Gotta See this: http://happybirthdayfromaz.com/
Send a Birthday greeting to the President who is in Chicago with Rev Wright, Tony Rezco, and other Chicago heavyweights while his Wife is taking over 60 rooms with 40 people at a 5- Star Spanish Hotel with the kids.
****************
“Summer of Recovery” (Obama’s Term) Update
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website.
Participation has set records for 18 straight months.
An average of 40.5 million people, more than an eighth of the population, will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1, according to White House estimates.
The figure is projected to rise to 43.3 million in 2011.
But the economy is getting better, according to the Obama Administration and Liberal Media.
“Make no mistake, we are headed in the right direction,” Mr. Obama said July 2nd.
The U.S. economy continued to grow in the second quarter, but the pace slowed more than economists had expected.-CBS News
It may not feel like we are in a full-fledged economic recovery yet but the Treasury Secretary seemed to imply otherwise in a recent New York Times piece entitled “Welcome to the Recovery”. Although Secretary Timothy Geithner noted in the piece that we still have a long way to go, it seems a little off-putting for the Treasury Secretary to welcome us to a recovery when the unemployment rate is still well over 9% and not expected to go down much further in the near future.
A new jobs report for July is due this week but the jobs report for June wasn’t terribly optimistic. A CNN.com news items about that report was titled “Job recovery hits a wall” and reported that the economy lost 125,000 jobs in June. One hopes that the July jobs report will be much stronger. Regardless, I’m sure that the millions of Americans out there who still don’t have jobs don’t feel like we are in a “recovery”.
Liberal economist Paul Krugman even seemed surprised by Geithner’s piece. After criticizing Republicans for obstructionism (unsurprisingly) and saying that the government has not done enough to stimulate the economy, Krugman wrote that ”the [Obama] administration has decided to engage in happy talk, saying that it’s all good. Do they really think this will work?”
The administration might think so but until a lot more jobs are added to this economy, it seems like it’s too early for the Treasury Secretary to welcome us to a recovery. (townhall.com)
Has anyone told the American People?
Oh right, they don’t care about that, they just care about pushing their agenda.
And Big Brother is always right, isn’t he.
And since anything that is wrong is Bush’s Fault they don’t have to worry about it anyhow!
***************
In an exclusive Newsmax interview, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich backs Arizona’s new immigration law and says Gov. Jan Brewer “ought to promptly file suit against the federal government to make them pay for all the costs that Arizona’s dealing with — costs in schools, costs in prisons, costs in hospitals. If the federal government’s basis of its lawsuit is that it has sole responsibility, then it ought to have sole responsibility. If I were [Gov. Brewer], I’d present them with a bill for several billion dollars on behalf of the people of Arizona who are currently suffering because eof the incompetence and failure of the federal government.”
Sounds good to me.
*********************
YOU HAVE BEEN SCANNED, CITIZEN
For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”
Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.
This follows an earlier disclosure by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.
Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers.
This privacy debate, which has been simmering since the days of the Bush administration, came to a boil two weeks ago when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that scanners would soon appear at virtually every major airport. The updated list includes airports in New York City, Dallas, Washington, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to grant an immediate injunction pulling the plug on TSA’s body scanning program. In a separate lawsuit, EPIC obtained a letter from the Marshals Service, part of the Justice Department, and released it on Tuesday afternoon.
These “devices are designed and deployed in a way that allows the images to be routinely stored and recorded, which is exactly what the Marshals Service is doing,” EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg told CNET. “We think it’s significant.”
A 70-page document showing the TSA’s procurement specifications, classified as “sensitive security information,” says that in some modes the scanner must “allow exporting of image data in real time” and provide a mechanism for “high-speed transfer of image data” over the network. (It also says that image filters will “protect the identity, modesty, and privacy of the passenger.”)
“TSA is not being straightforward with the public about the capabilities of these devices,” Rotenberg said. “This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every U.S. traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion–I think it’s outrageous.” EPIC’s lawsuit says that the TSA should have announced formal regulations, and argues that the body scanners violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches.
TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz told CNET on Wednesday that the agency’s scanners are delivered to airports with the image recording functions turned off. “We’re not recording them,” she said. “I’m reiterating that to the public. We are not ever activating those capabilities at the airport.”
The TSA maintains that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: “The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events.”
Notice they did say they didn’t have the capability, they just were not using it. Uh, huh, sure I’m always willing to believe the angels of better nature when it comes to the Government, especially this one, and the Justice Dept and Big Sis Janet.
Don’t you fell safer now?
Don’t feel better about the economy.
Happy Happy Joy Joy!
Send a Birthday greeting to the President who is in Chicago with Rev Wright, Tony Rezco, and other Chicago heavyweights while his Wife is taking over 60 rooms with 40 people at a 5- Star Spanish Hotel with the kids.
****************
“Summer of Recovery” (Obama’s Term) Update
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website.
Participation has set records for 18 straight months.
An average of 40.5 million people, more than an eighth of the population, will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1, according to White House estimates.
The figure is projected to rise to 43.3 million in 2011.
But the economy is getting better, according to the Obama Administration and Liberal Media.
“Make no mistake, we are headed in the right direction,” Mr. Obama said July 2nd.
The U.S. economy continued to grow in the second quarter, but the pace slowed more than economists had expected.-CBS News
It may not feel like we are in a full-fledged economic recovery yet but the Treasury Secretary seemed to imply otherwise in a recent New York Times piece entitled “Welcome to the Recovery”. Although Secretary Timothy Geithner noted in the piece that we still have a long way to go, it seems a little off-putting for the Treasury Secretary to welcome us to a recovery when the unemployment rate is still well over 9% and not expected to go down much further in the near future.
A new jobs report for July is due this week but the jobs report for June wasn’t terribly optimistic. A CNN.com news items about that report was titled “Job recovery hits a wall” and reported that the economy lost 125,000 jobs in June. One hopes that the July jobs report will be much stronger. Regardless, I’m sure that the millions of Americans out there who still don’t have jobs don’t feel like we are in a “recovery”.
Liberal economist Paul Krugman even seemed surprised by Geithner’s piece. After criticizing Republicans for obstructionism (unsurprisingly) and saying that the government has not done enough to stimulate the economy, Krugman wrote that ”the [Obama] administration has decided to engage in happy talk, saying that it’s all good. Do they really think this will work?”
The administration might think so but until a lot more jobs are added to this economy, it seems like it’s too early for the Treasury Secretary to welcome us to a recovery. (townhall.com)
Has anyone told the American People?
Oh right, they don’t care about that, they just care about pushing their agenda.
And Big Brother is always right, isn’t he.
And since anything that is wrong is Bush’s Fault they don’t have to worry about it anyhow!
In an exclusive Newsmax interview, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich backs Arizona’s new immigration law and says Gov. Jan Brewer “ought to promptly file suit against the federal government to make them pay for all the costs that Arizona’s dealing with — costs in schools, costs in prisons, costs in hospitals. If the federal government’s basis of its lawsuit is that it has sole responsibility, then it ought to have sole responsibility. If I were [Gov. Brewer], I’d present them with a bill for several billion dollars on behalf of the people of Arizona who are currently suffering because eof the incompetence and failure of the federal government.”
Sounds good to me.
*********************
YOU HAVE BEEN SCANNED, CITIZEN
For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”
Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.
This follows an earlier disclosure by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.
Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers.
This privacy debate, which has been simmering since the days of the Bush administration, came to a boil two weeks ago when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that scanners would soon appear at virtually every major airport. The updated list includes airports in New York City, Dallas, Washington, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to grant an immediate injunction pulling the plug on TSA’s body scanning program. In a separate lawsuit, EPIC obtained a letter from the Marshals Service, part of the Justice Department, and released it on Tuesday afternoon.
These “devices are designed and deployed in a way that allows the images to be routinely stored and recorded, which is exactly what the Marshals Service is doing,” EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg told CNET. “We think it’s significant.”
A 70-page document showing the TSA’s procurement specifications, classified as “sensitive security information,” says that in some modes the scanner must “allow exporting of image data in real time” and provide a mechanism for “high-speed transfer of image data” over the network. (It also says that image filters will “protect the identity, modesty, and privacy of the passenger.”)
“TSA is not being straightforward with the public about the capabilities of these devices,” Rotenberg said. “This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every U.S. traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion–I think it’s outrageous.” EPIC’s lawsuit says that the TSA should have announced formal regulations, and argues that the body scanners violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches.
TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz told CNET on Wednesday that the agency’s scanners are delivered to airports with the image recording functions turned off. “We’re not recording them,” she said. “I’m reiterating that to the public. We are not ever activating those capabilities at the airport.”
The TSA maintains that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: “The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events.”
Notice they did say they didn’t have the capability, they just were not using it. Uh, huh, sure I’m always willing to believe the angels of better nature when it comes to the Government, especially this one, and the Justice Dept and Big Sis Janet.
Don’t you fell safer now?
Don’t feel better about the economy.
Happy Happy Joy Joy!
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