Chrysler appears almost certain to file for bankruptcy. GM fate is uncertain. Some predict 40% of American auto dealers will close.

U. S. Senator Arlen Specter, 79, returned to his Democrat Party roots this week. Some may recall he began his political career as a Democrat and switched running against John Heinz and lost.

Now he has rejoined the Democrat Party after discovering he was not reelectable as a Republican in the Pennsylvania Primary. He has had an estrangment from the national and state Republican parties over his increasingly contrary views especially on fiscal matter by supporting Obama’s borrowed “stimulus” package and $3.6 trillion budget..

Predictably the Pennsylvania Republican Party have pledged to defeat Specter in 2010. While possible that is tough. Senators Chris Dodd (D) Conn. and Harry Reid (D) Utah are among the Democrats who appear vulverable in 2010.

They’re saying that the swine flu comes from Mexico. Thank God we have an airtight border with Mexico.-David Letterman

The last days of April 1975 were among the darkest in American history. On April 29^th America was involved in the most notorious event since December 7, 1941 until September 11, 2001; it was April 29, 1975 that helicopters tried to lift the last few refugees from the embassy roof. The next day, April 30^th, South Viet Nam surrendered to the Soviet (Russian) backed Communist North Vietnam Army.

Just days earlier, a similar though smaller evacuation occurred in neighboring Cambodia as the Communist Khmer Rouge moved into Phnom Penh, its capital city. As the U. S. fled the city the U. S. ambassador asked Prince Sirik Matak is he too wanted to flee. His answer is hard to read and contains contemporary lessons for Americans today. He said,

“I thank you very sincerely for your letter and your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it. You leave, and my wish is that you will find happiness under the sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that IU love, it is no matter, because we are all born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you.”

When the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh, they shot Matak in the in the stomach. Unattended it took him three days to die. His slaughter was among the first of 2,500,000 to be murdered in the next four years from execution, starvation and forced labor.

Hopefully such disgrace and shame will not revisit upon us and others will not have to pay such a horrible price.

You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going ’cause you might not get there.                                                                                                               - Yogi Berra

Besieged Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared a “state of health emergency” because of the swine flu outbreak in neighboring Mexico where hundreds have died and  because of the dozens cases identified in the U. S. So far there has been one death in a U. S. hospital of a Mexican national brought there for treatment.

In a typical flu season 36,000 Americans succumb to other strains of flu. Whether or not  swine flu is indeed a threat or even an emergency if her hyperbole attracts attention and provokes Americans to get vaccinated against other known to be deadly flu strains her CYA effort will be productive.

Napolitano is under fire, including calls for her resignation, because of the report her department issued calling veterans and even American Legion member right wing extremists and threats that can be recruited into anti-government organizations. The timing of the report’s release at the same time the T. E. A. PARTIES sprung up around the nation is also questionable

Last night Obama nannied us all reflecting the CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL concern about swine flu and recommending during a flu pandemic, you can use simple actions to help protect yourself and others from becoming sick with the flu. No single action protects completely and there is no vaccine.. If used together, the steps below can help reduce the chances of becoming infected.

• Wash your hands often with soap and water. Use an alcohol-based hand cleaner if soap and water are not available.
• Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your arm when you cough and sneeze.
• Stay away from other people if you are ill.
• Avoid crowded places and large gatherings as much as possible.

There may be times during a pandemic when you must be in a crowded setting or in close contact (within 6 feet) with people who might be ill. During such times, the use of a facemask or a respirator might help prevent the spread of pandemic flu.

Mexico and Japan are issuing face masks but the CDC is not yet doing so. Its website describes precaution and the use of face masks should that become a recommendation - which it is not at this point. Just click face masks link for more details. Few of the face mask work because the flu virus is small enough to pass through them.

Although the if no swine flu vaccine it is still a good idea to get vaccinated against other strains that can and is fatal to tens of thousand a year.

Moorpark High School (east of Ventura, Ca.) claimed a fourth national Academic Decathlon title last Saturday, edging past Wisconsin. The “Ventura County Star” reports out of a possible 60-thousand, the final tally was 51-thousand-289-point-five for Moorpark High School and 50-thousand-979-point-nine for Waukesha West High School, out of a possible 60-thousand points. It is the second consecutive national title for Moorpark, which won last year by 23 points. The school’s previous national championships were in 1999 and 2003. The 2010 United States Academic Decathlon finals will be held in Omaha, Nebraska. Somebody’s doing something right at Moorpark High School.

Industry sources said Russia’s state-owned arms export agency, Rosoboronexport, has been briefing a range of oil-rich Middle East countries on Moscow’s fifth-generation fighter.

They said Russia has sought funding from such countries as Algeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for the Pakfa advanced tactical aviation aircraft.

“The Russian message has been that anybody who invests will have access to advanced technology and coproduction,” a source said. Proposed cuts in F-22 and F-35 5^th generation air superiority fighters have compromise the entire U. S. air defense capability. Plus, those warplanes been requested by U. S. allies but so far not OK’d by Obama leaving the wa open for Russia.

The sources said Pakfa has sought to echo the U.S.-led Joint Strike Fighter program. They said foreign investors would be allowed to produce key components of Pakfa and gain access to technology. Iran and Syria likely partners along with other Middle East allies..

Over the last two years, Russia has sought to expand its market in the Middle East. A key project has been the $8 billion military modernization program in Algeria as well as the Pantsyr S-1 air defense system in the UAE. The UAE invested in the development and enhancement of Pantsyr.

So far, only India has signed an agreement to join Pakfa. Other countries, such as Brazil and China, were said to have rejected the Russian program - China thinks it can built its own variation.

The industry sources said Rosoboronexport has marketed Pakfa to Gulf Cooperation Council states as a means to reduce their dependence on the United States. The sources said Russia, unlike the United States, would not impose any restrictions on the use of the aircraft, which has yet even been tested.

The prime contractor of Pakfa has been identified as Sukhoi. The company has invested $115 million into the program, estimated at costing more than $5 billion.

The sources said Middle East states have been monitoring development of Pakfa. They said the first flight was scheduled for late 2009, with deliveries set for 2017.

Israel and Turkey have been the only Middle East state involved in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But neither country has submitted a firm order amid rising costs and delays in aircraft development.

Sunday School bloopers:

• The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.
• Solomon, one of David’s sons, has 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
• Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you. He also explained, “Man doth not live by sweat alone.”
• It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance.

Jerusalem (AFP) April 21, 2009 - Israel wants to buy a rocket intercept system from the United States to protect against militant fire from the Gaza Strip, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview published on Tuesday.

“The Vulcan-Phalanx 120 MM (70 calibre) canons and radar will be part of a multi-layer defense to intercept rockets,” Barak told the Haaretz newspaper.

“Such defense, as far as I am concerned, is a strategic goal,” he said.

The system consists of the Phalanx radar for targeting rockets and the 20-millimetre (70 caliber) Vulcan Gatling gun to shoot them down, with each component costing 25 million dollars (19 million euros), Haaretz said. M61 Vulcan Gatling gun autocannon was first deployed in Viet Nam aboard a cargo aircraft nicknames “puff the magic dragon” and could fire 3,000-4,500 rounds per minute putting a bullet into every square foot in a target area 150 by 350 yards. Subsequently it was linked to the phalanx radar system abd deployed aboard U. S. Navy warships where it can acquire inbound target, automatically open fire and destroy cruise and other missile and targets.

The gun component is already being used by American and Israeli navy ships, it said.

Previous requests by Israel to buy the Vulcan-Phalanx have been waved aside by the US defense establishment, which has used the system with success in Iraq and Afghanistan and has reserved for its own military all units to be produced in the near future, it said.

During his planned June visit to the United States, Barak will ask US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to put Israel at the top of the list for the system, with the hope of securing at least one by the winter, Haaretz said.

Militants in the Gaza Strip, run by the Islamist Hamas movement since June 2007, regularly fire rockets and mortars into Israel. Most of the projectiles are notoriously inaccurate home-made devices dubbed “Qassam” with a range of up to 12 kilometres (more than seven miles).

Real church sign: If you’re headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns.

To paraphrase Albert Einstein “we call it theory because we aren’t sure what we’re doing.”

Not long ago you would be branded a scientific heretic for challenging the enduringly popular theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs, along with some 65 percent of all species 65 million years ago. Now it is being challenged in a paper published in the Journal of the Geological Society on April 27, 2009.

The crater, discovered in 1978 in northern Yucutan and measuring about 112 miles in diameter, records a massive extra-terrestrial impact. When spherules from the impact were found just below the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, it was quickly identified as the “smoking gun” responsible for the mass extinction event that took place 65 million years ago.

It was this event which saw the demise of dinosaurs, along with countless other plant and animal species. That provoked the theory and a string of Sci-Fi movies about life ending events due to comet and asteroid impacts.

However, a number of scientists have since disagreed with this interpretation but not the fact that every few 100,000 years or so a big chunk of rock smacks into the Earth shaking things up.

The newest research, led by Gerta Keller of Princeton University in New Jersey, and Thierry Adatte of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, uses evidence from Mexico to suggest that the Chicxulub impact predates the K-T boundary by as much as 300,000 years.

“Keller and colleagues continue to amass detailed stratigraphic information supporting new thinking about the Chicxulub impact, and the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous,” says H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.

“The two may not be linked after all.”

From El Penon and other localities in Mexico, says Keller, “we know that between four and nine meters of sediments were deposited at about two to three centimeters per thousand years after the impact. The mass extinction level can be seen in the sediments above this interval.”

Advocates of the Chicxulub impact theory suggest that the impact crater and the mass extinction event only appear far apart in the sedimentary record because of earthquake or tsunami disturbance that resulted from the impact of the asteroid.

“The problem with the tsunami interpretation,” says Keller, “is that this sandstone complex was not deposited over hours or days by a tsunami. Deposition occurred over a very long time period.”

The study found that the sediments separating the two events were characteristic of normal sedimentation, with burrows formed by creatures colonizing the ocean floor, erosion and transportation of sediments, and no evidence of structural disturbance.

The scientists also found evidence that the Chicxulub impact didn’t have the dramatic impact on species diversity that has been suggested.

At one site at El Penon, the researchers found 52 species present in sediments below the impact spherule layer, and counted all 52 still present in layers above the spherules.

“We found that not a single species went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub impact,” says Keller.

This conclusion should not come as too great a surprise, she says. None of the other great mass extinctions are associated with an impact, and no other large craters are known to have caused a significant extinction event.

Keller suggests that the massive volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Traps in India may be responsible for the extinction, releasing huge amounts of dust and gases that could have blocked out sunlight and brought about a significant greenhouse effect

This should not divert attention from efforts to detect the big rocks regularly whizzing by, like those that passed nearby in the past weeks, lest we take one in the chops. Once found diverting them becomes the problem that has spawned a virtual blizzard of ideas including one from Russia pointing out that the simplest may be best. Russian scientist suggests attaching a long tether from the offending chunk and another quickly and dramatically changing boths orbit missing Earth.

A Jewish gentleman stood before a delicatessen display counter and pointed to a tray. “I’ll have a pound of that salmon,” he said.
“That’s not salmon,” the clerk said. “It’s ham.”
“Mister,” the customer snapped, “in case nobody ever told you, you got a big mouth!”

Forty-one percent (41%) are in favor of a government-run health insurance plan, while 44% are opposed, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.

 Americans are evenly divided over whether a government plan would have an unfair advantage over private insurers. Thirty eight percent (38%) say yes; the identical number (38%) say no.

 But a plurality of all Americans (49%) still believes a private health insurance company is likely to provide better service and more choice. Twenty-nine percent (29%) say a government-run plan would do a better job and offer more choice, but one-out-of-five (21%) are not sure which would do better.

 One major issue is whether new health care options will allow Americans to choose their own doctors. It is significant to note that just 50% believe the current system allows most Americans to make that choice. Most private sector employees say that Americans today do not have such a choice, but government employees, entrepreneurs, and retirees disagree.

 Earlier surveys have shown that few Americans rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent, but most rate their own insurance coverage in such terms.

For Democrats, health care reform is the most important of Obama’s priorities this year, while Republicans and unaffiliated Americans rate deficit reduction as number one.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of U.S. voters agree with the president that “we must make it a priority to give every single American quality affordable health care.”

Patrocliny / patricliny (PA-truh-kli-nee) noun: Inheritance of traits primarily from the father. ETYMOLOGY:  From Greek patro- (father) + klinein (to lean). Ultimately from the Indo-European root klei- (to lean) that is also the source of lean, incline, ladder, lid, client, climate, and climax.

In a bitter irony on the day U. S. Senator Arlen Specter (D) Pa. switched parties becoming the 60^th Senate Democrat. Republicans took the  lead over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. This is just the second time in more than five years of daily or weekly tracking this has happened.

 A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 41% would vote for their district’s Republican candidate while 38% would choose the Democrat. Thirty-one percent (31%) of conservative Democrats said they would vote for their district’s Republican candidate.

 Overall, the GOP gained two points this week, while the Democrats lost a point in support. Still, it’s important to note that the GOP’s improved position comes primarily from falling Democratic support. Democrats are currently at their lowest level of support in the past year while Republicans are at the high water mark.

 Over the past year, Democratic support has ranged from a low of 38% to a high of 50%. In that same time period, Republicans have been preferred by 34% to 41% of voters nationwide.

 During calendar 2009, Democratic support has ranged from 38% to 42% and the Republican range has been from 35% to 41%.

 Democrats began the year holding a six- or seven-point lead over the GOP for the first several weeks of 2009. That began to slip in early February and the Republicans actually took a two-point lead for a single week in the middle of March. Since then, the results have ranged from dead even to a four point lead for the Democrats. Men now favor the GOP by a 45% to 34% margin. Women prefer the Democrats by a 42% to 38% margin.

 Other recent polling shows 50% believe the high reelection rates result from election rules that are “rigged to benefit members of Congress.”

Americans are evenly divided as to whether or not the government should create a health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies.

An analysis by Scott Rasmussen looks at the Beltway Republicans and concludes that they are on a continuing path to irrelevance.

 Whether this shift in generic approval is the harbinger of things to come is unlikely because of a broader trend. In California. for instance, the Republican party has skidded into the ditch of irrelevance.

Obama’s 100^th-day job approval rating is slightly less than Jimmy Carter’s at the same point, and about the same as Nixon, Ford, Bush I and II, and better than Clinton.

Michelle Obama is the first American first lady to have a full-time makeup artist travel with her entourage.

Ingrid Grimes-Miles has been serving as Michelle’s makeup artist for six years, and now splits her time between Washington and Chicago, where she works with news anchors at the TV station WGN.

“No other first ladies have consistently traveled with a makeup artist,” hairdresser Bernard Portelli, who has styled Hillary Clinton’s hair, told the New York Post.

“It took Laura Bush four years to finally look good. It’s taken Michelle Obama two months. She wears fake eyelashes that are beautiful. She can’t do those herself.”

Grimes-Miles and hairstylist Johnny Wright both accompanied Barack and Michelle Obama during their recent trip to Europe. The Obamas paid the pair’s travel expenses.

Observers suspect that Grimes-Miles is behind Michelle’s “most prominent beauty reinvention: her eyebrows,” the Post reported.

“After the first lady drew criticism for looking angry, her high-arched eyebrows were reshaped with a softer arc that gave her a friendlier appearance.”

The still unanswered question is does this costs American taxpayers anything? It appears that it does but those costs are being obscured and comingled with others costs.

Prosopagnosia (pros-uh-pag-NO-see-uh) noun: Inability to recognize familiar faces. ETYMOLOGY:From Greek prosopon (face, mask), from pros- (near) + opon (face), from ops (eye) + agnosia (ignorance). Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know) that is also the source of know, recognize, acquaint, ignore, diagnosis, notice, and normal.

What you are now reading may soon be illegal and monitored more than it already is.  A U. S. Senate Proposal could put heavy restrictions on internet freedoms. The bill would give Obama widespread powers even to shut down the Internet in the event of a cyberattack. That would have sweeping implications on American’s civil liberties scrapping freedom of speech.

James Osborne, in a FOXNews.com, 4/21/09 report says the days of an open, largely unregulated Internet may soon come to a screaching end.

the bill proposes to give Obama authority over all networks considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. Under the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2009, Obama would have the unilateral authority to shut down Internet traffic to “protect national security.” The issue is what does that mean?

First and foremost Obama, et. Al. would have access to digital data from a vast array of industries including banking, telecommunications and energy. A second bill, meanwhile, would create a national cybersecurity “adviser” - commonly referred to as the cybersecurity czar - within the Obama White House to coordinate strategy with a wide range of federal agencies involved.

The need for greater cybersecurity is obvious:

• Canadian researchers recently discovered that computers in 103 countries, including those in facilities such as embassies and news media offices, were infected with software designed to steal network data.
• A Seattle security analyst warned last month that the advancement of digital communication within the electrical grid, as promoted under President Obama’s stimulus plan, would leave the nation’s electrical supply dangerously vulnerable to hackers.
• on Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported that computer spies had broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project and had breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system.

The proposal to give the Obama White House the authority to regulate the Internet is sounding alarms among critics who say it’s another case of big government getting bigger and more intrusive.

Silicon Valley executives are calling the bill vague and overly intrusive, and they are rebelling at the thought of increased and costly government regulations amid the global economic crisis.

Others are concerned about the potential erosion of civil liberties. “I’m scared of it,” said Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group.

“It’s really broad, and there are plenty of laws right now designed to prevent the government getting access to that kind of data. It’s the same stuff we’ve been fighting on the warrantless wiretapping.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va, who introduced the bill earlier this month with bipartisan support, is casting the legislation as critical to protecting everything from our water and electricity to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records.

“I know the threats we face.” Rockefeller said in a prepared statement when the legislation was introduced. “Our enemies are real. They are sophisticated, they are determined and they will not rest.”

The bill would allow the government to create a detailed set of standards for cybersecurity, as well as take over the process of certifying IT technicians. But many in the technology sector say the government is simply ill-equipped to get involved at the technical level, said Franck Journoud, a policy analyst with the Business Software Alliance.

“Simply put, who has the expertise?” he said. “It’s the industry, not the government. We have a responsibility to increase and improve security. That responsibility cannot be captured in a government standard.”

Rockefeller nor the bills co-sponsored the bill, Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., will answer questions on cybersecurity until a later date.

Obama, meanwhile, is considering his own strategy on cybersecurity. On Friday, the White House completed a lengthy review of the nation’s computer networks and their vulnerability to attack. An announcement is expected as early as this week.

“I view [the Rockefeller bill] as an opening shot,” said Tien. “The concept is cybersecurity. There’s this 60-day review underway, and some people wanted to get in there and make their mark on the White House policy development.”

IT leaders hope the president will consider their argument that their business is not only incredibly complex and static, but that it also spreads over the entire globe.

If the United States was to set its own standard for cybersecurity, they say, it would create a host of logistical challenges for technology companies, virtually all of which operate internationally.

“Any standards have to be set at an international level and be industry led,” said Dale Curtis, a spokesman for the Business Software Alliance. “This industry moves so fast, and government just doesn’t move that fast.”

Many Silicon Valley executives remain hopeful that the White House’s recommendations will be more industry-friendly, following what Journoud said was a good dialogue with former Bush administration official Melissa Hathaway, who is leading the White House review and is considered a likely candidate for cybersecurity czar.

 Fidel Castro threw water on his brother’s reported cuddling up to Obama saying it was misunderstood. 

  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) California may have violated Senate ethics rules by introducing legislation in January that indirectly benefited her husband. The legislation authorized that $25 billion of taxpayer money be given to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to help finance an FDIC proposal to avoid home foreclosures by promoting loan workouts and increasing federal loan guarantees, The Washington Times reports. The Democratic California senator’s husband, Richard Blum, is chairman of the board of commercial real estate colossus CB Richard Ellis (CBRE). When Feinstein introduced her bill, the FDIC had just signed a contract with the firm to unload foreclosed properties for prices higher than industry averages, the Times points out. The FDIC generally receives all its money from insurance fees from banks rather than congressional authorizations. And the Times notes that Feinstein’s intervention was odd in that she isn’t even a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, which oversees the FDIC for Congress.

 Senate ethics rules say members must avoid not only conflicts of interest, but “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

 The Times obtained documents revealing that on Oct. 30, Feinstein first offered the FDIC assistance in its quest for money to stanch home foreclosures. She sent her letter two weeks before the agency chose CBRE for the contract to dump foreclosed properties the FDIC took over from failed banks.

 Spokesmen for the FDIC, Feinstein and CBRE told the Times there was no connection between the legislation and the contract and that the couple didn’t know about CBRE’s business with FDIC until after it was awarded.

 But ethics experts were critical. “This clearly gives the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Kent Cooper, a former federal regulator who specializes in government ethics and disclosures, told the Times.

 Harsh interrogations resulted in most of the information that porevented post 9-11 attacks including a planned attack on LA’s tallest building. 

Sen. Chris Dodd (D) Conn. has been tripping from one masque to another is trying to resurrect his lagging reelection hopes by attacking credit card companies for their stinking business practices such as changing usury fees and penalties. But, turns out the Senate Banking Committee chairman has a new dose of fleas this time for lying with some of the dirtiest dogs in a lending industry overrun by crooks and scoundrels - the pay day loan scum. Dodd happily pocketed $44,000 from payday loan companies and pawn brokers who typically charge 499% annual interest.

Dodd’s committee is considering a bill that would cap interest for consumer loans at 36%, and of course the pawnbrokers and payday loaners have their underwear in a bunch. The National Pawnbrokers Association website does not comment on its “payoff” to Dodd and others but offers a list of frail talking points to justify its loan shark like interest rates.

Dodd won’t say whether he supports the bill that would impact the payday loaners as well as pawn brokers.

Critics of both say they prey on low income people who pay the exorbitant interest some of which they shoveled to Dodd in the hope he’ll block or emasculate their part of the bill.

 Obama’s personal approval rating remains in the high 50% range but falls to less than half on how he’s handling the economy; on taxes and deficit.

 The U. S. Supreme Court appears divided over whether New Haven Connecticut ’s decision to scrap a promotion exam barring white firefighter’s promotion because too few minorities passed it violates the civil rights of top-scoring white applicants.

Justice Anthony Kennedy appeared to hold the key to the outcome. He seemed concerned that New Haven, Conn., scuttled the test after it learned that no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be promoted based on the results.

“It looked at the results and classified successful and unsuccessful applicants by race,” said Kennedy, who often frowns on racial classifications, yet is not as opposed to drawing distinctions on the basis of race as his more conservative colleagues.

But where Kennedy saw shades of gray, the rest of the court seemed to view the case clearly in terms of black and white.

The court’s conservative bloc seemed inclined to side with the white firefighters. “You had some applicants who were winners and their promotion was set aside,” Justice Antonin Scalia said.

The court’s liberals indicated that New Haven did nothing wrong by throwing out the test over concerns that it had a “disparate impact” on minorities in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

A ruling against the city, Justice David Souter said, could leave employers in a “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.” Souter’s comment reflected the concern of business interests who said in a court filing that a decision in favor of the white firefighters would place employers in an untenable position of having to choose whether to face lawsuits from disgruntled white or minority workers.

The firefighters’ dispute is one of two major civil rights cases on the court’s calendar in the next two weeks. The other deals with a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Underlying both cases are broader questions about racial progress and the ongoing need for legal protections from discrimination for minorities, especially after the election of President Barack Obama.

The discrimination lawsuit brought by 20 white firefighters - one also is Hispanic _ challenges New Haven’s decision to throw out promotion exams for lieutenants and captains in its fire department.

The plaintiffs, in their dark blue dress uniforms, posed for photographs Wednesday morning in front of the court.

The city argues that if it had gone ahead with the promotions based on the test results, it would have risked a lawsuit claiming that the exams had a “disparate impact” on minorities in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The federal appeals court in New York upheld a lower court ruling dismissing the lawsuit.

The case has drawn input from interest groups across the ideological spectrum. The Obama administration has weighed in mainly on the city’s side, although it recommends allowing the lawsuit to proceed on a limited basi

Obama’s Department of Education hid a report chronicling the success of a school vouchers program until after Congress had voted not to continue the program as he kowtowed to the Teacher’s Union who shoveled over $55 million to politicians.

That’s the report from Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution, who exposes the subterfuge in an article published by National Review Online.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program allows 1,714 children - 90 percent of them black and 9 percent Hispanic - to receive up to $7,500 to attend a private or parochial school instead of a public school in the District of Columbia, which is widely believed to have one of the nation’s most troubled school districts.

Since the program’s launch in 2004, 7,852 students have applied for these grants, and participants have been chosen by lottery.

Obama - who said last year that “you do what works for the kids” - did not intervene as Congress scheduled the program’s end after the 2009-2010 academic year.

“Now it emerges that Obama’s Department of Education  possessed peer-reviewed, congressionally mandated, federally financed research proving this program’s success,” Murdock writes.

“Though it demonstrates ‘what works for the kids,’ DOE hid this study until Congress squelched these children’s dreams.”

An amendment in the Senate to rescue the vouchers program failed on March 10 by a vote of 39 to 58. The DOE finally released the report on April 3. Even then, DOE researchers were reportedly barred from discussing their findings.

“You’d think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program,” An April 5 editorial in The Wall Street Journal reported.

During the March 10 vote, 57 Democrats voted and 54 of them opposed the vouchers program.

Why? Murdock suggested, “Follow the money,” and he pointed out that teachers’ unions shelled out $55,794,000 in political donations between 1999 and 2008, with 96 percent of the funds going to Democrats.

The “winners” in the Senate vote, he added, are “the teachers’ unions, who hate school choice, hate vouchers, and don’t give a damn about school kids when they threaten union pay, benefits, and control of classrooms.”

Private investigator Joe Culligan registered PresidentBillClinton.com and similar Clinton-related domain names in the late 1990s as a joke. Now Clinton’s lawyer is suing him action to gain ownership of those Web site addresses - as payback, Culligan says - for being critical of the former president..

Where does Obama find these moronic imbeciles? I’m talking about the likes of Charles Freeman, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, Timothy F. Geithner and now the supercilious and sardonic Janet Napolitano. I’m sure everyone has heard about the nine page intelligence report I’m alluding to. The one where our beloved Secretary of Homeland Security insults not only our military, but America as well. I took it as an insult, but what’s worse, I fear the agenda even more.

Why do I say that? Well, the report warns law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for “right-wing” extremist groups recruiting during these tumultuous economic times. She focused on returning veterans,  reviling our military. But who are the “right-wing” extremists she refers to? Is it gun owners? Anti-abortionists? Those against illegal immigration? Anyone who doesn’t fall into line and agree with liberal dogmas?

Once the report was leaked to the media House Minority Leader, John A. Boehner, called for an apology from Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security. After that, and heated criticism from other Republicans, conservative groups and veteran’s groups, she came out with this statement.

“Let me be very clear, we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States. We don’t have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group. We must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown,  regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence.”

What violence is she referring to? What ideology? I only know of one “right-wing” group. Hmmm, could she be talking about the Republican Party? Let’s go on, maybe we can decipher this.

“We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not - nor will we ever - monitor ideology or political beliefs.” She also said in the statement. “We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources.”

So, does this mean that the rigorous oversight and numerous internal and external sources is “Big Brother” watching over us? Well, according to her, at least those who don’t agree with her and the Administration’s agenda. And whose civil rights is she protecting? Those same gun owners? Right to life advocates? Illegal immigration protesters, et al? I  don’t think so. I believe Janet has some ‘esplaining to do.

Here is Michael Savage’s take on it all.

“What does Big Sis say these right-wingers are concerned about? Illegal aliens, the increasing power of the federal government, gun grabs, abortion and the loss of U.S. national sovereignty. In other words, anyone who is worried about preserving our borders, language, and culture is on Big Sis’ watch list.”

That’s simply put. But what say we give “Big Sis” a break and chalk this up to just another gaffe. After all, isn’t she the one that said; “If the U.S. will be placing National Guard troops along the Mexican border to guard against the massive drug cartel violence happening inches away from the border, it is only fair that the we also place National Guard troops on the Canadian border to keep from hurting the feelings of Mexicans and perhaps proud Canadian drug runners.”

Oh wow! Where does Obama get them from?

Bien-pensant (bee-aN poN-saN [the last three syllables are nasal]) adjective:1. Right-thinking; conservative; conformist.2. Self-righteous.1. A right-thinking person.2. A self-righteous person.

The US government has endorsed a plan to build a new generation of spy satellites, although funding to boost the Pentagon’s imaging capacity still needs congressional approval. There is no provision for defense spending in Obama’s “stimulus” package even though defense jobs are well paid - proposed cuts in F-22 production will cost 65,000 jobs.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday that his agency and the Department of Defense had finalized a plan to modernize the fleet of US observation satellites.

“Imagery is a core component of our national security that supports our troops, foreign policy, homeland security and the needs of our intelligence community,” Blair said in a statement.

He said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees all US spy agencies, had studied the need for the “next generation of electro-optical satellites,” and stressed that the government needs “to move forward now.”

US media said the program would require some $10 billion, although a DNI spokesperson told AFP that the cost of the plan is classified.

Republican lawmaker Pete Hoekstra, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said he would “not make any judgment” until he sees the plan.

But, he said, the committee “will have a briefing as soon as we get back to Washington” on April 20 after the spring congressional recess, “and we’ll study this very closely.”

The US government canceled a similar program in 2005 because it was deemed too expensive.

“When it comes to supporting our military forces and the safety of Americans, we cannot afford any gaps in collection,” Blair said Tuesday.

“We are living with the consequences of past mistakes in acquisition strategy, and we cannot to do so again.”

Congress is on a collision course with Obama over defense issues.

He is trying to appeal to the Mexican people. He even changed his slogan to “Yes, we Mexi-can.”

The owners of ground zero, locked in a new round of heated talks with a private developer about how and when to build office towers at the World Trade Center site, have proposed indefinitely putting off two of three planned skyscrapers until the real estate market recovers, officials familiar with the negotiations say according to AP..

One analysis prepared for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey predicts World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein wouldn’t be able to finish building all three towers he plans for decades, with the last tower finished by 2030.

Silverstein and the Port Authority have been talking on and off for months about rewriting a 3-year-old agreement that gives the developer rights to build three out of five towers planned at the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack site.

In a failing economy where developers have found it impossible to obtain financing for new projects, Silverstein last fall asked the Port to back financing for two of his towers, three officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.

The Port Authority about a week ago agreed to back about $800 million in financing for one tower already under construction, where the Port Authority has agreed to lease space once it’s completed.

The other two towers shouldn’t be built until there is enough demand for commercial office space downtown, the Port has said.

An analysis of Silverstein’s plan by the Cushman & Wakefield real estate brokerage projected that while two of Silverstein’s towers could be built by 2013, a third would not be built until 2030 and fully leased until 2036. A second tower that hasn’t been built yet wouldn’t be fully leased until 2025, the brokerage says.

Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward said Thursday that even in this market, the government cannot subsidize Silverstein.

“Mr. Silverstein is asking the public sector to finance … his building,” Ward said. Silverstein “is seeking the Port Authority’s capacity to finance office space downtown.”

Janno Lieber, who oversees the trade center site for Silverstein, said the developer wants to build all the towers as quickly as possible, “as we all promised the public so that downtown could realize its potential.”

Silverstein has not formally rejected the port’s proposal. Both sides need a new deal, in which Sept. 11 insurance money was split to pay for the towers. Silverstein has paid about $800 million in rent since 2001 for the undeveloped space and has collected over $100 million in development fees. The Port Authority is paying Silverstein $300,000-a-day late fees for not excavating all the land Silverstein needs to build on. The lease requires Silverstein to build his three towers by 2013 or forfeit rights to them.

Kathryn Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York business group, said the real estate market would likely drive the decision how fast to build back office space.

“If you don’t have commercial tenants demanding the space, I don’t see it being developed,” she said. But she wondered at projections like the 2030 date, saying demand for new office space in lower Manhattan would happen long before that.

“It may take five years, it may take 10 years,” she said, “but it’s not going to take 21 years.”

The red and white striped barber pole displayed in front of shop now recall blood soaked bandages drying there in the middle ages when barbers were also dentists and doctors.

  A recent upturn in deadly bombings in Iraq has exposed the risk that a planned  and announced withdrawal of US forces will be seized on by insurgents as an opportunity to wreak new carnage, analysts told AFP.

The decision to speed up the drawdown of American troops from Iraq, which the U. S.  invaded six years ago, and focus on Afghanistan has also raised the perception that the United States has lost interest, which must be avoided, they said.

When the U. S. withdrew from South Viet Nam there were grave predictions that millions could die there and in neighboring Cambodia which came true but many Americans and America were weary of the war, and just wanted out. Some are concerned about similar slaughter in Iraq this time provoked by neighboring Iran and Syria but with poetentially the same fatal results.

“It is crucial not to create the impression in Iraq that we have somehow disengaged,” said Noah Feldman, author of “After Jihad, What We Owe Iraq.” He was a senior adviser to the Coalition Provincial Authority (CPA) set up after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

“So far the insurgency in its various guises has without exception tested US policy when it is rolled out. I see no reason to think this time is any different,” said Feldman, a professor of Law at Harvard University.

Obama said during a visit to Iraq on April 8 that the next 18 months would be “critical,” and also pledged he would stick to a timetable for all American troops to leave by the end of 2011.

Obama wants all combat troops out by August next year, and US soldiers are already scheduled to withdraw from major cities and towns by June, to help speed a planned military “surge” in Afghanistan.

“I am deeply concerned about keeping our eye on the ball and maintaining security,” said Feldman. “In fact, this is crucial,” he added, alluding to the risk of losing interest in Iraq because of US military aims to battle a bloody Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and attacks by Al-Qaeda militants based in the lawless border areas of Pakistan.

February and March saw the number of deaths from unrest in Iraq rise from a six-year post-conflict low of 191 in January to 258 and 252 respectively, according to defence, interior and health ministry statistics in Baghdad.

The death toll remained high in March because of four major suicide bombings.

Incidents in the past 10 days have included a series of six co-ordinated car bombings in Baghdad that killed at least 34 people and wounded 139 and two suicide attacks on Iraqi security bases, one of which killed five US soldiers.

Defence and police officials said on Thursday a suicide bomber disguised in military uniform killed 16 Iraqi soldiers west of Baghdad, although a defence ministry spokesman later denied the deaths, saying 38 recruits were wounded.

United Nations figures show that the number of attacks rose in every region of Iraq in the first week of April, compared with the last week of March.

Lydia Khalil, international affairs fellow in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former policy adviser for the CPA in Baghdad, also said Washington must maintain its concentration on Iraq.

“We need to view these recent attacks as a reminder that just because the surge has succeeded in bringing a measure of stability to Iraq, there are still many more dangers that lie ahead,” New York-based Khalil said.

“This is especially true as US troops begin to draw down even more of their forces,” in line with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed between Washington and Baghdad last November.

“We are going to have to think of other ways to help Iraqi security forces against terrorist attacks,” she added.

“In and around northern Iraq, particularly around Mosul and disputed territories (such as oil-rich Kirkuk), will be particular trouble spots.”

The US military concedes that Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city located in the north of the country, remains an Al-Qaeda stronghold.

Colonel Gary Volesky, a US commander in northern Iraq, said this week the troops would remain there if Baghdad asked them to. Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi also said Baghdad was prepared to be flexible in the case of Mosul.

Michael O’Hanlon, who specialises in US national security policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, said he was “worried, but worried in general” about Iraq’s security situation, not because of recent trends.

“Mosul is a challenge but I think, and have thought, that the Iraqis will be pragmatic and if they need our help, they’ll find a way to keep requesting it,” he said.

Residents of a northeast Kansas town are mourning the deaths just hours apart of an elderly couple who were married 67 years. Arnita Yingling died in her sleep early Saturday at the family’s home in Troy. She was 93. Six hours later her 95-year-old husband, Lyle, died at a nursing home in the nearby town of Wathena.

At their funeral Wednesday, friends and relatives described the two as inseparable. Some found comfort knowing neither would have to live without the other.

The Yinglings were married in 1941. Both were born on northeast Kansas farms and were active in Troy as members of their church and civic organizations.

Obama’s White House insisted a monogram symbolizing the name of Jesus be hidden from the backdrop of a speech Obama gave at Georgetown University Tuesday. (He did not, as internet blogs have reported, demand every religious symbol opn campus be coveraged - that’s a hoax.)

The letters IHS, which represent the first three letters of “Jesus” in Greek, stand on a wooden archway above the dais where Obama gave his speech and they were concealed at White House direction.

The White House insisted that all university signs and symbols behind the stage be concealed, said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Jesuit-founded school in Washington, D.C.

“The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they’ve done for other policy speeches,” Bataille told The Washington Times.

“Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn’t high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal, and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context.”

The Catholic University of America, also in Washington, might have handled the situation differently. “I can’t imagine, as the bishops’ university and the national university of the Catholic Church, that we would ever cover up our religious art or signage for any reason,” Catholic University spokesman Victor Nakas told The Times,

“Our Catholic faith is integral to our identity as an institution of higher education,” he said.

But the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown, advanced a more relaxed approach.

“It is more for camera quality than anything else,” he told The Times. “They don’t want distractions that would make the eye wander. I don’t think this is motivated by theology, but by communications strategy.”

Obama drew some criticism from the left when he chose conservative Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. His statements about America no longer being just a Christian nation, and Obama’s secular or tather non-Christian leanings including why he has yet to attend a religious service as president has sparked debate among Chrirstian-Jews and even some Muslims - for different reasons.

People are wondering if Notre Dame University will kow tow to Obama’s secularist “communications strategy.”

Rep. Ron Paul declares that the federal war on drugs is a failure and legalizing marijuana would reduce the prison population and in effect the crime rate

The hallowed Harvard Endowment, $37 billion as of last June, is reporting its biggest losses in 40-years. Harvard University is said to be running out of money freezing salaries of faculty and non-union employees and offering early buyouts of 1,000 employees.

Last September it s endowment corporationwas still riding high. So much so there was brave talk of providing free tuition to every student. By February 2009 staff was being severely cut and investigatiuon begun about what some are calling arrogance in its investing, and maybe worsse.

Then Harvard Divinity School said it can no longer meet its tuition scholarship commitments.Its school of arts and sciences is cutting its budget by $100 million and delayed construction of its proposed $1 billion new science center.
Simultaneously Harvard has raised it debt load by selling $1.5 billion in bonds the largest debt offering ever.
The Harvard Endowment is the largest in America and is reported to have lost $8 billion since last summer. It still has boast $29 billion.

It has been over 3 decades since I strode across its quad. Those were heady days for its planned giving programs as money literally poured in.  I confess to utter dismay and surprise by this starling news.

770 car dealers closed in 2008 and perhaps twice that number may close shop in 2009.

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked
and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.The professor then said OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged, and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were
averaged, and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset, and the
students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the
students who studied little had studied even less, and the ones who studied hard
decided they wanted a free ride too; so, they studied little. The second test
average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average
 was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name calling all resulted in hard
feelings, and no one  would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to  their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ltimately fail because
when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government
takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than  that….

Michelle Obama is the first American first lady to have a full-time makeup artist travel with her entourage.

An estimated 1,000 T. E. A. (Taxed Enough Already) Parties occurred spontaneously across the country to protest “taxation with rotten representation” and an array of less politically correct slogans like BORN FREE:TAXED TO DEATH. The non-violent protests have no paid staff and receive no government funding.

The New York Times and Boston Globe ignored protest day entirely; CNN ’s story reporter insulted participants and MSNBC was at best condencending. The general main stream media theme was the T. E. A. Parties were an artifact of right wing media like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Detractors fallaciously point out as evidence of some organizing hand that there has been a TEA Party website operating since at least last fall before the presidential election. Proponents say this fledgling movement is an enduring symbol of things American.

So far the protests have been peaceful and few detractors have showed up in counter protest, About the only reported incident has been a protest set for the Treasury Building in Washington DC that the Secret Service discouraged even though participants has a city police permit as required.

Monday was “tax indepence day” when the average American started working for themselves having worked up to then just to pay their taxes. April 15^th is the income tax payment deadline when you must ay your taxes although you can gte an automatic extension until October 15, 2009 to file your return. April 25^th is the day when the Obama administration will have spent every dollar collected and started using borrowed money - largely Chinese.

Politicians are counting on the TEA Party movement to fizzle. But, the first real test will be California’s May 19th Special election when voters will approve or reject various taxation proposals. The Governor. who has disappeared from the State, and legislators are forecasting doom if Californians reject the deceptively worded and confusing ballot propositions. Recent polls show all the propositions losing. The White House said Obama was “unaware” of the protests. So far he has made no comment.

ABC News reluctantly is featuring the TEA Parties on its morning shows.

USA TODAY reported on Tuesday that “Two United Nations agencies spent millions in U.S. money on substandard Afghanistan construction projects, including a central bank without electricity and a bridge at risk of “life threatening” collapse, according to an investigation by U.S. federal agents.”

The U.N. ran a “quick impact” infrastructure program from 2003 to 2006 under a $25 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The U.N. delivered shoddy work, diverted money to other countries and then stonewalled U.S. efforts to figure out what happened, according to a report by USAID’s inspector general obtained by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act.

“Due to the refusal of the United Nations to cooperate with this investigation, questions remain unanswered,” the report says.

Federal prosecutors in New York City were forced to drop criminal and civil cases because the U.N. officials have immunity, according to the report. USAID has scaled back its dealings with the U.N. and hired a collection agency to seek $7.6 million back, Deputy Administrator James Bever said. The aid agency hasn’t heeded its inspector general’s request to sever all ties.

“There are certain cases where working with the U.N. is the only option available,” Bever said in an e-mail.

The quick-impact program was designed to demonstrate results and promote confidence in the reconstruction effort, but the report suggests it did the opposite.

One U.N. employee told investigators that “about $10 million of USAID grant money went to projects in other countries, to include Sudan, Haiti, Sri Lanka and Dubai.” That witness said the Afghanistan country director for the U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which served as the contractor on the project for the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), spent about $200,000 in U.S. money to renovate his guesthouse. Witness names were withheld by USAID.

The development program hired UNOPS to do the work and kept a 7% management fee, the report says. The finances were “out of control,” an unnamed project services manager told investigators.

An unnamed USAID contractor told investigators that the program was “ill conceived from the beginning. This was a political idea to do quick impact projects that would look good,” the report said.

Investigators found that projects reported as “complete” were actually so shoddily built that they were unusable, the report said. For example:

• A bridge near Kandahar cost $250,000, had to be overhauled by other contractors and still was not safe. The U.N. claimed the bridge was damaged by flood, but a colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told investigators that “falls between absolute incompetence and a lie; the project was improperly constructed.”
• An airstrip in the southern town of Qalat, originally budgeted at $300,000, cost $749,000 and could not accommodate military planes.
• A $375,000 headquarters for Afghanistan’s central bank lacked electricity or plumbing, and basement flooding destroyed stacks of local currency.

Investigators found that UNDP withdrew $6.7 million from a U.S. line of credit without permission in 2007, months after the project had ended. UNDP has yet to explain what happened to that money, the report says.

“This is a disturbing report and an egregious example of the kind of fraud and waste that needs to be fixed,” said Mark Kornblau, a spokesman for Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. “The U.S. is committed to making the U.N. more accountable.”

Vitaly Vanshelboim, UNOPS deputy executive director, did not dispute that some of his agency’s work was substandard and that money was improperly diverted. He said UNOPS had overhauled itself dramatically since then. An internal U.N. investigation found serious irregularities by one former official that have since been addressed through management reforms, he said.

UNDP spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called the report “disturbing.” Both officials denied that their agencies failed to cooperate with investigators.

“We are continuing to work closely with USAID to get to the bottom of all of the issues they have raised,” he said in an e-mail.

USAID’s inspector general, Donald Gambatesa told the Commission on Wartime Contracting during a February public hearing that he was “concerned” that his agency was continuing to do business with the U.N.

Commissioner Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon controller, asked Gambatesa whether the agencies have immunity “if they siphon (their U.S. grants) all off into Swiss banks? Is that accurate? They will be totally immune, no matter what they do with the money?”

“My understanding is, yes,” Gambatesa replied.

On Monday, Alonzo Fulgham, USAID’s acting administrator, met in New York to discuss the matter with Ad Melkert, the development program’s acting administrator, USAID said in a statement.

“Mr. Melkert pledged UNDP’s full cooperation with USAID in reforming UNDP’s project management practices, improving financial accountability and in recovering any missing funds,” the statement said.

Jamie Fox says he’s sorry for acting the ass on his Sirius radio program and insulting a teenaged girl actress. Some see his absolution as a double standard because he is black and she white while Imus, equally the ass, was fired for insulting a basketball team of black women.

You might have thought that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would have retired her nearly $6 million presidential campaign debt a long time ago.

Apparently not, judging from an e-mail sent out today by Hillary Clinton for President announcing a lottery - only $5 a ticket - and offering as prizes a day with Bill Clinton in New York (as part of “your own special New York City weekend”), a trip to the American Idol Finale in Los Angeles or a flight to Washington for you and a guest for a tour of the District with political operatives and commentators James Carville and Paul Begala.

Almost every dollar raised from the Carville-Begala pitch will go toward someone who those advisers had quite a stormy relationship with - Mark Penn, the pollster-strategist who was ousted midway through the 2008 primary season.

According to year-end filings with the Federal Election Commission, Clinton’s campaign had outstanding debts of $5,943,385. Of that total, Penn’s firm was still owed $5,362,278 as of Dec. 31.

In the e-mail from Carville, he says that he “knew it was going to take an extraordinary effort to help pay off Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt.” Especially after the economy sank and the job situation turned dreary.

So the idea would be “to have some fun” while settling her debt, Carville says. “These amazing prizes are only being offered online and are available only for a limited time,” he says, “so please don’t delay in acting today.”

Then you can “win one of three truly once in a lifetime opportunities.” A day with Bill, a night at Americana Idol or, he says, you can “talk politics with me” - and Begala.

The problem is lotteries are unlawful in many states and this whole thing raises serious questions about internet gambling too.

Homeland Security Report: RightWing, Military Retirees, even the American Legion are “Radical Fringes”

Note: David K. Rehbein, an Army veteran and national commander of The American Legion,  sent the following letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in response to the recent Homeland Security report warning about “Rightwing Extremism.”

Secretary Janet Napolitano
Department of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

April 13, 2009

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

On behalf of the 2.6 million-member American Legion, I am stating my concern about your April 7 report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence and Recruitment.”

First, I want to assure you that The American Legion has long shared your concern about white supremacist and anti-government groups. In 1923, when the Ku Klux Klan still yielded unspeakable influence in this country, The American Legion passed Resolution 407. It resolved, in part,  “…we consider any individual, group of individuals or organizations, which creates, or fosters racial, religious or class strife among our people, or which takes into their own hands the enforcement of law, determination of guilt, or infliction of punishment, to be un-American, a menace to our liberties, and destructive to our fundamental law…”

The best that I can say about your recent report is that it is incomplete.  The report states, without any statistical evidence, “The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during the Oklahoma City bombing, but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42 million veterans who have worn this nation’s uniform during wartime.  To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical “disgruntled military veteran” is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam.

Your report states that “Rightwing extremists were concerned during the 1990s with the perception that illegal immigrants were taking away American jobs through their willingness to work at significantly lower wages.” Secretary Napolitano, this is more than a perception to those who have lost their job. Would you categorize union members as “Right Wing extremists”?

In spite of this incomplete, and, I fear, politically-biased report, The American Legion and the Department of Homeland Security share many common and crucial interests, such as the Citizen Corps and disaster preparedness. Since you are a graduate of New Mexico Girls State, I trust that you are very familiar with The American Legion. I would be happy to meet with you at a time of mutual convenience to discuss issues such as border security and the war on terrorism.  I think it is important for all of us to remember that Americans are not the enemy. The terrorists are.

Sincerely,

David K. Rehbein
National Commander
The American Legion

The ill-advised even bizarre report says in part: Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.  It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.

Secretary Janet Napolitano  is underfire for the report and some are calling for her resignation.

Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.

What the hell are these complete nitwits at Homeland Security thinking?

Obama goes to Mexico today to discuss trade, drugs and guns.  Mexico blames America’s drug users for fiancning the problem. Analysts point to endemic Mexican corruption and point out that the guns from US issue is a strawman with the vast majority coming across Mexico’s southern border.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in L.A. Friday urging voters to pass measures on the upcoming ballot that are directly tied to the success of the recently passed budget. At the L.A. Chamber of Commerce offices, the governor said if Props 1-A through 1-F fail, the state faces the possibility of financial collapse. Legislators tried to close the $42-billion gap in the troubled budget, but their attempts have wound up as measures on the May 19th public ballot. Most of the props relate to keeping tax revenue streams flowing well beyond their original end dates. All of the measures are trailing in the most recent polls.

A recent Chinese state-run press report provides new information indicating that China’s military plans to develop strategic lift for power projection capabilities around the world.

The April 1 report in the Chinese military newspaper stated that delegates to the recent National People’s Congress, the communist party organ that seeks to present itself as a democratic institution, recently discussed “how to push forward the construction of the strategic projection capability of our armed forces.”

Such forces are needed to display comprehensive national strength and military strength.

“We must carry out various measures to speed up the process to improve the rapid maneuver capability of our armed forces in various directions, such as on the ground, at the sea and in the air,” the report said.

Recent humanitarian and peacekeeping operations demonstrated that the Chinese military needs forces to conduct what in Chinese parlance is called “walk outside the country” and “go far away.”

Gao Shouwei, the commander of the Air Force under the Guangzhou Military Region, was quoted as saying that each time power projection capability is improved by a factor of one, combat power will be increased by two or three times.

Chinese power projection capability is being enhanced by more and larger sea and air transports as well as large number of submarines.

Such public discussion of Chinese power projection is unusual, as Beijing’s state-run media normally do not discuss such topics

Nationwide the sales of antacids has increased by 8% due to anxiety about the economy.

IT IS PORN FOR PRAYER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

The University of Maryland is trading porn for prayer as the 175-member “senate” (composed of faculty and students) voted 42 to 14 to end prayer at its upcoming graduation ceremony in order to be “sensitive” and join its peers “like UC Berkeley.” At the same time there is a campus campaign of sorts to show a hard-core pornographic film as an official part of its activities. The decision will be reviewed by its president and thence go to the university’s board for review before it becomes policy.

Coincidentally, this week’s NEWSWEEK cover bears the title, DECLINE AND FALL OF CHRISTIAN AMERICA, with the words arranged in a red cross on a black background, recalling TIME’S famous “Is God Dead?” cover of the mid-sixties. The story intones, “The end of Christian America”: The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now-and what, as a nation, we are about to become.”

According to the article, the annual 2009 American Religious Identification Survey summary got the attention of R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary because it said, “The number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent,” and names the Northeast as “the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.” As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America’s religious culture was cracking.”

The PEW CENTER forum reports that 78% of Americans identify themselves as Christian; the Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll found the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent.

In June, 2008, then Senator Obama declared in a speech in Jerusalem that the U. S. is “no longer [exclusively] a Christian nation,” but is also a nation of others, including Muslims and nonbelievers.

It was in that speech that Obama also blasted the “Christian right” for hijacking religion and using it to divide the nation: “Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us,” he said.

Asked last year to clarify his remarks, Obama repeated them to the Christian Broadcast Network. “I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers,” Obama wrote in an e-mail to CBN News senior national correspondent David Brody.

“We should acknowledge this and realize that when we’re formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we’ve got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community,” wrote Obama.

It was just over 100 years ago that Justice Brewer in CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY V. UNITED STATES, 143 U. S. 457 (1892) said:

“If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, ‘In the name of God, amen’; the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

Comments by Rev. Bill Seimens::

The spectacle of Barack Obama’s accusing the Christian right of hijacking religion and exploiting it to divide us further amounts to an act of mega-hypocrisy, coming as it does from a man whose close friend and long-time mentor, the Rev. Wright, is a religious hatemonger of the first order. What has caused that extreme reaction in some conservative circles is the hijacking of the United States itself by the far left.

The historical fact is that the nation was in “the greatest generation” when it was far more Christian than it is today, when we are plagued by crime, violence, vice and corruption. I submit that it is very difficult to pass this off as mere coincidence. There is a set of values that any sober evaluation of our history will show made us great, and if we think we can eliminate prayer from our commencement ceremonies and replace it with hard-core porn, and then send out graduates who will mend the ills of our country, we are the most deluded generation in history.

Oh, and by the way, wasn’t it the University of Maryland whose medical students a few generations back solved the problem of a lack of cadavers to practice on by paying grave robbers to supply them?

This country was founded on the principle that it would be a nation ruled by Christian values, as stated by Judge Brewer, and that it would welcome those of other faiths to join us, become Americans, and worship as they pleased. The thought that those others should then demand that we drop everything to the lowest common denominator is an abomination. It is as if some people believe they have found a cure for all forms of cancer. Others move in and feel the others are deluded, and refuse to take the cure. Subsequently, they demand that those others stop claiming that they have such a cure.

In fact, there are historical precedents for such foolishness. In the Middle Ages Christian forces captured a Muslim doctor and put him to work treating their troops. A soldier was brought in with a leg wound, and the Christian doctor announced that the leg had to be amputated. The Muslim doctor protested, saying that his people healed such wounds on a regular basis. The Christian doctor retorted that the Muslims were barbarians and were wrong about this, and ordered a man with an axe to chop off the soldier’s leg. His first chop missed, at which point the soldier fainted. The second blow spattered the room with bone, blood and flesh. The third blow took off the leg, but the soldier was dead.

As long as our only absolute value is the conviction that there are no absolute values, we are going to continue riding the bobsled of emptiness and meaninglessness down into national oblivion. If we go the way the University of Maryland is threatening to go, so ends a great nation-not with a bang but with a whimper.

April 15^th is the day Americans have to file and pay their income taxes. April 13^th is the tax freedom day by when Americans have worked long wnough to pay their taxes. April 25^th is the day when Obama will have spent every nickel paid by Americans in taxes for 2008, and the rest of the year’s will be finances by borrowed money mostly from China.

Did you hear about the latest Rasmussen Poll? In their recent telephone survey they asked American adults “Which is a better system - Capitalism, Socialism or Not Sure”? Barely half (53%) said Capitalism was better while 20% said Socialism and 27% wasn’t sure. Wow.

Digging into the demographics is even more revealing. So who favors Socialism? Mainly the young. Only 13% of people over 40 picked Socialism over Capitalism while that doubles to 26% of the thirty something crowd and jumps to one-third (33%) of the youngest adults picking Socialism as the better system. Wow again. It is one thing to be idealistic when you are young but this is carrying it too far.

Except the Rasmussen report that accompanied this finding poses the hypothesis that perhaps the young aren’t as much socialistic as they are dumb. OK so they didn’t quite put it that way but that was the general gist of it. You see their survey never defined either Capitalism or Socialism, it simply asked which system was better. So maybe the 20 year olds just didn’t understand the meaning of those words so that they couldn’t make an informed decision. Hmmm. Sounds like what we saw during the Presidential election, doesn’t it?

This ignorance was supported by earlier surveys which showed that 70% of Americans supported a “free-market economy” while only 15% prefer a “government-managed economy” and another survey showed that just 14% believe the government would do a better job of running the auto companies. Granted, these surveys polled different people but if 70% want a free-market economy and yet only 53% want Capitalism then what else can you infer other than many people are poorly educated and not too bright.

Think I am being too hash? That maybe the older generation has always denigrated the younger generations? Think again. In the history of this country, never before have one-third of the younger generation turned their backs on what makes America great - the rights of the individual and instead are embracing a political system that promotes the government over the individual. And if they truly aren’t Socialists and basically didn’t understand the terminology then they are uneducated fools. So take your pick - in thirty years America will be run by either Socialists or ignorant twits. Feel better now?

Saccharin, the sweetener in those pink packets, was discovered by accident because chemist Constantin Fahlberg didn’t wash his hands after a day at the office.

Prepare to get icked.

 The year was 1879 and Fahlberg was trying to come up with new and interesting uses for coal tar. After a productive day at the office, he went home and something strange happened.

 He noticed the rolls he was eating tasted particularly sweet. He asked his wife if she had done anything interesting to the rolls, but she hadn’t. They tasted normal to her. Fahlberg realized the taste must have been coming from his hands - which he hadn’t washed.

 The next day he went back to the lab and started tasting his work until he found the sweet spot. Nobody paid much attention until sugar shortages during World War I sent bakers and others scrambling for alternatives.

Saccharin is an artificial sweetener. The basic substance, benzoic sulfinide, has effectively no food energy and is much sweeter than sucrose, but has an unpleasant bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. In countries where saccharin is allowed as a food additive, it is used to sweeten products such as drinks, candies, medicines, and toothpaste.

Obama’s scorecard from his Euro-Turkish trip does not tally much of anything concrete - absolutely nothing moved  on any of big policy issues - zilch, nada. Media awarded Obama a “Gentleman’s C” avoiding a failing grade.

Obamania followed him while leaders bobbed, weaved and ducked his “demands.”

France and Germany vetoed Obama’s giant $1 trillion global stimulus plan green lighting only funds for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - a small success, at best

At the NATO summit his pleas for additional combat troops in Afghanistan were rejected in favor of little more than a few more crossing guards with the proviso they’d stay out of harm’s way and even that paltry concession of 5,000 troops would be pulled home after Afghanistan’s August election.

Most notably Obama’s call for a nuclear-weapons-free world - was hailed as laudable if unrealistic and met with awkward silence from key nuclear powers, while Russia announced aggressive plans to upgrade its nuclear arsenal effectively rendering any new START treaty virtually meaningless.

“In my 10 years of doing this, never have I seen the difference between atmospherics and reality to be so great,” John Hulsman, a Berlin-based trans-Atlantic expert who is president and co-founder of foreign policy consulting firm John C. Hulsman Enterprises. “Of course it’s better to have a president who is liked, who listens to America’s allies with an open mind and who does not demonize America’s enemies, but we really saw in this European trip the limits of good vibrations - because despite of all those, absolutely nothing moved on the big policies.”

The president managed to reset the alliance with several European powers, which could at a later point in time lead to more concrete commitments in Afghanistan-but if that sours that will disappear like a puff of smoke.

Obama did apparently convince Turkey not to veto Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO’s next secretary-general. But Turkey exacted a key concession to lobby for its membership in the EuroUnion that irked Europe and accusation Obama was meddling where he had no right, license or honest purpose.

Analysts generally award Obama a “gentleman’s “C” not unlike my own in high school Latin because I played football and Miss Knapp knew I had to have it to stay on the team so mainstream media tried to save the savior.

Then Russia and China pranced and danced about North Korea’s missile test before issuing a toothless note that must have left Kim rolling in the aisle making Obama and the U. S. foreign policy look flaccid. Now there is the spectacle of two U. S. warships held at bay by Somalia based “pirates” who attacked a U. S. flagged ship for the first time in centuries and did so on the high seas with impunity.

It is ironic the first U. S. rescue ship to arrive was the USS Bainbridge named for Commodore William Bainbridge (1774 -1833). In 1800, Bainbridge was sent to carry the tribute which the United States still paid to the dey of Algiers to secure exemption from capture for its merchant ships in the Mediterranean. Upon arrival in the 24-gun USS George Washington, he anchored in the harbor of Algiers-directly under the guns of the fort. The dey demanded that he ferry the Algerian ambassador and retinue to Constantinople or be blown to bits on the spot. With great disgust, Bainbridge raised the Algerian flag on his masthead and submitted to the embarrassment of serving as the dey’s messenger boy

Finally the U. S. figured out paying tribute didn’t work and used force inspiring the reference in the Marine Corp hymn “to the shores of Tripoli” and eventually, if temporarily, subduing the Barbary pirates Bainbridge did not do sparklingly well and ran his ship aground and was captured and imprisoned. He was released serving with distinction in the War of 1812 that diverted US and English attention, encouraged the pirates igniting the Second Barbary Wars against the Libyan based Muslim pirates.

Now what’s that phrase about being destined to repeat history?

Tax collections by the Internal Revenue Service are down 25% from last year’s $633 billion total signaling a $2 trillion federal deficit is on its way.

Vice President Joe Biden who told Israel to get used to a nuclear armed Iran has now issued a high-level warning to the Israeli government, saying it would be “ill-advised” to carry out a military strike against Iranian nuclear sites.

Biden says the level of his concern is no different than it was a year ago. Despite reports that Israel may be gearing up for a unilateral strike because it believes the USA has abandoned it., Biden stressed that an attack on Iran is unlikely. Simultaneously the Obama White House spoke about high level meeting with Iran and it agreed because talk delays action which is what Tehran desires until its get a nuclear weapon. Iran views this as a big win, and Israel sees it as a further betrayal.

“I don’t believe Prime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu would do that, (attack)” Biden told CNN this week. “I think he would be ill-advised to do that.”

But many U.S. officials believe Israel is serious, noting that Netanyahu said several times during his election campaign that he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

“And this implies everything necessary to carry this out,” Netanyahu told the Los Angeles Times before his election.

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told senators last month that the Israeli government may be “so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take preemptive military action to derail or delay it.”

Netanyahu has reiterated in recent days that the Iranian nuclear issue is high on the conservative new Israeli government agenda. The newly installed Israeli leader argues it should be a top priority for the White House, tpp, the Jerusalem Post reports. But, Obama continues to trust he can talk Iran out of nuclear weapons and destroyring Israel.

According to Netanyahu, President Obama has two pressing concerns: “fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.”

During an interview last week with The Atlantic, Netanyahu said “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” Netanyahu said, underscoring the concern he has for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran.

“When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying. That is what is happening in Iran.”

Biden, who became the highest-ranking official to caution Israel against a striking Iran, also says criticism over the administration’s handling of foreign policy from former Vice President Dick Cheney is “dead wrong.”

In an interview with CNN last month, Cheney said Americans are more vulnerable to a terrorist attack on U.S. soil because Obama has dismantled former President George W. Bush’s anti-terror policies.

Biden guarantees that the U.S. is safer today and its interests more secure than it has been at any time during the past eight years.

He said the Bush administration left the country “in a weaker posture than we’ve been any time since World War II: less regarded in the world, stretched more thinly than we have ever been in the past, two wars under way, virtually no respect in entire parts of the world.”

‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.’

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Obama has nominated Dawn Johnsen to be the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel top dog - what those in the Justice Department refer to as a “real lawyer.” A lawyer who dispassionately cites and weighs facts and legal precedents before coming to a conclusion, one that is not tailored to please superiors and that will hold up in court.

But, a look at Johnsen’s statements suggests her extreme political bias will prevent her from doing that, for instance:

In 2007 she said, “President Bush, and you have to also mention his Vice President Cheney on this, they’ve set a tone of disregard for the rule of law and especially disregard for statutes enacted by Congress and Congress’ role generally in our system,” Johnsen said.

Citing two books, one by Jack Goldsmith, who once headed the Office of Legal Counsel under Bush, and “other reports,” Johnsen said they “confirm that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their top advisors . . . have been deeply hostile to any checks on their counterterrorism policies. And so that’s not only external checks from the courts and from Congress or from public advocacy groups or the press, even legal checks from within the executive branch, from the president’s own lawyers.”

As an example, Johnsen said that for years, the “Bush administration engaged in spying here in the United States without complying with the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] statute’s warrant requirements.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Johnsen’s legal opinions will be legally binding on the government. Only the attorney general and the president will have the power to overrule them. In the past, the office Obama has nominated her for was held by future Supreme Court justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia. Yet Johnsen cited as evidence for her claims were the two controversial books and unspecified “other reports.”

Contrary to Johnsen’s claim that Bush rejected any outside checks on the NSA intercept program, Bush disclosed the program at its inception to the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act Court, to congressional leaders, and to NSA’s inspector general.

This latest flap, or perhaps gaff, adds to a litany of troublesome nominees, including the likes of Mr. Koh, who largely share sharply partisan views.

We have to pay close attention to this nomination and Mr. Koh’s.

Maudlin (MAWD-lin) adjective: Overly sentimental. ETYMOLOGY:After Mary Magdalene, a Biblical character who was a follower of Jesus. In medieval art she was depicted as a penitent weeping for her sins (she washed the feet of Jesus with her tears) and her name became synonymous with tearful sentimentality.
The name Magdalene means “of Magdala” in Greek and is derived after a town on the Sea of Galilee. The name Magdala, in turn, means tower in Aramaic. So here we have a word coined after a person, who was named after a place, which was named after a thing. In an allusion to her earlier life, Mary Magdalene’s name has sprouted another eponym, magdalene, meaning a reformed prostitute.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is proposing deep cuts to some big weapons programs such as the revolutionary 5^th generation F-22 fighter a dangerous plan which I predicted even before Obama took office.

Gates announced a broad range of cuts Monday to weapons spending, saying he plans to cut programs ranging from a new helicopter for the president to ending production of the $140 billion F-22 fighter. In addition the Army’s modernization program would be cut back, while a new satellite system and a search-and-rescue helicopter would be cut.

Gates says his budget will “profoundly reform” the way the Pentagon buys weapons and does business.

To fight new threats from insurgents, Gates is proposing more funding for special forces and other tools.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he is overhauling military spending to “profoundly reform how this department does business.”

Outlining a $534 billion budget for 2009 that will slash funds for major weapons programs, Gates said Monday his moves amount to an “unorthodox approach” that would shift spending goals to concentrate on “wars we are in today and scenarios for the years ahead.”

 At a news conference to outline his budget, Gates says he closely consulted with President Barack Obama and top military leaders, but limited outside advice “because of the scope and significance of the changes.” Russia and China are expecting to increase military spending by up to 25%.

Gates’ theory is that American can pick its conflicts and thereby arm to fight just those it picks — that worked so well at Pearl Harbor.

The new liberal majority on Santa Barbara County’s Board of Supervisors reversed a prior position on Offshore drilling putting the ban back in place. California is leaving over a trillion dollars in taxes and fees on the table to due bans on oil and gas production.The state is flat broke.

Defense analyst are worried Obama’s defense cuts could end one of the most promising and comprehensive ballistic missile detection systems. The new sensor can detect and track missile launches from anywhere in the world.

A spokesman said,. “A persistent sensor that can cover the entire earth gives us the detection sensitivity and responsiveness our military forces need for time-critical decisions.”

The so-called staring sensor, which encompass large-format focal-plane arrays, was designed to detect and track dimmer objects than sensors in currently operational systems. “We’ve proved we have a design for a sensor with extremely sophisticated technology that is readily qualifiable for space flight,” a Raytheon spokesman said. “In less than 24 months, a fully flight-qualified sensor could be delivered.  

Raytheon has been a contractor in the U.S. Air Force’s Third Generation Infrared System. The military program, formerly known as the Risk Reduction Alternative Infrared Satellite System, aims to demonstrate that wide-field-of-view sensors can maintain persistent full-earth surveillance for missile warning in a relatively small, low-risk and easily manufactured payload.

The sensor represents a major technology advance in comparison with the sensors that scan the earth for missiles and other infrared targets. The sensor does not require scanning mechanisms and could easily incorporate advances in focal-plane technology.

Obviously early detection is critical to successfully deploying anti-ballistic missile missile that have been successfully tested and are now deployed on naval shifts as well at ABM sites in UK, US and Greenland.

China is upholding North Korea’s right to develop a space / rocket technology and slowing down or blocking U. N. action called for by the U. S.

North Korea has failed in its third attempt since 1998 to build an accurate long-range missile, analysts say, undercutting its image as a defiant state able to project its power across the ocean.

The communist North’s claim it had launched a satellite Sunday that was now circling the globe, transmitting data and patriotic songs praising secretive leader Kim Jong-Il is false.

“It seems to indicate that North Korea has not been able to demonstrate a reliable system capable of being an ICBM or a space launch vehicle.”

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo said the launch was a smoke-screen for testing a Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which at maximum range could theoretically hit the US states of Alaska and Hawaii.

Bermudez said current information indicated the second stage did not separate, meaning the rocket was too heavy to sustain flight.

Regardless of the technological failure the launch was a propaganda coup.

After the 2006 missile test North Korea tested an atomic bomb, which led the UN Security Council to pass a resolution barring the communist state from further missile-related activities. In classic fashion, at this writing the U. N. is still wrapped around the axle unable even to decide what to do.

During long-running six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, North Korea has repeatedly said it needs a deterrent against any attack by the United States, which it accuses of wanting to bring down the regime.

While the North is not believed to have configured a warhead for the Taepodong-2, a successful launch Sunday would have added to international concerns about the North’s capabilities.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service described it as a successful rocket test but a failed satellite launch, according to lawmakers who attended a closed-door briefing of parliament’s intelligence committee.

Chae Yeon-Seok of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute said that while the rocket apparently failed, it flew much farther than in 1998.

He called it “a big step forward in the North’s rocket technology.”

But the ICG’s Pinkston said the stated aim of the exercise - putting a satellite into orbit - is technically easier than delivering a warhead, which must re-enter the atmosphere and detonate.

Nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione, president of the non-profit Ploughshares Fund, told CNN that he believed it would take years for Pyongyang to develop a serious missile threat to the United States.

“North Korea’s missile and nuclear capabilities do not add up to a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile,” he wrote.  

“This (failure) creates an opportunity to convince them there are other ways to ensure their security,” Pinkston said.

David Wright, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the New York Times that the incident might “open a window of opportunity” with Pyongyang - which Pinkston said would be engaged in “soul searching” after the failure.

“But they can spin the story in all sorts of ways… they will have some footage of the rocket going up,” Pinkston said.

“It’s quite easy for them to depict it as a success to the vast majority of people.”

North Korea is known to have transferred and sold missile technology to Iran, and Iran is believed to have advanced past North Korea in its own missile program.

Senator Leiberman (I) Conn. Says Senator Chris Dodd (D) Conn. Will be reelected for the same reason he was - voters will realize he is too valuable to lose.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federally invented, wholly owned and run “banks” took $180,000,000,000 (billion) in taxpayer bailout bucks and now want to give quasi federal bureaucrats “executives” $160 million in bonuses for their exemplary work bankrupting both. In what is called the “fanny affair”  Barney Frank has been accused of cooking the books at Fannie Mae to benefit his homosexual lover Herbert Moses

While eviscerating AIG over bonuses Obama and the Brainiac-like Geithner are both doing their Sgt. Shultz imitations as is Congress. What makes the whole thing more rancid is it is the effort to sneak the money to these individuals while Obama is embarrassing the U. S. In Europe and Turkey; Hillary is proving just how ineffective the U. N. is, and Geithner is threatening to fire any corporate executive with the chutzpah to try the same things proposed at Freddie and Fannie.

So far only one Senator who, so far, has had the guts to call this what it is - an insult.

“It’s an insult that the bonuses were made with an infusion of cash from taxpayers,” Charles Grassley (R) Iowa of the Senate Finance Committee said in a statement. “The elite in Washington and New York need to realize that bonuses for poor performance and at taxpayer expense do a lot of damage to public confidence.”

Grassley has been a strong critic of executive bonuses paid out by companies that have lately had to rely on government aid to survive. .

During a public uproar last month about bonuses paid out at failed insurance giant American International Group Inc., (AIG) Grassley said executives should “follow the Japanese example” and “resign or go commit suicide.”

AIG was under fire for paying out $165 million of bonuses despite a series of taxpayer bailouts for the company totaling $180 billion. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have also had to rely on a huge helping of taxpayer bucks since they were fully nationalized in September.

Supporters are trying to justify the bonuses pointing out that  while several AIG executives received multimillion-dollar bonuses, the extra pay at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is being spread much more evenly across the companies.

James Lockhart, the companies’ regulator, wrote that the pay plan includes “many hard-working lower-level employees which are important to the mission of providing stability, liquidity and affordability to the housing market.”

Lockhart, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, wrote Grassley last week that bonuses were a key component of pay for more than 7,500 employees at the two companies.

When other lawmakers have questioned the payments, Lockhart has defended them as an important defense against employee attrition. An argument made by AIG and others and roundly pooh-poohed by Obama and gang.

Herb Allison, the government-appointed overseer for Fannie Mae, has also vowed to try and preserve the employees’ compensation.

“I understand your deep feeling that repudiation of the terms of the retention plan … would be a breach of faith,” Allison wrote in a memo to staff last month.

The blistering public anger over the AIG bonuses has subsidded a bit in the last two weeks after lawmakers vented voter outrage at congressional hearings and drafted legislation to tax the payouts.

Congress will be in recess for the next two weeks, so the political pressure to cancel executive bonuses might further subside and that has been the strategy from the get-go. This is a real stinker.

Multimillionaire, Missouri born venture capitalist Democrat Scott Murphy narrowly leads longtime New York legislator Republican Jim Tedisco by a handful og votes out of more than 150,000 ballots cast in the special election to replace Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who gave up her House seat after being appointed to succeed Hillary Clinton in the Senate.No matter who wins Democrats will still control the House of Representtives. Some think this is an early referendum on Obama - unlikely.

A Santa Barbara Tea Party Protest drew about 300 people- protesting  ”out-of-control spending by the local, state and federal government, and “wrongful spending of tax payer dollars.” It was one of the largest citizen protest in recent memory in the coastal city that thrives on being contrary.. Conservative commentator TAMMY BRUCE addressed the throng drawing loud applause.

At the same time the state’s county GOP chairs voted to oppose all six propositions on a May 19, 2009 special election ballot that the nominal Republican Governor supports. Ther were no incidents as protestors marched up State Street amid a strong police presence.

Next weekend a TEA PARTY PROTEST is set for Santa Maria, Califonira in northern Santa Barbara County. The ovement is spreding life wildfire across California that is facing enormous deficits and tax increases.

Saturday North Korea launched a 3-stage rocket reportedly to insert a satellite into orbit. But, there is no evidence an orbiting satellite exists. The U. S. impotently protested while China and Russia urged calm.  The U. N. ducked into an Emergency session Sunday doomed to insignificance because of Russian and Chinese obstruction.

Obama flapped his gums warning and cajoling to no meaningful effect. The incident put a final punctuation to an indecisive week of donothingness at the E-20 and NATO summit.

The E-20 addition of a trillion dollars to the IMF was an accomplishment of sorts but NATO’s pledge of more non-combat troops into Afghanistan to secure the August election and then to skedaddle was a profound disappointment.

North Korea got what it wants -attention, and China added the exclamation point that as long as China owns barges full of America’s debt when it burps Obama buckles. Chinese blogs obediently lighted-up Sunday urging “say goodbye to the U. S. dollar” that had to pucker even brainiac =-like clone Geithner’s sphincter..

Despite fawning mainstream media and talking heads desperate attempts to portray the week as a success - it simply was not.

Now Obama goes to Islamic Turkey risking unnerving its determined secular government and military and overtly offending Israel and alarming Persian Gulf allies.

More bad news was the disclosure of an impending Iranian base in Eritrea on the African coast of the Red Sea putting it astride of Suez Canal traffic.

Russia’s announcement that it will not activate its E-300 antiaircraft system in Iran that would deny access to the radical Islamic theocracies airspace by Israeli F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers was the only faint ray of hope during the week. It was a week when Israel admonished Obama to either stop Iran’s nuclear bomb program or it would.

Pellucid (puh-LOO-sid) adjective: Admitting the maximum passage of light.2. Clear; easy to understand. From Latin pellucidus, from perlucere (to shine through), from per- (through) + lucere (to shine). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leuk- (light) that is also the source of other words such as lunar, lunatic, light, lucubrate, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx.

The U.S. Department of Energy says the National Nuclear Security Administration has certified the completion of the world’s largest laser.

Located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California, the laser is expected to allow scientists to achieve fusion ignition in the laboratory, obtaining more energy from the target than is provided by the laser.

“Completion of the National Ignition Facility is a true milestone that will make America safer and more energy independent by opening new avenues of scientific advancement and discovery,” said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. “NIF will be a cornerstone of a critical national security mission, ensuring the continuing reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without underground nuclear testing, while also providing a path to explore the frontiers of basic science and potential technologies for energy independence.”

The Energy Department said the stadium-sized NIF is capable of focusing all of its 192 individual beams onto a spot about two-hundredths of an inch in diameter at the center of its 32-foot diameter target chamber in billionths of one second or a nano-second.

Fusion is the combining of atomic particles like hydrogen into helium that powers the very stars, including our Sun, and is the source of the enormous power in so-called hydrogen bombs or thermo-nuclear bombs. It holds out the potential for a virtually unlimited power supplies.

NIF became the world’s first fusion laser facility to break the one-megajoule barrier. NIF’s 192 laser beams delivered 1.1 million joules (MJ) of ultraviolet energy to the center of its ten-meter-diameter target chamber (one megajoule is the energy consumed by 10,000 100-watt light bulbs in one second). The accomplishment came less than two weeks after NIF first fired all 192 of its laser beams to target chamber center.

The 1.1-MJ pulse precisely matched the shape necessary for achieving ignition. The main laser delivered 1.952 MJ of infrared energy.

“This is an incredible milestone on our journey to ignition,” said NIF Director Ed Moses. “It was a great night that was the culmination of 15 years of incredible work by the entire NIF team. We are well on our way to achieving what we set out to do - controlled, sustained nuclear fusion and energy gain for the first time ever in a laboratory setting.”

The target positioner and target alignment system precisely locate a target in the NIF target chamber. The target is positioned with an accuracy of less than the thickness of a human hair.

For the past several weeks scientists and technicians have been conducting readiness tests within the NIF. “The system already has produced 25 times more energy than any other laser system,” Moses said. “NIF is well on its way to achieving breakthroughs in science never imagined. Through our readiness testing we will see glimpses of what that future will bring.

“NIF’s remarkable progress toward initial ignition experiments in 2010 is a tribute to the ingenuity, dedication and hard work of an extraordinarily talented team of scientists, engineers and technicians, supported by an equally talented and energetic administrative staff and construction crew,” Moses said.

Notwithstanding the hysterics that I call  C. A. V. E. (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) people who will interpret this idea into a negative or even a danger of some sort; this is a significant advance along the way to controlled fusion energy. But, there is a long way to go.

A woman accused of driving 103 mph with her 10-year-old grandson was on leave from a job at the state Driver and Motor Vehicle Services. The 53-year-old driver was arrested Sunday on charges of reckless driving and reckless endangering. Investigators said she told them she was teaching her grandson about the dangers of speeding, telling him not to drive as she was about to.

If you’re not a native Japanese - go home - we’ll pay you $3,000 to buy the ticket. The project that began this week only applies to several hundred thousand foreign born people of Japanese lineage mostly from Brazil which has 1.5 million such residents - the largest on Earth. The idea is to “deport” such folks who were imported to take hard, dirty, dangerous jobs that native Japanese didn’t want to do - until the recession.  The idea now is to get rid of those - called Nikkei.

Part of the problem is that they are soak up scarce jobs that native Japanese now want. That means unemployment is rising, and in Japan’s socialist approach they all qualify for generous unemployemtn getting $71 per day - $2,100 per month per person. Something like 20-30% of such folks have already returned home to Brazil or other mostly South American nations.

Major companies, like Toyota, have relied on these contract workers to keep a flexible workforce. Japan does not track unemployed foreign workers but the number of them showing up at government unemployment  offices have shot up eleven-fold over the past year. In total 192,000 individuals in such categories that were employed a year ago are expected to be unemployed by June, 2009.

You do the math.

If you are bothered by occasional or frequent constipation, repeat the following phrase three times in succession when symptoms  occur.
“My financial and personal well being are totally in the  hands of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Tim Geithner, Rahm Emmanuel, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Al  Gore.
If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, then you are probably destined to be full of it for the rest of your life.

With more hocus pocus and huckstering than HOUDINI - COMPACT FLOURESCENT BULBS burst onto the scene as a panacea product that would cost less to use while savings in electricity and consequently the planet. Now it seems reliability problems and much, much less than the promised 10,000 hour lifespan have many disappointed and disinterested too.

Prices have plummeted on the ballyhooed bulbs but, if they quickly burn out, as some do consumers get the shaft. Propaganda films like Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” convinced many to swap to swap their “wasteful” light bulks for the curvy cue wonders.

Manufacturers say quality control is high but admit that the 40-50 components parts required for CFLs do cause problems.

The University of California - Davis’ lighting center says that “in the pursuit of the holy grail we stepped on consumers.” A Pacific Gas and Electric blames problems on “aggressive goals in California we have to be pushing all the time” says an Associated Press report.

Compared to schemes like CAP AND TRADE getting swindled out of a sawbuck is not much of anything. But it is symptomatic of an almost expected consequence of bad science and worse planning.

CFL’s will likely be improved and perhaps deliver at least part of their promise. As always CAVEAT EMPTOR - buyer beware.

Queen Elizabeth thanked the Obama’s for their gift of a iPod saying it will be a lot better than the Boom Box she’s been carrying while she jogs.

There is little doubt Pakistan has been part and parcel of the problem 

The International Conference on Afghanistan held in the Hague had all the trappings. The UN officials, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a score of Foreign Ministers, the green-robed Afghan President Hamid Karzai were all there. And indeed the Conference-speak had the rights words too; partnership, rule of law, political accountability, transparency, etc. The UN’s Special Representative Kai Eide candidly stated, “We must push aside the atmosphere of doom and gloom which sometimes overshadows the important progress we are now seeing.”

The Afghan crisis is fast evolving into a regional threat not just for beleaguered Afghanistan but for neighboring Pakistan as well. And there’s little doubt that Pakistan, through its longtime and shadowy support to Islamic fundamentalists, has been part and parcel of the problem. U.S. General David Petraus recently commented, “Many Pakistani leaders remain focused on India as Pakistan’s principal threat, and some may even continue to regard Islamic extremists groups as a potential strategic asset.”

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) group, has long been the puppet master for a gaggle of Islamic fundamentalist groups, ranging from the Taliban inside Afghanistan, to jihadis in Indian-administered Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier, to the very core of the Pakistan nuclear-armed military establishment. ISI has often been a shadow force inside the Pakistani military.

While it’s a truism to say that throughout history, the Afghans have defeated invaders from the British to the Soviets, that does not mean the future is predestined. The country does have a genuinely elected government and new elections are slated for August .Nor does it mean that the Administration’s new Afghan strategy, despite its fanfare and its wowing of Washington circles, is destined to succeed despite the heroism and combat-effectiveness of the U.S. military.

AfPakia as the Administration likes to call this rough and untamed mountainous region, remains a witches brew confronting the USA and the international community. But by treating the area regionally we are figuratively adding a new piece to the puzzle, and realistically deploying more American and presumably European troops to the zone. By ramping up U.S. military forces from 38,000 at the start of his Administration to nearly 60,000 in the next months, Barack Obama is taking a calculated risk that he can turn the tide from recent Taliban gains. There’s a probability that the American numbers will be ramped up to 70,000 by next year. Training the Afghan national army remains a priority.

The American troops are part of a NATO force in country under an original 2001 mandate. There are forty -one contingents with major units from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. European enthusiasm for sending more troops to Afghanistan is lukewarm at best though.

Pakistan’s restive Northwest Frontier provinces remain a lawless region where tribalism, a gun-culture, and minimal government control have created a safe-haven for Taliban, and Al-Qaida terrorists. The area moreover has long hosted millions of Afghan refugees who fled their land during the Soviet occupation in the 1980’s. Following the fall of the Taliban fundamentalist regime, over 4.4 million Afghans returned home; the UN estimates that 2.7 million Afghans still remain refugees in both Pakistan and Iran. In 2008, some 280,000 returned home, but such numbers in a poor region remain destabilizing.

UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon asserted, “We committed ourselves to clear priorities and well-defined principles of aid effectiveness, including transparency of assistance… today we meet for a different purpose: to show our political support…with renewed vigor to Afghanistan’s stability and recovery.”

Ban stated poignantly, “We cannot afford to fail in this endeavor.”

In Iraq, the military surge in 2007 clearly turned the military tide away from the insurgency, and has since allowed for cautious political progress. Winning Afghanistan is a totally different game. First off, Iraq had a much better educated population, infrastructure, and through its petroleum resources, an opportunity for economic development and eventual success. Afghanistan is after all, a loosely organized tribal quilt, a political patch work of warlords, tribes, and drug barons. Narcotics remains the principal export according to the UN. Supplanting drugs with agricultural substitutes or a handicrafts industry is just not going to happen.

The Obama Administration’s AfPak Strategy appears reasonable for the medium term, but for Afghanistan itself. The risky future challenges will come from the untamed frontier tribal areas and probably see a spillover of more violence and chaos into Pakistan proper unwittingly opening the lid of the Afpak Pandora’s box.

If you’re homeless in Lancaster, Califonria and not from there, you can get a free bus ride back home or to anyplace where friends or family will take you in. The “Los Angeles Times” reports the Grace Resource Center in Lancaster has spent 25-hundred dollars since January, on one-way bus ticket vouchers for the homeless. City leaders in Lancaster and Palmdale have long complained that bigger cities in more populated parts of Los Angeles County see the Antelope Valley as a dumping ground for the homeless. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris has donated 10-thousand dollars of his own money to the Opportunity Pass Program.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.

Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”

He added: “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.”

France’s President Saroky says he’ll walk out of the E-20 conference if he doesn’t get what he wants is blaming “anglo-Saxons” for the current financial crisis.

The 20-country Arab League has given Sudan’s President al Bashir a pass promising not to allow his arrest despite he is accused of war crimes for his genocidal murder campaign in Darfur. Defacto accusing non-Muslims for his “persecution.”

A Newark, Ohio man has been charged with drunken driving after crashing his motorized bar stool. The 28-year old man who had wrecked a bar stool powered by a deconstructed lawn mower is proud of his craft pridefully saying it has been clocked at 38- MPH. He said he had consumed 15 beers before crashing. The man plead not guilty apparently based on stupidity and wants a jury trial as soon as he gets out of the hospital. Is nothing sacred?

Believe it or not California lawmakers have been discussing forbidding black cars in the once golden state. The “logic” is tht black absorbs the sun’s heat requiring more extensive use of cooling that uses more fuel that light colored cars.

In a move that will likely get California’s consumers in a huff, impending legislation may soon restrict the paint color options for Golden State residents looking for their next new vehicle. The specific colors that are currently on the chopping block are all dark hues, with the worst offender seemingly the most innocuous color you could think of: Black. What could California possibly have against these colors, you ask? Apparently, the California Air Resources Board figures that the climate control systems of dark colored cars need to work harder than their lighter siblings - especially after sitting in the sun for a few hours. Anyone living in a hot, sunny climate will tell you that this assumption is accurate, of course. In fact, legislation already exists for buildings that has proven successful at reducing the energy consumption of skyscrapers.

So, what’s the crux of the problem… can’t paint suppliers just come up with new, less heat-absorbent dark paints? According to Ward’s, suppliers have reportedly been testing their pigments and processes to see if it’s possible to meet CARB’s proposed mandate of 20% solar reflectivity by 2016 with a phase-in period starting in 2012, and things aren’t looking good. Apparently, when the proper pigments and chemicals are added to black paint, the resulting color is currently being referred to as “mud-puddle brown.” That doesn’t sound very attractive, now does it? Windshields, backlights and sunroofs are also slated to get reflective coatings starting in 2012.

When we first heard of this issue, an internal debate immediately began as to whether this might be an elaborate early April Fool’s joke, but it isn’t. Like they say ” in California when you throw out the fruits and nuts all you have left are the flakes.”

A GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. eatery will not  put a warning label on an enormous new hamburger they’re selling this season _ despite a vegan advocacy group’s request to do just that. The Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, sent a letter to the Grand Rapids minor-league team on Tuesday asking that the $20 4,800-calorie burger be labeled a “dietary disaster” that increases the risk of cancer and heart disease.

The biggest April Fools this year were Californians who will feel the impact of last February’s budget compromise lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger struck, as the state sales tax rises 1 cent on the dollar. The sales tax increase makes Californmia one of the highest taxed states in the nation.

That probably won’t help the polling for the May 19 ballot measures, none of which beyond the one involving lawmakers’ salaries topped 50 percent support last week, according to the Public Policy Institute of California poll.

That didn’t particularly bother Schwarzenegger who said last week, “I’m here to fix problems, to fix what is broken, rather than worry about poll numbers.”

Speaking of broken, it’s fair to say the relationship between Sen. Abel Maldonado, (R) Santa Maria a Republican who cast the deciding vote for the tax raising budget package, and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner (R) who has been campaigning against it, has soured. Billionaire Poizner has already declared his intention to run for Governor, and Maldonado is serving his last term in the Senate and is looking around for something else to run for.

In the two-page letter, Maldonado assailed Poizner as a political opportunist who has contributed nothing to solving the budget crisis.

“Since the budget was passed, you have gone around the state criticizing it and the role six Republicans played in its passage,” Maldonado wrote. “I am very disappointed that you would let the state fall into financial ruin just to win a political campaign.”

Poizner retorted that Maldonado was “a bit like the arsonist lashing out at the fire department for not stopping him from burning the village.”

Tobacco taxes and vehicles registration fees have also skyrocketed as a result of the budget.

TEA Parties are brewing across the State and Nation to protest higher taxes. In California those will almost certainly impact the May 19 special election to sanction or reject these tax increases. None of the ballot propositions are ahead in the polls and Schwarzenegger’s approvals continue in the low 30s.

Acarpous (ay-KAHR-puhs) adjective: Not producing fruit; sterile. ETYMOLOGY:From Greek akarpos, from a- (not) + karpos (fruit). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kerp- (to gather or harvest) which is also the source of harvest, excerpt, carpet, and scarce.

Russia plans to turn the Arctic into its “leading strategic resource base” by 2020 and station troops there, documents showed Friday, as nations race to stake a claim to the oil-rich region.

The country’s strategy for the Arctic through 2020 - adopted last year and now published on the national security council website - says one of Russia’s main goals for the region is to put troops in its Arctic zone “capable of ensuring military security.” Implicit in Russia statement is the question of how aggressive that “military security” will be.

The strategy also calls for the “creation of (an) actively functioning system of the Federal Security Service coastal guard,” in a sign that the KGB’s successor agency seeks to tighten its control of the region.

Likely because Russia could not yet backup its intentions and  hoping to appease other arctic interest s and probably delay their actions until it is too late Russia quickly moved to allay possible concerns that Russia was seeking to flex muscles in the region.

“The issue of the Arctic’s militarization is not on the agenda,” a spokesman said in written comments to AFP on Friday.

“The Arctic region is becoming a most important arena for Russia’s relations with foreign partners in the area of international and military security.”

According to the strategy, the Arctic should become Russia’s “leading strategic resource base” between 2016 and 2020.

To that end, the country should finalize the borders of the Russian Arctic and ensure “Russia’s competitive advantages in exploration and transportation of energy resources” are realised between 2011 and 2015, the document said.

Scientists say that global warming is opening up Arctic resources for exploration, prompting nations with Arctic coastlines to stake a claim to the resource-rich region.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a meeting with his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Stoere this week that the scenario of NATO war games dubbed the “Cold Response” in Norway had raised eyebrows in Moscow.

“We are surprised that the games that are currently being conducted in the Norwegian waters are dedicated to the scenario of the aggravation of a conflict regarding access to resources,” he said.

Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said Friday the Western military bloc should refrain from making inroads in the region.

“NATO has nothing to do in the Arctic, the alliance is unable to melt the Arctic ice,” he said in televised comments.

Five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean - Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States - dispute the sovereignty over parts of the region, which has been estimated to contain around 90 billion untapped barrels of oil.

The Canadian government on Friday reaffirmed its Arctic claims, saying it will defend its northern territories and waters after Russia earlier announced plans to militarize the North. “Canada is an Arctic power,” Catherine Loubier, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, said in an email.

Moscow in 2001 submitted a request to the UN to extend its territory to the Laminose Ridge, a mountain chain running underneath the Arctic.

Russian scientists in 2007 planted a flag on the ocean floor beneath the North Pole in a symbolic bid to stake the Kremlin’s claim over the region.

Obama has made no effective response, and Putin feels he can count on none.as he seeks to have the ANTI-MISSILE SHIELD cancelled in Europe by defector surrounding the US with Cuba-Central and South American moves and now into the Arctic.

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said Tuesday that she is “strongly considering” challenging Sen. Barbara Boxer’s reelection bid in 2010.

Barack Obama’s 56=year old aunt who is in the U. S. illegally will remain in this country until at least next year as she awaits a chance to make her case before an immigration judge in her bid for asylum from her native Kenya.

Zeituni Onyango (zay-TUH’-nee awn-YAHN’-goh) had an initial appearance in U.S. Immigration Court in Boston on Wednesday. At the brief hearing, a judge set her case to be heard Feb. 4, 2010.

Onyango wore a curly red wig to the hearing and declined to comment to reporters as she was led away from court by her attorneys and Federal Protective Service police.

Onyango first applied for asylum in 2002, but her request was rejected and she was ordered deported in 2004. She refused to leave the country and has continued to live in taxpayer subsidized public housing in Boston.

Her lawyer, Cleveland immigration attorney Margaret Wong, said in a statement Wednesday that Onyango first applied for asylum “due to violence in Kenya,” but she did not reveal what grounds she has cited in her renewed bid for asylum. The court hearing was closed at her lawyer’s request.

Wong’s spokesman, Mike Rogers, said the hearing date was set for nearly a year later because Judge Leonard Shapiro’s calendar is so booked.

Ilana Greenstein, a Boston immigration attorney who handles a large volume of asylum cases, said 10 months between the initial hearing date and the next hearing is common in immigration court.

“That’s just the way it goes,” she said. “Most of the judges are so overloaded, their case logs are so astronomical that they are forced to set cases out up to 18 months.”

Obama has said he did not know his aunt was living here illegally and believes laws covering the situation should be followed.

Onyango’s status as an illegal alien was revealed just days before Obama was elected in November. After intense media coverage, Onyango left Boston and went to Cleveland to live with a relative.

In December, a judge agreed to suspend her deportation order and reopen her asylum case.

Wong said in a statement that she is “working hard to keep matters in the court system and towards a favorable outcome for Ms. Onyango.”

Onyango, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, first moved to the United States in 2000.

People who seek asylum must show that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social.

President Obama is giving GM 60 days to come up with strategy of viability for spending taxpayers’ money. GM should have said to him, “Hey - you first.”

In March, the number of Democrats in the nation fell two percentage points while the number of Republicans fell by half-a-point. Democrats continue to have a sizable advantage in terms of partisan identification, but the advantage is smaller than it’s been since December 2007.

Currently, 38.7% of Americans say they are Democrats. That’s down from 40.8% a month ago. It’s also the first time the Democratic total has slipped below the 40% mark since the Republican convention bounce last September.

Prior to this month’s result, the Democrats have been over the 40% level 10 times in the previous 13 months.

In March, 33.2% of American adults say they are Republicans. That’s down from 33.6% a month ago. Over the past year, the number of Republicans has ranged from a low of 31.4% in April to a high of 34.4% in September.

A growing number - 28.0% - say they’re not affiliated with either major party. For most of 2006 and 2007, the number of unaffiliateds was at or above the 30% mark. However, during Election 2008, the number of unaffiliateds declined, primarily shifting to the Democratic column.

Coetaneous (ko-i-TAY-nee-uhs) adjective: Having the same age; contemporary. ETYMOLOGY: From Latin coaetaneus (contemporary), from co- (with) + aetas (age). Ultimately from the Indo-European root aiw-/ayu- (vital force, life, eternity) that is also the source of ever, never, aye, nay, eon, eternal, medieval, primeval, utopia, Sanskrit Ayurveda, and aught.