[Please note: links to news articles and accompanying headlines and text were valid and accurate at the time of posting but content often changes or is deleted by the original publishers for reasons they feel are warranted…ed]
Terror attack on U.S. ‘certain,’ Senate told
The five senior leaders of the U.S. intelligence community told a Senate panel Tuesday they are “certain” that terrorists will attempt another attack on the United States in the next three to six months. The warning came during the annual threat briefing to Congress in response to questions from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who asked, “What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S homeland in the next three to six months? High or low?” “An attempted attack, the priority is certain, I would say,” said Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral. Four other intelligence agency leaders who appeared at the hearing with Adm. Blair said they agreed with the assessment. [Thank God we have a fumbling rookie in the White House and some seriously incompetent morons heading up Homeland Security and the Justice Department! I’m left wondering what the odds are this “for certain” terrorist attack happens oh, sometime just before the November elections which would make it (them) just in time for Obama to sign an executive order suspending the elections and the Constitution…ed]
The Coast Guard said yesterday that it will allow tankers carrying liquefied natural gas from Yemen into Boston Harbor despite concerns about the cargo coming from a country that has been called a haven for terrorists. The decision, which means LNG ships could begin arriving in Everett later this month, drew immediate condemnation from Mayor Thomas M. Menino, a longtime critic of allowing LNG shipments through the harbor. He accused the Coast Guard of putting profits ahead of people. “This is all about helping a commercial enterprise,’’ Menino said in an interview. “I’m about helping protect people’s property and lives. They’re saying they will be as safe as any other LNG ship. I say they’ll be as unsafe as any other LNG ship.’’ [Correction: OBAMA has made the decision to allow these shipments NOT the Coast Guard. We have OCEANS of natural gas just waiting to be tapped right here in this country and that effort would bring hundreds of thousands of jobs related to the industry to the American people. Why in the HELL are we importing this stuff from a country well KNOWN to be a safe haven for terrorists?…ed]
KSM will never get a civilian trial
Though New York City will apparently be spared the unnecessary expense and disruptions of a civilian trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed & Co., President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are threatening to take the show on the road to some other unfortunate locale. But mark our words, it won’t happen. KSM and his cohorts will be tried in a military commission at Guantanamo Bay — because the administration has made it almost impossible for them to get a fair trial in a civilian court. In a typical criminal case, the government says very little outside of court, and what it does say in public is limited to a plain-vanilla recitation of the accusations with liberal use of the word “alleged” before the charges, as well as a reminder that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. This is for good reason: A defendant has a right to a fair trial, and pretrial publicity that is unduly prejudicial will deny the defendant that right. [Dana Perino, co author of this article and former George W. Bush press secretary, points out how this administration has hopelessly tainted the jury pool thereby forcing Obama to reverse his stupid decision to try ‘KSM’ in a civilian court…ed]
What We Lost While Abdulmutallab Clammed Up
The White House yesterday leaked the news that the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had begun cooperating with FBI interrogators last week. The Washington press corps quickly declared victory for the Obama administration and suggested that the news vindicated the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights just 10 hours after he was detained and after just 50 minutes of questioning. It’s good news that Abdulmutallab is talking. But he started talking five weeks after the attack. Intelligence is perishable. The U.S. government passed on an opportunity to interrogate him at a time when his al Qaeda sponsors in Yemen probably thought he was incapable of talking. And the the fact that he is cooperating now should not obscure the gross mishandling of the incident by the Obama administration. [Had a Republican administration fumbled this situation as badly as this one has the lamestream media would be ALL OVER IT. When their guy puts the entire country in peril because of his unbelievably stupid handling of the underwear bomber all we get are crickets. When not IF a grip of innocent Americans are slaughtered before the year is out, their blood will be on one man’s hands…ed]
What exactly did Bush and Cheney do wrong?
As I noted several days ago, it is not only Republicans — but Democratic and media establishment figures as well — who clearly crave the preservation of the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and civil liberties. When Bush’s popularity collapsed to historic lows, political and media elites pretended for awhile to object to his administration’s fear-based and radical policies as extremist and an assault on “our values.” But that was all just such a transparent pretense. In those few instances where Obama has rejected the Bush/Cheney template, the outrage and hysteria from Democratic and media voices is pervasive, and is growing louder. Just look at these illustrative incidents. [Wow looky here. A bunch of liberals are now looking back to the Bush/Cheney days with longing eyes now that they realize their ‘messiah’s’ policies are going to get a bunch of Americans killed, perhaps even some of them or their family members…ed]
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What is Barack Obama’s real problem? Too many people here and abroad took him at his word, and he now seems quite angry at that. For two years Obama serially damned the entrepreneurial classes. They should “spread the wealth,” be “patriotic,” and pay “their fair share.” They should be paying more income, payroll, and inheritance taxes. They could not be trusted with health care, student loans, high finance, or auto manufacturing. Their lifestyles of private jets and Super Bowl junkets came at the expense of the downtrodden. The would-be rich who made just over $200,000 were indiscriminately lumped together with the elite rich on Wall Street — who ironically contributed inordinately to Barack Obama’s non–publicly financed campaign coffers. Apparently, the small-business classes took Obama’s writs seriously, and for the foreseeable future they have shut down — they have quit hiring and buying, and are riding out the “recovery.” [Obama’s words alone are responsible for much of the damage to our economy and you have GOT to believe me when I say this has been done deliberately…ed]
President Obama Again Criticizes Trips to Las Vegas
President Obama is catching heat from Nevada lawmakers and business leaders regarding his comments Tuesday criticizing trips to Las Vegas. During the president’s town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, he discussed the need to curb spending during tough economic times. “When times are tough, you tighten your belts,” the president said. “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.” The president’s comments come nearly a year after he criticized companies that received federal money for taking corporate junkets to Las Vegas. “You can’t go take that trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on taxpayers’ dime,” he said at the time. Local business leaders say Nevada tourism suffered last year in part because companies canceled trips to Las Vegas in the wake of the president’s comments. [Slick move there Mr. Belt Tightener who just offered up his 3.8 TRILLION dollar budget sporting a 1.6 TRILLION dollar deficit. That means at least 1.6 TRILLION dollars of spending that he doesn’t have the money to cover for you folks up in Detroit…ed]
Republicans say Obama loan program is first step toward TARP slush fund
Republicans accused President Obama on Tuesday of taking a step toward using the $700 billion Wall Street bailout as a slush fund, a possibility many worried about when the Troubled Asset Relief Program was first created during the economic panic of 2008. “Our TARP should not be a piggy bank. It was intended to stabilize the financial system. It has stabilized the financial system. As it is paid back with interest it should go to reduce the debt,” Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican and ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a brief interview. Obama traveled to New Hampshire to promote his idea, a proposal to move $30 billion out of TARP and loan it to community banks, in order to spur lending to small businesses. Obama only touched on the idea during the town hall, but it drew fire from Republican lawmakers in Washington as well as some Democrats. [You cannot ‘force’ banks to lend money to anybody. It didn’t work before and it won’t work now. Obama’s true intent all along was to take any and all TARP repayment funds and use them to buy votes for Democrats. The GOP is absolutely correct. Use this money to pay down the deficit just like Obama said he wants to do the other day with his silly drop in the bucket “spending freeze”…ed]
Generic Congressional Ballot. Republicans Lead By Seven on Generic Ballot
Republican candidates lead Democrats by seven points in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. The new national telephone survey shows that 45% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. [The seven point lead by the Republicans over Democrats has been holding more or less steady for months. The real problem for the Democrats are those pesky and growing like crazy group of Independents. “Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the GOP leads this week by a 45% to 25% margin”…ed]
GOP’s Senate prospects on the rise
The long-shot bid by Republicans to retake control of the Senate is suddenly in play, as the prospect of high-profile Republican candidates entering the fray has pushed the GOP even or ahead in polling for 10 races. The potential candidacies of former Republican Govs. George E. Pataki in New York and Tommy G. Thompson in Wisconsin are improving the polling fortunes of the party as it pursues seats long in the hands of Democrats, while the anti-government “tea party” movement has provided momentum to Republican challengers in states such as Florida, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. “If the election were held today, the Republicans could come close to winning back the Senate, if not actually win it,” said pollster John Zogby. [What we need is a “conservative” takeover of the Senate not a bunch of Democrat Lite Republicans. Hopefully the GOP will get THAT message prior to November…ed]
Republicans find loophole in budget ploy to push healthcare
As it turns out, Senate Democrats may not be able to force healthcare legislation through the chamber on a simple majority vote. Republicans say they have found a loophole in the budget reconciliation process that could allow them to offer an indefinite number of amendments. Though it has never been done, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he’s prepared to test the Senate’s stamina to block the Democrats from using the process to expedite changes to the healthcare bill. Experts on Senate procedural rules, from both parties, note that such a filibuster is possible. While reconciliation rules limit debate to 20 hours, senators lack similiar constraints on amendments and could conceivably continue offering them until 60 members agree to cut the process off. [Good news. Perhaps the Republicans can start making a habit of going on the OFFENSIVE instead of always reacting to the crap the Democrats are trying to ram down the throats of the American people…ed]
SEIU Fat Cats Behind First Lady’s Anti-Obesity Campaign
Behind every seemingly good deed in the Obama White House, there’s a deep-pocketed, left-wing special interest. Take first lady Michelle Obama’s crusade against childhood obesity. Who really benefits from the ostensible push for improved nutrition in the schools? Think purple — as in the purple-shirted army of the Service Employees International Union. Big Labor bigwigs don’t care about slimming your kids’ waistlines. They care about beefing up their membership rolls and fattening their coffers. Mrs. Obama earned a State of the Union address shout-out from her hubby for taking on the weighty public policy issue of students’ physical fitness. The East Wing is now in full campaign mode — leaning on the nation’s mayors, traveling with the surgeon general and meeting with Congress and cabinet members to reauthorize the Lyndon Johnson-era Child Nutrition Act, which provides government-subsidized meals to more than 30 million children. It’s part of the Obama administration’s self-proclaimed “cradle-to-career” agenda for America’s youth. [Michelle Malkin follows the money and it turns out it’s going to the thuggish SEIU union folks…ed]
U.S. May Lose 824,000 Jobs as Employment Data Revised: Analysis
The U.S. may lose 824,000 jobs when the government releases its annual revision to employment data on Feb. 5, showing the labor market was in worse shape during the recession than known at the time. [Yeah, we’ve been sitting around waiting for this administration to come out with yet another one of their fuzzy math “revisions.” For the last year they’ve been publishing the numbers they wished (or wanted us to believe) were true rather than the numbers that really were accurate…ed]
Katie Couric Gets Some of Her Own Class Warfare Medicine for $14m Salary
Katie Couric may be getting a taste of her own populist medicine. When the Dow hit 10,000 last October, she (and other network news personalities) used the opportunity to bemoan massive payments to Wall Street bankers. But now the populist sentiment has turned on her. She faces dramatic pay cuts as CBS News downsizes. Couric, shown in a, er, file photo at right, “makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year! It’s complete insanity,” one CBS News insider told the Drudge Report. “We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a recession. Well look at Katie!” The employee was referring to Couric’s roughly $14 million annual salary, the highest in network news. That salary may be cut dramatically in the face of massive layoffs at CBS News branches in Washington, San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow. [This vacuous idiot makes $38,356 a day to push the liberal agenda while C-BS bleeds money like a stuck pig. And no I’m not hypocritically attacking capitalism. She SHOULD be paid what she’s worth, about five bucks an hour, however C-BS chooses to take shareholder and advertiser money and prop this fraud up in lieu of any and all fiscal sanity…ed]
Push is on to ease Arizona’s gun laws
Arizona has always held tightly to its legacy as part of the gun-toting Wild West and a protector of individual rights. This year, the state’s Republican governor and a conservative Legislature may continue that tradition by giving Arizonans some of the least-restrictive weapons laws in the nation. This session, state lawmakers have proposed more than a dozen bills on expanding rights to carry and use guns and knives. The proposed laws would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit, end requirements that guns manufactured and kept in Arizona be registered, and allow university professors to carry guns on school grounds. [Great news! Last time I checked crooks already carry concealed weapons without a permit, don’t bother to “register” guns even though this registering guns stuff is often mischaracterized, and visit school grounds while carrying guns so maybe it’s high time law abiding citizens can too…ed]
Toyota Owners Advised to Stop Driving Their Cars, Seek Help
Toyota owners should “stop driving their cars and take them to their dealers,” Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said today when asked by Congress for his advice. “My advice is if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it,” LaHood told a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee during a hearing. LaHood also said the government would be looking into consumer complaints about electronic systems in the vehicles. [Word on the street is Toyotas MAY have a real problem with the vehicle powertrain control module software. If that’s the case this is gonna be one mutha of an expensive vehicle recall campaign…ed]
FHP: Trooper Wrote Fake Traffic Tickets
A Florida Highway Patrol trooper was arrested Tuesday, accused of issuing traffic citations for violations that never happened. Paul Lawrence, a 12-year veteran of FHP, was released Tuesday night on $66,000 bond. He is charged with 22 counts of official misconduct. FHP and Miami-Dade County prosecutors said Lawrence was handing out bogus tickets. Ernest Knight, a postal carrier in Miami, lives in Miami Gardens. Knight said he has never been to the address on a traffic ticket he was issued, on which Lawrence claimed he pulled Knight over and cited him for having no vehicle registration. Knight said he has a registration. [What a dick. I can’t imagine what would motive a peace officer to do something like this but let’s hope they throw the book at this clown to discourage any similar behavior…ed]
Quote of the day.
He’s not our friend. I don’t know about Nevada, but Las Vegas, he’s sure not our friend. He has a real psychological hang-up about the entertainment capital of the world. Everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I’ve got to tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner. (emphasis added)
-Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman