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Selected News For Dec 13 – Dec 19

This thread is for the busy bees of S&L to post news items themselves.

In order to make the articles as readable as possible, please try to stick to the format described in the first of these weekly editions here.

Of course articles that fit under the topic of a recent thread should be posted there. As always, remember to excerpt heavily and to provide a link to the original source.

Related Articles:

 

This article was posted by Steve Gilbert on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 12:00 am. You can leave a response.

64 Responses to “Selected News For Dec 13 – Dec 19”

  1. brad
    December 13, 2008 at 4:54 am

    Well Well Well! Mr. “Change” is sending his two daughters to A PRIVATE SCHOOL: Sidwell Friends School!
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....lair_house

    http://www.sidwell.edu/

    What is wrong with making a change away from Al Gore, and other politicians, and send his kids to the many fine D.C. public school? http://www.k12.dc.us/
    Obama had another opportunity to stop “acting white” as jessie jackass would say, and send his kids to a public school.

    I wonder if the media is going to question this move. I can see a white president not sending his kids, but a black president? I should never hear a liberal again in my life call me a racist because I avoid living in black areas, avoid black schools, and basically all the same black people Obama is avoiding….

  2. 12 Gauge Rage
    December 13, 2008 at 7:52 am

    Remember Brad, the only ‘change’ coming to Washington is he who sits in the Oval Office. Nothing more. Same old liberal package but with fancier enticing wrapping paper.

  3. BillK
    December 14, 2008 at 7:44 am

    Guys, I reported this just about four weeks ago:

    http://sweetness-light.com/arc.....ent-124825

  4. BillK
    December 14, 2008 at 7:46 am

    Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but this seems a bit too coincidental.

    From the AP:

    Palin’s Alaska Church Damaged in Suspicious Fire

    Larry Kroon, pastor of the Wasilla Bible Church, estimates damages at more than $1 million

    Gov. Sarah Palin’s home church has been badly damaged in a suspicious fire.

    Larry Kroon, pastor of the Wasilla Bible Church, estimates damages at more than $1 million to the church.

    Kroon declined to say if the blaze was politically based or directed at Palin, the failed Republican vice presidential candidate.

    Kroon says the fire broke out Friday night while a small group of women were working on crafts. They were alerted to the blaze by a fire alarm.

    Kroon says he was called and by the time he got to the church, smoke was pouring out of the building. Sprinklers kept the fire from spreading beyond offices and classrooms.

    Authorities are not immediately commenting, but Kroon says he’s been told the fire is being investigated as a crime.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....uspicious/

    Can you remember AP ever referring to even Walter Mondale as a “failed candidate?”

  5. GuppyNblue
    December 14, 2008 at 8:58 am

    Drudge linked the Washington Post’s article on this today. It looks a lot like arson and there was an interesting point about the church’s recent history.

    “Early in Palin’s campaign, the church was criticized for promoting in a Sunday bulletin a Love Won Out conference in Anchorage sponsored by Focus on the Family. The conference promised to “help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome.”

    It’s too early to point fingers but you have to wonder. We’re talking about a church in Wasilla, Alaska that wasn’t even on the map until Sarah Palin stepped into the national spotlight?

  6. sheehanjihad
    December 14, 2008 at 8:59 am

    Just when you think this crap has gone too far, feast your eyes on the cowards in Armonk, NY. And read the comments….as though in the real world this would possibly happen.

    From the Associated Press:

    Star and crescent joins Christmas tree, menorah

    By JIM FITZGERALD

    ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) — When they light the town Christmas tree in Armonk on Sunday, there will be a Jewish menorah right alongside, as usual. There will also be something new this year — an Islamic crescent and star.

    And if there are any Buddhists or Hindus in town who want to see their symbols, the town is welcoming applications.

    The holiday display, sponsored by the town of North Castle, which includes the village of Armonk, is among a growing number around the country that include the symbol for Islam.

    “We’ve decided to go in the direction of being all-inclusive,” said Reese Berman, supervisor of the town of 11,000, about 30 miles north of New York City and the site of IBM headquarters.

    The star and crescent have been part of the national Christmas tree display in Washington for more than a decade. The symbol also is part of the display in Mineola on Long Island, which also features a Christmas tree, a menorah, a Nativity scene and a Kinara candleholder for Kwanzaa. And Wellesley, Mass., has had a star and crescent alongside its Christmas tree and menorah for several years.

    Armonk’s display is centered on a gazebo in a towering pine grove. One tree about 11 feet tall, strung with white lights, has been placed inside. A silver menorah is a few steps to the right of the cobblestone walk leading to the gazebo. The bright-white crescent and star are on 6-foot-high stanchions to the left.

    Craig Mason, 63, a retired town resident who was walking past the display on a rainy morning last week, said he had no strong religious feelings but felt the display “says nice things about the people here, about how we welcome everyone.”

    He found the star and crescent symbol “very attractive in its simplicity.”

    Judy Wesley, director of the Armonk Chamber of Commerce, said she was raised Catholic and “in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with having a spirit of inclusion. Jesus Christ himself would have gathered everyone around him.”

    However, Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, said displaying a menorah and star-and-crescent — which he considers religious symbols — “shows tremendous sympathy for Jews and Muslims at the expense of the majority Christians” because he does not believe a Christmas tree is religious. He would favor adding a Nativity scene…

    Last year, the town board was approached by Asad Jilani, who thought his family and other Muslim residents should also be represented.

    “I said `Oh, there’s a menorah and a Christmas tree and where is my crescent?’” said Jilani. He said that although there is not always an Islamic holiday in December, he felt it would be an appropriate time to celebrate all cultures…

    http://www.google.com/hostedne.....wD95208E00

  7. brad
    December 14, 2008 at 9:50 am

    I don’t have any idea why a crescent and a menorah have to do with Christmas? Why would jews and muslims what their symbols associated with a Christmas tree anyway? –It seems stupid and insulting to their religions. Does anyone else think it is beyond stupidity to place a crescent moon on a CHRISTMAS TREE? Perhaps the good liberals don’t understand that:
    1. The religions are different.
    2. Muslims don’t want their sacred symbols as decorations on another religion’s decorations.
    3. It ruins the respect for one religion, when you pile on so much iconography that you can’t even tell what the original intent was.
    4. There is no reason why other religions can set up their menorah, crescent moon, reclining buddah separate and away from the Christmas tree—–give it some space and respect!

  8. JohnMG
    December 14, 2008 at 10:16 am

    brad; …..”Does anyone else think it is beyond stupidity to place a crescent moon on a CHRISTMAS TREE?….”

    It’s not a matter of inclusiveness or respect. It’s a matter of cowardess. These milquetoasts (municipal officials) know that the Christains can be insulted with impunity. Nobody will lose his/her head to a dull knife when Christains are snubbed, but they must tread lightly with all things islam.

    Political correctness will soon have us all either subservient or dead, and those assclowns are too chicken $h*t to care.

  9. Reality Bytes
    December 14, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    In the spirit of the season, I would like to propose that we adopt a symbol that is befitting the religion of
    Global Warming, er I mean, Climate Change. If you have a suggestion, you can add it here.

    In the meantime, I would like to propose a thermometer – the rectal kind – because it represents the growing “awareness” that we all must share & the manner in which it is being administered, I mean preached. (It’s also color coordinated so retailers will have less trouble adding it to their existing displays).

    “Climate Change”. Sounds like an Indian Medicine Man. “Humm. Climate change. Soon Buffalo will come.”

    Of course climate changes. Why do you think they call it weather?

    “We’ll be going to Grandma, whether it rains or not.”

  10. Chinnubie
    December 14, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Why do we continue to care about this stupid politically correct nonsense? Why do we worry so much about offending people? Whenever I am offended I just blow it off and tell myself, I could care less by whatever was said by whoever, because in the scheme of the big picture this make no difference what-so-ever!!! People have to get over their insecurities and move on with their lives. Another thing, how come Christians don’t seem to be offended all that easily, but all of the other religions get their panties in a bunch anytime something is said about them or that they feel like they have not been included.

    The best way to solve this problem would be to say, GET OVER IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  11. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:07 am

    From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

    Minority GOP still holds some cards in Congress

    By Diana Marrero

    Washington – In just a few weeks, Republicans will no longer control the White House and they’ll count on even smaller numbers in both the House and Senate. But don’t write them off just yet.

    The GOP can still have some influence in Washington, especially in the Senate, where one individual senator can hold up measures through a time-tested maneuver known as the filibuster, political observers say. Democrats are expected to have at least 58 senators in their caucus; it takes 60 to break a filibuster. In fact, Republicans were able to stymie a bailout for American automakers in the Senate last week.

    Barack Obama won’t actually need much support from the GOP in the House – where Republicans will be outnumbered by at least 256 to 175 – but the new president will have to enlist their help if he wants to be perceived as a centrist, move forward on his agenda and boost his re-election chances.

    Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) say they are willing to look for ways to work with the Illinois Democrat to address some of the most pressing problems facing the country.

    “We shouldn’t just be a stick in the mud,” he said. “We have to work with the Democrats in the Obama administration when we feel they’re going in the right direction.”

    So far, it appears Obama wants to work with the congressional minority. He is already reaching out to Republicans on Capitol Hill, making phone calls to Republican leaders and sending his new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to meet with them.

    Ultimately, however, Obama’s ability to work with Republican senators is what really matters, said Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University.

    “What he’s going to be asking himself is ‘How many of those Republican senators can I break off?’ ” Hamilton said.

    Republicans most likely to break with their party include: Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Sens. Mel Martinez of Florida, Dick Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio and Chuck Grassley of Iowa also are known to buck their party on occasion.

    Senate Democrats won’t necessarily vote with one voice either, giving Republicans a chance to peel off senators such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jon Tester of Montana and Robert Casey of Pennsylvania. …

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/s.....48079.html

    Nice of the piece to just go ahead and name the RINOs for us.

  12. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:10 am

    Nothing to be concerned about here.

    From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

    11% of voters’ records didn’t match at election

    By Steven Walters

    Madison – One out of every nine Wisconsin voters in November whose names or personal ID numbers were checked did not match the state’s master list, a new report shows.

    Wisconsin’s mismatch rate under the Help America Vote Act – or HAVA – for November was 11%, Government Accountability Board Director Kevin Kennedy said in a report to the board, which will meet Wednesday.

    The 11% mismatch rate in November was much lower than estimates before the election. In August, the mismatch rate was 22%. It was the first time the numbers were made public.

    The 2002 act required states to maintain voter databases that could be compared with other records. The checks ensure people’s names and birthdates match driver’s license records or, if the voters don’t have a license or state ID, Social Security records.

    The board says many people fail the checks because of typos or slight variations in names – a Rebecca listed as Becky, for example. But some have argued that, without hard evidence of why people fail the tests, fraud could not be ruled out.

    According to Kennedy’s report, 275,819 new voters and voters who had to re-register were subject to checks in the month of the presidential election. Of that number, 245,048 passed the checks; 30,771 did not.

    Before the election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen sued to try to force the checks to be required beginning in January 2006, when the federal law took effect.

    Instead, the Government Accountability Board ordered local election officials to begin those checks on those who registered or re-registered beginning in August. Board members said extensive technical problems meant it would have been impossible by the Nov. 4 election to perform checks on hundreds of thousands of voters dating back to early 2006.

    A Dane County circuit judge sided with the board, ruling that it properly decided to order that the checks begin in August and that local election officials could not prohibit anyone from voting because of a data mismatch.

    Van Hollen has appealed that decision.

    There were more than 2.9 million votes cast in Wisconsin in the Nov. 4 election, which was 69% of the state’s voting-age population. President-elect Barack Obama got 56% of the votes; Republican Sen. John McCain, 43%.

    “The board’s job is to enforce the law. The board is doing just that,” board attorney Lester Pines said.

    Kevin St. John, a special assistant attorney general and Van Hollen’s spokesman, said he had not seen the report on mismatched data.

    St. John said Van Hollen sued the board because federal law “requires that a HAVA check be performed.”

    “The lawsuit is justified,” he said.

    St. John called the Government Accountability Board’s plan to have local election clerks complete checks on all new voters a “step forward.” …

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/s.....44784.html

    “It’s probably not fraud” somehow doesn’t seem good enough to me, but given the left’s in charge, that’s good enough for them.

  13. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:15 am

    From a jubilant Los Angeles Times:

    Settlement opens up amnesty for tens of thousands of immigrants

    Many who entered the United States on valid visas but fell out of legal status between 1982 and 1988 are eligible for the amnesty offered under the 1986 immigration reform law.

    By Teresa Watanabe

    For two decades, Anaheim businessman Erkan Aydin has taken on a task unimaginable for most immigrants like himself: trying to convince the U.S. government that he was here illegally.

    Aydin, 50, arrived in the United States from his native Turkey with a valid student visa in 1981, but fell out of legal status when he failed to enroll in school, he said.

    The customer service representative has a powerful reason why he wants to be considered an illegal immigrant. It would make him eligible for the amnesty offered to 2.7 million illegal immigrants under the 1986 immigration reform law.

    Thanks to a recent legal settlement, the chance to apply for amnesty is finally open to Aydin and tens of thousands of others who entered the country on a valid visa but fell out of legal status between 1982 and 1988. The settlement, approved this fall by a U.S. district court in Washington state, stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by attorney Peter Schey originally on behalf of an immigrant assistance program of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

    “I have been born again, like a new baby,” Aydin said last week in his Anaheim car dealership office. “I will start a beautiful life in this beautiful country.”

    The landmark reform law offered a one-time amnesty to immigrants who were in the United States unlawfully from before 1982 to about 1988.

    But Congress was concerned that those who entered the country with a valid visa would argue that they fell out of legal status during that time simply to qualify for amnesty. As a result, Schey said, Congress created a rule requiring immigrants to show that their shift from legal to illegal status was “known to the government.”

    That rule, however, created a new problem: How to prove that the government knew about their violations?

    Nigeria native Olaniyi Sofuluke, for instance, came to the United States in 1981 on a student visa to study banking and finance at Troy State University (now Troy University) in Alabama. But, lacking funds, he soon dropped out to work as a dishwasher in two Atlanta restaurants until he could earn enough for his tuition and living expenses.

    That violated his visa conditions and threw him into illegal status. The university was required to send a notice to the U.S. government that Sofuluke had dropped out but was not able to provide him with a copy when he requested one five years later. So immigration officials rejected his amnesty application, saying his violations were not known to the government.

    Schey, however, successfully argued that because schools were legally required to send the notices, it should be presumed that the government received them and therefore knew about the violations.

    He also successfully argued that the government knew many immigrants had violated their status another way: by failing to furnish an address report every three months. The government’s failure to produce the address reports showed that the immigrants had not filed them, violating the terms of their visa, he argued.

    U.S. immigration officials accepted both arguments in the settlement. They have announced that immigrants whose cases involve violations known to the government may apply for amnesty between Feb. 1, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2010.

    Although the settlement was announced in September, many immigrants are just learning about it. Sofuluke, now a Maryland administrator, just found out about it last week.

    “I couldn’t even eat dinner, I was so full of joy,” he said. “I’ve been in the twilight zone all of this time.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....8794.story

    It wlll be so much easier when we grant blanket immunity.

    In the mean time, this “settlement” (brought to you by big labor!) essentially says you get to stay if you can prove the Government knew you were breaking the law and didn’t do anything about it.

    What a deal!

