(I had to take a short break from the usual political stuff for just a second here)
In oh about 40 years that is!
Kinda neat to see this couple having a great time screwing around like a couple of teenagers.
Until recently, Marlow and Frances Cowan of Ankeny had never heard of YouTube, the video-sharing Web site.
That’s understandable. Marlow is 90. Frances is almost 84. They don’t own a computer. The antiquated little e-mail machine that won’t accept attachments is more than enough technology, thank you.
But now that Marlow and Frances have become YouTube stars, it’s much harder to plead ignorance. At last glance Friday, the video they didn’t realize they were making last fall at the Mayo Clinic had more than 450,000 Internet views and climbing.
They’re hearing from old friends from all over the country, and even some strangers. A guy from L.A. who told them he represents “Good Morning America” wants to fly them into New York to chat with Diane Sawyer.
Here’s how it happened. The Cowans were in Rochester, Minn., for Marlow’s routine physical. They were hanging out in a big atrium with a beautiful, old grand piano.
The U.S. has been embroiled in unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for years against men who do not wear military uniforms, stockpile weapons in mosques and use women and children as human shields so the inevitability of civilian casualties will be an unavoidable and regrettable issue that this country will have to deal with until we can get our guys out of that part of the world.
That said remember this from Barack Hussein Obama on the campaign trail?
News from today 5-11-09,
140 civilians killed in strikes
Herat – An investigation appointed by President Hamid Karzai concluded on Monday that 140 civilians including children were killed in US air strikes in Afghanistan last week, a police chief said.
Karzai has already said 125-130 civilians died in the strikes in the western province of Farah from Monday to Tuesday, a toll disputed by the US military, while other Afghan officials have said the toll could be as high as 167.
A team appointed by Karzai and headed by Chief of Army Staff, General Bismullah Khan, told authorities in Farah that they had concluded their investigation on Monday, provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar said.
“They confirm and accept that 140 civilians were killed and another 25 civilians were wounded and 12 houses were destroyed in the bombing,” he said.
So tell me, where are all those anti-war lunatics these days? Has George Soros cut off their travel money? Has he ordered them to stand down because the messiah is now sitting in the Oval Office? How come we aren’t seeing Cindy Sheehan pitching a tent down the street from Obama’s house in Chicago like she did with Bush?
And where is the over the top outrage from the media over this that we became so accustomed to when it came to the previous administration?
The left wing media dutifully reported en masse every single civilian death when George W. Bush was in office yet now that this is Obama’s ball game, well this kind of news seems to have been swept right off the front page.
Keep in mind a large part of the ginned up media driven anger of the citizenry in this country towards Bush was based on these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so naturally Obama promised to put an end to the hostilities as soon as he took office and everybody just loved him for that.
Since he has become known for doing the complete opposite from what he says Obama, soon after he became president, promptly signed an order behind closed doors sending an additional 17,000 troops of the eventual 30,000 or more that will be sent into that nightmare called Afghanistan and told everyone that the timetable for the Iraq withdrawal will in fact take much more time than he promised when campaigning.
So what happened to all those useful idiots who were masquerading as anti war protesters? I think Soros has them working on posting Obama love notes all over youtube and pumping up the site hit counter over at the huffy post.
A 15-year-old boy playing “cops and robbers” with a toy gun was shot and wounded by a sheriff’s deputy who mistook it for the real thing, authorities said Monday. The boy, whose identity was not immediately released, was hospitalized in stable condition, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Gordon said.
A U.S. soldier opened fire on fellow troops Monday, killing five before being taken into custody, the U.S. command said. The shooting occurred at Camp Liberty, a sprawling U.S. base on the western edge of Baghdad near the city’s international airport and adjacent to another facility where President Barack Obama visited last month. A brief U.S. statement said the soldier “suspected of being involved with the shooting” was in custody but gave no further details. It was unclear what provoked the attack.
The human resources director for Allegan County was killed in a chainsaw accident Sunday afternoon. The incident happened around 2:05 p.m. at the couple’s home, 765 Woodlea Drive in Otsego. Deb and Jerry Daniels were trying to cut down a tree in their yard when she was hit in the neck with the chainsaw her husband was operating. “I heard a cry for help, so I came outside and at that time I saw what was going on, and I rendered as much aid as I possibly could,” said David Labonte, a neighbor and deputy for the Allegan County Sheriff’s Department. “I’m glad that based on my position that I was the one that was the first to respond.”
An American journalist jailed in Iran will be freed Monday and can leave the country immediately, her lawyer said after an appeals court suspended her eight-year prison sentence. Roxana Saberi, a 32-year-old dual American-Iranian national, was convicted last month of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison. Her case caused tension between the United States and Iran at a time with President Barack Obama had said he wanted to engage Washington’s longtime adversary in a dialogue. The U.S. has called the charges against her “baseless” and demanded she be freed.
Political blogger Meghan McCain isn’t exactly the toast of D.C. right now. Sen. John McCain’s daughter — who writes online for The Daily Beast and will soon release a book about life as a Republican — lost it after getting stopped by security when she arrived at the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday. The problem? She had only two tickets, but brought two friends.
Laura Russell admits she should have known better. She admits she should have read her credit card bills more closely. But she didn’t. And it cost the Orange resident $832. In August 2006, Russell saw an ad for Irvine-based FreeCreditReport.com, a division of credit reporting giant Experian. Recently married, she decided to order reports for herself and her husband. That, she thought, was the end of it. Then the charges started appearing on her credit card bill: two $12.95 charges each month to something called “CIC*TripleAdvantage 877-486825 CA”.
The Fourth Amendment of the Bill Of Rights in our Constitution clearly states,
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Yet a Wisconsin Court of Appeals says police can go right ahead and attach a GPS tracking device to any vehicle without a warrant, even if the person being tracked is not a suspect in a criminal matter!
Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday. However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals. As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects. Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.
That means “police are seemingly free to secretly track anyone’s public movements with a GPS device,” he wrote.
Please read the rest of this incredible story here>>>
More absolute insanity from the people in the long black robes.
The largest union representing Houston police officers wants the politicians, which would include the highest ranking police officials, to allow officers on the street to begin inquiring about the immigration status of certain people they come in contact with, something they have been prohibited from doing for the last 17 years due to the politically correct atmosphere this country is smothered in.
Since the federal government has jurisdiction over immigration policy in this country and has refused to do anything about the wide open borders for decades, and budget busted city and county governments would rather not have to deal with the scores of “profiling lawsuits” brought about by the likes of La Raza and the ACLU, state and local officials pretty much have their hands tied when it comes to this issue and absolutely nothing will change as far as this policy for the Houston police officers.
Houston’s largest police union, frustrated by the shootings of two officers by illegal immigrants, wants an end to the department’s 17-year-old policy of not questioning residents about their immigration status.
Such a change would put Houston at odds with the state’s five other major city police departments — Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, Dallas and San Antonio.
Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers Union, said the September 2006 murder of officer Rodney Johnson and the severe injuries suffered by officer Rick Salter on March 5 are reasons to toughen immigration enforcement, including an end to the policy. Both officers were shot by illegal immigrants who had been deported from Houston, but returned to commit other crimes.
“It’s a strong issue,” Blankinship said. “My guys get tired of dealing with the criminal aliens out here, and it seems like the severity of the crimes is escalating and that’s frustrating to the rank and file.”
He stressed that calls for a change in the policy are not aimed at a wholesale roundup of illegal immigrants in Houston, a population the Greater Houston Partnership estimated last year at 420,000 in the 10-county Houston metropolitan area. It would help officers to weed out dangerous criminals in the undocumented community, he said.
Keep in mind how quickly these very same politicians trip over themselves trying to strip away our Second Amendment rights whenever a police officer is shot by some lunatic but when it comes to an illegal alien blasting away at the cops, hey….can’t touch that.
I wonder how the silent majority in and around Houston feels about this issue? Who knows, maybe we’ll find out just how fed up the people are come the next election down there in the big ol Lone Star State.
From today’s Chicago Sun Times we see an activist group, going by the moniker of “Black Star,” is demanding Barack Obama use his supernatural powers and stop the kids from killing each other in his home town of Chicago. Keep in mind they aren’t asking the parents of these kids to step up to the plate. No, that’s not the way things are done anymore as we all know it’s the government alone that can solve these types of societal problems. The government and billions of taxpayer dollars that is.
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Kids ‘would be safer in Iraq’ BLACK STAR | Activists urge Obama to help fight student slayings here
Kids are dying in President Obama’s backyard, and he needs to do something about it.
That’s what a Chicago activist group demanded Saturday as it called attention to the close proximity to the president’s home of many of the murders of Chicago Public Schools students this year. Against a map showing three-fourths of the 36 student slayings this year were within eight miles of Obama’s mansion, the Black Star Project said Obama can no longer sit back and do nothing.
“He should not only be concerned as president, he should be concerned as a resident of this community,” Black Star executive director Phillip Jackson said at the group’s South Side headquarters.
