


REPUBLICANS STOPPED HILLARYCARE, AND COULD'VE STOPPED OBAMA, TOO.
EXCEPT FOR THESE THREE JERKS.
TRAITORS.
"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."
Majority Leader Reid, we ask that you publish the full legislative text of the compromise immediately, and furthermore, to delay any vote on the bill for at least five days following publication.RTS.ORG
The American public deserves time to read and understand the substance of this critical legislation, and to express their views to their Senators.
Mr. President, you have pledged that once legislation is passed by Congress, it will be placed online for public review for five days before your signature.
In the same spirit, we ask you to add your voice to those encouraging Majority Leader Reid to publish this compromise bill and to allow time for public review during the critical period before the Senate votes.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The British Pakistani community is recognised as probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against North America.
"The American security establishment believes that danger continues and there's very intimate cooperation between our security services to monitor that." Mr Riedel, who served three presidents as a Middle East expert on the White House National Security Council, added: "President Obama's national security team are well aware that this is a serious threat."
The British official said: "The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources.
"Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented."
Explaining the increase in CIA activity over the past month, Mr Riedel added: "In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack the US and the UK intelligence services now have to regard Lashkar-e-Taiba as just as serious a threat to both of our countries as al-Qaeda. They have a much more extensive base among Pakistani Diaspora communities in the UK than al–Qaeda."
Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK and was instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, a British-born al-Qaeda operative implicated in a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic, who was tracked down and killed in a US missile strike in November.
Thousands marched through the Venezuelan capital on Saturday to oppose President Hugo Chavez's plans to allow unlimited reelection for officials, including himself.
To cries of "no means no" demonstrators -- led by opposition parties and student groups -- marched 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the outskirts to the center of the Caracas.
Local media reported as many as 600,000 people took part in the protest.
The show of strength comes ahead of a February 15 poll, when Venezuelans will vote on whether to strip term limits from the constitution.
"I am voting 'no' because I don't want the president to stay in office after 2012, he wants to monopolize everything" said Rolando Gonzalez, a worker from the densely populated Catia neighborhood of Caracas.With his popularity dipping, Chavez has vowed to promote economic development and address mounting crime worries if he wins a third term.
"Those who want to go on a direct route to violence, ungovernability and chaos, should vote 'no,'" he recently remarked.
A ship suspected of carrying arms to Gaza will not be returned to Iran, Cypriot officials said Saturday, but they refused to say what exactly was found onboard the boat or whether the cargo contravened UN resolutions.
Cypriot-flagged container ship Monchegorsk suspected by US of carrying an Iranian arms shipment bound for Hamas in Gaza anchors off the Cypriot port of Limassol last week.
Photo: APCyprus inspected the Monchegorsk twice after it arrived January 29 under suspicion of ferrying weapons from Iran to Hamas in Gaza. The US military stopped the ship last month in the Red Sea, and said it found artillery shells and other arms aboard. But it could not legally detain the ship, which continued to Port Said, Egypt, and then to Cyprus.
Authorities will decide what to do with the cargo once they have finished searching the ship, Cyprus' President Dimitris Christofias said, without saying how long that could take.
STAY TUNED...
PREVENTING A RECURRENCE of the financial crisis we face today does not require new regulation of the financial system. What is required instead is an appreciation of the fact--as much as lawmakers would like to avoid it--that U.S. housing policies are the root cause of the current financial crisis. Other players--greedy investment bankers; incompetent rating agencies; irresponsible housing speculators; shortsighted homeowners; and predatory mortgage brokers, lenders, and borrowers--all played a part, but they were only following the economic incentives that government policy laid out for them.WRONG.
Obama's Preemptive StrikeAt this rate, BHO is going to alienate his base. Can't happen too soon.
Broadcasters are bracing themselves for the likelihood of three prime-time interruptions in three weeks, totaling at least three hours of prime time -- and ad breaks -- yanked.
"His economic stimulus package apparently does not extend to the TV networks," President Obama's desire to talk -- and talk, and talk -- to the American public could cost broadcast networks millions, and millions, and millions of prime-time TV dollars," one network exec noted.
Obama's reps have alerted broadcasters that the president will hold a news conference Monday, according to network execs. It's expected to eat up the first hour of prime time; that alone could cost broadcasters more than $9 million in lost ad revenue....
[...]
Of course, Obama has picked one of the biggest viewership nights of the week for his appearances...
[... ]
[Besides] the economic hit, broadcasters are worried that this kind of shock-and-awe approach to prime-time preempting might be part of an Obama strategy to charm his way to a new economic-rescue plan. "As we're meeting this guy, from a network perspective, it's like, 'Is this part of the plan for him?'" the network exec said. "Is this what it's going to be: Is he going to take to the airwaves every time he has something to say?"
Such a strategy, of course, could backfire.
[...]
Said the TV suit: "He could lose a lot of goodwill doing this."
Our civilization rests on our having enough citizens possessed of the ability to turn a nickel into a dime, and a government that keeps out of the way while they do it. Nobody in Obama’s cabinet has any idea how to turn nickels into dimes, least of all the Wealth-Eater-in-Chief. In his autobiography, Obama described his one brief experience in the world of private enterprise as a sort of endurance test—a purgatory he had to suffer before ascending to the heaven of “community organizing.” He felt, he tells us, “like a spy behind enemy lines.” Those private-sector money-grubbers, trying to squeeze some wealth out of a reluctant world—that’s the enemy in Obama’s universe. A friend would presumably be someone who squeezes wealth out of big, litigation-whipped corporations, guilty white liberals, foundations taken over by leftist ideologues, and of course the ever-milkable taxpayer.Nobody in Obama's administration has "ever done anything an ordinary citizen would recognize as work." They've never started businesses that created jobs, supervised a business, or taken a calculated business risk. And they despise the people who do.
Palin’s social conservatism had never been the core of her political identity in Alaska. She always expressed general support for traditionalist views in interviews and debates, and it was widely known that she had also chosen to proceed with her fifth pregnancy after discovering the child had Down syndrome—a discovery that in about nine of ten cases leads parents to opt for abortion. But Palin never went out of her way to raise abortion or other social or cultural issues, and in her first two years as governor had not sought to change state policies in these areas. She was a good-government reformer with social conservative leanings, not the other way around.
But this was not how Palin was received on the national scene. Instead, her views on matters of cultural and social controversy very quickly became the chief focus of media attention, liberal criticism, and pundit analysis. Palin was assigned every view and position the Left considered unenlightened, and the response to her brought into the light all manner of implicit liberal assumptions about cultural conservatives.We were told that Palin was opposed to contraception, advocated teaching creationism in schools, and was inclined to ban books she disagreed with. She was described as a religious zealot, an anti-abortion extremist, a blind champion of abstinence-only sex education. She was said to have sought to make rape victims pay for their own medical exams, to have Alaska secede from the Union, and to get Pat Buchanan elected President. She was reported to believe that the Iraq war was mandated by God, that the end-times prophesied in the Book of Revelation were nearing and only Alaska would survive, and that global warming was purely a myth. None of this was true.
Her personal life came under withering assault as well. Palin’s capacity to function as a senior elected official while raising five children was repeatedly questioned by liberal pundits who would never dare to express such views about a female candidate whose opinions were more congenial to them. Her teenage daughter’s pregnancy was splattered all over the front pages (garnering three New York Times stories in a single day on September 2). Some bloggers even suggested her youngest child had not issued from her, but from her daughter instead, and that she had participated in a bizarre cover-up.I attended a gathering in Washington at which a prominent columnist wondered aloud how Palin could pursue her career when her religious beliefs denied women the right to work outside the home.
Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism, and all concern for clarity and truthfulness was left at the door.
Iran sternly dismissed decades of U.S. policies targeting Tehran and declared Friday that the new American administration had to admit past wrongs before it could hope for reconciliation.
The comments by Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani at an international security conference in Munich appeared to be the most detailed outline yet of Tehran's expectations from President Barack Obama's administration.
"The old carrot and stick policy must be discarded," he said, alluding to Western threats and offers of rewards to coax Iran to give up nuclear activities the West views as threatening. "This is a golden opportunity for the United States."
After weeks of internal debate, the Obama administration has settled on a plan to inject billions of dollars in fresh capital into banks and entice investors to purchase their most troubled assets.
The new financial industry rescue plan, to be outlined in broad terms on Monday in a speech by the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will not require banks to increase their lending. That is despite criticism that institutions that already received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, either hoarded it or used the funds to acquire other banks.
The incentives to investors could be in the form of commitments to absorb some of the losses from any assets they purchase, should their values continue to decline. The goal is to relieve the banks of their worst assets so that private investors might then provide more capital.
Officials hope that that part of the plan is not labeled a “bad bank” administered by the government, although they expect that some might call it that.
No matter what it is called, the government would assume some of the risk of declining assets at the heart of the economic crisis. But by relying on a combination of private investors and government guarantees, the administration hopes to reduce its exposure to losses and avoid the problem of having to place a value on assets that the institutions have been unable to sell.
Tens of thousands of Americans have been bombarding the Senate with phone calls, FAXes and emails today and the Senate is feeling the heat - but 3 GOP Senators are thinking about selling out and supporting this spending bill that has almost NOTHING to do with economic stimulus, but a lot to do with wasting your tax dollars.
