Januay 31, 2011

• Ground Hog Day
• China Leading Supplier for Iran’s Nukes & Missiles
• Coverage of TARP/HAMP failure excludes word ‘Obama’
• Oil Prices Set to Soar If Egypt Collapses.
• TACO BELL mystery meat controversy.
• Towel Wars
• Springfield Supremes: Chicago-style Rahm Around
• Navy Readies “DeathRay”

The eastern half of The U. S. A. has been skidding, slogging and sliding through a cold, miserable, winter as Ground Hog Day nears on February 2, 2011. In the U. S. and Canada the annual weather prognostication day is observed on February 2. It was made famous by the 1963 movie of the same name.

According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, it will leave the burrow, signifying that winter will soon end. If on the other hand, it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly “see its shadow” and retreat back into its burrow, and winter will continue for six more weeks.

Modern customs of the holiday involve celebrations where early morning festivals are held to watch the groundhog emerging from its burrow. In southeastern Pennsylvania, Groundhog Lodges (Grundsow Lodges) celebrate the holiday with fersommlinge, social events in which food is served, speeches are made, and one or more g’spiel (plays or skits) are performed for entertainment. The Pennsylvania German dialect is the only language spoken at the event, and those who speak English pay a penalty, usually in the form of a nickel, dime or quarter, per word spoken, put into a bowl in the center of the table.

The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Groundhog Day received worldwide attention as a result of the 1993 film of the same name, Groundhog Day, which was set in Punxsutawney and featured Punxsutawney Phil a coddled ground hog in the Pennsylvania town of the same name.

The holiday, which began as a Pennsylvania German custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, has its origins in ancient European weather lore, wherein a badger or sacred bear is the prognosticator as opposed to a groundhog. The holiday also bears some similarities to the medieval Catholic holiday of Candlemas. It also bears similarities to the Pagan festival of Imbolc, the seasonal turning point of the Celtic calendar, which is celebrated on February 1 and also involves weather prognostication.

France has a new battle tank - it has 13 reverse gears and one forward gear just in case someone attacks from behind.

 While and as Obama was kissing up to China’s president came disclosue that China is the leading supplier to Iran’s nuclear weapons program intelligence sources say.

Officials said the intelligence community has determined that state-owned and other Chinese companies were exporting virtually every component required for Iran to maintain and advance its nuclear weapons program. They said China has also supplied components, systems and technology for Teheran’s ballistic missile program, a key element in the delivery of nuclear weapons.

“We’ve asked China repeatedly to stop the flow of technology and components to Iran, and they haven’t done anything about it,” an official said.

Officials said Western and United Nations sanctions have failed to stop China’s aid to Iran’s nuclear program. They said Beijing and Teheran appear to have formed a strategic alliance based on Iranian energy in exchange for Chinese strategic weapons technology.

Within two months of UN sanctions in June, officials said, the U.S. intelligence community was already warning of an accelerated flow of Chinese dual-use technology for Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. They said China was also serving as an intermediary for the acquisition of Western components for Iran’s strategic weapons program.

As a result, the Chinese have supplied Iran with such key components as gyroscopes, jet vanes, aluminum alloys and steel, officials said. They said most of these exports were used to enhance Iran’s intermediate-range ballistic missile program, meant to contain nuclear warheads.

“The understanding is that whatever Iran wants from China, it will get,” another official said.

This disclosure comes as Obama last week offered conciliatory comments on China during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao,

During a press conference with Hu, Obama said that China’s “peaceful rise is good for the world and it’s good for America.”

The emergence of China also is “potentially good for the world,” Obama said noting that “to the extent that China is functioning as a responsible actor on the world stage; to the extent that we have a partner in ensuring that weapons of mass destruction don’t fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue states; to the extent that we have a partner in dealing with regional hot spots; to the extent that we have a partner in addressing issues like climate change or pandemic; to the extent that we have a partner who is helping poorer countries in Asia or in Africa further develop, so that they too can be part of the world economy, that is something that can help create stability and order and prosperity around the world, and that’s the kind of partnership that we’d like to see.”

Obama said he believes China will be peaceful if “China feels secure and itself is doing well economically, and that therefore they’re more likely to be an effective partner with us on the world stage.”

