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Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.
The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.
In the videotape, made on July 24, James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named "Kenya" who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN's office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.
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Dailymail.co.ukChildren as young as five should be taught about explicit sex acts, according to guidelines from the United Nations.
The advice also calls for youngsters to learn about abortion, same-sex relationships and sexually transmitted diseases.
The draft report on sex education has been compiled by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
Read more: click here.
Kaine Adopts Schedule Despite Early PledgeWashington PostThursday, July 9, 2009RICHMOND -- Timothy M. Kaine said he has been spending a day and a half of each workweek handling fundraising and policy matters for the Democratic National Committee, a departure from his pledge to conduct most of his national party work by phone and fax and restrict it largely to evenings and weekends while he is governor of Virginia.
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The stickier problems of bumper morality.
Culture & Media Institute The other day I was driving behind a car with a “Friend of Tibet” Virginia license plate. That’s great and I’d like to be a “Friend” myself, but with the job and the family and cutting the lawn … Can I just become a “Facebook Friend of Tibet?” If so, am I entitled to the same preening as Tibet’s actual Friends?
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CNSNews.comWashington (CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.
“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.
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National Review OnlineMuch has been said about Maureen “I wanted to weave the idea into my column” Dowd’s latest take-down of Sarah Palin (“Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.”) Her hit-piece is a self-parody. Instead, of seriously critiquing the wisdom or folly of Palin’s controversial decision to step down from the governorship, we get child-like sentences on spec like this:
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Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.
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Wall Street JournalBy ROBERT BRYCEWhenever you read about ethanol, remember these numbers: 98 and 190.
They offer an essential insight into U.S. energy politics and the debate over cap-and-trade legislation that recently passed the House. Here is what the numbers mean: The U.S. gets about 98 times as much energy from natural gas and oil as it does from ethanol and biofuels. And measured on a per-unit-of-energy basis, Congress lavishes ethanol and biofuels with subsidies that are 190 times as large as those given to oil and gas.
Those numbers come from an April 2008 report by the Energy Information Administration: "Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007." Table ES6 lists domestic energy sources that get subsidies. In 2007, the U.S. consumed nearly 55.8 quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTUs), or about 9.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, in natural gas and oil. That's about 98 times as much energy as the U.S. consumed in ethanol and biofuels, which totaled 98 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Meanwhile, ethanol and biofuels are getting subsidies of $5.72 per million BTU. That's 190 times as much as natural gas and petroleum liquids, which get subsidies of $0.03 per million BTU.
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Wall Street Journal Franken wins by changing the rules.
The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year's disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman's gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.
Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat's strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.
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Mackinac CenterBy Mr. Jarrett Skorup / Posted: July 6, 2009Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted:
A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors.
A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average.
A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members.
A powerful government employee union that does the same for its members.
A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.
Would this be a shining city on a hill, exciting the admiration of all? We don't have to guess, because there is such a city right here in our state: Detroit
Detroit has been dubbed "the most liberal city in America" and each of these "progressive" policies are alive and well there. How have they worked out?
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Real Clear PoliticsCBS' Chip Reid and Helen Thomas double teamed Robert Gibbs today at the daily press briefing on the "tightly controlled" town hall meeting President Obama will hold on health care. Gibbs kept saying lets have this discussion AFTER the meeting. Helen Thomas accused the White House of "controlling the press." She said almost all White House/Obama events are "prepackaged." She accused the White House of not "having any answers."
Market-ticker.orgWe have seen the largest looting operation in history perpetrated against The American People.
Over $5 trillion dollars in junk securities were marketed and sold. They had a real value of about $2 trillion dollars; the other $3 trillion, roughly, was pure fiction.
The banks created and sold these throughout the world, with the full knowledge and support of Congress, The Fed, and the banks themselves.
It was pure fraud.
Granting someone a "mortgage" based only on whether they can fog a mirror is proof positive of malfeasance, unless you disclose this fact to the buyers of these securities - a fact that was not disclosed until after the securities blew up.
Lenders, builders and others pressured appraisers to "hit the numbers" to support these fraudulent deals. Proof of that is found in the nearly-10-year-old Appraisers Petition bearing thousands of appraiser signatures.
That ratings were a "mistake", either real or intentional, is a matter of now-known historical fact.
Americans have sat on their butts through all of this, allowed their 401ks and IRAs to be trashed, their supposed "home values" to be pumped and then destroyed, and their hopes, dreams, employment and house have all vanished into the ether of fraud.
When this came to light the banks went to Congress, and supported by The Fed's intentional draining of liquidity to create an immediate "crisis", they got a $700 billion bailout bill passed - one that you, your children and grandchildren, will have to pay for.
