March 10, 2011

• Obama Accused in Wisconsin Recall Plot.
• Congressional Hearing on Radical Islam Could Get Raw.
• Scores Killed and Wounded In Egypt’s Sectarian Violence
• Whites Nearing Minority in California
• Statistic of Priestly Sexual Abuse
• U. S. Hollow Sixth Fleet
• California Get official 2010 Censurs Data
• Bahrain Blames Iran
• NPR Executive Blast GOP and TEA Party
• Fat Tuesday
• Lybia’s WMDs
• Ides off March 44 B. C. Bad Day for Julius Caesar.
• Back to Gitmo: Obama Style
• Saud’s Squash Protests
• Pension “Reform” Ballot Initiatives Sweep California.

Antartian aan- tar-shun a person lacking common sense.

Republicans in Wisconsin are laying blame on the White house doorstep for a partisan effort to recall eight GOP State Sentors there that would give control to Democrats.

Wisconsin will be a “battleground” state in the 2012 Presidential election - controlling it legislature, as Republican now do could be a turning point for Obama. Recalls petition are being circulated including by a known leftist radical and Move-On.org afficnnato.

Republicans say the money for those recallsise being steered thier by White House operatives in the greatest tradition Chicago smoke-filled room politics.

If Wisconsin Governor Walker succeed in limiting public employee labor unions influence there it could profounding effect Obama’s reelection plans including his goal of raising $1 billion for his reelection campaign.

So far there is no conclusive evidence of an Obama plot.

David S. Broder, 81, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, has died of complication from diabetes.

Despite leftists and pandering politicos throwing coniption fits as Congress prepares to hold a hearing investigating the radicalization of Muslims living in the United States, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of Americans ( 52% to 38%) feel it is appropriate to focus the hearing just on U.S. Muslims

Today’s hearing before Rep. Peter King’s House Homeland Security Committee will look at the threat posed by U.S. Muslims being radicalized by terrorist organizations, and whether the Muslim-American community is doing enough to help law enforcement capture those who are becoming radicalized.

The hearing has prompted angry reactions from the Muslim community and civil rights groups, including the ACLU and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), saying the community is being unfairly singled out. CAIR has been criticized for bias and accused for clandestine anti-American activities.

The poll also found that more Americans think Muslims living in America are committed to their religion than think they are supportive of the United States. While 53% of Americans feel Muslims are supportive of the United States, 82% believe they are committed to their religious beliefs.

A majority of Americans do not believe, however, that Muslims in America have become radicalized. Fifty percent do not think Muslims are too extreme in their religious beliefs, while only 36% hold that view. The poll also found that 54% believe Muslims are not sympathetic to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, while only 28% think they are sympathetic.

Six witnesses are expected to testify at today’s hearing including:

• Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress. The African-American convert has been sharply critical of the hearings, saying focusing on one faith group when discussing radicalization is dangerous.
• Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who is well-known for his advocacy on human rights issues, particularly related to religious freedom overseas. He has made alliances with Muslim-Americans by speaking out about violence against Muslims in places from Bosnia to Sudan. He wrote legislation in 1998 creating the National Commission on Terrorism.
• M. Zuhdi Jasser, a prominent Muslim doctor from Scottsdale, Ariz., who runs a small nonprofit that partners with groups critical of Muslim-American leadership. A Republican and Navy veteran, he believes Muslims need to be more outspoken about intolerances in their scriptures and less critical of America.
• Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali-American activist who works with the youth of Minneapolis’s large Somali community. His nephew was killed in Somalia in 2009 after becoming radicalized and joining a militant group there.
• Melvin Bledsoe, an Arkansas man whose son converted to Islam and became a radical in Yemen. He returned to the United States and went on a shooting spree in 2009 at a Little Rock military recruiting center, killing one and wounding one. Bledsoe is critical of the FBI for ignoring what he says were signs his son was potentially dangerous.
• Leroy Baca, the sheriff of Los Angeles County who was called by the ranking Democrat on the committee, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson. He has spoken out in recent weeks to criticize the hearing’s premise that Muslims aren’t cooperative with law enforcement.

President Obama attended a parent-teacher conference. Apparently, Joe Biden is being held back a grade - Craig Ferguson

Thirteen people, all Christians, were killed in overnight clashes with Muslims in the worst outbreak of sectarian violence in Egypt since last month’s ouster of president Hosni Mubarak, officials reported Wednesday. In January 21 Coptic Christians were killed and 97 wounded when Muslin terrorists bombed a church in Alexandria, Egypt.

The religious rioting stirred fears among some political and civic leaders that the country’s post-revolutionary unity could be rapidly deteriorating.

The Health Ministry also said 110 people were injured after Coptic Christians blocked roads in several Cairo locations as part of their growing protests to demand the rebuilding of a village church that was torched in earlier sectarian violence south of the city.

Muslims account for between 80% and 90% of a population of around 80 million Egyptians.

As Obama continues to dither and hide behind an indecisive and impotent U. N. Lybia’s pro-Gaddafi forces have pummeled opposition forces driving them back and retaking territory as the nation slides into a protracted civil war.. Brent crude snapped a two-day decline on speculation that the conflict in Libya may persist and disrupt oil supplies sending forcast for future gasoline prices even higher.

The U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday show that over the last decade, the percentage of Latinos has approached parity with non-Hispanic whites - 37.6% to 40.1%, with Asians at 12.8% and blacks at 5.8%.

California grew by 3.4 million people in the last decade, a rate that was on par with the national average.

The data released Tuesday showed that much of California’s growth was fueled by Latinos, who saw their numbers increase nearly 28% to 14 million, and Asians, who saw a nearly 31% gain to nearly 4.8 million. The two other major demographic groups were in retreat: Non-Hispanic whites declined more than many demographers had predicted, dropping 5.4% to just under 15 million. The number of blacks declined nearly 1% to nearly 2.2 million residents.

Though most parts of the state added population, growth was greater in the interior and more anemic along the coast.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Tuesday that it had suspended 21 priests from active ministry in connection with accusations that involved sexual abuse or otherwise inappropriate behavior with minors.

The problem of priestly sexual abuse is worldwide litlle emperical data has been collected. The 2004 John Jay Report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is an exception and was based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The report says 10,667 people in the US had made allegations of child sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002 against 4,392 priests (about 4% of all 109,694 priests who served during the time period covered by the study). One-third of the accusations were made in the years 2002 and 2003, and another third between 1993 and 2001. “Thus, prior to 1993, only one-third of cases were known to church officials,” says the report.

Around 81% of the victims were male; 22.6% were age 10 or younger, 51% between the ages of 11 and 14, and 27% between the ages to 15 to 17 years. Of the 11,000-odd allegations, 6,700 were investigated and substantiated against 1,872 priests, and another 1,000 were unsubstantiated^[ against 824 priests. The remaining 3,300 allegations were not investigated because the priests involved had died by the time the allegations were made. The allegations were thought to be credible for 1,671 priests and not credible for 345 priests. Police were contacted regarding 1,021 priests. Nearly all these reports led to investigations, and 384 instances have led to criminal charges. Of those priests for whom information about dispositions is available, 252 were convicted and at least 100 of those served time in prison. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made had been convicted and about 2% sentenced to prison at the date of the report.^[

Of the 4,392 accused priests included in the report, 56% were the subject of a single allegation. Just under 3% (or 149 priests) were the subject of ten or more allegations. These priests accounted for 2,960 of the total number of allegations.

Charlie Sheen was spotted on a roof wielding a machete and drinking red liquid labeled "tiger blood." I would love to see this guy's to-do list. -- Leno

China and Iran having combatants in the Med, the former a frigate off Tripoli, many rightly ask where is the U. S. Sixth fleet?

Why do Americans in Lybia have to wait for a rented Greek ferry. Well, alas there is no Sixth Fleet other than its non-combatant flag ship permanently [mostly] anchored in Gaeta.

Except for transient carrier groups passing through on their way to the Gulf, there have been no combatants assigned to the Sixth Fleet for more than two years.

The six hundred ship Navy is in China and the 600 ship US Navy is down to 280 and steadily shrinking. Its deployments are fully taken up by the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a strategic fact well known in China, North Korea, Russia, Iran and
Pakistan, but not in America.

Charlie (Sheen) is planning a humanitarian trip to Haiti. He says he wants to show them what a real disaster looks like.= Leno

As early as 2008, documents say, Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Issa Al Khalifa asserted that the Shi’ite opposition was being directed by Iran. In a meeting with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, then commander in Iraq, the king said Iran was sending members of Bahrain’s opposition for training with Hizbullah in Lebanon.

The U. S. State Department refuses to believe the link, and continues to excuse Iran.

In the July 2008 meeting, reported in a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, the king also said Iran has recruited Syria in an effort to destabilize his country. Hamad said Syria was providing the Bahraini opposition with false passports for entry into Lebanon.

In the briefing, Hamad said he did not have evidence to support his allegations. But the king said the Iranian destabilization campaign was designed to force Bahrain to expel the U.S. military presence, particularly the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

The State Department was believed to have been skeptical over the king’s claims that the Shi’ite opposition was directed by Iran. Another cable by the U.S. embassy in Manama asserted that the opposition was fueled by the discriminatory policies of the Sunni kingdom. Shi’ites comprise about 70 percent of the population of the Gulf Cooperation Council state.

Cynic (SIN-ik) noun: 1. One who believes people are motivated by self-interest only. 2. A person with a negative outlook, one disposed to find fault. Etymology: From Latin cynicus, from Greek kynikos (like a dog), from kyon (dog). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwon- (dog), which is also the source of canine, chenille (from French chenille: caterpillar, literally, little dog), kennel, canary, hound, dachshund, corgi, and cynosure. Earliest documented use: 1547.

Cynics  was the name given to the ancient Greek philosophers who believed in self-control, austerity, and moral virtue. The movement was founded by Antisthenes (c. 444-365 BCE) and perfected by Diogenes (c. 412-323 BCE). It’s not clear why they were labeled cynics or dog-like, but as often happens with such epithets, they appropriated it. Some believe the name was given because Antisthenes taught in a gymnasium nicknamed White Dog, but it’s more likely that they were given the insulting moniker for their rejection of society’s conventions.

Conservative activist James O’Keefe’s, hidden camera Planned Parenthood videos have made him a star is out with a new video targeting exiting National Public Radio executive Ron Schiller - and by extension NPR itself. News reports call the video “dece[ptively edited" but when you watch it no edited is evident or required to expose the hatefilled rant by the NPR fud raising executive.

The video captured National Public Radio's top fundraising executive disparaging Republicans, Christians, evangelicals, tea-party members, gun owners, Jews, and Americans lacking elite educational backgrounds has touched off a strong backlash across the cultural and political spectrum, fueling renewed calls for Congress to yank NPR's $90 million in annual taxpayer funding.

The video It shows Schiller stating that the Republican Party and the Tea Party is "fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian - and I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."

Schiller goes on to say that the "xenophobic" Tea Party has hijacked the GOP and calls them "white, middle-America, gun-toting - I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people." Many charge that Schiller represents the uber leftists philosophy that pervades NPR and Corporation for Public Broadcasting coloring it programming.

Some $442 million taxpayer dollars are allocated to public broadcasting for 2011. Money Schiller  contends it would be better off without. A day later National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller resigned; recently she was at the epicenter of the firing of NPR Commentator Juan Williams. Last October Williams was fired " on a Fox News program earlier this week. The Republican House is gaining the upper hand to defund NPR and CPB and this most recent embarrassement adds fuel to those efforts.

ZIPPO has turned to making and marketing men's fragrances, hand warmers and such  as tobacco smoking has declined and demand for its iconic cigar and cigarette lighter has dropped too. ZIPPO is famous for its worldwide guarantee that says - "Any Zippo pocket lighter, when returned to its factory, will be put in first-class mechanical condition free of charge, for we have yet to charge a cent for the repair of a Zippo pocket lighter, regardless of age or condition.  The finish, however, is not guaranteed." The address is:Zippo Manufacturing Company, 33 Barbour Street, Bradford PA 16701

Last Tuesday was Fat Tuesday of Mardi Gras, the festival in New Orleans, Louisiana, is famous for. "Gras" - French for fat and "Mardi" is French for Tuesday. The annual festivities start on January 6, the Twelfth Night Feast of the Epiphany, when the three kings are supposed to have visited the Christ Child, and build to a climax on Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, which always occurs on the day before Ash Wednesday. The parties and parades will continue until Lent begins at the stroke of midnight on Tuesday.

Lent is a traditional time of fasting and abstinence and the Tuesday before is therefore a binge. Scripture tells us that "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and he fasted forty days and forty nights" (Matthew 4:1-2). The season of Lent is a commemoration of Our Lord's fast, which He undertook before entering into His public ministry.

Last Sunday was the 175th Anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo (February 23 - March 6, 1836) a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas). Fewer than 50 of the almost 250 Texicans and Tejanos who had occupied the Alamo Mission,  a not quite yearold baby Alijo Perez Jr. born March 23, 1835, survived to became the last Alamo survivor dying  October 21, 1918.

Soon after the Texans defeated the Mexican Army extending Texas independence from Mexico and eventually leading to Texas statehood.

Private intelligence sources say Tripoli has hidden tens of thousands of tons of chemical weapons.

Formally, the international community has determined that Tripoli cooperated with efforts by Britain and the United States to eliminate its WMD stockpile. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has reported that Libya still has some of the 9.5 to 23 tons of mustard gas declared by the Gadhafi regime in 2004.

But the revolt has halted efforts to destroy the remaining mustard gas stockpile, which OPCW had planned to complete in May. In 2004, Libya helped destroy 3,500 air-to-ground munitions filled with chemical weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community, particularly the CIA, has quietly assessed that Gadhafi was hiding what could be a significant stockpile of WMD. They said one suspected location could be an air base about 400 kilometers south of Tripoli.

The assessment was said to have listed several options for Gadhafi. One was that his forces use CW against the rebels in eastern Tripoli. Another was that Libyan agents plan attacks on Western interests in North African or Europe.

"I don't know of anyone at the [CIA] agency who was fully comfortable with the Libyans telling us everything we wanted to know,” a former senior intelligence official told NBC News. “The going assumption was they were lying whenever possible, and we were rarely proven wrong. We believed they were saving something for a rainy day.”

Mexican President Calderon told President Obama that the United States must do more to reduce the demand for drugs. Obama said, “We got Charlie Sheen off cocaine. What more do you want us to do?” — Leno

The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martii) is the name of 15 March in the Roman calendar, probably referring to the day of the full moon. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months.^[1] The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was stabbed (23 times) to death in the Roman Senate led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and 60 other co-conspirators.

On his way to the Theatre of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar saw a seer who had foretold that harm would come to him not later than the Ides of March. Caesar joked, “Well, the Ides of March have come”, to which the seer replied “Ay, they have come, but they are not gone.”^[2] This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned to “beware the Ides of March”

Believe it or not I took 3-years of Latin in high school admittedly because Miss Knapp, my instructor, ensured a gentlemen’s “C” to football players. Regardless I did toil through Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars (51-58 B.C.) and have enjoyed an occasional root word - thanks in large measure to her and a freshman language instructor one Mr. Rice who would lean back, snap his suspenders and asked “Get it?” I didn’t but once and a while all these year’s later I sometimes do.

Teachers in Milwaukee have complained bitterly that they are underpaid.  Last weekend a local newspaper there published an embarrassing report showing that those teachers take home an average $101,000 a year for their nine months of effort. $61,000 in salary and the balance in fringe and pension benefits.

 Obama announced Monday that the United States will resume using military commissions to prosecute alleged terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility.

 In the announcement, Obama said his administration remains committed to closing the controversial detention facility but will rescind its previous suspension on bringing new charges before military commissions. The commissions are military proceedings rather than trials in civilian courts.

Obama also called for prosecuting Guantanamo detainees in U.S. criminal courts when appropriate, and issued an executive order calling for periodic reviews of suspects held under indefinite detention.

The steps followed through on Obama’s previous call to reform the process of prosecuting or holding Guantanamo detainees to make it more in line with international laws and standards, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on condition of not being identified by name.

 However, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights both criticized the administration for what they called institutionalizing indefinite detention of terrorism suspects who have yet to be formally charged or designated for transfer to another country, but are considered too dangerous to set free.

 ”The creation of a review process that will take up to a year — designed to be repeated every four years — is a tacit acknowledgment that the Obama administration intends to leave Guantanamo as a scheme for unlawful detention without charge and trial for future presidents to clean up, despite the fact that senior officials acknowledged today that keeping the prison open continues to hinder our national security in the long run,” the constitutional rights center said in a statement.

Established in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks on the United States, the Guantanamo Bay facility has been a lightning rod for criticism of the U.S. handling of terrorism suspects.

Under the Bush administration, allegations of mistreatment of detainees, including harsh living conditions and denying them full U.S. legal rights, led to the facility becoming a recruiting tool for terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, U.S. officials say.

 The editor of the uber-left New York Times harshly criticized FOX NEWS last week and by implications its owner that is about to launch a low cost electronic newspaper that many think will nail the NYT coffin shut. NYT has become a money pit

 As Libyan protests morphed into bloody civil war, Saud protesters tried to grab limelight of Middle East by bringing forward its Day of Rage demos by four days to Monday, March 7. It flopped. The organizers failed to get the numbers out on the streets.. sources report exclusively that they had planned to start the demonstrations against the Saudi throne in Taif, Medina and Jeddah in the west, the towns of Assir and Najran in the south, which are traditional anti-monarchical centers and locales of the Ismaili communities close to the Shia brand of Islam, and the capital Riyadh.

This week, the Saudi Interior Ministry banned all demonstrations, backed Sunday by the Council of Senior Clerics which declared demonstrations violated Islamic law and signing reform petitions “violates what God ordered.”   

In rescheduling the protests, the organizers had two main goals:

 

• 1. To start a slow-burning fire on the western and southern fringes of the desert kingdom, ready in four days to burst into flames in Riyadh and rouse the masses exiting the mosques after Friday prayers into forming anti-government street processions.
• 2. To make the coming Riyadh demonstration strong enough to pull in the rest of the kingdom including the Shiites of the oil-producing Eastern Provinces, thereby realizing the royal house’s most feared bugbear, collaboration between the mainstream opposition and the Shiites.

The backstory is that the Saudi’s warned they would not mess around with dissidents that are seen to be at least partly encouraged by outside forces.

Remember Saudi Arabis has bought two nuiclear warheads from Pakistan so Iran is on notice.

Women who drink are less likely to be obese than women who do not drink. All this time, you’ve been on Jenny Craig while you should have been on Johnny Walker. - Leno

On March 3rd, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson gave the Obama administration just seven days to file an appeal challenging his ruling that ObamaCare is unconstitutional.

That means today, Thursday, March 10th, the administration must file their appeal and quit pretending that Judge Vinson’s ruling does not exist, or worse, that they don’t understand it!

Immediately after Vinson’s ruling, Justice Department lawyers filed a “motion of clarification,” which claims they were CONFUSED and DID NOT UNDERSTAND Vinson’s language:

In any case today is the day that unless Obama lawyer’s file an appeak Vincson’s ruling effectivelt declares Obama  Care unconstitutional. Hidden inside the massive bill was billions of dollars in funding appropriations hamstringing the GOP’s tactic  of defunding Obama Care and claifyiny what then House Speaker Pelosi meanth when she said the bill had to be passed to fuinbd out what is in it,

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won his job last November with 52% of the vote, but his popularity has slipped since then just 34% Strongly Approve of the job he is doing, while 48% Strongly Disapprove.

Los Angeles leads off Tuesday with a modest ballot measure aimed at curbing pension costs, which are threatening to take a big bite out of the budgets of California’s three major coastal cities.

City officials in San Diego are talking about putting dueling initiatives on the ballot to switch new hires to 401(k)-style individual investment plans, one including police and firefighters in the cost-cutting change and the other leaving them out.

The sponsor of a pension initiative rejected by San Francisco voters last November, as voters approved measures cutting pension costs in seven other retirement systems around the state, is talking about trying a new version of Measure B.

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi calls his new measure “Son of B.” He may propose, among other things, that employer contributions be capped, going no higher than employee contributions.

A similar cap on employer contributions is part of a statewide initiative being developed by California Pension Reform, a new group led by Dan Pellisier. Voters in Pacific Grove approved an employer contribution cap in November, 10 percent of pay.

At the Capitol, where Gov. Brown is seeking a handful of Republican votes needed to put a budget-balancing tax extension on the ballot, there is speculation that he may cut a deal that puts a cost-cutting pension reform measure before voters.

A bipartisan watchdog, the Little Hoover Commission, last month called for a dramatic overhaul of “unsustainable” public pensions, similar to a recommendation two weeks earlier by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The prime examples of “pension costs (that) will crush government” in theHoover report are the three big cities. Soaring pension costs have more impact on local governments than the state because personnel is a much greater part of local budgets.