From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Judge halts sick-leave ordinance

By Georgia Pabst

A Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge today halted enforcement of Milwaukee’s paid sick-day ordinance, just four days before the measure was scheduled to go into effect.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Thomas R. Cooper granted the temporary injunction that was sought by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. The pro-business group had challenged the ordinance, which had been passed overwhelmingly by city voters on Nov. 4, 2008.

“This has really shaken up the community,” Cooper said. “This call is such a big deal to everybody that we better do it right from the start.”

The city did not object to the temporary injunction, but attorneys for 9to5, the national organization of working women, argued in court against the injunction, saying that it has been passed by the electorate and should be enforced.

9to5 led the petition drive that brought the measure to the ballot. That group also has criticized Mayor Tom Barrett and city officials for not fighting to enforce the ordinance.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/39208057.html

Note that the up side of the passage of this ordinance in Milwaukee is that a number of surrounding suburbs in the Milwaukee area have passed new laws explicitly stating that no sick leave ordinance can be enacted in those cities.

From the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal:

Madison center to offer second-trimester abortions within few weeks or months

By David Wahlberg

The board of the Madison Surgery Center unanimously approved an abortion clinic on Friday, meaning second-trimester abortions will be offered there within a few months.

The facility, at 1 S. Park St., will provide abortions primarily to women 19 to 22 weeks pregnant.

The service will replace the practice of Dr. Dennis Christensen, who had performed abortions up to 22 weeks at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Madison until he retired in December. Planned Parenthood will still do abortions up to 19 weeks.

Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, repeated earlier calls for a boycott of the facility and said protests will continue.

“There will be an active presence outside of the clinic that we anticipate will only increase,” she said.

Lisa Subeck, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin, said second-trimester abortions are rare but the service is necessary.

“They stood up for the community and for women,” she said.

The surgery center is owned by UW Hospital, the university’s doctor group and Meriter Hospital. Boards of those organizations recently approved the plan, despite protests and petitions from opponents. Friday’s vote by the surgery center board was 6-0. …

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/437041

At least the current staff of the facility has some moral character:

Fredericks said three of four anesthesiologists at the surgery center will refuse to take part in abortions. Brunette said the volume of procedures — about 125 abortions a year are expected — is low enough that staffing will be adequate.

For those who aren’t good at math, 19 – 22 weeks is basically five months pregnant.

That’s way beyond “choice.”

Let me translate this NY Times shitsandwich into plain english:

Ms. Napolitano, who is known as a serious liberal ball licker who masquerades as a moderate voice on immigration, and whose policies occupy the sphere somewhere to the left of V.I. Lenin, will completely emasculate the entire ICE and Border Patrol organizations in deference to her ‘hero’ BHO.

It is laughable to me, to think that someone who couldn’t even control the illegal immigrant situation in her home state of Arizona, is now magically able to oversee the entire US operation, once again proving that it, indeed, possible to fail upward.

The entire Obama administration is populated with morons. The only one I hope stays on is Gibbs. He’s positively funny to observe.

Arpaio’s America

It has come to this: In Phoenix on Wednesday, more than 200 men in shackles and prison stripes were marched under armed guard past a gantlet of TV cameras to a tent prison encircled by an electric fence. They were inmates being sent to await deportation in a new immigrant detention camp minutes from the center of America’s fifth-largest city.

The judge, jury and exhibitioner of this degrading spectacle was the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants. Though he frequently and proudly insists that he answers to no one, except at election time, the sheriff is not an isolated rogue. As a participant in the federal policing program called 287(g), he is an official partner of the United States government in its warped crackdown on illegal immigration.

The immigration enforcement regime left by the Bush Administration is out of control. It is up to President Obama and the new secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, to rein it in and clean it up. This applies not just to off-the-rails deputies like Sheriff Arpaio, but to the federal enforcement agencies themselves.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have been shown in recent news accounts to be botching their jobs. Border Patrol agents in California have accused supervisors of setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, and a recent Migration Policy Institute study showed that a much-touted campaign of raids against criminal fugitives was a failure. It netted mostly the maids and laborers who are no reasonable person’s idea of a national threat.
The burden of action is particularly high on Ms. Napolitano, who as Arizona’s governor handled Sheriff Arpaio with a gingerly caution that looked to some of his critics and victims as calculated and timid.

Ms. Napolitano, who is known as a serious and moderate voice on immigration, recently directed her agency to review its enforcement efforts, including looking at ways to expand the 287(g) program. Sheriff Arpaio is a powerful argument for doing just the opposite.

Now that she has left Arizona politics behind, Ms. Napolitano is free to prove this is not Arpaio’s America, where the mob rules and immigrants are subject to ritual humiliation. The country should expect no less.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02......html?_r=1

Is Joe an American-born citizen? I’d sure vote for him to fix the border problem!

Guess the writer of this editorial doesn’t know how many resources illegals use in California … I’d like to send a few C-10 cargo planes full of ‘em to NY and let them see what we live with here! Let’s see how NY state’s economy become as ruined as California’s is.

The Gestapo must have gotten to her …

Rise in public opinion spending raises concerns

By Chris Tomlinson – The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Feb 6, 2009 12:13:16 EST

WASHINGTON — As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls “the human terrain” of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law.

An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That’s almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.

This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.

“We have such a massive apparatus selling the military to us, it has become hard to ask questions about whether this is too much money or if it’s bloated,” says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Committee on Media and Democracy, which tracks the military’s media operations. “As the war has become less popular, they have felt they need to respond to that more.”

Yet the money spent on media and outreach still comes to only 1 percent of the Pentagon budget, and the military argues it is well-spent on recruitment and the education of foreign and American audiences. Military leaders say that at a time when extremist groups run Web sites and distribute video, information is as important a weapon as tanks and guns.

……..In 2003, for example, initial accounts from the military about the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch from Iraqi forces were faked to rally public support. And in 2005, a Marine Corps spokesman during the siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah told the U.S. news media that U.S. troops were attacking. In fact, the information was a ruse by U.S. commanders to fool insurgents into revealing their positions.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.co.....r_020509w/

So what this really boils down to is a couple liberal senators are mad because the Military is using the liberal media effectively against their terrorist buddies. The article also fails to mention how much of the the AP’s budget is spent on propaganda against the US and the Armed forces, which of course is ALL OF IT. Besides the media leaking any information about on going operations is treason and should be punished with death, which of course it is not. Instead they give “excellence in journalism” awards to these traitors.

From (sorry) tmz.com (IMPORTANT: Most of their site is rather family un-friendly; I’ve edited the appropriate words below)

Etta James to Beyoncé: I’ll Whoop Your A**!

This is not a joke: 71-year-old Etta James actually threatened to beat the cr*p out of Beyoncé Knowles — and it’s caught all on tape!

The war is all over Etta’s song, “At Last ” — Beyoncé sang the tune at Obama’s 1st Inauguration Ball on Jan. 20th … but last week at a concert in Seattle, James was still pissed. …

http://www.tmz.com/2009/02/04/.....-your-ass/

But the important thing is to listen to the audio, in which she refers to Obama as “Your big-eared President” and says “He’s not my President” at least twice.

I’ve no idea what Ms. James’ politics are – I highly doubt she’s a conservative – but you’ll note that even the gossip-hungry MSM hasn’t exactly spent a lot of time on this and the agencies that have covered it have concentrated on the feud between the singers rather than her comments about the person whom Beyoncé was serenading.

Meanwhile, could you imagine what would have happened if it were, say, Toby Keith, or for that matter any non-liberal who had made the same comments about The Chosen One?

Obama Declares Major Disaster in Kentucky Over Ice Storm

FRANKFORT, Ky. — President Barack Obama on Thursday issued a major disaster declaration for Kentucky in the wake of a deadly ice storm, ordering federal aid to supplement local recovery efforts.

Gov. Steve Beshear sought the major disaster status earlier this week. The storm has been blamed for 27 Kentucky deaths.

Beshear said such a declaration would open the state to immediate federal financial assistance in the wake of the devastating ice storm, which cut power to more than three-fourths of a million homes and businesses, a state record. …

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,488569,00.html

Can you imagine the cries of “Katrina!” that would be rampant if it were Bush that had taken days to declare Kentucky a major disaster area?

But nah, he can’t mean that…

PM is actually fairly sensible. (Cf. their anti-truther articles.)

Why Shovel-Ready Infrastructure is Wrong (Right Now)

The term “shovel-ready”—as in, infrastructure projects that are ready or almost ready to begin—has become a favorite of policy makers in recent weeks. As the Senate gets ready to vote on a stimulus bill, it looks like the idea has stuck: The latest bill gives only projects that are able to start construction within 90 days eligibility for funding from the $90 billion set aside for infrastructure. Here is why the shovel-ready mandate could make the infrastructure crisis worse.

By Erik Sofge
Published on: February 5, 2009

The term arrived with all the muscle and blue-collar authority of a bulldozer: “shovel-ready.” As in, infrastructure projects that are ready or almost ready to begin, the antithesis of some dimly imagined earmark or budget-sucking bridge to nowhere. Then-president-elect Obama used the term on a December 7th visit to NBC’s Meet the Press, describing the kinds of projects that would be supported by the upcoming economic stimulus bill. Soon the phrase was being repeated by policy-makers only an almost daily basis. …Only projects that are able to start construction within 90 days of selection are eligible for funding from the $90 billion set aside for infrastructure.

From Buzzword to Multibillion-Dollar Policy
So what exactly is a shovel-ready project? As the Washington Post recently pointed out, the term “shovel-ready” may have been introduced in the 1990s by New York-based electric utility Niagara-Mohawk Power, which later became National Grid (it is the current owner of the URL shovelready.com). There are no specific parameters or requirements that define shovel readiness. But according to civil engineers, the idea behind this new buzzword could help scuttle the stimulus bill’s highly publicized, though secondary, goal of infrastructure reform. At issue is that 90-day restriction stipulated by Congress, an even narrower window than the bill’s original 180-day limit. “They’re well intentioned, and they know their infrastructure sucks, so they’re trying to do immediate reactive management to what is a very deep, endemic problem,” says Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you want to patch some potholes in the road, this is a good program. But if you’re hoping for anything long-term with this approach, throw away all hope. It can’t happen.”

The programs that would meet the bill’s 90-day restriction are, for the most part, an unappealing mix of projects that were either shelved after being fully designed and engineered, and have since become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition. No one’s building a smart electric grid or revamping a water system on 90 days notice. The best example of a shovel-ready project, and what engineers believe could become the biggest recipient of the transportation-related portion of the bill’s funding, is road resurfacing—important maintenance work, but not a meaningful way to rein in a national infrastructure crisis. …

http://www.popularmechanics.co.....02578.html

The msm vacuum must now be sealed. All sorts of publications are rushing in to do real news analysis. What next? Playboy? Redbook? Vogue?

And the information in the article is enlightening. The only really useful Shovel Ready project appears to be covering the Moron and his Idiot Mouthpiece with horse manure. Now THAT would be priceless.

So if you don’t fall in that category, the average will be about $17,000 per.

But that also includes people who pay minor amounts.

Most people reading this likely pay above average taxes, so the good news for you is you will take on debt of more than 17K (a LOT more for many of you)………..while 60 million people will be getting handouts……from you.

But not to worry. It will be worth it for the improvements in birth control, the arts, and plasma tv’s for “the poor”

it’s the radical Islam nations who use the Koran as their “tool to divide us”, not the other way around, at least not for the last 1500 years.

This guy, Allah they keep referring to – is in fact a religious diety. And that other guy, you kow the pediphile Mohammed – is also a religious figure.

I just wanted to set the record straight for any 7 year old and Obama…

Obama says faith shouldn’t be used to divide

By NATASHA T. METZLER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is telling the National Prayer Breakfast that even though faith too often has been used “as a tool to divide us from one another,” there is no religion in the world that is based on hatred.

Obama, in prepared remarks, said, “There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.”

Obama is also telling the gathering that the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that he is announcing Thursday won’t favor any religious group, or favor religious groups over secular groups.

He says it will help organizations that want to “work on behalf of our communities,” without “blurring the line” between church and state.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s.....TE=DEFAULT

“There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.”

What about the innocent child of a botched abortion? Even a child of a correctly performed abortion?

How much $$ per taxpayer?

Question: “If we just gave all the bailout money to taxpayers, how much would we each get? I’ve seen $25,000, $300,000, $1 million – what’s the real answer?” — Miranda Marquit, Logan, Utah

Answer: $9,718.49M

To arrive at that figure, CNNMoney.com took the total of the bank bailout, $700 billion, and added that to the proposed stimulus spending in the House of Representatives bill, $819 billion. That totals $1.519 trillion.
We then divide that number by 156.3 million, which was the total number of U.S. filers in 2008.

So: $1.519 trillion divided by 156.3 million equals $9,718.49 per U.S. taxpayer.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries.....index.html

Of course the better question is what the long-term net cost of this fiasco will be, and no one knows.

Meanwhile there are many, many editorial pages filling with letters from “ordinary citizens” complaining we aren’t spending enough fast enough.

Sure…