Pages

Monday, February 28, 2011

White House Sweats, and He’s the Cause

“Am I working out? Am I eating right?” Mr. Strautmanis recalledPresident Obama asking. “And then he told me that I should use his trainer.”
The very fit president has sent other White House aides to Cornell McClellan, the trainer, a genial master tormenter who is the secret weapon behind Michelle Obama’s famously toned arms and who has overseen both Obamas’ exercise programs for more than a decade.
Mr. Strautmanis made one — and only one — appointment with Mr. McClellan, just to satisfy the president. But Mr. Obama had other plans.
As Mr. Strautmanis walked away from a White House news conference one morning, the president caught up with him and called out, “Strautmanis, Cornell says you’re not showing up for your workouts.”
“And that’s when I knew this was going to be a different experience for me,” said Mr. Strautmanis, who has forsaken cheeseburgers, taken up egg whites and lost 20 pounds since he started twice-weekly sessions with Mr. McClellan in a gym at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
An unassuming 54-year-old with a compact body and an easy laugh, Mr. McClellan has become the unlikely man at the center of a group of top staff members who work out with him, gossip with him, talk about him and even rat one another out to him, especially when someone — that means you, David Axelrod — slips up and gets an extra scoop of ice cream in the White House mess. (But the real culprit, aides joke, are the M&Ms found throughout the West Wing).
“He has this gift where he works you pretty hard and you don’t even realize it,” said Mr. Axelrod, a former senior adviser to the president who shed 25 pounds on Mr. McClellan’s watch. “And then you go home and you can’t lift up your arms.”
Mr. McClellan grew up practicing martial arts, eventually earning a black belt, and as a college student realized that he had a knack for working with people. He owns Naturally Fit, a personal training and wellness center in Chicago, and now spends part of his week in Washington at Mr. Obama’s request.
“It was an easy sell for me, because I thought of it as kind of a duty, to serve the president,” said Mr. McClellan, who works out with the first couple, often in the early morning, at the gym in the White House residence. Mr. and Mrs. Obama both try to exercise for at least an hour every day, and Mr. McClellan says he usually sees them two to four times a week, depending on their schedules.
The president, a well-known fitness buff, does a mixture of cardio and strength training and spends his free time playing basketball and golf. “He is very motivated and he loves to work, so that makes it very easy for me,” Mr. McClellan said.
People who have seen Mr. Obama at the gym, wearing black wind pants and a dark baseball cap, say that sometimes he and Mrs. Obama work out together, and that he runs hard on the treadmill, with the television tuned to “SportsCenter” on ESPN.
In the gym, Mr. McClellan, a father of six, seems to be one part gentle, prodding father and one part drill sergeant. “I believe in working people as hard as possible, but as polite as possible,” he said, laughing.
“It’s not boot campish or militaryish from day one,” he added, “but it can go there.”
His clients can be divided into two camps — the enthusiastic and the grudging, White House staff members say. The president and the first lady are the star students — eager, dedicated, with the toned limbs to prove it.
Tommy Vietor, a National Security Council spokesman, and the speechwriter Jon Favreauare competitive, and Mr. McClellan sometimes pits them against Sam Kass, a young White House chef. Mona Sutphen, a deputy chief of staff who recently left the administration, and Lisa Brown, the staff secretary, are hard core, naturally fit and athletic exercise partners who push themselves. And Mr. Axelrod, Mr. Strautmanis andPete Rouse — the president’s senior adviser, who is considered Mr. McClellan’s crowning achievement, having overhauled his diet and lost 20 pounds since his early, reluctant days — are the whiners who crack jokes and make conversation, anything to avoid sweating.
“There will be lots of e-mails or hallway chatter of ‘Did he make you do that insane thing and now you can’t walk?’ ” Mr. Vietor said.
Though Mr. McClellan claims his shop is a gossip-free zone, staff members say they unwind there, talk about their families and get to know about the personal lives of their fellow gym rats.
“Cornell knew better what was going on in the White House than most people who worked in the White House,” said Lawrence H. Summers, who recently left as one of Mr. Obama’s top economic advisers. “Who’s up, who’s down, which way things are moving. Everybody talked to Cornell.”
Some of the best gossip involved Mr. Summers himself. One day, he forgot his exercise gear and began working out — shirtless — on the treadmill. A frantic e-mail quickly made its way to the West Wing: did someone — anyone — have a shirt Mr. Summers could borrow? Mr. Strautmanis, whose office is nearby, ran one over, but the incident quickly became White House lore.
“There was a brief interval of that,” Mr. Summers confirmed, before adding, gamely, “I liked it better when I didn’t have to see how in shape some of the president’s younger aides were.”
Mr. McClellan has conspired with Mr. Strautmanis’s assistant, who now orders his boss only healthy food from the White House mess. “He has spies all over the White House,” Mr. Strautmanis joked. “He’s got us surrounded.”
Mr. McClellan, sounding gleefully conspiratorial, put in another way: “You kind of team up and say, ‘Hey, make sure they’re doing this.’ It’s really good when you can have a support team.”
Mr. Obama has offered to buy personal training sessions for his most recalcitrant staffers. (So far, no one has taken him up on the offer, according to several staff members.) Mr. McClellan would not say what he charges, only that his rate “varies.” One staff member said he paid $60 per session.
Some aides joke that the president feels guilty about having brought Mr. McClellan all the way to Washington and is trying to help drum up business for him. But the Obamas are health conscious themselves, and aides say they care about the well-being of their staff.
 
WASHINGTON — Michael Strautmanis had no sooner started his White House job as a deputy assistant to the president when his boss began badgering him.
“They both know how hard their staffs are working, so they really want to encourage some sort of balance,” said Susan Sher, Mrs. Obama’s recently departed chief of staff.
Aides say they do not need to feel guilty about leaving their desk to work out. Not only is it acceptable to do so during lunch or an afternoon lull, it is considered beneficial for people’s sanity.
“As a friend,” Mr. Axelrod said, the president “has always been on my butt about this, and as a result, my butt is a little bit smaller.”
He and other White House clients have helped introduce Mr. McClellan to their lifestyle, as well. For Christmas, they pitched in and bought him an iPad. Since he spends much of his day in the gym, they explained, they thought he would want to be able to get online and check his e-mail.

Teach for America: Letting the cream rise


By George F. Will
Sunday, February 27, 2011; 
For Princetonians, the senior thesis is a high hurdle before graduation. For Wendy Kopp, class of 1989, it became a career devoted to transforming primary and secondary education. What began as an idea for a teacher corps for hard-to-staff schools, urban and rural, became Teach for America (TFA). At first it was merely a leavening ingredient in education; it has become a template for transformation.
Back then, Kopp's generation was stigmatized by journalistic sociology as "the 'me' generation" composed of materialists eager to be recruited into careers of quick self-enrichment. She thought the problem was not her peers but the recruiters. So she became one.
This academic year, 16 percent of Princeton's seniors and 18 percent of Harvard's applied to join Teach for America, of which Kopp is CEO. TFA is the largest employer of recent graduates from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Eight percent of seniors at the University of Michigan (undergraduate enrollment: 26,830) applied last year for TFA's two-year commitments. More than 5 percent of graduating seniors at 130 colleges are applicants.
Kopp began by "meeting anyone who would meet with me," soliciting corporate executives for seed money. She believed something that bemused skeptics - that students from elite schools would volunteer to have their first experience out of college teaching in difficult-to-staff schools in areas of urban and rural poverty.
"I knew college students would do it - I had just been a college student." What was needed, she thought, was a high-status service organization with an aura of selectivity.
Raised in comfortable circumstances in Dallas, Kopp precociously understood not just the importance of education but the educational importance of where one is born. TFA's first recruiting was done by fliers shoved under dorm room doors. Her Yale recruiter had 170 messages on his answering machine in just three days. TFA's first cohort totaled 500 teachers. This year TFA will select 5,300 from 48,000 applicants, making it more selective than most colleges.
This school year, there are 8,000 TFA teachers. Of the 20,000 TFA alumni, two-thirds are still working full time in education. Of those, only one in six says that even without TFA he or she might have gone into K-12 teaching.
TFA has become a flourishing reproach to departments and schools of education. It pours talent into the educational system - 80 percent of its teachers are in traditional public schools - talent that flows around the barriers of the credentialing process. Hence TFA works against the homogenization that discourages innovation and prevents the cream from rising.
Kopp, whose new book ("A Chance to Make History") recounts her post-Princeton education, has learned, among much else, this: Of the 15 million children growing up in poverty, 50 percent will not graduate from high school, and the half that do will have eighth-grade skill levels compared to those from higher-income families and neighborhoods.
Until recently - until, among other things, TFA - it seemed that we simply did not know how to teach children handicapped by poverty and its accompaniments - family disintegration and destructive community cultures. Now we know exactly what to do.
In government, the axiom is: Personnel is policy. In education, Kopp believes, "people are everything" - good ones are (in military parlance) "force multipliers." Creating "islands of excellence" depends entirely on finding "transformational leaders deeply committed to changing the trajectories" of children's lives.
We do not, she insists, have to fix society or even families in order to fix education. It works the other way around. The movie "Waiting for Superman" dramatizes what TFA has demonstrated - that low-income parents leap at educational opportunities that can break the cycle of poverty. Teaching successfully in challenging schools is, Kopp says, "totally an act of leadership" by people passionately invested in the project.
Speaking of leadership, someone in Congress should invest some on TFA's behalf. Government funding - federal, state, local - is just 30 percent of TFA's budget. Last year's federal allocation, $21 million, would be a rounding error in the General Motors bailout. And Kopp says that every federal dollar leverages six non-federal dollars. All that money might, however, be lost because even when Washington does something right, it does it wrong.
It has obtusely defined "earmark" to include "any named program," so TFA has been declared an earmark and sentenced to death. If Congress cannot understand how nonsensical this is, it should be sent back to school for remedial instruction from some of TFA's exemplary young people.

Sen. Graham: Republicans waiting for 2016 should run in 2012


By Michael O'Brien - 02/28/11 11:01 AM ET
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) urged Republicans who are reportedly waiting until 2016 to run for president to consider getting off the sidelines for 2012. 

Graham said Monday that the time was ripe to take on President Obama, and that any candidate with the ambition to be president should run. 

"If you really decide to do this, now's the time," Graham said, noting speculation that a number of top GOP candidates are waiting until 2016. "If you think you should be president, it's not about timing, it's about ability."

"There's plenty of opportunity here for the Republican Party to win in 2012," the Palmetto State Republican said on conservative talker Laura Ingraham's radio show. 

There are a number of Republicans considering running for president in 2012, including some of the GOP's biggest names, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). 

But there are also a number of rising stars in the party who have passed on running for president this cycle, perhaps to run in 2016. Among them are New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, among others. 

The conventional wisdom says that some of the candidates may be waiting for 2106 because they're hedging their bets about Obama's beatability in 2012. The president has the advantage of incumbency, and he's regarded as a formidable campaigner and fundraiser who won in 2008 with a broad electoral map.

Graham said that he didn't expect Obama to win North Carolina, Virginia or Indiana, as he did in 2008, and speculated that the president might be vulnerable in Wisconsin and Ohio, the latter of which is a traditional bellwether in presidential campaigns. 

"Any sitting president probably has some built-in advantages, but this guy's incredibly exposed," Graham said. 

The South Carolina senator didn't tip his hand as to which candidate he might back in a Republican primary (Graham spoke favorably in the past of South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who declined to run), but he did flag Christie for praise. Graham said that Republicans could win in 2012 "if our party will listen to Chris Christie on the economic side," and develops a strong contrast with Obama on national security as well.

PM urges Colonel Gaddafi to “go now”

Sunday 27 February 2011


Prime Minister David Cameron; Crown copyrightPrime Minister David Cameron has urged Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi to “go now” as the UK imposed sanctions in an effort to force him from power.
The UK, in line with a United Nations Security Council resolution, has frozen the assets of Gaddafi and his family and barred them from entering the UK.
Mr Cameron said: “All of this sends a clear message to this regime: it is time for Colonel Gaddafi to go and to go now.
“There is no future for Libya that includes him.”
The Prime Minister, speaking inside Downing Street, also said that he was “delighted” at the success of a second special forces-led operation to rescue oil workers stuck in the remote Libyan desert.
The PM welcomed the safe extraction of another 150 civilians – including an unspecified number of UK nationals – in three RAF Hercules transport planes to Malta.
He said:
“Obviously Libya is a country in complete chaos and so it is difficult to arrange these things. But it was the right thing to do and I pay tribute to the very brave pilots and armed services personnel who managed to help so many British citizens back to safety and I am delighted they have been able to do that.”
The UN Security Council agreed to refer the brutal repression of the popular uprising to the International Criminal Court as well as approving an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.
The UK asset freeze on Mr Gaddafi, five of his children “and those acting on their behalf” was announced by Chancellor George Osborne after being formally approved at a Privy Council meeting with the Queen at Windsor Castle.

Prime Minister’s statement on Libya

Monday 28 February 2011


Prime Minister David Cameron made a statement on the situation in Libya to the House of Commons on Monday 28 February 2011.
Read the transcript:
[Check against delivery] 
Introduction
Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the evacuation of British nationals from Libya, the actions we are now pursuing against Colonel Gaddhaffi and his administration and developments in the wider region.
Evacuation
Mr Speaker, we have been working intensively to get our people out. As of now we have successfully removed around 600 British nationals from Libya.
The evacuation has centred on three locations – Tripoli airport, the port at Benghazi and the desert oil fields. At Tripoli airport, a series of six aircraft organised by the Foreign Office and an RAF C130 Hercules flight have brought out more than 380 British nationals and a similar number of foreign citizens. At Benghazi, HMS Cumberland has carried out two evacuations from the port, taking out 119 British nationals and 303 foreign citizens. 
The first of these evacuations took place in very difficult sea conditions. The second arrived in Malta earlier today. These evacuations were assisted on the ground by 5 rapid deployment teams, in total nearly 30 extra staff from the Foreign Office, who helped marshall British citizens in the midst of chaotic scenes in and around the airports and ports.
The most challenging part of the evacuation has of course involved those British nationals scattered across over 20 different locations in the oil fields deep in the desert. On Friday evening I authorized a military operation to bring as many as possible out of the desert. On Saturday, two RAF C130 aircraft flew into the Eastern desert and picked up 74 British nationals and 102 foreign nationals at three different locations. A second mission took place yesterday, bringing out a further 21 British nationals and 168 foreign nationals. On this second mission, one of the aircraft involved suffered minor damage from small arms fire. This underlines the challenging environment in which the aircraft were operating.
Indeed Britain has taken on a leading role in coordinating the international evacuation effort. Our AWACS aircraft are directing international aircraft involved. And Brigadier Bashall, who is commanding the operation, has established a temporary joint headquarters in Malta. 
I have thanked the Maltese Prime Minister personally on behalf of the country. Not for the first time in our history Mr Speaker, we must pay tribute to Malta and her people. 
In terms of numbers of British citizens remaining in Libya, this is of course difficult to ascertain precisely given the situation on the ground. Many of them will be dual nationals and not all of them will want to leave. 
I asked for urgent work to be done on accurate numbers in both categories – those who wish to leave and those who currently do not. Our current indications are that, as of today, there are fewer than 150 British citizens remaining in Libya of which only a very small proportion wish to leave. Clearly this can change at any time and we will keep the House regularly updated. We will continue to do all we can to ensure that those who wish to leave can do so.
HMS Cumberland will remain in the area, together with HMS York which also stands ready off Tripoli to assist. And we have military aircraft including C130s and a 146 in Malta ready to fly in at very short notice. 
Mr Speaker, the Government will continue to focus on making sure our citizens are safe. COBR has met regularly to co-ordinate the effort and I personally chaired three meetings over the weekend. The National Security Council is looking at the overall strategic picture – meeting last Friday and again today – not least to look at other risks to British citizens in the wider region.
As I said last week, there will be lessons we will wish to learn from this evacuation, including in respect of the hiring of charter aircraft, use of defence assets and the need for greater redundancy. 
Mr Speaker, clearly an important decision was when to extract the Embassy. This was taken at the COBR meeting on Friday and carried out on Saturday after the remaining civilians had been extracted from Tripoli Airport in parallel with the start of desert operations, which were of course planned from Malta. 
Our judgment throughout has been that the risk to British citizens has been growing and the Americans, French and Germans have similarly suspended the operations of their Embassies. 
Britain also retains a Consul in Tripoli and a consular warden in Benghazi. And we have arranged that Turkey – which still has several thousand of its own citizens in Libya – will look after British interests while our Embassy’s operations remain suspended.
I’m sure the whole House will want to put on record its thanks to all those who have made the rescue effort possible to the skill of the RAF pilots and to all those involved from all three armed services, to our diplomatic service and to all those who put themselves in harm’s way to help our people leave safely.
Action to isolate the Gaddafi regime 
Mr Speaker, let me turn to the pressure we are now putting on the Gaddafi regime. We should be clear. For the future of Libya and its people, Colonel Gaddafi’s regime must end and he must leave. 
To that end we are taking every step possible to isolate the Gaddafi regime, deprive it of money, shrink its power and ensure that anyone responsible for abuses in Libya will be held to account.
With respect to all these actions, Britain is taking a lead. Over the weekend, we secured agreement for a UN Security Council Resolution which we had drafted and which is unusually strong, unanimous and includes all of our proposals. It condemns Gaddafi’s actions, and imposes a travel ban and assets freeze on those at the top of his murderous regime. It demands an immediate end to the violence and the killing of protesters, access for international human rights monitors, lifting of restrictions on the internet and media and an end to the intimidation and detention of journalists. And it refers Libya’s current leaders to the International Criminal Court to face the justice they deserve.
Mr Speaker, we were also the driving force behind a Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, which started work to eject Libya from the Council. And the Foreign Secretary is in Geneva today along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to see this work through.
With our European partners, we have today secured agreement on freezing the assets of a wider group of individuals and banning them from entering the European Union. And also imposing a wider arms embargo on the Libyan regime.
Britain is also leading in implementing these direct measures against the regime. I can tell the House today that here in the UK a Special Privy Council session was held yesterday as a result of which we have now frozen the assets of Gaddhaffi, 5 of his family members, people acting for them or on their behalf, and entities that are owned or controlled by them. The Treasury has stepped in to block a shipment of some £900m in banknotes destined for Libya.
The Government has revoked Colonel Gaddhaffi’s immunity as a Head of State and neither he nor his family may freely enter the UK any more. And we have also revoked the visas of a number of Libyans linked to the regime who are now on immigration watch-lists.
We will look at each and every way of stepping up pressure on this regime. Further isolation of the regime by expelling it from international organisations and further use of asset freezes and travel bans to give the clearest possible message to those on the fringes of the regime that now is the time to desert it.
And we do not in any way rule out the use of military assets. We must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people. In that context I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone.
Mr Speaker, it is clear that this is an illegitimate regime that has lost the consent of its people. My message to Colonel Gaddhaffi is simple: Go now.
Humanitarian situation 
Mr Speaker, everyone hopes this situation will be resolved quickly but there is a real danger now of a humanitarian crisis inside Libya. 
We are acutely conscious of the risks of shortages and are monitoring the situation closely. We have dispatched technical teams to be in place at both the Tunisian and Egyptian borders. Currently the most pressing need is assisting the large numbers of migrant workers into Egypt and Tunisia to get home. 
Tomorrow, in response to a request from the UN, Britain will fly in tents and blankets from our stocks in Dubai for use at the Tunisian border.
The International Development Secretary will be visiting the region later this week to assess the situation on the ground for himself.
Political reform 
Mr Speaker, North Africa and the wider Middle East are now at the epicentre of momentous events. History is sweeping through this region.
Yes, we must deal with the immediate consequences, especially for British citizens caught up in these developments. But we must also be clear about what these developments mean and how Britain and the West in general should respond.
In many parts of the Arab world, hopes and aspirations which have been smothered for decades are stirring. People, especially young people, are seeking their rights, and in the vast majority of cases they are doing so peacefully and bravely. 
The parallels with what happened in Europe in 1989 are not, of course, precise. But there is no doubt that many of those who are demanding change in the wider Middle East can take inspiration from other peaceful movements for change, including the Velvet Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe or the peaceful transition to democracy in Muslim countries like Indonesia.
Of course there have been many disappointments in the past. But those of us who believe in democracy and open societies should be clear: this is a precious moment of opportunity.  
While it is not for us to dictate how each country should meet the aspirations of its people, we must not remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success. Freedom of expression, a free press, freedom of assembly, the right to demonstrate peacefully: these are basic rights.  And they are as much the rights of people in Tahrir Square as Trafalgar Square. They are not British or western values – but the values of human beings everywhere.
So we need to take this opportunity to look again at our entire relationship with this region – at the billions of Euros of EU funds, at our trade relationship, at our cultural ties. We need to be much clearer and tougher in linking our development assistance to real progress in promoting more open and plural societies. And we need to dispense once and for all with the outdated notion that democracy has no place in the Arab world.
Too often in the past, we have made a false choice between so-called stability on the one hand and reform and openness on the other. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.
We should be clear too that now is not the time to park the Middle East peace process – quite the opposite. This is a problem that is long overdue for resolution, and we should use developments in the region to drive forward progress, not hold it up.
In short, reform, not repression, is the way to lasting stability. No one pretends that democracy and open societies can be built overnight. 
Democracy is the work of patient craftsmanship – and it takes time, as we know from our own history, to put its building blocks in place. 
What is happening in the wider Middle East is one of those once in a generation opportunities, a moment when history turns a page. That next page is not yet written. It falls to all of us to seize this chance to fashion a better future for this region, to build a better relationship between our peoples, to make a new start.  
As the inspiring Opposition leaders I met in Tahrir Square said to me last week: We now have the opportunity of achieving freedoms that you in Britain take for granted. I am determined that Britain will not let them down. And I commend this statement to the House.

Labor wins the day in Wisconsin


Police change course and say demonstrators can stay another night, and a GOP senator opposes Walker's union-busting

Why Democrats Hate “Fair And Balanced” News(Tea Party Express)

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
Around two thousand years ago, a man said: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” A relatively short while ago, someone added a few words to it and said: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free – but first, it will pi*s you off!” That’s all you need to know about the democrats and the fair and balanced news channel – Fox News.
However, I still have blank paper to write upon and an ink cart not quite dry, so I shall plod on in the seemingly endless task of defining the love of democrats for the politically correct over fact and/or truth.
Facts and truth are two of the most stubborn things in existence. It does not matter whether you believe a fact, or refuse to accept a fact; it remains a fact, nonetheless. The same is true for the truth. It makes not one whit of difference whether you believe the truth, or not. It remains the truth – period.
On the other hand, politically correct facts and/or truth(s) can mean anything you want them to mean. Often they are based on fact or truth but, in reality, that is the only thing valid about politically correct fact and truth. To my way of thinking, a politically correct fact, or truth, is an oxymoron. In the southern vernacular: “There ain’t no such thang!”
The political left is entirely too emotional for me. It has often been said that if American political parties had gender, the democrats would be female and the republicans would be male. All one needs to do to see evidence of that is to observe the pathetic union demonstrations in Wisconsin and other states.
Those demonstrations are a public display of an emotion, called anger, because they lost control of the US government last November. It is the reaction that a child displays when a favorite toy is taken away as punishment.
The electorate sent the democrats to the woodshed, and they don’t like it, no, not even a little bit. They are P.O’ed and, like a child, they are throwing a tantrum.
When I “threw a fit,” as a child, my parents snatched my skinny butt up and applied a 2-inch leather belt to my gluteus maximus until my cerebral cortex sparked and my mind was changed, my attitude was adjusted, and my general demeanor was acceptable in polite southern society. Of course, that meant eating from the mantle board for a few days. (For those uneducated in southern colloquialism, that means: “eating while standing up.”)
Look. When grown people, adults, make fools of themselves, on purpose, normal people just have to wonder: “What ails those folks?”
OK, so it is just me. See, I have a heck of a time dealing with anyone having authority over me. While in the US Army, I was on “KP,” as punishment, 13 times in eight weeks, at Fort Jackson, SC, because I had a problem with authority figures. I simply do not like, and will not tolerate, anyone or anything having absolute control over me. It ain’t gonna happen. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not particularly proud of it – but neither am I shamed by it. It is the way I am wired.
(Stay with me – I am about to make a point – or, at least, TRY!)
Unions, and the Democrat Party, are all about control. I could never be a member of either. I tend to think for myself, indeed, I LIKE thinking for myself. I am self-motivating, and I darn sure don’t like some one trying to motivate me — covertly or overtly. (Again – it is the way I am wired.) You can imagine – I was a pain in the collective posteriors of my former employers.
The communists used to refer to THEIR minions as “useful idiots.” They manipulated them anyway they wanted and those minions did the will of the Communist Party. Much like Pavlov’s dog, the party would ring the bell — and the “little commies” would come running.
Now. Compare that to what you see in the union demonstrations. The unions ring the bell(s) and the union members come running. See? Understand? It is “conditioning.” It is “control.”
There would be a heat wave in Hades before I would stand in the snow and shout that a news organization, which actually makes an effort to present BOTH sides of an issue, is a liar – for anyone!
But, then again, they have been so conditioned by the union’s propaganda and the Democratic Party’s propaganda that they seem to actually have great difficulty discerning truth from fiction, fairness from partiality, fact from lie. Its called: “CONTROL.”
It is important that America understands that those “conditioned” union members and Democratic Party members are a prototype for a liberal-socialist Democrat Party/labor union controlled America. Should they ever gain total control of America – they will OWN you – much like the people of the old Soviet Union, only worse.
It would seem their problem with Fox News is – the truth. They can’t stand it. And since the truth remains – unchanged – they must attempt to divert America’s attention elsewhere. They try to besmirch the purveyors of the truth. If it were not so serious, it would be hilariously funny.
Don’t hate them. No. They are to be pitied. They can’t quite grasp the meaning of a representative republic. They seem to believe that socialism is not evil and will not lead directly to communism, and ultimately to slavery. Sadly, they don’t have a clue that they would be the very first targets their socialist masters would seek to round up and annihilate!
J. D. Longstreet

Daily Kos: In Wisconsin, the Plutocrats Plot ‘Walkercide’(tea Party Express)

The hatred of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker continues in the fever swamps of the Daily Kos. The blogger "Patience John" posted an article Wednesday headlined "Walkercide: Killing the American Dream for Corporate Paymasters." Try not to pay attention to the mangled syntax: that "Walkercide" sounds like a plot to kill the governor, not the other way around, or that the headline suggests a plot to kill the dreams of corporate paymasters. As usual among Kosmonauts, the capitalists plot to build a class of wage-slave peasants:
The elite never want the American worker to realize that the workers generate all the wealth of our republic, and this new corporate aristocracy just feeds off it.
They have a plan.
It is called Walkercide, and it is meant to kill the last of the good American jobs. [Emphasis his.] 
In the world of "Patience John," democracy has been stolen by the capitalists, and "Lady Liberty" is held hostage by the free enterprise fans. It began:
When will we wake up to the greatest threat to our republic in a generation?
The average American citizen has more to worry about from our corporate overlords than any Frankenstein blowing back on us due to our imperialistic foreign policy. The very foundation of our country, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, is under siege by a plutonomy based on wealth and decadence.
Never have so few controlled so many and dared to call it democracy.
This cabal of elites knows time is ticking on their hidden hand and black propaganda techniques as the InfoTech Age blossoms with its promise of free and transparent information. That is why they are pushing so hard, so fast, least they lose control of the republic's purse string, giving control back to the citizens of this land.
That is their greatest fear, that equality and basic American fairness is restored to our economic and political systems.
They have spent thirty years on this project, they will not go quietly into the night. They will turn all the citizens of our land against each other to ensure their continued position of holding Lady Liberty hostage and defiled.
We, as a people, need to stop and think about why we are at each other's throats when it is the corporate paymasters that are the root of our current problems.
And this conspiracy theory wouldn't be complete without lying capitalist media outlets:
They are trying to kill the American dream and install a permanent working class of slave wage peasants to serve their decadent dreams of a corporate aristocracy.
They have being using their media outlets to lie to us all, to turn worker against worker, citizen against citizen, brainwashing us to manufacture consent against our own self interests in order to serve them.
Is it any wonder that Bill O'Reilly has so much fun pinning the ears back on these Noam Chomsky-adoring radicals?
[Hat tip: Sports Are For Jingoists]

Florida Governor Rick Scott: Sanford, Minus Sex Scandal



Florida Governor Rick Scott announces his new budget during a Tea Party event in Eustis, Fla., on Feb. 7, 2011
Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP

Florida Governor Rick Scott gives off a wide-eyed glow of certainty about everything he does. The Tea Party Republican has worn it from the moment he took office on Jan. 4, and since then he's rankled even conservatives in his own party with his imperious style. In his first eight weeks, he's put forth a budget proposal that slashes education spending — an area in which low-wage, low-tech Florida can't really afford to scrimp — by 15%; put the kibosh on a high-speed rail project, funded with federal and private dollars, that could have created up to 30,000 jobs; campaigned to repeal a prescription-drug-monitoring law in a state where seven people die each day from overdoses; and pressed to kill two amendments Floridians passed last November to curb the reckless gerrymandering of their legislative districts. (See souvenirs from a Tea Party rally.)
But as much as Scott would like to think he's revolutionizing government, it's best to remember that we already saw this movie not so long ago, starring former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford — and the ending wasn't pretty. Long before "hiking the Appalachian Trail" became the media's favorite euphemism for Sanford's clandestine meetings with his Argentine mistress, the Palmetto State's chief executive was a conservative who, like Scott, was so convinced of his government-reduction dogma that he believed he could disregard his state legislature and the fellow Republicans who controlled it. And while he'll be remembered for the sex scandal, in many ways Sanford's lasting legacy will be the thwarted economic development of one of the nation's poorest states. He repeatedly vetoed trade centers and tourism-marketing initiatives, he left the public schools about as decrepit as he found them, and his miserly effort to lure a $500 million Airbus plant to South Carolina was widely blamed for the loss of that bid. (See pictures of the budget showdown in Wisconsin.)
Like Sanford, the multimillionaire Scott is a fan of my-way-or-the-highway gestures. Florida's legislature, like most in the U.S., is hardly a heroic institution. But it was generally lauded in 2009 when, realizing Florida had become a national leader in prescription-drug abuse — overdose deaths from the painkiller oxycodone alone had more than doubled that year to 1,185 — it voted to create a database to detect illicit prescriptions and crack down on so-called "pill mills." It was set to begin operation this year, and looked all the more urgent last week, when the feds raided numerous clinics in South Florida and arrested 20 people, including five doctors.
But Scott has vowed to repeal the measure and has already eliminated the state's Office of Drug Control, which was supposed to help manage the database. One reason, he says, is that the database is too costly — even though its budget is just $1.2 million, and even that is being picked up by federal grants and private donations. Scott — who in 1997 resigned under a cloud as CEO of Columbia/HCA, the world's largest hospital corporation, when it was busted for massive Medicare fraud (although he wasn't charged personally) — calls the database an invasion of privacy, despite the fact that no such concerns have been raised in the 34 other states that have similar monitoring systems. "I'm extremely, extremely disappointed in the governor," GOP state senator Mike Fasano, who sponsored the legislation, said this month.
Fasano isn't the only Sunshine State Republican fuming. State senate budget chairman J.D. Alexander has told Scott that the governor violated Florida law when he recently sold two state airplanes and redirected the sale proceeds without consulting the legislature. Although Alexander too had supported selling the aircraft, he scolded Scott in a letter for "not respecting the Legislature's constitutional duty." Scott says his counsel told him the unilateral move was legal, but Alexander appears to have the state constitution on his side. (See "40 Under 40: The Rising Stars of American Politics.")
But few actions have angered Florida pols in both parties more than Scott's rejection this month of $2.4 billion in federal stimulus money for a $2.7 billion high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando. It would have been the first component of a proposed bullet-train system to alleviate traffic woes on Florida's long, car-clogged peninsula, as well as a local incubator for the sorely needed high-tech enterprise. The GOP-led state legislature had spent the past two years laboring to win the federal funds, which the Obama Administration may now hand off to California. But Scott, who made his contempt for all things public sector clear during his campaign last year, called it a wasteful project that would end up putting "state taxpayers on the hook" despite the federal largesse. Two-thirds of Florida's 40 state senators rebuked him — most of them Republicans — including the senate majority leader.
Scott refused to budge last week, even when federal and Florida officials hammered out a revised plan of private-sector and local-government initiatives that guaranteed to keep the state off the hook. U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave the governor until the end of this week to change his mind; if he doesn't, some GOP state legislators say they're mulling whether to sue him for "exceeding his executive authority."
Scott's Sanfordesque disdain for the legislature would also seem to extend to the electorate. In last November's midterm elections, more than 60% of the Sunshine State's voters approved two amendments requiring that their state and federal legislative districts be drawn on a nonpartisan basis. It was an especially important ballot measure given that Florida, the U.S.'s fourth most populous state, gained two congressional seats in the 2010 census (giving it 27) and given how absurdly contorted many of those districts are, having been designed to assure both parties virtually guaranteed seats. (Comment on this story.)
Because any voting measure like that requires federal review, Scott's predecessor, former governor Charlie Crist, sent the anti-gerrymandering amendments to the Justice Department last year before leaving office. But Scott, with no explanation, almost immediately withdrew them from consideration as soon as he took office. Even Fasano, who like many Republicans opposed the nonpartisan redistricting scheme, was disturbed by the high-handed move and has urged Scott to respect the majority in favor of the amendments — a majority that Scott, who was elected with only 48.9% of the vote, couldn't muster himself.
Still, perhaps it's not such a surprise that Scott dislikes the amendments. Their intent, after all, is to make elections more competitive by making politicians engage a more diverse cross-section of voters — and that threatens the polarized, hyperpartisan environment that favors the likes of Scott. And Mark Sanford.

GORDON HINTZ: "YOU ARE F'N DEAD!"

Doesn't sound all too ethical or electorial.......

By Charlie Sykes

State Rep. Gordon Hintz was issued a municipal citation in Appleton earlier this month for violating a city sexual misconduct ordinance.
Appleton police said the citation was issued Feb. 10 in conjunction with an ongoing investigation of Heavenly Touch Massage Parlor, 342 W. Wisconsin Ave., in Appleton. Police searched the business and a nearby residence in the 1300 block of North Division Street Jan. 28, after investigators had staked out the properties for several days after receiving a tip.
**
Last Friday.... after the Assembly voted to engross the Budget Repair Bill, Hintz turned to a female colleague, Rep. Michelle Litjens and said: "You are F***king dead!"
 New tone, indeed. Will he be held accountable?
Photo of Representative Hintz
Photo of Representative Litjens

Muammar Gaddafi - Zenga Zenga Remix this video was made by an israeli


YouTube video of a Gaddafi rant put to music

ethan4israeliboy | Feb 27, 2011 |  likes, 0 dislikes
Muammar Gaddafi - Zenga Zenga this video was made and created in israel, and now the libyan opposition makes use it.
Made in Israel and embraced by theArab world.

From the New York Times (H/T Mish)

“A satirical YouTube clip mocking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s megalomania is fast becoming a popular token of the Libya uprising across Middle East. And in an added affront to Colonel Qaddafi, it was created by an Israeli living in Tel Aviv.
Noy Alooshe, 31, an Israeli journalist, musician and Internet buff, said he saw Colonel Qaddafi’s televised speech last Tuesday in which the Libyan leader vowed to hunt down protesters “inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway,” and immediately identified it as a “classic hit.”
“He was dressed strangely, and he raised his arms” like at a trance party, Mr. Alooshe said in a telephone interview on Sunday. Then there were Colonel Qaddafi’s words with their natural beat.
Mr. Alooshe spent a few hours at the computer, using Auto-Tune pitch corrector technology to set the speech to the music of “Hey Baby,” a 2010 electro hip-hop song by American rapper Pitbull, featuring another artist, T-Pain. He titled it “Zenga-Zenga,” echoing Col. Qaddafi’s repetition of the word zanqa, Arabic for alleyway.
Mr. Alooshe said he was a little worried that if the Libyan leader survived, he could send one of his sons after him. But he said it was “also very exciting to be making waves in the Arab world as an Israeli.”
As one surfer wrote in an Arabic talkback early Sunday, “What’s the problem if he’s an Israeli? The video is still funny.” He signed off with the international cyber-laugh, “Hahaha.”