BREAKING NEWS: U.S. soldiers arrested ‘with explosives’ in plot to attack Fort Hood
Police have arrested an AWOL soldier plotting another attack on Fort Hood, it was reported today.
Killeen Police Department have arrested Pvt. Nasser Jason Abdo near Ft. Hood, Fox news have reported.
Quotes of the Day:
“It’s bad enough that you have the entire leftist establishment and Democrat Party leadership likening the Tea Party activists, grass-roots, dedicated fiscal conservatives out there who’ve been holding both party’s feet to the fire, and then having them smeared as terrorists and hostage-takers and people who are pointing the gun to the head of America. Look, it’s Washington that has pointed a gun to the head, not just of taxpayers but of future generations. That’s what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting on principle and there are elites in Washington that would rather have us, as they have always had us do, sit down and shut up. No more!”-Michelle Malkin to DC: We will not sit down and shut up! No more!
“David likes the crease in Obama’s diaper…”-Commenter jon1979 commenting on this story By acting like a baby, Obama forced Congress to grow up
Must Reads of the Day:
We can no longer afford the liberal philosophy of redistribution. Hanson concludes that there “…is a certain brutal honesty about this debt crisis. It is slowly beginning to force us to see the world in the tragic way it is, rather than in the therapeutic way we dream it must be.”
But as Greece showed us — and the public sector battle in Wisconsin hinted at — civil unrest could be on the horizon rather than a becalmed expiation of liberals’ sins.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.
Since receiving this notification I have confirmed with secondary sources the accuracy of the details. It should also be noted that White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley was not in attendance at this meeting. It is my understanding he has been personally communicating with both Democrat and Republican leaders on the debt ceiling issue – but doing so without the presence of either President Obama or Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett. Also informed his ongoing private meetings with Congressional leaders involves other topics “more significant” than the debt ceiling debate. Am attempting to follow up further on this though I have my suspicions on what those topics would be.
This is getting frightening.
Bush was supposed to usher in the dark night of Fascism according to the Left in the MSM, entertainment and academia. Today, because Obama has to deal with a fractious Republican party, many of whom were elected specifically to rein in government spending and regulation, there is a serious call for an Obama dictatorship … by these same people.
When a whole society is stressed by more change than it knows what to do with, the Dark Side gets crowded. People flip out in sects and groups rather than one by one. We see that in many Muslim countries today where the appeal of terrorists is strengthened by a pervasive sense of social frustration. Sometimes whole countries and whole nationalities flip. We saw it in the Bolshevik madness in Russia, the Fascist epidemic that swept Europe in the 1920s and 1930s; we saw it in Iran in 1979. The Serbs and the Hutus went over the edge in the 1990s.
Artwork of the Day: The Prince of America
Japan and the softly glowing world…
- BBC
- NHK in English(Live feed in upper right corner)
- Telegraph of London
- Kyodo Wire
- Japan Times
- Asahi Shimbun
- The Daily Yomuri
- Japan Today
- ImTranslator – Online Translator, Dictionary, TTS add on for Firefox (It comes in handy)
- Japanese government list of nationwide radioactivity concentration
- Japan Geigermap
- Ibaraki Prefecture Geiger Counter Readings
- US National Radiation Map (updated every minute)
- Via Soylent Green: Radiation Exposure in Daily Life
- Radiation Dose Chart
- Radiation Converter
- ZeroHedge commenter Max2205′s excellent post about radioactivity including a list of radioactive elements and their half lives.
- Donations to the American Red Cross that are being designated to Japanese Earthquake relief are already getting to the folks in Japan and are most helpful.
Reactor No.3 requiring more water than No. 1 and 2 because of leaks and “other problems”
Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Robot “Quince” Video Inside Reactor 3
According to tweets by a worker at Fukushima I Nuke Plant, TEPCO seems quickly running out of workers with low enough cumulative radiation, as the work these days has to be done inside the reactor buildings with very high radiation. He says TEPCO and the government are not involved in hiring of the workers at all, and it is left to the subcontractors to find workers. But they are having a hard time finding workers willing to work in an environment where they will reach the annual radiation limit in 2 weeks (I hope he’s not talking about 250 millisieverts/year emergency limit) for an increasingly lower pay as the middlemen take cuts.
He seems to have been doing the indoor work himself, carrying equipment, pipes and lead shields up the stairs in the reactor building (Reactor 4, probably).
Document: 1600 Fukushima Workers Thought to Be Exposed to High Radiation
60 Becquerels/Kg Cesium from Eggs in Fukushima (Video-clip added)
From TV Asahi’s “Hodo Station” on July 26, in the segment that discusses the lifetime limit of 100 millisieverts radiation.
A chicken farmer in Kawamata-machi in Fukushima Prefecture has brought his eggs to a volunteer testing station in Fukushima City. After 20 minutes of testing, 60 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium is detected from the eggs.
Radioactive Compost Has Already Spread Wide
From the press release by Akita prefectural government on July 25:
A resident in Akita Prefecture alerted the authorities when the bag of leaf compost that he purchased from a local garden/home center measured high in radiation with his portable survey meter. The authorities tested the content of the bag, and it had 11,000 becquerels/kg of cesium.
Radiation in Japan: How the Brainwashing Was Done in Fukushima
An article appeared in the local (Ishikawa Prefecture) version of Mainichi Shinbun on July 25. The article was about the anti-nuke demonstration in Kanazawa City in Ishikawa on July 24, and it contained this passage:
Among the participants was Mr. Takumi Aizawa, a school worker at Kusano Elementary School in Iitate-mura in Fukushima Prefecture, which has been designated as “planned evacuation zone” by the national government. Mr. Aizawa told the demonstrators, “After the earthquake there was no information. Then a university professor sent by the government came to the village and said, “You can eat vegetables harvested in the village if you wash them”. Children, who had been evacuated, then started to come back [on that reassuring word] and they got irradiated.”
What? And who was this professor? I suspected Dr. “100 millisieverts” Yamashita, but it turned out to be his younger sidekick, Dr. Noboru Takamura of Nagasaki University. The powerful duo was all over Fukushima Prefecture in March and early April, preaching “safety” of radiation and radioactive fallout to the worried residents of Fukushima as the official radiation advisors for the prefecture.
World News:
Gold Near Record USD And EUR High – Eurozone Debt And U.S. Default Risks Global Financial Contagion
Step Aside UniCredit And Italy: The US Is Number One… In Monthly Spike Of Default Bets
S&P Downgrades Greece To CC From CCC, Expects Recovery Of 30-50% By Principal Bondholders
The global imbalances continue to grow and the reactions to those imbalances is nothing short of madness.
How the mighty have fallen. Ten years ago the NZ dollar was worth 49¢US. Fortunately for the Kiwis they have adults running their government who understand that what the US is doing is stupid and they aren’t going there….NZ dollar headed for parity with US
But exporters want the Reserve Bank Governor to use his powers and pump the market with NZD to lower the price.
“I would look to the Reserve Bank to act, because the pain level is now extreme,” says NZ Manufacturers and Exporters Association spokesman John Walley.
Yet Reserve Bank intervention rarely happens and, right now, most believe it would be overpowered by global forces.
“We’d be printing Kiwi dollars,” says economist Gareth Morgan. “We can print as many of those as we like to get the price of them down, but as soon as you start doing that you fuel inflation at home which is also an issue for us – so we’re a bit unbalanced.”
Mr Morgan says New Zealand must ride it out and shop while we can.
Norway’s Ambassador to Israel Defends Palestinian Terror After Oslo Massacre
We’re living through a revolutionary moment, all over the world. The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed. No wonder chaos disrupts orderly thought, and mythology replaces common sense.
He’d fit right in with the Islamofascists…BREIVIK WAS A GYNOPHOBE – (he hated women and feared equal rights)
Lockerbie Bomber Miraculously Still Alive: ‘Sending Him Home Was a Disastrous Policy’
So how’s that decision to release the Lockerbie bomber on “compassionate” grounds nearly two years ago working out? Let’s put it this way: He’s a couple years past his supposed expiration date and still ticking.
The Lockerbie bomber has been paraded on Libyan TV almost two years after his release from a UK prison because he was dying of cancer.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, 59, has been feted as a hero in his home country since he was released from jail in 2009 ‘on compassionate grounds’.
Muhammad Cartoon Comes To Life… Suicide Bomber Hides Bomb In Turban
A Muslim suicide bomber blew up the mayor of Kandahar City today. He hid the bomb in his turban.
Not surprising. They know they can do anything they want now that Obama is kissing their a$$es…Taliban Attacking More Children
1200 Babies Killed and Dumped on The Streets of Karachi in a Year
It’s a story that would make the must ardent horror fan shudder, over the last year alone over 1200 newborn baby girls have been killed and dumped on rubbish dumps on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan.
News network CNN sent reporter Reza Sayah into Karachi to look at the situation that by aid workers own words is getting out of hand.
Anwar Kazmi of Edhi Foundation told Sayah “ Sometimes they are hanged, sometimes they are killed by knife, and sometimes we find bodies that have been burned”.
9 out of 10 bodies found are baby girls, disposed of by families because they are illegitimate, conceived out of wedlock. In a country where women are not allowed to work, girls are deemed as a drain on the countries resources. Many of the babies have been dismembered, burned, or even mutilated by animals before being discovered in large dump areas often in the middle of busy shopping areas.
China’s High Speed Rail System Has First Major Accident
We don’t know that this accident was caused by China’s autocratic political system; even the best-run systems do occasionally have accidents. But what’s emerging from behind the shiny pictures of whizzy trains and smiling engineers is a story of overreach, corruption, and possibly disastrous construction shortcuts. We should not lament the fact that we couldn’t do anything like this here.
South Korea landslides leave 19 dead, 1 missing
Venezuela Foreign Minister Now Mouthing Democrat Talking Points
You suppose this clown is sitting in on conference calls with Chuckie Schumer and Dingy Harry?
The Debt Ceiling/Budget Kabuki Theatre:
The Obama Regime is getting really, really desperate! Stuff like this and sh*tstorm of hateful, nasty crap coming out of Democrats like Reid, Franken, Wasserman-Schultz and RINO’s like McCain is a sure sign that they know they are losing the debate and fear that they will lose everything else. The question I wonder about is whose Christmas are they worried about being ruined? It must be their own because the policies of the Obama regime and their enablers have already ruined Christmas for the millions who are out of work, who have lost all their savings trying to keep afloat thanks to the declining value of the dollar and increased costs and taxes thanks to Obama’s policies, etc. I guess those people don’t matter because they are just peasants “Hobbits” according to the WSJ and John McCain. GOP aims to gut Christmas, White House alleges
This Time The Debt Ceiling Hike Really Is Different
Yes, indeed it is. While everyone and their grandmother is foaming at the mouth how both republicans and democrats hiked the debt ceiling for umpteen times over the past x years, the truth is that never before has the ratio of the proposed debt ceiling to the tax receipt ratio been as high as it is now. At nearly 6 times, this means that the top line (forget bottom line) cash inflows into the Treasury are 6 times lower than the current debt ceiling. And following the upcoming $2.5 trillion this number will surge to almost 8 times. So please ignore the next “pundit” who is complaining about the hypocrisy of not agreeing to an outright debt ceiling hike this time around – as usual they have no idea what they are talking about.
The following two articles point out a simple fact that often gets lost. The situation that we find ourselves in truly began when the Democrats took over the House and Senate in 2007, that is when the embers of the fire were awoken and fed the fuel of out of control “we still have checks left so we still must have money’ spending so it would start burning. The election of of Obama was the equivalent of tossing a tanker truck full of gasoline on the fire that the Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid controlled legislative branch had already whipped up.
2008 was the time to put the fire out before it got out of control. Now, thanks to the 53% who voted for Hope and Change™, it is a raging wildfire that may be impossible to stop from consuming everything before it runs out of fuel.
The chart also responds implicitly to some recent Democratic Party talking points. The Democrats like to point out that the ceiling was raised 18 times during the Reagan administration. That’s right, an average of about once every six months. In other words, those increases were small and highly temporary, as you can see from the chart. It is also noteworthy that the total increase in the debt ceiling during the Reagan years was almost exactly equal to the increase in the debt ceiling during the Clinton administration. Neither, however, is in the same universe with the spiraling debt the Democrats have racked up since they took control of Congress in 2007.
Just think, in 2007 the national deficit was $162 billion.
That was before Barack Obama tripled the deficit in a year.
How Obama Caused The Debt, Downgrade Crisis
Obama’s economic policies, ObamaCare and business’s heightened concerns over more and more regulation, especially as long as Obama is in the White House, are stifling economic growth. That, combined with his tremendous, irresponsible domestic spending, has debt trending on a course to equal and potentially surpass GDP.
Any homeowner can appreciate what’s going on. A responsible lender will not allow you to accrue too much debt in proportion to your potential income. Obama’s economic philosophy is driving him to want tax increases to increase revenue to keep pace with spending.
Free market capitalists realize that when you tax and/or over-regulate economic activity, you prohibit growth. Combined, Obama’s political and economic philosophy is a disaster for America. Both aspects negatively impact the two critical trend lines: debt and GDP.
This, in a nutshell, is what the average American and voter needs to understand to appreciate precisely how disastrous the Obama administration has been and will continue to be if we hope to once again enjoy an economically robust America with the capacity to both maintain and raise our standard of living.
The only other option, one Obama clearly prefers, is one in which everyone and everything below a more or less locked in elitist establishment is provided for and dictated to by said establishment. It, not one’s efforts, would determine who gets what and when. What Obama is in the process of destroying has traditionally been called the American Dream. As long as he remains in office and Democrats now so beholden to the far Left remain in power, we will continue to experience this nightmare.
One shouldn’t be surprised by this. Obama and the Democrats have shown that they have all the financial and economic understanding of a spoiled rotten 13 year old brat at the mall with their parents credit card. They have no understanding that the stuff they buy has to be paid for and if it isn’t their credit card is declined. When that happens the 13 year old does not understand the situation, they just screech, stomp their feet and throw a temper tantrum because mommy and daddy won’t call the credit card company and raise the credit limit on their card so they can go and buy more stupid junk…Obama tosses away 222 years of good credit
The buck stops at the White House. Democrats could have resolved this in December when they still owned Congress and could have passed a budget — with a debt ceiling increase and taxes on the rich — with a simple majority in the Senate (no filibuster allowed under the Byrd Budget Act of 1974).
Only a fool would risk our credit rating for political Brownie points.
Meet Barack Obama.
He has no deficit plan.
The downgrade hysteria is reaching fever pitch as the House holds hearingsthis morning featuring the big credit ratings agencies.
It’s been aggravating to hear Republicans join Democrats on this fear-mongering meme — holding America hostage to the whims and determinations of credit agencies that made abysmally wrong-headed judgments about the subprime meltdown.
Since when did politicians pledge allegiance to S&P’s and Moody’s? And since when is it Washington’s job to avert overdue credit downgrades based on decades of profligate policies?
Rush is right…The Rating Agencies Play Politics
Now, we noted this last week: Standard & Poor’s is regulated by Congress, particularly the Senate. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, the new financial regulatory reform bill, the federal government regulates S&P — particularly the Senate, the Senate Banking Committee. So if you’re S&P and you don’t want these guys (snorts) up various orifices of yours, what are you gonna do? You gonna say what they want to hear. Which in this case is Harry Reid’s plan cuts spending! What an insult. What an absolute joke! There is no Democrat plan. There’s no Democrat organism, there’s not a Democrat cell, there’s not a Democrat atom, there’s not a Democrat neutrino.
August 2 Won’t Happen On August 2
As previously noted, the real deadline seems to be August 9 or 10. As best I can tell with my searches,the Times has still not addressed Obama’s fear-mongering about Social Security checks on August 2. Have they, too, forgotten about the trust fund? And don’t Upper West Siders have moms and grannies, too? Surely even reliable liberals are worried that granny might not get her check.
The Times treatment of the Social Security angle is almost puzzling. Social Security is an iconic Democratic program with plenty of statutory funding room provided by the trust fund. It would take a willful President and Treasury Secretary to fail to get those checks out, and I am sure that if this were a Republican President holding granny hostage, the Times would be screaming about his (her?) defiance of the Social Security legal framework and clear Congressional intent.
But since its Obama, holding granny hostage is nothing to mention. What is it with Obama and grannies, anyway?
NYT discovers “drop-dead date” more like “get dizzy date”
The irony here is that the administration Social Security funding is supposed to be self-sufficient. The White House claimed that including Social Security in deficit reform was illegitimate since Social Security had its own revenue stream, and supposedly its own lockbox. Unfortunately, that lockbox consists entirely of the same Treasury bonds that will push the US into default if interest payments aren’t met, and since the SSA is now running in the red, it has to start cashing some of those bonds to make the payments. Treasury has to borrow money to pay off those bonds, which is why (a) this is a real problem in the current acute crisis, and (b) Social Security is far less secure than the White House and Democrats have led voters to believe.
Boehner v Reid Proposals: A Compare And Contrast Cheat Sheet
Plans are dangerous because someone might scrutinize them. Someone might point out that Social Security was enacted in 1935, when life expectancy was 61.7 (It is now 77.9 and increasing), and, if it isn’t overhauled, it’s finished. No, you better stay away from these plans. Better to have vague theories and pronouncements. (No, I’m not going to say “hope and change,” but you know I was about to.)
All is not lost, however, in this most unPanglossian world. When you are finally able to shake free of liberal-statist ideas or, as Miniter explains, are forced to abandon them because the state itself is broke (not yet Greece, but close enough), you get a tremendous bonus: the pleasure of self-reliance.
When finally free from the bromides of their ultra-bourgeois ideology, even liberals realize you feel better when you do things for yourself. Most of us know from our own families and friends that the happiest people are those who have made their own way, not those who have had life handed to them, either by inheritance or from the state.
Obama Threatens to Veto Boehner Plan That Would Force Another Debt Vote Next Year
Rush is right…The Country Finally Can See the Obama We’ve Always Known
It’s only taken two years, and, what, seven months. Heck, longer than that. I mean I saw it back during the campaign. I’m talking about who Obama really is, this petulant, self-absorbed, egoistic little man-child. Even David Brooks is disappointed. He still likes the substance, but he can’t believe how childish Obama’s acting. Do you remember, folks, there was a book out there, you women will remember this. There’s a book out there, I don’t know, some years ago. I think it was written by a guy. It might have been written by a woman, I’m not sure. The book was He’s Just Not That Into You. Oh, yeah. Now all the women are nodding their heads. Oh, yeah. It was basically a how-to book for women to understand, “Look, the guy is not playing games. If he doesn’t call you back, it’s ’cause he’s not that into you.” (interruption) What do you mean it was a terrible book? Oh, it exposes secrets women should know nothing about? See, Snerdley, you think you’re a female expert. What you don’t know is that women know all the secrets anyway. They don’t need to be told what the secrets are.
The book didn’t reveal any secrets; it just depressed ‘em because it confirmed that they were right in what they were assuming, and they were hoping that… you know, hope really is an effort to prove to yourself that you’re wrong when you know you’re right. That’s what hope is. I’m not talking about the biblical sense, of course, or definition. And I think it’s starting to become obvious now that we’re just not that into Obama and he needs to read the book. All of these speeches and it’s counterproductive. I think the reaction to the Bamster is, “Hey, dude, we’re just not that into you.” In fact, this is not even a “think”; I mean we “know” this. You go back and you compare the messianic idolatry people had for the guy during the campaign and the acceptance speech at Grant Park compared to now, and it’s absolutely true.
We have an increasingly tedious and ineffective president who cannot even scare the stock market.
Pathetic.
Being a dictator is a relatively easy job. Even junior tyrants like Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong Il can do it. All a dictator needs to be effective is the ability to instill fear. An effective democratic leader needs to be able to command respect.
Obama has a problem commanding the respect of his adversaries. Immediately after his address to the nation last night, Speaker John Boehnerwent on TV with a response. Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier reported that apart from the State of the Union, it was the first such response from the opposing party to a presidential address since 2007, when George W. Bush gave a speech on Iraq.
And Boehner mocked Obama’s rhetoric: “The president has often said we need a ‘balanced’ approach–which in Washington means we spend more, you pay more.” One might observe that the partisan sniping was mutual. But the president is the higher-status player. He diminishes himself by punching down.
The phones lines are busy today because conservatives are winning the debate. But don’t tell the liberal media. You wouldn’t want to wake them up from their latest Obama fantasy.
Eric Cantor Rips Obama: “Stop Your Policies That Are Wrecking the American Economy!” (Video)
“Stop your policies in Washington that are wrecking the American economy… We know the spending is the problem here. Let’s focus on that and not try to score political points and not worry about the election for the presidential campaign… He believes that government is in place to promulgate rules and regulations to somehow settle scores.”
Rush is right…Baseline Budgeting and DC Culture
Now, those of you who have been regular listeners to this program since the mid-nineties, you probably remember what my explanation of baseline budgeting was, or is. Here is the dirty little secret: Because Obama got his Porkulus, and because we did TARP, the “baseline” on which all these so-called cuts are measured has gone way up. So essentially the baseline that is being used here is a baseline that is established after $9 trillion of new spending. We’re gonna cut $1.2 trillion from $9 trillion in new spending. We’re still left with a new spending of seven-point-some-odd trillion.
The Debt Mountain Labored and Brought Forth a Mouse
If the CBO’s scoring is correct — that it reduces the 2012 deficit by just $1 billion — then the ”cut” represents what the United States borrows every five hours and 20 minutes. In other words, in the time it takes to photocopy and distribute Boehner’s “plan,” the savings have all been borrowed back.
All 53 Senate Dems sign letter to Boehner: Your bill will never pass
We now have only five days left to act. The entire world is watching Congress. We need to do the right thing to solve this problem. We must work together to avoid a default the responsible way – not in a way that will do America more harm than good.
So that’s how this story ends. With the party of endless spending and entitlements unto death lecturing fiscal conservatives on how they’re leading the country into a credit downgrade. Perfecto.
Boehner Grounds into a Double Play
I would remind you that extremism in defense of solvency is no vice
My headline here obviously borrows from Barry Goldwater’s infamous line that “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” A better precedent might be to that singular moment when Churchill faced down the appeasers in the war cabinet on May 28, 1940, not yet three weeks into his premiership. Scott has drawn attention to this moment on Power Line a couple times over the years, but it is worth noting once again in our present circumstances. When Lord Halifax and a handful of other influential members of the war cabinet were building support to seek peace terms with Hitler through the Italians, Churchill reminded them that “nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished.” The same may be said for the Republican Party today; if it surrenders to Obama, it may as well pack it in for good.
Churchill concluded his statement to the cabinet that day with these words: “If our long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” For Churchill, it wasn’t a matter of keeping office; life itself wasn’t worth living if the struggle wasn’t won. It was a huge risk on Churchill’s part. But it was the only noble course. It is not possible to guarantee victory, Churchill said at other times; it is only possible to deserve it. For Republicans at this moment, it ought not to be worth keeping office if they surrender.
Krauthammer: Boehner plan is do or die
I honestly felt more hopeful when Boehner decided that he couldn’t work with our Jello President and cut him out of the talks. But then all we came up with was a deal that cuts a trillion over 10 years and shovels any other cuts to a committee that probably won’t agree to cut anything, all the while Obama gets his debt limit raise and we keep spending ourselves into oblivion with an ever growing baseline. This isn’t fighting and it’s not holding the line. It’s caving to Democrat rhetoric and I just can’t support it.
But Krauthammer believes that we must accept this deal or we lose. Sometimes I wonder if he’s lost hope in the American people, that maybe he doesn’t hear anymore inside the DC bubble the cries of the American people who voted in Nov. 2010. But we are still here and we are awake. And we will win in 2012 and send the Democrats packing.
It’s time for Washington to quit fearing bad press and Democrat rhetoric and begin fearing the American people’s wrath if they continue to allow this country to be run into bankruptcy. We will replace you if you can’t stand up for us.
In Which Bill Kristol Decides To Play The Fool. Again.
Kristol wants to cut a deal because . . . well . . . because he likes sucking up to Republican leaders first of all. But also because in his cowardly abandon he cannot perceive how holding the line can force the Democrats to produce a better deal.
So this is the deal Bill Kristol wants — from a staffer on Capitol Hill who attended the briefings:
- Fake caps that future Congresses can waive.
- $1 billion in actual cuts.
- A super committee with the power to raise taxes with virtually no way to stop it.
- Eradication of the Bush tax cuts (Boehner’s plan is premised on them going away)
This is not a plan any conservative should support. It really is fascinating how conservative groups are making passionate arguments for holding the line and people like Kristol are resorting to name calling.
Hundreds of Tea Partiers Gather to Support Speaker Boehner in Ohio
Hundreds of tea party protesters came out yesterday to support Speaker John Boehner in Ohio. The local leader Andrew Pappas told the media the rally was to let Boehner know fiscal conservatives locally and across the region are backing him fully during the high stakes debt negotiations.
HARRY REID: Tea Partiers Are Not Real Americans
That is because he and Obama don’t have one…Dem lawmaker: ‘Nobody I know’ has seen Reid plan
‘Welcome Terrorists:’ Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) Explores the New Civility
Unmitigated Arrogance And Gall On Display
Shame on you, Senator. You are part of the greatest deliberative body in the world, and rather than making your case and persuading your colleagues (and the American Public), instead you belittle and insult your colleagues who stand firm on doing what they were sent there to do, which was stop the madness.
Instead you give us the same arrogant condescension that we despise from the Democrats. “We know better than you. Shut up and do what you’re told.”
I think someone’s been in D.C. long enough.
Obama and the Democrats love to talk about ‘shared sacrifice’ and ‘having skin in the game’ yet do not demand that the 40+% of the population who pays no taxes and receives the most in government benefits and handouts ‘share the sacrifice’ or ‘put some of their skin in the game’…
So the president wants “millionaires and billionaires” to “share in the sacrifice everyone else has to make.” Right. A couple of points: by “millionaires and billionaires” he means middle-class folks with a family income of $250,000 or above. By “sacrifice everyone else has to make” he means everyone except the 43.4 percent of tax filers who pay no federal income tax— many of whom, in fact, get a check from the government, i.e., from the other 50-odd percent who do pay federal income tax. (Remember this: the government has no money of its own: what money it disperses it gets from individuals and businesses.)
A “sacrifice everyone else has to make.” That sounds nice. What do you suppose it means? And what sacrifice do you suppose the president himself is making? Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t he figure out how much it actually costs to run the White House and then indulge in a little shared sacrifice by cutting (say) 20 percent. And why doesn’t he order his cabinet to make similar “shared sacrifices” in their own departments?
I know, I know: don’t hold your breath on that.
Nancy Pelosi has said that Democratic lawmakers “will not make working families and the middle class sacrifice without also calling on everyone to contribute their fair share.” Indeed, it seems that the president and the Democrats are determined to insure that the now 50 percent or so of Americans who do not pay income tax are able to maintain this privileged status, even as some of them (along with some richer Americans) will be forced to bear—largely in the future of course—some reduction in the benefits that they receive, especially from the big three programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
We are freaking broke. Why are we spending money on crap like this?
The U.N.’s Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) is simple in theory. It aims to prevent developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America from cutting down parts of their forests. Since forests store carbon, the thinking goes, stopping rapidly growing nations from felling trees will limit carbon emissions.
The REDD solution is to pay developing countries not to cut down their trees. It’s a kind of global welfare system with transfer payments from the wealthy, developed North – in particular the U.S., Europe, and Japan — to the underdeveloped South.
“With the ground-breaking on the African American Museum currently scheduled for the summer of 2012, underfunding it now, at this critical juncture, could generate substantial delays and ultimately cost tax-payers significantly more,” he added.
Canceling it entirely would save us even more. Has he even considered that?
It’s time to cut spending. Period.
US News:
Land of the Six Dams News and Info sources:
- KELO-Sioux Falls, SD
- KFYR-Bismarck, ND
- KCAU-Sioux City, IA
- KETV-Omaha, NE
- Say Anything
- Plains Daily
- “Land of the Six Dams” flood gage status interactive map.
Are you better off today than you were in January 2009?
Very few Americans find themselves able to answer “yes”, at least at this point.
Gold New Record Nominal Highs ($1,625.70) As CDS Traders Start Positioning For U.S. Downgrade(s)
Everything Not Nailed Down Getting Sold
The market has finally realized that “this” is getting real. As of the open everything, including USTs, has been sold off aggressively. Well, except for gold of course, but we all knew that. Gold just hit a new all time record above $1628.
Nomura: US Downgrade May Cause Repo Market Liquidity Freeze
Tired of all the lies that a US downgrade will have no impact whatsoever on unsecured funding be it money markets, repo or so many other shadow banking system components (full list is below)? So are we. Which is why we were very interested to read the following summary of a Nomura research report that a US downgrade “may cause a repo liquidity freeze.” Remember the Ice-9 in money markets following Lehman? Well, it may not be quite as big as money markets (last at $2.7 trillion), but at $1.3 trillion, frozen Repos will certainly cause a lot of headaches, especially with a dramatic scarcity of short-term Bills available in the market place for replacement capital flow. For all those wondering why the Fed and the BIS have been writing paper after paper (here, here and here) warning about the potential complications arising from the shadow banking system, this is precisely the reason.
Durable goods order slump 2.1% in June
The bigger concern isn’t a “soft patch,” it’s a new recession. On Friday, Commerce will report the preliminary GDP growth rate for the second quarter. With the durable-goods orders series in Q2 at -2.5%, 1.9%, and -2.1%, there is a very good chance that the Friday number will be negative, the first negative quarter since 2009Q2. It almost certainly won’t match last quarter’s anemic 1.9%.
