By Liliana Samuel
AFP
4.19.12
Facing intense criticism over the nationalization of its biggest oil firm, Argentina on Thursday ordered the seizure of YPF Gas, another group controlled by Spain's Repsol, a move expected to further inflame tensions.
In a case that has sparked fears of a new wave of expropriations, a statement published in the official gazette said the Argentine government was declaring YPF Gas a public utility and taking 51 percent of the shares.
YPF Gas is not technically part of the YPF oil group ordered nationalized this week, leading to global condemnation, but a separate company.
However, an 85 percent stake in the gas firm is owned by Repsol Butano SA, a division of the Spanish energy giant.
Officials said the move was an extension of the takeover of YPF, the big unit of Repsol that Argentina decided to seize this week.
The government statement indicates that YPF Gas "plays an essential role in Argentina's hydrocarbon policy."
YPF Gas is the main provider of fuel tanks that are supplied to low-income households in the South American nation that are not on the gas network, officials said.
The move expands the nationalization effort ordered by Argentina, which claimed the Spanish firm was failing to invest in the country and forcing it to import more of its energy supplies.
Spain, the United States, the IMF, the European Union and others lined up to take turns slamming the move by President Cristina Kirchner.
During a visit to Colombia on Thursday, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy again slammed the move as "an injustice," but declined to comment on how his government might retaliate.
Spain and the European Union have warned that the nationalization would damage relations and others have voiced concerns of a chilling effect on capital investment in the region.
On Thursday, World Bank head Robert Zoellick added his criticism to Argentina's move.
"I think it's a mistake and I think it's a symptom that we have to watch out for -- if under economic pressure, whether countries will move to more national, autarchic policies, respond more to nationalism, more to protectionism," Zoellick said at a news conference.
"So I think it was the wrong thing to do," he told reporters as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings got underway in Washington.
Later he told CNN that Argentina should concede the move is a mistake and reverse it.
"This is not the time to be playing with fire, and ultimately, it will leave Argentina behind in the international economy, and that hurts the people of Argentina, and that is who I am concerned about," he said.
"What investor in his right mind would put money into a country where people are taking away private property?"
Repsol bought Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales in 1999 for $15 billion in what was the biggest operation of the privatization program of former Argentine president Carlos Menem.
Credit rating firm Standard & Poor's downgraded Spanish oil firm Repsol's rating by one notch Thursday.
S&P lowered the rating to BBB- from BBB, indicating strong creditworthiness but an increased vulnerability to economic shocks, with a negative outlook, it said in a statement.
"The nationalization of YPF will materially worsen Repsol's credit metrics," since the Argentine subsidiary accounted for a large share of Repsol's profits last year, it said.
US ratings agency Moody's downgraded YPF on Tuesday.
YPF shares, which have tumbled some 70 percent since January and accelerated losses this week, rebounded nearly 10 percent in New York in late trade at $14.42.
Kirchner has argued that the expropriation was justified because YPF crude production had dropped while oil and gas imports doubled in 2011. Imports are forecast to triple by the end of the year.
Argentina also faces a drop in its trade surplus -- down 11 percent in 2011 -- which is its main source of hard currency since foreign credit markets closed their doors after the 2001 debt default.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Wife Of Fort Carson Soldier Learns Of His Death On Facebook
April 19, 2012 11:00 PM
Ariell Taylor-Brown learned about her husband’s death in Afghanistan from a fellow soldier via Facebook. (credit: CBS)
FORT CARSON, Colo. (CBS4)- The wife of a Fort Carson soldier learned about his death on Facebook. Now the U.S. military is investigating how a Facebook friend passed on the news before the Department of Defense had a chance to.
Ariell Taylor-Brown had just said goodbye to her husband via Skype hours earlier when she learned he had been killed in Afghanistan.
She found out from another soldier on her Facebook page asking her to call immediately.
“A girl in his platoon. She told me to call her immediately and I was in front of my kids and I completely had a breakdown,” said Taylor-Brown.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Brown of Columbus, Ohio was killed April 3 by an insurgent bomb. He was in his fourth tour just one week before he was killed.
Taylor-Brown says hours later, two soldiers arrived at her home but she knew about it already.
Most soldiers are warned not to release information on a fellow soldier’s death until next of kin are notified. Soldiers who break the rules can be ordered to a Court Martial.
Taylor-Brown is a widow with two children. She said she was devastated and angry that she wasn’t informed by the military first.
She is pregnant with her third child, “I’m almost 11 weeks.”
Taylor-Brown will name her newborn Carter Christopher because that is what her husband would have wanted.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Brown (credit: CBS)
“I wish he could meet him. His dad is a hero,” said Taylor-Brown.
Brown served twice in Iraq and was on his second deployment in Afghanistan. He had earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal.
Ariell Taylor-Brown learned about her husband’s death in Afghanistan from a fellow soldier via Facebook. (credit: CBS)
FORT CARSON, Colo. (CBS4)- The wife of a Fort Carson soldier learned about his death on Facebook. Now the U.S. military is investigating how a Facebook friend passed on the news before the Department of Defense had a chance to.
Ariell Taylor-Brown had just said goodbye to her husband via Skype hours earlier when she learned he had been killed in Afghanistan.
She found out from another soldier on her Facebook page asking her to call immediately.
“A girl in his platoon. She told me to call her immediately and I was in front of my kids and I completely had a breakdown,” said Taylor-Brown.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Brown of Columbus, Ohio was killed April 3 by an insurgent bomb. He was in his fourth tour just one week before he was killed.
Taylor-Brown says hours later, two soldiers arrived at her home but she knew about it already.
Most soldiers are warned not to release information on a fellow soldier’s death until next of kin are notified. Soldiers who break the rules can be ordered to a Court Martial.
Taylor-Brown is a widow with two children. She said she was devastated and angry that she wasn’t informed by the military first.
She is pregnant with her third child, “I’m almost 11 weeks.”
Taylor-Brown will name her newborn Carter Christopher because that is what her husband would have wanted.
“I wish he could meet him. His dad is a hero,” said Taylor-Brown.
Brown served twice in Iraq and was on his second deployment in Afghanistan. He had earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal.
Gun industry’s economic impact skyrockets during Obama years
By Tim Devaney
The Washington Times
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The economic impact of the firearms industry is up 66 percent since the beginning of the Great Recession, providing an unexpected shot in the arm for the economy, according to a new study.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation says the economic impact of firearm sales — a figure that includes jobs. taxes and sales — hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008.
Jobs in the firearms business jumped 30 percent from 2008 to 2011, when the industry employed 98,750.
The industry paid $2.5 billion in federal taxes in 2011, up 66 percent in three years.
"Ours is an industry with a rich history and heritage that remains vital and important to the American economy today," NSSF Senior Vice President Lawrence G. Keane said in a statement. "To millions of Americans our industry's products represent liberty, security and recreation."
Some in the industry attribute the jump in sales to fears the Obama administration will tighten gun control laws in a possible second term.
"There's a concern that in the second term the Obama administration would lead an attempt to restrict gun ownership," Mr. Keane said.
That concern, known in the industry as "the Obama factor," has led many gun owners to purchase now in hopes of avoiding more restrictions and regulations later.
"Some people jokingly refer to [President Obama] as the salesman of the year for the industry," Mr. Keane said.
Mr. Keane said the president doesn't deserve all the credit for the sales growth.
He said more young people and women are getting into gun ownership.
"You cannot attribute all the increase simply to the Obama factor," he said. "It's a factor, it's an important factor, but it's not the only reason."
Although there is no single indicator that tracks the number of firearms sold in the country, the FBI reported that a record 14.4 million criminal background checks were requested for gun purchases in 2010, and that preliminary numbers project the figure to be above 16 million for 2011.
According to the NSSF's numbers, requests for gun-related background checks was up some 17.3 percent for the month of January 2012 compared to the same period a year earlier — the 20th straight monthly increase in background check requests.
FBI officials say that just over 1 percent of such background checks result in denials, and not every background check results in a final gun purchase. But the numbers are widely considered a reliable proxy for gun sales trends generally.
© Copyright 2012 The Washington Times, LLC.
The Washington Times
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The National Shooting Sports Foundation says the economic impact of firearm sales — a figure that includes jobs. taxes and sales — hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008.
Jobs in the firearms business jumped 30 percent from 2008 to 2011, when the industry employed 98,750.
The industry paid $2.5 billion in federal taxes in 2011, up 66 percent in three years.
"Ours is an industry with a rich history and heritage that remains vital and important to the American economy today," NSSF Senior Vice President Lawrence G. Keane said in a statement. "To millions of Americans our industry's products represent liberty, security and recreation."
Some in the industry attribute the jump in sales to fears the Obama administration will tighten gun control laws in a possible second term.
"There's a concern that in the second term the Obama administration would lead an attempt to restrict gun ownership," Mr. Keane said.
That concern, known in the industry as "the Obama factor," has led many gun owners to purchase now in hopes of avoiding more restrictions and regulations later.
"Some people jokingly refer to [President Obama] as the salesman of the year for the industry," Mr. Keane said.
Mr. Keane said the president doesn't deserve all the credit for the sales growth.
He said more young people and women are getting into gun ownership.
"You cannot attribute all the increase simply to the Obama factor," he said. "It's a factor, it's an important factor, but it's not the only reason."
Although there is no single indicator that tracks the number of firearms sold in the country, the FBI reported that a record 14.4 million criminal background checks were requested for gun purchases in 2010, and that preliminary numbers project the figure to be above 16 million for 2011.
According to the NSSF's numbers, requests for gun-related background checks was up some 17.3 percent for the month of January 2012 compared to the same period a year earlier — the 20th straight monthly increase in background check requests.
FBI officials say that just over 1 percent of such background checks result in denials, and not every background check results in a final gun purchase. But the numbers are widely considered a reliable proxy for gun sales trends generally.
© Copyright 2012 The Washington Times, LLC.
Nugent says had "solid" meeting with Secret Service
OKLAHOMA CITY
Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:43pm EDT
(Reuters) - Musician and gun-rights advocate Ted Nugent said on Thursday he had a positive meeting with U.S. Secret Service agents investigating his recent criticism of President Barack Obama, and the agency confirmed the issue had been resolved.
Nugent, who told NRA supporters in St. Louis last week that he would be "dead or in jail" next year if Obama was reelected, said in a statement that he had "met with two fine, professional Secret Service agents" in Oklahoma.
"Good, solid, professional meeting concluding that I have never made any threats of violence towards anyone. The meeting could not have gone better," the 63-year-old singer and guitarist said. He was due to perform a concert in Ardmore, Oklahoma on Thursday.
The Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the U.S. president, senior officials and other figures, confirmed the meeting with Nugent.
"The Secret Service interview of Ted Nugent has been completed," agency spokesman Brian Leary said. "The issue has been resolved. The Secret Service does not anticipate any further action."
Earlier Leary said the agency respected freedom of speech, but also had a responsibility to "investigate intent."
Nugent, a Michigan-born conservative who has endorsed Obama's presumed Republican challenger in the November elections, Mitt Romney, drew Secret Service attention with his blunt remarks about Obama and administration officials at the NRA event.
"We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November," Nugent said at the convention.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Convention, responded earlier this week, saying "threatening violence - or whatever it is that Nugent's threatening - is clearly beyond the pale."
A Romney spokeswoman said the Republican candidate believed "everyone needs to be civil," but stopped short of condemning Nugent's original remarks.
Nugent is best known for hit 1970s songs such as "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Motor City Madhouse."
(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Paul Simao)
Romney Visits Empty Factory to Mock Obama
April 19, 2012, 5:31 PM
WSJ.com
Mitt Romney speaks at the closed National Gypsum drywall factory in Lorain, Ohio, Thursday, April 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
LORAIN, Ohio — Mitt Romney, shadowing President Barack Obama on the campaign trail, went to the battleground state of Ohio to appear at a shuttered industrial warehouse to dramatize his complaints about the incumbent’s economic policies.
“It underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regard to getting the economy moving,’’ Mr. Romney said standing in a cavernous, empty warehouse festooned with a banner that read `Obama Isn’t Working.’ “If you want to know where his vision leads open your eyes.’’
The setting, however, sent a mixed if not misleading message: The National Gypsum Co.’s warehouse closed not on Mr. Obama’s watch but during the presidency of George W. Bush, in June 2008, during the depths of the recession.
Also on Thursday, Mr. Romney picked up the endorsement of Ohio Gov. John Kasich – a mixed blessing because he is popular among conservatives but has had a controversial tenure due to his efforts to limit the rights of public sector unions.
Mr. Kasich was neutral during the state’s hotly contested March 6 primary, which Mr. Romney won only narrowly over former Sen. Rick Santorum, who drew on the state’s sizable population of blue-collar workers and evangelical Christians – voter groups that have been slow to support Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama won Ohio in 2008 by four percentage points, but the state is likely to be bitterly contested this year.
However, Ohio is no longer ground zero for the nation’s economic woes. In part due to a rebound in the auto industry, Ohio’s unemployment rate was down to 7.6% in February – below the national average.
Mr. Kasich, who has been touting the state’s economic improvements, said in announcing his endorsement of Mr. Romney, “The progress we’ve made in Ohio is hampered by a White House that can’t make up its mind and which can’t set the right course for our economy. Mitt Romney’s got what it takes to get us back on track.’’
Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said that the state’s economic improvements had more to do with Mr. Obama’s efforts to shore up the auto industry than with his state policies. He said Messrs. Romney and Kasich “both stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the improving Ohio economy that is largely due to President Obama’s policies and in spite of Kasich and the right-wing legislature.’’
The Romney campaign chose the warehouse because Mr. Obama held a campaign event there during the 2008 campaign. What’s more, the Romney event was scheduled just one day after Mr. Obama appeared at a community college less than 10 miles away, part of an intensified Romney effort to highlight the contrast between the two general election foes.
At his college appearance, Mr. Obama seemed to take a veiled dig at Mr. Romney’s wealth when he said, “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that Mr. Obama uses the phrase regularly, and it wasn’t aimed at Mr. Romney.
