Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.
Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become“a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
Well, somehow the “global warming” message that was utterly refuted by reality was morphed by the true believers into “climate change” – whatever the hell that means.
But “the scientists” and “the computer models” all said that it was going to get hotter and hotter, and that “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” And these morally stupid liberals couldn’t have been more wrong as they perverted science to suit their ideological agenda.
It must be global warming climate change.
(Star Tribune)
New York City is expecting its earliest snow storm since the Civil War. The Daily Mail reported:
The North East is bracing for a chilling Halloween weekend as 60 million people are expected to be hit by snowstorms.
New England has already been struck by a very early snowstorm, while this weekend looks set to see huge amounts of sleet and snow covering the North East, invariably causing power outages and travel chaos.
Low pressure will track up the East Coast on Saturday possibly bringing significant amounts of the white stuff across the tri-state area, Pennsylvania and New England.
New York has received measurable snow before Halloween only three times since 1869 – and never more than one inch, which is what some experts are predicting.
Likely to see the most snow will be the Massachusetts Berkshires, the Litchfield Hills in northwestern Connecticut, southwestern New Hampshire and the southern Green Mountains.
In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy warned residents that they could lose power due to the anticipated wet, heavy snow.
I have far more intellectual respect for the most severely mentally disabled person than I do for liberal “intellectuals”; because even that serverely disabled person (who also has an excuse for his or her inability to comprehend basic reality) can learn to stack one block on top of another. Liberals are utterly incapable of learning. I mean, this leftwing lunacy keeps boomeranging back over and over again.
What does the Bible say about liberals?
Yes, it says that “The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left” as indicated by Ecclesiastes 10:2. But why is that so? Because liberals are “always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). The truth to a liberal is akin to nuclear physics to a primitive yet-undiscovered aborigine. Because there is absolutely no possibility that they will ever discover it as long as they continue to think and live as they do.
Children just won’t know what snow is, liberals said. Because liberals actually are that stupid and that wrong.
Joe Biden gave a vicious, hateful, divisive and frankly fascist rant in which he essentially blamed conservatives and Republicans for all the rapes and murders.
Joe Biden falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the number of reported rapes in Flint, Mich., has skyrocketed since 2008 — providing different accounts at different events that do not square with FBI data. He started at a 152 percent increase, and since then has said rapes in Flint have tripled and even “quadrupled.” But FBI data show the number of rapes in Flint has gone down 11 percent, from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010.
Biden also said the city’s murder rate has “tripled.” The city says there were a record-high 66 murders last year — double, not triple, the 32 murders that occurred in 2008.
Rapes Haven’t ‘Quadrupled’
The vice president has been touring the country delivering his pitch for the American Jobs Act, President Barack Obama’s $447 billion plan that includes $35 billion to prevent the layoff of police, firefighters and teachers. On Oct. 12, Biden visited Flint, Mich., which has had the highest violent crime rate in the nation for the last two years. The city’s violent crime rate has increased from 20.2 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to 22.1 in 2010, a jump of about 9 percent, our analysis of FBI reports shows.
Crime is bad in Flint, no doubt, but Biden makes it out to be worse than it is.
Biden, Oct. 12: You know Pat Moynihan said everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but they’re not entitled to their own facts. Let’s look at the facts. In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on the police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes — just to pick two categories — climbed to 229.
He has cited Flint’s crime stats in other appearances since then, including at an Oct. 18 visit to the University of Pennsylvania — the home of FactCheck.org.
Biden, Oct. 18: I was up in Flint, Michigan, last week. Their police department’s cut more than in half. The murder rate, close to triple. The number of rapes have quadrupled.
A day later, Biden was asked by a reporter for Human Events, a conservative website, if he regretted “using a rape reference to describe Senate opposition” to the bill. Conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, have criticized the vice president for suggesting that rape and murder will rise if the Republicans don’t pass the jobs bill. Biden replied: “I said rape was up three times in Flint. Those are the numbers. Go look at the numbers.”
We have looked at the numbers. We started with the number of reported rapes, because Biden makes three claims that don’t add up: that rapes have gone up from 91 to 229 (a 152 percent increase), that rapes have “quadrupled,” and that rapes have tripled. He’s badly wrong on all counts. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for those years show that the number of reported rapes declined from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010, or a nearly 11 percent drop.
We also calculated the rate of reported rapes per 1,000 residents to account for the city’s declining population. Even then, the rate has declined from .91 rapes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to .84 rapes per 1,000, a decline of 8 percent.
We asked the vice president’s office to explain such a gross discrepancy. It referred us to the Flint mayor’s office — saying the figures came from the city. In response to our questions, Flint Public Safety Director Chief Alvern Lock put out a statement saying the city “stands behind the crime statistics provided to the Office of The Vice President.” It also said: “The discrepancies with the FBI and other sources reveal the differences in how crimes can be counted and categorized, based on different criteria.”
The statement falls short of supporting Biden’s various claims, however. For several reasons:
The city didn’t specify what rape figures it gave Biden, and he’s given at least three different and conflicting accounts. He said variously that the increase from 2008 was 152 percent, that it tripled and that it “quadrupled.” At least two of those claims must be wrong.
It’s true that rapes are notoriously underreported, as the vice president’s office pointed out to us. But Biden was talking about reported rapes. In fact, he used the FBI data when he said that there were 103 rapes in Flint in 2008. So why was the FBI report accurate in 2008 but not accurate in 2010? The city didn’t explain that.
The FBI gets its data from the city, because Uniform Crime Reports are voluntary and self reporting. If there was a mistake on the rape data, then it was the city’s fault. But the city, in its statement, does not acknowledge making a mistake in reporting rape data to the FBI.
The city did admit that it made a mistake in reporting the number of murders that occurred in 2010. It did so immediately — on the day the FBI report came out in May — and it did so again in the statement released in response to our questions. But it did not admit to making any reporting mistakes on rapes, then or now.
Update, Oct. 21: City spokeswoman Dawn Jones later explained to us that the 2010 figure provided to Biden included not just rapes that the city reports to the FBI but also “all cases of criminal sexual conduct.” That means the city and Biden were comparing reported rapes in 2008 (103) with all acts of criminal sexual conduct (229), including rape. That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. And in any case those numbers don’t support Biden’s other inaccurate claims — that rape has tripled and quadrupled. Jones did not readily have the figure for criminal sexual conduct cases in 2008 and answers to other outstanding questions, but she promised to get back to us and we will update this item more fully when she does.
Update, Oct. 23: We have now found that rape figures reported by Flint to the Michigan State Police confirm rapes declined in the city from 2008 to 2010. We also found that the broader category of “criminal sexual contact” (CSC) was also down. State Police figures show a 10 percent reduction in total CSC reports between 2008 (242) and 2010 (217). Also, murder, rape and robbery are declining this year in spite of police layoffs in Flint, Mich., according to the most recent official report released by the State Police. For more information, please read our Wire item, “Biden’s Flint Fiasco, Continued.”
Murders Haven’t ‘Tripled’
Now, what about the number of murders in Flint? There is conflicting data on this point, too, but we accept the city’s account that there were 66 murders last year.
The 2010 FBI crime report shows that there were 53 murders in Flint. However, the city statement says that there was an “internal clerical error” in reporting the data to the FBI and that there were actually 66 murders last year. That’s consistent with what has been reported by the local media months before Biden’s visit. On May 23, the day the FBI report came out, the Flint Journal wrote that city officials said there were 65 murders, not 53. A few days later, the Flint Journalwrote that there were 66 murders — a figure others have used as well. It’s clear that the city made an immediate effort to correct the record on murders, something it did not do on rapes.
Even so, Biden was wrong when he said that the murder rate has “tripled.” In 2008, there were 32 murders in a city of 113,462 people for a murder rate of .28 murders per 1,000 residents. In 2010, there were 66 murders and a population of 109,245 for a rate of .60 murders per 1,000. That’s an increase of 115 percent, more than double but not quite triple.
