A female decoy for a pair of heavily armed home-invasion robbers was shot dead early Saturday morning outside the West Hamblen County home of a family featured on a television reality show, authorities say.
Hamblen County Sheriff Esco Jarnagin described the dead woman as a 29-year-old white female who lived in Knoxville. She has been identified as Holly Ann Repasky.
Saturday afternoon, Jarnagin declined to release the woman's identity, but added he considers the fatal shooting in the Timbercrest subdivision to be a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide.
Scott Knight, who lives with his family on Rustic Circle, survived an assault-weapon barrage uninjured and fired the shot that killed the woman, according to Jarnagin.
The sheriff says the possibility exists that Knight hit one or both of the home-invasion robbers, but they escaped from the scene and continued to avoid arrest Saturday afternoon.
The sheriff described them as black males. They made their getaway in a white compact vehicle that may be missing one hubcap.
The Knights were featured on The World's Strictest Parents,' a Country Music Television reality show on which hard-to-handle teens lived in their home.
Mr. Knight's wife, Penny, is a probation officer for the Hamblen County Juvenile Court system, and the Knights have taken in troubled teens as foster children for several years.
The sheriff says detectives are considering all possible leads, including whether the Knights' appearance on the television show made them targets, as well as grudges that emerged through Mrs. Knight's job and fouled relationships with former foster children.
The series of events that led to the shooting began around 1:30 a.m. when the woman appeared at the Knight's front door, falsely saying she was having car trouble and needed help, according to Jarnagin.
Mr. Knight was suspicious about the complaint and retrieved his handgun before asking further about the specific nature of the problem. When Knight returned to the front door, the two black males attempted to force their way inside, Jarnagin said Saturday afternoon.
When Knight resisted the intrusion, one or both of the men opened fire with assault weapons, the sheriff said. The pair fled after their female accomplice was killed.
Scott Knight is to be commended for a job well done in protecting himself and his family because the law does provide that a man has a right to protect his home,' Jarnagin said.
The sheriff says Hamblen County detectives recovered several large-caliber gun casings that matched numerous bullet holes in the Knights' home.
"Assault Weapons"? Where the hell did they get full auto infantry rifles?
The press is so vapidly stupid on guns its not even amusing to make fun of them anymore.
Secondly, the "invasion" team are idiots. Using long arms while directly at the door and in easy range of a pistol, when a shotgun and pistol are far superior at such close range and quarters... stupid. I hope they end up bleeding out, and glad the home owner drilled one of them, saving taxpayers the trial expense.
#2
"It was some kind of assault weapon based on the shell casings we found at the scene," said Jarnagin. "When Scott fired back, the female was caught in the crossfire and was struck in the throat or chest area."
Assault weapon could be anything--probably a semi-automatic weapon (any variety of 223, AK-47, SKS).
Mr. Knights wife, Penny, is a probation officer for the Hamblen County Juvenile Court system, and the Knights have taken in troubled teens as foster children for several years.
I wonder if some of the troubled teens they fostered didn't return to give thanks on Mother's Day.
Scott Knight used a 22 cal pistol he had just bought his wife as a present for Mother's Day.
Two princes, a crown prince and a clown prince told to stay home. Peas in a pod.
An excerpt:
The White House is privately furious at the snub. Boy howdy that's got Vlad shaking in his shoes ...
It's not private when the Guardian is gossiping about it. talk about rubbing salt in the wound.
Barack Obama told Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, he was unable to attend but had confidently offered Biden as his replacement. Moscow's diplomatic corps has been abuzz all week with news of Putin's unexpected veto.
Pavel Felgenhaur, a defence analyst and columnist with the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said that Putin had personally decided to kick Prince Charles off the list. "It was entirely his decision," he said. Other sources have confirmed the story.
Felgenhaur said the Kremlin was in an uncompromising mood following a string of recent foreign policy successes. These include the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-western government and its replacement by a pro-Russian one, and last month's revolution in Kyrgyzstan, now run by a more Kremlin-friendly administration.
For the first time, troops from Britain, France and the US -- the Soviet Union's wartime allies -- are taking part in the victory parade, marching alongside 10,500 Russian soldiers. More than 25 foreign leaders will attend, including France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel.
But there will be no senior British figure. Both the UK and US will be represented by their respective ambassadors, Dame Anne Pringle and John Beyrle. Pringle hosted a reception on Thursday at the new British residence in Moscow, along with soldiers from the 2nd Company Battalion the Welsh guards who will march in Red Square.
