MFS - The Other News

                       Afternoon Posting.

• Live broadcast info from Japan directly ! Here.

• Libya Live Blog - April 14. Here .(Al-Jazeera).
• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world increased seismic activity in Japan  today between 4.5 and 5.4! More info here.

• Japan - Latest official Situation Update No. 86.Here .

• Japan  : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog

• HT:BigGovernment.Obama ‘Framework’: An Ideological Line In The Sand.Loaded with misleading statements, demagoguery, political rhetoric and outright lies, Mr. Obama’s speech announcing his debt reduction plan was no more than the formal start to his re-election campaign with the establishment of a clear ideological line in the sand. The American people now will begin a long debate on which side of that line they will stand.On one side is the America that those who came before us worked hard for; sacrificed for; and many died for. This is the America where individualism and self-reliance is real, not just the throw-away line that Mr. Obama opened his speech with. This is the America where all are guaranteed equal opportunity, not equal outcome; the America where the efforts of citizens determine the winners and losers; the America where the current generation pays for itself and passes on the freedom to increase prosperity to the next generation.On the other side stands a perverse vision of our country where the government makes choices for the citizens; determines who the winners are; and pays for all of the current generation’s desires with liens on the labor of future generations.In his own words, Mr. Obama declared, “This is not about debt reduction; this is about what kind of country we want to be.” However if we don’t begin to focus on the run-a-way spending of the federal government, our national debt will exceed our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) before the end of this year and will double over the next ten years. Our economy will collapse under the weight of that debt and the only kind of country we will be, is a failed one.Just before the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001, our nation was prospering with total federal spending of $1.8 trillion per year. Since Mr. Obama took office, we have been spending $3.8 trillion per year. What have we bought for that? Unemployment is twice what it was back in 2001, more people have dropped out of the work force, fuel prices are twice what they were before Mr. Obama took office and more American’s believe that we are declining as a nation then believe we are advancing. Spending the wealth of future generations is simply not working.“We can no longer afford to give a trillion dollar tax break to millionaires and billionaires” Mr. Obama stated and went on to call for increasing taxes on those making more than $250,000 per year. Aside from his numbers making no sense and unable to be tracked to any real facts, we already know that we could double the federal taxes on all Americans and we would still have an annual deficit in excess of $400 billion. We clearly have a spending problem.The important issue here is not the specifics of Mr. Obama’s plan, nor is it about how he presented the plan. What is important is the clear choice that the American people will have to make over the next eighteen months leading up to the 2012 Presidential Election and then with their vote in that election. It is the choice of which vision of America we will embrace.Mr. Obama clearly believes that the United States of America would be better off as a socialist democracy, where the government reigns supreme over the people and decisions for every major aspect of a citizen’s life are made by an elite ruling class. In this America, citizens exchange their freedom and the freedom of future generations for a government guaranteed safety net. The trouble is that even if we made the false assumption that this safety net would be effective and fair, the truth is that it would only exist until the economy collapses due to lack of incentive, the death of innovative spirit and a collectivist economic model that has never worked for any length of time in history.Hopefully, the majority of Americans still believe in the America that has become the greatest nation in the history of man in just 234 years; a country where the citizens reign supreme over the government: and where the only ruling class is – the people. This is the America where individual drive, innovative thinking and a capitalistic economic model can do anything.So the line has been drawn. Lift yourself above the falsehoods, misleading statements and political rhetoric. Think of what you want for your children, for their children and for future generations of Americans. If all citizens look past themselves, the right choice will be made. The world will continue to be blessed by an America with the freedom and prosperity that all other nations aspire to.Hmmmm......Comrade Obama "We the people" had enough of your 'dictatorship'!You don't protect The Constitution you're abolishing it!Read the full story here.

