Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Rachel Maddow has a lucid period....

The Circus is Back in Albany.......

COUP IN ALBANY: GOP Takes Over NY State Senate

Malcolm Smith Ousted As Senate Majority Leader; Dems Turn Off Lights, Cut Internet Power In Attempt To Stop Coup

Paterson Goes Ballistic: I'm Here To Stand Up For Democracy

Reporting
Marcia Kramer

ALBANY (CBS) ―

: Sens. Dean Skelos (l) and Pedro Espada (r) are sworn in in the New York Senate chambers on June 8, 2009.

Who's in charge of New York?

That was the big question Monday night following a political standoff in Albany.

The Republicans said they pulled off a coup, snatching power away from the Senate majority, but the Democrats said it was illegal and that they're still in control of the Legislature.

And the whole thing has Gov. David Paterson lashing out at lawmakers.

It was a carefully crafted coup -- five weeks in the making, with independent Tom Golisano in on the plotting.

And when it was over Republican Sen. Dean Skelos of Rockville Center was back in power as Senate Majority Leader. Dumped was former Democratic leader Malcolm Smith.

"I want to thank Pedro and Hiram," Skelos said. "I know the difficult votes you did today. But they did the right thing and I want to thank Tom Golisano, who certainly has been a leader."

The thank yous to Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate were because the two controversial Democrats crossed party lines and voted for Skelos to lead the Senate. The flip of the senators give Republicans a 32-30 edge in the chamber.

During the coup, Democrats fled the chamber, turned out the lights, and cut off the Internet feed of chamber proceedings, leaving Republicans and their two Democratic friends to take the vote in the dark.

Read it all here:

http://wcbstv.com/breakingnewsalerts/malcolm.smith.senate.2.1036194.html

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Monday, June 8, 2009

Health Care Plans are Making Me Feel Sick....

by Janet Crain
I don't want to see the government in any kind of business. Not auto, not health care, not anything! Being familiar with Civil Service I know how government runs things. It is not what you know, it's who you____. You fill in the blank.

Top Obama Adviser: Congress Will Approve Government-Owned Health-Care This Summer
Monday, June 08, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

David Axelrod, left, and Valerie Jarrett, right, senior advisers to President Barack Obama, not pictured, disembark Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009 (AP photo)

(CNSNews.com) - Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday that President Obama intends to promote a health-care reform plan that will include creating a government-owned health-care company and predicted that Congress will enact such a plan by the end of the summer.

Axelrod said that a government-owned health-care company would “give consumers a better deal."

Last week, Obama sent a letter to Senators Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D.-Mont.), who are pushing efforts in the Senate for a national health-care plan. In the letter, Obama said he favored, as part of this plan, creating a government-owned health-care company.

“I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans,” Obama said in the letter to the two senators. “This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”

Questioned by guest host Harry Smith on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” senior Obama adviser David Axelrod reiterated Obama’s call for a government-run health-care company to compete with private health insurance and said that a law creating such a program could be enacted this summer.

“In order to make this work, will the federal government have to go into the insurance business?” Smith asked Axelrod.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49243

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Obama will be hands on immediately to forge new health care

by Janet Crain
Would somebody tell me how a private company can compete with the government? The government will just borrow and/or print more money. Private companies can't compete on such an uneven playing field.

Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care
Published: June 6, 2009

WASHINGTON — After months of insisting he would leave the details to Congress, President Obama has concluded that he must exert greater control over the health care debate and is preparing an intense push for legislation that will include speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers, senior White House officials say.

Mindful of the failures of former President Bill Clinton, whose intricate proposal for universal care collapsed on Capitol Hill 15 years ago, Mr. Obama until now had charted a different course, setting forth broad principles and concentrating on bringing disparate factions — doctors, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, labor unions — to the negotiating table.

But Mr. Obama has grown concerned that he is losing the debate over certain policy prescriptions he favors, like a government-run insurance plan to compete with the private sector, said one Democrat familiar with his thinking. With Congress beginning a burst of work on the measure, top advisers say, the president is determined to make certain the final bill bears his stamp.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/politics/07policy.html?_r=1&hp

After 65 years, hero talks about D-Day assault

By Susan Lisovicz
CNN Correspondent

CNN's Susan Lisovicz sat down with her uncle Lenny Lisovicz, a decorated D-Day veteran, to talk about his experiences at war.

CNN's Susan Lisovicz spoke to her Uncle Lenny about his D-Day and war experiences.

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Decorated D-Day veteran Lenny Lisovicz says the whispers are true.

For 65 years my family had heard whispers that he and 220 men stormed Omaha Beach and that he and his captain later went AWOL in Paris, France.

They heard he returned to combat and fought all the way to Germany and his courage was rewarded with the prestigious Silver Star.

Then -- after that sacrifice and loss -- he was committed to a hospital.

On the 65th anniversary of D-Day, Uncle Lenny finally talked at length about everything he had seen and done. And he said it was all true.

Nowadays, Uncle Lenny lives a tranquil life. At 91, he is proud of his garden, where he grows corn, tomatoes and grapefruit. He takes in stray cats, attends Mass and sends money regularly to Catholic missionaries.

But his thoughts are never far away from a sliver of sand thousands of miles away. He turned down my offer to visit Normandy.

"I don't want to see it. I try to rub that out of my mind. It won't go away," he said.

But now, he finally agreed to share his memories. Watch Uncle Lenny describe storming the beach » See below.

It began with The Longest Day: June 6, 1944. My uncle was a 26-year-old lieutenant with the Army 1st Infantry Division, the famed "Big Red One." They had been training in England for something big for months.

Then, over the loudspeakers in the barracks came the famous declaration from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower: "You are about to embark on the Great Crusade."

The Germans were taken by surprise in one of the greatest amphibious invasions of all time, which would mark a turning point of the war in Europe.

