1997-2007, according to the Employment Policies Institute.

 ACORN is now managing apartments in Bedford-Stuyvesant for the newly completed Atlantic Avenue Apartments.

 

The video footage — which has been edited and goes to black in some areas — was recorded and posted online Thursday by James O’Keefe, a conservative activist. He was joined on the video by another conservative, Hannah Giles, who posed as the prostitute in the filmmakers’ undercover sting.

The video shows the pair approaching two women working at the ACORN Baltimore office and asking them for advice on how to set up a prostitution ring involving more than a dozen underage girls from El Salvador.

One of the ACORN workers suggests that Giles refer to herself as a “performing artist” on tax forms and declare some of the girls as dependents to receive child tax credits.

 

 

 

 

Governor Sarah Palin, in her Wednesday night speech to 40 million Americans said, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Sarah hit a grand slam with that one.

 

But what exactly were Barack Obama’s actions as of community organizer in Chicago?

 

It’s been hidden from the news that Obama was a member of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN. Google ACORN and you may be surprised to find that it is a liberal/socialist organization involved in voter fraud. Look up the lawsuits ACORN is involved in.

 

 

Obama’s community organizing involved training grievance-mongers from ACORN.

Last week, Milwaukee’s top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigatioins of 37 ACORN employees accused voter registration fraud on a massive level.

 

Obama’s campaign apologized for failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were “accidently” filed with the Federal Election Committee as money sent to “get-out-the-vote” and “advance work.”

 

The New York Post has more quotes today from upset community organizers. Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, says: “I don’t like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians.”

 

Hard work such as signing up non U.S. citizens as Democrats with voter cards.

 

The Arkansas connection
You know Acorn. You know the grassroots organization, now a national power, got its start here, led by Wade Rathke (pictured), who spent the group’s formative years wheeling and dealing in Little Rock before moving to New Orleans. The local affiliate remains a powerful voice for poor people.

Depending on your point of view, you’ll be saddened or gladdened to learn this shocking news:

The New York Times reports today that founder Rathke’s brother embezzled $1 million from the organization eight years ago and the matter was handled internally.He stayed on the payroll until a month ago, when whistleblowers finally forced him out.

Wade Rathke said the organization had signed a restitution agreement with his brother in which his family agreed to repay the amount embezzled in exchange for confidentiality.

Wade Rathke stepped down as Acorn’s chief organizer on June 2, the same day his brother left, but he remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.

He said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of enemies of Acorn, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.

Wade Rathke said he learned of the problem when an employee of Citizens Consulting alerted him about suspicious credit card transactions. An internal investigation uncovered inappropriate charges on the cards that led back to his brother.

“Clearly, this was an uncomfortable, conflicting and humiliating situation as far as my family and I were concerned,” he said, “and so the real decisions on how to handle it had to be made by others.”

If one of the prosperous businesses or public officials Rathke and Acorn have bedeviled and humiliated over the years had offered this alibi for wrongdoing, they would be in Lompoc right now.

Joe Wilson called out Obama on a major distortion in the socialized healthcare plan

Joe Wilson is the new Ronald Reagan. He called out the liberal Obama on one big distortion. Yes, illegals will get on the free healthcare bandwagon. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) has raised $1.2 million in less than 48 hours since his shout of “You lie!” to President Dear Obama during the Wednesday address to Congress. Please send more. The Democrat machine is trying to have Wilson “apologize” to Congress. Wilson already apologized to  Obama by phone and letter.

There should be no apologies for telling the truth.

Note: Traditional liberal media outlets are not reporting on the lies the Obama machine are churning out. That’s a major reason why readership continues to fall at the old daily newspapers and at CNN, CBS and NBC.

A new Pew Research report shows the majority of Americans, distrust the media and find stories inaccurate. 9/11 Update: Mystery? The US Coast Guard fired several shots at a non-compliant ship in Washington DC. The president repremanded CNN for reporting the news. 

In Obama’s one-way speech on Wednesday pushing nationalized healthcare, he said anyone distorting facts will be “called out.” 

In the next teleprompter slide, Obama said that 17 million illegals would not be covered. That’s when Joe Wilson called Obama out. 

 

The media has been trying to win praise from Big Brother by dog piling on Joe Wilson, but now Obama’s promise is in the limelight. 

Members of the group said they thought they’d settled the matter, but it came to the fore this week when Republican Rep. Joe Wilsonshouted “You lie” at Obama during his speech Wednesday. Obama had said illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered under his health plan.

 

 

Update: 11 ACORN members in the corrupt, Democrat-controlled Miami-Dade area have been issued arrest warrents for massive voter fraud in last year’s election.

Just six of the 11 have been arrested.

 

Single payer — isn’t that a monopoly or form of Soviet-style socialism? 

 

Will Sheila Jackson Lee be on the plan? Don’t kid yourself. 

 

 

This call must be more important than the people in her district, Sheila Jackson Lee

Bring in the Teamsters. Let’s have Chicago-style politics kick some ass. Who do these doctors think they are? 

 

 

Physicians jammed a town hall meeting in The Woodlands (a suburb of Houston) on Thursday, voicing  fears about the cost and effectiveness of a socialized health care reform bill that could come up for a vote in Congress as early as September.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, hosted the meeting attended by about 90 physicians at Memorial Hermann Hospital-The Woodlands.

“The bottom line is that doctors don’t want socialized medicine — another flawed health care system like Medicare. They don’t believe it will lower the costs or improve quality,” Brady said. “Medicare is already going bankrupt and not quality care. It also shifts medical costs onto other paying customers. It needs to be fixed first.”

The bill is designed to insure 94 percent of all Americans (excluding those covered by Medicare, which kicks in at age 65) and would cost an estimated $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The revenue to pay for it would come from $544 billion over the next decade in income taxes on single people making more than $280,000 annually and couples making more than $350,000 annually; $37 billion in business taxes; $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid; and sizable penalties paid by individuals and employers who don’t obtain coverage.

“I am very concerned about what this will cost us in terms of dollars,” said Dr. William Parker, the chief medical officer where the meeting was held. “Before this week, they did not tell us any details of the plan. We’ve had too little time to read, digest and discuss something that will be such a major overhaul of the health care system.”

 

Prediction: The year that the US is forced onto to socialized medicine scheme, is the year the US should be named the USSA. 

 This is our chance to make a difference:

Sheila Jackson Lee townhall meetings in Houston:

Aug. 12 7-9 p.m. at the Tidwell Center, 9720 Spaulding St.

Houston, 77016. Jackson’s Web site calls Americans that protest socialized medicine at her townhalls “tea baggers.”

Check out the Drudge Report for Ms. Jackson’s reaction to concerned citizens.

 

Obama’s official birth certificate found… in Kenya. A missing page from his parent’s divorce file.

I know, like you, I’ve been skeptical about the entire birth certificate saga. The Democrat machine, CNN, New York Times and MediaMatters calls anyone who even questions why the official Obama birth certificate hasn’t been vetted  a nutter and birther. Obama’s emaculate conception?

Anyway, the birth certificate was never displayed for media examination, was it? Personally, I thought he had the real copy like we all need to get a simple driver’s license or passport. I guessed that the Domocrat monopoly was playing “rope a dope” by withholding it. I believe  Hillary and McCain thought so as well. 

Now we have the smoking gun…

Few people know the prima facie facts tied to the Obama’s mother’s 1964 and 1980 divorces as well as a handful of us here on Free Republic. I know it probably better than most.

When I started looking at the date (Feb 17, 1964) on this new Kenyan birth certificate, I immediately started comparing it with the dates of the 1964 divorce between Obama’s mother and father – TRYING to REFUTE the Kenyan birth certificate. Was it at all PLAUSIBLE, at least based upon what we know as prima facie facts, confirmed by an independent source – such as a judge in a divorce case? If you wish to refer back to this initial comparison, the information is on Post 2,222 of the Free Republic thread “Is this really it? (re: possible Obama’s Kenyan B.C.)”.

There’s been a fair number of fake Obama documents surfacing in the days and weeks leading up to the release of the Kenyan birth certificate, quickly debunked, designed to create confusion of prima facie – so, many of us are naturally suspicious. You can cry “wolf” only so many times before others stop believing you, even though later there may truly be a wolf. That said, I’m not a forensics expert, nor have I seen the Kenya birth certificate – but I can connect dots.

Although ANY document can be faked, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that a sneaky pro-Obama “operative” came up with a fake document that also plausibly MATCHES the timeline of the 1964 Obama divorce and other events, as well as the new Kenyan birth certificate does. Anything is possible of course, but I see the Kenya birth certificate as a believable document – for various reasons that I’ll outline below.

Not all of the deductive reasoning used in Post 2,222 came from 13-page divorce decree. For example, information regarding the 10-day “knock and nail” notification for Obama SR in Boston came from work with a local Private Investigator and a clerk in a Hawaii Court records office (who will remain nameless to eschew FURTHER harassment to them from the Left). These “contacts” also explained that Marriage and Birth Certificates are NOT Public Record in Hawaii, but divorce decrees ARE Public Record. However, documents that are NOT Public Record have occasionally “popped-up” mixed in with Public Records upon modern review, due to sloppy record-keeping decades ago, as well as changes to Hawaiian privacy statutes since the cases were judged.

 

Additionally … there’s the issue of the missing page from the 1964 divorce papers … page 11 …

In assisting with the retrieval of the initial 8 pages a couple of weeks before Obama’s Inauguration, I and a few other researchers subsequently discovered from the clerk in Hawaii that there were 6 MORE pages, or 14 total pages total. The clerk read the index information directly from the microfiche machine over the phone when the request was placed. “14 pages total,” she said, very clearly, repeating the answer when queried several more times on the page count.

I mailed off a check for the other 6 pages to be sent. Imagine my surprise a few days later when I opened the envelope and only saw 5 pages – page 11 was missing – bringing the total page count to 13.

See the whole Obama 1964 divorce on Scribd.com or as 13 individual images below (in proper order):

I immediately called the clerk in Hawaii and asked where the extra page was. She looked, and counted, and said that there must be some mistake in the records – she counted only 13 pages that are available for reprint. I pointed out to her that the page count she sent skipped from page 10 to page 12 – page 11 was missing. To that, she suggested that perhaps the pages were simply misnumbered before they where archived into the microfiche.

I accepted her answer, not thinking much about it at the time. Perhaps it was just a clerical error in the 1960s, when hand-filed paper records and IBM punch cards were how court documents were tracked and maintained.

I have since come to learn that Obama and his team of lawyers have been working to sanitize his records since he announced that he’d run for President circa November 2004. Now in the White House, he’s still ACTIVELY blocking subpoenas for such documents as his Cambridge and Occidental College records TODAY – the same type of documents promised to be made available during his campaign. Obama and his lawyers are exceedingly adept at exploiting loopholes in Hawaiian birth certificate law to keep Obama’s past hidden from the American people.

This missing page – page 11 – very likely is a copy of the original birth certificate, based upon the prima facie timeline of the 1964 divorce. The Kenya birth certificate was likely requested on Jan 23, 1964 by either Judge King (to award custody on the next trial date), or recommended to Ann Dunham by her attorney for the ex parte divorce, where only one parent was expected to be present.

The missing page, 11, should be chronologically-numbered as all other pages were in the original docket file, by the court clerk at the time. Starting at page 8, Exhibit A is placed where it would have occurred by date in the paperwork (and appeared on microfiche), even denoting an erased, yet barely-readable “8″ on both pages of the returned notification sent to Obama SR. The missing page, numbered as page 11, would likely be a page that would have been admitted to the divorce file sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 – almost as if it were an undocumented “Exhibit B”.

Here’s a very plausible timeline merging the 1964 Obama Divorce papers and new Kenya birth certificate:

Jan 20 (Mon) – divorce request is filed by Stanley Ann D. Obama 
Jan 23 (Thur) – divorce orders for trial are given by Judge King at chambers (note – if the judge, or Ann Dunham’s attorney, told her to order the Kenya birth certificate, it would have been mailed 10,000 miles away, to the “Coast Province” Registrar’s office of the “Republic of Kenya”, likely arriving around the first week of February 1964 to be processed)
Jan 28 (Tue) – Gail A. Watanabe, presumably an assistant of Ann Obama attorney George Kerr, mails the notification for trial to Obama SR (her affidavit is signed Feb 3 and filed)
Jan 30 (Thur) – via Air Mail, notification of trial arrives at Obama SR’s Cambridge, Mass, address. The 10-day “knock and nail” notification would have expired on Sun, Feb 9. Therefore, the next trial date would have been automatically set, per Judge King’s instructions, for the first Tuesday, 30 days later, onMarch 3
Feb 10 (Mon) – allowing for a 10-day “knock and nail” notification for trial, Obama SR’s trial notification would have been retrieved by the US Post Office on this date, to be mailed back (as events turned out – UNSIGNED by Obama SR) to Hawaii as an exhibit for trial
Feb 17 (Mon) – the Obama Kenya birth certificate is signed by the “Coast Province” Deputy Registrar, to be mailed back to Hawaii for receipt by Ann Obama and/or her attorney (note: mail time would have ranged from a few days (Air Mail) to a couple of weeks (ship), arriving back in Hawaii in the last week of February to first week of March 3 (Tue). Based upon Judge King’s Jan 23 orders for the next trial date, “at 9:30 a.m. on the first Tuesday after thirty (30) days have elapsed from and after the date” that Obama SR would have been served with the notice of trial. That notification came back, unsigned, by Obama SR, so Ann’s attorneys surely requested, and received Default Judgment for the divorce in her favor for “grievous mental suffering”
Mar 5 (Thur) – trial takes place in favor of divorce in Hawaii, placing custody of Obama JR to his mother by default (note: the trial was likely rescheduled 2 days after the automatically set date of Mar 3, possibly for the convenience of the judge and/or parties) 
Mar 20 (Fri) – the divorce decree is signed by Judge King

In Hawaii, birth certificates are not Public Record. If the Kenya birth certificate was a part of the divorce decree, it may have been pulled out at the end of the trial, or more recently by a watchful archivist or attorneys wishing to remove unfavorable information about Obama.
To date, despite other honest attempts to refute the Kenya birth certificate, such as dealing with when the “Republic of Kenya” came into existence as a republichave been “un-bunked.” Dishonest alterations of the Kenya birth certificate have been maliciously created by sites such as Democratic Underground, designed to discredit the Kenya birth certificate – they’ve been un-bunked as well.

Having not actually seeing the Kenya birth certificate, and it’s chain of evidence, no intellectually-honest person can say if it’s real or not. By the same token, none of us have seen or touched the short-form “Certification of Live Birth” that has appeared on Obama’s “Fight the Smears” or FactCheck.org websites.

No one can confirm the chain of evidence of Obama’s “Certification of Live Birth” that has appeared online, which is the abbreviated-version of Obama’s true, 1961, original long-form(s) “Certificate of Live Birth” and associated vital statistics records. Even the Hawaii Department of Health directly refuses to verify Obama’s online COLBs.

Hawaiian law would have allowed for Obama to have been born in a foreign country. The “Certification of Live Birth” can’t confirm if Obama has EVER been eligible to hold the office of Commander in Chief, based upon loopholes in pre-statehood, transitional and current Hawaiian statutes. Inconsistencies, such as conflicting hospitals in Hawaii that Obama, his friends and family have publicly-stated he may have been born only add to the confusion. Obama’s abstract “Certification of Live Birth” doesn’t tell us if there were ANY “certifying officials” present who independent verified the “facts” of his birth – it’s anyone’s guess.

Obama himself cannot guaranty that he was born on American soil – really, who can remember their own childbirth?! Furthermore, his mother’s whereabouts are unconfirmed, inconsistent, and unknown, from the time of Obama’s conception, until a few weeks or months after his birth.

Thus is the purpose of Medical Doctors, Nurses, Midwives and Registrars, acting as “Certifying Officials” of a birth, to ensure the integrity – or chain of evidence – of the birth certificate to be properly recorded within Vital Statistics archives. Judges presiding over divorces ALSO produce a verifiable paper trail, as we can see on the 1964 Obama divorce.

 

At this time, both Birth Certificates from Kenya and Hawaii lack a publicly-exhibited, independently-verifiable chain of evidence – and chain of custody. As such, the Obama Kenyan birth certificate is as strong and believable a document as the Hawaiian “Certification of Live Birth”. However, Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate possesses something the Certificate does not – plausibility, based upon independent prima facie facts – the 1964 Obama divorce decree.

 

 

 

This may be the smoking gun. Instead of a dead-end in Hawaii, go to the source, Kenya. If this document is proved to be legit, we have a constitutional crisis. We’ve broken our Constitution and may have changed our form of democracy forever. Obama and the Democrat monopoly are railroading socialist laws at an unprecedented pace. There is no major media over-site, because 90 percent of journalists are Democrat/socialists who want a large central government that will heavily tax businesses.

These Obama Joker posters are appearing all over America. Join the campaign while we still have most of our freedoms.

 

Why so serious? It's only socialism.

Thank you Lou Dobbs. Now let’s watch the Democrat/Socialist political machine rev up. The US will have to follow the courage of Honduras. No wonder Obama was supporting the leftist kicked out by the Honduras Congress and Supreme Court. 

 

Why so serious? It’s only socialism. Obama Joker campaign going viral ACORN cracked open Obama’s socialist agenda

By Mick Gregory

 

ACORN is a socialist front group, a stomping horse of street thugs and ex-cons paid for by the Democrat Party to rig elections and legitimize massive tax  and loan fraud. Obama was an in-house attorney for ACORN just a few years ago.

Obama’s ACORN Connection to Voter Fraud

October 10, 2008 06:00 PM ET | Bonnie Erbe | Permanent Link |

Hate to say it, but when one thinks of voter fraud, one usually associates it with the GOP, the 2000 election, and the debate over who won Florida. You remember, voting machines that didn’t work, long lines to vote in predominantly Democratic districts, and recounts that weren’t accurate.

This election brings with it stories of voter fraud, but this time on the Democratic side. It seems ACORN, a community organizing group that normally helps poor people with low-income housing issues, has registered thousands of people to vote in Democratic districts. Some of these supposed voters reportedly are dead, nonexistent, or use storefronts as their home addresses, as told byCNN:

CAMPBELL BROWN: Now, it is officially nonpartisan. But this group works hard to register low-income voters who tend to vote for Democrats. ACORN’s under fire over allegedly phony voter registration in several states, and Drew Griffin of CNN’s Special Investigations Unit is digging into this for us. You’ll be pretty surprised by what he found.

DREW GRIFFIN: There are 5,000 of them.

GRIFFIN: These.

HOAGLAND: These.

GRIFFIN: Those?

HOAGLAND: And these.

GRIFFIN: They are new voter registration applications turned in by the community organizing group, ACORN, which has launched a massive voter registration drive, and with 5,000 applications in this one county dumped just before the October 6 deadline; it looked to Elections Board Administrator Ruth Ann Hoagland like ACORN was extremely successful, until her workers began finding problems.

GRIFFIN: A lot of them?

HOAGLAND: 50 percent. We had close to 5,000 total from ACORN, and so far we have identified about 2,100.

GRIFFIN: So roughly half of them are bad.

HOAGLAND: Correct.

GRIFFIN: Registered to a dead person, registered as a person who lives at a fast-food shop.

HOAGLAND: Yes.

GRIFFIN: Or just all of them amazingly in the same hand.

HOAGLAND: Yes. Yes. All the signatures look exactly the same. Everything on the card filled out looks just the same.

GRIFFIN: Ruth Ann. Fraud?

HOAGLAND: We have no idea what the motive behind it is. It’s just overwhelming to us.

GRIFFIN: It’s not that some are bad. Once they started going through them, every one they looked at was bad.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign gave $800,000 to ACORN to help with voter registration, according to WiredPRNEws:

Barack Obama has strong ties to the group that pressured banks into making high-risk loans.

Fort Worth, TX (WiredPRNews.com)—ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, pressured banks into making mortgages to those who would otherwise not qualify for them, according to an October 7, 2008 article by Stanley Kurtz, which appeared on the website for National Review.

As all Americans are footing the bill for the $700 billion bailout to prevent the collapse the financial market, ACORN leader Madeline Talbot—who has close ties to Senator Obama—personally strong-armed banks into making mortgage loans to low income minorities in the Chicago area, according to the National Review article. Kurtz writes that ACORN intimidation tactics include showing up at the home of bankers, breaking into offices and flooding bank lobbies with protestors.”

The Obama Joker campaign is on fire. Reports are starting to pop up on both coasts. In LA, talk shows (Tammy Bruce) are promoting one style, yet another more creative Obama Joker, “Why so serious?” following the tradition of the OBEY GIANT social campaign that started in California has been spotted in Texas.

 

 

Send us photos of your posters. 

Spread the campaign in your city. Print the Obama Joker and glue it to lampposts. (Void where free speech is prohibited).

Sarah Palin files for divorce and moving to Montana

If rumors from Alaska “pan out,” Conservative Republican idol, Sarah Palin is moving to Montana and getting a divorce. 

I think this is a great move. Palin could end up as a US Senator from Montana and help fight back the Democrat Socialists for decades. Air America, CNN, CNBC, NBC and the NY Times will have to send their liberal hack reporters to Montana to cover the stories unfolding. Dennis Miller will offer some great support for Palin’s move. John and Kate did it. 

Why can’t the Clintons and Edwards do the right thing and get a divorce? What kind of phonies are they? Who are they fooling.

Sen. Chris Dodd diagnosed with early prostate cancer today, surgery in 72 hrs.

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, age 69 and 1/2, was diagnosed with an early stage of prostate cancer today and will have surgery in the next 72 hours. The white-haired senior citizen Senator, could have been collecting Social Security for half a decade, but is seeking a sixth term “to serve” another six years in the elite US Senate. He is the distinguished, heavy-set man with mascara and dyed eyebrows. He looks like a villian out of the new Batman series.

Are you asking yourself if your 70-year-old dad would get the same treatment under the Democrat Socialized health care plan? Or would your dad, who worked his entire life at a job in the real world, be “advised” to die with dignity in a basic, dirty government hospice? 

What happened to US citizens’ thinking process? How can they go on funding bloated, cheating hypocrites to “serve” as Senators and re-elect them for life, even though they have been caught receiving special nearly cost-free mortgages from a bailed out Countrywide investigation?  Ironically, Dodd is leading the charge for Nationalized Health Care and will be back to the Senate to vote it in, fully recovered and tan. 

“I’m running for re-election,” he told reporters at his Hartford office. “I’ll be a little leaner, a little meaner, but I’m running.”

The  Democrat is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and is playing a lead role in Congress’ attempt to overhaul the nation’s health care system. He took that role while his close friend, Senate health committee Chairman Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts fights his own battle with brain cancer.

Note that jounalists at the Boston Globe and NY Times are not looking into what kind of expensive, extravagant proceedures Kennedy is receiving and asking the question, why him and not your average, working middleclass senior citizen under socialized health care?

Prostate cancer is the most common form of the disease in men in the United States, affecting about 6.4 out of every 100 men in Dodd’s elderly age group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

In Washington, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said he didn’t know if President Barack Obama had called Dodd upon learning about the cancer, but said he was likely to call later Friday.

Oddly enough, Dodd is facing  a tough re-election campaign when every other was a cakewalk. A poll last week showed him trailing former Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, 48 percent to 39 percent, and 52 percent of respondents disapproved of Dodd’s job performance, in a one-party Democrat “blue state.” 

The Senate ethics committee (Led by Democrats) is looking into whether Dodd violated standards of conduct when he received mortgage discounts from the VIP program at Countrywide Financial Corp. What will happen with that? Not so much. How old is Teddy Kennedy? Do a Google search. 

The major media/Democrat/Socialist propaganda machine will make sure the average American doesn’t get the details on this story. 

How’s that taxpayer-funded Cash for Clunkers going? 

The “Cash for Clunkers” program has been a “great success”, at least according to the government, and the auto industry. Within days of its kickoff, all $1 billion allocated to the program has been used up by Americans who have eagerly lined up to trade their clunkers for new vehicles.

Some refreshingly honest reporting has come from Edmunds.com, a car buying site that is telling the truth, in spite of benefiting from an increase in business and site traffic, due to the program. According to Edmunds, about 200,000 old low mileage cars would normally traded in, every 3 months, in exchange for more efficient higher mileage cars, without this program.

The highest rebate is $4,500, and the lowest is $3,500. If everyone qualified for $4,500 per vehicle, about 222,000 vehicles would have just taken advantage of the government’s money. At $3,500, 286,000 vehicles will have been sold. Visit Seeking Alpha.com for this kind or real journalism. 

 

 

Dodd also was caught up in the furor earlier this year over $165 million in bonuses American International Group Inc. paid some of its employees in 2009 while receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money.

After first denying it, Dodd admitted he agreed to a request by Treasury Department officials to dilute an executive bonus restriction in the big economic stimulus bill that Congress passed in February. The change to Dodd’s amendment allowed AIG to hand out the bonuses and sparked a blame game between Dodd andTreasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

 

The Ayatollah Khomeini was praised by the New York Times as a saint 30 years ago. That’s when Iran’s nightmare began.

Flashback to 30 years ago to the fall of the Shah of Iran and his pro-Western government. France and America’s Democrat party let him go. 

Ayatollah Khomeini was sending daily broadcasts to his Islamic followers while “in exile in Paris.” The French gave him free international phone services so he could continue his campaign to take over Iran. Soon after, movie theaters were burned down by the scores. They were “sinners”  according to Khomeini’s Islamic teachings.

In one horror, Islamic followers, locked the doors of a theater and burned over 500 Iranians alive. There were also killings of Christians and Jews by the Khomeini mobs. 

A strange call from Washington DC came in for the Shah.  It was to be A CALL FROM SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY the leading liberal from the US, calling about human rights. It turned out to be some kind of elaborate hoax. When the Shah picked up the phone a quiet voice kept repeating “Mohammad abdicate, Mohammad, abdicate.” 

Did Carter’s new CIA pull the prank? 

Today. The Iranian people are fighting for their freedom and life and getting no support from the mainstream liberal media: the New York Times, Washington Post, SF Chronicle, LA Times, CNN, CBS, NBC, and America’s dominant political party, the Democrats. As they did 30 years ago the “elite liberal media”  are not reporting the crisis in Iran.

The are back on the same playbook  that  Jimmy Carter and the Democrats used in 1978 when they sainted the Ayatollah.

In fact, the NY Times described Khomeini as tolerant and “his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.” The editorials went on to say Khomeini would provide “a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country. Andrew Young went even further saying Khomeini would be hailed as a saint. Jimmy Carter let the former friend of the West, the Shah fall. Soon after, their were mass murders of the Shah’s government and Americans on assignment in IT and in the oil fields. One afternoon, George Link, an Exxon general manager working in Iran was being driven back to work after lunch when his driver stopped the car and got out to open a gate, an assailant leaped from the side of the road and tossed a bomb in the car. Link threw open his door and jumped out. A moment later the car exploded. Evacuations of Americans started soon after, but not soon enough. 

Tensions wer running high and Paul Grimm, on loan from Texaco to try and get the Iranian oil companies back up was driving to work one morning when a shot was fired from a car following his. He died instantly. 

After more bloodshed the Shah’s kingdom decided to evacuate all it’s Western employees. The expatriates assumed that their exit was only temporarty because the media was not reporting the violence. They would never return.

Within a month, Khomeini was on a chartered Air France 747, the extra seats on the flight were sold to the New York Times, Washington Post, the BBC and other European journalists to pay for the flight. 

Khomeini was resting in the first class cabin about to become the new ruler after  the Persepolis monarchy that had ruled since 330 BC. 

Soon after Khomeini returned he set up his candidate to lead the new Iran. A puppet named Bazargan. 

There were still 20 or so oilfield managers left, among the group was Jeremy Gilbert, an Irish mathematician who became a petroleum engineer  for BP. They remained only a few days before they realized this country was a nightmare. Gilbert was the last BP man left because he was in a hospital with a case of hepatitis. He was nearly killed there when nurses started chanting “Death to Americans” and a fellow patient beat him nearly to death. 

 

The old regime of 2000 years in Iran was gone. Ironically, Iranians are not Arabs. Now they were ruled by an Islamic sect of Arab tyrants. 

 

The Ayatollah now had millions of fanatical puppets killing off the middle class Iranians and ready and willing to die for their mullahs. Some of the stories were told, of the 50 American hostages captured by “students,” beaten and tortured as crowds chanted their favorite new “prayer” “Death to Americans!”

What the media didn’t tell you about was the “Death to Iranians” that carried on well into the ’80s. 

The next two years brought untold terror to the world. Iraq, watching the internal blood bath and purge in Iran took advantage of the chaos and attacked their refineries and oil production cities. With the Shah dying of cancer, Jimmy Carter finally let him visit the US for medical treatment, but not stay beyond that. Some friend? 

Egypt let the Shah spend his last months alive on their soil.

Meanwhile, Hussein ordered an all out war against Iran with legions of armies amassed on their shared border. 

To the shock of the world, thousands of Iranian children with plastic keys to heaven around their necks ran ahead of the more important Iraqi tanks and soldiers, they were even dragging their coffins with them. The Ayatollah promised them heaven for their lives. They even used the young girls for finding land mines. Human mind sweepers.

Goats are more valuable to the mullahs. Mull that one over. 

I wonder if the Iranians ever wonder why the Ayatollahs live to their 90s while they send 9-year-olds to death as human shields? Don’t the mullahs want to go to heaven? To their perfume gardens with all those virgins? 

A lot more than sign waving has to go on to bring freedom to that poor country.  

 

 

And now you see where this all started. 

And you aren’t reading it in the newspapers in America. Their monopoly on rewriting history is over. 

 

 

Iraq has it’s new freedom thanks to America’s other party, the Republicans.

Obama took two weeks to say anything about the Iranian protests and killings by the Islamic tyrants.

The media/Democrat party alliance is not reporting the side of the protesters. But TWITTER is. The day of citizen journalists has arrived.

Visit TWITTER. Sign up for a free account and search for #iranelections. Join the effort to free Iran.

This is a great source of citzen journalist sites: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=List_of_citizen_journalism_websites

The Washington Post to host cozy $250,000 meet and greets between lobbyists, editors and Democrats

The Washington Post’s revenue plan of facilitating expensive meetings between lobbyists, Post writers and editors, Democrat and Obama administration officials has finally been outed. There was even a slick marketing piece promoting the deal that would cost big pharmacy, trial lawyers and “green” energy lobbyists up to $250,000 to dine and meet with the elite.

Sickening. But this has been going on “informally” at the New York Times, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post for years. Only the editorial elites didn’t charge for it.

More on media bias…

Know we know that the Washington Post and Kaiser (cheap health care) org were planning a July get together at the publisher’s elegant home. Any news in your daily newspaper about this? 

Next, we find out that about 30 elite reporters went to an “off the record” party at the White House on July 4th.

US WEEKLY — I have a new name for the racist rag: PU-US Weekly or Puss Weekly. Note the magazine didn’t touch the John Edwards cheating on his dying wife scandal.

Babies lies and scandal for Sarah Palin. Love and apple pie for Michelle Obama.

With the pressure on from blogs, and falling respect for the mainstream media, the Washington Post’s Deborah Howell did a little research and admitted to the obvious. At the same time, Pew research reports falling ratings and trust in mainstream media. Only 30 percent trust CNN.

By Deborah Howell
Sunday, August 17, 2008

Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party’s presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain — and therefore there’s more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn’t look good.

In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages. Fifteen stories featured both candidates and were about polls or issues such as terrorism, Social Security and the candidates’ agreement on what should be done in Afghanistan.

Yes, we knew. Thanks for coming forward. It’s a day late and a few dollars short.

The Media Research Center has been reporting the fall in credibility for a decade.

1. Media Credibility Plummets, Just 30% Believe ‘Most Trusted’ CNN
“Over the last 10 years,” the just-released biennial news consumption survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press determined, “virtually every news organization or program has seen its credibility marks decline” and “Democrats continue to give most news organizations much higher credibility ratings than do Republicans.” Based on past Pew polls, CNN touts itself as “the most trusted name in news,” but the percent who “believe all or most” of what CNN reports has fallen 12 points, to 30 percent, since Pew first posed the question in 1998. Yet, in a sign of how far the news media have fallen in the eyes of the public, that puts CNN at the top of the 12 television news outlets analyzed, as well as above all the newspapers and online sources. Believability for ABC News, CBS News and NBC News is down six points over the past ten years, to 24 percent for ABC and NBC, 22 percent for CBS, but that’s still better than the mere 18 percent who “believe all or most” of what they read in the New York Times. The extensive polling conducted in May also discovered that the audiences for CNN and MSNBC “which were heavily Democratic two years ago, have become even more so: fully 51 percent of CNN’s regular viewers are Democrats while only 18 percent are Republicans.” And “the regular audience for nightly network news also is now about two-to-one Democratic (45 percent vs. 22 percent Republican).”

Obama, Chavez and Hillary upset with Hondurans because they won’t let their leftist president remain in office for life like Castro and Chavez

By Mick Gregory

Did CNN or MSNBC report the details? 

Hugo Chávez’s socialist-building efforts suffered a minor setback yesterday when the Honduran military were ordered by the Honduras Supreme Court to expell its leftist president  Mel Zelaya for abusing the nation’s constitution.

Zeaya, with the help of Chavez wanted to hold an illegal special election last Sunday that would change the Honduran Constitution and allow him to remain “El Presidente” for life. That is a model set by Fidel Castro and followed by Hugo Chavez. 

 This report is from the Wall Street Journal:

El President l Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo Chavez in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Zelaya’s next move will be. It’s not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating “the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter” and said it “should be condemned by all.” Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya’s foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. “We won’t go backwards,” one sign said. “We want to live in peace, freedom and development.”

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

For Hondurans who still remember military dictatorship, Mr. Zelaya also has another strike against him: He keeps rotten company. Earlier this month he hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization.

