Obama Cites Rising Gas Prices – Up 83 Percent Under His Tenure

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama listed rising gas prices as among the many reasons to extend the payroll tax cut Tuesday, flanked by individuals the White House promoted as being affected by $40 per paycheck the average American would lose if the tax cut is not extended at the end of February.

The payroll tax funds Social Security. Cutting the tax would reduce funding to Social Security by $119 billion over the next year, on top of the $105 billion reduced from funding in 2011.

While Republican lawmakers have expressed plans to vote for a full-year extension to the tax cut, Obama told his audience Tuesday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington that they must put pressure on Congress.

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What do you expect when you put too many animals in one place!

Owners of New York City’s Zuccotti Park may be starting to get fed up with it being occupied.

Brookfield Office properties, the firm that owns the central location for the Occupy Wall Street protests, has released a statement claiming that they have not been able to properly maintain the park and that sanitation has become a growing concern.

“Because many of the protestors refuse to cooperate by adhering to the [park] rules, the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16th, and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels,” said in a written statement by the property management firm.

Brookfield normally cleans and inspects the condition of the park every night which includes a power washing, landscaping, and trash removal. They haven’t been able to do so since the protestors have sent up a tent city as part of the protests.

“Basic rules intended to keep the park safe, open, clean, and welcoming to all visitors are clearly posted,” the statement from Brookfield reads. “These rules includes bans on the erection of tents or other structures, as well as the placement of tarps, sleeping bags, or other coverings on the property.

“Unfortunately, many of the individuals currently occupying the grounds are ignoring these basic yet necessary requirements, which interferes with the use of the park by others.”

“#BrookfieldProps says they can’t clean #LibertyPlaza. We’ll share our brooms if they want 2 help,” said one posting on the twitter feed @OccupyWallSt NYC.

Brookfield says that they recognize people’s right to peacefully assemble but that they are also obligated to ensure that the park remains safe, clean and accessible to everyone.

“We continue to work with the City of New York to address these conditions and restore the park to its intended purpose,” the statement continued.

In addition to the growing mess at the park, The NYPD has spent over $2 million in overtime to keep cops stationed at the protests, according to a public statement by Commissioner Ray Kelly made yesterday afternoon.

The NYPD did not immediately return requests for comment on Brookfield’s statement.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/07/owners-zuccotti-park-says-conditions-unsanitary-from-wall-street-protests/#ixzz1a7uYhaYA

Can you feel the love?

A woman tries to extinguish a smoldering body in Somalia, where God’s
perfect religion inspired a suicide truck bombing that took 100 lives
and left over a hundred others literally burning in agony.   The targeted
victims were mostly students – among the country’s best and brightest.

OccupyWallStreet Video Lies But it’s not really a surprise….

First, here is the video #OccupyWallstreet wants you to see:

It looks brutal; the police are striking protesters with batons.

But what these protesters don’t want you to see is what happened seconds before that provoked the police response. In the video below, you can hear the protesters counting down and then rushing the police. At least one officer is struck in the head by a protester (@00:10). Another can be seen kicking an officer (@00:15). The police repeatedly order the protesters to “Get back” and they ignore the orders:

 

Shhhh! CAIR Wants Speaker Silenced at U.S. Law School

By Drew Zahn
© 2011 WND

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is working to stop author and former Muslim Nonie Darwish from addressing students this week at Virginia’s George Mason University School of Law.

According to a press release, CAIR wants the school to disinvite Darwish – whom CAIR calls “a notorious Islamophobe who has stated that Islam is a ‘poison to a society’ that is ‘based on lies’ and must be ‘annihilated'” – from a planned Oct. 5 address titled “The West’s Clash with Radicalism.”

“Such hate-filled views should not be funded by student organizations or endorsed by professors,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Darwish’s genocidal statements are reminiscent of those used to target the Jewish community in Nazi Germany.”

But Darwish, who told WND she sees Muslims as largest victims of Shariah (or Islamic) law, says CAIR is falsely equating criticism of a religion with hatred for a people because “the problem for CAIR is that they cannot debate us about the glaring truth, so they claim we hate Muslims, trying to deflect the attention of the American people from the true worldwide problem of Islamism, jihad, Shariah and tyranny.

“If anyone criticizes the ideology of Islam, jihad and Shariah, CAIR spins it to an attack on the Muslim people, confusing the American people between criticism of an ideology and being a racist against a whole group of people,” Darwish told WND. “I hope that the American people are more intelligent than to fall for this kind of childish spin.”

Read Nonie Darwish’s insider look at living under Shariah law in “Cruel and Usual Punishment,” autographed in the WND SuperStore!

As for being labeled a “Islamophobe,” Darwish said, “The truth is that I am afraid of Islamic laws that condemn me and thousands, if not millions of others, who have left the religion of Islam. Shariah is the only religious law in the word that condemns those who leave the religion to death. I do not think it is unreasonable phobia to speak against such a tyrannical law. Actually, it is my duty towards myself and the civil and human rights of many others.”

