In Obama's 2 years, more troops lost to suicide than combat-Congress.org

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Figures are likely to be even larger due to reluctance to report and varying standards.

1/24/11, "More troops lost to suicide," Congress.org, John Donnelly

"For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reasons are complicated and the accounting uncertain — for instance, should returning soldiers who take their own lives after being mustered out be included?

But the suicide rate is a further indication of the stress that military personnel live under after nearly a decade of war.

Figures released by the armed services last week showed an alarming increase in suicides in 2010, but those figures leave out some categories.

Overall, the services reported 434 suicides by personnel on active duty, significantly more than the 381 suicides by active-duty personnel reported in 2009. The 2010 total is below the 462 deaths in combat, excluding accidents and illness. In 2009, active-duty suicides exceeded deaths in battle.

Last week’s figures, though, understate the problem of military suicides because the services do not report the statistics uniformly.

• Several do so only reluctantly.

Figures reported by each of the services last week, for instance, include suicides by members of the Guard and Reserve who were on active duty at the time. The Army and the Navy also add up statistics for certain reservists who kill themselves when they are not on active duty.

But the Air Force and Marine Corps do not include any non-mobilized reservists in their posted numbers. What’s more, none of the services count suicides that occur among a class of reservists known as the Individual Ready Reserve, the more than 123,000 people who are not assigned to particular units.

Suicides by veterans who have left the service entirely after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan also are not counted by the Defense Department. The Department of Veterans Affairs keeps track of such suicides only if the person was enrolled in the VA health care system — which

• three-quarters of veterans are not.

But even if such veterans and members of the Individual Ready Reserve are excluded from the suicide statistics, just taking into account the deaths of reservists who were not included in last week’s figures pushes the number of suicides last year to at least 468.

That total includes some Air Force and Marine Corps reservists who took their own lives while not on active duty, and it exceeds the 462 military personnel killed in battle.

The problem of reservists’ suicides, in particular, has been a major concern to some lawmakers. A Pentagon study this year confirmed that

• reservists lack the support structure that active-duty troops have.

Some types of reservists are more cut off than others. Rep. Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, says that members of the Individual Ready Reserve and other categories of citizen-soldiers do not receive a thorough screening for mental health issues when they return from deployments....

One of those soldiers, a constituent of Holt’s named Coleman S. Bean, was an Army sergeant and Iraq War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder but could not find treatment. He took his own life in 2008.

Moved by Bean’s story, Holt wrote a bill requiring phone contacts with these reservists every 90 days after they come home from war. The House adopted Holt’s provision as part of its defense authorization bills for both fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011. But conferees writing the final version of the bills took it out both years.

Holt said in December that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was responsible for that decision in the most recent bill. A spokeswoman for McCain, Brooke Buchanan, would not state his position on the provision. Instead, she said House members had removed it.

A House Armed Services Committee spokeswoman, Jennifer Kohl, said the House reluctantly pulled the provision from the bill because of the opposition of senators, whom she did not name....

"In order to know whether the steps we’ve taken work," Holt said, "we’re going to have to have more detailed knowledge of who’s out there.""

-------------------------------------------------------

This was a serious problem under George Bush but he is gone. It is now worse and the media said we could sleep at night because of Obama:

Cover of New Yorker Magazine, 11/17/2008, after Obama's election. Time.com, breathless, notes about the cover:

• "Why is the cover great? It doesn't do a victory dance. Rather, it whispers to the reader (the tribe): "Everything's okay now — we have our country back." It's set at night, a time when creepy things happen, but also a time when people sleep, safe and sound. It is beautifully rendered. Simply spectacular."

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Obama budget defeated 97-0, democrat controlled Senate hasn't passed a budget in 760 days

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Obama trashed precious taxpayer time and expense on a 2400 page 'budget' so bad no democrats voted for it.

5/30/11, "Washington is Broken, and Needs Leadership. Where is President Obama?" Senator Ron Johnson, RedState.com

"For over 31 years, I’ve been building a manufacturing business in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with hundreds of good, hardworking, taxpaying Americans. During that entire time, I have watched government steadily grow, increasing its control over our lives, heaping trillions of dollars of regulations on our businesses, fostering a culture of entitlement and dependency, mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren, and driving America toward national bankruptcy.

I’ve been here in Washington for 5 months now, and I am more convinced than ever that our political and budget process is horribly broken. The Democrat controlled Senate has not passed a budget in over 760 days. Last week, President Obama’s FY 2012 Budget was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 0-97. Let me repeat that, ZERO to 97. The President’s budget that was unveiled as THE solution to our long-term fiscal problems did not receive a single vote in the United States Senate.

This is a stunning indictment of the President’s lack of leadership and seriousness. I don’t know how many thousands of man-hours that over four inch thick, 2400-page budget document took to create, but it was a total waste of time and resources. That is a very sad fact. Instead of acknowledging this failure, the Administration and members of the President’s party have been viciously demagoguing the only other budget plans offered, and engaging in a concerted effort to scare the American public and financial markets over the debt ceiling limit."...

--------------------------------------------

Comment:

"You cannot expect leadership from someone intent on destroying America

• izoneguy Tuesday, May 31st at 12:25AM EDT (link)

"Sorry, but Obama is a destroyer not a leader.

The Republicans in the Senate need to get a grip and start fighting Obama tooth & nail - you cannot work with this Marxist. The RINOS in the Senate are more on the side of socialism and that is the problem.

