“There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people…religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.” Linus from Peanuts.
Author: lenbilen
Retired engineer, graduated from Chalmers Technical University a long time ago with a degree in Technical Physics. Career in Aerospace, Analytical Chemistry, computer chip manufacturing and finally adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania State University, taught just one course in Computer Engineering, the Capstone Course.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama’s mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama’s 1961 birth are missing. The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other “nonvital” passport records, including Dunham’s 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.
I listened to the video with Mike Wallace Sunday Aug 12919 where he asked about the Arizona situation Sarah Palin’s answer was: “Jan Brewer has the cojones that our President does not have, to look out for all Americans, not just Arizonans, but all Americans in this desire of ours to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country.” Listening again to the video she did say cajones, not cojones. From Wikipedia we get the explanation of the difference: In US slang, cojones denotes “brazen, brave attitude”, pronounced /kəˈhoʊneɪz/ and /kəˈhuːnəz/ in English. Contextually, its usage is like that of the Yiddish chutzpah (nerve), the French couilles (gonads) and the Finnish sisu (perseverance). A common euphemistic misspelling of cojones is cajones (furniture “drawers” and “wooden box drums”, see cajón).
When Sarah took reins of the State she had courage.
Without a delay
she put on e-bay
that state-supplied jet on Ted Stevens, Anchorage.
(Ted Stevens International Airport, that is)
I have researched matters further, here is version 2 of the Limerick.
There once stood a corporate jet in Juneau,
and Governor Sarah – “you Betcha ” you know
without a delay
she put on e-bay
that fuel-guzzling state-supplied plane in Juneau.
Those were two of the only three airports in Alaska with runways long enough for the W III jet.
Update: While it was put on e-bay, the sale of a corporate jet is a little more complicated than processing it thru PayPal, so the deal was finalized using a broker.
LEFT: Nancy Pelosi tries her best to explain her strange behavior.
RIGHT:Question: Why does an American Woman Infidel do the sign of the cross in the great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus Syria? Answer: Nancy Pelosi does the sign of the cross to pay her utmost respect to the skull of John the Baptist. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looks at the tomb containing the head of St. John the Baptist inside the historic Umayyad Mosque, during her tour at a popular market in downtown Damascus, Syria, Tuesday April 3, 2007.
(President George W. Bush criticized the trip, saying it sends mixed signals to Syrian President Bashar Assad. )
Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the house in Jan 2007. What power does she have anyhow?
Let us take a look at the U.S. Constitution:
Section 7 – Revenue Bills, Legislative Process, Presidential Veto All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. Section 8 – Powers of Congress The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
How has our economy been performing since she took the reins of the purse strings? There is an interesting article by Mark Trumbull, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / February 21, 2007 : Despite the ongoing costs of US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the outlook for the federal budget has grown substantially brighter. Tax revenues are rising much faster than spending, according to Treasury Department numbers released last week. The recent trend is strong enough that, were it to continue, the budget could move into surplus in barely a year, one economist calculates. Already, the federal deficit is shrinking toward about half the size that it has averaged since 1970, when analyzed as a percentage of gross domestic product. The shift reflects a strong economy, with higher incomes and corporate profits generating a bigger flow of tax revenue. In turn, the Treasury’s progress could help the economy by buoying investor confidence in the nation’s fiscal position. Some experts say the budget could achieve balance in the short run of the next few years. In unveiling its proposed budget this month, the Bush administration forecast black ink on the federal ledger in 2012. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its recent annual outlook, also shows a surplus for that year. So, after three and a half year of Nancy Pelosi, how are we doing? I can only say it has gone from good to bad to verse:
Ode to Nancy Pelosi, Limerick style.
Since Nancy Pelosi took over the gavel
Was our economy quick to unravel.
She is more than bad,
The worst that we had.
We finally stopped contemplating our navel.
.
Since Nancy Pelosi took over as speaker
Our job situation has gotten much weaker
All jobs that are lost
Since she got the post
And as for advise, shame to all who still seek her.
.
For Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader
The Chinese exploiters a life-line did feed her
Our debt load increased
Four trillions at least
We all must this fall go and vote to unseat her
.
For Nancy Pelosi, known Tea Party hater
Gets scared when the grandmothers start to berate her
“A Period of Consequences.” The phrase is taken from a speech in the House of Commons in late 1936 in which Winston Churchill warned: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
The British economist and businessman Josiah Charles Stamp is said to have remarked, “It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.”
The Limerick:
Obama shows signs that fer sure he can’t hack it.
Our country: The consequence starts to attack it.
But Winston was right,
We must face the fight.
On Churchill’s old bust Barry blurted: Take back it!
As shown above (see the datapoint in the square box), the Jan 25 2012 UAH AMSU daily temperatures are the coldest for the globe at 600mb of all the years tracked since 2002 (warmest 2010, previously coldest 2008)
Above is worldwide average temperatures at the 2 meter level. The new Dr. Ryan Maue reanalysis based global temperature anomalies has declined dramatically this month – almost a full degree Celsius!
(Forecasts for temperature 8 days in advance are appended to the reanalysis values.)
Will the average temperature go up or down in the future?
(1) On eight occasions, the current occupant of the White House (Obama) has referred to the Spanish model as an example to follow.
(2) After a leaked Spanish government report, a newspaper in Spain (La Gaceta) confirms that the country’s “green economy” policies — the model for the Obama administration’s “green jobs” efforts — have been a disaster: expensive, ineffective, and unworkable
(3) The official jobless rate in Spain went from 7.9% in May 2007 to 19% in Nov 2009. It now stands at 22.8% (Oct 2011)
(4) The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Obrero Español [parˈtiðo soθjaˈlista oˈβrero espaˈɲol], PSOE [peˈsoe]) is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Since the General election on 14 March 2004, the PSOE has been the governing party of Spain. The PSOE is a full member of the Party of European Socialists and the Socialist International.
(5) MADRID — Spaniards struggling with high unemployment and a credit squeeze delivered a punishing verdict on almost eight years of Socialist government at the ballot box on Nov 20 2011, turning to the conservative Popular Party in the hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis. The Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy won 186 seats and a governing majority in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament, while the governing Socialists plummeted to 110 seats from 169. It was the Popular Party’s best showing, and the Socialists’ worst, since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.
(6) Spain took advantage of strong demand to sell nearly twice as many bonds as initially planned at its final bond auction last year on Dec 15 2011, although market participants expect the country’s borrowing conditions to remain tough next year. The strong response to the auction, which brought much-needed respite to the battered Spanish bond market, helped power the country’s bonds higher, with the yield on bonds due in two years falling to their lowest levels since late October.
(7) Jan 27 2012 Fitch Ratings has resolved the Negative Rating Watch on six Eurozone sovereigns, downgrading the IDRs for Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain while affirming ratings for Ireland. The Negative Outlook on all six countries indicates a slightly greater than 50% chance of a downgrade over a two-year time horizon.
President Barack Obama met with an all-star set of liberal and progressive media people — including three MSNBC hosts — but no conservative voices for a chat over coffee at the White House.
Tim Graham, director of media at the Media Research Center, observed: “In the Bush years, it was considered a major scandal for [Fox News chief] Roger Ailes to send a note to the White House, but MSNBC stars meet with Obama, and it’s just another day of ‘hope and change.’”
Chris Tapper of ABC News reported the Dec. 19 meeting in the Roosevelt Room: “The group chatted with the president about economic messaging, his agenda for 2012, the various campaign arguments against different GOP candidates, the desire among some Democrats for him to highlight his foreign policy accomplishments, fighting corporate influence and the ‘crappiness’ of the Senate filibuster, as one attendee put it.”
Those in attendance included Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes of MSNBC, Frank Bruni of The New York Times, Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent of The Washington Post, Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Faiz Shakir of ThinkProgress, and Joy-Ann Reid of The Reid Report.
The Inside Cable News blog also found fault with the liberal coffee klatch: “All I’ll say is that if that many of [Fox News Channel’s] hosts and contributors had shown up at the same time for a Bush chat, it would be all over the Web and probably the media as well,” wrote the blog’s author.
“It makes me uncomfortable for MSNBC to let that many of its people have open access to the president. It may be innocuous but at the very least it looks bad/smells fishy. “I want more distance between D.C. and the people that cover it.”
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama’s mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama’s 1961 birth are missing. The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other “nonvital” passport records, including Dunham’s 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 