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

To: longnshort who wrote (116367)	10/26/2011 2:17:46 PM
From: joseffy	5 Recommendations Respond to of 224713

ACORN and Obama are directly connected. The goal is to destroy the US.

To: longnshort who wrote (116367)	10/26/2011 2:24:14 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224713

Leno Goes Easy on Obama ............................................................ Oct 26, 2011 thedailybeast.com You’d hardly know from Jay Leno’s softball questions Tuesday night that Obama was presiding over a tanking economy. Lloyd Grove on the well-orchestrated sit-down. Plus, watch video. Barack Obama is looking long in the tooth. His face is creased and lined, his head has been invaded and occupied by an army of gray hairs, and—at least while sitting next to Jay Leno, a spicy meatball of a man—his skinny frame has a physical fragility that wasn’t apparent, say, only a year into his bone-crushing presidency. “Michelle thinks I look old. But that’s okay—she still thinks I’m cute,” the president confided to the host of NBC’s Tonight Show Tuesday in one of his periodic visits to late-night television to shore up his insomniac base and deliver his stump speech—in conversational tones and punctuated by the occasional witticism—in the run-up to the next election. Obama couldn’t have found a more willing accomplice. Leno—who wears his American flag pin on the right lapel, in contrast to the president’s flag-on-left—might just as well have been scripted by David Axelrod. Unlike The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, who piercingly challenged Obama with one tough question after another and at one point called him “dude” during a fascinating appearance a year ago, Leno seemed content to provide the nation’s top Democrat with an informercial masquerading as a guest-shot. Obama on Gaddafi’s Death “The bad news is that your approval ratings are at 41 percent,” the sit-down comic informed his guest. “The good news is you’re still three times better than Congress. They’re at 13 percent. You’re killing! You’re killing!” All Obama had to do was to laugh appreciatively. “The thing that angers me,” Leno told Obama, was “when Mitch McConnell [the Republican leader in the Senate] said ‘our goal is to make you a one-term president.’ How is that a goal?” Obama on Working With Rival Hillary Clinton

To: longnshort who wrote (116367)	10/26/2011 2:29:28 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 224713

FBI reports gang 'infiltration' of U.S. military ..................................................................... by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com Hell's Angels graffiti written on the back of a military vehicle in Iraq. / FBI Gang members have been signing up with the United States Armed Forces, posing a "significant criminal threat" to law enforcement, according to a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). "Gang infiltration of the military continues to pose a significant criminal threat, as members of at least 53 gangs have been identified on both domestic and international military installations," the report says, resulting in American gang graffiti in Iraq, among other things. Every branch of the military contains some gang members, the FBI reported, but most gang members join the Army, the Army Reserves, and the U.S. National Guard. And gang member enlistment doesn't require a sinister intention. "Many street gang members join the military to escape the gang lifestyle," says the FBI, while others join at the behest of a court "as an alternative to incarceration." But the military sometimes proves a bad environment for gang members, who "often revert back to their gang associations once they encounter other gang members in the military." Numerous U.S. gangs, according to the report, "advise members without criminal records to join the military for necessary weapons and combat training." Military deployments, in the event, end up placing gang members alongside other members of the armed forces on active duty. Gang membership in the U.S. military has resulted in "incidents of weapons theft and trafficking," the FBI warns, which "may have a negative impact on public safety or pose a threat to law enforcement officials." You can see a list of gangs affiliated with branches of the military below. For reference, OMG stands for "Outlaw Motorcycle Gang." Gang Name Type Military Branch(s) 18th Street Gang Street Army, Marines, Navy Aryan Brotherhood Prison Army, Marines, Navy Asian Boyz Street Army Asian Crips Street Army Avenues Gang Street Marines Bandidos OMG Army, Marines Barrio Azteca Prison Marines Black Disciples Street Army, Marines, Navy Black Guerilla Family* Prison Army Bloods Street Army, Army Reserves, Coast Guard, Marines, Navy Brotherhood OMG Marines Crips Street Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy Devils Disciples OMG Unknown East Side Longos Street Army, Special Forces Florencia 13 Street Army, Marines Fresno Bulldogs Street National Guard, Marines Gangster Disciples Street Army, Marines, Navy, National Guard Georgia Boys (Folk Nation) Street Army Haitian Mob Street Army Hells Angels OMG All branches Iron Horsemen OMG Army Juggalos/ICP Street Army, Air Force Korean Dragon Family Street Marines Latin Kings Street Army, Army Reserves, Marines, Navy Legion of Doom OMG Air Force Life is War Street Army Los Zetas Street Army Maniac Latin Disciples Street Marines Mexican Posse 13 Street Army Military Misfits OMG Marines, Navy Molochs OMG Marines Mongols OMG Marines, Navy Moorish Nation Separatist Army MS-13 Street Army, Marines, Navy Norteños Street Army, Marines, National Guard, Navy Outlaws OMG All branches Peckerwoods Street Marines, Navy, National Guard, Reserves Red Devils OMG Army/ Coast Guard Simon City Royals Street Navy Sons of Hell OMG Marines Sons of Samoa Street Army Southside Locos Street Army Sureños Street Army, Marines, Navy Tango Blast Prison Army* Texas Syndicate Prison Army, Marines Tiny Rascal Gangsters Street Army United Blood Nation Street Army Vagos OMG Army, Marines, Navy Vatos Locos Street Army Vice Lords Street Army Wah Ching Gang Street Army Warlocks OMG Air Force, Marines

To: longnshort who wrote (116367)	10/26/2011 2:38:06 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 224713

EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role in 'Occupy' Movement ..................................................................................... By Jana Winter October 26, 2011 foxnews.com Oct. 17, 2011: Members of New York Communities for Change, in orange t-shirts with orange banner, attend a press conference in New York with union leaders, including United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew. The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com. The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds. Related Video Occupy Wall Street Tied to Former ACORN Officials New questions about protest movement ACORN Plays Key Role in 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement Former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in 'leaderless' Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing 'guerrilla' protest events and hiring canvassers to collect money for various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com. NYCC’s connection to ACORN isn’t a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization’s controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests. Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day - to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said. At least some of those hired are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that’s used to support the protests. Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests. In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests. Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions—and did not mention that the money would go toward Occupy Wall Street expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000. Current staff members at NYCC told FoxNews.com the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all. Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC’s PCB campaign — which aims to test schools for deadly toxins —but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund Occupy Wall Street. “We go to Freeport, Central Islip, Park Slope, everywhere, and we say we’re collecting money for PCBs testing in schools. But the money isn’t going to the campaign," one source said. "It’s going to Occupy Wall Street, and we’re not using that money to get schools tested for deadly chemicals or to make their kids safer. It’s just going to the protests, and that’s just so terrible.” A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers told FoxNews.com, "The UFT is not involved in any NYCC fundraising on the PCB issue.” Multiple sources said NYCC is also using cash donations through canvassing efforts in New York’s Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods for union-backed campaigns to fund the Wall Street protests. “All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we’ve been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people’s salaries—and those people on salary are, of course, being paid to go to the protests every day,” one NYCC staff member told FoxNews.com. Those who contribute don't know the money is going to fund the protests, the source said. “They give contributions because we say if they do we can fix things - whatever specific problem they’re having in their area, housing, schools, whatever ... then we spend the contributions paying staff to be at the protests all day, every day. That’s where these contributions - the community’s money – is going,” the source said. “They’re doing the same stuff now that got ACORN in trouble to begin with. And yes, we’re still ACORN, there is a still a national ACORN.” Another source, who said she was hired from a homeless shelter, said she was first sent to the protests before being deployed to Central Islip, Long Island, to canvass for a campaign against home foreclosures. “I went to the protests every day for two weeks and made $10 an hour. They made me carry NYCC signs and big orange banners that say NYCC in white letters. About 50 others were hired around my time to go to the protests. We went to protests in and around Zuccotti Park, then to the big Times Square protest,” she said. “But now they have me canvassing on Long Island for money, so I get the money and then the money is being used for Occupy Wall Street—to pay for all of it, for supplies, food, transportation, salaries, for everything ... all that money is going to pay for the protests downtown and that’s just messed up. It’s just wrong.” Neither Kest, NYCC executive director, nor his communications director returned repeated email and telephone requests for comment, nor did his communications director. A Fox News producer who visited the Brooklyn office on Tuesday was told, "The best people to speak to who are involved with Occupy Wall Street aren't available." In a phone interview on Tuesday, Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said he knew nothing about NYCC’s involvement in the Occupy movement. “Haven’t seen them, couldn’t tell you,” he said. He said he couldn’t comment on the Occupy the Boardroom website’s relationship to the movement and to NYCC. “It’s a horizontal organization, a leaderless organization, it’s difficult to explain it,” Schultz said, “difficult to explain it to people who haven’t worked in this, who haven’t been part of it.” Kest publicly threw his organization’s support behind the movement in a Sept. 30 opinion piece on HuffingtonPost.com. But top ex-ACORN staff members and current NYCC officials have been planning events like the Occupy Wall Street protests since February, a source within the group told FoxNews.com. That’s when planning began for May 12 protests against Chase bank foreclosures, which were followed by the formation of the Beyond May 12 campaign, targeting Wall Street and big banks. That campaign was rolled out by a coalition of community groups and unions and led by the revamped former ACORN group. “What people don’t understand is that ACORN is behind this — and that this, what’s happening now, is all part of the May 12 and Beyond May 12 plans to go after the banks, Chase in particular,” a source said. Sources said NYCC was a key player behind a series of recent Occupy Wall Street events, including the Oct. 11 Millionaires March, which brought protests and union and community groups on walking tours of Upper East Side homes of wealthy New Yorkers; and the launch of the “Occupy the Boardroom” website, registered to Kest, which encouraged protesters to contact high-profile bankers, among others. . Read more: foxnews.com

To: longnshort who wrote (116367)	10/26/2011 6:46:28 PM
From: lorne	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224713

longnshort..makes a person wonder if this obama thing is out to destroy anything traditional America. Gibson Guitar Raid by U.S. Fires Up Tea Party, Charlie Daniels QBy William McQuillen - Oct 20, 2011 bloomberg.com A raid on Gibson Guitar Corp. by U.S. agents seeking illegally imported wood has given anti- regulation activists from the Tea Party to fiddler Charlie Daniels one more reason to dislike the Obama administration. “Thirty agents with guns” showed up unannounced at Gibson’s Nashville, Tennessee, factory on the morning of Aug. 24, Chief Executive Officer Henry Juszkiewicz, 58, said in an interview. “They wouldn’t let me come in my office. I had to come in the conference room and conduct business as best as I could while they did whatever.” Wearing bulletproof vests, agents from the Justice and Homeland Security Departments sent workers home and seized almost 100 guitars and boxes of raw materials, Juszkiewicz said. The raid has incensed Tea Party groups and Republican lawmakers such as House Speaker John Boehner, who say it’s yet another example of an overreaching big government. “The company’s costs as a result of the raid?” Boehner said in a Washington speech on Sept. 15. “An estimated $2-to-3 million. Why? Because Gibson bought wood overseas to make guitars in America. Seriously.” The agents were investigating possible violations of the Lacey Act, enacted in 1900 to curb illicit trafficking in fish and wildlife. It was expanded in 2008 to make it a crime to import plants and plant products taken illegally. Rosewood Fingerboards “The Lacey Act prohibits companies from undercutting law- abiding U.S. wood products companies, including numerous small businesses, by trading in artificially inexpensive raw materials that have been illegally harvested from foreign forests,” Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich and Christopher Mansour, the Justice Department’s legislative affairs chief, said in a Sept. 19 letter to Republican lawmakers. Agents carry arms as standard practice, according to the letter. The raiders seized 6,000 fingerboards made of rosewood from India, the company says. The wood for the thin strip that runs along the guitar’s neck was exported unfinished, a violation of Indian law that made it subject to the Lacey Act, according to an affidavit from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent John Rayfield that led to a warrant for the raid. Gibson is “innocent and will protect its rights.” Juszkiewicz said in a statement after the raid. Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation. Representatives from the India embassy in Washington didn’t return a call seeking comment. ‘Fat, Sweet, Snarling’ Closely held Gibson, founded in 1894, says it produces more than 160,000 guitars annually in Nashville and has almost $500 million in revenue. It’s the country’s second-largest guitar maker after Scottsdale, Arizona-based Fender Musical Instruments Corp., according to The Music Trades, a publication that covers the industry. Juszkiewicz, a Harvard MBA who says he worked his way through the General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan, by playing a Gibson guitar in various bands, acquired the company with business partners in 1986. The guitar maker boasts on its website of the “fat, sweet, snarling” sound of its Les Paul traditional model. It also has developed guitars with musicians B.B. King and Chet Atkins. Daniels, 74, who plays a Gibson guitar as well as his trademark fiddle, calls the raid a form of harassment that may hurt the company and its workers. Gibson has about 1,200 U.S. employees, including more than 500 at the Nashville factory that was raided. ‘Bum-Rushed’ “These people are about to destroy some jobs in Tennessee,” Daniels, whose hits include “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” said in an interview. “The federal government is spending too much time for stupid things like raiding a little guitar company.” The agents who appeared at Gibson’s factory “bum-rushed the building,” floor manager Johnny Alexander, a 23-year Gibson employee, said in an interview. Employees were herded out so quickly that many left belongings such as purses behind, he said. “They treated us like we were going to run back into the building and destroy guitars,” Alexander, 48, said. Gibson is familiar with the little-known Lacey Act, having been raided two and a half years ago as well, with the same factory as the target, according to Juszkiewicz. The company was never charged in that dispute, over wood from Madagascar, he said. Nashville Rally U.S. Representatives Jim Cooper, a Democrat, and Republican Marsha Blackburn, both from Tennessee, and Republican Mary Bono Mack of California today introduced legislation that would protect guitar makers and musicians if they unknowingly possess wood that violates the Lacey Act. Wood owned before the 2008 Lacey Act amendment would also be exempt. “In theory, anybody who travels outside the country or even across the state line with an old guitar right now would be in legal jeopardy,” Cooper said in a statement. The measure is supported by musicians Vince Gill, Rosanne Cash and Nanci Griffith, Cooper said. About 1,000 people rallied in Nashville on Oct. 8 to protest the August raid. The gathering in a parking lot across from Opryland, the country music mecca, featured live entertainment, booths for Tea Party-affiliated groups and denunciations of federal bureaucrats. ‘Show of Power’ “It was strictly a show of power of the federal government,” Sid Gilchrist, 70, a Nashville retiree wearing a Ron Paul hat, said of the raid. “I stand with Gibson all the way.” Larry Aull, a retired advertising executive who drove from Indianapolis for the event, said Gibson is the victim of selective enforcement. He held a sign saying, “When I play, I have my Gibson. When I vote I have my pick.” Blackburn, whose district neighbors the Gibson plant, spoke at the rally. She said in an interview that she has heard from furniture, piano and guitar makers who are afraid they’ll also be targeted by federal agents. Taylor’s View “I can see a musical retailer may not sell certain instruments because you’re not sure,” Erik Autor, vice president and international trade counsel for the National Retail Federation, said in an interview. “It may take a bite out of your business.” Charlie Redden, supply-chain manager for Taylor Guitars in El Cajon, California, says such concerns can be avoided. He said the closely held company, which produces 90,000 guitars annually, works with environmental groups to ensure its imported wood meets legal requirements. Its fingerboards are made of ebony from Cameroon, he said. “We support the Lacey Act and think it is good for the environment,” Redden said in an interview. “I can understand the anxiety in the market. They should go through the supply chain to make sure the wood is coming from a reputable source.” Cheap illegal wood undercuts the value of quality products from U.S. companies, said Richard Donovan, vice president for forestry with the Rainforest Alliance, an environmental group based in New York. Yet sending armed agents into a U.S. factory may have gone too far, he said in an interview. “We have not seen needs for any of that action,” Donovan said.