The three key GOP Senators who need to hear from us (try phone lines, try FAXes, try the email addresses we have listed) are: Senator Olympia Snowe (Maine), Senator Susan Collins (Maine), and Senator Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania). All the contact information you need to reach these offices ASAP:
MAINESENATOR SUSAN COLLINS - REPUBLICANDC PHONE: (202) 224-2523DC FAX: (202) 224-2693AUGUSTA PHONE: (207) 622-8414AUGUSTA FAX: (207) 622-5884EMAILS TO CONTACT:SENATOR OLYMPIA SNOWE - REPUBLICANDC PHONE: (202) 224-5344DC FAX: (202) 224-1946BOSTON PHONE: (207) 622-8292BOSTON FAX: (207) 622-7295EMAILS TO CONTACT:SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER - REPUBLICANDC PHONE: (202) 224-4254DC FAX: (202) 228-1229HARRISBURG PHONE: (717) 782-3951HARRISBURG FAX: (717) 782-4920EMAILS TO CONTACT:Scott_Hoeflich@specter.senate.govMaria_Plakoudas@specter.senate.govChristopher_Bradish@specter.senate.govthomas_dower@specter.senate.govseema_singh@specter.senate.govcorene_ashley@specter.senate.govregina_campbell@specter.senate.govgayle_mills@specter.senate.gov
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Friday said it is suspending humanitarian aid in Gaza until further notice, after Hamas seized control of its warehouses and stole 200 tons of food and supplies.
The agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel seized an aid shipment on Thursday. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
In a statement, UNRWA said 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been
delivered into Gaza on Thursday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
UNRWA said the suspension would remain in effect until the aid is returned and the agency receives credible assurances from the Hamas government that such thefts will end. There was no immediate reaction from Hamas.
Gallup: Only 38 Percent Support Obama Stimulus Plan
U.S. News & World Report, DC - Feb 4, 2009
A new Gallup poll finds that only 38 percent of Americans want the Obama stimulus plan passed without major changes.
Prodded by President Obama’s reaction to yet another dismal economic report on Friday, the Senate resumed its efforts to reach an accord on his economic stimulus plan, with Democrats calling for quick action and Republicans arguing against what they described as wasteful spending.
By mid-day, after the president called further delays “inexcusable,” the tone of the Senate debate was growing decidedly sharper, with no immediate end in sight, although the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, remained optimistic about a vote by Friday evening.
President Obama seized on Friday’s economic news — the Labor Department’s report that the unemployment rate shot up in January — to step up the pressure on the lawmakers.Obama is wrong: Actually, the delay is one reason the market is up!
The Bush administration received assets that were worth $78 billion less than the amount it invested as part of the massive infusion of capital into the country's banks, congressional investigators have found.So much for the reassurances offered by our politicians when that first bailout was legislated!
The investigators concluded that the Treasury under the federal bailout had invested $254 billion into companies but the preferred stock it got in return had a market value at the time of only $176 billion, or 69 percent of what the government paid, according to a congressional oversight panel report scheduled to be released today....
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani court declared disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan free on Friday, ending five years of house arrest for the man at the center of the world's most serious proliferation scandal.
Khan, lionized by many Pakistanis as the father of the country's atomic bomb, confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya in 2004, but was immediately pardoned by the government, although his movements were restricted to effective house arrest.
"It's a matter of joy. The judgment, by the grace of Allah, is good," Khan told reporters outside his Islamabad house soon after news of the High Court ruling broke.
"It is because of this judgment that I am speaking to you," said the 72-year-old scientist, who has been treated for prostate cancer.
Khan's detention had been relaxed over the past year and he had been allowed to meet friends and had traveled to the city of Karachi at least once under tight security.
He had also given a series of interviews to media after a new government came to power last March but was barred from speaking to reporters by a July court ruling.
Khan's lawyer Ali Zafar said the High Court had declared that he was not involved in nuclear proliferation or criminal activity and there was no case against him.
"The court has ordered that he's a free man," Zafar told Reuters.
Pakistan has never let foreign investigators question Khan, saying it had passed on all relevant information about his nuclear proliferation.
The government had for long maintained that Khan was not officially under house arrest but was being held for his own security. It was not immediately clear to what extent security agencies would still restrict his movements.
SMUGGLED BLUEPRINTS
Pakistan regards the case as closed, but U.S. and international nuclear experts investigating proliferation still want to question him.
Last year, a U.N. nuclear watchdog said Khan's network smuggled nuclear blueprints to Iran, Libya and North Korea and was active in 12 countries.
The U.S. State Department said last month it had imposed sanctions on 13 individuals and three private companies because of their involvement in Khan's network.