You must hold and block until after the Nov. 2012 elections.
If not and Obama gets re-elected then it won’t matter how many elections the Republicans win after that.

Sorry for the blunt talk but what is needed right now is a Republican Senate with spine & guts. I don’t know how you get to Brown, Snowe, Collins, Murkowski and a few more of the RINOS but they need to understand the fate of the republic is in the balance and it is much more important than their next election.

The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo.

• And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. "

via Tea Party News articles

Egyptian Arab Spring officials gave 'virginity checks' to women grabbed at random a month after Mubarek was gone, say 'none were virgins'-CNN

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Islamist perverts gave girls electric shocks too. The Arab Spring needs more hard earned American taxpayer money to practice Sharia sexual degradation. Anybody home in congress?

5/31/11, "Egyptian general admits 'virginity checks' conducted on protesters," CNN, Shahira Amin

"A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges

• and forced to submit to virginity checks.

At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."

But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted

• and defended the practice.

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."

The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

"We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said.

• "None of them were (virgins)."

This demonstration occurred nearly a month after Egypt's longtime President Hosni Mubarak stepped down amid a wave of popular and mostly peaceful unrest aimed at his ouster and the institution of democratic reforms.

Afterward, Egypt's military -- which had largely stayed on the sidelines of the revolution -- officially took control of the nation's political apparatus as well, until an agreed-upon constitution and elections.

Mubarak denies ordering shootings

The March 9 protest occurred in Tahrir Square, which became famous over 18 historic and sometimes bloody days and nights of protests that led to Mubarak's resignation.

But unlike in those previous demonstrations, the Egyptian military targeted the protesters. Soldiers dragged dozens of demonstrators from the square and through the gates of the landmark Egyptian Museum.

Salwa Hosseini, a 20-year-old hairdresser and one of the women named in the Amnesty report, described to CNN how uniformed soldiers tied her up on the museum's grounds, forced her to the ground and slapped her, then shocked her with a stun gun while calling her a prostitute.

"They wanted to teach us a lesson," Hosseini said soon after the Amnesty report came out. "They wanted to make us feel that we do not have dignity."

The treatment got worse, Hosseini said, when she and the 16 other female prisoners were taken to a military detention center in Heikstep.

There, she said, she and several of other female detainees were subjected to a "virginity test."

"We did not agree for a male doctor to perform the test," she said. But Hosseini said her captors forced her to comply by threatening her with more stun-gun shocks.

"I was going through a nervous breakdown at that moment," she recalled. "There was no one standing during the test, except for a woman and the male doctor. But several soldiers were standing behind us watching the backside of the bed. I think they had them standing there as witnesses."

The senior Egyptian general said the 149 people detained after the March 9 protest were subsequently tried in military courts, and most have been sentenced to a year in prison.

Authorities later revoked those sentences "when we discovered that some of the detainees had university degrees, so we decided to give them a second chance," he said.

The senior general reaffirmed that the military council was determined to make Egypt's democratic transition a success.

"The date for handover to a civil government can't come soon enough for the ruling military council," he said. "The army can't wait to return to its barracks and do what it does best --

• protect the nation's borders.""

via Lucianne.com

If climate guys don't want FOIA requests, let them use their own cash and don't allow alleged results used for public policy affecting billions

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5/30/11, "WashPost: Freedom of Information Act not for skeptics’ use," JunkScience.com

"In a bizarre Memorial Day editorial, the Washington Post criticized climate skeptics for using the Freedom of Information Act to pry documents concerning Climategater Michael Mann from the University of Virginia."...

-------------------------------------------------------

5/26/11, "FOI requests shouldn’t be needed in the first place," Talking About the Weather, Harold Ambler

"If such research were being done with the scientists’ own money and did not involve policy affecting billions of the world’s people, then the refusal to follow normal scientific protocol in terms of transparency could, perhaps, be justified. But it is not the scientists’ own money, and their work does affect you and me, profoundly.

The implication from Nurse is that Big Oil or some such is funding those sending the FOI requests, whereas all the significant climate-scientist FOI requests that have been made public have come from private individuals connected in no way with oil, big or small. They come from the heart of honest skeptics. Big Oil, keep in mind, funds mainstream climatology, the alarmists that is, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

How many times will mainstream journalists allow this mantra of poor, persecuted climate scientists to be repeated

• before checking a single fact?

--------------------------------------------------

The Washington Post's 'environmental' "reporter" Juliet Eilperin is married to Center for American Progess 'Climate' Specialist Andrew Light whose work at CAP's Global Climate Network is

• patronized by wealthy UN climate boss/lobbyist/steamy romance novelist, Rajendra Pachauri.
  

• Fittingly, Eilperin hubby Mr. Light's resume says he's an
  
• expert on 'ethics.'....

------------------------------------------------------------

5/25/11, "Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, says Nobel laureate," Guardian UK, Alok Jha

---------------------------------------------------

Elite media and 'scientists' mingle at posh getaways to ensure each other's financial success. Ordinary Americans who lack advocates of their own pay the bill.

• 6/28/10, "Getting Help from the Press," Gloucester Times, Nancy Gaines

"For five days, esteemed scientists and elite journalists gathered on Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles, east of Aruba, to loll on the island's fine beaches, sip cocktails at the Tipsy Seagull and perhaps marvel at the flamingoes for which Bonaire is famous.

The official purpose of the October 2002 gathering of the

• Pew Charitable Trusts marine fellows was to train the scientists in the ways of the media, the better
  
• to market their message.

