I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand

By John Stossel

Want to open a business in America? It isn't easy.
In Midway, Ga., a 14-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister sold lemonade from their front yard. Two police officers bought some. But the next day, different officers ordered them to close their stand.

Their father went to city hall to try to find out why. The clerk laughed and said she didn't know. Eventually, Police Chief Kelly Morningstar explained, "We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade and of what the lemonade was made with."
Give me a break. If she doesn't know, so what? But kids trying their first experiment with entrepreneurship are being shut down all over America. Officials in Hazelwood, Ill., ordered little girls to stop selling Girl Scout cookies.
It made me want to try to jump through the legal hoops required to open a simple lemonade stand in New York City. Here's some of what one has to do:
-- Register as sole proprietor with the County Clerk's Office (must be done in person)
-- Apply to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number.
-- Complete 15-hr Food Protection Course!
-- After the course, register for an exam that takes 1 hour. You must score 70 percent to pass. (Sample question: "What toxins are associated with the puffer fish?") If you pass, allow three to five weeks for delivery of Food Protection Certificate.
-- Register for sales tax Certificate of Authority
-- Apply for a Temporary Food Service Establishment Permit. Must bring copies of the previous documents and completed forms to the Consumer Affairs Licensing Center.
Then, at least 21 days before opening your establishment, you must
arrange for an inspection with the Health Department's Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. It takes about three weeks to get your appointment. If you pass, you can set up a business once you:
-- Buy a portable fire extinguisher from a company certified by the New York Fire Department and set up a contract for waste disposal.
-- We couldn't finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.
I sold lemonade anyway. I looked dumb hawking it with my giant fire extinguisher on the table.
Tourists told me they couldn't believe that I had to get "all those permits." A Pakistani man said: "That's crazy! You should move to Pakistan!"
But I don't want to move to Pakistan.
Politicians say, "We support entrepreneurs," but the bureaucrats make it hard. The Feds alone add 80,000 pages of new rules every year. Local governments add more. There are so many incomprehensible rules that even the bureaucrats can't tell you what's legal. In the name of public safety, politicians strangle opportunity.

Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Thar She Blows

Update: On this topic, see this ZeroHedge post and READ THE COMMENTS. Stuff like:

July is going to be worse. People were actually shopping in June.
I talked to a few people in Target looking at school supplies. They were writing down what they have. The women all said they are going to wait until school starts to buy the supplies because they know Target will put everything 50% off and then drop stuff to 75% a week later.
Nothing moved in summer seasonal until it was at least 50% off.
Reality is asserting itself. People don't have enough money to pay for the inflated prices of everything. Historical 20% profit margins will be coming back to retail. The consumer will no longer pay $20 for an item that was bought by the retailer for $7.
The problem is the immense overhead of big retail will destroy it with margins like that. Deflation is the only outcome when the population can't afford anything. At least when the free market allows it. Supply and demand says if nobody buys at price X, you must lower it until somebody does.
Mon, 07/16/2012 - 10:12 | 2620056 Abiotic Oil

Was in a local store this weekend. Huge summer clothing clearance sale. Talked to an employee who has been at the same store for 20 years and he said he has never seen so much summer clothing inventory left over or marked down as much as it was. It was finally moving at well over 50% off retail.

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Mon, 07/16/2012 - 10:30 | 2620120 Arnold Ziffel

July sales are dismal. Every store is nearly empty even with 60% discounts AND cash back rewards. I have never seen it so bad

End update.

I believe I mentioned regarding the last employment report that we appeared to be in a consumer recession, but not a manufacturing recession.

This morning's retail report for June confirms that belief. If you look at Table 2, retail sales in the second quarter were down 0.2% from Q1 retail sales. There's a clear drop off in the YoYs:

• 6 month YTD = +6.4%.
• May = +5.1%.
• June = +3.8%.

For June compared to May, it's -0.5%. May was negative in comparison to April, but the early Easter could have accounted somewhat for that. Adjusted for inflation, the YoYs are weaker than cited above. This graph only goes through May, because we don't have price indices for June yet:

In the US the rule of thumb is that real retail sales need to advance about 1% over the rate of population expansion. We seem to have fallen below that line in the last quarter.

The short term data is beginning to develop consistencies. The spike in May revolving credit was due to strapped consumers. The spike in female head of households out of work is largely due to slack retail, and one reinforces the other. What I really don't like is that auto advertising seems to be shifting to the credit downside. This could accelerate the retail downturn over Q3.

Now factor the recent sharp drops in some of the manufacturing surveys into the consumer-side picture (for example, the last two months of Chicago PMI abruptly changed trend to came in significantly below the 10 year and 40 year means and medians), and a vision of epic beauty and promise materializes in your mind's eye - if you are a Romney campaign worker, that is. If you are a Romney policy wonk hoping for a job in the Romney administration next year, this is a bad development.

Empire State Manufacturing came out this morning, and although it increased, new orders fell significantly, and the headline level is about where it was at the beginning of the last recession.

One of my brothers called me this weekend to report on the gun show index, and he told me flatly that it looked like a depression.

And You thought Harper was Bad ?