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that “the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called ‘democratic charter.’ It seems to believe that only military ‘coups’ can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove.” A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza’s judgment is that he doesn’t mind the Chávez-style coup.

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

Twitter reports Michael Jackson suffered from heart attack

Michael Jackson, the 50-something pop star has just experienced a heart attack or cardiac arrest event in his Los Angeles home at approximately 2:15 p.m. (PT). Paramedics performed CPR as he was en route to the local emergency room. Twitter people were the first to report the news. Update: Reports on Twitter linking to TMZ say

Recent photo of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was DOA. ABC News reporting now that the King of Pop is dead. Police are beginning to control crowds at UCLA Medical Center.

Michael Jackson was on the verge launching a new world tour. Family members report it was a serious event.

By 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time, ABC announced his death.

Investment guru Warren Buffett’s outlook on newspapers is dismal

In fact, Warren Buffett has said don’t buy newspaper stock at any price. The days of the monopoly newspapers huge readership and advertising revenue are long gone.

What happened? Take a look at this modest blog’s stats: The 7-day traffic average is now passing hundreds of thousands of hits.  The majority are college graduates and in their peek buying years ages 25-55.

I predict the Boston Globe will go online with just a Friday/Sunday printed and delivered paper. 

The Boston Globe proposes to slash Guild wages by 23 percent. The talks carry on tonight and will probably end with an 18 percent cut in wages, and most and upper middle managers and no-named editors will be gone. The NY Times will handle the management. Just my prediction. 

Air France and Surface to Air Missile Near Miss — Beginning of a long hot summer

It seems strange that there was a jihadist killing of two U.S. Service men, an apparent missile sighting just 100 ft. from a jet flying at 13,000 feet in Texas and the Air France plane “struck by lighting” in a 48 hour period. Add to that, Obama is in the Middle East using his middle name. 

The FBI, the Federal Aviation Admin and the Liberty County (Texas) Sheriff’s Department met Tuesday to compare notes on an apparent missile streak reported late last week by an ExpressJet Airlines pilot, on May 29. 

The pilot reported a “missile or rocket” flying near his airplane Friday at 8:09 p.m., shortly after takeoff from Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to sheriff’s officials.

“The FAA then contacted the Liberty County department dispatcher and reported their pilot reported an object flying straight at his aircraft and passed 100 feet under it,” said Ken DeFoor, chief deputy for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department.

FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said the agency was aware of the sighting.

“While we have no information to indicate there was a criminal act we certainly do not rule anything out and certainly would not want to speculate on what it may or may not have been,” she said.

The flight was over the southern edge of very rural Liberty County flying at 13,000 feet when the incident occurred, officials said. ExpressJet flies regional routes for Continental Airlines as Continental Express.

“We haven’t found anything yet — either something on the ground where it launched or on the ground where it came down,” said Liberty County Sheriff’s Cpl. Hugh Bishop.

DeFoor said the agencies consolidated their notes and information at the meeting.

“The FAA is in the process of debriefing the pilot today (Tuesday),” he said. “We are going to try and come up with a more definite track of this object and its path. We are trying to find out where it came from, where it went, and who may be responsible for it.”

Now we know that there was a warning called in about a bomb on an Air France flight. 

The airport safety delayed an Air France flight this evening before departring for Paris immediately after the company received a bomb threat over the phone at the airport of Ezeiza.

The Federal Police, along the Firemen’s direction and the Airport’s Safety proceeded to inspect the plane, that arrived this morning from the French city and, after a brief stop, it was preparing to return.

The routine procedure lasted approximately one hour and a half and, as sources of the airport reported all the passengers are ok and they were not evacuated.

It’s time to change the name of the United States to the United Socialist States of ACORN.

Illegal immigrants voiting for the Democrat/Socialists with the help of “community organizers” such as ACORN.
Election boards dominated by the Democrat/Socialists disgard more than 25 percent of US soldiers’ ballots. Major manufacturers are “nationalized” by the new one-party system.

Note to cool, trendy Obama supporters: Only U.S. Citizens over 18 are allowed to register to vote. Illegal immigrants and felons (in most states) do not have the right.

“It’s not who wins the votes, it’s who counts to vote,” Stalin.

ATLANTA — The Obama  Justice Department has rejected Georgia’s system of using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November’s election.

What’s wrong with a real ID check? 

“This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote,” Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said. 

The decision comes as Georgia awaits word on whether a law passed in the spring that requires newly registering voters to show proof of citizenship will pass muster with DOJ. Under the law that takes effect in January, people must show their proof up front just as everyone does when paying with a check.  

The Soviet Plan
Lessons were learned by watching the socialists take over Russia and transform through class and race warefare. The one-party Bolshavics took control and held it for 70 years before the people of Poland, Georgia and Romania took down the tyrants. Lessons were taken and used to prepare the American liberals for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and political insiders.

These observations are published in Pravda: 

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes.

America has traded places with the USSR. It’s time to congratulate the Democrat/Socialists and change the name of America in the spirit of “truth in advertising.”

Nancy Pelosi Extreme Makeover Working — (Not Her Facelifts) Her Transformation from San Francisco Liberal Progressive to Kindly Grandma, Italian Catholic

By Mick Gregory

Newt Gingrich has exposed the lies of Nancy Pelosi and is calling her actions the worst example of political power and damaging lies he has ever experienced in his lifetime. Watch the new Democrat one-party system ignor Pelosi’s poison and turn it on the few remaining Republicans.

 

 

Recent Pelosi items in the news

Chris Mathews of “Softball” calls Ms. Pelosi “a knockout.” She is amazing looking for a 68-year-old.

Update: Feb. 25, 2009 (Morning after Obama’s first State of the Union address). 

Pelosi’s face- and eye-lifts are amazing, but her biggest makeover is her political image, from a progressive Democrat/socialist, atheist, wealthy resort owner, to a middle of the road, “working class” Catholic.

 

 

Quite a makeover for newly sworn House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as her national image morphed from leader of the San Francisco liberal elite to Italian Catholic mom from Baltimore.

There was her photo-op return to the Little Italy neighborhood where she grew up as Nancy D’Alesandro, the mayor’s daughter. There was the visit to St. Leo the Great Catholic Church, where they still recite Mass in Italian several times a year.

“It’s clear Republicans are reeling today based on her outreach to Italian Catholics who, as we know, have deserted the Democratic Party in the Midwest in droves,” said San Francisco power attorney Joe Cotchett, who was among those attending the Pelosi swearing in.

While the marathon events in the nation’s capital might have resembled a coronation, those most familiar with how Washington works said Pelosi’s time in the spotlight amounted to well-calculated politics that could help her move her agenda in her first 100 days.

“A lot of people don’t know much about her, so this is a chance to fill in her profile and biography so she doesn’t just become the San Francisco liberal,” said San Francisco consultant Chris Lehane, a veteran of the Clinton-Gore White House. “This is the one time when the press will be focusing on it.”

And it may be working.

According to the results of a Rasmussen Reports national phone survey of 800 likely voters, released Friday, Pelosi’s approval rating has jumped to 43 percent — up 19 points from November.

On the other hand, the same poll also found 39 percent of those surveyed still give Pelosi the thumbs-down.

Showing off: In politics as in movies, staging is all-important to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — and his inaugural was no exception.

Produced by Schwarzenegger family friend Carl Bendix, who has done the Academy Awards Governors Ball and other Hollywood events, and emceed by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, the Friday affair was Hollywood through and through — including a last-minute prop to help the gimpy governor.

–Matier & Ross, SF Chronicle

Keep a score card on the liberal mainstream media. Make note that there is never a word about:

Nancy Pelosi’s age.
The age of her children — in photo-ops it is Pelosi and her youngest, prettiest grand children
Her resort, Napa Valley vineyards, and high-end restaurants and use of non-union and illegal immigrant labor.
Her total support of partial birth abortion.
How she gained the votes from Democrats for first, minority leader and now majority leader.

Notice how the San Francisco reporters go with the spin, calling her a “mom” and not mentioning any of these items.

That’s why citizen journalists are filling the void.

Dick Cheney — The voice of reason

Now, the White House said the president “strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing U.S. forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The White House was criticized earlier this week for going along with the release of the photos. Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, for instance, said Obama was “siding with the terrorists” by releasing the photos.

The national commander of the American Legion said last week:

“A picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it worth the death of a single American soldier? Is any photograph worth the life of your Marine Corps daughter? Or your neighbor’s deployed husband?

“I would like to concede that these are tough questions, but they are really quite simple. The answer is a resounding “No.” Releasing photographs of alleged or actual detainee abuse in the War on Terrorism is not worth the life of a single American. Of course, as some have noted, the incidents at Abu Ghraib have already endangered our troops. So did any orders and policies that may have led to those incidents. But what is to be accomplished by continuing to provide ammunition and provocation to the enemy?”

Miss California has same views against gay marriage as President Obama, Biden and and Hillary

President Barack Obama didn’t think the media lap dogs would do this to him just 100 days into his term. But thanks to The Donald, Obama ended up in the middle of the gay/lesbian/transgender smear campaign against Miss California.  — the debate over Carrie Prejeans Christian beliefs — in opposition to gay marriage.

At a press conference addressing Carrie Prejean’s disputed title in the Miss USA competition, pageant owner Donald Trump compared Prejean’s stated views on gay marriage to Obama’s. Bloggers on Twitter have pointed this out weeks ago. 

“It’s the same answer that the president of the United States gave,” Trump said. “She gave an honorable answer. She gave an answer from her heart.”

In her own remarks moments later, Prejean echoed Trump’s statement, telling reporters: “The president of the United States, the secretary of state, and many Americans agree with me in this belief.” Let’s be clear on this media/gay smear, Miss Prejean would be Miss USA today, if not for the biased, hate-filled attacks by the gay/lesbian/transgender political arm of the Democratic party of the U.S. Perez Hilton is the one who should be in a controversy today by the major media.

Q: “Do you support gay marriage?” VP BIDEN: “No, Barack Obama nor I support redefining, from a civil side, what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically a decision to be able to be left to the faiths and people who practice their faiths to determine what you call it.”

Michael Savage banned from the UK

What does freedom of speech mean to the old world, rotting, UK? Not much.

Michael Savage

The Labour Party (the UK sister party of the US Democrats) posted a list of the 16 “least wanted” people and includes radio talk show host Michael Savage.

“This is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country,” Ms Smith told BBC Breakfast.

Savage self promotes his show as independent, yet he helped tear down George W. Bush’s reputation and has no clue how the American two-party system works. Savage actually helped  elect Obama and the one-party Democrat powerhouse.

Savage lumps FOX News in with MSNBC , CNN and CBS.  If he is serious, he really may be mentally off. Or he is such a blowhard that he wants the masses just listen to him. What has it done for you lately? 

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are constantly mocked by Savage. 

But this is not the way governments should work, by destroying free speech. 

 

He’s a target of the left and the outlook for his survival is about as dim as that of newspapers. 

 

Advice to Michael Savage: Visit Ireland! 

Buyouts, layoffs, big declines in readership and ads — it is a bleak Christmas for newspapers

The decline of the newspaper media monopoly never slows. If you have any stock in newspaper-heavy media, it’s too late to get out. As of the end of 2008, 30 daily newspapers are for sale. Buyouts were the good old days. Now there are brutal Christmans-time layoffs. Google the Gannett Blog and find a running count by an ex-Gannetter. 

The layoffs and firings that started this week at newspapers owned by Gannett, including at the flagship USA Today, have been especially ruthless,  in addition to being timed just weeks before Christmas, they number in the thousdands.  But why not? These are mainly socialists and athiests who mock families and call moms breeders. 

It’s bloody news for newspaper journalists. Even the sill profitable Gannett newspapers (many still have profit margins at 20 percent) are shedding employees at a breathtaking rate. 

This week  a Gannett spokesperson said the cuts are being managed locally, at each newspaper, which is why as a company they’ve not released figures on specific jobs other than to say it’s a 10 percent cut companywide. While early figures compiled paper-by-paper totaled 1,700 Gannett jobs cut, it looks like that number may well pass 2,000 by next week.

In just the past week several thousand newspaper employees in America have lost their jobs, Cox Newspapers announced the closing of their Washington, DC, bureau, and the Tribune Co. will lay off more people at their flagship paper in Chicago.

In Chicago the credit analyst Fitch Ratings predicted that the continued decline in advertising revenues will cause some newspapers to default on their debt in 2009, and rated the debt of two huge newspaper companies – The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. – ask “junk.” Fitch also predicted that several cities could find themselves without daily print newspapers by 2010.

As many as 1,700 Gannett jobs were cut this week, from assistant managing editors on down, including reductions of up to 31 percent of the staff at one newspaper, The Salinas Californian, according to a reader tally on a blog published by a former Gannett worker, Jim Hopkins.

 

The most recent E&P (an online Web site on newspapers that ironically ended its print edtions a decade ago) reports that recruitment advertising declined in May. The Newspaper Conference Board, which measures job ads in 51 print newspapers across the country, said its Help-Wanted Advertising Index is 33. It was 38 one year ago.

“This is certainly a more negative picture going into the second half of the year, compared to the beginning of the year,” Ken Goldstein, a labor economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

In the last three months, help-wanted advertising fell in all nine U.S. regions.

 

The Dallas Morning News (a monopoly) said today it’s going to offer buyouts to the newsroom. That means waving a modest proposal of a few extra weeks of severance pay in front of the noses of older employees. Reality check: the UAW buyouts give auto workers 90 percent of their pay and free health care for life.

 

I was walking my dog this morning at 5:30 a.m. and watched a newspaper carrier in a junk car speeding around my neighborhood to drop a paper at every 20th house or so. Just a few years ago, 40 percent of the homes subscribed to the paper. 

Imagine the carbon footprint of that old smokestack medium. 

Who is Nancy Pelosi? What does Progressive Democrat mean? Watch Obama, Hillary and Pelosi smile and talk with Ortega and Chavez, fellow socialists

OBEY OBAMA

You won’t see the mainstream media reporting who Nancy Pelosi is.

Citizens: Print,  clip and save this free Obey Obama poster (Void where prohibited by law).

By Mick Gregory

I know quite a bit about her, having lived and worked in her San Francisco district. You won’t see the San Francisco Chronicle or New York Times mentioning that she is a multi-millionaire from earnings on her non-union Napa Valley winerey and resort hotel. Yet, the soon-to-be-crowned Speaker, gets one of the largest shares of union campaign money.

Your 68-year-old grandmother hasn’t spent as much on her home as 68-year-old Nancy Pelosi has on facelifts.
Democrats are America’s neo-progressives, better known as socialists. I lived in Nancy Peloci’s San Francisco, where transsexuals are given special status along with all the other classes of minorities and the city is a “sactuary city” for illegals.

 

Do you think I am exagerating? Progressive Democrats are America’s Democrat/Socialists — Google it for yourself. Why doesn’t the LA Times with it’s 950-person newsroom devote an afternoon of a reporter’s time to check into this?

Socialism in America is growing. Aided by such influential Congressmen as John Conyers, Ranking Member of the House Judicial Committee, and the one who will start impeachment proceedings against George Bush in the coming months. Nancy Pelosi is one of the stars of the nearly 60 other Democrats advancing socialism in America behind the “Progressive” label.

Here are a few excerpts taken directly from the web page of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. DSA’s members are building progressive movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics.

“At the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to democracy, as means and end. We are activists committed not only to extending political democracy but to demanding democratic empowerment in the economy, in gender relations, and in culture. Democracy is not simply one of our political values but our means of restructuring society. Our vision is of a society in which people have a real voice in the choices and relationships that affect the entirety of our lives. We call this vision democratic socialism – a vision of a more free, democratic and humane society.

0. We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.
0. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.”
Here is what “Liberty” looks like to a socialist:
“A democratic commitment to a vibrant pluralist life assumes the need for a democratic, responsive, and representative government to regulate the market, protect the environment, and ensure a basic level of equality and equity for each citizen. In the 21st century, such regulation will increasingly occur through international, multilateral action. But while a democratic state can protect individuals from domination by inordinately powerful, undemocratic transnational corporations, people develop the social bonds that render life meaningful only through cooperative, voluntary relationships. Promoting such bonds is the responsibility of socialists and the government alike.
“The social welfare programs of government have been for the most part positive, if partial, responses to the genuine social needs of the great majority of Americans. The dismantling of such programs by conservative and corporate elites in the absence of any alternatives will be disastrous. Abandoning schools, health care, and housing, for example, to the control of an unregulated free market magnifies the existing harsh realities of inequality and injustice.”
The action agenda posted on the socialists’ web site very closely parallels Agenda 21, and the recommendations of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. The web site boasts the creation of the “Progressive Caucus” in Congress, as well as the coalition that is working to promote the socialist agenda in Congress.

Now you know that the third person in line for the Presidency is a socialist.

Secret Service, please make sure that President Bush and Dick Chaney are not ever again with in a mile of each other for the next two years.

Imagine this, the Democrats impeach George Bush for invading Iraq, Dick Cheney becomes president, he dies of a heart attack within weeks because of his spike in blood pressure. Nancy Pelosi becomes the first women President of the United States, and another first of much more import, America’s first Progressive Democrat president.

Sources: http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html,
www.sovereignty.net/center/socialists.htm

Al Gore’s Global Warming Propaganda Creates Fear — But Also Big Laughter — Coldest Day in Bejing in 57 Years — 2008 Was the Year that the Man-made Global Warming Hoax Was Exposed–Earth Entering a New Ice Age

Who actually believes the Democrats’ Global Warming panic attack?

 

Jan 15, update:

The National Weather Service has issued a wind chill warning until noon Friday. The forecast high for Thursday is expected to linger in the negative range at -2, dropping to -15 overnight. Strong northwest winds are producing wind chill factors of -25 to -40.

Chicago’s CBS 2’s Ed Curran says as of 5 a.m., it was -7 at O’Hare International Airport and -5 at Midway Airport. In Waukegan it was -9, in Joliet it was -11, and in Aurora, the mercury was reading -20.

(Updated Jan. 11)

Russian scientists show strong evidence that the earth is on the cusp of another Ice Age. — PRAVDA

It is sad to come to realize that PRAVDA is more credible than the New York Times, San  Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NBC and CBS.

 

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years. Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age (Photo: earthweek.com)     Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000 years. Most of the long-term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the Precession of the Equinoxes, also known as the earth’s ‘wobble’, which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these three astronomical cycles, each of which effects the amount of solar radiation which reaches the earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Age maximums and warm interglacials. Elements of the astronomical theory of Ice Age causation were first presented by the French mathematician Joseph Adhemar in 1842, itwas developed further by the English prodigy Joseph Croll in 1875, and the theory was established in its present form by the Czech mathematician Milutin Milankovich in the 1920s and 30s. In 1976 the prestigious journal “Science” published a landmark paper by John Imbrie, James Hays, and Nicholas Shackleton entitled “Variations in the Earth’s orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” which described the correlation which the trio of scientist/authors had found between the climate data obtained from ocean sediment cores and the patterns of the astronomical Milankovich cycles. Since the late 1970s, the Milankovich theory has remained the predominant theory to account for Ice Age causation among climate scientists, and hence the Milankovich theory is always described in textbooks of climatology and in encyclopaedia articles about the Ice Ages.

 

The first, on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. The second, on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the “hottest in history” and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to “natural factors” such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely “masking the underlying warming trend”, and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times. == By Christopher Booker 

(Dec. 22)

Winter arrived in Beijing yesterday (Dec. 21) with the highest temperature of the day down to minus 8.8 ℃. Media reports say it was “the coldest day in December in the last 57 years.”

 

 

The Midwest and the East of the U.S. will barely have time to dig out from the snow and ice that blasted the regions on Friday before the next system moves through by Sunday. 

The extreme arctic air, being pushed to the south and east by strong winds behind the storm will pave the way for the third storm in the train that is adding to the winter woes in the Northwest. 

The Severe Weather Center lists the storm- and cold-related watches, warnings and advisories in effect through the weekend across the northern tier of the country. 

One result of many from this cold wave — car accidents, a bus nearly went off a cliff in Seattle due to icy conditions; a jet airliner slid off an icy runway and crashed in a ravine. 

Continental passengers on a flight from Denver, Colorado to Houston,Texas had to flee their burning airliner, sprawled in a smoke-filled ravine off a runway with the fuselage partially buckled and one engine and part of its landing gear ripped off.

There was no official word yet Sunday on the possible cause of the crash of Continental Flight 1404 at Denver International Airport.

The entire right side of the Boeing 737 was burned in the Saturday evening accident and melted plastic from overhead compartments dripped onto the seats.

Some 40 people suffered injuries including broken bones. The conditions of two people who had been in critical condition at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver were upgraded Sunday, one to serious and one to fair, spokeswoman Tonya Ewers said.

 

 

Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” (Dec. 18) viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13^th Century.

 

“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13^th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”

 

Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.

 

“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”

 

Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.

 

Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.

 

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

 

Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

 

His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

 

 

American Idol rejects might be supporters. Now it’s understandable that Democrats win elections in Seattle and Minneapolis. Did you see how remedial that population is on American Idol’s tryouts?

No wonder the Democrats won the House and Senate back. There are a lot of delusional and low IQ people who think it is cool to vote for Democrats. Nancy Pelosi is going to jump out with a new Global Warming Committee in the House.

Now the Mainstream Media Progressives are feeling the backlash. So, like Stalin, Hugo Chavez and Castro, impose censorship! They are against the party platform! They need re-education camp!

The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to “Holocaust Deniers” and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.
The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program “The Climate Code,” is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their “Seal of Approval” for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

What’s Next? Gulags for Global Warming Skeptics?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Southern California’s Interstate 5 remains closed through the Grapevine today, due to snow and ice. Northbound lanes are shut at Parker Road, and southbound lanes are closed at Laval Road. Malibu received snow this morning. Maybe Michael More should get Al Gore on the phone and talk about a Global Cooling movie?

Anna Nicole Smith Is Dead at 39. Two years later, justice.

By Mick Gregory

Killer good looks. Now her doctors and former lawyer and “boyfriend” charged with criminal intent. Finally, justice may come to punish the monsters behind Anna’s death.

Howard K. Stern, her lawyer-turned-confidant, and Drs. Sandeep Kapoor and Khristine Eroshevich were charged in an 11-count felony complaint on Thursday, including conspiracy, unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance and prescribing, administering or dispensing a controlled substance to an addict.

“These individuals repeatedly and excessively furnished thousands of prescription pills to Anna Nicole Smith, often for no legitimate medical purpose,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown said in a statement. His office is expected to release more details about the case at a news conference Friday.

Anna Nicole’s fame and tragic end were all thanks to the mass media, and perhaps her fantasy of becoming Marilyn Monroe (another victim of mass media). Print and TV sold copies and advertising off her life. The tabloids especially made a lot of money off of her dramatic ups and downs. You can’t help but feel pity for her.

The Houston blonde bombshell, Anna Nicole Smith died in Hollywood, Florida this afternoon at the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino. The former model and Playboy Playmate collapsed at the South Florida casino and couldn’t be revived.

A tragic ending to a People Magazine life. The past year she experienced the birth of her daughter and death of her son. She was 39 years old. Anna Nicole Smith used her good looks to leap from trailer park trash to super stardom.

var bt_counter_type=1;
var bt_project_id=798;

The media chased her around, like Princess Diana. It’s very similar to what the San Francisco Chronicle is trying to do to Barry Bonds. Some reporters even made money on a book written from illegal grand jury testimony. But Bonds has much more self control, talent and intelligence than Anna Nicole. He understands the way the media works. He hasn’t given interviews in a decade. His grand jury testimony has his statements made under oath, that he never knowingly took illegal steroid drugs.
And he’s about to be the all-time home run king.

Ask yourself this, which is harming and killing more young people? Bulimia and diet pills that girls take to just try and fit the model look? Or performance enhancing herbal remedies and vitamins that athletes may use to heal injuries and extend their careers?

Why isn’t the Chronicle looking into Nancy Pelosi’s carbon footprint? Or her hiring of non-union, illegal workers? Or, why not look at the monopoly that Shorenstien has on parking fees and downtown office space?

What do you think?

More Layoffs at the Denver Post

Updated Feb 26:

Note to “journalists:”  Your socialist views promoted Obama and the Democrat Party take over of Colorado. Businesses small and large are the enemy of Democrats. They were your advertisers. Does Big Brother spend advertising in your newspaper?

The Denver Post announced the layoffs of six newsroom managers Wednesday as part of a cost-cutting effort. Big deal, you think? After hundreds have been “let go” over the past two years? Yes. It is big for them.

Dismissed, effective Friday, were Gary Clark, managing editor of news; Mark Cardwell, managing editor of online news; Erik Strom, assistant managing editor of technology; Ingrid Muller, creative director; Cynthia Pasquale, assistant city editor; and Stephen Keating, online special- projects editor. Keating will continue to work on a project for Post owner MediaNews Group.

The layoffs come as dozens of newspapers across the country are cutting staffs and budgets to deal with steep declines in advertising and circulation.

“These departures were forced by budget cuts I have to make,” Post editor Greg Moore said in a memo to staffers. “I think you all know the financial challenges facing this industry and this newspaper.”

MediaNews Group is negotiating with union-covered Post employees for $2 million in wage and benefit concessions.

Rocky Mountain News owner E.W. Scripps has put that newspaper up for sale, and may close it, because of mounting financial losses.

Scripps imposed companywide pay and benefit cuts Wednesday at its newspapers and television stations, although the Rocky Mountain News reported that the cuts will not apply to the News.

The reductions, announced in an e-mail from Scripps chief executive Rich Boehne, were reported in several Scripps newspapers. Scripps declined to publicly release what it described as an “internal employee memo.”

I wrote about Times Mirror pulling the plug on The Denver Post, Dallas Times-Herald, and Houston Post, some 13 years ago, next they sold the family jewels, the rest of Times Mirror to the Tribune Co., and we all know about Zell’s offer to take the company private.

This is what is in store for all the former Times Mirror papers:

Layoffs, cuts to the bone.

Memo from Denver Post editor Greg Moore

To The Staff:

On Monday, April 23, in the auditorium on the first floor, we will have two very important staff meetings. I don’t think there is any secret that our newspaper and others have been facing some challenging times.

Even though just a year ago we went through buyouts in an effort to reduce costs, the financial situation facing the paper and the Denver Newspaper Agency requires additional measures be taken. At meetings at 11 a.m. and again at 4 p.m., we will explain details of another round of buyouts in an effort to cut expenses without having to do layoffs. These buyouts will be offered to Guild and exempt employees. I really hope we are able to achieve the savings we need and every effort has been made to construct an offer that will help us get there. The meetings will give us a chance to share details of the offers with you and answer questions. I know this is tough and introduces more anxiety in already difficult times. But we will get through it.

See you then,

Greg

While the Chandlers live like royalty in California.

 

Singleton should be praised for saving the Denver Post. It very easily could have been the Post shutting down today instead of the weird, tabloid Rocky Mountain News.

Sirhan Sirhan fired the first shots in our war with Islamic terrorism — 40 years ago

Mick Gregory

Did you rememeber reading any of this in your daily newspaper? The 40th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

The war started in June 1968, when PLO terrorist Sirhan Sirhan — under direct orders from the mass murderer Yasser Arafat — assassinated U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had just become the Democratic Presidential frontrunner with his victory in the California primary.

The CIA has Arafat’s voice on tape in which he personally ordered PLO terrorists to murder the Bobby Kennedy. Rashid Khalidi was the official spokesman for the PLO for several years.

 

Decades later, after a rewrite of history, Arafat and Democrat Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize and Bill Ayers (who calls Sirhan Sirhan a political prisoner) helped Barack Obama run for Senate and now of course, the next President of the United States. Democrat followers apprantly don’t care to read history. Now we know that Obama has received help from the former PLO agent, Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi  taught at universities in Lebanon until the mid-’80s, and some critics accuse him of having been a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Khalidi has denied working for the group, and says he was consulted as an expert by reporters seeking to understand it.

Tom Friedman report for the New York Times, June 9, 1982:

The Israelis are out to “crush the P.L.O.,” said Rashid Khalidi, a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa.  He said they hope that by doing so, they will undermine the international recognition the P.L.O. has gained and eliminate its demands for an independent Palestinian state as a rallying point for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Martin Kramer has more, here.

St. John Hunt has tapes of his father, E.H. Hunt on his deathbed saying the LBJ was behind JFK’s assassinatiion. This came out on the Glenn Beck show last week. The History Channel reported compelling accounts that also pointed to LBJ and his personal attorney with help of the CIA, two years ago.

Google it for yourself.

But that is old news. Let’s look at the past few days.

A United Airlines flight from Denver to Dallas was delayed two hours Tuesday after a passenger found box cutters in the seatback pocket in front of her.

That is according to Transportation Security Administration spokesman Darin Kayser.

United Flight 490 was taxiing on the runway at Denver International Airport at 12:30 p.m. when the box cutters were found.

“The passenger notified the flight attendant, who told the pilots, who called authorities,” said United spokesperson Megan Mccarthy.

She says the pilot aborted takeoff and returned to the gate.

Two tanker trucks explode and destroy major intersections in the nation’s No. 4 and No. 5 largest metro areas on the same weekend. It will take months to repair.

A few weeks ago, it was the mad foreign born Cho with a tatoo that said Ismael Axe on his arm, who killed 30 innocent Americans.

This week, it’s six foreign-born Muslims were arrested and accused Tuesday of plotting to attack the Army’s Fort Dix and massacre scores of U.S. soldiers, a plot the FBI says was foiled when the men took a video of themselves firing assault weapons to a store to have the footage put onto a DVD. It was first reported that the six were “home grown terrorists,” you will recall.

The plot to attack U.S. soldiers ended in darkness at a home in Cherry Hill, N.J., an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. Ringleaders of the terror cell with big plans and big egos were arrested as they tried to buy AK-47 and M-16 assault weapons from an FBI agent posing as an arms dealer.

Federal agents watched and listened to the six suspects for more than a year.

The defendants, all men in their 20s from the former Yugoslavia, Albanian Muslims, and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base.

The Clinton White House a UN war on the side of the ethnic Albanians in the late ’90s.

Three of the men are illegal aliens; the others are legal permanent residents, and one is a naturalized U.S. citizen, according to the FBI.

Their goal was “to kill as many American soldiers as possible” in attacks with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns, prosecutors said.

“This is what law enforcement is supposed to do in the post-9/11 era — stay one step ahead of those who are attempting to cause harm to innocent American citizens,” U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said.

In the wake of 9/11, more than 400,000 names have come under one form of government surveillance or another, from watch lists to wiretaps, reports CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian.

But only a handful of terrorists have been convicted in cases with concrete ties to al Qaeda, most notably “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and Iyman Faris, sent to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge.

Weiss saluted the unidentified New Jersey store clerk who noticed the suspicious video as the “unsung hero” of the case. “That’s why we’re here today — because of the courage and heroism of that individual,” the FBI agent said.

In addition to plotting the attack on Fort Dix, the defendants spoke of attacking a Navy installation in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy football game, and conducted surveillance at other military installations in the region, prosecutors said.

One defendant, Eljvir Duka, was recorded as saying: “In the end, when it comes to defending your religion, when someone is trying attacks your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad.”

How many times did Sirhan, Sirhan switch from Islam to Christianity and back?

 

 

 

 

 

Coverup: Were Wildfires Started by Terrorists?

Mick Gregory

Updated Feb. 9 2009

The wildfires in Australia are reported to be arson and an act of terror and mass murder according to the Prime Minister

U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against “crusader” nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece.

A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.” The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week.

The statement, in Arabic, said that “summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.”
The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to “start forest fires.”

The posting quoted imprisoned Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Al-Suri, as saying “Jihad is an art just like poetry, music, and the fine arts. There are people that draw and there are others that are jihadists. They both act upon inspiration.”

Al-Suri is a senior Al Qaida leader captured in Pakistan in 2005 who is believed to be in U.S. custody.

Updated Nov. 16, 2008

Here we go again. 

 

The cause of most of the blazes was not known, though at least one of the major fires here was deemed of suspicious origin.

The outbreak of fires came a week shy of the one-year anniversary of a series of blazes in Southern California that destroyed more than 2,200 homes, killed 10 people, burned more than half a million acres from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara County and resulted in the largest evacuation in state history.

Oct. 28, 2007
The largest fire, in San Diego County, has burned more than 300 square miles but was 90 percent contained as of Sunday. State officials said blazes still threatened 12,000 homes in the region, though firefighters were optimistic that the cool weather would enable them to get the fires under control within about a week.

Santa Anna winds fueled as many as 24 separate wildfires last week, ravaging more than 500,000 acres and destroying 2,300 buildings, according to the California Office of Emergency Services. The fires have been responsible for 12 deaths and 78 injuries.

One has to wonder how 24 separate fires started?

Oct. 27, 2007
A “predictive and astrological analyst,” Dr. Louis Touri, was on ‘Coast to Coast A.M.’ about last night. He said that it was his opinion that these California fires were a terrorist act.

 

 

 

He makes a good point. I believe these fires are too far apart in distance and in too many in number to have all started by random acts of nature.

Oct. 26, 2007
Half a million acres have been destroyed in California.

“Arsonists are not highly regarded in the prison population. They are seen as cowardly,” said Timothy Huff, a retired FBI criminal profiler. “When an arsonist strikes his match, he cannot predict the ultimate consequences. This is what makes them despicable criminals.”

Any video of Palestinian women making that funny turkey sound, rejoicing over this?

Now it is 2,000 homes and businesses destroyed. Note to Islamic fascists: This is a free country, this is America. We will rebuild. The devistation will actually cause a building boom and help the depressed real estate market. See how free enterprise works?

As of Friday morning, this is what we know. Nine people are dead, 11, including two suspected arsonists who was shot by sheriff deputies fleeing from an apparent fire flash point behind a college and another ramming police cars. So far, no descriptions of the men. (I’m thinking if they are white guys or black guys we would know by know.)