As with previous administrations, Obama made no mention in his remarks of China’s military buildup of asymmetric warfare weapons, such as anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-satellite weapons, cyberwarfare capabilities, or its large-scale buildup of nuclear forces.

California Governor Brown has ordered the State to stop buying new cars and trucks and sharply prune its 50,000 vehicle fleet - at least 4,500 of which are taken home by state workers and often used as a personal vehicle. In some cases spouses and even teen children are known to drive the cars and trucks as their own.

Just one day after President Obama talked about winning the future, a report from the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) found that Obama’s failed policies have put the nation even more at risk..

The serious nature of the economic and financial crisis - and the failure of Obama’s Big Government programs to solve it - continues to be played down by the major media. NBC did not even mention his name in covering the report -= maybe when COMCAST takes over more heads will roll there. It was COMCAST who insited uber liberal Olderman was fired.

The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) issued a report finding that TARP’s main goals of “increasing lending” and “promoting jobs and economic growth” have been “largely unmet.” Even more disturbing, the report finds that Obama’s nearly two-year-old Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) program is a complete failure.

All of this evidence was presented at a hearing of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday.

The NBC Nightly News covered the shocking information without once uttering the words “President Obama” in connection with the documented failures. Anchor Brian Williams said the inspector general had concluded that “the government’s effort to help Americans save their homes” was a failure.

The government? This is “The Obama HAMP,” as noted by one private company Web site promoting the government program.

The Web site promises: “The funds the Obama Administration has made available for this program come from YOUR tax dollars. Take advantage of this program while it is still available! You will be able to lower your rate as low as 2%, obtain a fixed lower monthly payment, and save your home from foreclosure.”

Get your “Obama loan modifications,” promised another non-government Web site.

But the Inspector General report finds that this Obama program’s failure to preserve homeownership has had perhaps “the most devastating consequences.” It said the HAMP “has been beset by problems from the outset and, despite frequent retooling, continues to fall dramatically short of any meaningful standard of success.”

The report that followed on the NBC Nightly News by Lisa Myers noted that one person who was supposed to be helped by the program ended up facing foreclosure anyway. Obama officials had said the program would help 3-4 million people, but the number of “mortgage modifications” now stands at only 522,000. It is not clear how many of those people supposedly benefiting from HAMP through reduced mortgage payments subsidized by the taxpayers will actually end up facing foreclosure in the long run.

So the taxpayers will lose even more money and the homeowners will lose their homes. This is a lose-lose program guaranteed to create even more of an economic and financial crisis.

The Inspector General report notes, “HAMP’s failure to have a material impact on the foreclosure crisis has many causes, starting with a rushed launch based on inadequate analysis and without fully developed rules, which has required frequent changes to program guidelines and caused unnecessary confusion and delay. Perhaps most fundamentally, Treasury has steadfastly refused to adopt meaningful goals and benchmarks…”

While Myers did note that “the Obama Administration official managing the program calls it a success,” an incredible statement considering the evidence presented in her own report, there was no effort on the part of the NBC Nightly News or other liberal media to contrast Obama’s optimistic or “Reaganesque” tone during the State of the Union with the actual facts on the ground and the evidence of his policy failures.

In terms of the broader economic and financial picture, Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said that while TARP saved some big firms from failure, the government actions “encouraged future high-risk behavior by insulating the risk-takers who had profited so greatly in the run-up to the crisis from the consequences of failure, and gave an unwarranted competitive advantage, in the form of enhanced credit ratings and access to cheaper credit and capital, to institutions perceived by the market as having an implicit Government guarantee.”

“In many ways,” Barofsky said, “TARP has thus helped mix the same toxic cocktail of implicit guarantees and distorted incentives that led to disastrous consequences for the Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) - the Federal National Mortgage Association (’Fannie Mae’) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (’Freddie Mac’).”

Why Obama clings to Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner who can only be judged as a abject failure himself remains a minor mystery. Most think it because, like in foreign affair Obama does not know what to do and has surrounded himself with other incompetents,

“Hypocrisy is a government that demands every citizen to prove that  they have health insurance, but not that they are citizens.”

Obama’s muddled Rodney King-like foreign policy is coming home to roost.

Iran has taken over Lebanon; Tunisia has collapsed., Sudan has split but still teeters, and  violent riots in Egypt and Yemen have the world holding its breath as oil prices appear set to skyrocket.. Thousands of Jordanian opposition supporters are in the streets Friday in the country’s capital demanding the prime minister step down and venting their anger at rising prices, inflation and unemployment. Members of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jordan’s largest opposition party, swelled the ranks of the demonstrators, massing outside the al-Husseini mosque in Amman and filling the downtown streets with their prayer lines. Demonstrators chanted “In the name of God, the government must change” and the Muslim holy book “Koran is our constitution, jihad is our path.”

Persistent claims were heard Saturday, Jan. 29 in various Egyptian and informed western circles that the uprising against president Hosni Mubarak, 80, still going strong on its fifth day, was secretly prepared with U. S. support.

It was the third consecutive Friday of protests in Jordan following Muslim prayers inspired by the unrest in Tunisia and riots in Egypt demanding the downfall of the country’s longtime president.

Local news reports from Egypt say over 100 are dead and more than 2,000 injured in Egypt’s violent riots and a grassfire of unrest torching across the sands of the Middle East fueled fears of $200 a barrel oil and an instability some say could spread to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and beyond. That would send domestic gasoline prices over $4 per gallon bringing the already stumbling recovery to a stretching halt. Sunday reports said Mubarrack’s son and family fled to England by Saturday those were bbeing denied..

For now Saudi Arabia slammed protesters in Egypt as “infiltrators” who seek to destabilize their country Saturday while an Iranian official called on Egypt to “abide by the rightful demands of the nation” and avoid violent reactions.

Saudi Arabia is publicly standing by Mubarack who for the first time picked a vice President Omar Suleiman, the head of the country’s intelligence services, as vice president and a another  military veteran as prime minister. .

Egyptian style demonstrations , absent the killings spread to downtown Sacramento, Washington DC and New York City  hundreds pranced, and chanted demanding an end to the 30-year authoritarian rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Likewise there were similar protest in Lebanon, Turkey and Tunisia.

Egyptians are reportedly angered by 17% food price inflation, massive unemployment and a generally repressive regime. Observers say as Egypt goes so goes the Middle East.

The influential Muslim Brotherhood is forbidden from being an official political party in Egypt since it was implicated in the murder of Anwar Sadat in 1981.After a few days of ,mayhem lawlessness in spreading in Cairo amd vigilante groups had formed to fight looters as judge jury and executioners.

Police clashed with tens of thousands of protesters in Cairo and Alexandria. Shortly after 11 a.m. ET, Friday as a government-ordered curfew took effect, CNN carried pictures of dozens of military trucks and armored vehicles loading police and leaving downtown Cairo as Egyptian army regulars moved in. Saturday things initially changed with a dirth of police observed but, when protestors attacked violence returned

Radical extremists see the turmoil as their opportunity to institute the region-wide, anti-Western Muslim caliphate or union that they have dreamt of for decades..

If violence expands into Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf world oil prices could skyrocket sending fuel prices through the roof and dragging the U. S. and other economies backwards into deep recession or depression.

Obama, Biden and Clinton all mouthed grim warnings that the U . S. could stop its $1.5 billion annual stipend but otherwise just wrung their hands impotently. Unlike the Bush administration, which made a public push for democratization, the Obana crowd has preferred to express its concerns in a low-key, flaccid manner and this malaise is a result. Egypt’s last king Farouk was deposed in 1952 dying in exile in 1985.

Mubarak, himself a military man, was appointed Vice President in 1975, and assumed the Presidency on 14 October 1981 following the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat who was killed by al Qaeda related military mutineers. Mubrrack was slightly wounded in the same attack as he watched an Armed Forces Day parade with Sadat..

Saturday 10,000 criminals escaped or were released from Eyptian prisons to joinj the melee and looting as priceless antiquities were sneselesly destroyed in Cairo’s  Museum. Fighter bombers noisily but flaccidly orbited Cairoi Sunday at sunset.

In sum Obama’s steering of the U. S. away from Israel and toward Arab Muslims has backfired catastrophically risking world peace and putting the U. S. and its economy in the gravest jeopardy. It ius increasingly obvious Obama is beyond his depth, and does not know what to do.

If the nuclear armed Israel is put in mortal danger it will do what it must to survive including using nuclear weapons. Igniting a world conflagration,

Watch if Saudi Arabia moves those two nuclear warheads sitting in Pakistan for an indication of how serious things have become.

Egyptian elections are already set for September.

Some Georgia residents say their 2010 tax refunds disappeared from their bank accounts, leaving them with overdrawn accounts and overdraft fees, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. A spokesman for the state Department of Revenue confirmed that several complaints had been made about missing money from bank accounts. For some reason, as yet unexplained, Georgia cancelled their refunds and withdrew the funds without telling them.

TACO BELL is vigorously defending itself from attack for using “extenders” in its “mystery” meat claiming it uses 88% beef in its food. A class action lawsuit claims that customers are misled by the chain’s practice of representing to consumers that its restaurants serve “seasoned ground beef” or “seasoned beef”. When because of fillings in its products, the percentage of beef is actually around 35 percent.

Filler ingredients include: water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin, soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder (processed with alkali), silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate and potassium lactate. Is your mouth watering yet?

Folks who alledgedly tested TACO Bell products found that its “seasoned ground beef” is actually less than 30% beef which does not meet USDA stipulations to claim it is beef. It says only 15% of the “filler” is actually beef protein.

Reportedly TACO BELL adds anti-foaming agents to it soft drinks too. I do not know what those might be and Taco Bell has not responded to my emails.

Fourteen American police officers have been murdered already this year a 40% increase over 2009. As far as is now known this does not appear to be orchestrated by any group or individuals.

Last weeki’s terror bombing at Moscow’s biggest airport killed 37 and injured over 100. Dead  includied:  two Austrian citizens, two Tajiks and one person each from Britain, Germany, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.Former KGB head  Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, and Dmitri Medvedev, the President, vowed to “destroy” those responsible. Medvedev promptlky fired the police chief whose responsibility was secruity at airports a rail stations.

Many finigered Muslim Chechens.for the attacks which by the weekend had been confirmed.. For centuries Chechenya an ancient  area in the Caucusus region where evidence has been found  that  humans have lived  there for more than 125,000 years. It  is wedged between the Black and Caspian Seas near Turkey, Russia, and Iran and has seen warring factions for centuries between Orthodox Christians and Muslims who ultimately prevailed. Now that aChecknyan has been connected to the killings retribution will be swift and violent. .

The region straddles the East - West invasion routes and for millennia sufferied the horrors of Mongol invaders among others. Each Mongol warrior - in an army group that usually consisted of two tumens (units of 10,000) - was required to execute 24 people.-so large areas were depopulated.

Canada will be the only country among the G-7 likely to achieve a balanced budget by 2015 from among the United States, France, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy,. One of the reasons cited is that Canada has the lowest business taxes of the bunch.

Gregg McArthur is sort of like a war profiteer willing to sell assault rifles to both sides by adding a Titletown Towel for Green Bay while producing Pittsburg’s Terrible Towel. As Long as the Alleghany Valley School for special children benefits –Myron Cope, who created the terrible towel for the 1975 Pittsburg - Baltimore Colts playoff game and eventually signed over his right to proceeds to the school would not mind the towel wars. The Terrible Towel is the most popular fan symbol in all pro-sports sales benefit the school where Cope’s  autistic son attended.

 McArthur’s conscience bothers him not one bit. Short of snapping it sharply in the locker room, it’s hard to actually hurt anyone with a hand towel.

Since 1997, McArthur’s Baraboo company has produced the most famous rally rag of all, the golden scrap of terrycloth that frenzied Pittsburgh Steelers fans know as “The Terrible Towel.”

McArthur Towel & Sports has produced millions of them over the years. Now, with the Steelers headed to their third Super Bowl since 2006, the firm is cranking out hundreds of thousands more, this time with a possible bonus:

McArthur also hopes to produce “Titletown Towels” for the equally frenzied fans of the Steelers’ opponent, the Green Bay Packers.

“It’s the perfect storm,” McArthur said Tuesday as he awaited final approval from the National Football League on the Packers’ item.

“We’re calling it Towel Wars - the Terrible Towel vs. the Titletown Towel.” The companies phone number is 1-800-356-9168

After months of rancor the Santa Barbara City Council has roused from its slumber to question its “traffic calming bulb out” campaign. The “Bulb Out” bust has seen the city spending hundreds of thousands of dollar to build so-called bulb outs at every intersection in the city narrowing streets in what has been billed as a “traffic calming” technique to the ire of residents and taxpayers. Now after 3-years of this most recent boondoogle some council membes are saying enough already. Bulb Outs replaced the “blue line” project which was to have drawn a blue line to mark the high water mark if after global warming melted the ice caps flooding large areas of the city. That was nixed when underwater property owners bleated it would kills their property values.

Attendees at the highly select World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland heard that rich corporations must share wealth with poor and middle class. Hell no dissidents yelped– it’s our money that these shysters and shylocks stole. Share it, no, we’ll seize it! The capitalist pigs are afraid of unrest, they don’t know what unrest is.

“I didn’t attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” - Mark Twain.

 The Springfield Supremes wasted little time in Oking Rahm Emanuel’s bid to become mayor of Chicago, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, ending a week that had turned this city’s politics upside down, then back again. The Chicago Board of Elections has already decided to ignore the Federal Courts ruling barring Rahm from being on the ballot.

The unanimous decision brought a close to months of legal debate over whether Emanuel qualified for the ballot, specifically whether his time in Washington as President Obama’s chief of staff meant that he had given up his residency status in Chicago, where he was born.

By Illinois state code, candidates for mayor are required to have resided in Chicago for at least one year before Election Day. Mr. Emanuel left the White House in October, and the election is Feb. 22, but Mr. Emanuel argued that he was still a Chicago resident because he owned a house he rented here, paid taxes here, voted there, and stored his most cherished possessions in the basement of his house here.

Moments after the ruling was issued late Thursday, Mr. Emanuel was shaking hands with voters at a downtown “L” train stop,, where many had yet to hear the outcome, and asked what had happened.

Mr. Emanuel, who appeared cheery as a mob of cameras rolled, said that he had no control over what had occurred but was pleased that the voters now had some sense of certainty for the election ahead.

“We stayed focused on the concerns of the voters,” Mr. Emanuel said of a week that had, however briefly, sent voters, election workers and other candidates into a tangle of confusion. The word “resident,” Mr. Emanuel advised, would no longer be permitted in his family’s regular Scrabble games. Then he was off to a televised debate of the candidates.

Procumbent  (pro-KUM-buhnt) adjective:1. Lying face down; prone; prostrate.
2. Of a plant: Growing along the ground without putting new roots. Etymology: From Latin procumbent- (bending forward), present participle of procumbere (to lean forward), from pro- (forward) + cumbere (to lie down). Earliest documented use: 1668.

China has been “leaking” information about its aircraft carrier killing ballistic missiles. Now the USN ONR (office of naval research) has checked and mated it with what even it describes as a revolutionary defensive weapon in the form of a powerful shipborne Free Electron Laser neutralizing that and warning off Iran’s threats of swarms of amll hard to hit bomb boats.

The FEL is expected to be deployed in 2012 providing future U.S. Naval forces with a near-instantaneous laser ship defense in any maritime environment throughout the world,” Navy program manager Quentin Saulter said.

The prototype, tested on Dec. 20, has been developed by scientists at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. Exactly a month later, the Navy convened a two-day preliminary design review for the next-generation weapon system.

Several Middle East states have been monitoring the Navy’s laser program. Israel has been examining the feasibility of employing lasers for the nation’s missile defense umbrella.

“The injector performed as we predicted all along,” Dinh Nguyen, senior project leader at Los Alamos, said. “But until now, we didn’t have the evidence to support our models. We were so happy to see our design, fabrication and testing efforts finally come to fruition.”

Officials said the navy wants to produce a free electron laser that could protect any ship anywhere in the world. They said the Navy hopes to test the prototype at sea by 2018.

The injector generates a beam of high-energy electrons that moves through a series of magnetic fields. The result is a high-powered laser that could neutralize incoming anti-ship missiles.

Officials said the laser, which could also be used as a sensor, tracker or designator, would be beneficial to protect ships in the Gulf. They cited Iran’s swarm strategy, in which scores of high-speed attack vessels try to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier or destroyer.

“This is a major leap forward for the program and for FEL technology throughout the Navy,” Saulter said.

The then super secret World War II era Norton bombsight could - it was bragged — drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet. Rather than have the gadget salvaged from crashed bombers bombardiers were told to blast it with their.45 pistol if their bomber was about to crash. To keep things in perspective each bombsight costs twice as much as a WWII American home cost.