  14. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:20 am

    In today’s “Freedom from Religion” news, from the Los Angeles Times:

    Atheist may sue if law on Las Vegas officiants won’t change

    Nevada law requires licensed officiants to belong to a religious group. It’s unfair, says Michael Jacobson, who wants the state Legislature to rework the law that so he can preside over nuptials.

    By Ashley Powers

    In a city launched by shotgun weddings and quickie divorces, and which offers the chance to be wed by faux Liberaces, King Tuts and Grim Reapers, there remains at least one nuptial taboo: You can’t be married by an atheist.

    Michael Jacobson, a 64-year-old retiree who calls himself a lifelong atheist, tried this year to get a license to perform weddings. Clark County rejected his application because he had no ties to a congregation, as state law requires.

    So Jacobson and attorneys from two national secular groups — the American Humanist Assn. and the Center for Inquiry — are trying to change things. If they can’t persuade the state Legislature to rework the law, they plan to sue.

    Jacobson, who spends most afternoons reading online or dining at a nearby buffet, is an admittedly reluctant plaintiff. But he’s willing to fight on principle, recalling one time he couldn’t: In the 1960s, the Army demanded that his dog tags note his religion. He reluctantly chose Judaism, which reflected his ancestry if not his beliefs.

    “One of the things I like to do is stand up and say I’m a nonbeliever, so you know you’re not alone,” he said recently.

    For years Mel Lipman, a friend of Jacobson’s and president of the American Humanist Assn., had presided over nonreligious weddings in Las Vegas. But he belonged to the Humanist Society, a secular branch of the Humanist Assn., whose tax status as a religious group satisfied the clerk’s requirements.

    When Lipman and his wife moved to Florida this spring, Jacobson — a balding man with a thin, white mustache and a trace of his native Philadelphia in his voice — decided to become the local atheist celebrant.

    “But I’m not going to do it by saying I belong to a religious organization,” he said. “That’s a sham, because atheists are not religious.”

    Jacobson filled out an application to perform marriages, but sidestepped the questions on religion. County Clerk Shirley Parraguirre said she had little choice but to reject it.

    As Nevada law requires, all of the county’s 2,500 or so licensed officiants are connected to a congregation — though some are as small as two people, Parraguirre said. (Judges and commissioners of civil marriages can also lead ceremonies.)

    Some of the state’s regulations hark back to the 1960s, when ministers were dumping their flocks to become wealthy “Marrying Sams,” according to the book “Las Vegas: An Unconventional History.” One would-be officiant apparently hoped to marry enough people to finance his divorce.

    Lawmakers, trying to ferret out the profit-hungry, said weddings must be among a minister’s “incidental” duties. Drive past the string of neon-lighted downtown chapels, and you’ll see that didn’t quite pan out.

    Clark County issues nearly 100,000 marriage licenses a year and boasts dozens of places to exchange vows — atop Harley-Davidsons, in Renaissance costumes, aboard gondolas — 24 hours a day. The competition is so fierce that in recent years, employees at rival chapels have accused one another of slashing tires and shouting death threats. “Someone is working at all of these chapels,” said Parraguirre, whose office doesn’t have the resources to track down ministers flouting the law. In fact, she worries that if the criteria to become an officiant changes, her staff will be “bombarded with people coming in and just doing it for a job.”

    But Bob Ritter, an attorney for the American Humanist Assn., argued that when a celebrant marries a couple, he is acting as an agent of the state. Therefore, it’s unconstitutional to block someone from holding that position based on his religion — or lack of it, he says.

    “Many atheists and agnostics have . . . deeply held beliefs,” Ritter wrote in a letter to Parraguirre. “Are not their beliefs entitled to the same respect?” Nevada law, he continued, implies that “the religious are more trustworthy than the nonreligious. This is a bigoted assumption.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....3695.story

    Is there any doubt a judge will simply rule the law unconstitutional?

  15. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:25 am

    The Los Angeles Times gives a religious group some press.

    Why?

    In Utah, the Parowan Prophet predicts disaster will prevent Obama from taking office

    ‘He will not be the next president,’ Leland Freeborn warns those who will listen. He and his followers expect nuclear explosions this Christmas season.

    By Peter H. King

    Parowan, Utah — Our trip to the Parowan Prophet began with a letter to the St. George Spectrum. It was set among missives proposing that oil companies bail out Detroit automakers, that county inmates be forced to winter in tents, that lawyers be barred from public office. A rough crowd.

    This particular letter to the editor in the St. George, Utah, newspaper carried the headline ” ‘Prophet’ shares grim forecast,” and it was signed by one Leland Freeborn of Parowan, who wrote that he was known to many as the Parowan Prophet.

    After establishing his bona fides as an international talk radio guest and proprietor of a survivalist website that has “passed more than 100,000 hits,” Freeborn wrote:

    “I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the ‘riots’ that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn’t lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said.”

    These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the “old, hard-line Soviet guard” to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.

    “Prepare now,” Freeborn’s letter concluded. “We are downwind from Las Vegas. I hope you can survive.”

    t took an hour to reach the prophet, a high-country drive through stunning red-rock formations, the color of which matches the politics in this corner of southern Utah. A freeway billboard, depicting a nuclear mushroom cloud, provided directions to the prophet’s two-story house.

    The frontyard seemed a staging ground for rapid flight — two or three motor boats, a raft, a canoe, a recreational vehicle and an old sedan, parked with its engine running.

    The man who answered our unexpected knock wore a cowboy hat with a big feather stuck in the band, and a beard suggestive of St. Nick. We asked to see the prophet. He said we had the right guy.

    Freeborn hobbled out the door on crutches and eased into a wheelchair on the porch. As it turned out, he was heating the car not for rapid escape from a nuclear cloud, but to take a neighbor to the doctor.

    “I only have nine minutes,” he said.

    It was enough time to sketch out his history — a Mormon of substance, a father of 12, he had crashed his airplane in 1975 and fallen into a three-week coma, during which he went through “to the other side” and emerged a prophet.

    Freeborn, now 66, took “a plural wife,” as he put it, and parted ways with the church. He forfeited his wealth, spreading word of his prophecies. He appears to live now mainly on sales of newsletters and survival information packets advertised on his website.

    Asked for examples of successful prophecies, he offered O.J. Simpson’s murder acquittal and Al Gore’s winning of the popular vote in 2000. But his core insight has been a repeated dream of seeing nuclear flashes to the west while shopping at a Wal-Mart during Christmas season.

    And this, he warned, appears to be the year.

    As Freeborn rose to leave, he said he would be hosting a weekly religious meeting that night. He urged us to come.

    “If you can write a story,” Freeborn said, “you can save a lot of lives in L.A.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....1803.story

    You can see the Times’ editors: “A Mormon prophet forecasts nuclear annihilation of the United States – hey, let’s run that!”

    Of course, if his prophecies prove true, that’s another good reason not to bail out the Big Three. :-)

    Of course the left would probably point out that this is another evil of shopping at Wal-Mart:

    But his core insight has been a repeated dream of seeing nuclear flashes to the west while shopping at a Wal-Mart during Christmas season.

  16. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:28 am

    No bias from the AP. None at all.

    World markets rise on hope for U.S. auto bailout

    HONG KONG — World stock markets rebounded today after the Bush administration revived hopes of a bailout for troubled U.S. automakers and China announced a multibillion dollar plan to spur consumer spending.

    Asia and Europe’s advance was another sign world markets may be stabilizing, at least in the short term, from their dizzying declines over the last three months, analysts said.

    As in the U.S. recently, investors appeared unfazed by dismal economic data. Japanese shares led today’s gains even as the country’s central bank released figures showing confidence at major manufacturers marked its sharpest drop in 34 years. China also largely shook off more bad news about waning factory output.

    Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 428.79 points, or 5.2 percent, to 8,664.66 points, and Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index added 288.56, or 2 percent, to 15,046.95 points.

    Major European bourses opened higher with Britain’s FTSE-100 up 0.5 percent at 4,303.55, France’s CAC-40 gaining 0.1 percent to 3,217.32 and Germany’s DAX up 1.1 percent at 4,712.03.

    South Korea’s Kospi rose 4.9 percent to 1,158.19 and major stock measures in Taiwan, India, Australia and Singapore were higher by about 2 percent or more.

    The upward swing followed Wall Street, where stocks rallied from an early sell-off Friday as the Treasury Department said it was ready to assist Detroit’s Big Three automakers after a $14 billion rescue plan died in the Senate.

    “Investors think the automakers are going to be rescued after all,” said Nicole Sze, Singapore-based investment analyst at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which manages about $300 billion in assets.

    “It does seem the market is reacting to stimulus and bailout measures positively and choosing not to focus on data showing a slowdown in growth,” she said. …

    http://www.latimes.com/la-fiw-.....7618.story

    Of course it never occurs to the AP or people reading their pieces that the market’s moves could be based on the failure of the bailout efforts to date as news of the failure of the Government to interfere in markets may be more important.

    Nah.

  17. BillK
    December 15, 2008 at 8:34 am

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    Inaugural party planners walk the taste line

    Considering the economy, being festive without being ostentatious means making some sacrifices. ‘There won’t be shrimp, I’ll be blunt,’ says a Michigan planner.

    By Richard Simon and Jill Zuckman

    As Washington gears up for a big night of inaugural balls, a delicate dance is taking place.

    Planners want to stage a splashy celebration worthy of the historic moment but are doing it in tough economic times, perhaps even as President-elect Barack Obama calls for sacrifice in his inaugural address.

    “Anything too flashy or expensive and the new presidency starts off on the wrong foot,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington watchdog. “It would be difficult to call for sacrifice on the one hand and toast with Dom Perignon in the other.”

    Linda Douglass, spokeswoman for the inaugural committee, said planners were preparing for the most accessible, inclusive inauguration in recent history, noting that the National Mall would be open to anyone regardless of whether they had a ticket.

    “This is no time to party,” Janett Calland of Ohio, whose husband was recently laid off, wrote on presidential-inauguration.com. “It would be a real impressive gesture for President-elect Obama and Mrs. Obama to elect to cancel parties and balls considering the state of the economy of our country at this time. . . . The masses are financially hurting, but the ‘money crowd’ is eating caviar and drinking champagne.”

    Donald Baker of Kentucky replied: “Obama shouldn’t be denied his moment of celebration. . . . Lord knows the man is going to have his hands full enough soon.”

    City officials project that they could spend $40 million or more for the event, expected to draw a record turnout. That is separate from the millions that the inauguration committee will raise from private donors to pay for official balls and other expenses.

    At a time when the auto industry pleads for federal aid, planners of the Michigan inaugural dinner dance have scaled back their event — a simpler menu, black tie optional, biodegradable paper plates instead of china, and no contributions from automakers.

    “We need to be very sensitive to appearances,” said Debbie Dingell, president of the Michigan State Society, who talked about scaling back on champagne. “We won’t have premium brand. There won’t be shrimp, I’ll be blunt. But Michigan is known for its whitefish, and we’ll have whitefish.”

    Yet it’s hard to hold back in a town that views the inauguration as its own version of the Oscars. Events include a celebrity-studded party planned by the Creative Coalition, with tickets starting at $10,000 per couple.

    Jan Powell, chairing the Indiana Inaugural Ball, said she had had no trouble selling corporate sponsorships for $18,000-per-person tickets to the formal four-course dinner dance. “Even in rough economic times, people are perhaps looking for something to celebrate,” she said.

    Jenifer Sarver of the Texas State Society said the group had sold 10,000 tickets to its Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball, which would have seven stages with entertainers.

    “We’re trying to be respectful of the economic times by not doing anything too over the top,” she said, but added: “Texans certainly do love to have a good time.”

    There is precedent, of course, for reins on the pomp of the day. Jimmy Carter gave up a limo ride to take his surprise stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue, and he set $25 as the maximum price for admission to official balls.

    During the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt skipped the 1933 inaugural ball and canceled the 1937 ball. But Tim Blessing, a history and political science professor at Alvernia University in Pennsylvania, said it was questionable whether that was because of tough times “or simply because FDR disliked the balls.”

    “He wanted hot chicken a la king for the inaugural lunch” at his first swearing-in, said Elizabeth B. Goldsmith, a professor and Fulbright scholar at Florida State University. “The housekeeper said no, too expensive. And they had chicken salad, rolls, unfrosted pound cake and coffee.”

    Still, FDR’s first inauguration was far from sedate.

    Warner Bros. sent a train load of Hollywood stars, including Busby Berkeley chorus girls who rode a float in the inaugural parade, led by cowboy star Tom Mix doing rope tricks on his horse, said Stephen Talbot, whose father, actor Lyle Talbot, made the trip.

    “The very next day,” he said, “the actors all hustled over to a big movie palace in Washington — the Earle Theatre — to perform a live stage show before the screening of the big new Warner Bros. musical ‘42nd Street,’ whose theme was that even in the depths of the Depression, the show must go on!”

    Blessing expected the Obama team to exercise some restraint. “It should be noted that the Obama camp had fireworks planned for his election evening victory,” he said, “but that he canceled them as not setting the right tone.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....7800.story

    Yep, give Carter as an example – especially when the country was so much worse off after he did his damage.

    Somehow I don’t think anything short of the nuclear attack prophesied above could keep Scarlett Johanessen and her Hollywood friends away.

  18. BillK
    December 16, 2008 at 1:59 am

    From the Wall Street Journal:

    Disarming Ourselves

    A new report warns Obama about our aging nuclear weapons.

    Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo get more press, but among the most urgent national security challenges facing President-elect Obama is what to do about America’s stockpile of aging nuclear weapons. No less an authority than Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calls the situation “bleak” and is urging immediate modernization.

    On the campaign trail, Mr. Gates’s new boss appeared to take a different view. Candidate Obama said he “seeks a world without nuclear weapons” and vowed to make “the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.” His woolly words have given a boost to the world disarmament movement, including last week’s launch of Global Zero, the effort by Richard Branson and Queen Noor to eliminate nuclear weapons in 25 years. Naturally, they want to start with cuts in the U.S. arsenal.

    But the reality of power has a way of focusing those charged with defending the U.S., and Mr. Obama will soon have to decide to modernize America’s nuclear deterrent or let it continue to deteriorate. Every U.S. warhead is more than 20 years old, with some dating to the 1960s. The last test was 1992, when the U.S. adopted a unilateral test moratorium and since relied on computer modeling. Meanwhile, engineers and scientists with experience designing and building nuclear weapons are retiring or dying, and young Ph.D.s have little incentive to enter a field where innovation is taboo. The U.S. has zero production capability, beyond a few weapons in a lab.

    We’re told Mr. Gates’s alarm will be echoed soon in a report by the Congressionally mandated commission charged with reviewing the role of nuclear weapons and the overall U.S. strategic posture. The commission’s chairman is William Perry, a former Clinton Defense Secretary and a close Obama adviser. Mr. Perry is also one of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” the nickname given to him, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn for an op-ed published in these pages last year offering a blueprint for ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

    The commission’s interim report is due out any day now, and the advance word is that Mr. Perry has come back to Earth. We’re told the report’s central finding is that the U.S. will need a nuclear deterrent for the indefinite future. A deterrent is credible, the report further notes, only if enemies believe it will work. That means modernization.

    That logic ought to be obvious, but it escapes many in Congress who have stymied the Bush Administration’s efforts to modernize. Britain, France, Russia and China are all updating their nuclear forces, but Mr. Bush couldn’t even get Congress this year to fund so much as R&D for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Senator Dianne Feinstein dismissed the RRW, saying “the Bush Administration’s goal was to reopen the nuclear door.”

