April 28, 2011

• Cal Senate Pro Tem Wants To Punish GOP Districts
• American Seniors Say Hands Off Medicare
• 500-Year-Old Book Turns Up At Utah Non-Profit Event.
• NATO Fails In Qaddafi’s Assasination Try
• Nations Chose Sides In Lybia
• Yale: Oprah A Religion
• What If China Dumps U. S. Debt: It Says It May
• Van Jones On Campaign For Human Rights for Shrubs and Bugs
• Obama Unleashed Predator Drone In Libya
• Top 10 Reasons for Business To Leave California
• As Predicted Radical Muslim Brotherhood Taking Over Egypt

California Senate Pro Tem Sternberg is threatening to cut off state money from GOP Districts around the state to punish Republicans for blocking a statwide vote on tax increases. Without the few votes Republicans have in a Assembky and Senate Neither the retread Democrat Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown not the majority in both houses.

Brown and state Democrats want to increase taxes while Republicans are demanding bigger spending cuts that would rip into State worker unions that are a Democrat bastion and cash cow. California has a $15,000,000,000 (billion) deficit; record high unemployment, and a general flight of businesses and jobs.

Wednesday Raytheon announced it was mocing most of its California employment to Texas and Mississippi. Like many other companies high taxes, over regulation and a anti-business climate.

Democrats have controlled State government, except for the Governor’s chair for nearly a decade piling up debt. California has the worst statecredit rating in the nation with unfunded liabilities that could reach into the trillions.

Obama called Trump a carnival barker. Trump described Obama as a “very strange president” for not releasing his birth certificate promptly, as well as other personal records still being withheld., and those will be Trump’s next target.

Senior citizens, whose fierce opposition to the 2010 health overhaul law helped propel Republicans’ midterm election gains, have little appetite for the House GOP’s plans to turn Medicare into a voucher-type program that sends beneficiaries to private plans but limits the amount of federal funding, according to a poll released today.

The survey this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation found just 30 percent of seniors supported the idea of restructuring Medicare into a system where seniors are given government subsidies to shop for private coverage. In contrast, 62 percent of seniors said they wanted Medicare to be left alone with the program continuing to guarantee the same benefits to all enrollees.

Overall, the poll found Americans evenly divided on dramatically changing Medicare, part of a Republican plan to reduce the federal deficit. Fifty percent of respondents say they wanted Medicare to remain as is while 46 percent said it should be changed.

Respondents were split along party lines with 63 percent of Democrats in favor of maintaining the current Medicare system compared to 41 percent among Republicans. Independents were evenly split.

Among Republicans, about 55 percent favored the Medicare overhaul proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., compared to 34 percent among Democrats.

A Utah rare book dealers got the surprise of his life while volunteering at a fundraiser for the small town museum in Sandy, Utah, just south of Salt Lake,

A man sat down opposite him and started unwrapping a book from a big plastic sack, informing me he had a really, really old book and he thought it might be worth some money, Turned out to be a a tattered, partial copy of the 500-year-old Nuremberg Chronicle.

The German language edition printed by Anton Koberger and published in 1493 is a world history beginning in biblical times. It’s considered to be one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books produced after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and revolutionized publishing.

If this copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle were in mint condition and fully intact, it could be worth up to a million dollars.

Book dealer Ken Sanders looks over a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle published in 1493. It’s considered to be one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books produced after the invention of the printing press.

One in such shape sold last year at a London auction for about $850,000, Windle said, but not so much because it’s such a rare find.

Because of this book’s tattered state,it is likely worth only $50,000 and could be worth more if sold to collectors at framed pages.

The book’s owner disappeared and refused to be identified.It is unclear how he came about the very rare volume.

The Nuremberg Chronicle is an illustrated world history. Its structure follows the story of human history as related in the Bible; it includes the histories of a number of important Western cities. Written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel, with a version in German translation by Georg Alt, it appeared in 1493. It is one of the best-documented early printed books - an incunabulum (printed, not hand-written) - and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text.

