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January 17, 2010

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LET'S SEE

What Had Been Happening

In Haiti

A water delivery truck driver said he was attacked in one of the city's slums.

Haitians are carrying stones, knives, ice-picks and hammers, to break into wrecked premises and slash open boxes to grab T-shirts, bags, toys and other items.

Hundreds of scavengers and looters swarmed over the wrecks of shops, carrying off anything they could find and occasionally fighting among themselves for a prized item.

Looters have begun raiding food and medical supplies.

Medical personnel were advised to leave because of threats of harm to them.

On a back street in Port-au-Prince, a half-dozen young men ripped water pipes off walls.

One of the recent Haitian "refugees" made it to JFK Airport and caused alarms to sound, requiring all passengers, on the ground and in the planes, as well as aircrews and employees to evacuate the airport immediately and then go through a total re-scanning.

Residents arm themselves in town 12 miles from epicenter.

There was a bank robbery.

There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man, whose body was left on the street.

U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the capital said popular anger was rising and warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting.

Water and food supplies were looted and those delivering them were mugged.

(Well, it's so nice to see that the Haitian people are so receptive to all the help that is being sent their way. They are so receptive that 7,000 U.N. "peacekeepers" and 9,000 U.S. military are there to ensure that the volunteers who are doing ALL the work can proceed in safety!)

U.N.'S WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION EYEING GLOBAL TAX
ON BANKING, INTERNET ACTIVITY

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

Such a scheme could raise "tens of billions of dollars" on behalf of the United Nations' public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

The multibillion-dollar "indirect consumer tax" is only one of a "suite of proposals" for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry that will go before WHO's 34-member supervisory Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.

The idea is the most lucrative - and probably the most controversial - of a number of schemes proposed by a 25-member panel of medical experts, academics and health care bureaucrats who have been working for the past 14 months at WHO's behest on "new and innovative sources of funding" to accomplish major shifts in the production of medical R&D.

WHO's so-called Expert Working Group has also suggested asking rich countries to set aside fixed portions of their gross domestic product to finance the shift in worldwide research and development, as well as asking cash-rich developing nations like China, India or Venezuela to pony up more of the money.

These would also add billions in additional funds to international health care for the future - as much as $7.4 billion yearly from rich countries, and as much as $12.1 billion from low- and middle-income nations.

But the taxation ideas draw the most interest. The expert panel cites a number of possible examples. Among them:

-a 10 per cent tax on the international arms trade, "which might net about $5 billion per annum";

-a "digital tax or 'hit' tax." The report says the levy "could yield tens of billions of U.S. dollars from a broad base of users";

-a financial transaction tax. The report approvingly cites a levy in Brazil that charged 0.38 percent on bills paid online and on unspecified "major withdrawals." The report says the Brazilian tax was raising an estimated $20 billion per year until it was cancelled for unspecified reasons.

The panel concludes that "taxes would provide greater certainty once in place than voluntary contributions," even as the report urges WHO's executive board to promote all of the alternatives, and more, to support creation of a "global health research and innovation coordination and funding mechanism" for the planned revolution in medical research, development and distribution.

The WHO scheme to transfer impressive amounts of money, technology, patents and manufacturing ability to the developing world in a global battle to conquer disease looks similar in many respects to the calls for huge transfers of wealth and technology that were at the heart of the just-failed U.N.-sponsored conference on lowering greenhouse gas emissions at Copenhagen.

Indeed, the volume of revenues that the experts foresee from their global indirect tax - if it should ever be approved by enough national governments - might well come close to the $30 billion annual wealth transfer that rich nations approved at Copenhagen to hand over to poor countries until 2012.

But a global health tax would go one big step further. And, as the experts point out, one trail-blazing version of their global consumer tax for medical research already exists: a germinating program known as UNITAID, which aims to battle against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

UNITAID, which began in 2006 and is also hosted by WHO, is financed in part by a "solidarity contribution" levy of anywhere from $1.20 to $58 on airline tickets among a group of nations led by France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and Britain. According to the WHO experts report, it has raised around $1 billion since its inception, with 13 countries having already passed the airline tax legislation and "several" others in the process of doing so.

The idea, as with the "indirect" taxes that WHO is about to consider, is that a relatively small consumer levy, once implemented, is a low-profile and relatively painless way to create a global health-care tax system.

UNITAID's board chairman, Philippe Douste-Blazy, a former French Cabinet Minister and currently special advisor to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on "innovative financing for development," is also a member of the WHO expert working group.

The global financial mechanism that the experts have been exploring is the keystone to WHO's entire program for the transformation of the world's health industry, which was endorsed as a "global strategy and plan of action" by the health organization's World Assembly in May 2008.

The plan includes more than 100 specific actions across the areas of research and development, technology transfer and intellectual property rights, among others, according to an update that will also be presented to the executive board next week.

New regional and national networks for medical innovation and development are being planned in Asia, Latin America and Africa - where, for example, there will be "African-led product research and development innovation," including delivery of drugs based on traditional medicines.

Another major effort is the transfer of technology to poorer countries to produce vaccines. One example: H1N1 flu vaccine, which is being manufactured in China, India and Thailand under licensing arrangements created under WHO auspices.

After WHO issued repeated warnings of a serious H1N1 influenza pandemic over the past two years, countries such as Britain and France ordered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of vaccine, only to decide that they were unnecessary, leading to mass cancellations of orders. WHO is reviewing how it handled the crisis.

According to the WHO update, the U.N. organization is already promoting transfers of new medical products for vaccines against rabies, even though that disease is now something of a rarity in the West.

A significant aim of the WHO effort is expanding production and distribution of remedies for what it calls "neglected diseases," mainly meaning those that are more common in poor, underdeveloped countries than in richer ones. These include a variety of parasitic ailments, including trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness.

Behind all of the effort is the "persistent and growing concern," as the expert's paper puts it, that "the benefits of the advances in health technology are not reaching the poor," which the paper calls "one of the more egregious manifestations of inequity."

As with "climate change" at Copenhagen, the WHO's experts see that health inequity as a malady that innovative and permanent forms of global taxation are just the right thing to help cure.

(Friggin' U.N.!

Once again (and I'm getting tired of saying this) "GET THE U.S. OUT OF THE U.N. AND GET THE U.N. OUT OF THE U.S.!!")

MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY?

You Gotta Be Kidding!

Even our Presidents don't have their own day anymore!!

When the communists took over a country, one of the first things that they did was to confiscate all the privately-held weapons, to deny the people the physical ability to resist tyranny. But even more insidious than the theft of the people's weapons was the theft of their history. Official Communist "historians" rewrote history to fit the current party line. In many countries, revered national heroes were excised from the history books, or their real deeds were distorted to fit Communist ideology, and Communist killers and criminals were converted into official "saints." Holidays were declared in honor of the beasts who murdered countless nations.

Did you know that much the same process has occurred right here in America?

Every January, the media go into a kind of almost spastic frenzy of adulation for the so-called "Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr." King has even had a national holiday declared in his honor, an honor accorded to no other American, not Washington, not Jefferson, not Lincoln. (Washington and Lincoln no longer have holidays - they share the generic-sounding "President's Day.") A liberal judge has sealed the FBI files on King until the year 2027. What are they hiding? Let's take a look at this modern-day plastic god.

Born in 1929, King was the son of a Black preacher known at the time only as "Daddy King." "Daddy King" named his son Michael. In 1935, "Daddy King" had an inspiration to name himself after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. He declared to his congregation that henceforth they were to refer to him as "Martin Luther King" and to his son as "Martin Luther King, Jr." None of this name changing was ever legalized in court. "Daddy" King's son's real name is to this day Michael King.

KING'S BRAZEN CHEATING

We read in Michael Hoffman's "Holiday for a Cheater":

The first public sermon that King ever gave, in 1947 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, was plagiarized from a homily by Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick entitled "Life is What You Make It", according to the testimony of King's best friend of that time, Reverend Larry H. Williams.

The first book that King wrote, "Stride Toward Freedom", was plagiarized from numerous sources, all unattributed, according to documentation recently assembled by sympathetic King scholars Keith D. Miller, Ira G. Zepp, Jr., and David J. Garrow.

And no less an authoritative source than the four senior editors of "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.", (an official publication of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., whose staff includes King's widow Coretta), stated of King's writings at both Boston University and Crozer Theological Seminary: "Judged retroactively by the standards of academic scholarship, [his writings] are tragically flawed by numerous instances of plagiarism.... Appropriated passages are particularly evident in his writings in his major field of graduate study, systematic theology."

King's essay, "The Place of Reason and Experience in Finding God", written at Crozer, pirated passages from the work of theologian Edgar S. Brightman, author of "The Finding of God."

Another of King's theses, "Contemporary Continental Theology", written shortly after he entered Boston University, was largely stolen from a book by Walter Marshall Horton.

King's doctoral dissertation, "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Harry Nelson Wieman", for which he was awarded a PhD in theology, contains more than fifty complete sentences plagiarized from the PhD dissertation of Dr. Jack Boozer, "The Place of Reason in Paul Tillich's Concept of God."

According to "The Martin Luther King Papers", in King's dissertation "only 49 per cent of sentences in the section on Tillich contain five or more words that were King's own...."!

In "The Journal of American History", June 1991, page 87, David J. Garrow, a leftist academic who is sympathetic to King, says that King's wife, Coretta Scott King, who also served as his secretary, was an accomplice in his repeated cheating. ("King's Plagiarism: Imitation, Insecurity and Transformation", The Journal of American History, June 1991, p. 87)

Reading Garrow's article, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that King cheated because he had chosen for himself a political role in which a PhD would be useful, and, lacking the intellectual ability to obtain the title fairly, went after it by any means necessary. Why, then, one might ask, did the professors at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University grant him passing grades and a PhD? Garrow states on page 89: "King's academic compositions, especially at Boston University, were almost without exception little more than summary descriptions... and comparisons of other's writings. Nonetheless, the papers almost always received desirable letter grades, strongly suggesting that King's professors did not expect more...." The editors of "The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers" state that "...the failure of King's teachers to notice his pattern of textual appropriation is somewhat remarkable...."

But researcher Michael Hoffman tells us "...actually the malfeasance of the professors is not at all remarkable. King was politically correct, he was Black, and he had ambitions. The leftist [professors were] happy to award a doctorate to such a candidate no matter how much fraud was involved. Nor is it any wonder that it has taken forty years for the truth about King's record of nearly constant intellectual piracy to be made public."

Supposed scholars, who in reality shared King's vision of a racially mixed and Marxist America, purposely covered up his cheating for decades. The cover-up still continues. From the "New York Times" of October 11, 1991, page 15, we learn that on October 10th of that year, a committee of researchers at Boston University admitted that, "There is no question but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation." However, despite its finding, the committee said that "No thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree", an action the panel said "would serve no purpose."

No purpose, indeed! Justice demands that, in light of his willful fraud as a student, the "reverend" and the "doctor" should be removed from King's name.

COMMUNIST BELIEFS AND CONNECTIONS

Well friends, he is not a legitimate reverend, he is not a bona fide PhD, and his name isn't really "Martin Luther King, Jr." What's left? Just a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people.

On Labor Day, 1957, a special meeting was attended by Martin Luther King and four others at a strange institution called the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The Highlander Folk School was a Communist front, having been founded by Myles Horton (Communist Party organizer for Tennessee) and Don West (Communist Party organizer for North Carolina). The leaders of this meeting with King were the aforementioned Horton and West, along with Abner Berry and James Dumbrowski, all open and acknowledged members of the Communist Party, USA. The agenda of the meeting was a plan to tour the Southern states to initiate demonstrations and riots.

From 1955 to 1960, Martin Luther King's associate, advisor, and personal secretary was one Bayard Rustin. In 1936 Rustin joined the Young Communist League at New York City College. Convicted of draft-dodging, he went to prison for two years in 1944. On January 23, 1953 the "Los Angeles Times" reported his conviction and sentencing to jail for 60 days for lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion. Rustin attended the 16th Convention of the Communist Party, USA in February, 1957. One month later, he and King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC for short. The president of the SCLC was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The vice-president of the SCLC was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was also the president of an identified Communist front known as the Southern Conference Educational Fund, an organization whose field director, a Mr. Carl Braden, was simultaneously a national sponsor of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which you may have heard. The program director of the SCLC was the Reverend Andrew Young, in more recent years Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the UN and mayor of Atlanta. Young, by the way, was trained at the Highlander Folk School, previously mentioned.

Soon after returning from a trip to Moscow in 1958, Rustin organized the first of King's famous marches on Washington. The official organ of the Communist Party, "The Worker,", openly declared the march to be a Communist project. Although he left King's employ as secretary in 1961, Rustin was called upon by King to be second in command of the much larger march on Washington which took place on August 28, 1963.

Bayard Rustin's replacement in 1961 as secretary and advisor to King was Jack O'Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O'Dell. According to official records, in 1962 Jack O'Dell was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA. He had been listed as a Communist Party member as early as 1956. O'Dell was also given the job of acting executive director for SCLC activities for the entire Southeast, according to the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat ", of October 26, 1962. At that time, there were still some patriots in the press corps, and word of O'Dell's party membership became known.

What did King do? Shortly after the negative news reports, King fired O'Dell with much fanfare. And he then, without the fanfare, "immediately hired him again", as director of the New York office of the SCLC, as confirmed by the "Richmond News-Leader ", of September 27, 1963. In 1963 a Black man from Monroe, North Carolina named Robert Williams made a trip to Peking, China. Exactly 20 days before King's 1963 march on Washington, Williams successfully urged Mao Tse-Tung to speak out on behalf of King's movement. Mr. Williams was also around this time maintaining his primary residence in Cuba, from which he made regular broadcasts to the southern US, three times a week, from high-power AM transmitters in Havana under the title "Radio Free Dixie." In these broadcasts, he urged violent attacks by Blacks against White Americans.

During this period, Williams wrote a book entitled "Negroes With Guns." The writer of the foreword for this book? None other than Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also interesting to note that the editors and publishers of this book were to a man all supporters of the infamous Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

According to King's biographer and sympathizer David J. Garrow, "King privately described himself as a Marxist." In his 1981 book, "The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.", Garrow quotes King as saying in SCLC staff meetings, "...we have moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution.... The whole structure of American life must be changed.... We are engaged in the class struggle."

Jewish Communist Stanley Levison can best be described as King's behind-the-scenes "handler." Levison, who had for years been in charge of the secret funneling of Soviet funds to the Communist Party, USA, was King's mentor and was actually the brains behind many of King's more successful ploys. It was Levison who edited King's book, "Stride Toward Freedom." It was Levison who arranged for a publisher. Levison even prepared King's income tax returns! It was Levison who really controlled the fund-raising and agitation activities of the SCLC. Levison wrote many of King's speeches. King described Levison as one of his "closest friends."

FBI: KING BOUGHT SEX WITH SCLC MONEY

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had for many years been aware of Stanley Levison's Communist activities. It was Levison's close association with King that brought about the initial FBI interest in King.

Lest you be tempted to believe the controlled media's lie about "racists" in the FBI being out to "get" King, you should be aware that the man most responsible for the FBI's probe of King was Assistant Director William C. Sullivan. Sullivan describes himself as a liberal, and says that initially "I was one hundred per cent for King...because I saw him as an effective and badly needed leader for the Black people in their desire for civil rights." The probe of King not only confirmed their suspicions about King's Communist beliefs and associations, but it also revealed King to be a despicable hypocrite, an immoral degenerate, and a worthless charlatan.

According to Assistant Director Sullivan, who had direct access to the surveillance files on King which are denied the American people, King had embezzled or misapplied substantial amounts of money contributed to the "civil rights" movement. King used SCLC funds to pay for liquor, and numerous prostitutes both Black and White, who were brought to his hotel rooms, often two at a time, for drunken sex parties which sometimes lasted for several days. These types of activities were the norm for King's speaking and organizing tours.

In fact, an outfit called The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, which is putting on display the two bedrooms from the Lorraine Motel where King stayed the night before he was shot, has declined to depict in any way the "occupants ", of those rooms. That "according to exhibit designer Gerard Eisterhold "would be "close to blasphemy." The reason? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent his last night on Earth having sex with two women at the motel and physically beating and abusing a third.

Sullivan also stated that King had alienated the affections of numerous married women. According to Sullivan, who in 30 years with the Bureau had seen everything there was to be seen of the seamy side of life, King was one of only seven people he had ever encountered who was such a total degenerate.

Noting the violence that almost invariably attended King's supposedly "non-violent" marches, Sullivan's probe revealed a very different King from the carefully crafted public image. King welcomed members of many different Black groups as members of his SCLC, many of them advocates and practitioners of violence. King's only admonition on the subject was that they should embrace "tactical nonviolence."

Sullivan also relates an incident in which King met in a financial conference with Communist Party representatives, not knowing that one of the participants was an infiltrator actually working for the FBI.

J. Edgar Hoover personally saw to it that documented information on King's Communist connections was provided to the President and to Congress. And conclusive information from FBI files was also provided to major newspapers and news wire services. But were the American people informed of King's real nature? No, for even in the 1960s, the fix was in "the controlled media and the bought politicians were bound and determined to push their racial mixing program on America. King was their man and nothing was going to get in their way. With a few minor exceptions, these facts have been kept from the American people. The pro-King propaganda machine grinds on, and it is even reported that a serious proposal has been made to add some of King's writings as a new book in the Bible.

U.S. OFFICIAL:

Violence In Haiti

Hindering aid work

Incidents of violence in Haiti have hindered rescue workers trying to help earthquake victims, a top official leading the U.S. government's relief efforts said Sunday.

Providing humanitarian aid requires a safe and secure environment, said Lt. Gen. Ken Keen of the U.S. Southern Command. While streets have been calm, he said, violence has been increasing.

"We are going to have to address the situation of security," Keen said. "We've had incidents of violence that impede our ability to support the government of Haiti and answer the challenges that this country faces."

Keen said about 1,000 U.S. troops are in Haiti and that 3,000 more are working from ships. More than 12,000 U.S. forces are expected to be in the region by Monday.

Looters and robbers has been one of the factors slowing the delivery of aid. After Tuesday's earthquake, maintaining law and order fell to the 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers and international police already in Haiti even though those forces also sustained heavy losses in the disaster.

Keen said U.S. forces are working with U.N. peacekeepers and that local police are beginning to assist in providing security.

On Sunday, the White House said Barack Obama had issued an order allowing selected members of the military's reserves to be called up to support operations in Haiti. Signed Saturday, the executive order permits the Defense Department and Homeland Security Department to tap reserve medical personnel and a Coast Guard unit that will help provide port security. More than 250 medical personnel from the Health and Human Services Department are already in Haiti.

Rescue efforts and getting food, water and medical supplies to earthquake victims were the focus of efforts Sunday, U.S. officials said.

An estimated 100,000 or more people may have died in the magnitude-7.0 quake. As of Sunday, the State Department said the total number of confirmed U.S. death was 16, including one embassy worker.

Rajiv Shah, who leads the U.S. Agency for International Development, said U.S. relief workers are also trying to rescue people from under the damaged and destroyed buildings.

"Our first priority was to go in with urban search and rescue teams," said Shah, who visited Haiti on Saturday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "They work around the clock to try and save lives."

Rescuers, he said, still hoped to find more survivors buried in the rubble.

"On next priority, which started in parallel, was getting those commodities down there and making sure we have the food, water, shelter and basic needs met for the people of Haiti," Shah said.

International search and rescue teams are looking for earthquake survivors around the clock as officials running the rescue effort get closer to shifting to a recovery operation.

There have been 62 live rescues, Tim Callaghan of the U.S. Agency for International Development's foreign disaster assistance office said Sunday. American search and rescue teams had performed 29 of those rescues.

"We are still in rescue mode," Callaghan said in a conference call with reporters. He said the decision to move to recovery will be made by the Haitian government. "Obviously we're getting closer to that painful decision of moving from searching for people to recovery," Callaghan said.

Air Force Col. Buck Elton, commander of the U.S. forces directing flights at Haiti's airport, told reporters that 24 patients have been brought to the airfield for treatment. Of those, 16 were Americans with what Elton described as "crush injuries."

Elton said the ability to get flights in and out was improving steadily. He said the rush of supplies and aid from other countries initially overwhelmed the airport's limited capacity. Decisions also have to be made on which cargo is the highest priority and needs to come in right away.

Elton said about 60 percent of the flights coming in are civilian and 40 percent are military. The Port-au-Prince airfield's capacity is up to 100 aircraft per day, and 30 military helicopters are delivering supplies across the country.

National Security Council aide Dennis McDonough said the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Oak arrived Sunday with heavy cranes and other machinery to get Haiti's main shipping port up and running. The port was heavily damaged by the earthquake and is central flow point for fuel.

(Well, wadda ya know! Someone in an "authority position" has finally had the balls to announce that the Haitians are their worst enemy, and that THEY are responsible for the delay and difficulty in getting needed supplies distributed!)

THE LATEST QUOTES FROM HAITI

"We don't need military aid. What we need is food and shelter." (From a citizen of Haiti.)

"White guys, get the hell out!" (From a citizen of Haiti.)

"I ain't gonna talk about Haiti anymore, unless they kill an American GI while he is trying to help them." (From me...)

ONCE AGAIN, GREAT SATAN COMES TO THE RESCUE

As you may know, anti-American people overseas call the USA the "Great Satan," even though America's record would shame the devil. We have done more good on this Earth than any other nation in history. And once again, the USA has responded big to a disaster taking charge in Haiti, as the American military tries to save as many lives as possible.

Obama has pledged $100 million to help the Haitian people. That's in addition to the almost $3 billion we've already give that nation since 1992. The Heritage Foundation estimates that before it's all over, the USA will pour another billion dollars into Haiti. That counts military expenditures and infrastructure rebuilding.

By comparison, the benevolent nation of China has pledged a little more than $5 million in cash and aid. I mean, how generous is that?

Russia pledging one mobile hospital and 20 doctors. Putin's another Mother Teresa, isn't he?

That great humanitarian Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is sending one plane full of relief supplies. You know what, Hugo? Keep your stupid plane.

Iran is sending 30 tons of food and medicine, a pittance.

So far, Saudi Arabia, a very wealthy nation, has pledged nothing.

So you can see who the good guy in the world really is. Without America, this planet would really be in a shambles.

But don't tell that to the far left. Danny Glover, who could be a nut, accuses the USA of actually harming Haiti. Unbelievable.

And on the right, there are still people pounding Obama for reacting quickly to the Haiti earthquake. That's dumb as well.

There is no question that we Americans are the most generous people on Earth. "Talking Points" will predict that private donations from us will top $100 million. That's in addition to our tax money that's being sent.

Also, American corporations like Google and Microsoft have already contributed almost $45 million, and that will go up.

Now if you want to give money to the Haitian people, I suggest the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders or the Haitian Health Foundation. That's a charity "The Factor" has contributed to for years. Information about the Haitian Health Foundation is on BillOReilly.com.

So all in all, the Great Satan has come through again. I remain very proud of my country, and I will challenge anyone who doesn't feel the same way.

(How come I haven't heard any Haitians say, "White guys, get the hell out and take your food, money and medicine with you!")

IT'S BARRETT-JACKSON TIME!

So don't expect too much from me for the next few days...

IT DIDN'T

Take Them

Very long!

A little before noon on the 19th I received a video of a "democratic" woman handing out blank absentee ballots and instructing the recipients as to how to mark the ballot for the democratic candidate!

Some of the ballots already had the democratic candidate selected!

How much you wanna bet she gets away with it?

How much you wanna bet she is going to lose?

WHY LIBERALS ARE PROFESSORS

An article in Monday's New York Times tried to explain "the overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors." The conclusion: It's not discrimination against conservatives, it's just type-casting by conservatives!

Yes, apparently conservatives don't want to be professors, the same way men don't want to be nurses. Righties abhor tweed the way dudes reject Dansko scuff-proof clogs. One researcher calls this political typecasting and includes journalism, art, fashion and therapy as other jobs righties avoid.

Instead, conservatives head toward medicine, law enforcement, the military and late-night shows about unicorns.

Think about that: The left gravitates toward fashion and therapy; the right toward medicine and might. What does this tell you? Well, with the lefty jobs, it's impossible to create guidelines for success. Look at modern art — they all suck.

In the jobs favored by the right, standards are drawn. You can assess the difference between a good and a bad doctor simply by the number of sponges left in your lower intestine (I have three).

But the real reason why professors are liberals? Tenure. I mean, imagine if you had a guaranteed job for, like, ever. That means your actions are never tested in the real world. Instead, you can blather about how America is responsible for all the world's problems and what a "cool dude" Che Guevara was. And no one cares.

The fact is, if we actually measured the success of liberal ideas throughout history it just wouldn't be fair to liberals. Which is why liberals become historians.

HE DRIVES A PICK-UP WITH 200,000 MILES ON IT

And, he is the new Senator from Mass-a-two-shits!

It looks as if the worm has turned. Considering this election and the previous three, Obama and crew are no longer "America's Salvation"!

It is possible that Americans do not want to see America go through a "fundamental change"!

I think that November 2010 is going to be an interesting month...

BARRETT-JACKSON'S FIRST DAY

Was a total bummer!

For 5 hours I watched as tons and tons of really piss-poor vehicles crossed the auction platform.

Mismatched numbers, cracked paint, peeling chrome, body cancer and make-believes rolled onto the ramp and rolled off again.

And for the first time years I didn't see a single vehicle I would want to own, even in my worst nightmare!

I sure hope things improve...

SAUDI TEEN

Sentenced To 90 Lashes

For cell phone in school

A teenage girl in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 90 lashes and two months in prison for taking a cell phone to school.

The 13-year-old's punishment, harsher than that given to some robbers and looters, requires her to be flogged in front of her classmates.

She was reportedly hiding a cell phone in class, breaking strict Saudi regulations banning their use in girls' schools.

Saudi Arabia is the world's leading country in the use of torture-by-flogging, and religious police keep a close watch over public behavior.

In September, twenty Saudi teenagers who ransacked shops and restaurants were flogged in public.

