Tag: World News

Obama signs the Generational Theft Act and Promises Another, Markets Tank…

I figured this was coming:

The Story:

President Obama has not ruled out a second stimulus package, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Tuesday, just before Mr. Obama signed his $787 billion recovery package into law with a statement that it would “set our economy on a firmer foundation.”

The president said he would not pretend “that today marks the end of our economic problems.”

“Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr. Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of playoffs.”

Mr. Gibbs, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Denver, said, “I think the president is going to do what’s necessary to grow this economy.” While “there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package,” he added, “I wouldn’t foreclose it.”

Mr. Obama began the first leg of a two-day trip, using the museum ceremony to spotlight the bill’s clean-energy provisions. The president will also visit Phoenix, where he will unveil his new housing plan on Wednesday.

After a bruising legislative battle on the stimulus bill, which drew only three supporting votes from Republicans in the Senate and none in the House, the White House is trying to recapture the debate over the economy. Mr. Obama’s message is that the bill will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.

While the bill has been criticized by conservatives as bloated with pork-barrel spending, it has also been criticized by the left as too tepid and not bold enough to jumpstart the economy. Mr. Gibbs’s remarks on the plane seemed to echo that concern.

In describing the package, the press secretary called it “a strong start towards economic viability” and “the beginning of getting our economy back on track.”

via Signing Stimulus Bill, Obama Does Not Rule Out Another – NYTimes.com.

I figured Obama would do this, sign one porkus bill into law and say, “This is not the end, but just the beginning of the pork!”

Meanwhile, the markets basically tanked, even more so than last week: (Via the New York Times)

From Hong Kong to eastern Europe to Wall Street, financial gloom was everywhere on Tuesday.

Stock markets around the world staggered lower. In New York, the Dow fell more than 3 percent, coming within sight of its worst levels since the credit crisis erupted. Financial shares were battered. And rattled investors clamored to buy rainy-day investments like gold and Treasury debt.

It was a global wave of selling spurred by rising worries about how banks, automakers — entire countries — would fare in a deepening global downturn.

“Nobody believes it’s going get better yet,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “Do you see that light at the end of the tunnel? Any kind of light? Right now, it’s not there yet.”

At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 297.81 points or 3.7 percent to 7,552.29 points as losses in General Motors, Bank of America and American Express dragged the blue chips lower. The only Dow stock in positive territory was Wal-Mart, which rose after reporting better-than-expected profits.

“If we get substantially below 800 then look out below,” said Marc Groz, chief investment officer at Topos, a risk-advisory firm in Greenwich, Conn.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index slid 3.7 percent to drop below 800, which analysts said was an important trading threshold.

Investors know what this is, it is basically nationalization of our Economy, our banks, everything. They are just not going to invest money in a Government owned banking system. I believe this drop is just the beginning. Wait till it totally collapses and the world is thrust into chaos. It will be an interesting time, indeed.

Dutch MP refused entry to by the cowardly Government in Britain

This is a disgrace….

The Video and listen to Mr. Wilders stand up to the Liberal BBC’s baiting questions:

The Story:

A Dutch MP who called the Koran a “fascist book” has been sent back to the Netherlands after attempting to defy a ban on entering the UK.

Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders had been invited to show his controversial film – which links the Islamic holy book to terrorism – in the UK’s House of Lords.

But Mr Wilders, who faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred, has been denied entry by the Home Office.

He told the BBC it was a “very sad day” for UK democracy.

The Dutch ambassador was also at Heathrow to make clear his government’s opposition to the ban on Mr Wilders entering the UK.

via BBC NEWS  Dutch MP refused entry to Britain.

As far as I am concerned, Britain is nothing more than a Nation of terrorist sympathizers.  This is a disgrace and should be held as an example of what America will become if we allow the Liberals in America to have their way. This man put out a video exposing Islam for what it really is and now he is being persecuted for it.  Yes, the video was extreme, and yes, the framing of his argument was a bit extreme, but there is a thing called freedom of speech, and his man’s right are being violated.

In the Spirit of freedom of speech, I present, once again, Fitna:

Others: Fausta’s Blog, Riehl World View, Gateway Pundit, Atlas Shrugs and Gates of Vienna

Absolute Courage – 7 Year old boy dies trying to protect sister from Rapist

This comes via Breit Bart:

The Back Story via Russia Today:

Just over two months ago Galina lost her son and she’s still struggling to get over the shock.

Zhenya was brutally murdered by a robber, as the boy was trying to save his 12-year-old sister from being raped.

It all happened in late November, in the small military town of Noginsk-9 – a place where even small crimes are rare.

Around midday, a man rang the bell of the flat where Zhenya and his family lived.

“I asked who it was. The man said he was the postman, and he needed to give us a telegram and get a signature. So I opened the door,” recalls Zhenya’s sister Yana.

The little girl says the man held a knife to her throat, and demanded that her brother bring him all the money he could find. Zhenya did as he was told. But when the man started undressing his sister it was more than the boy could bear.

Zhenya seized a knife from the kitchen and plunged it into the man’s back. This didn’t kill the attacker, but it was enough to set Zhenya’s sister free. She ran for help. But it was too late for her brother – he was stabbed eight times.

Thirty-five-year old Sergey Kiyashko is in custody accused of the murder.  Police say they have all the evidence they need to convict him.

There is indeed a special place in Heaven for young boys like this. May he rest in the Holy Peace of Christ. May the foul beast that committed this horrible crime to this young boy never see the outside of a jail cell again.  😡

Sickening Report: World Bank Destroys Albanian Village and then Covers it up

This is absolutely sickening to read.  😡

Managers at the World Bank provided false information to the agency’s board of directors about a $39 million, politically-connected European “coastal cleanup” project that led to the destruction and destitution of a powerless village in Albania in 2007 — and then spent nearly two years trying to cover it up, FOX News has learned.

Bank insiders also misled and stonewalled a panel of independent investigators commissioned by the board to investigate the scandal, according to the investigators themselves.

World Bank sources tell FOX News that the panel’s report, submitted to the 24-member board in late November, is one of the most damning independent assessments of the anti-poverty agency’s behavior in the bank’s 60-year history. The bank, the world’s largest and most influential anti-poverty institution and part of the U.N. system, is doling out $100 billion over the next three years for development projects.

For its part, once the report leaked in Albania last week, the bank announced that further disbursements of the loan for the Albanian project had been temporarily suspended on Jan. 9 “due to certain outstanding policy and operational issues.” A World Bank spokesman did not comment to FOX News by press time.

via MyFox Springfield | World Bank Spent More Than a Year Covering Up Destruction

I hope like hell, whomever was responsible for doing this, is brought to justice. The very notion that the organization like the World Bank can just come in and destroy someone’s home is disgusting. May whomever carried this out rot in the Devil’s hell.

Don’t expect our Government to say anything about this, as it is well-known that the World Bank controls much of what goes on in this country as well.

(H/T Freedom’s Phoenix)

Fire strikes Beijing Hotel Complex

Holy Moses…. This is wild…:

Via the New York Times:

A fierce fire engulfed one of the Chinese capital’s most architecturally celebrated modern buildings on Monday, the last day of festivities for the lunar new year when the city was ablaze with fireworks. By late evening the blaze was still raging and the cause remained unknown, but it seemed clear that the 34-story structure, not yet completed, had been rendered unusable. The building, a luxury hotel and cultural complex designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, is part of China Central Television’s new headquarters, an angular two-legged behemoth built to coincide with the Beijing Olympics last year.

Firefighters, their ladders only reaching up a dozen or so floors, could do little to contain the blaze, a spectacular wall of flames eerily reflected in the glass skin of the adjacent CCTV tower.

The CCTV complex was a hugely expensive trophy of the pre-Olympics building boom, the result of many billions of dollars that the ruling Communist Party had devoted to making Beijing a city of the future. The main CCTV tower appeared untouched by the fire.

The 241-room Mandarin Oriental hotel, which had been due to open this summer, was unoccupied at the time, hotel executives said.

According to Chinese television, the fire began at 8:27 p.m., although witnesses said they spotted flames as early as 7:45 p.m. Within 20 minutes, they said, the fire had spread from the lower floors to the building’s crown. Black smoke drifted across the night sky, obliterating a full moon.

