An Independent view of law, politics and social issues confronting Angelinos, Californians, and Americans
President Barack Obama appeared on a one hour Town Hall meeting that was hosted by CNBC Political Reporter John Harwood. Velma Hart was the first person to ask a question.
Obama Responds To ‘Exhausted’ Woman
Was this the appropriate response the president should have given? I don’t think so!
GREAT FALLS, Montana — A Montana resident believed to be the world’s oldest man celebrated his 114th birthday Tuesday at a retirement home in Great Falls.
Walter Breuning was born on Sept. 21, 1896, in Melrose, Minnesota, and moved to Montana in 1918, where he worked as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway for 50 years.
His wife, Agnes, a railroad telegraph operator from Butte, died in 1957. The couple had no children.
Breuning inherited the distinction of being the world’s oldest man in July 2009 when Briton Henry Allingham died at age 113. Allingham had joked that the secret to long life was “Cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women _ and a good sense of humor,” according to Guinness World Records.
The Guinness organization and the Gerontology Research Group each have verified Breuning as the world’s oldest man and the fourth-oldest person. Three women were born earlier in the same year as Breuning.
Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records, presented Breuning with a copy of the book’s 2011 edition that lists him as the record holder.
“Walter wasn’t in last year’s edition,” Young joked. “He was too young.”
The Great Falls Tribune reported that Breuning gave a speech before about 100 people at an invitation-only birthday party at the Rainbow Retirement Community, with a guest list that included Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and representatives from Guinness World Records.
Breuning was helped up to a lectern from his motorized cart, appearing somewhat frail but speaking with a strong voice.
He recalled “the dark ages,” when his family moved to South Dakota in 1901 and lived for 11 years without electricity, water or plumbing.
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Richard Florida (born 1957 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American urban studies theorist. On Sunday, August 29, he was interviewed on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and pointed out that the United States seems to have forgotten its basic message to the world. That message was that this is the country that will take “…your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,…” Guesting on that show from Toronto, Canada, he pointed out that ½ of all the residents in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada are immigrants from around the world. The mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba is an expatriate from Israel. Canada has taken the mantle from the United States.
Here we are arguing about legal versus illegal immigration. We are not alone. Business Week reports in its September 6, 2010 edition that Australia is concerned about the impact on their nation of Chinese investments for the purpose of mining their minerals. They haven’t visited Vancouver, Canada. The first thing you notice driving into the city is that Mandarin is the primary language on many building signs and English beneath in a smaller font. Check out this article by another Canadian. Canada’s Teck Resources has the Chinese government’s China Investment Corp. sovereign wealth fund as a strategic 17% shareholder.
All races, all religions, all sexual orientations are accepted without reservation. Taxes are high but more American cars are manufactured in Canada than in the United States. The taxi driver said, “medical care is free.” It isn’t. They pay for it in higher taxes. Canada is growing despite its major reliance on the United States.
There is a lesson here. Will the United States learn too?
Political Independents are people who do not follow any political party philosophy even though they believe it is correct in some ways. After all, political party philosophy has been determined by party leaders. Thus, it is estimated by the Pew Research Center that between 36% and 39% contend to be Independents. I am one of them. I receive email from Republicans, Democrats, and the Tea Party. What I don’t do is attend any of their events.
It has been gratifying to watch New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has been a Democrat, a Republican, and most recently an Independent. Now AOL reports that “he will plunge into this year’s elections to raise money and campaign for candidates for both parties who he sees as capable of compromise.”
This is a philosophy I can relate to. America functions best when we find common ground and compromise. The banner wavers and extremists provide no solution to our mixed and multi-cultural society.
The Boston Tea Party was about taxation without representation. Who in America doesn’t have a representative?
The Tea Party of 2010 has been that it is all about Federal government interference in everyone’s life and the national debt. Just this past week Dick Armey, a former U.S. Representative from Texas, was interviewed on television and said that members of the movement had many different views about social issues. He insisted that social issues are not part of the Tea Party agenda.
Now we have the Values Voters Summit. Who attends their event? Of course Christine O’Donnell was there along with a list of the usual GOP leadership group. This is a group that opposes abortion in all circumstances including rape and incest. They oppose gay marriage.
They, of course, support your right to buy as many guns as you can afford. They are lead by the conservative evangelical Christians.
What is Mitt Romney doing in their midsts? I thought he was a Mormon.
How many Independents and Democrats will follow this agenda? Did these people ever hear about Barry Goldwater or George McGovern? Their movements took over their parties but soundly lost in the general elections.
If you read or watch nothing else today, take the ten minutes needed to watch this shocking video.
Here is the story. A sixth-grade class in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was “dragged” by their teachers to the “notorious” Roxbury mosque — the $15 million Saudi-funded, minareted Islamic center started by Abdurrahman Alamoudi (now serving a 23-year terrorism sentence) and run by the Muslim American Society (the quasi-official arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States). Capitalizing on the “goo” that passes for “social studied” curricula, parents were told the “field trip” was “to learn about the architecture of the mosque and observe a midday prayer service.” One parent was concerned enough to volunteer as a chaperone and bring along a camera.
The result is stunning: an unabashed exercise in Islamic dawa, the “call to Islam” and the manner by which the Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Yusuf Qaradawi, promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” Qaradawi — wonder of wonders — is a trustee of the Roxbury mosque (although he is banned from the U.S. for sanctioning terrorism). As the video relates, “Dawa Net,” one Islamic organization that instructs on how to use the schools to inculcate the young, explains that public schools in America are “fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students.”
The question is, Did this really happen? Is this just another fear mongering video that has been taken out of context? Anyone can post a video on YouTube. Anyone can add what ever voice over they want. If all this is accurate then we really do have a problem.
Peter Morici, a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School and occasional guest on CNN posted an article on the Logisticstoday website starting with the following words:
The Tea Party is winning big, because the U.S. economy is failing. Voters are disgusted with a mess instigated by Washington spoiling Wall Street and kowtowing to China, and leaders of both major parties appear clueless.
Mr. Morici goes on to point out that the departure of industry and R&D to China and other Asian nations has resulted in the export of all the jobs that those industries provided American workers. He sees no events that will change this course of events. He further argues that disputes over income tax rates is just a diversion from the real issues surrounding the economic well being of America. He argues that the United States is following the path of the U.K. that has resulted in an economy that never recovered from “excessive state intrusion in the private economy.”
AOL’s Senior Correspondent, Joseph Schuman, says that Barack Obama’s pitch for relecting Democrats this Fall will be 1. The Economy Is Better Than It Was When We Found It. 2. Tax Cuts for the Middle Class, Not the Wealthy. 3. 3. Republicans Are Playing Election-Year Games.
I wonder if the Barack Obama has read this piece in the New York Times?
While all the fighting over the economy is going on there is a fierce battle over social issues from mosques to immigration reform, and rights for homosexuals.
My question is who will be the presidential candidates in 2012?
Thus evolved the term ‘S.H.I.T’ , (Stow High In Transit) which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.
You probably did not know the true history of this word.
Neither did I.
I had always thought it was a golf term.
Sometimes we strike out at others without complete forethought. President Calderon of Mexico has done just that. His country is in turmoil and he is looking for someone to take the blame. The United States is an easy target. In a television interview reported by the AP Calderon said the migrant massacre doesn’t undermine Mexico’s moral authority to demand better treatment for its own migrants.
“Of course we have the moral authority, because Mexican officials are not shooting Central American youths at the border, but U.S. agents are shooting Mexican migrants. If we are talking about responsibility, at the root of this, in the case of immigration, is the lack of immigration legislation in the United States that would recognize this phenomenon.”
President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador said during his joint appearance with Calderon that the home nations of migrants bear some of the responsibility for immigration problems.
“In part, the greatest responsibility lies with our governments, the Salvadoran government, for not having generated the employment conditions, the welfare conditions, that doesn’t leave our migrants any choice but to look for other opportunities in the United States and Canada.”
As this blame America news conference is occurring Wall Street Journal’s David Luhnow reports from Monterrey, Mexico in a headline that reads Elite Flee Drug War in Mexico’s No. 3 City:
In the past two weeks, U.S. farm equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. ordered executives with children to leave the city, following a similar move by the U.S. State Department for American diplomats here. Other U.S. firms are allowing employees to leave voluntarily.
“Based on recent guidance from the State Department, Caterpillar has informed expat employees in some regions of Mexico (including Monterrey) that they and their families should repatriate as soon as possible,” Jim Dugan, Caterpillar’s chief spokesman, said in an email to The Wall Street Journal. The move affects about 40 employees, he said.
Despite President Obama’s diplomatic repudiation of Hilary Clinton’s comment “Mexico drug wars starting to look like insurgency”, the reality is becoming apparent. We may not want to send American soldiers into Mexico but we may have no choice.
Speaking at the Pentagon on September 11, 2010 the president said, “The highest honor we can pay those we lost, indeed our greatest weapon in this ongoing war, is to do what our adversaries fear the most. To stay true to who we are, as Americans; to renew our sense of common purpose; to say that we define the character of our country, and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are.”
However, for others It’s all about fear. Blacks, Japanese, Chinese, Jews, Irish, Latinos, etc. are all “invading” America. They will destroy the nation is the repeating theme of those who spread hate. Everyone who spreads fear is also destroying what America stand for.
This year it is either the Latinos or the Muslims. I can’t sort out which is the enemy. We are being driven by fear mongers. Who ever reads this should stop and think. Perhaps your groups will be next!
