My.Pantagraph.com Forums / Sound Off / Your views on the news of the day

American First?

tLIB — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:26:13 GMT

The Fort Hood killer told fellow soldiers that he was a Muslim first and American second.How do you feel. Are you a Christian first and American second? Muslim First? American First?

Union shows its relevance

GOODave — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:12:43 GMT

Here's the scoop:Allentown had to lay off 39 members of the local Service Employees International Union.Kevin Anderson, a candidate for Eagle Scout in Allentown, sought a good deed to do in partial fulfillment of that rank's requirements. He chose to clear an 800' "footpath" in a local park and spent over 200 hundred hours performing this community service.The union got ticked off because he was doing union work for free. So the union files a grievance against the city because, according to their lay-off agreement, "No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path."Nick Balzano, local union president, was considering filing the grievance. [quote]"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path. (poster's note: :roll: )"We would hope that the well-intentioned efforts of an Eagle Scout candidate would not be challenged by the union," said Mayor Ed Pawlowski in an e-mail Friday. "This young man is performing a great service to the community. His efforts should be recognized as such."[/quote] Read the whole tale of the thoughtless Eagle Scout's selfish desire to self-promote over the poor, suffering union and its local president in [url=http://www.mcall.com/news/all-a8_5scout.7084728nov15,0,6238384.story][color=#BF0080]Allentown's local paper[/color][/url] if you'd like (Caution: Not for the squeamish: Outright altruism is expressed openly).Yeah Unions are relevant. :crazy:

Alleged 9/11 Plotters Face Trial

tLIB — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:36:00 GMT

[quote]By EVAN PEREZKhalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will be tried at a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, just blocks from the former World Trade Center site, in the ultimate test of the Obama administration's strategy of trying terrorist suspects in U.S. civilian courts.Prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty for Mr. Mohammed and four others accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, who are now held at Guantanamo Bay, said Attorney General Eric Holder.Friday's announcement sets up what may be the trial of the decade, with the world's eyes fixed on lower Manhattan as the U.S. government lays out for the first time in a public courtroom how it thinks Mr. Mohammad plotted the deaths of nearly 3,000 people."After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice," Mr. Holder said. "I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial, just as they have for over 200 years."Mr. Holder said that the administration hopes to send a message to the world that the U.S. is giving the men a fair trial and upholding American values.[/quote]

How Many has Obama Lost?

GOODave — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:56:50 GMT

Obama's white house looks to be the new Wingnuttia that Shellboy is always drooling over. I'm sure I'll miss some so please pile on as you see my gaps[b]Van Jones[/b], "green" czar (believed Bush was behind the 9/11 "conspiracy" or something like that) [b]Anita Dunn[/b], communications chief, Devotee of chairman Mao [b]Carol Browner[/b], Energy czar and hard core socialist [b]John Holdren[/b], the Science Guy (no, not really: a Science "advisor" to the President) favored wars and other means of killing people to keep the population growth down... [b]Harold Koh[/b], Legal Avidsor, supports Sharia law and doesn't believe the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land...[b]Greg Craig[/b], Sr. White House Counsel, for getting Obama to sign the Executive Order closing Gitmo by January, 2010and let's not forget [b]Bill Richardson[/b], [u]nominee[/u] for Commerce Secretary, who stepped out of consideration for the job because he was being investigated by a Federal Grand Jury;[b]Tom Daschle[/b], [u]nominee[/u] for HHS who bowed out because of, ahem, "inconsistencies" in his tax accounting framework;[b]Judd Gregg[/b], subsequent [u]nominee[/u] for Commerce, who withdrew his name from consideration because of fundamental disagreements with the President over the so-called “stimulus package” and politicization of the US Census.

DC sniper said to be 'fearless' before execution

tLIB — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:48:03 GMT

It seems like people rot on death row, but not this guy. They killed him. Remember this case?[quote]JARRATT, Va. — Sniper John Allen Muhammad is meeting with relatives in the hours before his execution and one of his attorneys described the convicted killer as fearless.Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said Muhammad had no regrets and would die with dignity Tuesday night in Virginia. Gordon also insisted that Muhammad was innocent.Gordon says Muhammad met with one of his sons before the execution and then reminisced with the attorney about the time he spent with his son before Muhammad went to prison.A sister of one of Muhammad's ex-wives says Muhammad returned from the first Gulf War a changed man. Sheron (shuh-RON) Norman says the nation should do a better job of caring for its veterans.The 48-year-old Muhammad is set to die at 9 p.m. for three-week killing spree in 2002 that left 10 dead.[/quote]

Historic healthcare overhaul passes House

tLIB — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:02:09 GMT

[quote]Reporting from Washington - The House of Representatives on Saturday approved the most sweeping healthcare legislation since the creation of Medicare 44 years ago, giving a boost to President Obama's campaign to guarantee health coverage to almost all Americans.The gargantuan Democratic measure passed 220 to 215, with a single Republican vote, capping a contentious daylong debate that underscored the ideological divide separating the two parties over healthcare.The narrow Democratic victory underscored the difficult road ahead as the issue moves on to the Senate. But it also meant that the party had reached a historic landmark: It has been trying since the Depression to win a vote to extend the government's social safety net to include healthcare.The House plan would cover an additional 36 million people by 2019, leaving 4% of the nation without coverage, compared with the estimated 17% who do not have insurance now, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.[/quote][url=http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ncl=dHy4vpkR2uDXMSMyahi88j4rxrMOM&topic=h]Google News[/url]

Yahoo Closes Geo Cities

tLIB — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:07:57 GMT

Yahoo has officially shut down Geocities.The company has said that it did not count the property among its priorities, so it is simply getting rid of it. Yahoo has shut down about 20 services in less than a year. We learned that Yahoo would be closing the door on GeoCities back in April, so users have had plenty of time to migrate to other services. Earlier this year, for example, MSN partnered with WetPaint to allow people to create "fansites". After Yahoo's announcement, Wetpaint took the opportunity to announce a " bailout plan for foreclosed GeoCities properties," which it called the "GeoCities Asset Recovery Plan (GARP)."As it shuts down GeoCities, Yahoo itself is now plugging its own $4.99-a-month Web hosting service. Ok, so there are other options for GeoCities users, but is just shutting down a community that still attracts so much traffic the right thing to do? Yahoo's way of going about it has been widely questioned. According to Compete data, GeoCities has still been seeing over 10 million unique monthly visitors as recently as last month. Why would Yahoo want to just shut that down? iSubmit will submit your website to over 350 search engines and directories. Click for full details. "Then there's the fact that Google, not Yahoo, appears to be responsible for the lion's share of GeoCities referrals, sending about 31.45 percent of the site's traffic its way," noted Doug Caverly upon Yahoo's original announcement. "Yahoo's only behind of 16.89 percent of all GeoCities visits. So by closing GeoCities, for which it paid $3.6 billion in 1999, Yahoo seems to be turning its back on a large amount of traffic. Moreover, it's turning down free traffic from its biggest competitor." "Carol Bartz may be trying to get Yahoo's costs under control, but it looks like sticking a 'for sale' sign on GeoCities would be at least one preferable option compared to a closure," he added. But alas, it looks like the sign reads "closed" rather than "for sale." So say goodbye, and in the words of Richard Marxx, "hold on to the memory." It seems unwise from a business perspective, but what about the users? Does Yahoo have an obligation to its users who may have spent years using their GeoCities site only to have it pulled from the web? Should Yahoo provide a forwarding web address for GeoCities users? After all, it was the GeoCities users that built their sites, promoted them and put up with sometimes annoying ads. A simple forwarding of their GeoCities url to their new home would be appreciated! Do you agree? MySpace isn't exactly at the peak of its popularity, but there are still tons of people who use it. What if they just pulled everything? What if Google bought Facebook and decided to kill it? What if your Tweets vanished? Sure these things seem unlikely now because these services are still fresh. Well, GeoCities was once the "it" thing too. Granted, most GeoCities sites I have seen are not much to look at now, but that doesn't mean people aren't getting use out of them. They're obviously getting page views. Here's what Yahoo is telling GeoCities users to do if they want to keep their sites: On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files. If you'd like to keep your web site, you'll need to move your site files to another web hosting provider. We recommend moving to our award-winning Web Hosting service, which works a lot like GeoCities but includes a personalized domain name (such as widgetdesigns.com) and matching email, terrific new site building tools, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, premium customer support, and more. Perhaps it's not worth it to users to go throgh the hassle of migration, but it has been nice to have their GeoCities site at least remain in tact. Well, tough luck. I hope you've gotten what you wanted away from it before Yahoo obliterates it. There are some sites out there that have not yet been shut down, but it appears that is only a matter of time. What do you think of Yahoo's decision to simply shut down GeoCities? Discuss here. Remembering GeoCities GeoCities held a lot of web memories for a lot of people. There was a time where you could barely surf the web without running into one GeoCities site or another. Wikipedia provides a little history: GeoCities began in mid-1995 as BHI, which stood for Beverly Hills Internet, a small Web hosting and development company in Southern California. The company created its own Web directory, organized thematically in six "neighborhoods". The neighborhood included "Colosseum," "Hollywood," "RodeoDrive," "SunsetStrip," "WallStreet," and "WestHollywood". In mid-1995, the company decided to offer users (thereafter known as "Homesteaders") the ability to develop free home pages within those neighborhoods. Chat, bulletin boards, and other elements of "community" were added soon after, helping foster rapid growth. On July 5, 1995 Geocities added additional cities, including "CapitolHill," "Paris," "SiliconValley," and "Tokyo." By December 1995, the company, which now had a total of 14 neighborhoods, was signing up thousands of Homesteaders a day and getting over six million monthly page views. The company decided to focus on building membership and community, and on December 15, 1995, BHI became known as GeoCities after having also been called Geopages. "It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet," writes Mark Milian with the LA Times. In early 1999, Yahoo purchased Geocities for about $3.57 billion in stock. Now a decade later, Geocities is no more. Do you have fond memories of the Geocities days? Should Yahoo be obligated to forward GeoCities pages to your new site? What if Facebook, MySpace or Twitter suddenly shut down? Should there be a web or social homesteading bill of rights?