Obama, Black Star members say, needs to address Chicago’s rising student deaths as a national priority by providing his hometown with the political and financial muscle to stem the violence.
Jackson called for a $20 billion “trickle-up” federal investment, which he said could support the anti-violence efforts of frustrated community organizations, summer jobs for youth and other community measures.
Are these Black Star goofs completely clueless how the Chicago politics ballgame works or are they just hoping to land a huge chunk of taxpayer money via a federal government grant like hundreds of other left wing groups are so good at getting their hands on? After all Obama was a state senator representing the area for eight years and seemed more concerned with helping his close buddies and campaign contributers, such as the presently incarcerated Tony Rezko, make a pile of money than he was about the difficulties his constituents were dealing with.
For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago’s South Side. It was just four years after the landlords — Antoin “Tony” Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru — had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. Rezko and Mahru couldn’t find money to get the heat back on.
But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building. Obama has been friends with Rezko for 17 years. Rezko has been a political patron to Obama and many others, helping to raise millions of dollars for them through his own contributions and by hosting fund-raisers in his home.
Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems — including squalid living conditions, vacant apartments, lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers. The building in Englewood was one of 30 Rezmar rehabbed in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers. Every project ran into financial difficulty. More than half went into foreclosure, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
“Their buildings were falling apart,” said a former city official. “They just didn’t pay attention to the condition of these buildings.” Eleven of Rezko’s buildings were in Obama’s state Senate district.
So what did Obama do to help the citizens of Chicago when it came to violent criminals and youth gang members?
Obama voted against a proposal to criminalize contact with a gang for any convicts on probation or out on bail. In 2001, Obama opposed making gang activity eligible for the death penalty. “There’s a strong overlap between gang affiliation and young men of color…. I think it’s problematic for them to be singled out as more likely to receive the death penalty for carrying out certain acts than are others who do the same thing.”
In 1999, Obama opposed mandatory adult prosecution for youth who discharge a firearm near a school, declaring, “There is really no proof or indication that automatic transfers and increased penalties and adult penalties for juvenile offenses have, in fact, proven to be more effective in reducing juvenile crime or cutting back on recidivism.”
(Source: The Improbable Quest, by John K. Wilson, p.146 Oct 30, 2007)
So there you have it Black Star folks. Obama wasn’t all that concerned about the problems of youth violence when he was supposed to be representing the area as a state senator so I really don’t know what you think he will do about it now. I suppose this group can keep up the hollering but until the root of the problem is addressed nothing will stop this horrific black on black crime that so senselessly takes the lives of so many young people in the Chicago area, a city which already has some of if not the most restrictive gun regulations in the nation.
Husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi judge said recently during a seminar on domestic violence, Saudi media reported Sunday. Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily newspaper based in Riyadh, reported that Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that “if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.”
Cadaver dogs found the body of a wanted professor “beneath the earth” in the north Georgia woods Saturday, two weeks after police say he shot his wife and two other people to death outside a community theater, then vanished. Searchers found two guns near the body of marketing professor George Zinkhan, 57, but police wouldn’t say how he died. They did say it appears he buried himself in brush and dirt.
SUSAN Boyle turned down the chance of a dream dinner date with President Barack Obama in Washington . . . to stay at home and wash her hair, we can reveal. Britain’s Got Talent’s Hairy Angel confessed to being TOO NERVOUS to meet the American president – her most famous fan – at a glittering star-studded bash. A source told us: “She was shocked and thrilled by the invite – but it was all too much too soon for her so she said No.”
More than two thirds of women admitted that a gossip with friends is the only time they are properly listening to what is being said. The same percentage think they hear most intently when they are trying to eavesdrop on an argument taking place nearby. Only half of men said they only hear properly when gossiping, while four in 10 admitted to listening closely to other people’s conversations. The poll of 2,000 people also found that more than one in five men reckon they always listen carefully to every word, and while less than one in five of women said the same. Ladies are also most likely to switch off when listening to their work colleagues, with the average woman catching what they say just 64 per cent of the time.
President Hugo Chávez has sent troops to seize boats and facilities owned by oil service companies as part of a “revolutionary offensive” in Venezuela. The socialist leader said the move would liberate the country’s oil industry from capitalism and return its natural wealth to the people. On Friday the state took control of more than 300 vessels and 39 ports and docks in Lake Maracaibo, one of South America’s biggest oil reserves. Two US-owned gas facilities have also been taken over. The expropriations, the latest move in a two-year campaign against foreign and domestic companies, placed 8,000 oil workers under the umbrella of the state oil company, PDVSA.
A Tennessee man is being held on two counts of forgery after he had a shipment of cell phones sent to the address of the FBI office in Monroe, police reported Friday. The FBI notified Monroe detectives Thursday after it received a call from a Minnesota cell phone distributor that some phones shipped to 300 Washington St., Monroe, were apparently ordered by the same person who had been giving counterfeit cashier’s checks. They knew they were counterfeit because cashier’s was spelled “cahier’s.”
A former US military contractor who shot and killed a defenceless and handcuffed member of the Taleban walked free today after a judge decided he had been provoked by the Afghan’s brutality. The extraordinary case of Don Ayala, a former US Army Ranger who once served as personal bodyguard for President Karzai of Afghanistan and Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, ended in a Virginia courtroom when he was sentenced to probation for the killing of Abdul Salam in November last year. US prosecutors, who originally charged Alaya with murder, had argued that he acted as judge, jury and executioner and was a cold-blooded killer after Salam had set fire to one of Alaya’s colleagues. But the judge decided that probation was warranted under the circumstances. Alaya was also fined $12,500. Ayala had pleaded guilty to the voluntary manslaughter of Salam, an undercover member of the Taleban, whom he shot in the temple.
President Obama called for overturning a decade-old ban on publicly funded abortions in the District as part of his budget proposal Thursday, but did not overturn the national ban on federal funding, thus angering advocacy groups on both sides of the volatile issue. Under his proposal, the District for the first time in more than a decade would be allowed to pay for abortions with the money it raises from its own taxpayers. “This is just the most recent in a long line of actions by President Obama to placate the abortion industry actions that fail to match his words with regard to abortion policy,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life women’s group.
Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is threatening to pull state business from Wells Fargo & Co. unless the bank stops trying to liquidate a company that makes suits for President Barack Obama. Giannoulias made the ultimatum outside a Hartmarx Corp. factory in Des Plaines Thursday. Chicago-based Hartmarx is the nation’s largest maker of men’s tailored clothing.
Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is threatening banks that fail to invest in their communities. He says financial institutions will have to sign a pledge before they can receive state deposits. Giannoulias says banks must promise to make small business loans, and work to prevent home foreclosures.
Government researchers are spending more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to hit the bars in Argentina. The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk — and just what can be done about it. Doctors and specialists from the New York Psychiatric Institute are using the generous grant from NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to help tailor HIV prevention programs to work at bars and clubs.
Germany is renowned for fighting inflation, but the battle extends beyond money and into the realm of names. In a split decision on Tuesday, the German Constitutional Court upheld a ban on married people combining already-hyphenated names, forbidding last names of three parts or more. It was not the first time the court was forced to weigh in on the subject of names, which are regulated start to finish, fore to family, in Germany. This time, it was a Munich couple who decided to challenge the constitutionality of a 1993 rule limiting the names of married people to a single hyphen and two last names.
Immigration into this country falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government but it’s the states that are saddled with most of the criminal costs and expense of feeding, housing, providing medical care and schooling those that enter the U.S. illegally.
In return for the massive expenditures the state taxpayers are forced to pay for imprisoning illegal immigrant criminals, especially in the border states of California, Arizona and Texas, any amount of reimbursement from the feds is essential in providing at least some financial relief.
Unfortunately that reimbursement runs only about 12 cents on the dollar in California which spends nearly a billion dollars a year on incarcerated illegal immigrants.
So if states such as California wind up losing even this meager amount what is going to happen? Will cash strapped residents be forced to pay more taxes to address the growing problem? Will state government officials just throw up their hands and say to hell with it and start deporting these criminals on their own dime and just suck up the expense to save money in the long run?
Well that’s not likely to occur since these people will be right back in this country before the return flight lands.
President Obama voted in the Senate to provide additional funding for a program targeted for elimination by his budget that provides states a federal subsidy to offset the costs of jailing illegal immigrants.
Killing the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAPP) would save $400 million, according to Obama’s budget for fiscal 2010 released Thursday. It’s one of the largest non-defense discretionary cuts proposed in the president’s budget.
The program is popular with border-state politicians on Capitol Hill, however, making its elimination a tough sell to lawmakers, particularly from California.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has repeatedly pushed for additional funding for the program, and lawmakers from other states that have costs associated with illegal aliens have also offered support.
A bipartisan trio of House members from California have drafted a letter urging the House Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies to restore funding for the SCAAP program. The three members, Reps. Mike Honda (D), Adam Schiff (D) and Jerry Lewis, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, are also asking the rest of the California House delegation to sign the letter, Honda’s office said.