The authorities blocked off a thoroughfare known as the Third Ring Road, which runs adjacent to the complex. Subway cars running underneath the site were briefly halted, stranding thousands of passengers. Frantic police officers tried to shoo away huge crowds as sirens wailed and fireworks lit up the skyline. People watching noted that the timing of the fire — coming at the end of the spring festival — was inauspicious.

While errant fireworks were suspected as a possible cause, fires of such magnitude are nonetheless highly unusual in Beijing.

Videos:

Of course, the Alex Jones crowd is trying to compare it to WTC-7. Proving that you cannot fix stupid. What happened at WTC-7 was that airlines destroyed the Twin Towers and the falling debris from the towers damaged key structural members and the resulting uncontrolled fires led to the collapse hours after the rest of the complex. Anyone who says otherwise is insulting the dead. Which is something Alex Jones is good at. 🙄

Why can’t people just accept the damned truth and be glad they even got it. Damned morons. 😡

Australian Fires Devastate

I have not blogged about this, because it really didn’t not hit close to home. However, I was over reading in the comments section at Rachel Lucas’s Blog.

It seems that Australian Conservative Blogger Tim Blair has really been covering this story big time:

Here are his postings:
FIRE LATEST
STATE RALLIES
BRIAN NAYLOR
FIRE WITHOUT END
STATE ABLAZE

It my understanding that some of the blazes were intentionally set.

Google News has much more on the fires.

The Australian Red Cross is taking donations.

Japan could serve as a lesson to the United States

Barack Obama could learn a lesson from Japan. There’s a very good article in the New York Times today, on the mistakes made by the country of Japan in the 1990’s to fix their failing economy:

The Hamada Marine Bridge soars majestically over this small fishing harbor, so much larger than the squid boats anchored below that it seems out of place.

And it is not just the bridge. Two decades of generous public works spending have showered this city of 61,000 mostly graying residents with a highway, a two-lane bypass, a university, a prison, a children’s art museum, the Sun Village Hamada sports center, a bright red welcome center, a ski resort and an aquarium featuring three ring-blowing Beluga whales.

Nor is this remote port in western Japan unusual. Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. While Japan is not exactly comparable to the United States — especially as a late developer with a history of heavy state investment in infrastructure — economists say it can still offer important lessons about the pitfalls, and chances for success, of a stimulus package in an advanced economy.

The Lesson to be learned here is:

“It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again,” said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. “One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future.

But the real lesson to be learned here is the follow and pay special close attention to what is said here:

In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.

Gee, is that not what Ron Paul said ALL ALONG, while he was running for President of the United States? For Ron Paul’s troubles and hard work he was slandered, maligned  and marginalized by the Neo-Conservatives who hated him and the Liberal Democrats who were sacred to death of him.

I highly suggest that you read the rest of this article. The United States could learn much from this lesson that Japan had to learn. We could very well end up causing more harm than good to our economy.

Others: Glenn Thrush’s Blogs, Hot Air, A Blog For All, Cafe Hayek, Weekly Standard and QandO

Panasonic to eliminate 15,000 Jobs

Another victim of the worldwide economic collapse:

Panasonic on Wednesday said that it was shedding 15,000 jobs, the second significant layoff in Japan’s electronics industry in less than a week, and the latest example of how Japanese companies, exporters in particular, are scrambling to cut costs as demand evaporates.

Panasonic, along with Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda, also joined the rapidly lengthening list of companies to sharply revise their full-year outlooks Wednesday, with Panasonic now projecting a net loss of 380 billion yen or $4.2 billion for the year ending March 31, rather than the 30 billion yen profit it forecast on Nov. 27. Mitsubishi expects a net loss of 60 billion yen and Mazda 13 billion.

The speed of the demand downturn in recent months has taken manufacturers and economists by surprise, and forced many companies to sharply lower profit warnings made only months or even weeks ago.

via Panasonic to Cut 15,000 Jobs – NYTimes.com.

I hate to sound like I am repeating myself. But this is more damage done by the Clinton Administration and the inaction of the Republican Majority of 2003. The easing of the housing loan regulations is what created all this, thus creating a economic bubble. Which has now burst. Of course, throwing money at it, will not fix it. Now, we have the tech sector taking the hit, because of the downturn in the economy. Expect more of this to come as time goes on.