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Selected News For Dec 27 – Jan 2

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. Please eschew articles from blogs or hugely popular sites like the Drudge Report, since most people will presumably see such material elsewhere.

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 27th, 2008 at 12:00 am. You can leave a response.

79 Responses to “Selected News For Dec 27 – Jan 2”

  1. BillK
    December 27, 2008 at 9:01 am

    Well hey, if she’s promising to work twice as hard, she’s got my support (not).

    From the AP:

    Kennedy tells AP she’ll have to work twice as hard

    Caroline Kennedy told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that she knows she will have to work twice as hard as others if she is picked for the U.S. Senate.

    The 51-year-old daughter of President John F. Kennedy said she realized she will have to prove herself because of her famous background and her lack of political experience.

    “I came into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anybody else,” she said. “I am an unconventional choice.”

    But Kennedy said there are “many ways to public service” and her accomplishments as a writer, mother and fundraiser for New York City public schools prepared her well for the post.

    Kennedy sat down to talk with the AP at the Gee Whiz diner in lower Manhattan after weeks of avoiding the media. She seemed relaxed, eating a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich with coffee during the half-hour interview.

    Kennedy’s name first surfaced as a possible replacement for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in early December after President-elect Barack Obama nominated Clinton to be secretary of state.

    The Senate appointment rests solely with Democratic Gov. David Paterson, who has said he will wait until the Senate confirms Clinton as secretary of state before picking a successor.

    Since Kennedy expressed interest in the job, she has faced sometimes sharp criticism that she cut in line ahead of politicians with more experience and has acted as if she were entitled to it because of her political lineage. More than a half dozen other elected officials are vying for the seat, including New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and several members of Congress.

    Kennedy had spoken publicly about her interest in the seat only briefly, once on a swing through upstate New York and later in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

    She told the AP on Friday that she had been reluctant to appear to be campaigning for the job because it was an appointment, not an election.

    “I was trying to respect the process. It is not a campaign,” she said. …

    http://www.9news.com/news/worl.....;catid=347

    Because you know being appointed is a perfectly reasonable route to public service at a national level.

    Unlike say, being elected first mayor of a city, then Governor of the nation’s largest state.

    • JohnMG
      December 27, 2008 at 2:07 pm

      Well, she’s a woman. We all know that women must work twice as hard as a man while earning only 72% of the money, just to be recognized. We have Gloria Steinam’s and Germain Greer’s word for it–glass ceiling and all.

      One thing is certain, however. With the accomplishment record of that celebrated femininist who is vacating the seat as a target, not a whole lot should be expected nor required of the replacement. In that regard, Ms. Caroline____________ (pick the last-name-of-choice-of-week) is at least marginally qualified for, not to mention ‘entitled’ to the position.

    • 11ten1775
      December 27, 2008 at 5:51 pm

      Will Katie Couric and the rest of the MSM treat every interview with Caroline like a quiz show, as they did with Palin? (Supreme Court decisions, specific policies/accomplishments of other politicians, which newspapers she reads, and endless hammering on nationally relevant experience) Or will Katie and her ilk toss softballs about motherhood, charity, and the Kennedy legacy? Somehow I can’t imagine Katie pushing Caroline for “one specific example” of anything… The ridiculously vacuous candidacy of Barak Obama has emboldened the liberals. They don’t even pretend that experience is necessary – for a Democrat, that is.

    • pinandpuller
      December 28, 2008 at 12:37 am

      Hey John MG-my wife and I were looking at our 401k’s the other day and she only got 72% the dividends that I did. She might change her name to Stanley.

    • cjokry
      December 28, 2008 at 12:40 am

      “I came into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anybody else,”

      Kennedy said there are “many ways to public service”

      “I was trying to respect the process….”

      hahahahahahahahahahahaha haaaaaaaaaaa haa ha!
      She will work half as long as anyone else does to get there and will get ten times more out of it. No one will be surprised at her eventual, inevitable appointment, because hers is the surest way to “public service.” (If that’s what the dems in congress are calling that.)
      And people like her getting jobs like that are the very reason nobody respects the process.

    • big spike
      January 5, 2009 at 10:32 am

      someone PLEASE buy the cryptkeeper a pony

  2. BillK
    December 27, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Today’s wildly activist judge tale, from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

    Judge delivers sharp words to UPS, reduces restitution

    Prosecutors say victim is being blamed in fraud case

    By John Diedrich

    Katherine Siewert committed a crime when she sent at least 284 fraudulent checks through UPS with stolen shipping numbers in 2006 and 2007.

    Siewert, 55, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in federal court. Her attorney and the prosecutor agreed on 18 months in prison and restitution of $5,275 for UPS, court records show.

    An open-and-shut case, right? Wrong.

    U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller in October indeed sentenced Siewert to 18 months, but he held open the issue of restitution, unusual given that both sides agreed on the amount.

    Citing his own experience with FedEx, Stadtmueller said in Eastern Federal District Court in Milwaukee that UPS could have prevented the fraud through better business practices.

    Prosecutors responded in a sharply worded letter to the judge earlier this month, suggesting Stadtmueller was blaming the victim.

    “Notwithstanding the fact that UPS was the entity that discovered and reported the fraud to law enforcement, the court (Stadtmueller) stated that the crime ‘would have never happened but for UPS,’ ” according to a Dec. 9 letter from assistant U.S. attorneys Kelly Watzka and Richard Frohling.

    The judge also questioned whether UPS actually lost $5,275, noting the packages never left Wisconsin and the company had failed to provide documentation proving its loss.

    Stadtmueller told prosecutors he wanted UPS’ chief financial officer to come to his court three days before Christmas – the company’s busiest time of the year – to verify the restitution, records show.

    The U.S. attorney’s office shot back that under the law it had met its burden of establishing the restitution amount and said no one from the company would be coming to Stadtmueller’s court during the holiday week.

    But Stadtmueller did not relent. In an unusual move for a judge, he personally called a security supervisor for UPS, Peter Kohanowski, reaching him on his cell phone at home.

    “During the call, the court (Stadtmueller) repeatedly compared UPS to FedEx and suggested that UPS’ business practices were inferior to the practices of FedEx,” the prosecutors’ letter said.

    Stadtmueller explained in court that he called Kohanowski using the number out of Siewert’s pre-sentence report. During the call, he said he discovered officials had an incorrect address for Kohanowski, possibly explaining why UPS had not returned paperwork on its loss in the case.

    Giving the defendant “every benefit of the doubt,” Kohanowski recalculated UPS’ loss and put it at $4,100, according to the prosecutors’ letter.

    Stadtmueller did hold a hearing this week on restitution, with Siewert, formerly of Montello, in Marquette County, brought in from prison by deputy U.S. marshals.

    In court, the judge again was critical of UPS’ business practices. Stadtmueller said his approach in the case should serve notice to both the prosecution and defense to do a better job scrutinizing restitution figures.

    “It is required not because it is what Judge Stadtmueller wants, but because the statute requires it,” Stadtmueller said.

    The prosecutor, Watzka, said the loss amount was based on UPS’ cost for moving the overnight parcels across Wisconsin before the fraud was discovered.

    Stadtmueller said he was satisfied by that explanation and ordered Siewert to pay the $4,100.

    This is not the first time the former chief federal judge has delivered a blunt message to a defrauded company or even the nation’s leaders.

    In sentencing defendants convicted of pirating Rockwell Automation Inc. software and selling it on eBay, Stadtmueller said that company should have better protected its products and sued eBay instead of going to the FBI.

    In another sentencing, Stadtmueller gave six months’ probation and no fine to Dennis Troha, a millionaire trucking magnate and Indian casino backer convicted of breaking campaign finance laws.

    The judge, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and previously was the U.S. attorney, said he thought the Bush administration and Congress spend wastefully on programs such as a fence along the Mexican border.

    “There is no reason to provide funds to the government, and I respectfully decline to do so,” Stadtmueller said at the time.

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/36770634.html

    Aren’t lifetime appointments great?

    • cjokry
      December 27, 2008 at 11:58 pm

      Something about zero accountability to the public must just make those people really opinionated and incapable of being objective about their work. It reminds me of tenured professors at the universities. Only people are forced to take judges seriously.

    • pinandpuller
      December 28, 2008 at 12:46 am

      I think it was Ambrose Bierce who said that a judge is a lawyer who knows a governor.

    • Liberals Demise
      December 28, 2008 at 11:39 am

      This judge is definitly off his rocker….CooCoo……or smoking crack!!
      Maybe brothers and sisters really shouldn’t marry!!

  3. clifcrds
    December 27, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Ye shall reap what ye sow . . .

    Obama Visits Marine Corps Base for Christmas
    Sunlen Miller
    December 26, 2008 8:34 AM
    http://blogs.abcnews.com/polit.....l#comments
    FROM ABC NEWS’ SUNLEN MILLER IN HAWAII:

    President-elect Obama stopped by the Marine Corps base in Hawaii Kaneche Bay where servicemen and -women were eating Christmas dinner in Kailua Thursday evening.

    “Just wanted to say hi, hey guys,” Obama said as he walked into the Anderson dining hall which was decked out in Christmas decorations.

    The diners represented seven military units — Marine and Navy — some of whom were joined by their families for Christmas dinner.

    As Obama entered the room, it was absent of the regular fanfare of cheering and clapping. The diners were polite, staying seated at their respective tables and waited for the president-elect to come to them to stand up.

    Obama, dressed casually in a blue polo shirt and dark khaki trousers, worked his way around the room — table by table — and took pictures with the service members. He slapped them on the back at times, shook hands, and signed some autographs.

    “Hey guys, Merry Christmas,” The president-elect said as he walked from table to table.

    The servicemen and -women were already seated at their holiday dinner when the president-elect made his impromptu visit. They were dining on salad, candied sweet potato with marshmallow topping, cream of mushroom soup, mashed potatoes, beef, ham, turkey, broccoli and corn.

    The president-elect spent about an hour with the troops. Obama transition aides say that Obama did not eat with the uniformed men and women — he ate at his beach home with his family and friends Christmas night.

    http://blogs.abcnews.com/polit.....l#comments

    I guess our military is not as brainwashed as our government indoctrinated school children:
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/w.....rainwashed

    I know some will see this as a direct lack of respect for the Commander In Chief (Dear Leader to you trolls) BUT there is NOTHING in military protocal that commands you to give proper respect to the President Elect (Dear Leader annointed to you trolls). Right now Obama is just another civilian on vacation while the Marines and Navy personel were on active duty. Right now he is not even a US Senator (member of the Politburo to you trolls).

    The question on my mind is this: Why did Obama (Dear Leader annointed to you trolls) waste his vacation time visiting our troops? Oh yeah . . . all of the gyms were probably closed on Christmas.

    • JohnMG
      December 27, 2008 at 2:29 pm

      The American military are the most perceptive individuals on earth. You can’t pull the wool over their eyes for they can detect a phony in a heartbeat. They despise incincerety and falseness, and are masters at exposing disingenuous poseurs. “Honest Obe” should be careful in the future when trying to achieve ’stature-by-association’.

      Our American fighting forces will honor the oath they swore and respect the Office of the Presidency. But the occupant of that office must EARN their respect.

    • 11ten1775
      December 27, 2008 at 6:18 pm

      Where is Michelle in all of this? I thought one of her primary goals as First Lady is to reach out to military families. She can’t even take the time to go shake some hands with her husband? Or will we only hear from Michelle when they are rolling out their, “Military families are pathetic, so we have to help them” massively funded (by taxpayers, of course) plans? These have actually already begun under the Democratic Congress, and the funds are nicely tucked away into the ever-expanding, bureacratic mess that is MCCS. But that’s another tangent… John, of course you are correct about our military. Parts of the younger crowd are awed by Obama, because they just left classrooms where teachers/professors were in love with him, but enough time around the salty guys, and they’ll change. But for now, Obama will get his photo ops with tiny crowds. It goes without saying that if W. walked onto that base, it would take him hours to shake the number of hands reaching out to him.

    • pinandpuller
      December 28, 2008 at 12:50 am

      I wonder if he visited any shoe stores.

    • Liberals Demise
      December 28, 2008 at 11:45 am

      Talk about timing……U.S.Marines at the mess hall. Not allowed to enter a mess hall with weapons….it’s allllllll in the timing!!

    • yadayada
      December 30, 2008 at 9:47 pm

      of course he didn’t eat with them. and for many reasons, among them- he is perceptive enough to know where he isn’t appreciated, when he isn’t wanted, it would be perceived for exactly what it was, a photo op, he didn’t want to risk a lot of photos with the troops giving the duress signal (a la Hillary),
      and of course there was no lobster, caviar, or expensive champagne.

  4. clifcrds
    December 27, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    Hear Hear – Well said JohnMG.

    On January 20th Obama will command their attention . . . BUT he will have to earn their respect. I doubt this will happen, but I could be wrong.

    • 12 Gauge Rage
      December 29, 2008 at 9:20 am

      Maybe Obama doesn’t like food served chow hall style. His loss. After twenty years of service I still get a yearning for a nice thick, steaming plate of S.O.S. which my lovely wife graciously makes for me. It’s the ultimate sticks-to-your-ribs military comfort food.

  5. BillK
    December 28, 2008 at 8:21 am

    From Fox News:

    Autoworkers Union Keeps $6 Million Golf Course for Members at $33 Million Lakeside Retreat

    The United Auto Workers may be out of the hole now that President Bush has approved a $17 billion bailout of the U.S. auto industry, but the union isn’t out of the bunker just yet.

    Even as the industry struggles with massive losses, the UAW brass continue to own and operate a $33 million lakeside retreat in Michigan, complete with a $6.4 million designer golf course. And it’s costing them millions each year.

    The UAW, known more for its strikes than its slices, hosts seminars and junkets at the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway, Mich., which is nestled on “1,000 heavily forested acres” on Michigan’s Black Lake, according to its Web site.

    But the Black Lake club and retreat, which are among the union’s biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union’s neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis.

    Critics call it a resort for union leaders that wastes money from union dues.

    “It’s their members’ money that they’re spending on this thing,” said Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts, a union watchdog group. “The union has bigger issues at hand than managing a golf course.”

    Managing the course may become a burden for the union. The UAW covers costs for the Reuther Center from the interest it earns on its strike fund, according to tax documents, but massive losses in the past five years have forced the union to make heavy loans to keep the center afloat. Critics call it a poor investment for a group with over $1.25 billion in assets.

    “Unions certainly have had real estate investments in the past, but investments are supposed to make money, not bleed money,” said Wilson.

    The UAW did not return calls from FOXNews.com, and a spokesman could not be reached for comment. …

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,472304,00.html

    But hey, at least the UAW hasn’t asked for federal funds… yet.

    • 12 Gauge Rage
      December 29, 2008 at 9:26 am

      Is there a union for golf course gardeners and groundskeepers? It wouldn’t surprise me if there were. Most powerful unions don’t like the idea that there are workers within their midst who aren’t under their control.

    • Liberals Demise
      December 29, 2008 at 9:45 am

      Who aren’t paying them their hard earned money for nothing!!

  6. BillK
    December 29, 2008 at 12:26 am

    Awww, don’t you feel sorry for the Press?

    From the Washington Post:

    Life’s Not Necessarily A Beach for Press Corps

    Obama Reporters Try to Hang Loose

    By Philip Rucker

    HONOLULU, Dec. 25 — It’s prime time and CNN’s Ed Henry is standing on the white sand of Waikiki Beach, reporting live on President-elect Barack Obama’s holiday vacation in Hawaii. With the volcanic mountain Diamond Head in the distance, Henry is flanked by palm trees, bikini-clad babes and surfer dudes.

    “Ed, are those your producers over your right shoulder, like sunning themselves and deciding what books to read?” anchor Anderson Cooper asks.

    “No, my producers are working very hard,” Henry replies.

    “Okay, yeah, I think you’re in board shorts and have a mai tai nearby,” Cooper says, prodding the cameraman to zoom out.

    And voilà! Below his blue dress shirt, Henry’s sporting teal swim trunks with orange stripes.

    “I kept my shirt on because I don’t have the pecs of either Anderson Cooper or Barack Obama,” Henry, the network’s self-deprecating senior White House correspondent, said later in an interview.

    For the White House press corps, covering Obama’s 13-day Hawaiian sojourn is a departure from past holidays hunkered down near President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex. They’ve upgraded their offices from highway hotels in Waco to the Westin Moana Surfrider Resort on Waikiki Beach. They’ve traded a backdrop of rusted farm equipment and bales of hay for sailboats, longboards and crashing waves.

    And they’ve hung up their winter coats.

    “What a difference a year makes,” exults NBC White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie, leaning back in a padded armchair on a veranda overlooking the Pacific.

    “No offense to the people of Crawford, Texas, but taking the presidential retreat from Crawford to Honolulu is change anyone can believe in,” Henry says, borrowing a phrase from Obama’s campaign.

    Although Obama is staying about 15 miles away in the quiet beach town of Kailua, the television networks decided to broadcast from the beach in front of the Honolulu hotel where journalists and Obama’s staff are staying. The location affords a stunning backdrop of Diamond Head, one of Hawaii’s most recognizable landmarks. Since the isles are five time zones behind the East Coast, the sun is blazing during reports on the evening news.

    But broadcasting live from a tourist-packed beach can be dicey. Sunbathers stretch out just a few feet away, and shirtless vacationers gather close to the correspondents to snap pictures during their reports. And there’s no telling if a strong wave might splash the cameras or whether kids might get silly in the background.

    “I was really surprised to see how exposed we are,” Guthrie says. But, she adds, “you develop a tunnel focus. If I’m doing a live shot, there could be a pack of wolves in front of me and I wouldn’t notice.”

    All week on the air, news anchors have teased the traveling correspondents about their assignments. One suggested during a live broadcast that Guthrie was wearing a swimsuit under her dress. “Which I was not!” Guthrie says.

    “There’s a perception that in between live shots we’re sipping umbrella drinks and fanning ourselves and diving into the ocean,” she says. “But actually I spend most of my time in my hotel room working on stories.”

    Henry says that when he calls his colleagues in Atlanta, New York or Washington, “they start cursing at me. I called one of our producers and I said, ‘Aloha!,’ and she said, ‘Bleep you! Don’t ‘aloha’ me.’ ” On Tuesday, when Obama’s staff released a report about contact his aides had with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, television correspondents were reporting around the clock. Henry said he did 20 live shots that day for CNN and its sister networks. On such days, the seriousness of the news regarding the president-elect contrasts with the seaside location where reporters stand. And that raises the question of attire.

    “Do correspondents dress formally as they normally do, with a suit and tie, or embrace the venue?” asks Jeff Goldman, a CBS News producer who arrived days before Obama and selected the beachfront spot. “Some correspondents chose to go Hawaiian and dress far differently than they would on the White House North Lawn.”

    “You’re standing on the beach, but you’re talking about the economy and the report” on Blagojevich, says Ben Tracy, a CBS News correspondent from Los Angeles covering Obama’s trip.

    “The first night I did it, I was wearing slacks, a dress shirt and tie because we were talking about fairly serious things,” Tracy says. On other days, he has worn casual shirts, shorts and sandals.

    “The best part of this assignment is the shoes: flip-flops,” ABC News White House correspondent Yunji de Nies says. “When you work at the White House like I do, you wear heels every day. Here, half the stand-ups I do, I’m barefoot.”

    For journalists who slogged through long winters in Iowa and New Hampshire covering Obama’s campaign, covering the president-elect’s trip to Hawaii is a long-awaited respite. “Unfortunately, Hawaii was not a swing state,” jokes Bonney Kapp, an embed producer for Fox News Channel. “Last I checked, the beaches in Ohio weren’t exactly stellar.”

    Kapp and Sunlen Miller, an off-air reporter for ABC News, spent last Christmas in a Des Moines hotel room watching “A Christmas Story.” This year, Miller decorated her Waikiki Beach hotel room with strings of white Christmas lights, ornaments and her favorite stocking from home.

    The Hawaii trip also lets journalists add island color to their reports. On “Good Morning America,” de Nies, who grew up in Honolulu, tasted a traditional plate lunch that Obama is said to favor. She and Miller also recruited a local ukulele player to sing “Mele Kalikimaka” (the Hawaiian translation for “Merry Christmas”) on camera.

    “It’s just fun to show a little bit of what this place is all about,” de Nies said. “I never thought I would get to say ‘Mele Kalikimaka’ on television.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....71_pf.html

    Life is tough for the working press, isn’t it?

    I still don’t see where the “Life’s Not Necessarily a Beach” in the headline comes from except from the paragraph that mentions the reporters – gasp! – occasionally have to interact with actual regular people on the beach.

    Oh no!

  7. JohnMG
    December 29, 2008 at 7:11 am

    See! EVERYTHING is better already. Even the Press’ job is less arduous.

    I hope these idiots have to follow “Honest Obe” to all these far-reaching exotic spots, and give a major case of heart burn to the networks when it comes to expense accounts and location-reporting costs.

    Actually, this fawning herd make me want to vomit. They need to have their colective lips surgically removed from his ass before the grafting process begins.

  8. 12 Gauge Rage
    December 29, 2008 at 9:37 am

    I’m sure that the scenery out there is prettier than in Crawford but it’s also more expensive too. JohnMG you forgot to bring up all the broken noses these fawning lemmings (reporters) will get when the Exalted One makes a sudden unannounced sharp turn. Since they’ll have their noses so far up where the sun doesn’t shine.

  9. BillK
    December 29, 2008 at 9:44 am

    I don’t know what to say here; I’ve donated to the memorial campaign before but I can’t go along with this at all. :(

    From the AP:

    Flight 93 Families Ask Bush to OK Land Seizure for Memorial

    PHILADELPHIA — Relatives of those who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93 want the Bush Administration to seize the land needed for a memorial where the plane crashed in western Pennsylvania during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

    The Families of Flight 93 sent a letter earlier this month asking President George W. Bush to empower the Secretary of the Interior to take the land in dispute from a homeowner who had been in negotiations with the National Parks Service, said Patrick White, vice president of the families’ organization.

    The group says ground must be broken early next year in Shanksville, Pa., in order for a memorial to be build for the 10th anniversary of the crash in 2011.

    Svonavec Inc. owns one of the last large chunks of land needed for the 2,200-acre memorial, including the area where the plane crashed Sept. 11, 2001. Svonavec’s treasurer Mike Svonavec has said the park service has not done enough to negotiate a deal. He did not immediately return a call for comment on Sunday.

    White said Svonavec has not been willing to negotiate, and called that unacceptable.

    “We’ve certainly sought to do this within in the process, following protocol as much as we possibly can,” White said Saturday. “It has gotten to the point where we fear we’ll lose significant momentum.

    “We have an administration that has been very supportive of this effort. We just wanted to make sure the president is aware of what the circumstances are. … We just didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle.”

    The White House said it was reviewing the letter.

    “The president recognizes the contributions of those working to memorialize the heroes of Flight 93 with a fitting tribute at the spot where they gave their lives to ensure that others would live,” Pete Seat, a spokesman for the White House, said Sunday.

    Bush signed legislation authorizing the building of a national memorial to the passengers and crew of Flight 93 on Sept. 24, 2002. The president has twice visited Shanksville, Pa., to mourn with those that lost loved ones.

    In October, the National Park Service said it would use an independent appraiser to determine the value of 275 acres of land needed for the memorial. The NPS also said it could use eminent domain to acquire the plot if all else fails.

    Construction of a $58 million permanent memorial and national park is scheduled to begin in 2009.

    White, whose cousin Louis Nacke II died on Flight 93, said the group would favor Bush giving the interior secretary or director of park services the power to take the necessary steps to acquire the land before the administration leaves office in January.

    He said the families understand that the outgoing president has plenty to do in his final weeks in office. But White pledged that the group would carry its fight to the Obama Administration, if needed.

    “I think the rest of the family members and I feel there is no point at which we will stop,” White said. “Whatever it takes. As long as it takes. Whoever it takes. To do anything less would be doing a disservice to those that we love.” …

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473404,00.html

    Just wow.

    I could never do enough to honor the passengers of Flight 93, but I can’t help but think stealing someone’s real estate is just the wrong thing to do to memorialize them.

    (Can you imagine the “truther” rumors surrounding this now – what magic properties in terms of resources must that land have if the Federal Government simply takes it from its current owner?)

    • 12 Gauge Rage
      December 29, 2008 at 10:07 am

      Let me see if I’m reading this correctly. They want land to erect a memorial to honor the brave passengers of Flight 93. But the landowner of the selected site doesn’t want to sell the land needed for the memorial. So therefore they want to forcibly and wrongfully seize the land because they feel it would be a disservice to those that they love if they don’t get this land. YOU GOTTA BE FRIKKIN’ KIDDING ME! The unmitigated gall of these people to seize another man’s rightful property so that they can erect a memorial to demonstrate how pious they are in reverencing their lost loved ones goes beyond the pale. Yes, it’s a shame they lost loved ones on that flight but they can best preserve the memory of their loved ones in other ways besides what they’re doing now.

    • BillK
      December 29, 2008 at 10:50 am

      12 Gauge, it shouldn’t surprise you; this isn’t much different from how the victims’ families have been treating the developer that leases WTC from the New York Port Authority, interfering in when and how rebuilding should take place and what may be placed there.

      However, even they never suggested the Federal Government simply terminate Larry Silverstein’s leases or that the Feds should just take the land from the Port Authority.

  10. BillK
    December 29, 2008 at 9:50 am

    A truly sad tale, from the AP;

    News of Fabricated Holocaust Memoir Sparks Anger, Sadness

    NEW YORK — It’s the latest story that touched, and betrayed, the world.

    “Herman Rosenblat and his wife are the most gentle, loving, beautiful people,” literary agent Andrea Hurst said Sunday, anguishing over why she, and so many others, were taken by Rosenblat’s story of love born on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at a Nazi concentration camp in Germany.

    “I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story.”

    On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat’s memoir, “Angel at the Fence.” Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.

    Rosenblat, 79, has been married to the former Roma Radzicky for 50 years, since meeting her on a blind date in New York. In a statement issued Saturday through his agent, he described himself as an advocate of love and tolerance who falsified his past to better spread his message.

    “I wanted to bring happiness to people,” said Rosenblat, who now lives in the Miami area. “I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world.”

    Rosenblat’s believers included not only his agent and his publisher, but TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, film producers, journalists, family members and strangers who ignored, or did not know about, the warnings from scholars that his story did not make sense.

    Other Holocaust memoirists have devised greater fantasies. Misha Defonseca, author of “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” pretended she was a Jewish girl who lived with wolves during the war, when she was actually a non-Jew who lived, without wolves, in Belgium.

    Historical records prove Rosenblat was indeed at Buchenwald and other camps.

    “How sad that he felt he had to embellish a life of surviving the Holocaust and of being married for half a century,” said Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum.

    The damage is broad. Publishing, the most trusting of industries, has again been burned by a memoir that fact-checking might have prevented. Berkley is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), which in March pulled Margaret B. Jones’ “Love and Consequences” after the author acknowledged she had invented her story of gang life in Los Angeles. Winfrey fell, as she did with James Frey, for a narrative of suffering and redemption better suited for television than for history.

    The damage is deep. Scholars and other skeptics as well as fellow survivors fear that Rosenblat’s fabrications will only encourage doubts about the Holocaust.

    “I am very worried because many of us speak to thousands of students each year,” says Sidney Finkel, a longtime friend of Rosenblat’s and a fellow survivor. “We go before audiences. We tell them a story and now some people will question what I experienced.”

    “This was not Holocaust education but miseducation,” Ken Waltzer, director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University, said in a statement.

    “Holocaust experience is not heartwarming, it is heart rending. All this shows something about the broad unwillingness in our culture to confront the difficult knowledge of the Holocaust,” Waltzer said. “All the more important then to have real memoirs that tell of real experience in the camps. …

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473445,00.html

    Truly sad, but “he meant well.” Sigh.

  11. Liberals Demise
    December 29, 2008 at 9:55 am

    Believe it or not…..this happens all the time. I’m not kidding!! Ask Barney Frank or other Senator in office. They seize land from people everyday to build their stupid malls. I’m not sure but it has something to do with “eminate domain” or close to that. It’s gotta do with the good for everybody thing. Oh well….it happens and it will probly happen here, right or wrong.

  12. BillK
    December 29, 2008 at 11:05 am

    Your government at work.

    From the AP:

    County Stops Disabled Veteran From Selling Homemade Fruitcake

    REDDING, Calif. — Shasta County health officials are cracking down on an 86-year-old disabled World War II veteran who has been selling homemade fruitcakes for more than a decade.

    The Department of Environmental Health cites an obscure law banning food businesses in private homes.

    Jack Melton of Redding gave away many of his pecan-filled fruitcakes. But health officials saw a small handmade window sign offering some for sale.

    Health specialist Fern Hastings says Melton must use a commercial bakery that has passed a health inspection even if he gives his cakes to the public.

    Melton says the 10- to 14-dozen fruitcakes he sold each year helped supplement his Social Security benefits.

    But the retired electrician says at his age, it’s probably time to quit anyway.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473500,00.html

    Though I do understand completely; it’s like those who get upset when the government shuts down a kid’s lemonade stand, yet those same people would complain the government didn’t “do something” if people get sick from it…

    • JohnMG
      December 29, 2008 at 7:21 pm

      Just a thought.

      Did the sign say “Fruitcakes For Sale”? If his home was in San Francisco, all he’d have had to do was deny he was selling bakery goods. He could have claimed he was ‘gay’ and was running a brothel. Case closed!

      Or…….he could have pretended he was a politician from Chicago in search of someone to fill a Senate seat.

      This same type of thing happened to my sister-in-law at our local farmers market. Our city closed her home-baked bread booth down citing the same health concerns. You should have seen the letters-to-the-editor in our local newspaper when the word got out. They went on for two weeks, with scores of people critical of the City’s position. Finally, the city relented and said she could continue if she, and several other vendors of like wares, would agree to buy a “City Business License”. She told them to “Shove it!”, and closed down the operation. (A later inquiry to the State Board of Health [Missouri] revealed that the statute most likely would not apply under such circumstances.)

      Crap like this happens all the time. As with any level of government, it’s usually “all about the money”. A person can’t even give something away without being taxed or regulated out of existence.

      That’s a shame in the case of this story, too. Redding is a really nice town.

    • big spike
      January 5, 2009 at 11:02 am

      reagan was right: the scariest phrase in the english language is “i’m from the government and i’m hee to help”

  13. BillK
    December 29, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Not his fault, but still fun to pile on as the press would were he a Republican.

    From the AP:

    Man exonerated in rape case charged with murder

    A man exonerated by DNA evidence in a rape case after serving several years in an Illinois prison now faces a murder charge in Indiana.

    Jail records show 51-year-old Marlon Pendleton is in custody at Lake County Jail where he’s been since Dec. 19. Pendleton was arrested earlier this month for allegedly killing his 45-year-old girlfriend. Her body was found at a Hammond, Ind., home where Pendleton was living.

    Pendleton made headlines in 2006 when DNA evidence cleared him of a 1992 rape conviction. He had served eight years of a 10-year prison sentence.

    Since then, he’s been pardoned by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago for suffering he endured during his time in jail. …

    http://www.9news.com/news/arti.....ovider=top

    Every once in a while even justice gone wrong apparently gets it right…

    • cjokry
      December 30, 2008 at 2:21 pm

      An almost identical case occurred in Wisconsin, where a man was freed from a rape sentence by dna evidence after 19 years, but shortly after ended up murdering a girl. Not sure if that’s pertinent, but it’s interesting.

  14. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 3:25 am

    From a thrilled AP:

    Defiant Hamas hits Israel with dozens of rockets

    By Ibrahim Barzak and Jason Keyser

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian militants sent a deadly barrage of missiles flying deep into Israel on Monday, demonstrating that Hamas still had firepower three days into Israel’s punishing air offensive in Gaza.
    Four Israelis, including a soldier, were killed and eight wounded. Palestinian health officials put the three-day death toll in Gaza at 364; the U.N. said the total included at least 62 civilians.

    In Monday’s attacks, Israel focused its bombing on the houses of Hamas field operatives in a campaign meant to tear at the roots of the extremist group ruling Gaza. Israel’s defense minister promised a “war to the bitter end against Hamas” and allied militants.

    Early Tuesday, Israeli aircraft dropped at least 16 bombs on five Hamas government buildings in a Gaza City complex, destroying them, setting fires and sending rubble flying for hundreds of yards, witnesses said. Rescue workers said 40 people were injured.

    Intensified rocket strikes by Gaza militants, which triggered the Israeli offensive, have revealed the expanding range of missiles that are making larger cities farther inside Israel vulnerable.

    In a barrage Monday night, a missile crashed into a bus stop in Ashdod, 23 miles from the Gaza Strip. A woman died and two others were wounded, one seriously – the first casualties in the city of 190,000 residents.

    The military said an Israeli soldier was killed later in a mortar strike, the first soldier to be killed in the conflict. Five others were wounded, one seriously, according to a military statement.

    Earlier Monday, an Israeli was killed and one seriously wounded by a rocket strike in the Negev desert community of Nahal Oz, closer to the Gaza border. A rocket also killed an Israeli construction worker in the city of Ashkelon. In all, five Israelis have been killed since the Gaza offensive began Saturday, bringing to 19 the number killed in rocket attacks from Gaza this year.

    Early Tuesday, Hamas released a statement saying its squads had fired 43 homemade rockets, 17 longer-range Grads and six mortar shells at Israel. Other militant groups also fired rockets at Israel.

    The targets chosen by Israel on Monday pointed to an intention to chip away at Hamas’ foundation. Israeli aircraft staged five separate strikes on the houses of field operatives, though there was no confirmation that any of them were killed.

    A grainy video taken by an Israeli drone airplane showed several men loading a pickup truck with what the Israeli military said were medium-range Grad rockets. Moments later, a big explosion from an Israeli missile strike envelops the image.

    One Israeli attack targeted a house in the Jebaliya refugee camp, killing seven people, but the Hamas activist was not there, Hamas security and relatives said. Another hit the Jebaliya home of Abdel-Karim Jaber, a Hamas political figure who is a senior administrator at Gaza’s Islamic University. He was not at home and it wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was hurt in the strike.

    In another air assault, an Islamic Jihad commander was killed as he was walking near his house, said Abu Hamza, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad’s military wing.

    Israel’s airstrikes on more than 325 sites since midday Saturday reduced dozens of buildings to rubble, overwhelmed hospitals with wounded and filled Gaza’s deserted streets with smoke and fire. The military said Israeli naval vessels had also bombarded targets from the sea.

    On Monday, aircraft pulverized a house next to the home of Hamas Premier Ismail Haniyeh, a security compound and a five-story building at a university closely linked to the Islamic group – all symbols of Hamas strength in the coastal territory it has ruled since June 2007.

    Israel’s offensive has rattled the Middle East and capitals around the world, triggering street protests and fiery speeches by adversaries of Israel like the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the day’s biggest outpouring of anger, tens of thousands of Hezbollah’s supporters stood in a pouring rain in a Beirut square to condemn Israel.
    Stone-throwing clashes broke out in about a half-dozen spots in the Palestinians’ West Bank territory as well as in several Arab-populated areas inside Israel. Israeli police and soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas at rioting youths, but it did not appear anyone was injured.

    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel’s offensive as excessive and demanded an immediate cease-fire. He said key international and regional players – including foreign ministers of the Arab League nations holding an emergency meeting Wednesday – must “act swiftly and decisively to bring an early end to this impasse.”

    The U.S. government said it was “vigorously engaged” in trying to restore a cease-fire. …

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

    Once again, it’s apparently Israel’s job to just tirelessly undergo rocket bombardment without retaliation, because it invites “street protests.”

    Got it; silly me.

    • JohnMG
      December 30, 2008 at 7:46 am

      ……”U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel’s offensive as excessive……”

      Someone should tell Ban Ki-Moon-Bat that he heads up an increasingly irrelevant organization to whom no one listens. Except, of course, the islamo-commies akin to himself.

      Upon the occasion of the first instance of the new administration paying dues to this sham group, I hope for highly vocal protests from the population of this country.

      Well! I can hope, can’t I?! After all, Obama’s all about HOPE and CHANGE, right?

    • sheehanjihad
      December 30, 2008 at 8:27 am

      Lets see here, Israel is excessive for trying to stop Hamas rocket attacks, which exceeded three THOUSAND rockets this year…..but Hamas’ constant mortar and rockets intended to kill Israelis is somehow “ok”?

      Someone needs to slap Ban Ki-moon’s man bag with a board. If he had the slightest clue as to how irrelevant his opinion is, he would resign and slink back to mopping floors. The world is tacitly and sometimes openly hoping Israel beats the snot out of Iran, er I mean Hamas.

      People are just getting sick of Islamic bombings….no matter where it is, if there are muslims, there are bombings, and innocent people die.

      The muslims dont have to worry about a biological attack…..they are the plague infecting the world, and they are doing a great job of bringing death and destruction wherever they exist.

  15. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 3:32 am

    Nice to see they’re completely predictable.

    From the ultra far-left Madison, WI Capital Times:

    Madison’s Freedom From Religion sues over prayer at inauguration

    By Samara Kalk Derby

    The Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing to stop prayer from being part of the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

    The Madison-based foundation, its co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, and several of its members are among the 29 co-plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit, Newdow vs. Roberts, filed Monday by attorney Michael Newdow in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit seeks to stop the Presidential Inaugural Committee from sponsoring prayers at the official inauguration.

    The 34-page legal complaint said for most of the country’s history, clergy has not led prayers at inaugurations.
    Similarly, the lawsuit seeks to stop U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts from using the religious phrase, “so help me God,” in the presidential oath of office.

    Roberts is among the defendants, along with inaugural committee officials — such as chairperson Sen. Dianne Feinstein — and Revs. Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery, who have been invited to deliver the invocation and benediction.

    “Interlarding those ceremonies with clergy who espouse sectarian religious dogma does not unite, but rather divides, our citizenry,” Newdow’s complaint reads. “Similarly, instead of instilling confidence in our governmental structure, it tears at the very foundation upon which that structure is built.”

    This is Newdow’s third lawsuit over the issue, so Gaylor said she is not holding her breath about getting the court to agree in time for the inauguration.

    “But even if we don’t get the injunction, it is also asking to have a judge declare this practice unconstitutional,” Gaylor said. “The lawsuit could continue after the inauguration. We think we should win. Whether we will win in today’s current climate, I don’t know.”

    Of the nation’s 57 public presidential inaugurations, Newdow pointed out, 39 were devoid of clergy-led prayers and only 18, spanning the last 72 years, have included them.

    The notion that “so help me God” was added to the presidential oath by George Washington is a myth, Newdow said. Not until 1881 can the first use of “so help me God” as an addition to the presidential oath be traced. The phrase was apparently used only intermittently until 1933, according to the complaint. That unauthorized alteration has been used by the Chief Justice since then.

    The complaint points out that the Bible that is traditionally used in the inauguration, not only calls atheists fools, but says atheists as blasphemers should be put to death, Gaylor said.

    “There is good reason for those of us who are nonreligious to be offended by the Bible, by God being brought up at an official inauguration,” she said.

    Gaylor takes great joy in naming Rev. Warren in the lawsuit, knowing that he will be served.

    “There’s been a great deal of concern about the unsuitability of his selection for the invocation and we concur wholeheartedly. But we think it’s unsuitable for any clergy to pray at the inauguration,” Gaylor said.

    “We are First Amendment purists. It’s not just that we think he is politically incorrect. It doesn’t really matter which clergy you have. They have all been Christian since this became a custom in 1933. And that is exclusionary to those of us who aren’t Christian, to those of us who aren’t religious,” she said.

    “We aren’t against free speech, but what we are against is religion in government, and we are against the constitution being meddled with,” she said. …

    http://www.madison.com/tct/top5/429922

    Hmmm, blasphemers must be put to death.

    Exactly which Bible is Gaylor using? Perhaps the Koran?

    By the way, if you don’t recall athiest Newdow’s name, he’s the man who (unsuccessfully) sued to have the reference to “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance ruled unconstitutional because he said he was “offended’ his daughter heard it, and was ruled not to have standing because he didn’t even have legal custody of his daughter, his wife – who is a Christian – does:

    WASHINGTON – So determined is atheist Michael Newdow to not have his 9-year-old daughter hear the Pledge of Allegiance recited in her classroom that he went to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to argue his case in person.

    Newdow was in the rare position of being both a party to a landmark constitutional case and the attorney arguing the case before the court.

    Every time his daughter’s class recites the Pledge of Allegiance with the phrase “under God” in it, Newdow told the justices, she is being forced “to say her father is wrong.”

    Even though Newdow is not the girl’s custodial parent and even though the girl’s mother wants her to recite the pledge, Newdow insisted that his rights and his conscience were being violated.

    Knowing that she recites the pledge “is like I’m getting slapped in the face,” Newdow told the justices. “I want my beliefs to given the same weight as everybody else’s.”

    What’s wrong with the pledge, in Newdow’s view? “The government is saying there is a God,” he told the court. …

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4594537/

    • JohnMG
      December 30, 2008 at 7:54 am

      …..”but says atheists as blasphemers should be put to death, Gaylor said……”

      And the problem is………..what?

    • cjokry
      December 30, 2008 at 2:45 pm

      What version of the Bible, and what version of our Constitution? This guy talks about the things that divide our citizenry as if lawsuits were something that bring everyone together. But I do like the part at the end where he gets slapped in the face, however much it’s the result of his own imagination/ indignation.

  16. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 3:55 am

    From an excited AP:

    N.J. rules against church group in lesbian case

    MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. – A church group that owns beachfront property discriminated against a lesbian couple by not allowing them to rent the locale for their civil union ceremony, a New Jersey department ruled Monday in a case that has become a flash point in the nation’s gay rights battle.

    The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights said its investigation found that the refusal of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to rent the oceanfront spot to the couple for their same-sex union in March 2007 violated the public accommodation provisions of the state’s Law Against Discrimination.

    While the ruling is decisively in favor of the couple, Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster, it does not end the case. An administrative law judge still must decide on a remedy for the parties.

    “What this case has always been about from my clients’ perspective has been equality,” said Larry Lustberg, the lawyer for the couple. He said they will seek an order that requires the pavilion to be “open to all on an equal basis.”

    Brian Raum, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based group that represents the Methodist organization, Camp Meeting Association, said his clients would keep pushing back against being forced to allow civil unions on the property.

    “Our position is the same,” he said. “A Christian organization has a constitutional right to use their facilities in a way that is consistent with their beliefs.”

    Meanwhile, the parties in the dispute are awaiting a ruling from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether the issue should be decided in the division on civil rights or in federal courts. A lower federal court has ruled that the state could consider the case.

    The dispute has become a rallying point for both sides in the political battle over gay unions. …

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28425909/

    How long before Catholic churches are required to make their facilities available?

    • JohnMG
      December 30, 2008 at 8:01 am

      ……”Meanwhile, the parties in the dispute are awaiting a ruling from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…..”

      I sure hope one of them doesn’t get the other pregnant before the court rules. If that happens, they’ll be sueing because they were denied the legitimacy of marriage and have thus become subject to public ridicule.

      I’ll ask a rhetorical question. Doesn’t the court system have some really IMPORTANT stuff they should be doing??!!

  17. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 9:18 am

    From a horrified San Francisco Chronicle:

    Drillers eye oil reserves off California coast

    By Jane Kay

    The federal government is taking steps that may open California’s fabled coast to oil drilling in as few as three years, an action that could place dozens of platforms off the Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt coasts, and raises the specter of spills, air pollution and increased ship traffic into San Francisco Bay.

    Millions of acres of oil deposits, mapped in the 1980s when then-Interior Secretary James Watt and Energy Secretary Donald Hodel pushed for California exploration, lie a few miles from the forested North Coast and near the mouth of the Russian River, as well as off Malibu, Santa Monica and La Jolla in Southern California.

    “These are the targets,” said Richard Charter, a lobbyist for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund who worked for three decades to win congressional bans on offshore drilling. You couldn’t design a better formula to create adverse impacts on California’s coastal-dependent economy.”

    The bans that protected both of the nation’s coasts beginning in 1981, from California to the Pacific Northwest to the Atlantic Coast and the Straits of Florida, ended this year when Congress let the moratorium lapse.

    President-elect Barack Obama hasn’t said whether he would overturn President Bush’s lifting last summer of the ban on drilling, as gas prices reached a historic high. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Col., Obama’s pick as interior secretary and head of the nation’s ocean-drilling agency, hasn’t said what he would do in coastal waters.

    The Interior Department has moved to open some or all federal waters, which begin 3 miles from shore and are outside state control, for exploration as early as 2010. Rigs could go up in 2012.

    National marine sanctuaries off San Francisco and Monterey bays are off-limits in California. Areas open to drilling extend from Bodega Bay north to the Oregon border and from Morro Bay south to the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Drilling foes say the impacts of explosive blasts from seismic air guns that map rock formations, increased vessel traffic and oil spills should be enough to persuade federal agencies to thwart petroleum exploration. California’s treasured coast, with its migrating whales, millions of seabirds, sea otters, fish and crab feeding grounds, beaches and tidal waters, are at risk, Charter and other opponents say.

    According to the Interior Department, coastal areas nationwide that were affected by the drilling ban contain 18 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in what the agency called yet-to-be-discovered fields. The estimates are conservative and are based on seismic surveys in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the moratorium went into effect. …

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

    So to be clear, the drilling would be nowhere near the San Francisco Bay area – Bodega Bay is over an hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge – and of course they claim not even seismic hammers can be used to map deposits because it might disturb the poor wittle fishies.

    I honestly don’t know why oil companies can’t charge based on distance from the source, such that the more Northern Californians resist drilling, the more they pay for fuel.

    After all, there are oil rigs around Los Angeles, so let’s see how Bay Area residents enjoy paying $10/gallon where LA pays say $1.25.

    I mean Bay Area residents should all be using mass transit anyway, right?

    Of course aside from the usual idiots blaming Bush, Cheney and (I love this) Sarah Palin for the possible drilling, there are also scores of comments on the Chron’s website along the lines of:

    No Drilling off our coasts. The corrupt around energy is sickening. There are affordable, clean possibilities, but the information is being denied us. Stop the corruption.

    The other canned response is of course that these oil fields can only supply “X” million barrels which is only “Y” percent of America’s needs, so we can’t drill unless it magically will supply all of America’s oil needs for decades to come.

    Yet they continue to push “alternative” energies which will meet an infinitesimal amount of America’s energy needs, but that’s OK. You know, solar and wind will solve everything as will electric cars – never you mind how that electricity is actually generated nor how you’ll charge your car when it’s hot out and there are already rolling blackouts.

    • cjokry
      December 30, 2008 at 7:22 pm

      Yeah, it’s funny how they feel the need to foist the idea of “alternative energy” on everyone, and always talk as if oil has got to go down in flames before this “alternative energy” will catch on. Which is probably true. They pretend not to acknowledge what it’s going to mean for all of us to try to live without petroleum powering our civilization. It’s such a huge idea, you might think their tiny little brains just can’t process it.

      But really, they don’t care, and there is no back up plan. Their stupid “alternatives” would already be selling like hotcakes on a cold day if they were worth the hot air that spewed them. They just want us all back living in huts, caves, tree forts, and the skeletal ruins of our cities because they hate people; they’ve been sent here by the devil to outlaw Christianity, take all of our money, and expose us to their most unnatural sexual perversions while they topple our civilization with promises of a new Eden.

      This is why every fourth movie they make either begins or ends with the end of the world as we know it. They’re conditioning you for their “social reforms” and “innovations,” and the day we give in to their obviously myopic demands for “cleaner, more efficient” fuel is the day we’ll see all of these apocalyptic daydreams they’ve been selling us come true.

  18. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 9:27 am

    Just what you’d expect from San Francisco.

    From the San Francisco Chronicle:

    Demonstrators in S.F. protest Israeli bombings

    By Jill Tucker

    A few hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators tied up Market Street traffic Monday night, disrupting Muni service and startling shoppers and tourists.

    The marchers gathered at Montgomery and Market streets and blocked traffic at about 6 p.m. before heading to Union Square, where they gathered on steps across from Macy’s and then down to Market at Powell Street.

    Muni service was rerouted to Mission Street for about an hour.

    Organizer Lubna Morrar said the march was planned to protest recent Israeli bombings against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and drew a wide range of Palestinian supporters from various Bay Area groups.

    “We are just representing our people of the Gaza who have been bombed every day,” she said. …

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....150V14.DTL

    She of course neglects to mention who represents the Israeiis at whom Hamas has been firing missiles and in fact started firing missiles long before Israel had to respond.

    I really wonder how the left decides whether Israel or the US is more evil on any given day.

    Yet they do love our First Amendment, don’t they?

    • big spike
      January 5, 2009 at 10:36 am

      of COURSE they’re rallying in support of hamas in “granola city”…anyone who is an enemy of America is an automatic friend of the left

  19. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 9:52 am

    The latest Bush hit piece from the AP:

    Former Aides Say Katrina Was ‘Tipping Point’ for Bush’s Reputation

    In an article in Vanity Fair, two former advisers to President Bush say the president was never able to recover politically from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

    WASHINGTON — Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government’s poor handling of the natural disaster.

    “Katrina to me was the tipping point,” said Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. “The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter. P.R.? It didn’t matter. Travel? It didn’t matter.”

    Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: “Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin.”

    Their comments are a part of an oral history of the Bush White House that Vanity Fair magazine compiled for its February issue, which hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationally on Jan. 6. Vanity Fair published comments by current and former government officials, foreign ministers, campaign strategists and numerous others on topics that included Iraq, the anthrax attacks, the economy and immigration.

    Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

    “It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let’s face it, that’s what he was — was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire,” Wilkerson said, adding that he considered Cheney probably the “most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur” he’d ever met.

    “He became vice president well before George Bush picked him,” Wilkerson said of Cheney. “And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.”

    On other topics, David Kuo, who served as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, disputed the idea that the Bush White House was dominated by religious conservatives and catered to the needs of a religious right voting bloc.

    “The reality in the White House is — if you look at the most senior staff — you’re seeing people who aren’t personally religious and have no particular affection for people who are religious-right leaders,” Kuo said.

    “In the political affairs shop in particular, you saw a lot of people who just rolled their eyes at … basically every religious-right leader that was out there, because they just found them annoying and insufferable. These guys were pains in the butt who had to be accommodated.”

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

    Cool, we get to disparage the religious right and criticize Sarah Palin – twice!

    Could Vanity Fair please remind me again what Obama’s foreign affairs experience consists of? Palin signed an agreement with Canada, and Obama?

    Well he might have been born outside of the United States, but that’s about it.

    • cjokry
      December 30, 2008 at 7:43 pm

      Many of these quotes are plainly farmed from a few disaffected officials, like Powell’s chief of staff. Others are likely taken out of context, but given this is Vanity Fair, the vast majority of them are likely all-out bs.

  20. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 9:56 am

    To go with the Freedom from Religion Foundation lawsuit above, we’ve got this idiocy from an obviously supportive AP:

    Atheist Soldier Sues Military Over Alleged Christian Bias

    TOPEKA, Kan. — An atheist soldier suing over prayers at military formations claims a larger pattern of religious discrimination exists in the military, citing attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and an evangelical bias in a suicide prevention manual.

    The expanded lawsuit filed Monday by Spc. Dustin Chalker and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in U.S. District Court in Kansas City also claims the military doesn’t take complaints of religious discrimination seriously enough.

    The Defense Department has identified fewer than 50 complaints about alleged violations of religious freedoms during the past three years, with 1.4 million personnel in uniform, spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said.

    She declined to comment on a pending lawsuit but noted that the military has policies against endorsing any religious view.

    The revised lawsuit criticizes the Army’s 2008 manual on suicide prevention, quoting it as promoting “religiosity” as a necessary part of prevention and describing “connectivity to the divine” as “fundamental.”

    The lawsuit cites comments from a chaplain and a second soldier in Christian missionary publications about attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the two soldiers’ desire to distribute Bibles.

    The lawsuit also notes that in 2007, the Air Force sponsored “Team Faith,” which performs motocross stunt shows to “lead extreme sports athletes to Christ.”

    The original lawsuit filed in September alleged Chalker had to attend events at Fort Riley where Christian prayers were given. Foundation president Mikey Weinstein said Chalker tried to pursue his complaints within the Army but was told they were “unfounded.” …

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473959,00.html

    No!!! The Air Force didn’t sponsor a group that spoke about Christ!

    Oh, we must end this now…

  21. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 10:00 am

    Needless to say, the sniping continues.

    From the AP:

    Palin’s daughter gives birth to son named Tripp

    The daughter of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has given birth to a son, a magazine reported Monday.

    Bristol Palin, 18, gave birth to Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston on Saturday, People magazine reported online. He weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces. Colleen Jones, the sister of Bristol’s grandmother, told the magazine that “the baby is fine and Bristol is doing well.”

    The governor’s office said it would not release information because it considers the baby’s birth a private, family matter. Palin family members, hospital employees and spokespeople for the governor’s former running mate, John McCain, either would not confirm the birth or did not return messages from The Associated Press.

    The father is Levi Johnston, a former hockey player at Alaska’s Wasilla High School.

    Palin announced on Sept. 1, the first day of the Republican National Convention, that her unwed daughter was pregnant. The campaign issued a statement saying Bristol “and the young man” would get married.

    Levi Johnston’s mother eventually disclosed that her 18-year-old son was the father. The following week, the young man attended the convention in St. Paul, Minn., when Palin accepted the vice presidential nomination.

    The announcement that the unmarried Bristol Palin, 17 at the time, was pregnant immediately drew concerns that it could damage Palin’s credibility as a religious conservative. But many observers noted the pregnancy served to humanize the Palins and showcase the candidate’s rejection of abortion.

    Sherry Johnston, Levi’s mother, said in October that Bristol and her son were considering a summer wedding.

    Levi Johnston told The Associated Press that month that he and Bristol loved each other and wanted to get married. Johnston, who dropped out of high school to take a job on the North Slope oil fields as an apprentice electrician, said he was a little shocked to learn that Bristol was pregnant but quickly warmed to the idea of being a father.

    He said the two had planned to get married even before Bristol became pregnant. …

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....929S06.DTL

    Of course the AP has to gleefully remind people:

    Johnston’s mother was arrested on felony drug charges this month after state troopers served a search warrant at her Wasilla home. According to authorities, she sent text messages to two police informants in which she discusses making drug transactions involving OxyContin, a strong prescription painkiller.

    I wish the Palins and their extended family warmest wishes for a happy future.

    It’s hard enough to be married at that age let alone have a family, but given the love we’ve seen in the Palin household along with their faith, if anyone can make it Bristol and Levi can.

  22. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 10:05 am

    You can almost sense the AP’s excitement and support.

    Gaza rockets persist despite Israeli onslaught

    By Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel

    Palestinian militants, armed with deadlier missiles than ever before, kept up rocket assaults on Israeli border communities on Tuesday, despite relentless Israeli air attacks against Gaza’s Hamas rulers and unwelcome word from Egypt that it would not bail them out.

    More than 370 Palestinians have died since the Israeli air onslaught against Gaza’s Islamic Hamas rulers began Saturday, shortly after a rocky, six-month truce expired. Most were members of Hamas security forces but at least 64 were civilians, according to U.N. figures. Among those killed were two sisters, aged 4 and 11, who perished in an airstrike on a rocket squad in northern Gaza on Tuesday.

    Israeli warplanes smashed a Hamas government complex, security installations and the home of a top militant commander. During brief lulls between airstrikes, Gazans tentatively ventured into the streets to buy goods and collect belongings from homes they had abandoned after Israel’s aerial onslaught began Saturday.

    Rasha Khaldeh, 22, from the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, said she dared go no further than down the block to look for food.

    “We just don’t know what they are going to shell next. It’s not safe,” Khaldeh said.

    The campaign has brought a new reality to southern Israel, too, where one-tenth of the country’s population of 7 million has suddenly found itself within rocket range. Militants have pressed on with their rocket and mortar assaults, killing three Israeli civilians and a soldier and bringing a widening circle of targets into their sights with an arsenal of more powerful weapons.

    The military estimated that close to 700,000 Israelis are now within rocket range, with the battles shifting closer to Israel’s heartland. Of the four Israelis killed since the operation began Saturday, all but one were in areas that had not suffered fatalities before.

    “It’s very scary,” said Yaacov Pardida, a 55-year-old resident of Ashdod, southern Israel’s largest city, which was hit Monday. “I never imagined that this could happen, that they could reach us here.”

    By mid-afternoon, gunmen had launched about a dozen rockets and mortars, down from 80 a day earlier, the Israeli military said. But the number of firings have fluctuated sharply throughout the day, and that number could dramatically rise by day’s end.

    In the 72 hours since the offensive began, militants have fired off more than 250 rockets and mortars all told, they added.

    “Zionists, wait for more from the resistance,” Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan wrote in a text message to reporters, referring to militants’ armed struggle against Israel. …

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....930S67.DTL

    Now, time to crank up the sympathy a bit more:

    The offensive comes on top of an Israeli blockade of Gaza that has largely kept all but essential goods from entering the coastal territory since Hamas violently seized control June 2007 from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

    and:

    The initial wave of airstrikes took Gaza by surprise, targeting militants and Hamas security forces at key installations, often located in the midst of tiny Gaza’s densely populated towns and cities.

    But the government buildings targeted later were empty, as Gazans became fearful of venturing out into the streets. For Ziad Koraz, whose nearby home was damaged in the attack on the government compound Tuesday, that violence gratuitously put Gaza civilians at risk.

    “More than 17 missiles were directed at an empty government compound, without regard for civilians who lived nearby,” Koraz said. “If someone committed a crime, they should go after him, not after an entire nation.“

    Remind me again, mindlessly lobbing rockets at the country of Israel, something that has an almost 100% certainty of killing civilians rather than military personnel, meets this guideline how?

  23. BillK
    December 30, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    No shock whatsoever, but Franken’s outright theft of the Minnesota Senate seat is almost complete.

    From a conspiring AP:

    Franken Keeps Lead as Canvassing Board Turns to Absentee Ballots

    The Minnesota State Canvassing Board is hoping to finish its count next week, with more than 1,300 absentee ballots still to be reviewed.

    ST. PAUL, Minn. — Democratic candidate Al Franken now holds a 50 vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman with almost all of the counting in Minnesota’s Senate race done.

    Franken’s lead grew by a few votes on Tuesday when the state Canvassing Board finished allocating thousands of ballots that had been held up due to candidate challenges.

    Coleman’s hopes now ride on a pool of uncounted absentee ballots that will be opened before next week. The size of that pile is in dispute but it is thought to be around 1,350. Coleman’s campaign wants to add 650 more to the stack.

    Even if the board declares a winner next week, the race won’t be over. The losing party is expected to challenge the outcome in court.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....e-ballots/

    Of course if it’s Coleman that challenges, look for lots of pontificating about going against the will of the party and the Republicans wanting to “steal another election.”

    If it’s Franken it will of course be “counting every vote” and “serving the people.”

    Don’t believe for a second there’s any way Coleman can win this election; the Messiah will see to that.

  24. Diane
    December 30, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Health specialist Fern Hastings says Melton must use a commercial bakery that has passed a health inspection even if he gives his cakes to the public.

    So, let me get this straight – when I bake brownies for my students or a loaf of bread for my neighbors, I have to use a commercial bakery or I’m breaking the law? Wow. Just wow.

    • sheehanjihad
      December 30, 2008 at 6:19 pm

      This guy is doing things for people out of kindness, and to supplement his income. No wonder he is a danger to society! Ol Fern needs an enema.

    • big spike
      January 5, 2009 at 10:59 am

      i’m just surprised that it doesn’t have to be a union bakery

  25. BannedbytheTaliban
    December 31, 2008 at 11:05 am

    While Obama is experiencing upward of 80% approval for his handling of the transition from the uneducated proletariat, the people whom Obama will have the greatest effect over aren’t so optimistic.

    2008 Military Times poll: Wary about Obama

    Troops cite inexperience, Iraq timetable

    By Brendan McGarry – Staff writer
    Posted : Wednesday Dec 31, 2008 9:39:54 EST

    When asked how they feel about President-elect Barack Obama as commander in chief, six out of 10 active-duty service members say they are uncertain or pessimistic, according to a Military Times survey.

    In follow-up interviews, respondents expressed concerns about Obama’s lack of military service and experience leading men and women in uniform.

    “Being that the Marine Corps can be sent anywhere in the world with the snap of his fingers, nobody has confidence in this guy as commander in chief,” said one lance corporal who asked not to be identified.

    For eight years, members of the U.S. military have served under a Republican commander in chief who reflected their generally conservative views and led them to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    …Nearly one-third of respondents — including eight out of 10 black service members — said they are optimistic about their incoming boss

    http://www.marinecorpstimes.co.....in_122908/

    Racism is alive and well in America. It dwells in the nepotism of black Americans. But I generally agree, Obama is inexperienced and lacks a comprehensive understanding of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. All we can do is hope for the best.

    • proreason
      December 31, 2008 at 11:42 am

      “Nearly one-third of respondents — including eight out of 10 black service members — said they are optimistic about their incoming boss”

      Which means that about 80% of non-black servicemen are NOT optimistic about Obamy. (assuming 20% blacks in the military, which is probably low)

      Gee, why might that be? Hasn’t Obamy always “supported the troops”? Not just him, of course. Liberals in general are patriotic and support the troops. Don’t they?

  26. DW
    December 31, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    From the AP:

    Gunman wounds 2 Israelis in shooting in Denmark

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    COPENHAGEN, Denmark – A gunman has wounded two Israelis working at a packed central Denmark shopping mall.

    Police said one of the wounded was shot in the arm and the other in the leg. Their condition is unclear.

    The shooting took place at the Rosengaard mall in Odense, 170 kilometres west of Copenhagen.

    It took place this afternoon., when the mall was filled with people doing last-minute shopping before the new year’s break.

    Denmark’s Ritzau news agency said the men, who were selling hair-care products, had been harassed by a group of youths in recent days.

    Article:
    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Wo.....21-ap.html

    Uh oh…those youths again…

  27. DW
    December 31, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Also from the AP:

    Dubai bans new year celebrations in solidarity with Gaza residents

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Hotels in ritzy Dubai scrambled to rework new year’s plans today after the city’s ruler issued a last-minute order cancelling celebrations in solidarity with the people of Gaza Strip, where a fifth day of Israeli air strikes are underway.

    New Year’s Eve is one of the busiest times of the year for Dubai’s hotel-based bars and restaurants, which typically boast lavish dinner packages but steep entry fees.

    The official news agency WAM announced the ban late last night.

    The order called for Dubai to mark the new year “with a sombre tone as a token of solidarity” with the Palestinian people and with the Gaza Strip in particular.

    A number of New Year’s celebrations were also cancelled in Jordan, where roughly half of the 5.8 million people are of Palestinian descent.

    Article:
    http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Wo.....91-ap.html

    Hey! Great idea! In order to show our solidarity with a bunch of murderous cretins, we’ll screw all of our business people out of one of their most lucrative seasons -and at the last minute too, after bookings have been made and (no doubt) deposits have been paid.

    And serious consideration was being given to let these guys run US ports…?

    • Helena
      December 31, 2008 at 5:54 pm

      Hilarious. Dubai is trying like mad to get into the tourist biz, spending gazillions on construction, and courting celebs to publicize their starting up international film festivals and whatnot, so now their govt shoots them in the foot. Way to go.

  28. pdsand
    December 31, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    From Reuters:

    “SEC chief has regrets over short-selling ban

    Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:47pm GMT
    By Rachelle Younglai

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Under fire for regulatory missteps, top U.S. securities regulator Christopher Cox defended his agency’s record but acknowledged some regrets over how he handled the worst financial crisis in decades.

    The Securities and Exchange Commission has been lambasted by lawmakers and others for not doing enough to prevent the 2008 collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, interfering with markets and failing to detect the alleged $50 billion fraud at Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff’s firm.

    Cox, a Republican and former California congressman, said the SEC’s focus has been customer protection and broker dealer regulation and that the agency “performed that traditional role superbly.”

    However, Cox said he had some regrets over a drastic action the agency took as markets were hurtling downward in September. For a few weeks, the SEC stopped investors from making bearish bets on financial stocks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

    The SEC’s office of economic analysis is still evaluating data from the temporary ban on short-selling. Preliminary findings point to several unintended market consequences and side effects caused by the ban, he said.

    “While the actual effects of this temporary action will not be fully understood for many more months, if not years, knowing what we know now, I believe on balance the commission would not do it again,” Cox told Reuters in a telephone interview from the SEC’s Los Angeles office late on Tuesday. “The costs appear to outweigh the benefits.”

    Less liquidity in the markets was one of the unintended consequences, experts have said…

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/.....mp;sp=true

    Really? Government intervention into the free market can have unintended consequences? Somebody should appoint a congressional committee to investigate and determine what these unintended consequences can be and what government interventionist steps can be taken to prevent them the next time the government wants to intervene.

    • proreason
      January 1, 2009 at 12:03 pm

      The most dangerous enemy of this country is its government, by any measure.

      9/11 was a walk in the park compared to what the government perpetrated in 2008. Of course, everybody knows about the unfathomable loss of wealth (home prices now down over 30% nationally, tens of trillions of dollars gone from the markets, millions of people thrown into unemployment, millions of retirements ruineds, untold number of people thrown into poverty, EVERYBODY forced to work additional years and perhaps decades to accumulate enough money to retire, except, of course, for those millions who don’t work anyway)…..but what you will never hear about is the loss of life that have resulted from the criminal actions of a small number of elected officials acting unilaterally and without authority to alter the economy based on their own whims rather than the will of the people. The deaths have resulted mostly because or older people who can no longer afford the medicine and utilities they need to survive or because their chiildren discontinued needed support. The number in this country is probably in the tens of thousands. In other countries the death toll is undoubtedly in the millions.

      This is the handiwork of Barney Franks, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines and Barack Obama.

      THEY know better than you about the economy and about “fairness”, even though none of them ever worked a signle day in his life, ran a business, managed an employee, or served a day in the military.

      If there was a free and objective media in this country, there would be lynch mobs after those people, and many many others. They are just as much thieves but 100 times as evil as Bernard Madoff. And Madoff suckered greedy rich people. Franks, Dodd, Raines and Obama wrecked their damage on totally innocent people, you and me. It’s the greatest economic crime in history.

    • proreason
      January 1, 2009 at 1:40 pm

      As an update to my rant, this just in, from Wapro (with no reason to lie about this, for once):

      Wall Street’s Final ‘08 Toll: $6.9 Trillion Wiped Out
      Racked by Crisis, Markets End Year on Slight Upswing

      After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression yesterday, leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer.

      The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index took a double-digit hit…
      The Dow Jones industrial average, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, and the S&P, a broader index watched by market professionals, were down 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively, their deepest losses since the 1930s. ….
      Traders endured unprecedented turmoil last year as Lehman Brothers, an icon of the financial industry, teetered then collapsed,…
      By the end of 2008, the Dow had set new records for its three largest single-day point gains and two steepest point losses after swinging hundreds of points an hour during some sessions. ….
      Investors’ skittishness could also be seen in the market for crude oil. After surging to $147 a barrel in the summer, prices began a precipitous slide as economic concerns spread and demand dropped.
      The price …has fallen about 70 percent from its peak and finished down about 50 percent for the year….
      “This is a year that people will go back and look back and study for the next 100 years,” said Phil Flynn, oil analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago. ”

      A few comments:

      1. Lehman Bros collapsed 7 days after McCain took the lead in the polls. Quite a coincidence, huh?

      2. The 3 biggest swings were after Lehman Bros fell, in the 7 weeks prior to the election. Quite a concidence, huh?

      3. Almost the entire drop of 70% in the Oil prices was after McCain took the lead, and before the election. Quite a coincidence, huh?

      4. George Soros reported over $2B in profits BEFORE September, shorting the Market. Half the drop occurred after that, in Sept and Oct. (note: the drop at that time was over 50% from the prior Oct). The drop in Sept and Oct was the greatest of all time for those two months in an election year. Quite a coincidence that Mr. Soros was making billions when other investors were losing trillions, huh?

      5. At the end of 2007, GNP growth had been normal. Unemployment was low by historical standard. Corporate earnings were strong. There was concern about the sub-prime mess, but it was widely reported that the total amount of sub-prime dollars was only a fraction of total mortgages. In other words, there was little discussion by anyone other than perpetual election-year naysayers that the economy was in danger. Even in Q2 of 2008, GNP growth was strong. Quite a coincidence that an economic tsunami only approached in magnitude by the Great Depression overcame a stong economy in the two months prior to Obamy election, huh? A 100-year event happened at the EXACT MOMENT IN TIME when it would most benefit Obamy. What an amazing coincidence.

      To cut to the chase, the president select of this country is the greatest criminal of all time.

      But it’s ok. His handlers have happily done all of this so your country will be more fair in the future.

  29. JohnMG
    December 31, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    Re-electing career politicians and advancing them to higher offices can have unintended consequences for a free republic.

  30. sheehanjihad
    December 31, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    From the Associated Press:

    NY Democratic advisers talk up ‘caretaker’ senator

    By MICHAEL GORMLEY – 6 hours ago

    ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Sen. Bill Clinton? Sen. Mario Cuomo? Don’t completely rule it out. The former president and the former New York governor are among several boldface names being touted as possible “caretakers” for New York’s Senate seat — people who would serve until the 2010 elections but wouldn’t be interested in running to keep the job.

    As the process of picking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s replacement gets messier, the option may become increasingly attractive to Gov. David Paterson, who has sole authority to name a successor.

    A spokesman for Bill Clinton, Matt McKenna, said Wednesday that the former chief executive isn’t interested in the job and plans to continue the work of his foundation. Cuomo declined through a spokesman to discuss the Senate seat.

    A big name could have an immediate impact for New York in the Senate while letting the large field of hopefuls duke it out in 2010, according to three Democratic Party advisers in New York and Washington who are close to the discussion with Paterson’s inner circle on this issue.

    Two others in the party confirmed that Paterson is still considering the caretaker option. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment.

    http://www.google.com/hostedne.....gD95DTHHO0

    Oh yes, what will they do? Bill? Mario? How about Zawahiri? sheesh. Ms Schlossberg must be feelin real important right about now…..

  31. BillK
    January 1, 2009 at 6:13 am

    Yet another case of “I said I agreed to the rules, except when I don’t agree with them.”

    From the San Antionio Express-News:

    Teacher terminated over marriage

    By Brian Chasnoff

    Less than a week before Marquis LaFortune was supposed to marry her fiance, the principal of the downtown Catholic high school where she worked as an English teacher called her into his office to warn that a “scandal” was looming.

    The scandal, the deacon informed the bride-to-be, was her coming marriage.

    LaFortune married anyway, but now she’s the one who feels scandalized. Fired from Central Catholic High School for the Nov. 22 wedding, the 25-year-old has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and wants to sue the school.

    The reason for her termination turns on a theological tenet. According to Catholic doctrine, participants in a marriage must be an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. LaFortune told the principal that her fiance had been divorced — a proceeding not recognized by the Catholic Church.

    The deacon was concerned with whether the first marriage of LaFortune’s fiance, Benjamin Stakes, had been declared invalid by a Catholic tribunal and thereby annulled. His concern, however, did not sit well with LaFortune, who refused to resign from her job or seek an annulment — a process that could reach to Rome and take more than a year.

    “I would have resigned if I’d felt like I’d done something wrong,” LaFortune said last week, adding that the conflict put a strain on her wedding preparations. “I couldn’t get out of bed. It’s just been this cloud. It was supposed to be the best week of my life, and I had to pull myself together for the ceremony.”

    The school’s president said federal law supports the school’s stance.

    “We have very clear policies on what we expect from Catholic people on our faculty, and there has been a violation of that,” Brother Peter Pontolillo said. “When a person does something that is obviously contrary to everything that our Catholic school stands for, we cannot just look through our fingers.” … http://www.mysanantonio.com/ne.....riage.html

    Watch her tap dance:

    The conflict threw LaFortune into an emotional tailspin.

    She said she met again with Cunningham, who explained that his stance wasn’t a personal attack, but rather a reflection of God’s laws, which are non-negotiable.

    “I then told him I would be having a lawyer or attorney soon,” LaFortune said.

    She added that she loved her students, felt she was doing nothing wrong and would not leave the all-boys school without a fight.

    Raised in the Catholic faith, LaFortune had moved with her fiance to a nondenominational church before the conflict at the school.

    The conflict “just sort of turned me off (of the religion) more,” she said. “It felt really archaic. I think they were overlooking what I had to offer the boys.”

    Her sister flew down early from Boston to help the distraught bride with last-minute obligations, including altering her wedding dress and choosing flowers for the ceremony in Fredericksburg. Meanwhile, LaFortune brainstormed for mitigating circumstances that could temper the deacon’s decree.

    The high school regularly hires non-Catholic employees. So LaFortune told her employers that she no longer attended a Catholic church. Perhaps this would make her immune to Catholic strictures.

    It did not.

    “Do you know what the definition of scandal is?” Pontolillo said in a phone interview. “If I present myself as Catholic to an institution that’s Catholic, and I practice that Catholicism in the institution by attending school Masses and receiving communion and then suddenly make a decision that is published that (I am) now going to go against that Catholicism.”

    According to both LaFortune and Pontolillo, at one point, the school president asked LaFortune if she went to church every Sunday. She told him she did not.

    “No wonder you don’t understand,” Pontolillo said. “You are not churched.”

    Needless to say, the moronic readers are posting comments like:

    The Catholic Church – the real threat to the sanctity of marriage.

    Why is it so difficult to understand if you go to work for a Catholic school that demands that you abide by the Catechism, you need to follow the Catechism?!?!

    Of course if this were an Islamic school and the teacher was fired for refusing to wear a head scarf, it wouldn’t even make the paper.

    • JohnMG
      January 1, 2009 at 9:08 am

      Well!! How dare they?! (weary sigh)

      As a practicing Catholic I find this behavior no more astonishing than I do the fact that more than 50% of professed Catholics voted for “Honest Obe” for president. Being one of the ‘dinosaurs’ from an earlier age, my understanding of my religion is that Catholocism is not a label but an adherence to a set of beliefs and principles modeled through behavior. I’m also aware that there have been forces throughout history dedicated to tearing apart and marginalizing my religion–particularly some “catholics” who don’t seem to understand what the word ‘catholic” means.

      So over the years I have begun responding to those wishing to bend the faith to their own in the same way I respond to those people who seem to delight in trashing the country in which we live. Either love it, or leave it. If this poor creature cannot abide by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, she is free to go elsewhere. I doubt that she is handcuffed to the altar.

      But even in this obviously sympathetic “newspiece”, it comes through that she is more concerned with her own finances than in reinforcing Church doctrine. That, and in exacting revenge through some greedy lawyer (is that a redundancy?) who is equally eager to teach those ‘inflexible’ Church bigots a real lesson.

      I’m sure she will have no trouble in finding some disaffected ‘catholic’ lawyer willing to take on the Church heirarchy, forcing them to ‘right this wrong’. For a fee, of course.

      The only thing I am surprised with is that her “fiance” in this story was actually a man, and not another woman.

      Seriously. If the dope realized she couldn’t cut it as a Catholic, she should have just left. She really wouldn’t be missed. Only pitied.

  32. sheehanjihad
    January 1, 2009 at 9:25 am

    This is an interesting take on the legality of the Senate’s being able to block Burris legally, without the stain of the Black Caucus’s accusations of blatant racism to force a black man to be accepted.

    How the Senate Can Stop BlagojevichIt easily has the power to block the governor’s appointment of Roland Burris
    .
    By Akhil Reed Amar and Josh ChafetzPosted Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008, at 6:23 PM

    ETDoes the Constitution allow the Senate to refuse to seat Roland Burris, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s surprise appointee? In a word, yes. Here’s why.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2207754/?from=rss

  33. BillK
    January 1, 2009 at 10:26 am

    From the AP:

    Suspect dead in Aspen bomb threats; ‘last will’ sent to Times

    ASPEN — A man police wanted to question in two Aspen bomb threats that forced the evacuation of much of downtown on New Year’s Eve has been found dead.

    Police cleared a 16-block area of the resort town Wednesday afternoon after two banks reported receiving bomb threats and packages wrapped in holiday paper.

    The suspect allegedly left a suspicious package with a threatening note inside each bank.

    Police also found clear plastic boxes containing holiday wrapped packages and pizza boxes on a black sled in a downtown alley.

    Aspen Police Chief Richard Pryor said both notes suggested a “credible threat.” That led authorities to rope off areas around both banks as they sought to keep locals and tourists away from the buildings.

    People were cleared from the area that included The Aspen Times newspaper and some homes. By Wednesday evening police released surveillance tape from one bank showing 71-year-old Jim Blanning and asked the public to help find him.

    Early Thursday, Blanning was found dead in rural Pitkin county. Officer Stephanie Dasaro of the Aspen Police Department couldn’t say early Thursday how Blanning died or where exactly he was found.

    Dasaro said the man was recognized quickly by police as a former Aspen resident, though he was living in Denver.

    Also unanswered early Thursday was what the packages contained. Dasaro said they were destroyed early Thursday, but she could not say whether they contained explosives. …

    http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....-sent-tim/

    What makes this worthy of posting here was the envelope in which his screed was delivered, which read, in part:

    For the past 2 yrs. I was in prison. I woke up every day wishing I was dead. Now it comes to pass. I was and am a good man. Too many people and I do hate Rove/Bush with a passion. …”

    http://media.rockymountainnews.....1_t600.jpg

    Further, the note inside contained the lines:

    We have all of the cop threats to us under very sophisticated electronic surveillance. Do not f— with us or there will be mass death like we have all been part of over in that f—ing quicksand trap that Rove’s and Chaney’s (sic) monkey Bush put us into where so many of our soul mats and brothers died very horrible deaths. …

    Link here; note strong language:

    http://media.rockymountainnews.....2_t600.jpg

    Be prepared to see this idiot defended on Kos and other sites as just doing what was necessary…

  34. BillK
    January 1, 2009 at 10:35 am

    So people in the article bemoaned Israel was targeting “civilians” and not “those responsible.”

    Now that Israel has taken out its first Hamas leader, AP continues to be depressed.

    Israel kills top Hamas figure, escalating campaign

    By Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel

    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel assassinated a Hamas strongman Thursday in its first assault on the top leadership of Gaza’s rulers, escalating a crushing aerial offensive even as it declared it was ready to launch a ground invasion.

    The airstrike targeted the eight-story apartment building that was home to Nizar Rayan, 52, ranked among Hamas’ top five decision-makers in Gaza. The attack killed 12 other people including two of Rayan’s four wives and four of his 12 children, Palestinian health officials said. The Muslim faith allows men to have up to four wives.

    While escalating its 6-day-old military offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Israel also appeared to be sounding out a possible diplomatic exit from its campaign by demanding international monitors as a key term of any future truce.

    The offensive is meant to crush Gaza militants who have been terrorizing southern Israel with rocket fire that is reaching closer to the country’s heartland than ever before.

    In launching the campaign on Saturday, Israel made it clear that no one in Hamas was immune and Thursday’s strike drove that point home. The airstrike blew a huge hole in the side of the building where Rayan lived and sent a thick plume of smoke into the air.

    Hamas leaders went into hiding before Israel launched its operation, but Rayan was known for openly defying Israel.

    Hamas threatened to take revenge against Israeli soldiers who were massed along the border with Gaza, waiting for a signal to invade.

    “We are waiting for you to enter Gaza to kill you or make you into Schalits,” it said, referring to Sgt. Gilad Schalit who was seized by Hamas-affiliated militants 2-1/2 years ago and remains in captivity.

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

    Once again, a big congratulations to the IDF for doing what needs to be done.

  35. BillK
    January 1, 2009 at 10:37 am

    But I thought there was no money to be had?

    From the AP:

    Applications soar as 30-year mortgage falls

    Rates on 30-year mortgages fell to a record low for the third straight week and borrowers took advantage of the drop, sending new applications soaring to a five-year high.

    With the Federal Reserve on the verge of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the devastated U.S. housing market, mortgage rates have plunged to the lowest level since Freddie Mac started tracking the data in April 1971.

    Low rates are a great opportunity for borrowers with solid credit and plenty of equity in their homes. But those in danger of foreclosure are sidelined, and defaults are expected to keep rising in the coming months.

    Freddie Mac reported Wednesday that average rates on 30-year fixed mortgages dropped to 5.1 percent this week, down from the previous record of 5.14 percent set last week. It was the ninth straight weekly drop. The survey was released a day early due to the New Year’s holiday.

    Mortgage applications remained at their highest level in more than five years last week, as borrowers took advantage of attractive rates and rushed to refinance their home loans.

    The Mortgage Bankers Association said applications surged earlier this month to the highest level since July 2003, when refinancing activity boomed at the peak of the housing market.

    More than 80 percent of applications came from borrowers looking to refinance at more affordable rates, the trade group said. …

    http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....age-falls/

    Gee, making things cheaper produces more of the activity in question!

    But of course they can’t resist mentioning that those who shouldn’t be getting loans can’t qualify.

    Of course the inevitable result of the Government’s meddling will be that banks will force to lend once again to the very idiots who couldn’t pay back their loans the first time…

    • BannedbytheTaliban
      January 2, 2009 at 9:32 am

      The low rates have been beneficial to me, I’ve bought a house and a car in times when the MSM says nobody is buying anything. But I have to disagree with keeping them low. IMO, the low mortgage rates have helped bring about a lot of the mess we are in. By making loans cheaper people could either A) buy a house they couldn’t afford or B) pay more for a house than it was worth. This intern created higher demand for homes artificially inflated the value of homes, devaluing money and created many foreclosures when the rate inevitably went up. Had the rates gone up to around 7 or 10% in the early part of 2008 I think a lot of the housing mess could have been avoided. Now we are in a catch 22, keeping the rate low will encourage growth, but it may not be sustainable. Raising the rate will continue to depress markets and cause more foreclosures with people who still have variable rate loans. Hopefully people will take advantage of the low rates to refinance and have more stable debt.

  36. BillK
    January 1, 2009 at 10:50 am

    Wisconsin’s tax and spend Governor just can’t tax enough.

    From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

    Doyle hints at willingness to raise cigarette tax again

    By Patrick Marley

    Madison – Gov. Jim Doyle is signaling a willingness to raise the cigarette tax, a year after he and legislators raised the tax by $1 a pack.

    The Democratic governor did not explicitly endorse raising the tax in a recent interview, but he noted he originally fought for raising the tax by $1.25.

    “I would simply point out that I’ve supported going to a higher level in the past,” he said.

    The cigarette tax rose to $1.77 a year ago today.

    Doyle – who spent Tuesday doing one-on-one interviews with reporters at the governor’s mansion in Maple Bluff – told the Wisconsin State Journal he wants to resume having the gas tax automatically increase every year.

    “The simple fact is that where Wisconsin went, where Republicans took us, is unsustainable for transportation (infrastructure), where you say, that’s basically it on the gas tax, regardless of what the costs are and what the needs are,” Doyle told the State Journal.

    That’s a departure from what he said two years ago, when he was running for re-election. Then, Doyle promised not to raise the gas tax during a second term, which runs through 2010.

    Republicans said they opposed raising either tax.

    “They’re both horrible ideas, especially with where the economy sits today,” said Rep. Scott Newcomer (R-Hartland).

    Sen. Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) said allowing the gas tax to go up annually without a vote would be “gutless” and a “political cop-out.”

    For 20 years, the state gas tax automatically increased an inflationary amount every April 1. But in 2005, Republicans who controlled the Legislature and Doyle approved ending that practice, despite initial resistance to the idea.

    The gas tax – now at 32.9 cents per gallon – increased for the last time in April 2006. Wisconsin’s gas tax is one of the highest in the country, but its annual registration fee of $75 per vehicle is on the low end.

    Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Weston) and Assembly Speaker-elect Mike Sheridan (D-Janesville) voted against ending the automatic increases.

    Decker spokeswoman Carrie Lynch said Decker would support resuming the automatic gas tax if there were bipartisan support for it and the money were guaranteed to go toward transportation. Critics have blasted Doyle because he has diverted more than $1 billion from the transportation fund since 2003 to pay for schools. …

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/w.....58734.html

    But the biggest lie is to be found here:

    Doyle discussed the cigarette tax not as a way to shore up the state’s finances, but as a means to curb smoking.

    When Doyle lobbied for a $1.25 per-pack increase in the cigarette tax, he said any tax increase had to be big enough to shock smokers into quitting.

    Then why not make the tax $100 per pack? Better yet, how about $1000 per pack?

    Wouldn’t those taxes have substantially more “shock” value than $1.25?

    If the revenue is not a concern, then if the tax is $1000/pack and tax revenues from cigarettes drop to zero, it shouldn’t be an issue, right?

  37. sheehanjihad
    January 2, 2009 at 7:37 am

    “Congress may decide to disguise a fuel tax hike as a surcharge to combat climate change”

    Time to prepare yourselves for the fleecing of the century by democrat controlled government!!.

    WASHINGTON — Motorists are driving less and buying less gasoline, which means fuel taxes aren’t raising enough money to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs.

    That has the federal commission that oversees financing for transportation talking about increasing the federal fuel tax.

    A 50 percent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes is being urged by the commission to finance highway construction and repair until the government devises another way for motorists to pay for using public roads.

    The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress, is the second group in a year to call for increasing the current 18.4 cents a gallon federal tax on gasoline and the 24.4 cents a gallon tax on diesel. State fuel taxes vary from state to state.

    In a report expected in late January, members of the infrastructure financing commission say they will urge Congress to raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel tax by 12 cents to 15 cents a gallon. At the same time, the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation.

    The commission will also recommend that states raise their fuel taxes and make greater use of toll roads and fees for rush-hour driving.

    Although the cost of gasoline has dropped dramatically in recent months, such tax increases could be politically treacherous for Democratic leaders in Congress. A gas tax hike was one of the reasons they lost control of the House and Senate in the 1994 elections. President-elect Barack Obama has expressed concern about raising fuel taxes in the current economic climate.

    But commission members said the government must find more road and bridge building money somewhere.

    “I’m not excited about a gas tax increase, but the reality is our current gas tax doesn’t pay for upkeep of the system we have now,” said Adrian Moore, vice president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank in Los Angeles, and a member of the highway revenue commission. “We can either let the roads go to hell or we can pay more.”

    The dilemma for Congress is that highway and transit programs are dependent for revenue on fuel taxes that are not sustainable. Many Americans are driving less and switching to more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, and a shift to new fuels and technologies like plug-in hybrid electric cars will further erode gasoline sales.

    According to a draft of the financing commission’s recommendations, the nation needs to move to a new system that taxes motorists according to how much they use roads.

    “Most if not all of the commissioners have a strong belief and commitment that we need a fundamental transformation of the current system,” said commission chairman Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a technology policy think tank in Washington.

    A study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies estimated that the annual gap between revenues and the investment needed to improve highway and transit systems was about $105 billion in 2007, and will increase to $134 billion in 2017 under current trends.

    Projected shortfalls in revenue led the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, in a report issued in January 2008, to call for an increase of as much as 40 cents a gallon in the gas tax, phased in over five years.

    Charles Whittington, chairman of the American Trucking Associations, which supports a fuel tax increase as long as the money goes to highway projects, said Congress may decide to disguise a fuel tax hike as a surcharge to combat climate change.

    Transportation is responsible for about a third of all U.S. carbon emissions created by burning fossil fuels. Traffic congestion wastes an estimated 2.9 billion gallons of fuel a year. Less congestion would reduce greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil.

    “Instead of calling it a gas tax, call it a carbon tax,” Whittington said.

    Bottlenecks around the nation cost the trucking industry about 243 million lost truck hours and about $7.8 billion per year, according to the commission.

    http://www.comcast.net/article.....2/Gas.Tax/

  38. sheehanjihad
    January 2, 2009 at 8:01 am

    Poll: 77% of Americans Blame Media for Making Economic Crisis Worse
    Jan 1 11:09 AM US/Eastern

    - New Poll Conducted by Opinion Research Corporation -

    NEW YORK, Jan. 1 /PRNewswire/ — Seventy-seven percent of Americans believe that the U.S. media is making the economic situation worse by projecting fear into people’s minds.

    The majority of those surveyed feel that the financial press, by focusing on and embellishing negative news, is damaging consumer confidence and damping investment, making a difficult situation much worse. The poll was conducted via telephone, December 4 – 7.

    The US survey of 1000 adults was conducted by Opinion Research Corporation and is statistically representative of the total U.S. population. The survey question: “Do you think the financial press is making the economic crisis worse by projecting fear into people’s minds?” While the overall response indicated that 77% of Americans answered YES, here are highlights of note: Household Incomes: $25k – $35k — 79% answered YES $35k – $50k — 88% answered YES $50k – $75k — 76% answered YES $75k – more — 78% answered YES Demographics: 85% of young adults (18-24 yrs old) answered YES 77% of males and females alike answered YES 65% of blacks answered YES

    Richard L. Scheff, a national expert on corporate liability and white collar crime issues, warns media that they could potentially be exposed to liability despite apparent constitutional protections:

    “Although statements by the media are protected by the First Amendment, the survey results demonstrate that the public believes that the press bears some responsibility for the lack of confidence in the economy. One would hope that the media would act less out of self-interest in these times of national crisis,” said Mr. Scheff, vice chairman and partner with Philadelphia-based law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads.

    http://www.breitbart.com/artic....._article=1

  39. sheehanjihad
    January 2, 2009 at 8:04 am

    Aides: Democrats have plan if Burris shows up
    Posted: 08:00 PM ET

    From CNN Congressional Correspondent Brianna Keilar
    Senate Democrats will not allow Burris on the Senate Floor if he shows up next week.
    .

    (CNN) — Senate Democratic leaders think Roland Burris, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s pick to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, will likely show up on Capitol Hill Tuesday for the opening day of Congress, according to a Democratic aide familiar with Senate Democratic leaders’ plans.

    They have prepared a contingency plan in case he does, the aide added.

    Burris will not be allowed on the Senate floor, according to this aide and a Senate Democratic leadership aide.

    Watch: What if Burris shows up?

    The aide familiar with Senate Democratic leaders’ plans said if Burris tries to enter the Senate chamber, the Senate doorkeeper will stop Burris. If Burris were to persist, either trying to force his way onto the Senate floor or refusing to leave and causing a scene, U.S. Capitol Police would stop him, said the aide.

    “They (police) probably won’t arrest him” but they would call the sergeant-at-arms,” the aide said.

    When asked about what would happen if he shows up and tries to be seated, Burris told the Chicago Tribune that he’s, “not going to create a scene in Washington.” He added, “We hope it’s negotiated out prior to my going to Washington.”

    Burris told CNN that, “We’re certainly going to make contacts with the leadership to let them know that the governor of Illinois has made a legal appointment. And that I am currently the junior senator for the State of Illinois. And we’re hoping and praying that, you know, they will see the reason in appointing me as a very qualified, capable, able and ready-to-serve individual.”

    Coincidentally, the senate sergeant-at-arms, Terrance Gainer, served in the Illinois government at the same time as Burris. Gainer was the director of the Illinois State Police from 1991-95. Burris was the Illinois attorney general from 1991-95.

    Senate Democratic leaders, who consider Governor Rod Blagojevich a loose cannon, also have discussed what might happen if Blagojevich shows up on Capitol Hill Tuesday, said the aide familiar with their plans. But the leaders see that move by Blagojevich as unlikely at this time.

    This would be a “radioactive” situation, according to the aide, because Senate Democratic leaders could not deny Blagojevich entry, as sitting governors have floor privileges in the Senate. Governors are allowed to walk around the Senate chamber or talk with senators while on the floor, though they cannot vote or formally address the Senate.

    Blagojevich is aware he is allowed access to the Senate floor, his spokesman Lucio Guerrero said, but “the idea of going on Tuesday was first raised by a reporter,” not Blagojevich.

    The governor is not planning on going to Capitol Hill at this time, Guerrero said.
    http://politicalticker.blogs.c.....-shows-up/

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