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Yemen's Saleh formally steps down after 33 years
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Page 6: Politix
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-Obits-
Snowe to exit... Rhino owned by Offshore TV builders to exit stage left.


Posted by: Water Modem || 02/28/2012 19:57 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  BTW only until March 15 for somebody to file and run for her seat or the gov. gets to appoint someone... likely dem...
Posted by: Water Modem || 02/28/2012 20:04 Comments || Top||

#2  The Governor is a rough-around-the-edges first term republican named LePage. Democrats hate him. The feeling is mutual. It is highly unlikely he would appoint a democrat.

An election however is different; Maine is rather independent-minded for a blue New England state. It could go any way.
Posted by: Chesney Shusoling7348 || 02/28/2012 21:23 Comments || Top||

#3  Tea Party hadn't targeted her. She was a shoe-in for reelection. This is her final "F*ck You!" to conservatives.
Posted by: Iblis || 02/28/2012 21:48 Comments || Top||

#4  Ms. Snowe has been a thoughtful and modest Senator for many years. Senator is not a job that encourages either thoughtfulness nor modesty. So, I thank her for her service. And I thank her for stepping down. And I hope the door does not hit her on the ass as she exits -- too hard.
Posted by: rammer || 02/28/2012 22:09 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Michelle Now Oppressing Military With Her Food Regime
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/28/2012 17:32 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It is unwise to take away the one perquisite of military service many soldiers feel they have.

Many soldiers are of the opinion that if they get an omelet in the morning, with a cup of coffee, they can handle any shiat thrown at them for the rest of the day. Take that away, though, and they are going to get surly.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/28/2012 17:35 Comments || Top||

#2  Calories are a measure of the energy that the food provides. If a person is active enough (s)he can eat as many calories as desired. If (s)he is an inactive, desk-flying dietitian, (s)he needs to limit calories.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 02/28/2012 17:47 Comments || Top||

#3  If we all begin to eat like her, will we cop an attitude and have arsses two axe handles wide as well? Think I'll stick to my fried eggs, cheese grits, red-eye gravy, and streak o'lean. The sooner I'm dead, the sooner I won't have to be bothered by these meddling, doddering fools!
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/28/2012 17:58 Comments || Top||

#4  Also bumbles is wanting to severely cut medical coverage as well - for the servicemen (tricare?) but not for the unionized civilians.....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/28/2012 18:06 Comments || Top||

#5  Hey stupid B*#^C, Our Soldiers don't need weight control or your stupid ideas. They need to eat and bulk up.

Back off you whacked out trailer trash.
Posted by: newc || 02/28/2012 23:17 Comments || Top||

#6  Now your insulting trailer trash.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/28/2012 23:20 Comments || Top||


Europe
French election 2012: Francois Hollande announces 75 per cent tax plan
When will they ever learn?
The Socialist front-runner in the race to become France's next president has announced plans to introduce a 75 per cent tax rate on millionaires.
Posted by: tipper || 02/28/2012 13:08 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Capital flight will be the next thing they will talk about.

Remember, taxing those rich enough to pay to have their wealth moved to another country is like a Monkey trying to have sex with a football.
Looks like something is happening and is amusing to watch, but in reality nothing gets accomplished.
Posted by: DarthVader || 02/28/2012 13:32 Comments || Top||

#2  France avoided having a credit/housing bubble as it had a higher percentage of taxation than surrounding countries in the immovable, i.e. Land/Property. Which is why despite it's horrendous level of state meddling in the economy it's not as fubared as expected.

I expect Hollande will take France Full Retard.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 02/28/2012 18:38 Comments || Top||

#3  The problem is they won't be taxing millionaires, ie taxing wealth, they will be taxing high income earners.

Taxing wealth is a good idea from an economic perspective but notoriously difficult to do in practice.

Taxing very high income earners is nuts, because whatever they do is economically very valuable, and they will either do less of it or go somewhere else to do it.
Posted by: Phil_B || 02/28/2012 19:28 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Homeland Security Dept. Pays General Dynamics to Scour Internet for Criticism of its Policies
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions.
Posted by: Beavis || 02/28/2012 12:12 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I hereby criticize the fascist DHS.
Posted by: Iblis || 02/28/2012 14:07 Comments || Top||

#2  I for one, fully support the persistent surveillance of internet sites and the dynamic tasking and re-tasking of airborne ISR over FEMA region, non-compliant or suspect neighborhoods and cell towers. Afghanistan was a successful beta test, Fast and Curious is here to stay. Get over it!
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/28/2012 14:12 Comments || Top||

#3  Let me make it easy for you GD guys, you have always been good subs. ( name="Homeland Security Criticism" content="citizen comment" ).

Homeland security started out as an interesting concept. If it had secured the borders, championed enlightened self-defense (e.g. flight 94), and respected the American people, well then it would be a success.

However, being famous for insulting both traveling citizens and those foreigners traveling on a legitimate visa, ignoring illegal trespass of our borders, failing to support our sworn immigration officers, and lavishing money on NYC union make work projects is to be famous for fail.

I don't criticize HSD, it criticizes itself.

To those in HSD I ask you to look around. Americans respect the FBI; admire the CDC; and revere their Coast Guard. What are you doing wrong to be so hated?

Posted by: rammer || 02/28/2012 22:36 Comments || Top||


JPM Pwns Nancy Pelosi
Last week we had the mispleasure of suffering a subdural hematoma or 7 after reading CA Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's formal response to the gas price shock, in which it became abundantly clear that the amount of heavy metals in the California water supply is directly proportional to the insolvency of said state. Yet the only thing better than the resulting cathartic post, which had over 57,000 reads, and hundreds of comments, is JPMorgan doing the very same to what some allege is the most corrupt and incompetent legislator in the history of the US Congress. Which, to our and our readers' utmost delight, is precisely what happened today, when JPM Private Bank CIO Michael Cembalest decided to clinically deconstruct her argument into its constituent utterly insane components. Below we present the carnage.
Posted by: tipper || 02/28/2012 01:16 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  amount of heavy metals in the California water supply is directly proportional to the insolvency of said state - mad hatters all? Ouch...
Posted by: Water Modem || 02/28/2012 2:30 Comments || Top||

#2  Just remember that when Newt had the opportunity he failed to send to the states the Constitutional Amendment for term limits. As much as Ms. Pelosi has damaged America, she as enabled by a Trunk who is no less enamored of power.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 02/28/2012 8:44 Comments || Top||

#3  If my meory is any good Contitutional Amendments have to be ratified by two thirds of the States (in addition of being ratified by two thirds of Congress). Couldn't it be that Newt kew all too well it had a snowball in hell chance of adoption?
Posted by: JFM || 02/28/2012 10:05 Comments || Top||

#4  Its 2/3rds of the House and Senate [or Constitutional Convention] for proposal and 3/4 of the states for ratification. As to if you'd get enough states to vote yes, think about the opportunities presented to state politicians if incumbents in Congress were required to step down. It opens a viable career progression that is otherwise obstructed by sitting incumbents who accumulate lots of bribes 'campaign' contributions from national lobbyists that state personalities usually have no access.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 02/28/2012 10:19 Comments || Top||

#5  @Procopius.

Stop day dreaming. First it has to get approval of 2/3 of the Chambers and I dion't think incumebents would vote for term limits unless you put a loaded gun on their heads. Then you have to get thirty eight states ratifying the Amendmnet. The fact is that either because they have a good chance of being next incumbent, party discipline or because of the incumbents network of influence it is dubious you get thity states ratifying the Amendment let alone thirty eight.

Now before you begin to tell American Constitution is flawed and should be reformed I will tell you that your Constitution is best thiung since sliced bread, that even if the rules for getting it ammended get in the way on this particular subject you shouldn't be in a hurry to make it easier to ammend: had it been in Europe at the time Democrats controlled both chambers Obama could have it had ammended at will. Your Founding Fathers knew too well what they were doing when they made this Constitution.
Posted by: JFM || 02/28/2012 11:03 Comments || Top||

#6  What JFM said, with fireworks and a pretty girl dressed as Lady Liberty. The Founding Fathers designed the system to go slowly, so that all possible objections to a course of action would have the opportunity to bubble up from the primordial muck and block it. Politicians always want to do things, especially things that allow more power to accrue to them. So it's much more important to prevent bad ideas than to permit good ones.
Posted by: trailing wife || 02/28/2012 11:35 Comments || Top||

#7  First it has to get approval of 2/3 of the Chambers and I dion't think incumebents would vote for term limits unless you put a loaded gun on their heads

Of course the French did come up with a solution, but it involved Madame Guillotine. However, forcing such a vote and getting the incumbents name clearly on the record makes him/her a future target for a replacement who would.

However, while agreeing to the greatness if imperfection of the Constitution, the failure to follow the acts called for in Article V by the Congress, has resulted in the Judiciary substituting their 'interpretations' by merely a majority of the Supremes. [Thus the down and dirty fight for nominations and the elevation of such nominations in the Presidential elections] The slow has for all intents and purposes been replaced by the connected who avoid the painful and necessary process as intended and in doing so has basically ended the need to engage in committing themselves to engage the population in the process.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 02/28/2012 12:32 Comments || Top||

#8  Pelosi is reality in the hobbit city of SanFran. Those people are ALL insane and really need a lobotomy. I have been there before but you could not pay me enough to go back to those SCUMBAGS again.

I despise the left coast, their reps, and their view on life.

CURSE her, curse San Francisco, and Curse that evil wicked witch of the west.

FU
Posted by: newc || 02/28/2012 13:09 Comments || Top||

#9  "Just remember that when Newt had the opportunity he failed to send to the states the Constitutional Amendment for term limits. As much as Ms. Pelosi has damaged America, she as enabled by a Trunk who is no less enamored of power." A better plan is to put it on the ballot in each state. If all 50 states adopt term limits the constitution doesn't need to be changed. I believe the constistion leaves election issues up to the states after all.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/28/2012 15:19 Comments || Top||

#10  In fact a lot of laws should be handled that way. The GOP should be pushing for nearly identical laws in multiple states the way folks did with the medical marajuana. Keep trying and eventually the mindsets start to change and you capture more states.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/28/2012 15:20 Comments || Top||

#11  Newc, hobbits are a lot more practical and sensible than San Franciscans. A better description of San Francisco would be the Land of the Lotus Eaters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus-eaters

Putting term limits on the ballot in every state? The idea has possibilities. Which state would have the guts to go first?
Posted by: mom || 02/28/2012 16:30 Comments || Top||

#12  Having Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman Sultz as spokeswomen for the Dems is great for the Republicans.

If only Barney Frank wouldn't retire and if only Rev Al could become a spokesman too.
Posted by: Lord Garth || 02/28/2012 19:48 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi
A Georgetown co-ed told Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex that they’re going broke, so you and I should pay for their birth control.

Speaking at a hearing held by Pelosi to tout Pres. Obama’s mandate that virtually every health insurance plan cover the full cost of contraception and abortion-inducing products, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it’s too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage.

Apparently, four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet if they have to pay for their own contraception, Fluke's research shows.

"Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception), Fluke reported.

It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations.

"Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school," Fluke told the hearing.

$3,000 for birth control in three years? That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex – and, she wants us to pay for it.

Yes, us. Where do you think the insurance companies forced to cover this cost get the money to pay for these co-eds to have sex? It comes from the health care insurance premiums you and I pay.

But, back to this woman’s complaint that she’s spending $3,000 for birth control during her time in college.

"For a lot of students, like me, who are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary," she complains.

So, she earns enough money in just one summer to pays for three full years of sex. And, yes, they are full years – since she and her co-ed classmates are having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight, apparently.

At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year. (By the way, why does CVS.com list the weight of its condom products in terms of pounds?)

Assuming it’s not a leap year, that’s 1,000 divided by 365 – or having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years. And, I thought Georgetown was a Catholic university where women might be prone to shun casual, unmarried sex. At least its health insurance doesn't cover contraception (that which you subsidize, you get more of, you know).

And, that’s not even considering that there are Planned Parenthood clinics in her neighborhood that give condoms away and sell them at a discount, which could help make her sexual zeal more economical.

Besides, maybe, these female law students could cut back on some other expenses to make room for more birth control in their budgets, instead of making us pick up the tab. With classes and studying and all that sex, who's got time for cable?

And, let's not forget about these deadbeat boyfriends (or random hook-ups?) who are having sex 2.74 times a day. If Fluke's going to ask the government to force anyone to foot the bill for her friends' birth control, shouldn't it be these guys?

All of this seems to suggest at least two important conclusions:
1.If these women want to have sex, we shouldn't be forced to pay for it, and
2.If these co-eds really are this guy crazy, I should've gone to law school
Posted by: Beavis || 02/28/2012 16:29 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  That's a thousand dollars a year of sex -- and, she wants us to pay for it.

The premiums terminate once you are married....but come to think of it, so does the sex. :-(
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/28/2012 17:04 Comments || Top||

#2  They should use aspirin.
Posted by: DarthVader || 02/28/2012 17:08 Comments || Top||

#3  I see they've begun their career of screwing over the public even before getting the JD.
Posted by: Shimble Guelph5793 || 02/28/2012 17:20 Comments || Top||

#4  This is hilarious. Someone should suggest to the Georgetown administration that they now have a reputation as a "party school".

Schools have been sensitive to that label going back to at least 1,000 B.C., and the medical school in Sidon, in what is now Lebanon. The students were supposed to be chaste, and the school was surrounded by a high wall to keep them from going into town.

But a document from that time detailed all the known ways in which students had been able to get over that damned wall so they could get themselves some action.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/28/2012 17:51 Comments || Top||

#5  Heck they can get full birth control you can ever need for only a dime.

You just have to hold it (the dime) between your knees...
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/28/2012 18:05 Comments || Top||

#6  Why don't thay make their partners pick up at least half the cost? Why should I get screwed if I don't even get sex?
Posted by: Glenmore || 02/28/2012 18:54 Comments || Top||

#7  If only Sandra were named Jane instead.

"Jane, you politically and economically ignorant slut!"
Posted by: Eric Jablow || 02/28/2012 19:20 Comments || Top||


Obama Taps NBA Millionaires for Campaign Cash
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/28/2012 02:44 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Tactics and methods: Roundball and children as an international 'community organizing' vehicles:

The NBPA (Player's Union) also travels overseas to improve lives and impact communities. In addition to distributing millions of meals to the residents of Kenya, the NBPA also has visited China, Saudi Arabia and Puerto Rico, as well as other international locations, hosting basketball clinics for local children at each stop.

Link
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/28/2012 8:14 Comments || Top||

#2  ...playing with the One Percenters. The useful idiots can't connect the dots. It's beyond their comprehension like a round earth.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 02/28/2012 8:39 Comments || Top||

#3  “One of the great things about America and one of the great things about professional sports is we’ve all got cousins, uncles, family members, who are still struggling. And we are reminded we have a lot more work to do,” the president is reported to have said."

A millionaire talking to a bunch of millionaires about how they've all got relatives struggling and that government is the answer. Says a lot about Obama when you think how little hes done to help his Kenyan relatives. The mindset is if the government can't be the one to help then nobody should I guess.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 02/28/2012 10:18 Comments || Top||

#4  He's going to run out of millionaires to tap who he hasn't ticked off. Of course he could parade Joe Biden out to tell these roundballers it is their patriotic duty to cough up.
Posted by: JohnQC || 02/28/2012 10:41 Comments || Top||



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Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
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Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2012-02-28
  Yemen's Saleh formally steps down after 33 years
Mon 2012-02-27
  Congressmen Attacked on Mount of Olives
Sun 2012-02-26
  Afghan interior ministry employee sought in NATO killings
Sat 2012-02-25
  Yemen gets new president after 33 years
Fri 2012-02-24
  Air strke kills al-Shaboobs
Thu 2012-02-23
  Ansar as-Sunna Chief Arrested on Syria-Iraq Border
Wed 2012-02-22
  Hugo has new tumor
Tue 2012-02-21
  Afghans rescue 41 child suicide bombers
Mon 2012-02-20
  Syrian army reinforcements head to Homs
Sun 2012-02-19
  Iran stops oil sales to British, French
Sat 2012-02-18
  SWIFT To Cut Off Iran - No Financial Telecommunications
Fri 2012-02-17
  Feds arrest another thinks-he-is suicide bomber heading to Capitol building
Thu 2012-02-16
  U.S. drone kills five insurgents in Miranshah
Wed 2012-02-15
  Thailand charges Iranian bomb suspects in Bangkok
Tue 2012-02-14
  Suspected Iranian Agent Bungles Bombing in Bangkok

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