• HT:BigGovernment.Obama Moves Left in Budget Debate.We thought tax reform meant lowering rates and broadening the base by eliminating or cutting back on various deductions, credits, and loopholes. That’s what the Bowles-Simpson commission proposed. That’s what Paul Ryan and David Camp are working on. And that’s the pro-growth model.But President Obama unveiled a much different tax-reform vision in his much-anticipated debt speech on Wednesday. He would raise tax rates on upper-income earners and small businesses. He also would eliminate deductions and credits, or so called “tax expenditures.” The president referred to these tax-expenditure reductions as “spending cuts.” In his context, they most certainly are not. They are more tax hikes.Basically, the president is giving successful earners and small-business filers a double tax hike. That’s what it really is.Of course, the president’s formula of estimating higher revenues to lower the deficit is completely wrong. The reality is that higher tax rates will slow the economy, inhibit new start-up companies, penalize investors, and may very well lose revenues and increase the deficit.In the latter part of his speech the president did mention some kind of middle-class and corporate tax reform. But he gave no specifics.He also touted $750 billion in discretionary spending cuts, but again without any details. Most of that amount probably comes from the recent continuing resolution to avoid a budget shutdown. Since Obama is extrapolating out twelve years, who knows how this is scored.On the entitlement front, Obama rejected Paul Ryan’s consumer-choice and competition approach to Medicare reform. Instead, he invoked the Obamacare central-planning agency called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is supposed to make reductions in Medicare. Medicare itself would exercise more price controls on prescription drugs, rolling back the consumer choice and competition established under George W. Bush.In effect, the president has moved to the left. He has embraced the Democrats’ so called progressive caucus in the House by slashing defense and jacking up taxes, all while offering no serious entitlement reform. (Hat tip to Jimmy Pethokoukis for nailing this earlier in the week.)My final point is this: President Obama’s harsh-rhetoric rejection of the Ryan budget and his new (presidential) campaign to raise taxes on the rich sets up a huge confrontation with House Republicans on the eve of the hugely important debt-limit expiration.Sometime in mid to late May, the debt ceiling to allow the government to borrow more money is going to run out. The Treasury can move money inside government accounts to forestall a debt breakdown for another couple of months. But the potential for a major political conflict on the eve of this process sets up the worst possible outcome: Failure of the U.S. to pay the interest on its own debt.This is unnerving to financial markets. Instead of compromise, the president decided to seek confrontation.Caveat emptor. Investors beware.Hmmmmm......Having destroyed America's finances he's going for broke.Read the full treason story here.

• HT:LogisticsMonster.Wayne Madsen Has Gotten A Little Too Close To The Truth About Obama.Wayne Madsen went to Chicago recently to do research and investigate Barack Obama, his family and his past. According to Alex Jones, Wayne Madsen has received news through the intelligence community that “the White House is gonna kill him deader than a hammer if he doesn’t shut up.” (3:30) Wayne is currently preparing to leave the country.Hmmmm......Read the full story here.

• The Presidential Divider. Obama's toxic speech and even worse plan for deficits and debt.Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda.Mr. Obama did not deign to propose an alternative to rival Mr. Ryan's plan, even as he categorically rejected all its reform ideas, repeatedly vilifying them as essentially un-American. "Their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America," he said, supposedly pitting "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society." The President was not attempting to join the debate Mr. Ryan has started, but to close it off just as it begins and banish House GOP ideas to political Siberia.Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which "starts," he said, "by being honest about what's causing our deficit." The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.The great political challenge of the moment is how to update the 20th-century entitlement state so that it is affordable. With incremental change, Mr. Ryan is trying maintain a social safety net and the economic growth necessary to finance it. Mr. Obama presented what some might call the false choice of merely preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window that makes that reduction seem larger than it would be over the normal 10-year window.Lastly, Mr. Obama came out for a debt "failsafe," which will require the White House and Congress to hash out a deal if by 2014 projected debt is not declining as a share of the economy. But under his plan any deal must exclude Social Security, Medicare or low-income programs. So that means more tax increases or else "making government smarter, leaner and more effective." Which, now that he mentioned it, sounds a lot like cutting "waste and abuse."Mr. Obama ludicrously claimed that Mr. Ryan favors "a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history." Nothing is likelier to bring that future about than the President's political indifference in the midst of a fiscal crisis.Hmmmm....A mental health checkup is advised?Read the full story here.

• ObamaNomics: Only 45% of American Have Jobs, Lowest Rate Since 1983.The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds.Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.The bad economy, an aging population and a plateau in women working are contributing to changes that pose serious challenges for financing the nation’s social programs.Hmmmm......"Change".Read the full story here.

• BP feels fishermen's fury over oil spill.BP faced protests from angry fishermen and disgruntled shareholders on Thursday at its first annual general meeting since the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.The meeting took place almost one year after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers and caused nearly five million barrels of oil to gush into the ocean.Diane Wilson, a fisherwoman from the Texas Gulf Coast smeared her face with oil as she protested outside the AGM venue in London."My community is dead. We've worked five generations there and now we've got a dead community. I'm angry, I've been angry a long time," she said.She was refused entry to the meeting by security guards, even though she is a BP shareholder.Around 100 protesters turned up to display their anger at BP's actions. They ranged from the Gulf of Mexico fishermen to representatives of indigenous communities angry at BP's involvement in tar sands extraction in northern Canada.Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association, said he had crossed the Atlantic to come to London to show his anger at compensation payments delays."We were the first to feel the impact of the oil spill. I'm here because the claims process has failed the fishing communities along the coast," he said. "We'd just like to know where all this money went. We should have got it."He said he wanted to see a commitment from BP that the tens of thousands of delayed and unpaid claims would be investigated.BP's fortunes were ravaged by the spill, widely acknowledged to be the worst environmental catastrophe in United States history. Billions of dollars were knocked off the company's value as oil spewed for 87 days before the well was capped.The oil giant's fortunes are instrumental to the fortunes of millions of British investors because most British pension funds invest in the company.Several key shareholders, including the U.S. pension fund Calpers, have said they will vote against the annual report to be submitted at the AGM, partly in protest at the high levels of pay for BP executives despite the disaster.Bob Dudley, the American who took over as chief executive from the beleaguered Tony Hayward in October, also faces calls to defend a planned deal to explore for oil in the Arctic with Russian giants Rosneft.The Rosneft issue has been put off until May after BP on Thursday said it and the Russian company had agreed to extend a deadline to complete a $16 billion share swap that is a key to the deal that has also sparked environmental concerns.Hmmmm.......BP - 'Beyond Prosecution'?Read the full story here.

• 'Hezbollah intends to attack Western targets ahead of Hariri killing indictments'.Beirut Observer news websites cites Western intelligence report claiming unusual Hezbollah, Iranian Revolutionary Guards maneuvers are geared toward an upcoming strike.Hezbollah is planning an attack on Western targets, a Lebanese news website reported on Tuesday, basing its claims on information intercepted by a Western intelligence agency. According to the Beirut Observer article published Tuesday, Western intelligence officials believe Hezbollah intends to strike Western targets, citing the unusual movement of suspected Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards operatives. Lebanese officials and Western diplomats expect the court to accuse Hezbollah members of involvement in the assassination, a prospect Lebanese politicians fear could fuel further tensions. The Lebanon tribunal, the world's first international court with jurisdiction over the crime of terrorism, was set up to try those accused over the 2005 bombing that killed Lebanese ex-prime minister Hariri and 22 others. The prosecutor's original indictment filed in January, the contents of which are still secret, set off a political crisis in Lebanon, where Hezbollah and its allies toppled the government of Hariri's son, Saad Hariri. Hezbollah, has said it believes some of its members may be named, and has warned the case could spark renewed bloodshed in Lebanon. Wednesday's Beirut Observer report came after earlier this week Israel's counter terrorism bureau warned that terrorists intended to carry out attacks against Israelis and Jewish targets abroad, specifying the Far East, Greece and Turkey as areas where an attack could occur. The warning comes just a few days before the Jewish holiday of Passover, a time during which many Israelis go on vacation. "Due to what is happening in the Gaza Strip, terrorists intend to carry out attacks against Israelis and against Jewish targets abroad during the Passover holiday," the bureau's notice said. Along with Greece and Turkey, India and Thailand are also thought to be countries where an attack could take place.Israeli traveling abroad must stay especially alert at tourist spots and entertainment venues and hotels, the bureau advised. They also advised against going to places where large groups of Israelis are known to be.Last week, the counter terrorism bureau warned against traveling to Sinai and called on Israelis who were in Sinai to return to Israel immediately.Hmmmmm.........."Israel may benefit from the Arab Change"yeah whatever.Read the full story here.

• Chutzpah: Palestinian Authority Asks Its Western Sugar Daddies For $5 Billion to Launch New State.(INN) - The Palestinian Authority is asking Western officials for $5 billion dollars to launch a state with, Reuters reports.This, despite US rejection of unilateral moves and abject refusal by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table.PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is asking the West to underwrite a three-year development plan to the tune of $1.467 billion this year, $1.754 billion in 2012 and $1.596 billion for 2013.“We have distributed the plan to the donors and they have welcomed it,” PA Planning Minister Ali al-Jarbawi said.The plan, which includes significant funds for Hamas-run Gaza, will be presented formally to donor countries at a pledging conference in June, he said.Hmmmm.....Obama rewriting his budget to fit the extra cost at taxpayer expense?Read the full story here.

• Israel urges Turkey to avert new aid convoy to Gaza.The ambassador emphasized that Israel has no problem with transporting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip through legal means, praising the work that Türk Kızılay, the Turkish Red Crescent, is doing there.“The passages to Gaza are open. There is a greater flexibility on the Israeli side. The quota for 220 trucks cannot even be filled as there is no need for more aid. Under these conditions, such an aid campaign could only be seen as provocation,” Levy said.Hmmmmmm......The Turks provoking this no.... way?Read the full story here.

• Muslim Woman in Georgia Behind Package Containing Monkey Wearing Star of David and Hate-Filled Letter Sent to NY State Senator.There are new details now on the suspicious and bizarre package that showed up at the office of an Albany lawmaker Tuesday.State police say the liquid that arrived with a stuffed monkey at State Sen. Greg Ball’s office appears to be perfume.Captain John Kowalewski said that it doesn’t seem as though anything in the package was dangerous. However, state police, postal inspectors, and the FBI are investigating.The Georgia woman who claims she sent the package told FOX23 News exclusively that she didn’t mean any harm.A bizarre package arrived at the Albany office of State Sen. Greg Ball on Tuesday.Staffers say they received a package containing a vial of liquid, a hate-filled letter, and a toy monkey wearing the Star of David.“This is pretty outlandish and horrific,” Ball told FOX23 News. “The hate speech in it is serious. We’re taking it seriously but we’ve got to continue to do our work.”Both the email and the package appear to come from a woman named Jameela Barnette in Mariette, Georgia. She lists her phone number in the email.FOX23 News contacted Barnette by phone on Tuesday night. She says she is a grandmother who read about Ball on the Internet.She told FOX23 News that she is a Muslim and is upset with the hearings that Ball is conducting in his role as chairman of the State Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.FOX23 News asked her why she sent Ball the email and package and she responded “to let him know how I felt about his racist hearings.”Barnette responds, “He’s vulnerable! He keeps messing with Muslims. Muslims have not been harassing anyone.”Hmmmm......Is this the Jameela who left all the hatespeech comments on TundraTabloids.com ,site who then contacted the FBI?Read the full story here.

• How Did $38 Billion in Spending Cuts Turn into Only $352 Million?As the parties argue over who who won the months-long budget battle that resulted in a deal to cut $38 billion in federal spending, the Congressional Budget Office offered this total buzzkill: the budget cuts were really only worth $352 million. That's less than 1 percent of the touted total; many GOP lawmakers are furious and House Speaker John Boehner may have to count on Democratic votes to get the bill passed. Why did the CBO get such a wildly different number?First of all, the deal actually increased Pentagon spending by about $8 billion, as the Associated Press's Andrew Taylor explained in an article that was quickly passed around by outraged conservatives Wednesday afternoon. When war spending is considered, the budget actually increases spending by $3.3 billion compared to current levels. As for non-defense spending, much of what was cut comes from grants to state and local governments that haven't gone into effect yet. (Example: The CBO provided another analysis to lawmakers smacking down claims that cutting health care-related bonuses to states would save $5.7 billion. The real amount of savings? About $0.) Other cuts withdrew appropriations outlays from earmarks that were never spent--and might never have been.One cut that will seriously cut the deficit? Elimination of year-round Pell Grants. That'll save $40 billion over the next 10 years, but just under $1 billion this year.Politico's David Rogers notes that if you ignore the defense spending, the deal still cuts $42 billion from current levels. Still, the CBO report is a problem for House Speaker John Boehner, Rogers writes. "Given the GOP’s famous '$100 billion cut' rhetoric of the 2010 campaign, the influence of tea party conservatives and projections now of a $1.4 trillion-plus deficit..." The Republican might have to stoop to "borrow[ing] a phrase from Obama and try to sell the deal as an 'investment in the future.'"But The Weekly Standard's John McCormack urges conservatives to calm down. "Is the CR a sham? Nope, not really." The bottom line is that spending has been cut since Boehner took over. "This is all a little confusing, but the bottom line is that the conservative angst over the CR seems to be much ado about little."Hmmmm.....As i said many times you're much better off with a honest farmer with common sense then a hundred politicians!Read the full story here.