There Goes The Neighbourhood

obama taxes

Banning books - it is fine if the government passes a law that would ban books, because the law has never been enforced. Comforting.  I have NEVER heard a Conservative argue in any way, shape, or form, that it was fine to have a law banning books. The nominee to the Supreme Court thinks it is perfectly ok. In her words. in their own words

Hamas says asked by US to keep silent on talks Roee Nahmias Published: 06.25.10, 19:04 / Israel News YNet Islamist group source says senior American officials request contacts remain secret 'so as not to rouse Jewish lobby' A senior Hamas figure said Friday that official and unofficial US sources have asked the Islamist group to refrain from making any statements regarding contacts with Washington, this following reports that a senior American official is due to arrive in an Arab country in the coming days to relay a telegram from the Obama Administration. The Hamas figure told the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that the Americans fear discussing the talks publicly would "rouse the Jewish lobby and other pressure groups in the US and cause them to pressure the administration to suspend all talks with Hamas." The Hamas figure, who is close to Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the government in Gaza, added, "This is a sensitive subject. The Americans d...

I have decided that I like some things Camille Paglia has to say: Madonna’s dance-track acolyte, Lady Gaga, with her compulsive overkill, is a high-concept fabrication without an ounce of genuine eroticism.                         sex

Oh what a difference a year makes ... Biden: We Can't Recover All the Jobs Lost Stephanie Condon June 25, 2010 CBSNews.com     Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, "there's no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession." Appearing at a fundraiser with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) in Milwaukee, the vice president remarked that by the time he and President Obama took office in 2008, the gross domestic product had shrunk and hundreds of thousands of jobs had been lost. "We inherited a godawful mess," he said, adding there was "no way to regenerate $3 trillion that was lost. Not misplaced, lost." Claims for jobless benefits fell by the largest number in two months last week, but were still high enough to signal weak job growth. Meanwhile, the Senate on Thursday failed to pass an extension of unemployment benefits. Biden said today the economy is improving and...

Opinion: Al and Tipper and the 'Good Divorce' Myth AOL News (June 15) -- The separation of Al and Tipper Gore after 40 years as husband and wife produced a flood of commentary concerning what's purportedly impossible, and possible, in modern marriage. According to rapidly calcifying conventional wisdom, the Gore breakup shows it's impossible to uphold the old ideal of "til death do us part," while their dignity and discretion demonstrate the real possibility of a "good divorce." Actually, both conclusions contradict reality. Statistics show that loving, lifetime marriage isn't just possible, it's prevalent. And common sense and sad experience expose the notion of the good divorce as a destructive myth, since the end of every marriage brings pain, problems and damage to society. Concerning assumptions that marriages all go stale or sour over time, The New York Times recently reported a major study by neuroscientists at the University of Califo...

Remember, this was going to be the most transparent administration ?  Well, that went away a long time ago, but every now and then the Retardicans make a stab at it - this time, they are pushing for a vote to make all earmarks public and searchable.  Earmarks are little bits of nothing each member of Congress slips into a bill.  The Reatrdicans want these earmarks transparent - who inserted what and where for how much. The Democrats are stalling, if not outright refusing. Transparency. Levin blocks Earmark Transparency Act from vote By Alex Pappas - The Daily Caller Published: Friday, June 25th, 2010 Democratic Sen. Carl Levin blocked the bi-partisan Earmark Transparency Act from coming to a vote during a committee hearing Thursday after expressing concern that posting all earmarks online would be too complex. “This is a transparency bill,” the bill’s author, Republican Tom Coburn, said at Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Aff...

and we are not talking 10th and 12th graders.  All the way down to elementary school! Should Elementary Schools Give Condoms to Students? June 24, 2010— Associated Press ABC News When kindergarten through fifth grade students return to class at Veterans Memorial Elementary School in Provincetown, Mass., this fall, they'll be able to ask the school nurse for condoms. Thanks to a new, district-wide policy approved by the Provincetown School Board, condoms are now available to students in all schools, regardless of their age. Parents will not be informed if their kids request condoms. Officials say that there's no set age when sexual activity starts and students who ask for condoms will also receive counseling and information on abstinence. Debate over the decision focused not on whether condoms should be available, but whether the policy was too restrictive for students, particularly those in high school. According to the Provincetown Banner, some committee members were worried t...

I have compassion, unlike the left who threaten a judge - my compassion extends to people like the two in this story.   My disposition of the case - 2 years for each, if they agree to be spayed and neutered.  For they are no different than cats and dogs - they cannot control themselves.   If not, 15 years with no possibility of parole before they serve 10 years, plus an 5 additional years of parole when released. Couple Tried to Sell Baby Outside Walmart for $25: Cops By JESSICA GREENE Fri, Jun 25, 2010 Everyone knows you can find just about anything you need for a low price at Walmart -- including baby stuff. But an actual baby? That's not usually part of the deal. Unless you're desperate for cash and not in the best frame of mind. That's the case in Salinas, California, where police say a couple tried to sell their 6-month-old baby for $25 outside a Walmart. Now they're facing child endangerment charges. Patrick Fousek, 38, and Samantha Tomasini, 20,...

You may wish to peruse  PRB and check out the Total Fertility Rate (recognizing that in some countries having 8 children doesn't mean all 8 live, but having less than 1.6 surely is a bad sign when you need 2.1 to perpetuate your culture. US childlessness is up, but racial gaps narrowing Hope Yen, Associated Press Writer June 24, 2010 WASHINGTON – Nearly 1 in 5 American women beyond childbearing years never gave birth as fewer couples, particularly higher-educated whites, view having children as necessary to a good marriage. An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center, being released Friday, documents the changes in fertility rates that are driving government projections that U.S. minorities will become the majority by midcentury. The figures show that among all women ages 40-44, about 18 percent, or 1.9 million, were childless in 2008. That's up from 10 percent, or nearly 580,000 in 1976. Broken down by race, roughly 20 percent of white women are childless, compared ...

The peaceful, tolerant, compassionate left.  We are always hearing how hateful the right is.  Every joke about guns by anyone on the left, contains some reference to the right-wingers.  Jokes about the intolerance of the right, about their refusal to dialogue, to set aside their hate, and open their hearts to love.  Which sounds more like Osama bin Laden to me, but in any case, the left has made a point of linking the right with violence and intolerance.  Not just a point of making this connection, they have made it a crusade to link conservatives to hate, evil, death, violence, rape, war, greed ... yet the left show themselves as caring and compassionate, open-minded, and tolerant, believers in the market-place of ideas and expressing all ideas no matter how hateful.  This is reasonably clear when we watch the left push Islamic values onto mainstream America under the guise of toleration and free-speech. This open-minded spirit, clearly does not extend to ...

I would argue that part, a small percentage of this radicalization is due to the heartfelt efforts of the Obama administration. Arab minority in Israel gets more radical Report also indicates hostility among Jews By Benjamin Birnbaum 8:41 p.m., Tuesday, June 22, 2010 The Washington Times While confronting threats abroad, Israel faces a challenge closer to home — the increasing radicalization of its Arab minority, according to a new report. The report notes several public opinion trends in Israel's Arab sector since 2003 that reflect a growing alienation from the state and its Jewish majority: • Support for the proposition that "Jews in Israel are a people who have a right to a state" has declined from 75.5 percent to 60.8 percent while support for "two states for two peoples" has plummeted from 88.8 percent to 65 percent. • Those who list Israeli citizenship as the most important aspect of their personal identity have dwindled from 29.6 percent to 19.8 percent, ...

On oil drilling at least. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman today granted a preliminary injunction, halting the moratorium. He also “immediately prohibited” the U.S. from enforcing the ban. Government lawyers told Feldman the ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April. “The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium,” Feldman said in his 22-page decision. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.” Separate Order “The court cannot substitute its judgment for that of the agency, but the agency must ‘cogently explain why it has exercised its discretion in a given manner,’” Feldman said, citing a previous ruling. “It has not done so.” Feldman in a separ...

Down with America: the Anti-American Dance (2) From the desk of Luc Van Braekel on Sat, 2005-09-10 12:17 "Down with America" is the title of a recent song by the popular Belgian musician Raymond van het Groenewoud. Written in Dutch and published by EMI , "Weg met Amerika" ("Down with America") will be available in record shops as of next week, and was played on Belgian state radio last Thursday and Friday. Here is a quote from the lyrics of the song: Hamburgers and coke, yes you already knew But do you also know the cause of the general decay? Short-sighted thinking, loud talking Sticking to one-liners forever Down with America! Down with the jerks from America Down with America! [...] Down with American colonialism Down with that ugly, biting English All the Anglo-Saxon pretence, arrogance Yes, a hot pick up their ass And that is that [...] I am from the Belgian, the European panel And I ask you: “Clear my channel! Clear my channel!” Megalomaniac unicellu...