"Learn how to navigate the stormy waters of the media," read the description of one Bonaire workshop. "Packaging your message is a key to success — whether talking to the media,

• submitting a paper to Science or Nature (magazine), writing a grant proposal, or writing an op-ed for your local paper."

But it wasn't all business.

The workshops were followed by "barside discussions" as the sun-soaked setting

• blurred the line that usually separates reporters and those they cover. So, too, did it blur the line between trainers and trainees.

The scientists being trained on Bonaire had a ready pool of journalists on which to practice what they were learning about working the media. The list of reporters invited to Bonaire was a

• who's who of science journalism: Cornelia Dean of the New York Times, Natasha Loder of the Economist, Charles Alexander of Time magazine and Tom Hayden of U.S. News and World Report, among others.

Dean told the Gloucester Daily Times her trip to Bonaire was paid for by Pew, the powerful nonprofit that uses its multi-billion-dollar endowment to steer public policy on the environment and other issues.

• While the New York Times has strict standards against junkets, Dean said, an exception is made for "teaching," and that's what she was doing in Bonaire.

• "My goal was to help scientists to speak more clearly to the public," she said.

The scientists mingling with the journalists on Bonaire included beneficiaries of Pew money, like Steve Palumbi, Elliot Norse and Jeremy Jackson.

Another notable scientist on Bonaire was Daniel Pauly, the author last year of "Aquacalypse Now: The End of Fish," and

• a professor whose fisheries center at the University of British Columbia has received some $15 million from Pew.

Pauly is a longtime prophet of doom for commercial fishing.

In a 1998 article he co-authored for Science magazine, Pauly predicted that rapacious commercial fishermen would work their way down the marine food chain — eliminating predator fish such as tuna and swordfish, then setting their nets for the bait those fish feed on. In the end, nothing would be left on the menu but "jellyfish and plankton soup."

'Fished Out'

The Bonaire conclave is just one example of the symbiotic relationship that has developed between

• environmental advocates and scientists and some of the
  
• big-media journalists who cover them.

The journalists are wined and dined by the advocates

• and hired to train the scientists to use the media to advance their message.

The journalists, in turn, call on those same scientists as sources when writing about the advocates and their agenda.

• In June 2003, eight months after Bonaire, Tom Hayden warned of the cataclysmic consequences of overfishing in a cover story for U.S. News and World Report,

The story, "Fished Out," quoted 13 different concerned scientists and citizens coming to the same awful conclusion: Jellyfish might one day be fishermen's only catch.

Although Hayden was virtually unknown in commercial fishing circles,

• his story had the potential to influence the American public's view of the fishing industry.

Hayden did not mention to his readers that, of the 14 sources he quoted for the article, 13 received their funding directly or indirectly from Pew, as Pew fellows or the recipients of Pew grants. The 14th was a restaurant chef.

• Hayden also quoted Jane Lubchenco, now head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

'Frame their messages'

Lubchenco, a Pew fellow and mentor of many other Pew fellows, wasn't on Bonaire. But she appeared in a PBS-produced film shown at the event titled "Empty Oceans, Empty Nets," another cautionary tale of overfishing, funded in part by Pew.

• Lubchenco for years has urged her fellow scientists to become activists in the debate over issues like global warming and overfishing and
  

• to help shape public policy through the media.

In 1997, as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Lubchenco called on fellow scientists to

• join her in a new "social contract."

Scientists must promote their ideas to politicians and the public in order to create a world that is "ecologically sound, economically feasible and socially just," she argued.

• A year after the speech, Lubchenco founded the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program to advance her activist vision.

The program trains chosen scientists in "talking points" to use with the media and other nonscientific audiences, according to its website. Through "role playing and small group interactive exercises,"

• the scientists learn how to develop "specific, appropriate messages to stakeholders."

Trainers hired to work with Aldo Leopold fellows have included

• reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and National Public Radio, as well as leaders of environmental groups and
  
• White House and
  
• congressional staff members.

Lubchenco also helped organize two groups with a similar mission, SeaWeb and the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea — COMPASS.

• Lead trainer for all three advocacy groups — Aldo Leopold, SeaWeb and COMPASS — is Nancy Baron, a zoologist and former science writer.

Baron has boasted to colleagues about her success in manipulating the media message — and the media.

In 2008, referring to a story on damage to the ocean ecosystem written by Andrew Revkin for the Science Times section of The New York Times, Baron wrote: "This Science Times piece came out of AAAS (American Academy of Arts and Sciences) and our infamous marine mixer."

• The infamous mixer was a cocktail party hosted by COMPASS for members of the Academy and the press.

The networking that links activists and journalists was fully on display in the Washington Post story that broke the news of President-elect Obama's decision to nominate

• Lubchenco as head of NOAA in December 2008.

The story was written by the Post's environmental writer, Juliet Eilperin, who has been both a panelist and participant in COMPASS events.

• Eilperin cited "several sources" for the scoop and quoted one in praise of Lubchenco: Andrew Rosenberg.

The story did not mention that Rosenberg is an adviser to both Pew and COMPASS and has ties to Lubchenco that date to when she was a professor and he a grad student at Oregon State University. He lists Lubchenco as a reference on his resume.

• Rosenberg is also a former high-ranking NOAA official who
  

• now runs an environmental consulting company that has obtained
  

• more than $12 million in NOAA contracts in the past decade.

Last fall, Lubchenco made him a White House consultant on ocean policy."

