This reminds me of when the USSR leaders spread their form of government to China, N. Korea, and Cuba. This guy truly believes that he is the chosen leader of the world. This cannot end well.

Brown woos Obama on global deal
Jonathan Oliver, Political Editor

GORDON BROWN hopes to forge a partnership with President Barack Obama in Washington this week, to call for a “global new deal” to lift the world out of recession.

As he prepares for his first White House visit since the president’s inauguration, the prime minister has hinted that he is ready to make further tax cuts to boost the UK economy.

Brown will meet Obama on Tuesday and address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Aides say he has both to demonstrate to a sceptical British public that he commands the respect of the president, and to persuade the American political establishment that global action is needed to rescue the US economy.

Brown is under pressure to persuade American political leaders to sign up to bold aims for the G20 summit of industrial and leading developing nations, which is to be held in London next month.

Related Links
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Many US politicians believe economic policy should put America first, and have shown little interest in concerted global action. Brown will argue for a renewal of the transatlantic relationship, with the two powers working together to solve global economic problems.

The prime minister will borrow from the rhetoric of Franklin Roosevelt, who introduced the government-financed New Deal to tackle the US Depression of the 1930s. He will argue that his 21st century “global new deal” will also require public spending on a huge world-wide scale.

Writing in The Sunday Times today, Brown calls for “universal action to prevent the crisis spreading, to stimulate the global economy and to help reduce the severity and length of the global recession”.

His stress on continued economic “stimulation” will increase speculation about next month’s budget. No 10 sources said that, while no final decision had been taken about further tax cuts, the prime minister would do “whatever it took” to pull the UK out of recession.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5822265.ece

This is the next best thing to implanting a chip into your citizens to monitor their whereabouts. This should make it easier to find the intolerant citizens who don’t obey to new tolerant Obama agenda.

Radio chip coming soon to your driver’s license?
Homeland Security seeks next-generation REAL ID

——————————————————————————–
Posted: February 28, 2009
12:25 am Eastern

By Bob Unruh

——————————————————————————–
WorldNetDaily

Washington state’s enhanced driver’s license

Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.

The proposal, which has earned the support of Janet Napolitano, the newly chosen chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver’s licenses, or “enhanced driver’s licenses.”

“Enhanced driver’s licenses give confidence that the person holding the card is the person who is supposed to be holding the card, and it’s less elaborate than REAL ID,” Napolitano said in a Washington Times report.

REAL ID is a plan for a federal identification system standardized across the nation that so alarmed governors many states have adopted formal plans to oppose it. However, a privacy advocate today told WND that the EDLs are many times worse.

Radio talk show host and identity chip expert Katherine Albrecht said REAL ID earned the opposition of Christians because of its resemblance to the biblical “mark of the beast,” civil libertarians opposed it for its “big brother” connotations and others worried about identity theft issues with the proposed databases.

“We got rid of the REAL ID program, but [this one] is way more insidious,” she said.

Enhanced driver’s licenses have built-in radio chips providing an identifying number or information that can be accessed by a remote reading unit while the license is inside a wallet or purse.

The technology already had been implemented in Washington state, where it is promoted as an alternative to a passport for traveling to Canada. So far, the program is optional.

But there are other agreements already approved with Michigan, Vermont, New York and Arizona, and plans are under way in other states, including Texas, she said.

(Story continues below)

Napolitano, as Arizona’s governor, was against the REAL ID, Albrecht said. Now, as chief of Homeland Security, she is suggesting the more aggressive electronic ID of Americans.

“She’s coming out and saying, ‘OK, OK, OK, you win. We won’t do REAL ID. But what we probably ought to do is nationwide enhanced driver’s licenses,’” Albrecht told WND.

“They’re actually talking about issuing every person a spychip driver’s license,” she said. “That is the potential problem.”

Imagine, she said, going to a First Amendment-protected event, a church or a mosque, or even a gun show or a peace rally.

