As the State’s fiscal collapse continues California’s Senate Rules Committee takes up a flock of gubernatorial appointments, but the only appointees required to appear and answer questions are four nominees for the state parole board. The list of those not required to appear include Bo Derek, best known for her scantily clad role in the movie “10,” whom Schwarzenegger has appointed to the state Horse Racing Board. Exactly why California spends money on such commissions can not be explained.

Two illegal aliens, Raphael  Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home.

It seems the two crooks never learned two things: they were in Montana and Patricia  had been a local clay shooting champion and hunter since she was  nine.

Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house using a sledge hammer.  She quickly ran to her father’s room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.

Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank  blast of 00 buckshot from the 11-year-old’s knee crouch aim. He  suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals.

When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast which  shredded his left shoulder and staggered out into the street and  bled to death before medical help could arrive.

It was  found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber  handgun he had stolen earlier from another home invasion robbery.  That victim, 50-year-old David Burien, was not so lucky. He died from multiple stab wounds to the chest.

Ever wonder  why stories like this never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, & MSNBC, CNN,  or ABC news……..an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended  her home and herself……against two murderous, illegal aliens  ……..and she wins, she is still alive.

hecatomb (HEK-uh-toom, -tom) noun: A large-scale slaughter. ETYMOLOGY: Originally a hecatomb was a public sacrifice and feast of 100 oxen or cattle to the gods in ancient Greece and Rome. The word is derived from Latin hekatombe, from Greek hekatombe, from hekaton (hundred) + bous (ox). Another word derived from bous (ox) is boustrophedon. USAGE: “The use of high-tech weapons will result in hecatombs, smart as the US bombs may be.”

When the bankrupt San Francisco Chronicle lectures Obama about fiscal fornication you know you’re wading around hipdeep in a dung pile. “This year,” the Chrincile says, “the government is borrowing 50 cents of every dollar it spends. If that were just a blip caused by a historic financial crisis that necessitated a $787 billion fiscal stimulus and a $700 billion bank rescue in the space of about three months, there would be little cause for concern.”

It talks about Obama’s borrowing reducing the USA to a “banana republic.”

Worse it says is not a blip. It is a relentless curve of red ink that will, within the decade, take U.S. debt levels to the record reached at the end of World War II, from 40 percent of the nation’s output now to 80 percent, and then rapidly thereafter into the realm of banana republics.

“We (US taxpayers) owe about half that debt to foreigners, including the Chinese whom are playing the dollar like a commodity and others whose foreign policy is not always well aligned with ours,” said Isabel Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official who now co-directs the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. “So we are really losing control of our economic destiny and possibly losing control of our foreign policy as well.”

Japan has lost its AAA credit rating, the United Kingdom may soon follow, and there is talk that the United States is headed fast down the same path.

Last week the Treasury Department announced a huge sale of new debt - $162 billion - as part of its financing of the government’s $1.8 trillion deficit this year. That’s as much as the entire government spent just eight years ago. Within hours, interest rates on U.S. Treasuries shot up.

In recent weeks, the prices of credit default swaps on U.S. government debt - a measure of the risk that the government could do the unthinkable and default - have risen to record levels.

The market reactions highlight a growing disconnect between the Obama ambition including a $1.5 trillion overhaul of the nation’s health care system, and the money available to do it. Sunday Obama admitted that “we are running out of money.”

As if to underline the point, the Social Security and Medicare trustees, who include three Obama Cabinet officials, issued their report saying the finances of the two bedrock social programs are dire.

“We are heading toward very high debt-to-GDP ratios very soon,” said UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach. He said the rise in perceived risk of the federal government going bankrupt is sobering.
The United States does not now even meet the standards for admission to the European Union, because its deficit and debt levels are too high. The federal government faces either enormous tax increases or inflation (regressive taxation in another form), to remedy the problem.

The consequence is people, instead of having money to buy a home, have to send it to the government to pay the interest on the debt. “There are no ways around this. This is not academic. It’s not theoretical. It’s real. The numbers are there.

The appetite for U.S. debt has remained robust, and Treasurys were viewed as a safe haven amid the financial turmoil last fall. The United Kingdom credit warning has turned many eyes suddenly to the United States.

“Nothing happens until it does,” says Auerbach. “People were warning about the housing market and the bubble and nobody seemed to worry about that, and now a lot of us are sorry. The United States can go on for several more years doing absolutely nothing responsible to get the debt under control and things may be fine, but at some point, and it’s impossible to predict when, people can lose confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to deal with its problem, and things can unravel. Whether that happens in five years or 10 or even longer, it’s impossible to say.”

The idea that something very bad will happen is now a consensus view among budget experts.

“Our creditors are beginning to ask questions, and it’s only a matter of time before something bad happens,” said Saw-hill. ”

Even House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the top lieutenant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said this month, “If a fiscal meltdown comes, there will be no one to bail out America.”

So far, there is little indication that Obama is taking the issue seriously, other than talking and talking about which comprises his entire domestic and foreign policy.

Laughably Obama said several days ago in announcing $17 billion in proposed budget savings that “we can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration or the next generation.”

But $17 billion is a grain of sand in the roughly $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities the federal government carries.

Obama calls his budget a “new era of responsibility,” but it would add $9 trillion to an already unsustainable debt burden over the next decade.

Obama inherited a mess, including the financial crisis. The Bush administration put everything - wars, tax cuts, Medicare prescription drug benefits - on the national credit card instead of paying for them. While Obama talks about changing direction, he has not yet done so. Pundits joke that his cuts include: Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, and Hannity but nothing substantive.

In fact, his plans not only do not fix the problem, they make it worse. The Congressional Budget Office said the Obama budget will cut taxes by $2.1 trillion, most of that by extending most of the Bush tax cuts, and increase spending $1.7 trillion over 10 years, resulting in a net increase in interest costs alone of $1 trillion.

Obama made some hard choices, but most of these have been shunned or are being watered down by Congress, from trimming tax write-offs for charity to raising revenue by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Congress has already raised the price of the administration’s latest supplemental spending bill, adding $6.2 billion for military hardware, including C-17 aircraft that Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended terminating.

But the larger problem, as in California, is that the public also recoils from spending cuts and tax increases

“It goes back to my days as mayor,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and former mayor of San Francisco, who noted during an interview in her office Thursday that she is very worried about the situation. “I would go before a group. Do you want more police officers?”

“Yes,” was the firm reply.

“Do you want more firefighters?” Yes, again, very firmly.

“Do you want to pay for them?” An emphatic no.

“That’s the situation out there,” Feinstein said.

Money isn’t there

“The requests don’t stop coming,” Feinstein said. “We’ve had over 2,000 earmark requests from counties, from cities, up and down the state. Local governments are in trouble, they’re looking for money, and everybody comes here, and says, ‘Can’t you do it?’ And there just isn’t the money.”

The story is a microcosm of what will happen with increasing frequency as Medicare starts squeezing out more and more other spending as the Baby Boom retirement gets seriously under way.

But Pelosi and Obama have said no to taking on Social Security and want to proceed instead with health care reform. They argue that it is Medicare and health care costs generally that are driving U.S. finances over a cliff. The United States spends $2.5 trillion a year on health care, more than any other rich nation, and yet has poorer outcomes. About $700 billion is wasted each year. Health insurance premiums have been rising five times faster than wages for eight years and are bankrupting businesses too.

But there is also widespread skepticism about Obama’s claim that spending more on health care now will somehow fix the budget. Savings from such things as computerized health records and preventive care will not begin to cover the cost of expanding care to the uninsured. Nor will higher taxes on the wealthy. In fact no serious, non-drug using economist agrees with Obama.

Obama has been hard-pressed to even find ways to pay for the expansion of health coverage, much less a way to bring down the deficit at the same time,” Sawhill said. “If you could slow the trajectory on health care spending it would help, but not much in the next decade. And I’m not sure we have a decade to fix this problem.”

Obama tapped federal appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court on Tuesday, officials said, making her the first Hispanic in history picked to wear the robes of an associate justice. A Hispanic  born in Puerto Rico she was the least likely among those nominees discussed, and controversial for her views, comments and demeanor.

If the Senate confirms her, Sotomayor, 54, would succeed retiring Justice David Souter.

Obama made the formal announcement at 10:15 AM EST

Obama had said publicly he wanted a justice who combined intellect and empathy, the ability to understand the troubles of everyday Americans.

If approved, she would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the current court.

Sotomayor is a self-described “Newyorkrican” who grew up in a Bronx housing project after her parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico. She has dealt with diabetes since age 8 and lost her father at age 9, growing up under the care of her mother in humble surroundings. As a girl, inspired by the Perry Mason television show, she knew she wanted to be a judge.

A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, a former prosecutor and private attorney, Sotomayor became a federal judge for the Southern District of New York in 1992.

As a judge, she has a bipartisan pedigree. She was first appointed by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush, then named an appeals judge by President Bill Clinton in 1997. Since being on that court her decisions have been overturned five times by the Supreme Court and a very controversial decision involving affirmative action in the New Haven Fire Department is widely expected to be overturned this summer.

In that decision she sided with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case that white firefighters brought after the city threw out results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough.

In one of her most memorable rulings as federal district judge, Sotomayor essentially salvaged baseball in 1995, ruling with players over owners in a labor strike that had led to the cancellation of the World Series.

She is expected to be confirmed after a spirited debate.

Before she left for China, reporters repeatedly questioned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about her claim that the CIA lied to her, but Pelosi remained tight-lipped . . . she also remained tight-foreheaded and tight-eye-lidded

Overall, 55% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance so far while 44% disapprove. The Rasmussen index is the product of the percentages of those who strongly approve or disapprove of Obama’s performance. That currently stands at +1%. So far that number has never been negative.

31% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty percent (30%) Strongly Disapprove

Following the President’s speech on the Guantanamo prison camp, just 38% agree with the President’s decision. Forty-nine percent (49%) now disagree. Opinion was evenly divided in January. By a two-to-one margin, voters oppose having any of the suspected terrorists brought to prisons in the United States. Only 25% share the President’s belief that the Guantanamo camp weakened the nation’s security.

Patricia Demauro set a new record for the longest craps roll, hanging on for four hours and 18 minutes at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.after 154 rolls of the dice. She bought in for $100 and the casino won’t say how much she won. The odds of doing so are several million to one.

Everything Obama, the Federal Reserve, and Congress are doing was predicted in startling detail almost two decades ago by a famous Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.

Friedman died  in 2006, in his prophetic book, Friedman showed how, facing massive deficits, the U.S. government would dramatically increase the money supply; why foreign countries would stop buying our debt; how the Fed would start buying our Treasury bills; and why this would call cause massive inflation.

He even predicted that our officials would claim inflation was no problem at all.

Amazingly all of this is coming to pass!

Make no mistake about it - the Obama administration is embracing massive inflationary deficit spending.

In just 100 days, Barrack Obama has more than doubled the U.S. money supply . . . committed the government to at least $7 trillion in new spending . . . and warned the American people to expect trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.

While the media has been falling over itself to praise Obama’s “bold initiatives,” the question no one has been asking is, “Where is all of this money coming from?”

Decades ago, Milton Friedman answered these questions clearly and precisely in his insightful - and very topical - book, Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History.

In Money Mischief, Friedman even warned that the coming inflation could “destroy” our country.

Here’s what he wrote: “Inflation is a disease, a dangerous and sometimes fatal disease that, if not checked in time, can destroy a society.” (Money Mischief, Page 191)

You see the end result of that process in countries like Zimbabwe today, where prices double every day, and it now takes a $10 billion Zimbabwe note to buy a single loaf of bread - assuming you can find one.

Could America suffer the same fate? Friedman wrote ominously, “The fate of a country is inseparable from the fate of its currency.”  The US Dollar is under attack woirldwide.

Even Warren Buffett recently admitted on CNBC that the only way for the U.S. to solve its woes was to inflate the currency.

There is little doubt that Obama’s massive deficit spending will doom the dollar and our economy.

You need to find out what is really happening to our economy and your wealth and get a copy of Milton Friedman’s pathbreaking book, Money Mischief.

Its insights are so relevant and shocking - it reads like it was just published for our times!

Friedman also tells how the U.S. and the West could still avoid hyperinflation, even with unbacked paper currency

Looks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg will no longer be the hot chick on the Supreme court.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY 41 or 141?

Memorial Day is a federal holiday celebrated on the last Monday in May to commemorate those who have died defending America. It originated in 1868 after the Civil War as Decoration Day when “strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but Posts and comrades will, in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”

The commemoration officially became Memorial Day 100 year later in 1968.

When I was young I recall it as an exciting day. Men with rifles fired crackling volleys at the local cemetery and we boys would scramble for the highly prized ejected cartridge casings. There would be many people there putting flags, flowers, and ribbons on graves scattered hither, thither there. Then big shots popping off followed by prayers and tears. Someone would play a bugle.

Then there would be a parade down Main Street headed by “the Sergeant” an “old man” to me who walked slowly at its head wearing a Marine Corp tunic with ribbons and cap. The honor was his because he fought, lost a leg, and been given an important medal at some odd sounding place in the Pacific. He was to that tiny West Virginia town respected and revered. We boys would interrupt anything to carry his groceries when he was seen leaving the IGA store. After all he was “the Sergeant.”

After the parade my family would go to Grandma’s house and sit on the front porch overlooking the Ohio River. There was lemonade if you didn’t fidget too much Sooner or later Grandma would point out nearby houses on Grant Street reciting the names of “the boys” who once lived in them but, never came back. Then we’d stop at my other grandparents’ house where there would be a slream of aunts and uncle and cousins- they had 13 children. People would walk by in front of the Esso station across the street, waving and calling greetings and exchanging nods.

Then everyone would go home for supper because the next day was a work and school day.

The very best Memorial Day was the one a man gave me a spent rifle cartridge and I slept with it under the pillow that night.

In due course Memorial Day’s meaning changed for me; “the Sergeant” is long since gone from that town as I am. But, I remember those Memorial Days or rather Decoration Days.

 Combat deaths ranked by war (top 10)

1	World War II	1941-1945	291,557
2	American Civil War	1861-1865	212,938
3	World War I	1917-1918	53,402
4	Vietnam War	1964-1973	47,355
5	Korean War	1950-1953	33,746
6	American Revolutionary War	1775-1783	8,000
7	Iraq War	2003-present 2258 days	3,760 (as of 24 May, 2009)
8	War of 1812	1812-1815	2,260
9	Mexican-American War	1846-1848	1,733
10	Philippine-American War	1898-1913	1,020

U.S. military sources say the Taliban are using terror tactics to discredit U.S. and coalition military forces with false charges of killing civilians. Claims  that the U. S. mainstream media relish  and enthusiastically promote.

The most recent example was the incident May 4 in Bala Baluk Farah Province in Western Afghanistan that began with the Taliban beheadings of three local officials tied to the Afghan government.

Afghan security forces were drawn into the area and a large fire fight took place lasting about a half a day. The local authorities then requested assistance from a U.S. Quick Reaction Force, which called in an air strike that killed civilians.

According to the sources, the Taliban selected certain families and blew them up with hand grenades or other explosive inside their homes and then took the bodies and body parts and positioned them for media, local community and government official to view, in an information operation designed to discredit coalition forces.

The Taliban atrocities were witnessed by Afghans, some of whom were killed by the Taliban.

“This is just an example how we are losing the information war,” said one official.

Part of the problem is that gullible Afghan government officials a too ready to accept the false Taliban claims.

It is unclear exactly how many people died in the fighting in Bala Baluk district. However, the Afghan government paid compensation to families for 140 dead, based on a list gathered from villagers.

Obama has found a way to quickly close Guantanamo Bay. He’s going to turn it into a Pontiac dealership.- Leno

Teachers unions, state workers, business leaders and politicians outspent opponents by six-to-one, and they still lost by a two-to-one margin at Tuesday’s special election. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has moaned that if these initiatives were voted down, government services would have to be slashed, criminals released early and public employees furloughed. But voters said do it and more, the alternative of letting the state’s tax-and-spend machine continue was worse. How right they are.

The response so far from Sacramento is typically short-sighted. and disingenuous. Schwarzenegger, legislators and public-worker unions are now conspiring to roll out plan B: a federal bailout. The Governor was in Washington on Tuesday and, sounding like a Detroit auto executive, declared: “We need assistance.” As a starter he wants a federal guarantee on California’s next $6 billion bond offering.

But a federal bailout is an injustice to the residents of other states, especially those that run their governments responsibly. Why should taxpayers in Colorado, Virginia or Ohio pay for  Schwarzenegger ’s and State Assemblymembers and Senators incompetence?

Worse, one price of a bailout could be an Obama Administration demand that California remove its requirement for a two-thirds legislative majority to pass a tax increase. Another possible political target is repeal of the Proposition 13 property tax limitation. Yet these are the only remaining restraints on the appetites of the political class. Either interference is almost assured to trigger a revolution in California.

Tuesday’s vote was a voter cry that the state needs more such restraints, and now is the time to push them. First, California needs a sturdy cap on the rate of spending growth. Thirty years ago this November, when California’s economy was in a similar rut, three-quarters of the voters approved the famous Gann Amendment. That limited the annual growth rate of spending to population growth and inflation.

The result was that California’s annual average rate of spending growth after inflation fell to 2% through the 1980s from 9% in the 1970s. California’s state per-capita expenditures fell to 16th in the nation in 1990 from 7th in 1979. The economy soared, growing by 121% — 14% faster than the U.S. average. The Gann limits were effectively neutered in 1988 and 1990 by initiatives that exempted education and transportation from the cap.

The next step is to fix California’s steeply progressive and antigrowth tax code. California’s 10.55% income tax and 9% sales tax are driving businesses and high income taxpayers out of the state, depleting the tax base month after month. They also lead to overspending during the good times as revenues boom, but to budget crises when those revenues fall precipitously during the busts. A 5% to 6% tax rate on sales and income without deductions would halt the flight to low-tax neighboring states and invite newcomers who could start buying houses again.

The state’s public-employee pensions also need to be overhauled. According to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, the state pension funds are more than $200 billion underfunded. Public employees can retire after 30 years on the job in their early 50s, with lifetime retirement benefits at 90% of their final salary. Some retirees receive $200,000 a year or more in pensions. The solution is to follow Florida’s lead and require new workers to accept defined contribution pensions like the 401(k) plans now dominant in the private work force. Without such a reform, many California cities will go bust and the state’s tax burden will grow inexorably.

Despite the panic from Sacramento, Tuesday’s vote was the best fiscal news out of California in 30 years. It showed that the voters are paying attention to the games their elected leaders have been playing, and they have finally blown the whistle. We hope the sound was heard as far away as another out-of-control government, the one in Washington, D.C.

California experienced another earthquake yesterday. California is the only state where you don’t know what’s going to bounce first - the ground from the earthquake or the check you get from the government.

John Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth in a decade galvanizing Americans, and sending tens of thousands into science and engineering - including me. Since then America’s interest in a space program as well as those fields has steadily declined mirroring a general decline in America’s public education in a general dumbing down of the nation. Obama appears to be set on ending JFK’s science legacy.

A recent meeting of the Committee on Science and Technology discussed Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Budget Request. At the hearing, Republican and some Democrats  expressed concerns to acting NASA Administrator Christopher Scolese over insufficient funding to develop the next generation manned launch vehicle in a timely manner after retirement of the Space Shuttle.

“NASA is one area of the federal budget where I think some increases are justified,” said Science and Technology Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX). “As I said to Dr. Holdren last week, I am very concerned that priorities may be shifting away from human space exploration at a very critical time.”

Obama appears disinterested and unconcerned nor are Americans who are more focused on self-interest than ever before.

While NASA’s proposed FY10 budget is $18.7 billion, an increase of 5.1% over the enacted FY09 appropriation for NASA, the budget projection beyond FY10 is essentially flat through FY13.

Several members expressed concern that this budget has deleted nearly all of the out-year funding for the Altair Lunar Lander and for the heavy-lift Ares 5 launch vehicle necessary to support exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit.

Discussing his concerns over the out-year funding of the Constellation program, Ranking Member Hall said, “The Exploration program needs stability and growth and cannot be the bill-payer for the rest of the agency.”

NASA plans to fly the remaining Shuttle missions, including an additional flight to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the Space Station before retiring the Shuttle.

The Orion and Ares 1 are not expected to be ready before 2015 at the earliest. In the resulting gap, the U.S. stands to lose a highly skilled workforce and a number of accompanying parts suppliers and other contractors, while making cash payments to Russia to ferry our astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

At the request of the White House, a review will be conducted by a panel of outside experts chaired by Norman R. Augustine to determine a set of options for the future of human spaceflight at NASA. The panel will examine ongoing and planned NASA human spaceflight development activities, as well as potential alternatives for advancing human spaceflight following retirement of the Shuttle.

While Mr. Scolese said that “major development work is underway” in completing the formulation phase of the Constellation Program, when asked whether the Administration’s proposed $3 billion cut to the out-year budget would affect the projected 2020 return to the moon, Mr. Scolese was disingenuous and said he did not know and he hopes the review panel might better evaluate this projection.

In regard to the review panel, Ranking Member Hall said, “There are many questions that should be answered including about whether to extend the International Space Station beyond 2016.”

He said that the Space Station “is a valuable National Laboratory and we should be seeking new and innovative research to perform there well into the future.”

Hall continued, “While we do not need to add more money to the ballooning deficit, we should prioritize Federal spending on programs that yield great returns-and NASA is one of those programs.”

China, Russia and India are each ramping up their space programs filling the vacuum Obama seems set on creating by withdrawing in favor of the major social reengineering of America.

A Hindu devotee asked God, represented by the multi-armed Lord Narayana, this question. “My dear Lord,” he said. “I understand that you have innumerable inconceivable potencies. But out of all of them the energy of light seems to be the most amazing. Light pervades the spiritual world, it illuminates the material universes, and life is impossible without it.” He continued, “I would like to know how you make it work.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” was the reply. “Many hands make light work.”

Most Americans agree with Obama’s push for higher fuel efficiency even if, as expected, it increases the cost of a new car.

 Sixty-three percent (63%) favor a law that would require automakers to produce cars that get more miles out of a gallon of gas. Just 29% oppose such a measure in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

If requiring higher fuel efficiency increases the average cost of a car by $600 to $1,300, 55% support still support it while opposition rises to 36%.

At the same time, 68% of all adults oppose higher taxes on bigger cars and SUVs as a way to encourage the sale of more fuel-efficient vehicles. Only 23% think the extra taxes are a good idea.

 Democrats are far more supportive of mandated fuel-efficiency standards than Republicans, but their support drops more dramatically when the increased cost is factored in.

Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Democrats agree with the plan to require automakers to produce more fuel-efficient cars, while 53% of Republicans oppose it.  Residence location was not factored into the study.

But Democratic support drops 16 points to 71% if the mandates add $600 or more to the cost of a new car, while GOP opposition increases only five points to 58%.

 Among adults not affiliated with either major political party, 59% favor a law requiring higher fuel efficiency, and that support falls just slightly to 56% when the question includes the higher cost per vehicle.

Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans, 61% of Democrats and 64% of unaffiliated Americans oppose extra taxes to discourage sales of bigger cars and SUVs.

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Americans also reject a large increase in the federal government’s tax on gasoline as a way to encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

Tuesday Obama announced new fuel efficiency standards that will begin to take effect in 2012. By 2016, the required average will be 35.5 miles per gallon, up from 25 mpg for the current year. The new standards are expected to add anywhere from $600 to $1,300 to the cost of a new vehicle. The survey did not measure the impact of higher prices on support for the new standards nor the likelihood of increased injury and deaths resulting from the smaller cars..

These standards are being implemented at a time when the government has taken unprecedented control of two struggling auto giants-General Motors and Chrysler. Only 18% of Americans believe the government and unions will do a good job running the auto companies. Most expect that, upon formally assuming an ownership role, the government will give GM and Chrysler unfair advantages over other auto companies.

The government’s increased involvement in Chrysler and General Motors after both companies declare bankruptcy is expected to push the automakers more aggressively into making more fuel-efficient vehicles. But only 25% now say they would buy a car from a bankrupt automaker.

 Americans have mixed feeling about the so-called “Cash for Clunkers” plan moving through Congress. Forty-two percent (42%) like the idea of offering car owners up to $4,500 if they turn in their old vehicle and put the money toward a more fuel-efficient replacement, but 34% oppose it.

Yesterday during a speech, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the CIA misleads us all the time. You know . . . unlike Congress. -   Leno

“It has to be true; I read it in the newspaper” was sometimes said when journalist and newspapers were generally viewed as reliable. Except on editorial pages in those bygone days opinion was excised and facts checked. The advent of the internet and weblogs, or blogs, with their anonymity has changed a lot of things.

Like donut shop owners, city councilmen, and smalltown gossip victims, doctors aren’t terribly fond of patients leaving negative comments of them all over the Internet. They, however, aren’t taking the lawsuit route-at least not yet. Instead, doctors are asking patients to sign agreements that bar them from posting comments on everything from review sites to blogs, and then attempting to have the reviews removed if they break the gag order.

In fact, these doctors are going so far as enlisting the help of monitoring companies that watch for negative posts attempting to keep them in check. One such company is (appropriately) called Medical Justice, founded by North Carolina neurosurgeon Dr. Jeffrey Segal, whose entire business is built upon pushing patient waivers to doctors and then hunting out their commenting indiscretions online.

Segal advises the 2,000 or so doctors who employ his services to request that all patients sign the waiver. If someone refuses, he says the doctor should suggest going somewhere else, though Segal claims he has not heard of a case where a doctor has turned away a longtime patient.

What’s the point of all this, though? Customers are “hungry for good information,” Segal told the Associated Press, but that’s apparently not what they’re getting when reading sites like RateMDs.com or random blog posts about doctors. These “are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices,” he says, and could potentially damage a physician’s practice. RateMD post average ratings taken from posts on a numeric scale. It you look at the website you immediately notice what seems to be a majority of the ratings are based on one comment.

For their part, some sites that allow patients to review doctors are refusing to be bullied into taking down reviews, even if the reviewer in question has signed a waiver. “They’re basically forcing the patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, and I really find that repulsive,” RateMDs cofounder John Swapceinsk told the AP. In fact, Swapceinsk is taking things a step further by putting up a Wall of Shame list of doctors who use patient waivers so that everyone can know who is engaging in these tactics.

Considering the upswing in review sites like Yelp and AngiesList, the public is growing accustomed to getting information like this from the Internet. Not every patient is going to offer a fair and balanced view of a doctor visit (just like not every Yelp reviewer has any idea what they’re talking about when they trash your favorite restaurant), but people should be to speak openly about their experiences. 

Review sites will only continue to increase in popularity-though potential customers should always take what they read online with a grain of salt. Instead of fighting the trend, doctors need to embrace the new reality and maybe even use the reviews as an opportunity to improve themselves.

Aggrieved patients can file more formal complaints with Medical licensing boards and Medical Socieites but in general there does not appear to be much confidence in those.

New Zealand police launched an international search for two New Zealanders who allegedly took the money and ran after a bank mistakenly put 10 million New Zealand dollars ($6.1 million) into their account.

The couple, who operated a gas station in the northern city of Rotorua, applied to Westpac Bank for a NZ$10,000 ($6,000) overdraft, but 1,000 times that amount was paid into their account. The two then withdrew some of the money and disappeared, police said.

The foundation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for years has been the assumption that there would be a two-state solution. Such a solution has not materialized for a host of reasons including:.

1. at present there are two Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, which are hostile to each other.
2. the geography and economy of any Palestinian state would be so reliant on Israel that independence would be meaningless; geography simply makes the two-state proposal almost impossible to implement.
3. no Palestinian government would have the power to guarantee that rogue elements would not launch rockets at Israel, potentially striking at the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor, Israel’s heartland.
4. neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have the domestic political coherence to allow any negotiator to operate from a position of confidence. Whatever the two sides negotiated would be revised and destroyed by their political opponents, and even their friends.

For these reasons, the entire peace process-including the two-state solution-is a chimera. Neither side can live with what the other can offer. But if it is a fiction, it is a fiction that serves Obama’s purposes if not U. S. interests The United States has interests that go well beyond Israeli interests and sometimes go in a different direction altogether. Like Israel, the United States understands that one of the major obstacles to any serious evolution toward a two-state solution is Arab hostility to such an outcome.

The Jordanians have feared and loathed Fatah in the West Bank ever since the Black September uprisings of 1970. The ruling Hashemites are ethnically different from the Palestinians (who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Jordanian population), and they fear that a Palestinian state under Fatah would threaten the Jordanian monarchy. For their part, the Egyptians see Hamas as a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the Mubarak government’s ouster-meaning Cairo would hate to see a Hamas-led state. Meanwhile, the Saudis and the other Arab states do not wish to see a radical altering of the status quo, which would likely come about with the rise of a Palestinian polity.

At the same time, whatever the basic strategic interests of the Arab regimes, all pay lip service to the principle of Palestinian statehood. This is hardly a unique situation. States frequently claim to favor various things they actually are either indifferent to or have no intention of doing anything about. Complicating matters for the Arab states is the fact that they have substantial populations that do care about the fate of the Palestinians. These states thus are caught between public passion on behalf of Palestinians and the regimes’ interests that are threatened by the Palestinian cause. The states’ challenge, accordingly, is to appear to be doing something on behalf of the Palestinians while in fact doing nothing.

The United States has a vested interest in the preservation of these states. The futures of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are of vital importance to Washington. The United States must therefore simultaneously publicly demonstrate its sensitivity to pressures from these nations over the Palestinian question while being careful to achieve nothing-an easy enough goal to achieve.

The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served U.S. and Arab interests quite well. They provide the illusion of activity, with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions-all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending. Just 14% say the problem is that voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Turns out there is a crapper crisis in Moscow says Russia’s RIA Novosto news service. Before the Soviet Union collapsed Moscow had plenty of toilets where Moscovites could answer natures call for 15 or 20 roubles. Since then most fell into ill-repair and disuse. Some were sold off and even converted to eateries to be replaced by entrepreneurs who illegally set up one holers around town charging only 5 roubles per use. Undercutting the once bureaucrat monopoly. The estimated 15 companies that setup the 10,000 rent-a-crappers around town are in a bitter battle with something called Santekhrabot - the state run sanitation district..  

Now the government wants to shut those down because they aren’t paying taxes so they can build more public toilets and charge the old rates. The motivation isn’t that the for profit companies wares are not doing the job but only that the government isn’t getting its share, and worst of all the companies are pocketing the profits.

Meanwhile citizens will have trouble finding public facilities at any price. We can only hope that Washington DC doesn’t get wind of this revenue scheme or you best start wearing Depends or at least carrying your own toilet paper rolls.

Tomorrow the California Supreme Court will issue its decision on whether Proposition 8 banning homosexual marriage I constitutional or not, Regardless of the ruling the defecation will hit the impeller as the losing side will explode.

In the week a California man was charged with the double murder a 4 month old fetus and mother the mother and just after a masterfully double talking Obama at Notre Dame he has formed a White House task force of advocates on both sides of the abortion divide and asked them to agree on ways that government can help reduce the number of abortions.

The Christian Science Monitor reports the group’s proposals are due this fall, possibly coinciding with the Senate’s vote on Obama’s nominee for a new Supreme Court justice. Congress is also weighing a bill aimed at making it easier for a pregnant woman to choose to go to term and to put her baby up for adoption.

Even if the task force’s efforts fall short, the president has done a service by trying to alter the angry tone of a debate that still polarizes Americans some 35 years after the high court defined a right to abortion in the infamous Roe versus Wade case.

A new Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans now identify their political stance on abortion as “pro-life.” This shift may be due in part to advances in medical science that have enabled premature babies to be kept alive at earlier and earlier stages. (The point of prenatal “viability” was a big factor in the court’s Roe v. Wade decision outlining when government can regulate abortion.)

While some experts dispute the Gallup poll’s results, Obama nonetheless has picked up on the uneasy feeling that many Americans still have toward abortion, even if they agree with its legality.

Abortion, says Obama, is not just about a woman’s freedom to choose. It is also a moral and ethical issue that affects women, their families, and society. (He didn’t mention the effect of abortion on the fetus - the baby is dead.) He has also called for a “conscience clause” in contracts for healthcare workers who don’t want to participate in abortions; such a step would also need to protect the abortion right.

In his Notre Dame, speech Obama said the key role for government on this issue is to help women avoid an unwanted pregnancy. For both sides to find common ground on even that aim would not mean they must give up their positions on abortion’s legality. In fact, Obama said, the opposing views on defining the point at which human life begins are “irreconcilable” (and, as he put it last year, that issue is “above my pay grade”).

The president offered an alternative way to deal with the abortion issue in his Notre Dame talk:

“When we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe, that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground. That’s when we begin to say, ‘Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually. It has both moral and spiritual dimensions.’”

It may be overly ambitious to assume government can greatly reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and then also help the remainder of those women put their child up for adoption.

But if anyone has the skills for reconciliation and the passion of hope to do so, says the Monitor’s editorial it is this president.

What was it Shakespeare said, “Full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.” There is enough hypocrisy to go around on this one.

The big three networks’ evening news broadcasts (CBS. NBC. ABC) have lost around one-quarter of their nightly audience since Obama entered the White House. Fox News has increased and is head and shoulders above its three competitors.

CBS’s total nightly audience has dropped from an average of 7.72 million viewers in the week beginning on Jan. 26 - six days after Obama’s inauguration - to 5.61 million in the week of May 11, a plunge of a whopping 27.3 percent.

ABC’s average has fallen from 9.34 million to 7.14 million, a drop of 23.6 percent, and NBC’s evening news broadcast has plummeted 25.3 percent, from 10.3 million to 7.69 million.

The networks have fared even worse in the all-important 25 to 54 demographic - the big three combined have suffered a 33.6 percent drop in that age group.

Once there was an old rich man who was afraid of dying and leaving all his wealth behind on earth. So, he took up the matter with God. He pleaded day and night to be able to take all his earthly possessions with him.
St. Peter, shrugged his shoulders and simply said, “Fine with me. But we’ve already got plenty of pavement here.”

Finally, God conceded. He said the man could take as much as he could fit in one suitcase. The old man immediately went out, bought a huge suitcase, sold all he owned and filled the suitcase with gold bars.

Shortly after that, the old man died. Awkwardly dragging the big, heavy suitcase, he approached St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter stopped him, asked him to open his luggage, and then told him he couldn’t bring his gold bars into Heaven. The man was irate. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I got permission directly from God himself for this. He told me whatever I could fit into one suitcase, I could bring with me.”

 The detailed report compiled by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington last month, complete with graphs and diagrams, has been reprinted in thousands of copies in Tehran. It is compulsory reading for its intelligence and Revolutionary Guards personnel because the Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Development Facilities concludes that the Jewish state has all the resources necessary for a successful strike.

When asked recently, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, agreed with this estimate. This week, president Shimon Peres and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu both said that if diplomacy failed to halt Iran’s nuclear activities, Israel would be left with no option other than the military one. And Tuesday, April 14, the New York Times quoted an Israeli official as saying that Jerusalem would give the Obama administration until late 2009 to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment projects; after that, Israel will be forced to act.

Obama himself set a “timeline” at the end of 2009 for progress with Iran on the issue.

Tehran responded with a complaint to the UN Security Council demanding that Israel be condemned for “its threats against a sovereign state.”

For the past three years, US military and intelligence sources have used attributed and leaked assessments to the American media to emphasize that such an operation is beyond Israel’s capabilities because of the nuclear facilities’ wide distribution across Iran. At best, they maintained, the Israeli Air Force might knock out a few Iranian nuclear installations, but only enough to put Iran’s nuclear drive temporarily on hold.

 The CSIS paper refutes this assessment and maintains there is no need to destroy dozens or hundreds of sites; the destruction of seven to nine targets would be enough to cripple the Iranian program, and lists them as follows:

 1. Lashkar A’bad, site of secret uranium enrichment plants in the north near the Turkish border.

2. Tehranb, for the central laboratory for developing atomic armaments as well as more uranium enrichment facilities.

3. Arak, in central Iran, where a heavy water plant is under construction to manufacture plutonium for weapons.

4. Isfahan, in central Iran, near which a small research reactor and a cluster of laboratories for uranium enrichment, centrifuges and weapons development, are situated.

5. Natanz, the main center for uranium enrichment.

6. Ardekan, at the southern tip of Iran, where more uranium enrichment facilities are located.

7. Saghand, Iran’s main uranium mining region.

8. Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf shore, Iran’s biggest nuclear reactor built by Russia.

9. Gachin, near the Strait of Hormuz, the site of more uranium mines and enrichment facilities.

 Complicated tables set forth an array of technical details showing how many PG bombs Israeli Air Force F16I or F15F bomber-fighter planes can carry, how much fuel is needed to reach their Iranian targets, and at what stage of their return journey they would need to refuel.

This think tank finds Israel has enough aircraft as well as the necessary intelligence and electronic resources for the task - contrary to previous estimates.

 The authors propose three attack routes for a potential Israeli operation against Iran: an eastern route over Saudi Arabia; a central route over Iraq, and a northern route over Turkey, Syria and northern Iraqi Kurdistan. They point to the third as Israel’s best option in view of the superiority of its electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.

 This is the first time a detailed and accurate description of these capabilities, and a description of how they were put to use in the Israeli raid on the North Korean-built plutonium reactor in Dar az-Zawr, Syria, on September, 2007, has ever been published.

Another gaffe by Vice President Joe Biden. Newsweek is reporting that at the Gridiron Dinner, Joe Biden accidentally revealed Dick Cheney’s secret hiding place. Here’s more proof you don’t need to waterboard - just give Joe Biden a couple of drinks. This is all part of our new plan: “Don’t Ask - We’ll Tell.” - Leno

“Obama’s remarks and expressions of hope were intended to deceive the international community regarding everything connected to the continuing behavior and existence of the racist and radical Zionist entity,” a Hamas spokesperson said Tuesday in remarks about Monday meeting between the U. S. President and Israel’s Prime Minister. They called Obama’s remarks an “ensemble of wishes.”

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Yuval Diskin told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday morning that there was “no chance for an effective peace process so long as Hamas rules the Gaza Strip.”

The Jerusalem Post editorial said “It would have been more helpful for him to note that Gaza would not be suffering deprivations if it wasn’t led by a violent Islamist movement that uses the territory to attack Israel.”

Iran’s foreign minister said Obama setting a deadline for talks with Iran is of no use unless it is combined with a visible policy shift. “Iran’s stance toward the United States is based on realities. Therefore, our decision will be made according to their practical moves,” Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

So far no serious mainstreat U. S. media has looked beyond the yuck-yuck and except for a couple snide Anti-Semitic ranters there have been no substantive comments.

The Israeli daily Haaretz quoted the special US envoy on Iran, Dennis Ross, as saying that Obama had set October as the deadline for concluding the first round of talks with Iran on the country’s nuclear program.

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the gap between Obama and Netanyahu on Iran was wider even than on the Palestinian issue. Overshadowing their outwardly easy conversation was the US president’s growing inclination to meet Iran halfway on uranium enrichment and call off UN and American sanctions if Tehran allows international monitoring of the process.

 Obama is seriously considering taking up the Anglo-German proposal for an international monitoring mechanism strict enough to preclude Iran’s attainment of weapons-grade enriched uranium. Obama has been convinced by American intelligence and nuclear experts that this can be done. Obama believes nothing will persuade Tehran to cede its right to enrichment activity on its soil.

 Israeli intelligence and military experts take the opposite view. They believe the Anglo-German plan gives Iran the perfect cover for concealing its race for a nuclear bomb, a misgiving shared by the political and military establishments of the moderate Arab governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gulf states and elsewhere.

 If Obama adopts this plan, Iran can be sure of arriving at a nuclear weapon capability by the end of 2010.

 This dispute did not come up in the Obama-Netanyahu conversation. Both skated around the Iranian nuclear threat separately without touching on options outside diplomacy.

 Obama said he was in the process of “reaching out” to Iran and was confident he could persuade Tehran’s rulers that a nuclear weapon was not in their best interest if they wanted to be fully accepted as part of the international community. He did not mention uranium enrichment or a military option against Iran. Neither would he accept a deadline for negotiations with Tehran, except to say that at the end of the year, “we will see where we stand.”

 But asked later to comment, Netanyahu said: “We will defend ourselves.”

Seen from outside Washington, by Iran’s neighbors, Israeli and Arab alike, Obama has made Iran the gift of seven clear months for developing its nuclear capabilities and enrichment undisturbed.

 The only thing left to the Israeli prime minister was to commend “the president’s firm commitment that Iran will not attain a nuclear weapon” - privately most see that as “toothless.”

A 17-year old  high school student is facing charges of cruelty to an animal for using a biology class snake as a jump rope..

Israel’s leading strategic institute has issued a report stating that U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear weapons program would prove decisive for the success of Obama’s presidency.  Frankly that includes at least some wishfulness as the wheelsseem to be coming off in Pakistan, China is puffing up its chest and Russia is gleefully rubbing its hands to exploit its position by bottling up NATO.

 Obama is way over his head and going to an Egyptian mosque next month to make nice with a fuzzy speech that will awe America’s mainstream media will only make matters worse.

The Institute for National Security Studies said Obama, despite the economic crisis, would be forced to place Iran’s nuclear program at the top of his agenda.

In a report authored by Ephraim Asculai, INSS, formerly the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said Teheran would test Obama’s resolve by continuing uranium enrichment and other activities required for nuclear weapons development.

“In a way the Iranian nuclear issue is the Cuban missile crisis all over again,” Asculai said. “It will test the ability of the newly-elected U.S. president to confront the adversary and better him. In a way, this is a make-or-break situation for Obama.”

Titled “The Time Game with Iran,” the report said the United States would be forced to confront rising instability in the Middle East sparked by Iran’s nuclear weapons program and Teheran’s support for insurgency groups. The report cited Egypt’s capture of an alleged Hizbullah network, said to have planned attacks throughout the Sinai Peninsula.

“Egypt is confronting Iran and instability is in the air,” the report said. “Perhaps more than the recent U.S. elections, the timetable is now dictated by the closing deadline of Iran’s nuclear progress.”

The report was issued amid a quiet Israeli dialogue with the United States regarding Iran. In May, CIA director Leon Panetta held a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and was said to have demanded that Israel not take any military action against Iran. Officials said the Panetta visit was ordered by Obama, who wanted to avoid a long discussion on Iran during his meeting with Netanyahu in Washington on May 18.

Asculai, a former official in the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, said Obama would pursue a diplomatic solution to Iran’s uranium enrichment program, banned by the United Nations Security Council. But the report urged the U.S. president to set a deadline for any diplomatic process.

“In setting the time limit, the President must remember that any time gained by the Iranians during the negotiation process would be used to further advance their project,” the report said.

The report warned that Iran could exploit Obama’s diplomatic route by insisting that its nuclear project was not up for negotiation. Such an opening position, the report said, would harm U.S. influence throughout the Middle East, particularly in Gulf Cooperation Council states.

Asculai urged Israel to delay plans to attack Iran. Instead, he recommended that the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu give Obama some time to determine whether Iran would respond to diplomacy.

“Should engagement fail, Israel would be in a better position to convince the United States, if not to actively support, then at least not to interfere, with any military action,” the report said. A wildcard is Russia and Putin ho has delayed deployment of sophisticated air defense systems in Iran would render talks moot if they do install it. My hunch is Putin well knows he is in the driver’s seat and will steer Obama into the ditch on START, etc.

The White House had a private screening of “Star Trek.” You don’t have to worry about some moron talking though the movie at private screenings. That’s why they didn’t invite Joe Biden.– Leno

Two men were adrift in an open boat, and it looked bad for them. Finally one of them, frightened, began to pray.

“O Lord,” he prayed, “I’ve broken most of thy commandments. I’ve been a hard drinker, but if my life is spared now I’ll promise never again…”

“Wait a minute, Jack,” said his friend. “Don’t go too far. I think I see a sail.”

CALIFORNIA Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) released a pair of dire budget politically motivated proposals last week to address the state’s worsening fiscal crisis.

 The first scenario, designed to tackle the $15.4 billion deficit the state would face if the May 19 ballot propositions pass, calls for, among other things, $6 billion in borrowing and $3 billion in cuts to public schools.

The second scenario, aimed at the $21.3 billion budget hole projected if the ballot measures fail, proposes cutting school funding by $5.4 billion, dropping 225,000 children from the children’s health insurance program, reducing the state workforce by 5,000 employees and selling off state-owned properties, including the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Orange County Fairgrounds and San Quentin Prison.

 ”To solve our immediate cash crisis, we simply cannot avoid deep and painful cuts in spending, Schwarzenegger wrote in a statement. “Some of these solutions are things I would never have considered in the past but, unfortunately, our state could be in a worst case scenario if the propositions fail.”

With most of the ballot measures appearing headed for defeat, some dismissed the budget proposals as a scare tactic. Others were more specific with their criticism. State Sen. Roderick Wright (D), for instance, found fault with the idea of selling the Coliseum.

“You’ve got a depressed market, so you are not going to get its full value,” he said. “To try to sell the LA Coliseum now in a fire sale is not a prudent thing to do.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, L.A.County Supervisor and president of the L.A. Coliseum Commission, didn’t care much for Schwarazenegger’sColiseum proposal either.

 ”The idea is absurd,” he said. “The Coliseum is a national historic monument. You cannot sell it anymore than you can sell the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument.”

 Schwarzenegger’s panic proposals fail to address the real solution of cutting California’s profligate spending In any meaningful way.

 Recent polls show that voters oppose all of the measures - which include a spending cap and tax hike (Proposition 1A), and authorization to borrow $5 billion against future California Lottery revenues (Prop. 1C) - but one: Prop. 1F, which would prevent state legislators from receiving pay hikes in deficit years ppars to be leading. turnout will be low, between 25 and 33 percent. while the outlook may not be good for Props 1A-1E tomorrow, it may be better for measures like them in the future. Nearly a third of the over 1 million immigrants who became U.S. citizens last year - almost twice the number that did two years before - reside in CALIFORNIA. Mexicans constituted the largest group,nearly a quarter of the 300,000 total, followed by Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, Cubans and Vietnamese. And some political analysts believe such citizens will eventually reshape California’s electorate and rearrange its policy priorities.

A North Carolina store owner and a patron thwarted a teen accused of trying to carry out a robbery by concealing a banana beneath his shirt to resemble a gun. 17-year-old John Szwalla entered the Internet cafe Thursday and demanded money, saying he had a gun.

The owner, Bobby Ray Mabe, said he and a customer jumped Szwalla, holding him until deputies arrived. While they waited, Mabe says the teen ate the banana. Deputies took pictures of the peel. Forsyth County Sheriff’s office spokesman Maj. Brad Stanley says deputies joked about charging Szwalla with destroying evidence

China’s top oil producer has issued the nation’s first medium-term US dollar notes, the Chinese central bank said Thursday, in yet another sign Beijing is keen to facilitate the companies’ overseas expansion.

China National Petroleum Corporation’s issue marks a “milestone” because it “offers a new forex financing channel for companies,” the People’s Bank of China said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the China National Petroleum Corporation, parent of Hong Kong-listed Petrochina, said it had raised one billion dollars in the issue of three-year, floating-rate notes.

“It provides a driver for competent firms to go abroad and strongly supports their overseas business expansion,” the central bank statement said.

China is increasingly keen on buying overseas mining assets and other resources through state-owned companies, taking advantage of low prices on the international market due to the global financial crisis.

In a recent high-profile example of Chinese corporate ambitions abroad, aluminium producer Chinalco has proposed to invest 19.5 billion dollars in Australian mining giant Rio Tinto.

The deal is still under review by the Australian government and would mark China’s largest ever foreign investment if approved.

Obama has puffed that China needs the U. S. as a market so it has to keep buying a lot of the 46 cents per dollar he spends debt.. But, that was moderated last week when an international report showed that the U. S. only is only buying what amounts to 5% of China’s $7.8 trillion GDP. Still a lot but a decreasing percentage.

China has the world’s second Gross Domestic product behind the U. S.’s $14.3 trillion. Estimates to be released May 29, 2009 will show China gorwing and the U. S. GDP delining by perhaps 6.3%. China husbands its numbers but some think its GDP could be reported as growing by 10%.

Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.

Iran is chortling about a big victory over Obama and the U. S.  They say Obama collapsed to get US journalist Roxana Saberi released Tuesday, May 12, as part of a secret exchange deal under which Obama agreed to free four senior Iranian  One view is Iran flim-flammed Obama by arresting and convicting her in a public way then using her as a bargaining chip.

The four were Revolutionary Guards intelligense officers captured in northern Iraq in January 2007. Defined as “diplomats” by Tehran, they in fact ran terror operations and covert arms supplies from Iran then to al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent networks.

 Those sources reveal that Obama will also release to Tehran information on the fate of the Iranian diplomat who disappeared in Pakistan four months ago. US and Pakistani officials claimed at the time that he was kidnapped by the Taliban, tortured and executed. Tehran insist he was captured - and is still held - by US special forces because of his ties with al Qaeda.

The four Iranian agents captured in Iraq have not yet been freed, but senior Iranian and Iraqi sources say it will happen soon. The date depends on Tehran satisfying Washington’s demand for information on the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who has never been heard of from the time he disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007.

On April 23 this year, Mohammad Hossein Aghasi, the Iranian lawyer the Levinson family hired to trace him said he believes the missing American is alive and held at a secret location in Iran.

Intelligence sources told the Israeli based DebkaFile that the Obama administration’s willingness for this kind of swap goes partway toward admitting to Tehran’s charge that Roxana Saberi performed services in Iran for the United States.

After the Tehran court commuted the eight-year sentence against her for spying to two years suspended, her lawyer revealed that part of the Iranian case against her was that she had a copy of a confidential Iranian report on the US war in Iraq which, he said, she had copied “out of curiosity.”

Obama’s naming of Utah GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman as US ambassador to China removes another rung from Hillary’s ladder removes him as an opponent in 2012 and puts Huntsman on hot seat.  

The Huntsman nomination comes a week after NSA told Congress that Beijing has declared asymmetric warfare against the United States saying it is ready to attack U.S. banking systems. China has fired a figurative first shot by issuing its first “dollar note”

Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander told the House Armed Services Committee on May 7 that the rules for defending, exploiting and attacking networks are part of the Defense Department.

“There was a Chinese PLA statement in 1996 that said something to the effect, ‘If you want to attack the United States, attack its banking system,’” he said, noting that a future cyber war may not involve an attack against the Pentagon.

“But if we assume symmetrically that they would attack us, the Defense Department, and the Defense Department would respond back, you’re now into one form,” Alexander said.

“The issue, I think, that realistically faces us, though, is that it would be asymmetrical. It would go against our industry, and it might be our critical infrastructure.”

Alexander said the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and others in the intelligence community are working on rules of cyber conflict.

Military and defense systems have a legal framework for conflict.

“But that’s a very limited and a very focused set. I think to really get to the heart of your question, you have to have that partnership and we have to operate seamlessly across all of those if we’re going to be successful. And that’s going to take some work,” Alexander said.

Huntsman is fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in the Nationalist Chinese stronghold of Taiwan, the 49-year-old Huntsman is a popular two-term governor who served in both Bush administrations and was national co-chairman of Arizona Sen. McCain’s campaign against Obama last year. Huntsman has made a name for himself advocating a moderate agenda in one of the nation’s most conservative states and has been mentioned as a possible Obama opponent. Most think Huntsman will easily be confirmed.

Huntsman will also have to deal with a checkered history of the Mormon (LDS Church) in China.

The first attempt by the Mormons to enter China was in 1853. during the Taiping Rebellion was an ill-prepared failure. The second attempt in 1949 also failed due to internal turmoil, and the Korean War.

Missionaries returned in 1955, gained footholds and according to the Chinese Encyclopedia of contemporary Chinese culture in 2001 there were 21,084 members meeting in forty-one congregations in Hong Kong; on Taiwan there are 35,506 members in eighty-one congregations. BYU is believed to have or have had some 600 teachers in various Chinese cities. Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, the Chinese communist government has forbidden Chinese citizens from attending services conducted by expatriates

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1960 Huntsman is the son of billionaire businessman and philanthropist Jon Huntsman of Huntsman Corporation. He has seven siblings. His maternal grandfather was an Apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He attended the University of Utah, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He received a Bachelor’s degree in business from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

China’s is aggressively and secretly building up its strategic and tactical nuclear forces, with new systems including three long-range ballistic missiles and possibly multiple warheads; U. S. caps Pacitic BMD system

A recent report by the Center for Naval Analysis and the National Defense University says an analysis of the 2008 annual Chinese defense White Paper reveals China is asserting a new global role; details of the conditions of its strategic nuclear forces, and C*hina is becoming more assertive in international affairs after decades of isolation.

“The 2008 White Paper displays a China that is more confident and assertive about its role in the world than at any time in the past,” the report states.

“The White Paper says that China has reached an ‘historical turning point’ and, for the first time, depicts China as a central player in global military, political, and economic affairs, saying that ‘China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world, nor can the world enjoy prosperity and stability without China.’”

Concerning China’s nuclear force development, the report did not provide new details but reiterated the public posture that China will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

New information on China’s nuclear policy in the White Paper includes more details on the conditions under which the Second Artillery’s nuclear capabilities would be employed.

According to the report, “If China comes under conventional attack, it will ‘go on alert in order to deter’; if China comes under nuclear attack, it will ’seek to retaliate.’” It was the first time those two conditions of attack have been differentiated, though the White Paper did not actually define what constituted an “attack.”

The Pentagon has sought to engage China in a dialogue on its nuclear forces but Chinese paranoi prohibits that fearing it will provide details of its nuclear systems, which could be attacked pre-emptively prior to a future conflict.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said last week that the United State needs to focus on China’s U.S.-directed weapons and military buildup to avoid a “disaster.” Mullen appears to be breaking away from the Obama backed benign view of China’s military build up and ambitions.

Senretary of Defense Gates is spending a lot of time defending a defacto cut in U. S. defense spending including cancelling the 5^th generation F-22 air superiority fighter.

In a related development the U. S. aid it is capping its ground-based missile defense interceptor force at 30, a move indicating that there are no plans to eventually expand the system to cover Chinese long-range missiles.

Taken in total the Obama Rodney King-like foreign and defense strategy is increasingly an ill-directed. disjointed mish-mash .

A recent report by the Center for Naval Analysis and the National Defense University says an analysis of the 2008 annual Chinese defense White Paper reveals China is asserting a new global role; details of the conditions of its strategic nuclear forces, and C*hina is becoming more assertive in international affairs after decades of isolation.

“The 2008 White Paper displays a China that is more confident and assertive about its role in the world than at any time in the past,” the report states.

“The White Paper says that China has reached an ‘historical turning point’ and, for the first time, depicts China as a central player in global military, political, and economic affairs, saying that ‘China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world, nor can the world enjoy prosperity and stability without China.’”

Concerning China’s nuclear force development, the report did not provide new details but reiterated the public posture that China will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

New information on China’s nuclear policy in the White Paper includes more details on the conditions under which the Second Artillery’s nuclear capabilities would be employed.

According to the report, “If China comes under conventional attack, it will ‘go on alert in order to deter’; if China comes under nuclear attack, it will ’seek to retaliate.’” It was the first time those two conditions of attack have been differentiated, though the White Paper did not actually define what constituted an “attack.”

The Pentagon has sought to engage China in a dialogue on its nuclear forces but Chinese paranoi prohibits that fearing it will provide details of its nuclear systems, which could be attacked pre-emptively prior to a future conflict.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said last week that the United State needs to focus on China’s U.S.-directed weapons and military buildup to avoid a “disaster.” Mullen appears to be breaking away from the Obama benign view of China’s military build up and ambitions.

Senretary of Defense Gates is spending a lot of time defending a defacto cut in U. S. defense spending including cancelling the 5^th generation F-22 air superiority fighter.

In a related development the U. S. aid it is capping its ground-based missile defense interceptor force at 30, a move indicating that there are no plans to eventually expand the system to cover Chinese long-range missiles.

Taken in total the Obama Rodney King-like foreign and defense strategy is increasingly an ill-directed. disjointed mish-mash

A catholic hospital in Massachusett is trying to figure out what to do with a window in which some Catholics claim to see an image of the Virgin Mary that hundred of people have seen. Throngs of people required to hospital to remove the window for safety reasons now its deciding what to do with it.

According to a report in Sunday’s TIMES OF INDIA the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had warned Obama that Pakistan’s nuclear sites in North West Frontier Province areas that are Taliban-al Qaeda strongholds are already partly in the hands of Islamic extremists. He told Obama: “Pakistan is lost.” He is among those increasingly concerned about the catastophic consequences of the inexperienced and even polyanna Obama.

Singh’s Congress Party has meanwhile won a second term in India’s general election, according to exit polls Saturday, May 16.

The Times of India goes on to cite visiting US scholar Robert Windrem as commenting: “It is quite disturbing that the (Obama) administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much so a public reproach.”

 Officially US officials have repeatedly maintained their confidence that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists and have Islamabad’s assurance to this effect. Scholars like Windrem fear this U. S. confidence is misplaced because Pakistan’s nuclear program “may already be infected with the virus of radicalism from within…” A New Yotk Times article reports U. S. doubts of the security of Pakistans nuclear weapons.” senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon…”

A May 14 Japan Times article reported U. S. SecState Clinton saying, “(T)he “unthinkable” could happen in Pakistan: Islamists could get “the keys to the nuclear arsenal.” The Japan Times raised the issue of “military insiders” threatening Pakistan’s arsenel.

During last year’s political turmoil in Pakistan there were revelations that the U. S. had cooperated with Pakistan to install internal tamper proof safety devices on its nuclear warheads rendering them inert unless the “keys” - actually a series of digital and presumably mechanical codes - were stolen. That was the “unthinkable” that Clinton appears to be concerned about, and what Singh believes can or may be even h as happened perhaps because of espionage or a traitor inside Pakistan’s military.

 The Carnegie Endowment estimated that Pakistan ha(d) enough highly enriched uranium 235 to build 55 warheads, and it is known to be on a quest for more at present. Most estimate are that it has 1-25 warheads. Estimates are that India has twice the number of nuclear warhead than Pakistan and it is seeking parity.

In 2007, amid Pakistan’s political turmoil there were rumors that the U. S. had develop tactical plans to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear arsenel if it was about to fall into “radical” hands.

The Australian described last week a. $100 million Bush initiated secret US program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of its nuclear facilities , and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security. Be that as it may Pakistan’s Muslim military is fractious and some elements are loyal to militant elements and even al Qaeda.. Therein, of course, is the rub.

A May 13 article by John Wildermuth, in the SF Chronicle Schwarzenegger reports on the increasingly delusional behavior of  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The scene is set with him popping off  to  various mayors and council members why California’s budget is in the dumper.

“We made a mistake for decades of not having a rainy day fund,” he thundered. “We’re one of the very few states that doesn’t have a rainy day fund … or some other system in place that protects us when we have a downturn in the economy.”

Prop. 1A on next Tuesday’s ballot provides a rainy day fund and a state spending cap that will keep this sort of budget disaster from happening again, he promised.

Cut, as they say in Schwarzenegger’s old action films, to March 2004, when Prop. 58, the California Balanced Budget Act was on the ballot. According to the official ballot argument, the measure not only would call for a balanced budget, but also “require general funds to be put in a ‘Rainy Day’ fund to build a reserve to protect California from future economic downturns.”

Guess who signed that ballot argument — Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California. Prop. 58 passed overwhelmingly with 71 percent of the vote.

Now the governor can argue that the rainy day reserve fund in Prop. 1A is bigger and more effective, with guaranteed annual deposits from the state and a much tighter lock on how that money can be spent. But he can’t say that California doesn’t have a rainy day fund. After all, he and 4.5 million other Californians voted for it.

Of course, it’s easy to see why the governor might want to shove memories of Prop. 58 under the rug instead of under the mattress because on that same 2004 budget argument, Schwarzenegger warned that “California faces unprecedented budget deficits. Overspending has led to serious shortfalls which threatens the state’s ability to pay its bills and access financial markets.

“This proposition is a safeguard against this EVER HAPPENING AGAIN.” And yes, the capital letters are all the governor’s.

VOTE NO on PROPOSITIONS 1A to 1F

With the new movie ‘Star Trek’ opening to near record audiences last weekend in theaters across the nation, one thing movie goers will undoubtedly see is the Starship Enterprise racing across the galaxy at several times the speed of light. But can traveling at warp speed ever become a reality?

Two Baylor University physicists believe they have an idea that can turn traveling at the speed of light from science fiction to science, and their idea does not break any laws of physics.

Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Dr. Richard Obousy, a Baylor post-doctoral student, theorize that by manipulating the space-time dimensions around the spaceship with a massive amount of energy, it would create a “bubble” that could push the ship faster than the speed of light.

To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 11-dimension would create dark energy. Cleaver said positive dark energy is responsible for speeding up the universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.

“Think of it like a surfer riding a wave,” said Cleaver, who co-authored the paper with Obousy about the new method. “The ship would be pushed by the bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light.”

The method is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding the fabric of space behind a ship into a bubble and shrinking space-time in front of the ship. The ship would not actually move, rather the ship would sit in between the expanding and shrinking space-time dimensions.

Since space would move around the ship, the theory does not violate Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which states that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object faster than the speed of light.

String theory suggests the universe is made up of multiple dimensions. Height, width and length are three dimensions, and time is the fourth dimension. Scientists believe that there are a total of 10 dimensions, with six other dimensions that we can not yet identify.

A new theory, called M-theory, takes string theory one step farther and states that the “strings” actually vibrate in an 11-dimensional space. It is this 11th dimension that the Baylor researchers believe could help propel a ship faster than the speed of light.

The Baylor physicists estimate that the amount of energy needed to influence the extra dimensions is equivalent to the entire mass of Jupiter being converted into energy.

“That is an enormous amount of energy,” Cleaver said. “We are still a very long ways off before we could create something to harness that type of energy.”

Barkley’s Bank economist say the recession ended last month, and unless banks stop  lending better times are ahead. George Bush injection of $700 billion into banks last Fall appears to have worked. The concern now is inflation driven by massive borrowing (see next story).

Obama will have to borrow nearly half for every dollar he spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates. Other predict even greater deficits. Budget office figures released Monday would add $89 billion to the 2009 red ink _ increasing it to more than four times last year’s all-time high as the government hands out billions more than expected for people who have lost jobs and takes in less tax revenue from people and companies making less money.

The unprecedented deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill _ as well as a seemingly embedded structural imbalance between what the government spends and what it takes in.

As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion, the White House says. Priate analyst predict $2 trillion plus deficits. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps.

Just a few days ago, Obama touted an administration plan to cut $17 billion in wasteful or duplicative programs from the budget next year. The erosion in the deficit announced Monday is five times the size of those savings. Mot saw this as an absurd political stunt.

For the current year, the government would borrow 46 cents for every dollar it takes to run the government under the Obama plan. In 2010, it would borrow at leat 35 cents for every dollar spent - other say much more.

“The deficits … are driven in large part by the economic crisis inherited by this administration,” budget director Peter Orszag wrote in a blog entry on Monday.

The developments come as the White House completes the official release of its $3.6 trillion budget for 2010, adding detail to some of its tax proposals and ideas for producing health care savings. The White House budget is a recommendation to Congress that represents Obama’s fiscal and policy vision for the next decade.

Annual deficits would never dip below $500 billion and would total $7.1 trillion over 2010-2019. Even those dismal figures rely on economic projections that are significantly more optimistic _ just a 1.2 percent decline in gross domestic product this year and a 3.2 percent growth rate for 2010 _ than those of private sector economists and the Congressional Budget Office.

As a percentage of the economy, the measure economists say is most important, the deficit would be 12.9 percent of GDP this year, the biggest since World War II. It would drop to 8.5 percent of GDP in 2010.

In the past three decades, deficits in the range of 4 percent of GDP have caused Congress and previous administrations to launch efforts to narrow the gap. The White House predicts deficits equaling 2.9 percent of the economy within four years.

Polling data suggest Americans are increasingly worried about mounting deficits and debt.

An AP-GfK poll last month gave Obama relatively poor grades on the deficit, with just 49 percent of respondents approving of the president’s handling of the issue and 41 percent disapproving. By contrast, Obama’s overall approval rating was 64 percent, with just 30 percent disapproving.

“Even using their February economic assumptions _ which now appear to be out of date and overly optimistic _ the administration never puts us on a stable path,” said Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group that advocates budget discipline. “The president … understands the critical importance of fiscal discipline. Now we need to see some action.”

For the most part, Obama’s updated budget tracks the 134-page outline he submitted to lawmakers in February. His budget remains a bold but contentious document that proposes higher taxes for the wealthy, a hotly contested effort to combat global warming and the first steps toward guaranteed health care for all.

Meanwhile, the congressional budget plan approved last month would not extend Obama’s signature $400 tax credit for most workers - $800 for couples - after it expires at the end of next year.

Obama’s “cap-and-trade” proposal to curb heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions is also reeling from opposition from Democrats from coal-producing regions and states with concentrations of heavy industry. Under cap-and-trade, the government would auction permits to emit heat-trapping gases, with the costs being passed on to consumers via higher gasoline and electric bills.

Also new in Obama’s budget details are several tax “loophole” closures and increased IRS tax compliance efforts to raise $58 billion over the next decade to help finance his health care measure. The money would make up for revenue losses stemming from lower-than-hoped estimates for his proposal to limit wealthier people’s ability to maximize their itemized deductions.

Next Tuesday is Californmia’s special election on several deceptively worded ballot propositions that proponents say will cut into the state’s record $40 billion deficit. The most recent polls say all are failing as voters don’t buy the sales pitch.

Obama has imposed obstacles on Israeli efforts to procure U.S.-origin fighter-jets further estranging the two nations.  Administration sources said in a World Tribune article that the Obama White House has drafted measures that could prevent Israel and other non-NATO allies from procuring U.S. fighter-jets, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.. That caveat will be of concernas Arab allies are becomining increasingly concerned about Obama’s tolt toward Iran. They said the administration would require that Israel obtain special permission from the Defense Department and State Department to acquire the Joint Strike Fighter.

The administration has also been resisting Israeli requests for technical data on the new F-15SE fighter-jet.

Under the proposals, the Pentagon would order modifications of JSF to provide the aircraft with nuclear strike capabilities. The sources said such a capability would provide the Pentagon with access to government budgets to maintain and develop the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“Once JSF obtains nuclear strike capability, there becomes a problem with exports,” the source said. “NATO countries would have less of a problem; non-NATO countries would need special exemptions.”

The sources said Lockheed Martin would not be instructed to develop both nuclear- and non-nuclear models of the F-35 for the first stage of production. Israel has sought to become among the first export clients of JSF.

Over the last few months, the administration has rejected a series of Israeli requests regarding modifications of the F-35. They included Israeli electronic warfare systems and acquisition of U.S. software codes that would allow Israel to repair the aircraft’s central computer. The U.S. refusal meant that the Israel Air Force would be forced to send the F-35 to the United States for any repairs, a process that could take months.

The sources said the State Department has been delaying Israeli requests for pre-export licenses required for an examination of the new generation F-15.

The sources said the administration has not approved the new F-15 for the Foreign Military Sales program. They said this could prevent Israel from using U.S. military aid to purchase the aircraft from Boeing.

“This is a legal issue,” a source said. “The F-15SE might not qualify for FMS.”

The whole episode smells like Obama angling to please the Russians and Iranian. In the former that they do not install their sophisticated anti-aircraft system that could block all but the F-22 and F-35 from successfully striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Obama thinks he can strike  deal with Putin to limit nuclear weapons and he can because Russiai is busy updating its nuclear warheads while the U. S. is stalled. So the deal would allow Russia to grab an edge..

It’s time again. Tear up the violets and plant something more difficult to grow.-

James Schuyler

Russia’s Putin warned Sunday that he would never agree to a new strategic arms reduction treaty until Obama agreed to scrap plans to deploy 10 ballistic missile interceptors in Poland.

Putin demonstrated paranoia saying if the 10 ground-based midcourse interceptors, known as GBIs, were still deployed, Obama and future U.S. presidents would feel so confident and powerful that “the threat of global confrontation will reach a very dangerous level.”

“One needn’t be an expert to understand: If one party wants or would have an umbrella against all kinds of threats, this party would develop an illusion that it is allowed to do anything and then the aggressiveness of its actions will increase numerously, and the threat of global confrontation will reach a very dangerous level,” he told Japanese journalists Sunday, according to the RIA Novosti the Russian news agency, before flying to Tokyo on a visit.

Putin gave his warning the day after the Russian government celebrated Victory Day, the 64th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, with the largest public display of military and nuclear force the world has seen since the Soviet Union disintegrated 17 and a half years ago at the end of 1991.

Nuclear bombers flew over Moscow, and main battle tanks rumbled through its streets. The Russian air force also publicly displayed its S-400 Triumf — NATO designation Growler — the most advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense system in the world.

The S-400 is believed to have an operational range of 250 miles. If the claims for it by Russian officials are true, it has a far greater range, operational ceiling and maximum speed than its U.S counterpart, the MIM-104 Patriot. U.S. officials have expressed concern that the Kremlin may supply the S-400 to Iran, which has already received the earlier but still formidable S-300 longer-range and Tor-M1 shorter-range, lower-altitude air-defense systems.

Russia has already said it will sell the S-400 to its close ally and next-door neighbor Belarus, which guards the traditional route of invasion into Russia from Europe. Deploying the S-400s in Belarus as well as the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad jutting into Poland on the Baltic coast would also carry the threat of denying the United States and its NATO allies command of the air over large regions of Central Europe in the event of any conventional war in Europe.

The S-400 system is believed capable of stopping any threat from the air with the possible exception of the F-22 that Obama has cancelled.

The new Obama regime came to office with high hopes of concluding a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia before the current START-1 treaty, signed in 1991, runs out at the end of this year.

However, Obama’s refusal to scrap plans for the proposed GBI base in Poland and an advanced radar tracking and guidance facility to be built nearby in the Czech Republic has put the kibosh on those plans for now. Putin’s comments Sunday served notice that, as we have previously predicted in these columns, Russia will refuse to seriously negotiate a replacement treaty for START unless the BMD base plans are scrapped first. The Czechs has delayed a final vote on its part of the GBI because it is not confident in Obama. Its president recently visited the U. S. and is openly critical. The Poles continue to lobby Obama for deployment.

Most expect Obama to give in to Putin on GBI and in other areas in the hope of blocking its deployment of the S-400 into Iran and elsewhere.

The first round of talks on the new strategic arms reduction treaty are due to begin in Moscow from May 18-20.

The price of a postage stamp has gone up to 44 cents. The government says they had to raise the price because fewer people are using the mail these days. That’s government thinking for you - “Hey nobody’s buying our products . . . let’s raise the price!”

“Life isn’t too short. It’s the longest thing anyone will ever do,” Bumper sticker.

There was an old priest who got sick of all the people in his parish who kept confessing to adultery. One Sunday, in the pulpit, he said, “If I hear one more person confess to adultery, I’ll quit!”Everyone liked him, so they came up with a code word. Someone who had committed adultery would say instead that they had “fallen.”

This seemed to satisfy the old priest and things went well until the priest passed away at a ripe, old age.

A few days after the new priest arrived, he visited the mayor of the town and seemed very concerned.

“Mayor, you have to do something about the sidewalks in town. When people come into the confessional, they keep telling me they’ve fallen.”

The mayor started to laugh, realizing that no one had told the new priest about the code word. But, before he could explain, the priest shook an accusing finger at him and shouted, “I don’t know what you’re laughing about, because your wife has already fallen three times this week!”

The estimated population of the United States is 306,132,365 so each citizen’s share of the national debt is $36,672.22; it is increasing an average of $3.79 billion per day and totals: $11,226,552,836,808.19 as of 3PM May 6, 2009.

Despite repeated denials and a penchant to lecture others on honesty now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and then Congresswoman was indeed briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda suspects. Intelligence officials released documents yesterday showing Pelosi was repeatedly briefed regardless of her many statements that she was never told the techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress briefed on the tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House intelligence committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The memo, issued to Capitol Hill by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, notes that the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs” on Abu Zubaida. EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique, and Abu Zubaida, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured. He also was the first to have the controversial tactic of simulated drowning, or waterboarding, used against him.

The disclosure catches Pelosi in a bloody-handed lie adding to her long record of duplicity and hypocrisy.

Someones in Pennsylvania want to put 1,000,000 bumper stickers on cars and trucks in the state saying, “BENEDICT ARLEN - Don’t Reelect The Traitor.”

Iraq has launched another offensive against Al Qaida, raiding suspected AQI strongholds throughout the Diyala province, capturing insurgents and confiscating suicide vests.    The Iraqi offensive was launched amid an AQI suicide bombing campaign in Baghdad and Mosul. Officials said AQI has revived its operational cells and intensified operations as the U.S. military prepares to withdraw from cities by June 30.Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Atta Qassim said the resurgence of Al Qaida was fueled by the U.S. release of nearly 4,000 insurgents in 2009.   Qassim said the released insurgents have been returning to both Al Qaida and organized crime.Th Iraqi disclosure focuses attention on Obama’s GITMO decree and the consequences of the release of those detainees release. AG Eric Holder has said none of those suspected terrorists will be released into the U. S. as many have feared. There is evidence that a high percentage of releases return to the field as fighters.

On May 6, at least 17 people were killed in a two car bombings at a market in southern Baghdad, populated mostly by Sunnis. Officials acknowledged that security at the market was light.Officials said the Iraqi security forces were capable of battling AQI. But they acknowledged that authorities were hampered by a shortage of intelligence.Officials said more than 50 suspected insurgents were killed in nearly one week of the Iraqi operation. “We’ve seized weapons, included suicide vests,” Iraqi Col. Salam Ahmed Naji said. Security forces also captured more than 60 suspects, including three women, in Diyala. Officials said the province has been the launching pad for AQI insurgency attacks in Baghdad. On May 4, 31 insurgency suspects were killed in Iraqi operations. Officials said scores more were injured and killed since the operation began on May 1.

The young couple invited their aged pastor for Sunday dinner. While they were in the kitchen preparing the meal, the minister asked their son what they were having. “Goat,” the little boy replied.

“Goat?” replied the startled man of the cloth, “Are you sure about that?”

“Yep,” said the youngster. “I heard Pa say to Ma, ‘Might as well have the old goat for dinner today as any other day.’”

 

Louis Caldera, the director of the White House Military Office has added another impressive failure to his resume committing professional Hari Kari splitting his belly open for Team Obama.

Caldera’s claim to infamy are numerous but the most recent was the incredibly stupid April 27, 2009 Air Force One stunt in NYC that flushed out Manhattan office buildings like a dose of salts.

The idea was to get a photo of Air Force One (actually Air Force Two - a look alike) trailed by an F-16 flying by the Statue of Liberty. The stunt cost taxpayers at least $357,000.

Caldera’s spotty resume includes: stepping down as the University of New Mexico’s president after a rocky 3- year tenure; serving on the board of the failed bank IndyMac. and being forced out as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association.

Lou’s resume is certainly not all bad and includes: West Point, Harvard Law, Harvard Business School, Secretary of the Army under Bill Clinton. All that goes to prove that some of the smartest and best educated can also be the dumbest and should have been rewarded by his ritual sepuku.

There are 89 days until football begins in 2009.

China is conducting espionage and intelligence operations against the United States on a unprecedented scale,  a former senior FBI counterintelligence agent said last week that.

Former FBI Agent I.C. Smith told the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission that “the People’s Republic of China is neither the people’s nor is it a republic.”

“The PRC is an oppressive totalitarian police state that is governed by the Communist Party that allows less than 5 percent of the population to become members,” he said.

“The Chinese Communist Party has become, in effect, China’s new royalty whose primary goal is to retain power.”

Smith said Chinese agents are working covertly against the United States and are stealing high technology.

“The Chinese make political mischief for our nation at every opportunity and there is the massive attempt to obtain, by any means, this nation’s technology,” he said.

“There is no doubt the Chinese view the United States as its No. 1 adversary.”

Smith called China’s anti-U.S. activities “the greatest threat to our national security that we face today.”

On China’s intelligence activities, Smith said that “never has this country faced such massive attacks, on virtually all fronts, from a single country as China does right now.”

China uses ethnic Americans of Chinese descent for its spying, and not all technology theft is carried out by intelligence officers, Smith said.

He noted that Larry Wu Tai Chin, a Chinese spy uncovered in the CIA in 1985, and Katrina Leung, an FBI informant who was a long-standing double agent for China, did not involve technology collection.

China’s spying is largely decentralized, he said, with little coordination between military and civilian intelligence agencies, academic institutions and increasingly, business interests.

Smith noted that Chinese ethnic targeting of Americans has been limited to first-generation Chinese-Americans who were born in China.

“The Chinese have been largely unsuccessful in gaining the support of second generation, and beyond, Chinese-Americans, many of whom even reject their Chinese language and culture and are more interested in becoming fully Americanized without divided loyalties,” he said.

U.S. policies have made it relatively easy for Chinese spies to operate, he said, noting lax laws on purchases of American companies, the dispatch of students and state-run delegations that travel freely.

“Politically, we haven’t shown any political will to punish the Chinese for their frequent violations and activities, i.e., the Hainan Island incident, undervaluation of their currency, the harassment of our ships in international waters, the sudden cancellation of ship visits to Hong Kong, etc,” he said.

“Our approach, even including Tiananmen Square, was to get the incident out of the news as quickly as possible. I believe it’s time for this country to practice a stricter reciprocity in dealing with the PRC.”

 Just in time for Mother’s Day, a mother duck has been reunited with two of her babies who fell into a storm drain in Manchester. Mom appears happy.

Research by a theoretical physicist at Indiana University shows that the crusts of neutron stars are 10 billion times stronger than steel or any other of the earth’s strongest metal alloys.

Charles Horowitz, a professor in the IU College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Physics, came to the conclusion after large-scale molecular dynamics computer simulations were conducted at Indiana University and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The research will appear in Physical Review Letters.

Exhibiting extreme gravity while rotating as fast as 700 times per second, neutron stars are massive stars that collapsed once their cores ceased nuclear fusion and energy production. The only things more dense are black holes, as a teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weigh about 100 million tons.

Scientists want to understand the structure of neutron stars, in part, because surface irregularities, or mountains, in the crust could radiate gravitational waves and in turn may create ripples in space-time. Understanding how high a mountain might become before collapsing from the neutron star’s gravity, or estimating the crust’s breaking strain, also has implications for better understanding star quakes or magnetar giant flares.

“We modeled a small region of the neutron star crust by following the individual motions of up to 12 million particles,” Horowitz said of the work conducted through IU’s Nuclear Theory Center in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research. “We then calculated how the crust deforms and eventually breaks under the extreme weight of a neutron star mountain.”

Performed on a large computer cluster at Los Alamos National Laboratory and built upon smaller versions created on special-purpose molecular dynamics computer hardware at IU, the simulations identified a neutron star crust that far exceeded the strength of any material known on earth.

The crust could be so strong as to be able to elicit gravitational waves that could not only limit the spin periods of some stars, but that could also be detected by high-resolution telescopes called interferometers, the modeling found.

“The maximum possible size of these mountains depends on the breaking strain of the neutron star crust,” Horowitz said. “The large breaking strain that we find should support mountains on rapidly rotating neutron stars large enough to efficiently radiate gravitational waves.”

Because of the intense pressure found on neutron stars, structural flaws and impurities that weaken things like rocks and steel are less likely to strain the crystals that form during the nucleosynthesis that occurs to form neutron star crust. Squeezed together by gravitational force, the crust can withstand a breaking strain 10 billion times the pressure it would take to snap steel.

Earlier this year, Horowitz was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society, the preeminent organization of physicists in the United States, for his contribution to research in dense nuclear matter. His most recent work on neutron stars was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and through Shared University Research Grants from IBM to IU.

 A Pennsylvania high school ordered more than 450 shot glasses for its prom, a move the assistant principal now says sent the wrong message

 The exact location within Egypt from which Obama will deliver another speech to the Muslim world on June 4 was secret- now we know it is Cairo– and kicks off a convoluted trip to reassure Jews, court Muslims and curry favor amoung skeptical Europeans and generally provide American media will a bushel basket of photo ops.

A key question is was Obama’s ignoring last week’s National Day of Prayer and bald-faced political move to avoid being photographed praying with Christians and Jews as he bends over backwards to present himself favorably to Muslims?

It is not clear if Obama  was actually invited to visit Egypt. But White Houser Gibb stressed: “The scope of the speech, the desire for the president to speak, is bigger than where the speech was going to be given or who’s the leadership of the country where the speech is going to be given.”

The Arab world is increasingly apprehensive about Obama’s Rodney King-like disjointed Iran policy. Obama’s Muslim schooling in a Madrassah as a youth seems to be a trump that Obama is more willing to infer among Muslims although it remains policitcal poison in the USA.

From Egypt, Obama travels June 5 to the German city of Dresden and the former Nazi death camp at Buchenwald, in whose liberation Obama’s great-uncle Charlie Payne took part in 1945 as a soldier in the US army. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources commented that this visit is intended to highlight the Holocaust, which some Muslim leaders like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad make a point of denying, as a factor in his commitment to Israel’s security.

 Those sources were unable to explain why the president felt impelled to address the Muslim people again, or why Egypt was chosen, when US relations with President Hosni Mubarak are strained over the latter’s resentment of Washington’s rapprochement with Tehran and its criticism of Egypt’s human rights conduct.

 The White House spokesman said: “I think in many ways, this is the heart of the Arab world.” The address is intended for the entire Muslim world, not simply Arab Muslims. It is part of Mr. Obama’s continuing effort to reach out to Muslims, as he did in a speech he gave in Turkey last month.

 Two high-ranking US delegations which visited Cairo in the last ten days failed to convince Mubarak that the US president’s plans to engage Iran in diplomacy was not at the expense of Arab interests.

 After Germany, Obama will then join commemorations marking the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy as guest of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Forgive the truncated CONSERVATIVELY SPEAKING for May 7, 2009. The JESUSITA WILDFIRE has things a bit dicey here in Santa Barbara. Happily the fires are miles away from me in the foothils behind the Santa Barbara Mission which is not threatened at thismtime. Yesterday’s flareup was a complete surprise and things got out of hand. 

 Today it is expected be be 97-99 degrees with wind gust up to 60-65 MPH this afternoon. It was in the 70 degree range through touit last night. There are 1,300 firefighters and scores of firetrucks and engines involved along with 16 fixed and rotary wing aircrafts. An ABC pilot has counted 16 homes destroyed. There are reports of eight firefighters injured, and three have been air evacuated to the Grossman Burn Center.   So far 13,500 residents have been evacuated and another 13,000 warned to be prepared to evacuate. Schools are closed. Air quality is much better this morning and was OK through the night. It was chokingly bad late yesterday afternoon, and power flickered on and off for a time. I saw several having respiratory problems at Cottage Hospital E-Room last evening while there on an unrelated matter.