A 27-year-old Louisa, Va., man was caught driving a stolen Chesapeake, Virginia school bus while under the influence in New Bern, N.C., on Saturday, The big yellow school bus had Virginia license plates when he crashed through railroad crossing gates attracting local police who arrested and jailed him.

Hours after US and British figures called for “the head of the snake” in Libya to be cut off, NATO warplanes early Easter Monday morning, April 25, pulverized a building in Muammar Qaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli. His offices and conference room were wrecked. A government official called the strike an attempt on the Libyan ruler’s life which coalition spokesmen did not deny.

He did not disclose Qaddafi’s whereabouts. About 45 people were hurt in the strike, 15 of them seriously and some still missing. The ruler’s son Saif al Islam said such attacks would achieve nothing since the West was losing the war in Libya in any case.

There was no word about which nations took part in the Bab al-Aziziyah air strike. Targeting the life of Muammar Qaddafi was not mandated in UN Security Council resolution 1973. However, Military sources report that coalition leaders are increasingly frustrated by their failure to break the deadlock in the Libyan war and Qaddafi’s ability to stand up to whatever they throw at him and even gain ground.

Obama releases birth certificate, decries ’silliness’ which he could and should have ended years ago. Finally Obama released his birth certificate on Wednesday saying the controversy was counterproductive which it has been. Recurring question and allegation about poor college grades and who and how his college was paid for he is still hiding.

Both of Libya’s fighting camps are taking delivery of a surging influx of weapons shipments and military personnel - each hoping to use the extra aid for breaking the military standoff in its own favor, military sources report. Thursday, April 21, President Barack Obama authorized a pair of armed Predator drones to help the rebels break breaking the siege of Misratah, while British, French and Italian military officers headed for rebel headquarters in Benghazi, part of a package of arms and military equipment from the US, Britain, France, Italy and Qatar.

On the other side of the Libyan divide, China, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia are keeping the pro-Qaddafi camp’s arsenals stocked with new hardware along with combat personnel from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia.

Building up in Libya is a confrontation that recalls the 1999 war in Yugoslavia (Serbia today) when NATO’s four-month Operation Noble Anvil hammered Yugoslav forces to force their retreat from Kosovo. The Serbs too were backed then by clandestine Chinese-Russian support in tactical advice, intelligence, fighting men and arms.
Just like 12 years ago, our military sources report that from mid-March, hundreds of “volunteers” - professional soldiers ranking from colonel down to corporal - have joined the army loyal to Qaddafi. Calling themselves “nationalists” operating in paramilitary organizations without the knowledge of their governments, these foreigners claim they have come “to repulse the Western-Muslim onslaught on Qaddafi’s regime.”

The tipping point will come when Qadafi gets effective surface-to-air missile to deploy against NATO warplanes.

St. Louis International Airport was hit directly by a tornado. They determined that tornadoes are no longer a danger, and now we can go back to being endangered by sleeping air traffic controllers.– Kimmel

A Yale University religion professor Kathryn Lofton examined transcripts of more than 1,560 Oprah shows, 105 issues of O magazine, 17 issues of O at Home, 68 Book Club selections and 52 Spirit Newsletters. She sets forth her findings in a book, “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon.” Lofton says Oprah’s success is based on her ability to transform herself into a religious icon.

According to the study, the most important moment in Oprah’s career occurred in 1994, when the TV host changed the direction of her program.

“The time has come for this genre of talk shows to move on from dysfunctional whining and complaining and blaming,” Oprah said at the time. “I have had enough of people’s dysfunction.”

“Her spiritual revelation was converted into a corporate makeover,” Lofton told The New York Post. “Her show became ‘Change Your Life TV.’ As a part of this new look and focus for the show, she began to develop her brand, including, eventually, the book club, the magazine, the website, and her Angel Network.”

By using a Southern preacher’s rhythmic speech pattern with a sermon-like structure, Oprah has been able to create a new “gospel” for each show. The message of her programs became what Lofton refers to as “The Gospel of You.”

“Gospel is a word that means ‘good news,’” Lofton said. “Oprah says that the good news is ‘you.’”

There is a nationwide shortage of drugs for Attention Deficit Disorder. The FDA says they’re not sure how it happened. I guess somebody wasn’t paying attention.– Leno

Obama will likely set out on a grovel fest bowing and kissing various Chinese body parts if China cuts its foreign exchange reserves by about two-thirds, down to about $1 trillion from its current $3.04 trillion level, as China news says it might..

It simply has too much money and that is feeding runaway inflation in China.

This would be a marked change in Chinese policy, which has been to stockpile these reserves, in particular dollar-denominated assets.  It currently holds about $1.154 trillion of U.S. treasuries - the debt securities that constitute U.S. debt.

Now it may be planning to dump those U.S. treasuries on the market.  If China wants to diversify its holdings by reducing its gross reserves by two-thirds, that would necessarily mean a drastic reduction of its share of the $14.3 trillion U.S. national debt.

If it does it would have severe consequences, mostly for the American people.

Because the U.S. has racked up so much debt among foreign creditors like China, we have become increasingly vulnerable to their whims.  China dumping a significant portion of its U.S. treasuries could spark a run on the dollar, uprooting it as the world’s reserve currency.  How?

It would cause a rush to the exits on the treasuries market, robbing the ability of the U.S. to borrow from other creditors, who would not want to risk having the value of their assets devalued.  Suddenly, a frenzy would occur by financial institutions to cash in dollars for something - anything - of value.

A dollar run would in turn cause hyperinflation here at home, super-high interest rates, and a complete default on U.S. debt.  Without borrowing, we lack the ability to repay principal and interest owed on the national debt.  We really are that vulnerable.

But, wouldn’t China be devaluing its own assets? Zhou does not seem to think so.  He thinks his country needs to stop stockpiling money to get domestic inflation under control.  But even if the Chinese were not looking to dump current holdings - they may still be signaling that they won’t be looking to buy any more.

With the Fed supposedly out of the Treasury market come June and with them now buying 70 percent of the issues, who will buy this junk? Barack Obama sees trillion dollar deficits for the next decade. At best, China can just sit back and do nothing and seriously injure us.

At worst, China may want to get out while the getting’s good from what amounts to nothing more than a useless paper trade.

The unemployment rate was unchanged in April, a report next week is forecast to show.

Crude oil has surged 23 percent this year, with May futures reaching a 30-month high of $113.48 a barrel in New York on April 25.

Domestic growth is expected at just 2 percent for 3011. The Labor Department shows consumer price inflation at barely over 2%. John Williams’ ShadowStats puts the figure at close to 8%. Saying the Feds exclusion of fuel and food from inflation stats is foolish.

Ex-convicts prepared the eggs for the White House’s Easter Egg Roll.  It’s nice to see the White House reaching out to former members of Congress.- Leno

Van Jones, the Obama administration’s controversial former “green jobs czar,” has found a new calling: helping to push for a new, global architecture of environmental law that would give Mother Nature the same rights status as humans. Within this ethos are human rights for insects and shrubs..

Jones is taking up the challenge as one of the newest board members of an obscure San Francisco New Age-style organization known as the Pachamama Alliance, which has been creating a global movement to make human rights for Mother Nature an international reality - complete with enforceable laws - by 2014. The Alliance claims it is responding to appeals for help from Amazon tribesmen. The Rio summit will create an important midpoint for that campaign.

Jones joined the alliance’s board last December, shortly after the organization announced creation of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature to carry the concept around the world-and install it not only in international law but in the statutes of communities and municipalities across the U.S.

He resigned from the administration in September 2009 after making public apologies for some of his past actions, including the signing of a 2004 petition that questioned whether the Bush administration had deliberately allowed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to happen, and his previous affiliation with a self-described communist organization, the Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM).

The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature “is working to build a movement of millions of educated and inspired individuals, with thousands of successful cases of enforceable Rights of Nature legislation having been enacted at local and national levels, by the end of 2014,”

Organizing and advocating just such a radical “green” restructuring of the U.S. economy is the skill set that brought Jones to the Obama White House staff as a “green jobs czar” in the first place.

In the USA TODAY poll, only 38% of Americans say Obama definitely was born in the USA, and 18% say he probably was. Fifteen percent say he probably was born in another country, and 9% say he definitely was born elsewhere.

Obama authorized a pair of armed remote control Predator drones to help the rebels break breaking the siege of Misratah, while British, French and Italian military officers headed for rebel headquarters in Benghazi, part of a package of arms and military equipment from the US, Britain, France, Italy and Qatar.

On the other side of the Libyan divide, China, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia are keeping the pro-Qaddafi camp’s arsenals stocked with new hardware along with combat personnel from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia.

Both of Libya’s fighting camps are taking delivery of a surging influx of weapons shipments and military personnel - each hoping to use the extra aid for breaking the military standoff in its own favor, military sources report. Thursday, April 21, President Barack Obama authorized a pair of armed Predator drones to help the rebels break breaking the siege of Misratah, while British, French and Italian military officers headed for rebel headquarters in Benghazi, part of a package of arms and military equipment from the US, Britain, France, Italy and Qatar.

On the other side of the Libyan divide, China, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia are keeping the pro-Qaddafi camp’s arsenals stocked with new hardware along with combat personnel from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia.

It is a surrogate war and Obama does not understand its implications.

The trouble is that all the additional military assistance the West is laying on is barely enough, say military experts, to maintain the current stalemate against the Qaddafi regime’s boosted capabilities - certainly not sufficient to tip the scales of the war

A dead scorpion was found on a US Airways flight last Thursday just as the plane was pulling away from a gate at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, Passengers on Flight 1972, which originated in Houston, were moved to a different plane before taking off for Newark, N.J.

The jet is being fumigated at the airport and will be put back into service as soon as possible. 

“Joseph Vranich, The Business Relocation Coach, located in Irvine, Ca. has compiled the Top Ten reasons why businesses are fleeing California. Below is a summary:

The #10 Reason (New!) - Unprecedented Energy Costs: 50% higher than in the rest of the country.

#9 - Severe Tax Treatment: The Tax Foundation in their 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index lists California at No. 49 for tax fairness.

#8 - Worst Regulatory Burden: The consulting firm Bain & Co. constructed a “regulatory hassle index” that found “California is far worse than any other state by a very significant margin.”

#7 - Dreadful Legal Treatment: California ranks 44th in legal fairness to business. Los Angeles was again named the least fair and reasonable litigation environment in the entire country.

#6 - Most Expensive Business Locations: California cities continue to be some of the most expensive locations to do business in the United States.

#5 - Provable Savings Elsewhere: an astonishing 60% of companies - said their policy is to restrict job growth in the state or move jobs to other U.S. locations.

#4 - Downright Unfriendly: California ranks 49th overall in terms of business friendliness.

#3 - Uncontrollable Spending: Extravagant spending causes California to now have the lowest credit rating of any state.

#2 - Excessively Adversarial: California to be the worst state in the nation in which to do business. “California is terrible. It’s the most difficult state in the nation.” CEO magazine calls California the “Venezuela of North America.”

#1 - The ‘Outpouring’ of Poor Rankings Continues: California ranked dead last in the latest Pollina Corporate Top 10 Pro-Business States for 2010 study.

The statistics are compiled from a number of reputable, authoritative sources.

In what could be useful to the dysfunctional U. S. Congress members Kyrgyzstan’s divided parliament slaughtered seven rams before their morning session on Thursday, in a sacrifice they hope will banish “evil spirits” disrupting their work.

White House cheering  for Egypt’s Mubarak’s ousting has barely died down when the  prospect of a radical  Islamic takeover of Egypt, long the leading Arab military ally of the United States is a reality except for the most profunctory details. As bad as Syria and Libya’s situations are the lose of Egypt to the radical Islamic Brotherhood is a catastrophy of epic proportions.

The emerging consensus among the experts who have testfied is that as a result, Egypt will transform its ties with the United States and drastically reduce its security relationship with Israel.

A House committee was informed that the Muslim Brotherhood was gaining power in Egypt and working with the new military regime. The House Intelligence Committee heard testimony that the Brotherhood was working with Al Qaida-aligned groups, called Salafists, who seek to transform Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid, into an Islamic state.

“Brotherhood members and sympathizers have been deeply engaged in all political dialogues with the post-Mubarak military government,” Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told a House committee.

Satloff, a leading U.S. analyst on the Arab world who returned recently from a visit to Egypt, said the Brotherhood provided the manpower that helped oust President Hosni Mubarak in February. Since then, the Brotherhood has been quietly supporting the new military regime as well as the constitutional referendum in March.

Satloff said the Brotherhood, which established the Justice and Freedom Party, currently led by media spokesman Mohamed Saad el-Katatni, has been working with Salafist elements, including those linked to Al Qaida. He cited the Gamiat Islamiya, Jihad and Salafist gangs implicated in attacks on Christians and Sufi Muslims over the last month.

“One implication of this variety of Islamist political groupings, especially the impact of the emergence of the Salafis as political actors, is that it has the effect of making the Brotherhood look more mainstream and moderate, by comparison,” Satloff said. “That, indeed, might be the rationale for these divisions all along.”

Satloff said the Brotherhood and the Salafist groups have been receiving funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council states. He said any Brotherhood victory in elections in 2011 could transform Egypt into either an Islamic state or one sympathetic to fundamentalism, such as Turkey.

“Should the Brotherhood achieve political power, it will almost certainly use that power to transform Egypt into a very different place,” Satloff said. “The best case analogy would be Turkey under Erdogan, where the secular state is gradually being Islamized. A more realistic situation would see deeper and more systemic Islamization of society, including the potential for a frightening growth of sectarianism between Muslims and Copts and even deepening intra-Muslim conflict between Salafis and Sufis.”

The House committee was told that an Islamic takeover of Egypt was not inevitable. Satloff said the military regime did not appear to be ready to change the electoral system that would help the Islamic bloc in either parliamentary or presidential elections over the next year.

Satloff said Washington retained influence in the new regime in Cairo. He said the administration of President Barack Obama should work with Egypt’s military to ensure the continuation of peace with Israel, counter-insurgency cooperation and navigation through the Suez Canal.

“Privately, the [U.S.] administration should engage with the Supreme Military Council on U.S. concerns so that technical decisions are not taken in framing an electoral process that inadvertently abets the Brotherhood’s political prospects,” Satloff said. “In addition, we should share information with them on the foreign funding of Islamist groups, parties and movements with an eye to insulating Egypt’s democratic experiment from nefarious interests of outside powers.”

Two friends who hired a New York City cab driver to drive them across the United States for $5,000 have arrived in Los Angeles after a six day trip

Shakinmg up his Washington DC team before 2012 Obama will name Leon Panetta, a veteran Washington politician and the current CIA director, as U.S. defense secretary as he resets his national security team ahead of the 2012 presidential campaign and a battle over the Pentagon budget.

Obama will nominate General David Petraeus, who is running the war in Afghanistan after leading the campaign to quash the insurgency in Iraq, to replace Panetta at the CIA, U.S. officials also said on Wednesday.

Trouble-shooting diplomat Ryan Crocker, who has served as ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon, will be named as ambassador to Afghanistan.

A female mallard duck is nesting atop bags of mulch just outside the main entrance of a Giant Eagle store in Medina in northeast Ohio. A small sign advises shoppers to beware of the bird and to grab their mulch from another pile.

The Akron Beacon Journal reports the duck is sitting on at least 10 eggs in a nest assembled on top of an 8-foot stack of bags. Store officials think she laid the eggs a couple of weeks ago.

Buoyed by polling that show public dislike for oil companies Obama attacked oil companies charging fraud and manipulation. Only 11 percent of those surveyed in a McClatchy-Marist poll this week said Obama and Democrats are to blame for high gas prices. Thirty-six percent of U.S. residents blamed turmoil in the Middle East for the high prices, while 34 percent say U.S. oil companies are to blame.

Seven percent said Congressional Republicans were at fault.

The war in Libya is pulling a couple million barrels per day from markets, Cohan emphasized that perceptions of higher demand are having an even bigger effect on price.

Members of Congress are hearing complaints from their constituents, which has led to tensions between the White House and Democrats in the House and Senate.

Thousands of plant lovers have flocked to the  Basel Botanical Gardens to see a corpse flower, in full glory before the bloom wilts late Saturday or Sunday. The plant is 17 years old and has never bloomed before and uses the smells like rotting flesh to attract insects.

The 6.6-feet (2-meter) tall flower is native to the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the last one to bloom in Switzerland was 75 years ago.

President Barack Obama’s actions regarding the growing turmoil in North Africa and the Mideast are “incompetent at best and subversive at worst,” former CIA officer Kent Clizbe says in an interview with Newsmax.TV.

“The Obama administration is doing exactly what they criticized the Bush administration for,” particularly in Libya, says Clizbe, author of the forthcoming book “Willing Accomplices:  How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America.”

“They’re working on little information and a lot of ideology,” he says.

Members of the Obama administration hammered the Bush administration for its handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Clizbe points out. But “they are doing what they criticized the Bush administration for 100 times over.”

The Obama administration doesn’t know who it’s dealing with in Libya, Clizbe says. “They don’t have an entry plan. They don’t have an exit plan. The strategy doesn’t seem to be anything more than hope and change.”

The Muslim Brotherhood will exploit the opportunities created for it amid the region’s turmoil, Clizbe warns. “The Brotherhood is, if not behind a lot of the revolutions, then setting itself up to take advantage of the unrest,” he says.

“The Muslim Brotherhood will sit back, work behind the scenes and keep themselves within striking distance of power. Maybe they will go through elections. Then once things break down - it may be months or years - they will be in a position to step in and takeover.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is using U.S. aid to bolster itself, just as the Bolsheviks did in the Russian revolution, Clizbe says. “The Obama administration is falling right into that trap.”

On a separate issue, Clizbe says Americans have a right to be concerned about whether Obama was born in the United States.

“There’s a constitutional mandate that lays out exactly the qualifications for any president,” he says. “In the past, the press has served as vetters for these issues.” But this time around, the press hasn’t come through, Clizbe says.

“President Obama needs to be vetted. What exactly is in his background, who knows? But he hasn’t been vetted. The birth certificate is just one tiny issue in a much larger vetting question.”

 

A senior FBI official said last week that Al Qaida and its offshoots are continuing to conduct terrorist planning for attacks on the United States.

Mark F. Giuliano, assistant direct of the FBI counterterrorism division said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that the nation has never faced a more fluid, dynamic and complex terrorism threat.

“We are seeing an increase in the sources of terrorism, a wider array of terrorism targets, a greater cooperation among terrorist groups, and an evolution in terrorist tactics and communication methodology,” he said.

Long-term planning by core Al Qaida leaders like the 9/11 attacks is much more difficult in the current environment, but it has been replaced by “somewhat less sophisticated, quick-hitting strikes that can be just as lethal but which take less funding, fewer operatives, less training, and less timing to execute,” Giuliano said.

The main threats are Al Qaida and its affiliates, homegrown terrorists and then other domestic terrorism, he said.

On Al Qaida, Giuliano said efforts by military and CIA forces have “created an environment which makes training, moving funds, and communicating very difficult.”

“While experiencing challenges in its ability to directly conduct terrorist attacks, core AQ is sharing financial resources, training, tactics, operational expertise, recruits, and operatives with other like-minded groups,” he said.

A more serious threat, is Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which tried several recent attacks. The group that is led by American jihadist Anwar Aulaqi and Samir Khan and have stated in published articles on the Internet that they plan to attack the United States, he said.