As for the city’s police force, it’s difficult to assess whether Biden was right. The FBI says Flint had 233 full-time law enforcement employees in 2008 and 155 in 2010, a decline of 78 employees or 33 percent. That’s a significant decline, for sure. Biden’s figures, however, show an even greater drop. In Flint, Biden said the number of “sworn officers” declined from 265 to 144, a drop of 46 percent.
Who’s right? We don’t know. We asked the city to provide information about police staffing, too, but the statement issued by the city didn’t address our questions about staffing. It’s possible, for example, that Biden included part-time employees. The FBI provides numbers only for “full-time law enforcement employees,” which it defines as “individuals who ordinarily carry a firearm and a badge, have full arrest powers” and are paid from government funds dedicated for law enforcement.
We should also note that in Philadelphia, Biden said Flint’s police department was “cut more than in half.” He may have been referring to current staffing. In Flint, Biden said the number of sworn officers is now 125 — which would represent a cut of more than half compared with Biden’s 2008 figure (265), but not the FBI’s (233).
Biden is right on his larger point: Police staffing has sharply declined, and the number of murders has sharply increased. But the vice president is clearly wrong when he says the number of rapes have “quadrupled,” when in fact they have gone down, or that the murder rate has tripled, when it has doubled.
If he’s going to quote the former New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan — a quotation we used when launching this site in 2003 — then he should get his facts straight to support his opinion.
– Eugene Kiely, with Scott Blackburn and Wendy Zhao
As the Occupy Wall Street drug parties protests continue in New York city, violent crime is running rampant as police resources are being allocated to keep occupiers in check, leaving those who really need police protection helpless.
Bullets are flying over Broadway — and everywhere else in the city. The number of people shot surged 154 percent two weeks ago — to 56 from 22 over the same week last year — and spiked 28 percent in the last month.
Last week tallied another increase in victims — 22 people had been hit through Friday, including the three victims gunned down outside a Brooklyn school Friday.
Last year, only 17 shooting victims were logged for the entire week.
The recent gunplay has now pushed the number of shooting victims this year slightly above last year’s tragic tally — to 1,484 from 1,451 — through Oct. 16.
Four high-ranking cops point the finger at Occupy Wall Street protesters, saying their rallies pull special crime-fighting units away from the hot zones where they’re needed.
Since Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, the NYPD has relied heavily on its borough task forces, the department’s go-to teams for rowdy crowds.
But such protest duty takes the special units away from their regular jobs — patrolling public housing and problem spots and staking out nightclubs plagued by violence, supervisors said.
“Normally, the task force is used in high-crime neighborhoods where you have a lot of shootings and robberies,” said one source.
“They are always used when there are spikes in crime as a quick fix. But instead of being sent to Jamaica, Brownsville and the South Bronx, they are in Wall Street.”
Sidenote: New York’s strict gun control laws are also to blame for a spike in violence because they make it impossible for innocent citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals, especially when the cops aren’t around.
Facts and truth are to Democrats what holy water and crucifixes are to vampires; they have a pathological hatred of both.
None of that matters to the left. They would have to have a shred of honor, or decency, or honesty for stuff like that to matter. And they are crawling vermin.
Ann Coulter gives a counterfactual “If I were a liberal” here’s how I would act tale that is worth reading.
If I were a liberal, I would have spent the last week in shock that a Democratic audience in Flint, Mich., cheered Vice President Joe Biden’s description of a policeman being killed. (And if I were a liberal desperately striving to keep my job on MSNBC, I’d say the Democrats looked “hot and horny” for dead cops — as Chris Matthews said of a Republican audience that cheered for the death penalty.)
Biden’s audience whooped and applauded last week in Flint when he said that without Obama’s jobs bill, police will be “outgunned and outmanned.” (Wild applause!)
I suppose liberals would claim they were applauding because they believe Obama’s jobs bill will prevent these murders. Which reminds me: Republicans believe the death penalty prevents murders!
Which belief bears more relationship to reality?
In a case I have previously mentioned, Kenneth McDuff was released from death row soon after the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 and went on to murder more than a dozen people.
William Jordan and Anthony Prevatte were sentenced to death in 1974 for abducting a teacher, murdering him and stealing his car. They came under suspicion when they were caught throwing the murder weapon from the stolen vehicle in a high-speed car chase with the cops and because they were in possession of the dead man’s wallet, briefcase and watch.
The Georgia Supreme Court overturned their capital sentences in an opinion by Robert H. Hall, who was appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.
Hall said that the death sentences had to be set aside on the idiotic grounds that the jurors had overheard the prosecutor say that the judge and state supreme court would have the opportunity to review a death sentence, which might have caused them to take their sentencing role less seriously.
(If the facts had been the reverse, the court would have overturned the death sentences on the grounds that the jurors did not take their sentencing decision seriously, under the misapprehension that no judge or court would second-guess them.)
Prevatte was later released from “life in prison” and proceeded to murder his girlfriend. Jordan escaped and has never been found.
As president, Carter appointed Hall to a federal district court.
Darryl Kemp was sentenced to death in California in 1960 for the rape and murder of Marjorie Hipperson and also convicted for raping two other women. But he sat on death row long enough — 12 years — for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional. He was paroled five years later and, within four months, had raped and murdered Armida Wiltsey, a 40-year-old wife and mother.
Kemp wasn’t caught at the time, so he spent the next quarter-century raping (and probably murdering) a string of women. In 2002, his DNA was matched to blood found on the fingernails of Wiltsey’s dead body. Although Kemp was serving a “life sentence” for rape in a Texas prison, he was months away from being paroled when he was brought back to California for the murder of Wiltsey.
His attorney argued that he was too old for the death penalty. He lost that argument, and in 2009, Kemp was again given a capital sentence. He now sits on death row, perhaps long enough for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional again, so he can be released to commit more rapes and murders.
Dozens and dozens of prisoners released from death row have gone on to murder again. No one knows exactly how many, but it’s a lot more than the number of innocent men who have been executed in America, which, at least since 1950, is zero.
What is liberals’ evidence that there will be more rapes and murders if Obama’s jobs bill doesn’t pass? Biden claims that, without it, there won’t be enough cops to interrupt a woman being raped in her own home — which would be an amazing bit of police work/psychic talent, if it had ever happened. (That’s why Americans like guns, liberals.)
Obama’s jobs bill tackles the problem of rape and murder by giving the states $30 billion … for public school teachers.
Only $5 billion is even allotted to the police, but all we keep hearing about are the rapes and murders that Democrats are suddenly against (as long as being “against” rape and murder means funding public school teachers and not imprisoning or executing rapists and murderers).
Finally, did Flint use any money from Obama’s last trillion-dollar stimulus bill to hire more police in order to prevent rape and murder? No, Flint spent its $2.2 million from the first stimulus bill on buying two electric buses.
Even if what Flint really needed was buses and not cops, for $2.2 million, the city could have bought seven brand-new diesel buses and had $100,000 left over for streetlights.
Rather than reducing the rate of rape and murder, blowing money on “green” buses is likely to increase crime, since people will be forced to spend a lot more time waiting at bus stops for those two buses.
It’s going to be a long wait: The “green” buses were never delivered because the company went out of business — despite a $1.6 million loan from the American taxpayer.
But if I were a liberal, I wouldn’t acknowledge these facts, or any facts. I would close my eyes, cover my ears, demand that MSNBC fire Pat Buchanan and the FCC pull the plug on Fox, and pretend to believe that taxpayer-funded “green” projects and an ever-increasing supply of public school teachers were the only things that separated us from Armageddon.
Democrats posture themselves as the party of tolerance, with their adversaries being the party of rape and murder. But they have it – just as they have everything – back-asswards. It is DEMOCRATS who are profoundly intolerant and divisive, and it is DEMOCRATS whose “tolerant” policies toward rapists and murderers have done nothing more than increase the numbers of both.
That people are actually so utterly stupid that they are looking at the shocking damage Obama has made of foreign policy is proof that we are in the very last days just before the world chooses to worship the satanic beast of the Book of Revelation.
So Obama has set the Middle East on a fire that is continuing to burn out of control. He has allowed Iran to grow closer and closer to its goal of having nuclear weapons and the nuclear immunity that will accompany it.
And he is simultaneously dismantling the American nuclear arsenal – and the deterrent that that arsenal created for the last sixty damn years:
The last of the nation’s biggest nuclear bombs, a Cold War relic 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was dismantled Tuesday in what one energy official called a milestone in President Barack Obama’s mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
This is God damn America. And God will surely damn the American people for electing the greatest fool who ever lived as he labors unceasingly to bring about World War III and Armageddon.
When I say that the Democrat Party is under the direct control of Satan, I tell no lies.
Now Iran has the bomb, Russia and China are arming themselves and the United States of America under the biggest fool who ever sat in the Oval Office is dismantling the only thing that gives us any power following Obama’s destruction of the US economy.
The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams From My Father” more than a decade after its release.
The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama’s best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.
About the same time, halfway around the world, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea had the same idea and spent more than $6,000 for copies of “Dreams From My Father.”
One month later, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, spent more than $3,800 for hardcover copies of the Indonesian version of Mr. Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope,” records show.
A review of the expenditures in a federal database did not reveal any examples of State Department purchases of books by former Presidents George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. The purchases of Mr. Obama’s literary work mostly, but not always, took place in the months after Mr. Obama captured the White House.
Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group, said if the federal government is looking to cut costs, eliminating purchases of Mr. Obama’s books is a good place to start.
“It’s inappropriate for U.S. taxpayer dollars to be spent on this,” she said. “This sounds like propaganda.”
But State Department spokesman Noel Clay said the book purchases followed regular government procurement rules. He said diplomats have long used books as a way to help broker talks on important foreign-policy matters.
“The structure and the presidency of the United States is an integral component of representing the United States overseas,” Mr. Clay said. “We often use books to engage key audiences in discussions of foreign policy.”
He also said books are purchased to stock the State Department’s “information resource centers,” which he said are located around the world and provide books about U.S. coverage of issues such as culture, history and values.
“We also provide key library collections with books about the United States,” he said.
Pete Sepp, vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, said there could be value in distributing books about American politics and the people who make up political institutions.
“Compared to big-ticket items like embassy construction, buying books may not show up as a huge warning on taxpayers’ radar screens, but there is always room for improvement and making sure programs like this are serving a good, intended purpose,” he said.
There’s no indication the White House knew about the purchases, which overall represent just a fraction of the nearly quarter-million dollars Mr. Obama donated to charities last year and his more than $1.7 million in overall income. Mr. Clay said book orders are normally made directly by embassies based on “their experience and knowledge on the ground of the intended audience.”
A White House spokesman did not respond to email messages.
The records show a mix of English and foreign language purchases of Mr. Obama’s books.
The U.S. Embassy in Indonesia spent more than $4,800 in September 2009 for copies of “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope,” though the title of the latter book is spelled “Authority of Hope” in the federal spending database. The embassy spent $3,885 for additional Indonesian copies of “The Audacity of Hope,” records show.
The U.S. Embassy in Turkey spent more than $3,700 in December 2009 for what purchasing records describe as “Copies of Barack Obama’s book in Turkish.”
In March, the U.S. Embassy in Paris spent more than $8,300 for French language copies of “Dreams From My Father.” The embassy also spent more than $11,600 for French language copies of Mr. Obama’s children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing,” though any royalties he receives for purchases of that children’s book will be donated to charity, according to Mr. Obama’s financial disclosure forms.
Mr. Obama has earned far more writing books than he has earned holding government office. He reported from $1 million to $5 million in royalties in 2010 for “Dreams From My Father,” and between $100,001 and $1 million in royalties for “The Audacity of Hope.”
If he earned 10 percent royalties on roughly $60,000 in purchases of his books by the State Department, excluding the children’s book, he could expect to pocket $6,000. It’s a tiny slice of Mr. Obama’s overall earnings, though still a sizable chunk to most Americans, whose median household income in 2009 was just over $50,000.
According to financial-disclosure forms, Mr. Obama earns royalties of 15 percent of the U.S. price for hardcover sales for “The Audacity of Hope” and 7.5 percent for trade paperback book sales. He reported between $100,001 and $1 million in royalties for “The Audacity of Hope.”
Mr. Obama’s and first lady Michelle Obama’s joint 2010 tax return showed overall income of just under $1.8 million, with more than $240,000 donated to charity. The Obamas reported about $1.5 million from book-related income. Overall, they donated about 14 percent of their income to charity.
Royalties for Mr. Obama’s children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing” are being donated to the Fisher House Foundation for a scholarship fund for children of fallen and disabled soldiers, disclosure forms show.
Mr. Obama also has a deal to write another book after his presidency.
The worst thing about these books is that Obama hadn’t accomplished a dang-blasted thing when he wrote them. If he wasn’t a dishonest slimeball, the least he could have done was wait until his presidency was over – and people NOT beholden to him could select his book – and he could embellish upon all the things he really didn’t do after the fact.
As it is, this is just one more example of a dishonest crony capitalist mutual back-scratching session, with the people who personally benefitted from Obama returning the favor.
I have pointed this fact out time and time again: the socialists, the Marxists, the communists, the Soviets, the fascists, the Nazis, the Maoists, were all PART OF THE POLITICAL LEFT.
The left have been out labelling conservatives as “Nazis” ever since Marxist propagandists first started defining fascism as the polar opposite of communism. It didn’t matter that “Nazi” stood for “National Socialist German Workers Party.” Because facts to liberals are like crucifixes to vampires (mind you, liberals also hate crucifixes plenty, too).
I’ve been pointing out the FACT that the left has always been the most violent BY FAR AND AWAY compared to the right:
I’m going to just point out here that recent history completely confirms that I was right and every single liberal and every single mainstream media “journalist” was wrong.
Oakland police stormed the Occupy Oakland protest encampment outside City Hall just before 5:00 a.m. PDT. Police lobbed flash grenades and reportedly fired tear gas. Initial reports say at least 70 people have been arrested and the police tore apart the protest camp. We get a live report from the park by legal observer Marcus Kryshka. Nearly 2,500 people have now been arrested in protests since the start of Occupy Wall Street movement on September 17.
OAKLAND, Calif. — Dozens of police in riot gear and hundreds of protesters in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse in downtown Oakland on Tuesday, with authorities using tear gas to respond to demonstrators’ repeated agitations.
The latest such skirmish came around 11 p.m. as some protesters began throwing bottles among a crowd that had reconvened in front of City Hall, where a haze of chemical smoke still hung in the air following a similar clash at the site about an hour earlier.
It was the fourth time police used tear gas in three hours.
Authorities have denied reports that they used flash bang canisters to help break up the crowds, saying the loud noises came from large firecrackers thrown at police by protesters. Police also report being attacked with rocks.
City Hall has been the site of conflict throughout the day. Authorities used a pre-dawn raid to dismantle an Occupy Wall Street encampment that had taken over a plaza outside the government headquarters for more than two weeks.
Police removed about 170 demonstrators who had been staying in the area overnight after repeatedly being warned that such a camp was illegal and they faced arrest by remaining. City officials said 97 people were arrested in the morning raid.
The Central THelicopters scanned the area late Tuesday and scores of officers wearing helmets and carrying clubs patrolled the streets as protesters gathered only a few feet away.
The first scuffle broke out after hundreds of people made their way back to City Hall in an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of the dispersed camp.
The protesters gathered at a library and marched through downtown Oakland and ultimately were met by police officers in riot gear. Several small skirmishes broke out and officers cleared the area by firing tear gas.
The scene has repeated itself several times since. But each time officers move to disburse the crowd, protesters quickly gather again in assemblies that authorities have declared illegal.
Acting Police Chief Howard Jordan told reporters at a late night news conference that authorities had no other choice, saying the protesters were throwing rocks and bottles at officers.
AHHH, yes. The answer to all our problems, “Occupy Wall Street” and destroy capitalism…that will sure get all these Woodstock wannabes jobs. How refreshing it is to hearken back to the days of the unwashed masses, noisy demonstrations, aimless lawlessness and mass arrests. It’s nothing like the peaceful, spontaneous, orderly Tea Party rallies that actually made a difference in our democratic republic. Do you think this latest thuggery on the part of the Democratic Party brown shirts will save the Obama presidency? Are you now more likely to vote for the liberals to maintain control of the Senate and retake the House? I know I am!
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Testing a re-election theme, President Barack Obama is telling donors during a fundraising rich tour of three western states that the country is suffering from an economic crisis and from a political crisis. “People are crying out for action,” he says.
Pointing to elements of his $447 billion jobs plan rejected by Republican lawmakers, Obama said they would likely linger as campaign issues in 2012.
“This is the fight that we’re going to have right now, and I suspect this is the fight that we’re going to have to have over the next year,” Obama told about 240 donors at a fundraising event Monday at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. “The Republicans in Congress and the Republican candidates for president have made their agenda very clear.”
In Los Angeles on Monday evening, Obama mingled with Hollywood’s royalty. At an intimate dinner with top donors in the Hancock Park home of producer James Lassiter, Obama chatted with movie star Will Smith and former Los Angeles Lakers standout Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
“Sometimes I think people forget how much has gotten done,” Obama said, and he urged his supporters to rally once again, at the same time joking, as he often does, that he is older and grayer now. “This election won’t be as sexy as the first one.”
The Las Vegas fundraiser attracted about 240 people who paid from $1,000 to $35,800 toward Obama’s re-election campaign and to the Democratic National Committee. The bigger donors met the president personally.
The dinner at the Lassiter home was cozier, with fewer than 40 donors who paid $35,800 each. Among the sponsors were Troy Carter, the manager of Grammy award winner Lady Gaga. The singer herself was a guest at a fundraiser last month at the Atherton, Calif., home of Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
Obama was to raise money at the home of movie stars Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, an event aimed at Latino donors that was also expected to feature actress Eva Longoria and mayors Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Julian Castro of San Antonio.
While in Las Vegas, Obama spelled out a plan to help homeowners refinance their homes even if their home values had dropped dramatically below what they owed on their mortgages. Obama ventured into a working class development in the Las Vegas suburbs that benefitted from a community revitalization program like one he is pushing Congress to approve now.
But the president displayed campaign-style vigor, wading into the neighborhood crowd to shake hands and even lift a baby. His handlers reminded him it was time to leave, but Obama strode to yet another group of residents for one last hand shake, autograph and photograph.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Obama headed to a diverse neighborhood near Lassiter’s home south of Hollywood and stopped at Roscoe’s, a chicken restaurant, where he greeted customers and ordered chicken wings for his staff.
Most of his remaining time during this three-day swing through Nevada, California and Colorado is being spent raising money. On Tuesday he will tape an appearance on “The Tonight show with Jay Leno,” his second as president and fourth appearance overall. He will also attend fundraisers in San Francisco and Denver.
Why is the country suffering from a political crisis and an economic crisis three years into the Obama presidency? Why is it that three years into the Obama’s regime the people are crying out for action?
“Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced his plans to run for reelection in 2012, 582 days before Election Day and before most major Republican opponents officially announced that they’d be entering the race. This is the earliest any incumbent president has officially signed up to run again.”
The day that he announced, he himself ended his ability to move things legislatively. He went into full-time candidate mode and every single thing he is doing is merely another campaign tactic.
You add up all his golf, and he isn’t doing much else BUT campaign. Particularly given the fact that most of the crap the man is doing is nothing but incredibly poorly disguised campaigning (which he’s cynically making taxpayers pay for). From CNN:
But at times, the event also took on a touch of the political rally Obama’s political opponents said it was.
“I’m not just here to enjoy the nice weather, I’m here to enlist you in a fight,” he said to the cheering Cannon Falls crowd.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus derided the event — the first stop on Obama’s three-state trip — as nothing more than a campaign event disguised as a public one.
“He’s spending taxpayers’ dollars on a bus tour disguised as some kind of economic event for the country when we all know that it’s a campaign event paid for by the taxpayers,” he said.
Earlier, the Republican National Committee issued a “briefing book” on the trip made to resemble one produced by the administration in which it mockingly described the trip as “a totally non-political taxpayer-funded administration event that just happens to criss-cross several battleground states critical to the president’s reelection.”
Add to that the fact that this Marxist-in-Chief has been out hypocritically playing communist class warfare in public even as he has been sucking up to the filthy rich – oh, about every three days or so – in private.
Let’s just call Obama what he is: totally dishonest (or read what Steve Wynn had to say here).
Do you remember the holy righteous outrage of the left over the waterboarding of the terrorist slimebag who masterminded the 9/11 attacks? Remember that?
Republicans were just so damned EVIL. The rule of law had been discarded like a bag of dog crap, etc. etc.
Well, consider the following from the Obama administration.
Muammar Ghadaffi – the man whose last name remains forever unspellable because we killed him and now he won’t ever be able to correct the LA Times – died a painful and bloody end. From the Daily Mail:
The final bloody moments of Muammar Gaddafi’s life were still shrouded in confusion today as conflicting reports emerged about who fired the shot that actually killed him.
Libya’s deposed leader was pulled out alive from a drain under a motorway in Sirte, the city of his birthplace, where he had been hiding with a small group of bodyguards.
A clutch of videos have emerged on the internet in which he is seen begging his captors for mercy. His condition varies dramatically, with later footage showing him rambling and drenched in blood.
Wounded and terrified, Gaddafi appeared deluded to the end, asking his captors: ‘What did I do to you?’ His last words were ‘Do you know right from wrong?’
Scroll down for video of Gaddafi’s last minutes…
Was this the moment the dictator died? A handgun points at the head of Gaddafi who is facing the ground with his hands behind his back
Fear on his face after being captured in his home town of Sirte, this is Gaddafi in the moments leading up to his death
Final moments: A dazed Gaddafi gesticulates as rebels parade him through Sirte shortly before he was shot
Grimacing in pain: A still from a video taken from the mobile phone of a rebel fighter shows Gaddafi, his face covered in blood, being dragged around by freedom fighters
Losing blood: Gaddafi lifts a hand to his face to see the blood pouring from his wounds. The mobile phone footage shows the dictator slumped against a jeep but still alive
Moments after the last grainy video was shot, it is believed he was killed. Initial reports suggested he had been executed by revolutionary forces in front of a baying mob.
But there have been claims by rebels who witnessed the killing that Gaddafi was actually shot by one of his own bodyguards to spare him further humiliation.
It has also been suggested he was shot during a fight inside an ambulance conveying him to hospital or that he was actually caught in crossfire.
Grisly end: New pictures released today show Gaddafi’s scarred corpse on the floor of a freezer where it is being kept before burial
A day Libyans fought for: Gaddafi’s eyes are closed and mouth firmly shut as preparations are made for his burial
One rebel claimed that he had been killed as he put up a desperate last fight for freedom. He carried his golden revolver on him at all times, and may have pulled it from his clothes.
‘He might have been resisting. He might have struggled, tried to escape,’ a Libyan revolutionary said.
Pictures of Gaddafi’s body show a bullet hole in the temple, which supports claims he was shot at close range.
‘They captured him alive and while he was being taken away, they beat him and then they killed him,’ a freedom fighter said.
Gaddafi’s battered body was paraded through the streets of Sirte to the sound of celebratory gunfire and jubilant shouts.
Another video captured the corpse of the 69-year-old being dragged through the streets of Sirte, to be paraded later before celebrating crowds in the nearby port town of Misrata.
Pleading: Muammar Gaddafi begged with his captors for his life after he was found cowering in a storm drain
Paraded: Gaddafi struggled with his captors in video footage taken by rebel fighters after he was found
Chaotic: Gaddafi was pushed around by rebel fighters, one of whom filmed the incident on a mobile phone
Fear: Becoming increasingly desperate, Gaddafi asked a rebel fighter ‘What did I ever do to you’
Terrified: Moments after he begged for his life, Gaddafi was shot dead by rebel fighters
The circumstances leading up to Gaddafi’s death are more clear.
RAF Tornados helped launch the final airstrike by flying surveillance missions which cleared the way for French fighter jets to bomb a Gaddafi convoy.
The astonishing end for the tyrant came after he and loyalist fighters tried to flee Sirte as it was overrun by forces of the National Transitional Council.
Gaddafi was in a convoy of up to 100 vehicles which tried to break out of Sirte – the last centre of resistance after eight months of civil war – early yesterday.
The escape was spotted by Nato which launched two devastating strikes. At least 50 loyalist fighters were killed.
Injured in both legs, Gaddafi made his way with bodyguards through trees. The group hid in two concrete sewers but were spotted by rebels.
A Libyan named Salem Bakeer said that he and his comrades gave chase to Gaddafi and his small retinue of bodyguards after they fled their convoy following the airstrike.
‘At first we fired at them with anti-aircraft guns, but it was no use,’ said Bakeer.
‘Then we went in on foot. One of Gaddafi’s men came out waving his rifle in the air and shouting surrender, but as soon as he saw my face he started shooting at me.
Struggle: Video footage shows Gaddafi being hauled off a rebel fighter truck minutes after his capture
Manhandled: The former Libyan leader is propped up against the side of a truck during the melee
Arguing: Gaddafi pictured in chaotic video footage minutes before he was killed
Watch the footage of Gaddafi’s last minutes in this video:
‘Then I think Gaddafi must have told them to stop. ”My master is here, my master is here”, he said, ”Muammar Gaddafi is here and he is wounded.”
‘We went in and brought Gaddafi out. He was saying ”What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”. Then we took him and put him in the car.’
Freelance photojournalist Holly Pickett was embedded with an ambulance. She said that she saw another ambulance carrying Gaddafi.
So close was she to the action, that she was able to pick out the bloodied body of Gaddafi. She says that he was wearing gold pants.
She tweeted: ‘From the side door, I could see a bare chest with bullet wound and a bloody hand. He was wearing gold-coloured pants.
‘At every checkpoint between Sirte and Misrata, crowds had gathered and wanted to know if we were the ambulance with Gaddafi’s body in it.
‘Upon hearing the truth, that Gaddafi was truly dead, revolutionaries at the checkpoints were beside themselves, shouting with joy.’
Celebration: Mohammed al-Bibi, seen here in a Yankees hat, points to a comrade holding Gaddafi’s golden gun. Al-Bibi is the one who found the despot in his final hiding place and duly claimed the war souvenir
Adel Samir said that Gaddafi was shot in the stomach with a a 9mm pistol. But Imad Moustaf told Global Post that Gaddafi was shot in the head and the heart.
Doctor Ibrahim Tika added: ‘Gaddafi was arrested while he was alive but he was killed later. There was a bullet and that was the primary reason for his death, it penetrated his gut. Then there was another bullet in the head that went in and out of his head.’
The claims that Gaddafi was executed in the back of an ambulance may be celebrated in Libya. But some within the new government, which is trying to establish itself on the western stage, would have preferred for Gaddafi to have been captured alive and put on trial.
It could be for this reason that Libya’s interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, said that Gaddafi was killed from a bullet to the head during crossfire between government fighters and his loyalists.
Jibril told a news conference in the capital, Tripoli, today: ‘I am going to read to you a report by the forensic doctor who examined Gaddafi.
‘It said: ”Gaddafi was taken out of a sewage pipe … he didn’t show any resistance. When we started moving him he was hit by a bullet in his right arm and when they put him in a truck he did not have any other injuries. When the car was moving it was caught in crossfire between the revolutionaries and Gaddafi forces in which he was hit by a bullet in the head”.’
Dead: The body of Gaddafi is covered with a blue plastic sheet at a house in Misrata. He is due to be buried at a secret funeral within the next 24 hours
Brutal end for tyrant who exported terror: Gaddafi’s body is displayed, clearly showing a bullet hole in his head
The exact circumstances around this theory are unclear. It is unlikely that bullets would have penetrated the ambulance and hit Gaddafi, who was pictured slumped against a rebel’s leg, in the head.
It is also unlikely he was shot in the head before he entered the ambulance as bullets to the head almost always knock somebody off their feet killing them instantly.
This points again to the theory that Gaddafi and a bodyguard launched a fightback inside the ambulance.
CBS News correspondent David Martin claims that Gaddafi’s own bodyguard shot him, in order to spare him the indignity of being captured.
Confirmation of the death sparked wild scenes of celebration across Libya with tens of thousands taking to the streets.
Celebratory gunfire rang out across the capital, Tripoli. Cars honked their horns and people embraced each other.
In Sirte, ecstatic rebels celebrated the city’s fall after weeks of bloody siege by firing endless rounds into the sky.
Gaddafi’s death closes a chapter in the Nato-led military campaign to help rebel forces remove him from power. Ever since the fall of Tripoli, the hunt for Gaddafi had prevented rebels from claiming outright victory.
France’s defence minister announced today that the multi-million-pound bombing campaign of Libya by airforces including the RAF is now over.
‘The military operation is complete,’ said Alain Juppe, in Paris. ‘All Libyan territory is under the control of the National Transitional Council, and subject to some transitional technicalities, the Nato operation has come to an end.
‘The objective of helping the National Transitional Council to liberate their territory is now achieved,’ Mr Juppe added.
‘They will enter a phase of reconstruction, or of construction. It is about establishing the rule of law, which never existed. ‘
A meeting later today will decide the technicalities of winding up the operation which has cost British taxpayers an estimated £300 million.
Admiral Jim Stavridis made said today before a meeting of the alliance’s North Atlantic Council.that it was ‘a good day for Nato, a great day for the people of Libya’.
US president Barack Obama last night announced that the mission would ‘soon come to an end’, although Foreign Secretary William Hague struck a more cautious note.
Procession: Libyans have been flocking to the morgue, where Gaddafi’s body was taken, and have been taking photographs of him
Dead: Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was also killed in a firefight in Sirte
Last moments of his life: Gaddafi’s son Mutassim lies on a sofa in pain and soaked with blood after his capture but before his death in Sirte
‘We will want to be sure that there are no remaining pockets of pro-Gaddafi fighters who can again become a threat to the civilian population,’ he said.
Last night it emerged that RAF Tornados helped launch the final airstrike by flying surveillance missions which cleared the way for French fighter jets to bomb a Gaddafi convoy.
There were also claims that RAF jets carried out another raid which led to the wounding of Gaddafi’s favourite son, Saif al-Islam.
The conflict has already cost British taxpayers more than £1billion and today Nato chiefs will decide whether to end the aerial campaign.
Mutassim Gaddafi: He was also killed by Libyan rebels
David Cameron, who had driven much of Nato’s intervention, hailed it as a moment to remember Gaddafi’s many victims, including those who died when Pan-Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988, policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, and those killed by the IRA using Libyan Semtex.
In a statement notably free of any hint of triumphalism, the Prime Minister said he was ‘proud’ of the role Britain played in helping the Libyan people liberate their country.
Outside 10 Downing Street, Mr Cameron said: ‘People in Libya today have an even greater chance of building themselves a strong and democratic future.
‘I’m proud of the role that Britain has played in helping them to bring that about and I pay tribute to the bravery of the Libyans who have helped to liberate their country.’
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who with Mr Cameron had kept up pressure for Nato’s continued role, said Gaddafi’s death was a ‘major step on the country’s path to democracy.’
U.S. President Barack Obama said: ‘This marks the end of a long and painful chapter for the people of Libya.’
Nato leaders will be watching anxiously over the next few days, however, in case Gaddafi loyalists plunder stockpiled weapons to wreak bloody revenge on the rebels.
Five bodyguards were killed but one tried to save Gaddafi, telling rebels: ‘My master is here, my master is here. Muammar Gaddafi is here and he is wounded.’
Bundled: An ambulance carries Gaddafi’s body from Sirte to Misrata
Transporting: An ambulance, containing happy rebel fighters, carries Gaddafi’s body after he was executed
But there was to be no mercy for the man dubbed ‘The King of Kings of Africa’.
He is the first leader to be killed in the ‘Arab Spring’ wave of popular uprisings that have swept the Middle East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and the establishment of greater democracy.
His death decisively ends a regime that had turned Libya into an international pariah.
The oil-rich nation now enters a new era, but its turmoil may not be over.
The former rebels who now rule are disorganised, face rebuilding a country stripped of institutions, and have already shown signs of infighting with divisions between geographical areas and Islamist and more secular ideologies.
Brutal: There had been fierce fighting around the drain before Gaddafi was finally killed. The body of a fighter can be seen in the dust at the centre of the screen
Already a monument: As celebrations continued, more and more graffiti appeared at the entrance to the drain where the leader was eventually found
Battleground: Bodies of suspected Gaddafi loyalists lie outside the storm drains their leader was captured
The death of Gaddafi and his son, Mutassim, who commanded loyalists in Sirte, as well as the capture of the British-educated Saif al-Islam, who was seen as the heir apparent, effectively removed any rallying point for an insurgency.
Both Gaddafi and Saif had faced international war crimes warrants and there was concern last night that unlike Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was similarly pulled from a hole where he was hiding – he eventually was hanged in Baghdad – the Libyan leader was effectively executed by the troops of a fledgling democracy.
Pretty rough way to go – especially when the man who so thoroughly DEMONIZED George Bush for waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – is taking credit for Gaddafi’s end.
KSM’s only crime had been murdering 3,000 innocent American citizens in a day that changed history. George W. Bush was facing exigent circumstances; was there another massive attack planned that would murder even more innocent Americans? Bush’s waterboarding not only extracted the information we needed not only to ensure that the terrorists rat bastards didn’t have yet another huge plot in the works, but it also ultimately lead U.S. intelligence to Osama bin Laden.
For which Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrat Party demonized him up one end and down the other as being evil and anti-democrtic.
It doesn’t matter that Obama ordered Osama bin Laden assassinated without trial. That’s clearly nothing compared to how bad it would have been if we’d done something extreme, like waterboard him.
And then there was Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen whom Obama ordered assassinated by a Predator drone attack without trial. Remember how Democrats put on sackcloth and poured ashes over their heads over the destruction of constitutional protections to waterboarded terrorists who weren’t even citizens? What’s the deal with that? Where has the outrage been from Democrats?
You tell me which is worse: being waterboarded or being beaten and shot to death? Because I’ll tell you what, you Democrat cockroach, let’s make a deal: you waterboard me and then I’ll beat the crap out of you and then put a bullet in your head. And, since on your depraved view being waterboarded is worse than being beaten and murdered, I get to go first and then you can waterboard me to your heart’s content.
Now, having demonized Bush for waterboarding the terrorist murderer who personally had the blood of 3,000 innocent Americans on his hands, here’s the Obama administration on the torture and murder of Muammar Gaddafi:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed.
“We came, we saw, he died,” she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews.
Clinton was in Tripoli earlier this week for talks with leaders of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC).
The reporter asked if Qaddafi’s death had anything to do with her surprise visit to show support for the Libyan people.
“No,” she replied, before rolling her eyes and saying “I’m sure it did” with a chuckle.
Where’s the outrage over the violation of poor Gaddafi’s sacred rights? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Silly me, I almost forgot:
Let me simply put it this way: Democrats aren’t just vile by Republican standards; Democrats are utterly vile by Democrat standards.
This actually gets even worse than the mere demonstration of abject Democrat hypocrisy on a fundamental level.
Barack Hussein Obama appeared on television today and took all the credit in the world for Muammar Gaddafi’s end as a backdrop to announcing that all American troops were going to be pulled out of Iraq. What he didn’t bother to tell the American people was that this end to the Iraq troop committment was a total disaster and a total disgrace for American policy. U.S. military commanders wanted to keep upwards of 25,000 troops in Iraq (the way we kept troops in Germany, Japan and South Korea) as a guarantee that Iran would not win in Iraq by destabilizing the Shiite majority in that country. Obama had THREE FULL YEARS to negotiate the troop level in Iraq with the assistance of an Iraqi congress that WANTED us to remain. But he did NOTHING until the last minute by which it was too late. And now we’re out of Iraq in failure with all that sacrifice being for nothing and Iran is laughing at us.
And Obama gives this asinine press briefing (taking no questions) in which he refuses to even MENTION Iran but made sure that everybody knew what a hero he was for getting Gaddafi. And Obama walked out of that press room with every single reporter shouting in unison, “Mr. President, what about Iran?”
Now that Obama is the president responsible for the torture and murder of a dictator, what is going to happen next in Libya? Are his heroic allies who overthrew Gaddafi going to embrace democracy and freedom now that they showed how sacred human rights are with their former leader (after all, they didn’t waterboard the sonofabitch, did they?)?
(CNSNews.com) – Chris Crane, president of a union that represents Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, testified in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration last week that ICE agents have been told by ICE headquarters not to arrest illegal aliens who do not have a prior criminal conviction even if they are fugitives who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge or are individuals who have illegally re-entered the United States after being deported and thus have perpetrated a felony.
“Aliens who could not be arrested included but were not limited to ICE fugitives that had been ordered deported by a federal immigration judge as well as aliens who had illegally re-entered the United States after deportation, a federal felony,” Crane, who is also an active-duty ICE agent, told the committee on Oct. 12.
“ICE officers and agents also alleged that they were not permitted to arrest or even speak to confirmed or suspected illegal aliens encountered in the field during operations and were prohibited from running standard criminal record checks for wants and warrants,” Crane testified.
Crane had previously testified about the matter in the subcommittee in late July.
“When I last testified before the subcommittee on July 25, 2011, I reported among other things that ICE enforcement removal officers and agents in the field alleged that unwritten directives from ICE headquarters had been issued nationwide ordering officers not to arrest aliens unless it was confirmed that the alien had received a prior conviction for a criminal offense,” Crane told the committee last week.
Since his July testimony, he said, his union has been working with the Judiciary Committee on the issue.
“I would like to thank Chairman [Lamar] Smith and his staff for working with the union regarding this matter after the July 25 hearing,” said Crane. “Chairman Smith provided us with the opportunity to bring officers forward as witnesses. We were also able to turn over several internal ICE documents which appear to not only verify that these activities did in fact take place, but also named several senior level ICE managers allegedly involved in issuing the directives nationwide.
“Second,” Crane testified, “I would like to address the impact and effectiveness of these type of orders. I have never heard of any law enforcement agency in the nation that prohibits its officers from even speaking to or interviewing individuals who are inside a house in which the officers are attempting to affect an arrest.
“From a law enforcement standpoint what could be the possible benefit?” said Crane. “The only purpose for an order such as this is to prevent officers from making arrests which ICE leadership has allegedly stated is its goal. However, these directives not only prevent the arrest of non criminal aliens but also prevent the identification and arrest of very dangerous criminals, potentially individuals involved in terrorist activities.”
Crane told the committee that he believed the ICE policy was putting both the public and ICE agents at risk.
“It not only prevents officers from talking to and arresting persons who may be wanted for crimes but also individuals who are being victimized and in need of assistance,” said Crane. “Certainly, anyone can see that these practices are contrary to effective law enforcement practice and place the public at risk. Many officers will tell you that the majority of their best arrests, the arrests that most benefit public safety, come from unintended encounters with criminal aliens in the course of looking for a different target in the field.
“Of course, these practices also place our officers at risk,” said Crane. “Nothing that I could ever say here today can capture the dynamics as they unfold when a door opens and our officers enter a house that they’ve never been in before. It’s dangerous. Officers don’t know who is in the house or what they are capable of doing. Problems often arise that require officers to remain in a house for extended periods. Officers on the scene must have the ability to provide for their own safety. They should never be prohibited from talking to people at the scene, conducting interviews as needed, running appropriate background checks, or even making additional arrests.”
During an Oct. 19 hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about the information Crane had brought forward. Napolitano denied that agents were being told not to arrest fugitives and deportees who had re-entered the country.
“What I’m hearing is that while claiming to arrest more criminal aliens, internal ICE documents show that DHS leadership has ordered field officers not to arrest fugitives and re-entries and leadership efforts to conceal this from the public has led to confusion in the field,” Sessions told Napolitano.
“Well if they say that, they’re not reading it correctly because that’s exactly not the case,” Napolitano said. “They can be arrested, but at some point in the process there need to be decisions made about who is to be removed.”
CNSNews.com recently reported that during fiscal years 2009 and 2010 ICE caught and released at least 28 Iranian who as of this January were considered fugitives in the U.S.–and that ICE would not say whether they were still fugitives as of the beginning of this week. Iran has been designated by the U.S. State Department as one of four state-sponsors of terrorism. The other three are Syria, Sudan, and Cuba.
Chris Crane is president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council 118 of the American Federation of Government Employees. The National ICE Council, according to written testimony Crane presented to the committee, represents about 7,200 ICE employees, who mostly work in ICE’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations. Crane said he had been an ICE officer since 2003. Before that, according to Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Elton Gallegly, Crane had served 11 years in the U.S. Marine Corps.
During his time as an ICE agent, Crane told the subcommittee in his written testimony, he has worked in the Criminal Alien Program, which goes after aliens who have been charged with crimes by local or federal law enforcement, and also as part of a Fugitive Operations Team “whose primary function was to apprehend foreign nationals who had not departed the United States after receiving and Order of Deportation from a federal immigration judge.”
American jobs suck and the United States should be funding union jobs that benefit “the world” rather than helping the American people. And throwing away half a billion dollars in American taxpayer money to fund green jobs boondoggles on the other side of the Atlantic is perfectly fine.
That’s not my opinion; that’s Barack Obama’s opinion, according to ABC News:
Car Company Gets U.S. Loan, Builds Cars In Finland In Billion-Dollar Gamble on Tesla and Fisker, Some Worry About A Second Solyndra
By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS and RONNIE GREENE
ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS
Today, 9:47 PM EDT
With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.
“There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle,” the car company’s founder and namesake told ABC News. “They don’t exist here.”
Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money so far has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to a rural Finnish firm, Valmet Automotive.
“We’re not in the business of failing; we’re in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business,” Fisker said. “That’s why we went to Finland.”
The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers producing sporty — and pricey — cutting-edge autos. Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore, predicts it will eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered GM factory it bought in Delaware. And Tesla Motors, whose prime backers include PayPal mogul Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, says it will do the same in a massive facility tooling up in Silicon Valley.
For more on the Fisker and Tesla loans and the Obama administration’s green auto loan program, watch “Good Morning America,” “World News with Diane Sawyer,” and “Nightline.”
An investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News that will air on “Good Morning America” found that the DOE’s bet carries risks for taxpayers, has raised concern among industry observers and government auditors, and adds to questions about the way billions of dollars in loans for smart cars and green energy companies have been awarded. Fisker is more than a year behind rolling out its $97,000 luxury vehicle bankrolled in part with DOE money. While more are promised soon, just 40 of its Karma cars (below) have been manufactured and only two delivered to customers’ driveways, including one to movie star Leonardo DiCaprio. Tesla’s SEC filings reveal the start-up has lost money every quarter. And while its federal funding is intended to help it mass produce a new $57,400 Model S sedan, the company has no experience in a project so vast.
There is intense scrutiny of the decisions made by the Department of Energy as it invests billions of taxpayer dollars in alternative energy. The questions come in the wake of the administration’s failed $535 million investment in solar panel maker Solyndra. The company’s collapse, bankruptcy and raid by FBI agents generated a litany of questions about how the Energy Department doles out billions in highly sought after green energy seed money.
A key question, experts and investigators say, is whether another Solyndra is in the offing.
Because if you don’t agree with Obama blowing billions of dollars on green energy boondoggles whether here or overseas, you’re just a racist is all you are.
Barack Obama, most of the Democrat Party and pretty much all the Occupy Wall Street hooligans are Trotskying I mean trotting out the tired Marxist myth that Republicans only care about the rich and that the rich are a bunch of evil thieves who somehow stole “the people’s” money by somehow forcing them to buy stuff. The entire movement is based on the servile, mindless philosophy of people who believe that somebody else owes them whatever they think they deserve to have.
I was glad to come across this editorial byInvestor’s Business Daily:
Inequality: President Obama’s class-envy strategy is built on a false premise — that the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. Amazingly, such zero-sum thinking is influencing public opinion.
Twice as many Americans support the anti-Wall Street protesters as oppose them. And even Rasmussen is polling that nearly half of Americans support proposals to soak the rich.
This is an emotional response to both the hard economic times and dishonest political rhetoric. People are buying into the notion peddled by the left that the rich steal from people. It’s a pernicious myth left over from preindustrial Marxism.
The left says current levels of income inequality echo the late 1920s and the Gilded Age. They’ve zeroed in on the richest 1%, citing Census Bureau data showing these top earners “grabbing” more income than the bottom 90%.
But the census stats are misleading.
For one, they are a snapshot of income distribution at a single point in time. Yet income is not static. It changes over time. Low-paying jobs from early adulthood give way to better-paying jobs later in life.
And income groups in America are not fixed. There’s no caste system here, really no such thing even as a middle “class.” The poor aren’t stuck in poverty. And the rich don’t enjoy lifetime membership in an exclusive club.
A 2007 Treasury Department study bears this out. Nearly 58% of U.S. households in the lowest-income quintile in 1996 moved to a higher level by 2005. The reverse also held true. Of those households that were in the top 1% in income in 1996, more than 57% dropped to a lower-income group by 2005.
Every day in America, the poor join the ranks of the rich, and the rich fall out of comfort.
So even if income equality is increasing, it does not mean income mobility is decreasing. There is still a great deal of movement in and out of the richest and poorest groups in America.
The beauty of our free-market system (what’s left of it), is that even among the thousands of Wall Street protesters thumping, “We are the 99%,” there are those who might not be able to say that a decade or so from now. Some might go on to profit from an Internet start-up. Others might get a rap contract. Anything’s possible in America.
One of those street agitators might even become president, following in the shoes of Obama, who’s now one of the 1-percenters he mocks.
Another problem with the census data is they don’t include the noncash income received by the lowest-income households. Each year, the poor get tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for housing, food and health care. None of these transfer payments, a lot of it paid for by the 1%, is counted as income by the Census Bureau.
One report estimates that the share of total income earned by the lowest-income group would rise roughly 50% if such welfare were considered.
Likewise, the share of total income earned by the top income quintile would drop about 7% if taxes paid to fund welfare were considered.
Census doesn’t take into account the equalizing effects of taxes. Though they earn more than 45% of total income, the top 10% of taxpayers pay over 70% of the total income-tax burden. The top 1%? They shoulder a whopping 40% of the tax load.
Federal Reserve and other data — which include all financial and nonfinancial assets, including bank accounts, investments, houses and cars — give a more complete picture of the gap. When you count all wealth, not just income, inequality has not gotten worse.
The top 1% account for 35% of total wealth, compared with 37% in 1922. In fact, the worst wealth disparity ever was in the 1990s under President Clinton.
That last sentence of the article bears repeating:
“In fact, the worst wealth disparity ever was in the 1990s under President Clinton.”
Democrats love lies. Their souls swim in lies. Lies and hypocrisy define Democrats. Take away the lies and the hypocrisy and Democrats simply dematerialize like the Cheshire cat.
Democrats have fabricated the narrative that the streets were paved with gold under Bill Clinton. They cite Clinton’s tax hikes as proving that high taxes and a healthy economy go hand in hand.
That it erally isn’t true doesn’t mean a thing to them.
For one thing, Bill Clinton LOWERED the capital gains tax even as he raised the income tax. That offset is completely off the modern Marxist Democrats’ radar now, but it was an essential offset, a sine qua non without which there would have been no healthy economy. Because low taxes HELP create a healthy economy. It is simply a fact.
Another thing that is important to consider is that a primary cause of the economic health of the 1990s had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Bill Clinton. The presidents who created that condition – the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of many markets that had previously been completely inaccessible to the United States – were Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
In the short-term aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union there was – unsurprisingly – a severe recession. Why was this not surprising? Two reasons: Because 1) investors don’t like uncertainty; and the world was a very uncertain place the first few years after the U.S.S.R. imploded as breakaway republics and unaccounted-for nuclear weapons abounded. And because 2) Western Europe went into a deep recession due to the fact that suddenly they were inheriting the shambles of the Soviet economy that had resulted from all the liberal socialism of the communist Soviet Union. Our major trading partners got weaker, which reduced their purchase of American products, which in turn affected the American economy. Obama has in fact been using that very same argument to try to claim that he wasn’t responsible for the failure of his economy the last three years.
By the time Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, the world was beginning to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union. New markets were opening. We were about to enter boom times.
But that still leaves a third thing to consider about the Clinton years. They didn’t start out so well: remember 1994? Remember that historic asskicking of Democrats in the midterm elections? Things weren’t going well at ALL; and it wasn’t until after the American people wisely elected Republicans to take over both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate that things BEGAN to start going well.
Democrats give Bill Clinton total credit for “balancing the budget.” But the fact of the matter is that balancing the budget was THE VERY FIRST PLATFORM OF THE FAMOUS REPUBLICAN CONTRACT WITH AMERICA. Things that were instrumental to balancing the budget – such as welfare reform – were FORCED on Bill Clinton. Clinton vetoed welfare reform TWICE before signing the same thing he’d vetoed into law. And then Clinton took credit for the thing he’d twice vetoed that was ultimately shoved down his throat. And with the help of a completely dishonest media, he managed to sell that lie.
But all in all, the 1990s (under the wise leadership of Republicans who controlled two of the three political branches of government after 1994) were good years. And they were years in which the wealthy had the largest share of the wealth in America of ALL TIME.
Which simply proves that the demagogic, Marxist, dishonest tirades that Obama, Democrats and liberals are screaming about today about “the rich paying their fair share” is simply a flat-out lie.
After pointing out that Democrats are liars and hypocrites, let me also point out that they are stupid people. Because believing lies and constantly putting up double-standards doesn’t make one more intelligent; it makes one more stupid. And the problem with Democrats today is that they are radically committed to a depraved, dishonest and perverted view of the world which cannot possibly be true because everything they believe has been refuted by history time after time.
And so they claim that socialism works when in fact it has failed every single time it has ever been tried. And they claim that Bill Clinton’s tax policies more fairly distributed wealth when in fact it did the exact opposite.
“First of all, he’s right. Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.”
Which is another way of saying the first thing the American people should want to do is throw this useless bum out of the people’s house.
This is breathtaking stupidity; and yet the stupider I believe Democrats are, the more right I turn out to be.
Barack Obama understands that Democrats are unbelievably stupid people who live in a world of lies. And he’s counting on that stupidity to try to lie his way to re-election. That’s the bottom line.
If you want to see liberal hypocrisy in action, just look at the Occupy Wall Street movement and the liberal media coverage of the movement. These are people who have every single Apple gadget in their hands, but are decrying the very capitalism that Apple so profitably exploited. The fact of the matter is that Apple has a FAR higher profit margin than either the oil companies or the banks that these loathsome hypocrites demonize, but consistency is simply not a virtue they care about. Furthermore, they have nothing to say about the greatest crony capitalist boondoggle ever seen: the Obama-backed Solyndra fiasco. And if that isn’t enough to demonstrate the hypocrisy that the left wallows in, consider the fact that the “whiteness” of the Tea Party demonstrators was brought up by the mainstream media over and over and over again to decry the movement as “racist.” And yet where are all the charges of racism now when the leftwing Occupy Wall Street movement is every scintilla as “white” as the Tea Party was???Ninety-nine percent of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are WHITE. And they are clearly racist, too as they blame all the problems in their terrible useless lives on the Jews. But suddenly no one in the mainstream media seems to care about the whiteness of the mob – or this particular mob’s active racism – any more.
Was this the moment the dictator died? A handgun points at the head of Gaddafi who is facing the ground with his hands behind his back
Fear on his face after being captured in his home town of Sirte, this is Gaddafi in the moments leading up to his death
Grimacing in pain: A still from a video taken from the mobile phone of a rebel fighter shows Gaddafi, his face covered in blood, being dragged around by freedom fighters
Losing blood: Gaddafi lifts a hand to his face to see the blood pouring from his wounds. The mobile phone footage shows the dictator slumped against a jeep but still alive
Grisly end: New pictures released today show Gaddafi’s scarred corpse on the floor of a freezer where it is being kept before burial
A day Libyans fought for: Gaddafi’s eyes are closed and mouth firmly shut as preparations are made for his burial
Pleading: Muammar Gaddafi begged with his captors for his life after he was found cowering in a storm drain
Chaotic: Gaddafi was pushed around by rebel fighters, one of whom filmed the incident on a mobile phone
Terrified: Moments after he begged for his life, Gaddafi was shot dead by rebel fighters
Struggle: Video footage shows Gaddafi being hauled off a rebel fighter truck minutes after his capture
Arguing: Gaddafi pictured in chaotic video footage minutes before he was killed
Celebration: Mohammed al-Bibi, seen here in a Yankees hat, points to a comrade holding Gaddafi’s golden gun. Al-Bibi is the one who found the despot in his final hiding place and duly claimed the war souvenir
Dead: The body of Gaddafi is covered with a blue plastic sheet at a house in Misrata. He is due to be buried at a secret funeral within the next 24 hours
Brutal end for tyrant who exported terror: Gaddafi’s body is displayed, clearly showing a bullet hole in his head
Procession: Libyans have been flocking to the morgue, where Gaddafi’s body was taken, and have been taking photographs of him
Dead: Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was also killed in a firefight in Sirte
Last moments of his life: Gaddafi’s son Mutassim lies on a sofa in pain and soaked with blood after his capture but before his death in Sirte
Mutassim Gaddafi: He was also killed by Libyan rebels
Bundled: An ambulance carries Gaddafi’s body from Sirte to Misrata
Transporting: An ambulance, containing happy rebel fighters, carries Gaddafi’s body after he was executed
Brutal: There had been fierce fighting around the drain before Gaddafi was finally killed. The body of a fighter can be seen in the dust at the centre of the screen
Already a monument: As celebrations continued, more and more graffiti appeared at the entrance to the drain where the leader was eventually found
Battleground: Bodies of suspected Gaddafi loyalists lie outside the storm drains their leader was captured
Start Thinking Right 