Mr. Romney, in his warehouse speech, accused Mr. Romney of “punishing’’ people who succeed.
“You will see him attack success day in and day out,’’ he said. “And one thing you know is if you attack success, you’re going to have less of it.’’
WSJ.com
LORAIN, Ohio — Mitt Romney, shadowing President Barack Obama on the campaign trail, went to the battleground state of Ohio to appear at a shuttered industrial warehouse to dramatize his complaints about the incumbent’s economic policies.
“It underscores the failure of this president’s policies with regard to getting the economy moving,’’ Mr. Romney said standing in a cavernous, empty warehouse festooned with a banner that read `Obama Isn’t Working.’ “If you want to know where his vision leads open your eyes.’’
The setting, however, sent a mixed if not misleading message: The National Gypsum Co.’s warehouse closed not on Mr. Obama’s watch but during the presidency of George W. Bush, in June 2008, during the depths of the recession.
Also on Thursday, Mr. Romney picked up the endorsement of Ohio Gov. John Kasich – a mixed blessing because he is popular among conservatives but has had a controversial tenure due to his efforts to limit the rights of public sector unions.
Mr. Kasich was neutral during the state’s hotly contested March 6 primary, which Mr. Romney won only narrowly over former Sen. Rick Santorum, who drew on the state’s sizable population of blue-collar workers and evangelical Christians – voter groups that have been slow to support Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama won Ohio in 2008 by four percentage points, but the state is likely to be bitterly contested this year.
However, Ohio is no longer ground zero for the nation’s economic woes. In part due to a rebound in the auto industry, Ohio’s unemployment rate was down to 7.6% in February – below the national average.
Mr. Kasich, who has been touting the state’s economic improvements, said in announcing his endorsement of Mr. Romney, “The progress we’ve made in Ohio is hampered by a White House that can’t make up its mind and which can’t set the right course for our economy. Mitt Romney’s got what it takes to get us back on track.’’
Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said that the state’s economic improvements had more to do with Mr. Obama’s efforts to shore up the auto industry than with his state policies. He said Messrs. Romney and Kasich “both stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the improving Ohio economy that is largely due to President Obama’s policies and in spite of Kasich and the right-wing legislature.’’
The Romney campaign chose the warehouse because Mr. Obama held a campaign event there during the 2008 campaign. What’s more, the Romney event was scheduled just one day after Mr. Obama appeared at a community college less than 10 miles away, part of an intensified Romney effort to highlight the contrast between the two general election foes.
At his college appearance, Mr. Obama seemed to take a veiled dig at Mr. Romney’s wealth when he said, “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that Mr. Obama uses the phrase regularly, and it wasn’t aimed at Mr. Romney.
Mr. Romney, in his warehouse speech, accused Mr. Romney of “punishing’’ people who succeed.
“You will see him attack success day in and day out,’’ he said. “And one thing you know is if you attack success, you’re going to have less of it.’’
New Obama plan: Test a job, keep unemployment benefits
Published April 19, 2012
FoxNews.com
April 2011: Americans wait in line for unemployment benefits (AP)
The Obama administration is announcing the start of a new strategy to curb nagging unemployment – allowing Americans to keep their benefits while trying out a job.
The program will be administered on the state level, with the Labor Department opening the application process Thursday for 10 model programs across the country.
The so-called Bridge to Work program was in fact a key part of the payroll tax cut package that President Obama negotiated with congressional Republicans in February.
The national jobless rate for March was 8.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A Labor Department spokesman said the program has already garnered a lot of interest, with Texas attempting to apply almost immediately after lawmakers agreed to the deal.
He said the program is designed to give states “some flexibility” regarding unemployment benefits and that Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also expressed interest in participating.
The plan is modeled after a Georgia program and would allow workers who have lost jobs to be placed in other temporary jobs as trainees for short periods to retain their skills or gain new ones while receiving jobless assistance.
About a third of the time, those workers wind up getting hired full-time.
North Carolina, New Hampshire, Utah and Missouri are among several states that combine unemployment benefits with on-the-job training.
States that are chosen could get waivers from the federal government allowing them to tap their unemployment insurance accounts to pay for such costs as transportation for workers in temporary jobs.
The program has had mixed results in some states that have their own programs. Administration officials said they hope the waivers and assistance offered by the federal demonstration projects could help rectify any problems that have emerged.
Supporters of the programs say it helps workers retain or learn new skills and add new job references to their resumes. The plan passed with support from leading Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
It also is designed to answer critics of unemployment benefits who say the aid discourages some people from aggressively seeking work.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
FoxNews.com
The Obama administration is announcing the start of a new strategy to curb nagging unemployment – allowing Americans to keep their benefits while trying out a job.
The program will be administered on the state level, with the Labor Department opening the application process Thursday for 10 model programs across the country.
The so-called Bridge to Work program was in fact a key part of the payroll tax cut package that President Obama negotiated with congressional Republicans in February.
The national jobless rate for March was 8.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A Labor Department spokesman said the program has already garnered a lot of interest, with Texas attempting to apply almost immediately after lawmakers agreed to the deal.
He said the program is designed to give states “some flexibility” regarding unemployment benefits and that Minnesota and Pennsylvania have also expressed interest in participating.
The plan is modeled after a Georgia program and would allow workers who have lost jobs to be placed in other temporary jobs as trainees for short periods to retain their skills or gain new ones while receiving jobless assistance.
About a third of the time, those workers wind up getting hired full-time.
North Carolina, New Hampshire, Utah and Missouri are among several states that combine unemployment benefits with on-the-job training.
States that are chosen could get waivers from the federal government allowing them to tap their unemployment insurance accounts to pay for such costs as transportation for workers in temporary jobs.
The program has had mixed results in some states that have their own programs. Administration officials said they hope the waivers and assistance offered by the federal demonstration projects could help rectify any problems that have emerged.
Supporters of the programs say it helps workers retain or learn new skills and add new job references to their resumes. The plan passed with support from leading Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
It also is designed to answer critics of unemployment benefits who say the aid discourages some people from aggressively seeking work.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Obama's popularity abroad on the wane, survey finds
April 19, 2012
AFP:
US leadership has lost some of its luster abroad, suggesting President Barack Obama can't count on as much global euphoria as he gears up for a fierce reelection campaign, a new survey found Thursday.
The report card was particularly dire from Serbia and Iran where approval ratings for the White House were below 10 percent. India, Cyprus, Belarus and Egypt also gave the Obama administration less than stellar marks.
Overall, median approval ratings for Washington's leadership across 136 countries stood at 46 percent in 2011 -- largely unchanged from 47 percent across a smaller sample of 116 states a year earlier, but better than during the final years of George W. Bush's presidency.
Approval ratings for the original pool of 116 countries, meanwhile, declined from 47 percent to 43 percent between 2010 and 2011.
"US leadership ratings in 2011 failed to regain the momentum they lost in 2010 and instead remained static or retreated even more in some places," said the "US-Global Leadership Project" report, released jointly by Gallup and the Meridian International Center.
Ratings were strongest in Africa due to enthusiasm in the sub-Saharan part of the continent, the study said. Scores were less rosy in North Africa, however.
The lowest ratings in the region were recorded in Egypt, where a mere 19 percent of those surveyed showed approval for Washington -- virtually unchanged despite the revolution that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
In Europe, meanwhile, the picture was mixed.
The highest and lowest ratings were recorded in the Balkans, with 90 percent of Kosovars saying they approved of US leadership, compared to just eight percent of Serbians. Obama has been a steadfast supporter of Kosovo's independence, anathema to Serbians.
Cyprus gave Washington a mere 18 percent approval rating. Belarus, often criticized for human rights issues, came in at 19 percent.
While Washington's approval increased by double digits in Britain and Belgium in 2011, it lost favor on other fronts, including double-digit declines in France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.
In Asia, the Obama administration's new foreign policy focus, India's approval rating was just 18 percent. In contrast, the White House got a 75 percent score from Singapore. Iran, under scrutiny for its nuclear program, gave the White House a mere nine percent.
The survey showed waning support for Obama abroad as the US president gears up for a bruising reelection battle in November against likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire businessman and former governor of Massachusetts.
The results were based on interviews with approximately 1,000 individuals aged 15 and older in 2010 and 2011. The maximum margin of error ranges from 1.7 percentage points to 5.7 percentage points.
AFP:
US leadership has lost some of its luster abroad, suggesting President Barack Obama can't count on as much global euphoria as he gears up for a fierce reelection campaign, a new survey found Thursday.
The report card was particularly dire from Serbia and Iran where approval ratings for the White House were below 10 percent. India, Cyprus, Belarus and Egypt also gave the Obama administration less than stellar marks.
Overall, median approval ratings for Washington's leadership across 136 countries stood at 46 percent in 2011 -- largely unchanged from 47 percent across a smaller sample of 116 states a year earlier, but better than during the final years of George W. Bush's presidency.
Approval ratings for the original pool of 116 countries, meanwhile, declined from 47 percent to 43 percent between 2010 and 2011.
"US leadership ratings in 2011 failed to regain the momentum they lost in 2010 and instead remained static or retreated even more in some places," said the "US-Global Leadership Project" report, released jointly by Gallup and the Meridian International Center.
Ratings were strongest in Africa due to enthusiasm in the sub-Saharan part of the continent, the study said. Scores were less rosy in North Africa, however.
The lowest ratings in the region were recorded in Egypt, where a mere 19 percent of those surveyed showed approval for Washington -- virtually unchanged despite the revolution that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
In Europe, meanwhile, the picture was mixed.
The highest and lowest ratings were recorded in the Balkans, with 90 percent of Kosovars saying they approved of US leadership, compared to just eight percent of Serbians. Obama has been a steadfast supporter of Kosovo's independence, anathema to Serbians.
Cyprus gave Washington a mere 18 percent approval rating. Belarus, often criticized for human rights issues, came in at 19 percent.
While Washington's approval increased by double digits in Britain and Belgium in 2011, it lost favor on other fronts, including double-digit declines in France, Germany, Spain and Sweden.
In Asia, the Obama administration's new foreign policy focus, India's approval rating was just 18 percent. In contrast, the White House got a 75 percent score from Singapore. Iran, under scrutiny for its nuclear program, gave the White House a mere nine percent.
The survey showed waning support for Obama abroad as the US president gears up for a bruising reelection battle in November against likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire businessman and former governor of Massachusetts.
The results were based on interviews with approximately 1,000 individuals aged 15 and older in 2010 and 2011. The maximum margin of error ranges from 1.7 percentage points to 5.7 percentage points.
Levon Helm: The Band star loses throat cancer battle aged 71
Levon Helm, the long-time member of The Band, died on Thursday following a long battle with throat cancer. He was 71.
By Andrew Hough
8:45PM BST 19 Apr 2012
UK Telegraph:
The three-time Grammy award-winning drummer and singer, who lent his distinctively Southern voice to classics like "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", died peacefully in New York.
He was surrounded by family, friends and members of the band that once backed Bob Dylan and counted George Harrison and Eric Clapton among its fans.
Announcing his death on Thursday, his family said he would be remembered by “all he touched as a brilliant musician and a beautiful soul”.
Larry Campbell, Helm's longtime guitarist, said his greatest honour was not only helping lead Helm's band, but knowing him.
"We lost Levon at 1:30 (local time) today surrounded by friends and family and his musicians have visited him," Campbell, who has played with everyone from Bob Dylan to BB King, told Rolling Stone.
"All his friends were there, and it seemed like Levon was waiting for them.
"Ten minutes after they left we sat there and he just faded away. He did it with dignity.
"It was even two days ago they thought it would happen within hours, but he held on. It seems like he was Levon up to the end, doing it the way he wanted to do it. He loved us, we loved him."
He added: "As sad as this was, it was very peaceful. What I'm most proud of is he called me his partner.
"For me to arrive at a place like that with a great man like him is the ultimate."
On Thursday night, fans took to Twitter and Facebook to pay tribute to the musician. At one point his name was the fourth top "trending" topic on Twitter.
His death came just days after his wife of 30 years Sandy, and daughter, Amy, a vocalist and instrumentalist who recorded with her father, posted a message on his official website saying that Helm was “in the final stages of his battle with cancer”.
They added on Tuesday: “Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.
“Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration.
“He has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat and make the people dance. He did it every time he took the stage.”
A number of artists took to Twitter to pay tribute.
Helm was best known for his years with The Band, where he played drums, guitar and mandolin and sang until the group's 1976 "The Last Waltz" farewell performance, which was filmed by director Martin Scorsese.
Levon Helm was born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, on May 26, 1940, the son of a cotton farmer.
He grew up near the community of Turkey Scratch, outside Helena, Arkansas, with the intention of being a musician. He was a teenager when he became the drummer for another Arkansas native, rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins.
Hawkins took the group to Canada, where he added guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko and keyboardists Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson to The Hawks. Eventually the four Canadians and Helm would split off.
Helm and his band mates were musical virtuosos who mined the roots of American music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy metal and jams.
The group's 1968 debut, "Music From the Big Pink," remains a landmark album of the era.
Early on, The Band backed Dylan on his sensational and controversial electric tours of 1965-66 and collaborated with him on the legendary "Basement Tapes," which produced "I Shall Be Released," "Tears of Rage" amongst others.
The group’s regular drummer, Helm was also among its lead vocalists, adding his southern voice to songs including “Up on Cripple Creek” — which reached No. 25 on the Billboard chart in 1970, making it The Band’s biggest hit.
Helm, who also toured with Ringo Starr's All Star band in the 1980s and won a Grammy Award last year had cancelled a series of gigs recently due to his ill health.
“The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots,” wrote the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which inducted the group in 1994.
“With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, The Band reached across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them.”
Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998. At one point, the musician, who was born in Arkansas native lost his voice to cancer.
He underwent 28 radiation treatments, recovering to produce a Grammy Award-winning album, “Dirt Farmer,” in 2007.
He fell on hard times as cancer took his voice and medical bills threatened his house in Woodstock, New York home.
"You got to pick one – pay your medical bills or pay the mortgage. Most people can't do both, and I'm not different," he told CNN in 2010.
Instead, he turned his home, better known as The Barn, into a weekly concert hall that attracted sell-out crowds, big names such as Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson and ended up both paying the mortgage and rejuvenating Helm's career.
For someone who played before packed out venues including Wembley Stadium and New York's Madison Square Garden, and Radio City Music Hall he found some of his biggest success staging house concerts at his home.
"If I had my way about it, we'd probably do it every night," Helm said. "I never get tired of it."
Helm also had a career as an actor.
He made his film debut in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), playing the father of Loretta Lynn, and he performed Bill Monroe's “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the soundtrack. He also had roles in The Right Stuff (1983), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), Shooter (2007) and In the Electric Mist (2009).
Jane Fonda was amongst his fans.
"I got to know Levon personally because he played my husband in the movie The Dollmaker," she wrote two days ago.
"He was kind and deep and devoted to music, as a singer and playing not only drums, but harmonica, fiddle, mandolin, you name it."
Earlier this week Robertson, 68, described how he set aside years of acrimony to visit Helm in hospital.
"I am so grateful I got to see him one last time and will miss him and love him forever," he said.
Hudson has also expressed his sadness on Helm's illness this week, posting a video of Knocking on Heaven's Door.
"I am too sad for words right now," he wrote on his website.
"It hit me really hard because I thought he had beaten throat cancer and had no idea that he was this ill. I spoke with his family and made arrangements to go and see him."
He died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
By Andrew Hough
8:45PM BST 19 Apr 2012
UK Telegraph:
The three-time Grammy award-winning drummer and singer, who lent his distinctively Southern voice to classics like "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", died peacefully in New York.
He was surrounded by family, friends and members of the band that once backed Bob Dylan and counted George Harrison and Eric Clapton among its fans.
Announcing his death on Thursday, his family said he would be remembered by “all he touched as a brilliant musician and a beautiful soul”.
Larry Campbell, Helm's longtime guitarist, said his greatest honour was not only helping lead Helm's band, but knowing him.
"We lost Levon at 1:30 (local time) today surrounded by friends and family and his musicians have visited him," Campbell, who has played with everyone from Bob Dylan to BB King, told Rolling Stone.
"All his friends were there, and it seemed like Levon was waiting for them.
"Ten minutes after they left we sat there and he just faded away. He did it with dignity.
"It was even two days ago they thought it would happen within hours, but he held on. It seems like he was Levon up to the end, doing it the way he wanted to do it. He loved us, we loved him."
He added: "As sad as this was, it was very peaceful. What I'm most proud of is he called me his partner.
"For me to arrive at a place like that with a great man like him is the ultimate."
On Thursday night, fans took to Twitter and Facebook to pay tribute to the musician. At one point his name was the fourth top "trending" topic on Twitter.
His death came just days after his wife of 30 years Sandy, and daughter, Amy, a vocalist and instrumentalist who recorded with her father, posted a message on his official website saying that Helm was “in the final stages of his battle with cancer”.
They added on Tuesday: “Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.
“Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration.
“He has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat and make the people dance. He did it every time he took the stage.”
A number of artists took to Twitter to pay tribute.
Helm was best known for his years with The Band, where he played drums, guitar and mandolin and sang until the group's 1976 "The Last Waltz" farewell performance, which was filmed by director Martin Scorsese.
Levon Helm was born Mark Lavon Helm in Elaine, Arkansas, on May 26, 1940, the son of a cotton farmer.
He grew up near the community of Turkey Scratch, outside Helena, Arkansas, with the intention of being a musician. He was a teenager when he became the drummer for another Arkansas native, rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins.
Hawkins took the group to Canada, where he added guitarist Robbie Robertson, bassist Rick Danko and keyboardists Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson to The Hawks. Eventually the four Canadians and Helm would split off.
Helm and his band mates were musical virtuosos who mined the roots of American music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy metal and jams.
The group's 1968 debut, "Music From the Big Pink," remains a landmark album of the era.
Early on, The Band backed Dylan on his sensational and controversial electric tours of 1965-66 and collaborated with him on the legendary "Basement Tapes," which produced "I Shall Be Released," "Tears of Rage" amongst others.
The group’s regular drummer, Helm was also among its lead vocalists, adding his southern voice to songs including “Up on Cripple Creek” — which reached No. 25 on the Billboard chart in 1970, making it The Band’s biggest hit.
Helm, who also toured with Ringo Starr's All Star band in the 1980s and won a Grammy Award last year had cancelled a series of gigs recently due to his ill health.
“The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots,” wrote the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which inducted the group in 1994.
“With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, The Band reached across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them.”
Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998. At one point, the musician, who was born in Arkansas native lost his voice to cancer.
He underwent 28 radiation treatments, recovering to produce a Grammy Award-winning album, “Dirt Farmer,” in 2007.
He fell on hard times as cancer took his voice and medical bills threatened his house in Woodstock, New York home.
"You got to pick one – pay your medical bills or pay the mortgage. Most people can't do both, and I'm not different," he told CNN in 2010.
Instead, he turned his home, better known as The Barn, into a weekly concert hall that attracted sell-out crowds, big names such as Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson and ended up both paying the mortgage and rejuvenating Helm's career.
For someone who played before packed out venues including Wembley Stadium and New York's Madison Square Garden, and Radio City Music Hall he found some of his biggest success staging house concerts at his home.
"If I had my way about it, we'd probably do it every night," Helm said. "I never get tired of it."
Helm also had a career as an actor.
He made his film debut in Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), playing the father of Loretta Lynn, and he performed Bill Monroe's “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the soundtrack. He also had roles in The Right Stuff (1983), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), Shooter (2007) and In the Electric Mist (2009).
Jane Fonda was amongst his fans.
"I got to know Levon personally because he played my husband in the movie The Dollmaker," she wrote two days ago.
"He was kind and deep and devoted to music, as a singer and playing not only drums, but harmonica, fiddle, mandolin, you name it."
Earlier this week Robertson, 68, described how he set aside years of acrimony to visit Helm in hospital.
"I am so grateful I got to see him one last time and will miss him and love him forever," he said.
Hudson has also expressed his sadness on Helm's illness this week, posting a video of Knocking on Heaven's Door.
"I am too sad for words right now," he wrote on his website.
"It hit me really hard because I thought he had beaten throat cancer and had no idea that he was this ill. I spoke with his family and made arrangements to go and see him."
He died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
Cops Take Schoolkids' DNA Without Parental Consent
By Alyssa Newcomb
ABC News Blogs
Wed, Apr 18, 2012
Samples of DNA were collected without parental consent from students at a Sacramento, Calif., middle school in connection with the murder of an 8 th grade student who was found stabbed, strangled and beaten to death near the dugout of a local park.
The Sacramento Sheriff's Department, which has been spearheading the investigation into the murder of Jessica Funk-Haslam, 13, said parental consent was not required in the DNA collection and interview of minors, several of whom were taken out of class during the day last week at Albert Einstein Middle School.
"These are interviews, not interrogations," Sheriff's Deputy Jason Ramos told ABCNews.com. "They are all consensual. Once it's done, there is a mechanism in place for school administrators to notify parents."
Ramos said the DNA collection was done at the time of the interview so efforts didn't have to be "duplicated." Ramos cautioned that the collection did not necessarily mean authorities had a DNA profile of the suspect.
Over the past few weeks, police have sifted through a number of leads and alibis but have been unable to name a suspect in Jessica's murder.
The teen's body was found at Rosemont Community Park on the morning of March 6. Jessica was reportedly arguing with her mother the night before and voluntarily left her home and boarded local transportation to a local park.
There is nothing under California law that prohibits DNA collection of consenting minors, said John Myers, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
"I think the answer is, kids can consent, and if they consented and it was knowing and intelligent, [law enforcement] can do the search," he told the Sacramento Bee.
Ramos said last week's DNA collection was not the first time detectives visited the school and that he expects they'll be back for more follow-up.
He declined to say how many students have been interviewed, but said students who spoke with detectives were sent home with contact information to give to their parents.
"The parents have been completely supportive of it, in fact advocating our detectives do that for the benefit of excluding their children," Ramos said. "We've gotten a lot of positive feedback."
But one parent who said her son was interviewed wasn't happy with the process.
"My child's in a room with two detectives being questioned and grilled and I'm sure he was quite frightened, which is very upsetting," Michaela Brown told the Los Angeles Times.
Gabe Ross, of the Sacramento City Unified School District, said the school immediately made efforts to notify parents by phone and also sent home a letter. However, Ross said the school would not stand in the way of the investigation.
"We're not in a position to interfere in any way with the law enforcement investigation. If and when law enforcement wants to interview our students, we inform parents immediately," Ross said.
ABC News Blogs
Wed, Apr 18, 2012
Samples of DNA were collected without parental consent from students at a Sacramento, Calif., middle school in connection with the murder of an 8 th grade student who was found stabbed, strangled and beaten to death near the dugout of a local park.
The Sacramento Sheriff's Department, which has been spearheading the investigation into the murder of Jessica Funk-Haslam, 13, said parental consent was not required in the DNA collection and interview of minors, several of whom were taken out of class during the day last week at Albert Einstein Middle School.
"These are interviews, not interrogations," Sheriff's Deputy Jason Ramos told ABCNews.com. "They are all consensual. Once it's done, there is a mechanism in place for school administrators to notify parents."
Ramos said the DNA collection was done at the time of the interview so efforts didn't have to be "duplicated." Ramos cautioned that the collection did not necessarily mean authorities had a DNA profile of the suspect.
Over the past few weeks, police have sifted through a number of leads and alibis but have been unable to name a suspect in Jessica's murder.
The teen's body was found at Rosemont Community Park on the morning of March 6. Jessica was reportedly arguing with her mother the night before and voluntarily left her home and boarded local transportation to a local park.
There is nothing under California law that prohibits DNA collection of consenting minors, said John Myers, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento.
"I think the answer is, kids can consent, and if they consented and it was knowing and intelligent, [law enforcement] can do the search," he told the Sacramento Bee.
Ramos said last week's DNA collection was not the first time detectives visited the school and that he expects they'll be back for more follow-up.
He declined to say how many students have been interviewed, but said students who spoke with detectives were sent home with contact information to give to their parents.
"The parents have been completely supportive of it, in fact advocating our detectives do that for the benefit of excluding their children," Ramos said. "We've gotten a lot of positive feedback."
But one parent who said her son was interviewed wasn't happy with the process.
"My child's in a room with two detectives being questioned and grilled and I'm sure he was quite frightened, which is very upsetting," Michaela Brown told the Los Angeles Times.
Gabe Ross, of the Sacramento City Unified School District, said the school immediately made efforts to notify parents by phone and also sent home a letter. However, Ross said the school would not stand in the way of the investigation.
"We're not in a position to interfere in any way with the law enforcement investigation. If and when law enforcement wants to interview our students, we inform parents immediately," Ross said.
Woman Whose Face Mauled Off By Chimp Blames State, Sues For $150M
Exclusive: Charla Nash’s Lawyer Blames State For Chimp Attack, Seeks $150 Million
4.18.12
STAMFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) - Charla Nash is still recovering from a face transplant and wants to sue the state of Connecticut over the chimpanzee attack that nearly killed her three years ago, WCBS 880 Connecticut Bureau Chief Fran Schneidau reports exclusively.
On February 16, 2009, a 200-pound chimpanzee named Travis was freely roaming the grounds of the Stamford home of his owner, and Nash’s friend, Sandra Herold when Nash visited.
The chimp attacked Nash, causing her to lose her ears, eyes, hands, and nose in the aftermath.
Bridgeport attorney Charles Willinger, who represents Nash, exclusively told Schneidau that he believes that the near-fatal mauling could have been avoided.
He said the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ignored its own regulations regarding private ownership of potentially dangerous animals.
“They knew it was an accident waiting to happen. They knew the animal had no permit, and in spite of all this, the DEEP took no action,” Willinger told Schneidau. “Under Connecticut law… the DEEP must either issue a permit or the statute says it shall seize and dispose of the animal. It chose to do neither.”
Nash is hoping to sue the state for $150 million, Schneidau reported, but a decision on the whether the lawsuit will be allowed to proceed is pending.
State Attorney General George Jepsen said he wants the lawsuit dismissed. He believes Nash should be suing the estate of the now late Sandra Herold instead.
4.18.12
STAMFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) - Charla Nash is still recovering from a face transplant and wants to sue the state of Connecticut over the chimpanzee attack that nearly killed her three years ago, WCBS 880 Connecticut Bureau Chief Fran Schneidau reports exclusively.
On February 16, 2009, a 200-pound chimpanzee named Travis was freely roaming the grounds of the Stamford home of his owner, and Nash’s friend, Sandra Herold when Nash visited.
The chimp attacked Nash, causing her to lose her ears, eyes, hands, and nose in the aftermath.
Bridgeport attorney Charles Willinger, who represents Nash, exclusively told Schneidau that he believes that the near-fatal mauling could have been avoided.
He said the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection ignored its own regulations regarding private ownership of potentially dangerous animals.
“They knew it was an accident waiting to happen. They knew the animal had no permit, and in spite of all this, the DEEP took no action,” Willinger told Schneidau. “Under Connecticut law… the DEEP must either issue a permit or the statute says it shall seize and dispose of the animal. It chose to do neither.”
Nash is hoping to sue the state for $150 million, Schneidau reported, but a decision on the whether the lawsuit will be allowed to proceed is pending.
State Attorney General George Jepsen said he wants the lawsuit dismissed. He believes Nash should be suing the estate of the now late Sandra Herold instead.
Barack Obama: “In Just Three Years… We’ve Begun to See What Change Looks Like” (Video)
Posted by Jim Hoft
Thursday, April 19, 2012, 6:26 PM
TheGatewayPundit.Com:
And, he’s bragging?
President Barack Obama told a group of supporters today,
“In just three years, because of what you did in 2008, we’ve begun to see what change looks like. We’ve begun to see it.”
Here is his entire speech today in Detroit
Fans, Foes Greet Obama, in Mich. for Fundraisers: MyFoxDETROIT.com
Real Clear Politics has the video clip:
OBAMA: When you decide to support a candidate named Barack Hussein Obama, you know the odds are not necessarily in your favor. You didn’t need a poll to tell you that wasn’t going to be a sure thing. But the point is, you didn’t get involved in this campaign just because of me. You did it because you were making a commitment to each other. You had a shared vision for America.
It wasn’t a vision where just a few were doing well and everybody else was left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. It was a big, bold, generous vision of America where everybody who works hard has a chance to get ahead, not just those at the very top. That’s the vision we share. That’s the commitment you made to each other.
We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We knew the changes that we believed in wouldn’t necessarily come quickly, but we understood that if we were determined that we could overcome any obstacle, that we could beat any challenge. And in just three years, because of what you did in 2008, we’ve begun to see what change looks like. We’ve begun to see it.
Yeah, we’ve seen it alright.
$5 trillion in new debt.
Record trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
And a downgraded and weakened America.
We’ve had enough of Obama’s change.
Thursday, April 19, 2012, 6:26 PM
TheGatewayPundit.Com:
And, he’s bragging?
President Barack Obama told a group of supporters today,
“In just three years, because of what you did in 2008, we’ve begun to see what change looks like. We’ve begun to see it.”
Here is his entire speech today in Detroit
Fans, Foes Greet Obama, in Mich. for Fundraisers: MyFoxDETROIT.com
Fans, Foes Greet Obama, in Mich. for Fundraisers: MyFoxDETROIT.com
Real Clear Politics has the video clip:
OBAMA: When you decide to support a candidate named Barack Hussein Obama, you know the odds are not necessarily in your favor. You didn’t need a poll to tell you that wasn’t going to be a sure thing. But the point is, you didn’t get involved in this campaign just because of me. You did it because you were making a commitment to each other. You had a shared vision for America.
It wasn’t a vision where just a few were doing well and everybody else was left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. It was a big, bold, generous vision of America where everybody who works hard has a chance to get ahead, not just those at the very top. That’s the vision we share. That’s the commitment you made to each other.
We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We knew the changes that we believed in wouldn’t necessarily come quickly, but we understood that if we were determined that we could overcome any obstacle, that we could beat any challenge. And in just three years, because of what you did in 2008, we’ve begun to see what change looks like. We’ve begun to see it.
Yeah, we’ve seen it alright.
$5 trillion in new debt.
Record trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
And a downgraded and weakened America.
We’ve had enough of Obama’s change.
Jonathan Frid, the vampire Barnabas Collins on '60s TV's 'Dark Shadows,' dies
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: April 20, 2012
New York Times:
Jonathan Frid, a Shakespearean actor who found unexpected — and by his own account unwanted — celebrity as the vampire Barnabas Collins on the sanguinary soap opera “Dark Shadows,” died last Friday, April 13, in Hamilton, Ontario. He was 87.
Jonathan Frid, a brooding, lovelorn, eternally 175-year-old representative of the undead, in ABC's "Dark Shadows."
He died from complications of a fall, said Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played several characters on the show. Mr. Frid, who lived in Ancaster, Ontario, leaves no immediate survivors.
Mr. Frid, along with several castmates, makes a cameo appearance in Tim Burton’s feature film “Dark Shadows,” to be released on May 11. Johnny Depp stars as Barnabas.
Though the befanged Mr. Frid was the acknowledged public face of “Dark Shadows” — his likeness was on comic books, board games, trading cards and many other artifacts — Barnabas did not make his first appearance until more than 200 episodes into the run. The character was conceived as a short-term addition to the cast, and early on the threat of the stake loomed large.
Broadcast on weekday afternoons on ABC, “Dark Shadows” began in 1966 as a conventional soap opera (with Gothic overtones), centering on the Collins family and their creaky manse in Maine.
The next year, with ratings slipping, the show’s executive producer, Dan Curtis, chose to inject an element of the supernatural. Enter Barnabas, a brooding, lovelorn, eternally 175-year-old representative of the undead. Today TV vampires are legion, but such a character was an unusual contrivance then.
The ratings shot up, and not only among the traditional soap-opera demographic of stay-at-home women. With its breathtakingly low-rent production values and equally breathtakingly purple dialogue, “Dark Shadows” induced a generation of high school and college students to cut class to revel in its unintended high camp. The producers shelved the stake.
Swirling cape, haunted eyes and fierce eyebrows notwithstanding, Barnabas, as portrayed by Mr. Frid, was no regulation-issue vampire. An 18th-century man — he had been entombed in the Collins family crypt — he struggled to comes to terms with the 20th-century world.
He was a vulnerable vampire, who pined for his lost love, Josette. (She had leaped to her death in 1795.) He was racked with guilt over his thirst for blood, and Mr. Frid played him as a man in the grip of a compulsion he devoutly wished to shake.
Mr. Frid starred in almost 600 episodes, from April 18, 1967, to April 2, 1971, when the show went off the air. (It remains perennially undead on DVD.)
Mr. Frid received nearly 6,000 fan letters a week. “I wish you’d bite ME on the neck,” read one, from a woman in Illinois.
Others contained snapshots of the letter-writers’ necks — and everything on down — laid bare.
All this, Mr. Frid said in 1968, was exquisitely ironic in that “the other vampires we’ve had on the show were much more voluptuous biters than I am.”
It was also an exquisitely unimagined career path for a stage actor trained at the Yale School of Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Mr. Frid, as he made plain in interviews, was as conflicted about his calling as Barnabas was about his own.
The son of a prosperous construction executive, John Herbert Frid was born in Hamilton on Dec. 2, 1924; he changed his given name to Jonathan early in his stage career.
After service in the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II, Mr. Frid received a bachelor’s degree from McMaster University in Hamilton; he later moved to London, where he studied at the Royal Academy and appeared in repertory theater. In 1957, he earned a master’s degree in directing from Yale.
Mr. Frid spent his early career acting in North American regional theater, appearing at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts and the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn. On Broadway, he played Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York, in “Henry IV, Part 2” in 1960.
Long after “Dark Shadows” ended, Barnabas remained an albatross. Mr. Frid reprised the role in the 1970 feature film “House of Dark Shadows”; the few other screen roles that came his way also tended toward the ghoulish. He starred opposite Shelley Winters in the 1973 TV movie “The Devil’s Daughter,” about Satanism; the next year he played a horror writer in “Seizure,” Oliver Stone’s first feature.
Returning to the stage, Mr. Frid played Jonathan Brewster — a role originated by Boris Karloff — in a 1986 Broadway revival of the macabre comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
As critical as he was of “Dark Shadows,” Mr. Frid was equally critical of his performance in it.
“I’d get this long-lost look on my face,” he told The Hamilton Spectator in 2000. “ ‘Where is my love? Where is my love?,’ it seemed to say. Actually, it was me thinking: ‘Where the hell is the teleprompter? And what’s my next line?’ ”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
Published: April 20, 2012
New York Times:
Jonathan Frid, a Shakespearean actor who found unexpected — and by his own account unwanted — celebrity as the vampire Barnabas Collins on the sanguinary soap opera “Dark Shadows,” died last Friday, April 13, in Hamilton, Ontario. He was 87.
He died from complications of a fall, said Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played several characters on the show. Mr. Frid, who lived in Ancaster, Ontario, leaves no immediate survivors.
Mr. Frid, along with several castmates, makes a cameo appearance in Tim Burton’s feature film “Dark Shadows,” to be released on May 11. Johnny Depp stars as Barnabas.
Though the befanged Mr. Frid was the acknowledged public face of “Dark Shadows” — his likeness was on comic books, board games, trading cards and many other artifacts — Barnabas did not make his first appearance until more than 200 episodes into the run. The character was conceived as a short-term addition to the cast, and early on the threat of the stake loomed large.
Broadcast on weekday afternoons on ABC, “Dark Shadows” began in 1966 as a conventional soap opera (with Gothic overtones), centering on the Collins family and their creaky manse in Maine.
The next year, with ratings slipping, the show’s executive producer, Dan Curtis, chose to inject an element of the supernatural. Enter Barnabas, a brooding, lovelorn, eternally 175-year-old representative of the undead. Today TV vampires are legion, but such a character was an unusual contrivance then.
The ratings shot up, and not only among the traditional soap-opera demographic of stay-at-home women. With its breathtakingly low-rent production values and equally breathtakingly purple dialogue, “Dark Shadows” induced a generation of high school and college students to cut class to revel in its unintended high camp. The producers shelved the stake.
Swirling cape, haunted eyes and fierce eyebrows notwithstanding, Barnabas, as portrayed by Mr. Frid, was no regulation-issue vampire. An 18th-century man — he had been entombed in the Collins family crypt — he struggled to comes to terms with the 20th-century world.
He was a vulnerable vampire, who pined for his lost love, Josette. (She had leaped to her death in 1795.) He was racked with guilt over his thirst for blood, and Mr. Frid played him as a man in the grip of a compulsion he devoutly wished to shake.
Mr. Frid starred in almost 600 episodes, from April 18, 1967, to April 2, 1971, when the show went off the air. (It remains perennially undead on DVD.)
Mr. Frid received nearly 6,000 fan letters a week. “I wish you’d bite ME on the neck,” read one, from a woman in Illinois.
Others contained snapshots of the letter-writers’ necks — and everything on down — laid bare.
All this, Mr. Frid said in 1968, was exquisitely ironic in that “the other vampires we’ve had on the show were much more voluptuous biters than I am.”
It was also an exquisitely unimagined career path for a stage actor trained at the Yale School of Drama and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Mr. Frid, as he made plain in interviews, was as conflicted about his calling as Barnabas was about his own.
The son of a prosperous construction executive, John Herbert Frid was born in Hamilton on Dec. 2, 1924; he changed his given name to Jonathan early in his stage career.
After service in the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II, Mr. Frid received a bachelor’s degree from McMaster University in Hamilton; he later moved to London, where he studied at the Royal Academy and appeared in repertory theater. In 1957, he earned a master’s degree in directing from Yale.
Mr. Frid spent his early career acting in North American regional theater, appearing at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts and the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn. On Broadway, he played Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York, in “Henry IV, Part 2” in 1960.
Long after “Dark Shadows” ended, Barnabas remained an albatross. Mr. Frid reprised the role in the 1970 feature film “House of Dark Shadows”; the few other screen roles that came his way also tended toward the ghoulish. He starred opposite Shelley Winters in the 1973 TV movie “The Devil’s Daughter,” about Satanism; the next year he played a horror writer in “Seizure,” Oliver Stone’s first feature.
Returning to the stage, Mr. Frid played Jonathan Brewster — a role originated by Boris Karloff — in a 1986 Broadway revival of the macabre comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
As critical as he was of “Dark Shadows,” Mr. Frid was equally critical of his performance in it.
“I’d get this long-lost look on my face,” he told The Hamilton Spectator in 2000. “ ‘Where is my love? Where is my love?,’ it seemed to say. Actually, it was me thinking: ‘Where the hell is the teleprompter? And what’s my next line?’ ”
Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
Thanks Obama! Food stamp users increase 70% since 2007
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that 45 million people in 2011 received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a 70% increase from 2007. It said the number of people receiving the benefits, commonly known as food stamps, would continue growing until 2014.
Spending for the program, not including administrative costs, rose to $72 billion in 2011, up from $30 billion four years earlier. The CBO projected that one in seven U.S. residents received food stamps last year.
Source: FireAndreaMitchell.Com
Mark Levin: Why isn’t Al Sharpton in federal prison?
More Money, More Problems
MSNBC host Al Sharpton’s 2004 campaign owes nearly $1 million to creditors and federal government, records show
BY: Bill McMorris
April 18, 2012 12:41 pm
Washington Free Beacon:
MSNBC’s Al Sharpton is reeling in debt and back taxes.
The liberal provocateur owes nearly $1 million to creditors and the federal government as a result of his failed bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
His campaign’s unpaid bills exceed $888,000, according to federal filings.
It is unclear why Sharpton has not paid his creditors. He does not lack for income.
Sharpton has his own primetime talk show on liberal network MSNBC, a platform he used to drive the Trayvon Martin shooting story that rocked the nation and led to the arrest of Democratic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.
In August 2011, Sharpton took over the 6 p.m. slot from Keith Olbermann, who earned more than $4 million per year working in the same slot at the network. Sharpton also drew a $240,000 salary from his nonprofit group, National Action Network, in 2011 even as the group racked up nearly $1 million in unpaid federal payroll taxes, interest, and penalties.
NAN has dealt with major finance issues in the last few years. The nonprofit raised $3 million in 2010, and paid off its state back taxes in 2011, but still owed $883,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes in December. The group also owed more than $200,000 in loans to one of Sharpton’s for-profit enterprises.
Sharpton, who has endorsed President Barack Obama’s calls for taxing the rich, has his own tax issues. He owed the IRS $2.6 million in income taxes in December 2011, as well as almost $900,000 in New York state taxes.
Sharpton financed his presidential run, in part, by borrowing large sums of money from his struggling nonprofit.
Sharpton borrowed more than $181,000 from NAN—money that is now supposed to be refunded. Sharpton also loaned $145,000 to the campaign to finance a fundraising push.
His largest creditor is the federal government; the campaign owes the Federal Elections Commission and the U.S. Treasury Department more than $225,000.
Sharpton could not capitalize on his national reputation as a rabble-rouser in the 2004 Democratic primary, losing out to Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.). But he did make waves in the race, slamming then-frontrunner Howard Dean for not having enough minorities on his campaign—a charge that has also dogged the Obama campaign—during an Iowa debate.
Sharpton skipped out on debts big and small. In addition to the six figure sums he borrowed from his nonprofit and leveraged from campaign consultants, he has not paid a $0.33 charge to a group called Xpedite, as well as a $2.50 ATM fee to Amalgamated Bank.
Sharpton’s presidential committee owed more than $900,000 to creditors late in 2011, according to Politico, after paying down the $208,000 in civil penalties the campaign owed the FEC for “failing to report accurately all receipts and expenditures, receiving excessive and prohibited in-kind contributions and accepting impermissible corporate contributions,” according to the FEC. The campaign has established a payment schedule to address the fines for campaign violations and other federal charges, according to the FEC.
“Now that the civil penalties have been satisfied, the campaign is contacting vendors to construct a debt resolution plan that must be submitted to the FEC for approval,” spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger told Politico in November. “While Rev. Sharpton, as candidate, helped to raise the money to resolve the civil penalties, the additional debt will be reviewed by the campaign and remedied in accordance to FEC’s rules and regulations.”
Calls to Sharpton’s creditors have not been returned.
MSNBC host Al Sharpton’s 2004 campaign owes nearly $1 million to creditors and federal government, records show
BY: Bill McMorris
April 18, 2012 12:41 pm
Washington Free Beacon:
MSNBC’s Al Sharpton is reeling in debt and back taxes.
The liberal provocateur owes nearly $1 million to creditors and the federal government as a result of his failed bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
His campaign’s unpaid bills exceed $888,000, according to federal filings.
It is unclear why Sharpton has not paid his creditors. He does not lack for income.
Sharpton has his own primetime talk show on liberal network MSNBC, a platform he used to drive the Trayvon Martin shooting story that rocked the nation and led to the arrest of Democratic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.
In August 2011, Sharpton took over the 6 p.m. slot from Keith Olbermann, who earned more than $4 million per year working in the same slot at the network. Sharpton also drew a $240,000 salary from his nonprofit group, National Action Network, in 2011 even as the group racked up nearly $1 million in unpaid federal payroll taxes, interest, and penalties.
NAN has dealt with major finance issues in the last few years. The nonprofit raised $3 million in 2010, and paid off its state back taxes in 2011, but still owed $883,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes in December. The group also owed more than $200,000 in loans to one of Sharpton’s for-profit enterprises.
Sharpton, who has endorsed President Barack Obama’s calls for taxing the rich, has his own tax issues. He owed the IRS $2.6 million in income taxes in December 2011, as well as almost $900,000 in New York state taxes.
Sharpton financed his presidential run, in part, by borrowing large sums of money from his struggling nonprofit.
Sharpton borrowed more than $181,000 from NAN—money that is now supposed to be refunded. Sharpton also loaned $145,000 to the campaign to finance a fundraising push.
His largest creditor is the federal government; the campaign owes the Federal Elections Commission and the U.S. Treasury Department more than $225,000.
Sharpton could not capitalize on his national reputation as a rabble-rouser in the 2004 Democratic primary, losing out to Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.). But he did make waves in the race, slamming then-frontrunner Howard Dean for not having enough minorities on his campaign—a charge that has also dogged the Obama campaign—during an Iowa debate.
Sharpton skipped out on debts big and small. In addition to the six figure sums he borrowed from his nonprofit and leveraged from campaign consultants, he has not paid a $0.33 charge to a group called Xpedite, as well as a $2.50 ATM fee to Amalgamated Bank.
Sharpton’s presidential committee owed more than $900,000 to creditors late in 2011, according to Politico, after paying down the $208,000 in civil penalties the campaign owed the FEC for “failing to report accurately all receipts and expenditures, receiving excessive and prohibited in-kind contributions and accepting impermissible corporate contributions,” according to the FEC. The campaign has established a payment schedule to address the fines for campaign violations and other federal charges, according to the FEC.
“Now that the civil penalties have been satisfied, the campaign is contacting vendors to construct a debt resolution plan that must be submitted to the FEC for approval,” spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger told Politico in November. “While Rev. Sharpton, as candidate, helped to raise the money to resolve the civil penalties, the additional debt will be reviewed by the campaign and remedied in accordance to FEC’s rules and regulations.”
Calls to Sharpton’s creditors have not been returned.
York:Obama faces defeat on pipeline as Dems defect
by Byron York -Chief Political Correspondent
April 19, 2012 8:25pm
Washington Examiner:
While much of the political world obsesses over Twitter fights and Seamus the dog, Barack Obama has set himself up for a high-profile defeat on one of the most important issues of the campaign.
The president has put his feet in cement in opposition to the Keystone oil pipeline. But on Capitol Hill, more and more Democrats are joining Republicans to force approval of the pipeline, whether Obama wants it or not.
The latest action happened Wednesday, when the House passed a measure to move the pipeline forward. Before the vote, Obama issued a veto threat. The House approved the pipeline anyway -- by a veto-proof majority, 293 to 127. Sixty-nine Democrats abandoned the president to vote with Republicans. That's a lot of defections.
When the House voted on the pipeline in July of last year, 47 Democrats broke with the president. Now that it's an election year and the number is up to 69, look for Republicans to hold more pipeline votes before November. GOP leaders expect even more Democrats to join them.
Then there is the Senate. Democrats are using the filibuster to stop the pipeline, which means 60 votes are required to pass it. (Some Democrats who bitterly opposed the filibuster when Republicans used it against Obama initiatives are notably silent these days.) In a vote last month, 11 Senate Democrats stood up against Obama to vote in favor of the pipeline. Add those 11 to the Republicans' 47 votes, and the pro-pipeline forces are just a couple of votes away from breaking Harry Reid's filibuster.
"We're right around the corner from actually passing it," says a well-informed Senate source. "Two-hundred-ninety-three votes in the House is a gigantic number. People want this thing."
The president didn't help his cause when he staged an odd photo-op last month, delivering a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma in front of huge stockpiles of pipes. Obama sang the praises of pipelines -- "It is critical that we make pipeline infrastructure a top priority," he said -- and made a big deal of his approval of a section of domestic pipeline that didn't need his approval. But he remained unyielding on Keystone.
In the latest House vote, the pipeline measure is attached to a larger transportation bill. That now goes to a conference with the Senate, which has passed a version of the transportation measure without the Keystone provision. It's not clear whether the pipeline will end up in the final bill. But it is certain that, whatever happens, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will force another vote on Keystone sometime.
If the pipeline wins those last couple of Senate Democrats, then Obama will be faced with a bill that passed with a veto-proof majority in the House and over a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. The president would be forced either to make good on his veto threat or sign a bill moving the pipeline forward.
If he signs the bill, Obama would surely try to save face by claiming his concerns about the pipeline's routing and approval process had been met. But there's no way it would be seen as anything less than a major defeat.
If Obama vetoes the pipeline, he faces an embarrassing rebuff in the House. But in the Senate, it would take 67 votes to overturn the veto, and that's probably an insurmountable obstacle for pipeline supporters. All the president would need is 34 Democratic dead-enders to stick with him to stop the pipeline.
But Obama could prevail only at grave political cost. The rise in gas prices is a potent issue for Mitt Romney and Republicans, and it could become far more potent if prices increase in the summer. And the president will be standing alone -- not just against Republicans, but against a major coalition within his own party, including Big Labor -- in opposition to the effort to increase America's energy supplies. Not a good place to be with an election around the corner.
Meanwhile, the pipeline project is going forward. This week the company that will build the pipeline submitted plans for a new route through Nebraska, where much environmental opposition has been focused. And in Lincoln, the Nebraska legislature passed, and the governor signed, a new bill that would hasten state approval of the project.
The odds are overwhelming that the Keystone pipeline will become a reality. In the end, Barack Obama has mostly hurt himself by trying to stop it.
Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.
April 19, 2012 8:25pm
Washington Examiner:
While much of the political world obsesses over Twitter fights and Seamus the dog, Barack Obama has set himself up for a high-profile defeat on one of the most important issues of the campaign.
The president has put his feet in cement in opposition to the Keystone oil pipeline. But on Capitol Hill, more and more Democrats are joining Republicans to force approval of the pipeline, whether Obama wants it or not.
The latest action happened Wednesday, when the House passed a measure to move the pipeline forward. Before the vote, Obama issued a veto threat. The House approved the pipeline anyway -- by a veto-proof majority, 293 to 127. Sixty-nine Democrats abandoned the president to vote with Republicans. That's a lot of defections.
When the House voted on the pipeline in July of last year, 47 Democrats broke with the president. Now that it's an election year and the number is up to 69, look for Republicans to hold more pipeline votes before November. GOP leaders expect even more Democrats to join them.
Then there is the Senate. Democrats are using the filibuster to stop the pipeline, which means 60 votes are required to pass it. (Some Democrats who bitterly opposed the filibuster when Republicans used it against Obama initiatives are notably silent these days.) In a vote last month, 11 Senate Democrats stood up against Obama to vote in favor of the pipeline. Add those 11 to the Republicans' 47 votes, and the pro-pipeline forces are just a couple of votes away from breaking Harry Reid's filibuster.
"We're right around the corner from actually passing it," says a well-informed Senate source. "Two-hundred-ninety-three votes in the House is a gigantic number. People want this thing."
The president didn't help his cause when he staged an odd photo-op last month, delivering a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma in front of huge stockpiles of pipes. Obama sang the praises of pipelines -- "It is critical that we make pipeline infrastructure a top priority," he said -- and made a big deal of his approval of a section of domestic pipeline that didn't need his approval. But he remained unyielding on Keystone.
In the latest House vote, the pipeline measure is attached to a larger transportation bill. That now goes to a conference with the Senate, which has passed a version of the transportation measure without the Keystone provision. It's not clear whether the pipeline will end up in the final bill. But it is certain that, whatever happens, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will force another vote on Keystone sometime.
If the pipeline wins those last couple of Senate Democrats, then Obama will be faced with a bill that passed with a veto-proof majority in the House and over a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. The president would be forced either to make good on his veto threat or sign a bill moving the pipeline forward.
If he signs the bill, Obama would surely try to save face by claiming his concerns about the pipeline's routing and approval process had been met. But there's no way it would be seen as anything less than a major defeat.
If Obama vetoes the pipeline, he faces an embarrassing rebuff in the House. But in the Senate, it would take 67 votes to overturn the veto, and that's probably an insurmountable obstacle for pipeline supporters. All the president would need is 34 Democratic dead-enders to stick with him to stop the pipeline.
But Obama could prevail only at grave political cost. The rise in gas prices is a potent issue for Mitt Romney and Republicans, and it could become far more potent if prices increase in the summer. And the president will be standing alone -- not just against Republicans, but against a major coalition within his own party, including Big Labor -- in opposition to the effort to increase America's energy supplies. Not a good place to be with an election around the corner.
Meanwhile, the pipeline project is going forward. This week the company that will build the pipeline submitted plans for a new route through Nebraska, where much environmental opposition has been focused. And in Lincoln, the Nebraska legislature passed, and the governor signed, a new bill that would hasten state approval of the project.
The odds are overwhelming that the Keystone pipeline will become a reality. In the end, Barack Obama has mostly hurt himself by trying to stop it.
Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.
Obamacare in Action? Private Practice Shuts Down Citing 'New Regulations'
by Tony Lee
4.19.12
Breitbart.Com:
Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat who is not running for reelection, said at at a Washington, D.C. breakfast that Obamacare would be President Barack Obama’s “biggest downside politically.” The legislation, he continued, “cost Obama a lot of credibility as a leader.”
On the same day as Senator Webb's remarks, the real-world consequences of Obamacare came to light, as a conservative South Carolina website, The Conservatist, flagged a letter that a Spartanburg, SC private practice wrote to its patients, telling them that the practice would close its doors next month.
Boiling Springs Family Medicine wrote to their patients that, presumably because of the regulations they would have to comply with under Obamacare, they would “no longer be able to provide you with medical care,” and “it is with a heavy heart that we have to inform you” of the closing.
The private practice wrote that “the challenges of practicing primary care medicine independently in today’s world and economy are too great” and “new guidelines and regulations have made the practice of medicine as we know it impossible as independent practitioners.”
Of course, liberals who espoused Obamacare had to know that private practices such as Boiling Springs Family Medicine would close, forcing more citizens to be dependent on government for their health care.
Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s governor, has repeatedly said that if Mitt Romney defeats Obama in the fall, she would immediately ask for Obamacare waivers for her state’s private practices.
One can only that will happen.
But unfortunately, private practices like Boiling Springs Family Medicine -- and their patients -- will not get such waivers because Obamacare has made them inoperable before the election.
Bette Midler auditions for Obama White House press secretary
Posted at 10:40 pm on April 19, 2012 by Twitchy Staff
Blame Bush was a good slogan four years ago. Not sure it will work in 2012, though. In any case, Midler would certainly make a good pinch hitter for White House press secretary Jay Carney.
She’s got the talking points down pat.
She’s got the talking points down pat.
So Far, Media Mum on Obama's Defense Secretary: A Million Dollars for Commuting Costs?
By Scott Whitlock
April 19, 2012 17:15
NewsBusters.Org:
The big three networks have, thus far, shown little interest in investigating the nearly one million dollars in commuting costs spent by Barack Obama's Defense Secretary. According to the Washington Times, Leon Panetta's weekend flights home cost $32,000 and have totaled $860,000 as of early April.
Yet, ABC, NBC and CBS have skipped this subject, even as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was pressed on it, Wednesday. Yet, on January 29, 2012, 60 Minutes profiled Panetta about his California farm. Journalist Scott Pelley puffed, "He and his brother planted these walnut trees sixty-five years ago with their father...Did you pick the walnuts?"
FoxNews.com reported:
Panetta, the cost and nature of whose travels in more than two years as President Obama’s director of the CIA are classified, faced questions from reporters this week about the costs related to his desire to fly home every other week to see his family and look after his walnuts.
The Washington Times explained that the White House is denying any talk of a "deal" to allow the commuting:
"There's no deal here," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday when pressed on the issue. "The secretary has addressed the matter. He, I think, spoke about it, and he has decided to try to find a way, if there is, to reduce the cost. But, you know, I don't have anything to add to it."
If the White House is denying a deal, and in the wake of the GSA spending scandal, shouldn't this be a topic of interest for journalists, especially the ones that have fawned over Panetta's walnut farm?
April 19, 2012 17:15
NewsBusters.Org:
The big three networks have, thus far, shown little interest in investigating the nearly one million dollars in commuting costs spent by Barack Obama's Defense Secretary. According to the Washington Times, Leon Panetta's weekend flights home cost $32,000 and have totaled $860,000 as of early April.
Yet, ABC, NBC and CBS have skipped this subject, even as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was pressed on it, Wednesday. Yet, on January 29, 2012, 60 Minutes profiled Panetta about his California farm. Journalist Scott Pelley puffed, "He and his brother planted these walnut trees sixty-five years ago with their father...Did you pick the walnuts?"
Panetta, the cost and nature of whose travels in more than two years as President Obama’s director of the CIA are classified, faced questions from reporters this week about the costs related to his desire to fly home every other week to see his family and look after his walnuts.
The Washington Times explained that the White House is denying any talk of a "deal" to allow the commuting:
"There's no deal here," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday when pressed on the issue. "The secretary has addressed the matter. He, I think, spoke about it, and he has decided to try to find a way, if there is, to reduce the cost. But, you know, I don't have anything to add to it."
If the White House is denying a deal, and in the wake of the GSA spending scandal, shouldn't this be a topic of interest for journalists, especially the ones that have fawned over Panetta's walnut farm?
The Harry Reid “Solution” to Budget Deficits
The logic behind Reid’s solution: Budget deficits exist only because of budgets
John Lillpop
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Canadian Free Press:
Wrestling with the complexities and aggravation that ensues when a responsible member of Congress tries to balance a budget during the Barack Obama Era of fiscal insanity has driven many a good public servant to drink, drugs, or both.
A notable exception to this dilemma is found in the weak-voiced, wimpy-looking fellow from Nevada, also known as the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. That would be Democrat Harry Reid whom has revolutionized the whole concept of leadership and budget technology by making denial and procrastination the new standard for slothful, inept public service.
Reid’s new-age solution is so simple that it is a wonder that it has not been tried before.
The logic behind Reid’s solution: Budget deficits exist only because of budgets. That is, if there were no budgets with their arbitrary, mostly racist goals around, there would be no deficits!
This solution is akin to the progressive solution to illegal immigration. Instead of demeaning future Democrats by labeling them as illegal aliens, simply call them “undocumented” and poof!, just like that there are no illegal aliens to fret about.
Similarly, if there are no budgets around to make life miserable, then there will be no deficits to deal with.
This tactic has worked like a charm for Harry Reid who has refused to allow work to proceed on a Senate budget for a third consecutive year!
Democrats acknowledge that this solution could someday haunt the grand children and great grand children of current taxpayers.
However, progressives are counting on savings from ObamaCare to save the day in the “out” years.
Besides, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are both in their 70s and are unlikely to be held accountable for future deficits.
And although Obama is just 50 years old, and likely to face some heat 20 years from now, he intends to fight off enemies with two words and one letter: George W. Bush!
John W. Lillpop
San Jose, California
John W. Lillpop is a recovering liberal. “Clean and sober” since 1992 when last he voted for a Democrat. Pray for John: He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where people like Nancy Pelosi are actually considered normal!.
John Lillpop
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Canadian Free Press:
Wrestling with the complexities and aggravation that ensues when a responsible member of Congress tries to balance a budget during the Barack Obama Era of fiscal insanity has driven many a good public servant to drink, drugs, or both.
A notable exception to this dilemma is found in the weak-voiced, wimpy-looking fellow from Nevada, also known as the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. That would be Democrat Harry Reid whom has revolutionized the whole concept of leadership and budget technology by making denial and procrastination the new standard for slothful, inept public service.
Reid’s new-age solution is so simple that it is a wonder that it has not been tried before.
The logic behind Reid’s solution: Budget deficits exist only because of budgets. That is, if there were no budgets with their arbitrary, mostly racist goals around, there would be no deficits!
This solution is akin to the progressive solution to illegal immigration. Instead of demeaning future Democrats by labeling them as illegal aliens, simply call them “undocumented” and poof!, just like that there are no illegal aliens to fret about.
Similarly, if there are no budgets around to make life miserable, then there will be no deficits to deal with.
This tactic has worked like a charm for Harry Reid who has refused to allow work to proceed on a Senate budget for a third consecutive year!
Democrats acknowledge that this solution could someday haunt the grand children and great grand children of current taxpayers.
However, progressives are counting on savings from ObamaCare to save the day in the “out” years.
Besides, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are both in their 70s and are unlikely to be held accountable for future deficits.
And although Obama is just 50 years old, and likely to face some heat 20 years from now, he intends to fight off enemies with two words and one letter: George W. Bush!
John W. Lillpop
San Jose, California
John W. Lillpop is a recovering liberal. “Clean and sober” since 1992 when last he voted for a Democrat. Pray for John: He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where people like Nancy Pelosi are actually considered normal!.
The Battle the Democrats Cannot Afford to Win
April 20, 2012
The Battle the Democrats Cannot Afford to Win
By Michael Bargo Jr.
There is one project that liberals never complete -- a task that is talked about all the time, especially during campaigns, but for some reason just can't get done.
It is "making the rich pay their fair share" of taxes. Somehow, even though President Obama and his party found the time to write ObamaCare and a huge plan of spending that included the Stimulus and Recovery Acts, taxing the rich for their fair share just slipped through their fingers.
The IRS reports that the top 10% of wage-earners pay 70 percent of the taxes, and the bottom half pay nothing at all. So that leaves the middle class, those whose income places them between the poor and wealthy, paying 30% of the overall income tax bill. The highest wage-earners seem to have been stuck on that 70% share for quite a number of years. It's been relatively constant.
One can then ask why the proportion paid by wealthy people has been limited to 70%. Why not require them to pay 100%? This would allow middle-class people, who are struggling in this tough economy, to stay above water, keep their homes out of foreclosure, and send their children to good schools. After all, the middle class is the backbone of the country and must be preserved.
We are constantly reminded that the wealthy don't pay their fair share and could be paying more. If they could be paying more, why don't they? Since the president says they could be paying more, he must know that they can afford to pay more. How much more, he doesn't say.
It's interesting to note the rhetoric here; although he says that the rich could pay more, the president has been careful to avoid saying that the middle class should definitely be paying less. So there is a sort of standoff here: while the rich should and could pay more in taxes, the president hasn't forced them to do so. The middle class are struggling along to get by, and the president won't drop their income tax bill.
(The only tax he did drop for them was the Social Security payroll tax -- 2% of it. This is not the entire payroll tax, but it is a significant number. This was done in spite of the fact that for many decades politicians have called Social Security the "third rail" of politics -- touch it and you're dead. But Obama touched it and wasn't seriously affected. Probably because the media didn't do enough to inform the voters of the seriousness of removing $150 billion a year from their Social Security retirement fund. Either way, having the media on his side, Obama was inoculated from the deadly effects of the third rail.)
The next time somebody tells you "the rich should pay their fair share," ask "Why don't they?" The president can't say it's because the Republicans have stopped him from making the rich to pay more; he passed ObamaCare and the Stimulus Act without one Republican vote. He could have greatly increased taxes on the rich, but he chose not to.
He chose, and still chooses, to limit their contribution to 70% of income tax revenue. Why? The answer is not in the dollar amount. The president has shown, through his deficit spending, that dollar amounts don't matter. What can't be borrowed from foreign countries can be printed through quantitative easing.
The real reason why the president will never tax the rich their full "fair share" is because then he can no longer complain that they don't pay their fair share. He stands to lose his "fair share" political card. He needs a scapegoat. If this doesn't seem to make sense, imagine a country where the "rich" paid all the income taxes. Would the president and his party then be satisfied that they achieved their goal?
No, there is no indication that he would. His goal is not to get all the social justice and fairness programs paid for by the rich.
After all, if the rich paid for all the people programs, then whom would President Obama blame for all the problems we face? He has recently stated that the Republicans don't want the rich paying their fair share, that they want dirty air, dirty water, and seniors starving in the streets. Americans need to elect him to protect them, and to maintain the people programs.
The president and his party can't have that. That would mean the end of them. It's a form of good cop-bad cop. The president needs to keep the voters on edge, to keep them perceiving the Republicans as a threat. He must play the cards he has: that only he and his party fight to protect the working class, poor, elderly, and the environment. These cards are the rhetorical tools he needs to stay in power, and staying in power is the main goal.
Paradoxically, then, Obama must continue to tax the middle class, in order to keep them believing that only he will fight to make the rich pay their "fair share." This may seem to contradict his party's values, but is the only plausible explanation for the party's actions.
The Battle the Democrats Cannot Afford to Win
By Michael Bargo Jr.
There is one project that liberals never complete -- a task that is talked about all the time, especially during campaigns, but for some reason just can't get done.
It is "making the rich pay their fair share" of taxes. Somehow, even though President Obama and his party found the time to write ObamaCare and a huge plan of spending that included the Stimulus and Recovery Acts, taxing the rich for their fair share just slipped through their fingers.
The IRS reports that the top 10% of wage-earners pay 70 percent of the taxes, and the bottom half pay nothing at all. So that leaves the middle class, those whose income places them between the poor and wealthy, paying 30% of the overall income tax bill. The highest wage-earners seem to have been stuck on that 70% share for quite a number of years. It's been relatively constant.
One can then ask why the proportion paid by wealthy people has been limited to 70%. Why not require them to pay 100%? This would allow middle-class people, who are struggling in this tough economy, to stay above water, keep their homes out of foreclosure, and send their children to good schools. After all, the middle class is the backbone of the country and must be preserved.
We are constantly reminded that the wealthy don't pay their fair share and could be paying more. If they could be paying more, why don't they? Since the president says they could be paying more, he must know that they can afford to pay more. How much more, he doesn't say.
It's interesting to note the rhetoric here; although he says that the rich could pay more, the president has been careful to avoid saying that the middle class should definitely be paying less. So there is a sort of standoff here: while the rich should and could pay more in taxes, the president hasn't forced them to do so. The middle class are struggling along to get by, and the president won't drop their income tax bill.
(The only tax he did drop for them was the Social Security payroll tax -- 2% of it. This is not the entire payroll tax, but it is a significant number. This was done in spite of the fact that for many decades politicians have called Social Security the "third rail" of politics -- touch it and you're dead. But Obama touched it and wasn't seriously affected. Probably because the media didn't do enough to inform the voters of the seriousness of removing $150 billion a year from their Social Security retirement fund. Either way, having the media on his side, Obama was inoculated from the deadly effects of the third rail.)
The next time somebody tells you "the rich should pay their fair share," ask "Why don't they?" The president can't say it's because the Republicans have stopped him from making the rich to pay more; he passed ObamaCare and the Stimulus Act without one Republican vote. He could have greatly increased taxes on the rich, but he chose not to.
He chose, and still chooses, to limit their contribution to 70% of income tax revenue. Why? The answer is not in the dollar amount. The president has shown, through his deficit spending, that dollar amounts don't matter. What can't be borrowed from foreign countries can be printed through quantitative easing.
The real reason why the president will never tax the rich their full "fair share" is because then he can no longer complain that they don't pay their fair share. He stands to lose his "fair share" political card. He needs a scapegoat. If this doesn't seem to make sense, imagine a country where the "rich" paid all the income taxes. Would the president and his party then be satisfied that they achieved their goal?
No, there is no indication that he would. His goal is not to get all the social justice and fairness programs paid for by the rich.
After all, if the rich paid for all the people programs, then whom would President Obama blame for all the problems we face? He has recently stated that the Republicans don't want the rich paying their fair share, that they want dirty air, dirty water, and seniors starving in the streets. Americans need to elect him to protect them, and to maintain the people programs.
The president and his party can't have that. That would mean the end of them. It's a form of good cop-bad cop. The president needs to keep the voters on edge, to keep them perceiving the Republicans as a threat. He must play the cards he has: that only he and his party fight to protect the working class, poor, elderly, and the environment. These cards are the rhetorical tools he needs to stay in power, and staying in power is the main goal.
Paradoxically, then, Obama must continue to tax the middle class, in order to keep them believing that only he will fight to make the rich pay their "fair share." This may seem to contradict his party's values, but is the only plausible explanation for the party's actions.
Narrative Arc: Second-Guessing Palin, Santorum’s Story and Romney’s Doom
Yesterday, Ross Douthat engaged in a “counterfactual” what-if about the 2012 primary campaign: Could Sarah Palin have won?
Speculation unmoored from actual facts is one of those games intellectuals love to play. It’s light work for brainy people to imagine what might have been in an alternative universe. By contrast, the business of reporting — trying to get sources to return your calls, for example — is often enormously frustrating and the labor-to-output ratio sometimes makes you wonder if it’s worth it.
Why bother picking up the phone, when you can just speculate?
Successful politics involves telling stories — “narrative arc,” as the intellectuals say. In 2008, Sarah Palin had an awesome narrative arc: Feisty mother of five, husband an oil worker and snowmobile race champ, she fought the odds, beat the Republican establishment, became governor of Alaska, and was plucked from (relative) obscurity as the surprise choice for vice-presidential running mate.
Then her enemies went to work on her, and messed up that story, so she was scapegoated for John McCain’s 2008 loss and was made a symbol of everything anybody might hate about the Republican Party: A religious fanatic. A negligent mother. A tacky, selfish, scheming manipulator. An unsophisticated airhead lacking basic knowledge about major policy matters, who quit before her first term ended under a cloud of ethics allegations, and then cashed in with a book deal, a reality show, and a contract with Fox News.
A 2012 Palin for President campaign would have been about repudiating that negative version of her story, recapturing the narrative arc of the feisty Alaska hockey mom that had made her a heroine to so many people in 2008. And I would have loved to cover that campaign.
Peter Singleton and Michelle McCormick had me half-convinced at one point it might actually happen. (See, “Still Waiting for Sarah,” The American Spectator, Aug. 22.) I traveled to New Hampshire over Labor Day weekend to cover a Palin rally (“The People’s Palin,” The American Spectator, Sept. 6) where she drew a bigger crowd — and vastly more media coverage — than Mitt Romney had the day before. By the time she finally bowed out (“Sarah Says No,” The American Spectator, Oct. 6) Palin’s supporters had endured two months of agony, only to have their hearts broken, and were exposed to sadistic mockery from Erick Erickson merely for having hoped at all.
Perhaps you understand why I don’t particularly relish watching Ross Douthat, Allahpundit and Philip Klein (none of whom were ever prominently pro-Palin) do a leisurely re-hash of the hypothetical counterfactuals of a Palin campaign that didn’t happen.