#3
No one will do better from the coming collapse of euroland than Putin. He can't believe his good luck: soaring oil prices, a fat budget surplus, and best of all, a completely clueless and supine US president who is determined to let him have his way across the former USSR. Putin's personal fortunes are soaring, his power within Russia is unchallenged, his and his fellow thieves' ability to bully the near abroad has never been greater, and what remains of the West will be even more distracted and compliant than before-- especially his cat's paw, Germany. Win-win-win-win, as Tommy Boy Friedman would say.
#4
Also, re Biden and Barry, note that Putin as an old sovok trained in Soviet protocol and thinking places enormous value on diplomatic "face", prestige and so on. Think of the mafia concept of "respect," and you have a good analogue.
From his and Russia's standpoint, this is more than a "snub." It is a major policy pronouncement: a neo-USSR is coming, headed by not the party but a criminal state-capitalist class that's perfectly attuned to our era global oligarchs.
Putin is signaling that he and his criminalized state perceive a major opportunity to extend their power in the near abroad, beginning with an anschluss with Ukraine-- he's already called for merging the Russian and Ukrainian energy sectors-- and the stans, and an escalation of the bullying and cowing of Germany and western Europe. Are the Baltic states next?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2010 14:43 Comments ||
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#10
Yeah, big surprise! Russia is not our friend, will not ever be our friend. Roosevelt knew that, Reagan even knew that. Obama needs to put down Ebony and pick up a frikkin' history book.
Posted by: Ay Chihuahua ||
05/09/2010 14:56 Comments ||
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#11
asan old sovok trained in Soviet protocol and thinking places enormous value on diplomatic "face", prestige and so on. Think of the mafia concept of "respect," and you have a good analogue.
You play the diplomatic game with absolute correctness in order to prevent it becoming a weapon. President Obama lost the game with everyone the minute he peremptorily returned Winston's bust. The rest is mere detail -- who will insult us next, and how badly. The representative of the United States being grouped together with a place-holding crown prince (does anyone actually think Prince Charles will ever actually be promoted, damaged goods that he is?) is quite a slap on its own, let alone a disinvite to something all the other kids are going to.
But then, our dear Secretary of State stood in front of everybody in Moscow being lectured -- whether by President Medvedev or Prime Minister Putin, I don't remember -- and didn't say boo. This is why smart presidents don't hire amateurs to head State or Defence.
#14
However, as noted in yesterday's Rant, they did invite a contingent of the Army to march in the VE day celebration. Why invite one and not the other. They know something we don't. Deep chess game going on?
#15
Russia has every interest in an economically strong, but politically weak Europe.
how so? Russia has essentially a third world, commodity-based economy. They sell necessities, not consumer luxury luxuries-- gas and industrial metals like nickel, not cell phones and electronic gadgets. The Euros desperately need Russia's gas and will pay up regardless of how economically strong or weak the euroland economy is.
#16
Because, regardless of 'reality' (and I don't think your assessment is entirely accurate), Russia views itself as the 'big dog' when it comes to the Continent.
#17
Putin needs Europe to be bad off enough to be paying lots for natural gas, but not so bad off that it actually starts burning its own coal again. At least until Europe doesn't have the capital in place to switch back, just like the US won't really have the will to drill here, drill now until it no longer has the capital to either.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Hundreds of British protesters take to the streets of London to demand electoral reform after the country's general elections closed with no outright winner.
Golly. Hundreds? They'd get that many between stops on a pubbing run on a Saturday night.
Demonstrators chanting "fair votes now" gathered outside a building where Liberal Democrats were discussing a power sharing deal with the Conservatives on Saturday, a Press TV correspondent reported.
Protesters called on Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg to honor his promise and push for democratic and proportional representation of the British public.
Clegg, who had said on Friday that the results of the General Elections showed the British political system is broken and needs major reform, addressed the crowd and vowed to make their voices heard.
Protesters believe the electoral system is very unrepresentative and undemocratic where millions of votes are effectively wasted and millions of people are disenfranchised.
Thousands of Britons were denied the right to vote on Thursday due to polling stations closing or running out of ballot paper.
Britons want the Liberal Democrats who have entered into coalition talks with the Conservative party, which won most seats in Thursday's elections, to put voting reforms on top of their agenda and use it as their bargaining chip to reform the voting system.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
notice the electoral system is only 'broken' and in need of reform when the socialists fail to win.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
05/09/2010 0:48 Comments ||
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#2
Britons want the Liberal Democrats who have entered into coalition talks with the Conservative party, which won most seats in Thursday's elections, to put voting reforms on top of their agenda and use it as their bargaining chip to reform the voting system.
Uh, thanks for speaking for us, Iran Press TV.
abu's right. The Lib Dems got 22% of the popular vote with a manifesto including a call for PR, and they're interpreting this as a mandate for PR? Get real! What we're seeing at the moment is the kind of shoddy back-room dealings you get with PR, in which deals are done in a most undemocratic fashion, and the electorate end up with a set of policies that no one got to vote for or against.
Clegg's dimwitted pro-PR demonstrators were seemingly placated by him appearing to them, regally, from amidst a typically PR-style backroom meeting, telling them that he wasn't in fact going to tell them anything - that he was busy advancing transparent politics. For a shocking, if blackly humorous, example of left-wing nonsense, watch this.
#4
It's a myth that PR always results in coalition governments. Australia has PR (Single Transferable vote) and we have never had a federal election in which one of the 2 major parties didn't achieve an absolute majority in the House of Commons.
The Senate elections use a different form of PR (party list) which occasionally results in the main parties failing to get an absolute majority, but in 4 out of 5 elections they do.
#5
The question is: do you want to be forced into proportional results and forced a majority, or do you want a results to actually mirror what the people want?
#7
I belive that disadvantages of "winner take all" are amply demonstrated by Britain & USA.
And the advantages of PR... Italy?
phil_b, in the UK PR would result in coalitions almost all of the4 time, if previous election results were repeated. And what's more, we'd have various forms of left wing progressiveness bullsh*t, as the celtic fringes ensured that profitable England never again managed to swing a Conservative majority. We'd have the tyranny of the regions in perpetuity.
I'd settle for PR, in return for English self-rule.
#8
PR would magnify, greatly, the voice of Britain's anti-American left. Britain's foreign policy would start to resemble that of a continental European nation.
#9
Must have been some other Ranburg where, couple of years ago, everybody were complaining that both Donks & Pubs ignore the popular views on illegals.
"We are becoming Mexico: a thin veneer of oligarchs protected by a compliant media and dominating a weak, incompetent regulatory apparatus and bankrupt state, with a swelling underclass and a shrinking middle class paying the inflated salaries and bloated pensions of a huge and growing public sector union base that ensures the oligarchs' continued hold on power."
#11
The chances of PR being neutral in that regard would be very small, IMHO. Which leaves two possibilities: it would make things better or worse. Until I see an actual case that it would make things better, I think it's safe to assume it would make things worse.
#12
The chances of PR being neutral in that regard would be very small, IMHO.
Indeed. Neither Labour nor the Tories have, up till now, been open to the option of replacing first past the post with PR (although Labour have been busy screwing up the UK's historically tried-and-tested system of government in other areas since 1997) for the reason that it would make single party success - their success - almost impossible. It would mean that, instead of having relatively sensible, if ideological, big tent parties which represent the interests of the whole of the UK forming stable and predictable governments, they would find themselves having to scrabble together coalitions with the Lib Dems and/or a host of regional and special interest parties. 'Hello' disproportionate influence from the extremes, and 'hello' pork barrel pay-offs to the likes of the Scottish Nationalists, rival Northern Ireland factions etc., at the expense of the majority.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Egyptian-born businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed has sold prestigious London department store Harrods to the investment vehicle of the Qatar royal family in a deal reported to be worth around 1.5 billion pounds ($2.3 billion).
A spokesman for Lazard, which advised the Fayed family trust, declined to confirm the value of the deal which was reported by Sky News, citing unnamed sources.
Qatar Holding is the prime vehicle for strategic and direct investments by the State of Qatar. It is an arm of Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), which was founded by the State of Qatar in 2005 to strengthen its economy by diversifying into new asset classes.
"What I can assure you is Qatar Holding will do their best to upgrade this monument, to make it even greater and better for the tourism and the British people," Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters in an impromptu news conference in the store in London's Knightsbridge area.
Al Fayed, 77, is retiring as chairman of Harrods and believed Qatar Holding would continue to promote it as one of the world's foremost brands, Lazard International chairman Ken Costa said in the statement.
"After 25 years as chairman of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed has decided to retire and to spend more time with his children and grandchildren," Costa said.
"He has built Harrods into a unique luxury brand with worldwide recognition" and wanted to ensure this legacy would continue, he added.