----------------------------------------------------

Commenter to JunkScience.com

Adrian Vance

"There is so much money and power driving anthropogenic global warming with young Ph.D.s paying off their loans with government grants livelihoods are at stake. It is just that simple. So far they have gotten $106 billion and that is a lot of money to the few thousand schools able to grant higher degrees. They have corrupted the whole system."

------------------------------------------------

5/29/11, "Harassing climate-change researchers," Washington Post editorial

.

Strauss-Kahn brother Marc-Olivier is visiting adviser to US Federal Reserve-Washingtonian

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5/16/11, "Dominique Strauss-Kahn: What Does the IMF Chief's Arrest Mean?" Washingtonian, Apolline de Marherbe
.

"Strauss-Kahn has four children from his previous marriages and Sinclair has two, plus grandchildren. In Washington, they settled as a tribe: DSK’s brother, Marc-Olivier Strauss-Kahn, was appointed visiting senior adviser at the Federal Reserve board and administrator of the Inter-American Development Bank. Marc-Olivier was sent here by the Central Bank of France; his wife works at the World Bank. Sinclair’s younger son, David Levai, also made his way here and got a job as a program manager with a microfinance institution."...

---------------------------------------------------------
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Soros, in meeting with US Federal Reserve Vice Chairman in 2010.

5/12/10, "US central banker targets imbalances in financial crisis," The Daily Star, Bangladesh

Now accused IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn met in Zurich in 2010 with US Federal Reserve Vice Chmn., Donald Kohn, George Soros and others.

---------------------------------------------------------

3/8/10, "IMF suggests how to raise climate change funds," AP

Strauss-Kahn says global warming slush fund is needed ahead of carbon taxes.

.

Boehner allergy to Tea evident in NY26

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5/29/11, "Tea party 2012 effect stirs GOP trepidation," Washington Times, Ralph Z. Hallow

"House Speaker John A. Boehner worsened matters, some Republican figures said, by failing to mention at a fundraising event in the district that Mrs. Corwin was the only tea party-endorsed candidate and that Mr. Davis was not the real tea party candidate.

“Boehner was in town, but didn't tell the 500 people at the Corwin fundraiser she is endorsed by the tea party and is the real conservative in this race,” Mr. Thompson (a NY area Tea Party coordinator) said.

via Lucianne.com

Breitbart to Anthony Weiner: We have much more

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5/29/11, "It's On!... Breitbart confronts Anthony Weiner," Gateway Pundit


.

New logo for GOP: Gutless Old Party

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via Free Republic

Drivers in Washington State to pay $672 million more for gas--Sen. Cantwell

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5/29/11, "Cantwell: Gas prices cost Wash. drivers $672M more," AP, Seattle PI

"U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell says Washington state drivers will spend an estimated $672 million more for gas this summer than they did last summer.

The Democrat's office conducted an analysis showing that each driver in the state can expect to pay $150 more between Memorial Day and Labor Day. She says gas prices are 93 cents higher on average since Memorial Day last year.

Cantwell says excessive speculation in oil markets is largely to blame. She's calling on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to rein in that speculation, and she compares what's happening now to the way Enron's market manipulation affected energy prices in the Northwest.

She notes that when people take fewer trips because of high gas prices, they buy fewer meals at restaurants and rent fewer hotel rooms, and that hurts the economy."

.

German commission says all democracies must be limited in service of global warming

.
5/29/11, "Climate Dictatorship of the Enlightened: More Great Ideas from Germany," Chris Horner, American Spectator

"The Global Warming Polcy Foundation, run by a native German if from London, links to and translates an article in Die Welt reporting on, and sounding something of an alarm over, a major recommendation from an influential commission advising Chancellor Angela Merkel, "World in Transition - Social Contract for a Great Transformation", by Germany's Scientific Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change (WBGU). That group is led by of all people the top dog at a major scientific institute (but, please, yes, let's bow to science not as a provider of knowledge but policy advisor). A telling pull quote from the story is:

"Germany's green government advisors admit frankly that decarbonization can only be achieved by the limitation of democracy - both nationally and internationally."

• You can put the piece through e.g., Google translate if you wish. Otherwise, here are some choice excerpts (all emphases in original):

All nations would have to relinquish their national interests and find a new form of collective responsibility for the sake of the climate: "The world citizenry agree to innovation policy that is tied to the normative postulate of sustainability and in return surrender spontaneous and persistence desires. Guarantor of this virtual agreement is a formative state [...].""...

---------------------------------------------------

German economist and UN Climate official Edenhofer, 11/18/10: " This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole....Africa will be the big winner, and huge

• amounts of money will flow there."...

"German economist "Ottmar Edenhofer was appointed as joint chair of Working Group 3 at the Twenty-Ninth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."

via Tom Nelson

Bill Clinton did robocall for dem. winner of NY26 election

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5/29/11, "Global warming splits the Christie administration," NJ Star-Ledger, The Auditor

"(NJ Gov. Chris) Christie waded into the special election last week, recording a robo-call for Corwin that went out to 80,000 residents of the traditionally conservative 26th congressional district near Buffalo. In the call Christie noted: “I ran for governor of New Jersey because like you, I wanted to see REAL change. Jane Corwin is a fighter who knows how to get things done.”

Christie’s robo call ran against one recorded for Democrat Kathy Hochul by former President Bill Clinton, who made Corwin’s Medicare position a focal point of the election."...


via Tom Nelson

French photographers try to get on roof to take pictures of DSK thru skylight of his Tribeca pied a terre

.
5/29/11, "Ex-IMF chief hires top legal guns in sex case," LA Times, Geraldine Baum

"Last week, television satellite trucks jammed the Manhattan neighborhood's narrow streets, and photographers, many of them French, were canvassing the neighborhood trying to find a doorman who would take $500 in cash to let them up on the roof to take pictures through the skylight of Strauss-Kahn's townhouse."...(last para.)

• More about DSK's defense:

"Among the first calls Strauss-Kahn made after police escorted him off a Paris-bound jet shortly before takeoff was to (William W.) Taylor, a soft-spoken Southerner and Washington insider. Taylor represented Strauss-Kahn a few years ago when he was facing an internal investigation by the Washington-based IMF over an affair with a woman who worked for him there. Though he was reprimanded for bad judgment, he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

When Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York, he again reached out to Taylor, who quickly contacted Brafman, with whom he had worked defending a white-shoe law firm accused of fraud.

"If you're in New York and you're in a heap of trouble, Ben's the guy you call," said Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, who teamed up with Brafman in the early stages of defending Michael Jackson against child molestation charges. Brafman's other famous clients include Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jay-Z, former NFL receiver Plaxico Burress

• and a roster of New York gangsters.

Geragos and Charles Ross, Brafman's former partner, each described him as a savvy cross-examiner with a wily manner and a engaging sense of humor —

• he was once a Catskills stand-up comic....

In addition, the defense has brought on Marina Ein, a Washington-based public relations advisor who worked for former Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) when he was questioned during the investigation into the disappearance of slain Washington

• intern Chandra Levy."...

via Lucianne.com

Obama again rejects Kyoto Treaty

.

5/29/11, "Kyoto deal loses 4 big nations," Sydney Morning Herald (Au.),

DEAUVILLE, France: "Russia, Japan and Canada told the G8 they would not join a second round of carbon cuts under the Kyoto Protocol at United Nations talks this year and the US reiterated it would remain outside the treaty, European diplomats have said."...

via Tom Nelson

David Mamet still 'no longer a brain-dead liberal', answers Zionist boilerplate-WSJ

.

Mamet responds to boilerplate Zionist accusations as "a crock of s---."

5/28/11, "David Mamet's Coming Out Party," WSJ, Bari Weiss

"In March 2008, David Mamet was outed in the Village Voice. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright had a comedy about an American president running on Broadway, and—perhaps to help with ticket sales—decided to write an article about the election season. The headline was subtle: "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal.'"

"They mistitled it," he insists. Mr. Mamet had given the piece the far more staid title, "Political Civility." But the Voice's headline was truth in advertising. "I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind," Mr. Mamet wrote, referring to his prior self as, yes, a "brain-dead liberal."

The article was the most popular ever published on the Voice's website. But was the acclaimed Mr. Mamet really a conservative?...

And so it was with Mr. Mamet and politics. He couldn't move on, so to speak, before he understood "what the nature of government is, just sufficient so that I as a citizen can actually vote without being a member of a herd." Same for taxes: "I pay them, so I think I should be responsible for what actually happens to them." As for the history of the country itself, he wanted to understand "the vision of the Founding Fathers. . . . How does holding to it keep people safe and prosperous?"

Reading and reflecting got him to some basics. Real diversity is intellectual. Whatever its flaws, America is the greatest country in the history of the world. The free market always solves problems better than government. It's the job of the state to be just, not to render social justice. And, most sobering, Mr. Mamet writes in "The Secret Knowledge," there are no perfect solutions to inequality, only trade-offs....

On the left, Mr. Mamet is accused of having ulterior motives for his political shift. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait writes that the story is a familiar, Zionist one: "An increasingly religious Jew with strong loyalty to Israel, he became aware of a tension between the illiberal nationalism of his right-wing views on the Middle East and the liberalism of his views on everything else, and resolved the tension by abandoning the latter." Mr. Mamet calls this a "crock of s—."

The Slate website has run with the "Rich Person Discovers He Is a Republican" narrative. And then there's the jiu-jitsu theory offered by a film blogger: "Mamet's escalating interest in martial arts—traditionally the domain of right-wing nutjobs like Chuck Norris—has pointed toward this new stance for some time." Obviously....

Mr. Mamet was in Toronto that day (Sept. 11, 2001) for a film festival. "I read an article, I think it was in that day's Toronto Star, that had been a reprint from the Chicago Tribune," he says. It was an interview with Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dorne, two former leaders of the Weather Underground. "They were talking about the bombings in the '60s. And the guy says to Bill Ayers: 'Are you regretful?' And he said: 'No, no, no.' . . . And I read it, and I thought, this is appalling and immoral," recalls Mr. Mamet.

"Then I got on a plane. And while I was on the plane they blew up New York City. The combination of the two things just started me thinking what have we—meaning my generation—done?" Mr. Mamet knows these characters intimately. They went to school with him at Goddard College in Vermont, or they passed through. "Some of the people I knew actually were involved in blowing up the building on 11th Street [in Manhattan by

• members of the Weather Underground in 1970]. . . .
  

• And I thought: how does this happen?""...

.

Obama defies California pols plea, orders them to build high speed rail to nowhere at cost already broke California can't pay

.
"State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who chairs the select committee, said ...the projected cost already has risen from $33 billion to $43 billion and there is no long-term funding commitment from the federal government. The legislative analyst contends that the cost could rise as high as $65 billion."...

