Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
NYT: Public relations department for Democratic Party?
It’s the day after Nancy Pelosi calls the CIA a bunch of liars over whether she was briefed about water-boarding.
This is The Hill’s front page….
This is the Washington Post’s story on A1…
This is the front page of the NYT for Friday, May 15, 2009.
The story “Pelosi Says She Knew of Waterboarding by 2003 ” is buried on page A20.
Democrats have long history of stone-walling Republican efforts to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
You’re gonna love this. It’s enough to make you want to throw up. If Voting America had a brain they would get off their McDonald’s fed fat ass an vote every fricking Democrat out of office. But they won’t. They fear that if they do, their entitlements (read as government teat) will dry up.
We are heading down the road to a socialist country. Read about the GSE meltdown time line here.
How Did Your Senators Vote?
| TOTAL: | Yea: 74 |
Nay: 25 |
| NAME | VOTE | VOTE |
| Akaka (D-HI) | Y | |
| Alexander (R-TN) | Y | |
| Allard (R-CO) | N | |
| Barrasso (R-WY) | N | |
| Baucus (D-MT) | Y | |
| Bayh (D-IN) | Y | |
| Bennett (R-UT) | Y | |
| Biden (D-DE) | Y | |
| Bingaman (D-NM) | Y | |
| Bond (R-MO) | Y | |
| Boxer (D-CA) | Y | |
| Brown (D-OH) | Y | |
| Brownback (R-KS) | N | |
| Bunning (R-KY) | N | |
| Burr (R-NC) | Y | |
| Byrd (D-WV) | Y | |
| Cantwell (D-WA) | N | |
| Cardin (D-MD) | Y | |
| Carper (D-DE) | Y | |
| Casey (D-PA) | Y | |
| Chambliss (R-GA) | Y | |
| Clinton (D-NY) | Y | |
| Coburn (R-OK) | Y | |
| Cochran (R-MS) | N | |
| Coleman (R-MN) | Y | |
| Collins (R-ME) | Y | |
| Conrad (D-ND) | Y | |
| Corker (R-TN) | Y | |
| Cornyn (R-TX) | Y | |
| Craig (R-ID) | Y | |
| Crapo (R-ID) | N | |
| DeMint (R-SC) | N | |
| Dodd (D-CT) | Y | |
| Dole (R-NC) | N | |
| Domenici (R-NM) | Y | |
| Dorgan (D-ND) | N | |
| Durbin (D-IL) | Y | |
| Ensign (R-NV) | Y | |
| Enzi (R-WY) | N | |
| Feingold (D-WI) | N | |
| Feinstein (D-CA) | Y | |
| Graham (R-SC) | Y | |
| Grassley (R-IA) | Y | |
| Gregg (R-NH) | Y | |
| Hagel (R-NE) | Y | |
| Harkin (D-IA) | Y | |
| Hatch (R-UT) | Y | |
| Hutchison (R-TX) | Y | |
| Inhofe (R-OK) | N | |
| Inouye (D-HI) | Y | |
| Isakson (R-GA) | Y | |
| Johnson (D-SD) | N | |
| Kennedy (D-MA) | ||
| Kerry (D-MA) | Y | |
| Klobuchar (D-MN) | Y | |
| Kohl (D-WI) | Y | |
| Kyl (R-AZ) | Y | |
| Landrieu (D-LA) | N | |
| Lautenberg (D-NJ) | Y | |
| Leahy (D-VT) | Y | |
| Levin (D-MI) | Y | |
| Lieberman (ID-CT) | Y | |
| Lincoln (D-AR) | Y | |
| Lugar (R-IN) | Y | |
| Martinez (R-FL) | Y | |
| McCain (R-AZ) | Y | |
| McCaskill (D-MO) | Y | |
| McConnell (R-KY) | Y | |
| Menendez (D-NJ) | Y | |
| Mikulski (D-MD) | Y | |
| Murkowski (R-AK) | Y | |
| Murray (D-WA) | Y | |
| Nelson (D-FL) | Y | |
| Nelson (D-NE) | N | |
| Obama (D-IL) | Y | |
| Pryor (D-AR) | Y | |
| Reed (D-RI) | Y | |
| Reid (D-NV) | Y | |
| Roberts (R-KS) | N | |
| Rockefeller (D-WV) | Y | |
| Salazar (D-CO) | Y | |
| Sanders (I-VT) | N | |
| Schumer (D-NY) | Y | |
| Sessions (R-AL) | N | |
| Shelby (R-AL) | N | |
| Smith (R-OR) | Y | |
| Snowe (R-ME) | Y | |
| Specter (R-PA) | Y | |
| Stabenow (D-MI) | N | |
| Stevens (R-AK) | Y | |
| Sununu (R-NH) | Y | |
| Tester (D-MT) | N | |
| Thune (R-SD) | Y | |
| Vitter (R-LA) | N | |
| Voinovich (R-OH) | Y | |
| Warner (R-VA) | Y | |
| Webb (D-VA) | Y | |
| Whitehouse (D-RI) | Y | |
| Wicker (R-MS) | N | |
| Wyden (D-OR) | N |
The New Citizenship Test
The Citizenship and Immigration Services has re-designed the citizenship test for immigrants who want to become naturalized Americans, revamping the questions for the first time since 1986.
The exam — designed with the input of adult educators, English teachers and community organizations that work with immigrants — asks questions about American history, the U.S. government, the rights of citizens and geography. Immigrants must also pass an English writing test.
10 Questions from the test and their answers are listed below:
1. What does the Constitution do?
2. What do we call the first 10 amendments to the Constitution?
3. Name one branch or part of the government.
4. We elect a U.S. representative for how many years?
5. How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
6. How old do citizens have to be to vote for President?
7. When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?
8. There were 13 original states. Name three.
9. Who was president during World War I?
10. Name one U.S. territory.
The Answers:
1. Sets up the government, Defines the government, Protects basic rights of Americans
2. Bill of Rights
3. Legislative, Executive, Judicial, Congress, the President, the courts
4. 2 years
5. 9
6. 18
7. April 15
8. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
9. Woodrow Wilson
10. Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam
House Speaker Pelosi Used Political Donations to Pay Husband’s Firm
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid her husband’s real estate and investment firm nearly $100,000 from her political action committee over the past decade, a practice that she voted to ban last year and that her party condemned as part of the “culture of corruption” when Republicans did it.
The Washington Times is reporting that the California Democrat’s husband, Paul F. Pelosi, owns Financial Leasing Services Inc., which has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker’s “PAC to the Future” over the PAC’s nine-year history.
Last year, Pelosi supported a bill that would have banned members of Congress from putting spouses on their campaign staffs. The bill banned not only direct payments by congressional campaign committees and PACs to spouses for services including consulting and furndraising, but also “indirect compensation,” such as payments to companies that employ spouses.
The bill passed the House in a voice vote but died in a Senate committee.
Last week, Pelosi’s office defended the payments, saying they were legal because she is compensating her husband at fair market value for the work his firm has performed for the PAC.
Ethical watchdogs called Pelosi’s arrangement “problematic.”
Nancy Pelosi shows her ass on the eve of America’s most important moment.
Nancy Pelosi, a clinical liberal, allows her emotions to eclipse what little intellect she has.
She would have served herself and this country very well if she had read the information provided to her on the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac-AIG meltdown beginning in 2001 which has been published at the link provided above. Instead, she chose to ignore the calls for reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Government Sponsored Enterprises directed by Democrat Barney Frank and chose to direct her attention and energy to criticize President Bush while mentioning wispy, nebulous and unquantified “failed economic policies”. Some say her putrid comments soured the deal.
In my opinion, the Democrats, recognizing Pelosi’s gaff and wishing to spin it to their advantage, point to her speech as the reason many Republicans (ignoring the many Democrats) who rejected the so-called bailout bill.
The fact is, the bill as it was written was bad for the country and deserved to be thrown out for the trash it was.
Nancy Pelosi would have done herself a favor by studying the following facts before allowing her ass to override her brain.
2001
April: The Administration’s FY02 budget declares that the size of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is “a potential problem,” because “financial trouble of a large GSE could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting Federally insured entities and economic activity.”
2002
May: The President calls for the disclosure and corporate governance principles contained in his 10-point plan for corporate responsibility to apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (OMB Prompt Letter to OFHEO, 5/29/02)
2003
January: Freddie Mac announces it has to restate financial results for the previous three years.
February: The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) releases a report explaining that “although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations,” “the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them.” As a consequence, unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market. (“Systemic Risk: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Role of OFHEO,” OFHEO Report, 2/4/03)
September: Fannie Mae discloses SEC investigation and acknowledges OFHEO’s review found earnings manipulations.
September: Treasury Secretary John Snow testifies before the House Financial Services Committee to recommend that Congress enact “legislation to create a new Federal agency to regulate and supervise the financial activities of our housing-related government sponsored enterprises” and set prudent and appropriate minimum capital adequacy requirements.
October: Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error.
November: Council of the Economic Advisers (CEA) Chairman Greg Mankiw explains that any “legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk.” To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have “broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards” and “receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE.” (N. Gregory Mankiw, Remarks At The Conference Of State Bank Supervisors State Banking Summit And Leadership, 11/6/03)
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080919-15.html
Barney Frank should step down as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
Mr. Frank is perhaps the most guilty of all of those who have worked hard to prevent efforts – beginning as far back as 2003 – to address the flawed policies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which Mr. Frank oversees as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
In 2003, Frank opposed Bush administration and Congressional Republican efforts for the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis. Under the plan a new agency would have been created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. “These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” Frank said. He added, “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
You can read about the GSE meltdown time line here. Try not to blow a gasket or bleed out of your eyeballs when you read what Mr. Frank and his ilk have to say about their management skills and their expert opinions on the matter. They basically tell us to butt-out and to mind our own business.
Republicans appear to some to be reacting to Nancy Pelosi’s Vomit
On the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to pass 700 billion bail-out plan.
Opponents said part of the reason for the opposition from Republicans was what they termed a partisan speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said one GOP source. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt said he thinks Republicans could have provided a dozen more votes had Pelosi not given her speech.
Pelosi had said that Congress needed to pass the bill, even though it was an outgrowth of the “failed economic policies” of the last eight years.
“When was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion?” she asked. “It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”
Here are a few facts Nancy Pelosi should have studied before her ass replaced her brain.
The Bush Administration raised a red flag starting in April 2001. The administration’s 2002 budget request declares that the size of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is “a potential problem” because financial trouble in either one of them could cause “strong repercussions in financial markets.”
In 2003 the White House warning about Fannie and Freddie was upgraded to a systemic risk. that could spread beyond just the housing sector.
In the fall of 2003 the Bush Administration was pushing congress hard to create a new federal agency to regulate and supervise Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both Government Sponsored Enterprises or GSEs. The then Treasury Secretary John W. Snow: “So we need a strong world class regulatory agency to oversee the prudential operations of the GSE’s and the safety and the soundness of their financial activities.” (Snow was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury by President George W. Bush on January 13, 2003 and unanimously confirmed by the US Senate. On May 30, 2003, it was formally announced that Snow would leave this position. On this same day, it was announced that President George W. Bush had nominated Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs, to replace Snow. )
But Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was getting a lot of push back from then ranking member and now chairman of the house financial services committee Democratic congressman Barney Frank “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not in any crisis”. In fact Frank said the federal government should be encouraging Fannie and Freddie to do more to get low income families into homes and he believed to many people had a sky is falling mentality. Frank: ” The more people in my judgment exaggerate the threat of safety and — the more people conjure — the possibility of serious financial losses to the tribute which I do not see, I think we see an entity that a fundamentally sound financially, and withstand some of the disaster scenarios and even if there were problems the federal government doesn’t bail them out, but the more protected everything there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.”
The legislation was blocked
In 2005 Fed chairman Alan Greenspan added his voice on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after many leaders admitted major accounting screw ups. Greenspan: “Enabling these institutions to increase in size – and they will once the crisis in their judgment passes – we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.” Greenspan added later at another hearing on the topic: “If we failed to strengthen GSE regulation we increase the possibility of insolvency in crisis.” But the two mortgage giants had staunch defenders. Democratic senator Charles Schumer said “I think Fannie and Freddie over the years have done an incredibly good job and are an intrinsic part of making America the best housed people in the world. If you look over the last one — whatever years they’ve done very very good job.”
