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Suspected suicide bomber killed near Afghan loya jirga site
Today's Headlines
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Attorneys seek to auction Righthaven copyrights
Attorneys fighting Las Vegas copyright company Righthaven LLC asked for a court order Monday to have Righthaven's assets auctioned off -- notably including the very copyrights Righthaven sues over.

Attorneys at Randazza Legal Group in Las Vegas represent Wayne Hoehn, who was sued for copyright infringement by Righthaven but defeated Righthaven in court when the lawsuit was thrown out.

Since then the attorneys been trying to collect more than $63,000 in court-ordered legal fees and the federal court in Las Vegas on Nov. 1 ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to seize Righthaven assets to satisfy Hoehn's judgment.

But in a Monday court filing, the Randazza attorneys said the Marshals so far have identified just one Righthaven monetary asset, its primary bank account containing less than $1,000.

So Randazza on Monday asked U.S. District Judge Philip Pro -- who dismissed the suit against Hoehn on fair use and standing grounds -- to appoint a receiver to which Righthaven would assign all of its intellectual property and other intangible property including its copyrights, trademark, website domain name and infringement-search software. The receiver would then auction these assets.

"Since Righthaven has refused to satisfy the judgment, Hoehn is entitled to force Righthaven's property into receivership and then to auction. Hoehn now moves this court to enact the process that will allow him to (at least partially) satisfy his judgment through Righthaven's only known assets -- its intellectual property," the Randazza attorney said in their filing.
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 09:35 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I like that angle. These birds and their parent company thought they were being crafty in creating muddied ownership of this stuff, but it is now coming back to bite them in the rear end.

That is why businessmen are always warned to never, ever, co-mingle business and personal bank accounts.

Bottom line: if you own 1% of a car and get a judgment against you, whoever owns the other 99% could lose it to them as well.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 11/15/2011 14:32 Comments || Top||

#2  Be nice if they could get at the firm's books.
Posted by: Pappy || 11/15/2011 15:23 Comments || Top||

#3  IANAL - but wouldn't this transfer of copyright ownership interests serve to totally block anyone else from enforcing those rights without the express consent of whoever winds up owning Righthaven's share?
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 15:38 Comments || Top||

#4  How about auction off the Righthaven attorneys?
Posted by: Water Modem || 11/15/2011 16:50 Comments || Top||

#5  They would have to pay someone to take them WM.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 11/15/2011 18:02 Comments || Top||

#6  Lawyers like these reduce that industry's already bad name.
Posted by: Grotle Wittlesbach8240 || 11/15/2011 18:58 Comments || Top||

#7  Fred should buy the righthaven domain and redirect it to rantburg. Rather like sleeping on your enemy's skull.
Posted by: KBK || 11/15/2011 19:46 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Bruce Wayne's Medical Report
Posted by: charger || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Aaaaahhhaaa, so he did fool around wid POISON IVY instead of CATWOMAN - D *** NG IT, I KNEW IT!
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 11/15/2011 0:45 Comments || Top||

#2  :Bats*t Crazy

JM, if thats a reference to using the right equipment that is damn funny there.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 11/15/2011 10:15 Comments || Top||

#3  OK, Joe. I'll take a wild stab at it...

I'm thinkin' these days that yer IQ is on the North side of 150. Huh? About right?
And, not a high-brow snob, to boot. KEWL!
Posted by: Angoper Smith4384 || 11/15/2011 22:34 Comments || Top||


Ex-Porn Star Reading to LA Students Causes Stir
[An Nahar] Some parents have filed complaints with the Parent-Teacher Association after a former adult film star said she read to children in a classroom at a Los Angeles County elementary school.

Sasha Grey, a 23-year-old ex-porn actress who has appeared in mainstream shows like HBO's "Entourage," was a guest earlier this month at Compton's Emerson Elementary School for Read Across America Day.
Did she have her clothes on? She wasn't humping anybody, was she? Was she presented to the kiddies as a porn star? Then what's the problem?
Grey tweeted Nov. 2 that she had spent the day reading to students in the first and third grades.

