Thursday, September 29, 2011

Anti-Obama sign in Uptown neighborhood draws controversy




http://www.wwltv.com/news/local/Controversial-political-sign-raises-eyebrows-130727418.html

Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS -- There are several political signs attracting all kinds of attention in one Uptown neighborhood.
On Wednesday, crowds gathered at the corner of Calhoun and Coralie streets, looking at several signs depicting President Barack Obama as either a dunce, a puppet or a crying baby in a diaper.
"It disrespects the nation -- and President Barack Obama represents our nation," said Skip Alexander, as he looked at one of the signs. "He represents everybody, not some people."
Dozens of protesters came by the house in the 1500 block of Calhoun throughout the day, demanding the sign come down.
"He wouldn't do that to [President] Bush, I'm sure. It's just insulting. It's insulting," said C.C. Campbell-Rock. "He's going to have to take them down."
"This is nothing put pure racism," said Raymond Rock. "This is a disgrace."
The home is owned by Timothy Reily, who declined to be interviewed about the signs. Former Mayor Ray Nagin showed up at the house and went inside to speak with Reily. He emerged later and would not comment on what they discussed.
Some neighbors tell Eyewitness News that Reily has been putting the signs up for months. Some of the protesters learned about the signs through a local radio station on Wednesday morning.
"He can put up a sign if he wants to. It doesn't bother me," said Harold Gagnet, a neighbor.
"I think it's fine. It's on his property," said Katherine deMontluzin. "He can say whatever he wants."
The signs have created such a firestorm of controversy, though, that police came to the scene-- called in by City Council Member Susan Guidry. She represents the district where the home is located. Guidry said she was concerned about public safety and was trying to figure out if the sign was even legal. She also said she spoke to Reily, but didn't get far.
"We have to determine that there is a zoning law that prohibits perhaps the size of the sign, perhaps the way that it's erected, that it is leaning over onto public property," Guidry said. "Whatever we can use, we will, but of course, we do have to balance that with First Amendment rights."
Yet, the signs remain in place, fanning the flames of a free speech debate on both sides of the fence

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D

Join the production : jerusalemthemovie.com
by JerusalemTheMovie


After a year of research and preparation, the giant screen film JERUSALEM advanced into production with an unprecedented aerial shoot throughout Israel and the West Bank. Scheduled for worldwide release in 2013, the film will take audiences on a spectacular tour of the Holy Land and the city once believed to lie at the center of the world.

Jerusalem | An Arcane/Cosmic Picture Film


Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D from JerusalemTheMovie on Vimeo.

Monday, September 26, 2011

REPORTS: Perry's Texas miracle--isn't

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/9124-reports-perrys-texas-miracle-isnt

WRITTEN BY R. CORT KIRKWOOD
MONDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2011 12:08

The Texas Miracle of Texas Gov. Rick Perry is little more than a Texas-sized myth.

That’s the upshot of reports across the political spectrum, Right to Left, that have evaluated Perry’s claims.

Chief among the tall tales is that Texas has become a jobs machine. That’s true, but Texans aren’t getting the jobs. Immigrants are. More than 80 percent of the new jobs in Texas went to foreigners, the Center for Immigration Studies reported last week, and 40 percent of those jobs went to illegal aliens.

That is no surprise, given that Perry is an open-borders, leftist Republican, but in any event, other reports show that most of the job growth in Texas came in one sector: government.

Border Jumpers Get the Jobs

Perry’s claim to fame is this: “No other candidate for President — Republican or Democrat — can match Rick Perry’s record on job creation. Rick Perry’s leadership has helped build the nation’s top economy. Since June 2009, more than 40 percent of all net new jobs in America have been created in Texas.

Technically, Perry is probably not exaggerating. But a look behind those figures reveals a few startling facts, starting with who the miracle has helped.

One of the most telling numbers in the CIS report is this: While newly arrived immigrants accounted for just 29 percent of the state’s population growth, they took 81 percent of newly created jobs. “There were 225,000 immigrants holding a job in 2011 who indicated that they had arrived in the United States in 2007 or later,” CIS reported. “This equals 80.6 percent of the 279,000 overall increase in employment in Texas between 2007 and 2011.”

As well, “the number of working-age immigrants accounted for 30.6 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the working-age (16 to 65) population in Texas from the second quarter of 2007 to the same quarter in 2011,” CIS reported. “The net increase in immigrant workers was 150,000 and this equaled 53.6 percent of the 279,000 overall growth in employment from 2007 to 2011.”

Beyond that, CIS shows, the number of native Texans at work declined from 71 percent to 67 percent during the same four years.

And, most importantly, “of newly arrived immigrants who took jobs in Texas since 2007 … 50 percent (113,000) were illegal immigrants. Thus, about 40 percent of all the job growth in Texas since 2007 went to newly arrived illegal immigrants and 40 percent went to newly arrived legal immigrants.”

Perry Likes People Working for the Government

U.S. News and World Report also suggests that Texas isn’t the jobs machine that Perry wants people to think it it is — if by “jobs” you mean those created in the private sector.

Granted, U.S. News' Rick Newman wrote, the numbers back Perry’s claim that Texas is responsible for at least a third of the jobs created nationwide since 2009.

The overall numbers look good, with jobs in Texas increasing 0.7 percent since the beginning of 2008, while jobs across the country decreased 5.6 percent. “Since the recession began,” Newman wrote, “Texas has added about 75,000 jobs, one of the few states with any job creation at all. Overall, the U.S. economy has lost about 5.6 million jobs since then.”

But here’s what Perry doesn’t say: “virtually all of them” were government jobs, Newman wrote: “Net job gains in Texas have come entirely from government hiring, which accounts for 115,000 new jobs over the past three years. The private sector in Texas shed about 40,000 jobs during that time.

According to Newman, federal jobs in Texas jumped 7 percent compared to 4.3 percent nationwide. State bureaucracy increased 8.4 percent, while dipping 0.1 percent across the nation. And local government jobs shot up 6.1 percent, while diving 1.7 percent nationwide.

The private-sector picture isn’t as rosy as that for Leviathan. Private-sector jobs as a whole, Newman reported, dropped 0.5 percent, a much better figure than that for the nation: 6.6 percent, although individual sectors posted healthy gains. Health employment rose 12.6 percent, compared to 6.2 percent nationally, and Texas was way ahead of growth in private education jobs than the nation as a whole: 17.4 percent to 6.5 percent. Oil and gas employment jumped 6.7 percent compared to 4.5 percent for the nation, and the number of retail jobs increased 1.9 percent. Nationally, that figure dropped 7.2 percent.

Texas lost information jobs at the same rate as the country, 10.9 percent, and also like the rest of the country, manufacturing there is a mess. Texas manufacturing jobs nosedived 11.6 percent, a little better than the 15.8 percent hit the country took.

Minimum-wage Jobs

Harold Meyerson, a leftist at the Washington Post put it this way: “Perry’s calling card in the presidential race is his state’s record of job creation at a time when the national economy floundered. Yes, Texas has created lots of jobs, though that’s partly a reflection of the surge in oil prices, which in turn created tens of thousands of jobs in the oil and gas industries.”

What Perry touts in his stump speech, however, isn’t the oil boom but, rather, the low-tax, low-reg, handouts-to-business climate that prevails in Texas. It’s the kind of spiel that businesses hear every day from leaders of developing nations — Mexico and, even more, China.

Consider the Texas that Perry holds up to the rest of the nation for admiration. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate of any state. It tied with Mississippi last year for the highest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs. It ranks first in adults without high-school diplomas. Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance — the highest percentage of medically uninsured residents of any state. It leads the nation in the percentage of children who lack medical insurance. Texas has an inordinate number of employers who provide no insurance to their workers, partly because insurance rates are high, thanks to an absence of regulations.

As well, New York Times leftist Paul Krugman noted in August, the unemployment rate in June was 8.2 percent, just a point behind that for the country: 9.2 percent.

And remember, as CIS demonstrates, that immigrants generally nailed down 80 percent of the jobs created since 2007 in the Texas Miracle, while illegal aliens in particular took 40 percent of those jobs.

The question that Perry’s adulatory, fawning boosters might ask is whether he performed a miracle for Texas or a miracle for Mexico.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Fast And Furious Bombshell. CBS Obtains Secret Recorded Information



CBS News has obtained secretly recorded conversations that raise questions as to whether some evidence is being withheld in the murder of a Border Patrol agent. The tapes were recorded approximately mid-March 2011 by the primary gun dealer cooperating with ATF in its “Fast and Furious” operation: Andre Howard, owner of Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Arizona. He’s talking with the lead case ATF case agent Hope MacAllister.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7381609n

OBama Faces Questions about his investments

http://www.usatoday.com/news/elections/2007-03-08-2531343349_x.htm

By Nedra Pickler, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday he was not aware he had invested in two companies backed by some of his top donors and said he had done nothing to aid their business with the government.
The Illinois senator faced questions about more than $50,000 in investments he made right after taking office in 2005 in two speculative companies, AVI Biopharma and Skyterra Communications. Obama set up a trust that gave his broker authority to trade stocks on his behalf without his input, according to 16 pages of documents he released Wednesday.

"At no point did I know what stocks were held, and at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested," Obama told reporters at the end of a news conference called to trumpet an unrelated immigration bill.

"What I wanted to make sure is that I didn't want to invest in companies that potentially would create conflicts with my work here," said Obama, who has campaigned on the need for stronger congressional ethics rules. "Obviously, the thing didn't work the way I wanted it to."

Obama purchased $5,000 in shares for AVI, which was developing a drug to treat avian flu. Two weeks after buying the stock, as the disease was spreading in Asia, Obama pushed for more federal funding to fight the disease, but he said he did not discuss the matter with any company officials.

Obama also had more than $50,000 in shares of Skyterra, a company that had just received federal permission to create a nationwide wireless network that combined satellite and land-based communications systems.

Among the company's top investors were donors who raised more than $150,000 for Obama's political committees, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The stock holdings were first examined Monday by the financial Web site, Thestreet.com.

The reports found no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months he owned the stocks. Obama lost about $15,000 on Skyterra and earned a profit of about $2,000 on AVI. Skyterra stocks continued to drop after Obama divested.

Obama said he wanted to invest in stocks after signing a $1.9 million deal for his second book, "The Audacity of Hope." He said after buying a home and putting money in the bank and mutual funds, he asked a friend and political donor, investor George Haywood, to recommend a broker so he could invest a portion more aggressively.

"I thought about going to (billionaire investor) Warren Buffett, and I decided it would be embarrassing that I only had $100,000 to invest," Obama said.

Haywood, a major backer of both AVI and Skyterra, recommended a broker at UBS who also bought stock for Obama in those companies.

Obama said at some point in fall 2005 he got a stockholder letter from AVI or Skyterra, but he couldn't remember which company. But on Dec. 15, 2005, he liquidated the "Freedom Trust," as it was titled in the May 15 agreement establishing it, and put his money in mutual funds and money market accounts that wouldn't raise such questions.

"It's at that point that I became concerned that I might not be able to insulate myself from knowledge of my holdings, that this trust instrument might not be working the way I wanted it to," Obama said.

UBS spokeswoman Karina Byrne said the company would not make Obama's broker available for interviews because they do not discuss client investments.

Obama said he didn't invest in a qualified blind trust because it wouldn't enable him to limit which companies he invested in, such as those in the tobacco industry and other areas that he did not want to support.

Obama attorney Robert F. Bauer added that the senator felt the blind trust left him in an "inadequate ethical position" because it would mean he couldn't respond to media inquires, for example, if questions arose about his investments. But Obama also would have to report the stock holdings each year under Senate rules because they weren't part of a qualified blind trust.

"At this point, I'm only invested in mutual funds or cash or money market accounts. That's my instruction to my accountant," Obama said. "We are not going to own individual stocks precisely because it raises questions like this."

Senate ethics rules do not prohibit lawmakers from owning stocks in companies that do business with the federal government.

Another investor involved in Skyterra was Jared Abbruzzese, a New York businessman now at the center of a federal inquiry into public corruption.

Abbruzzese and his wife had contributed $10,000 to Obama's political action committee. But normally they back Republican causes, such as the Republican National Committee and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that damaged John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Obama said he has never met Abbruzzese.

___

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Jim Cramer: President Obama Is ‘Hated Like Jimmy Carter’ By Business Leaders



http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jim-cramer-president-obama-is-%E2%80%98hated-like-jimmy-carter-by-business-leaders/

CNBC’s Jim Cramer reported Friday morning on Squawk on the Street that he’s hearing from business leaders off-camera that Obama is hated by business leaders. “The disdain is off the charts! This guy, he is hated like Jimmy Carter!”

Cramer’s candid insight came after news from anchor Melissa Lee that there was a sadness about the economy from many traders and about how The Conference Board said there was a 45% chance of the US going into recession. “They say that since 1988, every time that The Conference Board predicted the chances were higher than 40%, we soon went into a downturn. I just throw that out there in the context of it looks like the support for the American Jobs Act is unraveling a bit from both sides of the aisle for that matter. Could the writing be on the wall for President Obama’s presidency?”

“Let’s take The Conference Board at face value. Let’s say that’s right,” Cramer responded, “I mean, look, you don’t understand, when you are off-camera, I mean — the disdain for this guy! I often find myself saying like Trump did: ‘Come on, it is America. He’s our President. Support him.’ The disdain is off the charts! This guy is just hated. Okay. He is hated like Jimmy Carter!”

With the President’s polling numbers at record lows, Cramer’s bleak assessment will most definitely encourage conservatives that Obama is vulnerable for reelection in 2012. However, with Intrade astonishingly predicting Obama’s reelection chances at higher than 51%, if this is rock bottom, things can only get better for him.

Watch the segment above, courtesy of CNBC:

Friday, September 16, 2011

President George W. Bush and Brian Kilmeade Golf to Raise Money for Children of Veterans Killed or Disabled in Combat



September 1, 2011
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2011/09/01/president-george-w-bush-and-brian-kilmeade-golf-to-raise-money-for-children-of-veterans-killed-or-disabled-in-combat/
President George W. Bush and Brian Kilmeade Golf to Raise Money for Children of Veterans Killed or Disabled in Combat
by Fox and Friends Posted in: Brian Kilmeade, George W. Bush, Support Our Troops, U.S. Troops
Brian Kilmeade traveled to Dallas, Texas to play golf with President George W. Bush and two war veterans as part of Patriot Golf Day. Bush described the day, saying, “Patriot Golf Day asks people to donate a dollar of their green fees to raise money for the children of those who have been wounded and or killed in combat.”

Of why it is so important for him to participate in the event, President Bush said, “I want America to continue to pay attention to our vets.” He reflected on the courage of those of serve, saying, “We’ve got people who when severely injured, facing heartbreaks, say, ‘I’m not going to let that get me down. I’m going to continue to serve.’”

The former president and Brian were joined by Major Ed Pulido, who was serving in Iraq in 2004, when he was injured in an IED explosion. The blast ultimately led to the amputation of Pulido’s left leg. His two daughters received scholarships through the funds raised on Patriot Golf Day, something for which he says he’ll be “eternally grateful.”

Finally, the group hit the golf course. See if Brian’s swing has improved at all since last year!

http://www.patriotgolfday.com/

Friendly Fire? Jon Stewart Blasts Obama Administration For Solyndra Scandal


You guys have been waiting for this, huh? Try not to kiss (or punch) your computer screens too hard, y’all.

So. Solyndra. (Imagine we’re whispering seductively in your ear, perhaps whilst wearing a Ronald Reagan mask, if you’re into such things.) Solyndra is a solar energy company that declared bankruptcy late last month, letting go of each and every one of its 1,100 workers. That’s incredibly bad timing for the Obama administration right now as the President gears up for 2012. See, the company received over $500 million in federal loans (some reports have it at $528 million, others have as much as $535 million) under the 2009 stimulus law. In fact, Solyndra was the very first renewable energy company to receive a loan guarantee under that law, and quickly became something of a crown jewel in the Obama’s administration’s clean energy program, with the President even touring its facilities and praising its work in a speech you will likely see auto-tuned in the very near future. Pretty bad. And it gets worse…

House Republican investigators found email evidence of repeated warnings about the company and its green energy projects, with one calling it “not ready for prime time” and others warning that it was doomed to run out of money this very month. And and and, there’s also evidence that one investor in Solyndra, George Kaiser, was also a fundraiser for Obama and made several visits to the White House in order to visit with several aides.

Jon Stewart explained what this might mean for a certain popular media outlet:

Fox News, call your doctor. Because the erection you currently have is going to last longer than four hours.
Do you suppose Rick Perry and Mitt Romney are both performing the running man at this very moment?

So gather yourselves together, make sure your bedroom doors are locked, and check out the video above, courtesy of Comedy Central:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-blasts-obama-administration-for-solyndra-scandal/

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Writer reveals what is happening in Texas fires

NOTE: FRANK is a retired Marine. The sender was a subordinate in Vietnam.

From: Frank
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 11:09 AM
To:
Subject: RE: Concerned

Thank you Robert, that is both a kind and generous thought. I live right outside of Austin, Texas in a smaller city named Pflugerville, and the fires have been all around us, but not close to my home or that of my daughter who lives in Austin proper. Last night I gave clothing and other necessary items to a nearby church group collecting clothing as well as everything else to include even towels for showering or bathing in the shelters, and still needed by the many who lost all of their belongings.

The large fire in Bastrop County, which is adjacent to our own county of Travis, was hit hardest with the loss of some 1400 homes. Sadly, many of those homes belonged to Austin firefighters, police officers, and EMT personnel, as they were on duty elsewhere and were unable to protect their own homes. Their family members could do little, since they were forced to leave their homes by authorities and in order to prevent casualties (although several fatalities have occurred from the fires).

And so many policemen and firefighters and EMT workers now have only the clothing they were wearing while directing traffic or fighting the fires elsewhere, and while away from their own homes which were destroyed in the fires. Many are now living in shelters and so simple things like towels, shoes, etc, that we do normally think about, all of a sudden become important items for many, and of course there is also a great need for diapers and children items of all sorts including baby food, as it will be many, many, months if not a year or more, before a lot of these folks will be able to leave the various shelters, and then try to restart their lives once again.

Many of the above professionals and non professionals moved to Bastrop County, because it was cheaper to live there and also it is more of the country rather than city atmosphere, coupled with better schools and overall more reasonable living costs. However losing all one has and have worked for, is a devastating loss for all family members, and while insurance will help it does not pay the entire cost of rebuilding homes nor the loss of personal items. And so whatever savings they have will have to be dipped into, and this is a bad economic time for this to have occured on top of the actual devastating and complete losses of their homes and possessions.

Robert as my one time machine gunner in Vietnam and a professional retired police officer as well, you know full well what it means to lose everything of consequence that you own, and so you can well imagine what it must be like for many of these people. So I am asking for any assistance for others that you, or your friends, or groups might be able to provide for those who have suffered the greatest loses in most cases in their lifetimes. We read or hear about about these kinds of things in foreign countries and even occasionally here in the USA, and while we can feel empathy or sympathy for those folks they are far removed from us, and so we might say a prayer for them but there is little else we can do or afford to do, and so most simply rely on other charitable groups to handle those issues.

Here we are speaking of a large number of our own citizens, and more specifically for many of our own first responders, and so any assistance that anyone can provide will be most appreciated by many here. This is not unlike the disasters that I suggested people try to prepare for, whether natural disasters or man-made ones. But in an unstoppable windblown fire like this one, all of the preparations one might have planned for would not have helped in a situation like this one, since it happened too fast for people to do much beyond removing themselves from the scene, and taking what little they could quickly gather in the short period that they were given to evacuate from the fire areas.

Like I said, just notifying others who might be able help out is good enough as some might be able to respond with some kind of help. Thanks for your concerns for me and my family members, and as I said above we are doing fine, but many, many others are dealing with some very unplanned for events in their lives, and even at a time when the fires continue to burn around their present locations. For many it might as well have been a WMD attack, but fortunately the health issues associated with such events are perhaps the only silver lining in this unfortunate event.

With the upcoming holiday season it will be a bleak period for many, but they are resilient American citizens and will weather the storm so to speak, and most will someday get their lives back in order. For now, many are confused, scared, and unknowing of the future. Many local charities here prefer food stamps, or gift coupons to that of cash or checks, since the latter adds an additional burden of accountability in handling those monies. That is, with the exception of the Red Cross which does take money donations-and it always does.

To me, this is the time for churches, charitable institutions, as well as veterans organizations to show their stuff, and provide the assistance when it is most needed. True, these are not the only disaster or incidents across our nation, but for us here in Texas it is a very real and nearby catastrophe for many, and we know without question that assistance is very much needed for many of our local citizens as well as for many of our first responders.

I’m sorry that I can’t provide a better report than the above as many of the fires are still ongoing, and so my information is pretty much that which you read or hear about via the different news outlets. We can’t help all, but some were in tears just to receive ill fitting clothing, and especially that for their children as well as some of the elderly, and with some still remaining in the clothing and small items that they took with them when they evacuated their homes. Thanks again for your thoughts and concerns.-R/S-
-Frank Sends-
www.WMDTERROR.com


From

Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 8:04 AM
To:
Subject: Concerned

Good Morning Major, I didn`t know exactly what part of Texas you live in, but watching the news about the fires i have become very concerned about you and your family, I hope you, and the family are not in harm`s way but if you are, I have every confidence you have a handle on things major, please reply , and let me know if I can do anything to assist , SF Bob