Retired Admiral James Lyons, who commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet from 1985-1987 came pretty close to calling President Obama an Islamic mole in a talk before the Center for Security Policy on Feb. 11.
“The Obama Administration has a strategy,” he said. “It’s very simple. Any thinking American should be able to grasp it. It’s anti-American, anti-Western, it’s pro Islamic, it’s pro Iranian, and pro Muslim Brotherhood.”
We kind of agree. Biden 2015.
Obama must be impeached.
FWIW, Hillary isn’t any better. The father of her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin was the late Dr. Syed Zainul Abedin who worked for terrorism financier Abdullah Omar Naseef. Her mother, Saleha, is a leader in the Muslim Sisterhood, which is the ladies auxiliary for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Here is the video of what Admiral Lyons said on Feb. 11:
Duckman’s Injury by David Lynch is among the works available at Artsy.net
David Lynch Art — Nicholas of Artsy.net has found our story concerning Loren Kantor’s woodcut work which includes noted director David Lynch as a subject. He points out that Artsy has actual paintings by the auteur himself.
Of course, changing things to a 401K plan now is akin to closing the sty’s gate after the pig has left.
State Representative Tom Killion (R-168) will lead a town hall on pension reform, 6:30 p.m., Thursday, March 26 in Room 101 of the Main Building of Penn State Brandywine Campus, 25 Yearsley Mill Road, Media PA 19063.
RSVP is required and can be made by emailing your name, address and phone number to DO168@pahousegop.com or by calling 610-325-1541.
There is a pension crisis. The Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) and State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) have huge debts. Their combined unfunded liability is $50 billion.
Given that Pennsylvania’s population — including children — is 12.8 million, this means that every Pennsylvanian is on the hook for $3,900 to cover this.
Obviously, this burden is not shared equally and those who work and own property and refrain from shopping in Delaware will pay significantly more than that.
Local school districts contribute about 8.7 percent to PSER — which has about two-thirds of the liability — so the expectation is that property taxes will rise accordingly on top the raises caused by negotiated teacher salaries, automatic “step” increases and $136 million new edifices.
Attempts to turn the retirement plans for state workers and local teachers into the defined contribution 401K types that most of us have, have been unsuccessful as they have been met with vicious resistance from the lobbyists and contributors with whom are representatives are more likely to associate with than, well, us.
Of course, changing things to a 401K plan now is akin to closing the sty’s gate after the pig has left.
To save our standard of living we need outside-the-box thinking. The first thing is to demand a freeze on all salary increases for all public employees — including legislators. This also means no more automatic step increases for teachers much less negotiated ones.
Then restrict public projects to only what is necessary and require that they be done as cost-effectively as possible. This means repealing the prevailing wage law which is estimated to add 20 percent to the cost of public projects.
The final thing will be placing a 40 percent tax on public pensions to last until the books are balanced. Note, this will not be a surtax as these are not taxed now. Oh, will this cause screams. Oh, will those getting $48,000 pensions accuse those living on a $30,000 retirement or unemployment package, or working two jobs to make ends meet, or trying to figure out how to pay for a decent college for a couple of kids or trying to cover the Obamacare health insurance hikes of “H8ing” and being greedy, mean and unfair.
The appropriate response is but two words, the last being ’em.
We missed Grover Cleveland’s birthday. It was March 18. Our 22nd and 24th president — he served non-consecutive terms — was born in 1837 in Caldwell, N.J., which makes him the only president to be born in the Garden State. His daughter, Ester, was the only child ever born in the White House.
That’s impressive but not as impressive as John Tyler’s legacy. Tyler, our 10th president and the man who gave the address at Thomas Jefferson’s funeral, has two living grandsons — Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. (born 1924) and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born 1928)
There are a lot better, cheaper and less disruptive ways of increasing the ridership and utility of the Philadelphia area’s transportation system.
Way back when the Philadelphia area’s bus and trolley lines were run by private business, transfers were free. Why? The guys running things understood they would get more riders (and ultimately money) by doing this. They understood that transferring from a busy line to another wasn’t costing them anything as the other had to run anyway and the less the consumer cost the more use the busy line would get.
SEPTA now is a tax-funded bureaucracy. Nobody in management is going to lose his job if the bureau doesn’t make a profit. Further there is no incentive to increase ridership. In fact, there is a disincentive as more riders mean more aggravation and the ones running things are going to be paid the same whatever.
So the point for the taxpayer is, instead of dumping money into what will be a money losing venture, why not bring back free transfers? Public transportation use might very well increase as much if not more than by building this thing and without the tax hit and construction annoyance.
Somebody might point out that SEPTA is pushing for commuters to use monthly passes. Really? How’s it working for them? What percent of the residents of the area use SEPTA on a weekly (or monthly) basis much less have passes?
Monthly passes are a good way of using SEPTA, of course, but have you seen any marketing for them? Have you seen the advertisements for them on TV? In any media? Have you seen any marketing for SEPTA anywhere? We haven’t. The private transportation companies used to advertise but not SEPTA. We really don’t believe SEPTA is interested in increasing its riders.
Here’s a thought: where is the attempt to synch SEPTA’s rail service with it’s bus/trolley service? How about free transfers for that? It would be cheaper than this rail extension.
This project is just a means of getting somebody else to pay for more government-connected jobs.
This thing won’t go through Springfield Montco much less Springfield Delco and it won’t be a monorail but we have no problem using the Simpson reference.
SEPTA Free Transfers Beat ‘Springfield Monorail’
The cost of SEPTA Free Transfers would be a fraction of what building a five-mile spur along a busy highway.
SEPTA Free Transfers might actually cause revenue to increase.
Frederich Nietzsche’s sister founded a utopian colony in Paraguay called Nueva Germania. The German flag still flies there. Nazi war criminals hung out there. Paraguay was a fan of the Axis in World War II. The national police director named his son Adolfo Hirohito.
John Revlas of Holland, Pa. is among those asking a Federal Court to expand the distribution of seized Iranian assets reports Naomi Seligman of Seligman Consulting.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2008 granted summary judgment of $2.65 billion to the plaintiffs in Peterson, et al. vs. Islamic Republic of Iran to compensate for multiple acts of terror sponsored by the rogue nation.
The money is coming from assets held by Bank Markazi, which is the central bank of Iran, and Citibank.
The case was upheld last July by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Bank Markazi is appealing to the Supreme Court.
A separate action adding to the pot of money concerns the ruling that the Pahlavi Foundation, which owned a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, was a front for the Iranian government. Again summary judgment was granted. Compensation from the sale of the building and other property is valued at over $1 billion. This is also slated to go to victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism.
Revlas, along with Mark Boyd and John Kees want those receiving this money go to victims of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut Lebanon. The bombing killed 241 and injured many others.
Relvas’ brother Rui was among the dead, as was Kees’ father. Boyd was a Marine who survived the attack and has joined the suit on behalf of his friends.
The plaintiffs are represented by Karsman, McKenzie & Hart of Savannah, and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll which has offices in seven cities including Philadelphia.
While one may wonder what the cut of the law firms will be, we say the less money Iran has the less resources it has to kill those who want to be left alone including its own citizens.
Evan Mackinder of Sunlight Foundation tells us that his organization has a tool that let’s one experience firsthand the results of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and create poetry that one may tweet to the world.
It can be found here.
Don’t forget to tweet your congressman to let him or her know you want open government.
The last winter morning, March 20, 2015, in the Philadelphia region.
Forget that white stuff this morning that was predicted by Tornado Tom. It is 6:45 p.m.. EDT and that means the vernal equinox has occurred.
That means spring has sprung.
It is porch weather as some might say. Or soon to be anyway.
Regarding the science stuff, the word equinox is Latin words for “equal night.” Days and nights are approximately equal everywhere and the Sun rises and sets due east and west, explains The Old Farmers Almanac. At the equinoxes, the tilt of Earth relative to the Sun is zero, which means that Earth’s axis neither points toward nor away from the Sun.