When the number comes in on Friday, expect Reuters to include “unexpectedly” in the report.
Did Obama Give the Nod to the SEIU/ACORN Economic Pressure Campaign Against Wall Street?
Does President Obama approve of the SEIU/ACORN-led economic terrorism campaign that is now directed at JPMorgan Chase?
It seems like a reasonable question to ask. SEIU is President Obama’s favorite union and ACORN is his favorite community organizing outfit.
The campaign, engineered by SEIU board member Stephen Lerner, is designed, in Lerner’s words, “to disrupt and create uncertainty for capital, for how corporations operate … there are actually extraordinary things that we could do right now that would start to destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”
According to White House visitor logs, “Stephen Lerner” paid four visits to the Obama White House. On two of those visits he apparently met with then-White House political director Patrick Gaspard, a former executive vice president at the militant SEIU Local 1199. Gaspard, a longtime ACORN operative and Alinskyite, is now executive director of the DNC where he oversees the odious Organizing for America project.
I wonder what they talked about. Hmmmm.
Delta to Cut More Flights as Net Drops 58%
Leave it to a freaking HARVARD GRADUATE with absolutely no background in business, engineering, finance, or any other pursuit that doesn’t involve EXTORTION to try and revive the freaking Trabant. Believe me, folks — all of the “gifted” oration in the world couldn’t sell that POS, so whatever these environmentalist nutjobs that pull TOTUS’ strings think they can sell to the American people, will absolutely fail.
The Unhappy Meal makeover; Photoshop contest call!
They won’t rest until the Happy Meal has undergone the total Berkeley makeover.
Next up: Goodbye, hamburgers. Hello, tofu burgers.
Goodbye, fruit juice boxes. Hello, kale/wheatgrass boxes.
I’m running out to Sonic before right now before they get their grubby Nanny State hands on my cheesy tots and cherry limeade.
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Okay, all my wonderful Photoshop friends and readers. I know you can come up with better designs than mine. Send me your best Unhappy Meal makeover images and I’ll post the best! Winner of the contest gets a Sonic gift card.
One in eight small businesses get insurance cancellations after ObamaCare passage
Still, the core question involves events that have already transpired, which is either cancellations or notices of cancellations from insurers. If
1412% of the sample reported those outcomes, that means that 90 businesses have been either cut off or warned of cutoffs on their existing plans, with an impact averaging somewhere around 4500 employees. That’s a significant result, especially given the “you can keep your health-care plan” rhetoric coming from the White House while urging passage of ObamaCare.It also demonstrates one reason why businesses aren’t enthusiastic about expansion. Under these circumstances, businesses can’t price the costs of their existing staffs, let alone additions to them through capital investment and expansion. When risk can’t be quantified with some degree of certainty, then risk simply isn’t taken — and we get the stagnation we’ve seen for the last two years.
Open Borders Far Left Rep. Luis Gutierrez Arrested Again Outside White House (Video)
It wasn’t the first timethis nut was arrested in Washington DC.
Democrats must be very proud.
You really can’t blame Nancy. This kind of stuff is considered normal behavior in San Francisco…The Creepy Enablers of Wu
This is as much a scandal for Pelosi and her failed leadership as it is a scandal for Wu. We’re talking about the same proud feminist leadership and the same dysfunctional ethics panel that have dragged their feet on cleaning Capitol Hill’s mountain of other dirty laundry while providing cover to other predatory Dems:
They slapped New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel on the wrist for serial tax-cheating.
They have yet to bring California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters to trial after charging her last year with three violations related to her crony TARP bailout intervention on behalf of minority-owned OneUnited Bank in Los Angeles.
They are just now looking into former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner’s possible abuse of government resources while sending lurid messages and photos to young women across the country.
And they have only recently reauthorized a probe into the aftermath of allegations that former New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa sexually harassed several young male staffers.
In that case, you’ll recall that Pelosi’s office and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank’s office had both been told by Massa’s top aides of the out-of-control abuse of underlings — but said and did nothing for months.
Wu’s a creep. But the pattern of malign neglect on the part of his Washington enablers is even creepier.
Polls Show That If Election Were Held Today… Barack Obama Would Lose in a Landslide
The race for president isn’t a national contest. It’s a state-by-state battle to cobble an electoral vote majority. So while the national polls are useful in gauging the president’s popularity, the more instructive numbers are those from the battlegrounds.
Those polls are even more ominous for the president: In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past month, Obama’s support is weak. In most of them, he trails Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama can’t turn around his fortunes in states such as Michigan and New Hampshire, next year’s presidential election could end up being a GOP landslide.
Gunwalker/Fast & Furious/Castaway
Fish stinks from the head…You don’t have this kind of interagency involvement without the person in the Oval Office knowing about it and approving it, too: VIDEO: ATF agent who implemented ‘Fast and Furious’ says 4 federal agencies were ‘full partners’
Four federal agencies were “full partners” in the Obama administration’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed guns to wind up in the hands of Mexican drug lords, the man who implemented the program revealed today at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
William Newell, the former head of the Phoenix field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was pressed by Rep. Pat Meehan, R-Penn. to identify all the federal agencies involved in the operation.
In response, Newell identified the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service as “full partners” with the ATF.
The DEA and ATF are both part of the Department of Justice and ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The stinking head is starting to show….ATF Phoenix Manager shared Fast and Furious Info with White House
ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell was squirming on the hot seat in Tuesday’s Fast and Furious hearing on Capitol Hill. As CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson reports, Newell admitted to corresponding with White House National Security Director, Kevin O’Reilly:
At a lengthy hearing on ATF’s controversial gunwalking operation today, a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010. The communications were between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, and White House National Security Director for North America Kevin O’Reilly. Newell said the two are longtime friends. The content of what Newell shared with O’Reilly is unclear and wasn’t fully explored at the hearing. It’s the first time anyone has publicly stated that a White House official had any familiarity with ATF’s operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of weapons to fall into the hands of suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to gain intelligence.
Issa Hopes White House Official Aware of Fast and Furious Will Testify
The lies, the intimidation of witnesses, the administration denials — all are part of a cover-up strongly reminiscent of Watergate except for one thing: Nobody died at Watergate.
In the fall of 2009, American officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who were stationed in Mexico started noticing a sharp spike in the number of guns heading into the country. But what made things especially strange was that many of them were being traced back to the ATF’s own field office in Phoenix.
Over the next year, ATF’s Mexico-based officials raised louder and louder alarms all the way to Washington, as the number of guns flooding into Mexico grew from the hundreds into the thousands, and even more disturbingly, a number of them flowed into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
During this time, the United States representatives in Mexico were kept completely in the dark about the so-called “investigation.” Little did they know that the surge in guns heading into Mexico was no accident, but part of an elaborate but ill-conceived effort by the Obama administration to allow front men to purchase guns in Arizona and sell them to smugglers, in the hopes that it would eventually lead U.S. law enforcement officials to Mexican drug cartels.
From at least early 2010, their superiors assured the ATF officials in Mexico that everything was “under control” and that that the investigation would soon end. Yet it only ended in January 2011. By then, guns that were part of the investigation had already been linked to the tragic murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
The war that dares not speak its name…US and Libya:
*crickets*
In Other News…
Old media must make way for new media landscape
Where there once stood gatekeepers, mediators and critics telling you what and how you should think, there is now full-fledged retreat and chaos. Newsweek, once a powerhouse of received and regurgitated wisdom, legendarily self-appointed to “write the first draft of history,” was sold for all of $1 in 2010 and later merged with Tina Brown’s gossipy politics/celebrity website the Daily Beast.
The once-infallible Reader’s Digest went bankrupt in 2009. Ostensibly straight-shooting CNN may be “the most trusted name in news,” but it’s finishing a distant third to more opinionated challengers in the cable news wars it once dominated.
Never before in history has it been easier to produce, disseminate and consume media — preferably at the same time. The customer is no longer captive to Walter Cronkite’s wisdom or Dan Rather’s armadillo stories.
Is It That Time Again? Military Conducting Training Exercises In And Around Boston
The gravy train is stopping.
From the Associated Press:
AUSTIN, Texas — Some Houston-area Republicans are set to join Gov. Rick Perry for the ceremonial signing of a new law intended to limit frivolous lawsuits.
Perry will tout the so-called “loser pays” bill Wednesday in Houston. The measure, which goes into effect Sept. 1, will levy fees on unsuccessful plaintiffs and allowing meritless suits to be dismissed early in the process.
Perry made the measure a top priority for the Legislature, saying Texas needs to crack down on junk lawsuits.
Some plaintiffs who sue and lose will be required to pay the court costs and attorney fees of those they are suing.
Trial lawyer groups and the AFL-CIO opposed the measure, arguing it would give corporations the upper hand in lawsuits and prevent individuals with legitimate claims from filing suit.
One of the best ways to get elected president is to act presidential.
Any Smear Will Do… Media Now Blaming Michele Bachmann for Teen Suicides in Minnesota
Funny… We never saw the liberal media blame Obama for gang violence in Chicago but blaming Michele Bachmann for teen suicides in Minnesota is completely acceptable to the liberal media.
The answer is yes. You will note that the whackjobs who commit mass shootings/murders never go to a place where they know they will get turned into Swiss cheese the second they open fire. Question of the Day: Are “Gun-Free Zones” Really “Target-Rich Environments”?
So I ask you, do gun-free zones attract homicidal nutjobs like trailer parks seem to attract tornados, or is it just a coincidence that the mass-murderers seem to prefer gun-free locales for their target practice, oh about 10 to 1?
Staggering amount of ivory smuggled into US
Victor Gordon is accused of getting his ivory from west and central Africa, where conservationists consider the ivory trade a major threat to the dwindling African elephant population. He paid an unnamed co-conspirator to buy and carve the ivory, and then had them stain it to appear to be decades old to get around an international treaty, prosecutors said.
US officials called the amount of ivory seized in the case staggering, but could not immediately estimate how many elephants allegedly died at Gordon’s hands.
“It’s safe to say dozens of elephants sit before you,” Edward Grace, deputy chief of law enforcement for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said at a news conference Tuesday in Philadelphia, where officials displayed a cache of intricately carved tusks seized from Gordon and his customers.
Ghost towns on the increase as rural America accounts for just 16% of population
Detroit to set services by neighborhood condition
Governor Cuomo has said he wants to lift New York’s moratorium, and the state’s recently released draft rules are a step forward. But they must still undergo legal review and a public comment period that could bar New York drilling for the rest of this year, if not longer. New York will also still ban drilling in about 15% of the state’s portion of the Marcellus and impose more onerous rules than other states on private property drilling. Such bows toward the obsessions of rich, big-city greens explain why parts of upstate New York are the new Appalachia.
As they look across their northern border, Pennsylvanians can be forgiven for thinking of New Yorkers the way Abba Eban once described the Palestinians: They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Touching profile of a late-term abortionist
Dear God in heaven. Enough. Read the whole article if you can stand it.
“Let the People Vote” is a futile venture; Roe v. Wade is likelier to be overturned than New York’s Marriage Equality Act is to be repealed or nullified. But yesterday’s march illuminated a prospective fissure in the Democratic coalition. Earlier “ADVANCEMENTS,” most notably Roe‘s decriminalization of abortion by judicial fiat in 1973, prompted many culturally conservative white Democrats to begin voting Republican. It may turn out that yesterday’s diverse crowd represented the religious right of the future.
If so, it will be interesting to see how the left tries to counter it. Maybe Thomas Frank can publish a book called “What’s the Matter With Harlem?” or Barack Obama can deliver a disquisition on African-American bitter clingers. We suspect minorities would find such condescension as off-putting as whites do. But at least it would be an improvement on “STOP DRAGGING YOUR KNUCKLES!!!”
MSM Circus and Celebutard Side Show:
What Bollinger really means when he says we don’t produce quality global journalism is that we’re not producing the kind of journalism he wants. But Bollinger can have any kind of news on his PC each morning as long as he’s willing to pay for it.
The real problem is that not everyone wants the same news he does. Many prefer Fox News and other “ideological” rivals, as well as blogs, the British and Latin American press, and other sources of news that present a nonleftist or at least detached point of view instead of the pablum that much of his J-school puts out.
Bollinger’s proposal for a global press controlled by a government elite sounds like something on which George Soros would look kindly. Come to think of it, Soros has become one of the Columbia journalism school’s most generous patrons.
NYT columnist called Obama stupid
New Tone: NY Times Columnist Says Tea Party Is Hezbollah Faction of GOP
This must be part of that new tone of discourse we were promised…
Liberal fascist and far left columnist Thomas Friedman says the tea party is the Hezbollah faction of the Republican Party ready to take the GOP on a suicide mission.
Re: Media Assassins; Pamela Geller Under Assault, It’s The Anti-Anti-Jihad Movement
NEW YORK TIMES READER KILLS DOZENS IN NORWAY
Similarly, Breivik says in his manifesto that “it is essential that science take an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings” –- a statement that would be incomprehensible to all the real scientists, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, Mendel, Pasteur, Planck, Einstein and Pauli, all of whom believed the whole purpose of science was to understand God.
The Tucson shooter, Jared Loughner, was lyingly described by the Times as a pro-life fanatic. Not only did more honest news outlets, such as ABC News, report exactly the opposite — for example, how Loughner alarmed his classmates by laughing about an aborted baby in class — but Loughner’s friends described him as “left wing,” “a political radical,” “quite liberal” and “a pothead.” Another said Loughner’s mother was Jewish.
The only reason Timothy McVeigh has gone down in history as a right-wing Christian and Jared Loughner has not — despite herculean efforts by much of the mainstream media to convince us otherwise — is that by January 2011 when Loughner went on his murder spree, conservatives had enough media outlets to reveal the truth.
As explained in the smash best-seller “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” the liberal rule is: Any criminal act committed by a white man with a gun is a right-wing, Christian conspiracy, whereas any criminal act committed by a nonwhite is the government violating someone’s civil liberties.
It’s too bad Breivik wasn’t a Muslim extremist open about his Jihadist views, because I hear the Army is looking for a new psychiatrist down at Fort Hood.
Video: CNN notices how out-of-touch Obama is
Has the media begun to notice the wheels coming off at the White House? First, Politico notices that Barack Obama still hasn’t offered any solutions despite the late hour of the fiscal crisis at hand. Last night, CNN’s Gloria Borger noticed that Obama seems out of the loop on the actual proposals floating around the Beltway, too. Obama tried to pump up support for tax increases, which makes him a chorus of … one
Irony: Woman Who Didn’t Pay Bloggers Elected to Committee to Protect Journalists
Arianna Huffington’s controversial standing among journalism’s old guard didn’t hamper her appointment to the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists last week.
Despite some industry snickering that an aggregator of journalists’ work was now in the position of protecting them, CPJ sources mostly told us that the pros of adding Huffington to the board outweighed the cons.
Global Warmening:
Green agenda has parallels with excesses of communism
Klaus, 70, who has twice been elected as Czech President and is its former prime minister, is one of the most important figures in post-communist Europe. His experiences under totalitarian rule have made him exquisitely alert to the erosion of democratic freedoms.
He said environmentalists had been arguing for decades that we should reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, using various farcical ploys from the exhaustion of natural resources to the threat of “imminent mass poverty and starvation for billions”.
Those same environmentalists shamelessly talk now about dangerous global warming.
“They don’t care about resources or poverty or pollution.
“They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them.
“I used to live in a similar world called communism. And I know it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced.”
Global warming alarmists “want to change us, they want to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences. They want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. Therefore …what is in danger is freedom, not the climate”.
He described the parallels he sees between the loss of freedom under communism and the new global warming doctrine.
Environmental Wacko From ‘Peaceful Uprising’ Gets Prison Time, Supporter Threatens Violence
OK, so if they don’t get their way, just threaten violence. Thanks for the heads-up, Carlos. Now the authorities know your name.
Does Carlos see the irony that he’s with a group called Peaceful Uprising while he’s threatening violence?
Henry Waxman Asks Sec. Chu To Create Globull Warming Re-Education Program
Waxman then spends some time demonizing the oil and coal industries, and they are evil in his world….hey, wait, Waxman receives money from the United Auto Workers, who build evil cars that use fossil fuels. And the National Beer Wholesalers Assn, and beer releases lots of CO2. And the National Cable and Telecommunications Assn, Comcast, and Time Warner, and DVRs are really bad for global warming. Oh, and the number 1 PAC to donate to him during the 2009-2010 election season was ….. News Corp, which is supposedly made up of evil deniers. Oh, and $6,000 from the oil and gas sector.
Your position as Secretary of Energy and your world-renowned stature as a scientist mean you are in a unique position to speak with authority about the science of climate change and the frightening consequences of inaction.
Nope, sorry, Henry, you alarmists state that we are only supposed to listen to climatologists, and Chu has a BA in Math, BS in Physics, and a PhD in Physics. Bummer. Also, since you don’t have a degree in climatology, you should probably ignore yourself, Henry.
The Sock Drawer:
Fake but accurate. Scientists Retract Controversial Longevity Study, Blaming Equipment, But Argue They Were Still Right
Science papers are corrected and updated all the time; even retractions are not all that unusual. This case is unique because the authors say the work is still accurate — and because the study itself was so controversial and potentially groundbreaking.
Sleep with your iPhone? You’re not alone
While smartphones have made life easier for some, psychologists say the love of them is becoming more like an addiction, creating consequences that range from minor (teenagers who communicate in three-letter acronyms like LOL and BRB) to major (car accidents caused by people who text while driving).
Merlo, a clinical psychologist, said she’s observed a number of behaviours among smartphone users that she labels “problematic”. Among them, Merlo says some patients pretend to talk on the phone or fiddle with apps to avoid eye contact or other interactions at a bar or a party. Others are so genuinely engrossed in their phones that they ignore the people around them completely.
A comforting preen…After a hard day’s flight, birds love a stress relieving massage
Keeping us company, the newly discovered asteroid leading the Earth around the Sun