Obama Robs Elderly to Pay Young

by Nathan Harden on July 18, 2012

Robin Hood robbed the rich to pay the poor; now Uncle Sam is robbing the old to pay the young — raiding pension funds to keep student-loan rates artificially low.

President Obama’s much-touted plan to put a one-year freeze on student interest rates was signed into law with great fanfare this month. But the bill’s supporters hadn’t said where the money to subsidize the lower rates would come from.
Columnist Daniel Indiviglio of Reuters dug up the details this week, calling the bill financial “hocus-pocus.” The student-loan scheme was buried in a transportation bill. In it, the government raided its pension-guarantee fund to the tune of $6 billion — although the fund is already running a deficit of $26 billion.
The student-loan bill puts the pension system in jeopardy. To cover future payouts, pension contributions will need to rise by as much as $50 billion a year. The fund’s already broke; now, thanks to this reckless bill, it’s one step closer to total collapse.
Plus, the bill lowers accounting standards for pension funds, letting them contribute less money than before while forecasting the same future return. That is, the president and Congress are pretending that a system that’s already broke will magically prosper in the future with even less direct investment.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp is designed to insure private retirement plans. Millions of present and future retirees depend on it. Putting it at risk is simply irresponsible…
Read the full article in the New York Post.

Kindergarten Graduation In Gaza

One might expect that a graduation ceremony from kindergarten would be a cheerful event, if a school bothered to put one on at all. Not so in Gaza, apparently. A teacher at the school pictured below said:

In every year’s kindergarten graduation ceremonies we focus on the children to represent the role of struggling and resistance in the way of Allah, in order to establish this path, and grow up to love the resistance, and for it to have a prominent role in their lives to serve the cause of Palestine and Holy Jihad, as well as to make them leaders and fighters to defend the holy soil of Palestine.

The kids get into the spirit of the occasion:

One child, Hamza, wearing the uniform of the Al Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad and carrying a wooden weapon, said “I love the resistance and the martyrs and Palestine, and I want to blow up the most Zionists in a process of martyrdom and kill them.”

Here are some photos from the event.

What kindergarten event would be complete without coffins?

Here a boy dressed as an Israeli soldier pretends to torture a Palestinian:

There are lots more photos at this jihadist web site. These kids appear to have jailed some Israelis:

Here you can see the kids’ parents enjoying the event:

The girls carry weapons, too:

The words “cycle of violence” are often used in connection with the Middle East, usually in a way that is inapt. Here, however, I think we are indeed seeing the beginning of another cycle.

I Laughed So Hard

This really belongs on Small Dead Animals, but you have to read it here for now:

Not content with destroying their energy infrastructure, the Greens in Germany banned the primary agricultural rodent poison in 2008 due to environmental impacts.

The results have been alternately tragic and hilarious:

Farmers in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt are complaining that millions of field mice are devastating their food crops, including corn, barley and winter wheat. "They are eating everything," said Matthias Krieg, who manages an agricultural firm near the town of Zeitz in Saxony-Anhalt. "Not even the sugar beets are safe."...

Farmers already noticed an increase in the field mouse population in 2011 and began to take counter measures. According to Reinhard Kopp, a spokesman for the Thuringian Farmers' Association, agriculturalists set up hundreds of perches in their fields to lure birds of prey to kill the mice. But the operation was only moderately successful. "The birds got so fat from eating all the mice that they almost couldn't fly any more," Kopp said. "But they still couldn't keep up."
...
Instead, agriculturalists want drastic action. They have requested permission to deploy a rat poison called Ratron. Farmers in Germany have been banned from using the poison on large areas since 2008. Ironically, it was the indiscriminate use of Ratron by farmers in Saxony-Anhalt that led the agency to ban it in the first place, after the poison killed wild geese and endangered European hamsters.

The pensioners who can't afford to keep their lights on can now snicker at the farmers' suffering. A lot of those receiving the fat solar subsidies are farmers. Of course it won't be fun much longer as food prices rise!

I concede that I am not a nice person for laughing so hard, but what did everyone expect?

Two hard winters partly shielded the farmers from the results of the rodent poison ban, but this last winter was milder, so the inevitable happened. What they need is cats. Tens of thousands of them. But then the cats would eat the wild birds (think about the US campaign to ban outdoor cats).

Also the cats might end the mouse plague, and then the raptors would have to eat kittens. This would cause severe suffering in Germany, where laws protect household rodents from the cruelty of their human roommates.

If they do authorize the use of poison, then those fat raptors are going to be fat corpses, because they'll be eating poisoned rodents. Farmers have a lot of clout in Germany, so I presume they'll win this battle, but not before losing a good portion of this year's crop.

// posted by MaxedOutMama @ 7/11/2012 07:27:00 AM

What is Sharia, where does it come from, and why does it matter so much?

By Professor Dr. Johannes Jansen

Brussels, ICLA, July 9, 2012

The Islamic Sharia is a system of law. It is a collection of prohibitions, admonitions and commands about human behavior. The Sharia is not an internal matter that only concerns Islam and Muslims. The Sharia includes a large number of provisions about people who are not Muslims. These rules are usually prohibitions that carry severe penalties if violated. These provisions of the Sharia make life unsafe and uncertain for someone who lives under Sharia law and who is not a Muslim.

Under Sharia law, someone who is not a Muslim possesses no inalienable rights. If I am wrong here, I will be relieved, and happy to stand corrected and receive your e-mails pointing out why I am wrong. But if I am right, a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay possesses more rights than a Jew or a Christian who lives under Sharia law.

Unlike the legal systems of most modern nation states, Sharia law is not subject to democratic supervision. Like international law and rabbinic law, Sharia law is an academic affair: experts discuss and debate the rules until they reach an agreement. Sharia law does not know a parliament or a government that acts as legislator, but the rules of the Sharia come into being by being agreed upon by the experts, that is, the Islamic religious leaders, the professional Muslims, the Ulama, Ayatollahs, or whatever these dignitaries are called.

Like me, most of you will be only superficially familiar with international law. The pretensions of international law have never been put to the test of a free and democratic vote. It was, to say the least, interesting to note how often the accusers of Geert Wilders in 2010 and 2011 appealed to what they regarded as generally accepted international law in order to silence Geert Wilders. As international law demonstrates, communities of academic specialists, in their isolation, have a tendency to develop a degree of pedantry that an elected lawgiver could never afford. Up to a point, this is exactly what has happened to the Sharia.

Religions are not democratic even if they sometimes may preach or tolerate democracy. Hence, the way in which the rules of Islamic law come into being is undemocratic. This implies that allowing the Sharia, or a part of it, to be the law of the land in a Western nation will diminish the democratic character of that nation. It means giving away legislative power to unelected self-appointed men, who are unknown and anonymous, who operate from far-away mosques in Pakistan or Afghanistan. In a democracy, this is not the ideal arrangement. One may have legitimate religious reasons to nevertheless prefer such an arrangement, but it entails something worse than taxation without representation; it entails legislation without representation.

Western policymakers do not take Sharia law too seriously because it is an academic and religious affair, a system of law that springs not from the power of a state but from the minds of religious scholars. In the Muslim world, to the contrary, the authority of the Sharia is overwhelming. The colossal prestige of the Sharia in the world of Islam is easy to explain: Islamic theology identifies Sharia law with the will of God; and Sharia specialists are the religious leaders of the Islamic community. No government in the Muslim world can afford to alienate these specialists of religious law if it wants to remain in power.

Continue reading →

More here.

The Mysterious disappearing Winnipeg radio station.  

"Margo Goodhand started out to shut down a radio talk show"

Her interference wound up shutting down the whole radio station.

Posted by Kate at 3:01 PM| Comments (9)

The fat lady is singing !!!
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<param name="type" value="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>
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Maybe theres something to this birther thing

There were Criminal Acts during Canadian Federal Election- Click link below
http://bcove.me/5oze9vbf

The Scientist: Parkinson's Researcher Fabricated Data

Let me fix that headline for you: Researcher Commits Fraud Against Pesticide Industry

[An assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey] fabricated stereological cell count data in two studies on how pesticides influence neuronal mechanisms involved in Parkinson’s disease (PD). The studies reported the results of 13 new experiments that supposedly counted nigrostriatal neurons in the brains of mice and rats, but an investigation spearheaded by the UMDNJ determined those counts were never taken. The nigrostriatal pathway is a major dopamine circuit in the brain, and loss of neurons in this area is one of the main features of Parkinson’s disease.The papers slated for retraction investigate the neurological response to the combined pesticides paraquat and maneb, and suggest the pesticide atrazine also has a role in disrupting dopamine pathways. The false data were used to create several summary bar graphs, which Thiruchelvam modified to support the hypothesis that proteasomal dysfunction is higher in males than females with PD, and that exposure to paraquat and maneb enhances this effect.
[...]
Deborah Cory-Slechta, a co-author on the same paper, said in an email she was “both shocked and disappointed” by the news. Both papers have had influence in the field, with the Journal of Biological Chemistry study being cited 73 times according to ISI.

Posted by Kate at 8:36 AM| Comments (14)

So taxing the shit out of us really does get us know were !

Operation Fast and Furious

More on Issa's bombshell;

This revelation alone is of paramount importance because it lays to rest once and for all the notion that Fast and Furious was merely a local Phoenix ATF sting operation gone bad. That claim is false. The operation received its very name from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), and as such, it had to be fully cleared and approved by officials at the highest levels of government, specifically the Justice Department.
Previous articles by this reporter provide details on the nature of OCDETF and why understanding Fast and Furious within the context of this Justice Department task force is crucial to getting at the truth about the scandal.
But the information only gets worse for the Obama Administration.
Holder has stated repeatedly before Congress that neither he nor the president, nor any of his top aides knew anything about illegal "gunwalking' within the Fast and Furious program or the wiretapping that was part and parcel of the operation.
However, the wiretap applications themselves show otherwise...

And...

“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before.Grassley and Issa said that in early 2011, right around the time Grassley first made public the whistleblowers’ allegations about Fast and Furious, Scot Thomasson – then the chief of the ATF’s Public Affairs Division – said, according to an eyewitness account: “We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down.”
Thomasson also allegedly said that: “All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these guys.”

You can take the Administration out of Chicago...

"Deadbeat" Dad?

Left her with a $1.2 million house WITH EQUITY AND RENTAL INCOME?
All I can say is "Run Bambi, Run"

Posted by Captain at 2:01 PM| Comments (25)

We Don't Need No Stinking Sparky Cars

The DOE would like for batteries to improve their efficiency threefold, in less than ten years — well, why not sixfold, in four years? Heck, why not demand batteries that run on happy thoughts and fairy dust, right now?

(h/t Ed Z.)

Posted by Kate at 3:44 PM| Comments (11)

By popular request  - My old Canadian Home

WHY Do we put up with this shit ? we must be damm stupid !

The Daily show on the fast and the furious

Operation fast and furious

Memo to NBC: What the hell is wrong with you?

June 19, 2012 By Deacon Greg Kandra

Seriously.
First, there was the Trayvon Martin boondoggle a few months ago.
Then yesterday, evidence of some creative editing regarding Mitt Romney’s visit to a Wawa in Pennsylvania.
Today, we have Andrea Mitchell’s spectacularly lame followup to “criticism of the Romney clip edit” — which amounted to Ms. Mitchell saying, with a sigh and a frown, “Oh, bother. Fine. Here’s what we left out.” She failed to acknowledge what the “criticism” entailed; she neglected to point out how the editing misrepresented the event being covered; and she offered nothing resembling an apology or an admission of responsibility for something that was, as a matter of fact, irresponsible.
I’m tired. Truly. I’ve grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible and explain the inexplicable. For years, people have stomped their feet and pounded their fists and snorted “Liberal media bias!” and I’ve always tut-tutted and shooshed them and said, “No, no. Calm down. They meant well. It was just a misunderstanding. A mistake. These things happen.” I spent over 25 years working in the oft-reviled Mainstream Media and I saw up close and personal how the sausage was made. I knew the people who wielded the knives and wore the aprons, and could vouch (most of the time, anyway) for their good intentions.
But now?
Forget it. I’m done. You deserve what they’re saying about you. It’s earned. You have worked long and hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you. You have successfully eroded any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in objective reality any more. You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of democracy, a free press.
Good job.
I just have one question:
What the hell is wrong with you guys?

"Hey, America, did I ever tell you the one about…"

The bald-faced lies of the prevaricator in chief continue to pile up. That story he told during the presidential debate with McCain, and then re-floated earlier this year in his campaign film, about how his cancer-stricken mother had to battle the private insurance company who wouldn't pony up because they said it was a preexisting condition? Turns out he not only made it all up, but he "knew (his) account was false because he served as his mother's attorney in all her dealings with the insurance company."
The one about his step-grandfather Soewarno Martogihardjo being killed fighting the Dutch in Indonesia? A "concocted myth in almost all respects" -- Martogihardjo actually died while hanging drapes.
As for the one about Grandpa Onyango being jailed and tortured by the colonial bastards,

Zablon Okatch, who worked with Mr Onyango as a servant for American diplomats after his supposed detention, told (David) Maraniss: "Hussein was never jailed. I know that for a fact. It would have been difficult for him to get a job with a white family, let alone a diplomat, if he once served in jail." Dick Opar, a former senior Kenyan police official, said he "would have known" if Mr Onyango had been detained. "People make up stories," said Mr Opar…(Onyango's daughter) told Maraniss: "He was not detained"...Maraniss also notes that no records exist of the detention and that within a year of his supposed imprisonment, Mr Onyango's son, Barack Obama senior, was accepted into a prestigious boarding school in western Kenya.

Gosh, who could ever have possibly guessed that Obama would be a jive-ass president?

Posted by EBD at 9:44 PM| Comments (12)

‘Here’s the Proof!’: Rep. Gowdy Raises Voice, Invokes Stephen Colbert in 6-Minute Diatribe Blasting Holder, Obama

• Posted on June 20, 2012 at 2:05pm by Jason Howerton

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) Source: C-SPAN

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) blasted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his department in an impassioned speech during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee where lawmakers were discussing whether or not to charge the attorney general with contempt.
Gowdy — who raised his voice several times — argued the documents that have been made available indicate that senior level officials at the Department of Justice in Washington were aware about Fast and Furious before the death of Border Agent Brian Terry.
“Senior level DOJ officials were briefed, they discussed press conference opportunities, they discussed the unsealing of indictments , they traded emails about the status of the case, they approved wire tap applications and most significantly, Mr. Chairman, they actively discussed the tactic of gun-walking well in advance of special agent brian terry’s murder… and here’s the proof,” Gowdy said.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/heres-the-proof-rep-gowdy-raises-voice-invokes-stephen-colbert-in-6-minute-diatribe-blasting-holder/#ooid=N3ZHk2NTphniHQtE3cVzTeACyV4mR5p0

 

But he wasn’t done, far from it.
He continued, with passion: “So we have a fundamentally flawed federal investigation, we have a dead Border Patrol agent, we have hundreds of dead Mexican citizens, thousands of weapons with America’s fingerprints on both sides of the border unaccounted for and a demonstrably false letter being written to a committee of Congress and yet we are being asked for more time.”
“It has been over a year Mr. Chairman. If Congress has time to look into Major League Baseball, the BCS and invite Stephen Colbert to come to a committee hearing, surely to goodness we have time to get answers on a fundamentally flawed, lethal investigation like Fast and Furious,” Gowdy added.