Should we continue to support Karzai?

tLIB — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:30:09 GMT

[quote]KABUL (Reuters) - Re-elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed to form an inclusive government on Tuesday after stern warnings from Western supporters he would have to work harder to root out corruption.Afghan election officials on Monday canceled a needless presidential run-off vote after Karzai's only rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew citing serious concerns about the election.The outcome leaves Washington and other Western supporters to work with a partner whose legitimacy has been questioned, while Karzai himself faces the prospect of having to work with a newly strengthened opposition.Afghanistan endured weeks of political uncertainty after the August 20 first round was marred by widespread fraud, a crisis deepened by a resurgent Taliban who had vowed to disrupt the vote.Karzai's return removes at least one obstacle as President Barack Obama weighs whether to send up to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, where violence this year reached its worst levels since the Taliban were in 2001[/quote].

Obama May Change Policy Towards Taliban

tLIB — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:04:33 GMT

[quote]New York: New Delhi, which thinks there is no 'good Taliban' or 'bad Taliban', is likely to be disappointed by US president Barack Obama's rethink on strategy in Afghanistan.

The US is sharpening focus on fighting al Qaeda above all other goals, while downgrading emphasis on the Taliban.

White House officials acknowledged that Obama is prepared to accept Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and will determine how many more soldiers to send there, based on ensuring the war is now tightly focused on squashing al Qaeda.

It is a narrower objective that could require less than the 40,000 new soldiers sought by general Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan. Obama's developing strategy on the Taliban will "not tolerate their return to power", the senior official said. However, the US will fight only to keep the Taliban from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to al Qaeda, the official said.

[b]The US appears to be bowing to the reality that the Taliban is "too ingrained" in Afghanistan's culture to be entirely defeated. [/b]Although Obama's decision on troop levels and other elements of a new blueprint on Afghanistan is two weeks away, it appears increasingly that the US is prepared to accept a Taliban role in parts of Afghanistan.
[/quote]

[url=http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_india-may-be-left-unhappy-as-the-us-woos-good-taliban_1297043]More[/url]

H1N1 vaccine

MPH — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:09:33 GMT

There is some talk that the vaccine is "more dangerous" than the actual flu.

I will not be getting a vaccination for my kids or me for H1N1, but may get the kids a "regular" flu shot (if that's even doable).

I found this doctor's take on it interesting.

http://bobmccarty.com/2009/09/30/doctor-vaccine-more-dangerous-than-h1n1-flu/

What say you?

Palin book authorship

4tunate1 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:09:56 GMT

Lots of blog blathering today about the "right wing, Christian" co-author of Sarah Palins new book. Not so much about the "Marxist, terrorist" co-author of Obama's "Dreams of my fathers". That would be our old friend Bill Ayers, of course. Means nothing, of course, but just once I'd like to see one of these people release a book without a ghost writer.
No matter, if they release it, they must approve of it, I guess.

Obama: "Unemployment news sobering"

4tunate1 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:58:53 GMT

I was never drunk with Obama love in the first place, so the news didn't "sober" me.

General McChrystal's Assessment

Jarhead71 — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:18:26 GMT

The White House, dba, the President of the United States, said several weeks ago that he needed to see his military Commander's assessment before he made any firm committments for troop strength in Afghanistan. Now that the General has made his assessment, the White House is back-peddling because the DNC lacks the intestinal fortitude that the American people have to put an end to Al Qaeda, who I might remind everyone, attacked the USA on 9/11/2001 in an unprovoked attack similar in nature and scope to the attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. The difference is in terrorists sanctioned and supported by several religious zealots and back-handed support by some of our supposed allies, versus a nation seeking world domination.

Make no mistake, Al Qaeda and the power brokers behind the scenes are totally committed to world domination, just as the Japanese Emporer was some 68 years ago.

The military has spoken, polls of Americans show support to finish the task, now let's see if the President supports the people of the USA or the DNC. He cannot have it both ways.

Cofronting Iran

4tunate1 — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:17:11 GMT

I have been a harsh critic of President Obama, but I will give him this. The tenor of the statements from him, and the apparent solidarity of European allies, and even hopeful words from Russia, on confronting Iran's criminal regime are a good thing. If this grave threat to the region, and the world are stopped from their nuclear ambitions, then he would be successful where Clinton and Bush both failed. So far, it's just words. Now we'll see if they have any teeth.

Olympics for Chicago.....good or bad?

MPH — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:13:29 GMT

I didn't see anywhere that this has been discussed in this forum. Forgive me if I missed it somewhere.

I, personally, think the Olympics in Chicago would be an absolute DISASTER. The traffic is a nightmare, as is. Add another gazillion cars and people and the fact that they would "take away" one lane on the interstates for "official Olympic use" only, and you've got a recipe for chaos. I wouldn't go near Chicago if they do get it.

I would guess our section of the downstate would stand to benefit from motel and eateries usage, but I'm not sure it would outweigh the negatives.

What say you?

Flash Forward

tLIB — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:06:45 GMT

Did anyone see it last night. Now this is my kind of series. Total Mystery, but even beyond that. Everyone loses consciousness for 2 minutes and 17 seconds except for at least one person on earth. Why?

I think it is on tonight.

FCC's Mark Lloyd

4tunate1 — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:58:53 GMT

Diversity chief Mark Lloyd has great plans for us. He aims to end political opposition by targeting news and opinion outlets he disagrees with by using the licensing power of his office to force them into "compliance" by fining them an amount equal to their entire operating budget, and giving that money to "public" broadcasting entities. He apparently so loves the Hugo Chavez model of media management, he wants to do this here. Research it!

Happy Autumnal Equinox

GOODave — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:44:58 GMT

Today, at 4:18 CDST, the sun's rays will be perpendicular to the equator equally dividing the daylight hours from the night time hours: The Autumnal Equinox is the first day of Fall in the northern hemisphere (first day of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere).

The Vernal Equinox (on either March 22 or 23, depending on the year) marks the northern hemisphere's first day of Spring, making those days and nights also of equal length.

Their counterparts are the Summer Solstice (June 20 - 23, depending on the year) and the Winter Solstice (December 20 -22, depending on the year) and marks the points in our revolution around the sun when we in the northern hemisphere are tilted closest to the sun (Summer) and furthest away from the sun (Winter) and, of course, are the beginning days of Summer and Winter, respectively.

Happy First Day of Autumn.

MAN that Summer went by quickly ... and cooly.

Turnout

4tunate1 — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:50:09 GMT

The size of the turnout in Washington yesterday was pretty impressive. Estimates range from 50,000 to 2 million people attended, which means the true number is probably 500,000 to 1 million. Add to that 15 to 20 more for each attendee who couldn't be there, but who supported the effort, plus the thousands around the country having their own local rallies, and you have the makings of a viable movement. Politicians from both parties better pay attention, or 2010 could be an historic cleaning out of congress, as many of us have been calling for for decades.

9/11 50 flags bike ride

armymom — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:34:36 GMT

I can't believe there is no story on the bike ride that went from the Interstate Center to the Coliseum tonight. Have we forgotten about 9/11?? It was an awesome event.

Breathtaking foolishness

4tunate1 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:53:33 GMT

The labor department reports that we lost 570,000 jobs last week. VP Biden says the "stimulus" package is working above expectations, and has saved or created a million jobs.
Really?
I could say the stimulus cost us those jobs. Neither I nor the VP can prove either contention.

Is this really national newsworthy?

Mertie — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:15:09 GMT

Is it really national news when the sitting President and his family gets a pet?