Pres. Obama Lays Wreath At Tomb Of Unknown Soldier & Gives Honor To Fallen Heroes (Video)

"Today, we honor those who loved their country so much they sacrificed their lives for it. We owe them a debt we can never repay."
Pres. Barack Obama, Memorial Day 2012



Obama Memorial Day Ceremony: President Honors Fallen Troops At Arlington National Cemetery

President Barack Obama paid tribute Monday to the men and women who have died defending America, saying the country must strive "to be a nation worthy of your sacrifice."

He said the war in Iraq has ended after nine years and is "winding down" in Afghanistan. But he conceded that the pain of war lingers for the families of those lost in battle, noting mourners can be seen daily at Arlington National Cemetery daily, not just on Memorial Day.

"These 600 acres are home to Americans from every part of the country who gave their lives in every part of the globe," said the president, speaking under a brilliant sun before a large audience, including many uniformed servicemen and women, at the cemetery, after taking part in the traditional laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The president promised war veterans that "we will be there for you," to ensure that troops returning home from battle get the benefits they deserve.

Preceding Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that "all the men and women who rest here are a constant reminder that freedom is not free." He noted that some 6,400 men and women have died defending America since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Obama was traveling later Monday to the Vietnam War Memorial to give special recognition to the troops who served and died in that war.

In this election year, Obama has been reminding his audiences about the end of the war in Iraq and the move to bring all troops home from Afghanistan by 2014. In a campaign aid released last week, he credits U.S. servicemen who helped in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

With so many troops returning home from their service, Obama says the U.S. needs to return the favor.

"We have to serve them and their families as well as they have served us," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "By making sure that they get the health care and benefits they need; by caring for our wounded warriors and supporting our military families; and by giving veterans the chance to go to college, find a good job and enjoy the freedom that they risked everything to protect."

The White House said the gathering at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial War would mark the beginning of a 13-year program to honor those who served during the Vietnam War.

Republican Mitt Romney was scheduled to appear Monday with Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, in San Diego, home to a large number of military personnel and veterans. Romney has made the case that too many veterans are returning home to poor job prospects, casting blame on Obama's economic policies.

A Bureau of Labor Statistics report in March found that 12.1 percent of U.S. Armed Forces veterans who served on active duty after September 2001 were unemployed in 2011. The unemployment rate for all veterans was 8.3 percent.

Veterans could play a significant role in the 2012 election. Exit polls in 2008 showed that Obama was supported by about 44 percent of voters who said they served in the military, while 54 percent voted for McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for more than five years during the Vietnam War.

A poll released Monday by Gallup found that 58 percent of veterans support Romney and 34 percent back Obama. The results were based on a sample of 3,327 veterans who are registered voters and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Several closely watched states in the election have large blocs of military voters. Florida, home to several military installations, has more than 1.6 million veterans, according to the Veterans Administration. Pennsylvania has nearly 1 million veterans, while Virginia and North Carolina each have about 800,000 veterans living in their states.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama started the day with a breakfast at the White House for families who have lost loved ones in combat.



Obama lays wreath at Tomb of the Unknowns on Memorial Day

President Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day Monday.

The president, joined by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, delivers remarks following the traditional wreath-laying ceremony.

Earlier in the day, Obama hosted a breakfast along with first lady Michelle Obama at the White House in honor of Gold Star families.

The Obamas and Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, will also attend an event at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall on the National Mall to mark the 50th anniversary of the war.

“This month, we’ll begin to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, a time when, to our shame, our veterans did not always receive the respect and the thanks they deserved — a mistake that must never be repeated," the president said in a statement circulated by the White House.


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Sources: AOL, AP, CBS News, Huffington Post, The Hill, Google Maps

Obama & Biden Honor Nation's 2012 Top Cops (Video)

Today Pres. Obama & VP Joe Biden recognized our Nation's Top Cops in the White House Rose Garden.

God Bless All Police Officers!

Especially the GOOD Cops!


Sources: AP, Youtube

Obama Harassed & Heckled By Tea Party Plants At Iowa Town Hall (Videos)

Obama takes heat from Tea Partiers at Iowa town hall

President Obama got a little dose of Tea Party town hall anger on Monday during his three-day tour of the Midwest.

At a town hall event in Decorah, Iowa, local Tea Party activist Ryan Rhodes stood up and shouted a question at the president regarding reports that Vice President Joe Biden had called the members of the Tea Party "terrorists," USA Today reports. Rhodes questioned how the president can talk about civility when Biden was accused of using that kind of rhetoric.

After taking a question from another town hall attendee, Mr. Obama said he agrees that everyone should tone down their political rhetoric.

"Now, in fairness, since I've been called a socialist who wasn't born in this country, who is destroying America and taking away its freedoms because I passed a health care bill, I'm all for lowering the rhetoric," he said.

Earlier this month, Biden told CBS News that published reports that he compared Tea Party-linked lawmakers to "terrorists" were "absolutely not true." Instead, the vice president explained, "What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists. I never said that they were terrorists or weren't terrorists, I just let them vent."

Though Mr. Obama addressed the question during the town hall, Rhodes and another critical town hall attendee pressed the president on the issue after the event.

"When you're talking about civility, how is your vice president calling us terrorists?" Rhodes asked.

Referring to the debt ceiling debate, Mr. Obama responded, "For us to be willing to take the economy to the brink was irresponsible."

A woman next to Rhodes reminded the president that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano once warned that right-wing extremists should be monitored. Mr. Obama responded, "That's true, Timothy McVeigh should be -- you would agree with that."

After a bit more back-and-forth, the president told Rhodes, "It doesn't sound like you are interested in listening," and continued shaking hands with other Iowans in attendance.

The president hit the road this week to talk with voters about reviving the economy. As unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent, the president's poll numbers have dropped recently, and Republican presidential candidates are ratcheting up their political attacks against him.

During his two stops yesterday, Mr. Obama pointed to a number of initiatives he has proposed to create jobs and spur economic growth - including renewing payroll tax cuts, building up infrastructure programs and giving tax breaks to companies that are hiring veterans - but said "Congress needs to move."


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Sources: CBS News, Fox News, Huffington Post, Telegraph.co.uk, Youtube, Google Maps

Tea Party Lawmakers Behaved Like Terrorists During Debt Debate? YES! Palin Responds

Tea Partiers: 'Terrorists' or patriots?

The vice president reportedly said that Tea Party lawmakers "acted like terrorists" in Washington's fierce debt negotiations. Is that criticism fair?

Vice President Joe Biden said in a closed-door meeting that Tea Party Republicans "acted like terrorists" during Congress' messy debt ceiling negotiations, after another Democrat said the fiscal conservatives had "threatened to blow up the economy," according to Politico.

Sarah Palin, among other GOP leaders, said it was "appalling" that Biden would use such an insult. Biden's office denied the vice president used the term.

Is the "T" word out of line, even in a political fight as vicious as this one?

Absolutely!

Biden should be ashamed: It would be easy to dismiss this as just another one of Biden's infamous gaffes, says Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin, if it weren't for the fact that "quite a few lefties" have been slamming Tea Party lawmakers with this "ludicrous analogy" lately.

Sorry, guys, but "trying to prevent the nation's rapid descent into fiscal bankruptcy" isn't comparable to blowing up innocent people.

"Joe Biden: Those concerned about nation's unsustainable debt are 'like terrorists'"

Sadly, the label fits.

"Terrorism is a tough term," says William Yeomans at Politico, "but, unfortunately, it describes Tea Party tactics precisely."

They took "their radicalism beyond tough negotiating, beyond even hostage-taking," and threatened to inflict intentional harm on innocent Americans if their political demands weren't met.

They knew a default or downgrade would murder the markets — and the retirement savings of many Americans — and exploited that potential harm as a negotiating "weapon of mass destruction."

"The tea party's terrorist tactics"

Tea Partiers' behavior was reprehensible, but Not Criminal.

Like most people, we "bitterly opposed the tactic of holding up a vote on the debt ceiling," says James Joyner at Outside the Beltway.

Raising the debt ceiling has always been a mere housekeeping matter, but Tea Partiers used it to "get a second bite at the budget apple." That's "unprecedented and economically dangerous. But it's not criminal." And anyone who doesn't like it can say so at the ballot box.




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Sources: ABC News, CNN, Fox News, The Week, Youtube, Google Maps

Beau Biden Expected To Fully Recover From Mild Stroke

Biden's Son Beau Recovering After Mild Stroke


Vice President Joe Biden's oldest son is expected to make a full recovery after suffering an apparent "mild stroke" Tuesday.

Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, 41, is in stable condition, according to Dr. Timothy Gardner, Medical Director of the Center for Heart and Vascular Surgery at Christiana Care Health System.

