This should be fun, a bloodless Anschluss of Europe. I'll have of whatever the EU politicians are smoking. It certainly causes weird behavior.
The European Union is to gain dramatic powers to control tax and spending in crisis-hit eurozone countries under a deal to save the currency. The EU will have to agree the national budgets of heavily indebted countries under a deal to be signed tomorrow at a summit in Brussels attended by David Cameron.
The move will mean Greece losing control over its own budget, after Germany and the International Monetary Fund laid down increasingly harsh conditions for the indebted nation to receive its second £100 billion eurozone bail-out.
With the country on the brink of default, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, yesterday revealed that a "fiscal compact" was set to be signed by European Union leaders at their summit tomorrow.
The move to closer integration between the eurozone economies comes just days before Tory Euro-sceptics launch a campaign to repatriate powers over policing and justice already handed to the European Union.
Conservative MPs will put pressure on the Prime Minister to harness a "block opt-out" that will allow Britain simultaneously to withdraw from European Arrest Warrants, compulsory sharing of data with other police forces, and more than 100 other laws handed to Brussels.
#1
tipper, good post. I appreciate your efforts. This may be a push to purge undesirables. Where does it end?. This is a program that I can see Obama types wishing to implement. Forget the constitution. It's a living document that can be updated to reflect modern times. :-(
[Pak Daily Times] US Vice President Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body... said he had advised President Barack Obama My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it... not to authorise the raid on the compound in Pakistain where the late Osama bin Laden ... who went shovel-ready... was thought to be hiding. "My suggestion is, don't go," Biden recalled, saying when Obama sought his opinion on whether to give Navy SEALs the go-ahead to raid the compound. "We have to do two more things if he is there." Biden did not specify which two things he had considered necessary for the operation. Obama also sought opinions from senior advisers, but no one was willing to give a definitive answer except then CIA director Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... , who told Obama to move forward with the operation, Biden said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/29/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Biden didn't want Obama to order it because they were already late for Obama to take Biden for walkies, and he really, really had to go.
#2
I remember when 0 announced Slo Joe as his running mate, several here pronounced it the end of The One - and I believed!
So why is it taking so long?
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/29/2012 12:26 Comments ||
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#3
Biden as VP was an insurance policy for O
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2012 12:39 Comments ||
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#4
Advice from Biden =
-Color coordination tips from Ray Charles.
-Sensitivity training from Alec Baldwin
-Divorce counseling from OJ
-Humor from Bill Mahar
-Truth from the Times
#7
Plugs DID root for the San Francisco Giants instead of the San Francisco 49'ers in the NFL playoffs. There has to be some way to look at that as a flash of genius... NAH!!
he's a lying asshole who's now been caught in his lies. Jail him, strip him of everything, and extradite to MExico
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2012 11:02 ||
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#1
this just shows that Holder's staff knew, not that Holder knew
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/29/2012 14:05 Comments ||
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#2
Wilkinson responded to Burke shortly thereafter and said the incident was tragic. Ive alerted the AG [Holder], the Acting DAG, Lisa, etc.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2012 14:18 Comments ||
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#3
Lord Garth, if my staff kept that in formation from me I'd fire them. What other information is my staff witholding? I can' t trust my staff. He knew.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/29/2012 14:26 Comments ||
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#4
"A total of 103 members of the House have called for Holders resignation or firing, expressed no confidence in Holder via a formal House Resolution, or both. Two sitting governors, two U.S. senators and all the major Republican presidential candidates join those 103 congressmen in not trusting Holder. Many of those who have called for Holders resignation have pointed out that Holder claiming that he didnt read his memos is a sign that hes admitting incompetence to avoid charges of corruption."
Eric will be on the pardons list as the Zero's pack up the WH silverware and head for Chicago.
#5
Eric should move quickly to assure the high quality of accommodations to which he has become accustomed. under the bus. Waiting until the last minute can result in very high prices or unavailability of room except under the tires.
#6
If he admits to knowing, then he is involved in covering up illegal activity, If he denies knowing then he's involved in dereliction of duty. Either way, he is criminal.
#7
"This article was updated after publication. A previous version reported Holder was informed that the weapons used to kill Terry were linked to Operation Fast & Furious. But a letter to Congress provided by the DOJ suggests only that Monty Wilkinson was made aware. That letter states Wilkinson does not recall telling Holder. Reached Sunday, a spokesperson for Holder relied only on that letter, and declined to confirm that Holder himself was not informed."
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] His supporters make thousands of campaign calls and blanket Florida with signs as they dream of Newt Gingrich ...former Speaker of the House, author of the Contract with America. Gingrich gave the country welfare reform and a balanced budget and the Publicans a landslide House victory in 1996. On the downside, he has a roving eye and a loose fly, he's opinionated, and he's abrasive despite his ability to work with the other side of the political aisle... in the White House, but for many in his Republican Party such a scenario would be nothing short of a nightmare.
After the former House speaker's shock win in South Carolina, morale soared at Newt headquarters in this sprawling city four days ahead of a crucial Florida primary that could put Gingrich -- or his main rival Mitt Romney ...whose real first name is actually, no kidding, Willard, was governor of Massachussetts and is currently the front-runner for president on the Publican ticket. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's foot is in an ideological bucket because of Romneycare, a state-level experiment that should have been a warning against Obamacare if anyone had been paying attention. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field... -- in the driver's seat as they chase the Republican presidential nomination.
Minions of volunteers swarmed the ground floor of a small red brick house as they carried out campaign duties for the most controversial conservative in the race to see who will go head to head with President Barack Obama I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody... in November.
"We went from 50 volunteers to about 250," said Gingrich's local campaign chairman Bert Ralston. "We knew it was coming, but it's fantastic."
They put up campaign placards, distribute "Newt 2012" stickers, strategize, and of course make calls to prospective voters seeking their support for a candidate whose rivals deride him as bombastic and "erratic."
The calls are simple and direct, with volunteers reading from a script: "Newt Gingrich is the only candidate with the experience and vision to... rebuild the America we love. I hope we can count on your support."
An 11-year-old boy on Tuesday made some 75 campaign calls for Gingrich, volunteer John Libby said.
Retired history professor Don Rawlins, energized by the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement, is a fervent Gingrich supporter who helped post Newt signs at a campaign rally on the University of North Florida campus.
"The country is under water, the house is flooded, and we want the best plumber, regardless of the flaws he may have," Rawlins told AFP.
Gingrich has been castigated by social conservatives for his extramarital affairs that led to two messy divorces, and his toxic reign as House speaker in the 1990s has received fresh scrutiny.
Recently, conservative pundits have been among his most ardent critics, saying that while Romney might be too moderate to be a true conservative, the former Massachusetts governor and millionaire investor would be a stronger candidate against Obama in November.
But Rawlins said he is looking beyond Gingrich's shortcomings and occasional pie-in-the-sky ideas, including claims he will establish a permanent moon base by 2020 if elected.
"He is straightforward, he discusses the things that matter, he has the experience," Rawlins said.
Leaette Vollmar, who travelled 900 kilometres from Tennessee with her niece to attend the Gingrich rally at the University of North Florida, was equally succinct.
"He is bright, he knows how to get the job done, he won't flipflop," she said, belittling Romney for having changed his stance on issues such as health care and abortion. "He (Romney) is from Massachusetts, that tells it all," Vollmar said of the historically liberal state.
In Florida Gingrich has often compared himself to conservative icon Ronald Reagan, the 1980s Republican president.
He has hoped to capitalize on an electorate frustrated by high unemployment and a collapsed housing market, and who he hopes recognizes the anti-establishment bent to his campaign speeches.
But after a bump, Gingrich is suffering a post-Carolina slump, with a new poll Friday showing Romney has opened up a nine-point lead among likely Republican voters in Florida.
An aggregate of polls shows Romney at 38.7 per cent compared to Gingrich at 31.5 per cent.
While Gingrich's grass roots support is impressive, some Republicans no longer hide their discomfort with the renaissance of a man who left Congress in 1999 under a cloud after a House Ethics Committee (think of an escargot pretending it has a backbone) penalised him $300,000 in the first-ever reprimand of a sitting speaker.
On Thursday, the establishment unleashed 89-year-old Bob Dole, the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, who publicly voiced the fears that many were whispering about Newt.
"It is now time to take a stand before it is too late," Dole said in an open letter.
"If Gingrich is the nominee it will have an adverse impact on Republican candidates running for county, state and federal offices,' he said.
"Hardly anyone who served with Newt in Congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself," he added.
"He was a one-man-band who rarely took advice. It was his way or the highway."
Republican Representative Peter King told Washington website Politico that a Gingrich nomination would "make it difficult" to keep a Republican majority in the House. "There is just real concern."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/29/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Bill Clinton said the POTUS elections from Bush 1 + Dole were stolen from same, hence Dole's fellow Congresscritters decided that Clinton's presidential/electoral legitimacy + credibility of the US Nation's Laws + Processes would stand or fall on whether POTUS Bill had sex wid a "portly pepperpot" femme Intern in what used to be a nice clean blue dress.
* "A REVOLUTION EVERY NOW + THEN CAN BE A GOOD THING", correct?
The above political adage may ultimately be the best reason of all for Americans to vote for Newt.
#3
Gingrich is a hand grenade - useful but you don't want to be near him when he goes off. His attacks on capitalism (the Bain stuff) and his moral, ethical and philosophical "flexibility" are well demonstrated by his being on the Global Warming couch with Pelosi, opposing Bush on the surge, agreeing with Obama on the Individual Mandate... the guy seems to have no guidance on his intellect at all to determine good from bad. Moon colony? Even Ron Paul laughed at that one. And Gingrich fails miserably head-to-head against Obama due to very high negatives - even rural females favor Obama over him, which is really bad since that's a core group that the GOP carries. Plus he loses the independent voters badly to Obama compared to Romney. The establishment is afraid for all the wrong reasons - yes he'd shake up DC, but the problem is he'd never get elected. Bashing the press sells well to GOP grass roots, but it comes off as arrogant to uninformed and the great unwashed middle. Gingirch would demolish the GOP. His role should be as an attack dog speaker, a think tank kind of guy, a talking head on TV, not a serious candidate. The best thing I can say about him is that he is forcing Romney to get over to the conservative side more strongly, and is toughening up Romney. getting him to actually learn to throw sharp elbows (which he will need with Obama's Chicago gangsters). The other thing is that as long as the combination of Santorum, Gingrich and Paul continue to keep Romney below 50% in delegate count, it keeps open the possibility of late entries to take a brokered convention (which could be good, or could be bad).
#5
comments inside the article have factual problem
The Republican win of the House of Representatives was in the 1994 elections. In the 1996 elections, the Democrats picked up 9 seats (net) but the Republicans retained the majority.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/29/2012 7:01 Comments ||
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#6
Fine summation, Old Spook. Given this group of candidates, I think I'd like to take my chances with an open convention. It is an interesting group - combine Romney's business acumen, Gingrich's fearlessness, Santorum's character and Paul's 'differentness' and you'd have a great candidate (but then there's Gingrich's character, Romney's inconsistency, Santorum's non-charisma, and Paul's 'differentness' and you'd get the normal political candidate.)
#7
Tactically, Gingrich wins, because his supporters can block the onerous Romney, and even if Gingrich can't win the nomination, conservatives win with a brokered convention.
#8
I didn't see Gingrich offering US funds to pay for a moon colony. Rather he said it would be a good goal and NASA should provide prizes that stimulated private enterprise to take steps that way... and followed with the statement that if they got a colony up to 13,000 people he would put forward a bill to grant them statehood.
Oh and he wanted it to be an American colony under US law.
Nothing about funding it. Same for Mars. He said Bush proposed a 480 billion dollar mission to Mars. He would propose offering 10 Billion tax free prize to the first private operation to get there and back. Said it would save $470 billion over the Bush plan.
The media is rather unfairly bashing him on his space proposals. They are based on the 30's prizes to folks like Lindberg.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
01/29/2012 10:56 Comments ||
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#9
Romney's proposals would be the death of US Space. Just look in the NASA forums what they had to say about him. His "experts" are the same crew of dildos that were run out of NASA after wrecking it.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
01/29/2012 10:59 Comments ||
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#10
Oh, and a lot of us understand that a vote for Romney is a vote for Goldman Sucks.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
01/29/2012 11:00 Comments ||
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#11
"The media is rather unfairly bashing him on his space proposals."
Shorter version, WM.
Even shorter: "Duh."
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/29/2012 11:02 Comments ||
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#12
I always get the feeling from him that I'm hearing...
"Those are my principles, If you don't like them I have others..."
He's that but primarily he's always struck me as a generally right of center and rather extraordinarily self-aggrandizing political opportunist who is most interested in attaching himself to the big political idea du jour in an effort to further inflate what he sees as the glory that is Newt.
Whether seizing the then still relevant mantle of the Reagan legacy in '94 in response to a groundwell of public opposition to Billary's attempts to socilize US health care or more recently sharing a couch with Nancy Pelosi in support of the then-roaring climate change agenda, you can often understand Newt by putting a finger in the wind to see which way it is presently blowing.
When that fails recall that Newt is the father of the modern earmark and that his 90s Congresses led a vast expansion of the practice. A permanent moon base might well be technologically achievable but politically impossible but a promise to expend funds in furtherance of the idea will buy him a few votes on the space coast.
Newt may or may not truly hold conservative ideas at heart but it's certain that given the layers of opportunism and vote-buying one would have to unravel to learn the truth said truth will remain forever masked.
#14
On the other hand, he writes, with Forstchen(spelling?), some first-rate alternative history civil war stories. I'd say the best of both worlds would be to make sure he has the time to continue writing.
#15
An open convention would be interesting but then the movers and shakers in control could well be the Country Club types who just don't get it.
We see that a lot in Illinois... the reason the state is blue has more to do with the state's pub leadership cadre than a huge desire outside of Chicago's wards for Dems.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
01/29/2012 13:22 Comments ||
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#16
Since when are balanced budgets toxic?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/29/2012 19:01 Comments ||
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#17
I mean, IIRC, the only reason the Clinton years were not every bit as bad as the Obama years is because a Republican House kept the spending down and balanced the budget. Clinton took credit for it but all he really did was to recognize that he didn't have the votes. Seems to me there was something about a Contract with America. The House also checked Hillary's push for socialized medicine which in all likelihood would've looked a lot like Obamacare. So this is toxic?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/29/2012 19:06 Comments ||
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#18
absolutely not. That 2 yr period 15 yrs ago was great. Since?......
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/29/2012 20:23 Comments ||
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#19
I watch with enormous sadness the Republican party prepare to lose to the most defeatable President in AMerican history, producing a placid, well mannered, constructed candidate in the mold of Bob Dole and John McCain. The passion Newt engenders is because of the quality and genuine conservative nature of some of the things he says, interspersed with his egomaniacal posturing, superb debating skills, and 40% ill-considered ideas. Newt is a font of thought, and should be taken as a valued source, culled of the ego and foolishness of his moments, and used as a basis for rational policy.
But the worst of all, is that the Republican Party lets Obama frame the debate, cannot get traction to make the great unwashed aware of his disasterous policies and falsehoods, and most of all
allowed a debate format that let the candidates essentially abegin to destroy each other over a year before the election. I'm a life long conservative with passionate feelings and I'm bored beyond mention by now. Imagine how turned off the sheeple are.
The elction is in doubt now, and the Dems haven't even started cheating yet. We need to bring a nuke to the gun fight, not good manners and artfully crafted mediocrity and watered down policy ideas. The nation is in grave peril, Obumble sings at the Apollo in a revealing display of Neronic narcissism, and we get bupkis aside from Fox coverage. Lord Help the Republic.
#20
The moon stuff is all about the space industry workers in FL. It's not "zany"; it's good old fashioned pandering.
Newt has got his problems, but the best candidates we had are long gone. This is what is left, and I'll take Newt over 1,000 Romneys.
And I'll tell you all one good thing about Newt. He is willing to say what needs to be said. Call it "bomb throwing" if you like, but running Newt as the nominee guarantees we'll hear about Fast & Furious and all the rest. Newt will talk about it. Mitt won't.
#21
The thing that bothers me most about Romney (other than Romneycare) it that the media - who are in the tank for Bambi - have already annointed him.
That means they think Romney running is the best chance of Bambi getting a second term. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/29/2012 22:35 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
US Vice President 
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] His supporters make thousands of campaign calls and blanket Florida with signs as they dream of 
