Monthly Archives: February 2011
Daily Benefactor News – Oil Reaches $100 A Barrel As Libya Standoff Worsens
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Oil Reaches $100 A Barrel As Libya Standoff Worsens – Reuters
Oil surged to a 28-month high of $100 a barrel on Wednesday as escalating violence in OPEC producer Libya slashed output there and investors bet the unrest could spread to other oil exporters.
Brent has posted the biggest three-day gain since October 2009, rising to as much as $111.85 a barrel. That marked its highest since October 2008, shortly after the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.
U.S. crude has shot up more than 15 percent since Friday.
West Texas Intermediate futures rose 3.7 percent to $99 a barrel as of 1:37 p.m. EST in New York, paring some earlier gains. Brent gave up some of its earlier advance to trade up 5.1 percent at $111.18.
A lethal political standoff between Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi and rebel factions now in control of oil-rich eastern Libya has already cut output in the world’s No. 12 crude exporter by more than 25 percent, or 400,000 barrels a day, according to Reuters calculations.
The price surge raised concern about the impact of costly fuel on a fragile U.S. economic recovery and dragged U.S. equities lower. A jump in oil to a record $147 a barrel during 2008 led to demand destruction and contributed to the deepest global economic downturn since World War Two.
Traders are weighing the risk that popular revolts, which have been sweeping across North Africa since January, could spread to exporters in the Middle Eastern Gulf.
“Oil prices are not likely to fall any time soon,” said Shelley Goldberg, commodities and energy strategist at Roubini Global Economics in New York.
“It’s not all about Libya, but a fear these movements will spread further across the Middle East and North Africa region. We’re no longer in the early stages of uprisings, but we’re probably somewhere in the middle stages, with more ahead.”
The possibility that protests could expand in Bahrain or potentially into neighboring Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s top oil exporter, helped push prices higher.
While the kingdom has faced no tumult to date, hundreds of people on Wednesday backed a Facebook page campaigning for a “day of rage” across Saudi Arabia next month.
“Saudi Arabia is nervous about potential opposition too and the market senses that,” said Gene McGillian of Tradition Energy in Connecticut.
Traders were also watching for signals that Saudi Arabia, which controls much of global spare production capacity, would pump more oil to compensate for Libya’s lost output. Its oil minister has said the kingdom and other OPEC members would be ready to act should any shortfall develop.
“I don’t think Libya alone will take us to $150 a barrel, but, if unrest spreads in the Gulf countries, we could easily get there,” said Edward Meir, an analyst at MF Global in New York.
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Related Article:
Source: Gaddafi Orders Oil Sabotage – Time Magazine
There’s been virtually no reliable information coming out of Tripoli, but a source close to the Gaddafi regime I did manage to get hold of told me the already terrible situation in Libya will get much worse.
Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities. They will start by blowing up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports. The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya’s rebellious tribes: It’s either me or chaos.
Two weeks ago this same man had told me the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt would never touch Libya. Gaddafi, he said, had a tight lock on all of the major tribes, the same ones that have kept him in power for the past 41 years. The man of course turned out to be wrong, and everything he now has to say about Gaddafi’s intentions needs to be taken in that context.
The source went on and told me that Gaddafi’s desperation has a lot to with the fact that he now can only count on the loyalty of his tribe, the Qadhadhfa. And as for the army, as of Monday he only has the loyalty of approximately 5,000 troops. They are his elite forces, the officers all handpicked. Among them is the unit commanded by his second youngest son Khamis, the 32nd Brigade.
My Libyan source said that Gaddafi has told people around him that he knows he cannot retake Libya with the forces he has. But what he can do is make the rebellious tribes and army officers regret their disloyalty, turning Libya into another Somalia. “I have the money and arms to fight for a long time,” Gaddafi reportedly said.
As part of the same plan to turn the tables, Gaddafi ordered the release from prison of the country’s Islamic militant prisoners, hoping they will act on their own to sow chaos across Libya. Gaddafi envisages them attacking foreigners and rebellious tribes. Couple that with a shortage of food supplies, and any chance for the rebels to replace Gaddafi will be remote.
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Related Article:
The President’s Deafening Silence On Libya – Weekly Standard
After almost a week of escalating violent reprisals against protestors and soldiers who have joined the anti-regime forces, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and his sons have yet to quell the uprisings – and the White House has yet to take a public stand. Last night, Secretary Clinton released a statement, and pathetic as it was, it’s more than the president has offered – a president who has spent considerable energy burnishing his image for the Muslim and Arab public.