"I just imagined what that enemy observer felt when he looked through that concrete bunker and looked out at that ocean and all he could see was boats, warships," Lisovicz said.

Cont.here:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/05/dday.lisovicz/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Don't Miss

Horrors of war vivid for D-Day heroes

Friday, June 5, 2009

Would Obama's Tax Plan Cost U.S. Income and JOBS?

by Janet Crain
Remember Biden's "three letter word; J-O-B-S?" Well, we can't afford to lose any more. When a patient is hemorrhaging, what kind of doctor opens another artery?

Ballmer Says Tax Would Move Microsoft Jobs Offshore

By Ryan J. Donmoyer

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. “Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

Cont. here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aAKluP7yIwJY

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Thursday, June 4, 2009

D-Day, Lest We Forget.....

Slide Show:

http://eucom.smugmug.com/gallery/7940019_64LNy/1/519103446_gXbXq/Large

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Obama's Napoleon Complex..........

by Janet Crain
Does President Obama have a Napoleon Complex? It would appear likely. In 1798, Napoleon declared he had "more respect" than the local Egyptian rulers did "for your God, his prophet and the Qur'an."

Usually this Complex happens to short men. But in his case it has more to do with wanting to be seen as the Superman who saved the World. Maybe it's a Superman Complex.

Howard Fineman writes for Newsweek:

In the diplomatic community, there is little doubt the president is doing the right thing in Cairo. "President Bush liked to talk about our shared values, but it came off as didactic," said Tamara Wittes of the Brookings Institution. "His escalating series of military interventions left people in Muslim-majority countries feeling imposed upon. Obama's speech is a game-changer, because he's going to say that we are partners and equals."

That is nice, and who could argue with its value? But let's not underestimate the risks, large and small. This sounds picayune, but Obama and his speechwriters had better be careful. A single faulty reference will subject his whole speech to ridicule by the conservative scholars whom the president aims to neutralize. People will expect Obama, unlike Bush, to know what he's talking about.

Tone is crucial as well, and is hard to finesse in any foreign land, let alone in Egypt: so ancient, so proud of its past, so layered with social ritual and resentments. Obama is aware of the problem, but Islamist bloggers already are lying in wait, and already derisively compare him to Napoleon, who prepared his invasion of Egypt in 1798 by declaring he had "more respect" than the local rulers did "for your God, his prophet and the Qur'an."

A bigger risk is that the incorrigibles in the neighborhood—the true terrorists—will see him as a naif and be emboldened by that thought. But the biggest danger for Obama is that he will become a prisoner of his own words, and the high expectations they create. The human-rights community expects him to reflect its concerns about political repression. Palestinians will want him to address the running sore of Gaza, at least. Announcing student exchanges or new development programs won't be enough. "I'm sure he'll give a fine speech," said John Esposito, an expert on Islam at Georgetown University. "The better it is, the more action people will expect. People are getting very tired of words."

But not Obama. The man is just gearing up. Count me as skeptical. I know that words worked for him in Philly, but in Cairo they will merely be the beginning—not the end—of the story.

Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and an analyst for MSNBC.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Iraq and Afghanistan Suppressed Images DO NOT Depict Rape or Sexual Abuse

Suppressed images don't show rape, official says

The Pentagon says no sexual abuse, no Abu Ghraib photos among those held back in ACLU suit.

By Mark Benjamin

June 2, 2009 | Last Thursday, the Obama administration asked a federal court to block the release of images that depict detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The court had sided with the American Civil Liberties Union in its request that the administration release the photos. The administration's move seemed to lend credence to swirling rumors on the Internet that the administration was suppressing a cache of images showing sexual abuse of detainees. The day of the administration's request to the court, Britain's Daily Telegraph published a story claiming that the images included rape and sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Friday, the Daily Beast reported that many of the photographs were "sexually explicit" and included images of "a uniformed soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner" and "penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms."

What do these unreleased images actually depict? A Defense Department official who has seen the unreleased images consented to give Salon some details. Salon agreed to keep the identity of the defense official private in exchange for the opportunity to interview a person with firsthand knowledge of the images.

Specifically, the official said there are about 2,000 images related to detainee abuse, none of which are from Abu Ghraib, and the images do not include depictions of sexual abuse. The official said the government does not have secret images of rape buried in its files.

The official told Salon that the Pentagon has compiled around 2,000 images of possible detainee abuse in response to the ACLU's suit. Salon then asked, via e-mail, whether any of the 2,000 images "[show] a possible rape or sexual abuse" of the sort described in the media recently. The Daily Telegraph had reported that there were images of a male soldier forcing oral sex on a female detainee and a male translator anally raping a male detainee. "We don't have anything that would comport to what they are reporting," the official answered. (The official did not address whether any such images had ever existed.) Retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, whom the Telegraph had quoted as confirming that there were rape images among the unreleased material, told Salon on Friday that the Telegraph's report was inaccurate because he was quoted in a way that suggested he had seen the unreleased material. He has not. (The Daily Beast has since corrected its Friday story to say that none of the 44 photos "subject to the ACLU lawsuit and reviewed by President Obama" are sexually explicit.)

The official further clarified that the Defense Department is not withholding any additional images or video of apparent detainee abuse from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Salon published all of that material back in 2006, which included images of prisoners being forced to masturbate and to simulate oral sex. The Pentagon is not aware of any other images of abuse from the prison. "You have the whole set of Abu Ghraib," the official said. "There are no 'X Files' of images sitting somewhere else of Abu Ghraib."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/06/02/suppressed_photos/?source=newsletter

Monday, June 1, 2009

To See Ourselves as Others See Us.............

Hat Tip: Tamara

American capitalism gone with a whimper

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was.

But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists. Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters. First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.