Darwish’s address is sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Jewish Law Students Association.

A former Muslim who lived under Shariah for the first 30 years of her life, Darwish is the author of“Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.”

CAIR’s objection to her appearance is based partially on a previous speech, in which Darwish addressed a rally in Florida sponsored by Stop Islamization of America, a organization headed by Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, whom CAIR calls “two of the nation’s leading Islamophobes,” blasting their organization as “a hate group.”

CAIR has also attempted to block Geller, author of“Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,”from speaking.

In May of last year, CAIR attempted to have Geller removed from the list of speakers at the inaugural Tennessee Tea Party Convention. Event organizers rebuffed CAIR’s objections.

Geller later wrote on her blog, “CAIR is trying to get good, decent Americans in the Tennessee Tea Party to crush free speech by dropping me.”

“Islam is a poison to a society. It’s divisive. It’s hateful,” Darwish told Geller’s Florida rally. “Islam should be feared, and should be fought, and should be conquered, and defeated and annihilated, and it’s going to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, Islam is going to be brought down. . .Because Islam is based on lies and it’s not based on the truth. I have no doubt whatsoever that Islam is going to be destroyed.”

For these comments, CAIR blasted Darwish as “filled with anti-Islam hate.”

Darwish, however, says she’s speaking not from hate, but from a desire to see people – especially Muslims – freed: “What I speak about, and what CAIR is afraid of being exposed, is my standing up against the tyranny of Shariah law, the radical ideology of violent jihad, the commandments to kill Jews by many sheikhs in the Middle East and in many Muslim scriptures, my stand against atrocities happening today in the name of Shariah law to thousands and perhaps millions of people, including Muslims, in over 54 countries around the world.

“Criticizing Sharia, Islamic law and other radical laws against women, Jews and non-Muslims is a crime against Islam in Shariah,” she concluded, “and CAIR has convinced some Americans that it’s a crime in America also.”

Link:Shhhh! CAIR wants speaker silenced at U.S. law schoolhttp://www.wnd.com/?pageId=351181#ixzz1ZlUasuX0

Labor Unions Join Wall Street “Occupiers” for Mass Rally

The cavalry has arrived in Lower Manhattan. Representatives from no fewer than 15 of the country’s largest labor unions will join the Occupy Wall Street protesters for a mass rally and march today in New York City.

The AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transit Workers’ Union are among the groups expected to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of mostly young men and women who have spent the better part of three weeks sleeping, eating, and organizing from Zuccotti Square.

Their arrival is being touted as a watershed moment for the “Occupy” movement, which has now seen copycat protests spring up across the country. And while the specific demands of the “occupiers” remain wide-ranging, the presence of the unions – implicitly inclined to making more direct demands – may sharpen their focus.

Today’s action is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. ET, when the protesters in Zuccotti Square march approximately one mile north to Foley Square, where they will be met by community and labor leaders. Then, at 4:30 p.m., they plan to march together back down toward Wall Street. They do not yet have a city-issued permit for the gathering, but are now pursuing one.

The “Union March” is expected to be the movement’s largest yet and there is the potential for a significant number of arrests. The New York Police Department booked an estimated 700 protesters Saturday as they attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, bringing the total number arrested to over 1,000 in less than three weeks.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Demonstrators with the “Occupy Wall Street”… View Full Size

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Demonstrators with the “Occupy Wall Street” march against police brutality, Sept. 30, 2011 New York City.

 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, speaking at a retirement community in Florida yesterday, denounced the movement. “I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,” he said.

While some on the ground welcome the concept of a showdown with the “one percent,” organizers (who claim to represent “the 99 percent” of Americans they say are being trampled on by the financial elite), say they remain committed to “non-violent” protest.

The question for today, though, is what affect the presence of labor unions will have on the tenor of the demonstrations. To date, Occupy Wall Street has set their agenda during twice-daily “general assemblies” with large-scale votes and directly elected “working groups.”

The unions do not operate this way. They are top-down organizations. Their leaders, though elected, make most decisions autonomously. They are well-versed in fashioning specific appeals, the very concept of which runs counter to Occupy Wall Street’s purposefully abstract message.

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Unions, MoveOn.Org Set to Join Occupy Wall St. For Massive March on Wednesday

Occupy Wall Street  is set to create a perfect storm of leftist protest groups today in lower Manhattan to form its biggest march yet.

Unions, community organizers, and even more college students are swarming together at Occupy Wall Street on its 19th day. Occupy Wall Street organizers have already posted a game plan for today on their site:

“On October 05, 2011, at 3:00 in the afternoon the residents of Liberty Square will gather to join their union brothers and sisters in solidarity and march. At 4:30 in the afternoon the 99% will march in solidarity with #occupywallstreet from Foley Square to the Financial District, where their pensions have disappeared to, where their health has disappeared to. Together we will protest this great injustice.”

Those set to join in on the fracas today include the liberal group MoveOn.org, Working Families Party and United NY. The Chinatown Tenants Union and the Transit Workers Union have also signaled their intent to join the swelling marchers’ ranks. The Transit Workers Union alone has 20,000 members in the New York City area.

On top of that, the Occupy Wall Street organizers are calling for a 2PM walk out of college students across the United States. And the protest organizers are using Twitter and Social Media to rally protests in other cities.

Similar “Occupy” movement have sprouted up in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle, among others.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has received criticism in the media for its lack of a clear message or definable goals beyond rage at Wall Street and general perceptions of injustice in society. Protest organizers claim it draws inspiration from the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East. There are environmentalists, anarchists, and communists spread among the group.

But a muddled message certainly hasn’t slowed down the protest at all. And the labor unions could provide a major manpower boost, as well as on-the-ground organizational assistance.

President Michael Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers, the sole bargaining agent for 75,000 New York City public school teachers, has publicly endorsed the demonstrations, stating:

“The way our society is now headed it does not work for 99% of people, so when Occupy Wall Street started … they kept to it and they’ve been able to create a national conversation that we think should have been going on for years.”

The conversation is likely to kick up into a higher gear if there are mass arrests like the 700 this past weekend, or acts of violence or destruction break out.

One thing is for sure– It’s going to be loud and hectic on the southern tip of Manhattan today.

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Herman Cain Proves Conservatism Is Colorblind

On September 23, actor Morgan Freeman called the Tea Party “a racist thing” while appearing as a guest on Piers Morgan Tonight. He said the “stated policy” of the Tea Party “is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term,” and then equated such a policy with “We’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.”

Of course Freeman’s only the latest in a long line of liberals to place the “racist” moniker on the Tea Party movement. And like the others before him, many of whom were mental heavyweights like Janeane Garofalo, Freeman’s criticism is unfounded.

Moreover, the foolishness of his statements became evident within a day of their broadcast, as the Tea Party and other outlying conservatives carried Republican Herman Cain to a smashing victory in the Florida straw poll on September 24. What this means is that Cain, a black man, was propelled to victory over three white men (Perry, Romney, and Gingrich) and a white woman (Bachmann) by the same conservatives that had allegedly been opposed to Obama because of the color of his skin 24 hours earlier.

The truth is that the same Tea Party that cheered and voted for Representative Tim Scott (R-SC), who also happens to be black, will cheer and vote for every candidate that stands against big government, high taxes, open borders, and abortion on demand, among other things.

On a deeper level, the message from Cain’s resounding victory in Florida is that conservatism is colorblind. This translates two ways: First, it means conservatives aren’t caught up in the idea of electing a president of color simply because of that color (regardless of what it is). Rather, they put substance over style. Secondly, it means that conservatives aren’t opposed to a given candidate because of the color of his or her skin (regardless of what color it is). Rather, they judge each candidate on the basis of his or her policy positions and political ideology.

Cain won in Florida because he has come across as the most conservative guy in the mix during the last two debates. Or to put it as Rush Limbaugh did: “You want to know why Herman Cain won the straw poll in Florida? [Because] you can’t find one example of Herman Cain, at any point in this campaign, not being a conservative.”

If we want to face the cold hard facts, it’s the left in America that’s consumed with race. They are the political ideologues dominated by racial categories and quotas like affirmative action, and by the furtherance of racially homogenous groups like the Congressional Black Caucus. (Read Roger L. Simon’s fabulous suggestion on what to do with the Congressional Black Caucus here.) They were also the political group that hailed Barack Obama as the “first black president.”

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Obama waives penalties on countries that employ child soldiers – again!

 

Babes in Warland: Photographs of Africa’s child soldiers 

President Barack Obama has decided to waive almost all the legally mandated penalties for countries that use child soldiers and provide those countries U.S. military assistance, just like he did last year.

The White House is expected to soon announce its decision to issue a series of waivers for the Child Soldiers Protection Act, a 2008 law that is meant to stop the United States from giving military aid to countries that recruit soldiers under the age of 15 and use them to fight wars. The administration has laid out a range of justifications for waiving penalties on Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which amount to a gutting of the law for the second year in a row.

Last year, the White House didn’t even tell Congress or the NGO community when it decided to do away with the Child Soldiers Prevention Act penalties. Most had to read about it first on The Cable. Aid workers, human rights activists, and even congressional offices were shocked that the administration had gutted the law without consulting them.

The White House argued at the time that because the law was new, the offending countries didn’t have time to comply. As part of their damage control effort, they put National Security Council Senior Director Samantha Power on a private conference call with NGO workers (that we eavesdropped on) to explain that these waivers would only be for one year — but that in the second year, the administration was going to enforce the law in full.

“Our judgment was to brand them, name them, shame them, and then try to leverage assistance in a fashion to make this work,” Power said at the time. “Our judgment is we’ll work from inside the tent.”

Apparently that plan was scuttled, because the administration has decided to waive almost all the penalties again, despite the fact that little progress has been made in any of the offender countries.

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‘You’re a Bum, Jew’: Jewish Man Berated by Wild Wall St. Protester, Told to ‘Go Back to Israel’