You might want to re-read what I wrote about embittered cynicism as the bedrock belief system of the conservative grassroots.
What I liked about Rick Santorum’s campaign was that he had a great narrative arc: Grandson of an Italian immigrant coal miner, cast aside after his 2006 Senate defeat, given no chance at all by the media experts, tirelessly crisscrosses Iowa and — in a Christmas miracle! — suddenly surges ahead to win the crucial caucuses, becoming an overnight contender, emerging to mount a grassroots populist challenge to the Establishment frontrunner. As I wrote last week:
Santorum’s campaign raised just $2.2 million in all of 2011; by the time he emerged as one of the final four candidates for the GOP nomination, he had outlasted five candidates — Pawlenty, Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry — all of whom once led him in the polls, and whose campaigns spent a combined total of more than $55 million.
One reason I preferred Santorum over Gingrich is that Newt’s life story lacked any appealing narrative arc. One reason Mitt Romney’s candidacy fills me with such forebodings of doom is that it will be so easy for Team Obama to construct a negative narrative about him.
Rather than wasting time on hindsight speculation, then, let’s consider this: Lisa Graas and some diehard Santorum supporters have mounted a “Vote for Rick Anyway” campaign. Even though he has officially suspended his campaign, Santorum will still be on the ballot in many states. By casting a vote for Santorum, conservatives can register their continued commitment to principle, and their continued resentment of the way the GOP Establishment lined up behind Romney.
It is possible — perhaps not likely, but nevertheless still possible — that the “Vote for Rick Anyway” movement could actually hand Romney an unexpected defeat in one or two primaries between now and June. A surprise win by a non-candidate over the presumptive nominee would at least make it clear to Team Mitt that they can’t just take conservatives for granted, which would seem to be their game plan for the general election campaign. (Supporting the Lilly Ledbetter Act? Really?)
L.A. blogger Joe Fein at Valley of the Shadow talks about narrative arc in terms of TV Tropes, and his understanding of how the “meta-story” works in politics is important to study for 2012 and beyond. Today’s headlines portend doom this fall:
CNN Poll: Gender gap and
likeability keep Obama over Romney
– CNN
Romney gaining on Obama: Reuters/Ipsos poll
– Reuters
Poll: Romney rallies GOP, faces big
popularity deficit for general election
– Washington Post
Others see reasons for hope in these early polls, but what I see is Romney struggling against the SCOAMF from the very outset of the general election campaign, before the Obama message machine — what Breitbart called the Democrat-Media Complex — has even really started telling its version of Mitt’s story: The insincere flip-flopping panderer, the greedy vulture capitalist with the weird “secretive” religion. By the time the machine is done working him over, Romney will have higher negatives than Martin Boorman.
Republicans are prepared to flush $800 million down the toilet in their doomed effort to elect Romney and, when we find ourselves sitting amid the ruins of another electoral cataclysm on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 7, the GOP Establishment will still find some way to blame the defeat of their handpicked candidate on the conservatives who opposed his “inevitability” all along. I remind you once again of these numbers:
REPUBLICAN PRIMARY VOTE
Mitt Romney ……… 4,595,908 (40.7%)
Rick Santorum …… 3,209,301 (28.3%)
Newt Gingrich ……. 2,284,557 (20.4%)
Ron Paul ……………. 1,191,026 (10.6%)
CAMPAIGN SPENDING
MITT ROMNEY
$66.8 million + super-PAC $40.5 million = $107.3 million
NEWT GINGRICH
$19.2 million + super-PAC $16.6 million = $35.8 million
RICK SANTORUM
$13.0 million + super-PAC $7.5 million = $20.5 million
SPENDING PER VOTE
MITT ROMNEY
$107. 3 million (65.6% of total)
4.6 million votes (40.7% of total)
Price per vote = $23.33
NEWT GINGRICH
$35.8 million (21.9% of total)
2.3 million votes (20.4% of total)
Price per vote = $15.57
RICK SANTORUM
$20.5 million (12.5% of total)
3.2 million votes (28.3% of total)
Price per vote = $6.41
Whatever else is said about 2012, no one can argue with this: Romney bought its primary votes at a premium, while the Santorum campaign was more than three times as efficient on a dollar-per-vote basis.
Now, anyone can feel free to believe that there is still some chance Mitt can beat Obama. We cannot preclude that possibility, no matter how remote the odds seem on a sober calculation. But if I’m right, and Romney is already doomed beyond all hope of redemption, then Santorum is already pre-positioned as the 2016 frontrunner.
Go ahead and scoff. I remember early December, when he was stuck in single digits, and “Santorurm Surge” was a sarcastic inside joke among the campaign press corps. Reporters showed up at that Dec. 26 duck hunt because Santorum was pretty much the only candidate campaigning the day after Christmas, and none of those reporters really believed — as I had detected two weeks earlier – that the surge was for real. Two days later, on Wednesday, Dec. 28, a CNN poll showed Santorum had moved up to a strong third place, and he was off to the races. He won the Iowa caucuses six days later without ever having led a single poll.
Nothing succeeds like success. Santorum’s 2012 campaign added a compelling new chapter to his story, and provides a solid base for 2016. One hesitates to provide unsolicited advice, but what if:
Santorum can identify among his 2012 contributors 5,000 hard-core supporters who will commit to giving $50 a month to a new political action committee? That’s $3 million a year.
Santorum campaigns actively for GOP candidates at every level, and making early contributions from his PAC to help “seed” contenders?
Santorum works hard on his messaging and image, staying firmly conservative while emphasizing the optimistic, cheerful side of his personality and his policy expertise?
One can imagine Santorum finding many occasions to visit Iowa regularly, speaking at county GOP dinners and so forth, and also working to build a strong network of support in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada. One can likewise imagine him making occasional (unpaid) TV appearances as a guest commentator. Conservatives who were slow to rally to Santorum in this cycle because of his long-shot status would have every reason to back him early in the 2016 cycle.
Hindsight spilled-milk “what if” speculation about 2012 is an interesting intellectual exercise, but speculation about a Santorum 2016 comeback might be quite realistic. However, this possibility is premised on catastrophe: A cataclyasmic wipeout for Romney on Nov. 6, with Obama re-elected to a second term of incompetent misrule.
If this is too much gloom for you, look on the bright side: The ancient Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in December, which would at least spare us from another four years of Obama.
But the ancient Mayans could not be reached for comment.
Hit the freaking tip jar!
UPDATE: Thanks to Lisa Graas for this tip:
Santorum to His Supporters: ‘Stay Tuned’
SOURCE: TheOtherMcCain.Com
Pelosi: Obama is not in campaign mode
Pelosi: Boehner is 'cute,' but wrong
byJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer
Washington Examiner:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected an attack on President Obama levelled by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, saying it was "cute, but it's not true" that Obama is in campaign mode.
"It's cute, but it isn't true," Pelosi said during her weekly press briefing. "The president has been engaged, he has been engaged with the american people, and for that reason the republicans had to come around on the payroll tax cut in the House."
To prove her point, Pelosi argued that "President Obama was in agreement with the grand bargain that the two of them negotiated last summer," before saying "the Republicans walked away."
Pelosi was disputing the idea that "The president checked out last Labor Day," as Boehner charged yesterday. "All he's done is campaign full time for the last six months. He's not been engaged in the legislative process at all."
Last year, Boehner blamed Obama for the breakdown in grand bargain negotiations, saying the the president "moved the goal post" by demanding more tax revenue increases after the two leaders had come to a deal.
The Story Unravels: New Questions about Trayvon Martin's Final Hour
April 19, 2012
The Sea Change: Obama's Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away
By Monte Kuligowski
For several years, an Orwellian-type fear of being "marginalized" held reporters and pundits back from questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to hold the office of the presidency. To raise an eyebrow at the bizarre secrecy of Obama was off-limits. To question whether the historic definition of "natural born citizen" applied to Obama was taboo.
The era of fear, however, is happily winding down. It will take some time for this realization to fully take hold. But make no mistake: the tables have turned.
Like it or not, the ground has shifted, and it cannot shift back. The evidence of Obama's forgeries is not going away.
Up until this point, Mr. Obama controlled everything, including the talking points and burden of proof.
Rather than simply produce certified paper copies for state election officials and make the original available for officials to inspect in Hawaii, Obama played games with his purported birth certificate. We were told for three years that Obama's birth certificate had been posted online in 2008 -- though it turns out that it was a scant certification. In 2010, when confronted with the alarming doubts of the American people, Mr. Obama lamented to a sympathetic Brian Williams of NBC: "I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." The following year, out of left field, on April 27, 2011, Obama "released" the elusive birth certificate by posting a now-discredited file image online.
This time he wasn't teasing. It was "proof positive." Mr. Obama, in his robotic style, barked that it was time to stop the "silliness" and move on.
No one ever wanted Obama to get all crazy and walk around with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead. But many took the reasonable position of wanting the mysterious birth certificate produced, not plastered or uploaded to a computer. Many wanted Obama to produce certified copies for state officials and make the original available for inspection.
But because no authority forced him to comply with basic legal standards, Mr. Obama was able to create a sideshow atmosphere by selecting non-experts to verify his internet postings behind closed doors. His media sycophants were able to make those who questioned Obama's staunch secrecy appear as the unreasonable ones. Somehow the burden of proof was erroneously placed on the citizenry to prove that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
Well, the burden never actually rested with the people to prove anything. That was all smoke and mirrors. No conspiracy theories are needed to demand that Obama comply with basic legal standards -- especially in context of a state with a history of certifying foreign births as Hawaiian.
After Obama "released" the birth certificate in 2011, nonpartisan computer software experts immediately recognized that the embarrassing image had been computer-assembled. Of course, few in the free press dared to report on the "silliness." Fox News quickly summonsed Adobe-certified expert Jean-Claude Tremblayto to conclude, nothing fishy here (but his ORC explanation has been demonstrably debunked by the control-test findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team -- see below).
It's simply unfathomable to the consensus media that the One they worked so hard to elect could be a fraud -- or, at minimum, could have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's team of law enforcement and investigative experts were able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that forgeries have been committed. It turns out that the sheriff simply confirmed the "open secret" shared by technical document experts across the country. As with many crimes, if not for their abject carelessness, the forgers might have gotten away with it. But the strength of the evidence is such that local law enforcement was able to conclude that "probable cause" exists to show that the White House uploaded a computer-generated forgery of a birth certificate. Ditto with Obama's Selective Service registration form: it is also a crude forgery.
Who would have thought that Obama's illegal immigration nemesis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, could turn the tables on Obama?
With the help of his friends in the consensus media, Mr. Obama had been afforded the luxury of effectively remaining silent for years. Obama was able to sit back as a third-party onlooker as the media attacked, maligned, and ignored those who raised valid questions.
But the recent findings are similar to the events of a trial in which the burden of proof shifts from one party to the other. In our context, the burden of proof was absurdly placed on the people, but finally it has shifted to Obama. The six-month investigation by trained law enforcement and forensic experts has resulted in a compelling case-in-chief.
Anyone who views the video presentations of the law enforcement team can plainly observe the sea change which shifted the burden to rebut to Obama.
Even though crimes were allegedly committed, at this point, what is taking place is comparable to a civil trial. As such, it is time for Mr. Obama to produce competent evidence. If he has no evidence to produce, he's in public opinion trouble. If a court or Congress forces the production of his original documents, it's over for Obama.
Simple little mistakes: hastily uploading an assembled image without first printing and scanning, and cutting a "2008" rubber stamp to create the appearance of "1980." And the Selective Service forgery alone is enough to end Obama's presidency.
Sheriff Arpaio is under personal attack, but curiously, the control-test findings of his team are not being refuted. Apparently oblivious of the fact that the White House tried to cover its tracks by quickly replacing its original file image, NPR naively reports: "For the record, we opened the file using Adobe Photoshop and found that [the birth certificate] contained only a single layer of information." Fortunately, thousands have the original White House posting preserved for perpetuity.
The establishment media are trying every way they can think of to discredit Sheriff Joe. As WND.com president Joseph Farah recently wrote, "[t]hey are no longer just protecting Obama. They are now protecting their own reputations." The problem, of course, is that after all the attacks on Joe Arpaio are exhausted and after all the dust settles, the evidence of Obama's forgeries will remain.
The problem for Obama and his enablers is that the evidence is objective. And it's there for everyone to see. Generations from now, professors in Adobe Photoshop and journalism classes will be discussing and analyzing the evidence of Obama's forgeries.
The very result that timid conservatives and liberal reporters feared will eventually catch up with them: loss of credibility.
On the flipside, those who questioned Obama's bizarre secrecy eventually will be vindicated.
The Sea Change: Obama's Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away
By Monte Kuligowski
For several years, an Orwellian-type fear of being "marginalized" held reporters and pundits back from questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to hold the office of the presidency. To raise an eyebrow at the bizarre secrecy of Obama was off-limits. To question whether the historic definition of "natural born citizen" applied to Obama was taboo.
The era of fear, however, is happily winding down. It will take some time for this realization to fully take hold. But make no mistake: the tables have turned.
Like it or not, the ground has shifted, and it cannot shift back. The evidence of Obama's forgeries is not going away.
Up until this point, Mr. Obama controlled everything, including the talking points and burden of proof.
Rather than simply produce certified paper copies for state election officials and make the original available for officials to inspect in Hawaii, Obama played games with his purported birth certificate. We were told for three years that Obama's birth certificate had been posted online in 2008 -- though it turns out that it was a scant certification. In 2010, when confronted with the alarming doubts of the American people, Mr. Obama lamented to a sympathetic Brian Williams of NBC: "I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." The following year, out of left field, on April 27, 2011, Obama "released" the elusive birth certificate by posting a now-discredited file image online.
This time he wasn't teasing. It was "proof positive." Mr. Obama, in his robotic style, barked that it was time to stop the "silliness" and move on.
No one ever wanted Obama to get all crazy and walk around with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead. But many took the reasonable position of wanting the mysterious birth certificate produced, not plastered or uploaded to a computer. Many wanted Obama to produce certified copies for state officials and make the original available for inspection.
But because no authority forced him to comply with basic legal standards, Mr. Obama was able to create a sideshow atmosphere by selecting non-experts to verify his internet postings behind closed doors. His media sycophants were able to make those who questioned Obama's staunch secrecy appear as the unreasonable ones. Somehow the burden of proof was erroneously placed on the citizenry to prove that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
Well, the burden never actually rested with the people to prove anything. That was all smoke and mirrors. No conspiracy theories are needed to demand that Obama comply with basic legal standards -- especially in context of a state with a history of certifying foreign births as Hawaiian.
After Obama "released" the birth certificate in 2011, nonpartisan computer software experts immediately recognized that the embarrassing image had been computer-assembled. Of course, few in the free press dared to report on the "silliness." Fox News quickly summonsed Adobe-certified expert Jean-Claude Tremblayto to conclude, nothing fishy here (but his ORC explanation has been demonstrably debunked by the control-test findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team -- see below).
It's simply unfathomable to the consensus media that the One they worked so hard to elect could be a fraud -- or, at minimum, could have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's team of law enforcement and investigative experts were able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that forgeries have been committed. It turns out that the sheriff simply confirmed the "open secret" shared by technical document experts across the country. As with many crimes, if not for their abject carelessness, the forgers might have gotten away with it. But the strength of the evidence is such that local law enforcement was able to conclude that "probable cause" exists to show that the White House uploaded a computer-generated forgery of a birth certificate. Ditto with Obama's Selective Service registration form: it is also a crude forgery.
Who would have thought that Obama's illegal immigration nemesis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, could turn the tables on Obama?
With the help of his friends in the consensus media, Mr. Obama had been afforded the luxury of effectively remaining silent for years. Obama was able to sit back as a third-party onlooker as the media attacked, maligned, and ignored those who raised valid questions.
But the recent findings are similar to the events of a trial in which the burden of proof shifts from one party to the other. In our context, the burden of proof was absurdly placed on the people, but finally it has shifted to Obama. The six-month investigation by trained law enforcement and forensic experts has resulted in a compelling case-in-chief.
Anyone who views the video presentations of the law enforcement team can plainly observe the sea change which shifted the burden to rebut to Obama.
Even though crimes were allegedly committed, at this point, what is taking place is comparable to a civil trial. As such, it is time for Mr. Obama to produce competent evidence. If he has no evidence to produce, he's in public opinion trouble. If a court or Congress forces the production of his original documents, it's over for Obama.
Simple little mistakes: hastily uploading an assembled image without first printing and scanning, and cutting a "2008" rubber stamp to create the appearance of "1980." And the Selective Service forgery alone is enough to end Obama's presidency.
Sheriff Arpaio is under personal attack, but curiously, the control-test findings of his team are not being refuted. Apparently oblivious of the fact that the White House tried to cover its tracks by quickly replacing its original file image, NPR naively reports: "For the record, we opened the file using Adobe Photoshop and found that [the birth certificate] contained only a single layer of information." Fortunately, thousands have the original White House posting preserved for perpetuity.
The establishment media are trying every way they can think of to discredit Sheriff Joe. As WND.com president Joseph Farah recently wrote, "[t]hey are no longer just protecting Obama. They are now protecting their own reputations." The problem, of course, is that after all the attacks on Joe Arpaio are exhausted and after all the dust settles, the evidence of Obama's forgeries will remain.
The problem for Obama and his enablers is that the evidence is objective. And it's there for everyone to see. Generations from now, professors in Adobe Photoshop and journalism classes will be discussing and analyzing the evidence of Obama's forgeries.
The very result that timid conservatives and liberal reporters feared will eventually catch up with them: loss of credibility.
On the flipside, those who questioned Obama's bizarre secrecy eventually will be vindicated.
The Sea Change: Obama's Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away
April 19, 2012
The Sea Change: Obama's Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away
By Monte Kuligowski
For several years, an Orwellian-type fear of being "marginalized" held reporters and pundits back from questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to hold the office of the presidency. To raise an eyebrow at the bizarre secrecy of Obama was off-limits. To question whether the historic definition of "natural born citizen" applied to Obama was taboo.
The era of fear, however, is happily winding down. It will take some time for this realization to fully take hold. But make no mistake: the tables have turned.
Like it or not, the ground has shifted, and it cannot shift back. The evidence of Obama's forgeries is not going away.
Up until this point, Mr. Obama controlled everything, including the talking points and burden of proof.
Rather than simply produce certified paper copies for state election officials and make the original available for officials to inspect in Hawaii, Obama played games with his purported birth certificate. We were told for three years that Obama's birth certificate had been posted online in 2008 -- though it turns out that it was a scant certification. In 2010, when confronted with the alarming doubts of the American people, Mr. Obama lamented to a sympathetic Brian Williams of NBC: "I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." The following year, out of left field, on April 27, 2011, Obama "released" the elusive birth certificate by posting a now-discredited file image online.
This time he wasn't teasing. It was "proof positive." Mr. Obama, in his robotic style, barked that it was time to stop the "silliness" and move on.
No one ever wanted Obama to get all crazy and walk around with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead. But many took the reasonable position of wanting the mysterious birth certificate produced, not plastered or uploaded to a computer. Many wanted Obama to produce certified copies for state officials and make the original available for inspection.
But because no authority forced him to comply with basic legal standards, Mr. Obama was able to create a sideshow atmosphere by selecting non-experts to verify his internet postings behind closed doors. His media sycophants were able to make those who questioned Obama's staunch secrecy appear as the unreasonable ones. Somehow the burden of proof was erroneously placed on the citizenry to prove that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
Well, the burden never actually rested with the people to prove anything. That was all smoke and mirrors. No conspiracy theories are needed to demand that Obama comply with basic legal standards -- especially in context of a state with a history of certifying foreign births as Hawaiian.
After Obama "released" the birth certificate in 2011, nonpartisan computer software experts immediately recognized that the embarrassing image had been computer-assembled. Of course, few in the free press dared to report on the "silliness." Fox News quickly summonsed Adobe-certified expert Jean-Claude Tremblayto to conclude, nothing fishy here (but his ORC explanation has been demonstrably debunked by the control-test findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team -- see below).
It's simply unfathomable to the consensus media that the One they worked so hard to elect could be a fraud -- or, at minimum, could have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's team of law enforcement and investigative experts were able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that forgeries have been committed. It turns out that the sheriff simply confirmed the "open secret" shared by technical document experts across the country. As with many crimes, if not for their abject carelessness, the forgers might have gotten away with it. But the strength of the evidence is such that local law enforcement was able to conclude that "probable cause" exists to show that the White House uploaded a computer-generated forgery of a birth certificate. Ditto with Obama's Selective Service registration form: it is also a crude forgery.
Who would have thought that Obama's illegal immigration nemesis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, could turn the tables on Obama?
With the help of his friends in the consensus media, Mr. Obama had been afforded the luxury of effectively remaining silent for years. Obama was able to sit back as a third-party onlooker as the media attacked, maligned, and ignored those who raised valid questions.
But the recent findings are similar to the events of a trial in which the burden of proof shifts from one party to the other. In our context, the burden of proof was absurdly placed on the people, but finally it has shifted to Obama. The six-month investigation by trained law enforcement and forensic experts has resulted in a compelling case-in-chief.
Anyone who views the video presentations of the law enforcement team can plainly observe the sea change which shifted the burden to rebut to Obama.
Even though crimes were allegedly committed, at this point, what is taking place is comparable to a civil trial. As such, it is time for Mr. Obama to produce competent evidence. If he has no evidence to produce, he's in public opinion trouble. If a court or Congress forces the production of his original documents, it's over for Obama.
Simple little mistakes: hastily uploading an assembled image without first printing and scanning, and cutting a "2008" rubber stamp to create the appearance of "1980." And the Selective Service forgery alone is enough to end Obama's presidency.
Sheriff Arpaio is under personal attack, but curiously, the control-test findings of his team are not being refuted. Apparently oblivious of the fact that the White House tried to cover its tracks by quickly replacing its original file image, NPR naively reports: "For the record, we opened the file using Adobe Photoshop and found that [the birth certificate] contained only a single layer of information." Fortunately, thousands have the original White House posting preserved for perpetuity.
The establishment media are trying every way they can think of to discredit Sheriff Joe. As WND.com president Joseph Farah recently wrote, "[t]hey are no longer just protecting Obama. They are now protecting their own reputations." The problem, of course, is that after all the attacks on Joe Arpaio are exhausted and after all the dust settles, the evidence of Obama's forgeries will remain.
The problem for Obama and his enablers is that the evidence is objective. And it's there for everyone to see. Generations from now, professors in Adobe Photoshop and journalism classes will be discussing and analyzing the evidence of Obama's forgeries.
The very result that timid conservatives and liberal reporters feared will eventually catch up with them: loss of credibility.
On the flipside, those who questioned Obama's bizarre secrecy eventually will be vindicated.
The Sea Change: Obama's Confirmed Forgeries Are Not Going Away
By Monte Kuligowski
For several years, an Orwellian-type fear of being "marginalized" held reporters and pundits back from questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to hold the office of the presidency. To raise an eyebrow at the bizarre secrecy of Obama was off-limits. To question whether the historic definition of "natural born citizen" applied to Obama was taboo.
The era of fear, however, is happily winding down. It will take some time for this realization to fully take hold. But make no mistake: the tables have turned.
Like it or not, the ground has shifted, and it cannot shift back. The evidence of Obama's forgeries is not going away.
Up until this point, Mr. Obama controlled everything, including the talking points and burden of proof.
Rather than simply produce certified paper copies for state election officials and make the original available for officials to inspect in Hawaii, Obama played games with his purported birth certificate. We were told for three years that Obama's birth certificate had been posted online in 2008 -- though it turns out that it was a scant certification. In 2010, when confronted with the alarming doubts of the American people, Mr. Obama lamented to a sympathetic Brian Williams of NBC: "I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." The following year, out of left field, on April 27, 2011, Obama "released" the elusive birth certificate by posting a now-discredited file image online.
This time he wasn't teasing. It was "proof positive." Mr. Obama, in his robotic style, barked that it was time to stop the "silliness" and move on.
No one ever wanted Obama to get all crazy and walk around with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead. But many took the reasonable position of wanting the mysterious birth certificate produced, not plastered or uploaded to a computer. Many wanted Obama to produce certified copies for state officials and make the original available for inspection.
But because no authority forced him to comply with basic legal standards, Mr. Obama was able to create a sideshow atmosphere by selecting non-experts to verify his internet postings behind closed doors. His media sycophants were able to make those who questioned Obama's staunch secrecy appear as the unreasonable ones. Somehow the burden of proof was erroneously placed on the citizenry to prove that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii.
Well, the burden never actually rested with the people to prove anything. That was all smoke and mirrors. No conspiracy theories are needed to demand that Obama comply with basic legal standards -- especially in context of a state with a history of certifying foreign births as Hawaiian.
After Obama "released" the birth certificate in 2011, nonpartisan computer software experts immediately recognized that the embarrassing image had been computer-assembled. Of course, few in the free press dared to report on the "silliness." Fox News quickly summonsed Adobe-certified expert Jean-Claude Tremblayto to conclude, nothing fishy here (but his ORC explanation has been demonstrably debunked by the control-test findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's investigative team -- see below).
It's simply unfathomable to the consensus media that the One they worked so hard to elect could be a fraud -- or, at minimum, could have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's team of law enforcement and investigative experts were able to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that forgeries have been committed. It turns out that the sheriff simply confirmed the "open secret" shared by technical document experts across the country. As with many crimes, if not for their abject carelessness, the forgers might have gotten away with it. But the strength of the evidence is such that local law enforcement was able to conclude that "probable cause" exists to show that the White House uploaded a computer-generated forgery of a birth certificate. Ditto with Obama's Selective Service registration form: it is also a crude forgery.
Who would have thought that Obama's illegal immigration nemesis, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, could turn the tables on Obama?
With the help of his friends in the consensus media, Mr. Obama had been afforded the luxury of effectively remaining silent for years. Obama was able to sit back as a third-party onlooker as the media attacked, maligned, and ignored those who raised valid questions.
But the recent findings are similar to the events of a trial in which the burden of proof shifts from one party to the other. In our context, the burden of proof was absurdly placed on the people, but finally it has shifted to Obama. The six-month investigation by trained law enforcement and forensic experts has resulted in a compelling case-in-chief.
Anyone who views the video presentations of the law enforcement team can plainly observe the sea change which shifted the burden to rebut to Obama.
Even though crimes were allegedly committed, at this point, what is taking place is comparable to a civil trial. As such, it is time for Mr. Obama to produce competent evidence. If he has no evidence to produce, he's in public opinion trouble. If a court or Congress forces the production of his original documents, it's over for Obama.
Simple little mistakes: hastily uploading an assembled image without first printing and scanning, and cutting a "2008" rubber stamp to create the appearance of "1980." And the Selective Service forgery alone is enough to end Obama's presidency.
Sheriff Arpaio is under personal attack, but curiously, the control-test findings of his team are not being refuted. Apparently oblivious of the fact that the White House tried to cover its tracks by quickly replacing its original file image, NPR naively reports: "For the record, we opened the file using Adobe Photoshop and found that [the birth certificate] contained only a single layer of information." Fortunately, thousands have the original White House posting preserved for perpetuity.
The establishment media are trying every way they can think of to discredit Sheriff Joe. As WND.com president Joseph Farah recently wrote, "[t]hey are no longer just protecting Obama. They are now protecting their own reputations." The problem, of course, is that after all the attacks on Joe Arpaio are exhausted and after all the dust settles, the evidence of Obama's forgeries will remain.
The problem for Obama and his enablers is that the evidence is objective. And it's there for everyone to see. Generations from now, professors in Adobe Photoshop and journalism classes will be discussing and analyzing the evidence of Obama's forgeries.
The very result that timid conservatives and liberal reporters feared will eventually catch up with them: loss of credibility.
On the flipside, those who questioned Obama's bizarre secrecy eventually will be vindicated.
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