KTLA-TV quoted parents questioning whether it was appropriate to have Grey at the school. Parent Dudley Wheaton wondered why the school couldn't find a fireman or a police officer to read to students.
Instead they went with a "movie star." I guess you pays yer money and takes yer chance...
Grey has not appeared in porn films in over two years. She has been a regular on "Entourage" and appeared in the 2009 film "The Girlfriend Experience."
Now that I think about it a little bit, I'm not sure why Tom, Dick, Harry and Sasha get these invitations for reading photo ops whist surrounded by little kids. Surely the idea is to teach the kiddies to do the reading?
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  KTLA-TV quoted parents questioning whether it was appropriate to have Grey at the school.

Sometimes it's better to just STFU. Not a single kid would have figured it out. Now they'll all be doing their best to bypass Net Ninny and see what all the fuss is about.
Posted by: gorb || 11/15/2011 1:03 Comments || Top||

#2  Sasha Grey is a beautiful, nasty, dirty, dirty, girl. I'm sure it would cost thousands to have a private session of her reading to me. And these lucky kids got it for free! If I were a parent in that school district, I would be proud.
Posted by: Scooter McGruder || 11/15/2011 1:33 Comments || Top||

#3  23 yrs old and 203 titles in IMDB

according to IMDB - Known for: The Girlfriend Experience (2009), Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge (2008), Throat: A Cautionary Tale (2009), Life (2011).



203 is a lot of movies...
Posted by: Water Modem || 11/15/2011 2:12 Comments || Top||

#4  She's not bad, she's just drawn that way.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike || 11/15/2011 6:26 Comments || Top||

#5  What's the difference between Sasha Grey and Barack Obama? When Sasha screws the country, it doesn't cost us all trillions of dollars.
Posted by: Eric Jablow || 11/15/2011 7:25 Comments || Top||

#6  One the question of which of the two to read to your kids, the poll is overwhelming in favor of Sasha over the Ego-in-Chief [check the pics too].
Posted by: Procopius2k || 11/15/2011 8:25 Comments || Top||

#7  On the question....
Posted by: Procopius2k || 11/15/2011 8:26 Comments || Top||

#8  One does blow jobs and the other blows away jobs.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 11/15/2011 8:37 Comments || Top||

#9  Sasha works for a living, while Obama lives off your work.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 11/15/2011 12:35 Comments || Top||

#10  Living in Southern California is like having ringside seats to watch the collapse of the Roman Empire all over again.
Posted by: Jeque Hupairong2828 || 11/15/2011 14:00 Comments || Top||

#11  Except the food in Italy is better.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 11/15/2011 14:40 Comments || Top||

#12  Anonymoose, not really! I find Italian food of all regions in Italy to be bland. American style Italian (what I grew up with) is much tastier.
Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 || 11/15/2011 17:16 Comments || Top||

#13  In a time when a 13 year old boy rapes a 5 year old girl on McDonald's playground and 9 year old girls give birth, it's possible some of the third graders might have recognized Sasha from some of her artistic work on television or via the internet. I guess some of the parents recognized her also.
Posted by: JohnQC || 11/15/2011 17:21 Comments || Top||

#14  A disassociation of the sex industry from youth education might be warranted. Skanks don't educate.
Posted by: Grotle Wittlesbach8240 || 11/15/2011 18:56 Comments || Top||

#15  Skanks don't educate.

Judging by the flat achievement scores for the past few decades, neither do teachers.
Posted by: SteveS || 11/15/2011 20:40 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Mubarak party members allowed to run in Egypt vote
CAIRO: A top Egyptian court on Monday overturned a decision barring members of President Hosni Mubarak's former party from standing in a parliamentary election that starts later this month. A lower Egyptian court in the Delta city of Mansoura ruled Friday to ban members of former National Democratic Party (NDP) from running, setting off a string of lawsuits nationwide aimed at removing such candidates from the race.

"Depriving (anyone) of taking up their political rights is an attack on rights that are protected and guaranteed in the constitution," said a document detailing the verdict of the Higher Administrative Court, presided by Judge Magdy El-Agaty.

Backers of the candidates, who were former members of the now disbanded party, cheered the decision at the crowded court, chanting: "Allah-o-Akbar." Some waved pictures of candidates.

"I dedicate this ruling to all the honorable sons of this country from all political parties not only the disbanded NDP," said Omar Hareidy, a former NDP member and candidate in Assiut. "It gives equal chances to everyone."

Many former NDP members have registered to run as independents or on other party lists in the first free election in decades following an uprising that overthrew Mubarak.

The first stage of the staggered vote starts on Nov. 28.

Former NDP members have set up at least six new parties and many are running with older parties, angering activists who want to ensure that those they see as "counter-revolutionary" forces are kept out of the assembly which is tasked with appointing a committee to write Egypt's new constitution.
Posted by: Steve White || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:


Tunisia issues final election results
TUNIS: Tunisia’s election commission has issued the final results of the Oct. 23 national election, confirming the dominant position of the Islamist Ennahda Party.

The once banned movement has taken 89 out of 217 seats in the newly elected assembly, which will write the fledgling democracy’s new constitution and appoint an interim government ahead of new elections in the next year or so.

The Oct. 23 election was held nine months after Tunisians overthrew President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for 23 years.

Ennahda has pledged to preserve Tunisia’s progressive legislation on women’s rights.
Posted by: Steve White || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:


Africa Subsaharan
Equatorial Guinea opposition slams 99 per cent referendum win as sham
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Equatorial Guinea's small but vocal opposition on Monday ridiculed official results of a referendum showing 99 percent of voters approved President Teodoro Obiang Nguema's new constitution.

The oil-rich west African country voted Sunday on a constitutional reform that caps presidential terms but could allow Africa's longest-serving leader to cling on for years whilst grooming his controversial son for succession.

With 60 percent of votes counted, "99.04 percent voted yes and 0.96 percent no," Information Minister and government front man Jeronimo Osa Osa Ecoro announced overnight, adding that definitive results were expected on Wednesday.

Equatorial Guinea was long seen as one of Africa's most brutal and corrupt regimes but Obiang, now at the helm of sub-Saharan Africa's third oil producer, has embarked on a charm offensive to improve his image.

The proposed constitution limits presidential terms to two seven-year mandates but does not specify how Obiang himself, whose current tenure ends in 2016, will be affected.

It also creates a post of vice-president, a move the opposition and observers see as the first step towards handing power over to the president's big-spending playboy son Teodoro Obiang Mangue.

"It is a completely irrational dictatorship. Results topping 90% are the sign of a totalitarian regime. These results are fraudulent and have been fabricated," the country's only opposition politician Placido Mico told AFP by phone from Malabo.
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:


Down Under
Obama gets Croc attack insurance for Darwin visit
Posted by: Wheaper Unereper4618 || 11/15/2011 06:53 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Heh, wanted croc insurance after every speech.

"Quiet! Look! It's an economy! See how its standing in that mud looking about, wondering what to do? I'm gonna go down there an' stick my thumb right up its ass!"
Posted by: swksvolFF || 11/15/2011 10:28 Comments || Top||

#2  His whole administration is a crock.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 11/15/2011 12:12 Comments || Top||

#3  I am imagining this bizarre Dr. Evil-ish plot that involves smuggling crocodiles into the Presidential suite. Yeah, that will look like an accident!
Posted by: SteveS || 11/15/2011 13:15 Comments || Top||

#4  Too bad we can't get croc [of sh*t] insurance protection....
That seems to be all that Obama can produce....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 11/15/2011 13:16 Comments || Top||

#5  A friend on facebook asked: "Who was named as the beneficiary?"
Posted by: Water Modem || 11/15/2011 16:51 Comments || Top||

#6  Awwww, none for Dingo or Sudden 'Roo Attack = Boxing Syndrome???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 11/15/2011 18:40 Comments || Top||

#7  Dingos ate my POTUS!
Posted by: SteveS || 11/15/2011 19:12 Comments || Top||


Pimpin POTUS' ride down in Darwin Australia
Posted by: Wheaper Unereper4618 || 11/15/2011 06:52 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  No hydrolics to recover from a high-center? Well, get the Fosters ready, I know he's never had one but I need to hear how its so much better in Oz than USA.

What's with the dozen fighter escort, I guess that teams will be up while other re-fuel but sounds like an Afghan not Australia coverage.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 11/15/2011 10:24 Comments || Top||

#2  What's with the dozen fighter escort

Might be counter-productive for Barry's self-image as all attention will be on the aircraft when they fly over and not on The Won© itself.
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 11/15/2011 12:44 Comments || Top||


Europe
Italy's largest bank reports major loss
[Iran Press TV] Italia's largest bank, Unicredit, reports massive losses of 10.64 billion euros for the third quarter, as it moves to raise new capital and slash thousands of jobs.

UniCredit blamed the losses on 10.17 billion euros in write-downs "due to the negative impact of the new macroeconomic and regulatory scenario," AFP quoted the lender as saying in a written statement.

The statement said that Unicredit had been negatively affected by the "effects of the overall slowdown in the global economic environment coupled with the European sovereign debt crisis and continued significant market volatility."

The international lender plans to cut some 5,200 jobs in its home base, Italia, while another 2,000 might be lost in Western Europe by 2015. The bank has also asked for a 7.5-billion-euro capital increase.

UniCredit, which employs 160,000 worldwide and is a key player in Eastern Europe, has also scrapped its dividend payment for this year. More recently the bank came under pressure to increase its capital ratios to become more resilient against possible fallout from Europe's sovereign debt crisis. Italian banks are exposed to high levels of the country's sovereign debt.

Italia's debt is 120 percent of its gross domestic product. In August the country passed a 60-billion-euro austerity package to balance the budget by 2013.

There is growing fear among EU leaders that Italia might be drawn into the crisis that has already claimed Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Mario Monti was a member of the European Commission. Said to be the group responsible for both the euro and this crisis. Monti is not a good replacement for Mr. Bercosi. Unicredit is and has been in bad shape for some time. No Buffett bailout here unless directed by O. Same deal with BOA. Someone has to make it worth his adventure. Unicredit has been on the edge of failure for sometime now.
Posted by: Dale || 11/15/2011 7:46 Comments || Top||


Fifth Column
Occupy Portland, riot police face off
[Iran Press TV] Riot police have surrounded demonstrators at an Occupy encampment in Portland after hundreds of people defied the mayor's order to leave a downtown park area by midnight.

On Sunday afternoon, coppers besieged the camp in the Oregon city, where protesters were holding a "general assembly" meeting to discuss their next moves after the police issued an eviction order to them, the News Agency that Dare Not be Named reported.

The demonstrators chanted that they were "a peaceful protest," but coppers used nightsticks to keep them away from the encampment area and announced that anyone who resisted risked arrest and "may also be subject to chemical agents and impact weapons."

Police jugged at least one protester and another man was taken away from the park on a stretcher.

Elsewhere, police fired tear gas to disperse Occupy demonstrators in Denver and Salt Lake City. The riot police broke up the encampments and locked away several protesters.

In Honolulu, Occupy protesters gathered at a local park and staged a march to express their opposition to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit being held in the city.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York's financial district on September 17 to protest against the unjust distribution of wealth in the country and the excessive influence of big corporations on US policies.

Despite the police crackdown and the mass arrests, the Occupy movement, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has now spread to many major US cities as well as to Australia, Britannia, Germany, Italia, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries.

The demonstrators are protesting against poverty, unemployment, war, and corporatism.
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Being its Portland all side will get hurt by one of the bicycle gangs out smashing SUVs.
Posted by: Water Modem || 11/15/2011 2:39 Comments || Top||

#2  My advice, Stomp and Drag all of those people out of there. They need to be told to go home. It is a meaningless operation of public endangerment.

That's a list you may want to take a look at.
Posted by: newc || 11/15/2011 4:02 Comments || Top||

#3  The demonstrators chanted that they were "a peaceful protest," four legs good, two legs bad.

Should've tuned the place into a pet park for free running mutts. At least one of the days reserved for Pitbulls.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 11/15/2011 8:18 Comments || Top||

#4  I hope the police take precautions. I wouldn't want to touch them hippys. You might catch something. Is there even enough disinfectant to get one of those clean? Maybe they should just spray the hippies down with gallons of bleach and see if that halts the spread.
Posted by: Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division || 11/15/2011 11:28 Comments || Top||

#5  Was this the "peaceful protest" with the improvised bombs, or was that a different one?
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 11/15/2011 12:01 Comments || Top||


Police raid Occupy Oakland campsite
[Iran Press TV] US police have dismantled the encampment of Occupy protesters in Oakland and begun making arrests after the city became the scene of violent festivities

Police tossed in the clink at least 32 of protesters, who resisted the police raid, inside the camp.

Police have put up a fence around the plaza to prevent others from joining the protesters inside the camp, Rooters reported.

Over the weekend, police distributed formal eviction notices to protesters, warning them to leave their campsite or risk arrest and confiscation of their belongings.

Earlier, an unknown email warned the Occupy Oakland protesters that the police would move in to remove their tents.

The raid came one day after police forcibly cleared hundreds of anti-Wall Street demonstrators from weeks-old encampments in Portland, arresting more than 50 people.

Elsewhere, police fired tear gas to disperse Occupy demonstrators in Denver and Salt Lake City. Riot police broke up the encampments and tossed in the clink several protesters.

The Occupy movement emerged after a group of demonstrators gathered in New York's financial district on September 17 to protest against the unjust distribution of wealth in the country and the excessive influence of major corporations on US policies.

Despite the police crackdown and the mass arrests, the Occupy movement, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has now spread to major US cities as well as to Australia, Britannia, Germany, Italia, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries.
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:


Great White North
Honor-killing father said daughters betrayed Islam
The day before a Montreal man was charged with killing his three daughters and his first wife, he was recorded on a wiretap saying that even if he is sent to the gallows, nothing is more important than his honor.

"They betrayed kindness. They betrayed Islam. They betrayed our religion and creed. They betrayed our tradition. They betrayed everything," Mohammad Shafia is heard telling his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya.

Shafia, Yahya and their eldest son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were discovered dead inside a car submerged in the Rideau Canal in June 2009.

Police hid a microphone in the Shafia family van after family members returned to collect the victims' belongings. On Tuesday, the courtroom listened to wiretap conversations recorded in the weeks between the day the bodies were found and the arrests.

During the taped exchanges, Shafia says "even if they hoist us onto the gallows ... we have not done anything bad."

Mohammed Shafia can be heard saying, "God curse their generation, they were filthy and rotten children. To hell with them and their boyfriends, may the devil shit on their grave."

The father goes on, comparing his daughters to prostitutes for having boyfriends, and saying that nothing is worth more to him than his honor.

Speaking to his son, Hamed, also charged with first-degree murder, Shafia said, "I'm happy and my conscience is clear. They haven't done good and God punished them."
Posted by: ryuge || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [9 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is something good the media should do for society. Turn this whole situation around and say that the daughters were good, that it was the father who "betrayed Islam".

They should do what they do best, public vilification and character assassination, so that the father is turned into a vile thing, and even other Muslims shun and hate him for what he did.

This should be standard practice in the news media. Discouraging brutal and criminal murder is very ethical.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 11/15/2011 14:36 Comments || Top||

#2  That's like convincing Christians to hate mother Teresa, 'moose.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/15/2011 15:04 Comments || Top||

#3  I think the MSM views Islamics as a group oppressed by the West and therefore they give them a pass in most things--even horrific events.
Posted by: JohnQC || 11/15/2011 17:37 Comments || Top||

#4  Heck I knew that ever sense Beslain.

The MSM and Islamic terrorists are almost (if not de-facto) allies.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 11/15/2011 18:11 Comments || Top||

#5  The day before a Montreal man was charged with killing his three daughters and his first wife, he was recorded on a wiretap saying that even if he is sent to the gallows, nothing is more important than his honor.

I wonder if he'll be of the same opinion the day after Bubba gets his hands on him.
Posted by: gorb || 11/15/2011 18:42 Comments || Top||

#6  Message: muz CANNOT live within civilized values. As soon as they get the numbers, they want their own savagery.
Posted by: Kofi Gray3823 || 11/15/2011 19:00 Comments || Top||

#7  That's like convincing Christians to hate mother Teresa, 'moose.

Mother Teresa was no Saint, she had a great PR machine going for her.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man || 11/15/2011 21:29 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Here's Rick Perry's Audacious Plan To Completely Reinvent The U.S. Government
2012 presidential hopeful Rick Perry will try to reclaim some of the magic of his early campaign days today with a dramatic call to completely overhaul all three branches of the federal government.

Perry's proposal, based largely on ideas from his 2010 treatise Fed Up!, is pretty radical — it would completely change the legislative and judiciary branches, and even involves changing the U.S. Constitution.

Here are the highlights:

Cut Congressional pay in half and make Congress a part-time job. If they don't pass a balanced budget by 2020, Perry would cut Congressional pay in half again
Bring spending down to 18% GDP
Criminalize "insider trading" by members of Congress
Pass legislation requiring a two-thirds Congressional majority to pass any tax increases
End life-time appointments of federal judges
Pass a Constitutional amendment setting 18-year terms for supreme Court justices
Issue a moratorium on pending federal regulations
Eliminate the Department of Commerce, Department of Education, and Department of Energy
Overhaul the Department of Homeland Security and privatize airport security
Downsize the Environmental Protection Agency "so it no longer torments job creators or gives an official stamp to phony science."
Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
And of course, end federal funding of Planned Parenthood

Overall, this is a lot of federal government for one guy to hate. The proposal is a gutsy move that looks a lot like a Hail Mary pass by the struggling Perry campaign, which is looking for a second wind going into the homestretch before the 2012 primaries.


Posted by: tipper || 11/15/2011 11:37 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under:

#1  There is nothing on that list I disagree with.
Posted by: Iblis || 11/15/2011 13:31 Comments || Top||

#2  I was kind of leaning towards Cain, but Perry might get my vote with that. Good job.
Posted by: Jeque Hupairong2828 || 11/15/2011 13:36 Comments || Top||

#3  Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac As if any private party were willing to buy the crap those two agencies hold, a pile of steaming bad debt.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 13:54 Comments || Top||

#4  He left out "Repeal Obamacare". However Zerocare is mathematically impossible in any case.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 13:58 Comments || Top||

#5  Anguper, haven't they already transferred that waste into the Treasury?
Posted by: Jeque Hupairong2828 || 11/15/2011 13:58 Comments || Top||

#6  Also left out are "End corporate crony communism and "Prosecute the looters / enforce laws re: fraud, etc."
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 13:59 Comments || Top||

#7  Anguper, haven't they already transferred that waste into the Treasury? I believe that's where it ultimately lies (in all senses of that word).
The key point not discussed: Fannie and Fraud are being used to prop up the remains of the dying housing bubble. Get rid of their shuck & jive actions, and housing prices should collapse to an affordable level. This collapse will bankrupt many and cause political blowback. Knowing how the Feds work, they would simply institute other shuck & jive programs to continue propping up the zombie housing bubble, aka "Weekend at Bernie Bernanke's"
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 14:03 Comments || Top||

#8  At the moment, any candidate who comes right out and says, "The Federal government will from this time onward abandon any effort to prop up housing prices." is simply unelectable.
Fannie & Fraud are convenient whipping boys for some parts of the political spectrum, but that's not the basic issue.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 14:05 Comments || Top||

#9  The only prominent GOP personage who has even mentioned "Crony capitalism" was Sarah, and she is out of the running.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 14:07 Comments || Top||

#10  End life-time appointments of federal judges
Pass a Constitutional amendment setting 18-year terms for supreme Court justices

This is long overdue. Lifetime appointments were instituted in an age where hardly anyone lived past 65.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 14:10 Comments || Top||

#11  Politicians & the financial industry talk about one thing and the courts are starting to talk about something else: From today's NYT:
The Bank of America lawyer laid down a patented rhetorical move heard in courts across America...we should be allowed to foreclose.

Justice Catherine M. Bartlett of New York State Supreme Court cut off the lawyer. You, she said, are telling me lies.

“Bank of America got a bailout, and this is an outrage, how this man has been treated,” she said. “Hard-working, middle-class Americans are trying to make it, trying to refinance with your bank.”

Either bank officials show up in person, the justice said, or I’m going to order them “here in handcuffs."
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 14:26 Comments || Top||

#12  I'm leaning toward that ancient chinese system where any government official had to be a eunuch.
Posted by: Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division || 11/15/2011 15:02 Comments || Top||

#13  It's not crony capitalism, it's crony socialism.
Posted by: Steve White || 11/15/2011 15:03 Comments || Top||

#14  I agree with the list also. I would try to get some reasonable interpretation of the Commerce Clause other than "Everything is commerce and can be regulated." I do not know how this wish list could ever be implemented by a president although it needs to be.
Posted by: JohnQC || 11/15/2011 17:32 Comments || Top||

#15  It's just cronyism.

Patton got in trouble for telling the truth that a lot of 'Nazis' were just members to get a job and that the technical people were needed to keep the power plants, water plants, etc operating, for which he referenced the 'spoil system' back in the States as being just the same. It doesn't matter what adjective you put on it, it's the old "who you know not what you know" that floats the corrupt political system no matter what 'ism' is tacked on. The best inhibitor to the process is not to allow power to concentrate or be sustained by any group for any extended period of time.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 11/15/2011 17:38 Comments || Top||

#16  Rather than cutting the pay of Congress critters, I would just have term limits for them, just like for the president - two terms for Senators, five or six for Representatives. And a lifetime ban on lobbying for ex-critters. The Founding Fathers did not expect a Congress to be a lifetime job, a la T. Kennedy, Charlie Rangel, Robert Byrd, etc.
Oh - and Congress critters don't get to vote on their own pay - it goes to a national referendum each election.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 11/15/2011 18:15 Comments || Top||

#17  Also get rid of the Department of Labor. And stop regulating resources the Federal government has no business regulating (like offshore oil drilling) except via a warped and twisted commerce clause.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 11/15/2011 18:37 Comments || Top||

#18  Surely did "love me some" Sarah...tsk-tsk
Posted by: Angoper Smith4384 || 11/15/2011 21:58 Comments || Top||


Gingrich takes the lead
Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in PPP's national polling. He's at 28% to 25% for Herman Cain
...the personable former Godfather's Pizza CEO and quite possibly the next president of the U.S...
and 18% for Mitt Romney. The rest of the Republican field is increasingly looking like a bunch of also rans: Rick Perry is at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

Compared to a month ago Gingrich is up 13 points, while Cain has dropped by 5 points and Romney has gone down by 4. Although a fair amount of skepticism remains about the recent allegations against Cain there is no doubt they are taking a toll on his image- his net favorability is down 25 points over the last month from +51 (66/15) to only +26 (57/31). What is perhaps a little more surprising is that Romney's favorability is at a 6 month low in our polling too with only 48% of voters seeing him favorably to 39% with a negative opinion.
Posted by: Fred || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If the pub party played P O K E R ... it would ask for 4 C A R D S !
Posted by: Water Modem || 11/15/2011 2:37 Comments || Top||


Iraq
Lawn-chair balloonist plans flight over Iraq
In 2008, he flew from Oregon to Idaho. Next week, gas-station owner Kent Couch will fly again, this time over Iraq -- in his balloon-powered lawn chair.

On November 15th, Couch and Iraqi extreme sport enthusiast Fareed Lafta will board lawn chairs, fitted with 300 balloons instead of Couch's usual 150.

"We're going to have two guys on one platform," Couch said. "So we'll have two lawn chairs connected, and we'll launch with twice as many balloons."

Equipped with oxygen masks, they'll lift off in Baghdad's Green Zone, soaring to 25,000 feet for more than 24 hours, in an effort to benefit a charity for Iraqi children.

First, they'll make sure both the US and Iraqi militaries are aware of the flight.
That does seem like a prudent precaution, all things considered.
The 400-mile "cluster-balloon adventure" will end with Couch and Lafta arriving at the Talent for Youth Conference...
they hope. Either that or they get to be guests of the mullahs.
...Couch admits that his only fear is that the wind might push them in the wrong direction.
Remind me, the winds blow from, um, west, to um, um, um ... east, right?
"The fear is if we drift to Iran, which is only about 85 miles from Baghdad -- and if we were to get a wind blowing west, we would just have to go up and come back down, because I'm not going to gamble being in Iran for very long," Couch said.
Yes, one imagines your stay might be extended if you were to reach their territory. And hospitality has declined quite sadly since the days of the Shahs.
Posted by: American Delight || 11/15/2011 06:23 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sounds Like a target to me.
There IS a war going on there.

Morons
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 11/15/2011 11:04 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Justin Timberlake: Marine Corps Ball changed my life
Corporal Kelsey de Santis invited him to be her date in a video she posted on YouTube in July. Timberlake called the event 'one of the most moving evenings' he has ever experienced.
Posted by: ryuge || 11/15/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I hope the kid remembers it as he is surrounded by left wing nut jobs.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 11/15/2011 7:56 Comments || Top||

#2  Good for them!
Posted by: Creregum Glolump8403 || 11/15/2011 9:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Good on him, even knows where his heart is.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 11/15/2011 12:00 Comments || Top||

#4  This is what social cohesion looks like.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 11/15/2011 13:44 Comments || Top||

#5  Good for Timberlake.
Posted by: JohnQC || 11/15/2011 17:39 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2011-11-15
  Suspected suicide bomber killed near Afghan loya jirga site
Mon 2011-11-14
  Syria Calls for Urgent Arab Summit
Sun 2011-11-13
  Syrian brownshirts storm Saudi embassy
Sat 2011-11-12
  Iranian Terror Plot Against Bahrain Uncovered
Fri 2011-11-11
  Mexican minister who fought drug cartels killed in crash
Thu 2011-11-10
  Cash shortage threatens Pakistan flood aid
Wed 2011-11-09
  Kim Jong-il Death Rumors Rattle Markets
Tue 2011-11-08
  Syria Says U.S. behind 'Bloody Events', Urges Arab Help
Mon 2011-11-07
  19 Killed as Syrians Rally on Eid al-Adha
Sun 2011-11-06
  Suicide bomber kills six at mosque in Afghanistan
Sat 2011-11-05
  65 dead in Islamist raid on Nigerian town
Fri 2011-11-04
  Al-Shabaab militants fall back to defend Kismayu
Thu 2011-11-03
  Syrian tank fire kills two in Homs despite deal
Wed 2011-11-02
  Viktor Bout found guilty by NY NY court!
Tue 2011-11-01
  Unesco gives Palestinians full membership, U.S. pulls funding


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