The Congressman said he has no answers to give his constituents in South Carolina when he is asked for more information on Fast and Furious.

“Not only does Congress have a right to ask these questions, we have a fundamental duty to ask these questions,” Gowdy said. “Either we have the right to the documents and we should get all of them or we have no business here.”
“And with respect to executive privilege, Mr. Chairman, I am going to resist the temptation to contrast Senator Obama‘s position on executive privilege with President Obama’s position on executive privilege,” Gowdy started.
“If (Obama) was not part of the drafting of the February 4 letter, if he did not know about Fast and Furious before Brian Terry was murdered, if he did not approve of the wiretap applications then what in the world is he asserting executive privilege for?” he asked
Before concluding his memorable rant, Gowdy said about the president: “He is either part of it or he’s not. If he’s part of it, then we’ve had a series of witnesses that have misled this committee. If he’s not part of it, then he’s got no business asserting executive privilege.”

Operation Fast and Furious

Transparency!

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House.The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway.

As of this morning, the only CBC News mention of the scandal is buried in the tenth paragraph of an April 15th report on the Roger Clemens trial.
I kid you not.
(Heh).

Posted by Kate at 9:54 AM| Comments (39)

BREAKING: House Oversight Committee Votes 23-17 To Hold Eric Holder In Contempt of Congress — Update: Boehner And Cantor Schedule House Vote For Next Week…

On to the House floor.

(CNN) — Voting on strictly partisan lines, a House committee recommended Wednesday that Attorney General Eric Holder be cited for contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents relating to the botched Fast and Furious weapons sting operation.
The measure now goes to the full House for consideration, expected next week, of what would be an unprecedented event — Congress holding a sitting attorney general in contempt.

Update: Giddy up!

WASHINGTON, DC — House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) issued the following statement after the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee approved a resolution holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents related to the Fast & Furious operation:
“Despite being given multiple opportunities to provide the documents necessary for Congress’ investigation into Fast and Furious, Attorney General Holder continues to stonewall. Today, the Administration took the extraordinary step of exerting executive privilege over documents that the Attorney General had already agreed to provide to Congress. Fast and Furious was a reckless operation that led to the death of an American border agent, and the American people deserve to know the facts to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. While we had hoped it would not come to this, unless the Attorney General reevaluates his choice and supplies the promised documents, the House will vote to hold him in contempt next week. If, however, Attorney General Holder produces these documents prior to the scheduled vote, we will give the Oversight Committee an opportunity to review in hopes of resolving this issue.”

Family of Border Patrol Agent Killed With Fast And Furious Weapon Slams Obama For “Compounding Tragedy” With Executive Privilege Assertion…

Like Obama gives a rip.
Via ABC News:

The family of slain U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was killed with guns tied to the Fast and Furious program, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon accusing President Obama of compounding their family tragedy by invoking executive privilege.
President Obama invoked executive privilege to shield the Justice Department from having to release documents sought by House Republican investigating the secret law enforcement program, wherein weapons smugglers were permitted to buy guns so law enforcement could trace them to drug cartels. Law enforcement lost track of hundreds of the guns, which began showing up at crime scenes, most tragically in December 2010, where Terry was killed.
Terry family attorney Pat McGroder on Wednesday released the following statement from Terry’s parents Josephine Terry and Kent Terry Sr.: “Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to fully disclose the documents associated with Operation Fast and Furious and President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege serves to compound this tragedy. It denies the Terry family and the American people the truth.”
The Terrys said that their son “was killed by members of a Mexican drug cartel armed with weapons from this failed Justice Department gun trafficking investigation. For more than 18 months we have been asking our federal government for justice and accountability. The documents sought by the House Oversight Committee and associated with Operation Fast and Furious should be produced and turned over to the committee. Our son lost his life protecting this nation, and it is very disappointing that we are now faced with an administration that seems more concerned with protecting themselves rather than revealing the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious.”
Keep reading…

G20 summit: Barroso's bungling blame game

José Manuel Barroso's outburst at the G20 summit in Mexico amounted to sticking his head in the Los Cabos sand

The European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, was on shaky ground when he lashed out at the G20 summit in Mexico. Photograph: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty Images

Sometimes you read something in a newspaper, even the blessed Guardian, and think: "No, that can't be true." It happened this morning. But yes, I checked it in my other newspapers and then heard it on the radio. The European commission president, José Manuel Barroso of Portugal, really did throw a serious wobbly at the G20 summit in Mexico. It was awful. He was at a beach resort, but there was no need to stick his head in the sand.

Taunted by a Canadian journalist as to why North Americans should "risk their assets" to help bail out rich Europe, Barroso snapped: "Frankly, we're not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy. By the way, this crisis was not originated in Europe. Seeing as you mention North America, this crisis originated in North America and much of our financial sector was contaminated by, how can I put it, unorthodox practices from some sectors of the financial markets."

Wow, how much self-deluding error can you pack into a 50-word temper tantrum? It's only a detail, but how hard must it have also been to choose a Canadian to pick on for your "I've completely lost it" outburst? Herman van Rompuy, the European council president (the job Tony Blair says he turned down) echoed the complaint: "We are not the ones that are so-called responsible for the economic problems all over the world."

Oh dear. Many errors have been committed in many countries since the start of the latest global economic crisis in 2007. But Canada's cautious banking system – founded by Scots Presbyterians and still run by them – and its regulators were unusual in avoiding most of the folly. They are among the world's best.

As for democracy, Canada is a conscientious and scrupulous member of the international community. Surely, even insulated Brussels statesmen must know that? No, I don't think we can blame Canadians for Greece's dilemma.

Unlike banks and regulators in Britain and the US – yes, we all know that – where the combination of cheap credit and cheap Asian imports fooled too many people, including bankers and New Labour ministers, into thinking we'd cracked "boom and bust" at last. Also unlike governments, central bankers and retail bankers across much of the eurozone, including Portugal – where Barroso was prime minister from 2002 to 2004.

When the wider drama – starting in Greece and then Ireland – caught up with Lisbon in 2010, its excessive, under-funded public spending since the carnation revolution of 1974 overthrew the dictatorship, and its high deficit and debt levels, exposed the weakness of the economy. As PM before being lured to Brussels in mid-term (a reward for supporting the Iraq war?) Barroso had promised to halve the deficit. It doubled.

That's his domestic problem. I visited Lisbon myself last year, and concluded that the country hadn't suffered a crazy property bubble like Spain or Ireland, but had merely borrowed too much from abroad during the deluded boom years when the euro was deemed a safe refuge, and had been caught short in the liquidity crisis like so many companies and individuals.

But the wider implication of Barroso's outburst should concern us all. Four years on – five if you count the first panic in French, German and British banks (the run on Northern Rock) in the late summer of 2007 – the commission president still believes the crisis was caused by speculative banking habits and what one Spanish minister once darkly called "Anglo-Saxon accounting" – imperfect accounting perhaps, but better than the Greek, Spanish or Irish varieties.

Yes, the excesses of the US and British banking systems, the failures of their regulators – under New Labour, the Bush administration and (let's not forget this bit) the "me too" Tory opposition of the boom years – were grim. As the banking crisis morphed into a sovereign debt crisis we have all paid, and are paying, the price of excesses which many shared at different levels of society, though not all realised it as they maxed out mortgages or credit cards. The end is not yet in sight.

Barroso seems to cling to the EU's glib assertion that the wider crisis was both caused by US/UK banking excesses and Washington's failure to rescue Lehman Brothers from collapse in September 2008 as the crazy American property boom collapsed, exposing all those repackaged junk bonds (rated AAA by the dopey agencies until the end). It was glib when eurozone bankers asserted it in 2008, and it is unbelievably glib given the current near-paralysis of the zone's political and economic leadership.

To summarise, the creation of the eurozone in 1999, notes and coins arriving in circulation two years later, created an illusion that the credit-worthiness of Greece – or Portugal – was now as good as Germany's. In the boom years when Chinese savings, the profits of cheap, currency-rigged exports and suppressed domestic demand (a bit like Germany itself), were recycled to foolish borrowers, the eurozone periphery countries (remember the Celtic Tiger?) looked pretty good.

German and French banks loaned them a lot of money, which is what makes the prospect of a Greek default so scary. It's not that Greece is more than 2% of the eurozone economy, but that its debts could destabilise more important banking systems and economies, Main Street as well as Wall Street, as the Americans put it. There have been rumours about the real worth of debts held by major eurozone banks from day one. At least the Anglo-Saxons took the banking bull by the horns and recapitalised theirs.

Britain stayed out of the eurozone (Blair tried his best to lumber us with it, Alastair Campbell's latest version of his Diaries confirm) but it made many of the same mistakes. At least they were ours and we retain a self-governing banking, fiscal and political system in which to sort it out. Interestingly enough, our austerity package now emulates the German-led eurozone's mistakes too. Remember: if we all behave like Germany, we all go bust, including Germany.

Everyone is in a mess and the G20 – created out of the increasingly marginalised G8 only a few years ago to reflect new global realities – looks as feeble as its predecessor did. Do not expect much from the Mexican summit except Canadian-style exhortation of the eurozone states to fix their own crisis. The Greek election calmed the febrile financial markets for an hour or two on Monday. Can the next Spanish debt funding crisis (interest rates above 7%!) be staved off until the EU's latest "last chance" summit on 28 and 29 June? The Guardian's Nils Pratley thinks it's touch and go.

So Barroso's panicky attack, redolent of deluded complacency, is scary in a new way. On the financial pages and in parliaments, assorted experts thrash around, no one sure of the best way forward – Tory austerity, Keynesian pump-priming or a cunning mix of both – and David Cameron's overnight remarks reflect those uncertainties.

François Hollande says there should be no eurozone political union until there is a banking union which includes a Brussels-based regulator and mutual support across all 17 member states (or does he mean all 27?) The mighty German Bundesbank says there can be no banking union without a fiscal union which would allow Brussels to supervise budgets everywhere, not just in Athens or Dublin. Angela Merkel says there can be no fiscal union until there is political union which puts Brussels (do I really mean Berlin?) in the driving seat.

In other words, the key players all know the logic of their situation requires them to integrate further and faster, but they can't agree on how to go about it or in which order. Integration? A catastrophic collapse of the eurozone? Or muddling along, as Cameron implied might continue to be the soft third option. None is easy. Little wonder the PM said Britain must work harder to put its own house in order and sell more to faster-growing parts of the world.

That isn't easy either as the latest figures on the UK's shaky trade balance remind us all.

MILLER: Gun ownership up, crime down

FBI violent-crime rates show safer nation with more gun owners

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  Enlarge Photo
  Gun-control advocates are noticeably silent when crime rates decline. Their multimillion-dollar lobbying efforts are designed to manufacture mass anxiety that every gun owner is a potential killer. The statistics show otherwise.

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that violent crime decreased 4 percent in 2011. The number of murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults all went down, continuing a pattern.
“This is not a one-year anomaly, but a steady decline in the FBI’s violent-crime rates,” said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association. “It would be disingenuous for anyone to not credit increased self-defense laws to account for this decline.”
Mr. Arulanandam pointed out that only a handful of states had concealed-carry programs 25 years ago, when the violent-crime rate peaked. Today, 41 states either allow carrying without a permit or have “shall issue” laws that make it easy for just about any noncriminal to get a permit. Illinois and Washington, D.C., are the only places that refuse to recognize the right to bear arms. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence did not respond to requests for comment.
If the gun grabbers were right, we’d be in the middle of a crime wave, considering how many guns are on the streets. “Firearms sales have increased substantially since right after the 2008 election,” said Bill Brassard, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents the $4 billion firearms and ammunition industry. “There was a leveling off in 2010, but now we’re seeing a surge again.”
The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) serves as one of the best indicators of gun sales because it counts each time someone buys a gun. Checks hit an all-time high of 16.5 million last year. In the first five months of this year, the numbers have gone up 10 percent over the same period last year as Americans rush to the gun store in case President Obama decides to exercise “more flexibility” in restricting guns in a second term.
Gun manufacturing is the one private-sector industry “doing fine” on Mr. Obama’s watch. Sturm, Ruger & Co. sold 1 million firearms in the first quarter of 2012 - an amazing 50 percent increase from the first quarter of 2011. The jump was so steep that the company stopped accepting orders from March to May to catch up with demand for its products.
Last month, Smith & Wesson announced a firearm-order backlog of approximately $439 million by the end of April, up 135 percent from the same quarter in 2011. Sales in that period were up 28 percent from 2011 and 14 percent over its own predictions to investors. NSSF estimates the industry is responsible for approximately 180,000 jobs and has an annual impact on the U.S. economy of $28 billion.
Mr. Obama could honestly take credit for this jobs program, economic boost and the reduction in violent crime that has followed the spike in gun ownership on his watch. Instead, he’s silent about his greatest positive accomplishment.
Emily Miller is a senior editor for the Opinion pages at The Washington Times.

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One man was heard saying: ‘This is a grave of a Christian.’
Of the latest attacks, a council spokesman said: ‘We don’t know yet who did this. We have spoken to the security committee about investigating.’

A gravestone is seen damaged by an Islamist group in protest at the burning of the Koran by U.S.

‘This cemetery has been here for decades and nothing like this has ever happened before.’

Benghazi is now a hot spot for violence with arms readily available and state security forces struggling to assert their authority.

A convoy carrying Britain’s ambassador to Libya was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade on Monday, wounding two of his bodyguards.

Five days before that, an explosive device was dropped from a passing car outside the offices of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

The blast that followed slightly damaged the gate in front of the building.

Earlier attacks targeted the International Committee of the Red Cross and a convoy carrying the United Nations envoy to Libya.

Security experts say the area around the city is host to a number of Islamist militant groups opposed to any Western presence in Muslim countries.

More here.

VDH: The Liberal Super Nova

"Instead, the tsunami did it. No, it was the Republican Congress that after 2011 stopped all the good things he did between 2009-2010. No, it was automation like ATM machines. No, of course, George W. Bush damaged Obama’s economy in the manner that Reagan could not do anything because of Carter’s legacy. No, it was the EU and its failure to spend and “grow” more. No, the private sector is “fine”; the problem is cutting back like Walker is doing in Wisconsin."
As they say, read the whole thing.

Posted by lance at 3:30 PM| Comments (7)

Education School Hangs Student Drawing Showing Jesus Saying: ‘I Want You to Kill all Infidels’

Children show their creative imaginations in some intriguing ways. The artwork and storytelling they engage in often illustrates the ideas that are bopping around inside of their heads. Take, for instance, a student-drawn picture at Hamilton Elementary School in Fresno, California. The image, which has become intensely controversial, portrays Jesus Christ, with a caption that reads, ”I want you to kill all infidels.”
Under this shocking line are two others: “meet me in Jerusalem” and “get a free ticket to heaven.” Obviously, the picture, which is hanging prominently in the school’s lobby along with others, is causing a stir. While some claim it‘s merely a creative work spawned by a child’s imagination, others see anti-Christian sentiment at play. A 7th-grade student, who has not been named in media, created the drawing as part of a history assignment.
But, despite the educational elements associated with its creation, at least some parents have voiced their concern over its prominent display. One couple claims that school officials have done little to listen to their qualms — that is, until media began reporting on the story.
“I do believe common sense tells you, hey this may not be appropriate for a k through 8 school, right in the main lobby where each child passes on their way to school and home.” said Chris Alfaro, who is a parent of a second-grade student at Hamilton and a Christian.
Hamilton elementary has been quiet in terms of handing the criticism. A spokesperson for the Fresno Unified School District issued a statement to ABC30, telling the outlet the following about the picture’s creation:

“Students at Hamilton were assigned to create a help wanted poster for soldiers needed to fight in the crusades and write a poem about Joan of arc, the Black Death, or the Magna Carta and create a visual background for it. This was one of several posters displayed.”

Anti-Christian bias or merely a drawing created for a specified assignment? You decide. Watch more about the controversy from KSFN-TV  

U.S. SEC-STATE CLINTON REMOVES MENTION PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS FROM REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS…….

Posted on 11/06/2012 by KGS

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Life’s a blast for the worst Sec-State in recent history.

Covering for Muslim fundamentalist persecution of Christians and other minorities in the M.E. and elsewhere is an outrage. Removing any mention of their persecution of Christians from a report on human rights, is an indicator of how she loves ”slumming it” with OIC reps (when she’s not “slamming it” that is.)

NOTE: November 2nd can’t come soon enough.

CLINTON SHOULD EXPLAIN WHERE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM WENT

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be grilled about why her department has removed the sections on religious freedom from its Country Reports on Human Rights, which are statutorily required. Pete Winn of CNS News notes:

“The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

“Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.”

SYRIAN REBELS BEHIND HOULA MASSACRE OF 90 PEOPLE…….

Posted on 11/06/2012 by KGS

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All sides are busy slaughtering the other. Aiding just one side in this dog fight is not an act of humanitarianism.

Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre

By John Rosenthal

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

Read it all here.
Via Weasel Zippers

Unreal: NYC School Bans Song “God Bless The USA” From Graduation For Being Too Patriotic…

Disgusting.

(NY Post) — A controversial Coney Island principal has pulled the plug on patriotism.
Her refusal to let students sing “God Bless the USA” at their graduation has sparked fireworks at a school filled with proud immigrants.
Greta Hawkins, principal of PS 90, the Edna Cohen School, won’t allow kindergartners to belt out the beloved Lee Greenwood ballad, also known as “Proud to be an American,” at their moving-up ceremony.
Five classes spent months learning the patriotic song, which skyrocketed in popularity after the 9/11 attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It was to be the rousing finale of their musical show at the June 20 commencement. The kids, dressed up for their big day, would wave tiny American flags — which, as the lyrics proclaim, “still stand for freedom.”
But Hawkins marched in on a recent rehearsal and ordered a CD playing the anthem to be shut off, staffers said.
She told the teachers to drop the song from the program.
“We don’t want to offend other cultures,” they quoted her as explaining.
The curt edict stunned both staff and parents.
“A lot of people fought to move to America to live freely, so that song should be sung with a whole lot of pride,” said mom Luz Lozada, whose son, Daniel, is in kindergarten.

Muslims attack Australian war graves

youtube banned this as it would incite hatred against muslims , no bloody wonder , i want these low lives blood too when i was sent this , get a translator and listen to these low animal discuss how they hate kaffirs ( mon muslims) but like their women , then the reply "no they cry too much when we f### them "

download and share before the red head socialist who runs Australia get's it removed from here too

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=b209fc7e4950" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Nigeria: Boko Haram Thanks Allah For “Victory” After Massacring Christians During Church Services…

When was the last time Christians thanked Jesus for slaughtering women and children?

BAUCHI, NIGERIA (BosNewsLife) — The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least 15 people at an evangelical church in northern Nigeria.
In a statement e-mailed to journalists Monday, June 4, group spokesman Abul Qaqa said Boko Haram had “successfully launched” the attack. “We thank Allah for giving us victory. We successfully carried out a suicide bombing on a church at Yelwa in Bauchi state,” he said.
The email address was the same the militants always use, but reporters cautioned there was no way to confirm its authenticity.
A suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into the church Sunday, causing the building to collapse and trapping worshipers inside, witnesses said.
The bombing reportedly occurred just as the congregation of Living Faith Church in the Yelwa Tudu area of Bauchi city was leaving a worship service. However, the casualties came primarily from the neighboring church, Harvest Field Church for Christ, which bore the brunt of the explosion, according to Christian rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

HT: ROP

Free at last , Free at last ,thank god almighty We are Free at last

Goodbye, Section 13

The Conservative government voted late Wednesday to repeal controversial sections of the Canadian Human Rights Act banning hate speech over the telephone or Internet.In a vote of 153 to 136, the majority Harper government supported a private member’s bill from Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth that would scrap Section 13 of the human rights code, which deals with complaints regarding “the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet.”

Related - Finally a MP who questions Canada belonging to the United Nations
More via JoNova

Steyn weighs in.

Posted by Kate at 10:00 AM| Comments (27)