Another Test Run?
2 More passengers Detained after Flight to Phoenix
December 27, 2009
AP – PHOENIX — Two men thought to have been acting suspicious aboard a flight bound for Phoenix were detained and questioned by federal anti-terrorism authorities before they were released, the FBI said Sunday.
Transportation Security Administration officials said passengers aboard U.S. Airways Flight 192 from Orlando, Fla., on Saturday night reported that two men, described as Middle Eastern, were acting strangely and talking loudly to each other in a foreign language.
A nearby passenger also observed one of men watching what appeared to be footage of a suicide bombing, but was actually a scene from the 2007 movie “The Kingdom.” The man also got up from his seat while the seat belt warning sign was still lit, FBI spokesman Manuel Johnson said.
“The totality of those three occurrences led this passenger to believe this was suspicious,” he said.
The flight crew called for law enforcement and TSA officers to meet them when the plane landed. The flight’s final destination was San Diego. Authorities did not release the men’s names, ages or hometowns.
Yesterday, Ibrahim Cooper, the former ABC News producer and now head of CAIR once again tells us we can’t ‘profile’ for the protection of innocent travelers. Continue Reading »
U.S. Treasury Gives Blank Check to Fannie & Freddie
On Christmas eve, while most Americans were gathering with family and friends, Tim Geithner quietly removed the $200 billion cap on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both funds now have unlimited access to bailout funds through 2012.
Agreements the Treasury made the bankrupt funds in 2008 allow the Treasury to make amendments through the end of the year – without the consent of Congress.
Something deeper is going on because Freddie and Fannie haven’t even used the funds they already have access to.
From the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. Move to Cover Fannie, Freddie Losses Stirs Controversy
By James R. Hagerty and Jessica Holzer
The Obama administration’s decision to cover an unlimited amount of losses at the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the next three years stirred controversy over the holiday.
The Treasury announced Thursday it was removing the caps that limited the amount of available capital to the companies to $200 billion each. Continue Reading »
Drug Prices Down by Half – and Dropping
According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the street price of cocaine in Britain is half the price it was 10 years ago. Official figures released last week showed a line of cocaine now costs as little as £1 – about $1.50 US. That’s cheaper than a beer.
The boom in production has saturated global markets. In the last 10 years the world supply of opium and heroin has doubled from 4,000 to 8,000 tons. Drug traffickers have not only saturated Britain, the US, Russia, and most of Western Europe – they are now spreading throughout Africa.
The head of the UN drugs agency, Antonio Maria Costa said huge amounts of heroin and cocaine were being traded by “terrorists and anti-government forces” to fund their operations. Cocaine trafficking has turned the West African town of Guinea Bissau into Africa’s first narco-state, and a lucrative source of cash for Hezbollah and al Qaida as well as South American drug cartels.
See: Feds Look Into Al-Qaeda African Drug Connection
In 2008, more than 250 tons of cocaine are thought to have passed through Venezuela on their way to Africa – a five-fold increase from 2004. Venezuela has become the Bermuda Triangle for drugs.
From Venezuela, Colombian cocaine bound for Europe is transferred onto long range planes, generally Gulfstreams, Boeing 727s or DC-9s. It’s flown across the Atlantic to small West African countries with little ability to police their airspace or coastlines, notably Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Continue Reading »
Russian Hackers Steal Tens of Millions from Citibank
By Siobhan Gorman and Evan Perez
The same day President Obama made Howard Schmidt his Cyber Czar, Russian hackers breached Citibank’s secure computers and stole tens of millions of dollars.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang, according to government officials.
The attack took aim at Citigroup’s Citibank subsidiary, which includes its North American retail bank and other businesses. It couldn’t be learned whether the thieves gained access to Citibank’s systems directly or through third parties. Continue Reading »
INTERPOL and the UN International Criminal Court
The United Nations General Assembly established an “international criminal court” on July 17, 1998. The Rome Statute was adopted by a vote of 120 to 7. The seven countries that voted against the treaty were Iraq, Israel, Libya, the People’s Republic of China, Qatar, the United States, and Yemen.
The treaty entered into force on 1 July 2002. The ICC can only prosecute crimes committed on or after that date.
President Bill Clinton had previously signed the Rome Statute during his presidency. President George W. Bush removed the United States as a signatory. He rejected subjecting the United States to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
One reason is the overall matter of sovereignty and the concept of the primacy of American law above those of the rest of the world.
But more recently a more over-riding concern principally has been the potential – if not likely – specter of subjecting our Armed Forces to a hostile international body seeking war crimes prosecutions during the execution of an unpopular war. Continue Reading »
The Disparity Provision
Exclusive from the Weekly Standard
Senator Roland Burris is claiming credit for a provision in Harry Reid’s “manager’s amendment,” unveiled Saturday morning, that could funnel money to ACORN through the health care bill.
On December 9, Burris, an Illinois Democrat, pledged that he would filibuster a health care bill without a public option. “If we have to get 60 and it comes back and it does not have a public option in it, I will not vote for it,” he said. Then early last week he said he could vote for the bill if there were changes made to achieve the goals of the public option: “until this bill addresses cost, competition, and accountability in a meaningful way—it will not win [my vote].” Continue Reading »
“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother”
From Politico 12/18/09
Rep. Peter DeFazio’s phone rang. On the other end was Rahm Emanuel.
The White House chief of staff last month expressed frustration with DeFazio’s resignation calls for President Barack Obama’s top two economic aides — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House chief economist Larry Summers — and appealed for cooperation, according to DeFazio.
But Emanuel, known for his blunt manner and ability to bend members of his party to his will, did not raise his voice with the Oregon Democrat.
“Rahm does not yell at me,” DeFazio said, “because he knows that I yell back.” Continue Reading »
Washington Crossing the Delaware
The famous painting above is by the German-American artist, Emanuel Leutze. The painting, done in 1848, now hangs at the Met. The depiction is the turning point of the American Revolution. Maybe it’s time for another painting.
During the winter of 1776 the prospect of America winning the war against Britain was looking grim. The time for the enlisted army was about to expire on December 31 and most men were not interested in returning. Morale in the army was low, and Washington realized that if he didn’t make a move immediately he would lose most of his men.
in an attempt to save his army and help turn the tide of war, George Washington—Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army—devised a plan to cross the Delaware River on Christmas night and surround the Hessian garrison. The Hessians were German mercenaries hired by England to help fight in the war against the Americans. Continue Reading »
The President’s Team of Wall Street Insiders
Matt Taibbi-Rollingstone.com
Dec 09, 2009
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing. Continue Reading »
The Socialist Dictator Chavez
From the Editors of VenEconomy
It is nearly seven years since the general-oil strike. December 2002 sadly marked the beginning of the end of Petróleos de Venezuela.
The collapse of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company was not only sealed by the depletion of its excellent human resources following the unjustified (albeit politically justified) dismissal of more than 20,000 trained professionals and technicians with experience in the field, but also by the fact that most of these highly trained, specialized professionals and technicians were replaced by people whose best qualification was that they held a government party card or had a letter of recommendation from one of Chavismo’s privileged sons. But above and beyond all that, the destruction of PDVSA was marked by a shift in its corporate purpose, when it ceased to be purely an oil company that produces and exports crude and became a subsidiary of the Chavista revolution and the benefactor of whatever proselytizing program Chávez dreamed up. Continue Reading »
On Politics…
Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose
you were a member of Congress...
But I repeat myself.
-Mark Twain
