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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (61423)	3/18/2009 2:18:50 PM
From: jmhollen	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224755

And, all of us here clearly know that you're REALLY full of stuff..!!! :-) .

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (61423)	3/18/2009 5:11:40 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224755

"Barack Obama's lack of leadership in a down economy has now hit crisis proportions, as his claimed inability to block millions of dollars in bonuses for executives of bailout recipient AIG has caused even his supporters to turn on him," Bob Owens writes in a blog at www.pajamasmedia.com. "But while the ire of Congress and the media focus are on the $165 million that AIG paid out in bonuses to their executives, the president is hoping you won't notice the $100 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars that AIG paid out to other banks, including $58 billion to foreign banks and $36 billion given to French and German banks alone. ... "And of course, the re-distributor-in-chief hopes you won't notice where much of the rest of the AIG bailout cash is being spent. "While $58 billion of your tax dollars - or more accurately, your children's tax dollars - are being used to pay foreign banks, a substantial portion of that money ($43.5 billion) is being used to pay American banks, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, AIG International, and JP Morgan," which ranked among Mr. Obama's top campaign contributors.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (61423)	3/18/2009 7:12:05 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 224755

As for the Clinton-era donations that Mr. Locke received from sources connected to the Chinese influence-peddling investigation, Mr. LaBolt said the nominee had long since refunded the money and was never implicated in any wrongdoing by congressional or Justice Department investigators. Mr. Locke is Mr. Obama's third choice for commerce secretary. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, withdrew from consideration after it was revealed that a grand jury is investigating illegal contracting in the state, and Sen. Judd Gregg, New Hampshire Republican, withdrew over policy disputes with the administration. Mr. Locke is not a registered lobbyist at Davis Wright, but the firm has made millions lobbying for several U.S. companies and also is registered as a foreign lobbyist. Bad company Edward Timperlake, a former congressional investigator who worked on the 1990s fundraising probe, said the Senate should examine Mr. Locke's ties to fundraisers like John Huang, Ted Sioeng and others who were identified during the 1990s investigation. That probe looked into whether Chinese government cash was illegally routed into Democratic coffers during President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. VIEW: Campaign contribution check from 1996. REPORT: Details of the POTUS Asian dinner event and political contributions "The players connected to any examination of Locke and his confirmation are Triad gangsters and Chinese military agents," Mr. Timperlake said in an interview.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (61423)	3/18/2009 7:24:48 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 224755

The Pentagon's last annual report on China's military warned that China "continues a systematic effort to obtain dual-use and military technologies from abroad through legal and illegal commercial transactions." It stated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement rated China's aggressive and wide-ranging espionage as "the leading threat to U.S. technology." Mr. Huang was a Chinese-born employee of Indonesia's Lippo Bank, who went to work for the Commerce Department and also became a major Democratic Party fundraiser, collecting $3.4 million nearly half of which had to be returned to donors because of suspicions that the money came from the Chinese government. He sponsored several fundraisers for Mr. Locke in 1996, raising more than $30,000. Mr. Huang pleaded guilty in 1999 in a deal with U.S. prosecutors to illegally giving $2,500 to Los Angeles mayoral candidate Michael Woo in 1993 and $5,000 to a California political group that raised money for Democratic candidates. Mr. Locke's donations were not mentioned in the court case. Mr. Sioeng, an Indonesian businessman who has ties to the Chinese government, also supplied funds to Mr. Locke through intermediaries, according to a congressional report on the campaign finance investigation. Mr. Sioeng fled the U.S. in the 1990s after the FBI began investigating. He was never formally charged in the case, but congressional testimony from senior U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, identified him as a Chinese agent. They told a Senate committee that there was credible intelligence that Mr. Sioeng acted on behalf of China to influence U.S. elections with campaign contributions. A spokesman for Mr. Sioeng denied the allegations at the time. Records show Mr. Sioeng's bank account got wire transfers of more than $2 million from two Hong Kong holding companies at the same time that he was contributing to Mr. Clinton's re-election campaign. Under investigation According to a 1998 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report, Mr. Locke received $8,700 in contributions from Sioeng family members, business associates and employees. The committee found no evidence showing that Mr. Locke knowingly accepted illegal donations from Mr. Sioeng's family and associates but outlined "serious questions regarding some of the contributions and their apparent violation of Federal campaign funding laws." It is illegal for a foreign national to contribute to a U.S. candidate. Mr. Locke told the House committee that he met Mr. Sioeng twice but had no knowledge that donations were funneled from abroad, according to the report. "Committee investigators identified eight contributions from Sioeng family members and associates totaling $8,700 around July 29, 1996 to Gary Locke's 1996 campaign for governor of Washington State," the House report said. "Committee investigators traced the funding of five of the contributions totaling $5,500 to a foreign bank account in Hong Kong that the Committee has associated with Ted Sioeng." Four other payments totaling $4,400 appeared to be illegal "straw donor" conduit payments by employees of companies that the Sioeng family either owned or had business ties, according to the House committee report. A separate 1997 Senate report of the Governmental Affairs Committee said Mr. Sioeng and his family made $2,200 in contributions to Mr. Locke's campaign for governor. The report also contained photos of Mr. Locke, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Huang together at a May 1996 Democratic fundraising event in Washington, D.C., which had the goal of raising $1 million, and together at a separate May 1996 fundraiser also in Washington with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Sioeng.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (61423)	3/19/2009 2:18:00 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224755

Thus began perhaps the worst week in a string of bad weeks for the Treasury secretary. The mixed messages on A.I.G. gave further ammunition to critics who had begun questioning Mr. Geithner’s credibility as the administration’s point man on the economy, an essential commodity if he is to help restore consumer confidence. Fair or not, questions about why Mr. Geithner did not know sooner about the A.I.G. bonuses and act to stop them threaten to overwhelm his achievements and undermine Mr. Obama’s overall economic agenda. Edward M. Liddy, chief executive of A.I.G., told Congress on Wednesday that he generally deals with Fed officials, figuring they would keep Treasury informed. The controversy comes as Mr. taxcheaterGeithner is about to announce details of the restructured bank rescue program, and it clouds prospects for more rescue funds that the administration is all but certain to need. Mr. taxcheaterGeithner’s once-heralded credentials with Wall Street were already marred by false starts in revamping the Bush administration’s bank rescue program, even as his perceived closeness to financiers — he is the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — and unease with populist politics left Main Street skeptical. On Wednesday, a junior Republican in Congress and some traders on Wall Street went so far as to call for him to quit or be fired. The Republican leader of the House, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, told a conservative talk-radio host that the secretary is “on thin ice.”

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (61423)	3/19/2009 8:39:00 AM
From: lorne	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224755

Global warming expedition stranded in North Pole.. :-) ...."We're hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and because we're not moving, the colder we get,"".... Flight dispatched with supplies for North Pole team 17 hours ago google.com OTTAWA (AFP) — A plane set off Wednesday during a break in bad weather to re-supply three stranded British researchers, who are trapped and fighting to survive in the North Pole, organizers of the aid effort said. The flight from the remote Inuit hamlet of Resolute on Cornwallis Island in northern Canada, was expected to reach the team by 2030 hours GMT. The aircraft is scheduled to land on an ice strip identified by the research team with the help of satellite data. The exploration team -- Pen Hadow, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels -- set off on an 85-day hike to the North Pole on February 28 to measure the thickness of sea ice when bad weather hampered supply flights. They were down to half-rations and battling desperate sub-zero weather conditions. "It'll be a relief to get our new supplies," Hadow said Wednesday in a statement from the London headquarters of the Catlin Arctic Survey. "Until (the plane) does arrive, we need to conserve energy and can't really move on." The expedition now expects to arrive at the North Pole in late May. During the past 18 days, temperatures dropped below minus 40 degrees Celsius, which also is equivalent to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the brutal cold was accompanied by strong winds. Three earlier flight to drop food supplies to the team had to turn back because of bad weather. In a statement on Tuesday, Hadow described the team's desperate plight. "We're hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and because we're not moving, the colder we get," he said. The team aims to gather data to complement satellite and submarine observations to measure the sea ice and plot how fast it is disappearing during their 850-kilometer (530-mile) trek. Global warming is believed to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom.