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«Updated Daily« |
Friday May 25, 2012
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Made in the USA since 1998
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Democrats and the Obama campaign have sought to demonize the private equity industry, part of an aggressive effort to discredit GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s top selling point.
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Pres. Obama's Jobs Council Has
Private Equity Execs Despite Bain Attacks
ABC News
Are “job destroyers” sitting on Pres. Obama’s jobs council? There could be, if you believe the argument from Democrats and the Obama campaign that private equity executives are profit seekers who often run roughshod over workers, companies and communities. Two Obama-appointed members of the White House Council on Jobs & Competitiveness, an advisory committee, are leading figures in the private equity industry. Richard Parsons, chairman of Citigroup, is a senior advisor at Providence Equity Partners, “a leading private equity investment firm, specializing in media, communications and information companies,” according to his bio on the White House website. Mark Gallogly, the co-founder of Centerbridge Partners and formerly with Blackstone Group, the nation’s largest private equity firm, also sits on the panel. He served on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Gallogly is also a major Obama campaign contributor and fundraiser, collecting more than $500,000 for the 2012 race. Obama's inclusion of these men on his Jobs Council poses a sticking point in his case against GOP rival Mitt Romney. |
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Unclogging Politics from Government
Frank Salvato, Managing Editor
“That no more qualifies someone to be president than being a plumber.” That’s what Vice President Joe Biden said about the private equity experience as it relates to qualifications for being the President of the United States. As the politically aware look on in stunned silence, one has to wonder if good ol’ Joe didn’t go rogue from the Obama campaign approved teleprompter script. Why else would he bring up the subject of qualifications, a subject on which President Obama is intensely vulnerable? The subject of qualifications for the office of President of the United States is a contentious one, if not one that must be addressed from two vantage points: the legal qualifications set forth by the United States Constitution and the practical knowledge vantage point; the amassed experience of any given candidate. And where one is enshrined in the Founding Documents, the other is open to debate. Constitutionally, the qualifications are clear, at least to those who choose not to politicize the document.
Editor's Note: Her Soul Now
Shines in That City on the Hill
Frank Salvato, Managing Editor
It is with a heavy heart that we inform our readers that Ercille I. Christmas, a featured writer here at NewMediaJournal.us and a friend to all who embrace the idea of freedom, has passed away after a valiant battle with cancer. Ercille I. Christmas was born in the tiny Caribbean island of St. Kitts, the "Gibraltar of the Caribbean". She went through the procedures and processes needed to naturalize to the United States and became a US citizen, something that she viewed as an achievement; a designation she held with great pride, often referring to her new home as, "the land of the free and the home of the brave." For a great portion of her adult life, Ercille performed the duties of a supervisor in the insurance industry. But her life changed on September 11, 2001.
The Last Days of the Media
Daniel Greenfield
The magazine business isn't what it used to be. In the last ten years, Newsweek lost 2.5 million readers, and its newsstand sales are hardly worth mentioning. A full-page ad in it costs less than the price of a luxury car. Sold for a buck to the husband of an influential Congresswoman, merged with an internet site, it survives only by building issues around provocative essays and covers. If you want to understand why Newsweek put a badly photoshopped picture of Obama with a gay halo on its cover or features Romney doing a number from The Book of Mormon, you need only look at those numbers. Fifteen years ago desperate tactics like that were for alt weeklies like The Village Voice, but Time and Newsweek are the new Village Voice. Or the new Salon. There is no news business anymore, just media trolls looking for a traffic handout, feeding off manufactured controversies that they create and then report on. Magazines and sites struggling to stay alive while preaching to a narrow audience which likes essays by leftist cranks and mocking pictures of conservatives. And they're not alone; any magazine that still covers politics, covers it in the same exact way.
Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson:
What Do Iran’s Mullahs Want?