The government then passed another near-trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill claimed to hold unemployment to 8%. It did not, because it was yet another "papering over" of the fraud, but that bill your children and grandchildren, along with you, will also pay.
Your savings accounts and CDs now yield an effective zero.
Your credit card interest rates have gone from 11% to 29%, all so that the banks can keep granting ill-advised credit to people who can't pay. Those who can pay - the rest of you - are being jacked for 30% a year in interest.
We have seen a few "tea parties" in which a few people showed up and which were immediately panned by "those in power" as "astroturf."
Contrast with this.
A few days ago, Iran held an election. It is alleged that there was massive fraud. The current President claimed victory under less-than-clear circumstances.
That's about 2 million people, out of 70 million population (roughly), or one in thirty-five Iranians in the entire nation who took to the streets to demand justice in a simple vote.
More strikingly, Tehran has a population of roughly 12 million; this means that one in six citizens of the city are standing in that crowd.
This, despite the fact that the government there has been shooting people, has arrested the opposition party and issued an order to burn the ballots so there can be no recount.
This, despite the fact that the Iranian population does not enjoy a Second Amendment, and thus is forced to fight a rogue government with makeshift molotov cocktails, rocks and clubs, should that rogue government choose to shoot.
And this was about an election. A President. One man.
In our nation we have literally had 1/3rd of our GDP - that is, 1/3rd of everything you worked for last year - stolen by a bunch of fraudsters with the explicit cooperation and assistance of the government.
We should be seeing 10 million Americans literally closing Washington DC with peaceful protest in the streets - making the entirety of the downtown inaccessible to vehicles and the normal conduct of business impossible, were Americans to display the same sort of anger over an insult vastly more serious than that served upon the Iranian people.
If one in six Americans had enough in America's big cities, there would be one million people in the Streets of Chicago - enough to fill Chicago's Loop from Lake Michigan to I-90/94 and from The Chicago River to beyond Soldier Field, rendering the city core impassable. (Roughly double the crowd that shows up for the 4th of July Fireworks, to put it in perspective. "Greater Chicagoland" has a population of ~7 million)
The same in NY City would result in a crowd of 3.3 million people.
Where are you America?
In America, if the government turns into a goon squad, you have the constitutionally-protected ability to shoot back. In Iran you have no such ability as the Iranian government has never recognized the unalienable rights as set forth in our Declaration.
So in Iran the population risks mass death to protest.
In America the population risks loss of some income since you'd have to cut work.
The Iranians take to the streets; we take to our couches and have another beer.
Grow a pair of balls America.
The people of Iran are putting us to shame.
PS: Those threats appear not to have been idle either:
Market - Ticker
Seekingalpha.comHere’s yet another huge financial story that has been virtually blacked out by the US financial media. Although on the surface, this story appears to be a non-event, if we consider some of the released facts about this case, you will understand why I consider it to be a huge story. On June 8th, the Asia News reported the following story:
“Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollars each. Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.”
Here are just a few fascinating facts about this case (at least they are being reported as “facts” at this current time):
(1) Though the smugglers have been identified in the press as “Japanese nationals” there has yet to be any confirmation if the smugglers were indeed Japanese or of some other ethnicity. How difficult is it to confirm the ethnicity of the smugglers and why is this information being kept secret?
(2) According to a brief Bloomberg article regarding this story, the seized bearer bonds allegedly were dated as of 1934. Since bearer bonds in denominations of $500 million did not exist in 1934, the bonds were deduced as fake, though the Italian police are still waiting for a declaration regarding the bonds’ authenticity from the SEC. There is something truly “off” about this declaration. How can the quality of the forged bearer bonds be so meticulous that they “are indistinguishable from the real ones”, yet the people involved in the alleged forgery so ill-informed as to not date the bearer bonds with a more recent year that would not immediately identify them as fraudulent? How hard would it have been to date the bearer bonds with a more recent year? An equivalent analogy would be if an expert art forger meticulously re-created a Picasso oil canvas and then erroneously signed the work with the wrong artist’s name. This story just does not add up.
(3) The Bloomberg story also reported that there is no known existence of the alleged 10 Kennedy bonds that were discovered in the smuggler’s suitcases, each with a denomination of $1 billion. Again, this discovery defies any logical explanation. Why would expert counterfeiters make 249 bearer bonds with denominations of $500 million apiece, each indistinguishable from the real thing, and then instead of just making 20 more such bonds, decide to make 10 bonds in denominations of $1 billion a piece in a bearer bond design that has never existed? Were the alleged counterfeiters just too lazy to confirm if Kennedy bearer bonds were ever a legitimately issued security? Again, this story makes no sense.
(4) On March 30, 2009, the US Treasury Department announced that USD $134.5 billion remained in its Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]. The stated amount of seized bearer bonds was $134.5 billion. Coincidence?
(5) The two well-dressed Japanese men opted to travel to Chiasso on a local train normally full of Italian manual laborers commuting to Switzerland. If they were really intent on successfully smuggling these bonds, counterfeit or real, why would they not take more care to select a travel route in which it was literally impossible for them not to stick out like two sore thumbs? Again, this part of the story defies all logic.
(6) The bearer bonds were discovered in a hidden briefcase compartment after a customs inspection. Again, if the bonds were indeed authentic and owned by a nation state, they could have been transported in a diplomatic pouch exempt from customs searches that would have guaranteed transport without detection.
Thus, all of the above irreconcilable and illogical points, other than the coincidence of the amount of the bearer bonds exactly matching the remaining TARP fund amount declared on March 30th, seem to indicate that not only were the seized bearer bonds counterfeit, but also that the smugglers were intent on being caught.
Before I continue, let’s review the purpose of bearer bonds.
Here is the Wikipedia definition of bearer bonds:
“A bearer bond is a debt security issued by a business entity, such as a corporation, or by a government. It differs from the more common types of investment securities in that it is unregistered – no records are kept of the owner, or the transactions involving ownership. Whoever physically holds the paper on which the bond is issued owns the instrument. This is useful for investors who wish to retain anonymity. The downside is that in the event of loss or theft, bearer bonds are extremely difficult to recover.”
If you recall the Michael Mann movie “Heat”, starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, during a daring daytime armored car robbery, the criminals specifically targeted millions of dollars of bearer bonds for theft precisely because of the above qualities of bearer bonds that make them very difficult to trace. Again, due to the properties of bearer bonds, it seems highly unlikely that $134.5 billion of bearer bonds would be transported, if they were real, by two men with no security, since theft almost guarantees that they would be lost forever.
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Breitbart.comBUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier is one of only a few ice fields worldwide that have withstood rising global temperatures.
Nourished by Andean snowmelt, the glacier constantly grows even as it spawns icebergs the size of apartment buildings into a frigid lake, maintaining a nearly perfect equilibrium since measurements began more than a century ago.
"We're not sure why this happens," said Andres Rivera, a glacialist with the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. "But not all glaciers respond equally to climate change."
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Real Clear PoliticsRadio talk show host John Ziegler appeared on MSNBC to discuss his interview with Gov. Sarah Palin, in which she responds to a verbal attack from "Late Show" host David Letterman. Ziegler hit MSNBC for it's pro-Obama bias, causing the ire of MSNBC'er Contessa Brewer. Brewer, a woman, did not seem to be offended by Letterman's "slutty" remark.
At the end of the interview, Brewer was so agitated with Ziegler that she requested his microphone be turned off.
UPDATE: John Ziegler tells Real Clear Politics that MSNBC played a trick on him right before he was set to go on air. Ziegler was originally supposed to be interviewed by Norah O'Donnell, an anchor he has had dust-ups with in the past. However, O'Donnell was reassigned to "breaking news" dealing with FIAT. Ziegler says it was "clear Norah O'Donnell ducked" him. "It was part of why I handled it the way I did," Ziegler says. "She was clearly afraid of doing an interview with me," he added.
John Ziegler hosts a radio show on KGIL-AM in Southern California.
WSJ.COMMr. Fratto was a colleague of mine in the Bush administration, and as a senior member of the White House communications shop, he knows just how difficult it can be to deal with a press corps skeptical about presidential economic claims. It now appears, however, that Mr. Fratto's problem was that he simply lacked the magic words -- jobs "saved or created.""Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."Mr. Fratto sees a double standard at play. "We would never have used a formula like 'save or create,'" he tells me. "To begin with, the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it."Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved."
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ABC NewsBritain's National Health Service (NHS) is facing the biggest financial and organizational challenge in its 60-year history, with a 15 billion pound ($25 billion) shortfall looming after 2011, a report said on Wednesday.
The NHS Confederation, which represents health service managers, said recession and rising costs will squeeze the NHS budget by 15 billion pounds in the five years from 2011.
The two years leading up to 2011 would be "tough but manageable," its report said.
"In just under two years, the NHS will face the most severe constriction ever in its finances," it said. "Action is required now if the service is to remain true to its founding principles and continue to provide care free at the point of delivery."
The Confederation said funding shortages could lead to "across the board cuts," longer patient waiting lists, falling standards, and staff and patient dissatisfaction.
It added a cap on the budget for new drugs may have to be considered, and suggested looking at a "total resource ceiling" for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which assesses the cost-effectiveness of new treatments.
"With little or no cash increase from 2011/12 the NHS has to prepare itself for real terms reductions in what it can afford to do," NHS Confederation Chief Executive Steve Barnett said in a statement accompanying the report.
The NHS was launched 1948 as a health service promising to be free at the point of need. It has grown in more than six decades to become Europe's largest employer, with more than 1.5 million staff across Britain. It deals with eight patients every second.
RECESSION, DEBT, UNEMPLOYMENT -- LITTLE CASH FOR HEALTH
According to the government's Department of Health, the NHS budget for 2009/10 is almost 103 billion pounds, a 7.5 percent real-term increase on the previous year.
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The American SpectatorBy Matthew Vadum The "Glenn Beck Program" did an excellent piece on June 3 about Herb and Marion Sandler, the toxic mortgage king and queen, and their connection to ACORN and the inappropriately named Center for Responsible Lending. (The video clip is embedded above.)
Through their charity, the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation, they gave at least $5,723,222 to the ACORN network. Specifically, the charity gave $4,498,222 to American Institute for Social Justice (since 2003), $700,000 to Project Vote (in 2005), $525,000 to ACORN (2000–2001 according to Activist Cash). This excludes any contributions that either Sandler may have made personally to ACORN or its affiliates.
According to the "Glenn Beck Program," the Sandlers paid ACORN to send out protesters to hound Wells Fargo Bank, which competed with Golden West, the Sandlers' bank. If true, this is an explosive allegation.
The Sandlers have also given heavily to the Center for Responsible Lending, an ACORN ally that champions the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Their foundation has given the Center at least $11,200,000 since 2005.
The Sandlers are also deeply involved in an effort to push America's journalistic culture even farther to the left. They have given a reported $10 million to ProPublica, a left-leaning investigative journalism outfit. Cheryl K. Chumley profiled ProPublica in last month's Foundation Watch.
The Washington TimesTwo apparent politically motivated slayings within 24 hours resulted in some very uneven news coverage. The press paid far more attention to the killing of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller than it did to Army recruiter Pvt. William Andrew Long.
Some critics say journalists displayed clear pro-choice bias in their heavy Tiller coverage; others point to the doctor being a longtime controversial media figure.
Both stories were dramatic.
The Wichita, Kan., physician was shot while attending church Sunday. Authorities have charged Scott Roeder, who had a history of pro-life and anti-government writings. Pvt. Long was gunned down in a suburban Arkansas recruiting center a day later, and Muslim convert Abdulhakim Muhammad has been arrested. Authorities say he confessed to targeting soldiers to avenge U.S. military actions against Muslims.
A Google News search for "George Tiller" produced more than 10,000 hits Thursday afternoon, while a similar search for "William Long" yielded fewer than 1,400. A selective LexisNexis search by The Washington Times on Wednesday, based on the neutral words "recruiter" and "abortion doctor" and the respective locales turned up 98 newspaper stories on Dr. Tiller and six on Pvt. Long.
Every day from Sunday to Wednesday, the Associated Press moved three to six different-bylined stories mentioning the Tiller slaying. On no day has it moved more than one separate story on the Long killing.
The Washington Post had 28 news articles on the Tiller death through Thursday's editions, against just five on the Long slaying. A telephone call and an e-mail to Post ombudsman Andy Alexander were not returned.
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By Michelle WaylandNBCSanDiego.comWhat started as an argument over religion at a bar escalated when one man shot another five times overnight, as the victim's sister watched in horror.
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MCRGOThe Law Offices of Steven W. Dulan, PLC announces federal civil rights suit against City of Grand Haven and Ottawa County over open-carry ordinance.
The suit, brought under Title 42, Section 1983 of the U.S. Code, was filed on behalf of Christopher Fetters, an off-duty Air Force Security Officer who was attending the Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven last year. Mr. Fetters was openly carrying a holstered pistol, which is legal under Michigan law, as in most states. He was arrested and detained and charged with a violation of a Grand Haven city ordinance prohibiting open carry of firearms. His gun was initially seized, although it was later returned.
Michigan law prohibits local units of government from making any law with respect to firearms, (MCL 123.1102.) The public policy goal of the statute is to provide a uniform system of gun laws statewide so that citizens do not have to guess regarding what local rules might exist as they move from one locality to the next.
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