Factbox: Impact of Hurricane Sandy Roils Political and Economic Waters - Yahoo! News

If there's anything high-profile New York politicians have in common these days, it's outrage over the costs of Superstorm Sandy. Messrs. Schumer, Cuomo, King and others have levied blistering attacks on Congress for delaying a vote on the Sandy package. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie directed an ad hominem attack on House Speaker John Boehner, who confronted "fiscal cliff" issues while delaying the Sandy relief bill. The Congress today takes on the $9 billion FEMA replenishment part of the bill. On Jan. 15, it will take up an additional $51 billion package with contents largely unknown. Let's look at some facts:

Gov. Chris Christie Got Off Subway at the Wrong Stop - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Gov. Chris Christie Got Off Subway at the Wrong Stop - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

We're not in Kansas anymore. Neither are the people left homeless and about to be evicted from their FEMA-paid Super 8 housing in Brooklyn, reported in the New York Daily News.

Spielberg’s “Lincoln” Pretends Black Rebellion and White Repugnance Had Nothing to do with Emancipation

 

I enjoyed the film “Lincoln.”  The actors were sensational, the script had only minor dings,  and I managed to learn something from a film that was deeply researched.  

I’d like to get that out of the way before I rage on. 

Why did Stephen Spielberg decide to do a film on America’s 16^th president?  The timing is right, and there was a ready audience for it.  Abe Lincoln has been pretty much in the news, popular on all sides of the political aisle, with President Obama laying claim to him as his favorite and Bill O’Reilly writing a book on Lincoln, too. 

We know Lincoln as the Civil War president, and that event has legions of followers, enactors, readers.   Besides, can you say “Emancipation Proclamation” without thinking of the gaunt-faced man who led America through some of its bitterest days?

What I’m saying is that any decent film about Lincoln would have impressed an audience, and this one is entirely decent.   Spielberg knows what the public likes, and he always makes decent movies, sometimes exceptional ones.

 But he’s a liberal Democrat, and a heavy contributor to the Obama campaign.  As such he had a problem.  How could he make a  film adulating Republicans without antagonizing Democrats?   Southern Democrats, the political ancestors of the late Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, were the mainstay of the KKK and the most virulent, vocal, activist, and racist opponents of emancipation and the 13^th Amendment.  

 Spielberg solved is problem by focusing on the “conservative” wing of the Republican Party.   The movie wastes a lot of digital celluloid in focusing on the stodgy indignation of the traditional wing of Abe Lincoln’s Republican confreres and supporters.

That’s not to say that there were no racist Republicans.  That would be as idiotic as today’s Democrats and their sycophantic jockstrap caddies in the liberal media saying that everyone who voted against Obama, or doesn’t like him or his policies, is a racist.   

Or as stupid as the old regional stereotyping of the North as being free of racism, while the South is full of bigots.   Only demented degenerated people like Michael Moore say such things.

Yet, for Spielberg to focus his abolitionist cameras on Republican conservatives instead of on the masses of racist Democrat KKK men, the real engines of racism,  is the type of fakery and fraud that weakens “Lincoln.”    

If Spielberg was that much afraid of offending Democrats, he shouldn’t have seized upon the money-making opportunity of making a movie about the president who “freed the slaves.”  But then again, we have become accustomed to that type of hypocrisy from liberal Democrats, from Progressives, and from Obama administration flaks.

Director Spielberg also spends too much tedious film time on the congressional intricacies and chicanery that opened the door to the 13^th Amendment.  If the workings of Congress are his true interest, why not make a film of today’s congressional labyrinths. 

Too difficult, I’m sure.  Better to revise history.  Spielberg tries to sublimate his contemporary thematic ideology by embedding it into the workings of a divided Republican Party in 1865.  

Who could fail to be hooked by the subterfuge?   We’re supposed to love Lincoln, and we do, though it’s an often portentous, boring story-for-every-occasion Lincoln with a high squeaky voice.  Wasn’t there even the hint of a tough streak in the dour man? 

At one point, I expected Lincoln to emerge from his bedroom wearing Birkenstock sandals.

 To love Spielberg’s portrait and depiction of Abraham Lincoln, we must also carry the banner of the white-centric Progressive-appealing contemporary Democrats who want to blame Republicans, and Bush, and Tea Parties, and anyone but Obama for the mess we’re in today.

Another huge weakness of “Lincoln” is that pretends that African-Americans are passive and obedient beneficiaries of President Lincoln’s good heart.   Hasn’t Spielberg read William Styron’s “Confessions of Nat Turner?”  Where was Frederick Douglass in this picture? 

It is a fact, too, that there were so many Americans, and so many Europeans (the Brits abolished slavery long before we did), citizens of both North and South that were completely sick of the savagery and dehumanization of slavery. 

Human slavery must have been as sickening to many whites, as cruelty to animals is sickening today. It was certainly sickening to John Brown, “mouldering in the grave” John Brown who hated slavery so much he armed black men and went to war with the slave masters at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.

Not even a mention?    No, Spielberg’s “Lincoln” ignores so much of background, of outrage, of rebellion, that it almost seems to ennoble the status quo, as if the 13^th Amendment was some idea contrived by Progressives to win elections.

 

 

 

 

 

D.C. Gun Cops Should Sell the David Gregory Crime Drama to Hollywood - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

D.C. Gun Cops Should Sell the David Gregory Crime Drama to Hollywood - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

If it's true that the Washington Police Department is really investigating NBC reporter David Gregory for holding up a 30-round ammo clip during a broadcast, I think it's time to call in some mental health professionals.

Or maybe a Hollywood film crew.

Hit the Headline Link to Read More....

Factbox: Conflicting Facts of Gun Control Perplex the Public - Yahoo! News

Factbox: Conflicting Facts of Gun Control Perplex the Public - Yahoo! News-

 Using conventional weapons, Charles Whitman killed 13 people, and wounded 32 others at the University of Texas in 1966, according to an extended account at the TruTV Crime Library. Whitman stabbed his mother and wife to death, according to BIO True Story.

Japan's Shinzo Abe Said "NO" --and the Money Printers Panicked

Christmas Eve goes on all around me.  Downstairs, a lonely woman is talking to another lonely woman on the telephone.  Somewhere planes are landing as others are taking off and people are punching keystrokes into their cell phones nervously.

The new Prime Minister of Japan is the new “Honest Abe.”   He’s fed up with countries that fire up the presses to counterfeit their money to beggar their citizens, to depress their wages, increase their exports, and mainly trying to save their own asses. 

The new Japanese Prime Minister is not really “Honest Abe.”  His real name is Shinzo Abe and that “Abe” thing is pronounced “Ah-bey” but at least he’s not a slimy crook like Treasury Secretary Tim “Turbotax” Geithner.    With America leading the way down into the financial cesspool, other countries are expected to follow suit.  They are the master class.  Ours but to spend or die. 

Nobody gives a shit if bread costs three dollars and some ghetto rat has to rob a liquor store at knifepoint or sell drugs to feed his rugrats.  The Master Class must convince the media that it is “saving the economy.”  The media will then contribute to the wall of B.S. washing down like a Japanese typhoon on the unsuspecting too ground down with worry to even give a shit.

So Shinzo Abe of Japan is at least one dude who is not going for it.   I salute you Shinzo, and I hope you will slap our American president into wakefulness.

Take “Fair” Out of the Vocabulary of Politics - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Take “Fair” Out of the Vocabulary of Politics - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

No, "fair" is a term of art, used mainly by children desiring to get what they want from frustrated parents, and by adults behaving like children to get what they want. Unlike issues of equality, you will never see "fair share" brought up as an issue to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
President Obama uses the term "fair share" to get what he wants: $1.6 trillion in tax increases. He's betting that the energy of resentment can be harnessed, directed, put to political purpose. He's right, judging from the 2012 election results. But just because you are holding a whip doesn't mean you have to flog the horses pulling the wagons.

Anxious to Protect White House, Bumbling Bureaucracy Bungled Benghazi - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Anxious to Protect White House, Bumbling Bureaucracy Bungled Benghazi - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

The original CIA reports, which mentioned al Qaida, were scrubbed and made ready for public consumption. Administration officials in the Office of Sanitization (hopefully, there's no such thing) "were concerned that fingering al Qaida would tip them off that they were being monitored," writes the Wall Street Journal.
Yes, folks, there are people in government who really say such things.

First Amendment Protections Weren’t Meant to Protect Child Sex Predators - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

First Amendment Protections Weren’t Meant to Protect Child Sex Predators - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Because press freedom is protected by the First Amendment, the online exploitation of children in illegal sex trafficking also continues.
As spiders catch flies, the sex web is always waiting to capture vulnerable kids who have run out of money and luck. The Washington Post in 2010 related the grim tale of child victims of online prostitution.