The group was behind the December 2009 attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 and the October 2010 attempted bombings of air cargo flights bound for the United States from Yemen.

“In each instance, AQAP was able to recruit a small group of individuals committed to attacking the United States and whose backgrounds were less likely to trigger security scrutiny,” Giuliano said. “Additionally, AQAP claimed a significant victory for each attack due to both the fear they created and the economic impact expended by the United States and others to screen passengers and packages compared to the small expenditure on their part.”

Giuliano also said the homegrown Islamist terror threat is rapidly growing. He listed the recent terrorists and their activities, including:

• The arrest in September 2009 of 20-year-old Jordanian student Hosam Maher Smadi who was charged with attempting to place a vehicle bomb outside of a 60-story building in downtown Dallas.
• The November 2009 terrorist attack by U.S. Army Major and U.S. citizen Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, who shot and killed 13 DOD employees and wounded 32 others.
• The October 2010 arrest of Pakistani American Farooque Ahmed for allegedly plotting to bomb a subway station in the Washington, D.C., Metro system. Ahmed pled guilty to material support to terrorism charges and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
• The November 2010 arrest of 19-year-old Somali student Mohamed Osman Mohamud for attempting to detonate what he believed was a car bomb during a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon.
• The December 2010 arrest of Antonio Martinez, a 21-year-old American from Nicaragua for plotting to bomb a military recruiting center in Catonsville, Maryland.
• The February 2011 arrest of 20-year-old Saudi Khalid Aldawsari for building a bomb to be used in terrorist attacks against several targets, including the Texas home of former President George W. Bush.
• Najibullah Zazi and associates in 2009 traveled to Pakistan for training from AQ before returning to the United States and plotting to use a weapon of mass destruction in a plot to blow up commuter trains.
• A group of five young American men originally from Northern Virginia traveled in late 2009 to Pakistan where they were detained and sentenced to 10 years in prison in Pakistan on terrorism related charges.
• The May 2010 attempted bombing in New York’s Time Square by Faizal Shahzad who traveled to Pakistan and was trained by Tehrik-e-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) before returning to the U.S. to conduct a terrorist attack.
• The arrest In July 2010 of Virginia native Zachary Chesser while attempting to travel to Somalia, where he intended to join the terrorist organization al-Shabaab as a foreign fighter

A white, orange and black feline that arrived last weekend on Governors Island in New York maybe something of a record holder.  Security guards found the Calico cat on the island’s north shore. Its fur was salty, matted and caked with seaweed. So, they think kitty swam more than a mile after having been caught in runoff after torrential rains in New Jersey.

As gas prices approach $5 a gallon, and some even predict $6 a gallon by summer, the White House has launched an investigation into what is causing the rapid price surge. But on Thursday’s “Mark Levin Show,” George Mason University economist Walter E. Williams said no investigation was necessary since the cause of the spike in energy prices was obviously the fault of Washington politicians listening to “environmental wackos.”

“And actually, you know - collusion, if you look for the source of collusion - it’s in Washington, D.C.,” Williams said. “The federal government is in charge of colluding, you know setting prices and colluding on prices. But the problem with oil - I think it’s a supply problem. The United States, you know off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf and California and then huge oil finds in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and North Dakota - we have more oil than Saudi Arabia has altogether. And so however, what’s the problem? The government listening to Congress listening to these environmental wackos - they’re stopping us from drilling and so the prices are going up.”

However, there is the potential for strange bedfellows in this debate, he said. According to Williams, it would be in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) best interest for the American environmental movement to succeed with its efforts to prevent domestic oil production. He explained as long as restrictions remained on procuring oil from domestic sources, the oil cartel stands to gain the most. So, it would seem logical for OPEC to want to support environmental activists, particularly with financial contributions.

An Old Hickory, Tennesse church is offering a drive-thru Good Friday service until midnight. North Point Community Church is set up inside a former bank building on Donelson Avenue. From midnight Thursday to midnight Friday, people can drive up to the building to drop a burden or sin at the first window. Then they can pull up to the second window and receive a blessing.