    In the House, similar damage has been done by Ellen Tauscher, chairman of the subcommittee on strategic weapons. Ms. Tauscher, whose California district includes the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, likes to talk about a strong nuclear deterrent while bragging about killing the RRW. She also wants to revive the unenforceable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate rejected in 1999. Let’s hope the Perry report helps with her nuclear re-education.

    If Congress isn’t paying attention, U.S. allies are. The U.S. provides a nuclear umbrella for 30-plus countries, including several — Japan, Germany and South Korea, for example — capable of developing their own nuclear weapons. If they lose confidence in Washington’s ability to protect them, the Perry report notes, they’ll kick off a new nuclear arms race that will spread world-wide.

    In a speech this fall, Mr. Gates said “there is no way we can maintain a credible deterrent” without “resorting to testing” or “pursuing a modernization program.” General Kevin Chilton, the four-star in charge of U.S. strategic forces, has also spent the past year making the case for modernization. “The time to act is now,” he told a Washington audience this month. …

    http://online.wsj.com/article/.....05333.html

    One wonders how long it will be before enemies are no longer deterred by our nuclear weapons simply because they don’t believe they’d actually work.

    Not like any of our enemies believe Americans would actually have the stomach to use them, no matter what they do to us.

  19. imnewatthis
    December 16, 2008 at 4:22 am

    I was thinking the same thing as Bill Donahue.

  20. BillK
    December 16, 2008 at 4:57 am

    From a San Francisco Chronicle that can do little but mock derisively:

    GOP budget plan: Slash $10 billion from schools

    By Matthew Yi

    Republican state lawmakers unveiled their answer Monday to the state’s budget crisis – a $22 billion plan that would avoid raising taxes, cut deeply into education spending and dip into voter-approved funds intended to pay for mental health services and children’s health care.

    The plan is the Republicans’ first comprehensive proposal since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called a special legislative session last month to try to solve the state’s fiscal crisis. That special session ended without any action by lawmakers, prompting Schwarzenegger to declare a fiscal emergency Dec. 1, the first day on the job for newly elected legislators, and to call another special session to fix the budget.

    Senate Republican leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto insisted Monday that raising taxes was not the answer to California’s problems. Republicans have refused to consider tax increases as California’s money problems piled up, and they can block any budget that includes increases because both the Assembly and Senate must muster two-thirds votes to approve a spending plan.

    “We have said time and time again that because California taxpayers, quite frankly, are more burdened than the average taxpayer in this country, and the fact that we are ground zero as it relates to the economic realities that this country and the world face right now, we’ve got to find a better way,” Cogdill said.

    The GOP budget plan would raise $6.5 billion of new revenue for the general fund and reduce spending by $15.6 billion over the next 18 months, about two-thirds of it from K-12 schools. The proposed cut in education is far deeper than Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats have called for in separate plans for reducing the deficit.

    As part of their proposal, Republicans also suggested measures they said could stimulate the economy, such as granting tax credits to businesses, and relaxing environmental and labor regulations. Those would include extending deadlines to retrofit diesel engines in trucks and changing the rules on overtime pay and meal breaks.

    Schwarzenegger had expressed frustration with Republicans for bringing little to budget negotiating sessions other than a refusal to raise taxes. In a sign of how frayed relations between GOP lawmakers and the Republican governor have become, Schwarzenegger’s office was as critical of the Monday’s proposal as legislative Democrats were.

    “It’s simply a rehash of the tax cuts that have been on the table for months with some borrowing on top of that,” said Aaron McLear, Schwarzenegger’s spokesman. “It’s not a negotiated compromise. Until Republicans and Democrats negotiate with one another, our problem continues to get worse.”

    Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chairwoman of the Assembly Budget Committee, said the GOP plan balances the budget “on the backs of poor children and the mentally ill.”

    Evans plans to convene a committee hearing today to consider the Republican plan. If and when a vote is held, the Democrat-controlled panel is certain to reject it.

    Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), said she would hold a floor session this afternoon to vote on a separate budget proposal, even though there wasn’t a deal in sight Monday. …

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....14OGGO.DTL

    Nice that “Republican” Ahnold spends so much time joining his liberal friends in bashing the very policies he was elected on, let alone that the party at least once stood for.

    That’s right, one can never cut education or health programs – just raise taxes, someone will pay them, right?

    Let’s just hope the California Republicans continue to have the guts to refuse to pass the Democrats’ (including Ahnold’s) plan of just raising taxes while continuing to raise funding for every liberal program under the sun.

    Of course the biggest reason the GOP plan would never fly?

    The Republican proposal also would reduce the Legislature’s operating budget across the board by 5 percent, including lawmakers’ salaries, and eliminate $6 million for Schwarzenegger’s plan to build an infrastructure to support hydrogen-powered cars.

    If the CEOs of companies are supposed to reduce their salaries to $1 to show they understand the suffering of “the people,” why can’t lawmakers?

    OK, stop laughing now.

    Just FYI:

    – Schwarzenegger has suggested a $22.4 billion plan that includes $9.8 billion in cuts and $12.5 billion in revenue increases. He would raise the sales tax by 1 1/2 cents on the dollar, broaden the sales tax to include certain services, add an oil severance tax, add an excise tax on alcoholic drinks and increase the vehicle registration fee.

    – Democrats have come up with a $17 billion plan divided almost equally between cuts and new taxes that include restoring the vehicle license fee that Schwarzenegger cut when he took office and increasing the income tax by eliminating this year’s inflation adjustment.

    – Republicans want a $22 billion plan that includes $15.6 billion in spending cuts and $6.5 billion in new revenue for the general fund, most of which would be taken from money that now pays for mental health care for homeless adults and children’s health care.

    Needless to say, the kneejerk libs at the Chron have mostly made the comment that it’s “time” to raise taxes and the GOP wants to cut education because “educated people don’t vote for them.”

  21. BannedbytheTaliban
    December 16, 2008 at 10:11 am

    A local piece about what the NAACP thinks:

    Ask Anything: 10 questions with NAACP President Rev. William Barber

    ……2. Now that we have an African American president, has this changed the relevance of the NAACP and/or the NAACP’s outlook on race relations in America? – John, Clayton

    The election of a president who happens to be African American is the result of years of work for fair and free voting rights. One hundred years after the founding of the NAACP – after all the blood, sweat, tears, marching, fighting in the courts – America will inaugurate a President who happens to be African American.

    This would not have been possible without a tremendous amount of challenge and sacrifice that produced change. However, the work is not over. The empirical data tells us racism and racial disparities are not eliminated. Systemic racism is still alive in education, economic, health care, etc.

    ….Furthermore, here in North Carolina, we have a 14-point agenda. (Visit http://www.hkonj.com) It’s supported by 85 organizations, people of all backgrounds and represents more than 1 million grassroots activists. These agenda items point to the continuing relevance of our organization.

    THE PEOPLE’S AGENDA:

    2. Livable Wages and Support for Low Income People – North Carolina ought to provide livable wages, make sure no person goes hungry and that everyone in need has affordable, accessible childcare.

    3. Health Care for All – North Carolina ought to provide its people with health insurance and prescription drugs, while funding public health programs to treat social diseases that plague black and poor communities. This funding must also include HIV/AIDS, diseases caused by environmental pollution and warming, drugs, domestic violence, mental illness, diabetes, and obesity.

    8. Provide affordable housing and stop consumer abuse – North Carolina must provide an Affordable Housing Trust Fund for low-income renters, vouchers for wounded veterans who can not find accessible housing; meaningful tax breaks for seniors forced out of their homes, and protection against predatory lending and foreclosures.

    9. Abolish Racially Biased Death Penalty and Mandatory Sentencing Laws; Reform our Prisons.

    10. Put young people to work to save the environment and fight for environmental justice – North Carolina must establish an Environmental Job Corps for young people who did not graduate from high school to re-engage them in public service. North Carolina must fight all forms of environmental injustice.

    11. Collective Bargaining for Public Employees – North Carolina must allow its public employees’ unions to negotiate work issues with their employers in a mutually-respectful manner.

    12. Protect the Rights of Immigrants from Latin America and other nations – North Carolina must provide immigrants with health care, education, workers rights and protection from discrimination.

    13. Organize, strengthen and provide funding for our civil rights enforcement agencies and statutes now

    14. Bring our troops home from Iraq now – North Carolina cannot address injustice at home while we wage an unjust war abroad.

    http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4142989/

    Sound familiar? It is truly enlightening. I would suggest that everybody read this in its entirety. Perhaps NAACP should read, National Association for the Advancement of Communist People.

  22. BillK
    December 16, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Despite the fact they’re all hard left liberals, could it be some actors actually have a clue?

    From the AP:

    More than 130 A-list actors oppose strike vote

    Delivering a rebuke to the leadership of the Screen Actors Guild, more than 130 actors signed a letter urging their colleagues to reject a strike-authorization vote in January.

    “We don’t think that an authorization can be looked at as merely a bargaining tool,” said the letter, signed by “Desperate Housewives” actress Eva Longoria Parker, “Spider-Man” star Tobey Maguire, and others. “It must be looked at as what it is — an agreement to strike if negotiations fail.”

    “We do not believe in all good conscience that now is the time to be putting people out of work,” it said.

    Other signatories included Tom Hanks, Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, Heather Graham and Edward Norton.

    The letter, sent to guild board members and staff, is the latest sign of unhappiness with the leadership of the 120,000-strong union.

    On Friday, the New York representatives on the guild’s board demanded a halt to the strike vote and called for an emergency meeting to replace the negotiating committee.

    Guild President Alan Rosenberg planned an emergency meeting for Friday in Los Angeles, but rescinded it after New York members complained about the short notice to travel. A new meeting has not been scheduled.

    The guild wants terms that are better than the deals accepted by directors, writers, stagehands and another actors union earlier in the year.

    It is seeking union coverage for all Internet-only productions regardless of budget, residual payments for Internet productions replayed in ad-supported platforms online, and continued actor benefits during work stoppages, including those caused by strikes by other unions.

    The studios have said it is unreasonable for the guild to demand better terms, especially now that the economy has worsened.

    http://www.9news.com/life/ente.....;catid=343

  23. BillK
    December 16, 2008 at 10:51 am

    From NBC News and the Washington Post:

    Majority opposes auto bailout, poll shows

    Most blame industry for problems, believe failure won’t hurt economy

    By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta

    Most Americans continue to oppose a government-backed rescue plan for Detroit’s Big Three automakers as majorities blame the industry for its own problems and are unconvinced failure would hurt the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

    Overall, 55 percent of those polled oppose the latest plan that Chrysler, Ford and General Motors executives pitched to Congress last week, on par with public opposition to earlier, pricier efforts. But with 42 percent support, the new request for up to $14 billion in emergency loans has more backers than previous proposals to secure up to $34 billion in loan guarantees.

    But as with the earlier bids, those who strongly oppose the measure greatly outnumber those who are strongly supportive.

    Opposition to the automaker bailout is fueled by the widespread perception that the companies themselves are responsible for their predicament, not the faltering economy. In the new poll, three-quarters of Americans said Detroit’s woes are mainly the fault of its own management decisions, and a sizable majority of those who blame the front office object to government help.

    Nor have Detroit’s Big Three made significant progress persuading the public that bankruptcy proceedings would deepen the broader economic slowdown. Sixty percent said it would make no difference or would be good for the economy if one or more of the companies were forced to restructure under the protection of bankruptcy laws.

    Democrats are among the most wary of the economic impact of failure, with 42 percent saying it would hurt the economy. They are more apt to advocate federal aid — 52 percent support it, up from 42 percent support for previous versions of the rescue bill. But they, too, are deeply critical of company managers — 72 percent fault Detroit’s strategies, not the overall economy.

    Republican opposition has grown stronger, with 69 percent now against the bailout, an increase of 12 points since chief executives from General Motors, Chrysler and Ford last appeared on Capitol Hill to plead their case. Half of all Republicans polled now strongly oppose the plan.

    Overall, independents continue to lean against the plan, with 57 percent opposing it and 41 percent supporting it. …

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28248202/

    Unfortunately, we all know at least one Republican who still strongly supports the bailout, despite what the public has to say.

    He’s the one moving next January 20.

  24. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 9:08 am

    Honda apparently realizes it’s PC to want their competitors bailed out, all while making responsible moves itself.

    From the AP:

    Honda slashes profit forecast, management pay to cope with global downturn

    By Yuri Kageyama

    TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s auto industry suffered another blow Wednesday when Honda, its No. 2 carmaker, said it was slashing its annual profit forecast, curtailing investment and slowing production to ride out a global slowdown.

    Nissan, the nation’s third-biggest automaker, added to the dismal news by saying it was reducing domestic production by another 78,000 vehicles and cutting 500 temporary workers.

    What’s more, the dollar fell to a fresh 13-year low against the yen, further pinching the automakers’ income from exports.

    “Every day, the hardships we face are getting worse and worse. And there are no signs of recovery,” Honda President Takeo Fukui said at a news conference that was hastily moved up two days from the initial schedule.

    Honda Motor Co. now expects 185 billion yen ($2.06 billion) in group net profit for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 – less than a third of the 600 billion yen it earned last fiscal year.

    Tokyo-based Honda has already twice cut its forecast for the current year. In October, it said it expected 485 billion yen ($5.4 billion) in profit.

    He said Honda’s worldwide vehicle sales in 2008 are expected to reach 3.77 million units, almost unchanged from 2007. Sales are plunging in the U.S. and other regions, with even previously healthy emerging markets getting battered in recent months, according to Honda.

    Underlining the tough times ahead, Fukui refused to set a vehicles sales target for 2009 – an unusual move for Honda.

    To take responsibility for the faltering results, Honda directors will take a 10 percent pay cut and further bonus reductions are likely, he said.

    Earlier this month, Honda said it was pulling out of the glamorous but expensive Formula One racing to save costs and focus on its core car business.

    Mamoru Katou, auto analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research in Nagoya said Honda was taking the right action in guarding against a shrinking market.

    “In about two years time, it can again expect growth. For now, it is going on the defensive,” he said. “It’s making clear that it’s shifting gears.” …

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s.....APAN_HONDA

    But here’s the PC comment for the American audience:

    Fukui said he hoped the Detroit automakers would get some kind of rescue.

    “A collapse of any of the Big Three would be a negative for all the automakers in the world, including Honda,” he said. “It is best that they return to sound health.“

    It’s too bad that the Government bailout will absolutely not return Detroit to “sound health.”

  25. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:12 am

    More dissention in the ranks.

    From an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times:

    SAG shouldn’t strike

    By Melissa Gilbert

    The Screen Actors Guild, under the leadership of President Alan Rosenberg and its board of directors, has asked members to authorize a strike. This is a foolhardy move that endangers not only the union but our entire entertainment industry, the economy of the communities in which we work and our country as a whole.

    Now is not the time for a strike.

    I say this not just as one of the guild’s 120,000 members, or as one of the millions of Southern Californians who would be affected by a strike. I offer this perspective as a former SAG president who, between 2001 and 2005, oversaw five successful negotiated contracts.

    Even if it were advisable, SAG is in no financial position to bear the burden of a work stoppage at this time. The 2005 TV/theatrical negotiations, which took only a few months, cost the guild about $200,000. The cost of the current negotiations, which have dragged on since the spring, must be approaching $1 million. The guild reports that it has about $48 million in reserves, but nearly every penny is already allocated for operating costs. Where are the millions more needed to fund a strike, including the staff overtime and travel expenses that are inevitable?

    Just mailing out the ballots Jan. 2 will cost the guild $120,000. A PR campaign and more town hall meetings, like the one Wednesday night in Hollywood, will add to that tab.

    To be sure, most SAG members who have read the producers’ contract proposal are not happy with every point of the deal. And true, actors’ needs differ from those of our fellow artists. But it’s also safe to say that there is a deal to be made, just as there was for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

    I am not swayed by arguments that, given the current economic conditions, now is a good time to strike. How can any SAG member vote to knowingly put so many people, in our industry and in myriad associated businesses, into further jeopardy during the largest financial crisis since the Depression? Unemployment in California is expected to hover around 9% in 2009, and home values here still haven’t hit bottom. A strike would bring Los Angeles to a grinding halt, and the economic damage would ripple across the county and the state.

    On top of that, NBC — one of the largest buyers of scripted programming — announced last week that it will put Jay Leno in its 10 p.m. slot five nights a week. This represents a pink slip to numerous craftspeople who would have worked on the one-hour dramas that traditionally have lived in that slot.

    Each day brings another reason not to strike. And yet — strangely — SAG’s leaders keep insisting that a strike authorization is the only way to show the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) “that we mean business.” Really? Is that really what we think?

    On Monday, about 300 guild members in New York rallied in support of a strike, just as 400 did in Los Angeles last week. But many thousands of members, here and across the country, were not cheering. In fact, I hear from many working guild members that not only will they vote against a strike authorization, they will not honor a strike if one is called. The words “financial core” — a way of declaring oneself covered by any union contract even as you give up voting rights and other membership obligations — are on more lips. To see this kind of rift in the guild is horrible. But it’s happening.

    A growing number of programs — on network, cable and the Web — work under AFTRA contracts. It was hardly the time for SAG to distance itself from that sister union. Yet, SAG leaders did just that last spring. They ended our joint-negotiating relationship with AFTRA, which then quickly struck its own deal with the AMPTP. With SAG leaders now saying they’ll “show the AMPTP” by calling a strike, whose contract do you think will get more use going forward on new productions?

    SAG’s national board must convene an emergency meeting to officially reconsider and retract the motion to send out strike authorization ballots. It must remove the members of the contract negotiating committee who have been unable to make a deal, starting with chief negotiator Doug Allen. The guild would be in much better hands with SAG senior advisor John McGuire leading the charge. McGuire has been part of more negotiations than anyone on the staff, and just as important, he has a deep understanding of the U.S. labor movement and the broader context for these negotiations.

    At the very time our county has chosen a philosophic peacemaker over an impatient warrior, SAG is on the opposite course. Rosenberg lacks the qualities — thoughtfulness, probity and, frankly, strength — needed in a union leader at this difficult hour. Now is not the time for a strike. And yet Rosenberg is leading our union to the edge of that cliff. Members need to reflect on the path he is recommending; is it one of negotiation, patience and discipline? A true desire for peace and for the greater good? …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/op.....2616.story

    Can’t resist getting in one anti-Bush comment, can she?

    SG, I assume no relation. :-)

  26. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Ah, let the fun begin.

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    A gay Muslim, tested by faith and family

    Aliyah Bacchus returns home to offer a choice: Accept her sexuality — as she has — or lose her forever.

    By Erika Hayasaki

    Reporting from New York — All she has left of the person she used to be is contained in a 5-by-7 photo album with “Aliyah Bacchus” written in blue pen on its cover, each picture inside tucked beneath a slip of clear plastic.

    There she is at 17, barely 90 pounds, smiling sourly on her wedding day in Queens, N.Y., dressed in hijab — a pearl-toned princess bridal gown shimmering with beads, her slender hands dipped in sleek white gloves, a veil attached to a white qimar, or head scarf, fastened snugly around her face. The man her father chose for her stands behind Aliyah wearing a black bow tie, his hands resting on her bony shoulders.

    That was before. Before she walked out on the marriage. Before her Guyana-born Muslim family discovered she was gay. Before she fled.

    Aliyah is 22 now, still hovering at 90 pounds, the dark skin of her Indian roots hugging bone, a boyishly feminine lesbian with cropped black hair gelled into a tussle atop her head, long eyelashes and sharp cheekbones.

    She has traded her abaya, which she wore throughout middle and high school, for an ankle-length black trench coat and sunglasses with metallic frames. She has one piercing in her left ear, four in her right, a metal rod bridging the cartilage in the ear’s upper rim, a ring in her bellybutton, another in her nose.

    Aliyah is Muslim. It’s a part of her identity she can’t shed, like her sexuality, like her last name — Bacchus, as in the Roman god of wine and merriment — and like her ink-stained flesh: the angel tattooed between her shoulder blades, the dark dragons on her lower back, the polar bear on her stomach, the dying rose on her right wrist.

    She knows that in some Muslim sects, homosexuality is considered a crime punishable by death. But Aliyah lives in America, raised in low-income housing projects 20 miles from Manhattan’s West Village, where police raided the Stonewall Inn in 1969, setting off riots that sparked the beginning of a national gay rights movement.

    In America, Aliyah knows, it is acceptable to be gay. But how, she wonders, can she be true to who she is while also adhering to her family’s faith? How does she reconcile both sides of her existence?

    The pictures, faded and fragile, show Aliyah hugging her little sister, standing next to her father, laughing with her brother — a smiling tribe living in the Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens. The photographs remind Aliyah that she used to belong to a family.

    On an evening this spring, the sun sets as Aliyah sits on a park bench in the West Village, police sirens blaring around her. Police show up to break up two drunken men fist-fighting a few steps away. Aliyah is calm, nearly oblivious to the urban chaos around her.

    Sneezing and stuffy with a cold, she is lost in thought, eating a piece of raw chocolate. Aliyah fell in love recently, and the woman accepts her as she is. “For at least one person,” Aliyah says, “I seem to be enough.”

    It is enough to convince Aliyah to go home for the first time in over two years. She will tell her family to accept that she is gay, or lose her forever.

    The angel is rising out of flames. …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....8523.story

    It would be interesting to know how that goes over…

  27. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:21 am

    From a shocked, horrified Los Angeles Times:

    Cheney was key in clearing CIA interrogation tactics

    The vice president says that the use of waterboarding was appropriate and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should stay open until ‘the end of the war on terror.’

    By Greg Miller

    Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely.

    Cheney’s remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, although the decision is expected to be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

    Cheney’s comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA’s use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

    “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared,” Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.

    Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: “I do.”

    His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture.

    Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, the CIA “in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.”

    Waterboarding involves strapping a prisoner to a tilted surface, covering his face with a towel and dousing it to simulate the sensation of drowning.

    CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said that the agency used the technique on three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. But the practice was discontinued when lawyers from the Department of Justice and other agencies began backing away from their opinions endorsing its legality.

    Cheney has long defended the technique. But he has not previously disclosed his role in pushing to give the CIA such authority.

    Cheney’s office is regarded as the most hawkish presence in the Bush administration, pushing the White House toward aggressive stances on the invasion of Iraq and the wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

    Asked when the Guantanamo Bay prison would be shut down, Cheney said, “I think that that would come with the end of the war on terror.” He went on to say that “nobody can specify” when that might occur, and likened the use of the detention facility to the imprisonment of Germans during World War II.

    “We’ve always exercised the right to capture the enemy and hold them till the end of the conflict,” Cheney said. …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....1256.story

    Despite his Hoover comment regarding the bailout, it’s nice to see one of the two elected officals in the Republicans still has his sanity intact.

    Mr. Cheney, we’ll miss you.

    • Gila Monster
      December 17, 2008 at 11:05 am

      Agreed BillK, many of us will sorely miss Mr. Cheney, one of the few true conservatives in the outgoing administration.

      I noticed the LA Slimes continues their perpetuation of a common liberal myth lie.

      “His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture.”

      Mr. Harris should do a bit more research, water-boarding, along with other methods of interrogation are still legal in the US. Bush vetoed the libtards precious anti-interrogation bill back in March of this year and as far as I know, his veto hasn’t been overridden.

      http://tinyurl.com/5682gq

      Alas, the LA Slimes has never been overly concerned about facts getting in the way of a good story, especially for their libtard masters at the DNC.

  28. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Oh no, not Hollywood celebrities!

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    Hollywood figures snared in Bernard Madoff’s alleged fraud

    Screenwriter Eric Roth, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg are among those who suffered losses in the investment manager’s alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme.

    By E. Scott Reckard, Rachel Abramowitz and Claudia Eller

    “Good news, bad news” probably doesn’t begin to describe the day Hollywood screenwriter Eric Roth had last week.

    Roth was nominated Thursday for a Golden Globe award as screenwriter of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” And that same day, he learned that he lost all his retirement money to Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme.

    “I’m the biggest sucker who ever walked the face of the Earth,” Roth said Tuesday. “But the tragedy is the people who lost their life savings and their dreams.”

    Roth, whose screenwriting credits include “Forrest Gump,” indicated that his losses were heavy, although he declined to give a dollar figure. He said he had entrusted his funds to an investment manager he had used for decades.

    Although Roth declined to identify his financial advisor, the role of the many investment managers who steered money to Madoff’s New York-based company will come under scrutiny in the months ahead as investors look to them to recoup their losses.

    One such investment firm, Brighton Co. of Beverly Hills, was sued this week in federal court in Los Angeles. In the suit, Michael Chaleff of Arlington, Va., said he and other investors had lost about $250 million on investment partnerships that Brighton placed with Madoff.

    The head of Brighton, according to the suit, is Stanley Chais of Beverly Hills, a philanthropist who had served on charitable boards with Madoff and who now describes himself as a victim of the money manager.

    Reed Kathrien, an Oakland attorney who is representing Chaleff, said he would seek to have the suit certified as a class action on behalf of all the investors who entrusted their money to Chais (pronounced “Chase”) and Madoff.

    “A lot of them were in the entertainment business,” Kathrien, with the firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, said of the investors.

    He said many of those investors were “niche” workers who weren’t household names, but who lost small fortunes “because they’d been in [the investment funds] for 10 or 20 or 30 years.”

    The suit alleges that the Brighton firm was “aware of, or recklessly disregarded, the misuse and mismanagement of investment funds.”

    Chais could not be reached for comment Monday or Tuesday. But in its online edition, the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles quoted Chais saying he was also a victim and suffered large losses.

    “Like everybody else who trusted and invested with Bernie Madoff, he betrayed my trust,” Chais said.

    Chais also told the publication that he not only personally invested with Madoff but also “facilitated” others who wished to do likewise.

    Spokesmen for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the California Department of Corporations said they could find no record of Chais registering as an investment advisor or a broker.

    You don’t mess with Hollywood; Obama will make sure Madoff not only fries but is painted as the result of Bush’s economic policies.

  29. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Falling tax revenues. Cuts in service. Right?

    Hmmm…

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    L.A. County to send 112 deputies to inauguration

    Supervisors narrowly approve the decision, after disagreeing over the number or whether to send any at all. Knabe gets D.C. police to agree to foot most of the bill.

    By Garrett Therolf

    After a week of controversy over the potential cost to taxpayers, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to send 112 sheriff’s deputies — a fraction of the personnel initially proposed — across the country next month to aid in the presidential inauguration.

    The narrow approval, although for far fewer than the 500 deputies first requested by Sheriff Lee Baca on behalf of the Washington, D.C., police, will still make the L.A. County department one of the largest contingents helping with crowd control and other duties at what are expected to be high-turnout festivities surrounding President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing in.

    Supervisors Mike Antonovich, Don Knabe and Zev Yaroslavsky had complained that the trip would deprive county residents of law enforcement protection and cause unnecessary expense to local taxpayers.

    A letter sent by Baca to the board last week estimated the cost of sending about 347 deputies — already fewer than the number first proposed — to Washington at about $1.6 million, with as much as $1 million in salary and other expenses to be paid by the county.

    Knabe brokered a compromise to send about a third that many deputies, with the assurance that the trip would be fully reimbursed by Washington’s police department. The one exception is the cost of the deputies’ employee benefits during the four days they will be in the nation’s capital.

    Supervisors Antonovich and Gloria Molina joined him to support the deal. Yaroslavsky opposed sending any deputies, and Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas abstained after failing to gain support for his compromise proposal to send 250 deputies.

    “I think that we could and should have done better than this,” Ridley-Thomas said. “We will be making many requests of the Obama administration, and it is important to get off on the right foot. . . . We need to be smart about change.”

    Ninety-six agencies are sending 4,000 officers for inauguration events, according to a District of Columbia police spokeswoman.

    Some agencies have opted out. The New York Police Department decided in 2004 that sending officers would open the agency to unwanted liability. So, it was not asked to help.

    So at a time when Los Angeles is crying poverty they have no problem ponying up about $1 million to send 112 deputies to the coronation of His Highness.

    Nice.

    • JohnMG
      December 17, 2008 at 11:32 am

      …..”“We will be making many requests of the Obama administration, and it is important to get off on the right foot. . . . We need to be smart about change.”…..”

      So what they acknowledge doing is currying favor with Obama at the expense of taxpayers. Or put another way, he feels he must kiss Obama’s ass in order to access some of the money his own people have had confiscated by the government.

      In my opinion, these fools are too stupid to occupy the positions to which they’ve been elected or appointed. But then, that’s just me.

  30. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Some news from the People’s Republic of Boulder:

    Boulder moves toward stricter height limits

    By Ryan Morgan

    Boulder’s elected leaders next year will take another look at what kind of “community benefit” — such as affordable housing — developers should be required to include if they want to put up buildings taller than 35 feet.

    Builders now are allowed to go up to 35 feet in much of downtown Boulder. Building higher than that — up to the 55-foot limit set forth in the city’s charter — requires permission from the city’s Planning Board.

    The City Council voted 7-1 late Tuesday night to ask the city’s planning staff to start working in the second half of next year to come up with possible changes to the circumstances in which developers are allowed to exceed 35 feet and go up to the 55-foot ceiling.

    City Councilwoman Angelique Espinoza voted against the motion. City Councilwoman Susan Osborne was absent.

    Boulder resident Gwen Dooley encouraged the City Council to “move forward as soon as possible.”

    Elected leaders, she said, should change the way they think of the space above buildings more than 35 feet off the ground.

    “I’d like you to think of a little something radical … and think of that airspace as public airspace,” she said.

    City Councilwoman Lisa Morzel said she thinks that’s a reasonable way of looking at the issue. If developers are going to be allowed to build higher than 35 feet, she said, they ought to give something back to the community.

    “I think that truly is public space, and that … people in the community have a right to have a say in terms of what is built in that 20 feet of public space,” she said.

    The council will try to define what constitutes “community benefit,” which could include requiring developers to provide more affordable housing.

    Several officials on Tuesday said figuring out new rules for height — and for the character of new development in Boulder in general — is urgent. As the city deliberates new policies, City Councilman Macon Cowles said, new development projects will be proposed. And if they look anything like high-profile projects of the last few years, he said, that will be a problem.

    “The new stuff is not being well-received by the citizens,” Cowles said.

    But City Councilwoman Espinoza disagreed. There are plenty of other things elected officials should be worrying about, she said.

    “Construction provides a lot of jobs, and I don’t want to be the person who puts somebody out of work before Christmas,” she said. “I can understand that many of you have constituencies whose main concern is height and (density) bonuses and not changing Boulder too much. I have yet to hear a person who is a peer of mine come to speak to that issue. … I’m not with you on this as the most important thing to do. I think we spend way too much time on this stuff.” …

    http://www.dailycamera.com/new.....ht-limits/

    “Private” property? What’s that?

  31. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Do I even need to bother posting this? Was there ever any doubt?

    From a glowing AP:

    Time names Obama ‘Person of the Year’

    NEW YORK — President-elect Barack Obama has won another contest: He’s been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2008.

    The magazine has named Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gov. Sarah Palin and Chinese director Zhang Yimou as runners-up. …

    http://www.dailycamera.com/new.....rson-year/

    Wow, I bet Obama was sweating that one…

  32. BannedbytheTaliban
    December 17, 2008 at 11:25 am

    A gay Muslim, tested by faith and family

    Let’s ask the Imam! But here is a list of her “stoneable” offenses:

    1. Desecrating her body with piercings (seems to be at least 7 counts)
    2. Desecrating her body with tattoos (seems to be at least three counts)
    3. Removing her hijab
    4. Removing her abaya
    5. Leaving her arranged marriage
    6. Adultery
    7. Homosexuality
    8. Defaming her family in a public venue (the newspaper) surely an honor killing is justified

  33. BannedbytheTaliban
    December 17, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    From the AP via FoxNews:

    Muslim Woman Arrested for Allegedly Refusing to Take Off Headscarf at Georgia Courthouse

    ATLANTA — A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated.

    A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta’s west suburban outskirts.

    Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said after they arrested her Tuesday.

    Valentine, who recently moved to Georgia from Connecticut, said the incident reminded her of stories she’d heard of the civil rights-era South.

    “I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights,” she said Wednesday from her home. She said she was unexpectedly released after the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.

    Jail officials declined to say why she was freed and municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that “it would not be appropriate” for him to comment on the case.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,468785,00.html

    Oh the humanity! What an act of depravity!

  34. BillK
    December 17, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    The ultimate in “let’s propagate the public’s misunderstanding of this” journalism, from Las Vegas’ KVBC TV:

    TARP outcome: Economic conditions are worsening

    It’s been a controversial subject since it was approved by Congress. The $700 billion bailout plan doesn’t seem to be bailing anyone out – yet. Monday, the panel overseeing the billions of dollars came to Southern Nevada, ground zero in the nation’s foreclosure explosion. News 3’s Gerard Ramalho explains why many are convinced it won’t help the people who need it most.

    Everyone seems to agree about the bailout: It hasn’t actually bailed-out any homeowners. The banks have received about $350 billion so far, but Monday, many testified none of it has actually filtered down to the victims of the foreclosure crisis.

    At a time when many homes are adorned with holiday decorations, too many are displaying foreclosure signs. Foreclosures in Nevada still outnumber the rest of the country, and many agree the recent bank bailout has done nothing to help.

    Congresswoman Shelley Berkley kicked off the comments to a Congressional oversight panel assigned to take a closer look at the problem.

    “The purpose of this was to buy up toxic paper, unclog the pipes of the financial industry and get money and credit into the pipeline – get the credit and the money flowing again.”

    Panelist Damon Silver asked whether there is less fear in Nevada than there was in October or November. Homeowners like Daniel Dobeck unanimously answered “no,” and believe the effort is too little, too late. …

    http://www.kvbc.com/Global/sto.....=menu107_2

    Just to be clear, the Congresswoman was right:

    “The purpose of this was to buy up toxic paper, unclog the pipes of the financial industry and get money and credit into the pipeline – get the credit and the money flowing again.”

    TARP was never intended to “bail out” individual homeowners.

    It was never meant to prevent foreclosures.

    It was meant to stabilize the banking and money markets, period.

    Remember people even whining “they didn’t bail me out.”

    Yet the fact that homeowners weren’t bailed out somehow makes it a “failure.”

    Thanks MSM, never would have read that into it.

  35. sheehanjihad
    December 18, 2008 at 8:21 am

    By DIONNE WALKER
    Associated Press Writer

    ATLANTA (AP) – A Muslim woman arrested for refusing to take off her head scarf at a courthouse security checkpoint said Wednesday that she felt her human and civil rights were violated. A judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta’s west suburban outskirts.

    Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said after they arrested her Tuesday.

    Kelley Jackson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said state law doesn’t permit or prohibit head scarfs.

    “It’s at the discretion of the judge and the sheriffs and is up to the security officers in the court house to enforce their decision,” she said.

    Valentine, who recently moved to Georgia from New Haven, Conn., said the incident reminded her of stories she’d heard of the civil rights-era South.

    “I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights,” she said Wednesday from her home. She said she was unexpectedly released after the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia.

    The group cited a report that the same judge removed a woman and her 14-year-old daughter from the courtroom last week because they were wearing Muslim head scarves.

    Jail officials declined to say why she was freed and municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins said that “it would not be appropriate” for him to comment on the case.

    Last year, a judge in Valdosta in southern Georgia barred a Muslim woman from entering a courtroom because she would not remove her head scarf. There have been similar cases in other states, including Michigan, where a Muslim woman in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit in February 2007 after a judge dismissed her small-claims court case when she refused to remove a head and face veil.

    Valentine’s husband, Omar Hall, said his wife was accompanying her nephew to a traffic citation hearing when officials stopped her at the metal detector and told her she would not be allowed in the courtroom with the head scarf, known as a hijab.

    Hall said Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with the scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation. When she turned to leave and uttered an expletive, Hall said a bailiff handcuffed her and took her before the judge.

    http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=1552145&nid=104

    You see, removing a head scarf is called following the rules. But this woman is muslim. There are no rules for them. They do as they please. Ha! Not this time! Now lets sit back and watch the judge’s house get burned to the ground by this peaceful religion.

    ___

    • Kev
      December 18, 2008 at 4:15 pm

      There should be charges brought against the AP. First the lady was not arrested for refusing to remove her head scarf. She was charged with contempt of court for cursing the deputy.
      You would have to say that she has a religion of convenience or she would not be cursing the deputy. The reason she was there was only to accompany her nephew who had a ticket. The story as presented by the AP is nothing near the truth as the facts of the case have been left out. Our free press seems to think they have the freedom to lie.

  36. BillK
    December 18, 2008 at 9:51 am

    More on the coronation and the brain-washing, er, “education” of our youth.

    From a breathless AP:

    Nickelodeon planning first inauguration coverage

    By David Bauder

    Nickelodeon TV, the children’s’ network, is getting ready to cover its first presidential inauguration.

    Young reporters Lily Collins, rocker Phil Collins’ daughter, and J.J. (Nick would not release his last name) will be in Washington on Jan. 20 to show Barack Obama’s inauguration from a pint-sized perspective.

    Throughout the presidential campaign, Nickelodeon found that interest among its young viewers matched that of the adults. Nick’s own online “election” had 2.2 million children voting, with kids supporting Obama over John McCain (51 percent to 49 percent) in a closer margin than the real election.

    “We decided to carry it through so that kids would have the full experience of the presidential election,” said Marva Smalls, executive vice president of public affairs at Nickelodeon.

    The coverage will show up during commercial breaks and, most prominently, during the periods between regular shows in prime-time. Nick will offer a retrospective of past presidents taking the oath of office and interviews with young people about Obama’s election and his inaugural address.

    Nick won’t cover the speech live, but will take excerpts shortly after it is done from coverage on a news network and package it for its viewers.

    “We can’t go live in the same way the networks are going live but it will feel the same way to kids,” Smalls said.

    The station’s young viewers are particularly interested in the process because Barack and Michelle Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, are squarely in Nick’s demographic, she said.

    Nick reporters covered the primary this year for the first time (another online poll found kids selecting Obama and McCain as the nominees before Super Tuesday) and went to the Democratic and Republican party conventions. Republicans didn’t allow Nick TV reporters on their convention floor; the Democrats did.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....W9v5yuGL8C

    Great – perhaps SpongeBob can stop by too and tell us how important carbon caps are to Bikini Bottom, no matter how much worse they make the economy.

    • Kev
      December 18, 2008 at 4:20 pm

      This will be important when the Civil Corps start up with the middle school kids “donating” time to nation.

  37. BillK
    December 18, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Crud – news we didn’t expect, so we’ll be sure to spin that properly.

    From the AP:

    New jobless claims drop more than expected

    By Christopher S. Rugaber

    WASHINGTON – Initial claims for unemployment benefits dropped more than expected last week, but mass layoffs continue amid a recession that appears to be deepening.

    The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications for jobless benefits fell to a seasonally adjusted 554,000 for the week ending Dec. 13, from an upwardly revised figure of 575,000 the previous week. The new tally was slightly below economists’ expectations of 558,000 claims.

    One likely reason for the improvement is that the figure was inflated two weeks ago by applicants who delayed filing their claims during the Thanksgiving holiday week, a Labor Department analyst said. The government attempts to account for such volatility with its seasonal adjustments but is not always successful.

    Still, the four-week moving average, which smooths out fluctuations, increased slightly to 543,750 claims, the highest since December 1982. The labor force has grown by about half since then.

    Another slight improvement was seen in the number of people who continue to receive jobless benefits, which declined to 4.38 million from 4.43 million the previous week.

    Economists expected a slight increase to 4.45 million.

    Economists consider jobless claims a timely, if volatile, indicator of the health of the labor markets and broader economy. A year ago, initial claims stood at 349,000.

    The elevated level of claims is just one of several signs that the labor market has deteriorated rapidly in recent months.

    Large layoffs are occurring across many sectors of the economy. On Wednesday alone, hard drive maker Western Digital Corp., managed-care company Aetna Inc., and Newell Rubbermaid Inc., maker of products including Rubbermaid storage containers and Sharpie pens, announced mass job cuts.

    Pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., International Paper Co. and Bank of America Corp. also announced layoffs in the past week.

    “The continuing wave of layoffs suggests claims could soon top 600,000,” David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities, wrote in a client note Wednesday. …

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....9GVNW2GL8C

    Funny how when they’re laying off, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and banks are no longer evil incarnate but rather just other “suffering companies.”

    As far as the economists, no economist ever lost their job by predicting doom…

  38. BannedbytheTaliban
    December 18, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Posted everywhere in the MSM, as a shinning light of democracy, but this one is found on CNN:

    More than 20 Iraqi Interior Ministry officers arrested

    BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — More than 20 officers of the Iraqi Interior Ministry were arrested this week over alleged links to the outlawed al-Awda party, a successor to the Baath Party, a ministry spokesman said ThursdayThe highest-ranking person taken into custody was a brigadier general, according to Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf. He said the others were low-ranking officers.

    The Interior Ministry oversees policing, border enforcement and internal security.

    Al-Awda is a successor to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which was banned after the former Iraqi leader’s ouster during the U.S. military invasion in 2003. The party ruled Iraq for 35 years.

    Khalaf said judicial authorities detained 23 officers and were questioning them.

    A second Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said at least 32 ministry employees were arrested between Monday and Wednesday. He had no information on the reasons behind the detentions.

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/.....index.html

    Meanwhile in the world of USA today the headline reads:

    Official: 25 accused of plot to restore outlawed Saddam party

    BAGHDAD (AP) — At least 25 people working in Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior have been arrested on accusations of participating in a plot to restore Saddam Hussein’s outlawed party, a government investigator said Thursday.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/w.....arty_N.htm

    Wonder how long it will be before Obambi starts arresting people for trying to restore the Republican party, seeing how it is all but gone. What a convenient excuse to put down political dissent, kudos.

    On a side note, Microsoft as already added Barack and Obama to their spell checker.

  39. BillK
    December 18, 2008 at 10:09 am

    From MSNBC:

    Will FCC lighten up under Obama?

    Parental concerns may turn to economy, not sex on TV

    By Michael Ventre

    For better or worse, the Federal Communications Commission has become best known during the eight years of the Bush Administration for a one-second glimpse of Janet Jackson’s right breast.

    It wasn’t just that single incident at halftime of Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. 1, 2004 that was the issue. Instead, it represented an effort by the federal government to draw a clear line in the sand when it came to any type of obscenity over the public airwaves.

    Amid that same climate, the FCC reversed a long-standing policy of cracking down only on repeated expletives and acted when “fleeting expletives” were uttered by Cher during the 2002 Billboard Music Awards, and by Nicole Richie during Billboard’s 2003 ceremonies. A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Fox network in a case involving those instances, but the Supreme Court took up the case and heard oral arguments on it in early November.

    But in January a Democratic administration under President-elect Barack Obama will take over, and many eyes will be on the FCC to see which direction it goes. Will it pursue strict or even stricter enforcement than the previous administration, or will it loosen the reins?

    “First and foremost, every complaint deserves to be adjudicated on its merits,” said Dan Isett, director of public policy for the Parents Television Council, a conservative watchdog group. “That should be the case no matter who the president is.”

    The PTC has become a hub for many parents who are unhappy with content that goes out over the broadcast airwaves. As a result of Jackson, Cher, Richie, another expletive uttered by U2’s Bono during the 2003 Golden Globes Awards, and other less high-profile incidents, the PTC has helped to generate complaints filed with the FCC when it and its members feel certain segments of the television landscape have become too coarse and therefore unacceptable for viewing by children.

    But Ed Carter, an assistant professor of communications at Brigham Young University and a former newspaper reporter, said there may be a subtle change.

    “I don’t get the feeling the PTC will stop its efforts just because it’s a different administration,” Carter said. “But what you might see is that interest may wane a little bit. I think the Janet Jackson incident hypersensitized the topic.”

    Carter suggested the current economic downturn may also have an effect on complaints to the FCC. “If I’m a parent out there in America and I’m thinking about feeding my family and keeping clothes on my kids,” he said, “I don’t know if I’d be that worried about some entertainer’s top coming off.”

    Isett feels that will not change under an Obama Administration. “I don’t think people generally, or our members in particular, are more or less apt to exercise their First Amendment rights regardless of who the chairman is,” he said.

    “From our perspective, what’s important is the content of a show. If the content violates federal decency standards, we’ll inform our members.” …

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27917849

    So if you’re “concerned about the economy” your parenting skills take a back seat?

    Apparently I missed something, and Dad will be saying “Honey, I’m worried about my job – it’s no big deal if Junior watches that singer take her top off on the MTV Music Awards.”

  40. BillK
    December 18, 2008 at 11:35 am

    That definition of “hate crime” keeps getting broader and broader.

    From the far-left Madison, WI Capital Times:

    Tilted Kilt disturbance brings hate crime charge

    The man accused of creating a disturbance and fighting with police at the Tilted Kilt on Lien Road Sunday night has been charged with a hate crime in a dispute that apparently started because someone moved his coat.

    Justin J. Renard, 30, of Cottage Grove, is charged with disorderly conduct as a hate crime, disorderly conduct, attempted battery of a police officer and resisting officers for the Sunday night fight.

    The victim of the alleged hate crime told police he entered the bar with friends, looked for a place to sit, and saw some empty bar stools and a stool with a jacket on its back. The criminal complaint said the victim asked a waitress about the jacket, and she replied she didn’t think anyone was sitting there and he could move the jacket.

    Moments later, Renard returned and began shouting obscenities and demanding to know who moved his jacket. The victim would later tell police he thought Renard was joking, because he couldn’t understand why anyone would get so upset over a jacket, the criminal complaint says.

    Renard then yelled racial slurs at the victim, a dark-skinned man who was born in northern South America. “Your kind thinks they can sit wherever they f—— want,” he said. The bar manager later said Renard was relentless in his verbal assault of the victim.

    Renard also threatened to kill people in the bar, the manager said, and at one point said, “I’m gonna unload my gun in here.”

    Police were called after Renard continued going in and out of the bar. When officers arrived, Renard fought with them outside until he was restrained. …

    http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/latest/319088

    The Cap Times would be unafraid to print the “n” word had he said it, so that means that verbally yelling “Your kind” at a minority is now sufficient to get you charged with a hate crime in Madison, WI.

    Yes, read that again – the man did not threaten this man with being shot – he simply yelled at him and called him “Your kind.”

    Meanwhile this same police department, if you recall, has told 911 operators they don’t want to be bothered with reports of 911 hangups.

    The Madison Police Department at work.

  41. BillK
    December 18, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Proving yet again that he doesn’t get it.

    From the AP:

    Bush considering “orderly” auto bankruptcy

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is seriously considering “orderly” bankruptcy as a way of dealing with the desperately ailing U.S. auto industry.

    White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday, “There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that’s what we would be talking about.”

    President George W. Bush, asked about an auto rescue plan during an appearance before a private group, said he hadn’t decided what he would do.

    But he, like Perino, spoke of the idea of bankruptcies organized by the federal government as a possible way to go.

    “Under normal circumstances, no question bankruptcy court is the best way to work through credit and debt and restructuring,” he said. “These aren’t normal circumstances. That’s the problem.”

    At the White House, Perino said, “The president is not going to allow a disorderly collapse of the companies. A disorderly collapse would be something very chaotic that is a shock to the system.”

    She said the White House was close to a decision and emphasized there were still several possible approaches to assisting the automakers, such as short-term loans out of a $700 billion Wall Street rescue fund. Bush has resisted this approach before, and it is adamantly opposed by many Republicans.

    “It’s in the spectrum of options and there are a lot of options,” Perino said.

    She said one of the factors delaying an announcement on an auto rescue plan is the continuing discussion between the administration and the various sides that would have to sign on to a managed bankruptcy – entities such as labor unions and equity holders in addition to the companies themselves.

    “In any scenario that comes forward after this decision-making process, all those stakeholders are going to have to make tough decisions,” she said.

    The presidential spokeswoman would not put a timetable on when an announcement would come, and suggested it may not happen this week. But something must be done, she said.

    “If you thought that our economy today could handle the collapse of the American auto industry, then you might come to the conclusion that doing nothing was an option,” Perino said. “We’re going to do something.” …

    http://customwire.ap.org/dynam.....BUSH_AUTOS

    It’s not the #$@! collapse of the Americanc auto industry, it’s Chapter 11 reorganization.

    Why is it no one, including the Republcians in Congress who voted against this cr*p, are willing to explain that to the people?

    Bush may be doing this to “save” his legacy but all he’s done is to destroy it among the few people left who supported him.

  42. BannedbytheTaliban
    December 18, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Words fail me:

    Clinton foundation releases donor list

    Documents released this morning by The William J. Clinton Foundation show that the former president’s group received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and interests, AP says.

    The former president agreed to disclose donor information as part of his wife’s nomination to become secretary of state under President-elect Barack Obama. In a statement, the Clinton foundation says it also plans to release information about donations to a separate post-Katrina relief fund.

    Saudi Arabia donated between $10 million and $25 million.“Some of the donors have extensive ties to Indian interests that could prove troubling to Pakistan. Tensions between the two nuclear nations are high since last month’s deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai,” the wire service says.

    Here’s a list with some of the foundation’s biggest donors:

    Greater than $25,000,000:
    The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation
    UNITAID

    $10,000,001 to $25,000,000
    COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico
    Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
    The ELMA Foundation
    Theodore W. Waitt

    $5,000,001 to $10,000,000
    Government of Norway
    Nationale Postcode Loterij

    $1,000,001 to $5,000,000
    Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi
    Nasser Al-Rashid
    Dubai Foundation
    Friends of Saudi Arabia
    Princess Diana Memorial Fund

    $1,000,001 to $5,000,000
    State of Kuwait
    State of Qatar
    Swiss Reinsurance Company
    Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office
    The Government of Brunei Darussalam
    The Sultanate of Oman

    1 million to $5 million each:

    • Bernard L. Schwartz, former chief executive of Loral Space & Communications. Considered by Bill Clinton for defense secretary in 1992 and 1996, Schwartz ran a thriving satellite business during the Clinton years, even after its involvement in a Chinese rocket explosion in 1996 that was carrying a $200 million Loral satellite. The company eventually paid a $14 million fine as part of a State Department investigation into whether it improperly shared sensitive rocket technology with China.

    http://blogs.usatoday.com/onde......html#more

    OPEC nations, traitors and spys, and elite Saudis. And I thought Bush was the big oil man. Go figure. I’m just shocked someone ran this article. Althought it is pretty well hidden on the USAtoday website.

    • GuppyNblue
      December 18, 2008 at 12:57 pm

      BannedbytheTaliban
      Yahoo posted it via the AP this morning. They provided a link to a complete list of the donors but it’s just not working.

    • Gila Monster
      December 18, 2008 at 2:56 pm

      My oh my, what a tangled web they weave.

      The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation UK (CIFF UK) is a large charitable organization in the United Kingdom.
      It was founded in 2002 by UK hedge fund manager Chris Hohn and his wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn.
      CIFF is focused on improving the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries. Its main areas of activity are HIV/AIDS, emergency humanitarian aid and microfinance.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.....Foundation

      Sounds OK so far but why is a UK charity throwing Clinton $25 million plus? Related to a hedge fund king no less.

      UNITAID is an international facility for the purchase of drugs against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. It was founded in September 2006 on the initiative of Brazil and France, and is to a great part financed by so called innovative development financing mechanisms, namely a solidarity levy on air line tickets.
      Due to a growing number of Member States (35 as of April 2007) UNITAID’s budget is expected to exceed $500 million in 2009 ($300 million in 2007)[1] out of which at least 85% must be allocated to low-income countries. Hosted by the WHO in Geneva, the organization’s principal strength is the negotiation of low prices for drugs on the basis of its strong financial means. UNITAID does not have its own programs for the distribution of medication but supports programs by its partner organizations such as The Global Fund, the Clinton Foundation, or the WHO.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITAID

      I’m starting to see a trend here, AIDS and poor kids in “developing” nations. Again, $25 million plus gets thrown Billy Jeff’s way. And the UN is involved, well known for their myriad slush funds.

      COPRESIDA is a non-profit whose main purpose is fighting AIDS in the Dominican Republic. Sorry, most of the link is in Espanol but some of it is translated into English.

      http://tinyurl.com/3wda23

      Seems like a fairly small organization to be tossing BJ between $10 to $25 million.

      The ELMA foundation is another apparently small organization that supposedly helps the poor children in Africa. The link is to the mission statement of ELMA’s president, Dr, Natalia Kanem.

      http://tinyurl.com/3eldcx

      Again, a small mysterious “humanitarian” organization tossing Clinton between $10 to $25 million.
      But why are they throwing so much money to an ex-lawyer from Arkansas?

      OPEC, rich Saudi princes’, HIV/AIDS and the poor in Africa. What a scam combination!
      I think I get it now. The Goracle is getting his off the voodoo science of global warming. Billy Jeff is getting his off the backs of Africa’s poor, HIV/AIDS relief and dirty oil money from abroad.

  43. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 8:11 am

    How soon before hundreds of thousands of credit cards are cancelled and the interest rate on others jumps by double digits?

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    Credit card changes will give consumers a break

    The rules from federal regulators represent a sweeping change. But the new limits on fees and rates don’t start until 2010.

    By Tiffany Hsu

    Responding to rising consumer complaints, federal regulators Thursday adopted the most sweeping new rules for the credit card industry in three decades, including tougher restrictions on interest rate hikes and late fees.

    The regulations, which take effect in July 2010, would block card companies from applying higher interest rates on existing balances. Late fees could not be charged without giving consumers at least 21 days to make a payment.

    The new measures were needed to reverse a trend in which the pricing schemes and terms of credit cards have grown increasingly complicated and obscure, leaving consumers frustrated by mysterious charges, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said.

    The banking industry opposed the measures, contending that card issuers would be less likely to take a chance on people with weak credit. Card companies will also be forced to raise interest rates to cover the expense of the new measures, saddling most card users with higher costs, said Edward L. Yingling, chief executive of the American Bankers Assn.

    But consumer advocates said the measures, adopted by the Fed, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration, were needed to address hidden traps and fees nestled in the fine print of card applications.

    “There has been a long time since these regulations have changed, and banking and card companies have had very successful lobbies that kept any meaningful legislation at bay,” said Ginna Green, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending. “But consumer advocates and congressional leadership have put the pressure on regulators to do what really needs to be done for a number of years.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/busines.....9850.story

    They never learn.

    With these new regs, the last credit accessible by most people will be cut off. For the “poor” and “working man” the left loves so much, it will become a cash-only society.

    Of course until the Government hands over a few hundred billion more dollars to “ease the consumer credit crunch.”

  44. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 8:28 am

    The latest on the California budget battle, from the Los Angeles Times:

    Schwarzenegger says he won’t back Democratic budget plan

    The governor says the $18-billion plan calling for higher taxes and spending cuts doesn’t go as far as he’d like to stimulate the economy. The state may run out of money in early February.

    By Jordan Rau and Patrick McGreevy

    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday rejected an $18-billion plan the Legislature passed to ease the state’s financial crisis through higher gas, sales and income taxes and cuts to schools and healthcare.

    Schwarzenegger, who for weeks has exhorted lawmakers to act to forestall a cash crisis, vowed to veto the package after Democrats used a series of legal maneuvers to push through $9.3 billion in taxes without any GOP votes. He called on legislators to return to the negotiating table.

    It was not the taxes — or the tactics Democrats used to pass them — that Schwarzenegger said troubled him. He complained the plan did not go as far as he wanted to stimulate the economy.

    “I need exactly what I recommended [for my] recovery package,” he told reporters an hour after the Senate and Assembly concluded voting following a tense legislative session. “I think they should stay here, work some more on this budget.”

    Schwarzenegger said the Democratic plan — which would speed up financing for more than $3 billion in public spending on construction related to hospitals, streets, housing, flood protection, parks and transit– was “bogus.” He said the state also needs to ease environmental rules that can delay such projects and allow a greater role for private contractors in public building.

    He also complained that it did not include an additional $1.2 billion in cuts to the state workforce and welfare programs.

    “They thought I would sign it, that they could put the pressure on,” he said.

    The governor’s move comes as the state is projected to run out of cash as early as February. And it came a day after the state’s financial straits forced officials to stop payments for nearly 2,000 public works projects. The suspension of that money could make it impossible for lawmakers and Schwarzenegger to jump-start construction even if the stimulus measures the governor seeks are passed.

    Democrats accused the governor of keeping the state in financial jeopardy over fringe issues. The projects that Schwarzenegger would like to see privatized or fast-tracked and the program cuts he wants implemented, they say, make up only a tiny fraction of overall state spending.

    “We gave him an $18-billion gift, and he tossed it down the toilet,” said Sen. Mark Leno, (D-San Francisco). “This is more about his ego than what is good for the state.”

    Despite the veto threat, many in the Capitol expect some version of the package to survive.

    Legislative leaders late Thursday had not sent their bills to the governor’s desk, according to Capitol staffers involved in budget discussions and are planning to reopen talks with the governor’s office in coming days.

    “When the bus is about to go over the cliff, you don’t just pump the brakes once and give up,” said Democratic strategist Jason Kinney. “You keep pumping until the bus stops.”]

    If some version of the plan is eventually signed into law, it could still unravel.

    Several Republican lawmakers and antitax advocates said they would file a lawsuit charging that the plan violates Proposition 13’s provision that all tax increases require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.

    They also threatened to launch a referendum to overturn the proposed increase in the 13-cent-a gallon gas tax, which is scheduled to take effect in February.

    “Let’s just have the signature gatherers stand at the gas stations and see how long that takes to get the signatures on a referendum,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

    Qualifying the referendum would require 433,971 signatures. Once they were collected and validated, the increase would be suspended pending a vote of the electorate.

    Legal experts said it was unclear whether courts would overturn other parts of the Democrats’ package in the event that the governor were to sign it.

    The proposal would raise $9.3 billion by increasing sales taxes three-fourths of a cent. It would add a surcharge of 2.5% to everyone’s 2009 state income tax bill. It would also require businesses to withhold taxes on payments above $600 made to independent contractors, as they are now required to do with salaried employees.

    In addition, it would cut $7.3 billion from schools, healthcare and other programs. Their package would nearly halve the state’s budget shortfall, projected to reach $41.8 billion in the next 18 months.

    The Democrats circumvented Republicans through a number of novel maneuvers that took advantage of the legal difference between taxes and fees and skirted the need for a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, which is normally required for tax hikes. A two-thirds vote would have required some Republican support, but GOP lawmakers have vowed not to raise taxes. On the floors of the Senate and Assembly, Republicans said the Democrats showed contempt for voters and an unprecedented subversion of California’s Constitution.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....1906.story

    I’ve got to hand it to Californai’s Republican state legislators – they are sticking to their guns and remember what the GOP at least used to stand for.

    Ahnold seems to in some ways but in others he’s been listening to his wife’s family far too long.

  45. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 8:36 am

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    Immigration-overhaul supporters hope their hour has come

    With Obama in office, a sympathetic Cabinet and more Democrats in Congress, supporters hope to revive a reform package next year. But the economic downturn sparks worry about protecting U.S. workers.

    By Teresa Watanabe

    Immigrant advocates said Thursday that long-stalled efforts to legalize millions of illegal migrants, crack down on employers who hire them and win more family visas would be revived next year and could possibly succeed in early 2010 following sizable Democratic gains powered by record turnouts of Latino voters in the November election.

    Frank Sharry of America’s Voice, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy organization, said that Democrats who favored a comprehensive reform approach beat Republicans advocating only border control and other enforcement measures in 20 of 22 congressional races in such battleground states as Colorado and New Mexico. Those results were in part driven by Latino voters, who doubled their turnout over 2000, supported President-elect Barack Obama over Republican nominee John McCain 67% to 31% and helped Democrats win, in addition to Colorado and New Mexico, other swing states such as Florida and Nevada, Sharry said.

    “This is a defining issue among the fastest growing group of new voters in the country,” Sharry said of Latino support for immigration reform. “This is a huge priority.”

    In a national teleconference Thursday, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), said Obama had asked him to relay that he remains committed to a comprehensive solution to repair the nation’s immigration system. Advocates said Obama’s Cabinet appointments were a promising sign that he was assembling a strong team to deliver on reform promises, including New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as secretary of Commerce, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of Homeland Security and, announced Thursday, Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte) as secretary of Labor.

    All three are strong supporters of comprehensive reform, including a path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

    “It’s another indication that immigration reform is going to be a high priority for the incoming administration,” said David Mermin, a pollster with Lake Research Partners. Mermin said that the majority of Americans he surveyed for America’s Voice support a comprehensive solution that would secure the borders, crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and offer legalization to undocumented migrants who pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements.

    But Ira Melman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based restrictionist organization, said its own polling by Zogby International showed that the majority of Americans are concerned that legalizing immigrants during the economic downturn would hurt U.S. workers.

    “It’s going to be very, very difficult to sell this to the American people when the economy is generally in a state of collapse,” Melman said.

    Sharry said the recession would probably affect the outlines of a reform package. To protect American workers, Sharry said, the package might not include an increase in temporary visas for either skilled or unskilled foreign workers, for which business has long lobbied. An exception would be made for temporary farm workers, he said.

    Sharry also said the reform package would probably include greater emphasis on aggressive labor enforcement to target employers who simultaneously violate immigration and labor laws by hiring illegal workers into jobs with poor wages and working conditions.

    In Los Angeles, immigrant advocates said they plan to launch an appeal to Obama to stop immigration raids on homes and work sites.

    In the Chicago area, Gutierrez said, Roman Catholic and evangelical churches have begun mobilizing thousands of citizens to support immigration reform by publicizing the hardship they face waiting for loved ones to receive entry visas. …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....8825.story

    Don’t want to wait for your “loved one” to receive a visa? Go home. If you loved them so much, why did you leave them in the first place?!?!

    Meanwhile, it’s amazing how mob rule can lobby the President to stop enforcing the law.

    But most importantly, how does what they want Obama to do differ from what McCain wanted to do?

  46. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 8:54 am

    From the Los Angeles Times, can you imagine the screams of “the GOP is anti-Science!” that would be pouring forth if this were a Republican?

    NASA’s spending is under scrutiny

    Obama’s transition team wants to know about the agency’s basic money management, including cost overruns.

    By Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block

    Most nights it’s possible to look skyward with a pair of cheap binoculars and see a $100,000 mistake circling the Earth. The glowing object — an orbiting NASA tool bag — was lost last month by an astronaut during a routine spacewalk.

    The canvas-and-acrylic caddy contained two grease guns, a scraper, a trash bag and some wipes, hardly cutting-edge technology. So why did it cost $100,000?

    NASA officials said they had no answer to that question — beyond the fact that, as spokesman Allard Beutel put it, “space flight is expensive.” That expense is drawing serious scrutiny from the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

    Of 74 questions submitted to the agency by Obama’s NASA transition team, more than half asked about basic spending issues, including cost overruns.

    It’s clear that NASA’s long-standing inability to manage its money has attracted the team’s attention.

    For nearly two decades, NASA and its out-of-this-world projects have made a “high-risk” list compiled by government auditors because of cost overruns totaling millions — sometimes billions — of dollars.

    The designation applies to programs that are “impeding effective government and costing the government billions of dollars each year,” according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency.

    NASA has been on this list since 1990.

    “Our space program is running inefficiently, and without sufficient regard to cost performance,” wrote Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator who has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Michael Griffin, the current NASA administrator.

    In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Stern called the cost overruns a “cancer” that has cost the agency’s science program about $5 billion over five years.

    Few missions seem immune. In 1988, when NASA engineers started designing the International Space Station, the orbiting complex was to cost $23 billion and be completed by 1996. Today, the cost has topped $100 billion — and it still is not finished.

    Another project, a science satellite named Glory, was conceived more than a decade ago to help scientists better understand how the sun and particles in the atmosphere affect Earth’s climate. Since 2007, its cost has jumped by nearly one-third, from $169 million to $221 million.

    NASA says that part of the problem is the cutting-edge nature of what it does.

    “We start these things out, and we admit up front we don’t completely know how to do them. That is what makes them interesting,” Griffin said recently.

    Agency officials said they had improved financial controls — including forcing managers to better estimate costs.

    But the problem is so bad that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that NASA’s new moon rocket would go over budget by as much as $7 billion. It based the estimate on an analysis of 72 other programs that blew their budgets by an average of about 50%.

    NASA often blames its contractors, saying aerospace companies promise too much for too little and then cannot deliver at the bid price.

    Auditors say NASA does a poor job of policing the companies.

    NASA is involved in a lawsuit with an auditing company hired to review NASA contracts. The firm, Horn & Associates of Utah, says it has found millions of dollars in overpayments but was unable to get a full picture of the problem because NASA refused to let it see all its records.

    In a complaint filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the firm cited one example in which a NASA employee at Johnson Space Center in Houston defended contractors, whom she called her “customers,” and refused to go after some of the companies to refund the money that was overcharged. …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....9135.story

    It’s clear that this needs to be done, and it’s actually good that Obama is doing it, it’s just interesting to see he’s getting a complete pass from the “scientific community” for doing so.

  47. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:02 am

    From an awed Los Angeles Times:

    Stimulus plan could shape course of Barack Obama’s presidency

    Democrats want to have a bill ready and waiting for him. But with Republicans seeking more time for public hearings and to purge special-interest projects, his plans for bipartisanship will be tested.

    By Peter Nicholas

    President-elect Barack Obama’s call for speedy adoption of a massive spending plan to “jolt” the economy will prove an early test of two major promises: that he will work in a bipartisan style with a skeptical Republican Party, and that he will purge the federal budget of wasteful projects.

    Even conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill predict that, in the end, a substantial stimulus package will pass. Job losses and a deepening recession demand a quick infusion of money, they say.

    But Republicans in the Senate, even with their ranks diminished, still possess leverage to tailor a package that fits certain specifications. They want public hearings on the stimulus, even if it thwarts Democratic ambitions to present the bill to Obama for his signature when he is sworn in to office Jan. 20. And they insist that the bill be scrubbed of projects that, in their view, are aimed more at appeasing interest groups than creating jobs.

    When the new Congress convenes on Jan. 6, Senate Democrats will still lack the 60-vote majority needed to stave off GOP delay tactics — a reality that gives Republicans some confidence that they can win concessions.

    Obama has identified the stimulus package as an urgent priority. His economic advisors are considering a package of no less than $600 billion and potentially as much as $1 trillion over two years, according to the transition office.

    The fate of the bill could shape the course of Obama’s presidency. If it works, it could help lift the economy out of recession, giving him the space to enact his ambitious energy, education and healthcare plans.

    Behind him is a formidable array of interest groups eager to see a major national spending program unleashed. Business groups and organized labor, mayors and governors — all will be pressing lawmakers to pass Obama’s spending plan.

    For her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has touted a $600-billion plan that would include the middle-class tax cut Obama laid out during the campaign.

    New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, said in an interview Wednesday that he wanted to see Obama sign the bill on the day he is sworn in. In talks with his congressional delegation, Corzine said, he learned that the “goal is to have something on the president’s desk on Inauguration Day.”

    Republicans are watching to see whether Obama will ignore them in his zeal to achieve the first victory of his presidency. Were that to happen, they caution, it could perpetuate political divisions and set a sour tone for the next four years. Republicans and conservative interest groups also want Obama to resist pressures to lard the bill with needless projects.

    “I’m concerned that politics and pet projects will end up being as much or more of a significant consideration than what I think should be the acid test, which is what will have the most stimulus and the quickest impact,” said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). He added: “We can try to use our position of slightly more than 40 votes to shape legislation.”

    Obama’s methods may prove a revealing window into his governing style. Pushing for legislation by Inauguration Day would allow for just two weeks of public debate on a bill that could cost as much as the entire Iraq war.

    Republicans would like to see the timetable slowed and more debate encouraged — which they argue would also be in keeping with the transparent and inclusive style Obama embraced as a candidate for president.

    Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said: “There has to be transparency for a bill that big. If it gets to be $800 billion to $900 billion, it’s bigger than any single bill in the history of the country. It’s going to take some work and need some oversight, and nobody’s really talking about that right now.”

    Demanding that the bill be passed by Inauguration Day, he said, “is a pretty big ask.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/po.....5571.story

    I don’t know why the Republicans would even agree to vote on what will be called “Obama’s plan” while Bush is still in office, but that’s just me.

    You know that if the plan succeeds, it will be “Obama’s Brilliant Success,” and if it fails, it will be “Bush’s Last Big DIsaster.”

  48. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Some details on Obama’s heavily pro-Union labor pick from the Los Angeles Times:

    Obama to name pro-union Rep. Hilda Solis to Labor post

    PRO-LABOR: Rep. Hilda Solis was elected to Congress in 2000 from a district that includes swaths of East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley. She has consistently voted in support of labor’s interests.
    The California congresswoman is a leader in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and is called a coalition-builder.

    By Peter Nicholas

    Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte), a Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader considered to be one of the most reliably pro-union voices in the House, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the Labor Department, a Democratic official said Thursday.

    Obama is expected to announce the selection at a news conference today in Chicago.

    Solis, 51, would be the third Latino member of Obama’s Cabinet, a measure of diversity that has garnered praise from this fast-growing slice of the electorate.

    After Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be his Commerce secretary, some Latino officials complained that they were being shut out of the most prestigious Cabinet posts. Richardson at one time had been rumored to be in line for secretary of State, before Obama offered him the Commerce slot.

    Rep. Joe Baca (D-Rialto) had cautioned that Obama’s legislative agenda might face roadblocks unless more Latinos were installed in top positions.

    Since then, Obama has said he will nominate Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) as secretary of the Interior, and now Solis as Labor secretary. Prominent Latino officials are now praising the new Cabinet’s makeup.

    In an interview Thursday, Baca said: “We’re glad he listened to our voices and listened to the Hispanic community that came out and delivered for him on election day. It’s a great day for the Hispanic community.”

    Solis did not return calls for comment.

    Elected to Congress in 2000 from a district that includes swaths of East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, Solis has consistently voted in support of labor’s interests. A congressional voting analysis conducted by the AFL-CIO showed that she voted with organized labor 100% of the time last year.

    She supported measures increasing the minimum wage, making it easier for workers to organize and preserving a ban on privatizing jobs at the Labor Department. Other labor groups that study congressional voting patterns gave her a 100% rating in 2005 and 2006.

    J.P. Fielder, spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, suggested that Solis’ voting record is overly weighted in labor’s favor. “The business community recognizes that economic growth has happened in a number of non-unionized states. She has sided with the AFL-CIO in 97% of the votes that she has cast on the Hill,” he said.

    Solis also serves on the board of directors of American Rights at Work, which advocates for the right to form unions and bargain collectively. The chairman is former Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, who was also in the running for the Labor secretary post.

    “I’m very excited,” said Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “This is an extraordinary moment for all women, but especially for the Latino community.”

    Durazo said Solis would be effective in the job because she is a “coalition-builder” who “doesn’t walk in thinking everything has to be a battle with business.”

    Before winning her congressional seat, Solis spent 18 years in the Legislature in Sacramento. In Solis’ hometown of El Monte, officials are hoping that her move to Labor secretary will give the local economy a much-needed boost.

    El Monte officials cut more than $2 million from the city’s budget Wednesday and laid off more than 80 part- and full-time workers during a special meeting. The city had long ago banked on the auto sales industry, and now that is flagging.

    Councilwoman Emily Ishigaki, 63, said she had high hopes for Solis, whom she has long worked with as a fellow member of the El Monte Business and Professional Women.

    “I hope she can devise a way to bring jobs back to America,” Ishigaki said. “I sure hope it means notice for the San Gabriel Valley.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....9325.story

    Hint: “Pro-Union.” That will not “bring jobs back to America.”

    But don’t you love the way the Dems are already strong-arming Obama on behalf of their special interest groups?

    Now there are “Latino quotas” for cabinet positions. Wonderful.

    Who cares if they can do the job, are they the right race?

    Well that’s OK then.

  49. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:17 am

    The California Supreme Court delivers another reason to never help anyone in need.

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    California Supreme Court allows good Samaritans to be sued for nonmedical care

    The ruling stems from a case in which a woman pulled a crash victim from a car ‘like a rag doll,’ allegedly aggravating a vertebrae injury.

    By Carol J. Williams

    Being a good Samaritan in California just got a little riskier.

    The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a young woman who pulled a co-worker from a crashed vehicle isn’t immune from civil liability because the care she rendered wasn’t medical.

    The divided high court appeared to signal that rescue efforts are the responsibility of trained professionals. It was also thought to be the first ruling by the court that someone who intervened in an accident in good faith could be sued.

    Lisa Torti of Northridge allegedly worsened the injuries suffered by Alexandra Van Horn by yanking her “like a rag doll” from the wrecked car on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

    Torti now faces possible liability for injuries suffered by Van Horn, a fellow department store cosmetician who was rendered a paraplegic in the accident that ended a night of Halloween revelry in 2004.

    But in a sharp dissent, three of the seven justices said that by making a distinction between medical care and emergency response, the court was placing “an arbitrary and unreasonable limitation” on protections for those trying to help.

    In 1980, the Legislature enacted the Health and Safety Code, which provides that “no person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission.”

    Although that passage does not use the word “medical” in describing the protected emergency care, it was included in the section of the code that deals with emergency medical services. By placing it there, lawmakers intended to shield “only those persons who in good faith render emergency medical care at the scene of a medical emergency,” Justice Carlos R. Moreno wrote for the majority.

    The high court cited no previous cases involving good Samaritan actions deemed unprotected by the state code, suggesting the challenge of Torti’s rescue effort was the first to narrow the scope of the law.

    The three dissenting justices argued, however, that the aim of the legislation was clearly “to encourage persons not to pass by those in need of emergency help, but to show compassion and render the necessary aid.”

    Justice Marvin R. Baxter said the ruling was “illogical” because it recognizes legal immunity for nonprofessionals administering medical care while denying it for potentially life-saving actions like saving a person from drowning or carrying an injured hiker to safety.

    “One who dives into swirling waters to retrieve a drowning swimmer can be sued for incidental injury he or she causes while bringing the victim to shore, but is immune for harm he or she produces while thereafter trying to revive the victim,” Baxter wrote for the dissenters. “Here, the result is that defendant Torti has no immunity for her bravery in pulling her injured friend from a crashed vehicle, even if she reasonably believed it might be about to explode.”

    Both opinions have merit, “but I think the majority has better arguments,” said Michael Shapiro, professor of constitutional and bioethics law at USC.

    Shapiro said the majority was correct in interpreting that the Legislature meant to shield doctors and other healthcare professionals from being sued for injuries they cause despite acting with “reasonable care,” as the law requires.

    Noting that he would be reluctant himself to step in to aid a crash victim with potential spinal injuries, Shapiro said the court’s message was that emergency care “should be left to medical professionals.”

    Torti’s liability has yet to be determined in court, and if the Legislature is unhappy with any judgment arising from the immunity denial, it can revise the code, he concluded.

    Torti, Van Horn and three other co-workers from a San Fernando Valley department store had gone out to a bar on Halloween for a night of drinking and dancing, departing in two cars at 1:30 a.m., the justices noted as background.

    Van Horn was a front-seat passenger in a vehicle driven by Anthony Glen Watson, whom she also sued, and Torti rode in the second car. After Watson’s car crashed into a light pole at about 45 mph, the rear car pulled off the road and driver Dion Ofoegbu and Torti rushed to help Watson’s two passengers escape the wreckage.

    Torti testified in a deposition that she saw smoke and liquid coming from Watson’s vehicle and feared the car was about to catch fire. None of the others reported seeing signs of an imminent explosion, and Van Horn said in her deposition that Torti grabbed her arm and yanked her out “like a rag doll.”

    Van Horn’s suit alleges negligence by Torti in aggravating a vertebrae injury suffered in the crash, causing permanent damage to the spinal cord. …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....3454.story

    So remember, if you see someone that needs help in any way, call 911 and drive away before they can get your license plate number.

    Like so many other areas of society, the courts have ruled that ordinary people helping people is something that needs to be stamped out.

    Religious charities? Almost gone.

    Cooking for food banks or even bake sales? Not so fast, unless you’ve a license and a health inspection.

    See someone drowning? Call 911 and hope they can tread water for 20 minutes until the EMTs arrive.

  50. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:23 am

    Many say this will be the first legislation overturned when Obama takes office.

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    Health providers’ ‘conscience’ rule to take effect

    The last-minute Bush administration declaration lets doctors, clinics, receptionists and others refuse to give care they find morally objectionable.

    By David G. Savage

    The Bush administration announced its “conscience protection” rule for the healthcare industry Thursday, giving doctors, hospitals, and even receptionists and volunteers in medical experiments the right to refuse to participate in medical care they find morally objectionable.

    “This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience,” said outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.
    The right-to-refuse rule includes abortion and other aspects of healthcare where moral concerns could arise, Leavitt’s office said, such as birth control, emergency contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research and assisted suicide.

    The rule, to be published today in the Federal Register, takes effect the day before President Bush leaves office.

    It sets the stage for conflict in Barack Obama’s incoming administration. In August, Obama criticized the rule proposal and said he was “committed to ensuring that the health and reproductive rights of women are protected.”

    The rule says providers — including hospitals, clinics, universities, pharmacies and doctor’s offices — can be charged with discrimination if an employee is pressured to participate in care that is “contrary to their religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Violators would lose their federal funds.

    Critics of the rule said it was too broad and threatened the rights of patients.

    They said they were particularly worried that patients would not be given full and complete information about their medical options. For example, they said, an antiabortion doctor in a federally funded clinic might refuse to tell a pregnant patient that her fetus had a severe abnormality. Or an emergency room worker might withhold from rape victims information about emergency contraception.

    “This gives an open invitation to any doctor, nurse, receptionist, insurance plan or even hospital to refuse to provide information about birth control on the grounds that they believe contraception amounts to abortion,” said lawyers for the National Women’s Law Center.

    Critics also cited the timing of the change.

    “We are shocked that the Bush administration chose to finalize its midnight regulation and to take this parting shot at women’s health and ignore patients’ rights to receive critical healthcare services and information they deserve,” said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. “We look forward to working with President-elect Obama and leaders in Congress to repeal this disastrous rule and expand patients’ access to full healthcare information and services, not limit it.”

    An Obama spokesman, asked Thursday about the rule, said Obama “will review all 11th-hour regulations and will address them once he is president.”

    The Obama administration could revise the rule after he takes office Jan. 20, but the process would probably be months long.

    A speedier option would be a congressional resolution rejecting the Bush administration’s late rules. Democratic Reps. Louise M. Slaughter of New York and Diana DeGette of Colorado said Thursday that they would lead such an effort.

    Decades ago — shortly after the Supreme Court in 1973 established a right to abortion — Congress adopted laws clarifying that no one was required to perform an abortion. Later laws declared that “no individual shall be required to perform or assist” in any medical research or procedure “contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

    The new rule is needed to enforce the laws, Secretary Leavitt said. In a preamble to the rule, he expressed concern about “an environment in sectors of the healthcare field that is intolerant of individual objections to abortion or individual religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

    He said that the “doctor- patient relationship requires a balancing of interests” and that doctors have a duty only “to provide care that they are comfortable providing.”

    Health and Human Services said in its regulation: “To avoid potential conflicts from occurring, we strongly encourage early, open and respectful communications between providers and patients surrounding sensitive issues of healthcare, including issues of conscience.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/feature.....8045.story

    Now Congress can summarily “reject” an administration’s rules?

    Willl Republicans remember that if they someday regain power?

    Somehow, I think not.

  51. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:37 am

    A Union thug reveals how the MSM will paint auto companies in the South from now on.

    From an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times:

    UAW busting, Southern style

    Foreign carmakers are enlisting the help of GOP senators from states in the South to break the union.

    By Bruce Raynor

    The foreign nonunion auto companies located in the South have a plan to reduce wages and benefits at their factories in the United States. And to do it, they need to destroy the United Auto Workers.

    Last week, Senate Republicans from some Southern states went to work trying to do just that, on the foreign car companies’ behalf. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bob Corker ( R-Tenn.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) — representatives from states that subsidize companies such as Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan — first tried to force the UAW to take reductions in wages and benefits as a condition for supporting the auto industry bailout bill. When the UAW refused, those senators torpedoed the bill.

    They claimed that they couldn’t support the bill without specifics about how wages would be “restructured.” They didn’t, however, require such specificity when it came to bailing out the financial sector. Their grandstanding, and the government’s generally lackluster response to the auto crisis, highlight many of the problems that have caused our current economic mess: the lack of concern about manufacturing, the privileged way our government treats the financial sector, and political support given to companies that attempt to slash worker’s wages.

    When one compares how the auto industry and the financial sector are being treated by Congress, the double standard is staggering. In the financial sector, employee compensation makes up a huge percentage of costs. According to the New York state comptroller, it accounted for more than 60% of 2007 revenues for the seven largest financial firms in New York.

    At Goldman Sachs, for example, employee compensation made up 71% of total operating expenses in 2007. In the auto industry, by contrast, autoworker compensation makes up less than 10% of the cost of manufacturing a car. Hundreds of billions were given to the financial-services industry with barely a question about compensation; the auto bailout, however, was sunk on this issue alone.

    UAW President Ron Gettelfinger realized that the existence of the union was under attack, which is why he refused to give in to the Senate Republicans’ demands that the UAW make further concessions. I say “further” because the union has already conceded a lot. Its 2007 contract introduced a two-tier contract to pay new hires $15 an hour (instead of $28) with no defined pension plan and dramatic cuts to their health insurance. In addition, the UAW agreed that healthcare benefits for existing retirees would be transferred from the auto companies to an independent trust. With the transferring of the healthcare costs, the labor cost gap between the Big Three and the foreign transplants will be almost eliminated by the end of the current contracts.

    These concessions go some distance toward leveling the playing field (retiree costs are still a factor for the Big Three). But what the foreign car companies want is to level — which is to say, wipe out — the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three’s UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota’s per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.

    However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to “tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry.” Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota’s $30-an-hour wage.

    If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.

    But their plan will not work. The Bush administration is likely to keep the Big Three alive long enough for President-elect Barack Obama to construct a real solution. Democrats and even most Republicans understand that a nation that has already lost 2 million jobs this year cannot afford to put at risk 3 million more.

    What the economy needs now is rising wages so the country can get on the path of wage-driven consumption growth. That means stronger unions. Indeed, I believe eventually it will mean the unionization of the entire U.S. auto industry.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/op.....6838.story

    Yep, “stronger unions” are what’s needed, because nothing will help the economy more than making the United States even more uncompetitive in the global market for products they produce.

    Hell, let’s have the unions make the wage $100/hour? Why not?

    As long as the government keeps bailing out the auto companies, who really cares, right?

    Those evil Japanese car companies, wanting to pay a prevailing wage instead of some artifically inflated number driven by Unions making their competition unsuccessful.

    Just wait until card check is passed and auto workers in the South who don’t want a Union start having “accidents.”

    Nah, that would never happen.

    Oh, the moronic author?

    Bruce Raynor is the general president of Unite Here, a union of 465,000 workers in the apparel, textile, laundry, food service, distribution, hotel and gaming industries.

  52. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    The great thing about being an elected official is that you claim to represent “the people” and then, when elected to office, do whatever you want and say it’s “the right thing to do.”

    The latest example, from the Los Angeles Times:

    Jerry Brown: Gay-marriage ban should be invalidated

    By Jessica Garrison

    In a surprise move, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to invalidate Proposition 8. He said the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage “deprives people of the right to marry, an aspect of liberty that the Supreme Court has concluded is guaranteed by the California Constitution.”

    It is the attorney general’s duty to defend the state’s laws, and after gay rights activists filed legal challenges to Proposition 8, which amended the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Brown said he planned to defend the proposition as enacted by the people of California.

    But after studying the matter, Brown concluded that “Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification.”

    Backers of Proposition 8 expressed anger at Brown’s decision not to honor the will of voters, who approved the measure in November. “It’s outrageous,”said Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Proposition 8.

    Proposition 8 foes, however, were elated. “Atty. Gen. Brown’s position that Proposition 8 should be invalidated demonstrates that he is a leader of courage and conviction,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California.

    In his brief to the high court, Brown noted that the California Constitution says that “all people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights,” which include a right to “privacy.”

    The courts have previously said that the right of a person to marry is protected as one of those inalienable rights, he wrote. The question at the center of the gay marriage cases, he told the justices “is whether rights secured under the state Constitution’s safeguard of liberty as an ‘inalienable’ right may intentionally be withdrawn from a class of persons by an initiative amendment.” That, he concluded, should not be allowed.

    Although voters are allowed to amend other parts of the constitution by majority vote, to use the ballot box to take away an “inalienable” right would establish a “tyranny of the majority,” which the Constitution was designed, in part, to prevent, he wrote. “For we are talking, necessarily, about rights of individuals or groups against the larger community, and against the majority — even an overwhelming majority — of the society as a whole.”

    The briefs filed Friday were in response to a spate of legal challenges filed by gay rights advocates, including the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

    Last month, the California Supreme Court announced that it would hear arguments in the case, perhaps as soon as March. A revision of the state Constitution can go before voters only after a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or a constitutional convention. Proposition 8 was put on the ballot after a signature drive. Brown’s brief also said he believes that the estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages performed from June to November should remain valid.

    Because it did not trust Brown to mount a staunch defense of the proposition, the group Protect Marriage intervened in the case and filed its own brief. It argued that Proposition 8 should remain legal and that the same-sex marriages performed from June to November should no longer be recognized.

    http://latimesblogs.latimes.co.....enera.html

    It goes beyond arrogance but is completely expected.

    • GuppyNblue
      December 19, 2008 at 11:03 pm

      Watch for that constitutional convention (and not just in California). We should understand by now that people who have no respect for natural laws care even less for our nations laws.

      Definition of degenerate: “Having fallen to an inferior or undesirable state, especially in mental or moral qualities.”

  53. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Showing yet again that labor unions just don’t get it.

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    Schwarzenegger orders mass layoffs, unpaid furloughs

    Union leaders for state employees vow to challenge the legality of the furloughs, which they say amount to a 10% paycut.

    By Patrick McGreevy and Jordan Rau

    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday ordered mass layoffs and unpaid furloughs for state workers starting in February to address the growing fiscal crisis, and called another special session of the state Legislature.

    The workforce cuts were condemned by officials of state employee unions, who vowed a legal challenge, while Democratic legislative leaders voiced disappointment but said they were willing to return to negotiations with the governor to solve the budget problem.

    A day after the governor said he would veto an $18-billion package of cuts and new revenues adopted by the Legislature, Schwarzenegger blamed lawmakers for his having to seek layoffs that would cut spending by 10%.

    “Our state’s fiscal crisis has worsened dramatically in the past few weeks without legislative action to address our budget crisis,” Schwarzenegger said in a letter to state employees Friday after he declared another fiscal emergency.

    Under the executive order, rank-and-file employees will face a furlough of two days per month starting Feb. 1, 2009, and lasting through June 30, 2010. Managers will receive either the furlough or an equivalent salary reduction during the same period.

    Union officials, who announced Friday that they would file a legal challenge to the order, said the furloughs are the equivalent of a 10% pay cut.

    Schwarzenegger also asked the personnel department to work with state agencies to initiate “layoffs, reductions and other efficiencies” to achieve savings of up to 10% starting Feb. 1.

    Employees in the bottom 20% of seniority will receive notices within the next month, but not all who receive notices will be laid off.

    “I regret having to take these steps,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “We simply have no choice. The emergency steps I am announcing will require sacrifice from everyone, including those in my own office.”

    Employee groups including the Service Employee International Union Local 1000, said they would file a grievance with the state Public Employee Relations Board, charging that the order is an unfair labor practice because workforce reductions are currently the subject of contract negotiations, according to Yvonne Walker, president of the local.

    “The situation is out of control,” Walker said. “With the state’s economy heading towards a cliff, Gov. Schwarzenegger has pushed the state’s fiscal crisis into catastrophe.” …

    http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....1499.story

    The unions in this case are saying “we don’t care if you don’t have the money to pay us or what the economic realities are, we have a contract!”

    Sound familiar?

    • GuppyNblue
      December 19, 2008 at 10:07 pm

      Our Governor here in Maryland just did the same.
      “The furloughs affect about 67,000 of the state’s 80,000 employees.”

      I’m hearing a lot of whining from liberals who were silent when he pushed through our legislature (Dem majority in both Houses) the biggest tax increase in the states history – which they did it in the middle of the night to avoid scrutiny. Of course tax receipts started shrinking as affected business’ got the hell out of Dodge. lmao!

  54. BillK
    December 19, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    That took long enough; what we had all predicted has finally come to pass.

    From a jubilant AP:

    Franken leads Coleman for first time in Minnesota recount

    Democrat Al Franken now has a slight edge over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman, but the race still probably won’t be decided before the Senate reconvenes.

    By P.J. Huffstutter

    Al Franken took his first lead over Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman in the bitter recount battle for Coleman’s U.S. Senate seat, a race whose outcome probably won’t be finalized until early in the new year.

    The lead was a symbolic boost for Democrat Franken, who moved ahead by 53 votes this morning during the fourth day of a recount by the state Canvassing Board. Coleman led Franken on election night in November and had a 188-vote lead before the board began its deliberations.

    The board is expected to resolve several hundred remaining challenges by tonight, but the effort will not decide the closely watched contest. The candidates have withdrawn about 5,000 challenges, but the board could allocate those votes on Monday.

    The outcome also depends on an estimated 1,600 absentee ballots that were initially rejected. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that those ballots must be counted, and set a Dec. 31 deadline.

    The fight over the country’s only undecided Senate race has whipsawed political emotions, sparked dozens of lawsuits and tested voters’ patience in the North Star State. Neither man pulled in more than 42% of the vote and the breathtakingly narrow margin of votes between Coleman and Franken has steadily dwindled.

    When the state recount began Nov. 19, there were 215 ballots in favor of Coleman over Franken, out of 2.9 million cast. On Thursday, Coleman led by five votes.

    With a winner unlikely before the new Congress convenes on Jan. 6, there have been rumblings that Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, may appoint someone to the Senate seat on a temporary basis, though the governor has said that he expects the election to be resolved before then.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....5120.story

    Anyone want to bet that the 1,600 rejected ballots will be exclusively for Franken?

    Be sure to visit John Lott’s Minnesota recount website to see some of the ballots the Minnesota Canvassing Board claim are for “no one” – the ones with 99% filled in Coleman ovals but no other marks in the race.

    There’s no question the Democrats are stealing the election, what’s amazing is that the voters of Minnesota and of course Minnesota Republicans are letting them.

    • JohnMG
      December 19, 2008 at 10:18 pm

      Was there ever any doubt? If anyone believes that myth about Minnesota’s squeeky-clean elections then I want to contact them regarding the tooth fairy and my recently-extracted wisdom teeth. Where is the outrage?!! What are the odds that the Senate will seat Coleman if the count miracuously comes out in his favor by a handful of votes? These democrats are nothing short of thieves! And the republicans allowing it to happen are feckless wimps!

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