Khan said he was proud of what he had done for Pakistan, in making it safe from India, and said he had no need to answer to any foreign government.
"I will always be proud about what I did for Pakistan," he told reporters. "I am obliged to answer only to my government not to any foreigners," he said.
Pakistan Frees Nuclear Dealer in Snub to U.S.NO: IT WAS A SNUB TO OBAMA; HIS WEAK AND APPEASING ATTITUDE IS INVITING OUR FOES TO BECOME BOLDER.
"In November, we got our clocks cleaned," [chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Party] Bedell said. "Three months later, even in a special [election], this was a squeaker. That's good news for Republicans."A lifelong local here in Northern Virginia, I didn't expect Republican Pat Herrity to garner some 49% of the votes in this special election. Clearly, he was running as the underdog in this special election.
Leaders of both parties noted that Republicans turned out in greater proportions than Democrats....
(IsraelNN.com) Documents found in the bungled United States Consulate auction sale reveal a mammoth American effort for an overseas tour of Likud and Fatah youth leaders in 1997-1998 while the Fatah-led Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terrorist group carried out a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem.Erdan was correct to object to this throughly unacceptable intrusion. Of course, all members of the Likud youth movement should flatly object to such meetings, and refuse to attend any of them, if what the Clinton administration was doing was drawing moral equations.
The Americans paid out more than $185,000 for the tours, which included trips to Cyprus and the United States, complete with meetings with senior Congressmen and provisions for enjoying the World Cup on television.
Ten years later, the American government still is trying to promote joint meetings. Last December, ACYPL hosted six young PA leaders - without a Jewish party - in Washington for a 10-day State Department-funded program "following Phase I of the Likud-Fatah dialogue."
[...]
American officials engineered the event despite protests from Likud officials that it directly intervened in Israel's political affairs and that it worked around Likud opposition to the event's taking place outside Israel.
A USIA document shows how the Americans pressed ahead with the program despite objections from Likud Youth Wing leader Gilad Erdan, now a Likud Knesset Member.
In April 1998, a USIA document states, "Arden [sic] said it would be a big problem to move ahead on this seminar…We then discusses the situation with Arden's predecessor [Uri Aloni who] felt strongly that his response should not be permitted to derail the overall initiative."
All six of the Fatah participants had been imprisoned from two to eight years for links with terrorist attacks on Israelis. The USIS pointed out that ineligibility should be waived for one of the participants because "no one was hurt" in his firebombing attacks although a judge had stated, "It was only luck that no one hurt."
[...]
The series of dialogues included a meeting in Ramallah, which was called off due to a suicide bombing in Jerusalem.
Erdan complained at the time to then-American Ambassador that the Jerusalem Consulate intervened in Likud's affairs.
"The consul assured me that the program would be frozen for the moment" because of the event's taking place outside of the U.S. Erdan wrote. "To my astonishment, I learned…that your Embassy has arranged travel to the U.S…. Young Likud protests strongly against this deliberate intrusion by the Consulate into the internal affairs of the Likud."
OBAMA IS DOING JUST WHAT WE SAID HE WOULD:Panetta Hearing [Marc Thiessen]
Panetta just said that if they caught Osama bin Laden, they would find a place to hold him briefly, give him access to the International Red Cross, and use the Army Field Manual to question him.
If we had followed this policy when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, we would have gotten no information from him – and America would have been attacked again.
IN JUST A FEW WEEKS HE'S ALREADY THE WORST PRESDIENT OF ALL TIME.
Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that currently apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.Mr. Frank said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies.“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.
The Czech Republic has been strongly criticised by Europe's leading human rights body for continuing to surgically castrate male sex offenders.I THINK THEY SHOULD CUT THE BALLS OFF SCUM LIKE THIS.
The Council of Europe said castrations had sometimes been performed without warnings of side effects and on men not capable of making an informed decision.
Those requesting castration feared life in jail if they did not do so, it said.
The Czech government says 94 procedures have been performed in the past 10 years, all in accordance with its laws.
A further 300 Czech men have undergone chemical castration - involving the injection of drugs that suppress the production of male hormones - since 2000, according to government figures.
But the Council of Europe said Czech officials had provided "inexact information" on the numbers of those undergoing the procedures.
'Degrading treatment'
BBC Europe reporter Dominic Hughes says surgical castration - under which part of the testicles is removed - has been abandoned in many other countries because it is not clear whether it is effective in treating sex offenders.
Other countries, including Poland, Italy and France, seeking ways of dealing with violent sex offenders and paedophiles, have investigated using chemical castration methods.
But in the past decade the authorities in the Czech Republic have continued to carry out the surgical procedure, which the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture said amounted to "degrading treatment".
each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
That's why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress.