Inmate lawmaker Rep. Carlos Henriquez is doing his Beacon Hill business from his Billerica jail cell, thumbing through bills and budget proposals, and speaking to staff by phone “at least once a day,” according to the disgraced Dorchester Democrat’s legislative aide.
“We’ve been in regular contact with him, and at this point he’s concerned with the issues of the district,” aide Jessica DaSilva told the Herald.
DaSilva said Henriquez’s office is fielding four or five constituent calls a day, mostly from people concerned about cuts to unemployment benefits. (*snort*)
She declined to characterize the telephone calls further, and said she had not visited Henriquez in person at the Middlesex House of Correction.
Henriquez is serving a six-month sentence there after a jury convicted him Jan. 15 for the July 2012 assault and battery of a woman he was dating.
Henriquez, elected in 2010, made $68,000 as a lawmaker last year and belongs to several House committees, including on judiciary, education, ways and means, and mental health and substance abuse. He is also a member of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus.
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| Democrat War on Woman Representative Carlos Henriquez |
Ezekiel Gilbert was acquitted of murder charges in Texas for shooting and killing a prostitute he met on CraigsList who took his $150 in exchange for sex, then refused to have sex with him, and left with his money.In his defense he wasn't trying to kill her. He just wanted to get his money back.
He attempted to stop her by shooting at the car that contained her and her pimp, and she subsequently died from her injuries...More to the point, his lawyer made an innovative argument utilizing a law intended to permit Texans to protect their property.
There is a Texas law that permits you to use deadly force to recover property that’s taken during a nighttime theft.This particular case, however, wasn't that clear cut.
Legally, the case poses some interesting questions. First of which, generally under the law you can’t enforce an illegal contract. And a contract for prostitution is illegal. But it’s not clear, under the gun law in question, whether in fact this money was “stolen.”Of course, this being Texas, the defense based its case on the long-recognized but seldom articulated "the victim needed killing" premise.
Judging by the fact pattern, that the man was shooting at a prostitute and her pimp, I suspect the jury wasn’t terribly sympathetic to the victim.An unintended consequence of the verdict might be that it sets precedent for legalizing prostitution in Texas. It does, after all, 'assume' that the contract for sexual favors was legal. It also sets a precedent for shooting a pizza delivery person who collects your money but leaves without giving you your pizza.
All week, while Congress fought over (the 2014) budget, federal workers were immersed in a separate frantic drama. They were trying to spend the rest of this year’s budget before it is too late.Seems like an easy fix, no? So why hasn't it been changed by now?
The reason for their haste is a system set up by Congress that, in many cases, requires agencies to spend all their allotted funds by Sept. 30.
If they don’t, the money becomes worthless to them on Oct. 1. And — even worse — if they fail to spend the money now, Congress could dock their funding in future years. The incentive, as always, is to spend.
So they spent. It was the return of one of Washington’s oldest bad habits: a blitz of expensive decisions, made by agencies with little incentive to save.
Private contractors ... brought in food to keep salespeople at their desks. Federal workers quizzed harried colleagues in the hallways, asking if they had spent it all yet.
“The way we budget [money] sets it up,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). “Because instead of being praised for not spending all your money, you get cut for not spending all your money...”
Interestingly enough, when GWB was president you heard about the the military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan almost daily. With Obama in the White House, the mainstream media has been strangely quiet.If you are a veteran, or know a veteran, please pass this on.
More than 1,000 American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan in the last 27 months. This is more than the combined total of the nine years before. Thirty have died in August. During the last month, over 50 additional NATO and US servicemen have been murdered, inside jobs by those who are hired to be a force for good in Afghanistan.
The commander in chief is AWOL. Not a peep, although he ordered the White House flag flown at half-staff for the Sikhs that were killed. There is a deep disgust, a fury, growing in the ranks of the military against the indifferent and total incompetence of this president.
It has taken on a dangerous tone. No one knows what to do about him, but the anger runs deep as the deaths continue with no strategic end in sight to the idiocy of this war. Obama has had 4 years to end this futile insanity, during which time he has vacationed, golfed, campaigned, and generally ignored the plight of our men and women in uniform {and so much more}.
But, there is now a movement afoot in the armed services to launch a massive get out the vote drive against this president. Not just current active duty types, but the National Guard, Reserves, the retired, and all other prior service members. This is no small special interest group, but many millions of veterans who can have an enormous impact on the outcome of the November election if they all respond.
The million military retirees in Florida alone could mean an overwhelming victory in that state if they all show up at the polls. It might not keep another one hundred U.S. troops from dying between now and November, but a turn out to vote by the military against this heart breaking lack of leadership can make a powerful statement that hastens a change to the indifference of this shallow little man who just lets our soldiers die.
According to the MVPP (Military Voter Protection Project), just 4.6 percent of the nearly 2 million eligible military voters cast a ballot in 2010 that counted, well below the 15.8 percent who requested ballots.Two points about the above paragraph: first, that 15.8 percent number of eligible military voters who requested ballots is way, way too low - let's get it much higher.
If you were one of 120 million or more people who shopped at Target, Neiman Marcus or as many as a dozen other popular retail stores last month, there's a pretty good chance that your credit card or banking information was compromised by a highly organized band of Russian cyberthieves.I'm a little skeptical of the numbers - 120 million or more? the population of the US is around 320 million, so according to the media over 1/3 of the people in the US were affected. But be that is it may, the basic premise remains valid.
The frequency and sophistication of these retail data breaches have escalated to such a degree that last week the FBI sent leading US retailers a confidential report warning that point-of-sale malware similar to the type used to snare data from Target and Neiman Marcus registers is starting to pop up all over the place.
Toto’s newest smart john, the Intelligence Toilet II, is proving that it is more than an ordinary porcelain throne by recording and analyzing important data like weight, BMI, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels.Granted, the technology is impressive. But think about the implications. What federal agency is now in charge of monitoring and enforcing healthcare regulations?
There’s a “sample catcher” in the bowl that can obtain urine samples. Even by Japanese standards that’s impressive. Yes it has the bidet, the air dryer, and heated seat, but it’s also recording pertinent information. This information is beamed to your computer via WiFi and can help you, with the guidance of a trained physician, monitor health and provide early detection for some medical conditions. Graphs on your desktop PC will show how your glucose levels have been fluctuating, along with urine temperatures. These trends can help diabetics time insulin shots as well as give insight into hormone levels for women concerned with their menstrual cycles. Trying to have a baby? Not sure when your most likely to conceive? Ask your toilet for help.
The results of a new survey from Intel and Penn Schoen Berland say that 70% of people in 8 countries would be willing to share data from their smart toilet if it would mean lower healthcare costs. An even higher proportion, 84%, would be willing to share their vital statistics, like blood pressure or basic lab tests, and 75% would be comfortable giving up information gathered by a health monitor they could swallow, even though that’s far more intrusive than a toilet that tweets that you’ve had enchiladas three nights running.If that's not enough to make you worry, think about the state of Internet security.
The same survey found that only 30% of respondents would share banking information...
Hackers have long wreaked havoc on PCs via the Internet, leading to data breaches and computer crashes. Now that the rush is on to add connectivity to everything from crockpots to light bulbs, the stakes get even higher—and more personal... Antivirus software helped PCs, but you can’t simply install a software suite developed for your desktop on a smart toaster...
A number of tech companies and industry groups say that “smart” devices are hitting store shelves with little in the way of security protection. Security experts blame a number of factors for the problem: startups may put security in the backseat in their haste to get products out the door, and established companies that have traditionally operated offline—like stereo or TV manufacturers—could simply fail to realize that they need to protect against threats when it comes to Internet-connected gadgets.Examples:
A flaw they found in an Insteon home automation product allowed me to flicker the lights in a complete stranger’s house ... The Internet was a bit more excited about another of their findings: that a “My Satis” $4,000+ ‘smart toilet’ by LIXIL was vulnerable to hacking. A hacked toilet could theoretically scream and spray you with the bidet while opening and closing its ‘mouth,’ “causing discomfort or distress to user,” according to a Trustwave security advisory.And I thought low-flow toilets were an egregious invasion of my privacy.
Railroad crews in Philadelphia continue to transfer flammable crude oil from cars that derailed on a bridge near a busy highway.Even before the most recent derailment in Philadelphia, democrats were making political hay with calls for the government to 'do something.'
CSX says it has drained two of the five cars still derailed Friday over the Schuylkill River. Each contains 30,000 gallons of crude.
The accident Monday follows a series of derailments involving Bakken Shale crude from North Dakota - including one that exploded in Canada, killing 47 people.
