Alan Simpson, President Obusha’s hand-selected Cat Food Commission member doesn’t suffer critics. In fact, Simpson, who called Social Security “300 million tits on a cow,” says his critics are members of the “greediest generation.”
“I’ve never had any nastier mail or [been in a] more difficult position in my life. Just vicious. People I’ve known, relatives [saying], “‘You son of a bitch. How could you do this?”
But true to form, Simpson had some terse words for his detractors:
“We had the greatest generation. I think this is the greediest generation.”
It’s time for President Obusha to fire this cretin. Alan Simpson is a national disgrace.
The Hammer won’t be reprising his role on Dancing with the Stars anytime soon.
After deliberating for 19 hours, a jury today returned guilty verdicts against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay — once one of the most powerful and feared Republican in the U.S. Congress, of illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002.
He faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge.
Prosecutors said DeLay, who once held the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives and whose heavy-handed style earned him the moniker “the Hammer,” was convicted of using his PAC to illegally channel $190,000 in corporate donations into 2002 Texas legislative races through a money swap.
Ignore the pro-TSA propaganda merchants on the corporate cable news networks.
A new ZOGBY International poll finds 61% of voters oppose the newly enhanced security measures at the country’s airports and 48% said they would probably seek alternatives to flying because of the new, invasive measures.
Airport security has become a topic of heated debate, particularly since Nov. 1, when the Transportation Security Administration implemented a more aggressive pat-down search technique at security checkpoints.
Since the so-called “Christmas underwear bomber” attempted to detonate a bomb on Dec. 25, 2009 aboard a flight bound for Detroit, MI, the TSA expanded use of full-body image scanners that use ionizing radiation called Backscatter X, a known health hazard, to produce images of passengers’ bodies. The radiation blast creates a nude image of passengers to ostensibly detect hidden weapons or contraband.
The TSA is busy adding about 60 scanners a month at the nation’s airports, with a goal of installing 500 machines by the end of 2010. But Constitutional rights groups, including the ACLU, have objected to the new measures, comparing the pat-down procedures to a “groping” and sexual harassment.
The Zogby poll, taken online Nov. 19-22, seems to indicate a change in public opinion over the last few weeks. A CBS News telephone poll taken Nov. 7-10 found that 81% of Americans questioned said they approved of the use of the full-body scanners at airports. The CBS poll did not ask about the new pat-down search techniques.
Of those polled by Zogby, 52% said the enhanced security measures would not prevent terrorist activities and nearly half (48%) said the measures violated passenger privacy rights. Another 32% said they considered the full-body scans and pat-down search procedures to be sexual harassment.
“It’s clear the majority of Americans are not happy with TSA and the enhanced security measures recently enacted,” pollster John Zogby said in a statement.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says she wants the controversial body scanners installed on America’s trains, boats and metro systems.
Appearing in PBS’ “Charlie Rose” program, Jan Nap said:
“Terrorists are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through. I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”
Napolitano’s comments, made a day before one of the nation’s busiest travel days, come in the wake of a public outcry over newly implemented airport screening measures that have been criticized for being too invasive.
The secretary has defended the new screening methods, which include advanced imaging systems and pat-downs, as necessary to stopping terrorists. During the interview with Rose, Napolitano said her agency is now looking into ways to make other popular means of travel safer for passengers and commuters.
Napolitano isn’t the only one who’s suggested that advanced scanning machines could be used in places beyond airports.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, introduced legislation this past September that would authorize testing of body scanners at some Federal buildings.
The controversial body scanner machines use Backscatter X-ray ionizing radiation, a known cumulative health hazard, to produce images of passengers’ bodies. Children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with defective DNA repair mechanisms are considered to be especially susceptible to the type of DNA damage caused by ionizing radiation. Also at high risk are those who have had, or currently have, skin cancer. Ionizing radiation’s effects are cumulative, meaning that each time you are exposed you are adding to your risk of developing cancer. Since the dosage of radiation from the backscatter X-ray machines is absorbed almost entirely by the skin and tissue directly under the skin, averaging the dose over the whole body gives an inaccurate picture of the actual harm.
In their letter of concern, UCSF faculty members noted that “the dose to the skin could be dangerously high.” The eyes are particularly susceptible to the effects of radiation, and as one study found allowing the eyes to be exposed to radiation can lead to an increased incidence of cataracts.
President Obama’s fortunes continue on a downward spiral.
The president’s job approval rating has dropped to the lowest point of his presidency at 39%, and in potential match-ups with Republicans in 2012, he trails Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich and is just one point ahead of Sarah Palin.
The percentage of likely voters saying the U.S. is on the wrong track is now the highest since Obama took office at 69%.
The President continues to lose the job approval of Democrats, going from 78% on Nov. 15 to 72% in this Nov. 19-22, 2010 interactive poll. His approval among independents stayed at 39%, and is 6% among Republicans.
Remember Velma Hart? The instantly likable African American woman who told President Obama during one of his ill-fated town hall meetings she was “exhausted” from defending him?
She now finds herself unemployed.
Hart, who burst onto the national scene after she told told President Obama she was scared about her financial future and wondered if she would see Obama’s promise of change, was let go as the chief financial officer for Am Vets, a Maryland-based, non-profit veteran services organization.
Jim King, the national executive director of Am Vets said Hart was a good employee and her comments to the president had nothing to do with their decision to fire her.
“My husband and I joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot-dogs-and-beans era of our lives. But quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again. And quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly: Is this my new reality?”
Ms. Hart may look back at the hot-dogs-and-beans era of her life nostalgically as her new reality is boxed macaroni and cheese and Spam.
Meghan McCain, John and Cindy McCain’s blow-up doll daughter, appeared at the Miami Book Fair International to promote her book, “Dirty Sexy Politics,” told an enraptured audience she’s interested in working as a Republican “strategist.”
“I’ve already had people interested in me working, which is unbelievably flattering. I want to go out and do it all over again with somebody else, I want to get a Republican elected. I want to kick Obama’s ass the next election and get a Republican elected.”
What Tater Tot doesn’t understand is, we elected a Republican in 2008 and his name is Barack Obusha.
Everyone knows Conan O’Brien enjoyed a contentious relationship with NBC. Conan stood up to NBC in a number of ways during his stint at the Tonight Show. But one of the more interesting examples centered around Team Coco ignoring suggestions from the network on how to boost his ratings: book Sarah Palin as a guest.
Mama Grifter was never booked on Conan’s Tonight Show, says NY Times reporter Bill Carter in a chat with PopEater, as O’Brien blocked the move. Palin had become a champion among extremist conservatives but is generally considered a patently offensive pariah by both liberals and moderates.
Suffice to say Palin will never be a guest on Conan O’Brien’s new show which airs on TBS at 11PM M-F because Conan enjoys even more control over this new show than he ever did at NBC. Interestingly, after NBC ran Conan out of town and suck-up Jay Leno was given back the Tonight Show, Leno immediately booked Mama Grifter as a guest during his first-week despite claims on Leno’s part that his show is apolitical.
Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, MI — a bladder cancer survivor is the latest victim of enhanced TSA security procedures President Obama claims we must endure in the fight against terrorism.
Perhaps the current nitwit in the White House needs to talk to Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, MI.
Mr. Sawyer beat bladder cancer but couldn’t beat TSA agents at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, FL, when he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after TSA agents worked him over in an enhanced pat-down procedure.
On Nov. 7, Mr. Sawyer went through the security scanner at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. “Evidently the scanner picked up on my urostomy bag, because I was chosen for a pat-down procedure.”
Before starting the enhanced pat-down procedure, a security officer did tell him what they were going to do and how they were going to it, but Sawyer said it wasn’t until they asked him to remove his sweatshirt and saw his urostomy bag that they asked any questions about his medical condition.
“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”
The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”
Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.
“I am totally appalled by the fact that agents that are performing these pat-downs have so little concern for people with medical conditions,” said Sawyer.
A North Carolina flight attendant and breast cancer survivor says she was forced to remove her prosthetic breast during an airport groping by a pair of aggressive TSA agents.
Cathy Bossi lives in south Charlotte, NC. She has been a flight attendant for the past 32 years, working for U.S. Airways the past 28 years.
Bossi told WBTV News she was walking through security when she says she was asked to go through the new full body-scanners at Concourse “D” at Charlotte Douglas International.
She reluctantly agreed. As a 3-year breast cancer survivor she says she didn’t want the added radiation through her body.
“The T.S.A. Agent told me to put my I.D. on my back,” she says. “When I got out of there she said because my I.D. was on my back, I had to go to a personal screening area.”
She says two female Charlotte T.S.A. agents took her to a private room and began what she calls an aggressive pat down. She says they stopped when they got around to feeling her right breast where she’d had surgery.
“She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’. And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”
Cathy was asked to show her prosthetic breast, removing it from her bra.
“I did not take the name of the person at the time because it was just so horrific of an experience, I couldn’t believe someone had done that to me. I’m a flight attendant. I was just trying to get to work.”
Since then, Cathy has contacted the Legislative Affairs Team, a group through the flight attendant union. She says she wants to see a crackdown on these personal pat downs.
“There are blowers and there are dogs out there that can sniff out bombs,” she says. “There’s no reason to have somebody’s hands touching your body parts.”
President Obama’s ageist Cat Food Commission got an earful from the Government Accountability Office.
According to the report by the GAO, raising the Social Security retirement age would disproportionately hurt the poor and minority workers and increase disability claims by older people unable to work until they drop, government auditors told Congress.
The projected spike in disability claims could harm Social Security’s finances because disability benefits are typically higher than early retirement payments, the GAO concluded.
The report, obtained by the AP ahead of its scheduled release, further substantiates my argument against raising the eligibility age for Social Security benefits.
Sen. Herb Kohl (WI-D) said it best:
“There’s more to consider than simply how much money the program would save by raising the retirement age. [Many] would have little choice but to turn to the broken disability program.’’
Under current law, people can start drawing reduced early retirement benefits from Social Security at age 62. Full benefits are available at 66, a threshold gradually increasing to 67 for people born in 1960 or later.
Last week, the Cat Food Commission’s leaders, Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, and Alan “Social Security is 300 tits on a cow” Simpson, a Republican, proposed a increasing the retirement age to 69 and eliminating cost-of-living adjustments.
Support for Barry’s War, AKA, the Afghanistan war, has declined sharply. According to the latest Quinnipiac Poll:
Support for President Obama’s policy in Afghanistan turns the political landscape upside down.
· Democrats say 62 – 33 percent the United States should not be there, even though the O-bots strongly support Obama on virtually all other issues
· Republicans, who oppose Obama on most issues, back the war 64 – 31 percent
· Independent voters say 54 – 40 percent the United States should not be in Afghanistan
· Military families are divided, as 49 percent believe the U.S. is doing the right thing in Afghanistan while 47 percent say the U.S. should not be involved
I believe the decline can be traced directly to Obama backing away from his campaign promise to begin drawing down U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011.
Reports say U.S. troops will now remain in Afghanistan to at least 2014 at a cost of $8 billion dollars a month.
A team of scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have for the first time, solved one of the biggest mysteries of physics, successfully trapping the first “anti-atom” that they hope will help them understand what happened to all of the antimatter created by the Big Bang.
The team’s spokesman, American scientist Jeffrey Hangst, told the AP:
“For us it’s a big breakthrough because it means we can take the next step, which is to try to compare matter and antimatter.”
For decades, researchers have puzzled over why antimatter seems to have vanished from the universe. Theory posits it was created in equal amounts as matter at the moment of the Big Bang, which created the universe some 13.7 billion years ago. But while matter — defined as having mass and taking up space — went on to become the building block of everything that exists, antimatter has disappeared except in the lab.
Scientists have long been able to create individual particles of antimatter such as anti-protons, anti-neutrons and positrons — the opposite of electrons. Since 2002, they have also managed to lump these particles together to form anti-atoms, but until recently none could be trapped for long enough to study them, because atoms made of antimatter and matter annihilate each on contact.
To millions of Star Trek fans, combining antimatter with matter created the massive energy required to move the Enterprise through the galaxy at Warp Drive.
President Obama’s Cat Food Commission fired another salvo in their war against America’s poor, elderly and disabled today, calling for a staggering 6.5% national sales tax every American consumers would be forced to pay on food, goods and services.
To reduce the debt, we would supplement our spending cuts with a 6.5 percent “debt-reduction sales tax.”
Got that? If you’re poor, retired or disabled and spend a modest, income-driven $40 a week for food, or $160 a month, you will pay an additional $10.40 in “debt-reduction sales tax” on your food purchases.
Many of America’s poor, elderly and disabled are already living on the margins and if they’re forced to pay an additional 6.5% “debt-reduction sales tax” they will be driven even deeper into poverty.
What the “debt-reduction sales tax” amounts to is a VAT tax. For those of us who have traveled to Europe are familiar with VAT or V.alue A.dded T.ax. American tourists visiting Europe can file for a refund of VAT but, resident of the European Union aren’t so lucky. Rest assured, of “debt-reduction sales tax” becomes law, it will be 6.5% now and rise to 10% in a decade.
It is unfathomable to me that Obama Inc. keeps looking at ways to make America’s poor, elderly and disabled responsible for paying off George W. Bush’s economic malfeasance.
A TSA supervisor assigned to Newark International Airport was busted for running a theft ring targeting non-English speaking female passengers. The miscreant is accused of stealing more than $3,000 from female passengers.
Think the fix isn’t in for Mama Grifter’s 2012 presidential run? Then, think again.
Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was awarded Tuesday to comedy legend Tina Fey. PBS filmed the event and plans to broadcast it Sunday. But Fey’s Sarah Palin jokes were curiously left on the cutting room floor.
“And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women – except, of course –those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff,” Fey told the crowd. “But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years – whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know – actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.”
When PBS broadcasts the show this Sunday, Fey’s jabs about rape kits and evolution will be edited out.
PBS Executive producer Peter Kaminsky denied politics played a part in the editing, saying “It was not a political decision.” PBS claimed 19 minutes had to be cut out to fit the show in the 90-minute timeslot. Sure, Peter.
And NPR didn’t fire Juan Williams for saying Muslims on airplanes make him nervous.