Factbox: Social Security Disability Claims Pay Out $180 Billion Annually - Yahoo! News

Factbox: Social Security Disability Claims Pay Out $180 Billion Annually - Yahoo! News


Huffington Post blogger Joanne Bamberger took issue today with the term "fiscal cliff," seeming to attribute the term to a right-wing conspiracy. A better phrase than "fiscal cliff" might be "fiscal sword," as politicians do what they always do in times of budget crunch-slash at the obvious. Raising the entitlement age for social security benefits and Medicare is basic and easy to understand. But the giant bureaucracies that administer government largesse are a hard target. One example is the Social Security Disability program, a cumbersome and time-consuming tangle of rules and regulations. That Social Security Disability reform is elusive is evident in arguments presented in a 2009 New York Times article titled "The Disability Mess."

How much is paid out each year in Social Security Disability claims?

Social Security Administration Commissioner Michael Astrue testified about that in May to a Senate Finance Committee. SSA paid out $128 billion in insured disability claims and $52.4 billion in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability claims. An average wait time for a hearing, as of April, was 354 days. This is an improvement, says Astrue, over an all-time high of 532 days in August 2008.

Susan Rice is the Bait and Switch Nominee - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Susan Rice is the Bait and Switch Nominee - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

But what's really going on in the administration's vehement public defense of Rice? Other than out of hubris, why would a president walk into a hornet's nest and a congress not yet satisfied with accounts of the brutal events in Benghazi? Is the president merely flexing his muscles and spoiling for a fight predicated on the strength of his Nov. 6 victory?
More likely is that Rice serves as the hood ornament of the Obama administration's foreign policy.

Obama Tries to Restore Rice's Credibility - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Obama Tries to Restore Rice's Credibility - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

"If they want to go after someone, they should go after me," the president retorted angrily to an inquiry from Fox News reporter Ed Henry.

This was not the "cool" president some of his press admirers often praise. This was the president who can tell Israel "I've got your back" and leave everyone wondering if he really does.

The president missed the point with the tough guy talk. Benghazi wasn't a Chicago street fight, and the president's unsophisticated emotional response came out of left field. Nor was it "bringing a gun to a knife fight" as the president is wont to say.

 It was more like attempting heart surgery with a spatula.

Oliver Stone Provides Another Left-Wing View of History - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Oliver Stone Provides Another Left-Wing View of History - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

The 2012 election is proof of the popularity of government giving in the national psyche. A large majority of people now leaning Far Left would not describe themselves as such but they do believe that government is the solution, the entity that can make everyone equal, that can effectively dispense social justice, revenge the rapacious appetites of capitalism, make peace with America's enemies, restore a world tribal community powered by sun and wind, and kept bemused by an endless chain of grandiloquent demagogues

War of Words Shaping up Between Gov. Cuomo and Power Utilities

A war of words is shaping up between New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Long Island Power Authority.  As usual, civilians are often its first victims.  New York residents are shocked by the slow pace of power restoration from Hurricane Sandy and they are lashing out against Governor Cuomo.   Many residents feel that their pleas for relief have been stalled in bureaucratic limbo.  The heavily populated New York metro area is an interlocking network of separate authorities.   The situation  is complicated by a unique set of facts:

The Long Island Power Authority is not a private company.  It is a public governing board of trustees whose members are appointed by Governor Cuomo of New York and by the New York legislature.

Widely respected sports talk-show host Mike Francesca summed up popular criticism of Governor Cuomo for an ineffective response to Long Island power outages.  Politics on the Hudson captured the sentiment expressed by many fellow Long Islanders recently.  “I blame Cuomo and I blame the guys in charge of the state that allowed this system,” says Francesca.

While LIPA supplies management, administration, and direction for Long Island gas and electric utilities, National Grid supplies the energy.

LIPA executive staff have backgrounds as corporate managers, lawyers,   financial executives, and electrical engineers like Chief Operating Office Michael Hervey.

Michael Hervey was among a host of power company CEOs receiving a letter from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo threatening to revoke operating certificates and fire management personnel, according to a press release from Cuomo’s office.

The agency in charge of revoking public utility operating certificates is the New York State Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities and approves utility operations. 

As of November 11, a New York State Public Service Commission press release stated that power has been restored to 97 percent of New York homes and businesses.  The 97 percent figure excludes “36,200 customers, the majority of which cannot safely receive power yet.”

Enter the lawyers.  According to Thomson Reuters, a class action lawsuit has been filed in Nassau County today against LIPA and National Grid by Melville, NY attorney Kenneth Mollins.  The lawsuit seeks civil damages, and criminal prosecution if those charges should apply.

LIPA serves 1.1 million customers on Long Island, New York.  The bulk of customers without power as of Nov. 10 are concentrated on the southern or lower portions of Long Island, according to a LIPA map.

87 percent of LIPA’s 1.1 million customers lost power in the aftermath of Sandy, compared to approximately 25 percent of customers for Consolidated Edison, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benghazi is a Story of Public Deception Framed in a Sex Scandal - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Benghazi is a Story of Public Deception Framed in a Sex Scandal - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Things were falling apart in Libya, as Ambassador Stevens and the CIA were reporting, and drastic measures were needed. The situation called for vast public lying. Did the political cover story emanate from the White House or did the false narrative originate at the Central Intelligence Agency?

Petraeus’ Resignation Offers Everything but the Facts - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Petraeus’ Resignation Offers Everything but the Facts - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Mistrust of the Obama administration response to the Benghazi attacks is sure to be racheted up by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein's statement to NBC reporters. NBC reporters Andrea Mitchell and Robert Windrem write that Feinstein said Petraeus "will not need to testify at Benghazi hearings she is chairing next week

Generation Generator Meets Hurricane Sandy - Yahoo! News

Generation Generator Meets Hurricane Sandy - Yahoo! News

Electrical energy produced by generators, if not properly connected, can "backfeed" to outside electrical lines and electrocute power company utility workers trying to restore power to homes, according to the Center for Disease Control.

I Called it for Mitt -- What was I Thinking? - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

I Called it for Mitt -- What was I Thinking? - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Victorious Democrats voted for a rock star president who hugs it out with celebrity icons of hipster counterculture. In a recent news conference reported by ABC, voluble New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gushed about his three-way ménage with President Obama and Bruce Springsteen.

Evidence Mounts Against Obama Administration: #Benghazi Nights

The darkness that surrounds the Obama administration’s handling of Benghazi threatens to envelope us all, and the U.S. constitution with it.  Our freedom depends on an independent free press, yet much of media has harnessed itself to President Obama’s press office.  These toadies prefer to write and report about New Jersey Governor’s Chris Christie kumbaya moment with Obama for a photo op.  But Benghazi is an acid that will eat through the flimsy reporting of the liberal phalanxes of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN.  Should Obama and his fifth column be re-elected, Benghazi will destroy his presidency and leave the United States vulnerable to additional outside incursions by people who wish the worst for America and its freedoms. 

Meanwhile, the evidence of Obama’s deceit, cover up, stonewalling and disrespect of America’s citizens continues to mount up:

The CIA had a fat file on the AQ affiliate called Ansar al-Shariah and its operations outside of Benghazi. 

The liberal New York Times, which occasionally does real reporting, has reported on the terrorist camps in the mountains outside of Benghazi.  They are not there to roast marshmallows or hot dogs.

 The Red Cross had to close its offices in Benghazi due to attempted assassinations and bombings such as the one that occurred at the embassy in June 2012.

The Benghazi consulate, including Ambassador Stevens, made repeated requests for additional security.  In response, Hillary Clinton’s state department withdrew or denied the requested security and moved security assets away from Benghazi. 

This criminal negligence is matched only by the negligence of the people who let brave men die on the roof of the embassy as terrorists swarmed down below.  

The worst part of the Benghazi fiasco is that it presages the years to come, encouraging further attacks and allowing the fanatical Islamo-fascists to claim that America can be weakened and conquered.    But a weak and effete president who accommodates and succors those who hate America is not all of America. 

 

We are America.  We need to address this now.   We need to vote the Obamanuts out of office.    Short of that, we are in for a rough patch.   But AQ and its affiliates have made a huge mistake in  the Benghazi 9-11 and the 9-11 that preceded it.  AQ knows that Obama blows smoke with his empty perorations, that he's anxious to create the illusion of peace even at the cost of freedom.

Half of America may be sleeping now, but history tells the story of what happens when it wakes up.  By the grace of God, I hope it is awake today.

 

 

 

 

 

Government Storm Help Should Start at the Gas Station - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

Government Storm Help Should Start at the Gas Station - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com

If government must take care of the others, a good place to start might be at the gas stations.  But then again, at least we are relieved of hearing those utterly moronic GM television ads for the Chevy Volt, a car that will soon go the way of the Edsel and the Corvair.