"He is in good spirits and talking with his family at the hospital," Gardner said. "He is fully alert, in stable condition and has full motor and speech skills. We expect him to make a complete recovery."

Beau Biden will be transferred Tuesday afternoon to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia for further observation and examination, the vice president's office said.

Biden, 41, had considered running for the Senate seat his father held before becoming vice president, but decided against it.

In 2009, the younger Biden returned from a yearlong deployment to Iraq with his Army National Guard unit. He was a captain and military lawyer in the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade.

The vice president traveled to Delaware on Monday afternoon for a previously scheduled trip. He did a round of morning show interviews from Wilmington Tuesday morning, and was supposed to return to Washington later in the day for his weekly lunch with President Barack Obama and a series of meetings on Afghanistan.

Dr. Jill Biden's scheduled tour of a women's health facility in Washington Tuesday afternoon was postponed.

Beau Biden was scheduled to deliver a speech Tuesday night at the University of Delaware, but that was canceled too.

Beau Biden announced in January that he would not run for Senate. The decision left the seat his father held for 36 years vulnerable.

The elder Biden was away from that seat for seven months in 1988 after undergoing surgery for brain aneurysms.

Beau Biden, who is married with two young children, has worked as an attorney in private practice. He also worked for the Justice Department between 1995 and 1997 and as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1997 to 2002.


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Sources: AP, MSNBC, Zimbio, Youtube, Google Maps

Joe Biden Drops The "F" Word During Health Care Signing Ceremony

Joe Biden: "This Is A Big .... Deal"


It sounds like Vice President Joe Biden dropped the "f-bomb" at the health care reform signing ceremony Tuesday.

On video captured by network cameras and reviewed by POLITICO, Biden can be heard whispering to the president: "This is a big f---ing deal."

The audio isn't flawless. But a canvass of reporters from several news organizations who also reviewed the tape produced a consensus that Biden did, indeed, go there.

And in a Twitter message just before 1 p.m., White House press secretary Robert Gibbs appeared to acknowledge the hot-mic moment, writing: " And yes Mr. Vice President, you're right..."

The crack puts Biden in rarified company: On "60 Minutes" last Sunday, profanity-prone White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said that he's only cussed in the Oval Office around Obama once, and that he tries to keep his verbiage clean in the presence of the president whenever possible.

A call to Biden's spokesman wasn't immediately returned.


Sources: Whitehouse.gov, TMZ, Fox News, Politico, NY Post, Youtube

Obama Makes History! Signs Historic Health Care Bill! GOP Absent

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Obama Signs Landmark Health Care Bill Into Law


President Barack Obama capped a yearlong political drama Tuesday, signing into law a landmark health care reform bill that had been seen as impossible just two months ago.

The president said the law "will set into motion what a generation of Americans have fought for."

He said he was confident the Senate would make fixes to the legislation "swiftly."

The president praised those House members who had "taken their lumps" during the overhaul debate. Shouted one lawmaker in the audience to laughter, "Yes we did!"

He also hailed the new law, saying it helps lift a "decades-long drag" on the economy.

With Victoria Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy in the audience, Obama took note of the long battle to bring the health overhaul measure to his desk. "He was confident we would do the right thing," the president said of the longtime lawmaker.

"We are not a nation that does what's easy ... we are a nation that faces its challeges and faces its responsibilities."

Now, Obama must sell the law's merits to a wary American public.

House and Senate Democrats who backed the bill, as well as ordinary Americans whose health care struggles have touched Obama , oined him for the ceremony at the White House. Afterward, they headed to the Interior Department for an even larger celebration.



The White House did everything possible to make sure Obama's health care victory lap carried the day with no competition. A planned announcement of the administration's new drug control policy by Vice President Joe Biden was called off, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to hold his regular daily briefing for reporters and all Obama's meetings were closed to coverage, including one with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The next act begins Thursday, when Obama visits Iowa City, Iowa, where he announced his health care plan as a presidential candidate in May 2007. There Obama plans to talk about how the new law will help lower health care costs for small businesses and families, selling the overhaul to Americans who are deeply divided over the plan.

Republicans united in opposition pledged to repeal Obama's redesign of the health care system, which they criticized as a costly government takeover affecting one-sixth of the U.S. economy. The Republicans lack the votes needed to repeal the measure, but the minority party plans to use the issue to try to regain control of Congress in the November elections.

Democrats argue that they have delivered on Obama's campaign pledge for change, revamping a system in which the spiraling costs have put health care and insurance out of the reach of many Americans.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After a rancorous debate, the House voted 219-212 late Sunday to send the 10-year, $938 billion bill to Obama. Not one Republican voted for the bill. Some Democrats also voted against it.

The measure, which the Senate passed in December, eventually will extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce federal budget deficits and ban such insurance company practices as denying coverage to people with existing medical problems.

The bill will bring near-universal coverage to a wealthy country in which tens of millions of people are uninsured. The plan's various provisions will be phased in through 2014, and it is expected to expand coverage to about 95 percent of eligible Americans, compared with 83 percent today.

The measure represents the biggest expansion of the U.S. federal government's social safety net since the 1960s, when President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the Medicare and Medicaid government-funded health care coverage programs for the elderly and poor.

A companion measure sought by House Democrats to make a series of changes to the main bill was approved 220-211. It goes to the Senate, where debate could begin as early as Tuesday. Majority Leader Harry Reid says he has the votes to pass it — though only under special budget rules requiring just 50 votes rather than the 60 usually needed to bypass the opposition's delaying tactics.

Republicans plan to offer scores of amendments to slow or change the companion measure, which Democrats hope to approve as written and send directly to Obama for his signature.

Even so, the health care debate will likely continue for months as both parties try to use it to motivate their backers to turn out in huge numbers in the November congressional elections.

Republican-leaning states are already lining up to sue the federal government over the constitutionality of the health care overhaul legislation. Officials in at least 10 of the 50 states have agreed to file a lawsuit challenging it on grounds it violates state sovereignty by mandating that all Americans have some form of health insurance. Experts say the effort will likely fail because the U.S. Constitution states that federal law supersedes state laws, but it will keep the issue alive until the November elections.

Obama's yearlong campaign to overhaul health care seemed at a dead end in January, when a Republican won a special election to fill the late Edward Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat, and with it, enough votes to prevent the bill from coming to a final vote in the Senate.

But the Democrats regrouped and soon came up with a rescue plan that required the House to approve the Senate-passed measure despite opposition to many of its provisions, then have both chambers pass a measure incorporating numerous changes.

Obama has pushed health care as his top priority since taking office in January 2009. Failure would have weakened him and endangered other issues on the president's ambitious domestic agenda, including immigration reform and climate change legislation.

So-called tea party activists, who believe that government spending and influence should be limited, are vowing to exact political revenge on those who passed it.

The government "has declared war on our way of life," activist Eric Odom from Nevada said Monday.

In Florida, about 85 tea party groups have about 100,000 members, according to Everett Wilkinson, a leader in the state's movement. A rally was planned in Boca Raton later Tuesday.

The movement's name is taken from the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 protest in which activists in the then-British colonies in America boarded ships and threw their cargo of English tea into Boston Harbor in a symbolic act of protest against taxes.


Sources: MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov

Obama Health Care Bill Signing Ceremony, Live Coverage

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sources: MSNBC

Benjamin Netanyahu To Visit Obama Admin. This Week, Settlement Talks

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Netanyahu Won't Restrict Settlement Construction



Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he would not restrict construction in east Jerusalem, a step requested by the U.S., but would upgrade upcoming indirect talks with the Palestinians to include the main issues dividing them.

Netanyahu originally had wanted to put off a discussion of issues like the status of contested east Jerusalem, final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees until direct talks are launched.

It was not clear what Netanyahu's declared refusal to budge on east Jerusalem -- the territory that lies at the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- would mean for future relations with Washington and the rest of the international community.

Netanyahu's moves go nowhere near the U.S. demand to cancel a major new housing project at the heart of the row, but apparently he has offered enough to prompt U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to call them "useful and productive" and dispatch an envoy back to the region this week.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, who was touring the Gaza Strip on Sunday, told reporters that Netanyahu would be meeting with President Barack Obama while in the U.S. The prime minister's office had no immediate confirmation.

He described Israel's recent opening of Gaza's borders to allow in window frames and other supplies to complete a 151-apartment U.N. housing project in southern Gaza as "a drop in a bucket of water."

The blockade causes "unacceptable suffering" and "undercuts moderates and encourages extremists," he said, after visiting the project in the Khan Younis refugee camp. "My message to the people of Gaza is this: the United Nations will stand with you, through this ordeal."

Most of the 15,000 homes destroyed or damaged during Israel's war in Gaza that ended in January last year have also not been repaired because of the blockade. Israel launched the war after years of militant rocket fire from Gaza on its southern communities.

Hamas police lined the streets in areas Ban visited. They repeatedly prevented journalists from keeping up with the U.N. convoy, blocking roads and repeatedly raising their assault rifles in the direction of the journalists' cars.

The blockade was imposed in 2007 after Hamas violently took over the territory.

Israeli construction in east Jerusalem is such a fraught issue because it challenges Palestinian claims to that sector of the city as a future capital. The announcement of a major new building project during Vice President Joe Biden's visit earlier this month insulted Washington and provoked the biggest rift between the two allies in decades.

That rift has put Netanyahu in a particularly difficult bind, forcing him to find a formula that would repair ties with the U.S. without antagonizing his hawkish coalition, which is resistant to partitioning Jerusalem.

Since the feud erupted, Netanyahu has not announced changes in Israel's policy of allowing unrestricted construction in the eastern sector, home to Jerusalem's holiest sites. And his office denied reports that he promised to slow construction in the city's eastern sector.

"Our policy on Jerusalem is the same as that of all previous Israeli governments in the past 42 years and it hasn't changed," he told his Cabinet at the start of its weekly meeting. "As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv. We made this clear to the U.S. administration."

In a call to Clinton on Thursday, Netanyahu did assure the U.S. that a mechanism would be put in place to ensure that such announcements would not take Washington by surprise again, government officials have said.

But Cabinet ministers said in practice, construction will be restricted -- as it has been in the West Bank since November, when Netanyahu officially agreed to do so under heavy U.S. pressure.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it in the 1967 Mideast war. The international community does not recognize the annexation and considers the Jewish construction in east Jerusalem to be settlement building.

Netanyahu also told his Cabinet that the U.S.-brokered talks with the Palestinians would include a discussion of the main issues between them, but added that a "real resolution" of the conflicts could only be achieved in direct talks.

These issues include the status of Jerusalem, final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees from the war around Israel's 1948 creation.

Netanyahu originally had wanted to put off any discussion of these issues until direct talks start.

The row over east Jerusalem construction held up the start of the indirect talks, which are to be brokered by Washington's special Mideast envoy, George Mitchell. After Netanyahu spoke with Clinton, Washington announced that Mitchell would return to the region this week to try to get the talks moving.

He is to meet with Netanyahu before the prime minister sets off for Washington and on Monday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Mitchell has said he wanted indirect talks between the leaders to begin as soon as possible.


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Sources: Fox News, MSNBC, Google Maps

Biden Claims Stimulus Saved NC Jobs, Forgot Cocaine Monkey Project

Biden Claimed Obama Administration Has Saved 62,000 N.C. Jobs


Speaking at a company in Durham, Vice President Joe Biden touted the administration's recovery efforts today, saying it had helped create or save 62,000 jobs in North Carolina.

Biden appeared at Cree, a manufacturer of energy efficient LED lighting products that had received $39 million in tax credits through the federal stimulus act, Rob Christensen reports. The company has hired 375 workers in the past year.

Biden did not try to sugar coat the continued high unemployment rate, but said the economy was on the upswing.

"The Recovery Act is working," Biden told a crowd of 150 people that included Cree employees and public officials.

Biden said that the nation's 10,000th stimulus project, a bypass around Sanford, was scheduled to begin next month.

State and local officials in attendance included Democrats Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, House Speaker Joe Hackney, former House Speaker and now Sen. Dan Blue, Senate Majority Leader Martin Nesbitt and Durham Mayor Bill Bell.

Although Biden made no mention of the administration's health care bill, the timing of the visit — days before a scheduled House vote — was likely to be seen as a signal that the administration has the backs of the Democrats who support the health care plan.

No members of the House Congressional Delegation accompanied Biden.

Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu toured a laboratory at Cree before Biden's 25-minute speech. He was accompanied by a film crew from ABC News which is working on a story about a day in the life of the vice president.

Throughout his speech, Biden repeatedly emphasized the administrations concerns about the need for an economic recovery and to get people back to work.

"We want to make sure that everyone who aspires to the middle class can get there," Biden said.








The 10 Worst Federal Stimulus Projects in North Carolina: Hot Flashes, Dead Bugs, and Cocaine for Monkeys


Prior to signing his Federal “Stimulus” bill in early 2009, President Obama warned, “If we do not move swiftly to sign (the act) into law, an Economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.”

Here in North Carolina, Governor Perdue similarly declared that we were “facing the consequences of the national economic crisis,” and that failure to pass the stimulus bill would “jeopardize the education of our children and the health care of our citizens.”

She further noted that the stimulus will help “Create Jobs, Stimulate the Economy, and provide relief to North Carolina's families.”

However one year later, the debate over the stimulus bill’s effectiveness rages on.

A close inspection of stimulus grants and contracts awarded to North Carolina reveals a rather questionable strategy for the disbursement of stimulus funds. Many projects seem completely unrelated to avoiding an economic “catastrophe,” but rather an ad hoc satisfaction of countless dubious wish lists.

The Civitas Institute poured through the Federal Recovery Act website charged with tracking stimulus spending, and created the following list – The 10 Worst Federal Stimulus Projects in North Carolina:


1.) Study of monkeys using cocaine: $71,623


Wake Forest University was granted money to “study the effects of self-administering cocaine on the glutamate system on monkeys.” Well, at least the monkeys will be stimulated.

2.) North Carolina Dance Theatre: $50,000

This grant is used to retain four professional dancers from the North Carolina Dance Theatre’s second company. Nice for them, but why are tax dollars financing what should be a privately-funded philanthropic organization?

3.) Reducing Hot Flashes through Yoga: $147,694


Funds granted to Wake Forest University to study “preliminary data on the efficacy of integral yoga for reducing menopausal hot flashes.” The President warned us that the stimulus plan was needed to avoid an economic “catastrophe.” How does this study help revive the economy?

4.) Collecting, Researching and Reporting on the Stimulus Act: $115,000; $150,000; $227,940
Total: $492,940


Nearly half a million taxpayer dollars will go toward funding more propaganda selling the “benefits” of the stimulus plan. The federal government created the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, while North Carolina established the Office of Economic Recovery & Investment for these very purposes. Apparently, that’s just not enough propaganda.


5.) Create Interactive Dance Performance Technology: $762,372

This grant to UNC-Charlotte will fund the development of computer technology to digitally record the dance moves of performers. The recorded movements can then be reviewed and manipulated by a computer program. Although creating virtual-reality type technology for dance movements may be interesting to those involved, how does this serve to “protect the education of our children”? At an average salary of roughly $47,000, this money could have saved 16 North Carolina teacher jobs.


6.) American Dance Festival, Inc: $50,000


A graphic designer and archivist will retain their jobs thanks to this grant. The American Dance Festival hosts dance classes, workshops and engages in other charitable activities to help support dancers. How will this help reverse a major international financial crisis, exactly?

7.) Construction of a New Town Hall in Bladenboro: $200,000; $100,000
Total: $300,000


Why are taxpayers from across the country forced to finance construction of a local government office? This is a classic case of earmark pork spending.

8.) North Carolina Folk Life Institute: $25,000


With the help of this grant, the Institute was able to retain its executive director. Will this help “provide relief to North Carolina’s families”?

9.) Preservation of an Dead Insect Collection at North Carolina State: $253,123


We were promised that the stimulus was going to “save jobs.” We were never told it would also help preserve dead bugs.

10.) Greensboro Symphony Orchestra: $50,000


These funds are used to retain the GSO’s director of marketing and education manager. More bailouts of what should be a privately-funded organization.


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Sources: J.W. Pope Civitas Institute, Fox News, Recovery.gov, Politisite, Youtube, Google Maps

Netanyahu Builds 300 More Settlement Homes In East Jerusalem

Israel To Build 300 More Homes


News emerged yesterday of another building project of more than 300 homes planned for East Jerusalem, even as Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, sought to step back from a growing public feud with Israel over its settlement policies.

A notice on the website of the Israel Lands Authority invited bids on construction of 309 new homes in the Jewish suburb of Neve Yaakov, located in north-east Jerusalem.

A spokesman for the Jerusalem municipality said building and planning across the city were moving ahead. "For us, it is business as usual," Stephan Miller said.

Earlier, US officials had said Mrs Clinton was planning to telephone Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, in an effort to ease the bitter diplomatic row.

US officials said yesterday the call would be made in the next 24 hours, as the Obama administration awaits Mr Netanyahu's response to its complaints over Israeli settlement policy, which has provoked the deepest US-Israel rift in years.

But in a possible sign that it wants to stop the row widening, the administration also said the dispute was a disagreement between friends which would not shatter the ''unbreakable bond'' between the allies.

The spat erupted when Washington, frustrated over a lack of success for its peace brokering, reacted angrily last week to an Israeli announcement that 1600 new settler homes would be built in annexed East Jerusalem.

A day earlier, the resumption of work on 112 housing units in Beitar Illit had been announced. The move came at the moment the US had persuaded the Palestinians to take part in indirect ''proximity'' talks with the Israelis, and during a visit to Jerusalem by the US Vice-President, Joe Biden.

A State Department spokesman, Philip Crowley, told reporters he expected a conversation ''very soon'' between Mrs Clinton and Mr Netanyahu.

Mrs Clinton dismissed suggestions that relations between the allies were at their lowest ebb in three decades. "Oh, I don't buy that," she told reporters in Washington. "We have an absolute commitment to Israel's security. We have a close, unshakeable bond …''

Mrs Clinton explained that the US and its "international partners" would not always agree on every issue. Nevertheless, the two nations shared "common values and a commitment to a democratic future for the world", and both were committed to a two-state solution that would cement Palestinian autonomy.

"But that doesn't mean that we're going to agree," she added.

Mrs Clinton confirmed her rebuke by phone of the Mr Netanyahu last week, saying the US had expressed its "dismay and disappointment" after Israel's announcement it would allow construction of 1600 settler housing units in the Ramat Shlomo subdivision of East Jerusalem.

Mrs Clinton's conciliatory tone was noted in Jerusalem by a government spokesman, Mark Regev, but Israel appeared determined to resist US calls for a gesture reiterating its commitment to mediated talks with the Palestinians.

"Israel appreciates and values the warm words … about the deep ties between Israel and the US and the commitment of the US to Israel's security," Mr Regev said. But he continued: "Concerning the commitment to peace - Israel's government has proved over the past year its commitment to peace, in words and in deeds."

Meanwhile, Israel yesterday reopened the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound and lifted a days-old lockdown of the occupied West Bank - a day after Jerusalem saw the heaviest Palestinian rioting in years.

Rising tensions over settlement building had been inflamed by the reopening of a 17th century synagogue, the Hurva (''ruin'') synagogue, in Jerusalem's Old City, which is sacred to Jews and Muslims.







Israel's Titanic Moment: Does Obama Want Bibi's Head?


Hamas has designated this day, in this place, its Day of Rage. Why, then, the smiles on the faces of Mahmoud Zahar and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Perhaps it's because after more than 22 years of costly trial and error, Hamas has finally come upon the secret of how to bring down the Jewish state:

Let the ship sink itself.

This month, down here in the engine room of the Titanic, a single coherent order continues to sound from the officers shrouded in fog on the bridge: "More power!"

To the delight of Mahmoud Zahar and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel's homemade weapons of mass destruction - pro-settlement bureaucrats with conflicts of financial and ideological interest - have done in one meeting what Israel's foes have sought for generations: driving a stake through the heart of Israel's relationship with the White House.

We should have known. But in the swamp of anomaly and impossibility that is Jerusalem, you can easily lose sight of, and belief in, the basics:

One of the curses of endless war, is the tendency to become one's own worst enemy - in every sense.

Forget, for the moment, the parallels with Iran. Forget, also, that Ahmadinejad would like nothing more in life than to focus Muslim anger and Western displeasure on Israel's policies in Jerusalem.

Consider, instead, that with Hamas literally at the gates, Israel is not only doing the Islamic Resistance Movement's bidding - Washington is beginning to relate to the Netanyahu government as if it were Hamas.

Israelis woke on Tuesday to an Army Radio report that George Mitchell had abruptly cancelled his scheduled visit to Israel, and that the U.S. Mideast envoy would not resume his discussions with Jerusalem until Israeli leaders agreed to three conditions set by Washington - an uncomfortably familiar echo of the U.S. position on contacts with Hamas.

One focus of debate in Israel was the question of how an insulted and incensed Obama administration preferred to see the imbroglio turn out. Specifically, is the President after Benjamin Netanyahu's head?



Judging from the administration's responses thus far, it appears far more likely that what the president would like to see laid low is not the Netanyahu government's head, but rather the part that often verbally functions as its butt end - specifically Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party and Interior Minister Eli Yishai's Shas.

In the current Israeli political constellation, these two men, and these two parties - a volatile alliance of ultra-secular Russian-born immigrants and ultra-Orthodox sabras with roots in the Muslim world and the Mediterranean - are the effective veto both to the peace process as a whole and to a settlement freeze of any substance.

They represent a total of 26 of the 61 Knesset seats needed for a Netanyahu majority. More crucially, they are the primary roadblock to the entry of the centrist Kadima party, which at 28 seats is larger even than Netanyahu's ruling Likud.

Obama, whose math and history skills are as good as anyone's, knows both that Israeli government concessions are a near-monopoly of the center-right Likud. It is thus reasonable to assume that the president would like to see a Netanyahu-led coalition anchored by Kadima and Labor, whose 68-seat cushion could allow for the inevitable resignations of "rebel" Likud backbenchers.

For the time being, however, Lieberman and Yishai are enjoying the kind of shadenfreude that Hamas, for its part, has been trying not to make obvious. All three are the beneficiaries of a campaign by rightist Israeli activists which has seen trouble-making become a goal in its own right.

The Holy City, meanwhile, has the held-breath wariness of a fuse whose end had been lit, but whose other end was not in sight. For some on the right, there was evident relish in the situation, and not a little pride.

In one of the more remarkable, and ill-advised, editorials in its 77-year history, the Jerusalem Post poured oil on the smolder this week, rewriting Jewish history and tradition to declare that the newly dedicated Hurva synagogue in the Old City, "symbolizes, perhaps more than any other site, the Jewish people's yearnings to return to its homeland."

The piece is an extraordinary example of internal logic, and an indirect confirmation of fundamentalist Islamic fears of hopes to encroach on the Muslim shrine of Al Aqsa for the ultimate purpose of building a third Jewish Temple. Referring to the literal meaning of the Hurva, the editorial goes on to state that "To name something that is built a 'ruin' reveals a stubborn unwillingness to accept the present reality as unassailable."


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Sources: Smh.com, Haaretz.com, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama, Biden Attends Georgetown-Duke Game With W.H. Advisers...89-77

Pres. Barack Obama Attends Georgetown-Duke College Basketball Game


Pres. Barack Obama attended today's college basketball matchup between No. 7 Georgetown and No. 8 Duke. Among his companions were Joe Biden, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Reggie Love.

The president also offered commentary during part of the CBS broadcast of the game. He said that he typically does not have time to watch entire college basketball games, but stays up to date by watching SportsCenter. He'll make an exception for the Final Four and watch all of the games.

The home team prevailed, as Georgetown beat Duke, 89-77. Scroll down for video and photos, and to read the pool reports from the game.



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Sources: Huffington Post, AFP, Sports Buster, Youtube, Google Maps

Beau Biden Announces He Won't Seek Senate Seat

Beau Biden Declines U.S. Senate Bid


Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden announced Monday that he will not run for the Senate in 2010, a development which puts the GOP in a commanding position to claim the seat once held by his father, Vice President Joe Biden.

“I have a duty to fulfill as Attorney General – and the immediate need to focus on a case of great consequence. And that is what I must do,” Biden said in a statement. “Therefore I cannot and will not run for the United States Senate in 2010. I will run for reelection as Attorney General.”

Biden’s decision dealt a serious blow to Democratic hopes of retaining the seat and puts the party at a decided disadvantage against Republican Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), the popular former governor and veteran congressman who has comfortably won reelection since first winning his House seat in 1992.

Of his son’s decision, the vice president said in a statement: "I know I sound like the proud father I am, but all of his life, Beau has put duty above any personal ambition, and this decision today is another example of that exceptional character trait. Jill and I are so proud of our son and feel fortunate as Delawareans that he is our Attorney General."

Though Castle had been leading Biden in the polls by a small margin, Biden was widely believed to be the only potential Democratic candidate who could knock off the 70-year-old congressman, just as Castle was widely thought to be the only Republican capable of winning the seat in the solidly Democratic state.

Castle has outperformed the past five GOP presidential nominees by more than 20 percentage points and ran roughly 25 points ahead of John McCain in 2008, when Barack Obama won a landslide 62 percent to 37 percent victory in Delaware.

Appointed Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman made clear from the beginning of his tenure that he would not run for the seat in 2010. On Monday, in the wake of Biden’s announcement, Kaufman said he would not alter his plans.

“Serving the people of Delaware in the U.S. Senate is as fulfilling, challenging, and humbling as I imagined when I was appointed,” he said in a statement. “But as I said at the time, I will not seek election to a full term. I will continue to spend my time as senator serving the people of Delaware and our nation, and not running for office. It is a commitment I made when appointed, and one I will fulfill.”

One early name mentioned as a possible Democratic challenger to Castle is New Castle County Executive Chris Coons, who represents a majority of the state’s population.



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Sources: Politico, Google Maps