Thursday, December 25, 2008
3 Dead After 'Santa' Opens Fire at Party
COVINA, Calif. (Dec. 25) – A man dressed as Santa Claus opened fire at a Christmas Eve party in a suburban Los Angeles home that subsequently caught fire, leaving three people dead, police said Thursday.
Police said they were seeking a person of interest, 45-year-old Bruce Jeffrey Pardo. Pardo, described by police as armed and dangerous, is the estranged husband of a person who may have been at the party.
"He was going through some type of marital problems, and we believe that this residence is a relative's residence," Lt. Pat Buchanan said.
http://news.aol.com/article/3-dead-after-santa-opens-fire-at-party/287323
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Oprah Winfrey named PETA's 'Person of the Year'
CHICAGO (AP) -- Animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has named Oprah Winfrey its "Person of the Year."
PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk says Friday that Winfrey has used her "powerful voice to defend those without one."
Norfolk, Va.-based PETA says the group will send Winfrey an award plaque and a letter of appreciation.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WINFREY_PETA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-12-19-20-26-38
Friday, December 19, 2008
Burger King selling meat floavored cologne
The way to a man's heart may be through his stomach, but the way to a woman's heart — according to Burger King — may be through a new meat-scented body spray.
While fast-food chains aren't exactly best known for selling signature fragrances, on Sunday The Home of the Whopper rolled out a men's body spray called Flame by BK. The 5-ml bottles are available for sale in Ricky's stores in New York City and on a dedicated Web site, firemeetsdesire.com.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28284679?GT1=43001
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
"Japanese people taste the best - whites are too salty!"
The jungles of Papua New Guinea are a different world - the land of headhunters and cannibals.
Brave Italian photographer Iago Corazza travelled the country, the island at the end of the world, and took photos of its fascinating inhabitants, who still live a Stone Age existence.
“You find people here who can describe the taste of human flesh,” the photographer said of his travels.
Anthropologist Olga Ammann describes it more succinctly in the book. She quotes people who have eaten other humans: “The meat of white people smells too strongly and is too salty.”
The Japanese are meant to taste the best, according to her study - the only thing that beats it is the meat of their own women.
But is cannibalism just a myth, or does it still exist on the island? It has been banned there for over 50 years – but it is reported that some tribes still eat the flesh of people who have died.
Evidence of this is the current prevalence of the Kuru illness in tribe members, which is associated with cannibalism.
http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2008/12/12/cannibals-in-papua-new-guinea/japanese-taste-best-whites-are-too-salty.html
Monday, December 15, 2008
Tax holiday bill picks up steam
From World Net Daily,
WASHINGTON – Big business bailouts and "economic stimulus packages" are all the rage in the Capitol these days.
Most involve massive transfers of wealth from taxpayers to government-directed projects.
But a new and very different bill, proposed by a heretofore little-known congressman from Texas, is gaining traction from Republicans – and even a few Democrats, according to the sponsor.
It's called "the tax-holiday plan." And one version of it picked up support from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the nation's largest small business advocacy organization over the weekend.
"If Congress wants to jumpstart this economy, they need to do something to help small business owners gain confidence that now is a good time to grow their businesses and create new jobs," said Dan Danner, executive vice president of the NFIB. "Passing a six-month payroll tax holiday would do just that by putting more money in the hands of small business owners to invest in their business and by giving employees more of their own money to spend wherever they see fit."
Eliminating the payroll tax will have an immediate effect on employment, the NFIB said. The suspension of the 6.2 percent payroll tax on employers will decrease the cost of labor and will help employers keep people working during the recession, the organization said.
A payroll tax holiday also will directly increase the paychecks of lower-and-middle income taxpayers by 6.2 percent – the current portion paid by workers.
Something similar to that plan was introduced in the House of Representatives last week by Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas. The bill is HR 7309 that would require all federal income tax based on wages earned and FICA withholding to be left in paychecks for two straight months – dramatically increasing the amount each worker keeps.
Gohmert's plan would be paid for by the remaining $350 billion bailout spearheaded by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and already approved by Congress and signed by President Bush. Even wage earners who do not make enough to pay income tax would get back their FICA or Social Security withholding under the plan.
"In a matter of months, Paulson and Bernanke have committed $7.7 trillion to bailouts while individually Americans will pay $1.2 trillion in income taxes for all of 2008," Gohmert said. "We need to end the madness and implement a commonsense, free-market solution to our economic woes. My plan would cost less than the remainder of the bailout, but it would provide significantly more relief to taxpayers as well as a greater economic boost. Think about how much more of your paycheck you would see if you didn't pay federal taxes for January and February 2009."
Gohmert, who has already been backed in his plan by at least 35 members of Congress – all fellow Republicans – says he is getting interest from some Democratic colleagues as well.
"We've got a number of blue dog Democrats who are saying, 'Give me more information, this sounds like something I could really support,'" Gohmert said.
Gohmert said he doesn't care whether the bill comes to the floor under his name or a Democrat's, but that either way, it will require the American people to mobilize.
"I think the chance this has to get to the floor – even under a Democrat's name on the bill, fine by me – is if Americans rise up again, as they have a couple of times in the last two years, and let their voices be heard," Gohmert said.
Gohmert says the plan is actually much cheaper than the economic rescue effort pushed by Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He says Paulson has roughly $350 billion left that "he's probably not going to spend. I see that about the same time I notice the $7.7 trillion is estimated to be what Paulson and Bernanke may be throwing at the economy to try and get it to do better and more credit extended – like people who are failing in their mortgage to refinance and be able to finance the part they're behind on."
According to Gohmert, all revenue the government is set to receive in 2008 totals $2.5 trillion. Of that, about $1.21 trillion is comprised of individual income tax money for the year 2008.
"And then you realize they're pledging, committing, buying, squandering six and a half times more than we're going to get in actual income tax for the year 2008," he said.
With that in mind, Gohmert's first idea was a tax holiday for all of 2008.
"If everybody got everything back – think about yourself – if you'd got everything back that you'd spent so far into the government, in individual income tax and didn't have to pay anymore for the rest of the year, do you think you'd have a merry Christmas?" he asked. "Can you imagine the economy this year if you had that kind of ... there'd be cars bought, auto dealers, auto manufacturers bailed out by all the cars being bought, homes, buildings being built. It would be fantastic."
But he didn't get much support for that admittedly radical idea. So he scaled it back to just two months.
Citing figures from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's American Solutions think tank, he said Americans paid $101.6 billion per month in personal income tax and $65.6 billion per month in FICA tax. A two-month reprieve from these taxes would cost $334.4 billion, much less than the remaining $350 billion in bailout funds sought by Paulson. It would represent a 17 percent reduction in income taxes for Americans in 2009.
"These savings will allow some who are behind on their mortgages to catch up, others to trade their gas guzzlers for more efficient cars, pay off credit card debt, or take advantage of great deals in the stock market," explains Gohmert. "Our ailing industries would get the stimulus they need. Of course, I'd love to see long-term tax relief to individuals and a cut in corporate taxes to protect our businesses and American workers. However, I also know that those who control Congress and will soon control the White House will not allow that form of extended relief to be passed anytime soon. Therefore, as some of my colleagues and I deal with the political reality of the situation, we are trying to get done what we can with the circumstances we are given."
Gingrich has enthusiastically signed on to the Gomert plan, along with Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.
Gohmert is entering his third term in this upcoming 2009-10 Congress.
The NFIB said its November Small Business Economic Trends survey shows that small-business owners are feeling the impact of the current economic recession. Only a net-negative 4 percent of small business owners surveyed plan to create new jobs, and 50 percent reported profits falling. The net percent of all owners reporting higher sales in the past three months (seasonally adjusted) fell to a net-negative 25 percent, the worst reading in the 35-year survey history.
"No other stimulus provision will be as immediate and as effective as the payroll tax holiday in getting money in the hands of both employers and employees who are struggling to make ends meet in the current economic crisis," Danner said. "The payroll tax holiday will help small business owners afford the high costs of labor and will increase economic activity by allowing workers to take home more of their own paychecks. As lawmakers work to craft a stimulus package, NFIB urges Congress to remember how important small businesses are to our nation's economy and strongly recommends passing a six-month payroll tax holiday as part of any economic stimulus package."
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83682
WASHINGTON – Big business bailouts and "economic stimulus packages" are all the rage in the Capitol these days.
Most involve massive transfers of wealth from taxpayers to government-directed projects.
But a new and very different bill, proposed by a heretofore little-known congressman from Texas, is gaining traction from Republicans – and even a few Democrats, according to the sponsor.
It's called "the tax-holiday plan." And one version of it picked up support from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the nation's largest small business advocacy organization over the weekend.
"If Congress wants to jumpstart this economy, they need to do something to help small business owners gain confidence that now is a good time to grow their businesses and create new jobs," said Dan Danner, executive vice president of the NFIB. "Passing a six-month payroll tax holiday would do just that by putting more money in the hands of small business owners to invest in their business and by giving employees more of their own money to spend wherever they see fit."
Eliminating the payroll tax will have an immediate effect on employment, the NFIB said. The suspension of the 6.2 percent payroll tax on employers will decrease the cost of labor and will help employers keep people working during the recession, the organization said.
A payroll tax holiday also will directly increase the paychecks of lower-and-middle income taxpayers by 6.2 percent – the current portion paid by workers.
Something similar to that plan was introduced in the House of Representatives last week by Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas. The bill is HR 7309 that would require all federal income tax based on wages earned and FICA withholding to be left in paychecks for two straight months – dramatically increasing the amount each worker keeps.
Gohmert's plan would be paid for by the remaining $350 billion bailout spearheaded by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and already approved by Congress and signed by President Bush. Even wage earners who do not make enough to pay income tax would get back their FICA or Social Security withholding under the plan.
"In a matter of months, Paulson and Bernanke have committed $7.7 trillion to bailouts while individually Americans will pay $1.2 trillion in income taxes for all of 2008," Gohmert said. "We need to end the madness and implement a commonsense, free-market solution to our economic woes. My plan would cost less than the remainder of the bailout, but it would provide significantly more relief to taxpayers as well as a greater economic boost. Think about how much more of your paycheck you would see if you didn't pay federal taxes for January and February 2009."
Gohmert, who has already been backed in his plan by at least 35 members of Congress – all fellow Republicans – says he is getting interest from some Democratic colleagues as well.
"We've got a number of blue dog Democrats who are saying, 'Give me more information, this sounds like something I could really support,'" Gohmert said.
Gohmert said he doesn't care whether the bill comes to the floor under his name or a Democrat's, but that either way, it will require the American people to mobilize.
"I think the chance this has to get to the floor – even under a Democrat's name on the bill, fine by me – is if Americans rise up again, as they have a couple of times in the last two years, and let their voices be heard," Gohmert said.
Gohmert says the plan is actually much cheaper than the economic rescue effort pushed by Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He says Paulson has roughly $350 billion left that "he's probably not going to spend. I see that about the same time I notice the $7.7 trillion is estimated to be what Paulson and Bernanke may be throwing at the economy to try and get it to do better and more credit extended – like people who are failing in their mortgage to refinance and be able to finance the part they're behind on."
According to Gohmert, all revenue the government is set to receive in 2008 totals $2.5 trillion. Of that, about $1.21 trillion is comprised of individual income tax money for the year 2008.
"And then you realize they're pledging, committing, buying, squandering six and a half times more than we're going to get in actual income tax for the year 2008," he said.
With that in mind, Gohmert's first idea was a tax holiday for all of 2008.
"If everybody got everything back – think about yourself – if you'd got everything back that you'd spent so far into the government, in individual income tax and didn't have to pay anymore for the rest of the year, do you think you'd have a merry Christmas?" he asked. "Can you imagine the economy this year if you had that kind of ... there'd be cars bought, auto dealers, auto manufacturers bailed out by all the cars being bought, homes, buildings being built. It would be fantastic."
But he didn't get much support for that admittedly radical idea. So he scaled it back to just two months.
Citing figures from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's American Solutions think tank, he said Americans paid $101.6 billion per month in personal income tax and $65.6 billion per month in FICA tax. A two-month reprieve from these taxes would cost $334.4 billion, much less than the remaining $350 billion in bailout funds sought by Paulson. It would represent a 17 percent reduction in income taxes for Americans in 2009.
"These savings will allow some who are behind on their mortgages to catch up, others to trade their gas guzzlers for more efficient cars, pay off credit card debt, or take advantage of great deals in the stock market," explains Gohmert. "Our ailing industries would get the stimulus they need. Of course, I'd love to see long-term tax relief to individuals and a cut in corporate taxes to protect our businesses and American workers. However, I also know that those who control Congress and will soon control the White House will not allow that form of extended relief to be passed anytime soon. Therefore, as some of my colleagues and I deal with the political reality of the situation, we are trying to get done what we can with the circumstances we are given."
Gingrich has enthusiastically signed on to the Gomert plan, along with Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.
Gohmert is entering his third term in this upcoming 2009-10 Congress.
The NFIB said its November Small Business Economic Trends survey shows that small-business owners are feeling the impact of the current economic recession. Only a net-negative 4 percent of small business owners surveyed plan to create new jobs, and 50 percent reported profits falling. The net percent of all owners reporting higher sales in the past three months (seasonally adjusted) fell to a net-negative 25 percent, the worst reading in the 35-year survey history.
"No other stimulus provision will be as immediate and as effective as the payroll tax holiday in getting money in the hands of both employers and employees who are struggling to make ends meet in the current economic crisis," Danner said. "The payroll tax holiday will help small business owners afford the high costs of labor and will increase economic activity by allowing workers to take home more of their own paychecks. As lawmakers work to craft a stimulus package, NFIB urges Congress to remember how important small businesses are to our nation's economy and strongly recommends passing a six-month payroll tax holiday as part of any economic stimulus package."
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83682
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Ilana Goldman Avoids Easy Abortion Questions
Ilana Goldman is president of Women's Campaign Forum, an organization that focuses on supporting pro-choice female candidates. Goldman, a leader in the pro-choice movement and profiled by Washingtonian magazine's "100 Most Powerful Women in Washington" issue as one of eight "Women to Watch," cannot answer the easiest of questions regarding abortion.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Imagine
If each of us carried a gun . . .
. . . we could help to combat terrorism - Richard Munday
The firearms massacres that have periodically caused shock and horror around the world have been dwarfed by the Mumbai shootings, in which a handful of gunmen left some 500 people killed or wounded.
For anybody who still believed in it, the Mumbai shootings exposed the myth of “gun control”. India had some of the strictest firearms laws in the world, going back to the Indian Arms Act of 1878, by which Britain had sought to prevent a recurrence of the Indian Mutiny.
The guns used in last week’s Bombay massacre were all “prohibited weapons” under Indian law, just as they are in Britain. In this country we have seen the irrelevance of such bans (handgun crime, for instance, doubled here within five years of the prohibition of legal pistol ownership), but the largely drug-related nature of most extreme violence here has left most of us with a sheltered awareness of the threat. We have not yet faced a determined and broad-based attack.
The Mumbai massacre also exposed the myth that arming the police force guarantees security. Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor on the Mumbai Mirror who took some of the dramatic pictures of the assault on the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, was angered to find India’s armed police taking cover and apparently failing to engage the gunmen.
In Britain we might recall the prolonged failure of armed police to contain the Hungerford killer, whose rampage lasted more than four hours, and who in the end shot himself. In Dunblane, too, it was the killer who ended his own life: even at best, police response is almost always belated when gunmen are on the loose. One might think, too, of the McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, California, in 1984, where the Swat team waited for their leader (who was held up in a traffic jam) while 21 unarmed diners were murdered.
Rhetoric about standing firm against terrorists aside, in Britain we have no more legal deterrent to prevent an armed assault than did the people of Mumbai, and individually we would be just as helpless as victims. The Mumbai massacre could happen in London tomorrow; but probably it could not have happened to Londoners 100 years ago.
In January 1909 two such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. Edwardian Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down.
Today we are probably more shocked at the idea of so many ordinary Londoners carrying guns in the street than we are at the idea of an armed robbery. But the world of Conan Doyle’s Dr Watson, pocketing his revolver before he walked the London streets, was real. The arming of the populace guaranteed rather than disturbed the peace.
That armed England existed within living memory; but it is now so alien to our expectations that it has become a foreign country. Our image of an armed society is conditioned instead by America: or by what we imagine we know about America. It is a skewed image, because (despite the Second Amendment) until recently in much of the US it has been illegal to bear arms outside the home or workplace; and therefore only people willing to defy the law have carried weapons.
In the past two decades the enactment of “right to carry” legislation in the majority of states, and the issue of permits for the carrying of concealed firearms to citizens of good repute, has brought a radical change. Opponents of the right to bear arms predicted that right to carry would cause blood to flow in the streets, but the reverse has been true: violent crime in America has plummeted.
There are exceptions: Virginia Tech, the site of the 2007 massacre of 32 people, was one local “gun-free zone” that forbade the bearing of arms even to those with a licence to carry.
In Britain we are not yet ready to recall the final liberty of the subject listed by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England as underpinning all others: “The right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.” We would still not be ready to do so were the Mumbai massacre to happen in London tomorrow.
“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India,” Mahatma Gandhi said, “history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” The Mumbai massacre is a bitter postscript to Gandhi’s comment. D’Souza now laments his own helplessness in the face of the killers: “I only wish I had had a gun rather than a camera.”
Richard Munday is the co-author and editor of Guns & Violence: The Debate Before Lord Cullen
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article5299010.ece
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Friday, December 05, 2008
A revolutionary economic stimulus plan
Neal Boortz posted a brilliant idea for economic stimulus from Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert:
Gohmert proposes a two-month tax holiday where the federal government would not collect any taxes from individual Americans. No income taxes. No payroll taxes. You would keep all the money that you earn for two months.
Now this is a statistic that should shock you ... Americans pay over $101 billion in income taxes and $66 billion in FICA taxes every single month. That means that if Gohmert's plan went into effect, there would be over $330 billion in American pockets. That is money that you have earned and money that you can decide where it is spent or saved. You pick the economic winners and losers with your money - the government doesn't get to do the choosing for you. The government can't use it to pay executive salaries for failing companies or subsidize failing UAW contracts. The government won't spend $50 million just to send every American a letter saying that their pithy "stimulus" check is on the way. That's it ... you just stop all federal taxes for two months.
Will it cost us anything? Well, no more than has already been pledged in the bailout bill. There's $350 billion left there ... this would eat up most of it.
Gohmert says that this will create a surge in the economy because more people will have the money to buy cars, build homes, pay their mortgages, pay off their credit card bills. It would even help the states that are currently lined up at the federal government bailout trough.
One thing for sure. Politicians won't like it because this would allow the people to clearly understand just how much money the federal government is seizing from their paychecks every week. After the two month holiday, when withholding kicks in again, there might even be something akin to a tax revolt! The only way this would work is if came from the ground up .. that means the voters up. Let your congressman know how you feel.
Wouldn't you like to get two months of what you actually earn without it being given away to deadbeats by elected deadbeats who supposedly work for us?
Gohmert proposes a two-month tax holiday where the federal government would not collect any taxes from individual Americans. No income taxes. No payroll taxes. You would keep all the money that you earn for two months.
Now this is a statistic that should shock you ... Americans pay over $101 billion in income taxes and $66 billion in FICA taxes every single month. That means that if Gohmert's plan went into effect, there would be over $330 billion in American pockets. That is money that you have earned and money that you can decide where it is spent or saved. You pick the economic winners and losers with your money - the government doesn't get to do the choosing for you. The government can't use it to pay executive salaries for failing companies or subsidize failing UAW contracts. The government won't spend $50 million just to send every American a letter saying that their pithy "stimulus" check is on the way. That's it ... you just stop all federal taxes for two months.
Will it cost us anything? Well, no more than has already been pledged in the bailout bill. There's $350 billion left there ... this would eat up most of it.
Gohmert says that this will create a surge in the economy because more people will have the money to buy cars, build homes, pay their mortgages, pay off their credit card bills. It would even help the states that are currently lined up at the federal government bailout trough.
One thing for sure. Politicians won't like it because this would allow the people to clearly understand just how much money the federal government is seizing from their paychecks every week. After the two month holiday, when withholding kicks in again, there might even be something akin to a tax revolt! The only way this would work is if came from the ground up .. that means the voters up. Let your congressman know how you feel.
Wouldn't you like to get two months of what you actually earn without it being given away to deadbeats by elected deadbeats who supposedly work for us?
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