"Qatar Holdings was specifically chosen by the Trust as they had both the vision and financial capacity to support the long term successful growth of Harrods."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2010 00:00 ||
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Ay-Pee . . . The country imports most of its food, and Chavez on Friday announced the government will create an import-export corporation aiming to break with the private sector's "hegemony." It wasn't immediately clear how the new state entity would operate. "Sire, the natives are restless!"
"Dream up some way for me to take over a large part of the economy and tell them it's for their own good. That should keep their small minds occupied."
"They'll never fall for it!"
"If it worked for Obamacare, it'll work here. People are people." Chavez said wealthy Venezuelans involved in the import business "buy abroad, come here and ask for more than it really costs." That's why people do it. Not out of the goodness of their hearts. Of course, Venezuela's full of people with good hearts because they're socialist now. Or maybe he'll just wait until they're hungry.
#2
I believe it was 2% in March alone...(according to the gummit). At that rate it's 24% per year. It's going up, it has to. They've borrowed mountains of money and the only way out is to devalue the stuff. It's the old 40 year inflation ponzi cycle on steroids.
Regulators on Friday shut down banks in Florida, Minnesota, Arizona and California, bringing the number of U.S. bank failures to 68 this year.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over The Bank of Bonifay, based in Bonifay, Fla., which had $242.9 million in assets and $230.2 million in deposits; and Access Bank, in Champlin, Minn., with $32 million in assets and $32 million in deposits.
The agency also seized Towne Bank of Arizona in Mesa, Ariz., with $120.2 million in assets and $113.2 million in deposits; and 1st Pacific Bank of California in San Diego, with $335.8 million in assets and $291.2 million in deposits.
First Federal Bank of Florida in Lake City, Fla. agreed to acquire Bonifay's deposits and about $78.1 million of its assets. The FDIC will keep the remainder for eventual sale.
PrinsBank of Prinsburg, Minn. will assume Access' deposits and assets.
Commerce Bank of Arizona, based in Tucson, Ariz., agreed to assume all of the deposits and assets of Towne Bank, and City National Bank of Los Angeles will assume all of 1st Pacific Bank's deposits and assets.
The failure of The Bank of Bonifay is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $78.7 million; that of Access Bank, $5.5 million; that of Towne Bank, $41.8 million; and that of 1st Pacific Bank, $87.7 million.
With the 68 closures so far this year, the pace of bank failures this year is double that of 2009. By May 1 last year, U.S. regulators had shut down 32 banks.
There were 140 bank failures in the U.S. last year, the highest annual tally since 1992, at the height of the savings and loan crisis. They cost the insurance fund more than $30 billion. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008 and only three succumbed in 2007.
The number of bank failures likely will peak this year and will be slightly higher than in 2009, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said recently.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2010 00:00 ||
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#5
You really need to spend some time with the locals in Germany and France to get a feel for what the VAT brings to the economy and standard of living. If we take on a VAT, it WILL be a very, very oppressive move.
#6
There is a way out-- and it's really the only feasible way-- but it entails some very dramatic, large movements of people across the borders:
OUT: at least a few million of our imported underclass, whose drag on the economies of the southwestern US states is almost enough to balance the budget of California. Savings = $30-50B annually.
OUT: hundreds of thousands of US retirees each year, to other countries that have severely lower costs of living + adequate local medical care (Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, eastern Europe etc). Medicare savings = $30-50B annually.
IN: hundreds of thousands of immigrant technologists and PhDs in hard sciences a la Bechtolsheim, Grove, Khosla et al who can generate real economic wealth and incremental tax revenues, esp in the area of energy technology. Incremental tax revenues = $30-50B annually.
Germany proposed on Sunday evening the establishment of a comprehensive plan of financial aid can be used for countries in the euro area, totaling 500 billion euros and involves the IMF, told AFP European diplomatic source.
"Involves the IMF" means involves the US ...
"Germany has put on the table a proposal of 500 billion euros," she said. It would include 60 billion euros in loans from the European Commission, he was in the last day, and 440 billion would accrue if necessary, the euro zone countries and the International Monetary Fund. This envelope would be established "bilateral loans, collateral for loans and lines of credit from the IMF," the source said. It would be in scale, if the subject of an agreement, an assistance plan is unprecedented in history.
And once this money is exhausted which it will be, Europe will default as the playbook is TARP then immediate monetization, however without a reserve currency backstop. The EURUSD is spiking by 3 handles right now, however once traders realize that the ECB will commence printing money in earnest it will go straight down to parity.
The EU is invoking the "exceptional circumstances" clause of Article 122 of the Lisbon Treaty, arguing that the euro is subject to an "organized worldwide attack". This is a legal minefield. A group of professors has already filed a case at Germany's Constitutional Court, claiming that the Greek bail-out is illegal and that the EMU is degenerating into a zone of monetary disorder.
The judges have denied an immediate injunction on aid to Greece, saying that it would to be too "dangerous" to take such a step on limited facts, but it has not yet decided whether to hear the case. The battle has escalated in any case. The new EU rescue mechanism is to be permanent and no longer just bilateral help, if Mr Sarkozy is right. The professors have been given an open goal. One almost suspects that the Kanzleramt in Berlin is so weary of this dispute that it has given up worrying about lawsuits. If the judges block an EU debt union, be it on their heads.
Nor is this rescue fund any more than chemotherapy for the cancer eating away at the foundations of monetary union. It is not a cure. The rot set it when the South joined EMU before it was ready to cope with ultra-low interest rates or match German wage-bargaining. The ECB made matters worse by gunning M3 at an 11pc rate during the bubble. Club Med lurched from credit boom to bust. It is now trapped in debt deflation at an over-valued exchange rate, like Argentina with its dollar peg in 2001 until air force helicopters rescued President De La Rua from the roof of the Rosada.
The answer to this -- if the objective is to save EMU -- is for Germany to boost its growth and tolerate higher `relative' inflation. This would allow the South to close the gap without tipping into a 1930s Fisherite death spiral. Yet Europe will have none of it. The weekend deal demands yet more belt-tightening from the South. Portugal is to shelve its public works projects. Spain has pledged further cuts. As for Germany, it is preparing fiscal tightening to comply with the new balanced budget amendment in its Grundgesetz.
While each component makes sense in its own narrow terms, the EU policy as a whole is madness for a currency union. Stephen Lewis from Monument Securities says Europe's leaders have forgotten the lesson of the "Gold Bloc" in the second phase of the Great Depression, when a reactionary and over-proud Continent ground itself into slump by clinging to deflationary totemism long after the circumstances had rendered this policy suicidal. We all know how it ended.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition has suffered defeat in a state election costing it its majority in the upper house, according to exit polls.
So long, Angela, nice knowing you ...
If confirmed, voters in the western region of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) handed Mrs Merkel's coalition defeat, only edays after parliament approved the collosal loan package for Greece.
Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats won around 34 percent with coalition allies the Free Democrats (FDP) polling 6.5 percent, leaving them well short of a majority in the state legislature. Meanwhile, the opposition centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) also polled around 34 percent, the Greens 12.5 percent and the relatively new political outfit, the far-left Linke party, scored six percent.
The centre-right's loss means the coalition will be deprived of its majority in the Bundesrat upper house, hobbling Mrs Merkel's ability to push through key reforms in Europe's top economy.
I can only warn the CDU against trying to put a positive spin on this result. It is a huge disappointment,' said Wolfgang Bosbach, a leading member of her party. We have clearly fallen short of our goal of maintaining our coalition in NRW.'
The timing of the election could hardly have been worse for Merkel's Christian Democrats, who have ruled NRW in an alliance with the pro-business FDP since 2005.
Most Germans oppose the 22.4 billion euros (£19.3 billion) in loans over three years to debt-wracked Greece as Germany grapples with its own dire fiscal straits.
NRW was ruled by the same centre-right coalition Mrs Merkel has in Berlin, making the poll a damaging referendum on her government eight months after she won re-election.
The state is also home to the Ruhr rust belt region whose economic misery has deepened in the recession.
A poll published Saturday showed that 21 percent of NRW voters said the Greek bail-out would affect their ballot decision, according to a YouGov survey for the daily Bild.
Beyond control of the NRW state legislature, the dominance of Mrs Merkel's coalition in the Bundesrat upper house is now no more. Currently, the conservatives and the FDP hold 37 of the 69 seats in the Bundesrat, just over the 35 votes needed for an absolute majority. Losing NRW deprives the centre-right of six seats.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2010 15:27 ||
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#1
Anyone with a decent understanding of Germany able to comment on this? I'm assuming it's largely a case of Merkel being punished for being seen to be using Germans' money to bail out the feckless Greeks, in spite of the fact that her opponents would probably have been doing the same, if not worse? Am I wrong?
#2
It's much like as if the US President had a 51 vote majority in the senate, and his party also controlled the house, then due to a midterm election lost control of the senate. The opposing party can stop his agenda dead.
But because Merkel's big issue right now is supporting Greece, though it is very unpopular in Germany, the assumption will be that any politician who supports Greece may get thrown out. So German support for a Greek bailout may soon be dead.
The timing is also awful, because right now, the EU is talking about what amounts to "nationalizing" all the sovereign debt in the EU. This is breaking right now.
#3
"The timing is also awful, because right now, the EU is talking about what amounts to "nationalizing" all the sovereign debt in the EU."
Strikes me what's "awful" is what the EU appears to be planning (but that's an automatic fall-back position regarding the EU), 'moose. What am I missing?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2010 17:53 Comments ||
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#4
Barbara: I would like to think of it as the EU getting ready to vault over a chasm with a flying leap, not realizing that one of their shoes is untied.
The Left Party's governing board was forced into a climbdown on Saturday morning as delegates at the party's annual congress voted to continue pushing for a six-hour workday.
The vote, 121-91 in favour, means the party's elections manifesto will include calls for the introduction in Sweden of a six-hour workday with no loss of salary.
Leading figures had wanted to ditch the six-hour policy at the party's annual congress in Gävle. They hoped instead to focus on policies they felt stood a greater chance of gaining acceptance as part of the three-party Red-Green opposition's common electoral goals.
Demands viewed by the party's upper echelons as more realistic included: the right to full-time work; greater employment security; and the introduction of individualized parental leave, a system whereby mothers or fathers would be allocated days individually without the right to transfer them to the other parent.
But delegates proved unwilling to shed one of the party's high profile issues, meaning a paragraph calling for the introduction of the six-hour workday will now form part of the Left Party's official election manifesto.
Josefin Brink, a member of the governing board, had called for the demand to be set aside ahead of the forthcoming election. "We're going to continue pushing for a six-hour workday but it's not an issue that can be accomplished over the coming years. Our election manifesto should prioritize matters of strategic importance that can be accomplished in the near future," she said.
But many party delegates disagreed with the call from on high. "A six-hour workday with full salary retention ought to be one of the Left Party's major profile issues. We know it's right, and it's smart. We need to have faith in ourselves," said Skåne delegate Ana Rubin. Stockholm delegate Emil Magnusson said it would be catastrophic for the party to leave out one of the issues for which it is most famous. "When should we push the issue if not at election time?" he wondered.
Oh yes, do push it. Crystallize the differences between you and the party that ends up running the country for the next generation, even if you do win enough votes in this particular election.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
This is insane. If you want to make workers lives easier you are better off pushing for a 4 day work week instead. At least then you can help with traffic congestion and pollution and time wasted driving back and forth. Heck some businesses could shut down and save power for a day. But 6 hour days does nothing but make your economy less competitive.
You could also have all of these benefits with a 10 hour day four day workweek which is difficult for unions to accept but would be preferred by the vast majority of workers in my opinion.
How will that work in Hospitals? They simply ignore the patients 2 hours out of each shift, 6 hours out of 24? Nurses and doctors and other medical staff cannot be made to appear out of thin air to make up the shortage.
Assume they are trying to be "fair" as all good leftists are, so do they then raise the salary of those who have to work 8 hours instead of 6, by 25%? SO base costs for all medical care go up by 25%, which hits across society pretty hard, and causes the state (state run medical care there) to have to tax everyone even MORE or else curtail services.
What is the matter with these people? They are using "magical thinking" at the level of a 3 year old. Are Swedes that stupid? Or is it just leftists who think that business capital, money, doctors, nurses etc will all magically appear at the command of government bureaucrats, just because they say so? Where do they think it comes from, elves under a magic tree?
A civilization that is so blind to the causes of its decline that, confronted with crisis, it cannot think of any path other than the one that accelerates that decline.
We are heading into an Age of Oligarchy in which a rootless international class of moneyfiddlers, owners of scarce real assets and a handful of technology oligopolists will dictate terms to the societies they dominate. For a glimpse of the future, look at the societies that have produced, respectively, the world's richest man (Slim, in oligarchic Mexico) and the world's richest political bandit (Putin, in oligarchic Russia).
#4
This just extends the current shell game re: jobs in Sweden. Along with Norway, it has a very high incidence of people on sick leave at any given time, many of whom are not actually ill. They staff on the assumption that the number of people actually at work is rather lower than the official staff level. It's tolerated because it's a way to keep employment stats high and official unemployment levels low.
#3
this speech was recorded in 2007 according to allahpundit
Posted by: lord garth ||
05/09/2010 1:01 Comments ||
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#4
Per YouTuber: this joker's not a UCLA prof but an idiot high school teacher of "Social Justice" at
Santee H.S. in Los Angeles. http://www.santeefalcons.org/
Phone: (213) 763-1000
Los Angeles Unified School District
Tel: 213-241-7000
superintendent@lausd.net
Los Angeles Board of Education:
Tel: 213-241-6389
Email: steve.zimmer@lausd.net
Quote: "We are a revolutionary Mexican organization here. We understand that this is not just about Mexico. Its about a global struggle against imperialism and capitalism At the forefront of this revolutionary movement is La Raza. We will no longer fall for these lies called borders. We see America as a northern front of a revolutionary movement Our enemy is capitalism and imperialism...."
#5
Time to be smart here: best to keep a low profile on immigration and Mexico until November. There's no point in raising the issue before then or, as per National Review's prosecutorial expert Andy McCarthy, passing laws like AZ's that don't add any substantive powers while giving La Raza et al a reason to rally. Also best to keep our powder dry because
1) NOTHING WILL CHANGE, either in terms of policy, law or law enforcement, until the people have spoken and given Tweedledum and Tweedledee the resounding bitchslap they so desperately deserve on this-- in November; and
2) given that nothing will change, there's no point in helping Barry achieve his last ditch, ave maria madre de dios stratagem of rallying the latino element of his base.
Keep your powder dry. F*** these twin corrupt parties in November.
#6
1) NOTHING WILL CHANGE, either in terms of policy, law or law enforcement, until the people have spoken
Nothing will change, I think, until the start of the new Congress in January. The lame duck bunch will do what they can to ensure their legacy in the meantime.
#8
If Mexico is that great a culture, then why the hell are you HERE? Go back and revel in YOUR culture
It has zip to do with cultural pride or distinctiveness. The goal is simply power for the political scammers who use these desperately poor people for their own ends. The immigrants themselves only want to survive. They're unskilled campesinos who've been driven into the ditch by their and our political class's corrupt bargains (cf the loophole in NAFTA that lets Cargill, ADM etc dump over $1 BILLION in corn-- corn!-- into Mexico each year).
This movement has f-all to do with culture. It's simply one half of a set of corrupt bargains in which our and Mexico's elites cynically barter millions of desperate, hapless Mexicans for power and profit, at the expense of America's fiscal and Mexico's economic health.
#9
I'd contribute a small amount to buy this guy a ticket to the his favorite dictatorship paradise to take part in the global struggle. There is Cuba, Venezuela, etc. I'm sure you can enjoy your free speech rights in those places dipwad.
#10
Went to a Jiffy Lube to have my car serviced today. Many of the staff were Hispanic, but so too were a number of customers. I was particularly struck by the young Hispanic woman, probably Mexican by her accent, who was a little nervous about getting her car serviced for the first time but quietly proud of undertaking this task by herself, aided by a manager who is a native Spanish speaker.
From the looks of her clothes and car, her income is modest but if I followed her conversation correctly (and my Spanish is rusty when it comes to rapid conversations) she's gainfully employed. In other words, an immigration success.
Which makes the sort of thing we see in places like southern California and the political agenda of La Raza all that much more of a travesty.
#11
yeah, so what? Big surprise an UCLA professor would say something like this. Here's another shocker... the entire Chicano Studies faculty agree with him.
Posted by: Ay Chihuahua ||
05/09/2010 15:27 Comments ||
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#12
How come his speech is in English? Inquiring minds want to know.
It started with former Gov. John McKernan on Saturday morning, who urged the more than 2,000 Republicans to unite after the primary in support of one candidate for the November general election.
The idea was reinforced by former Ambassador Peter Cianchette, who was the GOP nominee in 2002. Cianchette echoed McKernan's plea for a post-primary kumbaya effort, to put the party firmly behind one candidate.
But during the middle of the convention, amid the recurring calls for unity, a mini-revolt occurred in the party.
The two-page platform that a Republican Party committee had drafted was replaced by a three-page platform proposed by the Knox County Republican Committee and strongly reflective of tea party ideals.
The new party platform, as adopted Saturday, begins with a lengthy introduction that, in part, praises the current Tea Party Movement. It has six main sections, with numerous subsections. Many deal with issues of state sovereignty and personal liberties. Many express stances on federal government issues.
Did it represent an ideological shift to the right for the party? "Absolutely not," said Charlie Webster, Republican Party chairman. Webster said the issues presented in the new platform reflected the values of working-class Mainers. There was some pretty esoteric stuff in the new platform, to be fair, like a call to reject the "Law of the Sea Treaty" as well as the U.N.'s "Treaty on the Rights of the Child."
While the party committee had attempted to provide a fairly straightforward, high-level platform document, the new platform really got into the weeds. As Webster said, supporters wanted more "specificity."
Tea party activists said there were at least 100 convention delegates from one group, the Maine Patriots, as well as an unknown number from another group, Maine Refounders. Support for the new platform was fairly overwhelming, well beyond what could be attributed to the tea party alone. Efforts to table it were stomped, and it passed handily.
So what does this mean? Will the 259,502 registered Republicans across the state now need to support efforts to "investigate collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth?" Will candidates running on the GOP ticket need to read up on Ron Paul's bill No. 1207 to audit the Fed (as supported in the platform)?
Not necessarily.
Many in the party said Saturday that the platform is talked about during the convention and forgotten during the rest of the year.
"We ignored the old platform, now we can ignore the new one," said one insider.
Practically speaking, the platform doesn't do much, though it was seen as a victory by those supporting it, of course. And these battles have been fought before. The more conservative elements of the party have often sought to take it more in their direction.
But for some, words count.
Gubernatorial candidate Peter Mills noted that "if you adopt a platform that most Republicans won't support, let alone the independents or Democrats, you're adopting a document that doesn't help anyone get elected."
Many in the party wonder whether the conventions are even worth attending, said Mills. This, he suggested, may answer that question for them.
"You need mainstream Republicans to come to these conventions," he said. "They won't come if they're not relevant."
On the other hand, there are some more-conservative candidates running, including Paul LePage and Bill Beardsley. It remains to be seen if the support that was seen for the new platform will translate over to votes in June. After all, those at the convention are just a small part of the universe of voters out there -- and not necessarily representative.
#1
Actually its less tea party and more a coming together of Ronulans and so-cons. Its quite fascinating and impressive how they did it
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge ||
05/09/2010 18:25 Comments ||
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#2
At this point, labels mean less than that a lot of people are sick to death of equivocating with the constitution. And this might prove to be a potent message.
The constitution is not loaded with gobbledygook and double speak. It is plain enough for "the common man" to read and understand. And the "common man" is also understanding that the constitution has been used as toilet paper by forked tongued, two timing scalawags for so long that "the common man" is ready to act.
So above and beyond all the cutesy labels, people are asking each other, "Are you a constitutionalist, or NOT?"
Which is followed up with, "If you aren't, then you pack your bags and git."
This "virus" has not yet been released into the wild and it appears it is based on a very old general vulnerability.
The difference is that this new exploit uses the a multiprocessor scheduler to switch good software with malware between running threads. IIUC, virus programs do not check for these kinds of swaps in pagable memory before allowing code to execute. The kernal does, but then it does it to regulate which memory space gets written to and it does not distinguish between the two types of software.
So what are we end-users to do about it?
Researchers say they've devised a way to bypass protections built in to dozens of the most popular desktop anti-virus products, including those offered by McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG, and BitDefender.
The method, developed by software security researchers at matousec.com, works by exploiting the driver hooks the anti-virus programs bury deep inside the Windows operating system. In essence, it works by sending them a sample of benign code that passes their security checks and then, before it's executed, swaps it out with a malicious payload.
It's just a concept right now, and as it was demonstrated, the malware is a one-two punch. The concept as it is now requires the machine to already be vulnerable to malware in order to use this method.
#3
Vista on a 64 bit VM, running on my Linux workstation. I have no worries at all, I simply restore the last saved VM session and any damage is gone. Even then, I use Firefox with NoScript & Ghostery (2 must-haves for security) and MSLive for AV+malware blocking.
If you want to be safe, simple: run Firefox with the 2 addons I mentioned (plus AdBlockPlus), keep the OS up to date with patches from MS, and use MSLive AV+firewall (free and works well enough - scan & update the AV daily, deep scan weekly via automated scheduler), and don't run binaries or click on links given by someone you don't personally know, and scan EVERYTHING.
IF you aren't stupid, its not easy to be compromised.
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.