Senator John McCain cosponsored legislation pushing for regulation delivering a speech on the Senate floor in 2006. McCain: “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac In the sheer magnitude of these companies in the role they play in the housing market the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.”
Republicans Recognize a Problem When They See It
This short news report chronicles the events of the meltdown. Notice the Republicans are saying as far back as 2000 “Hey – there’s a problem here” and how Barney Franks (D) and the rest of the Democrats come back with “No, there isn’t. In fact, we want to do more to sell mortgages like these.” You can watch the video here.
English Is My Language
I was born in America. I learned English from my parents as was taught about syntax in school. So, when I make a phone call and get that damned automated operator, why the hell do I have to press “1” for English? Shouldn’t the foreign-language speaking immigrant be asked to press “1” for their language?
Hmm?
Some Ike Victims May Not Be Allowed To Rebuild
Thursday , September 18, 2008
Associated PressGALVESTON, Texas —
Hundreds of people whose beachfront homes were wrecked by Hurricane Ike may be barred from rebuilding under a little-noticed Texas law. And even those whose houses were spared could end up seeing them condemned by the state.Now here’s the saltwater in the wound: It could be a year before the state tells these homeowners what they may or may not do.
Worse, if these homeowners do lose their beachfront property, they may get nothing in compensation from the state.
The reason: A 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.
Over the years, the state has repeatedly invoked the law to seize houses in cases where a storm eroded a beach so badly that a home was suddenly sitting on public property. The aftermath of Ike could see the biggest such use of the law in Texas history.
“I don’t like it one bit,” said Phillip Curtis, 58, a Dallas contractor who owns two homes — a $350,000 vacation home and a $200,000 rental — on Galveston Island’s Jamaica Beach. “I think the state should allow us to try to save the houses. I don’t appreciate the state telling people, `Now it belongs to us.’ It breaks your heart.”
The former state senator who wrote the law had little sympathy.
“We’re talking about damn fools that have built houses on the edge of the sea for as long as man could remember and against every advice anyone has given,” A.R. “Babe” Schwartz said.
Ike’s 110 mph winds and 26-foot waves obliterated the 4- to 6-foot dunes and redrew the tide lines along a broad stretch of the Texas Gulf Coast.
Texas General Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Republican whose office is responsible for policing the beaches, said he saw hundreds of houses in jeopardy of being declared on the beach unlawfully as he flew over the coastline this week.
“And those are the ones still standing,” he said. Other homes, he said, were reduced to pilings sticking up out of the sand or water.
Patterson said no decision on whether homeowners can continue living there would be made for at least a year, while authorities watch the ever-shifting boundaries of the beach.
“You want to have at least a complete all four seasons and find out what Mother Nature is actually going to do until she finishes what she’s going to do,” Patterson said.
That could put homeowners in a bind. Many may be afraid to spend money on home repairs if there is a chance the state is just going to condemn the property.
Those whose homes were destroyed can collect insurance. But it is unclear whether those whose undamaged homes are condemned under the Texas law will get any compensation, from the state or anyone else. Land Office spokesman Jim Suydam said the agency used to offer people up to $50,000 to move, but he didn’t know if that fund still exists.
Rebuilding the eaten-away beaches does not appear to be an option. Schwartz said that the Gulf of Mexico does not deposit sand on Galveston Island and other nearby beaches, and that trucking in huge amounts of sand would not work, because storms would just wash it away within a year or two.
The law was enacted when there were far fewer houses on the Texas coast. In fact, there are lot more houses on the coast now than there were in 1983, during Hurricane Alicia, the last time the law was invoked against large numbers of homeowners. Many of the beach homes on Galveston and other nearby beaches are second homes, many of them rather modest.
Schwartz said the area’s homeowners should not be surprised.
“Every one of them was warned of that in their earnest money contract, in the deed they received, in the title policy they bought,” he said. “And whether you like it or not, neither the Constitution of the United States nor the state of Texas nor any law permits you to have a structure on state-owned property that’s subject to the flow of the tide.”
California and Oregon have similar laws.
State Rep. Craig Eiland, a Galveston Democrat, said he is not aware of any move in the Legislature to change the Open Beaches Act. And the track record for those who choose to fight the state in court is grim.
“No one has ever succesfully ever beaten the state when the state comes after you under the Open Beaches Act,” said Charles Irvine, a Houston coastal law attorney. “But everyone still tries to think up innovative arguments.”
Susan Holman, 60, of Dallas, owns a house with her brother on Pirate’s Beach on Galveston Island. Her parents built it 25 years ago as a vacation home. The home is still intact, but the water’s edge is now close, meaning the house might be seized.
“Until we know more, I’m not going to worry about something that hasn’t happened,” she said. But she added: “If that did happen, it would break our hearts.”
ED: My initial reaction is “Good. It serves them right.” I cannot muster up any compassion for anyone dumb enough for wanting to build a home in areas such as this. It defies logic and therefore falls into an emotional driven decision, which are almost always never good ones.
This is certainly a case of “ya roll the dice and ya takes your chances” and they lost and now they whine.
As they say, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Cell Phones and Objects with Inertia
Cell Phone Ban Sought for Calif. Train Operators
LOS ANGELES — The state’s top rail safety regulator said Monday he would seek an emergency order banning train operators from using cell phones, as federal investigators sought to determine whether the engineer of a commuter train was text messaging before a crash that killed 25 people.
In 2003, the NTSB recommended that the Federal Railroad Administration regulate the use of cell phones by railroad employees on duty after finding that a coal train engineer’s phone use contributed to a May 2002 accident in which two freight trains collided head-on near Clarendon, Texas. The coal train engineer was killed and the conductor and engineer of the other train were critically injured.
The California Legislature last month sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill that would outlaw texting while driving. According to the Governors’ Highway Safety Association, four states have banned texting while driving — Alaska, Minnesota, New Jersey and Washington — and similar laws are under consideration in 16 other states.
ED: I’ve been saying it since 1995, perhaps a bit earlier and that is we won’t get a law banning cell phone use while operating a moving vehicle until a congressman’s son or daughter gets killed by a driver on a cell phone.
Look, people, the single minded purpose of an operator of a moving vehicle should be centered on it’s safe operation. Said another way; “Get off your Goddamned phone and drive your Goddamned car before you kill someone!”
In this case it is a train which is even better in my opinion because before people “get it” it usually takes a magnified event; single car accidents just don’t get the attention this problem deserves.
Justified Homicide
At the end of 2005 over 207 million people were cell phone subscribers. You can imagine what that number is today.
In 2000, over 41,000 people died on the nation’s highways. That same year the CATO Institute calculated that of the 41,000+ deaths, 300 were the result of using a cell phone while operating the vehicle. The folks doing the calculation reasoned that individual liberty and free markets is worth those 300 deaths calling it “justified”. They further stated they did not believe a ban was wise citing cell phone use “provides substantial personal and societal benefits, but does not contribute to a large number of serious accidents.”
This is stunning. It is tantamount to an authority approaching you and then stating to you that your value as a human being and a functioning part of society is zero. The authority then explains that it is more important to allow others to exercise their individual liberty to access free markets and talk with a friend or family member while they drove their car. So based upon this comparison and assessment the authority pulls out a gun and shoots you dead where you stand and then turns to your family members and says: “He is one of the 300 people that need to die this year. Have a nice day”.
Justified homicide is the label to be applied here.
How do you like that?
Feds: Immigrant Raid in Mississippi Largest In History
Tuesday , August 26, 2008
Associated PressLAUREL, Miss. —
The largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history has caused panic among Hispanic families in this small southern Mississippi town, where federal agents rounded up nearly 600 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally.One worker caught in Monday’s sweep at the Howard Industries transformer plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.
Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping.
“I was crying the whole time. I didn’t know what to do,” Pena said. “We didn’t know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb but then we figured out it was immigration.”
About 100 of the 595 detained workers were released for humanitarian reasons, many of them mothers who were fitted with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to go home to their children, officials said.
About 475 other workers were transferred to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, La. Nine who were under 18 were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
John Foxworth, an attorney representing some of the immigrants, said eight appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg on Tuesday because they face criminal charges for allegedly using false Social Security and residency identification.
He said the raid was traumatic for families.
“There was no communication, an immediate loss of any kind of news and a lack of understanding of what’s happening to their loved ones,” he said. “A complete and utter feeling of helplessness.”
The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday.
Roberto Velez, pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Peniel, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the 200 parishioners were caught up in the raid, said parents were afraid immigration officials would take them.
“They didn’t send their kids to school today,” he said. “How scared is that?”
Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.
Elizabeth Alegria, 26, a Mexican immigrant, was working at the plant Monday when ICE agents stormed in. When they found out she has two sons, ages 4 and 9, she was fitted with a bracelet and told to appear in federal court next month. Her husband, Andres, was not so lucky.
“I’m very traumatized because I don’t know if they are going to let my husband go and when I will see him,” Elizabeth Alegria said through a translator Tuesday as she returned to the Howard Industries parking lot to retrieve her sport utility vehicle.
“We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away,” said Velez’s son, Robert, youthes it a felony for an illegal immigrant to accept a job in Mississippi. A message was left with the district attorney’s office after hours seeking comment on whether he would use the law to bring state charges against Howard Industries or the workers.
The Mississippi raid is one of several nationwide in recent years.
On May 12, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant’s human resources department, according to court records. In December 2006, 1,297 were arrested at Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and five other states.
ED: Notice the spin? Look, it’s simple; these illegal immigrants can avoid the self-inflicted heartbreak of their broken up lives by simply not deciding to break the laws of this country. It was their decision to take the chance of coming into this country illegally… no one else’s … and they are now having to pay the piper for the dance.
Now perhaps those empty positions can be filled by Americans who need the work.
Let it be so.
Black America Needs a New Belief System
As far back as 1992, bizarre as it may seem to most people, many black Americans believe that AIDS and the health measures used against it are part of a conspiracy to wipe out the black race.
A survey of black church members in 1990 found that an astonishing 35 percent believed AIDS was a form of genocide. A New York Times/WCBS-TV News poll in 1990 found that 1 black in 10 believes the AIDS virus was “deliberately created in a laboratory in order to infect black people” and an additional 2 in 10 thought that might be so. A Gallup/Newsweek poll in March produced similar results.
ED: To this American this is testimony to the fact that Black Americans continue to cling to excuses to explain why they will not advance themselves in this society.
The leadership in the black community should not be tolerating this view and opposed to leadership such as Reverend Wright who shamelessly promote this unfounded belief. It only serves to perpetuate a victim-syndrome which needs to be removed from the psyche of the community. It is obtuse. It is divisive. It is hateful. It is inexcusable.
Demonstrating a willingness to be intellectually lazy makes it clear why they “Axe” the questions they do and demonstrates one reason why we need Affirmative Action. The black community that believe in intellectual swill such as this need all the help they can get.
Global Warming Debunked (again)
U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007
Who is backing Al Gore and helping to fund his recently announced campaign of commercials? That would be anyone or any country who would like to hobble the economy of the United States so that they may make economic gains at our expense.
Could it be countries like China and India? Hmmm?
Excepts from Maurice Strong, Al Gore
Creators of carbon credit scheme cashing in on it
Maurice Strong and Al Gore has done more than anyone else to advance the alarmism of man-made global warming.
With little media monitoring, both Strong and Gore are cashing in on the lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.
Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.”
Gore (“I live a carbon-free way of life.”) buys his carbon off-sets from himself–the Generation Investment Management LLP, “an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C.” of which he is both chairman and founding partner.
Strong is the silent partner, a man whose name often draws a blank in the Washington cocktail circuit.
Gore is the glitzy, media approved front man in the partnership, the flashing neon lights on the global stage warning the masses of the end of Earth, as we know it, and Hollywood’s poster boy for greening the silver screen.
From the Right 