Amil Imani
In dealing with the mullahs ruling Iran, what you see is not what you get, and what you hear is not what they mean. Transparency and honesty are not their strong suit. So, we need a first-rate sleuth to see through their smoke-and-mirrors, as well as beyond their twisted tongues into their warped brains. Who else but Sherlock Holmes can be our man to tell us what the mullahs really want? The fact of the matter, as far as we can tell, is that the mullahs are waving a big menacing stick over the world’s head -- their nuclear program and its ramifications.The mullahs, however, say to the world (if you are ever foolish enough to trust the word of a people whose religion not only officially condones but recommends taqqeyh -- lying -- to achieve a higher purpose) they promise, on their Boy Scout’s honor, to limit their nuclear activity to peaceful endeavors under the United Nation’s watchdog. From its past performance, rather its absence of performance, we know that the UN watchdog is a true disgrace to dogs, since all it does is eat, sleep and look the other way.
Who Is Valerie Jarrett?
Ed Klein
Trying to figure out Valerie Jarrett’s mysterious hold on Barack and Michelle Obama is a favorite guessing game in the parlors and dining rooms of Washington. No other White House official in history has enjoyed such a unique relationship with both a president and a first lady, and yet the mainstream media have ignored Jarrett’s enormous influence over the shape and direction of the Obama administration. Jarrett’s official title -- senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement -- doesn’t begin to do justice to her unrivaled status in the White House. She is Ground Zero in the Obama operation -- the first couple’s first friend and consigliere, the last person to leave the Oval Office after meetings, and the only White House official who dines with the first family in their private quarters at night. In the White House pecking order, Jarrett has more clout than the president’s chief of staff. During the savage internecine warfare between Jarrett and Obama’s first two chiefs of staff Obama sided most of the time with Jarrett, a classic limousine liberal who believes that Obama was elected president in order to engineer social change.
From Democracy to Sharia
Andrew C. McCarthy
A few weeks ago, amid the “Arab Spring” giddiness, a Shiite mosque opened in Cairo. This was big news. Among Egypt’s 80 million people, there are only a few thousand Shiites. It’s a 90 percent Sunni country, with even Christians vastly outnumbering the Shia. So, in their euphoria over the mosque’s inauguration, Shiite clerics heralded this Husseiniya (as Shiite mosques are known) as a symbol of rapprochement. The mosque would bridge the sectarian divide: a Shia center in this bustling Sunni city, yet a house of worship, thus emphasizing what unites rather than divides Muslims in one of Islam’s most important nations. Such stories were once the hallmark of the Arab Spring narrative. “Democracy” was in the air. The corrupt, cancerous, pro-American dictator was gone. With their yearning hearts now sated by freedom, Egyptians would pull together, the light of liberty guiding them to prosperity. The stories are different now.
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▪ Obama Jobs Council Has Private Equity Execs Despite Bain Attacks
▪ House Dems Want Colleges to Register Students for Same-Day Voting
▪ Pension Scammers Get to Avoid Prison, Keep Money Under Fed Amnesty
▪ Analysis: Wisconsin’s Act 10 Saving Taxpayers Big
▪ Significant Number of Fake Chinese Parts in US Military Gear
▪ No Vote on Law of the Sea Treaty Before Election
▪ Taliban Targets Afghan Girl’s School Poisoning 128
▪ Video: Pakistani doctor Who Fingered bin Laden Jailed for Treason
▪ DoJ Pressures University to Allow Man Access to Women’s Restrooms
▪ CBO: US Faces ‘Fiscal Cliff’ If Debt, Deficit & Tax Cuts Are Not Addressed Now
▪ Dems Balk at Obama Campaign’s Sustained Attack on Bain Capital
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Significant Number of Fake Chinese Parts in US Military Gear
NewsMax.com
Fake electronic parts are widespread in key US military systems and threaten national security, with China the top source for bogus gear, a US Senate investigation has concluded. The year-long probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee found counterfeit electronic parts from China in the Air Force's C-130J cargo plane, in assemblies for Special Operations helicopters and in the Navy's Poseidon surveillance plane, the panel said in its report released on Monday. The investigation found 1,800 incidents of bogus parts in the Department of Defense supply chain in 2009 and 2010. The total number of suspected fake parts in those cases topped 1 million, it said. The probe found that reporting into a Defense Department program set up to identify fake parts was "severely lacking."
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Egyptians Begin Voting in First Post-Mubarak Presidential Election
AP/FOX News
More than 15 months after Hosni Mubarak's ouster, Egyptians streamed to polling stations to freely choose a president for the first time in generations. Waiting hours in line, some debated to the last minute over their vote in a historic election pitting old regime figures against ascending Islamists. A sense of amazement at having a choice pervaded the crowds, along with fervent expectation over what direction a new leader will take a country that has been in turmoil ever since mass protests toppled the man who ruled for nearly 30 years. Some backed veterans of Mubarak's regime, believing they can bring stability after months of rising crime, a crumbling economy and bloody riots. Others were horrified by the thought, believing the "remnants" of the regime will keep Egypt locked under autocracy and thwart democracy
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Taliban Targets Afghan Girl’s School Poisoning 128
The London Daily Mail
At least 125 schoolgirls and three teachers have been poisoned in the second attack in as many months blamed on conservative radicals in the country's north, Afghan police and education officials said on Wednesday. The attack occurred in Takhar province where police said that radicals opposed to education of women and girls had used an unidentified toxic powder to contaminate the air in classrooms. Scores of students were left unconscious. Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), says the Taliban appear intent on closing schools ahead of a 2014 withdrawal by foreign combat troops. Afghanistan's Ministry of Education said last week that 550 schools in 11 provinces where the Taliban have strong support had been closed down by insurgents.
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Video: Pakistani doctor Who Fingered
bin Laden Jailed for Treason
FOX News
A Pakistani doctor who helped the US track down Usama bin Laden was sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday for conspiring against the state, officials said, a verdict that is likely to further strain the country's relationship with Washington. Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where US commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief last May in a unilateral raid. The operation outraged Pakistani officials, who portrayed it as an act of treachery by a supposed ally. Senior US officials have called for Afridi to be released, saying his work served Pakistani and American interests. But many Pakistani officials, especially those working for the country's powerful spy agency, do not see it that way.
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House Dems Want Colleges to Register Students for Same-Day Voting
CNS News
House Democrats introduced “comprehensive” voting rights legislation last week, which, among other things, would transform colleges into voter registration sites and allow for same-day registration. In response to the voter identification laws that have sprung up throughout the country, Rep. John Lewis (P-GA) introduced the “Voter Empowerment Act of 2012” (VEA) on May 17. The legislation (HR5799) seeks to broaden access to the polls and “address the unprecedented efforts to turn back the clock and erect barriers to voting,” a fact sheet says. Democrats are billing HR5799 as “comprehensive voting rights legislation.” The legislation comes after months of criticism from House Democrats against laws in over 30 states that require presenting a photo ID in order to vote.
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No Vote on Law of the Sea Treaty Before Election
The Hill
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee announced Wednesday he likely won't bring up the Law of the Sea Treaty for a vote before the November election. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said some lawmakers “on and off the committee” have candidly told him they'd “be more comfortable” if they could avoid having to cast the controversial vote during the campaign season. He made the announcement during a high-level hearing with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. Conservative Republicans say the treaty would undercut US sovereignty, force a redistribution of wealth and stand in for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change that would allow foreign countries to regulate US energy.
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Pension Scammers Get to Avoid Prison, Keep Money Under Fed Amnesty
The New York Daily News
Hundreds of Long Island Rail Road retirees who scammed lucrative disability pensions in a massive $1 billion ripoff can avoid prosecution and paying back their ill-gotten gains if they admit guilt under an innovative amnesty program, the feds said Tuesday. The amnesty offer was mailed out to more than 1,500 LIRR workers who were able to double-dip on their pensions after retiring early and submitting a bogus disability claim that was rubber-stamped by the federal Railroad Retirement Board. The offer came as federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed a new indictment charging 10 more LIRR retirees with boosting their regular pensions with fraudulent disability benefits. Under the program, those who cut a deal by July 6 won’t have to return any past disability benefits while those who wait until Aug. 10 will have to return 50%.
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Analysis: Wisconsin’s Act 10 Saving Taxpayers Big
The Wisconsin Reporter
While a lightning rod for controversy and recall, Wisconsin’s Act 10 has paid significant dividends to taxpayers, according to a new analysis by the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research, at Suffolk University in Boston. Act 10, which curbed collective bargaining for most unionized public employees, in the whole has saved taxpayers more than $1 billion, according to The Economic Impacts of the Wisconsin Budget Repair Act. The study is slated for release this week by Beacon Hill Institute, a prominent free market think tank. What the analysis found is that without the law, which in part requires covered public employees to contribute more to their benefits and holds wage increases to the rate of inflation, Badger State governments would have been forced to raise taxes or make deep job cuts to meet budget expenses.
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Obama Bundler’s Husband Received $1 Billion Plus in DoE Solar Loans
Washington Free Beacon
New disclosures show that one of President Obama’s bundlers is the wife of an executive at an energy company that received a more-than-$1.2 billion Department of Energy (DoE) loan guarantee for a solar power plant. Arvia Few is a bundler for the Obama re-election campaign who has promised to raise between $50,000 and $100,000. She began bundling for Obama in the first quarter of 2012. Her husband, Jason Few, is an executive at a company that has benefited handsomely from the Obama administration’s clean energy spending, records show. The US Department of Energy granted NRG Solar a $1.237-billion loan in September 2011 to help build NRG’s California Valley Solar Ranch, which is described as “a 250 MW alternating current PV solar generating facility” by the US Department of Energy.
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Disappointed in Obama, New Black Panthers Openly Consider ‘the Bullet’
The Daily Caller
The small but vocal New Black Panther Party is woefully disappointed in President Barack Obama, and is openly implying that the best way to reach its goals is no longer through “the ballot” but through “the bullet.” In the Spring edition of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) newspaper -- cover reading “The Ballot or The Bullet: which way for black people?” -- NBPP Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz breaks down the presidential election, concluding the Democrat Party is the “institutional pimp of Black peoples and the Black Nation” and that Obama has “been a real disappointment.” “Black peoples are the whores and prostitutes of the Democrat Party, and mistreated mistress that is courted in the late of night, but left hanging when it is time for real change in the light of the post election day,” Shabazz wrote.
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DoJ Pressures University to Allow Man Access to Women’s Restrooms
The Daily Caller
Despite opposition from female students, the University of Arkansas at Ft. Smith has decided on “advice of counsel” to allow a 38-year-old anatomically-male, transgendered student access to the women’s bathrooms on campus. According to a report from the conservative Campus Reform, the university decided to reverse its transgender policy after receiving a letter from the Department of Justice. The school’s initial solution was to allow the man to use gender-neutral bathrooms instead of the women’s restrooms, and to offer to convert more bathrooms into gender-neutral areas. “Because of the stance we took, the individual filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice,” Mark Horn, vice president of university relations, told Campus Reform.
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40 Catholic Dioceses & Organizations Sue Obama Administration
CNS News
The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations announced they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country."This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference. It is not about whether people have access to certain services," ," the archdiocese says on the website.
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InFocus The Progressive Movement and
the Transformation of American Politics
Progressivism was the reform movement that ran from the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, during which leading intellectuals and social reformers in the United States sought to address the economic, political, and cultural questions that had arisen in the context of the rapid changes brought with the Industrial Revolution and the growth of modern capitalism in America. The Progressives believed that these changes marked the end of the old order and required the creation of a new order appropriate for the new industrial age. While the Progressives differed in their assessment of the problems and how to resolve them, they generally shared in common the view that government at every level must be actively involved in these reforms.
The Briefing Updated May 21, 2012
The Syrian Civil War continues spreading into new areas of Lebanon. Inside Syria there is no cease-fire. There is less and less effort by both sides to the conflict to insure the safety of the UN Monitors. As the warring sides get more and more accustomed to the presence of the UN Monitors, the Monitors’ presence is having less and less of an effect. Arab countries opposed to an impending Pact between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have branded the alliance a “US-Zionist backed plot.” The Prime Minister of the Hamas terrorist organization has reiterated that “We will never recognize Israel.” Meanwhile, the Fatah (Palestinian Authority) -- Hamas “Unity Agreement” is moving forward. A general election for a national legislative body is to take place in 6 months.
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