It is rumored that there are differences within the administration, but it is still unclear who could be counseling silence, or for what purpose. To be sure, the Bush administration neutered Qaddafi with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, leaving him to believe he was next on Washington’s agenda. He dropped his nuclear weapons program and stopped sponsoring terrorism – but Qaddafi is not a U.S. ally, and with his treatment of his Libyan citizens he has shown he is the same old Qaddafi, a danger to his own people as well as the rest of the world.
The Obama administration would do well to exercise some moral clarity regarding a man whose personal demeanor has long symbolized the most repressively autocratic and obscurantist features of Arab political culture – a man who reportedly has now, among other things, dispatched his air force to put down the people he rules. The White House’s silence is perhaps explained by the idea that a public statement will do more harm than good.
“It is remarkable,” says Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser handling Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush White House, “that the administration appears to believe at the same time that our government is headed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is globally beloved, and that if he states his support for any cause it is immediately doomed or at least damaged. This may be some complex cognitive dissonance, but it appears more like simple confusion.”
The same is true of the White House’s decision to keep its support of Iranian protestors muted, for fear that the Islamic Republic might turn even more vicious. This policy seems to be a result of the Obama White House buying into the “kiss of death” fallacy. This line of thinking holds that since the U.S. is so hated in the Middle East, American support for any political cause in the region can only backfire by undermining the cause.
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Massachusetts Democrat Hounded Women During Sex-Crazed Spree
Massachusetts Democrat Hounded Women During Sex-Crazed Spree – Daily Mail
A former politician has been sent to jail for three months after he ‘accosted four women in a sex-crazed spree over four hours’.
James Marzilli, 52, who is being treated for mental illness, told one woman: ‘The sex is sweet, the sex is sweet, you want it and you want to go with me’, prosecutors said.
The creepy behavior of the grandfather and former Arlington Democrat state senator in Massachusetts was slammed as ‘repulsive’ and ‘potentially dangerous’ by a judge.
The spree happened when he was on official business in Lowell in June 2008. One of his victims was handicapped, Lowell Superior Court was told.
He went up to the women on foot and in a car over four hours and made lewd remarks to them. They replied by calling him a ‘pervert’ and telling him to buy a $20 prostitute.
One of the Arlington Democrat’s victims was handicapped, police said.
‘He makes the law and then he breaks them,’ one woman told prosecutors.
‘I think he’s an ill man – I really, really do,’ Terrence Kennedy, defending, told the Boston Herald after Marzilli was sent to the Billerica House of Correction.
‘I believe the behavior that was exhibited that day was due to mental illness. You don’t live your life for 50 years with no issues and have this come out of nowhere.’
Mr Kennedy expects Marzilli, who has spent time at a psychiatric institution and is being treated for bipolar disorder and anxiety, will serve less than 55 days in jail.
He pleaded guilty to charges of accosting, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, in front of superior court Judge Paul Chernoff.
‘Marzilli made a mistake,’ his friend and former senator George Bachrach said.
‘He’s going to pay for it. Clearly, he became unglued. How else do you explain what happened?’
He had also been charged with attempted indecent assault and battery for reaching for the crotch of a nurse’s assistant waiting for a patient on a bench.
But he will not have to register as a sex offender because this more serious charge was continued by the judge for one year, rather than declaring him guilty earlier.
Marzilli must be on probation for five years, perform 200 hours of community service and wear a GPS locator bracelet on release from prison.
He has been volunteering with Somali children and doing botanical gardening, after his employment prospects were destroyed by the case’s revelations.
None of the victims came to court for the hearing and some are now too afraid to go out in the downtown Lowell area again, said Elizabeth Dunigan, prosecuting.
‘At the time of his arrest, he was focused on himself, his career, his future,’ she added.
‘Maybe in time it can be a little bit about what these women lost on the streets of Lowell.’
Topless Sledding Championships Attracts 14,000 In Braunlage, Germany
Topless Sledding Championships Attracts 14,000 In Braunlage, Germany – What’s On Xiamen
It may not be the Winter Olympics but this topless tobogganing tournament has certainly got fans nipping out for a better view.