More than 1,000,000 were evacuated. Thousands returned home to ruins today. Nearly 18,000 customers in the San Diego area remained without power Thursday. A San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (SDOPH) helicopter attempting to restore power crashed Thursday morning, but all four people aboard escaped injury. The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known.
Medical examiners were trying to establish the identities of the man and woman whose bodies were found near Poway, north of San Diego, said Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Jan Caldwell. The bodies were found in a cinderblock, garage-sized building behind a home that sits alone atop a hill overlooking the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

The pair are believed to be related, officials said. Neighbors said they last saw them around midnight Monday when they told the two to evacuate, according to Caldwell.
Flames also claimed the life of a 52-year-old man in Tecate.

Oct. 25, 2007

The FBI, ATF, the Orange County Fire Authority and the California Department of Forestry will officially state that the massive Santiago Canyon Fire – which has caused an estimated $10 million in damage – is being declared arson, and a $50,000 reward is being offered to find the arsonist. Today, more than one million people have been evacuated, six have died and more than a billion dollars in expensive real estate has gone up in smoke.

As wildfires ripped through Southern California, a 41-year-old illegal immigrant was arrested on suspicion of arson after quick-thinking Woodland Hills residents allegedly saw him lighting a fire and called 911, police said this morning.
Woodland Hills residents saw a man lighting a fire then walking away about 4:30 yesterday on a hillside near Del Valle Street and Ponce Avenue. After calling police, the residents followed him to a restaurant and waited for police to arrive.

Police booked Catalino Pineda, a day laborer, into the Los Angeles County Jail where he was being held on an arson charge. Bail was set at $75,000.

Pineda is a native of Guatemala. He is currently on probation for making excessive false emergency reports to law enforcement, police said.

What about a description of the “alleged” arsonist killed by police?

FBI, ATF, the Orange County Fire Authority and the California Department of Forestry announced that the massive Santiago Canyon Fire — which has caused an estimated $10 million in damage — is being officially declared an arson, and a $70,000 reward is being offered to find the arsonist. Two points of origin have been identified. A $250,000 reward is in the offing. Any leads? Yes. 250 have come in already.

Oct. 24, 2007
Amid new blazes adding to the firestorm already devistating the Southern California region, a man in Hesperia has been arrested on suspicion of arson, and police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino.

Law enforcement officials said today that they didn’t know whether either of the men had started any of the more than a dozen large fires that have devastated Southern California in recent days, including the nearby Lake Arrowhead blaze. The brush fire in Hesperia was quickly extinguished by residents.

Investigators have said that at least two of the huge wildfires, one in Orange County and the other in Temecula, were the work of arsonists. What are the Islamic websites in America saying? They seem rather quiet.

Oct. 23, 2007
Today we have half a million evacuated from their homes in Southern California, more than 1,000 destroyed homes and several missing or dead from 13 wildfires.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, called it “a tragic time for California,” and declared a state of emergency in seven counties and redeployed California National Guard members from the border to support firefighters.

Oct. 22, 2007
Could terrorists have started the fires? Please don’t ask. You are racisit if you even think Islamic terrorists would do this.

Update: News is coming out that several of the fires are looking like arson according to officials of Orange County.

Nearly a dozen wildfires spread across Southern California on Sunday, killing one person near San Diego, destroying several homes and a church in celebrity-laden Malibu, and forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes down the coast to San Diego.

FLASHBACK: June 20, 2007
The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies this summer that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.

Did you read about that in your mainstream media?

How many of the major forest fires since 1990s have been caused by arson? How much has been covered up for “public safety?”

I understand economics. There is no way we can afford to have the National Guard stand over the millions of wooded acres near population centers. It may be a good tactic to hide the fact that several of the wild fires may be linked to terrorists. Why give them credit?

We could ask the Muslims in the U.S. to help identify the pigs among them and help us stop plots like these.

Law enforcement officials suspect several of the California wildfires that have killed scores of people and consumed more than 800,000 acres and destroyed more than 3,000 homes were deliberately set – increasing speculation there is a terror connection to the blazes.

The fire that caused most of the death and destruction three years ago has produced one arrest so far — Dikran Armouchian.

The fires are now among the deadliest and costliest disasters in California, second only to the Oakland Hills fire. I’ll have to dig up some names of any suspects.

“The fire when it gets started there will be of biblical proportions,” Andrea Tuttle, director of the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the New York Times. “It’s going to be the most intense fire that we have ever seen.”

While California law enforcement authorities investigate an eyewitness report of arson in the recent Lake Tahoe fire, there is new evidence terrorism was behind other recent wildfires in Europe and Australia.

In the devastating forest fires that swept through the Maures mountains near the French Riviera in 2004, investigators found Molotov cocktails (gasoline bombs), were used to ignite the blazes that killed at least four and destroyed 50 homes.

Luc Jousse, the mayor of Roque-Sur-Argens, called the fires “a new form of terrorism.” President Jacques Chirac threatened those responsible with “sanctions of an extraordinary gravity.”

The fires in France were the worst ever in the region. They were followed by riots by Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris last year that destroyed more than 3,000 automobiles.

In addition, southern Italy also was hit last summer with devastating wildfires also believed to be the result of arson.

In August, Australian authorities launched an investigation into reports al-Qaida planned to spark brushfires in a new wave of devastating terror attacks.

An FBI memo to United States law enforcement agencies revealed a senior al-Qaida detainee claimed to have developed a plan to start midsummer forest fires in the U.S.

The terrorist hoped to mimic the destruction that devastated Canberra last summer, killing four people and destroying more than 500 homes, as well as in other parts of Australia.

The memo, obtained by the Arizona Republic newspaper, said the unidentified detainee revealed he hoped to create several large, catastrophic wildfires at once.

“The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies,” the memo said.

The detainee told investigators his plan called for three or four operatives to travel to the U.S. and set timed explosive devices in forests and grasslands.

“Australian security authorities are aware of reports that al-Qaida has considered starting brushfires in the U.S. as a form of terrorist attack,” said a spokeswoman Australian Attorney General Daryl Williams. “Arson attacks are just one of a wide range of scenarios which have been considered as part of our investigations into al-Qaida’s ability to conduct attacks in Australia.”

In fact, Arab terrorists in Israel have started dozens of major forest fires over the years.

As far back as 1988, Israeli police caught more than a dozen Palestinian adults in the act of setting fires, while other Arabs confessed to arson after arrest. Some fires followed specific calls by underground Arab terrorists. A leaflet issued by the Palestinian uprising’s underground leadership called for ”the destruction and burning of the enemy’s properties, industry and agriculture.”

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said at the time: ”The need to set fires, which also leads to murders, is in my eyes worse than fundamentalism.”

Israeli nature reserve authorities said 408 fires in May and June of 1988 destroyed 400,000 acres of land, nearly seven times the acreage burned from 1974 to 1986.

Last year, Gilad “Gidi” Mastai, chief ranger in the Galilee region of Israel, told the Jerusalem Post: “It’s extremely hard to find arsonists, just like it’s hard to close off the Green Line to terrorists. The forests here are on the front line.”

But, he said, the vast majority of deliberate fires are started by Arabs with political motives.

Forest rangers often need the help of the Israel Defense Forces to battle the terror blazes.

Arson cases account for one-third of Israeli forest fires. “Political” arsonists cause the most with negligent hikers a close second.

This mass murder by fire from the religion of peace in 2002:

GODHRA, India – Muslim attackers armed with stones and kerosene descended on a train carrying hundreds of Hindu nationalists Wednesday, setting fire to four cars and killing 57 people.

Fourteen of the dead were children and 43 other people were injured, many critically, when a mob attacked the train as it pulled out of Godhra shortly after 6:30 a.m., Gujarat state officials said.

Fearing the attack would ignite sectarian riots, Indian officials immediately stepped up security across this vast, religiously divided nation. The prime minister urged Hindus not to retaliate.

The nationalists belonged to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, a group seeking to build a temple at the disputed holy site of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh. Ten years ago, fighting between Muslims and Hindus over Ayodhya killed 2,000 people.

Most of the 2,500 Hindu activists on board the Sabarmati Express were returning from Ayodhya and were bound for Ahmadabad, 95 miles to the south.

This “hate crime” was in Washington State in 2004.
Mirza Akram, 37, owner of Continental Spices Cash & Carry was arrested at the store yesterday on a federal warrant accusing him of arson. Police also said a second man helped set the July 9 fire that caused an estimated $50,000 damage.
“We suspected him right away,” said Julianne Marshall, spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Marshall declined to go into detail about why Akram was immediately suspected of the arson.

After the fire was doused at the grocery, at 315 E. Casino Road, Everett police and firefighters found a gasoline can and a derogatory message directed toward Arabs spray-painted on a wall. A white cross was spray-painted on a refrigerator in the back of the store, which specializes in Pakistani, Indian and Middle Eastern groceries. Nobody was injured in the fire.

Everett police spokesman Sgt. Boyd Bryant said investigators believe the store owner set the fire because he was experiencing financial difficulty. “That was his motive, to collect from insurance,” Bryant said.

This happened last year.
Demonstrators protesting caricatures of Islam’s prophet set fire Sunday to a building housing the Danish mission in Beirut. Security forces shot tear gas into the crowd and fired their weapons in the air in a desperate attempt to stop the onslaught.
Casualties, fires and damage of public property were reported in the violence, which came a day after protesters in neighboring Syria torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus.
Thousands of protesters took part in the protest against publication of caricatures of Islam’s revered prophet in European newspapers. The protest quickly degenerated into violence when groups of Islamic extremists tried to break through the security barrier, prompting troops to fire tear gas and water cannons from fire engines to try to disperse them, said the official.

What can we do? Keep the major fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wire reports from WorldNet Daily and Google Alerts.

Bernie Ward, the obese, liberal, former aide to Boxer in prison for child porn — Another Boxer aide is arrested for child porn — Jeff Rosato

LATEST UPDATE: Nov. 14,  2008

Barbara Boxer had another top aide, Jeff Rosato,  arrested for child pornography. Is there some reason the Democrat Senator from California attracts these criminals? What is it on their resume that gets them hired to these high paying jobs in Washington DC?

Aide to Boxer Fired After Being Charged in Child Pornography Sting

By Ben Pershing
Washington Post
Friday, November 14, 2008; A05

 

A senior aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer (Democrat) was fired from his post last week after he was charged with distributing and receiving child pornography.

Jeffrey P. Rosato, an aide to Boxer and a senior policy adviser on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was arrested last Friday, the same day he was fired from Boxer’s office, and charged with one count each of receipt and distribution of child pornography. He appeared in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday and was released on his own recognizance, but he is forbidden to have access to children or computers.

According to an FBI affidavit, an unnamed person “distributed more than 600 files containing graphic images and movies of child pornography to an undercover detective that [the person] believed was a 13-year-old boy” over the course of more than 15 online chats during a three-week period in January. In that person’s computer, the FBI found information suggesting the person had exchanged pornography with Rosato.

Investigators also found pornographic photos and movies of children on Rosato’s laptop computer during a Nov. 4 search of his Alexandria home, according to the affidavit. “Many of the images and videos depict prepubescent boys engaged in sexual acts,” it said.

Rosato’s attorney, Patrick N. Anderson of Alexandria, did not return a call seeking comment.

Natalie Ravitz, a spokeswoman for Boxer’s personal office, said: “On Friday, the Justice Department informed our office of criminal charges made against a Senate employee. Senator Boxer has zero tolerance for crimes against children, and the employee was immediately terminated.”

Rosato had worked for Boxer since 2005, according to Senate payroll records on the LegiStorm Web site, and had drawn a paycheck from the environment panel since 2007. Before joining Boxer’s staff, Rosato worked as an aide to then-Sen. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.).

The FBI’s investigation of Rosato and subsequent forensic analysis of his computer found that he had been using Google Hello, a photo-sharing service discontinued by the Internet giant earlier this year, allegedly to exchange pornographic images.

Last month, a former Senate aide, James Michael McHaney, was sentenced to three years in prison on a federal charge of possession of child pornography. McHaney, 28, was arrested last year in a sting and fired from his job in the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

 

 

 

UPDATE: Aug. 27, 2008

Bernie Ward (Democrat) was sentenced to serve 24 months in the United States Federal Penitentiary at Lompoc Calif. Case closed. Bernie is now literally a ward of the state.

UPDATE: Feb. 14, 2008, Valentine’s Day

Riveting police report read on air tonight by Michael Savage. Details are sickening. The liberal media is not going to cover this monster. Now, reports of a U.S. sitting Senator, intervening on fellow Democrat, Bernie Ward’s behalf.

We received a report from a local resident of Oakdale that she had gotten an e-mail message and pornographic material involving juveniles,” says Chief Marty West with the Oakdale Police Department.

The woman gave police the photographs and a transcript of her online conversation with Bernie Ward.

It’s Christmas week, three years ago. Ward’s on his home computer using the screen name “Vincentlio.” He begins the chat with “Good afternoon, mistress.” The woman using the name “Sexfairy” answers, “How was your day, slave?” In explicit detail, Ward describes being humiliated sexually. At one point, he asks, “Are you going to make me feel dirty, mistress?” “Sexfairy” answers, “Yes, I am.”

Ward discusses group sex he had at an infamous porn theater in San Mateo. Then, nearly an hour into the conversation, he brings up photographs, “I love trading pictures.” “Sexfairy” answers, “and why haven’t I gotten any pics, slave? Send me some.”

Ward sends several pictures — one of a woman and two children. Ward describes her as a mother in her late thirties, she’s topless. He says the naked boy is 14, that the girl wearing clothes is 12. They’re all touching in a sexual way.

“Sexfairy” writes, “brb,” (be right back). A half hour later, she’s on the phone with police, reporting Bernie Ward for child porn. They tell her to keep chatting with Ward.

“It would be important to the case to gather as much information as possible in support of bringing charges against the person that’s sending these pornographic messages,” says Chief West.

In the days that follow, “Sexfairy” asks Ward for more pictures — he complies. Then, police get a search warrant for Ward’s AOL account. E-mail sent and received by “Vincentlio” had pictures attached.

An investigator writes, “several of the photographs depicted children engaged in or simulating sexual acts with adults or other children.” The ages of the children in the pictures — four to 17 years old.

With a jury trial set for June, ABC7 legal analyst, Dean Johnson, says the transcript of the Internet chats knocks down Ward’s claim that he was researching a book.

“That’s very bad for his defense…”

A morbidly obese, liberal Democrat, talk radio host in the Bay Area, has been indicted on federal pornography charges. Bernie Ward. Betcha didn’t know he’s been separated from his wife for 3 1/2 years. Watch him try and cling to his wife now in his defense. Did you know that he was on Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D) Congressional staff for many years? How’s that for proof of liberal bias in the mainstream media?

By Mick Gregory

You may have seen him on CNN or MSNBC, he’s an icon of the left, though not even in the same league of popularity as Glenn Beck, Michael Savage or Rush.

Bernie Ward (Channel 2 file photo), 56, a former priest and host of two local talk radio programs on KGO, was charged, in an indictment unsealed late last week, with two counts of distributing child pornography and one count of receiving the material. If convicted, he faces a minimum of five years in prison for each charge.

(Wasn’t there another “journalist” in Santa Barbara with child porn on his computer? Wasn’t he from the Bay Area and friends with Bernie Ward? Jerry Roberts was his name.)

Ward’s lawyer told ABC News that Ward e-mailed the illicit images, but only as part of his “research” into a book about what he believed to be the hypocrisy of the religious right. Though it is illegal even for journalists, let alone talk show hosts to trade or possess child pornography as part of their work.

Mr. Ward, why not do your research transparently, working with the police or FBI?
Hey, I have some leads for you in your Democrat party. How about Larry Flynt? Why not your friends in NAMBLA? How about Hillary’s “close friends” in the Bay Area?

Hey, didn’t John Wayne Gacey, the killer clown, gay mass murderer, Democrat activist and contributor to Jimmy Carter’s campaign have a great child porn collection? He had a wife and two kids too? And he was a glutton for food and other pleasures. Sounds a lot like Bernie’s characteristics.

Are you going to march in the Gay, Lesbian, Transsexual Pride Parade again, Bernie? (Not this year. The Democrat National Committee wouldn’t aprove).

You have a lot to work with. Barney Frank has a liking for gay porn. Why not just talk to him about the issue?

How about your “Sports Memorabilia Business?” Didn’t your partner Dwayne Garrett jump into San Francisco Bay when the FBI found out the faked signatures? But I digress.

Jeanette Boudreau, Ward’s business attorney, said
“He tried to have a dialogue with people and see what he could talk them into saying and agreeing to,” she said. “He lost track of himself and didn’t stop and think about what he was doing.”

Yeah, a lot of NAMBLA members know what Bernie is talking about.

Though journalists tackle touchy issues like child pornography, it is generally illegal to possess child pornography for any reason and federal law does not provide an exception for reporters or academic research. Reporters usually consult with or work with law enforcement to access the material, said Gregg Leslie, legal defense director at the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. Though it is illegal to possess the images by saving, printing or e-mailing them, it is not illegal to merely view the images, said Parry Aftab, a cybercrime expert, reported in an ABC article — the parent company of Ward’s talk shows on KGO.

Even when the images are evidence in a criminal case, defense attorneys are often required to view them only in a government facility, instead of getting copies of the pictures. So, what if Bernie were doing a story about restaurants serving dog? Would he need to kill a dog and filet it to do a story?

How about a story on illegal ivory? Would Bernie be allowed to buy and sell ivory becuase he is a journalist? Wouldn’t his purchases ultimately promote more killing elephants for ivory?

“Congress has developed a more or less zero tolerance policy for this and I think the American public can understand that,” said Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity section.

“The purpose of the law is to protect the images by the most careful and deliberate means.”

In the few cases where journalists have been charged with trading in child pornography, the courts have treated them like any other defendant, Leslie said. In 2000, for example, a federal appellate court rejected a freelance reporter’s claim that the First Amendment protected his right to trade pornographic pictures, which he claimed were part of his research.

“It’s no different than trying to get involved in drugs,” Leslie said. “If you tried to buy or sell cocaine, no one cares if you’re just doing it for a story. If you want to get involved to that level, you almost have to do it through working with law enforcement.”

Federal law provides a defense if a person accidentally possesses three or fewer child porn images and they are immediately destroyed and reported to police. But, Ward’s attorneys said there should be a further exceptions.

The U.S. attorney in San Francisco recused himself from the case, after which it was transferred to federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. Benjamin Vernia, a former federal prosecutor who handled child exploitation cases, but who was not familiar with Ward’s case, said the transfer to Washington could account for the delay. He added that prosecutors typically handle child pornography cases more quickly.

“They tend view them as a threat to the community,” he said of the alleged pornographers.

“Obviously this is devastating,” Weinberg said. “It’s ruined his career.”

Jack Swanson, operations director of KGO Radio, said in a written statement that Ward was a “valued, longtime employee.”

“We were just recently made aware of these serious charges and are surprised and concerned by their nature,” the statement said. He said the station would have a substitute host for Ward’s time slot.

Vernia said journalists could ask law enforcement officials to allow to them to view the images as part of their research.

Though he was not familiar with details of Ward’s case, Vernia said that defendants frequently defended themselves by saying they were only doing research, but, “these kinds of defenses are almost always spurious. Once you start looking into the details, it’s usually easy to tell.”

It is known as the knee jerk lie in porn cases. If it was research, why not work with the authorities?

Ward, who sometimes appears on national television, has worked as both a talk show host and as a journalist. make things happen,” Guevara said. “He doesn’t just talk a good game, but says I need to put my weight behind this in a big way. He is a source of inspiration for the work we’re trying to do.”

Ward, who has pleaded not guilty, is due in court early next year. Oosterbaan would not comment on the case, but said that he has never heard a journalist describe a scenario in which the journalist needed to view child pornography.

“The images are pretty horrific stuff,” he said. “Every one of these victims says that the worst part is that the images will never go away. They are distributed so widely, and it’s hard to imagine how terrible it would be to know that your image is out there and being traded.”

Can you imagine if it were another, much skinnier (by 150 lbs.) talk show host – Rush Limbaugh?

Bernie Ward is the face of the Democrat party. Here is what the obese liberal was happy about just a couple months ago.

Oakland Tribune, Aug 21, 2007 by John Horgan
THE OTHER NIGHT, an animated KGO Radio talk show host was explaining how pleased he was regarding the collapse of the U.S. credit market.

It was not entirely surprising. Bernie Ward is hardly a big-time supporter of the vagaries of capitalism.

A former Catholic priest, the Rev. Ward, who confessed he has tried to control his negative feelings toward the wealthy, has developed a following of like-minded folks.

Ward admitted that he still likes to see “the rich” take a financial beating once in a while. He said he continues to take perverse delight in that circumstance.

Of course, there wasn’t a great deal of attention paid to working- class people who obtained tenuous mortgages and now find themselves behind a fiscal eight-ball.

Nor did the Pontiff of Pessimism spend much time sympathizing with average folks whose retirement investment accounts took big hits as the stock market wobbled and lost considerable value.

That said, Ward, a perceptive fellow with a gift for gab, was touching on something that has a direct bearing on the high-cost Bay Area, particularly Silicon Valley.

Ward never mentions his income, or that he is reported to be still married (but living apart) from his wife who is an MD in San Francisco. What is their annual household income, $300,000 plus?

Despised San Francisco attorneys in dog-mauling death of their neighbor Diane Whipple are liberal Democrats

UPDATE: Sept. 22, 2008

A judge has sentenced a dog owner to 15 years to life in prison, seven years after her canines fatally mauled her neighbor in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood.A judge had reduced a jury’s conviction of second-degree murder to involuntary manslaughter and Marjorie Knoller was sentenced in 2002 to four years in prison.

But the California Supreme Court last year ordered the second-degree murder conviction reinstated. She was sentenced on that conviction Monday. Knoller’s lawyers plan to appeal.

The conviction stemmed from the 2001 death of Dianne Whipple. She was attacked by Knoller’s two Presa Canarios in a hallway of their apartment building. Each dog weighed more than 100 pounds and inflicted at least 77 wounds.

Here are some details that you may have missed becuase of the media coverups:

The case of the San Francisco dog owners who kept a killer bull mastiff in an apartment are Democrat activists. You might remember this grusome case: Marjorie Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder in the dog-mauling death of her neighbor Diane Whipple. Her husband, Robert Noel was convicted of a lesser charge because he wasn’t at the scene when the killing took place. Both lawyers were and remain active Democrats and also were ‘friends’ of a felon in prison, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. The case came up again because a liberal judge cleared the Democrat fundraisers of the serious charges. Here is the rest of the story:

By Mick Gregory

The case of Knoller and her husband Robert Noel attracted worldwide media attention, but many of the unique details of the case were filtered out by the press. Did you know they were Democrat activists? They even had witnesses testify to that in their defense, they hate Republicans. (That makes it OK to have killer dogs the size and temperment of lions in a city apartment that end up tearing the throat out of a young woman). They hate Bush and Cheney!

When liberal and openly gay San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren threw out Marjorie Knoller’s second-degree murder conviction for the dog-mauling death of her neighbor Diane Whipple, the judge justified his controversial decision by explaining that Knoller did not know her conduct had a “high probability of death to another human being.”

More history on Warren: he is the son of the famous JFK assassination coverup, Earl Warren of the Warren Commission. Two death-bed confessions early this year have brought to light that that VP Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination. But that is a story for another time.

Knoller and Noel were keeping the two massive dogs for Paul Schneider, a life inmate and member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who bred and sold the Presa Canarios using people outside the prison. The couple later adopted Schneider, then 39 years old. And Mrs. Knoller was having sex with him on prison visits.

Days after the attack, Knoller appeared on “Good Morning America” and showed no remorse. Noel also publicly insulted San Francisco’s then-DA Terence Hallinan and partly blamed Whipple for the attack.

There were sex pictures of the cute couple and their adopted son and news reports of thier anti-Bush activisim. The “journalists” scrubbed that out of their reports.

California Real Estate Foreclosures and Falling Prices Finally Reported After Three Years of Industry Red Flags

By Mick Gregory

Foreclosures rise 500 percent in key Bay Area counties. (Reported one year ago).

I’d imagine a lot of Bay Area readers of the San Francisco Chronicle are wondering why they didn’t see any investigative reporting three years ago.

That’s because the realtor organizations were feeding the business reporters rosy press releases. Plus, very few reporters have MBAs or have even taken Economics 101 for that matter.

Foreclosures and default notices are reaching historic numbers in California and especially the high-tax, left-leaning Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to real estate stats released today.

Banks repossessed 31,676 homes in California in the October-November-December period, according to Data-Quick Information Systems, a La Jolla research firm. That was a dramatic 421.2 percent increase from 6,078 in the year-ago quarter. I predicted 200,000 for 2007 and 08.

More that 31,000 families lost their homes in California the past three months.

In the Bay Area, foreclosures rose a stunning 482.5 percent to 4,573 in the fourth quarter, compared with 785 a year ago. Contra Costa County, with 1,558 foreclosures, up 533.3 percent from a year ago, had the most, followed by Alameda County with 1,026 (a 514.4 percent increase) and Solano County with 704 (up 528.6 percent).

We moved from the Bay Area to Houston three years ago. My MBA and my wife’s law and real estate background paid off. We could see the bubble bursting in the near future and we timed it just right with a little luck. I built a river rock fireplace makeover and we had contractors put in hardwood floors and granite counter tops.

Our good friends Marjon and his wife, both attorneys, were studying the same red flags and moved out of California a few months ahead of us, after they did some extensive remodeling that included a new second story deck off their master suite and granite, of course.

So many of our friends and neighbors said “how could you leave California for Texas?”
(They were so smug.)

The Data-Quick company gives its services a little self promotion in the report.

“Foreclosure activity is closely tied to a decline in home values,” Data-Quick President Marshall Prentice said in a statement. “With today’s depreciation, an increasing number of homeowners find themselves owing more on a property than its market value, setting the stage for default if there is mortgage payment shock, a job loss or the owner needs to move.”

It was the most foreclosures since DataQuick began tracking them in 1988 and more than double the previous peak of 15,418 foreclosures in the third quarter of 1996. The fewest foreclosures recorded were in the second quarter of 2005, when 637 homes were repossessed.

Mortgage default notices, sent by lenders when homeowners are several months behind on payments, also hit record highs. Default notices are the first evil step of the drawn out foreclosure process. Once you fall about five or six months behind, the banks know you will never dig yourself back out.

Statewide, lenders sent 81,550 default notices, up 114.6 percent from 37,994 in the fourth quarter of 2006. It was up 12.4 percent from 72,571 in the third quarter of 2007. It was the most defaults since DataQuick began tracking them in 1992.

On Thanksgiving, we were at friends’ home in Texas, (they also came from California) having moved just a few months after us. There home has a saltwater pool and the two-story structure is about 3,200 sq. ft., a short walk to a large lake.

We laughed and congratulated ourselves as we realized that all five families at the party were from California.

Why did we leave? The state income tax is just under 10 percent, plus each employee has to pay disability tax, it went up about $600 per worker this month. Any connection to the job losses and mass exodus? Hey, but the lettuce is cheap! What about the weather, the mountains, the beaches?

The New York Times Tries to Save Face After Supporting and Covering Up for the Hillary Clinton Machine. Vicki Iseman Is Named John McCain’s Lover by the Scandal Sheet

UPDATE: The New York Times may not exist as we know it this year or next. The crash is happening faster than any of the experts had predicted.

This article has been mentioned on Silicon Alley Insider.

End Times
Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.

But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if TheNew York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.

“As part of our analysis of our uses of cash, we are evaluating future financing arrangements,” the Times Company announced blandly in October, referring to the crunch it will face in May. “Based on the conversations we have had with lenders, we expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature.” This prompted Henry Blodget, whose Web site, Silicon Alley Insider, has offered the smartest ongoing analysis of the company’s travails, to write: “‘We expect that we will be able to manage’? Translation: There’s a possibility that we won’t be able to manage.”

The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.

Granted, the odds that The Times will cease to exist entirely come May are relatively slim. Many steps could be taken to prolong its existence. The Times Company has already slashed its dividend, a major source of income for the paper’s owners, the Sulzberger family, but one that starved the company at precisely the moment it needed significant investments in new media. The company could sell its share of the brilliant Renzo Piano–designed headquarters—which cost the company about $600million to build and was completed in 2007, years after the digital threat to The Times’ core business had become clear. (It’s already borrowing money against the building’s value.) It could sell The Boston Globe—or shutter it entirely, given what the company itself has acknowledged is a challenging time for the sale of media properties. It could sell its share in the Boston Red Sox, close or sell various smaller properties, or off-load About.com, the resolutely unglamorous Web purchase that has been virtually the only source of earnings growth in the Times Company’s portfolio. With these steps, or after them, would come mass staffing cuts, no matter that the executive editor, Bill Keller, promised otherwise.

It’s possible that a David Geffen, Michael Bloomberg, or Carlos Slim would purchase The Times as a trophy property and spare the company some of this pain. Even Rupert Murdoch, after overpaying wildly for The Wall Street Journal, seems to be tempted by the prospect of adding The Times to his portfolio. But the experiences of Sam Zell, who must be ruing the day he waded into the waking nightmare that is the now-bankrupt Tribune Company, would surely temper the enthusiasm of all but the most arrogant of plutocrats. (And as global economies tumble around them, the plutocrats aren’t as plutocratic as they used to be.) Alternatively, Google or Microsoft or even CBS could purchase The Times on the cheap, strip it for parts, and turn it into a content mill to goose its own page views.

Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and news­paper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.” — Michael Hirschorn.

 

 

In a effort to retain their crown as the liberal beacon of Western Civilization, the old gray lady, The New York Times, found that not only its circulation, advertising and stock price are falling, now their editorial authority is irrelevant. Obama is crushing the Hillary Clinton machine and the massive coverup of voter fraud in New York and New Hampshire can’t be kept behind closed doors.   Not only are some leaders in the Democrat party pointing out the voter fraud, the liberal mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg called it exactly that. What does The Times do?

Instead they print  a smear job on the front page, attacking the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain.

White House Spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters that he and others working in the Bush administration felt the influential newspaper had a history of going after Republican presidential candidates.

“I think a lot of people here in this building with experience in a couple campaigns have grown accustomed to the fact that during the course of a campaign, about — seemingly on maybe a monthly basis leading up to the convention, maybe a weekly basis after that, The New York Times does try to drop a bombshell on the Republican nominee,” Stanzel told reporters.

Stanzel also said the newspaper sometimes makes “incredible leaps to try to drop those bombshells on the Republican nominees.”

It’s too late. The bombshell didn’t work this time. The truth is spreading via blogs. And it is too late for The Times to jump on the Obama band wagon, just yet. The editors are thinking ahead. They know that they will have to switch their support to the Democrat front runner in the next few weeks, graciously dropping Hillary. They have a first look at the poll results for Clinton and she is losing in Texas and Mississippi, big time it appears.  

So, in a last ditch effort, the NYT’s editors drop a bomb on McCain. They even endorsed the moderate war hero a few weeks ago. Take a look at the affair they are reporting that McCain had with Vicki Iseman. Who are the sources? What does Ms. Iseman have to say?

Why didn’t they do that kind of reporting on Bill Clinton? First, before he was elected, but more importantly, when he was being serviced by a young intern in the oval office? The Internet has toppled the elite liberal media in 2008. I predict the NYT stock price to fall below $15 in the coming weeks.

Ice age commeth — Deepest snow cover in North America in 40 years.

Al Gore, where are you?

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.

“Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality- control measures prior to archiving the data,” the center said. “Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check.’’

By Mick Gregory

Update: Feb. 16, 2009

Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and was elected to the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

“I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect,” said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists “are being intimidated” if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

“They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming,” Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the “global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making.”

Update: Feb. 4, 2009

The Weather Channel reports that 90 percent of the U.S. will reach freezing temeratures tonight. 

 

Update: Feb. 2, 2009

 

 

The groundhog says six more weeks of winter.

England has biggest snow cover in more than 20 years.

The heaviest snowfall in 20 years has closed thousands of schools and caused transport chaos up the eastern side of Britain, with London and the surrounding areas the hardest hit.

Six million bus passengers were left in the lurch as all London’s bus services were halted because of dangerous driving conditions, and every Tube line except the Victoria line was at least partially suspended.

 

Update: Dec. 13-17, 2008, Snow coverage in Malibu, Seattle, Las Vegas, Houston Texas! 
Feb. 25, 2008: Snow cover over North America and much of Russia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities recorded record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is experiencing its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

NPR fans along with Al Gore and Hillary must be wondering why they called the “crisis” climate change, rather than global warming. Words matter.
No Mr. Gore, the debate is not over.

Newspaper editors purged MBAs from management years ago

Newspapers have not been blessed with the best and the brightest managers. Why? The executive editors sabotage real management and have purged MBAs from their ranks. Kill off the competition.

This is from the WSJ Deal Journal column, a Q&A with Mr. Knee, a highly respected  investment consultant

DJ: What would be your advice to newspaper owners?
Knee: You have seen people outsource everything from printing to editorial and indeed, any kind of journalism where your scale in the local community does not provide you with an advantage should be gotten elsewhere. If you find out how many people the large papers sent to the national conventions, you would wonder whether that’s economically justified. You have to focus on your competitive advantage, which is local. When the smoke clears, the local newspaper, which may not be the sexiest part of the newspaper industry but is overwhelmingly the largest and most profitable part of the industry, will be a smaller and more-focused enterprise whose activities will be directed to those areas where their local presence gives them competitive advantage and they will continue to generate as a result better profits than the supersexy businesses in the media industry asking for government or nonprofit help like movies and music.

The newspaper industry has not been blessed with the best managers, and generations of monopoly profits do dull the senses. On the journalism side, I think many managers would rather have avoided a fight with journalists than actually force them to think harder about what their readers want, rather than what they want their readers to want. In the economic environment we’re in, newspapers can’t afford to do every six-part investigative series they could have done before.

Meanwhile, the rank and file newspaper reporters who were busy covering their beats, don’t make much compared to the executive editors. 

Moma don’t let you’re kids grow up to be newspaper reporters. Have them study business, engineering, law or sales, even bar tending would earn them a better living. The executive editors who scratched their way to the top make big bucks for a while, until the host dies from bad management anyway. 

Ever wonder what kind of money the nation’s top newspapers pay their best journalsits? The top rung of the latter is set by the Newspaper Guild. Once you’ve lasted five or six years after about four years at a small daily and tuition of at least $20,000 a year at a respected J-school, this is it.

New York Times pays the most, $1,675.28 a week after two years. But that’s where it stays fixed until the next Guild negotiations. Of course, New York City has the highest cost of living expenses in the U.S.

Reuters pays $1,587.93 a week after six years.

The San Francisco Chronicle pays $1202.24 a week for six years of journalist experience. I know that is top for the Guild scale, but many of the hard workers, who put in more than 38 hours a week get additional pay above scale.

Consumer Reports takes the No. 1 position with $1,80410 a week scale after four years of experience. The union-biased “non-profit” magazine pays more that the New York Times or San Francisco Chronicle for their pro-union advertorial reports on products.

Can new online newspapers chage for its content? Jeff Jarvis of the LA Times says “No!” And he explains himself very well:

How’s that for a direct answer? Every rule has its exceptions — this one only a few: The Wall Street Journal (paid by expense accounts), Consumer Reports (which serves reviews, not news), iTunes (we may play a unique performance over and over, but I don’t read even my articles more than once) and porn (which is suffering the same problem newspapers are thanks to free competition from, uh, amateurs). But the rule of the new, post-scarcity economy is clear: Charging for news online is dangerous folly. Why? Let me count the reasons if not the dollars:

Once news is known, that knowledge is a commodity and it doesn’t matter who first reported it. There’s no fencing off information, especially today, when the conversation that spreads it moves at the speed of links.

There will be no limit to competitors. Readers, like water, will follow the path of least inconvenience. It’s impossible to compete against free. Have papers learned nothing from Craigslist?

In the old-content economy, one could make much money selling many copies of a product. In today’s link economy online, we need only one copy, and it is the links to it that give it value. So rather than complaining that Google should pay them for aggregating their headlines, news organizations should be grateful that Google does not charge for the links it gives and the readers it sends. Indeed, we should be spending our effort figuring out how to get more links to original reporting to support it.

Putting your content behind a wall cuts it off from the conversation and robs it of influence. Just ask New York Times columnists how much they disliked the pay wall the paper finally demolished.

Not all newspapers are going bankrupt. Many, in small monopoly markets are among the most profitable businesses in America with profit margins much higher than oil companies, Apple, EBay, Cisco, Sprint, AT&T, Google or Microsoft.  Gannett has the lion’s share of these markets. And also the highest ratio of MBAs in the media business. 

Hugo Chavez is close to cutting off U.S. oil supply (to further inflate the price of oil)

Mick Gregory

Hugo Chavez has the support of Democrats such as Barbara Boxer, Bernie Ward, Nancy Pelosi, the entire Kennedy clan… Why? Chavez wants to turn the Americas into communist nations, that’s one reason. Why is oil selling for $125 per barrel? About $75 dollars of that can be pointed to Chavez and Iran’s OPEC manipulation.

UPDATE: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has threatened to cut off oil export to the US in case of any ‘aggression’ against his country.

“If there is any aggression towards Venezuela” from Washington, “there would be no oil for the people of the United States,” said Chavez as quoted by Reuters.

The threat came after Chavez accused a group of current and former military officers of trying to assassinate him with tacit backing from his political opponents and the United States.

The Venezuelan President urged the White House not to “think of launching a coup or some madness such as this. I warn you, I am not the Hugo Chavez of 2002,” he said, referring to a failed coup attempt against him in April of that year.

Tensions between the two countries grew this week after Russia deployed two of its strategic bombers to the country. The measure came in response to Washington’s sending its warships to the Black sea in order to deliver what it calls humanitarian aid to Georgians after the Caucasus crisis.

Where does Obama stand on Hugo Chavez and his brand of politics?

Today (05/09/08), The Wall Street Journal published a report that outlined the ties between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and communists attempting to overthrow Colombia’s government. Chavez has been linked to Colombian rebels previously, but the paper reported it had reviewed computer files indicating concrete offers by Venezuela’s leader to arm guerillas. That appears to heighten the chances that the U.S. could impose sanctions on one of its biggest oil suppliers.

“If we put on sanctions, I’m sure Chavez would threaten to cut off our oil supply,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. “Obviously that would have a major impact on oil prices.”

Light, sweet crude for June delivery vaulted to a new record of $126.20 in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before retreating to trade up $1.28 at $124.97 a barrel.

Even if Chavez cut oil shipments to the U.S., Venezuelan oil would still make its way to the U.S. via middle men, who would buy it from Venezuela and resell it to the U.S., Flynn said. But that new layer in the supply chain would bump up costs.

The Star Tribune bankrupt

By Mick Gregory

We are observing the death throws of a star on its way to becoming a white dwarf. Gasses spewing, used matter is shredded and  thrown out. The size of the once bright, powerful force rapidly shrinks as it collapses on itself. These are the telltale signs of a dying star.

The Star Tribune, once among the Midwest’s largest newspapers, was purchased by the Sacramento-based McClatchy media company in 1998. The “executive editors”  paid $1.2 billion for it from a family who wanted out of the business.

In less than 10 years, the rapid growth of Google, Drudgereport, Craigslist, E-Bay, FaceBook and WordPress lured away much of the newspaper audience and built new readers/users that were not newspaper-friendly. So the advertising found new rising stars.

Last year, Avista, a New York-based private equity group, purchased the dying Star Tribune for less than half of what McClatchy paid only eight years earlier.

Since Avista’s purchase, the star has been shedding  reporters, editors, photographers, advertising sales staff and designers through two rounds of buyouts and the elimination of open positions. That was just a show for creditors.

Now, in January of 2008, the Star-Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The Star Tribune’s long-term business slump has continued, with revenue declining by about 25 percent, from $400 million in 2000 to $300 million last year, according to a Star Tribune story in July. While major expenses such as newsprint and transportation  increased.  Even those adult newspaper carriers throwning papers out of the window of their pickups, need to be paid.

Several weeks ago, Avista announced that it was writing down the value of its $100 million equity investment in the Star Tribune to $25 million. That’s $75 million wiped out in one year. The Star shed more than $1.15 billion in value over nine years. The new owners are getting pennies on the dollar trying to restructure their debt.

The only candidates for buying into debt-ridden newspapers now are hedge funds, especially those that make a specialty of distressed debt investments, according to several industry observers. It’s called a loan-to-own strategy, they calculate that the owners like Avista will default on their new loans and the fund becomes the new owner for pennies on the dollar. What’s left may be some downtown real estate and a false store-front Web site. This is the white dwarf stage. And there are hundreds more flickering, spewing gas and spitting out  used up matter.

McCain should pick Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska for VP

This post was published on Aug 25, 2008 

There is talk that Sen. John McCain will take more air out of the Democrat Convention by announcing his VP on Thursday. Good plan. Now, make it Sarah Palin and he will get some of Hillary’s disenfranchised voters. Palin has it all, good looks right out of central casting, intelligent speaker, family values and governor of Alaska.

She has positive energy and wit. She will be able to out debate Biden and show that the Republicans trust a women for high office.

Visit http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/

Drill here, drill now!

Sarah Palin

McCain picks Sarah Palin! McCain picks Palin! The Energy to Run America!

Published on Aug 29, 2008 

Sen. John McCain has taken center stage the day after Obama’s coronation at the Democrat Convention by announcing his VP at high noon. It’s Sarah Palin she has it all, good looks right out of central casting, intelligent speaker, family values and governor of Alaska. She is an environmentalist and understands drilling for oil is a must for U.S. energy independence.

She has positive energy and wit. She will be able to out debate Biden and show that the Republicans trust a women for high office. She has a  real life, not a life-long  politician like Biden and so many other Big Brother Democrats. 

The mother of five is an avid runner. Here is an article from the WSJ in September:

WSJ. Magazine
Gov. Sarah Palin: Midnight runs and caribou dinners

Coming Saturday Sept. 6 in the debut issue of WSJ. Magazine, a conversation with Gov. Sarah Palin about her unusual workout and fitness routine. Preview excerpt

By JEN MURPHY
August 29, 2008 1:42 p.m.

Brian Adams for WSJ. Magazine

Gov. Sarah Palin has always been a runner. Her parents were marathoners and high school track and cross-country coaches. “Running was a family affair,” she says. “I didn’t have much choice. Thankfully, I’ve never tired of it.”

Gov. Palin, a mother of five kids, says exercise is still very much a “family thing.” She and her husband, Todd, also an athlete, named their first son Track because he was born in that sport’s season. Gov. Palin (above, near Mendenhall Glacier, outside of Juneau) and her family live in Wasilla, about 45 miles north of Anchorage.

Workout

MORE ON GOV. PALIN
 

 

• McCain Taps Gov. Sarah Palin as Presidential Running Mate

• Bio and Photo Gallery

“Conventional running is my sanity,” Gov. Palin says. Having recently given birth to her fifth child, the governor is trying to get back to her old workout routine. She was running 7 to 10 miles almost every day but switched to aerobics classes at her gym when she became pregnant. She has worked her way back up to running three miles every other day.

In the summer, when it’s always light, she’ll sometimes run as late as midnight. In the dead of winter, when it’s dark, she sneaks in an afternoon run, or else grudgingly runs on the treadmill at home or at the gym in the evening. Gov. Palin keeps dumbbells at home, but she says most of her upper body strength comes from snowmobiling with her family. “It’s the best upper body workout you could ever have,” she says. “You’re maneuvering through hundreds of pounds of powder.” (Todd is a four-time champion of the Tesoro Iron Dog, the world’s longest snowmobile race.)

Brian Adams for WSJ. Magazine

Gov. Palin in Juneau, Alaska

Diet pitfall

“My family and I eat a healthy diet heavy in wild Alaskan seafood, moose, caribou and fresh fruit,” she says. “I guess my biggest pitfall is breakfast. I know it’s the most important meal of the day but I still haven’t bought into it. I hate to admit it, but a skinny white-chocolate mocha is my staple in the morning.”

Workout gear

“My ideal fantasy is to be running on a hot dusty road just wearing running shorts and some kind of top that wicks away sweat. But in reality I’m running in 20-below temperatures, so I wear layers of fleece and always a good outdoor waterproof trail shoe. Right now I’ve been running in Nike Air Structure Triax. And I always wear sunglasses. My kids tell me to put them on so I don’t freak people out when they see me with a goofy hairdo and no makeup.”

While I’m working out

“I’m thinking about my next speech. I usually write my best speeches and letters [in my head] while out running. That is my inspired time.”

Postworkout food

“Nothing. I just drink water.”

Workout pitfall

“Being pregnant every few years. If I get lazy and go weeks or months without exercising it’s not because of circumstances but because I’m being less disciplined. Shame on me.”

Visit http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/

Drill here, drill now!

Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin has executive and energy experience

When the price of oil reached nearly $149 a barrel and the price at the pump broke the $4 barrier, energy became the top issue of this election. The Democrats (or European socialists if you prefer) are slow to understand economic issues and are still chanting Green Party slogans while the rest of the country has discovered that oil drilling in America has been shut down for the past 30 years off the coast of the U.S.

Sen. John McCain picked a super star in Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. She knows more about the oil industry than Obama, Biden, Pelosi and Harry Reed put together. Pali’s husband has been a North Slope oilfield engineer.

It’s time to realize that Norway and the UK are drilling and producing billions off their coasts in the North Sea and off the western coast of Norway. Russia has revived to a world power again from oil reserves.

Only the United States remains stupefied by environmental screed. Billions of barrels of oil and natural gas remain untouched in ANWR and off the coasts of California, Washington, Oregon, Florida ant the Carolinas.

Cuba, China and Venezuela are about to start producing oil miles off the U.S. coast.

America is about to be treated to a lesson in economics.

What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick — Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin, Vice President of the United States

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history.

And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.

The stakes for our nation could not be higher.

When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.

With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

“That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.”

“…we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we’ve got lots of both.”

“But listening to (Barack Obama) speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform – not even in the state senate.”

“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign.”

What is a “community organizer” in Chicago anyway? They are unemployed lawyers getting grants to line their pockets and promote European socialism. In fact, Barack Obama was a leader in ACORN. Obama has had a long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical socialist group in America. Why didn’t he tell us?

Obama’s “tax cuts” are actually payoffs.

Obama claims to offer a tax cut to moderate-income families, but a significant portion of Mr. Obama’s tax plan is a welfare giveaway costing more than $648 billion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center.

How so? He would authorize a hodgepodge of refundable tax credits covering everything from education, mortgage payments, child care and other items for people who do not pay income taxes now.

About 38% of U.S. households pay no income tax today. Under a President Obama (whose policies would shave 15.3 million households off the tax rolls) that share would grow to nearly half of all American households.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but you still have a pig! Obama’s Macaca Moment

The quote heard ’round the world today came from the lips of Obama. The Democrat presidential candidate with ties to Acorn said this about Sarah Palin today, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but you still have a pig!

Will the Washington Post, New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle run 50 straight days about Obama’s Macaca moment?

I wonder what Don Imus has to say about that? How about Oprah?

Democrat Party  presidential hopeful Barack Obama brushed aside a series of polls that show him losing support among white women voters to John McCain since the Republican hero named Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

A Washington Post/ABC News survey published on Tuesday found most of McCain’s surge in the polls since the Republican National Convention was due to a big shift in support among white women voters. Meanwhile, his supporter, Oprah refuses to have Sarah Palin as a guest on her daytime talk show that appeals to women. But apparently white women — not so much.

Who is more porcine, Oprah or Palin?

Question: Who said “It’s nice to be here in New Pennsylvania?”

A. Dan Quale

B. George Bush

C. Obama

Answere: C. Obama

Oprah

Question: Who said “Bashing my Muslim faith…”

A. Osama bin-Laden

B. Barack Obama

C. Ahmadinejad

Answer: B. Barack Obama

Ike is heading toward Houston — Cat 3 — Time to Evacuate

Where are the NBC, MSNBC and CNN anchors? Why aren’t they interested in the fourth largest city in the U.S.? Why did they all spend so much time to cover the storms in New Orleans?

(Because they were hoping to keep the U.S. voters’ attention away from the Republican National Convention.)

Then came Hurricane Sarah.

Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S. not including the population of Galveston. Imagine 5 million people on the move. It’s like scenes in the movies Independence Day and Asteroid.

Gas stations are already running out of regular. Wal-Mart shelves are wiped clean of water and toilet paper.

Why are people so concerned about toilet paper before natural disasters? I’d think your rectum would be the least of your worries.

I think local TV stations and grocery stores like Ike.

How about selling hurricane names to major sponsors — Hurricane Ikea.

You might remember I posted a suggestion that McCain/Palin and Bush will coordinate humanitarian aid to Cuba. Though my post didn’t raise many eyebrows, someone agrees with me in Washington DC.

Look at this:

Evacuations appeared to have saved lives in Cuba when Ike slammed into the island. Four deaths were reported from the storm, according to the Cuban government. The Cuban Civil Defense brought buses or trucks to take people to shelters. See the damage from the storm »

The United States, which provided $100,000 in emergency aid to communist-run Cuba through private aid agencies after Hurricane Gustav hit the island August 30, said that it was considering additional emergency aid for Cuba because of Ike. Watch as winds and waves pound Cuba »

It is 9-11 — 35 percent of the Democrat Party voters believe Bush was behind it.

Ike — the cleanup. FEMA is a perfect example of U.S. Congressional oversight — FEMA semi-trucks filled with ice sit for days in staging area

The largest hurricane to hit Texas in recorded history exposes heroes and losers. Free enterprise, private sector businesses are the heroes. No. 1 – HEB supermarkets were open within 24 hours of the storm throughout Houston with truckloads of ice, food and water.

Walmart and Sam’s Club gets the No. 2 award for full service within 48 hours.

FEMA is a disgrace and should be shut down. There are hundreds of generator trucks parked at Sam Houston Race Track with no apparent system to distribute them. A new report by “Pat and Ed” on 700 AM radio has the FEMA ice trucks sitting idle at the Reliant Stadium stageing center for nearly a  week, then sent to an air base in Sagine, Texas to melt out of sight at an air force base.

This is an example of the waste of the Congressionally managed FEMA project.

Joke of the day: Callers were giving advice on gas station openings, supermarkets with ice and FEMA POD locations.

A joker called in to report that FEMA was handing out $500 checks for those who arrived at the George R. Brown convention center at 5:00 a.m. Hundreds showed up to find it was a hoax. (This ain’t New Orleans).

Instead of free money, some aggressive “victims” were arrested for disorderly conduct and out during the dawn to dusk curfew.

Josh Howard, Mavericks NBA player and Obama supporter doesn’t celebrate July Fourth

In a video posted on YouTube, Josh Howard is shown at Allen Iverson’s charity flag football game in July. When the national anthem is being sung, various participants are shown mugging for the camera. When the camera gets to Howard, he says: ” ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is going on. I don’t celebrate this [expletive (shit?)]. I’m black.”

Why?

Recent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives on Obama’s payroll — Senator Chris Dodd oversees Freddie and Fannie and has received hundreds of thousands in contributions from them. Barney Frank’s lover was a director on Fannie

UPDATE: Oct. 2, 2008

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefited from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.

So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

Enron executives are in prison over much less. In fact far more money was lost to investors after Mr. Frank, trumpeted the great management of Freddie Mack and Fannie May.

We thank Bill O’Reilly for bringing up Barney Frank’s role. Fortunately, we still have a free press in this country. Wait until ‘09, if Obama wins he and Nancy Pelosi promise to invoke the “Fairness Doctrine.”

Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.

Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.

“It’s absolutely a conflict,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?

“If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane,” added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. “But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.”

Did you read about this in the New York Times, Washington Post or San Francisco Chronicle?

UPDATE: 9/25/08

Countrywide Financial, the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, made large, previously undisclosed home loans to two additional executives of Fannie Mae, the government-chartered firm at the center of the U.S. credit crisis.

This is what Lindsey Graham said on Greta’s show: “And this deal that’s on the table now is not a very good deal. Twenty percent of the money that should go to retire debt that will be created to solve this problem winds up in a housing organization called ACORN that is an absolute ill-run enterprise, and I can’t believe we would take money away from debt retirement to put it in a housing program that doesn’t work.”

Imagine what $140,000,000 can do to for ACORN and the Democrat party?

The FBI is investigating Freddie, Fannie, and AGI.
One of Countrywide’s previously undisclosed customers at Fannie was Jamie Gorelick, an influential Democratic Party figure whose $960,000 mortgage refinancing in 2003 was handled through a program reserved for influential figures and friends of Countrywide’s chief executive at the time, Angelo Mozilo. Ms. Gorelick was Fannie Mae’s vice chairman at the time. [Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, listening to testimony on Capitol Hill in April, got a Countrywide refinancing while at Fannie Mae.] Associated Press

Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, listening to testimony on Capitol Hill in April, got a Countrywide refinancing while at Fannie Mae.

Another Countrywide client was recently ousted Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd, though it isn’t clear whether he received special treatment on two $3 million mortgage refinancings he made when he was the company’s chief operating officer.

In an interview, Ms. Gorelick said she had no knowledge of receiving special treatment. A financial adviser to Mr. Mudd said he received interest rates in line with the prevailing market.

The Fannie loans — including a series of already reported preferential loans to former Fannie chief executives James Johnson and Franklin Raines — underscore the close connections between Countrywide and Fannie Mae and raise potential conflict-of-interest issues.

UPDATE: 9/24/08

Statement by John McCain, May 25, 2006:

Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.

Mac and Mae meltdown. Which Democrats benefited from the quasi-government agencies?

UPDATE: 9/24/2008

Opensecrets.com has looked into the public records of direct contributions from the organizations of Freddie and Fannie, not including the donations from top executives. The FBI is opening major investigations into the actions of the organizations.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Invest in Democrats

Published by Lindsay Renick Mayer on July 16, 2008 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

(For an updated chart that includes contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s PACs and employees to ALL lawmakers back to 1989, including to their leadership PACs, go here.) and data The federal government recently announced that it will come to the rescue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two embattled mortgage buyers that for years have pursued a lobbying strategy to get lawmakers on their side. Both companies have poured money into lobbying and campaign contributions to federal candidates, parties and committees as a general tactic, but they’ve also directed those contributions strategically. In the 2006 election cycle, Fannie Mae was giving 53 percent of its total $1.3 million in contributions to Republicans, who controlled Congress at that time. This cycle, with Democrats in control, they’ve reversed course, giving the party 56 percent of their total $1.1 million in contributions. Similarly, Freddie Mac has given 53 percent of its $555,700 in contributions to Democrats this cycle, compared to the 44 percent it gave during 2006.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also strategically given more contributions to lawmakers currently sitting on committees that primarily regulate their industry. Fifteen of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most from the two companies combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, has received the most from Fannie and Freddie’s PACs and employees ($133,900 since 1989). Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) has received $65,500. Kanjorski chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.
Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Name	Office	Party/State	Total
1. Dodd, Christopher	S	D-CT	$133,900
2. Kerry, John	S	D-MA	$111,000
3. Obama, Barack	S	D-IL	$105,849
4. Clinton, Hillary	S	D-NY	$75,550
5. Kanjorski, Paul E	H	D-PA	$65,500

This is a story that you won’t read about in the mainstream media. The Clinton administration marching orders to open up home loans to people unqualified, (socialization of home ownership). Today, the Democrats have taken over the U.S. Congress and have a 50/50 chance to take over the White House.

Look into the Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama connection — they have recieved millions of dollars from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Chris Dodd also received a sweet deal from Countrywide. These same people in “public service” are not investigating the corruption. For the past two years, the Democrats have held the majority controlling status of the House and Senate. So they will not turn in their own.

“Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 on the list is Sen. Barack Obama.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, many people who couldn’t afford them… Now remember: Obama’s ads and stump speeches attack McCain and Republican policies for the current financial turmoil. It is demonstrably not Republican policy and worse, it appears the man attacking McCain — Sen. Obama — was at the head of the line when the piggies lined up at the Fannie and Freddie trough for campaign bucks.

Sen. Barack Obama: No. 2 on the Fannie/Freddie list of favored politicians after just two years in the Senate.

Next time you see that ad, you might notice he fails to mention that part of the Fannie and Freddie problem.”

Now let’s look at Franklin Raines, Barack Obama’s campaign manager — previously a Fannie Mae top executive.

This story is serious but it won’t receive any attention from the mainstream media who benefit from a socialist America and Barack Obama as President.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also strategically given more contributions to lawmakers currently sitting on committees that primarily regulate their industry. Fifteen of the 25 lawmakers who have received the most from the two companies combined since the 1990 election sit on either the House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, has received the most from Fannie and Freddie’s PACs and employees ($133,900 since 1989). Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) has received $65,500. Kanjorski chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.”

The names of the top four recipients of Campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie over the last 10 years is also interesting – Christopher Dodd, John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (all top Democrats for those keeping a scorecard).

About Franklin Raines and James Johnson

James A. Johnson (born December 24, 1943) is a United States Democratic Party political figure. He was the campaign manager for Walter Mondale’s failed 1984 presidential bid and chaired the vice presidential selection committee for the presidential campaign of John Kerry. He was involved in the vice-presidential selection process for the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama.
Johnson began his career as a faculty member at Princeton University, later moving on to the United States Senate as a staff member and to the Dayton-Hudson Corporation (now Target Corp.) as director of public affairs. He was executive assistant to Vice President Walter Mondale during the entire Carter Administration (1977-1981). Later, he founded and headed Public Strategies, a private consulting firm, from 1981 to 1985 before leaving for Lehman Brothers.

From 1991 to 1998, he served as chairman and chief executive officer of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the quasi-public organization that guarantees mortgages for millions of American homeowners. Previously, he was vice chairman of Fannie Mae (1990-1991). An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight report from September 2004 found that, during Johnson’s tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses that they would have otherwise not earned.

As of 2006, he is a vice chairman of the private banking firm Perseus LLC, a position he has held since 2001. He is also a board member at Goldman Sachs, Gannett Company, Inc., a media holding group, KB Home, a home construction firm, Target Corporation, Temple-Inland, and UnitedHealth Group.

Johnson has also served as chairman of both the Kennedy Center for the Arts (1996-2004) and the Brookings Institution (1994-2003). He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Friends of Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.

On May 22, Democratic Party officials confidentially divulged that Obama had asked Johnson “to lead the process” for selecting Obama’s running mate.On June 4, 2008, Obama announced the formation of a three person committee to vet vice presidential candidates, including Johnson. However, Johnson soon became a source of controversy when it was reported that he had received loans directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, a company implicated in the U.S. subprime mortgage lending crisis. Although he was not accused of any wrongdoing and was initially defended by Obama on the grounds that he was simply an unpaid volunteer, Johnson announced he would step down from the vice-presidential vetting position on June 11, 2008 in order to avoid being a distraction to Obama’s campaign.

On September 19, the McCain/Palin campaign released an ad showing Obama linked him to Johnson.

What does Don Imus have to say about his old pals? They threw him under the train.

Give us your thoughts, my friends.

Citgo guilty of environmental negligence and poisoning two rivers in Louisiana — Fined $13 million

Citgo, the refining and gas station company fully owned and controlled by Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA headed by Hugo Chavez, pleaded guilty and was fined $13 million for negligently discharging pollutants into two rivers in Louisiana. The negligence resulted in about 53,000 barrels of oil being spilled into the rivers after a heavy rainstorm in June 2006, and poisoning the water ways, according to the government.

The penalty is the largest ever for a criminal misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Water Act, the Justice Department in Washington said, Citgo entered its plea Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Lake Charles.

PBS Democratic Party propaganda exposed by viewers — one sided poll is a laugher

Taxpayer supported PBS should at least try and show some restraint during the runup to a national election. But the programing executives do all they can to get Obama/Biden in the White House and complete the project of one party rule in the United States.

The media executives at PBS published a survey asking if Sarah Palin was qualified to be Vice President.

But there were no such surveys about Obama, Biden or Hillary were there?

Here are some examples of citizen journalists remarks buried on the PBS ombudsman Web page.

WIll you see this in your daily newspaper? Nah. And the Democratic Party promises to bring back the Fairness Doctrine after they take over the White House. Why do they have to go that far?

I am once again aghast and stunned that the PBS would be so involved in politics that they actually circulated the “is Sarah Palin qualified to be Vice President” poll. How dare you use federally subsidized taxpayer platform for your own political ambitions: have you know shame?

You code of ethics mentions a “neutral platform” and that means you do not have the right to back a candidate. The poll regarding the qualifications of Sarah Palin would only be put out by a biased, liberal attack apparatus: Everybody else knows that she is well enough qualified to be President, far far more than Obama. It is a moot point and undebateable fact that Obama is not qualified by experience, background or character to be President; yet you have the audacity to question whether the sitting governor of the State of Alaska is qualified.

The mere asking of the question is an unethical violation of your own “neutrality” status. As for me; Every night I pray to God that Obama does not reside at the White House.

James Steven Slater, Fort Worth, TX

Obama — what do you know about ACORN and the garden to nowhere?

Inside the Chicago Democrat machine

Updated: 10/11/08

By Mick Gregory

Watch John McCain roll up his sleeves and bring up ACORN, the Citi Bank intimidation lawsuit, the Annenberg $100 million to nowhere and Tony Rezco.

Jailed political fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer who helped launch Barack Obama on his political career, is whispering secrets to federal prosecutors about corruption in Illinois and the political fallout could be explosive.

Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration faces multiple federal investigations over how it handed out jobs and money with advice from Rezko, is considered the most vulnerable but second is non other than Barack Obama.

Rezko also was very friendly with Obama – offering him a job when he finished law school, funding his earliest political campaigns and purchasing a lot next to his house.

Rezko showed Obama around to the king makers and linked him up with Bill Ayers. The rest as they say is history.

Here is another story that  appears to be felony fraud, but you didn’t read it in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle or Washington Post. The tabloid Chicago Sun-Times reported a $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan — a Democrat who is supporting Obama’spresidential bid — is investigating “whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received,” Cara Smith, Madigan’s deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.

In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a “member initiative,” the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006.

Madigan’s office has notified Obama’s presidential campaign of the probe, which was launched this week. But Obama’sactions in awarding the money are not a focus of the investigation, Smith said.

Questions about the grant, though, come as spending on local pet projects has become an issue in Obama’s campaign against John McCain.

Obama andKenny Smith announced the “Englewood Botanic Garden Project” at a January 2000 news conference at Englewood High School. Obama was in the midst of a failed bid to oust South Side Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush for a seat in Congress. The garden — planned near and under L tracks between 59th Place and 62nd Place — fell outside of Obama’s Illinois Senate district but within the congressional district’s borders.

Obama vowed to “work tirelessly” to raise $1.1 million to help Smith’s organization turn the City of Chicago-owned lot into an oasis of trees and paths. But Obama lost the congressional race, no more money was raised, and today the garden site is a mess of weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage. The only noticeable improvement is a gazebo. The only tree was sawed down and removed.

The “garden to nowhere” ended up in the pockets of Obama’s campaign staff and maybe Obama himself.

In a previous interview, Smith said the state grant money was legitimately spent, mostly on underground site preparation. Underground? You mean out of sight.

But no one ever took out construction permits required for such work, city records show. And a contractor who Smith said did most of the work told a reporter all he did was cut down trees and grade the site with a Bobcat.

Citing the garden’s failure to take root, NeighborSpace — an umbrella group for dozens of community gardens citywide — moved Sept. 9 to return the site to the city. Its action followed a July 11 Sun-Times report on the grant.

Obama spokesman Michael Ortiz said Wednesday the senator’s staff in Washington will monitor the Madigan probe and an additional review under way by Gov. Blagojevich’s administration to make sure “the taxpayer funds allocated for the construction of the garden are recuperated from CBHA if the agencies determine that the funds were not properly spent.” Obama’s goal is to ensure the site “be used in a way that benefits the community and that any taxpayer dollars allocated are spent wisely,” Ortiz said.

The relationship between Smith and Obama dates to at least 1997, when Obama wrote a letter that Smith used to help the housing association win city funding for an affordable-housing development near the garden site. Plans called for more than 50 homes; a dozen ultimately were built.

Smith also has donated $550 to Obama campaign funds.

The Sun-Times learned about Karen Smith’s involvement in the project through an Aug. 12 Freedom of Information Act response from a lawyer for Blagojevich¹s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. The department, according to the lawyer, had ³discovered² 52 pages of ³additional documents² omitted from an initial response in May to a Sun-Times¹ Freedom of Information Act request about the grant.

Neither Smith nor his wife has been accused of any wrongdoing. Smith and his lawyer did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

In an interview in July, Smith said he was never able to raise the money needed for the garden. But the state grant awarded by Obamawas spent properly, he said, on the undergroundwork, withmost of the work done by a contractor whose name Smith got wrong.

The Sun-Times tracked down the contractor, Rodolfo Marin, in Austin, Texas, where he now lives.

“What I was hired for was: Clean up the area and cut the trees — that’s all,” Marin said. He said he rented a Bobcat — a sort of small bulldozer — for the project. “If he spent about $3,000 with me, that was too much.”

Visit this link for more details: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/09/07/barack-obamas-1-1-million-botanical-garden-er-100-000-gazebo

McCain showed true leadership by stopping his campaign and asking Obama, the Jr. Senator from Chicago Illinois, to help organize a financial bailout loan. What did he get for it? He was insulted by the Democrat leadership.

So why did the Democrats earmark millions to ACORN?

This is what Lindsey Graham said on the Greta Van Susteren show: “And this deal that’s on the table now is not a very good deal. Twenty percent of the money that should go to retire debt that will be created to solve this problem winds up in a housing organization called ACORN that is an absolute ill-run enterprise, and I can’t believe we would take money away from debt retirement to put it in a housing program that doesn’t work.”

Note: ACORN is a front group for Democrat/Socialists convicted of massive voter fraud. Google it yourself.

Dogs have a sense of fair play. More so than the Democrat Machine — Gwen Ifill of PBS will benefit if Sarah Palin fails

By Mick Gregory

Dogs are becoming more intelligent and are even learning morals from human contact, scientists reported at a conference in Budapest recently.

They say the fact that dogs’ play rarely escalates into a fight shows the animals abide by social rules.

During one study, dogs which held up a paw were rewarded with a food treat.

When a lone dog was asked to raise its paw but received no treat, the researchers found it begged for up to 30 minutes.

But when they tested two dogs together but rewarded only one, the dog which missed out soon stopped playing the game.

Dr Friederike Range, of the University of Vienna, who led the study, said: “Dogs show a strong aversion to inequity.”

So we look at the PBS modirator for tonight’s VP Debate. If Obama wins the election, she is going to receive a $350,000 to $500,000 bonus  for her book she is promoting on Obama and other African  Democrats.

The moderator of tonight’s vice-presidential debate is writing a book to come out on the day the next president takes the oath of office that aims to “shed new light” on Democratic candidate Barack Obama and other “emerging young African American politicians” who are “forging a bold new path to political power.”

Gwen Ifill of the Public Broadcasting Service program “Washington Week” is promoting “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” in which she argues the “black political structure” of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality.

Ifill declined to return telephone messages from ”The Factor” and WND asking for a comment about her book project and whether its success would be expected should Obama lose. But she has faced criticism previously for not treating candidates of both major parties the same.

During a vice-presidential candidate debate she moderated in 2004 – when Democrat John Edwards attacked Republican Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton – the vice president said, “I can respond, Gwen, but it’s going to take more than 30 seconds.”

Ms. Ifill was lauded for snapping back at Mr. Cheney.

“Well, that’s all you’ve got,” she told Mr. Cheney.

Ifill told the Associated Press Democrats were delighted with her answer, because they “thought I was being snippy to Cheney.”

But she also was cited in complaints PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler said he received after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivered her nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., earlier this month.

Some viewers complained of a “dismissive” look by Ifill during her report on Palin’s speech. According to Getler, some also said she wore a look of “disgust” while reporting on the Republican candidate.

Google the facts yourself if you have any doubts. Care to comment?

Note to new readers: PBS is a nationalized, taxpayer supported news medium.

Conclusion: Your loyal dog Spots has more sense of fairness than the mainstream media. Nothing will get in the way of elite liberal Democrats in their power grab. This smells awful. Or are you OK with it?

It’s patriotic to pay more taxes? Say it ain’t so, Joe! Joe, there you go again!

She connected with the West and Midwest.

Sarah stood toe to toe with an old Democrat who has been in Congress since she was in second grade.

“This was a knockout. She did the best of any debate I’ve ever seen.” — Rudy Guliani

She is more than qualified. She is a maverick governor of a large, important state.

She uses plain talk.

“McCain rang the warning bell in 2005. The Democrat Party ignored that warning and shut it off. That’s why we are in the financial bail out we are in,” Sarah Palin.

Create jobs, lower taxes, end the war with victory…

– Sarah Palin

Look, $180 billion to Kenya’s poor?

Energy independence.

I can’t wait to get to work there.

Did Joe Biden’s kids go to public schools? Did Clinton’s? Did Kerry’s? Did Obama’s?

Why do the teachers unions send their dues to Democrat elitists?

Joe there you go again.

Our schools need to be ramped up. Palin comes from a family of school teachers. Increase the standards.

“We need people from middle America’s opinions. They know what hard work and morals are about.”

“I’m totally blown away,” Senator Fred Thomson.

I’m so happy for her. She has been made to look like a bafoon. She has placed shame on a lot of people if they are capable of shame,” Thomson.

Obama said he would sit down with Amadidajon.

Biden said he was against coal. All coal in the U.S.

Try and say the following with a straight face to a liberal friend:

Senator Biden made the performance of a lifetime. He is substanitive, presidential and has gravitas. Sarah Palin, the hockey mom, pitbull with lipstick was an embarassment. What does she know about governing? She was an embarassment!”

New York ABC radio newsman George Weber was a gay pedophile, killed by his boy date. Sanchez, the gay pedophile train engineer was texting teenage boys seconds before he crashed and killed 25 people in LA

The mainstream news has been filtering the news and making everything nice and PC for the dumbed down readers. They only report what fits the “progressive” agenda. 

With the rise of blogs, the truth can now be reported. Did you know that the longtime New York radio newsman was paying teenage runaways for gay sex? George Weber was found stabbed to death in his Brooklyn apartment Sunday morning, cops said. Now we find he was accidently killed by a troubled teen, paid to have rough gay sex with the radio newsman. 

The bloody body of Weber, a passionate liberal fan of the city who spent a decade doing local news on WABC morning radio, was found just after 9 a.m. when he didn’t show up for work. It can now be told that Weber, an outspoken Democrat, was a gay pedophile. He was a chicken hawk who paid teenage boys, often runaways money for sex. A boy who just turned 16 accidently killed Weber during a session of “rough” gay sex.

Weber, 47, was freelancing at ABC’s national radio network after being laid off last year.

 

What kind of books or DVDs did Mr. Sanchez have in his home? Doesn’t the media look into these things? Oh, wait, Sanchez was a gay pedophile Democrat, not a Christian Republican.

The first results of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation are in. Surprising no one, it’s now confirmed that train driver Robert Sanchez was sending text messages moments before crashing a train full of people into an oncoming freight train, killing 25 people. His last text message was sent 22 seconds before the two trains collided. Sanchez was an outspoken Democrat and Obama reporter with a keen interest in teenage boys.

While we’ll likely will never be able to definitively say one way or the other due to the lack of eyewitnesses, those 58 seconds between received message and sent message are likely the reason why Sanchez missed the “red lights” on the track as the freight train approached. Shouldn’t we know what Sanchez was texting? What if it was something like “the brakes don’t work well?”

The cellular network clock and the train’s onboard computer clock are almost certainly set slightly differently, so the final, incoming text message may have arrived somewhat earlier or later than 22 seconds before the crash. If the timestamps are reconciled exactly, the NTSB could then use information about the speed and location of the train to determine exactly where Sanchez’s train was when he took his eyes off the track ahead and whether that is what likely caused him to miss the signals. The content of the message is important, also. If it was a urgent warning, rather than just a friendly “HOW R U?” Sanchez shouldn’t have had to rush back with an answer. Was he having text sex games with the teenage boy?

Why didn’t you read about this in the LA Times or San Francisco Chronicle? How about this?

There is a dark side to the tragedy

Sanchez’s “partner,” Daniel Burton, allegedly hanged himself in the garage of the home they shared in Crestline, a community in the San Bernardino Mountains about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.

Burton’s sister, Carolann Peschell, said she suspected foul play and never believed her 39-year-old brother, who was HIV-positive, would have killed himself. He had found a job at a gourmet restaurant and sounded well when she spoke to him two weeks before his unusual death.

“He was doing fine; he was happy, no signs of depression,” Peschell said. “We didn’t feel my brother was capable of doing this to himself.” He was a gentle man and hanging is a brutal way to kill yourself.

Peschell, who described Sanchez as “very odd, very strange, and obese” said her suspicions were not investigated throughly by San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators.

A coroner’s report said the two men had argued the night before Burton’s body was found; Sanchez had told Burton they should break up. That would draw attention by a professional CSI team.

Peschell kept her brother’s purported suicide note, which read: “Rob, Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you. Please take care of yourself and Ignatia. I love you both very much.” Ignatia was their dog.

From KFI radio, the John and Ken Show, Los Angeles

Newsman Eric Leonard reported on KFI radio (3:15 PT today) that the driver in the LA Metrolink crash last week, Robert M. Sanchez, is suspected of having killed his male lover 5 years ago. Leonard reports that the that the family of the lover, Daniel Charles Burton, has always believed that Sanchez killed Burton. The Burtons tried to get the police to investigate their son’s death as a murder to no avail. The death appeared to be a suicide, but the family has handwriting experts who say that the handwriting on the suicide note was not Burton’s. The family also told the police that Burton was HIV positive and that he and Sanchez had a fight right before the “suicide.” More recently, the Burtons called Metrolink to warn them that Sanchez was unstable.

Eric Leonard also reports that “it looks clear from [Metrolink's] review of the [train] controls, that Sanchez did actually apply some speed controls within seconds of the crash but never braked.”

Would Sanchez have lost his home? That could be a motive. Was Sanchez a chicken hawk preoccupied with teen texting? He was arrested and plead guilty to theft of expensive electronic gaming equipment. And on Sept. 2 his train killed a pedestrian. Was Sanchez texting then too?

What caused the subprime mortgage meltdown?

UPDATE: Oct. 8, 2008:

One of the funniest and most politically searing comedy sketches in years has vanished from the Web site of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Visitor comments asking about its disappearance are also being scrubbed from the Web site. The sketch — a harsh indictment of the housing meltdown that led to last week’s bailout bill — was clearly too much truth for someone to handle.

The seven-minute sketch featured a mock news conference of Democratic Congressional leaders on the bailout bill, during which Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank inadvertently acknowledge that it was Congress that blocked reform and effective oversight of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Then SNL comic Kristen Wiig, playing Speaker Pelosi, introduces a parade of “victims” of the housing crisis. These “real Americans” include two jobless deadbeats who bought houses with no down-payment and a preppy couple who can’t flip the dozen time-share condos they bought as a speculative investment.

They were followed by actors portraying the real-life couple of Herbert and Marion Sandler. They explained how they built a mortgage company that specialized in subprime mortgages, which they sold to Wachovia Bank for $24.2 billion in 2006 — one of the worst acquisitions by any company ever. It helped precipitate the collapse of Wachovia last week.

The Sandlers were hustled off the stage by “Speaker Pelosi” after they said they couldn’t understand why they were invited to a news conference of “victims” since they had done so well out of the housing crisis.

They were followed by financier George Soros, identified as “Owner, Democratic Party.” The actor portraying Mr. Soros informs the group that the $700 billion bailout package “basically belongs to me” and that he has decided to short the U.S. dollar. That will trigger a devaluation “either Tuesday or Wednesday. I haven’t decided which yet. It will depend on how I feel.”

The brutally wicked sketch must have caused tremors in left-wing circles. The Sandlers and Mr. Soros have all been prime financial backers of independent political groups that have secured huge influence in the Democratic Party and helped fuel the rise of Barack Obama.

The Sandlers, for example, were major donors to the left-wing radio network Air America as well as the liberal housing lobby ACORN, a major player in pressuring banks into making more subprime mortgages. They also donated $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, the liberal group that insulted General David Petraeus as “General Betray Us” last year. Mr. Soros contributed a like amount. In turn, Eli Pariser, the head of MoveOn.org, was quite candid after the 2004 election about the influence this left-wing cabal hoped to exercise: “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it, and we are going to take it back.”

No doubt the Sandlers and Mr. Soros were displeased with the Saturday Night Live sketch. Herbert Sandler told the Associated Press that its portrayal of him as a predatory lender was “crap.” “We are being unfairly tarred. People have been telling us to speak out for some time, but we didn’t think it was appropriate. That was clearly a mistake.”

I suspect that some of the people the Sandlers have spoken to — or complained to — are the corporate overseers of NBC. That may explain why the bailout sketch has been airbrushed from the network’s Web site and will likely never be shown again.

That’s a shame, because rarely has political satire been more timely, pointed and, in many respects, so truthful.

– The WSJ Online.

 

 

The mainstream media was able to keep a lid on it for 30 years. Thanks to individuals in radio, FOX News and now a strong online communications source, we get a detailed picture of the redistribution of wealth that has gone on in America. It started under the cloak of the Fairness Doctrine and Jimmy Carter’s presidency with the Democrat Party controlling Congress, (like they do today).

This is from Artur Davis, a Democrat:

The current market crash was set in motion when Jimmy Carter and the democratic majority Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act. The act actually gave INCENTIVES to low income borrowers to get home mortgages they couldn’t afford. In 1995 Bill Clinton revised the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to approve subprime mortgages even though it might result in defaulting on the loan, because borrowers couldn’t afford to keep up with the payments. The risk of defaulting on those loans was huge, but it was okay after Clinton’s revisions because he made it law that the government would back up the loans, like a co-signer. Banks then were FORCED to give out $1 Trillion in new SUBPRIME loans. Does that number sound familiar? It should. That is the exact amount being proposed to bailout the banks and financial markets today.

Artur Davis admits the democrats were at fault. The republicans, especially John McCain, warned in 2004 that tax payers would be stuck with the bill if something wasn’t done to correct the accounting fraud, and bad loans stemming from the Community Reinvestment Act. Republicans also warned in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were at the center of the problem, and both agaencies were owned by the Federal government, so they had the power to stop the train before it crashed the stock market today. Democrats got angry, as seen the video above, and said there was no problem, so they blocked any effort to reform the lending practices, and now we have the stock market, and mortgage market crash that could cause another 1929 depression. The bailout will cost tax payers more than $4,000 each. Thank you democrat party for creating the worst financial disaster in our country’s history. To make things worse, Barack Obama says he’ll raise taxes if he is elected.

Obama didn’t know Bill Ayers is a socialist? Why didn’t he Google him?

How dumb does Obama and the Democrat machine think Americans are? Is he trying to say he didn’t know that Bill Ayers bombed the Pentagon and a police station? Ayers said he wished he had bombed more in a Sept. 11, 2001 interview. Obama was a politcal partner with Ayers for years. The two community organizers were members of ACORN and headed groups that choose who got a share of $100 million from the Annenberg Challenge for the Woods Foundation; that was only a few years ago in 2002.

Can you imagine the U.S. electing an anti-American socialist as president over a war hero who nearly gave his life for this country?

Here is what you get if you Google Bill Ayers — he spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the “Weather Underground,” an anti-War group that protested U.S. policies by bombing the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and a string of other government buildings. The FBI labeled them a “domestic terrorist group.”

Today, Ayers and his wife — fellow former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn — live in upscale Hyde Park, where they moved after surrendering in 1980. Federal charges against the two were dropped because of improper surveillance, so they avoided prison.

Ayers and Dohrn have raised two sons of their own and adopted a third boy whose parents were Weather Underground members who went to prison. Along the way, they met a rising political star named Barack Obama, who lived in their neighborhood, just a few blocks away.

The Ayers-Obama relationship became a hot topic in this year’s Democratic presidential primary debate. It is “an issue certainly Republicans will be raising” should Obama be the Democratic nominee for president, Obama rival Hillary Clinton said. But the press has tried to prove her wrong.

In 1995, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a “meet-and-greet” at their house to introduce Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s campaign. Ayers also served alongside Obama between December 1999 and December 2002 on the board of the not-for-profit Woods Fund of Chicago. That board met four times a year, and members would see each other at occasional dinners the group hosted. This was the group that controlled $100 million of the Annenburg Challege money.

Ayers, a Glen Ellyn (upper middle class neighborhood) native who became active in SDS while attending the University of Michigan, is the son of late Commonwealth Edison CEO Thomas G. Ayers. Ayers has praised his dad for standing by him while he was on the lam.

A book Ayers penned about those years, Fugitive Days, landed him in hot water on Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, the New York Times ran a story about the book in which Ayers said, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Ayers has a Web site, billayers.org, in which he blogs about politics and other subjects. He lets friends and foes post comments.

In response to an Ayers posting, “End the War,” a reader wrote, “You are an anti-American communist and a terrorist. I hope you get what you deserve over and over and over.”

The bombing was horrible, but that was 40 years ago. What has Ayres and Obama done for socialists lately?

This from Stan Kurtz

In one of the first book-length scholarly studies of ACORN, Organizing Urban America, Rutgers University political scientist Heidi Swarts describes this group, so dear to Barack Obama, as “oppositional outlaws.” Swarts, a strong supporter of ACORN, has no qualms about stating that its members think of themselves as “militants unafraid to confront the powers that be.” “This identity as a uniquely militant organization,” says Swarts, “is reinforced by contentious action.” ACORN protesters will break into private offices, show up at a banker’s home to intimidate his family, or pour protesters into bank lobbies to scare away customers, all in an effort to force a lowering of credit standards for poor and minority customers. According to Swarts, long-term ACORN organizers “tend to see the organization as a solitary vanguard of principled leftists…the only truly radical community organization.”

ACORN’s Inside Strategy
Yet ACORN’s entirely deserved reputation for militance is balanced by its less-well-known “inside strategy.” ACORN has long employed Washington-based lobbyists who understand very well how the legislative game is played. ACORN’s national lobbyists may encourage and benefit from the militant tactics of their base, but in the halls of congress they play the game with smooth sophistication. The untold story of ACORN’s central role in the financial meltdown is about the one-two punch to the banking system administered by this outside/inside strategy.

Can you imagine the U.S. electing an anti-American socialist as president over a war hero who nearly gave his life for this country?

Obama has more respect for Kim Jong-Il and Hugo Chavez than John McCain Sarah Palin. Maybe you do too. That’s where we are in 2008.

One-term pledge — John McCain will serve one term — putting our country first

The October surprise may be a MOAB. At the next debate, McCain is planning to say, “My friends, you know that I put America first, I have most of my life. If you elect me your president, I promise to serve one term, but put my all into that one term.”

I discussed this with a high level Republican strategist and a “Perot” independent corporate affairs communications expert.

This will give Hillary Clinton PUMAS another good reason to vote for McCain.

It saves America from total Democrat control of all branches of government and no check and balance to slow down the Democrats push to transform to a socialist system. The Democrats are on the verge of capturing a 60 percent (filibuster proof) majority. And there is no one there to veto a sweeping socialist bill anyway.

This will also give Sarah Palin four years of on the job training.

“Obama was eager to bail out his buddies at Freddie Mack, Fannie May and AIG, but he didn’t want to bail you out on your inflated mortgages,” John McCain

Houston, we have a problem. I see dead people voting.

By Mick Gregor

Massive voter fraud by ACORN is sweeping the nation. Much of the spike in registration of new Democrats is coming from these efforts. Even the polls are changed due to sample size adujustments made to match the surge in Democrat voter registration. Sample size is weighted 10 to 25 percent in favor of Democrats before the pollsters make their calls.

More than 1.9 million people are registered to vote in Harris County alone. A TV news team found 4,000 people dead on the voter roles. That’s Houston an island of Democrats in a huge red state.

Now look at Ohio. A man who has come out and spoke about the voter-registration scandal told The New York Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in a blatant violation of Ohio and federal voter laws.

“Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they’ll give me a dollar to sign up,” said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

Take that into account and add it to Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos that had Republicans switching over to vote for Hillary duriing the primaries and you can see that there is an artificial surge in Democrat registrations. Many states required that you declare you were a Democrat. Legal or intimidation tactic, it didn’t matter, thousands of Republicans switched to defeat Hillary.

Investigative reporter Amy Davis on Houston’s Local 2 reported how hundreds of voters could sway this year’s election — voters who are not even alive.

“All-in-all, a great person, a great woman, just a wonderful person” is how Alexis Guidry described her mother to Local 2 Investigates.

“As far back as I can remember, they’ve always voted in the election,” Guidry said of her parents.

The March 2008 Primary was no exception. Voting records show Alexis’ mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home.

“It was just very shocking, a little unsettling,” said Alexis Guidry.

It’s unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.

“She’d be very upset,” Guidry said when asked what her mom would think.

Trent Seibert, of Texas Watchdog, says you should be too.

“This is really disquieting. It’s concerning. It’s worrisome,” said Seibert.

He heads up the non-partisan news group on the web.

Texas Watchdog compared Harris County’s voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and found more than 4,000 matches — registered voters that, it appears, are already dead.

Harris County is overwhelming Democratic as are most big urban areas. Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S. and has a popular Democrat as mayor, Bill White.

Some of them, like Henderson Hill’s late wife Linda, voted postmortem.

“I would like to know who did it, myself,” Hill told Davis.

We don’t know who used Linda Hill’s or Gloria Guidry’s IDs to vote, but we do know if their names had been purged from voter rolls after they died, using their IDs wouldn’t have worked.

“This is a red flag. No matter where you are, this should set off alarm bells,” Seibert said. “Someone needs to take a look at this.”

“We just kind of work with the systems that we’re allowed to,” explained George Hammerlein, the director of Harris County Voter Registration.

The county’s system for culling deceased voters from the roll seems painfully primitive.

We watched employees clip obituaries from the newspaper and sort through probate records for names matching those on the roll. But, Hammerlein says while fraud is a concern, for his office, disenfranchising voters is a bigger one.

“We do all we can, but you know we’d rather err on the side of leaving people on the roll instead of taking them off inadvertently,” he said. But could that cautious “better safe than sorry” standard sway an election some say will be a close one?

Texas Watchdog found 4,462 registered voters who appear to be deceased.

“We’ve never had any evidence there’s a concerted attempt at fraud,” Hammerlein told Local 2. But there is evidence the state agency in charge of ensuring only eligible voters can vote is not.

The State Auditor’s Office conducted an audit of the voter registration system at the Secretary of State’s Office last November.

Auditors identified 49,049 registered voters state-wide who may have been ineligible to vote. Approximately 23,576 may have been deceased and another 23,114 were possible felons. And they found more than 2,359 duplicate records.

The auditor did not find any instances in which potentially ineligible voters actually voted, but they wrote, “Although the Secretary of State’s office has processes to identify many ineligible voters and remove them from the State’s voter registration list, improvements can be made.”

Almost a year after this audit, we wanted to know if the Secretary of State has made any improvements. Have they added any safeguards to the process?

No one from that office would talk to us on camera, but the Director of Elections told us, “We’d rather err in leaving someone on the roll than taking someone off.”

“If there’s something wrong here, if there’s something amiss, this is the worst election to have that happen, “Seibert warned. And Guidry agrees. “I don’t think it’s a matter that she would take lightly,” she said of her mom.

In what she calls an historic election, Guidry says her mother wouldn’t want anyone speaking for her.

“I think she would definitely do all that she could just to make sure things were on the up and up.”

We sent the information we showed you to the Director of Elections in Austin. She said her office refers any credible allegation of election fraud to the Attorney General for investigation. She said the cases we presented would be felony violations.

Visit www.texaswatchdog.org for more information about how Texas Watchdog found dead voters on the rolls.

Reports of voter fraud by liberal groups could change election results
Michelle Malkin calls this wave of fraud a “radical revolution”
that is “taking place in your backyard.”

And much of these efforts are funded by your tax dollars!

The radical group ACORN – which gets 40 percent of its funding
from you and me through taxes — has registered 1.27 million voters and now
is being exposed for fraudulent practices. The other 60 percent comes from the Democrat Party.

We are watching a constitutional crisis.

Who wrote Dreams From My Father? Not Obama but William Ayers?

The evidence of a close kinship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers is coming out in the open on blogs, talk shows and in magazines. The mainstream media is hoping it will all be “noise” with no consequences. After all, the election is in the bag for Obama with only three weeks left.

Jack Cashill has written a story in American Thinker about the timing and evidence of a ghost writer who may have written Dreams From My Father — the book that put Obama on the national stage.

Time Magazine called Dreams … “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

But Obama had not really written anything up until that. So, did he use a ghost writer? The evidence is there, it is very professional and has a wonderful style. So why doesn’t he name the ghost writer? Or why doesn’t the great writer come forward and say “It was all Obama, I just zipped it up a little.”

Greta Van Sustren is said to be about to break this story.

Come on, this is your time to get some credit. Call yourself just an editor. But let us know who you are?

Wait a minute, what if the ghost writer is Bill Ayres? That would show that Obama is a fabricated man, built by the life-long socialist Ayres.

This is the October surprise.

Joe the plumber is in deep sh*t now for speaking up against Obama

By Mick Gregory

You knew it would happen. Joe the Plumber’s 15 minutes of fame in last night’s debate have turned into a round of public humiliation for the wannabe business owner. The Toledo Blade is reporting that Joe has no plumber’s license.

To make matters worse, the Blade also found that the Ohio Department of Taxation placed a lien against Joe because $1,183 in personal property taxes had not been paid. The piling on has begun. The media is searching for more dirt on Joe. Why aren’t journalists looking at William Ayers and Obama’s ACORN support and the Fannie and Freddie financial disastor with as much vigor?

You know why, don’t you. Welcome to the new United Socialist/Democrat States! Where the media is in lockstep with Big Brother and Senator Government. Make way for a wave of taxes and government control not seen in this country since Jimmy Carter, or LBJ’s Great Society, maybe even FDR’s New Deal. It’s BO’s time.

It took a hard working, average citizen to expose the media propaganda and lack of reporting on Democrat candidate for president, Barack Obama. Rather than report on Obma’s ACORN and William Ayers long-term alliance with Obama’s political support, they turn to ripping into Joe from Ohio.

 

 

We know that more than 90 percent of the major media consider themselves liberal. Even more so, the “minor media” like loser reporters in Scranton and those working for the Stribe.

We know that the small town Scranton fat, homely liberal reporter who made up hearing people at McCain-Palin saying “terrorist,” etc.

Bottom-up change of America by Obama — Lowering the middle class

Trickle up poverty,  a phrase coined by someone who deserves an award or something, is probably not well liked by the far right. Why not try trickle up economic support?  Most of us consider ourselves “middle class.” I’d imagine even Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh think of themselves as middle class, on the upper end, of course.

For political “big tent” purposes, the middle class is now about 80 percent of the country, including the  millions who don’t pay income taxes. We now know that  Joe the Plumber will soon be too rich for middle class status or Obama’s tax cuts. Welcome to the new lower middle class.

The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn unpacks Barack Obama’s “tax cut for 95% of the people” hooey. The short version:

Now, if you have been following this so far, you have learned that people who pay no income tax will get an income tax refund. You have also learned that this check will represent relief for the payroll taxes these people do pay. And you have been assured that this rebate check won’t actually come out of payroll taxes, lest we harm Social Security.

You have to admire the audacity. With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul’s tax relief. Where a tax cut for payroll taxes paid will not in fact come from payroll taxes. And where all these plans come together under the rhetorical umbrella of “Making Work Pay.”

All of this is breathtakingly dishonest. (As Al Gore would say I think we need a lock box.)

Welcome to the world of MSM-lapdog-ism. But I can’t blame the MSM. McCain was too frozen in country club Republican politics to respond. 

Joe the bumbler gets Obama supporters ready for an international crisis

It will happen. Mark my words… I can think of at least four ways it will happen.

Thanks for the warning.

Joe Biden the bumbler just dropped another led balloon, saying that Obama will be tested with an international crisis from enemies of the U.S.

We don’t need on the job training for South Side of Chicago 47-year-old senator. What  kind of crisis? Why would supporters have to stand  by him as Biden asked?

What was Biden  thinking? You were not supposed to bring  scrutiny to  Obama, you almost had this won. What were you thinking?

Didn’t Joe Biden say Obama wasn’t up to the job a few months ago?

AP shocker — McCain and Obama tied in poll! Update: McCain ahead now!

The Battleground poll has been reporting a tightening since the last presidential debate, “The Joe The Plumber” debate.

Mick Gregory

Today, the red state tide is flowing in to McCain/Palin. No wonder Obma is asking supporters for more money today in massive emails as reported on Drudge.  

Yesterday, an Obama staffer inadvertantly leaked Democrat internal polls that showed that Pennsylvania had dramatically shifted to McCain in the past week. That key race was now a statistical tie. The flabby old socialist, Dem. Murtha is now behind by two points to a Republican new comer, I don’t even know the man’s name. I’ll Google it later.

Was the leak meant to throw off McCain so he will waste his  time? Maybe. But the real  polls also point  to a dramatic shift away from Obama.

The next day polling companies are following the trend. Three major polls show that there is now a tie, nation-wide. There seems to be no bump from Colin Powel’s vote endorsment of Obama.

“Drill here, drill now” and  the Democrat moritorium of offshore drilling lifted due to defalt,  has  helped bring down the  price of an  oil of barrel to $66 per barrel. I paid $2.38 a gallon in Texas.

“When you spread wealth around, it’s good for everyone,” Barack Obama.

October bomb shells — Obama was born in Kenya — Obama praises the Jew hating Khalidi — Sirhan Sirhan a political prisoner says Ayers

The story of Barack H. Obama being born in Kenya, not Hawaii has picked up traction. This could be a Constitutional crisis. Check out Democrat Phil Berg’s findings at ObamaCrimes.com.

But that’s not all, we now know that the LA Times has been suppressing a tape of a rich, jew-hating follower, and a very interesting friendship between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi.

But wait, there is more! Dreams of My Father was ghost written by Bill Ayers according to new forensic software. Why doesn’t Obama give Mr. Ayers the credit? Google BreitbartTV.com.

This just in:
Bill Ayer’s wrote a book called: Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism.

In the intro Ayer’s dedicates the book to all the political prisoners in the U.S. Sirhan Sirhan’s name is listed in the dedication. For those of you who are new to following politics, Sirhan Sirhan assassinated  Bobby Kennedy, the  Democrat front runner for president in 1968. Sirhan Sirhan is an Islamic terrorist serving several life sentences in a California prison. Sirhan Sirhan said the reason he killed Kennedy was his support for Jews and funding for Israel.

Check the intro here:

http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/pfdedicationbig.jpg

“A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi,” said McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. ” . . . The election is one week away, and it’s unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job — make information public.”

The Times on Tuesday issued a statement about its decision not to post the tape.

“The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it,” said the newspaper’s editor, Russ Stanton. “The Times keeps its promises to sources.”

What kind of “deal” did the “journalists” at the LA Times have with the Jew hater? To only use the tape to write a nice account of the meeting?

If not, write a new story with complete quotes, descriptions of the praise or lack of it from Obama. Any objective reader should ask the LA Times print the story or cancel their subscription.

Jamie Gold, the newspaper’s readers’ representative, said in a statement: “More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite — the L.A. Times brought the matter to light.”

Really, then the LA Times reporters are heroes? Let us all see the tape then.

Or, did an Obama lawyer suggest a lawsuit if the tape were released? Obama’s campaign already used government computers to try and smear Joe the Plumber.

The original article said that Obama’s friendships with Palestinian Americans in Chicago and his presence at Palestinian community events had led some to think he was sympathetic to the Palestinian viewpoint on Middle Eastpolitics. Obama publicly expresses a pro-Israel viewpoint that pleases many Jewish leaders.

In reporting on Obama’s presence at the dinner for Khalidi, the article noted that some speakers expressed anger at Israel and at U.S.foreign policy, but that Obama in his comments called for finding common ground.

It said that Khalidi in the 1970s often spoke to reporters on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Khalidi later lived near Obama while teaching at the University of Chicago. He is now a professor of Arab studies at Columbia University in New York.

But if Obama and ACORN pull off the win: Look forward to this from African-American Thomas Sowell:

“There is such a thing as a point of no return,” he says. “If Obama wins the White House and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and Senate, they will intervene in the economy and redistribute wealth. Yet their economic policies “will pale by comparison to what they will do in permitting countries to acquire nuclear weapons and turn them over to terrorists. Once that happens, we’re at the point of no return. The next generation will live under that threat as far out as the eye can see. . .This man [Obama] really does believe that he can change the world. And people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians.”

This we know:

While Teaching At The University Of Chicago , Obama And Khalidi Developed A “Longtime Relationship”:

“[O]bama’s Longtime Relationship With Columbia University Professor (And One-Time PLO Adviser) Rashid Khalidi Has Provoked Speculation In The Israeli Press That He May Be Secretly Anti-Zionist. Another Chicago Academic Ally Of Obama’s Is Professor William Ayers, A Weather Underground Radical In The 1970s.” ( Gene Lyons, Op-Ed, “Obama Gives Opponents Plenty Of Ammunition,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 2/20/08)

Rashid Khalidi Dined Regularly With The Obamas In His Hyde Park Home. “For years, the Obamas had been regular dinner guests at the Hyde Park home of Rashid Khalidi… Mr. Khalidi said the talk would often turn to the Middle East , and he talked with Mr. Obama about issues like living conditions in the occupied territories.” ( Jo Becker and Christopher Drew, “Pragmatic Politics, Forged On The South Side,” The New York Times , 5/11/08)

“While Teaching At The University Of Chicago , Khalidi And His Wife Lived In The Hyde Park Neighborhood Near The Obamas. The Families Became Friends And Dinner Companions.” ( Peter Wallsten, “Allies Of Palestinians See A Friend In Obama,” Los Angeles Times , 4/10/08)

Khalidi: “[Obama] has family literally all over the world. I feel a kindred spirit from that.” ( Peter Wallsten, “Allies Of Palestinians See A Friend In Obama,” Los Angeles Times , 4/10/08)

Khalidi Threw A Fundraiser For Obama’s 2000 Congressional Campaign, In Which Obama Was Accused Of Sympathizing With The Palestinians:

“In 2000, The Khalidis Held A Fundraiser For Obama’s Unsuccessful Congressional Bid.” ( Peter Wallsten, “Allies Of Palestinians See A Friend In Obama,” Los Angeles Times , 4/10/08)

At The 2000 Fundraiser, Khalidi Claimed Obama Called For A More “Evenhanded Approach” To The Palestinian-Israel Conflict. “Both Mr. Khalidi and Mr. Abunimah, of the Electronic Intifada, said Mr. Obama had spoken at the fund-raiser and had called for the United States to adopt a more ‘evenhanded approach’ to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.” ( Jo Becker and Christopher Drew, “Pragmatic Politics, Forged On The South Side,” The New York Times , 5/11/08)

If both the birth certificate and the tape remain hidden, then you actually have your answer.

Let’s start redistributing the wealth of Barbra Streisand, Michael Moore and Opra

Barack Obama has plans to redistribute the wealth of Joe the Plumber — that’s chump change and the guy has to work with broken pipes and human waste for his money.

How about going after the big fish — liberal Hollywood Democrats like Barbara Streisand, Michael  Moore, Opra Winfrey, Rosie ODonnel, Rob Rhiner, Alec Baldwin, John Travolta and friends?

How about Ted Kennedy, John and Teressa Kerry, even Bill and Hillary Clinton now that they’ve skimmed millions from the system.

What’s so funny about redistributing the wealth? What kind of jokes are they telling in New York and Malibu about McCain and Sarah Palin?

Bill Ayers was out lecturing an adoring crowd of admirers, expressing displeasure that he’s become an issue in the Presidential campaign. The Daily News reports:

The former member of the Weather Underground beamed at the attention paid by the audience of about 60 people, many of whom were decked out in Obama gear. The crowd gave Ayers a warm welcome, guffawed at jokes about “redistributing the wealth” and nodded at his complaints about the “Republican revolution.” After the talk was over, event organizers attempted to sneak Ayers out a back door to avoid the media. Waiting reporters gave chase, but Ayers sputtered, “No comment,” and darted into a cab.

One wonders what that redistributing the wealth joke was — those “property is theft” gags are a hoot, no doubt. Yes, I’m sure with the website and the  new edition of his book coming out, his real hope is to remain far from the limelight.

If you find it odd that sixty people would choose to spend their time with a former terrorist yucking it up about the Reagan Revolution, you might consider how utterly bizarre it would be to enjoy a fulsome political and personal relationship with such a person. It is not something an average voter, I’d suggest, could in his wildest dreams imagine doing.

Once again, you are left to conclude that Obama simply doesn’t hold the same values as ordinary voters. He’s giving a good imitation. But that’s not the same. It really isn’t. –Jennifer Rubin

Osama Speaks! Asks U.S. to elect Obama

I have a dream. What if…? What kind of endorsement is that? Will Democrat/Socialists follow Osama’s advice? Or is this an embarrassment? You make the call. Is the audio really Osama? Why would Osama endorse Obama? Isn’t there a problem with brand identity?

We live in very excitng times.

McCain surging to a final day win — Mac is back! Obama says God damn America’s coal industry!