Katherine Albrecht

“What happens to all those people when a government operator carrying a reading device makes a circuit of the event?” she asked. “They could download all those unique ID numbers and link them.”

Participants could find themselves on “watch” lists or their attendance at protests or rallies added to their government “dossier.”

She said even if such license programs are run by states, there’s virtually no way that the databases would not be linked and accessible to the federal government.

Albrecht said a hint of what is on the agenda was provided recently by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The state’s legislature approved a plan banning the government from using any radio chips in any ID documentation.

Schwarzenegger’s veto noted he did not want to interfere with any coming or future federal programs for identifying people.

Albrecht’s recent guest on her radio program was Michigan State Rep. Paul Opsommer, who said the government appears to be using a national anti-terrorism plan requiring people to document their identities as they enter the United States to promote the technology.

“The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was … just about proving you were a citizen, not that you had to do it by any specific kind of technology,” Opsommer said.

But he said, “We are close to the point now that if you don’t want RFID in any of your documents that you can’t leave the country or get back into it.”

Opsommer said his own state sought an exception to the growing federal move toward driver’s licenses with an electronic ID chip, and he was told that was “unlikely.”

He was told, “They were trying to harmonize these standards with Canada and Mexico [so] it had to apply to everybody. I was absolutely dumbfounded.”

WND previously has reported on such chips when hospitals used them to identify newborns, a company desired to embed immigrants with the electronic devices, a government health event showcased them and when Wal-Mart used microchips to track customers.

Albrecht, who has worked on issues involving radio chip implants, REAL-ID, “Spychips” and other devices, provided a platform for Opsommer to talk about drivers licenses that include radio transmitters that provide identity information about the carrier. She is active with the AntiChips.com and SpyChips.com websites.

Opsommer said he’s been trying for several years to gain permission for his state to develop its own secure license without a radio chip.

“They have flat out refused, and their reasoning is all about the need for what they call ‘facilitative technology,’ which they then determined was RFID,” he said during the recent interview.

According to the U.S. State Department, which regulates international travel requirements, U.S. citizens now “must show proof of identity and proof of U.S. citizenship when entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the countries of the Caribbean by land or seas.”

Documentation could be a U.S. passport or other paperwork such as birth certificates or drivers’ licenses. But as of this summer, one of the options for returning residents will be an “Enhanced Driver’s License.”

The rules are being promulgated under the outline of the WHTI, a result of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which requires travelers to present a passport or other identity documents on entry into the U.S.

While the government has expressed confidence that no personal or critical information will be revealed through the system, it also says drivers will need special information on how to use, carry and protect the radio-embedded licenses as well as “a shielded container that will prevent anyone from reading your license.”

But Albrecht, the author or co-author of six books and videos, including the award-winning “Spychips: How major corporations and government plan to track your every move with RFID,” warns it goes much further.

“This must be nipped in the bud. Enhanced DL’s make REAL ID look like a walk in the park,” Albrecht said.

“Look, I am all in favor of only giving drivers licenses to U.S. citizens or people that are otherwise here in this country legally,” Opsommer said, “But we are already doing that in Michigan. We accomplished that without an EDL, as has virtually every other state via their own state laws.

“But just because we choose to only issue our license to U.S. citizens does not mean that our licenses should somehow then fall under federal control. It’s still a state document, we are just controlling who we issue them to. But under the EDL program, the Department of Homeland Security is saying that making sure illegals don’t get these is not enough. Now you need the chip to prove your citizenship,” he continued.

Opsommer further warned the electronic chips embedded in licenses to confirm identity are just the first step.

“Canadians are also more connected to what is going on in Britain with the expansion of the national ID program there, and have seen the mission creep that occurs with things like gun control first hand … Whatever the reason, as an example, just last week the Canadian government repatriated a database from the U.S. that contained the driver’s license data of their citizens,” he said.

“Someone finally woke up and realized it would not be a good idea for that to be on American soil … I think it is only logical that we as state legislators really understand how the governments of Mexico and Canada will have access to our own citizen’s data. Right now it is very ambiguous and even difficult for me to get answers on as a state representative.”

But Opsommer said Big Brother concerns certainly have some foundation.

“So if EDLs are the new direction for secure licenses in all states, it just reinforces what many have been telling me that DHS wants to expand this program and turn it into a wireless national ID with a different name,” he said. “We’ll wake up one day and without a vote in Congress DHS will just pass a rule and say something like ’starting next month you will need an EDL to fly on a plane, or to buy a gun, or whatever.’”

I … uh … am not … uh … a muslim …uh. PRAISE ALLAH! I just don’t understand all the jews who keep voting for democrats; it’s like signing your own death warrant.

The Associated Press
Published: January 17, 2009
WASHINGTON: A Muslim scholar chosen to speak at President-elect Barack Obama’s inaugural prayer service Wednesday is the leader of a group that federal prosecutors say has ties to terrorists.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is one of many religious leaders scheduled to speak at the prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral.

Mattson has been the guest of honor at State Department dinners and has met with senior Pentagon officials during the Bush administration. She also spoke at a prayer service at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

But in 2007 and as recently as last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents linking the Hartford, Conn.-based Islamic society to the group Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Neither Mattson nor her organization have been charged. But prosecutors wrote in July that they had “a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking” the group to Hamas and other radical groups.

Today in Americas
Crash cause unclear, but not pilot’s heroismInaugural too big an attraction for manyStatement on U.S. torture may have unexpected falloutLinda Douglass, a spokeswoman for Obama’s inaugural committee, would not discuss the case or say whether the committee knew about it.

“She has a stellar reputation in the faith community,” Douglass said Saturday night.

The existence of the court documents was first reported by Politico.

The Islamic Society of North America, which describes itself as “the nation’s largest mainstream Muslim community-based organization,” is fighting its inclusion on a list of coconspirators in the Dallas terrorism case against the Holy Land Foundation. In court documents, the group says it does not condone terrorism.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/01/17/america/Inauguration-Prayer.php

Does it make me a racist if I point out the fact that Obama has appointed a Socialist who is also a member of the Religion of Global Warming.

Obama climate czar has socialist ties
Stephen Dinan (Contact)
Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for “global governance” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner’s name and biography had been removed from Socialist International’s Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available.

Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world’s social democratic political parties such as Britain’s Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.

The group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization’s action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Obama, who has said action on climate change would be a priority in his administration, tapped Mrs. Browner last month to fill a new position as White House coordinator of climate and energy policies. The appointment does not need Senate confirmation.

Mr. Obama’s transition team said Mrs. Browner’s membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in U.S. policymaking to her new role.

“The Commission for a Sustainable World Society includes world leaders from a variety of political parties, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair, in serving as vice president of the convening organization,” Obama transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

“Carol Browner was chosen to help the president-elect coordinate energy and climate policy because she understands that our efforts to create jobs, achieve energy security and combat climate change demand integration among different agencies; cooperation between federal, state and local governments; and partnership with the private sector,” Mr. Shapiro said in an e-mail.

Mrs. Browner ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton. Until she was tapped for the Obama administration, she was on the board of directors for the National Audubon Society, the League of Conservation Voters, the Center for American Progress and former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection.

Her name has been removed from the Gore organization’s Web site list of directors, and the Audubon Society issued a press release about her departure from that organization.

Republicans said Mrs. Browner’s work with Socialist International raises questions.

“Does she agree with the group’s positions on global governance - that the United States should abdicate its international leadership to international organizations? Does she support its position that the international community should be the ultimate arbiter of climate change policy?” said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

“These are questions that merit answers - especially when you consider this group’s deep skepticism about America’s ability to be a force for positive change in the world,” she said.

An aide on the Obama team said its information shows that Mrs. Browner resigned from the organization in June 2008. The aide, who asked not to be named because he was discussing internal matters, said the transition team was aware she had been a member of the group when she was vetted.

The Socialist International Web site didn’t have a copy of her June 30 speech, but the agenda for the meeting had her scheduled to speak as part of a panel on “How do we strengthen the multilateral architecture for a sustainable future?”

Other panel participants were Sergey Mironov, speaker of the Russian legislature’s upper chamber and a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; Zhang Zhijun, vice minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee; and Jesus Caldera, a former Minister of Employment and Social Affairs of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party.

A woman answering the phone at Socialist International’s headquarters in London said all officers were traveling.

Nobody from the organization returned a message left Friday.

Socialist International bills itself as the world body of democratic socialist movements. It includes members ranging from Israel’s Labor Party and France’s Socialist Party to Angola’s MPLA, which won the 1970s Angolan civil war with the aid of Soviet arms and Cuban troops.

The organization distinguishes itself from violent or revolutionary communist parties. However, some such groups, including the Chinese Communist Party, have been invited to its events as guest organizations.

The Democratic Socialists of America, not the Democratic Party, is listed as the group’s U.S. representative. But Mrs. Browner was listed as an individual member of Socialist International, but not a member of the DSA.

While agreeing with Mr. Obama on the need for action to address climate change, the organization wants more draconian policies than the president-elect’s preferred solution.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called for a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions. He argued that such a system is efficient and lets the free market determine where it’s easiest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Socialist International says such “flexible mechanisms” do not clamp down hard enough on polluters.

The organization often takes a decidedly critical view of the U.S.

At this summer’s meeting, the group issued a statement on economics that blasted the “neo-liberal market ideology and the unilateralist, U.S.-dominated approach in the global economic system,” and attacked the U.S. for dominating international financial institutions.

At its meeting earlier in 2008 in Santiago, Chile, Socialist International endorsed “global governance” as the solution to the world’s problems of peace and climate change.

At a July meeting in St. Petersburg, the commission said developed countries “should think of decreasing current consumption levels” - which would mean shrinking their economies - in order to help the environment.

Socialist International regularly blasts the construction of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. The fence was approved by both houses of Congress, including with Mr. Obama’s vote in the Senate.

Socialist International was congratulatory when Mr. Obama won the election, issuing a statement noting that “the sky may seem a bit brighter today” but warning still that “there are enormous global challenges that must be addressed effectively and without delay.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/12/obama-climate-czar-has-socialist-ties/print/

I am hating Bush more and more each day because of his socialist bailout. The free market is killing the liberal media, and Bush’s stupidity may just allow the liberal media to kill the free market.

Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate
Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:50pm EST
By Robert MacMillan - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.

Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

“You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it,” he said.

The state’s Department of Economic and Community Development is offering tax breaks, training funds, financing opportunities and other incentives for publishers, but not cash.

“We’re not saying ‘Come to Bristol, come to New Britain, we’ll give you a million dollars,’” Nicastro said.

The lifeline comes as U.S. newspaper publishers such as the New York Times, Tribune and McClatchy deal with falling advertising revenue, fleeing readers and tremendous debt.

Aggravating this extreme change is the world financial crisis. Publishers have slashed costs, often by firing thousands in a bid to remain healthy and to impress investors.

Any aid to papers could gladden financial stakeholders, said Mike Simonton, an analyst at Fitch Ratings.

“If governments are able to provide enough incentives to get some potential bidders off the sidelines, that could be a positive for newspaper valuations,” he said.

NEWSPAPERS ARE DIFFERENT

Many media experts predict that 2009 will be the year that newspapers of all sizes will falter and die, a threat long predicted but rarely taken seriously until the credit crunch blossomed into a full-fledged financial meltdown.

Some papers no longer print daily, and some not at all.

Even as industries deemed too important to fail are seeking bailouts, most newspaper publishers have refused to give serious thought to the idea, though some industry insiders recounted joking about it with other newspaper executives.

“The whole idea of the First Amendment and separating media and giving them freedom of control from the government is sacrosanct,” said Digby Solomon, publisher of Tribune Co’s Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia.

Former Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler said that a democracy has an obligation to help preserve a free press.

“I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press,” said Fiedler, now dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. “Thus it is in democracy’s interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn’t hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened.”

Connecticut does not see trying to find a buyer and offering tax breaks as exerting influence on the press, said Joan McDonald, the economic development commissioner.

“It is what we do … with companies whether it’s in aerospace, biomedical devices, biotech or financial services,” she said. “If a company is developing laser technology, we don’t get into the business of what lasers are used for.”

Connecticut’s actions are not the first time government has helped newspapers. The U.S. Postal Service has offered discounted postage rates. Several cities have papers running under Joint Operating Agreements, created following the congressional Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 to keep competing urban dailies viable despite circulation declines.

But the press is not the same as other businesses, said veteran newspaper financial analyst John Morton. “You’re doing something that has a bearing on political life,” he said.

Marc Levy, executive editor of the Herald and the Press, said he would not let gratitude get in the way of reporting on local political peccadilloes.

“It’s the brutal reality,” he said. “You’d say, ‘thank you very much for helping me with that, but now we have to ask you about this thing.’”

(Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE4BU53T20081231?sp=true

The RNC is finally figuring out what the people have known for several years, that Bush is a complete failure as a leader and has no personal political convictions.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
EXCLUSIVE: RNC draft rips Bush’s bailouts
Ralph Z. Hallow (Contact)
EXCLUSIVE:

In what would amount to a slap in the face to a sitting Republican president and the party’s Senate and House leaders, national GOP officials, including the vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, are sponsoring a resolution opposing the resort to “socialist” means to save capitalism.

“We can’t be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms,” said Solomon Yue, a cosponsor of a resolution that would put the RNC — the party’s national governing body — on the record as opposing the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries.

Republican National Vice Chairman and constitutional law attorney James Bopp Jr. authored the resolution and is asking the rest of the 168 voting members of the committee to sign it.

“The resolution also opposes President-elect Obama’s proposed public works program and supports conservative alternatives,” while encouraging the RNC “to engage in vigorous public policy debates consistent with our party platform,” Mr. Bopp said.

The RNC has never played a leading policy role or any policy role except once every four years in framing the national party platform, which is quickly forgotten and almost never referred to for another four years.

See related story: Jeb Bush Senate bid a GOP remedy?

“Jim Bopp is the author of the no-bailout resolution because he wants to articulate our core principles now, not every four years when we have a presidential election,” said Mr. Yue, an Oregon member of the Committee. “This is based on the thinking that articulating political philosophy is equally important as applying it consistently.”

“Failing to do so, we have today’s identity crisis, which resulted in our losses in 2006 and 2008,” Mr. Yue said. “The bailout is a good example … In my view, if we are not going to address this, we will see more losses in 2010.”

North Dakota GOP Chairman Gary Emineth said he too has had enough of the never-ending disconnect between what the platform says and what elected Republicans do.

“It is time the party gets involved in policy issues and forces candidates to respond to the platform,” Mr. Emineth said. “Frankly the way we view the platform is a joke. We work hard to drive our principles into the platform, then candidates ignore it.”

“If the party doesn’t move in this direction, we will continue to be irrelevant. Whoever has the larger star power will continue to win, and what they stand for and believe will become less relevant,” Mr. Emineth said.

Mr. Bopp, Mr. Yue and the other cosponsors say they have the numbers to pull off this rebellion, unprecedented in the history of either party’s national committee.

“We have enough co-sponsors to take this to the RNC floor” at the party’s Jan. 28-31 annual winter meeting in Washington. “I will take it to the Resolutions Committee, but I intend to press this issue to the floor for decision.”

To the astonishment of most rank-and-file Republicans, hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts of private-sector companies were pushed through Congress last month by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

Just as astonishing, the Senate and House GOP leaders and the party’s presidential nominee supported the bailout of the financial industry, which in some cases took the form of the U.S. government’s gaining ownership of huge but financially troubled companies.

Nonetheless, not all RNC members — including some of Mr. Bopp’s fellow conservatives — are pleased with the idea of having it make policy instead of simply minding the campaign fundraising store.

Fellow RNC member Ron Nehring, chairman of the California GOP, expressed more reservations.

“We have to be careful not to confuse passing resolutions for action, or creating a situation where people interpret the lack of some resolution as an excuse for inaction on an important issue,” he said.

Historically, the elected GOP House and Senate leaders, plus the president and his advisers when the party controls the White House, make national party policy. The RNC’s sole job has been to raise money for candidates and to pass the party line down the food chain to state and local leaders.

The same has been true for the Democratic National Committee.

The Bopp-Yue vanguard say they are determined to change that.

“For the past eight years, the RNC has been the political outreach of the White House,” said Arizona GOP Chairman Randy Pullen, another resolution cosponsor who opposed what he regarded as Mr. Bush’s pro-amnesty immigration bill and his “economic policies promoting the ‘ownership society’ because they would eventually lead to the financial meltdown we are currently experiencing.”

“It is now time for the RNC to assert itself in terms of ideas and political philosophy,” Mr. Pullen added. “If we don’t do it now, when will we?”

Mr. Bopp, a social conservative who has served as counsel to pro-life groups, said, “We must stand for and publicly advocate our conservative principles as a party 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year.”

The RNC revolutionaries leave no doubt they mean to turn the committee into policy-producing and enforcing machine.

“In the long-run, we want to see this committee play an active philosophical-policy leadership role for the national GOP,” Mr. Yue said.

But it remains unclear whether there exist the rules or the machinery for enforcing such a resolution on Republican elected officials.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/30/rnc-pushes-unprecedented-criticism-of-bailouts/

Are Christians ready to stop being wimps and start fighting back against anti-Christian liberals? Maybe so.

Fla. woman claims ‘Merry Christmas’ got her fired
By MELISSA NELSON, Associated Press Writer Melissa Nelson, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 26, 1:45 pm ET

PENSACOLA, Fla. – A Christian woman claims she was fired from her job because she greeted callers with “Merry Christmas,” but the vacation rental company says it’s no Scrooge and the woman is just a disgruntled employee.

Tonia Thomas, 35, said she refused to say “Happy Holidays” and was fired, even after offering to use the company’s non-holiday greeting. The Panama City woman filed a federal complaint that accuses the company of religious discrimination. She is seeking compensation for lost wages.

“I hold my core Christian values to a high standard and I absolutely refuse to give in on the basis of values. All I wanted was to be able to say ‘Merry Christmas’ or to acknowledge no holidays,” she said Tuesday. “As a Christian, I don’t recognize any other holidays.”

Thomas said she is Baptist.

Her former employer, Counts-Oakes Resorts Properties Inc., said she wasn’t fired for saying “Merry Christmas,” but would not elaborate.

“We are a Christian company and we celebrate Christmas,” said Andy Phillips, the company’s president. Thomas is “a disgruntled employee,” presenting a one-sided version of what happened when she was fired Dec. 10, Phillips said.

Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based legal group that advocates for people discriminated against because of their religion, is representing Thomas before the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Their complaint also accuses the company of harassing and taunting Thomas after she was fired by calling the police to watch her pack her belongs and leave.

Thomas could have hard time winning the case, said G. Thomas Harper, a Jacksonville-based labor attorney who writes a newsletter on Florida employment law.

“I wouldn’t think an employee has the right to insist (on saying Merry Christmas) unless that really is a tenet of their faith. She would have to make a strong case that was part of her beliefs, if not, it becomes insubordination,” he said.

Thomas has found another job, but she makes less than the $10.50 an hour she earned with the rental company. She said the trauma of being fired and the pay cut has made for a tough holiday season for herself, her husband and their 6-year-old son.

Harper said when it comes to holiday greetings, the smartest choice might be ignoring the season.

“The best option is just not to say anything,” he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081226/ap_on_re_us/happy_holidays_firing

Another reason to pass more “right-to-work” laws.

Autoworkers Union Keeps $6 Million Golf Course for Members at $33 Million Lakeside Retreat

Friday , December 26, 2008

The United Auto Workers may be out of the hole now that President Bush has approved a $17 billion bailout of the U.S. auto industry, but the union isn’t out of the bunker just yet.

Even as the industry struggles with massive losses, the UAW brass continue to own and operate a $33 million lakeside retreat in Michigan, complete with a $6.4 million designer golf course. And it’s costing them millions each year.

• Click here to see photos of the UAW’s $33 million retreat.

The UAW, known more for its strikes than its slices, hosts seminars and junkets at the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center in Onaway, Mich., which is nestled on “1,000 heavily forested acres” on Michigan’s Black Lake, according to its Web site.

But the Black Lake club and retreat, which are among the union’s biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union’s neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis.

Critics call it a resort for union leaders that wastes money from union dues.

“It’s their members’ money that they’re spending on this thing,” said Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts, a union watchdog group. “The union has bigger issues at hand than managing a golf course.”

Managing the course may become a burden for the union. The UAW covers costs for the Reuther Center from the interest it earns on its strike fund, according to tax documents, but massive losses in the past five years have forced the union to make heavy loans to keep the center afloat. Critics call it a poor investment for a group with over $1.25 billion in assets.

“Unions certainly have had real estate investments in the past, but investments are supposed to make money, not bleed money,” said Wilson.

The UAW did not return calls from FOXNews.com, and a spokesman could not be reached for comment.

The Reuther Center is open 11 months of the year to offer courses on leadership, political action, civil rights and other topics; it hosts nearly 10,000 visitors annually. The UAW says it sends workers there to “learn, experience unionism (and) commit to labor’s cause,” according to their Web site.

The center was purchased in 1967 and underwent massive renovations in the ’90s under the careful watch of former UAW president Steve Yokich. “Today’s Black Lake might not exist if not for Steve Yokich,” said union member Bob Reidt, whom Yokich appointed as Black Lake’s director. “Yokich is responsible for rebuilding Black Lake.”

The UAW erected a monument to its longtime president Walter Reuther — the center’s namesake — which bears an inscription of his words: “There is no greater calling than to serve your brother. There is no greater satisfaction than to have done it well.”

But Reuther, who died in a plane crash en route to the center in 1970, never knew the satisfaction of Black Lake’s “well-groomed fairways,” a course that Michigan Golf Magazine called a “stunning visual marvel.”

Union members can play golf at discounted rates on one of the country’s top 100 courses, designed in 2000 by famed course architect Rees Jones at a cost of $6 million.

The center has a storied history. Reuther had his ashes scattered at the site, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz honeymooned there in 1940, well before it was bought by the UAW.

“It’s funny that they call it an education center — it’s a resort,” said Wilson. “If I was a union member, I would prefer that they rented out a room at the Ramada Inn.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,472304,00.html

…but I thought that the crazy global warming nuts already said that there was a “consensus” that global warming was true.

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 10:39AM GMT 28 Dec 2008

The first, on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. The second, on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the “hottest in history” and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to “natural factors” such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely “masking the underlying warming trend”, and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for “emissions trading”, “carbon capture”, building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to “biofuels”, are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest “metric martyr”, the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council’s vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce “by the bowl” (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don’t understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray.

Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original “martyrs” who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column’s readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book).

Readers were equally generous this year in rushing to the aid of Sue Smith, whose son was killed in a Snatch Land Rover in Iraq in 2005. Their contributions made it possible for her to carry on with the High Court action she has brought against the Ministry of Defence, with the sole aim of calling it to account for needlessly risking soldiers’ lives by sending them into battle in hopelessly inappropriate vehicles. Thanks not least to Mrs Smith’s determined fight, the Snatch Land Rover scandal, first reported here in 2006, has at last become a national cause celebre.

May I finally thank all those readers who have written to me in 2008 – so many that, as usual, it has not been possible to answer all their messages. But their support and information has been hugely appreciated. May I wish them and all of you a happy (if globally not too warm) New Year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html