(Well, waddayaknow! The Saudis aren't all that bad!!

Now, 90 lashes and 2 months in jail is kind of harsh. I would have made it 5 lashes and 2 months of home confinement, plus another 5 for each parent for allowing her to bring the phone to school.

Also, I wouldn't limit it to only girl students. I would have it for ALL students!)

THE STIMULUS WORKS...

...at least for one person. Who? Penn State University's Michael Mann, a climate scientist whose credibility has come into question. He's the guy behind Al Gore's famous "hockey stick" graph, which has been discredited.

Mann was also a central figure in the Climate-Gate email scandal, which showed prominent global warming alarmists to be fudging the data and squelching dissent.

According to today's Wall Street Journal, more than $2.4 million is "stimulating" the career of Michael Mann:

"Mr. Mann came by his grants via the National Science Foundation, which received $3 billion in stimulus money. Last June, the foundation approved a $541,184 grant to fund [Mann's] work [...] He received another grant worth nearly $1.9 million [...] Both grants say they were "funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

I assumed the deceit reveled by the emails and hockey stick error would mean my tax dollars will stop going to someone like Mann. I assume wrong:

"The NSF made these awards prior to last year's climate email scandal, but a member of its Office of Legislative and Public Affairs told us she was "unaware of any discussion regarding suspending or changing the awards made to Michael Mann."

Give me a break.

BRAWL IN MEXICAN PRISON LEAVES 23 DEAD

Prison officials say 23 inmates are dead and several others injured after a fight in a northern Mexico penitentiary.

Prison spokeswoman Carla Puente says the fight broke out early Wednesday at the state prison in Durango, which houses 2,025 inmates.

Puente said Wednesday she did not know the specific number of injuries, nor the reason for the fight, which was quelled by guards.

(I bet the prison guards broke-up the riot ... that is the real crime here!

My feelings are that if prisoners want to riot, let them ... until they decide to end it.

Then make the survivors clean-up the mess and bury the dead.

And, oh, the care of the injured should also be a job assigned to those who were not injured.

This also goes for all prisons in the U.S.!)

TEACHER ARRESTED IN NEW YORK

A public school teacher was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass, a slide-rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, the Attorney General said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-Gebra is a problem for us," the Attorney General said. "They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values. They use secret code names like 'X' and 'Y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns,', but we have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country."

As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "There are three sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, Obama said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the Obama; It is believed that another Nobel Prize will follow.

CHRYSLER MAY MERGE WITH ITALY'S LANCIA IN 2010

In an interview with Britain's Autocar.co.uk, Fiat/Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne indicated that the Chrysler line of cars could "converge" with the Fiat-owned Lancia brand by the end of the year.

(Like who really gives a shit?)

U.S. AGREES TO TIMETABLE FOR UN GUN BAN

The United Nations and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are moving forward with their plan to confiscate your guns.

The United States joined 152 other countries in support of the Arms Trade Treaty Resolution, which establishes the dates for the 2012 UN conference intended to attack American sovereignty by stripping Americans of the right to keep and bear arms.

Working groups of anti-gun countries will begin scripting language for the conference this year, creating a blueprint for other countries when they meet at the full conference.

The stakes couldn't be higher.

Former United Nation's ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners about the Arms Trade Treaty and says the UN "is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there’s no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control."

Establishing the dates for the Arms Trade Treaty Conference is just the first step toward their plans for total gun confiscation.

The worldwide gun control mob will ensure the passage of an egregious, anti-gun treaty...........and that's where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps in.

Once the UN Gun Ban is passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations it must be ratified by each nation, including the United States.

As an arch enemy of gun owners, Clinton has pledged to push the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty. She will push for passage of this outrageous treaty designed to register, ban and CONFISCATE firearms owned by private citizens like YOU.

That’s why it’s vital you sign the special petition I've made up for your signature that DEMANDS your U.S. Senators vote AGAINST ratification of the UN’s "Small Arms Treaty."

So far, the gun-grabbers have successfully kept the exact wording of their new scheme under wraps.

But looking at previous versions of the UN "Small Arms Treaty," you and I can get a good idea of what’s likely in the works.

Don't let any of the "experts" lull you to sleep by saying "Oh, we have it handled" or "Until you know exactly what's in the treaty you can't fight against it."

Judging by Ambassador Bolton's comments - who certainly knows what to expect from the American-freedom-hating international crowd that infests the U.N. - we are certain the treaty's going to address the private ownership of firearms.

If passed by the UN and ratified by the U.S. Senate (which is where we must ultimately make our stand), the UN "Small Arms Treaty" would almost certainly FORCE national governments to:

*** Enact tougher licensing requirements, making law-abiding citizens cut through even more bureaucratic red tape just to own a firearm legally;

*** CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL "unauthorized" civilian firearms (all firearms owned by the government are excluded, of course);

*** BAN the trade, sale and private ownership of ALL semi-automatic weapons;

*** Create an INTERNATIONAL gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun CONFISCATION. So please click here to sign the petition to your U.S. Senators before it’s too late!

You see, this is NOT a fight we can afford to lose.

Here's what you can do to help the National Association for Gun Rights fight Hillary Clinton and her United Nations cronies:

Click here and sign our petition to DEMAND that your United States Senators vote AGAINST the United Nations Small Arms Treaty.

Forward this e-mail to your friends and relatives who share your concern for American sovereignty and protecting our right to keep and bear arms.

Please consider making a generous contribution to the National Association for Gun Rights to help us fight Hillary Clinton and the United Nations "Small Arms Treaty."

Without your help and support, the National Association for Gun Rights cannot defeat this measure.

Thank you in advance for your support.

BARRETT-JACKSON'S SECOND DAY

Was another total bummer!

Unless, of course, you like Cobra Kit Cars or "Honor Cars" (honor cars are when someone takes a plane Jane Chevy or Ford, drops a big engine in it, and then sticks all kinds of performance decals and emblems on the outside with things like "Z-28", "Hemi 'Cuda", "GTO", and other reminders that American once made real cars).

They did have one car that I liked, however ... and of all things, it was a Chevy!

A real live 1970 Chevy Chevelle 396 SS! A beautiful car, and it sold for only $74,000.00!

PALIN AND MCCAIN TO HIT CAMPAIGN TRAIL AGAIN

Sarah Palin and Sen. John McCain plan to campaign together again.

The Arizona Republican announced Wednesday that the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate will join him in Phoenix on March 26 to help campaign for his re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Palin is scheduled to attend a private fundraising event that evening. The next day, she and McCain will appear together at a public event, likely a rally, according to McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan.

"I'm looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail with my former running mate, and I know my fellow Arizonans will welcome her, as well," McCain said in a statement. "Sarah energized our nation and remains a leading voice in the Republican Party."

Since their failed bid for the White House, McCain and Palin have had a couple of public appearances together, including a dinner in Washington. But the March events will mark the first time the pair will be on the campaign trail together since 2008, Buchanan said.

Palin has criticized McCain's campaign since their loss, saying in her book "Going Rogue" that there was substantial tension between her advisers and McCain's. She also details how she was prevented from delivering a concession speech in Phoenix on Election Night, and how she'd been kept "bottled up" from reporters during the campaign.

Palin hasn't criticized McCain himself, and the senator has stood by his decision to choose Palin as his running mate and has staunchly defended her.

Earlier this month, McCain refused to discuss material in "Game Change," a book that says Palin's vetting was "hasty and haphazard."

"I wouldn't know," McCain said on NBC's "Today" show. "The fact is, I'm proud of Sarah Palin and I'm proud of the campaign she waged. She energized our party."

During the interview, McCain predicted Palin will be a "major player" in GOP affairs.

(I guess Sarah isn't as smart as I thought she was!

Even her remotest association with John "Two Time Loser" McCain will have a negative effect on any of her political aspirations, if she has any!

If McCain really wants to have his senatorial seat, all he has to do is support the greatest sheriff in the country!)

MORE FROM SARAH

Former governor analyzes the Mass. Senate election

Sarah Palin opens up about her private life

SPARKS FLY

As 'Courting Disaster' Author

Clashes with CNN's Amanpour

Sparks flew on CNN’s Amanpour, when conservative author Marc Thiessen directly challenged the CNN’s chief international correspondent with evidence that she had misled her viewers about the CIA’s waterboarding techniques. A stunned Amanpour was left momentarily speechless as Thiessen pulled out a transcript from a 2008 CNN broadcast from the Khmer Rouge prison S-21, where Amanpour had stood before a picture of Khmer Rouge torturers drowning an innocent Cambodian in a vat of water, and declared that the CIA had done the same thing to terrorists in its custody.

Thiessen told Amanpour, "There have been so many so misstatements told about the enhanced interrogation techniques, comparing them to the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge, and I have to tell you Christiane, you are one of the people who have spread these mistruths."

An incredulous Amanpour replied, "Excuse me?"

Thiessen pulled out a transcript of her story from her visit to S-21, and said "Let me read to you what you said." He then quoted Amanpour’s report:

"I stared blankly at another of Van Nath’s paintings. This time a prisoner is submerged in a life-size box full of water, handcuffed to the side so he cannot escape or raise his head to breathe. His interrogators, arrayed around him, are demanding information. I asked Van Nath whether he had heard this was once used on America’s terrorist suspected. He nodded his head. ‘It’s not right."

Thiessen told Amanpour, "That is completely false." Amanpour asked, "That’s false?" Thiessen told her, "We did not submerge people in a box of water." Amanpour replied, "Excuse me a second, that is called waterboarding." "No it’s not," Thiessen replied. Amanpour tried to turn to the other guest, left-wing author Philippe Sands, but Thiessen pressed his point: "Christiane you are absolutely wrong. 14,000 people killed in S-21. Seven survivors ..." But Amanpour cut him off, "Excuse me, you are trying to obfuscate the debate. That prison was full of images of water torture." Thiessen responded, "Which is nothing like what the CIA did. Do you have any evidence ..." Amanpour cut him again off to go Sands, after which Amanpour tried to change the subject.

But Thiessen pressed her: "I want to answer this, because it is very important. What you said was not waterboarding but a barrel filled with water. You have no evidence whatsoever that the CIA did what you said they did."

Amanpour insisted that there was no difference between what she had described and what the CIA did. "Dipping people’s heads in water to simulate drowning. Period. End of story." But as Thiessen explains in his new book, Courting Disaster, the Khmer Rouge not "simulate drowning" at S-21 - they actually drowned their victims. Only 7 of the 14,000 people who entered S-21 emerged alive.

In the shocking new book released this week, Thiessen takes Amanpour and other public figures to task for making false and shameful comparisons between the CIA and the torturers of murderous regimes like the Khmer Rouge. Among those Thiessen exposes for their lies and misstatements are Attorney General Eric Holder, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Christopher Dodd, Dick Durbin, former White House Special Counsel Lanny Davis, Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan and others.

Thiessen systematically dismantles their arguments, and shows how the "techniques used by the CIA bear no resemblance to the techniques used by the Inquisitors of the Middle Ages or the murderous regimes cited by the critics."

Thiessen writes, "It is important to set the record straight ­ not only to restore the good name of those who interrogated terrorists in our custody, but also to restore the good name of our country. One of the principal arguments made against enhanced interrogations is that they have harmed America’s moral standing in the world. In truth, what has harmed America’s moral standing in the world are the false comparisons made by those who declare that America has practiced the same techniques as the most reviled despots and dictators in human history ­ when in fact we have done nothing of the sort."

Thiessen set the record straight on CNN - and set Amanpour straight as well.

This interview was aired on CNN International Wednesday and will air domestically on Sunday.

(I have always hated this bitch!

She has always shown me that the only "facts" she is concerned with are those which will promote her, even if she has to fabricate them!

Could be that if someone were to subject her to both "water-boarding" and the actions she "witnessed" she just might realize the difference.

But make sure the "water-boarding" is done first ... very few, if any, live through drowning...)

COMPANY TO REMOVE BIBLE REFERENCES FROM COMBAT RIFLES

A Michigan defense contractor will voluntarily stop stamping references to Bible verses on combat rifle sights sold to the U.S. military, a major buyer of the company's gear.

In a statement released Thursday, Trijicon of Wixom, Mich., says it also providing to the armed forces free of charge modification kits to remove the Scripture citations from the telescoping sights already in use. The Marine Corps has purchased more than 200,000 Trijicon sights and the Army has bought about 100,000.

The references raised concerns the citations break a government rule that bars proselytizing by American troops.

(Seems that the ragheads are offended by Scripture citations on American M4 and M16 rifles. They object to the reference to a Christian God.

But the lame-assed camel phuckers don't mind at all that "In God We Trust" is on the money they put in their pockets!)

THE WORLD BIDS FAREWELL TO OBAMA

Barack Obama suffered a painful defeat in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With mid-term elections looming, it means that Obama will have to fundamentally re-think his political course. German commentators say it is the end of hope.

Barack Obama has had a number of difficult weeks during his first year in the White House. Right after he took office, he had to wade through a week full of partisan bickering over his economic stimulus package combined with a tax scandal surrounding Tom Daschle, the man Obama had hoped would lead his health care reform team.

Then there was the last week of 2009, when a failed terror attack on a flight inbound for Detroit exposed major flaws in US efforts to identify and stop potential terrorists.

This week, though - a week when Obama should have been celebrating the first anniversary of his inauguration - may have been Obama's worst yet. Scott Brown, an almost unknown Republican member of the Massachusetts Senate, defeated the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley for the US Senate seat vacated by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The defeat in a heavily Democratic state not only highlights Obama's massive loss of popular support during his first year in office, but it also could spell doom for his signature effort to reform the US health care system.

There were immediate calls for a suspension of health care votes in the Senate until Brown is sworn in. The loss of the Massachusetts seat means that the Democrats no longer control the 60 Senate seats necessary to avoid a filibuster. Obama's reform package, which aims to provide health insurance to most of the over 40 million Americans currently lacking coverage, may ultimately fail as a result.

More than that, though, the vote shows just how quickly the political pendulum has swung back to the right following Obama's election. The seat Brown won had been in Democratic hands for all but six years since 1926. Now, its new occupant is a man who not only opposes the health care bill, but also favors waterboarding as a method of interrogation for terrorism suspects and rejects carbon cap-and-trade as a means of limiting carbon emissions.

The omen could be a dark one for the Obama administration heading into a mid-term election year. German commentators take a closer look.

Center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung writes on Thursday:

"Obama made a serious misjudgment. Right at the beginning of his first year in office, he saved the banks, rescued the automobile industry from collapse and passed a huge economic stimulus package. He had hoped that these enormous deeds would give him the space to address those issues which are dearest to him: health care reform, climate change and investment in education."

"Those issues, however, are clearly not priorities for people in the US at the moment. Scott Brown campaigned on two promises, both of which apparently struck a nerve with the electorate. He wants to block health care reform and he wants to find ways to reduce the enormous budget deficit. It is here where the roots of dissatisfaction with Obama are to be found. His reform agenda, in its current form, is highly suspect to Americans. And they have the impression that, if he continues piling up debt, he will be gambling away the country's future."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"For Obama, the election in Massachusetts means that he will have to re-evaluate his political style. He could now focus his concentration on his political base and push through his policy agenda. After all, he still has a majority in Congress - he could back away from his strategy of bipartisanship ... which would mean giving up much of what he spent his first year in office creating."

"More likely, however, is that Obama will interpret the Massachusetts loss as a signal that he should move further toward the middle and make more concessions to the conservatives - even if this alienates his base even further, a base which had high expectations from the 'yes we can' candidate."

"For everyone else in the world, this means that they will have to bid farewell to a candidate for whom the hopes were so high. They will have to say goodbye to the charisma they fell in love with. Obama will be staying home after all."

The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung writes:

"In addition to health care reform, Obama's reputation has primarily been harmed by the high unemployment rate and the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan. It will become even more difficult in the future for Obama to push projects through successfully. Not just because Republicans now have a means of preventing it, but also because the Democratic camp is deeply divided. Some would like to see the party shift toward the center - wherever that may be - whereas others want the party to position itself to the left. Such a battle is hardly a good sign for the mid-term elections in November. Massachusetts could prove to be an omen."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"Of course Obama rejects the interpretation that the Massachusetts election was a referendum on his first year in the White House. But he cannot ignore the fact that his health care reform package is not popular, the situation of the country's finances is seen as threatening and many voters blame the high unemployment rate on the party in power - on the Democrats, led by Obama. The result is a second year in office full of very different challenges than the first. To save what there is to be saved, Obama will have to be prepared to fashion a bipartisan compromise on health care - a compromise with a Republican Party which has tasted blood and can now dream once again about a return to power."

BARRETT-JACKSON'S THIRD DAY

Was another total bummer!

I was interested in a Ferrari that was going to hit the block yesterday. Everything seemed to be okay on the spec sheet, however, when it finally reached the cameras and announcers, it was a piece of shit!!

There were several un-repaired places of body damage and paint flaws. In addition it had 37,000 miles on it and no documentation of service. You might be interested to know that engine-out service on the Ferrari can run upwards of $17,000! Hell, an oil change can cost over $300.

Body damage, flawed paint, no service records? NO WAY!

JOB HUNT:

Veterans

Honoring veterans

Headstones honoring America's war dead now offer a chance at a better life for dozens of veterans. Many who've had a hard time adapting to civilian life, or have been unable to find steady work, are learning the tombstone trade: everything from designing the stencils to inscribing the words and images. The grave markers are then sent to national cemeteries across the county.

The training is part of a unique jobs program run by the Veterans Employment Agency in Menlo Park, California. For many, learning these skills has brought steady work, and renewed self respect. After serving in the Navy for 11 years, Penny Rowlan ended up homeless, and lived on the streets for 13 years. She says everything changed after she got help through the VEA. For two years now, she's earned a good wage from making headstones, and equally important, takes pride in what she calls "the superb quality control" of her work. We saw her create a stencil, and carefully check the inscription to make sure it matched the information she'd received from the National Cemetery Office in Quantico, Virginia.

The program allows Penny and other homeless vets stay connected to their military lives. It's clear there's a bond among those who've served our country, both on the battlefield and off. Navy veteran David Miller, who operates the sandblaster, says he's humbled every time he reads the inscriptions he helps create.

"I come out here and see my brothers and sisters at arms, the ones that were before me, and the ones that were after me. It's an honor for me to cut their stones," says Miller. It's also an honor for the families of the deceased.

At the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery, Jo Ellen Parish says her late husband loved the military, where he served for 20 years in the Air Force. She said he would be pleased, and impressed, to know his headstone was made by fellow veterans. More than 40 homeless vets have found employment since the program began 3 years ago. Along with the job and the self-esteem that comes with it, they get temporary housing, a good monthly wage, and another chance to serve in a deeply meaningful way.

(I applaud this employer! Veterans willing to train and help other veterans is a fantastic idea.

HOWEVER...

I'm sure that the ACLU, or some other "dead-donkey-dick-eating" outfit will find it necessary to take this employer to court, and some damn liberal judge will find this employer is discriminating against those who decided not to wear a uniform of the American military!)

WHY TODAY'S POSTING IS SO LATE

It is because Montana Flicker 'n' Flash (better known as NorthWestern Energy) has been playing havoc with my electricity!

Between 9PM on Thursday and 1PM on Friday I lost my electricity 178 times! And then, at around 1PM on Friday it went down for the count for over 10 hours!!

No Internet access, no Barrett-Jackson Auction, no lights, no heat, no telephone!

And what caused the loss of this very expensive utility?

No ... it wasn't a snow storm, a flash flood, or even an earthquake. It was fog!

That's right ... fog caused the electrical blackout!

The fog also closed the Glasgow International Airport for 3 days.

Do you have any idea how pissed-off I am?

I am pissed because I am down to my last 4 packs of cigarettes and there are 10 cartons floating around the USPS unable to get to Glasgow because the fog scared the shit outta some "professional pilots".

I am pissed because I did not get to see the Glenn Beck special.

I am pissed because I did not get to watch the Barrett-Jackson auction.

But most of all, I am pissed because you have no idea what it is like to have to reset 7 friggin' digital clocks 179 times!!!

TWO NEW YORKERS FREE AFTER 'DRUGS' TURN OUT TO BE CANDY

Two New York men were locked up and left in a jail cell for nearly a week after police officers mistook their candy for a bag of crack.

The "drugs" were finally tested five days later and determined to be popular Coco (coconut) Candy. The charges were dropped.

The trouble began the night of Jan. 15, as José Pena, a 48-year-old plumber from the Bronx, N.Y., and his longtime pal and colleague Cesar Rodriguez, 33, were headed to a party, and decided to stop at a bodega on 181st Street and the Grand Concourse.

When they came out, cops were waiting and asked to search their Ford minivan. "I said ‘Go search.’ I even opened the door," Rodriguez told The Post.

An officer rummaged around, came out holding a "Hello Kitty" sandwich bag, and shouted "Bingo!" the men said.

"It’s only candy!" Rodriguez said, as the cops handcuffed him and Pena, and several other police cars rushed to the scene.

Rodriguez said he buys a 50-cent bag of Coco Candy, a hard coconut-based treat, almost every day. Because it easily crumbles, he puts it in a sandwich bag.

"Can you test it? Can you taste it?" Rodriguez asked the cops. "Shut up!" they replied.

"I didn't know having candy was a crime," he said.

The men’s lawyer, Neal Wallerstein, said the cops could have realized their mistake quickly.

"That’s the reason why they have a field-test kit," he said, referring to the NYPD’s portable drug identification equipment.

But Wallerstein said cops just needed their noses.

"It smells like sugar," he said.

(Geesh! If this is what happens when cops are fully tested and trained, just imagine what it is going to be like in the cities where the training and testing have been removed in order to bring costs down!)

FLICKER 'N' FLASH FOLLOW-UP

Electricity was finally restored, as far as I know, around 8AM. I rushed to answer all the piled-up emails and started to update the opinion page.

I actually completed the updates, however, at around 9:46AM the electricity went bye-bye again!

I did take a shot break while I had electricity, since I also had phone service. My cigarettes were waiting for me to pick them up at the post office.

So I rushed through the Triple-S thing, loaded a weeks' worth of garbage bags in the Bronco, and headed to the post office and the Big City.

Did I mention it was snowing like crazy and that the roads were terrible? It was 4x4 all the way, with a maximum speed of around 40 MPH!

But I got my "butts" and even managed to buy some needed groceries (like Pepsi, paper towels, toilet paper, milk, orange juice and bread).

Then it was time for the trip home.

When I got home there still was no electricity. So I decided that hell with everything and took a nice long nap.

I was awakened around 7PM by the sound of the Barrett-Jackson on the TV. I had electricity once again!

But instead of jumping right in and trying to post this, I decided to wait and see what happened. There were several short brown-outs, and then things became reliable. Constant voltage was once again surging through my house!!

So that is why this posting is so damn late ... and if you don't think I have good enough reasons, then you are a racist and a communist!

BARRETT-JACKSON'S DAY FOUR

I have no friggin' idea ... no TV!

TSA WORKER FIRED

After Pulling Prank

On student at airport

A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia's airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carryon luggage.

The worker is no longer employed by the TSA after the incident this month, a spokeswoman said.

Rebecca Solomon, 22, a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened on Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.

In the Jan. 10 column for The Michigan Daily, she recounted how she struggled to come up with an explanation, wondering if it was bomb-detonating material slipped in by a terrorist or drugs put there by a smuggler.

"He let me stutter through an explanation for the longest minute of my life," Solomon wrote. "Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I'd never seen this baggie before."

A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his.

The worker "waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should've seen the look on my face," she said.

Solomon said she asked to speak to a supervisor and filled out a complaint, and during that process was told that the man was training TSA workers to detect contraband. Two days later, she said, she was told he had been disciplined.

"I had been terrified and disrespected by an airport employee," she said. "He'd joked about the least funny thing in air travel."

There was no answer Saturday at a telephone listing for Solomon at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. An e-mail message seeking comment from her was sent Saturday by The Associated Press, and a telephone message was left at her parents' home in suburban Philadelphia.

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis told The Philadelphia Inquirer she did not dispute the student's account and said the employee was no longer with the agency, though she declined to say whether he had been fired or quit. She also declined to identify the worker or his job title, citing privacy laws.

"TSA viewed this behavior to be completely inappropriate and unprofessional," Davis said in a statement. "The employee was immediately disciplined by TSA management at the Philadelphia airport."

TSA representatives did not return calls Saturday seeking comment.

(Just what we need! With all the bullshit we have to go through at an airport today, a TSA "agent" who is a smart-ass is NOT something that should be tolerated!

Firing was not enough ... charges should have been filed against him and his smart-ass should still be in jail awaiting a court appearance!

I'm sure there is a clause about misuse of authority ... and if there isn't, there sure as hell should be!)

ACORN EMPLOYEE SUES UNDERCOVER FILMMAKERS

An employee at a Philadelphia branch of ACORN, the national community organization under fire for allegations of wrongdoing, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the two filmmakers who set off the controversy last fall with their undercover videos.

The civil lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia accuses the filmmakers, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, of illegally recording their conversation with the worker, Katherine Conway-Russell, and then publicizing the videos, which Conway-Russell says "caused emotional distress, harm and injury."

Conway-Russell is featured in one of several videos recorded by O'Keefe and Giles, who posed as a pimp and prostitute and visited ACORN offices around the country with a hidden camera. The videos, released initially through the conservative Web site BigGovernment.com, showed ACORN employees seeming to offer to help the couple skirt tax and housing laws while setting up a brothel.

Conway-Russell, an office director with ACORN Housing Corporation since March 2008, accuses O'Keefe and Giles of visiting the Philadelphia office July 24 to "entrap ... employees into engaging in inappropriate counseling," adding that she made clear to them that she could only offer assistance with "mortgage possibilities." The lawsuit doesn't go into details of the conversation.

It's hardly the first time ACORN or its employees have responded to the controversy over its operations by suing.

The organization filed a lawsuit in Baltimore in late September accusing the filmmakers and BigGovernment.com of illegally recording conversations at a Baltimore ACORN office and then posting them online.