The American hero has closed to a statistical tie 48 hours before election day. Obama’s campaign is sending out email alerts asking for more money becuase McCain’s campaign is blitzing the media in battleground states. Obama’s internal polls say they will lose Florida, Virginia and West Virginia. Pennsylvania is too close to call. The fat, liberal bastard, John Murtha is projected to lose.

Imagine the shock and embarrassment of the news anchors and editors of the failing old newspapers on Tuesday night. Joe the Plumber will be the toast of the town. The Democrat party socialists spent over $1 billion on the Obama machine, add in Hillary’s $500 million and you can see what a disaster it is.

This could be due to the bombshell tape just released by the San Francisco Chronicle on the Drudge Report with Obama saying he will put the coal industry out of business. The audiotape Palin was referring to was recorded by the San Francisco Chronicle in a Jan. 17 interview.

Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks from Senator Barack Obama about the nation’s coal industry.

“Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America’s coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.

“These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like ‘I haven’t been some coal booster’ and ‘if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them’ are extraordinarily misguided.

“It’s evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state’s voters.

“Senator Obama has revealed himself to be nothing more than a short- sighted, inexperienced politician willing to say anything to get a vote. But today, the nation’s coal industry and those who support it have a better understanding of his true mission, to ‘bankrupt’ our industry, put tens of thousands out of work and cause unprecedented increases in electricity prices.

“In addition to providing an affordable, reliable source of low-cost electricity, domestic coal holds the key to our nation’s long-term energy security – a goal that cannot be overlooked during this time of international instability and economic uncertainty.

“Few policy areas are more important to our economic future than energy issues. As voters head to the polls tomorrow, it is essential they remember that access to reliable, affordable, domestic energy supplies is essential to economic growth and stability.”

Meanwhile, another fat, liberal Democrat (I know that is redundant) on KGO (once home to Bernie Ward) has said on air the Joe the Plumber should be killed. Charles Karel Bouley is a weekend host on KGO-AM and a contributing writer for The Huffington Post. If Bouley was a straight, moderate male, he would be fired. Let’s see what KGO does this week.

The U.S. coal reserves are the greatest on the planet. West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana are all important coal states.

“Why is the audiotape just now surfacing?” Palin asked, leading someone in the crowd to shout, “Liberal media!”

“This interview was given to San Francisco folks many, many months ago,” Palin said. “You should have known about this, so that you would have better decision-making information as you go into the voting booth.”

In the audiotape, Obama reiterated his call for a cap and trade system on carbon and greenhouse gases.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” Obama said. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

John McCain and Sarah Palin are pumped up. They are on the verge of yanking the curtains open on yet another year of manipulation on the “masses” as the mainstream media journalists think of voters.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis predicted: “We are witnessing one of the greatest comebacks since John McCain won the primary.”

Davis added that the last 10 days of the campaign have been the best since the conclusion of the Republican National Convention, noting that internal polling showed that the McCain had “shaken off the effects of the financial collapse that suppressed our numbers.”

As evidence, Davis cited Iowa, where Obama is expected to visit today, and where McCain’s internal numbers showed the race dead even. The accuracy in the poll can be questioned, but how do you justify Obama wasting his time in Iowa?

The Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows Obama leading McCain by just three points, within the margin of error — a narrowing from the nine-point edge the same poll gave to Obama a week ago.

The Investors Business Daily (IBD) poll shows McCain ahead of Obama on Friday by one point. The mainstream media doesn’t want their loyal audience to know that the IBD poll was the most accurate in the last two presidential races.

John Kerry was reported to be leading by 10 points in election day exit polling by the New York Times and Wanshington Post, NBC and CBS.

Here we go again.

The exit polls were way off again — inflated 200% or more

Hooray for Obama and his supporters. Campaign Finance Reform was flushed down the toilet of political history.

The media did their job again, they helped suppress the vote by publishing inflated East Coast exit polls along with weeks of what turned out to be false hype about a large youth vote and false predictions of an historic, record turnout. The youth vote increased from 17 percent by one point to 18 percent from 2004. In fact, Republican turnout was less than in 2004 for George W. Bush throughout the nation.

A new report from American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate concludes that voter turnout in Tuesday’s election was the same in percentage terms as it was four years ago — funny? I thought the media was reporting a historic ground swell?

Isn’t it time you canceled your subscription to the New York Times and LA Times. At least the SF Chronicle was honest enough to release the tape with Obama saying he would bankrupt any coal burning electric plant.

Well, the free enterprise system will move along and heal itself without the help of Big Brother. It was about the economy, but not the big bail out of Fannie and Freddie toxic loans, it was about stagnant, Rust Belt hopelessness.

Here is a good analysis.

Noam Scheiber:

Over the last several decades, the country has seen two swing groups move in opposite directions: Working-class whites exiting the Democratic Party, and more affluent, educated voters leaving the GOP. For either side, the key to winning a presidential election has been to hold onto its own swing voters while consolidating gains among the other guy’s. Thanks to the economy, Barack Obama more than accomplished that last night.

Think of 2000 as a baseline—the year the parties were in rough parity on the presidential level. Four years later, George W. Bush roughly held his own among college graduates (the group leaving the GOP), but nudged up three points among working-class voters (the group migrating toward the GOP). Obama accomplished something similar last night, except more pronounced.* Relative to 2000, he more than held his own among working-class voters (+6 among high school grads, +10 among those with “some college”). And he improved his take of educated voters even more sharply (+8 among college grads, +10 among post-graduates). . . .

mong all whites without college degrees (40 percent of the electorate), Obama lost by a whopping 18 points. But among whites making $50,000 per year or less (a quarter of the electorate), he lost by a mere 4 points.

Which is to say, the big divide last night wasn’t between working-class whites (i.e., whites without college degrees) and educated whites. It was between working-class whites who are relatively well off, and working-class whites who aren’t. The aforementioned numbers imply that Obama struggled hugely among working-class whites making more than $50,000 per year, but did well among those making less than that. The upshot was that, despite losing the white working-class by wide margins nationally, Obama came reasonably close in the economically depressed states of the industrial Midwest (down only 8 in Ohio and Indiana, actually up 6 in Michigan). Hence the electoral college landslide.

The greatest economic challenge of our lifetimes is not now, it was 25 years ago under Jimmy Carter — Get ready for the Obama Drama Ding Dongs

In his first news conference since Election Day, President-elect Barack Obama said the United States is ”facing the greatest economic challenge of our lifetimes.”

“Obama Drama Ding Dong.” (Let’s see if that phrase catches on). For the next four years we are going to read and hear about crisis after challenge for Obama Drama Ding Dongs. (Inspired by the “Animal House” nightclub scene.)

And the “free press” in America fails to report that Jimmy Carter’s presidency was on an economic disaster with mortgage interest rates of 19 to 21 percent, gas lines, unemployment of over 8.5 percent and the highest tax rates ever seen in the United States since LBJ’s Great Society.

Today’s media is a propaganda machine for the Democratic party. This week the Washington Post in an editorial admitted they had an overwhelming bias to get Obma elected. Woopsie. But the LA Times was even worse. The editors there kept a tape of a toast to a Jew hater named Khalid.

We will see the tape eventually. But will it have been edited? What do you think?

There is no comparative, investigative reporting. Watch America transform into an Eastern European socialist nation with no future and the middle class transformed into a lower-class, mediocre society ruled by the rich, elite class.

The age of objectivity and fair reporting in America is over — MSNBC is disgraced

Who is a Democrat PR talking head and who is a journalist on MSNBC, NBC or CNN? Why stop there? The Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and SF Chronicle are not investigating economic issues and massive bailouts. What kind of balanced journalism do you think the media performed during the two-year election?

First the gang journalists piled on Hillary, next they covered for Obama and attacked Palin.

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

The New York TImes had a reporter rewrite an AP story on the hoax and they spun the story to blame FOX News first with the hoax.  This is called journalism?

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, “a McCain policy adviser,” had come forth and identified himself as the source of a story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy and “a contributor to FOX News.” Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.

“The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air,” said Jeremy Gaines, network spokesman. “We recognized the error almost immediately and ran a correction on air within minutes.”

Gaines told the Times that someone in the network’s newsroom had presumed the information solid because it was passed along in an e-mail from a colleague.

The hoax was limited to the identity of the source in the story about Palin—not the Fox News story itself. While Palin has denied that she mistook Africa for a country, the veracity of that report was not put in question by the revelation that Eisenstadt is a phony.

Eisenstadt’s “work” had been quoted and debunked before. The Huffington Post said it had cited Eisenstadt in July on a story regarding the Hilton family and McCain.

Among the other victims were political blogs for the Los Angeles Times and The New Republic, each of which referenced false material from Eisenstadt’s blog.

“The story was not properly vetted and should not have made air,” said Jeremy Gaines, MSNBC spokesman.

There are plenty of questions that are not asked.

How did Minnesota Democrat Party election officials come up with 500 more votes for the Democrat senate candidate days after the polls closed and none for the Republican candidate?

Why was there a crisis over $150,000 spent on Sarah Palin’s campaign clothing, but no comparison with Hillary’s warehouse of pantsuits or Obama’s Greek columns and semi-truck of suits?

Newspaper and news magazine circulation is dropping. Layoffs continue. (Wait until after January).

Rupert Murdoch tells journalists: Shape up or risk extinction

Rupert Murdoch is a media genius. He has an instinct for fair and balanced news. Of course,  members of the elite, liberal media (former monopolies) would say he is just a rich conservative who buys up media. I’ve seen the smears against him for the past 25 years. Now his empire includes FOX, the Wall Street Journal and You Tube. 

This is what Mr. Murdoch has to say: 

“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news-and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”

Mr. Murdoch points out  the media reaction after bloggers debunked a “60 Minutes” report by former CBS anchor, Dan Rather, that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.

“Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. ‘60 Minutes,’ he said, was a professional organization with ‘multiple layers of checks and balances.’ By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as ‘a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.’ But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.

“Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone,” he continued. “A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”

–Reported by Charles Cooper of CNET.

Update: Dan Rather now works for Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Cuban is under investigation  for insider trading by the federal SEC.

“My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers,” said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp., owners of FOX News.

UPDATE: Dec. 21, 2008

Some 500 managers and nonunion workers at The Seattle Times are being asked to take a week off without pay as financial troubles mount.

This is one of many JOAs that allow two mastheads to remain “independent” while all the marketing, promotion, advertising, publishing and distribution are joined in one economical operation. It is a form of monopoly, exactly what Mr. Murdoch was discussing. 

 

· Times memo to unaffiliated employees

Company spokeswoman Jill Mackie said workers can take the time off in a weeklong chunk or a day at a time between now and February. She declined to say how much money the Times expects to save from the mandatory time-off program.

It’s the latest in a series of dire steps by the company, which has had three rounds of layoffs this year.

“There are very few areas remaining in which we can pursue necessary savings,” wrote Seattle Times Senior Vice President Alayne Fardella in a two-page memo sent to all nonunionized Seattle Times employees Friday.

“It has been and continues to be a long and difficult fight for our survival.”

The memo says the time must be taken off before Feb. 28 because the company needs to achieve cost savings early in the year.

Anniversary of JFK assassination Nov. 22, 1963

It’s the 45th anniversary of the JFK assassination in Dallas, Texas. The names connected have come to light after nearly half a century: LBJ, Clay Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Fidel Castro, Schlumberger Tool Co, General Dynamics, Woody Harrleson Sr.,  The Texas Book Depository, Elm Street, Warren Commission, mafia, pro-democracy Cubans and the USSR. 

There are still thousands of pages of testimony and evidence locked up until 2038. Often, the truth leaks out anyway.

 

This is what we know:

Oswald was well trained in Russian, a U.S. Marine who was allowed to leave the military early becuase of a family hardship. WIthin weeks he defected to the USSR. He was brought back to the U.S. with a Russian bride. This shows he was “liked” by the U.S. Special Forces.

After 10 hours of questioning at DPD headquarters, there were no recordings or notes.

What was Oswald saying that was so controversial that notes were not kept?

Then, Oswald repeats “I’m a patsy. I didn’t shoot the president.” 

Next, he is silenced by Jack Ruby. That was a mob hit and Ruby was a Chicago small time mobster with a strip club in Dallas. This link has the most up-to-date information: http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/ruby.htm

The magic bullet that caused seven wounds on Governor Conelly and JFK and was found in perfect shape in the limo, but to be precise, on the president’s stretcher. The other bullets were hallow point to cause maximum damage. Do  you want to see the bullet? You can. Google it  on the Time-Life images.

Close to 50 eye witnesses to the shooting said there were four to five shots. One witness was hit with a bullet fragment in the face. Several people pointed to a gun shot, smoke and a flash of light behind a picket fence next to the railroad bridge. 

“That SOB with the Irish mafia will never embarrass me again,” said LBJ on Nov. 21. This according to H.L. Hunt and LBJ’s mistress. 

The Warren Commission cover up backed by the major media was the turning point of America’s trust in government and media. The Commission findings were published in 22 volumns. All the fluff.

Who had the most to benefit?

A decade after LBJ’s death, a friend of Estes, a federal marshal, talked Estes into coming forward with what he knew about Henry Marshall’s death. Then on August 9, 1984, following Billie Sol Estes’ grand jury testimonyregarding Mac Wallace’s murder of Henry Marshall, Estes’ attorney, Douglas Caddy sent a letter to Stephen S. Trott, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, of the US Department of Justice. The letter
reads:

Lyndon’s scandalous wheeling and dealing from his Senate days were catching up with him even faster than the Billie Sol Estes affair, and it would bring the whole Democratic party down with it if the key players weren’t thrown overboard. Estes and to a lesser degree Johnson were the primary benefactors of their doings, while everyone on Capitol Hill knew Bobby Baker, and every lawyer, lobbyist, and lawmaker wanted a piece of the action — and Bobby was LBJ’s boy. The dealings had been too many to keep quiet with a quick “Texas suicide.” LBJ wasn’t just looking at the end of his political career; he was looking at hard time.

Dear Mr. Trott:

My client, Mr. Estes, has authorized me to make this reply to your letter
of May 29, 1984.

Mr. Estes was a member of a four-member group, headed by Lyndon Johnson,
which committed criminal acts in Texas in the 1960s. The other two,
besides Mr. Estes and LBJ, were [White House aide] Cliff Carter and Mac
Wallace. Mr. Estes is willing to disclose his knowledge concerning the
following criminal offenses:

1. Murders

1. The killing of Henry Marshall 2. The killing of George Krutilek 3. The
killing of Ike Rogers and his secretary 4. The killing of Harold Orr 5.
The killing of Coleman Wade 6. The killing of Josefa Johnson 7. The
killing of John Kinser 8. The killing of President J. F. Kennedy

Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that
he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who
executed the murders. In the cases of murders nos. 1-7, Mr. Estes’
knowledge of the precise details concerning the way the murders were
executed stems from conversations he had shortly after each event with
Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace.

In addition, a short time after Mr. Estes was released from prison in 1971, he met with Cliff Carter and they reminisced about what had occurred in the past, including the murders. During their conversation, Carter spoke of a list of 17 murders which had been committed, some of which Mr. Estes was unfamiliar with. A living witness was present at that meeting and should be willing to testify about it. He is Kyle Brown, recently of Houston and now living in Brady, Texas. . .

More to come…

The Internet most trusted news source now

The Web Most Reliable Source of News according to Zogby

There is a backlash to the perceived (real or imagined) alliance between major media and the Democrat party. 

A Zogby Poll, commissioned by IFC, found 37.6% of those asked consider the Internet the most reliable source of news. 20.3% consider national TV news most reliable and 16% say radio is the most reliable source.

• 39.3% of those surveyed trust FOX News most for the issues they consider most important, followed by CNN with 16% and MSNBC with just 15%.

• 72.6% believe the news they read and see is biased.

• 88.7% Republican and 57.5% Democrat respondents describe the news media as biased.

 Theodore Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” –Teddy Roosevelt

Impeccable timing for Ann Coulter’s new book, “Guilty.”

Set for release first week of January, the book exposes in documented detail, the media’s love affair with all things Democrat and Obama. Coulter presents all the details that have been covered up. It mocks  and rocks professional jounalism to its core.

“GUILTY is a much-needed reality check on a Left gone wild,” declares the book’s jacket.

“When it comes to bullying, no one outdoes the Left. Citing case after case, ranging from the hilariously absurd to the shockingly vicious, Coulter dissects so-called victims who are invariably the oppressors. For instance: While Barack Hussein Obama piously condemned attacks on candidates’ families, his media and campaign surrogates ripped open the court-sealed divorce records of his two principal opponents in his Senate race in Illinois.”

 

The leftist blogs are reporting that Ms. Coulter had her jaw wired shut. If so, she can still write best sellers. 

 

 

Will terrorists strike again? Why is the U.S. pouring 20,000 troops into cities? There must be some ‘chatter’

UPDATE:

The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has issued the marching orders to mobilize 20,000 millitary troops to secure unspecified cities within the U.S.

Homeland Securtiy issued warnings of a terror attack on New York City’s mass transit system from Nov. 28 through the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah) the mainstream media doesn’t even have the intellectual honesty to report which holidays. Commuters and vacationing shoppers are supposed to be uneasy and many may even put off their trips to buy gifts. This, as we watch to bloodbath from Nov. 26-28, in Mumbi, India where the death toll has reached 200 from a group of 10 terrorists.

Who did it? We know the terrorists hate Jews. That narrows it down. 

What do the learders of Iran, Palistine and Syria have to say about the bombings? 

A Brooklyn rabbi and his wife were found among the dead in a series of terrorist attacks in India that have claimed more than 150 lives. In response to the attacks, the NYPD beefed up patrols around large hotels and Jewish centers, including the Lubavitcher headquarters, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

The department already was on alert because of a warning earlier this week of a possible al-Qaida plot to strike the city’s rail systems over the holidays.

“The threat is serious, the threat is significant, and it is plausible,” said Congressman Peter King, R-Long Island, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who ran the Chabad-Lubavitch local headquarters in Mumbai were killed during a hostage standoff at the center, said Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a spokesman for the movement. 

On Wednesday, federal authorities warned New York police of an unsubstantiated (but reliable) report that al-Qaida operatives discussed an attack on New York’s subway system or rail lines like Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he had no plans to comment. (Keep shopping sheelple). 

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said additional resources were being deployed in the mass transit system in an “abundance of caution,” a common response when police receive new information about a threat.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s 468 stations and 6,480 subway cars, released a statement saying there was “no reason to be alarmed.”

The terrorists have been weakend from eight years of George W. Bush as Commander and Chief. 

We can be thankful for that time.

“We won’t have to smell the tourists anymore” — Harry Reid, Democrat Senate Leader

The brand new, $650 million Capitol Visitors Center, which opened this morning, may have tripled its original budget and fallen years behind schedule, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found a silver lining for members of Congress: tourists won’t offend them with their B.O. anymore. — Reported in the  D.C.  Examiner.

“My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway,” said Reid in his remarks. “In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.” “…We won’t have to smell the tourists anymore, the new Capitol Visitors Center is sectioned off.”

Can you imagine if Sarah Palin said that?

The center also has a gift shop. How about T-shrits with Harry Reid’s thoughts?

“We won’t have to smell
the tourists anymore.” 
– Harry Reid, Democrat Senator from Nevada

Republicans gain two more seats as the backlash begins

First it was the big win for Saxby Chamblis for the U.S. Senate from Georgia. The Democrats had a lot of paid people in the state to make sure that didn’t happen. They can’t change election results while counting if there is a landslide.

Next, in Louisiana’s runoff elections, two more wins for Republicans. This shows the people understand what absolute rule by the Democrats would be terrible for the nation. 

Republicans made an aggressive push to take the 2nd District House seat from the 61-year-old Democrat William Jefferson, who has pleaded “not guilty” to charges of bribery, laundering money and misusing his congressional office. You might remember seeing photos of Jefferson’s “cold cash” wrapped in foil in his freezer on FOX news.
“The people of the 2nd District have spoken,” Cao, 41, told supporters at a restaurant near the French Quarter. “We want new direction. We want action. We want accountability.”
In a speech that  stopped short of concession, Jefferson blamed low voter turnout for his showing and said supporters may have thought he was a shoo-in after he won a Nov. 4 primary in the black and heavily Democratic district.
“I think people just ran out of gas a bit,” he said. “People today flat didn’t come out in large numbers.”
Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans political consultant, said his analysis showed turnout in predominantly white sections of the district was double that in black areas. He said that helped push Cao to victory over Jefferson.
“This is quite a feat,” Rigamer said of Cao’s victory.

With ACORN money all used up to elect Obama, this election was decided by the voters of the district who cared enough to follow through on what was a national joke of corruption. 

Watch the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and SF Chronicle for their coverage. Page 12 you think?

The Miami Herald now up for sale

McClatchy, among the top three newspaper companies in America, burdened by huge debt and a steep slide in newspaper readership and advertising, wants to sell one of its most prized properties, The Miami Herald, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. That would be like you selling your best late model car that you use to get downtown to work every day. 

McClatchy has approached potential buyers for The Herald, said people  within the company (not able to give their names out of fear). But they said they knew of no serious offers for the paper, reflecting the reality of major investors’ interest in buying newspapers. None what so ever.

The reports all say about the same thing. The blood letting will continue for a long while. Eventually, only the top regional newspapers will survive in a mixed media format of print and online news and advertising. The list of survivors will not have room for papers like the Miami Herald, Rocky Mountain News, or even the Sacramento Bee. The San Francisco Chronicle will handle Northern California and the LA Times Southern Cal.

In Florida, readers will keep with the NY Times and the St Petersburg Times will become Florida’s paper of record. Just my opinion of course.

A company spokeswoman refused to discuss the matter. Elaine Lintecum, the treasurer, said, “We do not comment on market rumors.”

Well, time will tell.  What workers should watch for: window dressing. There will be blood letting.

You will experience some more cuts. The bean counters will have to make the books look good in Miami for the next six months. Computers will not be replaced, of course, neither will people, even the work horses who take the chump change buyouts. 

There will be some morale-boosting promotions such as “awards” to some high profile employees to add to the window dressing, but not with pay. Next, watch for tours of about six people in suits — accountants, corporate attorneys and a few silver haired consultants. Be nice to them, who knows if the older guy in his 60s will be the publisher in May of ‘09.

 

The McClatchy folly in 2006 is a case study in bad management. They bought Knight Ridder when its share holders said dump the bad business and the remaining Ridder family members looked at the numbers and said, “yes, you are right, sell now!”

Through the first 10 months of this year, McClatchy’s ad revenue fell 14.7 percent in other parts of the country, but 22.5 percent in California and Florida, the NY Times reported. (The Times does a good job reporting on the troubles of comepetitors). 

The McClatchy share price, which exceeded $75 in 2005, ironically started its slide soon after they purchesed the Knight Ridder papers, closed at $2.20 on Friday. So, for the price of a Rockstar sport drink, you could buy a share of McClatchy stock.  Go for the Rockstar, you really will get something for your money.

Gannett is building the model of the profitable newspaper

A new bold initiative is about to unfold in Detroit. Overnight, profitability will be restored to the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News and the joint operating agency that serves them, the experiment in non-daily home delivery could be common practice in the next two years.

Desperate times create desperate measures. The new model even cuts down on newspapers’ carbon footprint.

There is a widely reported plan that the Detroit dailies will restrict home delivery to Thursday and Sunday and perhaps one other day of the week. While papers on the other days of the week presumably would be available for single-copy purchase in busy downtown and suburban shopping centers, the rough draft of this plan is that the subscribers to  the Thursday and Sunday  newspapers would get full access to the news online.  

Gannett owns the Free Press, which is reported by the Gannett Blog to be preparing to eliminate 300 jobs. MediaNews Group, (Singleton) which in part is financed by Gannett, owns the News. 

Let’s face it, newspapers should not be printed and delivered each day. What a waste of energy.

Let’s hear the Blago tapes, the Rod Blagojevich tapes have Rahm Emanuel calling 21 times. Trib tips off wire tap before any crime was committed

UPDATE: The Illinois legislature is on the verge of an impeachment vote for Governor Blagojevich. I predict Blago will prevail. The governor knows what was said on those tapes. It takes two to tango. 

UPDATE: Governor Blagojevich says lets hear all the tapes!

“Before they remove a governor who’s been elected twice by the people, hear the whole truth, every tape,” Gov. Blagojevich said. “Richard Nixon, during Watergate, fought tooth and nail to keep those tapes from being heard because he knew there was something wrong on there. Me? I’m the opposite, the anti-Nixon. I want every one of those tapes heard in the impeachment trial, and every witness called in.”

In Springfield yesterday, senators heard the unmistakable voice of the governor talking to his deputy about an alleged pay-to-play scheme for his campaign. Isn’t that fundraising?

The trial seems like an  old USSR show trial. The fix is in if the governor can’t let his accusers hear the entire conversations.

Making a laughing stock of our democracy. A constitutional crisis or common practice?

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel is on record for calling Governor Blagojevich 21 times in a matter of a few days. What do you think the conversations were about, the weather? The Chicago Sun Times reported that little tidbit. The same paper that earlier endorsed Obama and Blagojevich. 

Chicagoans call the Gov, Rod Blowdryavich. What law did he break?

This we now know, the Tribune, which overall has been endorsing Democrats for decades including Obama, Daley and Blago, actually announced the wire tap to everyone, including the governor, Jessie Jackson Jr. and Obama’s staff. We know from Fitzgerald’s office that the governor had been under investigation for more than a year. That is well before the Democrat machine knew they had Obama’s coveted Senate seat to be appointed.  I’m sure they were hopeful about that and planning for it for a few months.

Why didn’t the Tribune expose the wire tap about two months earlier, before the presidential election? What day was the wire tap put on the Governor’s phones?

We know now that among the hundreds of hours of conversations involving Rod Blagojevich secretly recorded by the FBI since Oct. 22, one phone call is drawing particular scrutiny among politicos, journalists and others in Washington. It was a marathon conference call on Monday, Nov. 10. This must have been big. Really big.

Soon after the media mentioned the wire tap. Why now? The journalists didn’t know about it until the big call on Nov. 10. That’s my guess. What do you think?

It may be because a Democrat tipped off the Tribune after the election, but had to “pull the trigger”  earlier than planned  because the political payoffs and negotiations for a U.S. Senate seat were getting ugly, pulling in some top Democrats.

Think about the reason why somebody would leak the details of the investigation to the Tribune. Somebody who is close to the case observes that high-ranking Democrats are being dragged into the case, and he tips the media off on the wires as a way of warning anybody else dealing with Blago to cut it off now!

While all the witnesses against Blago were offered ple deals, even Tony Rezko, I bet you wont see a deal offered to Blago in exchange for other names or higher-ups. It will all end up on Blago.

The Chicago Tribune editors agreed to wait, according to Fitzgerald, until the wire was in place, not until a crime was committed. That was a nice gift for Christmas or “Fitzmas” in Chicagoland. But something is not right. The wire was placed  on  phones on Oct. 22.

Now the Democrat party  in 2009 will have it all — the Presidency, Senate and  House of Representatives. The powerful machine party will also be “appointing” Senate seats for Joe Biden (his son); Hillary Clinton (Carolyn Kennedy); and Obama’s seat (it was to go to the highest bidder, Jessie Jackson Jr., but that is in question).

Plus, the Democrats have their machine counting thousands of votes to cancel out Republican Norm Coleman’s slight win with re-counted (formerly rejected ballots for the former comedian Al Franken).

I have to laugh about the corruption of the media and the Democrat party. Watch how the media acts as defense attorneys when one of their own is in the hot seat. But when it’s a Republican, they act in concert with the prosecuting attorneys.

The Chicago Tribune endorsed Blagojevich for governor and Obama for president. Watch dogs? More like lap dogs.

Take the Nixon tapes. Those were tapes made by the former president so he had a record of events from which to accurately recall day-t0-day events for his biography. 

Those were attacked by Democrat politicians, taken from him by attorneys and made public. 

How about the tapes of political corruption of the highest, criminal level? The selling of a U.S. Senate seat? The tapes of Illinois governor Blogojevich and the scores of Democrats competing for Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat? Will there be the media and legal frenzy demanding the public have access to the tapes? Will we only hear select sound bites from the tapes? Let’s hear them all. 

The American people should know how the political system  works. The taxpayers paid for Fitzgerald’s taping and investigation. Let’s hear the tapes and read the transcripts in full. 

The “open” Obama administration is in lock down.

Obama’s staff has declined to respond to even basic questions, like who is conducting the probe? Have you heard the tapes? Obama promised transparency throughout his administration and the run up to it and to divulge contacts his staff has had with Blagojevich’s office in the coming days. But his staff has locked down on inquiries. Just words it appears. No follow up by the media. 

Does the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New York Times or Washington Post have an interest in finding the full transcripts of the  Blogo tapes with Jesse Jackson Jr. and maybe even president-elect Obama? 

Is there a  free press in America?

They didn’t do a very good job with Tammany Hall did they? How about Richard Daley? How about a little reporting on the 400 Illinois government officials arrested since 1995? 

How about LBJ?  And Jack Ruby, wasn’t he from Chicago? 

It’s time for complete transparancy. It’s up to citizen journalists. We have nothing to gain but the truth.

The Shagged Sheep — One party PC journalism is here. Watch the attack on Mark Steyn

THE SHAGGED SHEEP

This is a long piece but it does have underage sex and bestiality in it. So enjoy! — Mark Steyn The other day I had an e-mail from M J Murphy, who blogs as Big City Lib, saying only this: I think you owe Dr. Miller an apology. There followed a link to a post called Steyn Gets Punked By 28-Year Old Literary Hoax: Remember the kerfuffle between Mark Steyn and journalism professor Dr. John Miller from a few weeks back? Dr. Miller accused Steyn of taking material for “America Alone” from illegitimate sources like the infamous Little Green Book: Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini.* [*UPDATE: M J Murphy has quietly revised this paragraph, and so the airbrushing begins]  Actually, I don’t think Dr Miller has accused me of any such thing, though I admit, given his shifting accusations, that I’m no longer quite sure what he’s accusing me of. Just to recap, said “kerfuffle” arises from this passage in a review I wrote for Maclean’s of Oriana Fallaci’s final book The Force Of Reason: Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam – for example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Blue Book” and its helpful advice on romantic matters: “If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer.” I’ll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: “A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin.” Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah’s not clear on that. A cheap joke en passant. Indeed, insofar as I dwelt on the ovine fornication, it was to suggest to La Fallaci that, even for us flagrant Islamophobes, it was not perhaps the most useful avenue of attack: I enjoy the don’t-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the Western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers. If I had to choose, I’d rather Mohammed Atta was downriver in Egypt hitting on the livestock than flying through the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers. But he’s not. And that’s it. That’s all I said. And no one would remember had not El Mo’s sock puppets included the sheep-shagging line in the dossier they submitted to the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission. Whereupon Dr Miller …actually, I’m not sure he is a doctor: He calls himself “The Journalism Doctor”, but the  title seems to be entirely self-conferred. Anyway, at this point, Doc Miller, Prof Miller, Herr Baron von Miller or whatever he is got interested in the case and asked the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal if he could intervene. Silly ol’ me assumed that he wished to intervene to argue the cause of free speech. But no: he wanted to intervene to argue that I was not a “responsible journalist”, and so it was entirely appropriate for the state to censor me. As Rory Leishman notes, since this thought-police racket got going, “Most journalists have either condoned censorship or cowered in silence.” Canadians who still value liberty should know that, if they rely on anemic PC flunkeys like Professor Miller, they’ll lose their country. At any rate, the BCHRT gave him the bum’s rush, so Prof Miller surfaced a few weeks ago and kept returning to the subject of the sheep-shaggers line. His complaint is in an apparently endless process of evolution. But let’s go through the story so far: 1) First, insofar as I understand his initial argument, he advanced the curious line that the ruling from the Ayatollah was not widely cited, and therefore it was improper of me to use it. After it was pointed out that in fact Khomeini’s views on the post-bestiality buffet, child sex and other arcane points of Islamic law are known to many (especially those  on the receiving end), a couple of weeks later he revised his line of attack: 2) Now his argument was that I’d concocted it out of whole cloth. The J-Doc declared boldly that Steyn “gave no citation for the quote, and I suspect it was made up.” In fact, as anyone who reads the passage above can see, I attributed it to Oriana Fallaci’s book. The disinterested observer might conclude that Professor Ethics-Bore had never so much as glanced at the offending article but had simply taken the Sock Puppets’ word for it. So the E-Bore was obliged to revise his argument yet again – and decided to accuse me of what he appeared to have done himself: 3) Now my sin was that I “clearly accepted someone else’s word for it”. Evidently, it wasn’t all that “clear” when he was accusing me of making it up, but a drowning ethics prof can be forgiven for clutching at straw men. At any rate, that makes three different complaints. As I wrote: That’s the great thing about the self-appointed “Journalism Doctor”: When he diagnoses you, he provides his own second opinion. Now, on Prof Miller’s behalf, M J Murphy has revised my crime yet again: Dr. Miller accused Steyn of taking material for “America Alone” from illegitimate sources like the infamous Little Green Book: Sayings of the Ayatollah Khomeini. As I said, the sheep-shagging passage is from a review of La Fallaci’s book in Maclean’s. It’s nothing to do with America Alone. There is no mention of sheep shagging in America Alone. There is no mention of any Little Green Book in America Alone. There is, indeed, no mention of Ayatollah Khomeini in America Alone. Prof Miller and Mr Murphy and their enthusiastic chorus boys at Law Is Cool are welcome to check for themselves. But, leaving that aside and forgiving M J Murphy for confusing America Alone with a book review in Maclean’s, if you return to the passage up above, you’ll see that neither Oriana nor I refer to any Little Green Book. We cite a “Blue Book” – or “Libro Azzurro”, in La Fallaci’s original Italian. That’s the color we’re nailing to our mast. We’re singing the blues, and it’s you fellers who are smelling the green. Indeed, the guy who brought up the Little Green Book is Prof Miller in his response to me. I never mentioned any green book. Like I said, I’d rather be blue. So, if M J Murphy and the excitable schoolgirls at Law R Cool have proved The Little Green Book is a “hoax”, the person who’s been “punked” is Professor Miller. Incidentally, I wouldn’t describe The Little Green Book as a “hoax”. It would be truer to say that it is a somewhat lurid and condensed version of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s work. Nevertheless, if you read M J Murphy’s post, you’ll find that Marvin Zonis of the University of Chicago declined to provide an introduction for it. Professor Zonis is evidently regarded by M J Murphy as a greater authority in these matters than I am, so please keep his name in mind. However, as it happens, I didn’t take “someone else’s word” for anything, whether it was the word of Oriana Fallaci or the compiler of The Little Green Book. When it comes to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s views on sheep shagging, my gu ide for many years has been a book called Resaleh Towzih al-Masael. The author is a chap called …Ayatollah Khomeini. Let’s go back to the original offending quotation from my Maclean’s book review: Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam – for example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s “Blue Book” and its helpful advice on romantic matters. Well, here’s a clue: Hmm. Here’s another clue: But how can that be? We all know: “There is no Blue Book.” The Lord High Checker of Facts has pronounced. As it happens, Resaleh Towzih al-Masael has been published in Iran in several editions. But the most popular was the paperback edition published by Nashr I Sharia’t of Tehran. It sold for 120 rials. It had some 350 pages, approx 5×7 inches, with a blue cover, featuring a picture of its ever more famous author. A souvenir hardback edition marketed as the perfect New Year gift was subsequently published by Rashidi with a plain blue cover… almost every year this book is published in a different color. But many versions of the ”Blue Book” are still out there:     In the relevant passage in her book, Oriana recalls first seeing excerpts from the “Blue Book” in 1979. That’s what it was back then: A blue book. The blue book in revolutionary Iran. It certainly wasn’t a “little green book” as that wasn’t published till 1980. So when she and I refer to the Ayatollah’s “Blue Book” we’re referring to that Nashr I Sharia’t edition of the Resaleh. It was translated into English, unabridged, by J Borujerdi and published in 1984 by Westview in London and Boulder, Colorado under the title A Clarification Of Questions. I was given it a couple of decades ago by the Iranian gal I was then dating. She had a copy of the pocket paperback with the Ayatollah on the cover, and once, when she read out a bit to me, I expressed skepticism that it could really be that wacky.  So a few weeks later she presented me with the English edition. As she explained, these were not just some personal musings from the Ayatollah but a kind of moral compass for the Islamic state. So I didn’t need to “accept someone else’s word for it” on having sex with nine-year-old girls, because, like anyone else who’s taken even a cursory interest in the subject, I’ve known for a long time that, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, girls could be legally married at the age of nine. Article 1041 of the Civil Code states: Marriage before puberty by the permission of the Guardian and on condition of taking into interest the ward’s interest is proper. “Puberty” is defined as “nine full lunar years” – although, in practice, girls as young as seven can be married on the say-so of a doctor. The justification for all this is in the highly elaborate rules of Islamic life. They may sound unlikely to M J Murphy or Prof Miller but the Ayatollah’s “clarification of questions” doesn’t strike most devout Iranian Shi’ites that way. Mr Borujerdi, the English translator, was an Iranian émigré living in Cleveland, and he gave an interview about the book to David Remnick (now the editor of The New Yorker) in The Washington Post in 1985. It’s not available online but M J Murphy and Prof Miller and the Law R Cool nellies are welcome to go to their local reference library and check it out. It’s the Aug 21 issue, page B1: “I did the translation because it gives a very close understanding of the Shiite view of the world,” he said. “The Bantam Press published a very slight version five years ago called The Little Green Book’-just 6 percent of the original-but that was really a joke book, to poke fun at Khomeini and debunk Islam at the beginning of the hostage crisis. In Iran, this book is mandatory for every literate person, a kind of guide to living.” So this is the real deal, not the sensationalist précis but a serious, scholarly  “unabridged translation” designed to provide “a unique picture of the belief structure of Shi’ism“. Mr Borujerdi had no difficulty finding eminent academics to provide an introduction – namely, Professors Mehdi Abedi and Michael Fischer of Rice University in Houston. But he also consulted on the translation and interpretation with many other scholars, among them Professor Wilfred Madelung of the Oriental Institute at Oxford University, Professor Wheeler Thackston of Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages department, Professor William Darrow of Williams College, Professor Vincent McHale of Case Western, Professor Merlin Swartz of Boston University …oh, and Professor Marvin Zonis of the University of Chicago. That would be the same Prof Zonis who was unhappy with The Little Green Book, and thus made M J Murphy unhappy, too. But Prof Zonis is cool with A Clarification Of Questions, so presumably M J Murphy will also be satisfied? Resaleh Towzih al-Masael/A Clarification Of Questions consists of almost 3,000 “problems” for which Ayatollah Khomeini provides answers, plus a few follow-ups he dealt with in subsequent editions. So, just to bring the deplorably unicultural Prof Miller up to speed, the easiest way to get a flavor of the Ayatollah’s book is simply to  sample the contents pages: THE UNCLEANS 1&2. Urine and stool 3. Semen 4. Corpse 5. Blood 6&7. Dog and pig 8. Infidel 9. Wine 10. Beer 11. Sweat of an unlawful ejaculation 12. The sweat of a camel that eats uncleans Hey, Multiculti Man, that would be you at big hit sound number 8: “Infidel” – right behind “Dog and pig” but, if it’s any consolation, ahead of “Sweat of an unlawful ejaculation”. But hang on: ejaculate-wise, the Ayatollah’s just getting cranked up: PRECEPTS OF EJACULATION Things that are unlawful for an ejaculator Things that are loathesome for an ejaculator The bath of ejaculation… So just to reprise: Did I cite Oriana Fallaci accurately? Yes. Did she cite Ayatollah Khomeini accurately? Yes. Is there a volume by the Ayatollah commonly known as the “Blue Book”? Yes  Does it include rulings on sex with nine-year olds and what to do with a shagged sheep? Yes. Did either of us mention a Little Green Book? No. In fact, the translation Oriana cites pre-dates The Little Green Book by a year. I think Professor Waggy-Finger is doing what they call “projecting”. He’s accusing me of everything he’s been doing himself. I took “somebody else’s word for it”. Er, no. That would be you, taking the Sock Puppets’ word for it on my book review. I didn’t check the “primary source”. Er, no. That would be you, cavalierly announcing there’s no such thing as a “Blue Book”. To be more charitable to you than you deserve, you assume that Oriana Fallaci and I so want to think the worst of Islam that we’ll fall for any old hooey. Actually not. On the other hand, you so want to think the worst of us blowhard provocateurs that you assume we’re as ignorant of Islam as you evidently are.  Please follow this on SteynOnline.com

The Rod Blagojevich tapes started on Oct. 22, more than a year after the investigations started. Yet, no mention from the media until weeks after the election

Breaking news. 

Governor Rod Blagojevich gave a press confernence Dec. 19, at 2 p.m. announcing his side of the story for the first time.

“I’m hear to tell you right off the bat that I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing and that I intend to stay on the job and that I will fight this thing every step of the way,” said Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) proclaimed his innocence in the opening volley of a statement delivered at the John R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago this afternoon.

“I will fight, I will fight, I will fight, until I take my last breath,” he continued.  “I have done nothing wrong.”

I believe him. I don’t think he did anything wrong. What about Obama’s chief of staff? 

President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a deeper involvement in pressing for a U.S. Senate seat appointment than previously reported, the Sun-Times has learned. Emanuel had direct discussions about the seat with Gov. Blagojevich, who is is accused of trying to auction it to the highest bidder. — Reported by the Chicago Sun-Times (not the Tribune).  

We know now that hundreds of hours of conversations involving Rod Blagojevich and the top levels of the Democrat Party, were secretly recorded by the FBI since Oct. 22, and Tribune jounalists didn’t mention it — not until after the election of course. Wouldn’t the citizens of America have been better served if they knew about the investigation before the election? 

But it gets more interesting. 

It appears there was a marathon conference call on Nov. 10, with Blago getting all kinds action from the Obama and Chicago Democrat machine. This must have been big. Really big. Because someone tipped off the Tribune to announce to the world about the wire tap and the Obama lock down began. But this was before Blagojevich and Obama’s team exchanged favors, so no crime was committed. The Tribune got a call, from who? Could it be Tony Rezco (the former Tribune editor) to expose the wire tap before Obama’s team made the payoff? Who gave the Tribune the call to spill the beans? 

A WSJ report on Dec. 14 states that the Tribune knew about the wire in October and was working with Pat Fitzgerald’s office on withholding the story.

All is well in Crook County, Ill. 

Thousands of Avis customers are being billed for “unpaid” Ill tollroad fees that were supposed to be charged to the EZ toll devices. Millions of dollars are going to the corrupt Democrat Chicago machine. That’s chump change. This is Chicago! 

Tell us your Chicago stories. 

Biggest stories of 2008 — Obama wins presidency and Osama bin Laden is dead — FBI investigations of Gov. Richardson of New Mexico, Cleveland Democrats — Death Spiral of the New York Times and Chicago Sun Times

The No. 1 story for 2008 is the great campaign and election of Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the U.S. That is historic and the  obvious top story. But why isn’t there an investigation into the death of Osama bin Laden? That my friends is the biggest coverup since the JFK assassination. 

A story as big as Hitler shooting himself in his bunker, has been buried. In the one-party Democrat system, what is bad for the party will not be published. There is mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead, in fact he was most likely blown to bits and covered in tons of rubble on Feb. 4, 2002. Special Forces have detailed reports on Osama’s cave complex which was destroyed on that date early in the war on terror.

FBI investigations of “pay for play” and political corruption in New Mexico, Chicago, Cleveland — all Democrat Party officials. Death threats and a very unusual death at Christmas of Democrat Rosemary Vinci. 

Very little coverage of the most widespread political corruption in perhaps 150 years. All the investigations began before the November elections. Yet, no interest from major media until after the election. Is that how a free press works in 2008?

If you live outside Ohio, I’ll wager you don’t know anything about this story:

Rosemary Vinci, the mysterious former strip club manager and close ally of Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and Auditor Frank Russo, was found dead in her near West Side home Monday evening, said a spokesman for the county coroner.

Vinci was 50, was in good health, an autopsy to determine the cause of death is scheduled for Dec. 23 but had been put off. Police responded to Vinci’s home about 5 p.m. and found no signs of suspicious activity, a police spokesman said.

“We are very saddened by the recent passing of our employee, Rosemary Vinci,” said Destin Ramsey, a top Russo aide. “Our deepest sympathy goes out to all her friends and family, especially at this time, as we are sure she will be missed.”

Dimora and Russo are focuses of a federal corruption probe of county government. During a raid of Russo’s home and office, investigators sought pictures of Dimora and Vinci and documents related to Vinci, records show.

 

For years, Vinci managed the now-closed Tiffany’s, a high-end strip club on the west bank of the Flats. She recently pursued plans to open a social club at a property she owned in the Flats, but the project stalled because of zoning issues.

She had been active in the local Democratic Party, which Dimora leads.

Three months before the FBI raids, Vinci was at the center of a political storm when The Plain Dealer asked about her job on the county payroll. She made $48,000 a year, but officials gave varying accounts of who her boss was and what her duties were. Dimora ejected two reporters from a public meeting after refusing to answer questions about her.

Russo said Vinci worked for his office only, as a liaison to Cleveland City Hall. But several county employees, including one in the auditor’s office, told the newspaper at the time that Vinci also did work for the commissioners. Vinci said she worked for Russo and Dimora and spoke for both on behalf of the county to City Council members.

Back to Osama…

Osama, like all ego maniacs, couldn’t stay away from the camera or his followers. Reporting his death would not only make a hero out of the U.S. armed forces, but also President George W. Bush.

That was not going to happen in this day of the media/Democrat party alliance. It’s a double-edged sword. By hiding the fact that Osama was killed, the war effort continues to get full funding. That’s best, for there will be nothing left of al-Qaeda to speak of. 

Can you imagine the press keeping quiet about Hitler’s demise during WWII?

Special Forces and CIA specialist Billy Waugh has compelling evidence on the fate of Osama. Google him. 

Then ask yourself why you didn’t read this in the Washington Post, New York Times or San Francisco Chronicle.

That’s because it is hard to report on your own demise. 

by Michael Hirschorn

End Times
Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.

But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if TheNew York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.

“As part of our analysis of our uses of cash, we are evaluating future financing arrangements,” the Times Company announced blandly in October, referring to the crunch it will face in May. “Based on the conversations we have had with lenders, we expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature.” This prompted Henry Blodget, whose Web site, Silicon Alley Insider, has offered the smartest ongoing analysis of the company’s travails, to write: “‘We expect that we will be able to manage’? Translation: There’s a possibility that we won’t be able to manage.”

The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.

Granted, the odds that The Times will cease to exist entirely come May are relatively slim. Many steps could be taken to prolong its existence. The Times Company has already slashed its dividend, a major source of income for the paper’s owners, the Sulzberger family, but one that starved the company at precisely the moment it needed significant investments in new media. The company could sell its share of the brilliant Renzo Piano–designed headquarters—which cost the company about $600million to build and was completed in 2007, years after the digital threat to The Times’ core business had become clear. (It’s already borrowing money against the building’s value.) It could sell The Boston Globe—or shutter it entirely, given what the company itself has acknowledged is a challenging time for the sale of media properties. It could sell its share in the Boston Red Sox, close or sell various smaller properties, or off-load About.com, the resolutely unglamorous Web purchase that has been virtually the only source of earnings growth in the Times Company’s portfolio. With these steps, or after them, would come mass staffing cuts, no matter that the executive editor, Bill Keller, promised otherwise.

It’s possible that a David Geffen, Michael Bloomberg, or Carlos Slim would purchase The Times as a trophy property and spare the company some of this pain. Even Rupert Murdoch, after overpaying wildly for The Wall Street Journal, seems to be tempted by the prospect of adding The Times to his portfolio. But the experiences of Sam Zell, who must be ruing the day he waded into the waking nightmare that is the now-bankrupt Tribune Company, would surely temper the enthusiasm of all but the most arrogant of plutocrats. (And as global economies tumble around them, the plutocrats aren’t as plutocratic as they used to be.) Alternatively, Google or Microsoft or even CBS could purchase The Times on the cheap, strip it for parts, and turn it into a content mill to goose its own page views.

Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist. And it will likely have plenty of company. In December, the Fitch Ratings service, which monitors the health of media companies, predicted a widespread newspaper die-off: “Fitch believes more newspapers and news­paper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010.”  — Michael Hirschorn

Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy in the JFK assassination

You have to give the marketing departments of The New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and LA Times some high praise for the excellent PR they have been churning out for decades. The news organizations have an artificially lofty reputation. Yet, they have been alligned with the government acting as their publicity agents and building up politicians’ reputations (especially Democrats); the media and academia believe that the major newspapers are  ”watch dogs.” Now we know that all along they have been lap dogs for the government when Democrats are involved. 

With the Internet, authors and bloggers are doing a much better job uncovering the cover-ups than the elite media. 

Take for example the assassination of JFK. Testimony has been hidden from the public for decades. But with Richard Nixon, his own tapes are made public. 

 

‘YEAH, I HAD the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself!”

These were the words of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia godfather of Louisiana and Texas. And he was talking about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I believe he was played by John Candy in Oliver Stones “JFK.” 

Marcello’s admission is in uncensored FBI files at the National Archives, detailed for the first time in a new encyclopedic book “Legacy of Secrecy,” by Lamar Waldron. 

Waldron’s 848-page blockbuster was published in November, 2008. It involves 20 years of research that began in 1988 when he didn’t know that Mafioso Marcello had confessed to JFK’s murder back in 1985. The FBI kept this fact a secret for more than two decades. The Warren Commission released its cover-up version of the death of JFK at the hands of a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald and a magic bullet. 

IN 1963, only weeks after JFK was killed, the FBI questioned 14 Marcello mob associates. Yet the godfather’s name doesn’t even appear in the Warren Report. This secrecy shows that the government all the way up to LBJ had a hand in the cover-up at the very least, he appointed the Warren Commission and never had any questions directed to him.

Such as have you ever met Jack Ruby? Do you know Carlos Marcello, what he does for a living? 

In their war against organized crime and the Mafia, President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy were never able to convict any members of the Marcello crime family. And Marcello didn’t make his admission of guilt until he was serving a long prison sentence as a result of an FBI sting. 

The FBI groomed an informant who became Carlos Marcello’s cellmate. These tapes have never been released but they reveal the godfather standing in the prison yard, flying into a rage and cussing the Kennedys.

Marcello confessed that he’d also met Lee Harvey Oswald and brought him into the plot via that Louisiana character David Ferrie, played by actor Joe Pesci in Stone’s  ”JFK.” Now it is coming to light that the movie was very close to the truth. 

A fictional account of the JFK assassination titled “Deadly Delusion” by Jim Jarman is also very close to the real truth. Jarman describes how Oswald had been groomed to be a patsy for a couple of years by a special rogue unit of the CIA with a dotted line to the Mafia. Oswald was not a marksman, but the perfect fall guy. 

 

Marcello also admitted that it was he who had set up Jack Ruby “in the bar business in Dallas.” Ruby did his bit for the Marcello plot when he killed Lee Harvey Oswald before he could implicate anyone else. Later Ruby died in his cell just two weeks before he was scheduled to give new testimony before a Congressional investigation.

Kirsten Gillibrand is tapped for the New York U.S. Senate seat left by Hillary — a big seat to fill!

Update: After two months of a royal dance, and  the first public look at Caroline Kennedy, New York Gov. David Paterson (the legally blind replacement of the former man whore) named upstate NY Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate. And what a big seat to fill! 

Gillibrand is a NRA-backed moderate Democrat. But don’t worry liberals, she will fall in lock step with your party.
“This senator has great shoes to fill,” Paterson said at a press conference on Friday. (Note to MSM, this was a public news conference, any reports from this are in the public domain, bloggers are not getting their news from your press release rewrites). 

Gillibrand  is 42 and the mother of two. Did Paterson hear the uproar over the heir apparent Caroline Kennedy, then Andrew Cuomo’s obvious line to the throne? 

 

The privileged in New York’s Democrat royal families thought they could continue the tradition of tapping only the blue bloods. First Caroline Kennedy, then “you know” her do-nothing resume came to light. Next it was Andrew Cuomo. Wow, so his dad with Mafia connections and an ex-governor paved the way to keep high office all in the family.

Would Hillary have ever been a New York Senator in the first place if she had not been married to Bill, and bought their house in New York just months before she ran for office?

There are reports that that was the first time the Clinton’s had to buy a house and pay a mortage, all those other years their homes have been paid for by tax payers. What a royal life! 

What a surprise that Kirsten got the pick. I don’t think that she will do will when Hillary’s term is up. New York Democrats wanted one of the blue blood socialists. 

Now we know that Caroline got nasty. Gov. Paterson rappedCaroline Kennedy at a private event the night before he tapped Kirsten Gillibrand for the Senate, telling guests Kennedy had been “nasty” to him and shown “disrespect” with how she bowed out… 

 

Mick Gregory

Snow in the UAE — only second time in recorded history — no word for it in local dialect — And the amazing story behind the global warming scam

Snow covered the hilly area of the UAE for only the second time in recorded history yesterday , Jan. 24, 2009.

So rare was the event that one lifelong resident said the local dialect had no word for it.

Hey, the skiing has to be fantastic this year in Davos. How many of the big wigs from bailouts have the arrogance to attend? Will “Pinch Sulzberger?”

According to the government, temperatures on Jebel Jais dropped to -3°C on Friday night. On Saturday, the area had reached 1°C. Major Saeed Rashid al Yamahi, a helicopter pilot and the manager of the Air Wing of RAK Police, said the snow covered an area of five kilometres and was 10cm deep.

“The sight up there this morning was totally unbelievable, with the snow-capped mountain and the entire area covered with fresh, dazzling white snow,” Major al Yamahi said.

The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming Scam

 

By John Coleman, Meterologist and Founder of the Weather Chanel
January 28, 2009

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a

pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and

a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and

is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?

The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the

Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding

from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic

bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the

University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on

to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a

greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where

Revelle’s mind was most of the time.

Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960

Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil

fuels.

These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide

was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any

significant impact on temperatures.

Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal

combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars

and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health

consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this

challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were

developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no

longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and

smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.

But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue.

So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global

warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger

for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up

everywhere.

The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As

of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the

atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.

Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming.

But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their

theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.

Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice

Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in

Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.

 

Jan. 31, 2009

 

Czech President Vaclav Klaus took aim at climate change campaigner Al Gore on Saturday in Davos in a frontal attack on the science of global warming.

“I don’t think that there is any global warming,” said the 67-year-old liberal, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. ”I don’t see the statistical data for that.”

Referring to the former US vice president, who attended Davos this year, he added: “I’m very sorry that some people like Al Gore are not ready to listen to the competing theories. I do listen to them.

“Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. Al Gore is an important person in this movement.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, he said that he was more worried about the reaction to the perceived dangers than the consequences.

“I’m afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy all around the world,” he said.

“I’m more afraid of the consequences of the crisis than the crisis itself.”

Klaus makes no secret of his climate change scepticism — he is also a fierce critic of the European Union — and has branded the world’s top panel of climate experts, the UN’s IPCC, a smug monopoly.

 

Davos annual financial summit — It’s time to show stockholders and taxpayers what the big shots do with our money–Gov. Paterson pulls out of his ski trip to Europe

Just last year at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of Lehman Brothers held court on the state of the global economy before lucky big league journalists and quiet subordinates while other Wall Street stars mingled after-hours with the likes of Claudia Schiffer, the supermodel, Bono of U2, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Pinch Sulzberger of the New York Times empire always attended. Did he get an invite this year? Why would he? 

IT ALL STARTS TUESDAY. Better shape up for those ski pants. 

But the politicians go on our dimes. New York Governor Paterson will fly off to a “junket” in a swank Swiss town this week, escaping from New York just days after his disastrous effort to chose Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate replacement, The New York Post has learned.

UPDATE: A beleaguered Gov. Paterson pulled out of his Switzerland trip Monday as a new poll shows his once-huge lead over Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has virtually disappeared.

Paterson was planning to leave Thursday to attend and speak at theWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but said this morning he decided to stay to concentrate on the state budget.

With all the wealthy Democrats in DC to help Obama make the USA a socialist state, the big spenders are not showing up in Davos this year. They may be in hiding. 

As business, government and even nonprofit leaders jet set into the ski mecca, the cameras may be blocked from some of the parties this time. It would not be good PR to let the “journalists” into the five star restarants this time around. 

And with much of the financial system in the UK, EU and the USA edging toward a possible socialist takeover, the 2009 agenda at Davos, “Shaping the Post-Crisis World,” has taken the limelight over  global warming and globalization.

“The pendulum has swung and power has moved back to governments,” said Klaus Schwab, the German-born economics professor who founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 and has been its impresario ever since. “This is the biggest economic crisis since Davos began.”

Davos will draw approximately the same amount of participants (2,500) – but the cavier and celebrity-filled parties are going to be hidden from view. There  will be many fewer members of the Bogner-ski suit set strutting down the resort’s snowy streets with their Rosignol skis in tow. Will Getty and his boy Gavin Newsom be there? 

 

Davos has become so early 2000s and so Euro-centric. “Let’s stay longer at Sundance!”

The Communist Party of the United States celebrates Obama’s inaugural — the people’s inaugural

Let the transition to socialism in the US begin. Why hide the Democrat/MSM agenda any longer? 

History will mark 2009 as the start of the United Socialist States of America (USSA). 

Is this just hype from right-wing nuts? 

Check on this yourself at cpus.org

 

A People’s Inaugural
by Joe Sims, 01/20/2009
Reprinted from the People’s Weekly World

Huge crowds, unprecedented in U.S. history, gathered in Washington on Tuesday, to celebrate and welcome President Barack Obama to the White House. Pre-inaugural estimates of up to 3 million participants seemed on mark, with newspapers like the Washington Post calculating 2 million people on the Mall.

With many participants both with and without tickets unable to gain entry, the overall numbers are likely higher. “I had tickets and couldn’t get in,” said a New York City teacher whose story was echoed by many others.” We got here early but it was just too big.” Her family managed to watch President Obama’s speech at Union Station.

“You have to conceptualize this as a populist inauguration,” said political analyst, University of Maryland professor and long-time activist Ron Walters to the Washington Afro-American. “You have people coming here from all over the world; people coming from across the country – many bunking in with relatives – just because they want to be a part of history.”

As the millions gathered to observe the festivities, Wall Street stocks tumbled in the worst Inaugural Day plunge in a century, accenting the cloudy economic horizon and giving emphasis to President Obama’s people-oriented themes. The stock market plunged over 332 points or 4 percent, wiping out January gains amid growing fears of bank instability.

The president’s speech seemed to anticipate these problems and was a continuation of themes struck during the presidential campaign. Obama said, “Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.”

Moments later, tracing the sacrifice of previous generations, he continued, “For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.”

Even the poet Elizabeth Alexander, says The New York Times, speaking after the president, highlighted working class themes: “Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.”

Still the event and speeches, with these touches and emphasis, spoke broadly to the nation about the economic challenges ahead and marked a sharp break with policies of the Bush administration and even a direct rebuke, as President Obama made particular reference to not sacrificing ideals for expediency in foreign policy. “We reject as false the choice as between our safety and our ideals,” he said.

After the swearing-in Obama attended a traditional luncheon hosted by Congress, followed by a legislative session where several Cabinet appointments were approved. The huge outpouring of citizens from all over the country for the inaugural ceremony is sure to help hasten the approval of the president’s legislative agenda. According to press reports the first act of the new administration was to order a halt, pending further review, of all of former President Bush’s pending presidential regulations.

The inaugural parade extended into the afternoon, featuring a trade union float, representing the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the teachers union, the first in many years at an inaugural. Over 200 workers marched and called for passing the Employee Free Choice Act. That is the act that will put pressure on all but the smallest businesses to become unionized with open ballots. Employees will not be able to vote in private.

Most trusted media? Not newspapers.

Besides skiing, wine gulping and dining 24/7, there are some presentations at Davos. I know, it is hard to believe.

Two thirds of people in the Western world don’t trust newspaper articles.

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, began a session saying that trust is an issue for the press as well as government and big business. Edelman found that trust in business magazines and analysts fell from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47% respectively. Trust in TV news is down from 49% to 36% and in newspaper coverage from 47% to 34%.

The least trusted businesses: Banking and the auto business. In general the U.S., India, U.K., Poland and China, there is much more trust in business than in government. The French, Germans and most of Europe believe  in Big Brother over the private sector. The sad part, the U.S. is moving toward the French.

The Goracle speaks about global warming to our leaders

During a rare snow and ice storm in Washington DC on Jan. 28, the Goracle  (Al Gore) spoke of the crisis of man-made global warming.

 

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. “What does your modeling tell you about how long we’re going to be around as a species?” he inquired.

The Goracle chuckled. “I don’t claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator.”

This story by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post will  be  the turning point on the greatest hoax of the last 100 years.

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, January 29, 2009; A03

 

The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.

What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that “would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth –

and this is within this century, if we don’t change.”

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry (D-Mass.), appealed to hear more of the Goracle’s premonitions. “Share with us, if you would, sort of the immediate

vision that you see in this transformative process as we move to this new economy,” he beseeched.

“Geothermal energy,” the Goracle prophesied. “This has great potential; it is not very far off.”

Another lawmaker asked about the future of nuclear power. “I have grown skeptical about the degree to which it will expand,” the Goracle spoke.

A third asked the legislative future — and here the Goracle spoke in riddle. “The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it,” he said.

Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) begged the Goracle to look further into the future. “What does your modeling tell you about how long we’re going to be around as a species?” he inquired.

The Goracle chuckled. “I don’t claim the expertise to answer a question like that, Senator.”

It was a jarring reminder that the Goracle is, indeed, mortal. Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet. He repeats phrases

such as “unified national smart grid” the way he once did “no controlling legal authority” — and the ridicule has been replaced by worship, even by his political foes.

“Tennessee,” gushed Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Gore’s home state, “has a legacy of having people here in the Senate and in public service that have been of major

consequence and contributed in a major way to the public debate, and you no doubt have helped build that legacy.” If that wasn’t quite enough, Corker added: “Very much enjoyed your

sense of humor, too.”

Humor? From Al Gore? “I benefit from low expectations,” he replied.

The Goracle’s powers seem to come from his ability to scare the bejesus out of people. “We must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization,” he

said. And: “This is the most serious challenge the world has ever faced.” And: It “could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force.”

Though some lawmakers tangled with Gore on his last visit to Capitol Hill, none did on the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Dick Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican, agreed that

there will be “an almost existential impact” from the climate changes Gore described.

As such, the Goracle, even when questioned, was shown great deference. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), challenging Gore over spent nuclear fuel, began by saying: “I stand to be corrected,

and I defer to your position, you’re probably right, and I’m probably wrong.” He ended his question by saying: “I’m not questioning you; I’m questioning myself.”

Others sought to buy the Goracle’s favor by offering him gifts. “Thank you for your incredible leadership; you make this crystalline for those who don’t either understand it or want to

understand it,” gushed Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who went on to ask: “Will you join me this summer at the Jersey Shore?”

The chairman worried that the Goracle may have been offended by “naysayers” who thought it funny that Gore’s testimony before the committee came on a morning after a snow-and-ice

storm in the capital. “The little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis,” Kerry said at the start of the hearing.

The climate was well controlled inside the hearing room, although Gore, suffering from a case of personal climate change, perspired heavily during his testimony. The Goracle presented

the latest version of his climate-change slide show to the senators: a globe with yellow and red blotches, a house falling into water, and ones with obscure titles such as “Warming

Impacts Ugandan Coffee Growing Region.” At one point he flashed a biblical passage on the screen, but he quickly removed it. “I’m not proselytizing,” he explained. A graphic showing a

disappearing rain forest was accompanied by construction noises.

The Goracle supplied abundant metaphors to accompany his visuals. Oil demand: “This roller coaster is headed for a crash, and we’re in the front car.” Polar ice: “Like a beating heart,

and the permanent ice looks almost like blood spilling out of a body along the eastern coast of Greenland.”

The lawmakers joined in. “There are a lot of ways to skin a cat,” contributed Isakson, who is unlikely to get the Humane Society endorsement. “And if we have the dire circumstances

we’re facing, we need to find every way to skin every cat.”

Mostly, however, the lawmakers took turns asking the Goracle for advice, as if playing with a Magic 8 Ball.

Lugar, a 32-year veteran of the Senate, asked Gore, as a “practical politician,” how to get the votes for climate-change legislation. “I am a recovering politician. I’m on about Step 9,” the

Goracle replied, before providing his vision.

Prospects for regulating a future carbon emissions market? “There’s a high degree of confidence.” The future of automobiles in China and India? “I wouldn’t give up on electric vehicles.”

The potential of solar power in those countries? “I have no question about it at all.”

Of course not. He’s the Goracle. He and his entourage jetted to Davos, Switzerland! 

He can afford his carbon credits, he owns the company. It’s like the Stienbrenners “buying” tickets to see the New York Yankees. 

Now the famous NASA “climate change scientist” has been disgraced.

One of Al Gore’s favorite salesman is  James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute. Hansen’s former boss, retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, has come forward with some news … Theon is skeptic of man-made global warming and his former employee James Hansen is an embarrassment to NASA. Theon says, “I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made.” He goes on to say, “Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.”

There’s more to chew on here,  it is good to find out who is on the  Al Gore PR payroll.

Rush Limbaugh and Jim Cramer on Obama’s enemies list – Jon Stewart (real name is Leibowitz) is Obama’s throne sniffer

Updated March 13, 2009:

President Obama’s enemies now includes Jim Cramer of Mad Money. The list grows as the public finds life savings destroyed by BO’s socialist, wealth eroding Marxist ideals. 

Obama fan (voted for him)

Cramer, a former supporter of Obama, criticized the president yesterday on the Today Show, saying that his budget has “basically put a level of fear in this country that I have not seen ever in my life.”

“This is the most, greatest wealth destruction I’ve seen by a president,” Cramer added.

 

Cramer has a lot of business smarts. He left the newspaper business more than 10 years ago for TheStreet.com and later Mad Money on CNBC. 

 

 

 

Obama White House’s chief spokesman Robert Gibbs on Friday said he enjoyed watching “The Daily Show” talking head John Sewart tear CNBC’s Jim Cramer (a former Hearst staffer) a new one.  It was a week of payback from Cramer’s opinion that Obama has been the worst president when it comes to economis in modern history. Cramer’s Thursday appearance on Stewart’s (his real surname is Leibowitz) Comedy Central program created buzz throughout the MSM. The Stewart attacks started last Monday.

This is a gaudy scene of Obama’s power in the media. But that is fading as his popularity numbers fall. 

Press secretary Gibbs said he had spoken with President Barack Obama on Thursday about watching the Stewart-Cramer showdown.

 

From Jim Cramer — “Now some, including Rush Limbaugh, would say I am on Obmama’s enemies list: that of the White House. Limbaugh says there are only a handful of us on it, and if I am on it for defending all of the shareholders out there, then I am in good company. Limbaugh — whom I do not know personally, but having been in radio myself, know professionally as a genius of the medium — says, ‘They’re going to shut Cramer up pretty soon, too, but he’ll go down with a fight.’”

Carlson, reached Friday, described Stewart as “a partisan demagogue.”

“Jim Cramer may be sweaty and pathetic—he certainly was last night—but he’s not responsible for the current recession,” Carlson told POLITICO. “His real sin was attacking Obama’s economic policies. If he hadn’t done that, Stewart never would have gone after him. Stewart’s doing Obama’s bidding. It’s that simple.” — Tucker Carlson on Jon Stewart’s hatchet job. 

 

JON Stewart, the leftist who continues to support only Democrat/Socialist causes and has proven to be a big supporter of Obama, may have had a secret weapon in his corner to help him prep for his grudge match with “Mad Money” host, Jim Cramer - his older brother.

As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, Stewart’s brother, Larry Leibowitz, is head of US Markets & Global Technology at NYSE Euronext. (Stewart’s given surname is also “Leibowitz,” but he famously told “60 Minutes” that he changed it to “Stewart” because Leibowitz “sounded too Hollywood” Why? Is he ashamed to be a Jew?) Larry has also held high positions at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley.

A Page Six spy who recently shared an elevator ride at the NYSE with Leibowitz and Big Board CEO Duncan Niederauersays, “They both got off on the sixth floor, after Leibowitz had practically been doing everything but shine his shoes for the short ride up. What a routine they have. One brother pretends to kick Wall Street’s butt by crucifying Cramer on his show, while the other brother is down on Wall Street kissing it.”

Whatever advice the elder Leibowitz gave the talk-show host before last week’s showdown, it worked: The typically loudmouthed Cramer was uncharacteristically silent in the face of Stewart’s attacks and even seemed repentant at times.

Meanwhile, the hit to Cramer’s credibility has been followed by a hit to his ratings. While a CNBC rep says that March numbers for “Mad Money” are up overall compared to February, the show suffered a 2 percent decline in viewership in the days following Cramer’s appearance on Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and 6 percent in the 25-54 demographic. — The NY Daily News

 

 

Back to Rush

After the CPAC speech Rush Limbaugh gave — going  for  1.5 hours, the White House spokesman, Mr. Gibbs keeps up the attacks on Mr. Limbaugh to marginalize him.

This is Soviet-style politics. The Democratic/Socialists are targeting Rush Limbaugh because they know the “blame Bush” propaganda has lost its political currency with the masses. 

 

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s. — Politico.com

Rush Limbaugh has single-handedly solidified opposition to the Obama administration’s “Socio-Economic Stimulus Plan.”  Rush authored a “shot over the bow” opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday and it got some attention. 

Barack Obama warned congressional Republicans not to side with Rush Limbaugh. Next, George Soros, the multi-billionaire socialist, (who made his money in hedge funds and betting against UK and US currency)  helps fund the Democrat Party socialist organization Moveon.org and the new Obama administration with ad mad money. 

Limbaugh has said he hopes Obama’s liberalism fails. Rush’s huge national voice (20 million adults 18-65) is a serious problem for socialists. He is the leader of free enterprise and the enemy of Big Brother government.

The Obama White House has endorsed an ad attacking Limbaugh to try and isolate and muzzle him. They started airing immediately following the WSJ opinion piece. 

But wait, there are more attacks from the White House as financial analysts point out Obama’s lack of economics training. Jim Cramer stated on his popular cable show that Obama has destroyed more wealth than any other president. 

There is chatter on the Internet about plans at high levels to silence Limbaugh and later Michael Savage a Top 3 national radio host. They have had death threats before. But the online chatter seems to be at an all time high. 

The plans could go something like this: pick from a handful of  mentally handicapped, Islamic fanatics  and set a few up as the patsies in an  assassination of Rush. The blame will be deflected from the Democrats (who benefit). About two or three months later, Michael Savage will appear to have “committed  suicide.” 

Or just pave the way for the “Fairness Doctrine” by smearing Savage as a “Hate Monger.”  This will scare off advertisers and have stations dropping Savage thus ending his career.

Rush and Savage are very powerful free thinkers and targets. They are America’s last speed bumps on the Democrat machine’s highway to socialism. 

If these rumors come to fruition, it’s over. Welcome to the USSA.

…in my opinion.

There are a number of “legit” left-wing Web sites with subtle and sometimes bold campaigns trying to put Rush and Savage out of business, reminds me of the Nazi’s Kristol Nacht.

CAIR’s list of companies boycotting Savage show includes some that have never advertised on it or any other talk show. It’s apparently a phony list to try and defame Savage. 

CAIR —  the Council on American Islamic Relations, has been organizing a  boycott of Michael Savage’s show.

“AutoZone: CAIR wrong about Michael Savage ads,” from WorldNetDaily (thanks to D. C. Watson):

The Council on American-Islamic Relations claims a raft of companies have stopped advertising on Michael Savage’s top-rated radio talk show in response to a CAIR-instigated boycott campaign, but several of the cited companies say they don’t know what the Islamic lobby group is talking about.In a recent announcement claiming Universal Orlando Resorts “drops ‘Savage Nation’ ads,” CAIR stated:

“Advertisers that have already stopped airing, or refuse to air commercials on ‘Savage Nation’ include AutoZone, Citrix, JCPenney and Citgo.”

 

Most of these companies have not been advertising on any talk radio shows, including Air America. 

But we know that Media Matters, a leftist/socialist DC Web site staffed by college students, many working for free for the cause, has tried to have Rush’s show taken off Armed Services Radio.

We request that  talk radio host Rush Limbaugh from the American Forces Radio and Television Service (formerly known as Armed Forces Radio). 

The request never gained support in the Bush administration, what will we see happen with the new Obama/Democrat one party government? 

Limbaugh has had his share of death threats. He has also had his quota of criticism from the media, or the liberal media, as he tends to call it. He hates interviews and has rarely given any –The London Telegraph

 

 

Stephanopoulos and Obama Chief of Staff on daily phone briefings from the White House

No wonder why trust in the media is at record lows, like temperatures. 

ABC News’ anchorman of the news and host of This Week with 
George Stephanopoulos, is on a daily morning conference call with Rahm Emanuel and others from the old Clinton administration, now in the media.  Web site Politico broke the news that
Stephanopoulos is currently conducting private, daily
phone briefings with Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. 

This is unethical  journalism and a clear
conflict of interest.   How can Stephanopoulos participate
in daily briefings about the administration’s strategy and
message and then be charged with reporting on them?

Update: Feb. 4: A White House reporter, so infatuated with the new president, jumped out of line and begged for Obama’s autograph today. At the end of the SCHIP signing, a member of the press corps jumped the rope penning off reporters to get an autograph from POTUS. Secret Service swooped in and stopped him. An Obama aide said the man is still being held by Secret Service. No details yet on the reporter’s name or publication. — Carol E. Lee 

The individual in question, whose name I don’t know, showed up in the press briefing room basement under escort of a White House press aide (not the Service at that point) apparently to retrieve personal belongings and make his way out of the complex. — Josh Gerstein 

 

How about tapes of those conversations with major media and the White House? Shouldn’t the public get in on that? It’s our White House, not the Democrat party’s central command for propaganda. 

The Media Research Center (MRC) Action Team thas started a campaign to call
ABC News and demand that he Stepanopoulos (Stephy)  recuse himself
from reporting on any issues involving the Obama Administration,
thousands of citizens took immediate action!

         In fact, the MRC reports  that ABC News switchboard
         personnel were completely swamped, and couldn’t keep up
         with the heavy volume of angry calls.

Don’t Stop Calling!

We are expanding this effort, and have added Stephanopoulos’s boss,
David Westin, President of ABC News and Westin’s boss, Anne Sweeney,
Co-Chairman at Disney. They all need to hear from us.

Here are the numbers to call:

George Stephanopoulos, Washington Chief Correspondent, ABC News
202-222-7700

David Westin, President ABC News 212-456-6200

Anne Sweeney, Co-Chairman, Disney Media Networks 818-569-7700

Click here to send emails:

http://www.mrcaction.org/r.asp?U=15953&CID=517&RID=11817738

Drill here, drill now, pay less, create jobs — That’s stimulous

Gov. Sarah Palin continues to make news. She understands economics and real-world energy issues. 

 

I AM DISMAYED THAT LEGISLATION HAS AGAIN BEEN INTRODUCED in Congress to prohibit forever oil and gas development in the most promising unexplored petroleum province in North America — the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in Alaska.

Let’s not forget: Only six months ago, oil was selling for nearly $150 per barrel, while Americans were paying $4 a gallon and more for gasoline. And today, there is potential for prices to rebound as OPEC asserts its market power and as Russia disrupts needed natural gas to Europe for the second time in three years.

As I traveled throughout the country campaigning for vice president, I was glad to hear politicians, including Barack Obama, promise that “everything was on the table” to address America’s great challenges. I also found that when Americans were apprised of the facts, most people became supporters of responsible oil and gas drilling in Alaska. So, I want to remind our national leaders of this promise and make the case against this legislation:

•Oil from ANWR represents a huge, secure domestic supply that could help satisfy U.S. demand for more than 25 years.

•ANWR sits within a 20 million-acre refuge (the size of South Carolina), but thanks to advanced technology like directional drilling, the aggregated drilling footprint would be less than 2,000 acres (about one-quarter the size of Dulles Airport). This is like laying a 2-by-3-foot welcome mat on a basketball court.

•Energy development is quite compatible with the protection of our wildlife and their habitat. For example, North Slope caribou herds have grown and remained healthy throughout more than three decades of oil development. Most of the year, our coastal plain is frozen solid and thus characterized by low biological productivity.

•ANWR development would create hundreds of thousands of good American jobs, positively affecting every state by providing a safe energy supply and generating demand for goods and services.

– Gov. Sarah Palin

McClatchy about to be kicked off the New York Stock Exchange as stock falls below $1 dollar.

The elegant McClatchy stock certificates for Class A stock are worth more than the stock itself. *

 

This report is directly from a McClatchy press release. The McClatchy Company today (Feb. 5) reported a net loss from continuing operations in the fourth quarter of 2008 of $20.4 million, or 25 cents per share.

McClatchy also announced that it was notified by the New York Stock Exchange  that it is not in compliance with the NYSE’s continued listing standards. The NYSE’s notice dated February 4, 2009 indicated that on February 2, 2009, the company’s average share price over the previous 30 trading days was $0.98, which is below the NYSE’s quantitative listing standards.

The NYSE listed companies must maintain an average closing price of any listed security above $1 per share for any consecutive thirty trading-day period. McClatchy plans to notify the NYSE of its intent to cure this deficiency and has six months from the date of the NYSE notice to cure the non-compliance. The company’s Class A common stock will continue to be listed on the NYSE during this interim period, subject to compliance with other NYSE listing requirements and the NYSE’s right to reevaluate continued listing standards. In reality, the stock is now considered a “penny stock” and things had better shape up in the next six months. 

There was no report on what McClatchy was doing about its carbon footprint and efforts to slow climate change. 

Revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008 were $470.9 million, down 17.9% from revenues from continuing operations of $573.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. Advertising revenues were $388.3 million, down 20.7% from 2007, and circulation revenues were $67.0 million, up 1.4%. Online advertising revenues grew 10.3% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and were 10.9% of total advertising revenues compared to 7.8% of total advertising revenues in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Using cash from operations and proceeds from asset sales, the company repaid $30 million of debt in the quarter and $433 million for all of 2008. Debt at the end of the fiscal year was $2.038 billion, down from $2.471 billion at the end of 2007.

Restructuring plan to calm banks and other investors

McClatchy noted in a press release that the duration and depth of the economic recession have taken a severe toll on its advertising revenues. Given the unprecedented deterioration in revenues and with no visibility of an improving economy, the company is continuing to reduce expenses. McClatchy announced that it is developing a plan to reduce costs by an additional $100 million to $110 million, or approximately seven percent of 2008 cash expenses, over the next 12 months beginning later in the first quarter of 2009.

Details of the plan have not yet been finalized. In addition, the company will freeze its pension plans and temporarily suspend the company match to its 401(k) plans, effective March 31, 2009. The company will extend a salary freeze for senior executives in 2009 that was implemented in 2007. The company previously announced that it had implemented a company-wide salary freeze from September 2008 through September 2009. Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s chairman and chief executive officer, also has declined any bonus for 2008 and 2009. In addition, other senior executives will not receive bonuses for 2008.

 

The loss from continuing operations for the entire year of 2007 was $2.73 billion, or $33.26 per share, including the effect of the non-cash impairment charges taken in 2007. Adjusted earnings from continuing operations(1) were $110.9 million, or $1.35 per share, in fiscal 2007 after considering the non-cash impairment charges and adjustments for certain discrete tax items. The company’s total net loss, including the results of discontinued operations, was $2.74 billion, or $33.37 per share.

 

Management’s Comments

Commenting on McClatchy’s results, Pruitt said, “2008 was a difficult and disappointing year. We faced troubled economic times and structural changes in our business.

 

“But the economy remains mired in recession and our industry is still in a period of transition. The advertising environment continues to be weak and we expect print advertising revenues to continue to be down. While we do not have final advertising revenue results for January, we know that the month was slower than the fourth quarter. We don’t have any better sense than other market observers as to how long the current recession will last and we do not yet have visibility of revenue trends.

“We must respond with both continued rigor in driving our revenue results as well as permanently reducing our cost structure. At McClatchy we are quickly becoming a hybrid print and online news and information company.

“Evidence of our cost reduction efforts can be found in our results. Excluding severance and other benefit charges related to our previously announced restructuring plans, cash expenses were down 14.4% in the fourth quarter and were down 11.5% in all of 2008.

“This necessary transition to a more efficient company is especially painful in a horrible economy and we have had to make some very difficult decisions to keep the company safe,” Pruitt said. “Even so, we are determined to treat our employees well and secure their retirement as best we can. So while we have announced that we are freezing our pension plans and will temporarily suspend 401(k) matching contributions as of March 31, we will continue to offer competitive benefits for our employees. We expect to offer a new 401(k) plan later this year that will include both a matching contribution (once reinstated), plus a supplemental contribution that is tied to cash flow performance. I recognize the sacrifices our employees are making to help us get though this difficult time and I appreciate their loyalty to McClatchy. I am confident that the McClatchy team is up to this challenge and we will see brighter days when the economy finally turns.”

Pat Talamantes, McClatchy’s chief financial officer, said, “Our new cost initiatives, combined with our 2008 efforts, are designed to save approximately $300 million annually before severance costs. Approximately $60 million of savings has been realized in 2008, and $44.7 million of severance costs associated with these programs has been expensed in 2008 and largely paid.”

“Despite the downturn in advertising revenues, we still continue to generate significant cash and are using it to repay debt,” Talamantes said. “Our debt at year end is $2.038 billion, down $433 million from the end of 2007. Based on our trailing 12 months of cash flow, our leverage ratio is currently 5.1 times cash flow and our interest coverage ratio is 2.8 times cash flow as defined by our bank agreement — well within the allowable covenant thresholds. We have $159 million in availability under our bank credit lines, and have no significant debt maturities until June 2011. We believe that we can work through this difficult environment, and we expect to make further progress in paying down debt in 2009.”

Other Matters

McClatchy also announced that it was notified by the New York Stock Exchange (the “NYSE”) that it is not in compliance with the NYSE’s continued listing standards. The NYSE’s notice dated February 4, 2009 indicated that on February 2, 2009, the company’s average share price over the previous 30 trading days was $0.98, which is below the NYSE’s quantitative listing standards. Such standards require NYSE listed companies to maintain an average closing price of any listed security above $1.00 per share for any consecutive thirty trading-day period. McClatchy plans to notify the NYSE of its intent to cure this deficiency and has six months from the date of the NYSE notice to cure the non-compliance. The company’s Class A common stock will continue to be listed on the NYSE during this interim period, subject to compliance with other NYSE listing requirements and the NYSE’s right to reevaluate continued listing standards.

Consistent with the growing industry practice, McClatchy will discontinue issuing monthly revenue and statistical reports after this release. McClatchy is among the last newspaper companies to report advertising results monthly, and without comparable industry information, management does not believe monthly revenues are as useful to investors. The company will continue to provide revenue trends and other statistical information on a quarterly basis with its earnings releases.

*Class B stock is the stock held by the family, so that has voting rights and much more value when the assets are finally sold. It’s the same model used by the New York Times.

True liberal/socialist, Ruth Bader Ginsburg held out for cancer surgery until after the election

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery Thursday for pancreatic cancer, raising the odds that one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s leading liberals—will step down this year. So that someone of her political views will now be certain with an Obama and Democrat Congress. 

Ginsburg, 75, has been a justice since 1993, appointed by Bill Clinton. She has been increasingly vocal in recent years about socialist nanny state issues. 

Pancreatic cancer is often deadly, if not caught early. Was Ginsburg so worried about McCain Palin winning the election that she put off her cancer treatment? That is really taking one for the Democrat party. Ginsburg is a true Progressive.

Progressive Democrats set stage to bring back ‘The Fairness Doctrine’

The Orwellian “Fairness Doctrine” is  about to be forced on America by the Democratic party. 

It is a throw back to FDR when Democrats (America’s socialists) were in complete power in the government and the Fairnes Doctrine is anything but fair. Look for a name change here. 

President Reagan ended the “Fairness Doctrine”

 

As heard on the Bill Press Radio Show on Thursday, February 5, 2009:

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) spoke with Bill about the possible return of the Fairness Doctrine in some form.

BILL PRESS: So, is it time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.

BILL PRESS: Can we count on you to push for some hearings in the United States Senate this year, to bring these owners in and hold them accountable?

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s gonna happen. Yep.

Sleepless in Seattle — The Post-Intelligencer shuts down — lives online

Last week: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has told employees they “might” lose their jobs as soon as next week after a deadline for Hearst Corp to sell the newspaper passed last Monday. 

The news is out, the  146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer prints its last edition tomorrow.

The P-I will continue to “live” on the Internet with a much smaller staff.

I like it. It’s a mix of current and archival. Mikey likes it!

http://www.seattlepi.com 

Owner, the Hearst Corp. reports it has failed to find a buyer for the newspaper, which it put up for sale in January after nine years of financial losses. There are no more suckers left with enough trust fund money to waste.

The end of the print edition leaves The Seattle Times as the only major daily newspaper in the city. 

The TV stations will be there tonight and tomorrow capturing the historic day.

Seattle has been counting TV, and now the internet as their favorite news sources. Do you think people will wait for the Seattle Times to find out?

 

 

Last week:

Read between the lines: Boxes for removing personal items and shredding bins are scheduled to be delivered to the PI floors this week.

Clues suggest Hearst plans to close the P-I shortly

Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on its own demise

Just after Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer claimed that “we are still evaluating our options,” Post-Intelligencer staffers learned that boxes and bins are scheduled to be delivered to the newsroom later this week — some for materials to be taken home, others for notes that require shredding. “It would be nice to have some clarity,” says business reporter Joseph Tartakoff. “It’s really hard to plan your work when you’re not sure if you’ll be around the next day.”

The New York Times sold off the majority of its new sky scraper in New York and has a long-term rent agreement. The company no longer owns the roof over its head.

Next, McClatchy announced massive layoffs, and Hearst’s Seattle PI is about to turn into a shadow, online only edition. Meanwhile, back at Hearst’s figurative flagship, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Media Guild has accepted big cuts just to keep most jobs. The Denver Rocky Mountain News shut down a week or so ago. 

McClatchy Co. is shearing another 1,600 jobs in a cost-cutting spree that has clipped nearly one-third of the newspaper publisher’s work force in less than a year.

The latest reduction in payroll announced Monday follows through on the Sacramento-based company’s previously disclosed plans to lower its expenses by as much as $110 million over the next year as its revenue evaporates amid a devastating recession.

The layoffs will start before April. No fooling.

 Several of McClatchy’s 30 daily newspapers, including The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star, already have decided how many workers will be shown the door. Close to 2,000. 

 

Only 33% would miss their local paper if it folded

Pew Research report
Just 43 percent  of Americans say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot,” according to a Pew Research poll. And even fewer, only 33 percent say they will miss their local newspaper if it folds.

Back to the West Coast

Negotiators for the Guild and the San Francisco Chronicle reached a tentative agreement Monday night changes to the collective bargaining agreement in line with cost cuts planned by Hearst. 

The agreement will require approval by Chronicle Unit Guild members. (They will approve or lose their jobs wholesale). 

A ratification meeting will be scheduled as early as Thursday of this week. Time and place will be announced on Tuesday as soon as a large enough facility can be secured.

In view of the latest terms agreed today, the Guild Negotiating Committee recommends membership approval.

The terms reached late Monday include expanded management ability to lay off employees without regard to seniority. All employees who are discharged in a layoff or who accept voluntary buyouts are guaranteed two weeks’ pay per year of service up to a maximum of one year, plus company-paid health care for the severance term, even in the event of a shutdown – which today’s agreement is designed to avoid.

Guild membership will remain a condition of continued employment for all employees. However, new hires in certain advertising sales positions will be given the option of membership, even though they will retain Guild protection under the contract.

On-callers will be limited to no more than 10 percent in any classification or department.

Pension changes are not part of this agreement, but are being discussed by pension authorities and must be implemented under terms of the Pension Protection Act, due to the recent declines in investment markets. Because those changes may affect the decisions of many members concerning buyouts, we are attempting to reach some key understandings now as to the nature of the changes and when they will take effect.

A lunch-hour meeting on Wednesday March 11, with our pension plan’s lawyer will be held at the Guild Office, 433 Natoma, Third Floor Conference Room.

A bulletin summarizing all the proposed contract changes will be issued Tuesday. A set of the complete proposed amendments will be available on the Guild’s Web site (mediaworkers.org) as soon as possible.

Management is seeking to change the union contract as part of an attempt to cut costs and keep the paper operating under the ownership of the Hearst Corp.

The company said Feb. 24 it would sell or close the paper unless the Guild agreed to changes in the labor agreement in effect through June 2010.

The leaders in the former cash cow industry thought they could just transform to their pages of expensive advertising to Web pages. Sorry. The Web is very competitive and readers will not put up with page after page of ads to follow the news. 

McClatchy is down for the count. The stock is hovering below $1 and will soon be kicked out of the New York Stock Exchange. 

The The Sun of Myrtle Beach and the  Macon Telegraph – McClatchy papers, announced last week that they were outsourcing printing, they joined what one experts are calling the last stage of the dying industry.

Chuck Moozakis, editor-in-chief of Newspapers & Technology, found in a December survey piece that the flight from printing includes mid-sized papers like the two last week, small papers, but also very big ones like the San Francisco Chronicle. Dow Jones has already closed plants in Denver and Chicago and could shutter 10 of the 17 around the country that have printed The Wall Street Journal.

 

“There is a lot of iron sitting out there now,” Moozkis reported.  

“What’s more sobering is the amount of press capacity now available within operations with relatively new presses” like Detroit and Denver. Losing the Rocky Mountain News press run — when it closes (not if) — won’t help, and some of the same impact will come as the two Detroit papers have reduced distribution of a smaller print product most weekdays.

 

 The carbon footprint of newspapers is enormous. At least the unemployed “progressives” can be happy that they are no longer contributing to the worst global warming industry on the planet. 

Truth Commission headed by Democrat Patrick Leahy to start Soviet-style show trials

Mirroring the former Soviet Union’s Communist Party of the 1950s, today’s one party government in the USA (totally in the hands of the Democrat Party) are on a power grab.

Get ready for show trials! Democrat Patrick “Leaky” Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged a commission as a way to heal what he called sharp political divides under former President George W. Bush and to prevent future abuses.

How about the abuses of Congressional Democrat Party hacks like Leahy?

And what’s with that permenant forced smile, it’s like the Dali Lama’s?

Leahy is an example of the “change” Obama promised? That hack has been around for 40 years.

He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era of tribes hacking each other to death. 

Is this a free country? Next, the Fairness Doctrine will be pushed through. 

“We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” Leahy said in a speech at Georgetown University.

Be afraid, but what can we do about it? Next “the Fairness Doctrine.”

Bill Clinton said that there needs to be either “more balance in the programs or have some opportunity for people to offer  countervailing opinions.” Clinton added that he didn’t support repealing the Fairness Doctrine, an act done under Reagan’s FCC. 

In the past week, a couple Democratic Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Tom Harkin, have both spoken favorably about the Fairness Doctrine, or holding hearings on radio “accountability.” What you don’t know is that Stabenow’s hubby is a big investor in Air America.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Wife of Islamic TV network exec beheaded

 

Muzzammil Hassan, right, founder of Bridges TV (Islamic CTV format), is charged with murder in the beheading of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, left, in Orchard Park (exclusive suburb of Buffalo, NY).

                    

Woops there goes another fact about the religion of peace.  

Muzzammil Hassan came to America from Pakistan 25 years ago. He became a successful banker in Buffalo, New York, near the famed Niagara Falls.

While he and his wife were happy to be in the United States, they were upset by the negative perceptions of Muslims, and particularly how this perception might affect their children.

That is how they came up with the idea of Bridges TV. Mr. Hassan’s wife challenged him to start it.

“I had no background in television. I didn’t know anything about TV. Her comment was, ‘you have an M.B.A. (masters degree in business) why don’t you write a business plan?’”

He quit his job at the bank and for the next three years worked developing an English language television network that offers news and entertainment for Muslims. Stonings, beheadings, car bombings perhaps?

Hassan hopes Bridges TV lives up to its name by uniting American Muslims and by helping non-Muslims overcome the negative images they may have of both Muslims and Islam.

That was in 2004. Now, five years later, as far as I know, Muzzamil is still concerned about “negative perceptions” of Muslims held by Americans.

But his wife has no worries in that department. In fact, she has no worries at all.

Orchard Park police are investigating the gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband — an influential member of the local Muslim community — reported her death to police Thursday, Feb. 12.

Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder.

“He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead,” Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning.

Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers went to that location and discovered her body.

Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light. This unfortunate incident will not help. 

The killing apparently occurred some time late Thursday afternoon. Detectives still are looking for the murder weapon. 

“Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible,” Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said today. 

Authorities say Aasiya Hassan recently had filed for divorce from her husband. 

“She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th [of February],” Benz said. 

Muzzammil Hassan was arraigned before Village Justice Deborah Chimes and sent to the Erie County Holding Center. 

It’s too bad the order of protection was useless. A 12 gage Mossberg shotgun would have been a much better thing to do than waste time on a restraining order.

 

 

Has the earth been visited by space aliens? Kucinich and Pelosi think so. Do the math.

The idea of space travel is fun and provides great entertainment. I’m sure there are many forms of life similar to earth in the universe. But if you do the math, you will see that it doesn’t matter. The space aliens are not going to visit earth and probe Democrat House representatives’ rectums in Cleveland Ohio, or San Francisco like Democrat Dennis Kucinich insists happened to him and friends of his in Hollywood. Nancy Pelosi who like her friend Kucinich, may look like an alien from another galaxy, that’s a fact, but her basic math skills are lacking. 

 

Kucinich is currently the chairman of theDomestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He is also a member of theEducation and Labor Committee.

Kucinich heads committees on education? That should be against the law.

We need to increase teaching math, science and economics in our schools. That’s a fact.

Meanwhile the stock market continues to crash today. Investors understand economics and simple math and that spending billions on more government programs is not what drives an economy. 
A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away. Pluto is 12 light hours away.

Can you imagine man travelling in a vehicle that is 1,000 times slower than the speed of light? It would take 12.2 million years to visit a neighboring  solar system.  That’s the time equivalent to going back to the days dinosaurs roamed the earth. Planet of the Apes, it would not be. Planet of the volvox colonies. 

The concept that a rocket or space craft could ever travel at the speed of light are comic book science, much like man-made global warming. Let’s say man ever could achieve the speed of light of a space craft? Think about the speed and distance.

Philly Newspapers Rolled – Inquirer and Daily News in free fall

Bankruptcy documents filed Sunday by Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, The Inquirer and Daily News and seven affiliated suburban publications report the newspaper group bought  from McClatchy (the troubled chain that Knight-Ridder unloaded in 2005) is asking the court for bankruptcy protection. The Philly group paid McClatchy  $562 million for the papers. The value of the assets is far lower than that just a few years later.

You have to admire the business knowledge of the Knight-Ridder family share holders who knew when to fold them and chuck them off before the business trends became obvious.

This report in Forbes Magazine is by Wm. P Barret, former Dallas Times Herald and Philly Inquirer reporter and editor. He has good sources. 

The Inquirer and Daily News join a growing list of newspapers forced into bankruptcy after sharp declines in advertising destroyed their ability to service big debts taken on when they changed hands. A day earlier, Journal Register Co. (nyse: JRC – news – people ), parent of Connecticut’s New Haven Register and 178 other weekly and daily newspapers, sought bankruptcy-court protection. The same fate befell the Minneapolis Star Tribune last month. In December, Tribune Co., whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Newsday, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. All newspapers have suffered sharp ad revenue declines due to Internet competition and the recession, but those that recently changed hands in leveraged deals are the most vulnerable.

The bankruptcy threatens to wipe out the $150 million equity investment made by Tierney’s Philly group, which included local labor unions and business interests. It also raises the prospect of big losses by the lenders that provided the balance of more than $400 million in debt financing. The list of largest unsecured creditors was topped by Royal Bank of Scotland (nyse: RBS – news – people ), which is owed $22 million. As of Jan. 31, the company said it still owed $395 million to lenders.

 

“The debtors’ assets and going concern value are worth less today than they were worth in 2006,” Thayer wrote. He added that Philadelphia Newspapers had 2008 free cash flow–before interest, taxes, depreciation or amortization–of $36 million. That is expected to drop 31% to $25 million this year, Thayer wrote. It is from cash flow that debt-servicing payments are made.

Thayer’s statement hints at hard-ball tactics on all sides as Tierney’s team fought to restructure its finances outside of court. A Tierney request in November for $20 million in equity investment from lenders was rejected. Then this month, Thayer wrote, lenders countered with a proposal that the money be a loan and demanded an answer to their proposal within 48 hours–and without providing a copy of the paperwork describing fees for their loans.

In a memo to employees, Tierney said the company has asked the hometown bankruptcy court to allow payments of benefits and pensions. A bankruptcy filing usually halts such payments, at least initially. In recent years, many employees of the Inquirer and Daily News have taken buyouts or have been laid off.

Thayer’s affidavit says Tierney’s management has “dramatically improved the operations.” But one thing not specified was print circulation numbers of the Inquirer and Daily News, both Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers. Latest audited figures put their combined daily circulation at 398,000, on the order of half what it was when the papers’ main competition, The Philadelphia Bulletin, went out of business in 1982.

Chronicle’s chronic losses lead to major cuts at the Bay Area’s largest newspaper — papers coast-to-coast cutting staff

The San Francisco Chronicle ready for some major “right sizing.”

After some more streamlining in addition to a new printing process off site, the largest newspaper in Northern California should begin to be profitable again.  

In a posted statement, Hearst said if the savings cannot be accomplished “quickly” the company will seek a buyer, and if none comes forward, it will close the Chronicle. The Chronicle lost more than $50 million in 2008 and is on a pace to lose more than that this year, Hearst said.

Frank J. Vega, chairman and publisher of the Chronicle, said, “It’s just a fact of life that we need to live within our means as a newspaper – and we have not for years.”

Vega said plans remain on track for the June 29 transition to new presses owned and operated by Canadian-based Transcontinental Inc., which will give the Chronicle industry-leading color reproduction. That move will save a few million annually due to the reduction of highly paid pressmen.

If the reductions can be accomplished, Vega said, “We are optimistic that we can emerge from this tough cycle with a healthy and vibrant Chronicle.”

The company did not specify the size of the staff reductions or the nature of the other cost-savings measures it has in mind. The company said it will immediately seek discussions with the Northern California Media Workers Guild, Local 39521, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 853, which represent the majority of workers at the Chronicle.

“Because of the sea change newspapers everywhere are undergoing and these dire economic times, it is essential that our management and the local union leadership work together to implement the changes necessary to bring the cost of producing the Chronicle into line with available revenue,” Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Hearst vice chairman and chief executive, and Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, said in a joint statement.

From the Newsosaur:

SF Chron cost-cut target equals 47% of staff

If the San Francisco Chronicle had to slash enough payroll to offset the more than $50 million operating loss threatening its future, nearly half of its 1,500 employees would be dismissed.

That’s the magnitude of the challenge facing the managers and union representatives who were tasked today by Hearst Corp. to find a way to cut the paper’s mushrooming deficit – or else.

After losing more than $1 billion without seeing a dime of profit since purchasing the paper in 2000, the Hearst Corp. today threatened to sell or close the Chronicle if sufficient savings were not identified to staunch operating losses surpassing $1 million a week. Without significant cost reductions, the losses would accelerate this year as a result of the ailing economy, said Michael Keith, a spokesman for the paper.

To wipe out a $50 million loss, let alone make a profit, the paper would have to eliminate 47% of its entire staff

Meanwhile, on the East Coast:

The latest Hartford Courant (former Times-Mirror newspaper) layoffs were announced last night – political reporter Mark Pazniokas is among those cut from the newspaper. We’ve been told these names as well – please correct us if we have anything wrong: Jesse Hamilton of the Washington bureau,  Religion Reporter Elizabeth Hamilton, Business Reporter Robin Stansbury, Environment Reporter David Funkhouser, reporters  Steve Grant and Anna Marie Somma, sportswriter Matt Eagan,  itowns editor Loretta Waldman, itowns reporter Nancy Lastrina, administrative assistant Judy Prato, Marge Ruschau, Features copy editors Adele Angle and David Wakefield, and library staffer & researcher Owen Walker.

We’re told that editor/reporter Kate Farrish resigned earlier this week as did editor John Ferraro.

Denis Horgan is calling it the Mardi Gras Massacre.

Paul Bass has more in the New Haven Independent.

Now, back to Texas:

Memo from San Antonio Express-News’ editor

From: Rivard, Robert
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:44 AM
To: SAEN Editorial
Subject: We are canceling this morning’s news meeting for obvious reasons.

Colleagues:

By now you have read Tom Stephenson’s message to all employees. Every division of the Express-News will be affected, including every department in the newsroom. Incremental staff and budget cuts, we are sorry to say, have proven inadequate amid changing social and market forces now compounded by this deepening recession.

It is not lost on us as journalists in this difficult moment that we have built an audience of readers, in print and online, that is larger and more diverse than at any time in our century and half of publishing. We have done that at the Express-News through a commitment to excellence and public service. Now we must find ways to maintain these high levels of journalistic distinction even as valued colleagues depart. It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that declining advertising reve