The Rape of Europe From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2006-10-25 21:57 The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin, Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: “We are watching the world of yesterday.” Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. “I am too old,” he said. However, he urged young people to get out and “move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable.” Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder’s advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, l...

In England, the news is .... Labour MP for East Ham, Stephen Timms, was stabbed by a Muslim woman, who had been "radicalized." Since then, the names of four other MPs have been discovered on a terrorist hit list, and security for all MPs has been put under review. islamic terror

Why not let all the Guantanamo prisoners go ... after all, they have been deprived of their rights, and as soon as you let them go, why not give them a plane ticket to Afghanistan, which is where many of them go anyway - and why not simply give them a plane to fly into Americans in Afghainstan - save them time and trouble. The US government is behind the Saudi government's attempts at rehabilitation.  That is not a natural thing to do in Saudi Arabia - rehabilitate. 25 Saudi Guantanamo prisoners return to militancy Ulf Laessing RIYADH Sat Jun 19, 2010 1:07pm EDTRIYADH (Reuters) - Around 25 former detainees from Guantanamo Bay camp returned to militancy after going through a rehabilitation program for al Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi security official said on Saturday. The United States have sent back around 120 Saudis from the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, set up after the U.S. launched a "war on terror" following the September 11 attacks by most...

Parts of Arizona have been turned over to the drug and human traffickers. And the US government is suggesting Americans don't go into that area. And the army is not on the way, the national guard is not on the way, and ... the sheriff is helpess. The Obama Administration obama

Royal altar walk stirs controversy By Cajsa Wikstrom Saturday, June 19, 2010 Al Jazerra After eight years of media scrutiny and gossip, the Swedish Crown Princess finally got her prince. Victoria's decision to marry Daniel Westling, her former fitness trainer, was controversial in itself. The future queen fell in love with a commoner from a small town, and rumour has it that her father, King Carl Gustaf XVI, initially opposed the marriage because Westling was not "good enough". But as the engagement was announced and preparations for the June 19 wedding finally went ahead, it was the planned layout of the wedding ceremony that caused a media storm. Victoria asked to be escorted to the altar by her father, contradicting the Swedish tradition of couples entering the church together. In the country that prides itself as being one of the absolute front runners in the field of gender equality, the move was interpreted as much more than a ceremonial act. 'Altargate' C...

Mort Zuckerman: World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur The president is well-intentioned but can't walk the walk on the world stage By Mortimer B. Zuckerman June 18, 2010 US News President Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. president. Why? Because the United States stands on top of the power ladder, not necessarily as the dominant power, but certainly as the leading one. As such we are the sole nation capable of exercising global leadership on a whole range of international issues from security, trade, and climate to counterterrorism. We also benefit from the fact that most countries distrust the United States far less than they distrust one another, so we uniquely have the power to build coalitions. As a result, most of the world still looks to Washington for help in their region and protection against potential regional threats. Yet, the Iraq war lingers; Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of...

Rudy Guiliani - If this was Bush, he would have been impeached by now. rudy

AT&T  and Dell, Inc. They have more in common than India and the Philippines. Neither is very competent. I have gone without phone service for at least 8 days.  Why do I say at least 8 days and not a certain 8 or 7, because I use the phone very infrequently, but when I do, I need to use it (such as calling internationally) which i cannot do on the cell phone (without racking up costs as high as my mortgage). Yet when I call AT&T, they are quite casual about it, and will send someone out within 4 days, which will be Friday by 8pm. When I inform them that those options are wholly unacceptable for any country that is not Afghanistan, she said: We're very sorry sir, but all the technicians are very busy. This is the United States - the most sophisticated and technologically advanced civilization on earth and you (AT&T)  have me without phone service for 8 days. Unacceptable. phones

Our own extinction is forecast, but he's going by dead reckoning Andrew Bolt Herald Sun June 18, 2010 We humans are about to be wiped out in a few decades. The grandchildren of many of us will not live to old age. Hear it from Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University and the man who helped eradicate smallpox. "Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he told The Australian this week. "It's an irreversible situation." Blame global warming. But here's the odd thing. Just three paragraphs into this report announcing the - Oh My God! - end of the world, the reporter and Fenner were off talking about rabbits, Fenner's writing habits, his bookshelves, his student days, his war service and the weight of the book he wrote on smallpox - 3.5kg, actually. Oh, and did he ever tell how he used to study skulls with Norman Tindale? Now, you'd think when a reporter had just been told that thousan...

You picked a fine time to abandon Barrack, with more than two potential war fronts, and a gazillion gallons of oil in the ocean, you picked a fine time to abandon Barrack.  British media fall out of love with Obama By Janet Daley June 16th, 2010 The Telegraph The BBC reports of Barack Obama’s speech last night are about as derisive as it would be possible to be about someone you were describing only a few months ago as the incarnation of Hope and Optimism. Yes indeed, the romance is over. The British media have decided that it was all a cruel deception: Obama is just one more ranting populist president who will do anything to divert attention from his own failure to get a grip. And this is not just about BP and the fate of all those pension funds. Nor is it simply the demonising of Big Oil – which makes the US president sound as if he were recruiting his speech writers direct from the student union – that has evoked the UK media’s collective sneer. What has been much commented upo...

There is no room for opposition in Russia, unless they operate within parameters established by those in power.  And with a community organizer in the White House who spends more time golfing and vacationing than dealing with local and national problems, he certainly does not have the braintrust to deconstruct the implications of these events.  Russia is moving further and further away, into an orbit they previously held, one which is not a friend of the United States, nor of freedom.   Police seize 100,000 anti-Vladimir Putin books Russian police seized 100,000 copies of a book critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that activists planned to hand out at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum. 6:22PM BST 16 Jun 2010 The Telegraph Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin Photo: BLOOMBERG Copies of 'Putin. The Results. 10 Years on', written by opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov were "intended for participants of the forum", starting Thu...

Residents get 6 votes each in suburban NY election By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer Tue Jun 15, 4:08 pm ET PORT CHESTER, N.Y. – Arthur Furano voted early — five days before Election Day. And he voted often, flipping the lever six times for his favorite candidate. Furano cast multiple votes on the instructions of a federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a new election system crafted to help boost Hispanic representation. Voters in Port Chester, 25 miles northeast of New York City, are electing village trustees for the first time since the federal government alleged in 2006 that the existing election system was unfair. The election ends Tuesday and results are expected late Tuesday. Although the village of about 30,000 residents is nearly half Hispanic, no Latino had ever been elected to any of the six trustee seats, which until now were chosen in a conventional at-large election. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won. Federal Judge Stephe...

Excerpt from the Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2010 But watching the president and hearing him was a little creepy; that early portion of the address was robotic, lacked real energy, enthusiasm. And worst of all specifics. He was virtually detail-less. After almost two months of waiting through continuously contradictory reports, an anxious American public wanted to know, HOW are you going to accomplish all this? Even Obama's cheerleaders over at MSNBC were complaining. "Where was the How in this speech?" demanded Keith Olbermann. Seriously. Everyone's assumed that fixing the leak was a given since Day Four, which was still five days before the Democrat got his big plane and presidential entourage down there.                             obama

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture finds that a middle-income family with a child born in 2009 can expect to spend about $222,360 ($286,050 if inflation is factored in) for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise that child over the next 17 years. costs

Indonesia sex tape sparks call to control Internet Tue Jun 15, 2010 7:47pm IST By Sunanda Creagh Reuters JAKARTA (Reuters) - The release of video clips appearing to show top starlets having sex has sparked renewed calls for tighter Internet controls in majority-Muslim Indonesia and more use of a controversial anti-pornography law. The anti-porn law, passed in 2008, was seen by many as a sign of the growing influence of conservative Islam in policy-making in traditionally moderate Indonesia, a worry for some investors hoping for pro-market reforms. Police are now considering invoking it in an investigation into the release on the grainy clips that appear to show pop singer Nazril "Ariel" Irham having sex, in one clip with television star girlfriend Luna Maya, while in another with actress Cut Tari. The stars have denied it is them. Local media reported Irham as saying his laptop was stolen last year and police have called the stars for questioning. Information Minister Tifatu...