Church members said they hope this will be a bright spot in someone’s busy day.

“We want people to know we care because we know Jesus,” said church member Lee Fesler. The church hopes to offer the service each year.

Anyone who has spent 30 minutes in Hollywood realizes hiw vacuous many of the personalities are. award winniing actor/d/irector Robert De Niro campaigned for Obama in 2008; during one event during the Democratic primary that year, De Niro said:

“I’ve never made a speech like this at a political event before. So what am I doing here? I’m here because finally one person has inspired me. One person has given me hope. One person has made me believe that we can make a change.”

The star also seemed to be hitting out at Republican birthers who doubt President Obama’s birth certificate, among other accusations.

A man turning dirt in his backyard stumbled onto buried treasure - hundreds of pieces of centuries-old jewelry and other precious objects that Austrian authorities described Friday as a fairy-tale find.

Austria’s department in charge of national antiquities said the trove consists of more than 200 rings, brooches, ornate belt buckles, gold-plated silver plates and other pieces or fragments, many encrusted with pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments. It said the objects are about 650 years old and are being evaluated for their provenance and worth.

While not assigning a monetary value to the buried bling, the enthusiastic language from the normally staid Federal Office for Memorials reflected the significance it attached to the discovery

Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad’s tanks and infantry made their first assaults Sunday, April 24 on Jableh on the Mediterranean and Daraa in the south, after a 48-hour bloodbath by his security forces claiming up to 350 lives failed break the five-week countrywide uprising against his rule. Video-clips show tanks converging on the two towns with soldiers running in their wake while heavy gunfire continued to resound in Hama, al-Nuaimeh near Daraa and Saraqeb, southwest of Aleppo.  

The Syrian ruler continues to ignore all the evidence that by massacring civilian protesters he has only magnified their numbers and Sunday decided to press ahead with his last resort for piling on the violence by deploying trained infantry men and tanks in a final attempt to smash the five-week uprising, debkafile’s military sources report.

The southern epicenter of the uprising Daraa has resisted the most ruthless attempts to suppress its protest rallies. Less has been heard about Jabal, a town of 80,000 situated between Banias and Latakia. Anti-Assad demonstrators have barricaded themselves inside the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque, one of Syria’s main Sufi centers.

One of the most charming if untrue stories concerning World War II is that there are 13 hands on the flag staff of the Iwo Jima Memorial while there are only 6 men raising the flag on Mount Suribachi in February, 1945, and the extra hand is the hand of God. There are just twelve hands. The Memorial is said to be the largest bronze sculpture on earth.

A half-penny sized energy harvester developed by Univ. of Michigan researchers can harness energy from vibrations and convert it to electricity with five to ten times greater efficiency and power than other devices in its class.

In a tiny amount of space, we’ve been able to make a device that generates more power for a given input than anything else out there on the market,

This new vibration energy harvester is specifically designed to turn the cyclic motions of factory machines into energy to power wireless sensor networks. These sensor networks monitor machines’ performance and let operators know about any malfunctions.

Being tethered to a power source drastically increases their installation and maintenance costs,

Long-lasting power is the greatest hurdle to large-scale use of pervasive information-gathering sensor networks, the researchers say.

Up to 80% of the total cost of wireless snnsors consists solely of installing and maintaining power wires and continuously monitoring, testing, and replacing finite-life batteries, So, this new gadget will significantly lower startup and operating costs in many manufacturing or other continuous operating machines.

Additional uses for these new devices could have applications in medicine and the auto industry too. They could possibly be used to power medical implants in people or heat sensors on vehicle motors

Louis Farrakhan. The Muslim leader who was recently quoted as saying America will be bathed in blood, had an appearance on Hillary Clinton’s favorite network, Al-Jazeera the day before Easter to spew some more hatred along with saying that 9/11 was executed because “America was looking for a New Pearl Harbor.”