Desperately needed US taxpayer "Stimulus" money could feed hungry children, but Obama demands it be spent despite analyst reports that the massive project has completely collapsed, will be unusable even if completed, and leaves California taxpayers liable for many billions in predicted overages.

5/26/11, "U.S. rejects proposed changes to bullet-train project," LA Times, Dan Weikel,

"Federal transportation officials say they cannot postpone the deadline to start construction of the $43-billion project or allow California to move the first rail leg out of the Central Valley.

Rejecting the recommendations of a recent state report, federal officials said Wednesday they cannot postpone the deadline to start construction of California's $43-billion bullet train project or allow the state to move the first leg of the proposed system out of the Central Valley.

U.S. Department of Transportation officials said the 2012 deadline is required by federal legislation that provided about $3.1 billion in funding for the project's initial leg, which, they added, was placed in the state's agricultural heartland after considerable study.

"This shows that we are on the same page as the feds," said Jeffrey Barker, a spokesman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. "They are saying no to these huge recommendations. This takes them off the table."

Earlier this month, the California Legislative Analyst's Office concluded in a detailed critique that the project was poorly managed, faced potential long-term funding problems and had a governing structure

• in need of sweeping reform.

Until those issues could be addressed, analysts called on the rail authority to push back its federally required construction deadline and consider relocating the initial segment to a major urban area where there was more potential for trains to run sooner.

Analysts further recommended that the Legislature not spend any more money on the project if the federal government did not allow the changes in the route and construction schedule.

Rail officials plan to build the first section of the 500-mile system between Bakersfield and the tiny town of Borden in Madera County. The initial leg, which would pass through Fresno and Corcoran, has been criticized as a "train to nowhere" because high-speed trains would not operate on it until the route could be extended to major population centers.

In a letter to the rail authority, the Transportation Department stated that general appropriations law and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act require that construction begin in 2012, the last year the funds would be available.

The Transportation Department "has no administrative authority to change this deadline and does not believe it is prudent to assume Congress will change it," wrote Roy Kienitz, a department undersecretary. "We recommend that policy makers in California proceed on the basis that this deadline will remain fixed."...

After the analyst's report was released, the state Senate's Select Committee on High-Speed Rail directed the authority to ask federal officials about changing the funding requirements. Barker said rail officials discussed the issues with Kienitz when he visited Sacramento recently.

State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who chairs the select committee, said the project needs flexibility on the route selection and construction schedule because the projected cost already has risen from $33 billion to $43 billion and there is no long-term funding commitment from the federal government. The legislative analyst contends that the cost could rise as high as $65 billion.

"There is nothing in the letter saying the federal government would commit $17 billion to $19 billion for the project," Lowenthal said. "If it had, we would build the Central Valley segment right now. But

• the state needs to be financially and fiscally responsible.""

--------------------------------------------------

5/11/2011, "Report questions California bullet-train plan's management and governing structure," LA Times. Dan Weikel

"A new independent assessment of California's high-speed rail project warns that the $43-billion effort — thought to be one of the nation's most developed — has inadequate management and a governing structure in need of sweeping reform."...

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4/25/2011, "High-speed rail hopes are off the tracks," LA Times Op-Ed

"In his last State of the Union address, the president said he wanted to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years, an objective he backed up with a budget proposal calling for $53 billion in federal funds over the next six years for high-speed rail projects.

This is only a tiny fraction of the resources that would be required to make high-speed rail a viable

• intercity transportation option....

The only remotely meritorious argument for high-speed rail investments is the possible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but even in this respect high-speed rail is uneconomic. The state rail program's own numbers show that a high-speed system's impact on net C02 emissions would be slight, and easily as much as 100 times higher in terms of cost per ton of C02 eliminated than the goal established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Railroads are a crucial component of the U.S. freight management and distribution system, but we do not need and cannot afford a high-speed rail system for passengers. Congress should rescind the high-speed rail funds granted to the states, starting with California; and the Legislature should defund the California high-speed rail project. We should cut our losses

• while we can still afford them."

via MichaelSavage.com

If GOP doesn't address repeal of ObamaCare they will lose the election-Tantaros, NYDN

.
5/26/11, "GOP, get off your heels and attack Obamacare: House loss should put health law back on front burner," NY Daily News, Andrea Tantaros column

"Republicans were dealt a devastating blow this week with the loss of a House seat in New York's 26th Congressional District, an area that had long been a GOP stronghold. In a development few expected, Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated the favorite, Republican Jane Corwin, in the special election. Although there was a spoiler third-party candidate, Jack Davis of the Tea Party, who siphoned off some GOP votes, the reason for the defeat largely rests on the issue that's sure to dominate the 2012 presidential race: Medicare....

A much worse case of social engineering is Obamacare, which is already the law of the land and deserves all of the ire Republicans can muster. For example, Washington Democrats have cut $500 billion by stopping reimbursements to doctors and hospitals through Medicare Advantage. And what happens when you cut payments?

• Doctors stop treating Medicare patients.

Another part of their "reform" plan includes the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a 15-person rationing panel of unelected bureaucrats tasked with limiting costs per patient. That, again, will happen by cutting services and limiting treatments. Even many Democrats are opposed to this, as it will likely lead to rationing. So why aren't Republicans screaming about it

• from the rooftops?

What's more, the Medicare board of trustees, part of President Obama's own administration, bluntly acknowledges that Obamacare does nothing to solve the long term Medicare problem...

In the wake of Corwin's loss, it's imperative that Republicans speak truth to power and put the Democrats back on the defensive. Instead of retreating, they need to reframe this debate by retuning to the real issue at hand: The repeal of Obamacare. If Republicans don't, they will lose the message war,

• lose the election and our health care system will find itself
  

• falling off that cliff."

----------------------------------------------

The author is a professional Republican and says "few expected" the loss in NY26. The average person could see months ago just from reading a few articles that the GOP would probably lose NY26.

-----------

via Michael Savage

Yemeni 'Allahu Akbar' cockpit slammer pleads not guilty

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5/28/11, "Not-guilty plea in 'Allahu akbar' cockpit storming," San Francisco Chronicle, Kevin Fagan

"A Yemeni immigrant who authorities say tried to slam his way into the cockpit of a San Francisco-bound jetliner while yelling "Allahu akbar" pleaded not guilty in federal court Friday to one felony charge of interfering with a flight crew.

If convicted, Rageh Ahmed Mohammed Al-Murisi could face 20 years in federal prison and $350,000 in fines and restitution payments.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Corley ordered Al-Murisi to remain jailed without bail until his next hearing June 23 in San Francisco.

The crew members and passengers who tackled the 26-year-old Al-Murisi on May 8 said they were afraid he was planning to crash the plane as an act of terrorism.

Al-Murisi's lawyer says his client was in mental crisis and had no nefarious intentions.

"No, no, he did not want to crash the plane," attorney Christopher Morales said. "The Muslim faith he practices is against violence, and he absolutely rejects al Qaeda and terrorism.

"He was scared and nervous in his own mind. It all had to do with his mental health issues."

Attorneys in the case said Al-Murisi had been hallucinating and hearing voices for two months before he boarded American Airlines Flight 1561 in Chicago, which was the second leg of a trip from New York to visit relatives in Vallejo. They said Al-Murisi, who was a math teacher in Yemen, recently lost his job at a convenience store in New York and expressed suicidal intentions on the flight.

He underwent a mental exam this week at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where he is being held. Although court officials would not reveal the results, Morales said, "If he was not found competent, he wouldn't have been arraigned today.""

via MichaelSavage.com

$1/gallon increase in gas means loss of 1 point of US GDP-AP

.
5/27/11, "Gas tanks are draining family budgets," AP, J. Fahey

"Every 50-cent jump in the cost of gasoline takes $70 billion out of the U.S. economy over the course of a year, Hamilton* says.

• That's about one half of one percent

• of gross domestic product."...

*"James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies gas prices."...

==================================

4/28/11, "Economic growth slows as inflation surges," Reuters

"Growth in gross domestic product (GDP) slowed to a 1.8 percent annual rate after a 3.1 percent fourth-quarter pace, the Commerce Department said. Economists
."...

==============================

The price of gas has gone up a dollar a gallon in the past year (the above article says it was $2.76/gal. a year ago). If the statistic is accurate, it is public knowledge and Obama and taxpayer funded economists had to know they were driving us into a worse depression. It also means all the 'experts' claiming the economy would recover were lying or are mentally disturbed. ed.

More tax info from GasBuddy.com




.

Most Americans support balanced budget amendment to the Constitution-Mason-Dixon poll

.
"A large plurality – 46 percent to 21 percent — also say they would be “more likely” to vote for a presidential candidate who backs the amendment."...

5/27/11, "Poll: Large majority support balanced budget amendment to the Constitution," Daily Caller, Jonathan Strong

"According to a recent Sachs/Mason-Dixon poll obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, a large majority of the public backs an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget, a reform some lawmakers say is on the table in the debt ceiling debate.

65 percent of the public supports the amendment with 27 percent opposed; 8 percent are undecided.

81 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of independents support the amendment. Even a plurality of Democrats, the party that typically resists spending cuts, back the amendment by a 45 percent to 44 percent margin.

“Americans are concerned about our nation’s deepening deficit and as a result, an overwhelming number support a balanced budget amendment,” said Alia Faraj-Johnson, Partner and Executive Vice President of Ron Sachs Communications, the organization that commissioned the poll.

A large plurality – 46 percent to 21 percent — also say they would be “more likely” to vote for a presidential candidate who backs the amendment, the poll shows.

The poll surveyed 625 adults by phone May 23 and 24 and has a margin of error of 4 points.

Popular backing for the amendment could boost its appeal to lawmakers struggling to find a middle ground over a pending

• debt ceiling deadline of Aug. 2.

Like any constitutional amendment, a balanced budget amendment would face significant hurdles, needing to be approved by the House and Senate

• and ratified in three-fourths of state legislatures."...

via Rush Limbaugh show

Pending home sales plunge UNEXPECTEDLY in April 2011, predicted 1.0, got 11.6-Reuters

.
'Economists expected' 1% drop, got 11.6%.

5/27/11, "Pending Home Sales Plunge, Reaching Seven-Month Low," Reuters, CNBC

"Pending sales of existing U.S. homes dropped far more than expected in April to touch a seven-month low, a trade group said on Friday, dealing a blow to hopes of a recovery in the housing market.

The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index dropped 11.6 percent to 81.9 in April, the lowest since September. Pending home sales lead existing home sales by a month or two.

Economists, who had expected pending home sales to fall 1.0 percent last month, said bad weather in some parts of the country might have affected home shopping....

Pending home sales in the South, which was ravaged by tornadoes, dropped 17.2 percent.

• Sales were also down in the Midwest and the West."...

--------------------------------------

How do these 'economists' hold a job? ed.

via Drudge Report

GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander sees Tea Party as 'happy to support GOP candidates' and he 'hopes it stays that way'

.
The embedded GOP think we don't know they are 100% responsible for the loss of our country and the dictatorship of Obama. In the private sector, they'd be in jail for what they've done. Who in their right mind would 'support' such people?

5/27/11, "In 2012 campaigns, spoilers from the Tea Party worry GOP," The Hill, Alexander Bolton

"“I was glad that Tea Party activists for the most part expressed their energy in the Republican primaries and on behalf of Republican candidates in 2010,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

• “I hope they do it again in 2012.”

He said most Tea Party members in Tennessee have been happy to support GOP candidates, adding,

• “I hope it stays that way.”"
  

-------------------------------------------

(Above quote at end of The Hill article). The GOP isn't worried about anything despite The Hill's headline. Jim DeMint and a few others worry because they care about this country, but most of the GOP would be happy to see Obama re-elected. ed.

.

Canada Prime Minister Harper says no thanks to Obama and Euro/UN gang warfare against Israel

.
5/26/11, "On Israel, Harper stands alone at G8 summit," Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders

"Alone among G8 leaders, the Canadian Prime Minister refuses to embrace the U.S. President’s plan to begin peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis on the basis of a return to Israel’s de facto borders as they existed before its 1967 war with neighbouring Arab countries – a precondition, accepted by Arabs and by many previous Israeli leaders and Canadian governments,

• that would be necessary to get Palestinians back to the table.

Mr. Harper made his opposition to that position clear through a spokesperson shortly after Mr. Obama’s Middle East speech last week in a pre-G8 briefing, making him the lone leader in the G8 not to back the U.S. preconditions."...

This did not stop Mr. Obama from declaring this summit a historic moment. In fact, he told Britain’s House of Commons, this is a “pivotal moment” in history, in which the death of Osama bin Laden and the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghan (the latter of which will be the subject of difficult talks in Deauville) are putting an end to the events that defined the 2000s, and the economy, he said, is improving.

That statement will not resonate on the Normandy coast: The majority of the G8 countries are European and are embroiled in an increasingly serious monetary and fiscal crisis whose resolution will likely devour much of the leaders’ time this week."...

=================================

The UK has a problem with anti-Semitism. Scotland municipalities banned Israeli books in the recent past, are doing so again, or at least staging protests to boycott Israeli books. Palestinians slashing sleeping Jewish childrens' throats 2 months ago is no problem.

5/25/11, "European Jewish Congress President denounces calls to ban Israeli books and products in Scotland, 'eerily reminiscent of darker times'," European Jewish Press, Paris

"European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor expressed outrage at reports of the banning of Israeli books and distinctively marking Israeli products

• in several districts near Glasgow, Scotland.

Israeli books translated into English were recently added to the list of prohibited books in libraries.

"It is inconceivable that products from the Jewish State are banned or distinctively marked in Scotland," Kantor said. "These acts are eerily reminiscent of darker times and perhaps there is a level of hatred that connects them."

According to reports, two and a half years ago, shortly after the Israeli Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza, the West Dunbartonshire Regional Council, located west of Glasgow, approved a bill that called to boycott goods produced in Israel.

West Dunbartonshire was joined by the large Scottish city Dundee, which decided to issue a recommendation to boycott all goods produced in Israel.

Legal advisers however instructed Dundee's mayor to refrain from legally enforcing the boycott in order to avoid future lawsuits as such action is illegal under European Union law.

Instead, the municipality plans to distribute posters throughout the city, calling on some 150,000 residents to refrain from buying Israeli goods, and will also apply a special mark on Israeli products, in order to make them easily identifiable.

"While those behind the boycott will claim that this is not anti-Semitic, targeting the only Jewish state, a democracy, while ignoring serial human-rights abusing nations tells us that this is indeed anti-Semitic in intent and in effect," Kantor continued.

"This demonstrates how far ‘respectable anti-Semitism’ has come. Clearly it has become acceptable to boycott and discriminate against Jews, as long as there is a thin veneer of anti-Zionism which purportedly covers the hateful act."

Kantor called on Scottish and British officials "to immediately pronounce this boycott illegal."

"A place that boycotts books is not far from a place that burns them," Israel's ambassador to the U.K., Ron Prosor, remarked."

----------------------

3/14/11, "Dead Jews is no news," Mark Steyn, the Corner

"On Friday night, twelve-year old Tamar Fogel came home to find both her parents, Ruth and Udi Fogel, two brothers Yoav (11) and Elad (four), and her three-month old sister Hadas murdered in their beds. They had had their throats cut and been stabbed through the heart.

That’s not shocking: There is no shortage of young Muslim men who would enjoy slitting the throat of a three-month old baby, and then head home dreaming of the town square or soccer tournament to be named in their honor.

Back in Gaza, the citizenry celebrated the news by cheering and passing out sweets.

That’s not shocking, either: In the broader Palestinian death cult, there are untold legions who, while disinclined to murder Jews themselves, are content to revel in the

• glorious victory of others.

And out in the wider world there was a marked reluctance to cover the story."...

-------------------------------------

5/26/11, "Egyptian activists 'to form Nazi party', newspaper reports," Jerusalem Post

Nazi book burning photo during WWII from European Jewish Press, 5/25/11. Hitler photo and JPost link via Weasel Zippers

.