And I couldn't resist creating the equivalent version for the real Republican Party (not big government Statists, but Constitutional conservatives and the Tea Partiers):
Bold differences, sharp contrasts.
And I couldn't resist creating the equivalent version for the real Republican Party (not big government Statists, but Constitutional conservatives and the Tea Partiers):
Bold differences, sharp contrasts.America's transition into a welfare state continues, as May saw a new all time high number of American households, 22.3 million to be exact, enter technical poverty and collect foodstamps...
...At the individual level, 46.5 million Americans lived off foodstamps, a 222,157 increase in the month, or nearly three times the number of people who found jobs in June according to the BLS. Next month this too will be a record, as it is currently just 17,367 before the previous all time high set in December of 2011...
...The good news, and we use the term loosely, is that the average benefit per household rose from all time lows of $275.82 to $276.76. Surely, the bottom is in and just like housing, there is on blue skies ahead...
Combined foodstamp and disability recipients: 55,250,723.
QOTD: "Once this election boiled down to Chic-Fil-A, dogs riding on cars or being eaten and dancing horses, I knew it was the most vital one ever." --Jazz Shaw
GDP Report Worst In Over Year
Friday's Q2 GDP report will offer the most comprehensive picture of how quickly economic conditions have deteriorated, just days ahead of the Federal Reserve's next policy meeting.
Economists were predicting a second-quarter pace above 2% annualized a few months ago, but the consensus is now 1.2%. That would be the weakest in more than a year and down from 1.9% in Q1 and nearly 3% in Q4 2011.
Six people were shot and five of them died during a bloody 12-hour period between 4 p.m. Thursday and 4 a.m. Friday, according to Chicago police.
Among the dead: two men in their early 30s in a gang-related slaying on the Southeast Side, a 22-year-old former CPS basketball player who recently committed to a Division 1 school for basketball, a 35-year-old clerk at a West Side gas station and a 25-year-old man killed in a drive-by attack in the Park Manor neighborhood...
A 22-year-old Chicago man [Micheal Haynes] who recently committed to play basketball at a Division I school died after he was shot trying to break up a fight over a necklace Thursday afternoon, according to family and authorities... Haynes, a 6-foot-7 inch forward was set to play basketball for the 2012-2013 school year in New Rochelle, N.Y., for the Iona College Gaels, according to a statement from the school.
...The lone survivor of the violence was a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the 6700 block of South Carpenter about 11 p.m., police said. He was shot in the arm and torso and treated at Comer Children’s Hospital for his wounds, police said.
Answer: Repeal Obamacare.
...The gross spending for Obamacare’s insurance expansions [now] totals $1.4 trillion for the 2013–2021 period—the same stretch in which $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts known as “sequestration” would apply...
[The CBO] also shows $400 billion in net 2013–2021 tax hikes, part of the onerous “Taxmageddon” also slated to start in January. Thus, the net cost of Obamacare would be about $1 trillion for 2013–2021. That’s how much could be saved by cancelling the planned spending and taxes in the President’s government takeover of health care.
...The cuts would [otherwise] shrink defense spending by about 10 percent through a crude, indiscriminate, and irresponsible mechanism. They must be replaced. What better substitute than two huge new entitlements that have not yet been implemented, that [more than] half the public doesn’t want, and that the government cannot afford? Take away Obamacare, and the entire sequestration is replaced almost dollar for dollar—without tax hikes.
...The Heritage Foundation previously listed the top five reasons for repealing Obamacare: (1) to stop adding deficits and debt, (2) to help prevent Taxmageddon, (3) to protect religious freedom, (4) to keep health care decisions with doctors and patients, and (5) to clear the way for patient-centered reform. Now make it an even half-dozen: (6) repeal Obamacare, and prevent an indefensible sequestration.
• "[T]he (Obama campaign’s) press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”
• “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House.”
• “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position.”
• “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly.” Ratner believes that the Associated Press and McClatchy are exceptions; I’m less than convinced.
• “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”
If the Times, with what remaining power and influence it has, began to document and report every instance where a sycophantic administration flunky demanded quote approval and it firmly refused, I’ll bet things would change — and quickly. But either [they don't] have the stones to try, or for the time being would prefer not to.
Perhaps the day [those] in this sadly compromised calling will find the nerve to be journalists again will arrive on about January 21, 2013 — but only if someone other than Barack Obama begins to occupy the White House.
In October 2005 President George W. Bush used the term “Islamic fascist” for the first time to describe the Muslim barbarians at war with the West. He denounced them as movements that have a “violent and political vision”, and call for “the establishment... of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”
The ideology of the Islamists whose ranks today include not only al-Qaeda but also Hamas and Hezbollah -- originated with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood finds not just its roots, but much of its symbolism, terminology, and common cause deep within the origins of Nazism.
Hassan al-Banna (1906 - 1949) was born into the family of a poor watchmaker in southern Egypt. As a child, he was attracted to the extremist aspects of Islam, which were hostile to Western secularism and to its system of rights, particularly women's rights.
While still in his teens, the young al-Banna and friends (they referred to each other as ‘brethren’) met frequently to discuss the situation in the Middle East, to argue about the ills of Arab society, and to lament the decline of Islam. Their angst was in large part a reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the end of the Muslim Caliphate, the British occupation of Egypt, and the resulting exposure of Arab society to Western values.
In order to strike back against these evils, al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Among the perspectives he drew on to address these issues were the anti-capitalist doctrines of European Marxism and especially fascism.
The group expanded during the 1930’s as Al-Banna would describe, in inflammatory speeches, the horrors of hell expected for heretics, and consequently, the need for Muslims to return to their purest religious roots, re-establish the Caliphate, and resume the great and final holy war, or jihad, against the non-Muslim world.
The first big step on the path to the international jihad came during “The Great Arab Revolt” of 1936-9, when one of the most famous of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders, the Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti (Supreme Muslim religious leader) of Jerusalem, incited his followers to a three-year war against the Jews in Palestine and the British who administered the Mandate. By the end of the 1930’s there were more than a half million active members registered, in more than two thousand branches across the Arab world.
It was during this time that the Muslim Brotherhood found a soul mate in Nazi Germany. The Reich offered great power connections to the movement, but the relationship brokered by the Brotherhood was more than a marriage of convenience. Long before the war, al-Banna had developed an Islamic religious ideology which previewed Hitler’s Nazism. Both movements sought world conquest and domination.
Both were explicitly anti-nationalist in the sense that they believed in the liquidation of the nation-state in favor of a trans-national unifying community: in Islam the umma (community of all believers); and in Nazism the herrenvolk (master race). Both worshipped the unifying totalitarian figure of the Caliph or Führer.
As the Brotherhood’s political and military alliance with Nazi Germany developed, these parallels facilitated practical interactions created a full-blown alliance, with formal state visits, de facto ambassadors, and overt as well as sub rosa joint ventures.
The single best known and most active Nazi sympathizer in the Muslim Brotherhood was not al-Banna himself, but the Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and one-time President of the Supreme Muslim Council of Palestine. As one commentator has noted, to understand the Hajj’s influence on the Middle East in the 1930s and 40s is to understand the ongoing genocidal program of the Arab terrorist organizations warring against the Jews of Israel today.
Al-Husseini used his office as a powerful bully pulpit from which to preach anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, and (turning on his patrons) anti-British vitriol. He was directly involved in the organization of the 1929 riots which destroyed the 3000-year-old Jewish community of Hebron. And he was quick to see that he had a natural ally in Hitler and in the rising star of Nazi Germany.
The British sent massive reinforcements to put down the revolt. Al-Husseini fled to Lebanon, where he worked tirelessly on behalf of Germany and Nazism. He played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in instigating a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941, in urging Nazis and pro-Nazi governments in Europe to transport Jews to death camps, in training pro-Nazi Bosnian brigades, and, after Hitler’s cause was lost, in funneling Nazi loot into post-war Arab countries.
After meeting with Hitler on November 21, 1941, Husseini praised the Germans because they “know how to get rid of the Jews, and that brings us close to the Germans and sets us in their camp.”
His own memoirs, and the testimony of German defendants at the Nuremberg trials later on, showed that he planned a death camp modeled on Auschwitz to be constructed near Nablus for the genocide of Palestine’s Jews.
It was the Mufti who urged Hitler, Himmler, and General Ribbentrop to concentrate Germany’s considerable industrial and military resources on the extermination of European Jewry. The foremost Muslim spiritual leader of his time helped in his own way by lobbying to prevent Jews from leaving Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, even though those governments were initially willing to let them go.
As Eichmann himself recounted: “We have promised him [the Mufti] that no European Jew would enter Palestine any more.”
But with the Cold War looming, the British and the Americans sought to curry favor with the Arab world (and prevent the USS R from making political headway there) by allowing him to escape. He fled first to Egypt, and later to Syria. From Damascus, Hajj Amin al-Husseini reestablished himself as the foremost spokesman for the Arabs of Palestine.
As the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Arabia and Morocco invaded Israel in 1948, the general-secretary of the Arab League, Abd al-Rahman Azzam (aka Azzam Pasha), who had previously stated privately that he considered the partition of Palestine to be the only rational solution, now stood shoulder to shoulder with the Mufti. “This war,” he declared on the day of the Arab attack, “will be a war of destruction.” It was: but it was the armies assembled by Arab generals, many of whom had fought with Rommel in behalf of the Third Reich that were destroyed.
Al-Husseini’s Nazi ambitions, even though they were now seen as part of the Holocaust that he had helped in his small way to engineer, continued to be a source of pride for his Arab supporters after his death in 1948.QOTD: "The combination of the two welfare-policy reversions could be devastating, especially when combined with the Obama-backed massive expansions of food stamps and of eligibility for unemployment insurance. As others (including the American Enterprise Institute) have noted, the Obamite re-invigoration of the welfare state will almost assuredly catch millions of people anew in a “dependency trap” in which it is actually less financially beneficial to work than it is to game the system. Or, at least, that calculation of benefits would apply in the short term and the near horizon; the long-term social pathologies, of course, could be devastating for those who fall into (or willingly hurl themselves into) the dependency trap." --Quin Hillyer
FREELANCER FAST 50 (FASTEST MOVERS)
|
Rank |
Category |
Q2 2012 |
Q1 2012 |
Growth |
|
1 |
Word |
1594 |
728 |
118.96% |
|
2 |
Web Scraping |
3232 |
2025 |
59.60% |
|
3 |
Objective C |
1809 |
1140 |
58.68% |
|
4 |
User Interface / IA |
1756 |
1234 |
42.30% |
|
5 |
Mobile Phone |
5709 |
4209 |
35.64% |
|
6 |
iPhone |
5112 |
3926 |
30.21% |
|
7 |
iPad |
2308 |
1826 |
26.40% |
|
8 |
C Programming |
2501 |
2068 |
20.94% |
|
9 |
Android |
3444 |
2859 |
20.46% |
|
10 |
HTML5 |
2108 |
1763 |
19.57% |
|
11 |
|
1647 |
1385 |
18.92% |
|
12 |
Virtual Assistant |
3770 |
3202 |
17.74% |
|
13 |
jQuery / Prototype |
2247 |
1927 |
16.61% |
|
14 |
Data Processing |
21274 |
18331 |
16.05% |
|
15 |
Excel |
22947 |
20282 |
13.14% |
|
16 |
Software Architecture |
5095 |
4530 |
12.47% |
|
17 |
Shopping Carts |
2647 |
2370 |
11.69% |
|
18 |
Telemarketing |
1104 |
999 |
10.51% |
|
19 |
Banner Design |
1810 |
1672 |
8.25% |
|
20 |
Technical Writing |
2250 |
2119 |
6.18% |
|
21 |
Copy Typing |
2835 |
2709 |
4.65% |
|
22 |
Logo Design |
5768 |
5569 |
3.57% |
|
23 |
Linux |
1270 |
1239 |
2.50% |
|
24 |
Magento |
1752 |
1723 |
1.68% |
|
25 |
Social Networking |
5308 |
5250 |
1.10% |
|
26 |
Website Design |
23098 |
22945 |
0.67% |
|
27 |
Data Entry |
30943 |
30805 |
0.45% |
|
28 |
Illustrator |
2096 |
2103 |
-0.33% |
|
29 |
HTML |
22281 |
22533 |
-1.12% |
|
30 |
|
2184 |
2213 |
-1.31% |
|
31 |
Flash |
2522 |
2594 |
-2.78% |
|
32 |
PHP |
29381 |
30254 |
-2.89% |
|
33 |
Article Submission |
2681 |
2792 |
-3.98% |
|
34 |
Proofreading |
1377 |
1447 |
-4.84% |
|
35 |
Internet Marketing |
13848 |
14667 |
-5.58% |
|
36 |
AJAX |
3709 |
3978 |
-6.76% |
|
37 |
Report Writing |
1220 |
1313 |
-7.08% |
|
38 |
SEO |
9397 |
10133 |
-7.26% |
|
39 |
C++ Programming |
1921 |
2074 |
-7.38% |
|
40 |
Link Building |
6529 |
7120 |
-8.30% |
|
41 |
C# Programming |
1935 |
2122 |
-8.81% |
|
42 |
Article Rewriting |
6298 |
6941 |
-9.26% |
|
43 |
Blog |
3581 |
4086 |
-12.36% |
|
44 |
Customer Support |
1022 |
1171 |
-12.72% |
|
45 |
|
6510 |
7537 |
-13.63% |
|
46 |
Articles |
11282 |
13064 |
-13.64% |
|
47 |
Academic Writing |
3579 |
4219 |
-15.17% |
|
48 |
eBay |
1042 |
1284 |
-18.85% |
|
49 |
Classifieds Posting |
661 |
826 |
-19.98% |
|
50 |
.NET |
2919 |
4748 |
-38.52% |
Union heads representing thousands of America's immigration agents slammed the Obama administration Thursday over a policy they claim is forcing officials to ignore the law and allowing illegal immigrants to exploit the system...
In a startling allegation, the president of the union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers claimed illegal immigrants are "taking advantage" of a new directive [which] ends up allowing illegal immigrants to avoid detention without any proof -- particularly so-called "dreamers," or those illegal immigrants who would benefit under the "DREAM Act" proposal, which Congress has not passed but the administration has partially implemented...
"Prosecutorial discretion for dreamers is solely based on the individual's claims. Our orders are if an alien says they went to high school, then let them go," he said at a press conference with GOP senators. "Officers have been told that there is no burden for the alien to prove anything. ... At this point we don't even know why DHS has criteria at all, as there is no requirement or burden to prove anything on the part of the alien...
Crane cited one case in which, he said, an immigrant facing criminal charges was let go under the policy. Further, he complained that officers are "under threat of losing their jobs" if they defy the policy.
Those wondering why the Department of Justice has refused to go after Jon Corzine for the vaporization of $1.6 billion in MF Global client funds need look no further than the documents uncovered by the Government Accountability Institute that reveal that the now-defunct MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s former law firm, Covington & Burling.
...Records also reveal that MF Global’s trustee for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy retained as its general bankruptcy counsel Morrison & Foerester--the very law firm from which Associate Attorney General Tony West came to DOJ...
...Until now, the conventional wisdom for why Holder wouldn’t throw the book at Corzine was that Corzine is an Obama campaign bundler. Indeed, as Breitbart News reported, four of the top officials at the Department of Justice--Eric Holder, Thomas Perrelli, Karol Mason, and Tony West--were also big money bundlers for Obama...
...At least 65 members of Congress have already signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate MF Global’s collapse and the loss of $1.6 billion in customer money...
...What’s more, even progressives have begun to wonder whether Holder’s Covington & Burling connection explains why the Department of Justice has not charged, prosecuted, or jailed a single Wall Street executive after the biggest financial collapse in American history...
...More and more Washington insiders are asking a question that was considered off-limits in the nation's capital just a few months ago: Who, exactly, is Attorney General Eric Holder representing? As scandal after scandal erupts on Wall Street, involving everything from global lending manipulation to cocaine and prostitution, more and more people are worrying about Holder's seeming inaction -- or worse -- in the face of mounting evidence.
...Susan Collins, R-Maine, Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ... Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., ... John McCain, R-Ariz., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, ... Olympia Snowe, R-Maine
The anti-gay views openly espoused by the president of a fast food chain specializing in chicken sandwiches have run afoul of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a local alderman, who are determined to block Chick-fil-A from expanding in Chicago.
“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values,” Emanuel said Wednesday.
###
Chicago values? What would those be? Corruption, violence, inept government, voter fraud, bad baseball teams? The list practically writes itself.
Her mother, Dr. Saleha Abedin, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, the Brotherhood’s female counterpart... She is also a member of the Muslim World League, which terrorism expert Andrew McCarthy describes as “the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”
...the organization wants to get rid of laws against marital rape, permit marriage below the age of 18 and institute other elements of Sharia Law. She is also a board member of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (which the group she leads is part of), a group banned in Israel because it belongs to Qaradawi’s Union of Good, a network of “charities” set up to fund Hamas. The U.S. froze the Union of Good’s assets in November 2008...
...Huma Abedin’s late father, Dr. Syed Abedin, was also intimately involved with Islamists. He led the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs based in Saudi Arabia. It is backed by the Muslim World League and is an entity of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a very extreme Islamist group. The Institute also published Mrs. Abedin’s book. Huma herself was an assisstant editor of the Institute’s journal as far back as 1996 and as recently as 2008, which means she was there when it published her mother’s extremist book. This screenshot from September 2008 shows that Huma, her mother and brother were all simultaneously editors of the journal.
Saleha Abedin is Vice Dean at Dar El-Hekma College in Saudi Arabia, Saleha was also one of the institution’s founders, along with Yaseen Abdullah Kadi—a designated terrorist by the U.S.—and members of the bin Laden family...
...Courtesy of Internet Archives, we were able to learn that Huma Abedin served as an Assistant Editor with IMMA from at least December 2, 2002—September 24, 2008. Her name fails to appear on the IMMA website some time before February 14, 2009. Presumably, Abedin left IMMA to accept her current position as Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton... Huma worked and partnered together with her family at IMMA...
...From at least December 2, 2002—December 3, 2003, none other than Abdullah Omar Naseef served on the Advisory Editorial Board [with Huma]...
On October 12, 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Rabita Trust, a charity in Pakistan "for its close ties to senior al Qaida leadership and for providing logistical and financial support to Al Qaida." The Rabita Trust was founded in 1988 by Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, the former secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL) in the 1980s.
...Obviously, this means that more than two years prior to Huma Abedin serving on a board with Naseef—and one month after the 9/11 attacks—Naseef was formally connected to Al-Qaeda by the U.S. Government.
...Bachmann’s argument stands; with this evidence presented, the burden of proof is on McCain to show that Huma was vetted and does not present a threat to National Security. Bachmann’s 16-page letter was not only regarding the Abedins, but “Brotherhood infiltration” in general... After examining this we believe that we provide ample proof for Huma’s involvement, ties and relationship with members of the Muslim Brotherhood... It becomes then obvious that Huma Abedin likely knew:
1—That the organization to which her family belonged was founded with the help of Al-Qaeda Godfather Abdullah Omar Naseef.
2—Her family ties existed well after IMMA’s inception, after 9/11, and well into 2006—2008 without any degrees of separation as claimed by CNN. The Abedins could not deny knowing about the widely known SAAR Network charity that Naseef managed.
3—Her mother was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Huma arranged for Hillary Clinton to speak alongside two Muslim Brotherhood members; Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin and Suheir Qureshi who is listed by Al-Dustur and Al-Jazeera as a member. The complete list, including the 12 Saudi women members and the names of all 63 members are listed here. Evidence of these being involved with the Muslim Brotherhood is overwhelming.
4—That her brother is a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) with Abdullah Omar Naseef as the Chairman of the Board at OCIS with Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi serving on the OCIS Board.
5—That leaving her job as editor at IMMA was necessary for her new job at the State Dept.
6—That her mother leads a group that endorses marital rape, under age marriage, and female genital mutilation...