These busty babes braved freezing temperatures to compete in a brrr-illiant topless tobogganing tournament.
More than 14,000 spectators turned out to watch the eye-popping event where 30 male and female competitors bounced along a 100 metre track on sleds.
One lucky onlooker said: “It was very cold and because of that some of those girls would definitely have had a bit of an advantage in a photo finish.”
Christian Schmidt, 26, won the event, while one 70-year-old man got the biggest round of applause for stripping down to his long johns.
Earlier sour Krauts had tried to axe Germany’s first ever topless tobogganing championships at another German town after a mayor said he was “offended” by the spectacle.
The ladies, competing for cash prizes of nearly 300 pounds each, were required only to wear a hard helmet and footwear for the race at Oberwiesenthal near the border with the Czech Republic.
Liberal party mayor Mirko Ernst had threatened a ban. “The good name of Oberwiesenthal is at stake,” he said.
Man Jailed For Having Sex With Roommate’s Dog
Man Jailed For Having Sex With Roommate’s Dog – Weekly Vice
Tomas Bautista, a 40-year-old Florida man was jailed Thursday, charged with sexually assaulting his roommate’s dog.
According to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, Bautista was drunk when his roommate, identified as Clemente Velasquez, came home and told him to go to bed.
Bautista instead stumbled out into the backyard, followed his roommate’s black-and-white Chihuahua mix, Mimi.
“A little while later, Velasquez heard Mimi yelp, so he grabbed a flashlight and ran into the backyward,” according to the arrest afffidavit.
That’s when Velasquez found Bautista passed out with his pants down and his dog bleeding.
Velasquez notified police before taking the dog into a vet where she was treated for her injuries. Bautista reportedly told police that he used his finger to violate the dog.
Bautista was booked into the Broward County jail on a charge of third-degree cruelty to animals. Florida is one of a handful of states that does not outlaw bestiality.
Daily Benefactor News – New Zealand Earthquake Kills At Least 65, Hundreds Still Trapped Under Debris In Christchurch
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A 6.3 magnitude earthquake rocked New Zealand on Tuesday, causing widespread damage and killing at least 65 people in one of the country’s worst natural disasters.
The earthquake struck Christchurch, the country’s second largest city, around lunchtime when offices were occupied and stores and streets were bustling with people.
Rescuers frantically scrambled to find hundreds people who were thought to be still trapped in the debris as darkness fell on the city Tuesday night. Dazed, screaming and crying residents were seen wandering through the streets.
“It’s just a scene of utter devastation,” Prime Minister John Key said. “We may well be witnessing New Zealand’s darkest day.”
It was the second quake to hit the city of nearly 400,000 people in five months. There were no casualties in the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in September.
“There will be deaths, there will be a lot of injuries, there will be a lot of heartbreak in this city,” Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker, who declared a state of emergency, told Australian TV.
Video footage showed multistory buildings that collapsed in ruins, crushed buses, and groups of people carrying blood-spattered victims onto makeshift stretchers.
The airport was closed and Christchurch Hospital was briefly evacuated before it was deemed safe and patients were allowed to return. Power and telephone lines were knocked out, and pipes burst, flooding some streets.
The spire of the famous Christchurch Cathedral toppled into a central city square.
Gavin Blowman told CNN that he ran into the street when the tremors began.
“It felt like I was running on jelly, We saw a giant rock tumble to the ground from a cliff – a rock that had been there for millennia… It was terrifying.”
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Ah the simple joys of my niece and nephew
Savannah Grace is 15 months now and is a constant source of joy as is my nephew Logan Alexander who is a month old
Daily Benefactor News – Cowardly Indiana Democrats Also Flee To Avoid Anti-Union Showdown
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Cowardly Indiana Democrats Also Flee To Avoid Anti-Union Showdown – Detroit Free Press
Indiana House Democrats are leaving the state rather than vote on anti-union legislation, the Indianapolis Star has learned.
A source said Democrats are headed to Illinois, though some also might go to Kentucky. They need to go to a state with a Democratic governor to avoid being taken into police custody and returned to Indiana.
The state House was called into session this morning with only two of the 40 Democrats present. Those two were needed to make a motion and a seconding motion for any procedural steps Democrats would want to take to ensure Republicans don’t do anything official without quorum.
With only 58 legislators present, Republicans had no quorum present to do business. The House needs 67 of its members to be present.
Democratic Rep. Terri Austin of Anderson, told state House Speaker Brian Bosma, an Indianapolis Republican, that Democrats “continue to be in caucus” to discuss potential amendments to several bills.
Bosma said he was “flummoxed,” adjourned until noon, and labor union members watching in the gallery and hallway outside cheered the work stoppage.
Tuesday’s flight was triggered by Republicans pushing a bill that would bar unions and companies from negotiating a contract that requires nonunion members to kick-in fees for representation. It’s become the latest in what is becoming a national fight over Republican attempts to eliminate or limit collective bargaining.
House Minority Leader B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, “has taken a page out of the Wisconsin Senate playbook apparently” by keeping his caucus in hiding, Bosma said. “They are shirking the job that they were hired to do.”
In Wisconsin, Senate Democrats have fled to Illinois to deny Republicans the quorum they need to pass legislation limiting collective bargaining for many public employees.
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It is the Religion of peace ya know
A teacher, beaten for daring to teach Muslim girls about other religions. Can you smell the Peace?
Four men launched a horrific attack on a teacher in which they slashed his face and left him with a fractured skull because they did not approve of him teaching religion to Muslim girls.
Akmol Hussein, 26, Sheikh Rashid, 27, Azad Hussain, 25, and Simon Alam, 19, attacked Gary Smith with a Stanley knife, an iron rod and a block of cement.
Mr Smith, who is head of religious education at Central Foundation Girls’ School in Bow, east London, also suffered a fractured skull.
The four now face a jail sentence.
Detectives made secret recordings of the gang’s plot to attack Mr Smith prior to the brutal assault.
The covert audio probe captured the gang condemning Mr Smith for ‘teaching other religions to our sisters’, the court heard.
Attention Muslims, you have to clean up YOUR house! I understand most Muslims would not condone, endorse, or certainly take part in such barbarism. But, TOO DAMMED MANY MUSLIMS DO! So, in the end it is Muslims who have to stamp such evil out of Islam.
Another gigantic waste of time from the minds of Liberals!
The National Institute for Civil Discourse? Good freaking grief!
The National Institute for Civil Discourse opened yesterday at the University of Arizona. The institute is described as such:
a nonpartisan center for debate, research, education and policy about civility in public discourse.
Read more at the link if you like, but frankly, why waste the time?
I cannot wait until the TSA is unionized!
If they are this incompetent now, can you imagine how bad they will be once they get the Union Fevah?
We have been sold the line that with the new and improved back scatter x-rays, TSA agents can see what people have underneath their clothes, making it impossible to hide anything.
The problem is, you have to have people running the machines who are actually paying attention:
An undercover TSA agent was able to get through security at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with a handgun during testing of the enhanced-imaging body scanners, according to a high-ranking, inside source at the Transportation Security Administration.
The source said the undercover agent carried a pistol in her undergarments when she put the body scanners to the test. The officer successfully made it through the airport’s body scanners every time she tried, the source said.
“In this case, where they had a test, and it was just a dismal failure as I’m told,” said Larry Wansley, former head of security at American Airlines. “As I’ve heard (it), you got a problem, especially with a fire arm.”
Wansley said covert testing by the TSA is commonplace — although failing should be rare.
Working at an airport, as I do, I get to observe the TSA in action, performing their duties, and I have to admit that their presence does not really make me feel safer. Lots of great people in the TSA, but this is not about personality is it? This is about safety, and security, and gaps like this show a need to change the way we do security at airports. Perhaps more ex-military and police officers, who are likely better trained, and better able to both spot potential threats and better able to handle them would help. Perhaps letting private security companies handle security would help as well.
OK kids it is that time again!
Time, well almost time for my weekly radio show “If You are Left, You Just Ain’t Right”!
Please have a listen here at 10 PM EST, 9PM CST, etc You can chat with me at the link, while you listen as well
No death panels in Socialized Medicine? UPDATED!
Oh yes, sadly there are indeed, and anyone who thinks, rather than emotes about
“universal health care” and how health care is a “right” damn well knows it! For everyone else, they should take a few moments and read this
How many liberals have clamored for the humanity of the Canadian Health Care system? I think it’s safe to say that at one time, a majority of them have advocated for a single payer system.
One of the problems with single payer is the government can decide to stop paying because some “death panel” declared the patient’s life not worth the money required to keep them alive.
For example, a panel in Canada’s health care system has decided to remove a baby from life support, despite the parents protestations. The parents when to court. The court found in favor of the government.
So now, rather than die at home, with loved ones surrounding him, baby Joseph Maraachli will die at the hospital, at the hands of the Canadian health care system:
The father and relatives of one-year-old Joseph Maraachli wept outside a London courthouse after an emotional Justice Helen Rady upheld the earlier decision of an independent provincial tribunal forcing the baby’s parents to comply with doctors’ orders.
With all of their legal avenues exhausted, the family will have to say goodbye to Joseph Monday morning — on Family Day — when his breathing tube will be removed.
“I do my best for my baby. My son is not a criminal . . . to just let him die,” dad Moe Maraachli said through tears.
“They are taking my baby away from me . . . Where is the humanity?”
He said he didn’t know how to break the news to his wife Sana Nader, who was too upset to sit through the day’s court proceedings, or explain to their seven-year-old son Ali what’s going to happen to his little brother.
The parents have accepted the inevitable death of Joseph, and asked the hospital to perform a tracheotomy “which would open up a direct airway through an incision in Joseph’s trachea and make it possible to bring the baby home” to die.
The hospital refused because that might lead to an infection, which could kill him.
No, really:
Although the couple has accepted their baby boy’s inevitable death, they insisted that it occur peacefully at home and not by removing his breathing tube, which will cause him to choke since he can’t swallow or breathe on his own. The parents asked for a tracheotomy, which would open up a direct airway through an incision in Joseph’s trachea and make it possible to bring the baby home.
But doctors refused to perform the procedure, citing serious risks of infection, pneumonia and other possible complications.
Behold the logic of government.
It gets worse:
They have no compassion for us,” a tearful Faith said.
“I believe when the medical world doesn’t understand a situation, they just want to get rid of it,” Samar said. “That’s exactly what’s happening.”
Outside court, all the lawyers involved agreed Joseph’s is a “tragic” case but a decision had to be made in the child’s best interest.
Ah the compassion of Leftism, how barbaric it truly is
Political Junkie Mom has an update of interest
Now he might have the chance. From the Toronto Sun:
A dying Windsor, Ont., baby who was likely to be taken off life support this week at a London, Ont., hospital might instead be moved to a Michigan hospital.
The family wants to take Joseph home to die. Let’s pray doctors in Michigan help that happen. Pray. If you’d like to donate to help defray their legal costs, go here. For more updates, join the Save Baby Joseph Facebook page.
How The Hell Did Charlize Theron Get Overlooked During The DaleyGator DaleyBabe Playoffs?
I DEMAND ANSWERS!
UW Health Investigates Doctors Who Wrote Sick Notes For Wisconsin Teachers
UW Health Investigates Doctors Who Wrote Sick Notes For Wisconsin Teachers – Wisconsin State Journal
UW Health is investigating doctors who wrote medical notes last weekend excusing protesters at the Capitol from work, and the Wisconsin Medical Society has criticized their actions.
“These UW Health physicians were acting on their own and without the knowledge or approval of UW Health,” UW Health said in a statement. “These charges are very serious.”
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health and the UW Medical Foundation, the university’s doctor group, are investigating.
“The investigation will identify which UW Health physicians were involved and whether their behavior constituted violations of medical ethics or University of Wisconsin and UW Health policies and work rules,” the statement said.
“The investigation and any potential future action will follow the established procedures of the University of Wisconsin. Any future disciplinary action taken will be considered a personnel matter, and in accord with University of Wisconsin policies, will not be open to public discussion.”
The Wisconsin Medical Society, the state’s doctor group, said in a statement that it “does not condone these actions under any circumstances.”
“The physician-patient relationship is a cornerstone for providing high quality health care,” the medical society said. “Important elements of that relationship, such as conducting proper medical evaluations of patients, should not be taken lightly.”
The Wisconsin Medical Examining Board has received information about the events, the medical society said.
Dr. Lou Sanner, a family medicine physician at UW Health, told the Associated Press he was one of the doctors involved. He said wrote notes for protesters who were suffering from stress.
“Some people think it’s a nod-and-wink thing, but it’s not,” he told the Associated Press.
Gatordoug
darcprynce
Dave C