And in November, representatives for ACORN sued the federal government in an attempt to regain the millions of dollars in funding the community organizing group lost after Congress responded to the undercover videos by voting to block the funding.

ACORN also has faced allegations of voter fraud during the 2008 presidential election.

(When the hell are these people gonna stop?

They were caught on film doing wrong ... that is all there is to it!

But on the other hand, maybe they should be allowed to go to court ... and if an honest judge can be found, the verdict should be "not guilty" and the ACORN stooge should be ordered to pay all costs involved in the court hearing and trial!)

FLIGHT DIVERTED TO DENVER AFTER PASSENGER TRIES TO OPEN DOOR

An airplane flying from Washington D.C. to Las Vegas has been diverted to Denver International Airport after a passenger tried to open an exterior door on the plane while it was in flight.

DIA spokesman Jeff Green says that United Flight 223 was diverted to Denver at 5:10 p.m. Saturday, and police who met the plane at the gate took the passenger into custody.

Green told the Denver Post that it is "virtually impossible" to open an exterior door in mid-flight.

Green said the police were interviewing the passenger Saturday night but did not know if the man would be charged.

(Charged my ass!

He should be taken on another plane ride, this time in something smaller at an altitude of around 10,000 feet, and then THROWN out the door!)

PENTAGON WOULD RATHER CONCEAL THE DOTS THAN CONNECT THEM

While Republicans rejoiced over a huge victory in Massachusetts, a scarier win took place at the Pentagon. The winner, sadly, was political correctness — that infectious mist of brainlessness that turns men into Jell-O.

A bastard child of identity politics and the self-esteem movement, political correctness is an ideology based on avoidance of hurt feelings and its ability to render humans into thoughtless pods makes "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" look like "Mamma Mia."

I speak of the Fort Hood Report, just released by the U.S. military, detailing the deadly shooting. In the 86-page thingy, here's what you won't find: The name of the killer or his Muslim faith. The men who did the review argue that those trivial facts aren't important; their concern is more with "actions and effects, not... with motivations."

Here in Sanity Village, we call this "super-duper crazy talk." Because, you know, if there's one thing I learned from Obama the candidate, it's how important root causes are. You remember: Before calling someone evil, you need to first understand their motivations.

But oddly, root causes are only applied when Obama and others feel comfortable with its conclusions. If the killer was a fundamentalist Christian, his right-wing rage would be hammered home. Janet Napolitano created an entire report on such matters — that was quaint.

But in Hasan's case, citing Islamic extremism as a culprit will simply upset more Muslims, so the P.C. thing to do is to leave it out. It's one of those "dots" we keep hearing about, but instead of "connecting" them we're just covering them up with Liquid Paper. (They still make that crap, right? That stuff tasted awesome.)

BARRETT-JACKSON'S FIFTH DAY

What can I say? I didn't see all that much of it, but what I did see was not all that impressive.

Sure, the selling prices were impressive enough ... six-figures (almost seven) for cars that cost less than $3,900 when new!

And we are in a "recession"?

BIN LADEN

Takes Credit

For Christmas day bomb attempt

Usama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas in a new audio message released Sunday threatening more attacks on the United States.

A senior U.S. intelligence official in Washington said there is "no evidence whatsoever" that bin Laden had any involvement on the Christmas Day attack - or even knew about it beforehand. The message suggests the Al Qaeda leader wants to appear in direct command of the terrorist group's many affiliates around the world at a time when some analysts have suggested he is mostly a figurehead.

In the minute-long recording carried by Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel, bin Laden addressed President Obama saying the Christmas attack was meant to send a message similar to that of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The message delivered to you through the plane of the heroic warrior Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a confirmation of the previous messages sent by the heroes of the Sept. 11," he said. "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine," he added.

"God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support for the Israelis continues."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the tape has yet to be authenticated, but wouldn't offer an opinion on whether bin Laden had any role in the Christmas Day bombing

"I think everybody in this world understands that this is somebody that has to pop up in our lives over an audio tape because he's nothing but a cowardly, murderous thug and a terrorist that will someday, hopefully soon, be brought to justice," Gibbs told "Fox News Sunday."

On Christmas Day, Nigerian Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up his Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit Metro Airport. But the explosive powder he was hiding in his underwear failed to detonate.

He told federal agents shortly afterward that he had been trained and given the explosives by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

The U.S. intelligence official said the Yemen-based group is linked with the central Al Qaeda group that bin Laden heads and recent intelligence indicates there are ongoing contacts between Al Qaeda in Yemen and Pakistan. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.

Bin Laden's message, coming long after AQAP gave its own claim of responsibility, appears to be an effort on his part to stay relevant, said Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror."

"The training and the definition of the attack was by the local leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, so in many ways you can say bin Laden is exploiting for his benefit this particular attack," he said. "Bin Laden still wants to claim leadership for the global jihad movement."

Of all the various offshoots and branches of Al Qaeda around the world, Gunaratna said the group in Yemen is one of the closest to bin Laden since it is made up of bodyguards and associates of the organization's top ideologues. Yemen is bin Laden's ancestral homeland.

"Today the operational relationship has somewhat suffered, but the ideological relationship is very strong and that is why bin Laden claimed this attack," Gunaratna said.

Two of the group's top members were former detainees released in November 2007 from the U.S. military prison Guantanamo Bay.

Since the Christmas Day attempt, the Yemeni government, at the U.S.'s urging has stepped up its attacks on the group's hideouts in the rugged country's remote hinterland.

Analysts have long debated how much control bin Laden, who is believed to be somewhere in Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, really has over the various organizations using his group's name.

The Yemen-based group, however, has closer ties than most to bin Laden and his key lieutenants, many having once been their bodyguards.

There was no way to confirm the voice on the audio message was actually that of bin Laden, but it resembled previous recordings attributed to him.

In the past year, bin Laden's messages have concentrated heavily on the situation of the Palestinians in attempt to rally support from Muslims around the world.

Some analysts say bin Laden is focusing on the close U.S.-Israeli relationship because he is worried about Obama's popularity across the Middle East with his promises to withdraw from Iraq and because his father was a Muslim from the African nation of Kenya.

The plight of the Palestinians, especially in the blockaded Gaza Strip where 1,400 were killed in an Israeli offensive a year ago, angers many in the Arab world.

"The Palestinian conflict was never part of the Al Qaeda original mandate, but Usama is clearly exploiting it," Gunaratna said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David dismissed the latest Al Qaeda message and its attempt to link Israel with attacks on the U.S.

"This is nothing new. He has said this before," he said. "Terrorists always look for absurd excuses for their despicable deeds."

The last public message from bin Laden appears to have been on Sept. 26, when he demanded that European countries pull their troops out of Afghanistan. The order came in an audiotape that also warned of "retaliation" against nations that are allied with the United States in fighting the war.

(Obama made a nasty jab at both President Bush and John McCain while on the campaign trail about their inability to find Bin Laden.

Well, it doesn't seem that after over a year Obama hasn't done too well either!)

PHUCKIN' PHLICKER 'N' PHLASH!

About 15 minutes after I posted the opinion page last night I was once again hit with around 18 power outages!

Since awaking on Sunday morning I have had continuous power outages!

Considering that we pay top dollar for electricity (as well as all other utilities) up here, you would think that someone at the great NorthWestern Energy company would find out why this is happening!

AND FIX THE PHUCKING PROBLEM!!!

ANATOMY OF A FAILED PRESIDENCY!

The following is an interesting article and I wonder how long Dr. Hunt can remain at NIH once the powers that be get wind of this article.

Dr. Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist. He has had nearly 30 years experience in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug and alcohol research. Currently Dr. Hunt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on Health projects. He is also a writer for American Thinker.

Another Failed Presidency
An article from American Thinker by Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies - led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait - they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out.

Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of precedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task - all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.

Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us - financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012:

"For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too. "

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state - staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

Margaret Thatcher: "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money. "

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both. " - James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. " - Tacitus

"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own. " - Unknown

WHITEOUT...ERR...NO...BLACKOUT...ERR...NO...WHITEOUT...ERR...NO...BLACKOUT...

Oh hell ... IT'S BOTH!

Outside we are suffering through a whiteout ... heavy snow, fog, 45 to 50 MPH winds and temps in the teens and zero visibility!

Meanwhile, inside, I have once again been plagued by power blackouts! There have been 83 power losses since midnight, some lasting as short as less than one second, coming three and four in a burst, and other lasting for hours. Hours of no light, no heat, no communication, just absolute total isolation!

Forecast for outside? MORE OF THE SAME, but with much lower temperatures.

Forecast for inside? Who the hell knows?

What am I doing about outside? There ain't a damn thing I can do but stay inside.

What am I doing about inside? Well, I have refilled my "hurricane lamps", placed my air mattress in the kitchen along with my down sleeping bag, replaced all my burned-down candles with new ones, re-filled all my water jugs, and turned on my oven to 110 degrees and left the door open. I have also replaced all the batteries in my flashlights and my portable CD player (at least I can listen to music).

And so goes "mid-season" in northeast Montana ... God's country (but He is in Palm Beach!).

BARRETT-JACKSON'S SIXTH DAY

What can I say? I didn't see all that much of it, but what I did see was not all that impressive.

I also managed to catch a little of the first football game.

'SPOUSAL ABUSE'

Defense Used

In New York beheading case

The founder of an Islam-oriented television station, on trial for beheading his wife, claims that he was mentally abused for many years by his diminutive spouse and had no recourse except to hack off her head.

Muzzammil Hassan’s claim drew a blunt response from District Attorney Frank Sedita after a hearing Friday. "He chopped her head off," Sedita said. "He chopped her head off. That’s all I have to say about Mr. Hassan’s apparent defense that he was a battered spouse."

Mr. Hassan, 45, stands accused of one count of second-degree murder in the February 12 death of his wife - 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan - at the offices of Bridges TV, the station the Pakistan-born couple established in 2004 to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims.

During Friday’s hearing, Mr. Hassan fired the attorney who has been representing him for nearly a year and replaced him with a lawyer who promised to provide "a revolutionary defense" at the March trial. "The spouse was the dominant figure in this relationship," attorney Frank Bogulski said outside the courtroom. "He was the victim. She was verbally abusive. She had humiliated him."

Nancy Sanders, a former news director at Bridges TV, remains skeptical of the abuse claim. She notes the stocky Mr. Hassan is over 6 feet tall and "fills a doorway," while Aasiya was slender and several inches shorter. "I never ever heard her disparage him in the workplace at all," Ms. Sanders said. "It just did not seem to be in her nature. She was very gentle."

Mr. Hassan was served with divorce papers a week before his wife’s decapitated body was found at the offices of their television station in Orchard Park, the Buffalo suburb where the couple lived with their two small children and Muzzammil’s two teenagers from a previous marriage.

The beheading has led the state president of the National Organization for Women, Marcia Pappas, and others to label Aasiya Hassan’s death an "honor killing," a ritual, which Ms. Pappas says, is rooted in Muslim notions about women’s subordination to men.

(Hummm...)

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STEERS LUCRATIVE NO-BID CONTRACT
FOR AFGHAN WORK TO DEM DONOR

Despite Obama's long history of criticizing the Bush administration for "sweetheart deals" with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids.

The contract, awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, Inc., a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi, will pay the firm $24,673,427 to provide "rule of law stabilization services" in war-torn Afghanistan.

A synopsis of the contract published on the USAID Web site says Checchi & Company will "train the next generation of legal professionals" throughout the Afghan provinces and thereby "develop the capacity of Afghanistan's justice system to be accessible, reliable, and fair."

The legality of the arrangement as a "sole source," or no-bid, contract was made possible by virtue of a waiver signed by the USAID administrator. "They cancelled the open bid on this when they came to power earlier this year,".

"That's kind of weird," said another source, who has worked on "rule of law" issues in both Afghanistan and Iraq, about the no-bid contract to Checchi & Company. "There's lots of companies and non-governmental organizations that do this sort of work."

"I think the administration should explain what the decision was based on, and why a no-bid contract was given in this case, particularly given that Mr. Obama came in on a pledge of 'no more no-bid contracts,'" said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

"There's really no explanation of why they had to make an exception in this case. And based on the facts before us, it doesn't appear that there was a need for an exception. It's not as if this was something urgently needed today; they couldn't have taken the time to get the bids, and make sure that American people were getting the best value," she added.

Checchi confirmed that his company had indeed received the nearly $25 million contract but declined to say why it had been awarded on a no-bid basis, referring a reporter to USAID.

Asked if he or his firm had been aware that the contract was awarded without competitive bids, Checchi replied: "After it was awarded to us, sure. Before, we had no idea."

He declined to answer further questions, however, saying: "I don't want to speak for the U.S. government."

Joseph A. Fredericks, director of public information at USAID, saie the Checchi deal was actually a renewal of an existing contract, awarded in 2004 by the Bush administration after a competitive bid process. "As the incumbent," Fredericks wrote in an e-mail Monday, "Checchi was rewarded a renewed contract to allow for work on the ground to continue."

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the no-bid contract in this case "disturbed" him.

Issa has written to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah requesting that the agency "produce all documents related to the Checchi contract" on or before Feb. 5. Citing the waiver that enabled USAID to award the contract on a no-bid basis, Issa noted that the exemption was intended to speed up the provision of services in a crisis environment.

Yet "on its face," wrote Issa to Shah, "the consulting contract awarded to Checchi to support the Afghan justice system does not appear to be so urgent or attendant to an immediate need so as to justify such a waiver."

Presented with Fredericks's explanation - that the Checchi contract was extended, this time on a no-bid basis, in order to "allow for work on the ground to continue" - Issa was undeterred in his determination to investigate the matter.

"It's hard to say that this organization (Checchi and Company) has done such a great job of bringing the justice system in Afghanistan up to snuff that they should somehow not have to go through a competitive bidding process," Issa said.

Likewise, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight is seeking answers about the Checchi contract. "Sen. McCaskill is actively looking into this situation," said Maria Speiser, a spokeswoman for the senator. "She has posed questions to USAID about the situation and is pursuing full answers. If she doesn't get answers, she'll be ready to take action."

Corporate rivals of Checchi were reluctant to speak on the record about the no-bid contract awarded to his firm because they feared possible retribution by the Obama administration in the awarding of future contracts.

"We don't want to be blackballed," said the managing partner of a consulting firm that has won similar contracts. "You've got to be careful. We're dealing here with people and offices that we depend on for our business."

Still, the rival executive confirmed that open bidding on USAID's lucrative Afghanistan "rule of law" contract was abruptly revoked by the agency earlier this year.

"It's a mystery to us," the managing partner said. "We were going to bid on it. The solicitation (for bids) got pulled back, and we do not know why. We may never know why. These are things that we, as companies doing business with the government, have to put up with."

As a candidate for president in 2008, then-Sen. Obama frequently derided the Bush administration for the awarding of federal contracts without competitive bidding.

"I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all," the senator told a Grand Rapids audience on Oct. 2. "The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I'm in the White House."

Those remarks echoed an earlier occasion, during a candidates' debate in Austin, Texas on Feb. 21, when Mr. Obama vowed to upgrade the government's online databases listing federal contracts.

"If (the American people) see a bridge to nowhere being built, they know where it's going and who sponsored it," he said to audience laughter, "and if they see a no-bid contract going to Halliburton, they can check that out too."

Less than two months after he was sworn into office, Obama signed a memorandum that he claimed would "dramatically reform the way we do business on contracts across the entire government."

Flanked by aides and lawmakers at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building on March 4, Obama vowed to "end unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contracts," adding: "In some cases, contracts are awarded without competition....And that's completely unacceptable."

The March 4 memorandum directed the Office of Management and Budget to "maximize the use of full and open competition" in the awarding of federal contracts.

Federal campaign records show Checchi has been a frequent contributor to liberal and Democratic causes and candidates in recent years, including to Obama's presidential campaign.

The records show Checchi has given at least $4,400 to Obama dating back to March 2007, close to the maximum amount allowed. The contractor has also made donations to various arms of the Democratic National Committee, to liberal activist groups like MoveOn.org and ActBlue, and to other party politicians like Sen. John F. Kerry, former presidential candidate John Edwards and former Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont.

Sources confirmed that Checchi & Company is but one of a number of private firms capable of performing the work in Afghanistan for which USAID retained it.

For example, DPK Consulting, based in San Francisco and with offices in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, states on its website that it has contracted with USAID and other federal agencies on more than 600 projects involving "governance and institutional development" across five continents.

Among DPK's most recent projects are the establishment of a new public prosecutor's office in Jenin, in the troubled West Bank area of the Palestinian Authority, and the improvement of court facilities in the Kyrgyz Republic in Central Asia. Similarly, BlueLaw International, based in Virginia, was awarded a $100 million contract by the State Department in April 2008 to strengthen the "rule of law" in Iraq.

Although Obama suggested in his remarks on March 4 that he hoped particularly to address problems associated with defense contracting, an Associated Press analysis last July found that the Defense Department frequently awards no-bid contracts under the aegis of the $787 billion stimulus program, and often at higher expense to U.S. taxpayers.

According to The AP, more than $242 million in federal contracts, or roughly a quarter of the Pentagon's contract stimulus spending, was awarded through no-bid contracts. And while procurement officers say competitive bidding can actually cost the taxpayers more - because it involves delays and can thereby subject pricing for services and equipment to inflation - the AP analysis found that defense-related stimulus contracts awarded after competitive bidding saved the Pentagon $34 million, compared with $4.4 million when no bidding was involved.

Figures kept by OMB Watch, a non-profit research and advocacy group that tracks federal spending, show that no-bid contracts have been common under administrations controlled by both parties.

During fiscal years 2000 and 2001, for example, when Bill Clinton was president, as much as $139.2 billion in federal contracts was awarded without competitive bidding. The OMB Watch figures show that the practice appears to have accelerated sharply during the Bush administration, but the figures are not adjusted for inflation.

(Gee ... I wonder if Obama is going to cover this in his "State of the Union" speech?)

SENATORS URGE OBAMA TO TRANSFER ALLEGED BOMBER
TO MILITARY CUSTODY

Two top senators urged the Obama administration on Monday to transfer the suspect in the failed Christmas Day airline bombing to the Pentagon, blasting the Justice Department for reading him his Miranda rights and treating him like a common criminal.

Citing reports that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was "speaking openly about the attack" and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's involvement in it before he was read his Miranda rights, Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins said that reading the suspect his rights shortly after his arrest was an opportunity lost.

Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Collins, R-Maine, the committee's ranking Republican, said officials would be able to continue interrogating Abdulmutallab and try him before a military commission if they treat him as an enemy combatant.

"The decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than (an unprivileged enemy belligerent) almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks," the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.

"Though Obama has said repeatedly that we are at war, it does not appear to us that Obama's words are reflected in the actions of some in the executive branch, including some at the Department of Justice," they wrote.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., also released a written statement Monday urging Obama to revoke Abdulmutallab's "civilian status," saying the administration "squandered an invaluable opportunity to gather intelligence from a captured terrorist fresh from Al Qaeda's operation in Yemen."

Though Abdulmutallab has already been indicted in anticipation of a civilian trial, attorney Edward MacMahon said there is precedent for treating suspects as enemy combatants before trying them in civilian court.

MacMahon, former attorney for Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, said the administration would be in its right to treat Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant and interrogate him, despite the case that is already underway. He said the administration would not have to worry about jeopardizing his confession, since there's enough physical evidence and witness testimony to convict him.

The calls for the Justice Department to do an about-face on Abdulmutallab's civilian trial come after new questions were raised during congressional hearings last week about the way the suspect was handled after the attempted bombing.

In one hearing, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Abdulmutallab should have been questioned by the recently created High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. But he later released a statement noting that the HIG is not yet "fully operational."

Still, key officials - among them FBI Director Robert Mueller - have said they were not consulted on the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian.

Local FBI agents interviewed the suspect for about 50 minutes after he was taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center. One official said he spoke freely during this period and claimed to be a trained recruit for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

After that, he went into surgery. He was then advised of his right to remain silent, and he subsequently obtained a lawyer.

Lieberman and Collins wrote Monday that the "unilateral decision" by the Justice Department to treat the suspect as a criminal "and to forego information that may have been extremely helpful to winning this war demonstrates" that some in the department are not acting as if the country is at war.

"The administration can reverse this error, at least to some degree, by immediately transferring Abdulmutallab to the Department of Defense," they wrote.

(Does anyone really think Obama will reverse his initial decision?

I don't!)

TEA PARTIERS GO BIG
WITH FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN TO RIVAL MOVEON.ORG

Eyeing the success of Moveon.org and other grassroots groups, the conservative-minded FreedomWorks, which has been at the frontline organizing tea partiers into a half-million strong membership, has announced ambitious plans on the fundraising front.

"(MoveOn) raised around $31 million in 2003. We're not sure we can raise that much, but think we can be in the multi-millions and be a major player in 2010," said Rob Jordan, FreedomWorks' vice president of federal and state campaigns.

On Monday, FreedomWorks brought together dozens of conservative activists from as far away as California, Arkansas, Ohio and Florida and put them in a room full of reporters, hoping to let the grassroots speak to the Washington establishment through the press.

"It's hot in Florida, Charlie Crist is on the run," said Thomas Gaiten, a Florida field coordinator for Freedom Works, who opposes the Florida governor's bid for the U.S. Senate seat.

"I'm arranging an event on February 10 for the one year anniversary of 'the stimulus hug,'" Gaiten said, referring to a hug between President Obama and Crist last year. Crist was an exuberant host and endorsed the president's $787 billion stimulus package, for which Crist is now under fire.

"The hug" is a moment that conservatives have flogged in Florida. A few months ago Crist was leading his Republican primary competitor, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, by 30 points. But the tea party movement in Florida has been aggressively organizing for Rubio both on the ground and on the Web and the latest polls show the two neck-and-neck.

Meanwhile in Arkansas, tea partiers are confident of ousting embattled Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who had wavered on the health care bill before supporting it in votes taken before Christmas

Lincoln "is out," said Rob Porto of Little Rock. "The only question is who is going to replace her, and we're still vetting prospective Republican candidates. We're planning a number of debates."

Greg Fettig drove the 600 miles from his native Indiana to give notice to incumbents that just because they are safe, they should be looking over their shoulder.

"I used to think I was alone, now I know there are others out there who want to stand up for fiscal conservatism," he said.

Fettig, who co-founded a group called "Hoosier Patriots," lives in the district of longtime Republican Rep. Dan Burton, but said he thinks it's time for Burton to go.

"He's got no fire. ... He's been there too long, people should just serve a term or two and then get out," he said.

The conservative, organic grassroots uprising is proving to be quite powerful, with Republicans all over the country scrambling to get in front of it, but the question remains whether the Republican Party will be able to harness it.

A National Tea Party Convention is scheduled for Nashville, Tenn., in early February with former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a darling of the movement, as one of the featured speakers.

Tea party organizers admit they are a scattered and loose knit group despite efforts by established organizations like FreedomWorks doing the lifting.

Joking that the task of organizing is kind of like "herding cats," the activists are so anti-establishment they don't even like the idea that their own organization is having a convention and charging money for people to attend.

"I like Sarah Palin," said Scott Boston of the Bowling Green Ohio Tea Party Patriots.

"But I'm not going to spend $600 on a ticket. Tea party meetings are free. I have a feeling that the convention in Nashville is going to be about people who want to lead our parade but wouldn't be willing to march in it," Boston said.

(I like what the Tea Party has done, but I have an uneasy feeling about a "fundraising campaign"!

Sounds too much like the other parties to me...)

TOYOTA HALTS U.S. SALES

Of Camry,

7 Other models

Toyota's decision to suspend U.S. sales on an unprecedented scale to fix faulty gas pedals is a blow to the automaker's reputation for quality and endangers its fledgling earnings recovery.

It is also a symbol of the dramatic failings of the aggressive growth strategy Toyota Motor Corp. pursued under former President Katsuaki Watanabe, a cost-cutting expert, who led the Japanese automaker to the No. 1 spot in global vehicle sales, dethroning General Motors Co. in 2008, analysts say.

The sales suspension to fix gas pedals that could stick and cause acceleration without warning was announced in the U.S. late Tuesday and affects eight models including the Camry - America's top-selling car - and Corolla, another popular model.

Toyota is also halting production at six North American car-assembly plants, beginning the week of Feb. 1, and gave no date on when production could restart. Last week, Toyota recalled the same eight models, involving 2.3 million vehicles.

The automaker's shares fell 4.3 percent in Tokyo trade.

A Toyota official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the sales suspension could hinder the company's ability to meet its forecast for 6 percent growth in global vehicle sales this year.

Although Toyota's Japan plants are not affected, the problem could spread to Europe, where a similar accelerator part is being used, and could affect millions more vehicles.

The problem part comes from one U.S. supplier and does not affect models that use parts from different suppliers, said another Toyota official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Analysts said the production stoppage signaled a more serious crisis for Toyota than recalls, which are fairly routine for automakers.

"It's an abnormal situation, and there is no way to compare it with anything else," said Yasuaki Iwamoto, auto analyst with Okasan Securities Co. in Tokyo.

He said the problem should serve as a wake-up call for Toyota to be more careful with maintaining quality. There is no quick fix to a tarnished brand image, Iwamoto said.

Despite the recent recalls, Toyota has still done well on quality surveys, and leads the world in hybrids, which show off top-grade green technology.

But the latest U.S. problems mirror the spate of quality problems that plagued Toyota several years ago in Japan, its home market.

In 2006, Watanabe acknowledged lapses in quality control in Japan. One sparked a criminal investigation by the Japanese government into accidents suspected of being linked to vehicle problems. No one was charged.

At that time, Watanabe appeared at a news conference in Tokyo, bowing deeply to express remorse to consumers and dealers. Later, he acknowledged overzealous growth was behind the quality problems.

"Under Watanabe's growth strategy, it was difficult to maintain a balance between speed and quality," Iwamoto said. "The problems came about because of the strains that came from his expansion efforts."

Watanabe, who took office in 2005, was replaced last year by Akio Toyoda, the grandson of Toyota's founder. Toyoda, seen as a charismatic figure that can bring together not only employee ranks in Japan but suppliers and dealers, has repeatedly said his company is in a crisis that could peril its survival.

He has also avoided the past fanfare involved in announcing sales targets.

Toyota quietly gave global sales targets Tuesday that showed it was optimistic about getting on track to recovery since the financial crisis in late 2008 sent demand crashing, especially in the key North American market.

Toyota said it expected to sell 2.19 million vehicles in North America in 2010, up 11 percent from 2009. Globally, Toyota said it was planning sales of 8.27 million vehicles this year, up 6 percent from 2009.

But those numbers could change with the latest developments. Also at risk are Toyota's earnings.

Last year, Toyota reduced its loss forecast for the fiscal year through March 2010 to 200 billion yen ($2.2 billion) from its initial projection for a 450 billion yen ($5 billion) loss, citing a gradual recovery in global demand.

Toyota announces earnings Feb. 4.

Mamoru Katou, analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research, said he could not calculate the exact damage to Toyota's results because the duration of the sales suspension was still undecided. But he said it was certain to be significant, especially if the suspension continues for a month or two.

He said Toyota was likely reorganizing production plans, such as switching suppliers, and shipping in parts from Japan. "The problem is extremely serious," said Katou. "The models are precisely those Toyota had been preparing to sell in big numbers."

The Japanese automaker said the U.S. sales suspension includes the following models: the 2009-2010 RAV4, the 2009-2010 Corolla, the 2007-2010 Camry, the 2009-2010 Matrix, the 2005-2010 Avalon, the 2010 Highlander, the 2007-2010 Tundra and the 2008-2010 Sequoia.

Toyota sold more than 34,000 Camrys in December, making the midsize sedan America's best-selling car. It commands 3.4 percent of the U.S. market and sales rose 38 percent from a year earlier. Sales of the Corolla and Matrix, a small sedan and a hatchback, totaled 34,220 last month, with 3.3 percent of the market and sales up nearly 55 percent from December of 2008.

The auto company said the sales suspension wouldn't affect Lexus or Scion vehicles. Toyota said the Prius, Tacoma, Sienna, Venza, Solara, Yaris, 4Runner, FJ Cruiser, Land Cruiser and select Camry models, including all Camry hybrids, would remain for sale.

The announcement follows a larger U.S. recall months earlier of 4.2 million vehicles because of problems with gas pedals becoming trapped under floor mats, causing sudden acceleration. That problem was the cause of several crashes, including some fatalities.

(Gee ... sure am glad I drive a Ford! Of course there is no real problem with a Prius getting away from you ... unless you get tired of peddling!)

ALIEN LIFE COULD ALREADY BE ON EARTH, SAY SCIENTISTS

For the past 50 years, scientists have scoured the skies for radio signals from beyond our planet, hoping for some sign of extraterrestrial life. But one physicist says there's no reason alien life couldn't already be lurking among us - or maybe even in us.

Paul Davies, an award-winning Arizona State University physicist known for his popular science writing said Tuesday that life may have developed on Earth not once but several times.

(Hell, that ain't no big deal! There are 20,000,000 of them that have crossed the U.S./Mexico border in just the past few years!)

WHAT OBAMA COULD LEARN FROM EINSTEIN

It seems almost unfair to expect President Obama to deliver his first official State of the Union address only eight days after last week's seismic upheaval in Massachusetts; the political ground has shifted dramatically and is still shifting.

The health care reform bill, seemingly on the verge of passage, has been stopped in its tracks.

Vice President Biden's son Beau has suddenly decided not to run for his father's old Senate seat.

Democratic Congressman Berry of Arkansas says he's retiring.

The great political handicapper Charlie Cook is busy rewriting his odds on House races and today alone found 15 Democratic seats more vulnerable than before.

From the president and his allies, however, come comments suggesting they don't realize what has happened. The president says the anger felt by voters in Massachusetts is the same sentiment that elected him. Leading Democrats all over town say they're not giving up their health care dreams and the president's 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe has been called back to duty. His first recommendation: ram the health care bill through.

Former Clinton adviser James Carville says Obama needs to blame George W. Bush even more than he has so far.

What the president may need as he prepares his big speech is to listen to the advice of Albert Einstein, who famously said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

TRANSPARENCY AT DOJ

The Obama administration is turning its back on transparency yet again.

Remember Election Day 2008 when members of the New Black Panther Party were standing outside a Philadelphia polling place - one of them even carrying a nightstick? Thanks in part to Fox's coverage of the incident, the men were formally accused of voter intimidation.

But this summer the Justice Department dropped the charges against them with little explanation. That same Justice Department has now denied a request from The Washington Times to open the records related to the case.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee would like Attorney General Eric Holder to testify in the matter, but Democrats are blocking that request.

It certainly sounds like the Obama Justice Department has something to hide, now doesn't it?

"STATE OF THE UNION"

One Hour Of Nothing But Lies

And he says he is against torture!

Yes, I subjected myself to this torture, so I guess that I am just as responsible as Obama.

During the hour he used the words, "I", "me" and "mine" 123 times! However he totally forgot about "we".

He stated that because of his stimulus payment to a company in Arizona that their business has improved and they are hiring more employees. What he didn't state was that the package was $100,000,000.00, and it was to someone who supported his run for the presidency, and that although no new employees have yet been hired, the owner of that business is going to hire 30 more employees in the next year. Let's see now, $100,000,000 divided by 30 is...WOW!

Next he stated that the U.S. should not be a second class country, yet in the recent past there are news clips of him bowing, subserviently, to the leaders of 3 different nations!

He said he believes in the rights of all people who desire freedom and democracy, yet last summer he sat on a golf course while thousands of Iranians were being slaughtered in the streets.

He said he believes in the military, yet it took him over 4 months to decide to send the needed men and supplies to an active combat zone while American troops who were already there were being killed because of his delay. (It might be noted here that it took him no time at all to send 10,000 American troops to Haiti after an earthquake.)

He said he believes that his programs have cause 1,500 new jobs in one state and 2,500 in another. Yet the unemployment rose from under 8% to over 10.2%.

He claims that more people now "own" their own homes than ever before, but he forgot to mention that the foreclosure rate is the highest it has ever been since the 1930s, and that the number of homes being bought has dropped over 14% in the last month!

He claims that he wants to see more nuclear power plants, more offshore drilling for oil and natural gas and more usage of coal to power America, yet he has firmly took the stance for the past 12 months that blocked all three!

He claims that his administration has been totally transparent. Yet he signed executive orders at 2AM with no witnesses, his buddies attempted to force a "healthcare" plan on the American people in a midnight session that was totally held behind locked doors, and he failed to tell the American people that many of his "appointees" to very important positions were felons!

Now, all that being said, what did he say that was true?

He said that regardless of what the American people want, he is going to pass healthcare reform, a cap and trade package, and is also going to control "global warming"!

He said that it is his intention to make becoming an American citizen much easier and eliminating a lot of the current requirements.

Should I go on?

What he didn't say is also important, more than what he did say...

He didn't say a damn thing about security, terrorism, or anything else that has, or could have, a devastating effect on Americans right here on our own soil!

All-in-all, it was the same speech he gave while on the campaign trail.

Egotistical, self-centered, and full of bullshit!

That's what I have to say, read below for what the experts have to say!

FACT CHECK: HOW STATE OF UNION COMPARES WITH REALITY

A look at some of Obama's claims in the State of the Union and how they compare with the facts.

Obama, who once considered government spending freezes a hatchet job, told Americans on Wednesday it's now part of his solution to the exploding deficit. He didn't explain what had changed.

His State of the Union speech skipped over a variety of complex realities in laying out a "common-sense" call to action.

A look at some of his claims and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: "Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't."

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than one percent of the deficit - and that's if Obama can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel," he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year to year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain's.

OBAMA: "I've called for a bipartisan fiscal commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can't be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans."

THE FACTS: Any commission that Obama creates would be a weak substitute for what he really wanted - a commission created by Congress that could force lawmakers to consider unpopular remedies to reduce the debt, including curbing politically sensitive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. That idea crashed in the Senate this week, defeated by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success.

OBAMA: Discussing his health care initiative, he said: "Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan."

THE FACTS: The Democratic legislation now hanging in limbo on Capitol Hill aims to keep people with employer-sponsored coverage - the majority of Americans under age 65 - in the plans they already have. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million "compared with what those values would have been otherwise." It said the ranges "reflect the uncertainty of such estimates." And it added: "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package."

OBAMA: He called for action by the White House and Congress "to do our work openly, and to give our people the government they deserve."

THE FACTS: Obama skipped past a broken promise from his campaign - to have the negotiations for health care legislation broadcast on C-SPAN "so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." Instead, Democrats in the White House and Congress have conducted the usual private negotiations, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders behind closed doors. Nor has Obama lived up consistently to his pledge to ensure that legislation is posted online for five days before it's acted upon.

OBAMA: "We will continue to go through the budget line by line to eliminate programs that we can't afford and don't work. We've already identified $20 billion in savings for next year."

THE FACTS: Identifying savings is far from achieving them. If the past is any guide, little will result from this exercise because Congress routinely rejects the White House's suggested spending cuts.

OBAMA: "The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades."

THE FACTS: Despite insisting early last year that they would complete the negotiations in time to avoid expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in early December, the U.S. and Russia failed to do so. And while officials say they think a deal on a new treaty is within reach, there has been no breakthrough. A new round of talks is set to start Monday. One important sticking point: disagreement over including missile defense issues in a new accord. If completed, the new deal may arguably be the farthest-reaching arms control treaty since the original 1991 agreement. An interim deal reached in 2002 did not include its own rules on verifying nuclear reductions.

OBAMA: Drawing on classified information, he claimed more success than his predecessor at killing terrorists: "And in the last year, hundreds of al-Qaida's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed - far more than in 2008."

THE FACTS: It is an impossible claim to verify. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published enemy body counts, particularly those targeted by armed drones in the Pakistan-Afghan border region. The pace of drone attacks has increased dramatically in the last 18 months, according to congressional officials briefed on the secret program.

OBAMA'S SORRY STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH (WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY)

Obama's State of the Union address was an incoherent, disorganized, and most regrettably defiant, mess of a speech.

At roughly 9:48pm EST, in the midst of Obama's first State of the Union address he begged us to "let him know!"

Obama was defending his push for his vision of universal health care when he threw down the challenge in a speech that seemed strangely and wholly disconnected from the experience of the average American family.

As far as expectations for the State of the Union Obama's speech was a sizable failure.

By my count Obama made several significant policy pivots - for the first time he advocated the use of nuclear power, domestic drilling, clean coal, capital gains tax cuts, spending freezes, and called on Congress to "tighten their belts" just as American families are being forced to do.

Acting on previously published advice from Democratic strategist James Carville, Obama took the opportunity, by my count at least eight times, to mention Bush administration. He did this not to give President Bush and his team credit for the low unemployment we enjoyed during his eight years in office, or the national security they provided. Instead, he brought up the Bush administration to place blame for the problems that have only grown since Obama entered the White House.

He gave lip service to the need to create new jobs. Yet, in almost the same breath, he claimed he had rescued the economy in 2009. He claimed to have saved 2 million jobs with the stimulus bill (though the Congressional Budget office does not endorse his numbers or view his on the matter the way he implied it does in his speech.) But the number of jobs lost on his watch exceeds 3 million.

Most shocking of all, perhaps, was his insistence on ramming health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation down the throats of American voters even though they have roundly rejected his proposals on these issues.

He referred to himself in the speech more than 100 times. And made absolutely absurd demands that appeared to be almost dishonest. But noticeably absent in his speech was any mention of how he handled the mirandizing of a terrorist captured after a failed terror attack on Christmas Day. - The fourth such attack on our nation in just his first year in office.

He also made several statements that were painfully obvious, from noting that, "jobs must be our number one focus in 2010" to "the true engine of jobs creation is our nation's businesses."

He also drew laughter at himself with one liners, "For those who have yet to believe the overwhelming scientific evidence that exists on climate change" to the line "all of this before I walked in the door."

Obama's State of the Union address was poorly thought out, not terribly well executed, and, in the end, tremendously ineffective.

It was also terribly inappropriate when he openly encouraged belligerent reaction against the Supreme Court with the Justices sitting in the chamber. It was a cheap shot, and multiple constitutionalists and scholars believe it may have violated the spirit embodied in our government’s commitment to the separation of powers.

Add to this stemwinder of a speech that he will work towards an unhealthy and unsafe environment for homosexuals in our nation's military ranks.

He closed the sale by announcing yet another deadline for terrorists in Iraq to bide their time for, specifically August of 2010.

It was messy, incoherent, disorganized, and most regrettably defiant.

Which I guess when you think of it, defines the state of our union pretty well.

PELOSI

Pushes $300 Billion 'Fix'

To senate health care bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a $300 billion "fix" to the Senate health care bill, saying that her chamber could approve the Senate's package if those changes are made first.

Senior Democratic aides told Fox News that Pelosi has offered up the new package of changes to Senate Democratic leaders, with the hope that they will be able to pass it using a controversial procedural maneuver known as "reconciliation." The maneuver would allow Democrats to pass the measure with just 51 votes, without having to first overcome the normal 60-vote threshold.

Some Democrats are keen on using that process, since the election last week of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts broke the Democrats' 60-vote supermajority. However, some Democratic moderates - notably Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh - have balked at using the controversial tactic to ram through health care reform measures.

Pelosi announced last week that she did not have the votes in the House to pass the Senate health care reform bill as is.

But Pelosi says that if the Senate, and House, will approve the package of adjustments first, the House can then take up the original Senate bill.

Obama pledged to press ahead with health care reform in his State of the Union address Wednesday night. He said he would not "walk away" from the issue and urged Congress to stand with him.

"Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close," Obama said.

Obama urged Congress to take "another look" at the plan on the table, but at the same time offered to hear out new ideas from both parties.

Any move to then drive through a "fix" to the Senate bill using reconciliation is sure to draw fierce protest from Republicans, who want Obama to take a fresh approach to the health care bill.

STAND UP SIT DOWN CLAP CLAP CLAP!

The State of the Union address is many things: a chance to rally the base, introduce new proposals, and regain support with independents that may have been lost during the previous year. It can also be quite a workout.

Democrats and Republicans use the State of the Union as a sounding board to stand up for their principles and their Commander in Chief.

If you close your eyes, it’s possible to imagine yourself at a pep rally. Well, a pep rally that talks about the need to improve the economy rather than the need to beat Crosstown High’s football team.

Not counting minor smatterings of applause, Barack Obama was interrupted by applause 86 times, 46 of which included a standing ovation.

Democrats were logically the more frequent applauders, but there were 36 times when Republicans decided to reach across the aisle and join their hands together, and then apart, and then together again.

Democrats whooped it up 50 times in 69 minutes, or roughly once every 90 seconds.

While clapping was more partisan, the majority of standing ovations were bipartisan. Members felt the need to get out of their seats 46 times during the course of the speech, 28 of which were bipartisan.

But Obama only stood up to his party one time. He received applause and a standing ovation from only Republican members when he mentioned the need to take action on pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.

(And then there was Bobblehead Biden, who not only stood up and clapped, but nodded his head with almost every other word that Obama spewed!

That was much worse that Pelosi's "Jumpin' Jack-In-A-Box"!)

FORD REPORTS $2.7 BILLION PROFIT FOR 2009

Ford Motor Co. says it made $2.7 billion in 2009, its first annual profit in four years.

Ford says it benefited from cost-cutting, debt reduction and popular cars and trucks like the Ford Fusion sedan and Escape SUV. It's enjoying customer goodwill for avoiding bankruptcy and refusing federal aid.

Ford's net income of 86 cents per share rose from the year before, when it lost a record $14.6 billion.

In the fourth quarter, Ford says it earned $868 million, or 25 cents per share. That is up $6.8 billion from a year earlier. Ford earned money in three of the four quarters last year.

Ford says it expects to be profitable next year as well.

Ford gained market share in North and South America and Europe, despite the economic downturn.

(Amazing isn't it?

The only car company that refused government intrusion and invasion was the only car company which made a profit!

"If you build it, they will come...")

TOYOTA EXTENDS CAR RECALL TO EUROPE

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday it will extend its U.S. car recall to Europe due to problems with gas pedals, but is unsure how many vehicles will be affected - a fresh blow to the world's largest automaker as it struggles to salvage its safety reputation.

The company on Wednesday suspended U.S. sales of eight models - including the Camry, America's top-selling car - to fix faulty gas pedals that could stick and cause acceleration without warning.

Last week, it issued a U.S. recall for the same eight models, affecting 2.3 million vehicles, and on Thursday announced the recall of an additional 1.09 million vehicles in the U.S.

In a statement, the company said it would directly communicate with European customers with vehicles that are affected by a problem with worn accelerator pedal mechanisms that may "stick in a partially depressed position or return slowly to the idle position."

"Toyota is making every effort to address this situation for our customers as quickly as possible," it said.

The problem is rare, it said, and customers who are concerned should contact Toyota Customer Service for help before recall instructions are issued.

The company is already using different parts in models it is now producing in Europe and says it has "no need or intention to stop production in Europe," it said.

Toyota said a driver whose car is affected may notice that the pedal is harder to depress and slower to return.

"A rough or chattered feeling may also be experienced when depressing/releasing the accelerator pedal," Toyota said.

Toyota is not a major player in Europe, where it ranked No. 8 by sales last year, with a 5 percent share of the market. Its models have fared badly as customers were nudged toward smaller fuel-efficient models by cash-for-clunkers government handouts.

The company sold 730,831 cars in the 27-nation European Union, Norway and Iceland in 2009 - down 4.7 percent from a year earlier. Sales of the luxury Lexus line fell by more than a quarter.

(Amazing isn't it?

If it had been Ford (or the real GM or Chrysler of a few years ago) that had this problem the courts would be back-logged for the next 5 years with suits!

But not one Jap Junk owner has filed a suit!)

PALIN'S TAKE ON OBAMA'S ADDRESS

Sarah Palin critiques State of the Union

JUSTICE MOUTHS 'NOT TRUE' AS OBAMA SLAMS COURT

The man in the House chamber openly disagreeing with Barack Obama as he spoke to Congress wasn't an over-the-top Republican or a seething Democrat. He was a Supreme Court justice, Samuel Alito.

Obama had taken the unusual step of scolding the high court in his State of the Union address Wednesday. "With all due deference to the separation of powers," he began, the court last week "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections."

Alito made a dismissive face, shook his head repeatedly and appeared to mouth the words "not true" or possibly "simply not true."

A reliable conservative appointed to the court by Republican President George W. Bush, Alito was in the majority in the 5-4 ruling.

Senate Democratic leaders sitting immediately behind Alito and other members of the high court rose and clapped loudly in their direction, with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., leaning slightly forward with the most enthusiastic applause.

The court did upend a 100-year trend in law to impose greater limitations on corporate political activity. Specifically, the court said corporations and unions could spend freely from their treasuries to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court's majority "would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans."

Obama said corporations can "spend without limit in our elections." However, corporations and unions are still prohibited from contributing directly to politicians.

Alito's head-shaking, though only two rows directly in front of Obama, wasn't the "You lie!" moment that brought Obama's last speech to Congress to a screeching halt. In fact, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who shouted it, was stone-faced throughout Obama's latest speech, even rising a few times to applaud.

While Obama spoke to a Congress dominated by Democrats, the smiles and the applause that interrupted Obama dozens of times during his 69-minute address belied the Democrat-vs.-Democrat anger that has been roiling the ranks of the party's lawmakers.

For most of them, no issue is more pressing than getting re-elected in November. And it's not clear that pursuing Obama's priorities will help them achieve theirs.

In personal and profane terms, House and Senate Democrats have huddled behind closed doors to list the debacles: The stunner in Massachusetts that cost the Democrats a Senate seat. The slow-motion collapse of health care talks. A government bailout of Wall Street while unemployment sits in double-digits.

"It just stinks to the high heaven what happened here," Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., railed earlier in the day at Obama's treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner.

Lynch was talking about the bailout, but the statement could well describe the Democrats' attitude about Obama's performance and the toll it's taken on their political standing.

One powerful House Democrat released a scathing statement about the White House before Obama had finished speaking.

"Somewhere along the line, the White House lost its way," said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "Instead of focusing on solutions to help America's families wade through the wreckage of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, Washington has wasted valuable time wrestling with partisan politics in an effort to rush through drastic reforms that do not directly address our most immediate needs."

Skelton added: "Obama's address has lent us all hope - hope that the administration is finally heeding our concerns. It's about time."

Other Democrats aimed their ire across the Capitol. Some were elated that Obama several times urged the Senate to act on House-passed legislation on a range of subjects, from health care reform to a freeze on discretionary spending.

"He spanked the Senate five times," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. Then he used a pithy quote to describe the threat that some Democrats pose to others.

"Republicans are our opposition. The Senate's our enemy," Weiner said.

Republicans were making a studied effort to stay out of the way and avoid another "You lie" moment. The House's three top Republican leaders - Reps. John Boehner of Ohio, Eric Cantor of Virginia and Mike Pence of Indiana - all lectured their troops before the address that Obama should be treated with respect.

Democrats for days were questioning whether to stand with Obama, congressional leaders or neither.

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., did more than ask. In a private meeting the day after Republican Scott Brown won Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat, Titus used a profanity to describe to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and freshman lawmakers the Democratic Party's prospects in the midterm elections if it ignores the lessons of Massachusetts.

THE STATE OF THE UNION SMOKE AND MIRRORS SELF WORSHIP...AGAIN

It is coming soon now, the ‘new and improved Obama.’

Aren't you overwhelmed with relief? He now magically understands that the obsessive and draconian push on Health care reform is vividly unpopular, along with his pariah, cap and trade. However, does that mean with the ‘new and improved Obama’ we are to see that this obsession with health care and environmental controls stop?Heavens no!!! If you want to have a clue, in between the ever so smooth speeches, new suits and empathy moments, what is really happening, read the book he taught Acorn workers from ‘Rules for Radicals’ by Saul Alinsky. More will be done in secret while he brushes hair off our face.

EXPECT THE FOLLOWING IN THE WEEKS AHEAD

He will start by appealing to the middle class, fearing that the ground swell of the Tea Party folks and Independents against him need more attention and representation. He will promise tax cuts and spending freezes. The only problem with trying to appeal to the middle class with new and improved promises and devotion is that he has promised well before he was elected no tax increases and throughout his first year. Now the growing masses simply don't trust him no matter how he says he will improve, listen or give a masterful speech. HE IS SIMPLY A LIAR.

HE WANTS TO TAX BANKS AND BIG BUSINESS

Now, the new and improved Obama is talking with Gordon Brown about taxing banks. The only problem with this scheme is that the masses also understand more and more that taxing, banks and big business will only shred our economy and steal jobs all the more. It will also make banks pull back even further and flatten funding for businesses, needed investments and hark.....the middle class.

Bankers have all stood together at a Swiss ski resort to stop the scatter-gun approach to new financial regulation. Obama is threatening to break up all kinds of banks. Big banking heads have warned of the imminent peril slamming regulations, huge taxes and controls on bankers and the economy.

Barclays Capital boss, bob Diamond said:

"This is a time when isolated actions in the US and the UK are not beneficial."

"Without risk we do not have a banking industry, Having banks willing to take risks, particularly cross-border risk is essential to economics."

The Standard Chartered chief executive, Peter Sands said:

"...the stakes are very high ... If we get it wrong in one dimension, we will end up stifling growth. If we get it wrong in the other dimension we end up with another crisis."

The polls of potential re-election are down to 47% today according to Fox news. He would not be re elected today. He has to know that with the recent conservative sweeps in Virginian, New Jersey, Massachusetts and almost New York.

He can play to the middle class as long as he wants but his real legacy is lying to keep power and using manipulation and slight of hand as Saul Alinsky teaches.

Will his empathic speech and ‘new Obama’ push strengthen support by the disappearing Independents and middle class? Marcia Kramer comments in her article on Obama’s plan to push toward rescuing the middle class....child care credits, student loans etc....

"Some say it’s an open admission to many here in the tri-state area that he has failed to feel our pain and our needs. From his war on the banks, the lifeblood of the metropolitan area economy, to his health care reform which could cost taxpayers here over 1 billion. Obama’s policies have sent a strong message to the tri-state area that Washington doesn't care about the middle class."

Will this speech manipulate the Independents and middle class back in the polls? I say a big fat no. People of all kinds are waking up to his smooth and empathetic lies. Oh yes, to his endless self worship also. In just one speech Obama referred to himself 132 times.

Prepare yourself for the new improved messiah of change and middle class empathy in the next few months. Believe the promises if you are a moron. Even I as a growing, national, big mouth, radio talk show host don't refer to myself 132 times in a show.

ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL MONTANA NIGHT

Clear sky...

No fog...

No rain...

No snow...

No wind...

Temperature around 17 below...

SO WHY THE HELL DON'T I HAVE ELECTRICITY???

THE I'S HAVE IT:

Obama Hits 96 "I's"

In Tampa, Fla.

Much attention has been given to Obama's persistent use of "I" when giving speeches to sell his administration's agenda. Is he taking responsibility - or, as his critics say, is he still in campaign mode?

Never has America had a "leader" with so much ego!

Maybe, just maybe, if we are lucky, someone will punctuate this ass between his "I's" with a cupro-nickle projectile...

THE IDIOTS RUNNING THE VETERAN'S ADMINISTRATION

Yup, it's that time once again!

I received a phone call from the V.A. Hospital in Salt Lake City yesterday.

Seems they want to remove the cardiac implant they stuck in my chest a couple of years ago.

For you people who were around at the time, you may recall how impressed I was with their entire set-up and the way they treated veterans.

Well, they are at it once again!

When I spoke to them they told me that any competent surgeon could remove the device without any complications.

Now, I have a very good surgeon right here in Glasgow, who has done two surgeries on me without any problems.

So I asked them if she could take care of the removal, and they told me she could, but I would have to pay for it out of my own pocket!

WHAT?

The removal could be done here ... 20 miles from my home, require no overnight stay, and the total time would be about an hour and a half, including a stop for lab work and x-rays.

If I want the V.A. to pay for it, I have to go to Salt Lake City, a day in advance of the intended surgery and stay overnight, then I would have to stay overnight again, after the surgery ... three days shot in the ass!And the cost?

And the cost ... the cost of an "open-ended" round-trip ticket (approximate cost around $1,500 plus it would take around 11 hours of flight time and add the additional 3 hours for "TSA clearance"!).

I can drive to the hospital in Glasgow in around 15 minutes, and the cost of transportation would be around $12.

What a bunch of friggin' asses running the V.A.!

And while I am at it, here is another update on the V.A.

This concerns the cost of my medications.

I require nine (9) Rx medications daily. I buy then in quantities that will last 3 months, and I also specify generic where available.

The cost of these medicines is $216 if I get them through the V.A..

However; if I get them from Wal-Mart (which I do) my cost is $90!

Here's another "improvement" the V.A. has enacted!

For 9 years (give or take a year or two) I have been attended to by a real physician ... the same physician on every visit. This is called "continuity of care".

Recently the V.A. has decided to end their contract with the Glasgow Clinic and opened their own little office in what can be termed a "strip mall" by Montana standards.

There is no lab, there is no radiology department, and there is no doctor! Plus they have no treatment facilities!

What do they have? A receptionist and a nurse!

Why the hell would I want to see a nurse? I am an ICU/CCU/ER nurse with 25 years of experience, three related degrees (A.A.S., B.S.N, M.S.N) and every possible nursing accreditation after my name (CCRN, EDN, ACLS, ATLS, etc.)!

When I want something done, be it to my body or to anything I own, I want it done by someone who knows more than I do!

I take my Bronco to a real mechanic, and damnit, I want to take my body to a real doctor!!

CRIMINALS IN HAITI 'RAPING QUAKE SURVIVORS AND TRAFFICKING CHILDREN'

(I know I said I wouldn't write about Haiti again until an American GI was killed, however, I feel this is an indication of what all our money, food, medication and personal supplies are being wasted on!)

Criminals in Haiti are preying on vulnerable earthquake survivors, even raping women, in makeshift camps set up in Port-au-Prince after the disaster.

"With the blackout that's befallen the Haitian capital, bandits are taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents," Haiti’s police, chief Mario Andresol, said yesterday.

"We have more than 7,000 detainees in the streets who escaped from the national penitentiary the evening of the earthquake ... It took us five years to apprehend them. Today they are running wild." Rachelle Dolce, who is living at a large makeshift camp on the Petionville Club golf course, said that she thought a rape had occurred outside her tent the previous night. She said that she heard men making noise and a woman struggling.

"I heard a fight outside and I saw panties on the ground," she said. "I started to shout a lot and they left." Figures for the number of crimes were not available but women's organizations have already detailed a number of cases and alerted the United Nations mission in Haiti, Mr Andresol said.

His warning came a day after the UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, said that gangsters and child traffickers could try to exploit the chaos triggered by Haiti's devastating earthquake to step up their criminal activities.

The January 12 earthquake killed around 170,000 people and left more than a million homeless, many of whom are living in makeshift camps in the ruined capital.

Security was tenuous in Haiti before the 7.0-magnitude quake and Mr Andresol said that the police force itself had been crippled by the disaster.

He added that the Haitian police force had only 8,000 members before the quake and that many of them were now dead or missing. A large number of the remaining officers were demoralized or traumatized.

"We lost 70 police officers, nearly 500 are still missing and 400 were wounded," Mr Andresol said at a temporary office standing in for the capital's police headquarters, which collapsed in the quake.

The deputy head of the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, Anthony Banbury, said that desperate survivors waiting in line for the trickle of foreign aid reaching Haiti were sometimes turning violent.

"It attracts big crowds and there can be disorder around the food distribution so it's absolutely necessary that we get enough food, enough water, enough shelter for the people, and enough security," he said.

At the Champ de Mars tent camp that skirts the crumpled National Palace, displaced survivors said that government security was virtually absent.

"At night people take things," said Omen Cola, as she washed a blouse in basin made from a cut-off plastic container. "But I don't have a problem. I don't have anything to steal." Residents said that they largely fended for themselves, gathering their meagre belongings into a pile at night and sleeping beside them to guard against theft.

In corners of the sprawling camp youths said that they were banding together to protect their possessions - bags of clothes, chickens, car batteries - and to collect rubbish into piles to be burned.

This raised fears, however, that the bands might fight among themselves.

Tina Irisia, 45, said that youths from outside the camp had come in, shouting that a tsunami was on the way. When people fled they stole whatever they could get their hands on, she said.

"I don't feel safe but I don't have anywhere else to go," Ms Irisia said as she sliced green peppers in a pan.

"Only Jesus Christ is watching over us," said Mariana Merise, 40, a neighbor.

The chaos left by the earthquake has also raised fears that vulnerable children could fall prey to human traffickers. The UN said last week that a number have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti.

The US State Department said yesterday that it was working with Haiti's Government to crack down on trafficking.

(Haiti has no "government", Haiti has no "police force", and the Haitians have done absolutely nothing to help themselves!

They do nothing but sit around bitching about their "situation" and demanding that the world comes to their rescue ... for what?

What have they to offer the world in return?

Not a damn thing!)

AFGHAN MEN STRUGGLE WITH SEXUAL IDENTITY

As if U.S. troops and diplomats didn't have enough to worry about in trying to understand Afghan culture, a new report suggests an entire region in the country is coping with a sexual identity crisis.

An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns - though they seem to be in complete denial about it.

The study found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually - yet they completely reject the label of "homosexual." The research was conducted as part of a longstanding effort to better understand Afghan culture and improve Western interaction with the local people.

The research unit, which was attached to a Marine battalion in southern Afghanistan, acknowledged that the behavior of some Afghan men has left Western forces "frequently confused."

The report details the bizarre interactions a U.S. Army medic and her colleagues had with Afghan men in the southern province of Kandahar.

In one instance, a group of local male interpreters had contracted gonorrhea anally but refused to believe they could have contracted it sexually - "because they were not homosexuals."

Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot "love" another man - but that doesn't mean they can't use men for "sexual gratification."

The group of interpreters who had contracted gonorrhea joked in the camp that they actually got the disease by "mixing green and black tea." But since they refused to heed the medics' warnings, many of them re-contracted the disease after receiving treatment.

The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.

The report said: "When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, 'How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'"

The Pashtun populations are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country. The Human Terrain Team that conducted the research is part of a military effort to learn more about local populations.

The report also detailed a disturbing practice in which older "men of status" keep young boys on hand for sexual relationships. One of the country's favorite sayings, the report said, is "women are for children, boys are for pleasure."

The report concluded that the widespread homosexual behavior stems from several factors, including the "severe segregation" of women in the society and the "prohibitive" cost of marriage.

Though U.S. troops are commonly taught in training for Afghanistan that the "effeminate characteristics" of Pashtun men are "normal" and not an indicator of homosexuality, the report said U.S. forces should not "dismiss" the unique version of homosexuality that is actually practiced in the region "out of desire to avoid western discomfort."

Otherwise, the report said, Westerners could "risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture."

(Gee ... another group of people we feel the need to help!

I guess this is good that the "men" are fudge-packing each other ... this means that for awhile the camels are safe!)

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT, THE GOP & MAKING IT WORK

Only the most partisan and/or politically ignorant among us would fail to recognize the magnitude, importance and the consequences of the Tea Party Movement. To be certain, it is a force to be reckoned with. But, as with the science of storms, there is a danger when two forces compete to occupy the same space. We of the Right side of the aisle must recognize this danger and insist that actions are taken, definitions are designated and roles are recognized, lest we turn an important moment in time into catastrophic history.

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

The first thing we have to do is to recognize and understand exactly what the Tea Party Movement is, where it came from and why.

Many in the political world have erroneously identified the Tea Party Movement as a political group not unlike the Democrats, Libertarians or Republicans. In fact, this couldn't be further from the truth. Proof to this reality is in the fact that people who have embraced the Tea Party Movement come from every flavor of politics. When over a million people descended on Washington in the name of the Tea Party Movement last Fall, the crowd was comprised of people from every political party " sans the Progressives, every social background, every religion and every race. To say that it is dominated by any one political party is to make a huge mistake.

The Tea Party Movement " and the name itself is symbolic rather than manufactured " is, in reality, the re-awakening of the American people to their obligation to civic responsibility; to governmental oversight. This is nothing new or revolutionary, as was the original Boston Tea Party of 1773.

This re-awakening is actually a return to the obligation of citizenry as envisioned by the Founders and Framers. People like Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Franklin and Madison took for granted that the citizenry would understand their role in government: that of the overseer. The Founders and Framers believed that we would be vigilant in providing governmental oversight, in understanding just who we were electing to office and in holding them accountable for their actions. In short, they believed we, as citizens, would do our part by paying attention to government.

The truth is We the People began to abdicate this solemn responsibility with the advent of government entitlement and as apathy increased, political opportunists, ideologues and nefarious elements " such as the Progressive Movement, the globalists and their proxies " took hold in government. As we slid ever deeper into the abyss of political apathy we lost out government to special interest groups and those who would want to "fundamentally transform" our country from a Constitutional Republic to a cog in a new One-World Order.

The Tea Party Movement is " for all practical purposes " We the People re-establishing our rightful place at the top of the governmental food chain, from whence all the power of government is derived. It is not a political party. It is the American people re-establishing their constitutional right of governmental oversight and redress of government.

RE-ESTABLISHING THE GOP BRAND

Understanding that the Republican Party can never "own" the Tea Party Movement " essentially because the Tea Party Movement is a mindset and not an entity " there remains the issue of re-establishing the Republican brand.

The fact that the Republican brand is in trouble " and has been since at least 2006 " is attributable not only to the lack of governmental oversight by We the People, but by the lack of oversight targeting the political party hierarchy by rank-and-file Republicans. The GOP allowed itself to be co-opted " to a great extent " by inside-the-beltway political operatives that cared more about winning elections than advancing Republican principles.

To recap, aside for its staunch stance against slavery and its support of the Missouri Compromise, the original platform of the Republican Party circa 1856 establishes that the Republican Party stood for:

* A rededication of government to constitutional principles, philosophies and limitations

* A strong, prudent and principled national security

* A well-maintained infrastructure

And perhaps the most important and defining provision,

"RESOLVED, That we invite the affiliation and cooperation of the men of all parties, however differing from us in other respects, in support of the principles herein declared; and believing that the spirit of our institutions as well as the Constitution of our country, guarantees liberty of conscience and equality of rights among citizens, we oppose all legislation impairing their security."

Simply stated, the platform of 1856 created the "big tent" party that Republican National Committee members say they quest for today by limiting the planks in the platform and by employing the understanding that it is more important to safeguard an individual’s right to advance their own "special interest" agenda (please understand that the term "special interest" doesn't necessarily mean something unsavory) than it is to champion that special interest as a part of the party’s platform.

This concept is brilliance in practice.

The Republicans who crafted the original platform understood that legislating the micromanagement of specific societal mores was a no-win proposition. If one administration choose to advance legislation " or even the establishment of a constitutional amendment " to champion a specific special interest issue, it was understood that all that would be necessary to render that legislation moot would be for a future administration, in possession of an opposing view on the issue, to simply overturn or craft legislation nullifying the prior legislation. They recognized that legislated solutions to societal and/or cultural ills would never " and could never " render the issue resolved. A perfect example of this comes in the issue of prohibition.

Instead, the Republicans who established the original party platform understood that protecting the right of the individual " the right of the individual " to affect societal change and establish cultural mores outside the confines of government was the singular effective political component in resolving societal differences. The Republican Party of 1856 stood for defending the individual’s right to affect society and the societal norms, and they expected that the citizenry would be self-motivated and self-sufficient enough to embrace that freedom and the self-ordained civic responsibility to engage on behalf of their societal beliefs.

Today, aside from recovering from the moniker of spendthrift, the Republican Party has morphed into a mirror image of the Progressive-held Democrat Party. They say "black" and the GOP says "white." They have planks in their platform about separation of church and state, abortion, gay rights, etc. and the GOP simply takes the opposite viewpoint. This tactic does not create a choice, it creates division. It does not advance the principles and philosophy of Americanism, it advances factionalism with the body politic, something James Madison and George Washington identified as a direct threat to the Republic.

In re-branding the Republican Party, the leadership would serve its members " and the country " best by refusing to expand the platform to include special interest planks and, instead, returning to the limited plank platform of its roots, where the party championed individual freedom and individual responsibility and engagement where issues of societal mores were concerned, not the legislation of ideological solutions or social engineering. The GOP must resign itself to defending an individual’s right to affect change, not to being the vehicle for that change.

THE ROLE OF TODAY’S GOP & THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

As I stated in the beginning, in the science of storms, there is a danger when two forces compete to occupy the same space. This is exquisitely illustrated in the dichotomy of power now playing out between the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party, most significantly where candidates for office are concerned.

I was heartened to hear that Republican National Committee Political Director Gentry Collins stated the RNC would exercise a "light touch" in the 2010 midterm elections. This approach promises to diminish what could have been a disastrous confrontation between candidates championed by the Tea Party Movement and candidates "mandated" by the RNC. But this is simply a commutation of the inevitable unless a reformation is undertaken by the RNC hierarchy.

In re-branding itself, it would wise for the GOP to take the opportunity afforded by this unique moment in American history to re-invent itself. The Republican National Committee " along with Republican organizations at every level " must re-structure itself to be less the inside-the-beltway command and control entity (an entity that mandates candidates and strong-arms platforms and agendas, which it has most certainly evolved into) and re-dedicate itself to becoming more of a mammoth and viciously efficient support and organizational tool that embraces candidates sent up from the grassroots; Conservatives re-awakened to their constitutionally mandated civic responsibility who have taken it upon themselves to run for office in 2010, 2012 and through the future.

If the Republican Party can wrap its brain around the strategic brilliance of this re-invention, it will position itself to be the preferred political party of those in the Tea Party Movement; it will be the avenue and political structure through which the Tea Party Movement advances their preferred candidates.

If the Republican Party refuses to understand the dramatically changed political landscape of the country, if they refuse to evolve from the inside-the-beltway mentality that allows for the existence of egotistical power-players no different from the elitists now in control of Congress, should the GOP insist on maintaining the status quo, they will be compromised, marginalized and, perhaps, even destroyed by the re-awakening of the American people to their constitutionally mandated obligation to governmental engagement and oversight.

Simply put, the GOP can either adapt and enjoy a promising future or become ineffective.

(Just recently two very important Republican politicians have announced they are canceling their scheduled appearance at the Tea Party Convention!

Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., both prominent backers of the tea party movement, announced Thursday they won't attend the Feb. 4-6 event in Nashville, Tenn. Their offices released statements Tuesday citing concerns about how funds raised by the convention might be used.

Many tea party activists across the country are boycotting the convention because of its $550-a-person ticket price and the $100,000 speaking fee it is paying to Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential nominee.

The convention is being run by a for-profit Tennessee corporation registered to Tennessee lawyer Judson Phillips, who has said he hopes to make money on the convention.

Dave Dziok, a spokesman for Bachmann, said in a statement that the congresswoman dropped out after receiving "conflicting advice" on whether her participation would be in line with the Committee on Standards.

"There is uncertainty about how any proceeds from the event may be used, and we must err on the side of caution," he said. "Some will want to portray her withdrawal as repudiation of the tea party movement, but that couldn't be further from the truth."

Blackburn said in her statement that she told Phillips on Thursday that his company's for-profit status "has put many of his speakers in an awkward position."

"I remain encouraged by the outpouring of energy from constitutionally minded grassroots organizations in Tennessee and around America," she added.)

SARAH AND GRETA ON OBAMA'S LECTURE

A New Tone?

CAN AMERICA

Get On

Track?

High-speed railroads that travel upwards of 200 miles per hour whisk commuters around France, China and Spain. Does America have the technology and the know-how to build such a system?

Obama has announced a multibillion-dollar investment in high-speed railroads that could travel as fast as 200 miles per hour. Could high-speed rail become America's new Eisenhower Interstate, crisscrossing the nation and whisking us from Baton Rouge to Bethesda in mere hours? And does America have the technology and the know-how to build such a system?

"The talent is here in the U.S. to build high-speed rail networks," says Thomas D. Simpson, executive director of Washington D.C.'s Railway Supply Institute. "All we've ever needed is the wherewithal to do it. And 8 billion is going to get us started."

High-speed rail is an umbrella term that encompasses trains that travel over 90 mph, and as fast as 200 or more. And it's very real: Today, French TGV trains can take you from Paris to Lyons - a journey of 250 miles - in two hours. Amtrak's Acela covers the same distance in five hours, and that's the best the U.S. has to offer at present. China's high-speed trains cover 664 miles in just 3 hours, averaging a stunning 217 mph.

High-speed trains are very different from existing passenger trains (and from maglev trains, in which magnetic forces lift, propel, and guide a vehicle over a guideway at up to 300 mph): The rails they ride on need to be electrified and require different grades, plus federal regulations dictate that trains that travel over 110 mph can't go over graded crossings. That means they'll require entirely new tracks.

"There's a paradox," explains Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High-Speed Rail Association. "High-speed rail on the one hand is a just a train. But when you combine better trains and better tracks together, you get something that's completely transformational in the way cities interact and people travel."

In addition, high-speed rail has the potential to reduce oil use by 125 million barrels a year, according to Environment America. Only foreign companies like France's TGV, Canada's Bombardier, and Germany's Siemens manufacturer the trains, though many operate manufacturing facilities here in the U.S. Harnish thinks given the demand, American companies have plenty of room to innovate in this market.

"We don't have an industry, so we're not going to start it new? It's silly," says Harnish. "What happened in Spain and Korea and China was that a foreign manufacturer came in and built the first sets. Then the industry grew up to build their own sets."

So how long will it take to crisscross the nation with these new high speed tracks?

"It's impossible to say at this point," cautions Rob Kulat, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, warning that such a system could take 30 or more years to build out. Kulat notes that a lot of the infrastructure is shared with freight trains, so we may need double, triple or even quadruple tracks laid side by side. And signal controls need to be upgraded. Plus there are natural barriers, such as the tunnel in the Northeast corridor that hampers Amtrak's Acela train.

The other big hindrance is land use. Harnish and Kulat both note that eminent domain laws would need to be invoked in order to gather up the land such a high-speed network would require. But the main problem seems to be one of funding, rather than knowledge.

"There is the expertise for TGV like trains in this country," says Simpson. Americans could build these trains, if state and federal agencies invested in the industry. "Spain has spent over 200 billion in developing intercity rail. TGV is similar, because Germany has spent similar money. Even the Obama administration would admit 8 billion is just a down payment."

(SHIT!!

High speed trains? Hell, the American people have been supporting AMTRAK since May 1, 1971, and it isn't setting any speed records, and it hasn't shown a profit in any one year of the 40 years we have been supporting it!

This poor excuse of a rail system takes 13 hours to go the same distance that my Bronco and I go in 8-1/2 hours! And the Bronco is quieter and more comfortable!! And a hell of a lot cheaper ... airline tickets are cheaper than AMTRAK.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on this fiasco, maybe Obama should be looking into updating our Interstate system?

As for the 125 million barrels of oil that this farce is supposed to save, sound like an estimate from the same assholes who forecast the melting of the polar ice caps...)

SECRETARY NAPOLITANO MISSES HEARING ON CHRISTMAS DAY BOMBING ATTEMPT

Top House Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee are chastising Secretary Janet Napolitano for skipping Wednesday's hearing examining the attempted Christmas Day bombing.

Pennsylvania's Chris Carney said: "I am very dismayed that the secretary herself isn't here. I mean it's probably fair to ask - where the hell is Secretary Napolitano?"

Jane Harman of California scolded: "She should have been here... I am very personally disappointed that she isn't here."

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said he spoke to Napolitano personally two days before the hearing and the issue did not come up. Thompson says he was first told Napolitano would be out of the country. The committee later discovered her plans had changed and a deputy was sent.

DHS says it's 'unfortunate' that these members chose to raise this when they did, since they didn't raise concerns in many conversations with Napolitano right before the hearing

(Hey, someone tell that ugly bitch that she is supposed to attend these meetings! that is what she is being paid to do ... since it is obvious she cannot do anything else...)

TAXPAYERS PAY $101,000 FOR PELOSI'S IN-FLIGHT 'FOOD, BOOZE'

It reads like a dream order for a wild frat party: Maker's Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey's Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey ... and Corona beer.

But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for "in-flight services" - including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That's almost $1,000 per week.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over that time.

"Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said today. "And these documents suggest the Speaker's congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else."

Pelosi, D-Calif., recently joined Obama on a Judicial Watch list of Top 10 corrupt politicians because of her "sense of entitlement," the group said.

And WND reported almost a year ago that Pelosi was shown to have been erratically canceling and rescheduling flights, as one would with an on-call taxi service.

Do the tone-deaf lawmakers in D.C. make your blood boil? Read all about Washington and its politics of corruption in "Breach of Trust."

"We have ... folks prepping the jets and crews driving in (not a short drive for some), cooking meals and preflighting the jets etc," said one Department of Defense e-mail then.

Another official sent an e-mail questioning a series of Pelosi's requests for aircraft.

"Any chance of politely querying [Pelosi's team] if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend?" it stated. "[T]here's no need to block every weekend 'just in case'..."

The e-mail noted that the speaker's office had "a history of canceling many of their past requests."

Yet another e-mail exchange at that time revealed Pelosi's demand that jets pick her up at Travis Air Force Base rather than San Francisco's airport.

"She lives about 1.5 hours from SFO and much closer to Travis. ... Whether it is the best use of assets is not the question. But instead is it worth upsetting the speaker. ..."

Said another, "This is a battle that we are bound to lose if we tell the speaker('s) office. In the end, this is what will happen. I wish that I could say this is a one-time request, but we know it will probably happen again in the future."

Yet another indicated a deep level of frustration:

"Here is the laydown: there are five G5s. Two are broke. Two off on CODELS. One slated for priority White House... we should keep on G-III for now for Tuesday afternoon and start sacrificing goats and chickens."

Judicial Watch said the newly obtained 2,000 pages of documentation show Pelosi's military travel cost the U.S. Air Force $2,100,744.59 over two years - including $101,429.14 for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.

Among the newest highlights revealed:

Pelosi used Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district at an average cost of $28,210.51 per flight. Of 103 Pelosi-led congressional delegations (CODEL), 31 trips included members of the House speaker's family.

One CODEL traveling from Washington, D.C., through Tel Aviv, Israel, to Baghdad, Iraq, May 15-20, 2008, "to discuss matters of mutual concern with government leaders" included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone. This flight included the purchase of the long list of alcoholic drinks.

According to a "Memo for Record" from a March 29-April 7, 2007, CODEL that involved a stop in Israel, "CODEL could only bring kosher items into the hotel. Kosher alcohol for mixing beverages in the delegation room was purchased on the local economy i.e. bourbon, whiskey, scotch, vodka, gin, triple sec, tequila, etc.

Pelosi's office could not be reached for comment. The answering machine said the office would be closed until Monday, and the mailbox was full, so no messages could be left.

U.S. CANCELS NO-BID CONTRACT FOR AFGHAN WORK TO DEMOCRATIC DONOR

The U.S. has canceled a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan awarded to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids.

The cancellation comes after Fox News first reported on the details of the contract last week, prompting lawmakers to make inquiries into the deal. State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley told Fox News that USAID terminated the award and is now working on an appropriate resolution.

The contract had been awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi that was hired to provide "rule of law stabilization services" in war-torn Afghanistan.

A synopsis of the contract published on the USAID Web site said Checchi & Company would "train the next generation of legal professionals" throughout the Afghan provinces and thereby "develop the capacity of Afghanistan's justice system to be accessible, reliable, and fair."

The legality of the arrangement as a "sole source," or no-bid, contract was made possible by virtue of a waiver signed by the USAID administrator.

When Checchi was contacted by Fox News for its earlier report, he confirmed that his company had indeed received the nearly $25 million contract but declined to say why it had been awarded on a no-bid basis, referring a reporter to USAID.

Asked if he or his firm had been aware that the contract was awarded without competitive bids, Checchi replied: "After it was awarded to us, sure. Before, we had no idea."

Joseph A. Fredericks, director of public information at USAID, told Fox News the Checchi deal was actually a renewal of an existing contract, awarded in 2004 by the Bush administration after a competitive bid process.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox News the no-bid contract in this case "disturbed" him.

Issa had written to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah requesting that the agency "produce all documents related to the Checchi contract" on or before Feb. 5. Citing the waiver that enabled USAID to award the contract on a no-bid basis, Issa noted that the exemption was intended to speed up the provision of services in a crisis environment.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, told Fox News she, too, was seeking answers about the Checchi contract.

As a candidate for president in 2008, Obama, then a senator, frequently derided the Bush administration for the awarding of federal contracts without competitive bidding.

Less than two months after he was sworn into office, Obama signed a memorandum that he claimed would "dramatically reform the way we do business on contracts across the entire government."

"If you want to say this violates the basis on which this administration came into office and campaigned, fair enough," Crowley told Fox News.

Federal campaign records show Checchi has been a frequent contributor to liberal and Democratic causes and candidates in recent years, including to Obama's presidential campaign. The records show Checchi has given at least $4,400 to Obama dating back to March 2007, close to the maximum amount allowed.

COLLINS:
'THIS ADMINISTRATION CANNOT SEE A FOREIGN TERRORIST RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM'

Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) on Saturday hammered the Justice Department for treating Flight 253 terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a "common criminal" - a move she described in her party's weekly address as a "failure" of the entire justice system.

The decision to read Miranda rights to Abdulmutallab - better known as the Christmas Day bomber - is symptomatic of the White House's general "blindness" in its handling of the larger War on Terrorism, Collins stressed.

Consequently, the senator implored Barack Obama to treat both Abdulmutallab and other, future terror suspects as "enemy combatants," who have fewer constitutional rights than regular criminals, she explained.

"Obama recently used the phrase that ‘we are at war’ with terrorists. But unfortunately his rhetoric does not match the actions of his administration," said Collins, the ranking member on the Senate's Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

"The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism," she added. "And, because of that blindness, this administration cannot see a foreign terrorist even when he stands right in front of them, fresh from an attempt to blow a plane out of the sky on Christmas Day."

Collins is among a growing group of GOP lawmakers who are apoplectic at the administration's treatment of Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian terror suspect who tried to bomb Flight 253 above Detroit last year.

Her concerns stem from testimony at her own committee's hearing last week, during which one Justice Department official admitted the White House did not speak with top intelligence officials before reading Miranda rights to Abdulmutallab. That decision, Collins said at the time, meant the suspect was only interrogated for an hour before he was granted a lawyer, and thus was able to stop speaking to investigators.

Collins characterized that decision as a grave mistake in her address Saturday, stressing it has so far deprived the Justice Department of key counterterrorism information.

But other Republicans too have skewered the administration for its now-controversial legal call.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) expressed his concerns to Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter Wednesday, writing, "We remain deeply troubled that this paramount requirement of national security was ignored - or worse yet, not recognized - due to the administration’s preoccupation with reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights."

Earlier this month, 22 other senators wrote a similar letter to Obama, stressing Abdulmutallab's likely trial in a civilian setting would send the message that terror suspects would always have a "panopoly of rights" in U.S. courts.

But Collins' remarks this weekend perhaps signal GOP lawmakers are readying a larger push against the White House's approach to the Abdulmutallab case. Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Collins suggested one route earlier this week: immediately transferring custody of Abdulmutallab to the Defense Department, which could then try him before a military commission.

However, White House officials are unlikely to acquiesce to the two senators' request. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs as recently as last weekend described the Justice Department's move as the "right decision," adding the White House gained "valuable intelligence" despite only interrogating Abdulmutallab for a short time.

Still, Collins and others in her caucus remain staunchly unsatisfied with the Obama administration's response. Her radio address Saturday pined the Justice Department to consider revising its approach - not just with respect to the Abdulmutallab case, but to all of the White House's forthcoming terror trials.

"This charade must stop. Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such. The safety of the American people depends on it," Collins said.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Regardless of station in life, faith or philosophy, unfulfilled expectations are the greatest cause of anger, frustration and discontent on the planet. That's true whether those expectations arise in the interaction of husbands and wives, parents and children, teachers and students, employers and employees, businesses and customers, leaders and the led or politicians and their constituents. Barack Obama apparently doesn't grasp this fundamental truth of human nature.

Resolving the "friction" of unfulfilled expectations requires a straightforward recognition of personal responsibility for commitments - perceived or real - that have not been satisfied and a determination by the parties involved to do better in the future. My experience with this process with my wife, children and colleagues usually begins with an acknowledgment of mistakes or errors I have made and includes the words "I'm sorry" or a similar phrase.

When Obama was campaigning for president, he promised "hope" and "change." The majority of the American electorate believed these nebulous ideas would make life better for us and our children. We now know better.

Current poll numbers - the lowest for any president at this point in office - reflect the unfulfilled expectations of millions who voted for him. Yet Obama's first State of the Union address indicates he still doesn't get it.

Absent from Obama's lengthy lecture to the assembled masses last Wednesday night was any recognition of personal failure or error or even the hint of an apology. Instead, he ascribes blame to his predecessors, his political opponents and even the Supreme Court for all our problems. Apparently, apologies still are reserved for our nation generally - and are delivered in front of "blame America first" audiences overseas.

Worse, Obama's efforts to deflect responsibility for his party's political reversals, our current economic travail, national security threats and foreign policy setbacks lead him to be disingenuous at best and downright deceptive at worst. Thankfully, not everyone gathered in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday night was willing to timidly "go along to get along."

When Obama accused the Supreme Court of reversing "a century of law ... (to) open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections," Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing the words "that's not true." The justice is right, for the court has done nothing to remove long-standing prohibitions on foreign entities - be they individuals or corporations - against their contributing to our election campaigns.

Some argue our tolerance for dissembling on domestic political matters - limiting campaign contributions, legislation to create jobs, raising taxes, increasing government spending and debt, imposing government-run health care or increasing regulatory controls on free enterprise - is a long-standing tradition. Unfortunately, Obama carries the practice into issues of national security.

He boldly claimed he has provided "leadership" and "engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people." He also said, "Since the day I took office, we have renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation." Yet the administration's belated support for pro-democracy movements in Honduras and Iran, abandoning of a U.S. missile defense shield in Europe, insistence on shipping terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. while returning others to the battlefield, and treating terrorists - such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief 9/11 plotter; accused Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day "underpants bomber" - as common criminals all make his assertions ring hollow.

The same applies to Obama's call for Congress to "repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are." The commander in chief apparently wants us to ignore that it's not love of country that's the problem. Simply put, a warrior's ethos is incompatible with illicit, same-sex eros in the ranks. It's not "who they are"; it's what they do.

This cynical effort at resurrecting a campaign promise to use our military for radical social engineering raises expectations in the Democratic "base" that their leader can somehow prevail in implementing their agenda. Yet like so many of Obama's pledges, it is unlikely to happen absent a sea change in the American body politic.

The 1993 law - Section 654 of Title 10, U.S. Code - was mislabeled "don't ask, don't tell" by the media and the Clinton administration. In fact, a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress found "no constitutional right to serve in the armed forces" and codified that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service," holding that active gays in the ranks would pose "an unacceptable risk to the armed forces' high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability."

Unless the O-Team can show irrefutable evidence that changing the law would somehow improve "military capability" in the midst of war, even this Pelosi-Reid Congress will have to reject such blatant pandering to the far-left fringe. That undoubtedly will anger some who have not yet learned how to avoid disappointment with Obama: Keep expectations low. He is sure to live down to them.

OBAMA’S CONTEMPT:

Hallmark Vestige Of

His own incompetence

"In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment...But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order..."
- Randy Barnett

To the best of my reckoning of history, the degree of contempt towards the American people that Obama showcased in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, was extraordinarily comparable in repugnance to that painstakingly postulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in "The German Ideology," when they referred to the German public’s mentality as,

"...the putrescence of the absolute spirit. When the last spark of its life had failed, the various components of this caput mortuum [dead head] began to decompose, entered into new combinations and formed new substances..."

The seventy-minute pedantic spectacle, punctuated by more than 100 partisan standing ovations, and several lamely disguised derisive sniggering of some in the crowd, should dispel any iota of a doubt that the Obama is a certifiable agent of the patently destructive hubris of communist ideology. Only an ideologue, categorically convinced of the superiority and righteousness of his cause, can be so unabashedly angry that his agenda has been decisively, if temporarily, thwarted by the will of the people.

The self-proclaimed transformational Obama proceeded to transform a traditional ritual of governance in the hallowed halls of Congress into a locker-room peep talk on his expectations of how the nation ought to behave and think, and how his party and the opposition should conduct themselves in order to live up to his standards of decorum and accomplishments. He admonished the nation for not appreciating his unique genius in governance. He rebuked Congress for excessive partisanship. He falsely vilified the Supreme Court Justices for doing their duty with a majority finding to declare McCain-Feingold unconstitutional, because there is "no basis for allowing the government to limit corporate independent expenditures."

Admittedly, we had a preview of this elitist mean spirited streak of Obama’s during the campaign when he derided the rural folks of Pennsylvania as people who would "...cling to guns or religion or antipathy...as a way to explain their frustrations." At that time I just mentally noted that the remark was eerily reminiscent of Marx and Engels’ blatant characterization of the lumpenproletariat as the social class composed of "beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements..."

Both the atmospherics and rhetoric at the State of the Union ritual merely confirmed the bona fides of Barack Hussein Obama as a hardcore ideologue and rendered it unwise for this country to seek a compromise with any of his policies. Fortunately there are encouraging indications of his bungling incompetence lending a glimmer of hope that America may yet prevail. Unfortunately, retrenchment is one of the principal instinctive reflexes, integral to the arsenal of survival strategies for a hardcore ideologue "sympathetic toward the general aims of Marxian socialism." The contempt for "we the people" which he amply exhibited and articulated during the campaign and validated at the State of the Union can propel him to let his ideology determine the vector of his policies regardless of the consequences to the nation.

BEREFT OF EFFECTIVENESS, REPLETE WITH EXCUSES

To keep matters in perspective, it behooves to revisit a few items in the catalogue of scenarios of policy formulation and execution to count some of the most recent ways.

First: Outsourcing writing of the Health Care bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The adults who occupied the Oval Office before Obama, used to draft legislations and present them to Congress for deliberation. Obama on the other hand let loose the bureaucratic and clerical fury of congressional staffers to wreck havoc on what he deems his flagship legislation. That was why he could not articulate on the substance of the bill in any coherent fashion or graphic details and resorted to reciting platitudes every time he held a press conference on the subject.

Second: Outsourcing handling of terrorist culprits to nobody in particular. That was how nobody could answer the question of who authorized Mirandizing drawers Umar. That was how DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano pronounced the verdict of all systems peachy at her first press conference on the incident. That was why the futile if pathetic finger pointing of who did not notify the not-yet-constituted High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) was a spectacle on national TV at Congressional Hearings because nobody knew that nobody bothered to constitute what was supposed to be an all-important instrument of protecting the country, or who was supposed to do the constituting. The lawyerly formalism of dubbing drawers Umar an "alleged suspect" is sickening. The powers that be might as well call him a hero and make the charade consummate!

Third: Attributing most if not all the pitfalls of his administration as the legacy from the previous administration and proceeding to appoint Pres. George W. Bush as the co-leader to "coordinate efforts to involve more Americans in the recovery and rebuilding effort that's needed in Haiti." By so doing, he telegraphed to the world these three alternatives as each equally likely to be true:

1) Haitian relief is not that important so it does not matter much if the relief effort succeeds or fails;

2) The pervasively blame-worthy President Bush can really be counted on to deliver when the chips are down;

3) Obama himself does not really know what he is talking about or doing, for that matter, he is just learning on the job.

Fourth: The audacity of hubris exhibited at the Massachusetts campaign: the Obama showed up at Martha Coakley’s political rally and showcased his teleprompter-free eloquence when he proclaimed on national TV that:

1) He knew absolutely nothing about Scott Brown therefore he was uniquely qualified to campaign for Scott’s opponent. Unbeknownst to us, Brown might just be the best thing since sliced bread and the country cannot risk deploying such an impeccable talent to the U.S. Senate.

2) He was acutely aware that the Truck is practically the folk symbol of American manhood, therefore it is the Obama’ sworn duty to deride it. Otherwise, the country runs the risk of unleashing the unbridled American competence on the universe thereby undermining all the good will this nation had earned resultant to all the serial apologizing to the world in the first few weeks of his administration that Obama had most painstakingly and tirelessly undertaken for America’s competence and historical generosity.

I can go on for a few more but I don't have the intestinal fortitude for it. Besides, an exhaustive list would be logistically prohibitive for our immediate purpose. The bottom line is, we sent a spoilt brat to do a man’s job and we have been rewarded commensurately for our foolishness.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE OR IDEOLOGICAL DELIRIUM

The great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously observed, "we only see what we know." Accordingly, in this White House nobody hears anything except ideas which tend to promote the Oval Office agenda, which is the takeover and control of every aspect of every citizen's life.

That this is problematic for the future of the country is not recognized by the mindset of a Community Organizer, aka, a neighborhood agitator, or rabble-rouser. In order to thrive and flourish, a Community Organizer requires a significant amount of dysfunction in the domain, which viewed from the Oval Office translates into the entire national polity.

Once a Community Organizer, always a Community Organizer: the world is viewed always from the prism of structural and/or operational dysfunction in the community. The danger at this juncture is much greater and potentially more devastating because the principal dysfunction is in the Oval Office.

"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste," is the mantra consistent with the rabble-rouser’s mindset. And if there is not enough of a crisis brewing to warrant the citizenry’s attention, its urgency has to be contrived as in "the stimulus bill has to be passed this week else all hell will break loose, etc., etc."

Thus it came to pass that this White House had done everything it could to deny that the Scott Brown victory was a wake-up call for them, to slow down their drive to take the country into the precipice of (fill in your favorite blank: health care reform, auto/bank bailouts, stimulating shovel ready projects, green jobs, global warming, etc.).

From denial to delusion, from delusion to obsession can be a razor-thin transition, if we get so lucky. In fact, there needs not be any transition at all. It can very well be a quantum leap or a tsunami deluge depending on insinuatingly instigating ad hoc circumstances. Waning fortunes at the voting booths are mighty dangerous and persistent instigating and insinuating dynamo in a regime of electoral governance. That a regime of czars has already been stealthily introduced into the system serves to intensify the menace.

The danger is mortally grieve because the ideologue has the drive of a jihadist, especially if an annoying obstacle blocks his way, such as the patriotic resolve of the overwhelming majority of the populace. Then the operative battle cry becomes "Allahu Akbar " or some secularist variant thereof but doubtless as devastating if not more so. On perception of adversity, an ideologue is akin to a wounded beast, sensing its mortality, insisting on survival. The blinders of ideological delirium and retrenchment instincts are a lethal combination.

The defiant if condescending peroration ritualized at the SOTU served to brand, with platinum-titanium plating, the Stalinist seal onto this Obama Presidency. Whoever first recognized the Stalinist trappings in the Obama Paradigm deserves to be congratulated for insight and vigilance, but needs to remain demure in anticipating any rewards from posterity.

Recall how Stalin allowed the Ukrainians to die of starvation at the rate of 25,000/day rather than divert grain exports to abate the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine, in the name of a Five-Year Plan; never mind that it was later deemed an act of willful genocide.

This Obama regime is very much capable of instigating a similar type of atrocity to attain the goal of "fundamentally remaking America" to his vision of equal outcomes for all. We need to constantly remind him that our founding principle is "equal opportunity for all," and not "equal outcome for all," as he seems determined to impose on the national polity.

LAWMAKERS LOOK FOR CHEAP, SAFE SPOT FOR 9/11 TRIALS

The Obama administration is looking for other options than New York City for the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four co-conspirators while refusing to say that the Big Apple is off-limits.

(HEY ASSHOLES!

How about GITMO?

It already exists.

It already has all the security it needs.

There is no way that the ragheads can use the media as a speech-spewing platform.

And the gallows is just around the corner!)

SAAB SALE WAS REPORTEDLY DELAYED DUE TO SUSPECTED INVOLVEMENT OF RUSSIAN MAFIA

The U.S. Government participated in stopping General Motors from selling Saab to a Dutch automaker in December due to possible involvement in the deal by the Russian Mafia, a Swedish media outlet is reporting.

According to the Dagens Industri newspaper, the Swedish government asked its security force, the Sapo, to investigate the financial affairs of the Convers Group, a Russian investment group owned by the family of billionaire Alexander Antonov that was one of the major shareholders of Spyker when the Dutch automaker made the offer to buy Saab in December. That investigation reportedly turned up "strong suspicion" of ties between the Antonovs and organized crime, information that was passed on to the FBI. The report goes on to say the board of General Motors was then contacted by the U.S. government and told to stop the sale.

Since then, Spyker founder Victor Muller has assumed ownership of the 4.6 million shares in Spyker that were controlled by the Convers Group, apparently opening the door to another offer to purchase Saab, which was accepted by GM last week.

In the weeks leading up to the sale several media outlets reported that GM was wary of the Antonovs' involvement over concerns that intellectual property rights could be transferred to competing automakers. When asked during a conference call following the agreement if GM was satisfied with the exclusion of the Antonov family from the deal, GM Vice President for Corporate Planning and Alliances John Smith responded, "as part of finding a sustainable solution for Saab, we are happy with the structures of the company that Victor Muller has put in place for Saab Spyker and I'll just leave it at that."

A General Motors spokesperson had no comment on the Dagens Industri report when contacted by Foxnews.com. Efforts to contact officials at Spyker have been unsuccessful at the time of this writing.

("intellectual property rights"?

G.M. hasn't done a damn thing that could be classified as "intellectual" since the 1969 Z-28! Well, possibly the 1970-1/2 Z-Car could be considered "intellectual", but not a damn thing after that!)

GATES FIRES HEAD OF F-35 FIGHTER JET PROGRAM

A senior manager in charge of procuring the next generation of military fighter jets known as F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been fired and the Department of Defense has been instructed to withhold money that would pay bonuses to the lead contractor, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Monday.

In a briefing at the Pentagon on the 2011 defense budget, Gates said inefficiencies and budget overruns within the costly fighter program forced him to take action.

Gates said Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor responsible for producing the F-35, is in agreement with his plan to withhold bonuses, calling it a burden "the taxpayer should not have to bear."

In 2009 a Defense Department review concluded the Joint Strike Fighter program had significant cost overruns and its production dates were far over schedule.

Gates did not announce a replacement to head up the Joint Strike Fighter program, but he said the new position will be elevated to that of a three-star officer.

Gates has a reputation for firing his senior staff, and he was quick to point that out.

"One cannot absorb the additional costs that - that we have in this program and the - and the delays, without people being held accountable. And I think if - if I've set one tone here at the Department of Defense, it is that, when things go wrong, people will be held accountable."

In 2008 Gates fired Air Force Secretary Michael Wynn and forced out the Air Force Chief of Staff, Michael T. Moseley in wake of the "loose nukes" scandal earlier that year.

In 2009 he removed Gen. David McKiernan from his position as the commanding general in Afghanistan after it became clear that the Taliban had reversed the momentum of the war. Brig. Gen. David Heinz, now the former Program executive officer for the F-35, has become the secretary's latest casualty.

The new project manager for the Joint Strike Fighter will be announced in a matter of days, and he'll have heavy burden to bear. The Joint Strike Fighter is currently the Pentagon's most expensive weapons project ever, with defense officials putting the price tag for all the jets requested at nearly $300 billion.

The F-35 fighter is called the "Joint" Strike Fighter because it's designed for use across the Navy, Marine Corp, and the Air Force. The Pentagon also has plans to sell it to allies overseas once production needs within the U.S. military have been met.

The first F-35s are expected to be operation in 2012 if all goes according to plan. The Marines will be the first to get them and the defense community will be watching closely. From the day an F-35 rolls off the assembly to the day it's retired, it's total production cost is valued at $69 million.

(Considering that Obama stopped funding the F-35 almost as soon as he took the oath of office on the book he doesn't believe in, what difference does it make who runs the F-35 program?

Then again, Obama has also put the screeching halt on the F-22 as well!

Maybe, just maybe, this big-eared pretender to the throne will change his mind now that Mother Russia has a military aircraft that has stealth capabilities, and the ability to surpass the F-22?

But I wouldn't hold my breath!)

WHITE HOUSE CONFIRMS COURSE CHANGE FOR NASA

The administration of Barack Obama is canceling NASA's current space shuttle replacement- and lunar exploration-plan and is prepared to fight any congressional effort to save it, the nation's top budget official said Jan. 31.

Obama's budget, officially sent to Congress Monday morning, confirms what officials had stated during a teleconference with reporters one day before: White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer stated Obama's plan to kill NASA's Constellation program, a five-year-old effort to replace the aging space shuttle fleet with new rockets and spacecraft optimized to return astronauts to the Moon.

"...[W]e are proposing a cancellation of the Constellation program at NASA even while making other investments in long range [research and development] there, which again is a significant step," Orszag said in response to a reporter's question about the tough choices Obama faced in drafting his 2011 spending plan.

The key elements of Constellation include the Orion crew capsule, its Ares 1 launcher, a larger rocket dubbed Ares 5 and the Altair lunar lander. Obama's top-line spending proposal for NASA is expected to increase slightly over the 2010 appropriation of $18.7 billion and would including some funding for an alternative means for transporting crews to and from the international space station.

Orszag said that in addition to research and development, NASA's proposal invests in "advance robotics and other steps that will help to inspire Americans and not just return a man or a woman to the Moon but undertake the longer range research that could succeed in human spaceflight to Mars."

Facing a federal deficit of $1.26 trillion in 2011, Obama is proposing a three-year freeze on most non-defense discretionary spending, a move Obama believes will save $250 billion over the next 10 years, Orszag said. In addition, the White House is proposing more than 120 program terminations, reductions and efficiencies that together are expected to save $20 billion in 2011, Orszag said.

"You're going to see a whole variety of measures that curtail spending and activity in some areas while investing more in others," he said. "And again within the non-security discretionary sphere, achieving that overall cap."

In response to a reporter's question about congressional opposition to proposed program cuts that could lead to job losses in some states, Pfeiffer said the White House would fight special interests on Capitol Hill.

"We don't expect that this is going to be easy," Pfeiffer said. "There was a lot of opposition to some of the cuts that we proposed last year. And we had I think a historically very successful rate about 60 percent of the cuts we proposed were actually enacted into the law."

Pfeiffer said some funding reductions not enacted in the prior year budget would be evident in Obama's 2011 spending plan.

"Some of those cuts we didn't get are back in this budget and we're going to continue pushing for them because we don't believe that just because it has a powerful constituency, either on the Hill or on K Street, wasteful programs should continue to exist," Pfeiffer said.

When asked by a reporter what he would say to federal workers whose jobs could be eliminated if Obama's 2011 budget is enacted, Orszag said the spending proposal would expand the federal workforce in some areas, including defense, homeland security and veterans affairs.

"In addition, we have a significant effort under way and the budget includes additional funding to expand our acquisition workforce to oversee the roughly half a trillion dollars in federal contracts each year," Orszag said. "In most cases, these agencies, you'll see tomorrow the agencies have stepped forward with a sensible approach to achieving this overall cap."

(Gee ... another flying machine cancelled?

I guess that Obama figures that if you do not have aero-dynamic ears like he has, you have no right to fly!

You'll remember that he also requested a whole bunch of new "choppers" for his personal use, and also a host of smaller jet "executive planes" for Pelosi and her friends not all that long ago.

Hope the hell someone has saved their covered wagons and their 20-mule-teams ... since it appears that this is the only way Americans will be able to travel, unless, of course, you are an FOB ... [no that's not "Free On Board", it is "Friend Of 'Bama!])

BUDGETS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

They say actions speak louder than words. I think budgets speak even louder. Because with a budget, words don't matter, numbers do. And the numbers in Obama's budget sound a lot different than Obama's words.

Obama says he's tired of business as usual, yet his budget is very much business as usual. Because you can't say, Mr. Obama, that you're really serious about cutting the deficit, when your budget shows you're not remotely serious about cutting the spending: That is business as usual.

Saying you're cutting the deficit by over 1.3 trillion bucks over 10 years, but leaving out the little detail $1.1 trillion of that comes from taxing and not trimming: That is business as usual.

Bragging about $250 billion in actual spending cuts over the same period and leaving out the little detail that's barely $25 billion in multi-trillion dollar budgets each year: That is business as usual.

Saying you'll get even those laughable cuts when your own party-dominated Congress can't even agree on trimming a mere $20 billion by consolidating 640 government programs: That is business as usual.

Saying you're serious about reining in Congress, but apparently Congress is not: That is business as usual.

Killing an amendment to take back the $245 million increase Congress budgeted itself earlier this year: That is business as usual.

Because you can't say you're better than the predecessor you can't stop blaming if you're playing the same games you vowed you'd be stopping.

Assuming robust growth we'll likely never see; omitting barely a whiff of inflation we'll likely very much see: That is business as usual.

Because it's one thing to nix NASA going back to the moon and think you're being brave and quite another to push a budget that takes us to "The Twilight Zone" and think you're anything but a joke.

TAMPA MAYOR

Dismisses Flap

Over Obama bow

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio on Tuesday dismissed the controversy over a photograph that showed Obama bowing to her last week at an Air Force base in Tampa, saying Obama was only being "gracious."

Obama, who faced criticism last year for bowing to Japanese Emperor Akihito and slouching toward Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah months before that, was captured in an AP photo on Thursday bent at a 45-degree angle toward Iorio while greeting her at MacDill Air Force Base.

In case there was any doubt about what was being depicted, the AP caption read: "Barack Obama bows to Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio."

But Iorio said Obama was just being a gentleman.

"It's hard for me to believe that this is such a major issue," she said. "It is an unusual photograph, but ... I wish people could all meet Obama face to face, but he is a kind and sincere and gracious individual and you really see that when you meet him."

Iorio said the issue does not deserve "the kind of analysis that's been going on."

Obama was in Tampa to discuss jobs-creation and federal funding for mass-transit projects at a town hall-style meeting. But the run-of-the-mill nature of the stop made the bow seem all the more out of place.

The photo quickly made its way around the blogosphere over the weekend. Redstate.com, in a scathing post, suggested Obama should save his bows for more reprehensible figures.

"The mayor of Tampa isn't a Third World potentate, totalitarian dictator, or terrorist leader so I can't understand why Obama would be in full-bow mode. Is bowing now the standard way Obama greets people these days? Is he misoriented, for some reason, and thinks Tampa is a terrorist stronghold or an enemy of the United States?" Redstate.com wrote in a post.

(The next time he bows to someone, maybe, just maybe it would be worth the courts-martial if some close military type just gave him a good, hard, swift kick in the ass!)

OBAMA'S ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA ORGANIZING IN HIGH SCHOOLS

The popular web publication Atlas Shrugs, reveals that an Ohio reader, with a student in the eleventh grade, is reporting that the progressive Group Organizing for America (formerly MyBarackObama.com) is attempting to recruit high school students to "community organize."

Perry Local High School, in Massillon, Ohio, is allowing its government classes to pass out propaganda recruiting paper so students can sign-up as interns for the Obama Campaign-founded Organizing for America, and, in essence, allowing the public school system to recruit for a Saul Alinsky-inspired organization.

Organizing for America, on its website, declares that is dedicated to recruiting in our high schools to "build on the movement that elected Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda," which many believe to be an agenda to "fundamentally transform our Constitutional Republic to a system of national socialism.