The chairmen of the Senate Energy and Transportation committees are calling on the Obama administration to take “prompt and decisive” action after a series of train derailments involving crude oil shipments, including a fiery explosion in North Dakota last month and an explosion that killed 47 people in Canada last year.What they should be doing is calling for obama to approve the proposed Keystone pipeline to carry crude from Canada and North Dakota to refineries. Not only has his foot-dragging led to increased use of rail to transport oil (which is far riskier than pipelines), but by delaying he is insulting and offending our neighbor to the north.
Transportation Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Energy Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called the recent derailments “alarming” and said the administration should evaluate whether federal rules adequately address the risks of carrying crude oil by rail.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is calling for Congress to hold hearings about derailments of freight trains that are carrying oil after a recent accident in North Dakota.
Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance.So why is barry dilly-dallying over what should be a straight-forward decision. As always, follow the money.
Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the United States owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage.
Canadians may be preternaturally measured and polite, but they simply can’t believe how they’ve been treated by President Obama — left hanging humiliatingly on an issue whose merits were settled years ago.
Canada, the Saudi Arabia of oil sands, is committed to developing this priceless resource. Its natural export partner is the United States. But crossing the border requires State Department approval, which means the president decides yes or no.
After three years of review, the State Department found no significant environmental risk to Keystone. Nonetheless, the original route was changed to assuage concerns regarding the Ogallala Aquifer. Obama withheld approval through the 2012 election. To this day he has issued no decision.
The Canadians are beside themselves. After five years of manufactured delay, they need a decision one way or the other because if denied a pipeline south, they could build a pipeline west to the Pacific. China would buy their oil in a New York minute.
Yet Secretary of State John Kerry fumblingly says he is awaiting yet another environmental report. He offered no decision date.
If Obama wants to cave to his environmental left, fine. But why keep Canada in limbo? It’s a show of supreme and undeserved disrespect for yet another ally. It seems not enough to have given the back of the hand to Britain, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic, and to have so enraged the Saudis that they actually rejected a U.N. Security Council seat — disgusted as they were with this administration’s remarkable combination of fecklessness and highhandedness. Must we crown this run of diplomatic malpractice with gratuitous injury to Canada, our most reliable, most congenial friend in the world?
And for what? This is not a close call. The Keystone case is almost absurdly open and shut.
Even if you swallow everything the environmentalists tell you about oil sands, the idea that blocking Keystone would prevent their development by Canada is ridiculous. Canada sees its oil sands as a natural bounty and key strategic asset. Canada will not leave it in the ground.
Where’s the environmental gain in blocking Keystone? The oil will be produced and the oil will be burned. If it goes to China, the Pacific pipeline will carry the same environmental risks as a U.S. pipeline.
And Alberta oil can still go to the United States, if not by pipeline then by rail, which requires no State Department approval. That would result in far more greenhouse gas emissions — exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists are seeking.
Moreover, rail can be exceedingly dangerous. Last year a tanker train derailed and exploded en route through Quebec. The fireball destroyed half of downtown Lac-Megantic, killing 47, many incinerated beyond recognition.
This isn’t theoretical environmentalism. This is not a decrease in the snail darter population. This is 47 dead human beings. More recently, we’ve had two rail-oil accidents within the United States, one near Philadelphia and one in North Dakota.
Add to this the slam-dunk strategic case for Keystone: Canadian oil reduces our dependence on the volatile Middle East, shifting petroleum power from OPEC and the killing zones of the Middle East to North America. What more reliable source of oil could we possibly have than Canada?
Keystone has left Canada very upset, though characteristically relatively quiet. Canadians may have succeeded in sublimating every ounce of normal human hostility and unpleasantness by way of hockey fights, but that doesn’t mean we should take advantage of their good manners.
The only rationale for denying the pipeline is political — to appease Obama’s more extreme environmentalists. For a president who claims not to be ideological, the irony is striking: Here is an easily available piece of infrastructure — privately built, costing government not a penny, creating thousands of jobs and, yes, shovel-ready — and yet the president, who’s been incessantly pushing new “infrastructure” as a fundamental economic necessity, can’t say yes.
Well then, Mr. President, say something. You owe Canada at least that. Up or down. Five years is long enough.
“We really can't have her in the show, unfortunately,” producer Eliana Lopez told KPIX5. And: “Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants… (But) Doing what she is doing is against what we believe.”So much for tolerance, diversity, and an open exchange of ideas.
“Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that's who they are, and if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that's not who New Yorkers are.” Only “moderate Republicans have a place in this state.”Can you imagine the outcry if Rick Perry said "pro-abortion, pro-gun control gay rights advocates have no place in the state of Texas"? Liberal heads would explode.
The movie “Lone Survivor” didn't get any Oscar nominations. If it had, perhaps it should have been nominated for Most Unlikely Politically Incorrect Picture of the Year. (For the uninitiated, a spoiler follows in the next paragraph.)I can live with the film not getting any Oscar nominations. What I don't get is the liberal criticism of it.
It's based on the true story of a mission in Afghanistan that goes disastrously wrong. A four-man team of Navy SEALs hunting down a Taliban commander is stumbled upon by a couple of goatherds in the mountains of Kunar province. Deciding to let them go, even though it will compromise them, the SEALs are subsequently outnumbered in a fierce firefight. Three of them are killed, and a Chinook helicopter attempting to relieve them is downed, killing another 16 Americans. The only survivor is a SEAL named Marcus Luttrell (played by Mark Wahlberg) who wrote a book about the mission.
A reviewer in The Atlantic worries that movies like “Lone Survivor” “resemble multimillion dollar recruitment videos — tools of military indoctrination geared toward the young and the impressionable...”Fortunately, the American public has more common sense than the liberal critics. “Lone Survivor” is a box office smash. People are voting with their feet - and wallets.
A writer in Salon complains that the targeted Taliban commander “is presented as a terrible guy,” and we don't learn enough about the Taliban fighters attacking the SEALs, or as he calls them, “some dudes from an Afghan village about whom we know nothing.” Yes, if only we knew whether or not the Taliban commander, Ahmad Shah, had a troubled upbringing, that would change everything. Perhaps the Taliban version of the movie could present fuller, more sympathetic portraits of its fighters seeking to plunge their country into renewed medieval darkness — if, that is, the Taliban believed in movies.
In perhaps the most preposterous critique, a critic in LA Weekly says the attitude of the SEALs in the movie is “Brown people bad, American people good.” What a stupid smear. The proximate cause of the impossible situation of the SEALs is precisely their decision to let a few unarmed “brown people” go. Besides, not all “brown people” in the film are bad. Some of them are awe-inspiringly merciful and brave. Of course, the main thrust of the Taliban's war is against other “brown people,” whom they intimidate and kill.
The University of Utah has put together a panel of doctors and medical ethicists to find out how a convicted felon working at a fertility clinic two decades ago replaced a patient's sperm with his own and fathered a woman who is now 21.
The university has confirmed that Thomas Lippert, an employee of the private clinic that closed in 1998, is the biological father of the woman who now lives in San Antonio with her family. They don't know why or how his sperm samples got switched with the father's ... complicating matters is the fact that most of the records from the lab are gone and Lippert and the former clinic director have died.
The woman, Annie Branum, is now 21, and says the discovery has forced her to rethink who she is. Her family stumbled upon the discovery while using widely available DNA tests to trace their family roots online. The results showed Annie Branum's DNA didn't match her father's. The website led them to a second cousin who had also used the DNA testing. They tracked her down, and she turned out to be Lippert's cousin. She told the Branums that Lippert was a sperm donor who lived in Salt Lake City. A DNA test of Lippert's 99-year-old mother confirmed that she was the daughter's biological grandmother.
No one knows what might have motivated Lippert, who in 1975 took a plea bargain on kidnapping and other charges for subjecting a Purdue University female student to electroshock behavioral modification techniques in a so-called "love experiment."
The university hopes the in-depth investigation brings answers...Can you imagine that poor families shock when they learned who the real father was? To make matters worse, there may be others in the same situation. The investigation has revealed that around 1000 people may have visited the clinic while Lippert worked there. So far 15 have called a special hotline the university set up to field inquiries from former patients. No word so far on whether or not Lippert fathered anyone else.
Supreme Court justices expressed compassion for a woman raped as a child as they struggled with how much money should be paid to her by one man convicted of possessing pornographic images of the abuse that have spread among thousands of online viewers.The details of the case are confusing, but as near as I can figure out the defendant posted on the Internet pictures of an 8 year old child being raped by her uncle. The images were subsequently viewed by "thousands" of online perverts.
A 16-year-old girl who police say strangled a man during an apparent sex act has been charged as an adult with second-degree murder, authorities said Wednesday.WTF?!? What parent in their right mind allows their 16-year-old daughter to have a 43-year-old boyfriend? The mother should be in the cell next to her daughter.
Jason Ash, 43, was found dead Saturday evening in a Glendale apartment. According to court records, he was discovered lying on his back on a bed with an electrical cord around his neck and cuts to his face, arms and body.
The girl's mother told police she left her daughter alone in their apartment with Ash, whom she described as a boyfriend of the teenager.
The mother told police her daughter told her the couple was "playing sex games and he was cut on the arms and choked."Well, Jason is a perv, so he got what was coming to him. But blaming him because he didn't use the safety word is a bit much.
The girl told her mother they often used strangulation and cutting as part of their sexual activity and that "Jason did not say the 'safety word,' " police wrote in court papers.
The girl said that "after she strangled Jason with an electrical cord, she began cutting him with a razor blade," according to police. "The first cut was an attempt to get a response from Jason since he appeared to have passed out ... She continued to cut on Jason in order to alleviate her stress from the situation."Yeah, that's a good way to wake someone up - cut 'em with a razor. And when you get all stressed out because they don't wake up, cut 'em some more.
The table shows that the amount of people making over $200,000 per year has certainly grown while the middle group has also grown and the amount of people in the lowest economic strata has declined. More households have moved into the middle-class and more people have joined the highest income group.But refuting the notion of income inequality is not the point of this post. Most people (myself included) can cherry-pick and torture numbers to support any position we care to take. What I would like to do today is to offer a suggestion to help decrease the (perceived and alleged) rise of income inequality.
(The data comes from the US Census Bureau ... (it) is in constant dollars to remove the impact of inflation/disinflation from the analysis.)
In 2006, North Dakota ranked 38th among the states in average personal income. By 2012, it was sixth. Department of Commerce data show that over those six years, North Dakota’s per capita personal income went from 14 percent below the national average to 25 percent above.
...the Marcellus shale, which has been the biggest new source for the nation’s natural gas renaissance, is for the most part located beneath New York and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has allowed landowners to rapidly develop the reserves they own, while New York has maintained a moratorium on the smart-drilling technology (hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling) that unleashes the gas.The picture on the national level is strikingly similar.
The farmers on the New York side of the state line gnash their teeth, while the farmers in Pennsylvania cash their checks. One state grabbed the brass ring while the other thumbed its nose at jobs, income and lower energy prices.
Our stunning increase in petroleum production (nearly 40 percent in the past three years) has occurred almost exclusively on state and private land. In fact, production on federal land dropped over the past couple of years.Money quote:
One statistic epitomizes why that is so: In North Dakota, it takes about 10 days to get a drilling permit. In contrast, the delay for a federal drilling permit is about 10 months—double what it was in 2005.
You’d think that an administration that is so intent on redistributing income would be a little more sympathetic to generating the income in the first place.Bottom line, if obama and his cronies are serious about increasing income for the majority of American workers, they'd devote more time to removing impediments to innovation and job growth, and less time to political posturing.
"I would not let my son play pro football..."In response, Mark Levin laid a verbal hurt on the prez.
"Well let me tell you something Mr. President. I wouldn’t let my son be an ambassador under you. I’d much rather that he played football."
Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator whose filibuster for abortion rights made her a Democratic superstar and launched her campaign for governor, has admitted to the Dallas Morning News that she lied about key events in her life, including her first divorce. Davis may even have lied under oath, testifying in a federal lawsuit over redistricting that "I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old," when in fact she was divorced at age 21."My language should be tighter..." - Nominee for Understatement of the Year.
Other missing details have included: her second husband paid her way through law school and she divorced him the day after the last payment was made; her ex-husband accused her in initial court filings of adultery, and was awarded custody of their two daughters; and she first ran for city council in Fort Worth as a Republican.
"My language should be tighter,” she said, admitting her campaign biography has been less than truthful.
Wendy Davis, the progressive movement’s Texas darling because of her pro-late term abortion filibuster, is withering under revelations that much of her narrative of struggle and financial hardship is misleading at best, fabricated at worst.It gets worse:
The Wendy Davis campaign has been trying to keep Jeff Davis from speaking to the press for months. According to the Houston Chronicle article:“They’ve asked me not to talk to reporters,” (her ex-husband) said.Now we know why. Wendy Davis’ personal and campaign narratives don’t hold up to scrutiny.
...her ex-husband asked a Texas District Court to issue a temporary restraining order against Wendy Davis in 2003.Say what you will about Rick Perry (and I'm not a big fan of his), but 'Abortion Barbie' is much worse.
In that order, the judge ordered that Wendy Davis “be immediately restrained from . . . using illegal drugs or consuming alcohol within 24 hours before or during the period of possession of or access to the child.”
Speaking of the child, at the time her twelve year old daughter requested her father serve as her managing conservator.
It appears that Wendy Davis did not just leave out key details. Nor does it appear that Davis is just being held to a different standard than a man. It appears there is much more to Wendy Davis than meets the eye.
In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”One of the U.K.'s most knowledgeable and respected military advisers is also highly critical of obama's performance as CINC..
President Obama has been judged to be 'chronically incapable' of conducting a coherent military strategy and 'has no sense of what he wants to do in the world', according to Oxford University professor, Sir Hew Strachan - one of the UK's most respected and senior military advisers."...if he were act it would surprise everybody..." - More on that.
The damning verdict from a governmental insider of the United States' closest military ally comes days after the president was heavily criticized by his own former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who said that Obama was indecisive and lacked any passion for his nation's armed forces.
Claiming that America and Britain had committed total strategic failure in their near decade-long Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, Strachan said that the recent failed attempts to intervene militarily on behalf of Syrian rebels 'has left them in a far worse position than they were before.'
'What he’s done in talking about Red Lines in relation to Syria has actually devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability and it seems to me that creates an unstable situation, because if he were act it would surprise everybody,' he said.
While the Middle East is going through one of the most turbulent periods in history, America is governed by one of the most, if not the most, risk-averse post-war Presidents. The consequences of this unfortunate match are devastating, far-reaching and long-lasting.Examples:
The “Arab Spring” was always going to be a brutal contest between two major camps - secular progressives and religious reactionaries - and not an instant fix for the region’s deep-rooted socio-political, cultural and economic problems. Democracy is more than protests, elections and the sum of its institutions. But neither was the “Arab Spring” destined to turn into an “Islamist Winter” with no end in sight.
It has reached its bloody peak in Syria with the death toll now exceeding 130,000 - a conservative estimate with the actual numbers likely to be far higher.
On average, 5000 people are being killed every month and the civilian fatality rate is approximately 30 per cent or higher. The situation in the country is so bleak that it has almost produced as many casualties in less than three years than the war in Iraq, which many consider to be the US’s greatest foreign policy disaster in decades. The UN speaks of the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and, at current pace, Syria is likely to replace Afghanistan as the top refugee producing country during 2014, the first change since 1981.
Syria also constitutes the peak of Barack Obama’s contradiction-ridden Middle Eastern Odyssey of failures. His administration mishandled almost every major challenge it has been confronted with in the region..
When in 2009 the Iranian people took to the streets in massive protest against the clerical regime and fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama remained silent. Now, his administration is engaging in controversial nuclear talks with the Islamic Republic, including the country’s new Defence Secretary, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, who was involved in Hezbollah's 1983 Marine barracks bombings that killed 241 Americans.Egypt? Same thing.
Yet again Obama left American foreign policy hanging in the wind at a crucial moment in time after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt has always been a pivotal player in the region and the direction Egypt goes, the surrounding Arab countries tend to follow. Not only did Obama fail to use the leverage that the more than $1,5 billion in aid gives the US, but his administration lacked a clear and coherent policy altogether. It resulted in the isolation of Washington with almost no influence to shape events on the ground, as both sides of the revolution and counter-revolution blamed America for supporting the other. His infamous Cairo speech is no more than a distant memory and ratings for the US are lower now than they were during the Bush administration.Iraq?
Obama’s short-term foreign policy thinking was once more revealed when he failed to negotiate the renewal of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq. When troops were pulled out too quickly and over-hastily in December of 2011, despite repeated calls for caution from the generals, the peace in Iraq was once more lost.Afghanistan?
575 US troops died in Afghanistan during the Bush presidency. By August 18, 2010, following two troop surges initiated by President Obama, that number had doubled. Today, over 1500 US troops have died in Afghanistan since President Obama took office—and yet, little in that war-torn country has changed.
Al-Qaeda has re-emerged in Iraq under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shām (the Levant). Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they are seeking to seize control of the province of Anbar where nearly a third of US soldiers lost their lives. ISIS has already managed to gain control of parts of Fallujah, less than an hour away by car from Iraq’s capital Baghdad. Meanwhile, ISIS’s offshoot and former proxy organisation in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, is considered to be one of the most successful but also aggressive opposition groups. The al-Nusra Front has a strength of up to 10,000 fighters with mostly foreign backgrounds. Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime has also given a boost to al-Qaeda’s partner organisation in Lebanon, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which are behind a series of recent deadly suicide attacks in an attempt to draw the country deeper into Syria’s civil war.Not to worry, though. barry still has his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize:
The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 was awarded to Barack H. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".What a sad, pathetic, fraudulent joke...
After Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is one of the most talked-about potential candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.However, if this is any indication of how things are done in his state, we can only hope and pray that he doesn't get anywhere near the White House.
The two-term governor reiterated Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that he's considering the opportunity, but his attention is mostly on his current job.
...The state of Florida might have codified his Second Amendment rights, but he knew he’d be passing through states where recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions affirming the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms have been met by hostile legislatures and local officials.So many questions:
“I know the laws and I know the rules,” Filippidis says. There are, after all, ways gun owners can travel legally with firearms through hostile states. “But I just think it’s a better idea to leave it home.”
So there the Filippidises were on New Year’s Eve eve, southbound on Interstate 95 — John; wife Kally (his Gulf High sweetheart); the 17-year-old twins Nasia and Yianni; and 13-year-old Gina in their 2012 Ford Expedition — just barely out of the Fort McHenry Tunnel into Maryland, blissfully unarmed and minding their own business when they noticed they were being bird-dogged by an unmarked patrol car. It flanked them a while, then pulled ahead of them, then fell in behind them.
“Ten minutes he’s behind us,” John says. “We weren’t speeding. In fact, lots of other cars were whizzing past.”
Finally the patrol car’s emergency lights come on, and it’s almost a relief. Whatever was going on, they’d be able to get it over with now. The officer — from the Transportation Authority Police, as it turns out, Maryland’s version of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority — strolls up, does the license and registration bit, and returns to his car.
According to Kally and John (but not MTAP, which, pending investigation, could not comment), what happened next went like this:
Ten minutes later he’s back, and he wants John out of the Expedition. Retreating to the space between the SUV and the unmarked car, the officer orders John to hook his thumbs behind his back and spread his feet. “You own a gun,” the officer says. “Where is it?”
“At home in my safe,” John answers.
“Don’t move,” says the officer.
Now he’s at the passenger’s window. “Your husband owns a gun,” he says. “Where is it?”
First Kally says, “I don’t know.” Retelling it later she says, “And that’s all I should have said.” Instead, attempting to be helpful, she added, “Maybe in the glove [box]. Maybe in the console. I’m scared of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I might shoot right through my foot.”
The officer came back to John. “You’re a liar. You’re lying to me. Your family says you have it. Where is the gun? Tell me where it is and we can resolve this right now.”
Of course, John couldn’t show him what didn’t exist, but Kally’s failure to corroborate John’s account, the officer would tell them later, was the probable cause that allowed him to summon backup — three marked cars joined the lineup along the I-95 shoulder — and empty the Expedition of riders, luggage, Christmas gifts, laundry bags; to pat down Kally and Yianni; to explore the engine compartment and probe inside door panels; and to separate and isolate the Filippidises in the back seats of the patrol cars.
Ninety minutes later, or maybe it was two hours — “It felt like forever,” Kally says — no weapon found and their possessions repacked, the episode ended ... with the officer writing out a warning.
“All that time, he’s humiliating me in front of my family, making me feel like a criminal,” John says. “I’ve never been to prison, never declared bankruptcy, I pay my taxes, support my 20 employees’ families; I’ve never been in any kind of trouble.”
Face red, eyes shining, John pounds his knees. “And he wants to put me in jail. He wants to put me in jail. For no reason. He wants to take my wife and children away and put me in jail. In America, how does such a thing happen? ... And after all that, he didn’t even write me a ticket.”
How did the cop know Filippidis owned a gun? (Big Brother, anyone...?)
Why did the cop pull Filippidis over? (Out of state plates ... run them ... cross-reference to a database of gun owners...)Enquiring minds want to know...
Wasn't that 'probable cause' pretty flimsy? (Damn right it was. Because his wife doesn't know where her husband's pistol is, that gives the cops the right to search the car and passengers? I call Bullshit.)
If Chris Christie gets castigated for creating an atmosphere where his subordinates feel free to bully political opponents, shouldn't Martin O'Malley be held to the same standard regarding the Gestapo-like behavior of his state cops?
Since black is always in style in the fashion industry, saying something is "the new black" means that it is the hottest new thing. This phrase can be used to call out the "coolness" of anything, it's not just limited to the fashion world.Other examples:
"Striptease aerobics is the new black."
"I just love your yellow purse. Yellow is the new black this season."
Black Is the New White - a book by comedian Paul Mooney, who wrote jokes for Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphey, among others
Black is the New Green - marketing to affluent African Americans
Orange is the New Black - one of the hottest shows on Netflix right nowI've looked at several of the websites proclaiming the shirt as racist, and have yet to see any reasonable justification for that sentiment. If anyone out there can enlighten me, please do so.
For one Seattle woman, a mind-blowing orgasm sent her to heaven - and then to the emergency room.Relief? I thought an orgasm was relief, not something you needed relief from.
Liz had just had sex with her partner Eric, but well after he climbed out of bed, Liz was hitting new peaks of pleasure.
About an hour into her epic climax, Liz started to panic. By the second hour, the panting woman was rushed to hospital where medical staff thought she was in labor.
Liz's orgasm lasted for over three hours before she finally found relief.
'I started hopping up and down to see if that would do anything,' Liz said about her first frenzied hour.Drinking wine? Hopping up and down? That's what my wife and I do to achieve orgasms, not to end them.
'I started trying to drink wine to see if that would calm down my system. I tried just about every possible thing I could do to stop having an orgasm.'
Eric drove his partner to the ER, where, he recalled, some people stared and shared their insights.I'd better not let my wife see this. She won't be satisfied any more with her two-hour pleasurings.
'As much of a relief as it was to have her in the hospital, now there were eyes on me and I was still feeling very tense and uptight and uncertain about what was going on and what was going to happen,' Eric said.
Liz's orgasm continued for another hour in the hospital before it finally waned.
Another mainstream survey from another widely-respected, non-partisan polling firm has confirmed yet again that, contrary to everything we are told, it is Republicans who are more educated on the issues, more informed on current events and more open-minded, and Democrats who demonstrate persistent ignorance of the facts, narrow-minded intolerance and contradictory logic.Setting aside for the moment the informed/uninformed issue, let's take a closer look at who is more tolerant then who (whom?).
...recent polls and studies also show that Democrats are more likely to "unfriend," ban and/or otherwise try to silence anyone who disagrees with them on social media sites, and that they are willing to completely reverse their positions and abandon their own arguments to gain partisan power.Not exactly news to anyone who's been paying attention.
"...A March 12 Pew study showed that Democrats are far more likely than conservatives to disconnect from people who disagree with them. 'In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates,' said the report, tiled 'Social networking sites and politics.'
The report also noted that 11 percent of liberals, but only 4 percent of conservatives, deleted friends from their social networks after disagreeing with their politics."
A recent college graduate and aide to Colorado state Senator Irene Aguilar was fired from his job because he visited the office of a friend who worked for a Republican."...has lost some of his faith in the Democratic Party" Some?!? Only SOME...?
Tyler Drum, now unemployed, has lost some of his faith in the Democratic Party.
“Now I’m a disenchanted Democrat,” he said. “This was my first job after graduating, [the Democrats] don’t care about my situation, they don’t care to know who I am.”Welcome to the real world.
Drum explained that he was recommended for the position via a mutual contact. He had previously interned for Democratic State Senator Andy Kerr. When Aguilar hired him, she said her only reservation was that he had previously interned with the Log Cabin Republicans, a group for gay conservatives. Drum said he was raised Republican but became a Democrat in recent years — an answer that satisfied Aguilar, for the time being.
But last week, during an orientation for legislative aides, Drum chose to sit with friends from previous internships, one of whom was a Republican.
Later, Drum thought it would be perfectly reasonable to introduce his Republican friend to his new co-workers, which included Aguilar. But soon after he did so, the Democratic state senator pulled him out of the orientation session and said, “the Democratic Leadership was uncomfortable with [his] friendship with [the Republican aide].”
“The Democratic Party is not as tolerant and accepting as I had thought...” (Drum said).
He met a man with a litter of beautiful puppies. He asked the man "What kind of puppies are these?"
The man answered, "They are democrat puppies, Mr. President."
barry was thrilled. A week later, he brought his wife back to look at the puppies.
Naturally she asked, "What kind of puppies are these?"
The man answered, "They are republicans."
barry was shocked. He exclaimed "What? Last week you told me these puppies were democrats."
The man answered, "Well, I was telling you the truth. Last week they were democrats. But this week they've opened their eyes and are now republicans."
