Monday edition - February 2, 2009

 

 

Michael Phelps acknowledges pot pipe photo and apologizes
Los Angeles Times - 2-2-09
The swimmer admits to engaging in 'regrettable' behavior and showing 'bad judgment' after British tabloid runs photo of him appearing to smoke marijuana...

 

IOC accepts Phelps' apology for marijuana photo
ESPN - 2-2-09
AP LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- The International Olympic Committee expressed confidence Monday that Michael Phelps will learn from his "inappropriate behavior" and continue to serve as a role model after a British newspaper published a photo of him...

Charges against George Obama dropped
CNN - 2-2-09
NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- All charges against George Obama, half-brother to US President Barack Obama, have been dropped after his arrest in a drug raid...

 

Thank God, Michael Phelps wasn't caught doing something really destructive -- like beer bonging or doing shots while bar hopping in his car.

 

 

"According to a new study in the journal 'Social Science Quarterly,' people who grow up with unpopular and strange sounding names are much more likely to be unsuccessful in life. I'll remember to tell that to President Barack Hussein Obama." --Jay Leno
 

 

 

The-World-Will-Be-A-Safer-Place-Without George W. Bush

Home Sweet Home

 

President Barack Obama told Americans on Sunday a substantial number of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would be home within a year, saying Iraqis were now ready to take more responsibility for their own security.
 

Wall St., Having Already Spent Bonuses/TARP Funds, to Repay U.S. in Drugs and Hookers

By Don Davis

 

 

I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused.- President Barack Hussein Obama

 

 

Disturbing News

 

 

Financial Virus?

 

A fired Fannie Mae contract worker pleaded not guilty Friday to a federal charge he planted a virus designed to destroy all the data on the mortgage giant's 4,000 computer servers nationwide.

Had the virus been released as planned on Saturday, the Justice Department said the disruption could have cost millions of dollars and shut down operations for a week at Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance company.

 

Only Peons Have To Pay Taxes (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

I’m so sick of political sleaze
Who think they can do as they please.
Pay their taxes? Not them!
Be they right-wing or Dem,
With big friends their promotion’s a breeze.

 

New RNC Chairman Michael Steele Assures His Base: ‘I’m Hack Enough’

By Don Davis

 

Only Existing Black Republican Elected Head of Republican Party!
 

Republicans went and elected Michael Steele as their party chairman. The final ballot came down to Steele, a black man, and Katon Dawson of South Carolina, who until a few months ago was still a member of a whites-only country club. Steele won, 91-77. Under those circumstances, a Dawson win would have been disastrous for party image.

 

 

www.internetweekly.org

 

 

Republican-Shenanigans News

 

Geography game

 

 

Ooh, it’s getting nasty now between President Obama and Rush Limbaugh. In fact, Limbaugh told his radio audience he’s not going to “bend over” and grab his ankles just because Barack Obama is black. Well, you know, let’s take race out of it for a minute. Now, honestly, regardless of who’s president, do you think there’s any chance in hell Rush Limbaugh could bend over and grab his ankles? - Jay Leno

 

Rock-The-Voter News

Good News. The Rod Blagojevich Media Tour Continues!

The former Illinois governor is going to continue the PR strategy that has taken him this far. Sure, he was ousted from office by a razor-thin 59-0 Illinois senate vote on Thursday. And the week prior his lawyer dumped him because he wouldn’t quit talking. And most lawyers believe his media blitz last week was a disaster.

But, as they say, “you don’t change horses midstream.”
 

Learning of his impeachment, the outgoing governor of Illinois reacted bitterly by paraphrasing Richard Nixon: “You won’t have Rod R. Blagojevich to pronounce anymore!”  - Laugh Lines

 

 

 

Ads by Google

 

 

Biz-Tech News

Where Has All The Money Gone? Not Bailout Money, Iraq money!

 

After five years of investigations and 250,000 pages of audits, Stuart W. Bowen Jr. wishes he could say that the $50 billion cost of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq was money accounted for and well spent.

"But that's just not happened," Bowen said.

 

 

"Obama was trying to marginalize me...His hope was that the House and Senate Republicans would join him in denouncing me. Didn't work" - Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party

 

 

 

 

 

President Obama says he needs nearly a trillion dollars to help kick start the economy. That’s a lot of money. Do you realize with that money, you could give every man and woman and child in this country $3,300? Or you could buy shoes for everyone in South America for life. Or you could cover the New York Yankees’ payroll for a season and a half.- Jay Leno

 

Bush-Prison-Torture News

 

There’s now growing proof that some of the relief money that was supposed to help victims of the huge earthquake in China was actually siphoned off by corrupt officials. In fact, one corrupt official, Chang Blagojevich, was arrested today.- Jay Leno

 

 


 

Go-F**k-Yourself News

Heightened Awareness

 

Just how big is Google, anyway? Well, it can reach out into space and spy the Earth from above, as it did in the case of the pot farmers who got busted yesterday by Swiss police using Google Earth. And Google can even kill run over a deer with a Google Maps car

 

 

Michael Phelps may lose some endorsement contracts after being photographed with a bong. On the other hand, he’s already fielding new offers from Krispy Kreme, 7-11 and Doritos. - Laugh Lines

 

 

 

In case you missed it …

 

In its tireless effort to provide news and giggles for its readers, All Hat No Cattle now offers this Monday glimpse back at the previous week. This will include the weekend dump (we are referring to the time preferred by government agencies, politicians and titans of industry to release unsavory news in the hope that it will receive less media coverage – not a bathroom activity).

 

Sun., 2/1/2009
Steelers win Supr Bowl!!! Didya here? If ya didn ur eether def, ded or dubya.

Reps decry dumb Dem Daschle for delinquent tax debt
(AP) – Republican senators on Sunday questioned how former Sen. Tom Daschle could make a $128,203 mistake on his taxes but said they were not prepared to oppose his nomination as health secretary.
"You have to be troubled by it," said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. "We'll have to question former Sen. Daschle and understand his explanation, and then have a conversation about it and see where it goes," Kyl said on "Fox News Sunday." As to how much trouble the tax issue could present for the nomination, he said, "I think it's too early to tell."
Daschle recently filed amended tax returns to report $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest. The amended returns reflect additional income for consulting work, the use of a car service and reduced deductions for charitable contributions. The South Dakota Democrat, once the majority leader of the Senate, was scheduled to meet privately Monday with the Senate Finance Committee.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he was surprised that Daschle had not paid his taxes properly but would not say whether he thought the nomination was in trouble. He said the committee will make a recommendation to the full Senate. "I think I'm going to just wait until they give me their opinion," he told CBS' "Face the Nation."
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said the problem could disqualify Daschle but that he wanted to learn more about the matter. "It's disheartening, obviously. People are struggling to pay taxes on a very small amount of income and he's got this huge amount," DeMint said on ABC's "This Week."

 

Sat., 1/ 31/09
Obama seeks to save economy despite presence of kryptonite

(AP) – President Barack Obama on Saturday promised to lower mortgage costs, offer job-creating loans for small businesses, get credit flowing and rein in free-spending executives as he readies a new road map for spending billions from the second installment of the financial rescue plan.

The White House is deciding how to structure the remaining half of the $700 billion that Congress approved last year to save financial institutions and lenders. An announcement was possible as early as this coming week on an approach that would use a range of tools to unfreeze credit, helping families and businesses.

At the end of a week that saw hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs, Obama also used his Saturday radio and Internet address to tell that nation that "no one bill, no matter how comprehensive, can cure what ails our economy."

During the final three months of 2008, the economy recorded its worst downhill slide in a quarter-century, stumbling backward at a 3.8 percent pace, the government reported Friday

 

Fri., 1/30/09

Stocks take another dive, investors soil pants

(AP) – Stocks slumped for a second straight day Friday as investors, already on edge about the worsening economy, were further rattled by a report that Washington's plans to help banks may have hit a snag. The Dow Jones industrials dropped 4.5 percent over two sessions; broader stock indexes are down more than 5 percent since Wednesday. Uncertainty about when the economy will improve has investors looking to Washington for answers. With the market particularly worried about the prospects of a big bank failure, investors have been hopeful that the government will soon release details of a wide-reaching plan to help banks rid themselves of their toxic assets. But a CNBC report late Friday cast doubt on the so-called 'bad bank' idea, citing an unnamed industry source as saying the plan has hit significant snags. The news sent stocks down sharply lower in late afternoon trading.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 148.55, or 1.82 percent, to 8,000.46. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 19.26, or 2.28 percent, to 825.88, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 31.42, or 2.08 percent, to 1,476.42.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 9.71, or 2.14 percent, to 443.53.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by 3 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 1.51 billion shares.

On Thursday, the Dow sank 226 points, while other indicators tumbled more than 3 percent, on news that unemployment claims reached a record high and that new home sales hit a record low. This erased all of the gains from the previous day, when stocks soared on hopes that the government will take bad debt off banks' books.

 

Gore (who else?) urges Obama to take action on climate change

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) – Don't put off action on global warming just because times are lean — that's the message Al Gore, world environmental leaders and U.S. executives sent Friday to President Barack Obama.

Worries are mounting that economic troubles are sapping momentum, in the U.S. Congress and in other world capitals, for costly investment in clean energy and cutting carbon emissions.

"The oceans are being choked off of oxygen. They are dying as a result of this process we are seeing before our eyes the melting of the polar ice cap," Gore said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The assumption that we can continue on this path is an assumption that is collapsing."

Many countries are looking to Obama for aggressive action after frustration at the Bush administration's refusal to sign international pacts on reducing emissions of carbon, blamed for global warming.


GOP elects first black to lead party

(AP) – Michael Steele was elected Republican National Committee chairman on Friday, defeating the incumbent party chief and three other challengers over six rounds of voting to become the first black to lead the GOP. The former Maryland lieutenant governor takes over a beleaguered GOP as Republicans seek to rebound from back-to-back defeats in national elections that gave Democrats control of Congress and the White House. He won 91 votes out of a possible 168 in the sixth round. A simple majority of 85 was needed, but it took six rounds for Steele to win.

 

Thurs., 1/29/09
 White House: Bailout plan will address bonus pay

(AP) — The White House says its upcoming financial plan will clamp down on the salaries and bonuses paid to Wall Street employees whose firms receive taxpayer help.

This administration is developing plans for how it will use the last $350 billion from the original $700 billion financial-sector bailout plan.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that those plans will directly address executive compensation and bonuses. President Barack Obama on Thursday called it "shameful" that Wall Street workers received more than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 while their firms were receiving taxpayer help.

 

Wednesday, 1/28/09
Palin forms PAC, heads to Washington

(CNN) — Alaska governor Sarah Palin tried to beat back speculation she is already plotting a 2012 presidential bid Wednesday night, days after her newly-formed political action committee aroused suspicions to the contrary.

“No, not at all, not at all, no," Palin said definitely when asked if the new committee means she already has her eye on the White House.

Instead, Palin said her new PAC will help defray the costs of travel to events that may be construed as political.

"It’s helpful to have a PAC so that when I’m invited to things even like to speak at the Lincoln Day dinner in Fairbanks, to have a PAC pay for that instead of have the state pay for that because that could be considered quasi-political,"

Still, Palin is the first governor from Alaska ever to form a PAC, a move that has often preceded presidential runs.

"Now we’ll have an available source of funds so that we’re not coming close to any ethical line to be crossed in terms of travel or participation in events that will help Alaska, but could be seen perhaps as not worthy of state funding," she also said.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate also confirmed she is heading to Washington this weekend to attend the venerable Alfalfa Club Meeting, the annual closed-door gathering of the country's political elite.

 

Obama tells us something we didn’t know: U.S. in trouble

(AP) – Looking beyond expected House approval of an $816 billion economic stimulus plan, President Barack Obama said Wednesday the nation is at a "perilous moment" requiring swift and decisive action.

"We don't have a moment to spare," Obama said in the East Room of the White House, just hours before a crucial House roll call vote. The measure intended to steady the ricocheting economy was expected to pass, but likely with little of the bipartisan support that Obama wanted. The issue then goes to the Senate where the new president hopes to draw more GOP backing.

Obama tempered the sense of urgency in his voice with his observation that he and corporate leaders "left our meeting confident that we can still turn our economy around."

 

Tues., 1/27/09

Obama begins undoing Bush climate policies
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama has begun reversing the climate policies of the Bush administration, clearing the way for new rules to force auto makers to produce more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars.

The president told the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider immediately a request by California to impose its own strict limits on vehicle carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for contributing to global warming.

The Democratic Obama took over last Tuesday from former President George W. Bush, whose Republican administration had denied the request, prompting California and other states to sue.

"The federal government must work with, not against, states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Obama said at the White House, taking a stab at his predecessor's policies.

"California has shown bold and bipartisan leadership through its effort to 21st century standards. And over a dozen states have followed its lead."

Obama's directive, which is likely to result in a formal change in coming months, could prompt as many as 18 states to follow California's lead by putting into effect tailpipe emissions standards that are tougher than federal requirements.

The president directed the Department of Transportation to move forward with setting vehicle fuel efficiency standards for model year 2011 by March, giving automakers an 18-month period to prepare.

 

Mon., 1/26/09

Blagojevich warns America: This could happen to you
(AP) – Embattled Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich Monday morning's interviews with NBC's "Today" (on tape), ABC's "Good Morning America" (live) and "The View" (live), like the ones that were to follow on cable and broadcast television, represented a calculated political gamble by a politician trying very, very hard to give the impression he was distancing himself from politics.

"Those senators are politicians who make the rules and won't allow us to get them to change the rules, so I'm here talking to Americans to let them know what's happening in the Land of Lincoln," Blagojevich told ABC's Diane Sawyer. "If they can do this to a sitting governor, deny me the chance to bring witnesses in to prove my innocence ... that is a scary thing. If they can do that to a governor, they can do that to you."

The elected officials of the Illinois state senate can remove us from our elected office? Never mind. Blago was on a roll.

Sawyer, who was treated to a brief reprise of Blagojevich's Rudyard Kipling recitation, got the governor to confirm he at one point considered giving talk show host Oprah Winfrey the open U.S. Senate seat federal prosecutors allege he ostensibly was looking to sell.

With NBC News' Amy Robach, he said his youngest daughter asked his wife, Patty, about his political future and tried to cast himself as an everyman hero facing unfair persecution.
"This is like an old Frank Capra movie," he said. "Whether it's Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper, I do, I see myself in those movies. 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' 'Meet John Doe,' 'Mr. Deeds Goes to Town' or 'It's a Wonderful Life.'"

 

 

Email

Subject: Who is Congress helping?

 

Lisa,

You're not alone in your financial distress. My son and his family are in foreclosure. Early last year when he saw it coming, the bank wouldn't let him refinance his ARM, payments got higher and he couldn't keep up.

The govt needs to help people not just hand out money to financial institutions who aren't loaning to people before they get into financial distress. Instead they were redecorating their offices for the past year. WTF?

Good luck and keep up the fight! I wish I could donate.

Love, Rod ( not Blagojevich!)

 

Thanks for writing. Don't worry about not donating! But thank you for the thought.

 

I'm fortunate enough to have wonderful viewers who have kept me and AHNC going for several years, through its ups and downs.  I proselytize before ye.

 

Here's a way to help people. Congress should put an immediate hold on foreclosures and insist these 1,3 or 5 year ARMs are refinanced and eventually made illegal. Let people refinance for other reasons, too, like a lower interest rate. Think of all the jobs that alone would create instantly and all the foreclosures that'll be avoided. Your son's foreclosure included.  I'm headed down the same path as your son, if I can't refinance or sell my home soon.

 

I don't want to be the one to say to Congress, "Told ya so!", because they failed to help the victims and I become one of them!

 

I wish your son well and I wish Congress would step up to the plate and help the people, not just the businesses.

 

Its not rocket science.

 

 

 

2-2-09, Monday: Paypal Contributions have reached 2025.

Another 1000 was pledged through the US Mail -- AHNC has received 755, so far.

Thank you!

 

Offline Donation - TO: Lisa Casey - PO Box 88 - Ashford, AL 36312

 

Click here to e-mail a comment

 

Odd News

 

 

Ben Hughes, handler of the weather-predicting groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, holds Phil in the air after removing him from his stump at Gobbler's Knob on Groundhog Day, Monday, Feb. 2, 2009, in Punxsutawney, Pa. The Groundhog Club said Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter.
Photo/Carolyn Kaster

 

 

 

Peace is closer than ever.