Pamela Geller, publisher of Atlas Shrugs writes, "This is incredible. And evil. Suffer the little children - enlisted like SS youth. This is no accident. Obama is poisoning our public school system. He acts as if it's his own private breeding farm. Once again academic learning and achievement is hopelessly abandoned, and supplanted by radical leftist activism from the leftwing Alinsky indoctrinators in the perverse public school system."

The required reading for new high school recruits to Organizing for America includes:

* Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky

* The New Organizers, Zack Exley

* Stir It Up: Lessons from Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen

* Obama Field Organizers Plot a Miracle, Zack Exley, Huffington Post

* Dreams of My Father Chicago Chapters, Barack Hussein Obama

The internship program, it is said, is geared towards the 2010 elections.

PALIN WANTS RAHM FIRED

In a Facebook post, Sarah Palin calls on President Obama to fire Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for reportedly describing the strategy of Senate liberals as "fucking retarded."

"Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm's recent sick and offensive tactic."

'TEA PARTY NATION' PREPARES CONVENTION,
BUT PARTIERS BALK AT FOR-PROFIT EVENT

The first National Tea Party Convention is slated for the end of this week, but several big names and events have cancelled after questions rose about the high fees to attend and the treasure chest where the money will end up.

Over the past few weeks, several sponsors, speakers and volunteers have backed out of the convention, scheduled Feb. 4-6 at Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., after learning that the convention organizer, Tea Party Nation, is a for-profit company. Some activists and outsiders alike are questioning the motives of Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips.

"It seems to me like it's going to be a bunch of people who want to stand in front of our movement and lead it as parade leaders rather than being somebody who wants to walk with us in the parade," said Scott Boston, member of Bowling Green Ohio Tea Party Patriots.

Phillips originally said profits from the convention would fund a tax-exempt, "527" political organization that would air ads to promote conservative candidates.

But Phillips later told Politico that plans for the 527 group may not fly.

"We're still not even done with the convention yet and there may not be any profits. We could still end up losing money on this convention," he is quoted saying.

Because the use of any proceeds from the event haven't been established, a House ethics committee review insisted last week that Reps. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee withdraw from the conference.

The event's main sponsor, American Liberty Alliance, dropped its sponsorship after learning that those who purchased tickets paid for them through PayPal accounts linked to an e-mail address belonging to Phillips' wife.

National Precinct Alliance has canceled precinct strategy workshops. Meanwhile, American Majority scrapped plans for two sessions at the convention and withdrew its sponsorship.

The national convention that began as a way to unify tea party activists from across the country is now threatening to divide them. Some of Tea Party Nation's own volunteers and members have rejected the convention because they see profiteering and fear a Republican Party takeover.

Most tea party groups want to stay separate from the GOP, but very few are pushing for the movement to become a third party.

Saturday night's keynote speaker Sarah Palin remains committed to the event.

"Oh, you betcha I'm going to be there," Palin told Fox News. "I'm going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that tea party movement is all about."

Palin's speaking fee is $100,000. She said she will donate the money to campaigns, candidates and issues. As a down payment for Palin's fee, Phillips reportedly borrowed $50,000, much of it from a baseball card mogul. He missed his first payment.

Tickets to see Palin are $349 and participants can attend the entire event for $549.

Critics say that the convention's ticket prices are too high for a grassroots event, and most tea partiers will skip the convention simply because they can't afford it.

"We're limited on our funds," said Greg Fettig, Hoosier Patriots. "We don't have backers. It's coming out of our pockets."

(All it takes is one greedy fucking lawyer to ruin the entire process!

I was thinking about attending, but I'll be damned if I am going to pay some frigging lawyer $549 (plus travel expenses)!

If this idiot borrowed $50,000 in order to make a profit, let him learn the hard way that Tea Partiers are NOT interested in supporting him.

And Sarah, if you are reading this ... BAIL OUT OW! You don't need the speaking fee ... and if you do, then I have been supporting the wrong person ...)

MURTHA IN ICU FOLLOWING 'COMPLICATIONS' FROM SURGERY

Rep. John Murtha has been admitted to an intensive care unit at a Virginia hospital after experiencing "complications" from surgery a week ago.

(That's happens when you take someone's head out of their ass too quickly!)

OBAMA BACKS DOWN

After

Anti-Vegas remarks

Barack Obama is known for having a way with words, but some lawmakers from Nevada wish he would pipe down about trips to Sin City.

After sparking a firestorm of criticism from Nevada's elected officials for suggesting that people saving money for college shouldn't blow it in Las Vegas, Obama told U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a letter that he wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas.

It was the second time since taking office that Obama singled out Las Vegas as a potential example of spending excessively.

"I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun," Obama said, according to the letter released by Reid's office. "There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations."

Obama said he always enjoys his visits to Las Vegas.

A White House spokesman referred to Obama's letter to Reid and said the administration had no further comment.

Perception and reputation are sensitive issues for Sin City as it struggles to find footing amid a two-year meltdown of foreclosures, bankruptcies and unemployment. Tourism is the Silver State's backbone, and several lawmakers said they were shocked that Obama singled out Las Vegas again after commenting last February that bailed-out banks shouldn't go to Las Vegas using taxpayer money.

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts," Obama said, according to a White House transcript of his appearance Tuesday at a high school in North Nashua, N.H.

"You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage," Obama said. "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices."

The comments quickly sparked a flurry of reaction in the Silver State, which supported Obama in the 2008 election. Nevada had an unemployment rate of 13 percent in December.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said during a hastily called news conference that Obama is no friend to Las Vegas and would not be welcomed here if he visits.

"I'll do everything I can to give him the boot," Goodman said. "Obama is a real slow learner."

Goodman and others are worried that Obama's words will discourage visitors from coming to Las Vegas and depress the industry further.

"Enough is enough!" Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley said in a statement. "Obama needs to stop picking on Las Vegas and he needs to let Americans decide for themselves how and where to spend their hard-earned vacation dollars."

Nevada's tourism has been hit hard during the past two years as consumers everywhere tighten leisure spending and companies spend less on meetings and conventions.

Reid, one of Obama's closest allies, issued a statement headlined "Reid to Obama: 'Lay off Las Vegas"' and was unusually blunt in his reaction.

"Obama needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said. "I would much rather tourists and business travelers spend their money in Las Vegas than spend it overseas."

Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, complained that Obama "failed to grasp the weight that his words carry."

"Once again he has threatened the struggling economy of Las Vegas," Ensign said, recalling what he characterized as Obama's "irresponsible" comment in February 2009.

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons and Rep. Dean Heller, both Republicans, and Democratic Rep. Dina Titus also disparaged Obama's remarks, while Republican candidates hoping to unseat Reid this year called for an apology.

One year ago, Obama commented during a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind., that corporations shouldn't use federal bailout money for trips to Las Vegas, the Super Bowl or corporate jets. Tourism and casino officials said the comment hurt the city as companies canceled meetings in Las Vegas and rescheduled them elsewhere.

Obama later said during a May 2009 trip to Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas that it was nice to get out of Washington and "there's nothing like a quick trip to Vegas in the middle of the week."

Goodman said he thought Obama had a "psychological hang-up" of using Las Vegas as an example of excessive spending, and that this time, an apology wouldn't be enough.

"He has to step up right away and say, you know, he wasn't thinking," Goodman said. "Sometimes when he's not using his monitors and reading what he says, he doesn't think. And this is one of those times he didn't think, and he should straighten out the record because he's been here, he knows Las Vegas is a great place."

TOYOTA HIT BY OVER 100 PRIUS BRAKE COMPLAINTS

Toyota Motor Corp. has been hit by over 100 complaints in the U.S. and Japan about brake problems with the popular Prius hybrid, the latest in a spate of quality troubles for the automaker as it grapples with massive global recalls.

The Japanese company's sales are being battered in the U.S. - Toyota's biggest market - after recalls of top-selling models to fix a gas pedal that can stick in the depressed position.

The new Prius gas-electric hybrid, which went on sale in Japan and the U.S. in May 2009, is not part of the recalls that extend to Europe and China, covering nearly 4.5 million vehicles.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received about 100 complaints involving the brakes of the Prius new model. Two involved crashes resulting in injuries.

Japan's transport ministry said Wednesday it has also received 14 complaints since July last year about brake problems with Toyota's new Prius hybrid.

The 14 complaints included an accident in July 2009, in which a Prius crashed head on into another car at an intersection. Transport ministry official Masaya Ota said two people were slightly injured in the accident.

"The Prius driver in the accident told police that a brake did not work," Ota said. "Other Prius drivers also complained brakes were not so sharp." The complaints in Japan involve the new Prius model, and the vehicles were all made in Japan, he said.

The ministry ordered Toyota, the world's No. 1 automaker, to investigate the complaints. The other 13 cases happened from December to January 2010. Ota said the ministry has yet to receive a formal report on the complaints from Toyota.

Toyota spokeswoman Ririko Takeuchi said the company has received reports about the Prius complaints in North America and in Japan and was now looking into the matter.

Toyota shares plunged 5.7 percent to 3,400 yen ($38) with jittery investors dumping stocks in the wake of the Prius woes in the U.S. and Japan. The benchmark Nikkei stock index edged up just 0.3 percent to 10,404.33 as the drop in Toyota dampened sentiment.

"Investors were worried the latest trouble involving the Prius could get bigger. The problem could pose a bigger question on Toyota's quality and safety," said Kazuhiro Takahashi, market analyst at Daiwa Securities SMBC Co. Ltd.

Also Wednesday, the South Korean government said Toyota's local unit was recalling 444 vehicles over defects in gas pedals and floor mats.

The vehicles were made in North America, and the more than 19,000 Toyota vehicles imported from Japan weren't part of the recall, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs said in a statement.

Toyota is facing growing criticism that it has not done enough to ensure the safety of its vehicles.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told The Associated Press Tuesday that federal officials had to alert Toyota to the seriousness of the safety issues that eventually led to the recalls.

"They should have taken it seriously from the very beginning when we first started discussing it with them," he said. "Maybe they were a little safety deaf."

LaHood also said the U.S. government was considering civil penalties for Toyota for having dragged its feet on safety concerns.

Toyota executive vice president Shinichi Sasaki acknowledged Tuesday in a Nagoya, Japan, news conference that it took prodding from NHTSA officials for the company to decide on the U.S. recall.

Toyota has long prided itself on sterling vehicle quality and assembly line methods that empowered workers to ensure faultless production.

The latest recall, announced Jan. 21, over sticky gas pedals affects 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. alone.

Any serious problems emerging in the Prius, Toyota's flagship green car model, is certain to further tarnish its brand.

The Prius, now in its third generation since its 1997 introduction, is the best-selling gas-electric hybrid in the world, racking up a cumulative 1.6 million units sold so far, according to Toyota.

Hybrids, by going back and forth between a gasoline engine and electric motor, tend to offer better mileage in slow-speed and stop-and-go driving that's common in crowded cities.

(How 'bout that?)

REPUBLICANS UNCERTAIN OVER WHO SHOULD CHALLENGE OBAMA IN 2012

Republicans may be seeing the start of a political surge, but GOP voters still don't know who they want to lead it.

A new poll shows Republican voters are deeply divided over who they want to carry the party mantle in the 2012 presidential race. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leads the pack, a couple other names are close behind and a whopping 42 percent of Republicans are listed as undecided.

The numbers suggest the 2012 presidential primary is any Republicans' game. Republicans are expecting to pick up a lot of seats in the congressional midterm elections, buoyed by success in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections last year, and the Massachusetts Senate election last month. But while Obama's approval ratings have dropped significantly since he took office, it's unclear who would be up to the task of challenging him.

The survey was conducted by Research 2000, a non-partisan firm that polls for the liberal Web site Daily Kos. It surveyed 2,003 Republicans between Jan. 20 and Jan. 31.

The poll showed Palin with 16 percent support, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 11 percent and former Vice President Dick Cheney with 10 percent.

Cheney, though, has rejected talk of a presidential run despite efforts to "draft" him into launching a bid.

The Research 2000 poll had a margin of error of 2.2 percent. It also showed, among Republicans, 53 percent believe Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama. Just 14 percent think otherwise.

THE FALL OF BARACK OBAMA

In a January 20, 2010 editorial, the Editor in Chief of U.S. News & World Report, Mortimer Zuckerman, had this to say: "Obama’s ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he’s been in office. He’s had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences? And now people stop listening to him... He’s lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other public figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things... I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster." And that’s what his friends are saying about him.

As the boy occupied the White House on January 20, 2009 it was predictable that his presidency would last a year, at most, because the things he promised and the things he stood for were so uniquely un-American. Looking back over his year in office, any reasonably precocious fourth grader could make a cogent argument in opposition to nearly everything he’s done. In fact, his policies have been so extreme and so far outside the mainstream that he was destined to achieve the most spectacular fall from grace of any American president in history. It was easy to see him serving out the final three years of his term as a virtual exile in the White House... afraid to venture out among any but the most rabid partisans.

Seeing his most ambitious initiative, healthcare reform, die in the flames of the Massachusetts Massacre, Obama made a hastily-planned "sortie" to Ohio for yet another Bush-bashing, self-aggrandizing stump speech on job creation. It was vintage Obama... full of left wing hyperbole and planted questions from the Kool-Ade drinkers in the hand-picked audience... but there were just two things wrong with it: 1) Almost everything he said was either wrong or an outright lie, and 2) He is so overexposed that no one in the television audience really wanted to see him.

Obama Kool-Ade drinkers in the media, and elsewhere, like to describe Obama as a "very bright man, a true intellectual (compared to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, of course)." If that is the case, why has he demonstrated such a great inability to learn from his failures? The strident words and the in-your-face attitude of his Ohio speech were proof that he has totally misread the meaning of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts. Whatever hopes and dreams he had for his time in the White House, whatever grandiose plans he had for transforming the United States from a constitutional republic with a free market economy into a socialist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy, were all lost on Tuesday, January 19, 2010... one day short of a full year in office. Yet, he appears to have learned nothing from the experience.

Comedian George Gobel once asked, rhetorically, "Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?" In the context of 21st century American politics, and assuming that he has any capacity at all for honest self-examination, Obama must be feeling today very much like a pair of brown shoes at a black tie soiree.

When a politically naïve and totally inexperienced young black man, with a glib tongue and an exceptional ability to read words convincingly from a teleprompter, announced that he was ready to serve as President of the United States, liberals and Democrats saw it as a perfect opportunity to expiate whatever white guilt they may have felt... which was apparently considerable among those on the political left. It didn’t seem to bother them that, as one pundit has remarked, "every time he walks into a room he is the least experienced and the least qualified man in the room."

Nevertheless, his friends in the worldwide socialist movement and the international banking community figured out how to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal campaign funds into the country, the black community rallied to his banner, and American liberals and the mainstream media jumped on board the bandwagon. Together, they made it happen for him. But now, just one year later, Obama appears destined to become the unhappiest man in American politics... unhappier than even former Senator John Edwards, who runs a close second, and former president Bill Clinton.

Clinton will be the third unhappiest man because, after capturing the big prize, he frittered away whatever chance he had of ever being compared favorably with Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the 20th century’s greatest Democratic presidents. Not only was he a politician of unusual skill and insight, he was widely known as a policy "wonk" among policy wonks and he had the drive and the personal charm to be loved and respected around the world. Unfortunately, he was never able to put the public trust at the top of his priority list. Instead, he surrounded himself with a large cadre of trusted enablers who allowed him to conduct himself as if he were, not the President of the United States, but the class stud on an extended spring break in Acapulco.

Now that he’s been out of office for nearly a decade and he’s married to the current Secretary of State, he spends his days trying to find something useful to do without calling an undue amount of attention to himself. Having lied so shamelessly to the American people, having perjured himself in a court of law, having turned the Oval Office into a sexual playpen, and having suffered the humiliation of impeachment, he’s smart enough to know that he has little reputation left to protect. So in order to protect whatever legacy remains, he walks a tightrope every day... and he has many more years to walk it without falling off.

Former Senator John Edwards is destined to be the second unhappiest man in American politics because he will be known forever as the most thoroughly despised scumbag in the political arena. A trial lawyer, Edwards amassed a $60 million fortune by winning large jury awards against doctors, hospitals, and corporations. His specialty was cases in which children were born with cerebral palsy, which he blamed on doctors who had waited too long to perform C-sections, a claim that doctors and medical researchers have described as "junk science."

Then, like Obama, he decided that his experience in the courtroom, his glib tongue, and his one term in the U.S. Senate qualified him to be President of the United States. He entered the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, raising an incredible amount of money for a newcomer to elective office... most of it raised illegally by "bundlers" in plaintiffs’ law firms across the country. He was unsuccessful in his quest for the Democratic nomination but was selected by his Senate colleague, John Kerry, as his running mate.

Two years later, in 2006, Edwards met a young blonde film producer, Rielle Hunter, and embarked on a love affair with her. On February 27, 2008, Hunter gave birth to a daughter, for whom Edwards has consistently denied paternity... until now.

Taking into account that all of this was happening while his wife was waging a long battle with breast cancer, Edwards now has the well-deserved reputation of being the sleaziest of the sleazy. He is so universally despised that, if he is on the lookout for a friend, he might as well resign himself to getting a dog... or moving in with O.J. Simpson. Terry Moran, host of ABC’s This Week, put it all in perspective. He said, "What’s interesting to note is that Edwards’ latest admission (that he is the father of Hunter’s child) came while he was in Haiti. As if the people of that sad place didn’t have enough problems."

Clearly, the one thing Clinton and Edwards share that places them near the top of our list is their sexual peccadilloes, a shortcoming that Obama does not appear to share with them... at least from what we know so far. What we do know about Obama is that, since his teen years, he has been mentored by, gravitated toward, and surrounded by the most dangerous sort of America-hating socialists, communists, and Marxists... from Frank Marshall Davis and Saul Alinsky to Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, George Soros, and countless radical left college professors.

What destines Obama for the top spot on the list of unhappiest American politicians... aside from the failure of his economic recovery program, the failure of his radical cap-and-trade proposal, his failed attempt to give labor bosses unprecedented power to intimidate blue collar workers, and his ill-fated attempt at healthcare reform... is the fact that he carries on his shoulders the hopes and aspirations of every black child in America. It is unfortunate that, because he is so far outside the American mainstream, and because he carries so much hatred in his heart for the country he seeks to lead, his failures will be viewed by generations of black children, not as the failure of a black socialist attempting to bring down a constitutional republic, but simply as the failure of a black man.

A man can fail in the eyes of his countrymen and still be dearly loved by those closest to him. But in Obama’s case, his wife and his two daughters will be there to suffer every agonizing step of his fall along with him. And for the rest of his life, each time he looks into their eyes, and into the eyes of black people everywhere, he will see the crushing disappointment that his ill-fated attempt at national transformation has caused them.

(He will be the country’s unhappiest man, living the rest of his life knowing that his daughters know that the whole world sees him as a failure. He is simply the wrong man, in the wrong job, in the wrong country, at the wrong time in history.)

THE "I'S" HAVE IT:

Obama Reaches 49 "I's"

In Washington, D.C.

Much attention has been given to Obama's persistent use of "I" when giving speeches to sell his administration's agenda. Is he taking responsibility - or, as his critics say, is he still in campaign mode?

Today's Speech: Opening remarks at the Senate Democrats' annual issues retreat in Washington, D.C.

Subject: The Democratic legislative agenda

Speech Length: 2,449 words

Number of "I" References: 49

TEA PARTY LAUNCHES ‘COUNTER-REVOLUTION’

The first-ever National Tea Party Convention started with a bang Thursday, as conservative firebrand Tom Tancredo used his kickoff speech to rail against "the cult of multiculturalism" and the country's "socialist ideologue" president - and declare that the tea party movement is here to stop it.

"The race for America is on right now," the former GOP Colorado congressman told the crowd in Nashville. "You have launched the counter-revolution."

And so it begins. According to convention organizer Judson Phillips, the event's 600 tickets have sold out. Tea party supporters from all across the country arrived at the Gaylord Opryland hotel Thursday for a weekend of strategy sessions, workshops and speeches.

The convention is much, much smaller than the party-sanctioned Democratic and Republican ones, but the opulence of the Opryland grounds - and the $500+ ticket price - give it the air of something more official.

The convention-goers who traveled here range from the mere fiscal conservative to the all-out Obama basher.

"To me, Obama's the enemy of this country, and he's not the only one," said Harley Clinton, who traveled from Maryland with his wife, who sported an OBAMA T-shirt - with the letters spelling out "One Big Awful Mistake America."

Tancredo, a former presidential candidate known for his opposition to illegal immigration, drew the battle lines between the tea party movement and the leadership in Washington in his opening speech.

"People who could not spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House - name is Barack Hussein Obama," he said. "The revolution has come. It was led by the cult of multiculturalism aided by leftist liberals all over who don't have the same ideas about America as we do."

Arguing that American "culture," one based on "Judeo-Christian principles," is under attack, Tancredo said the tea party movement would be non-existent if Obama hadn't won the election and pushed the country swiftly to the left.

It's unclear whether the convention will result in a more unified tea party movement, or a more loose-knit and multi-faceted one. Some activists showed up to learn how to better organize local chapters at home.

Tracey Anderson, a real estate broker from Indianapolis, said that's why she came. And she said, so far as she can tell, this isn't the start of a whole new party.

"It's a movement of, we're sick of it - listen to us. We're sick of you making decisions without listening to the people who you work for," she said. "It's conservatism. ... It's not a new party. It is a movement."

The tea party movement has been effective in disrupting the balance of power from within the GOP. Some tea party-supported candidates are gaining steam in various GOP primary races across the country. But Scott Brown, who had the support of both tea party and non-tea party in his successful run for senator in Massachusetts, appeared to be the de facto guest of honor in Nashville - though he was hours away getting sworn in to the Senate.

Tancredo gave Brown a shout-out in his speech, which drew ecstatic applause and cheers from the audience. And he even borrowed Brown's pitch line.

"I'm Tom Tancredo ... and I drive a Harley," Tancredo said.

DEMOCRATS CLOSE TO VOTE ON JOBS PACKAGE WITHOUT BILL IN HAND

Senate Democrats are holding a news conference Thursday on a jobs bill without an actual jobs bill, an apparent sign that the Massachusetts Senate vote that is bringing Scott Brown to Washington is still reverberating through the U.S. Capitol.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday that he plans to introduce a bill as early as Thursday, and there will be some kind of first vote on Monday.

The bill Democrats hope to introduce is expected to contain the following, though there could be some change, if Republicans are brought on board:

- A job creation tax credit - the likely contender is a tax break for businesses that hire new workers proposed by Sens Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and Orrin Hatch, R-UT.

- Small business investment depreciation - help for small businesses to write off some of their expenses.

- A one-year highway bill extension (called the Surface Transportation Act)

- A "Build America" bonds - funds for infrastructure at the state and local level.

- Unemployment insurance extension and an extension of COBRA benefits.

The cost of the bill is still not known, though it is expected to come in under $100 billion, according to Democratic sources.

A senior Democratic leadership aide said that Democratic leaders are trying to get some Republican support and are "close to a deal". The aide said the Thursday event was a presentation of ideas that Democrats want to see in a bill.

A senior GOP leadership aide did not dispute the possibility of bipartisan support, but the aide expressed frustration with the way Democrats are already going about it - announcing a floor schedule for votes, before they even have a bill, which likely leaves out consideration of the bill by Senate committees.

Still under negotiation and likely to cause much contention is just how this bill will be paid. Many Democrats, especially following GOP Sen.-elect Brown's win in the Bay State, are very worried about a record deficit.

Democrats have said they'd like to see money - possibly as much as $30 billion - taken from the Wall Street bailout fund, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, but Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has already balked about that.

"It's against the law to pay for it out of TARP. It's an outrage and an insult. We were assured when the TARP was passed that money would simply go to stabilize the financial institution in America - and would be spent for no other reason," McCain told reporters.

By law, unused TARP funds and any returns coming back from the program are to be used to pay down the debt.

Still, while there is disagreement on how to find revenue to offset the cost of any jobs bill, agreement seems to be forming that any bill must contain help for small businesses.

McCain mentioned "incentives for small businesses" when asked what he would want to see in a bill, and he included a small business payroll tax moratorium, something left over from his 2008 presidential campaign.

One sticking point during debate could come in the amendments process.

McCain, joined by Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and George LeMieux of Florida, introduced two bills Thursday that could become amendments to the jobs bill. One is a piece of legislation co-sponsored by President Obama when he was a senator - a moratorium on earmarks for one year. This failed a number of years ago in the Senate.

The other proposal is a revival of the constitutional balanced budget amendment.

"I'd like to see a jobs package in the context of a balanced budget amendment," DeMint said.

Graham has an even more controversial, bipartisan amendment that he has said he intends to offer, one that would shut off all funds for federal, civilian trials for the Sept. 11 co-conspirators.

A senior Democratic leadership aide asked, "What does that have to do with jobs?" And the aide added, "Amendments that are off subject - that's where we'll probably draw the line."

(Excuse me ... but exactly how do you vote on something that does not exist?)

THERE SHOULD BE A VACCINATION FOR STUPIDITY

So The Lancet, a British medical journal named after a really sharp object, retracted a horrible study linking the measles vaccine to autism.

Now this would really be great news if the study had not come out, oh, 12 years ago. It's really scary that it took a medical journal over a decade to admit what nearly everyone else with a working brain knew: That the study had more gaping holes than Tom Sizemore's septum.

But although the study author has also been discredited, it doesn't matter. People who believe in junk science will continue to believe in junk science, because their egos won't allow any other option. And so they will continue preaching a dangerous and false belief that ends up killing kids - "they" being Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and all the saps at the Huffington Post who, by their own earnest idiocy, misled the public into skipping vaccinations.

The potential result: Measles outbreaks all over the globe and ultimately, dead kids.

(It's hard to make jokes about that, so I won't.)

But I will make jokes about gasbags like Carrey and McCarthy, two cretins who aren't content just making adults vomit with their work, they also got to make kids ill with ego-driven health advice.

Now, I'm not a celebrity, but here's my medical tip: Whenever a star offers an opinion on important health matters - citing flawed studies they know a half-asleep Larry King won't bother checking - they should be given a vaccination of their own. It should be full of lead and shot straight up their ass.

Twice, for good measure.

("You can't fix stupid!"

I know I have heard that somewhere...)

FREE SPEECH ON TRIAL:

15 Defense Witnesses

Disallowed

The free-speech trial of anti-Islamization Fitna movie-producer Geert Wilders has taken a break - after the court rejected 15 of Wilders’ requested witnesses. Some Dutch analysts following the trial said the decision "indicates the court’s bias against Wilders, and so does not bode well for him."

Wilders, leader of the PVV (Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands, is on trial in Amsterdam, charged on five counts of insulting Muslims, discriminating against Muslims, and incitement to hatred.

Wilders is well-known for his outspoken opposition to the Islamization of Europe in general and Holland in particular. His 2008 movie Fitna dramatically shows the aims and means of extremist Islam, and ends with a call for Europe to defeat Islamic ideology, just as it once defeated the threats of Nazism and Communism.

In the court's most recent session, on Tuesday, the judges turned down most of his requests for witnesses, agreeing to hear only three of the 18 for whom he asked. The only ones deemed "competent" and acceptable are Dutch Arabists Hans Jansen and Dr. Simon Admiraal, and Syrian-born Wafa Sultan, who is outspoken in promoting her view that Islam is "not only a religion, but is also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force."

Wilders responded with anger to the decision, saying "This Court is not interested in the truth and doesn't want me to have a fair trial. I can't have any respect for this. This Court would not be out of place in a dictatorship."

In his opening speech at a previous session, Wilders made an impassioned plea on behalf of the freedom he feels is threatened in his country:

Of all our achievements, freedom is the most precious - and the most vulnerable. People have given their lives for it ... I believe that freedom is endangered in the Netherlands; it is no longer a given, no longer self-evident ... I know that the words I use are sometimes tough, but they are never reckless ... I have nothing against Muslims; I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country, because Islam is at right angles to freedom ... The [question at hand] is whether freedom of speech applies to everyone, even to Islam-critics, or only to one side.

"Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but she can still hear pretty well - and I hope she will hear this, loud and clear: It is not only the right, but also the duty, of free people, to speak out against any ideology that threatens freedom. Thomas Jefferson was right: The price for freedom is eternal vigilance. I hope with all I have in me that freedom of expression in this trial will prevail.

"This trial is not only about freedom of expression, but also about truth - for if something is true, how can it be illegal? ... I ask the court to honor my request to call not only expert witnesses on the issue of freedom of speech, but also experts on Islam from Israel, the U.S., the U.K., and other countries ... I must be able to defend myself and prove that I have spoken the truth; please do not obstruct me from that."

Among the requested witnesses whose rejection was not unexpected were Mohammed Bouyeri, the Koran-inspired murderer of Theo Van Gogh; a Dutch imam who had unsuccessfully tried to sue Wilders; and an Egyptian Muslim fundamentalist.

However, the other rejectees included five experts on free speech and five experts on Islam. Geert Wilders’ lawyer, Bram Moszkowicz, said that the court’s rejection of these experts means that it "overestimates itself."

"That is quite something, that a court finds that no legal experts are needed," he said. "When a judge overestimates himself, I start to be afraid."

Moszkowicz said he would bring the statements of free-speech experts Theo de Roos and Henny Sackers into the case in writing, meaning that "the court will thus get a lot of paperwork because of this."

The trial is scheduled to continue sometime between June 1 and October 31.

Wilders' Fitna movie, which was screened on Arutz-7 after other Internet sites were forced to take it down after receiving Muslim threats.

(Oh shit! Is this going to give the current do-do-heads in D.C. an idea?)

ILLINOIS TOP COURT STRIKES DOWN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CAPS

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state's medical malpractice law today, saying it violates separation of powers by allowing lawmakers to interfere with a judge's ability to reduce verdicts.

The much-anticipated ruling, which challenged the constitutionality of damage caps for doctors and hospitals, is being watched closely by the health care industry and employers that see caps on damages as a way to tame rising health care costs.

The ruling could figure in the national health care debate of stalled health care legislation. In the U.S. Senate where Republicans have opposed existing health care reform legislation, the GOP has been vocal about the need for tort reform and caps on damages.

State lawmakers in 2005 passed legislation, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, that established caps on noneconomic damages of $500,000 in cases against doctors and $1 million against hospitals. Illinois followed other states, such as California, that capped damages years ago.

But Justices writing said they were not persuaded by arguments used in other states. "That ‘everybody is doing it," is hardly a litmus test for the constitutionality of the statute," Justices writing for the majority opinion said.

Further, Justices said that what the statute allows for amounts to a "legislative remittur." Chief Justice Thomas Fitzgerald delivered the judgment for the seven-member court and was joined in the opinion by Justices Charles Freeman, Thomas Kilbride and Anne Burke. Justice Robert Thomas took no part in the decision, the ruling said.

Justices Lloyd Karmeier and Rita Garman dissented on certain points of the decision and expressed sympathy to providers of medical care, citing President Obama's recent address to a joint session of Congress that the justices said "admonished" the nation's collective failure to enact health care reform.

"We have no business telling the General Assembly that it has exceeded its constitutional power if we must ignore the constitutional constraints on our own authority to do so," Karmeier wrote.

Justices in the majority, however, said their decision was not made with health care reform efforts in Washington in mind, saying the "Obama administration's health care reform efforts are not the backdrop against which we have decided the constitutionality."

The law came after more than two years of political battle in Springfield between trial lawyers and providers of medical care and their insurers. Doctors blamed the lack of malpractice reform for an exodus of physicians from the state, particularly neurosurgeons and obstetricians who had higher insurance premiums.

Though state lawmakers took steps to ensure the law would not be struck down by narrowing the scope of the legislation, doctors and hospitals have been worried about how the Supreme Court would rule.

Twice before in state history, Illinois lawmakers have adopted caps, and both times the Supreme Court eventually nixed them.

Physicians were naturally upset with the Illinois high court's decision this morning.

American Medical Association president James Rohack said patient access to medical care worsened in Illinois after the court overruled the state's previous cap on noneconomic damages in 1997."

"Severe problems with patient access to care emerged as the unrestrained excesses of the state's legal system forced Illinois physicians to limit services, retire early, or move to other states where liability premiums were more stable," Rohack said. "Without a cap on noneconomic damages from 1997 to 2005, Chicago physicians saw their liability premiums increase an average of 10 to 12 percent each year. When the cap was reinstated in 2005, premiums for Chicago physicians stabilized and even began to shrink."

But trial lawyers disagreed, saying malpractice insurance companies are trying to blame patients who have been harmed by medical errors. They say insurance reform is what is needed to spur competition and keep physicians and hospital malpractice premiums low.

The case before the high court came on appeal from Cook County Circuit Court. In 2007, Cook County Circuit Judge Diane Larsen decided that caps on malpractice awards violated the Illinois Constitution's "separation of powers" clause, in effect ruling that the state Legislature can't interfere with the right of juries and judges to determine fair damages. Larsen's ruling falls in line with a 1997 Illinois Supreme Court decision that overturned a 1995 law implementing caps on personal-injury cases.

The first case to test the law was that of Abigaile LeBron, a 13-month-old girl who suffered a severe brain injury during birth at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park.

(There MUST be a cap on malpractice suits! And there MUST be a cap on civil suits!

Sometimes in order to save a life something must be done that will limit mobility or change physical appearance. For a doctor to be sued for saving a life is pure nonsense!

How many people would still be driving their cars if their automobile insurance cost them $164,000 per year in premiums? So why should doctors continue practicing? And where would we be if there were no doctors or nurses?

When I first went into nursing, in the early 1970's, my malpractice insurance cost me $100 per year for $3,000,000 in coverage.

When I left nursing, in the middle 1990's, my malpractice insurance cost me $2,500 a year for $20,000,000 in coverage!

Why the hell should a nurse have to carry $20,000,000 (minimum) malpractice insurance? Because the bedpan was too cold?)

OVERHEARD FROM A SNOB CAR OWNER

"I could care less about Toyota! They make crap ... a real car lover would buy a Lexus. I did!"

Well, my dear snob ... Toyota makes Lexus, and the braking system on your Lexus is the same one that is used on the defective Toyotas!

JUSTICE ALITO

Objected To

Obama's history claim

Still wonder exactly why Justice Samuel Alito shook his head and mouthed the words "not true" during Barack Obama's State of the Union address? He objected to Obama's saying the ruling reversed a century of law.

Obama touched off a controversy when he broke with tradition - and decorum, his critics said - by criticizing the court's recent campaign finance decision in his speech with six justices in attendance and bound by their own tradition of not reacting to what is said. (Justice Antonin Scalia once said he no longer goes to the annual speech because the justices "sit there like bumps on a log" in an otherwise highly partisan atmosphere.)

"With all due deference to the separation of powers," Obama said, "the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections."

It seems clear from Alito's questioning when the court heard argument in the case that he was taking issue with Obama's assertion that the court reversed 100 years of law, rather than with Obama's reference to foreign influence, which also has generated some legal debate.

At the September argument, Alito suggested to attorney Seth Waxman that 20 years was the appropriate time frame, encompassing two high court decisions that upheld limits on corporate spending in campaigns.

"Mr. Waxman, all of this talk about 100 years and 50 years is perplexing," Alito said then. "It sounds like the sort of sound bites that you hear on TV. The fact of the matter is that the only cases that are being, that may possibly be reconsidered, are McConnell and Austin. And they don't go back 50 years, and they don't go back 100 years."

In the end, the court left untouched a 1907 law that bans contributions by corporations to candidates. But in overruling those two decisions, the court did strike down limits on corporations in a law that had been in place since 1947.

News organizations attempting to convey the sweep of the ruling without ignoring these distinctions said the court's opinion represented a sharp turn away from the a century-long trend toward greater regulation of corporate contributions.

PINK OUIJA BOARD TARGETING YOUNG GIRLS RILES CRITICS

A pink version of the popular Ouija board game has some critics seeing red.

The children's sleepover staple - sold by Hasbro since 1967 - now comes in hot pink, an edition released two years ago that gets tweens to call on "spirits" to spell out answers to life's pressing questions.

It's designed for young girls ages 8 and older, but some say the mysterious product is a "dangerous spiritual game" that opens up anyone, particularly Christians, to attacks on their soul.

(Good God! It's a game ... geesh!! A FRIGGIN' GAME!!!)

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TRUTHFUL ABOUT TERRORIST TRIALS?

Attorney General Eric Holder says the Bush administration tried and convicted 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges under the criminal justice system. But former Bush officials are mystified.

The Washington Examiner reports Holder has made this declaration more than once, most recently in defense of the Obama administration decision to criminally charge the Christmas Day bomb suspect.

But who are the 300 other terrorists he mentions? Lawmakers have been trying to find out for months, and Republican Senator Jon Kyl says flatly: "There haven't been 300 high-profile, dangerous terrorism cases in the United States. If there were — we would have heard about them."

Kyl has requested the information from Holder three times but gotten nowhere. Although an assistant attorney general told Kyl he could get "briefings about terrorism suspects housed in federal prisons generally."

Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino says: "the 300 number is as false as false gets."

(Wadda know...

Just another "misstatements" by one of Obama's buddies!

We must remember that they are only human ... and subjected to all the human frailties ... like Acedia, Despair, Extravagance, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Vainglory, and Wrath!

What is amazing is that most all of these will land Joe Citizen in prison, but when you are an Obama Buddy, they land you in the White House!)

TARGET REMOVES GLOBE FROM SHELVES THAT REPLACED ISRAEL WITH PALESTINE

It looks as if Iran has found allies in its quest to wipe Israel off the map -- the dopes at your friendly neighborhood Target store.

On sale exclusively at Target is this innocent-looking toy globe. Thousands of these trinkets have already moved out of malls, from Queens to Honolulu, and landed in living rooms and kids' rooms across America.

But folks who forked over a buck for the miniature worlds got less than they bargained for. These planetary models contain just about all the countries on Earth -- from France to China, Singapore to Spain. But there's one glaring exception: Israel.

In the spot where Israel should be, this word is printed: "Palestine." Some of those who unwittingly purchased the Israel-free orbs feel as if they've played a role in a modern-day Final Solution.

"They're teaching kids there is no Israel, only Palestine," said Rabbi Gary Moskowitz, who bought a globe at the Queens Center Mall for his 5-year-old daughter. "This encourages terrorism. This foments hatred."

Bob Kunst learned of the globe's omission when a friend's 12-year-old daughter in Florida asked innocently, "'Where's Israel?' The very people who deny Israel's existence also deny the Holocaust," he said.

After receiving complaints, Target, which sold the globes for several weeks, finally responded. On Sunday, it began yanking the globes from its 1,744 stores in 49 states (Vermont is Target-free), and destroying them. We hope.

"We didn't want to offend any of our guests," said Amy Reilly of Target customer relations, who initially said the omission of Israel was due to lack of space on the item. (Isn't "Palestine" a longer word?)

Devrian Global Industries of New Jersey, which imported "tens of thousands" of globes from China, apologized. "Obviously, it was a mistake. We obviously offended some people. Now we're pulling them off the shelves," said chief merchandising officer Larry Fine. No estimate on how many were sold.

(Maybe it is time to recall that Target is owned by the French.)

PALIN GOES AFTER OBAMA AT TEA PARTY CONVENTION

The Democratic agenda is "running out of time," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday at the National Tea Party Convention, claiming that the conservative tea party movement is part of a brewing "revolution" that constitutes the "future of politics."

Palin, who delivered the keynote speech on the closing night of the three-day gathering of conservative activists, aligned herself squarely with the movement, frequently using the word "us" in describing it.

"This is the future of our country. The tea party movement is the future of politics," she said.

The former GOP vice presidential nominee pointed to the room full of activists, as well as the recent election of Republican Scott Brown to U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, as the sign of a political tide change.

"If Scott Brown is any indication, it’s running out of time," Palin said of the Democratic agenda.

"It’s a ground-up call to action that is forcing both parties to change the way they do business, and that’s beautiful."

Palin got an ecstatic response from the hundreds of tea party activists in the banquet hall in Nashville, where they had spent the last few days hashing out ways to grow the movement and defeat Democrats in the 2010 midterms. Though tea party groups have faced criticism for being disorganized and been cast occasionally as angry rebels without a cause, the former governor said the activists have started something that Washington must heed.

"America is ready for another revolution, and you are a part of this," Palin said.

The former governor used her speech to go after Obama as well, hammering him for his economic, foreign and security policies.

She zeroed in on the Obama administration's handling of the alleged Christmas Day bomber.

Echoing wide-ranging complaints among Republicans that the administration should not have let suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab get "lawyered up," Palin said the administration is treating the incident like a "crime spree," rather than an act of war.

"Treating this like a mere law enforcement matter places our country at great risk," she said. "To win that war, we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern."

Palin, in a pre-taped interview with "Fox News Sunday" earlier in Nashville, said the way Obama is approaching national security is causing an "uneasiness" among many Americans.

"We are in war," Palin said. "These are acts of war that these terrorists are committing. We need to treat them a little bit differently than an American who is worthy, an American being worthy of our U.S. constitutional rights. I don't think the terrorists are worthy of our rights."

Palin, in her keynote address, also blasted the administration for "wasteful" stimulus spending, urged Congress to kill the latest stimulus-style proposal and said the last year has proved that the administration’s attempts to extend an open hand to hostile nations, like North Korea, has not worked.

"It’s no wonder that Obama only spent about 9 percent of his State of the Union address discussing national security, foreign policy, because there aren't a whole lot of victories he can talk about," she said.

Palin addressed the convention despite facing some controversy over the $100,000 speaking fee she was receiving and the fact that two other scheduled speakers, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., dropped out following ethics committee questions over how the convention profits would be used.

But Palin says she will not personally benefit from the engagement and that the speaking fee will go back to the "cause."

NASA READYING SPACE SHUTTLE FOR PRE-DAWN LAUNCH

NASA is about to launch the mother of all Super Bowl pregame shows with the space shuttle Endeavour, which is poised to blast off before dawn Sunday morning.

Endeavour and a crew of six astronauts are slated launch toward the International Space Station from a seaside pad here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff is set for 4:39 a.m. EST, about 14 hours before the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints kick off Super Bowl XLIV in South Florida.

"It's going to be a special day," said shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach. "We're going to launch Sunday morning and we're going to watch the big game Sunday night."

The weather looks good for the launch attempt, with an 80 percent chance of clear skies. But if the launch is delayed, NASA will gladly skip the Super Bowl to get Endeavour ready to fly on Monday.

"We're not going to change our plans based on the Super Bowl, frankly," Leinbach said, adding that tomorrow's game is not the first - or the last - football championship game. "So there have been quite a few, and there will probably be more."

NASA will begin fueling Endeavour for launch Saturday night at around 7 p.m. EST.

Endeavour's planned 13-day mission is the first of NASA's five final shuttle missions before the space agency retires its aging orbiter fleet later this year. It is NASA's last major construction job to build the 11-year-old station.

The shuttle will deliver a new room to the station along with a dome-shaped observation portal lined with windows. They will be installed during three spacewalks by the astronauts, who will be following an overnight work shift.

The predawn shuttle launch is also expected to be the last ever to blast off in darkness.

"It should be spectacular," said Endeavour commander George Zamka, who will make his second trip to space on the mission. [How to see the shuttle launch.]

At liftoff, Endeavour's twin solid rocket boosters will light up the night sky, Zamka said. That's the first thing Florida skywatchers will see. The rumbling roar of the shuttle's rocket engines will reach the crowds a short time later as Endeavour climbs into the morning sky.

"It's going to light up the ground around," he said. "You should be able to see it from as far as the Carolinas, I think, if the skies are clear. It should be a wonderful sight." In fact, experts say the shuttle could be visible from as far away as New York if the skies are clear enough.

Set to launch spaceward on Endeavour with Zamka are shuttle pilot Terry Virts and mission specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Robert Behnken and Nick Patrick. All are veteran spaceflyers with the exception of Virts, who is making his first spaceflight.

Zamka's five-man, one-woman crew will deliver the station's new Tranquility module and a seven-window observation portal dubbed the Cupola. Once they're installed, the $100 billion station will be about 98 percent complete. Construction began in 1998.

Tranquility is a new $382 million room designed to house the station's life support and exercise gear, as well as a robotic arm control station. The Cupola is a $27.2 million dome with six windows arranged around a large central portal for optimum viewing of the Earth and space.

Both Tranquility and the Cupola were built by the European Space Agency (ESA), which has sent more than 100 people to come watch Endeavour launch their handiwork into space.

"It's a lot like a baby growing up, a child leaving the house," said ESA space station program manager Bernardo Patti.

Endeavour's flight comes less than a week after Barack Obama ordered NASA to scrap its current plan to replace the shuttle fleet with new Orion spacecraft and their Ares rockets to send American astronauts into space and on to the moon.

Instead, the administration released a 2011 budget request for NASA that would set aside funding to develop new technologies and support commercially built spacecraft that could send astronauts back to the moon - or to asteroids or Mars - faster than the old path.

Shuttle officials said the radical shift has left some workers in shock, but they are still focused on the near-term goal of launching Endeavour safely.

"It's kind of one of those uncertainties about where we're going to go next," said Mike Moses, NASA's shuttle launch integration manager.

Sunday's launch will mark the 34th flight for Endeavour and is NASA's 130th shuttle mission since its reusable space planes began launching in 1981.

"It's going to be a beautiful launch. You'll be able to see it all the way up the East Coast and we're looking forward to it," Leinbach said. "The team is energized. We're ready to go."

THE SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL

It's 14 Below Zero Here

And that is all I have to say for today!

AGENTS WANT FEES

Before Releasing

Haiti aid

The members of the Cape Christian Fellowship felt their donations of baby food, diapers, toys and cribs would be welcomed in this impoverished port city. They were, but for a price, said Brett Furlong, executive pastor of the fellowship in Cape Coral, FL.

Haiti customs agents told those bringing in the donated goods that if they didn't pay $120 that the aid would be held indefinitely, he said. The demand came despite a sign at the point of entry stating, "No fees for humanitarian aid."

"Where there isn't customs before, now there is," Furlong said. "This is the third time this week we've been held." The group wound up paying the money, Furlong said. "But everyone takes it in stride; it's worth any hassle to get everything down to the orphanage," he said.

The group took a private plane out of Naples airport Saturday to hand out donated supplies to its orphanage in Quanami, outside of Cap-Haitien.

Cap-Haitien is known for its picturesque Caribbean beaches and resorts, making it a stop for cruise ships. Its well-preserved French colonial architecture mingles with shantytowns. It was untouched by the Jan. 12 earthquake, but a flood of children fled there soon after...

Cape Coral pilot David Beauvois said he and his co-pilot Sean Sanders of Atlanta were ordered to pay the $120. He said they will no longer land aid into Cap-Haitien's airport because customs agents gouge them: $65 for "overtime," $50 for a "gate fee" to open a gate and allow aid in. Other times, the aid has been stolen, he said.

"It's just sad because people out there really need this," said Michelle Schwartz, a Cape Coral occupational therapist who also was on board. "I mean, it's all for kids."

"The government is so corrupt," Beauvois said. "What they really need to do is get the American military here to regulate, like they do in Port-au-Prince."

(Well, I guess this is the way Haitians help Haitians!)

MURTHA DEAD AT 77

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, one of the House's most powerful lawmakers, died Monday afternoon at Virginia Hospital Center after complications from gallbladder surgery. Murtha was 77.

(Gee ... that's too bad ... but he and Teddy will be drinking brothers in hell!)

OBAMA ADVISER: POPE 'HURTING PEOPLE IN THE NAME OF JESUS'

Harry Knox, who serves on Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is standing by a statement he made last March that Pope Benedict XVI is "hurting people in the name of Jesus."

When asked on Tuesday whether he still holds that view that the pope "is hurting people in the name of Jesus," Knox said, "I do."

In addition to advising Obama on the government's Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership programs, Knox is the director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign...

In a follow-up question, CNS News asked Knox: "So, even in light of Edward Green, a Harvard researcher in AIDS prevention said the pope was correct in that condom use aggravates HIV, the spread of it, in Africa. So, in light of that statement, do you still hold to that position?

Knox answered, "He is simply incorrect in his assertion. All the other evidence of science shows otherwise."

On March 17, 2009, Pope Benedict flew to Africa to visit Cameroon and Angola. During the flight, he answered several questions from reporters, including one concerning AIDS in Africa: Given that the Catholic Church’s position in fighting AIDS "is often considered unrealistic and ineffective," would the pope "address this theme during the journey?"

Pope Benedict gave a lengthy response, detailing many of the Church’s humanitarian efforts to help people with AIDS in Africa. "I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is," he said. "If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it."

In response to the pope’s remarks, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) issued a statement. It quoted Harry Knox as follows: "The Pope’s statement that condoms don't help control the spread of HIV, but rather condoms increase infection rates, is hurting people in the name of Jesus."

(Another Obama wiener ... err winner!)

WE CAN'T HAVE 'ANTI-CATHOLIC BIGOT' IN WHITE HOUSE

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R.-Ohio) said today that Harry Knox, who serves on Barack Obama’s faith-based advisory council, appears to be an "anti-Catholic bigot" and should resign as a White House adviser.

Earlier this week, Knox said he stood by a statement he made last year that Pope Benedict XVI is "hurting people in the name of Jesus" because the pope does not support promoting the use of condoms as a means to stem the spread of HIV.

Knox, who is director of the Human Rights Campaign's religion and faith program, has made other controversial comments about the Catholic Church in the past. For example, in 2007 he was quoted in a statement from the Human Rights Campaign saying that the Catholic Church had committed an act that was "immoral and insulting to Jesus" when it denied communion to a lesbian couple in Wyoming who had promoted same-sex marriage. "In this holy Lenten season, it is immoral and insulting to Jesus to use the body and blood of Christ the reconciler as a weapon to silence free speech and demean the love of a committed, legally married couple," said Knox.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) describes itself as the nation's "largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization." Obama was the keynote speaker at the HRC's annual national dinner in October.

St. Michael Society, a Catholic organization, started an online petition calling for Knox to resign from his position on Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

CNSNews.com asked Boehner at his press briefing Thursday whether he believed that Knox should resign.

"He should resign. And I have agreed to sign a letter," said Boehner. "We can't have in the White House an anti-Catholic bigot, and that’s what this gentleman appears to be."

Boehner is a Roman Catholic.

At the National Press Club on Tuesday, CNSNews.com had asked Knox: "You put out a statement saying Pope Benedict XVI was - quote - ‘hurting people in the name of Jesus’ because he did not support promoting the use of condoms as a means to control the spread of HIV. And I was wondering, do you still believe the pope’s position on condoms is ‘hurting people in the name of Jesus’?"

Knox answered, "I - I do."

Knox had originally said the Pope was "hurting people in the name of Jesus" in March 2009, shortly before he became a member of Obama’s advisory council.

On March 17, 2009, Pope Benedict had flown to Africa to visit Cameroon and Angola. During the flight, the Pope answered several questions from reporters, including one concerning AIDS in Africa: Given that the Catholic Church’s position in fighting AIDS "is often considered unrealistic and ineffective," would the pope "address this theme during the journey?"

The Pope responded by detailing many of the Church’s humanitarian efforts to help people with AIDS in Africa. "I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is," he said. "If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it."

On the same day as the pope's remarks, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) issued the statement that quoted Harry Knox as follows: "The Pope’s statement that condoms don't help control the spread of HIV, but rather condoms increase infection rates, is hurting people in the name of Jesus."

"On a continent where millions of people are infected with HIV, it is morally reprehensible to spread such blatant falsehoods," said Knox in the statement. "The Pope’s rejection of scientifically proven prevention methods is forcing Catholics in Africa to choose between their faith and the health of their entire community. Jesus was about helping the marginalized and downtrodden, not harming them further."

Harry Knox spoke with CNSNews.com at a press conference about the "American Prayer Hour," a new, multi-city event designed to "affirm inclusive values and call on all nations, including Uganda, to decriminalize the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."