The No News Newsfeed, October 28th 2009

The last day of the no news newsfeed. The Baron and his contraption will resume tomorrow. To all our tipsters, I apologize, but without that programmer automation, I can’t keep up with y’all.

I know you’ll be glad to have the real McCoy back again. But not nearly as glad as I’ll be!

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D.C. Sniper Execution Planned for November 10th

The mastermind of the 2002 Washington, DC-area sniper attacks will die by lethal injection next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday.

John Allen Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said.

Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings.

The three-week killing spree in October 2002 left 10 dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also suspected of shootings in several other states, including a killing in Louisiana and another in Alabama. Malvo is serving a life sentence in prison.

Muhammad’s lawyers have asked the Virginia governor for clemency and plan to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court early next month.

Yeah, I know we Americans are barbarians. But I, for one, will be glad to see this cold-blooded murderer shuffle off this mortal coil. The death penalty has its place and this is one of them. So was the Lockerbie bomber.


Muslim Mob Attacks Copts Repeatedly

On Tuesday evening, October 27, a Muslim mob attacked the Church of St. George in the village of Nazlet Albadraman, located in the Deir Mawas District, Minya Province. The Priest and the congregation were held inside until they were freed by the village mayor after security forces dispersed the mob. The attack was prompted by the restoration of the Church’s tower, for which the Church holds the necessary permit.

Protestant Pastor Habib Ghattas said that the Coptic Orthodox priest Father Serabamon, phoned him from inside the Church and asked him to contact the security forces. “We need them to come and rescue us from the mob,” he told Pastor Ghattas.

The mob threw stones and destroyed the church’s windows, before going on to destroy cars, shops and Coptic homes. One Coptic woman, Ayman Nada Landy, suffered head injuries. Security forces are presently deployed in the village to diffuse the situation and prevent further escalation. The village was also placed under curfew.

St. George’s Church in Nazlet Albadraman serves nearly 5000 Copts. It was renovated eight years ago except for the tower, which is located on the top of the gate entrance to the church. It was made of soft bricks and posed a threat to the lives of the Church visitors. After four years of conflict with the authorities , the church obtained a permit for the renovation work two days ago. Once a was license obtained, the church demolished the dilapidated tower and began digging the foundations for the new one.

[…]

Pastor Ghattas said that what made the situation deteriorate was “while the mob was congregating near the Church, a preacher at the ‘Islamic Charity Society’ in the village was calling on Muslims, through his loudspeaker, to take action against the ‘Christian Infidels,’ so more and more people joined the mob.”

Although security forces are presently stationed in the village, some Copts are still taking shelter at the Church, to avoid engagement with the Muslims and for fear of being arrested randomly by the police.

Minya Copts are staging a three-day protest fast, October 26-28, against church-building restrictions and the escalating Muslim attacks on them.

Attorney Mamdouh Nakhla, Director of “Al-Kalema” Human Rights Center called today on President Mubarak to dismissed the Governor of Minya, in view of the increasing sectarian incidents and abduction and forced Islamization of Coptic girls during his tenure in office.


Time Is on California’s Side

. . . but time isn’t.

Contrarianism is a well-established investment strategy. “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful” is one of Warren Buffett’s favorite maxims. During the scariest hours of last year’s financial plunge, Buffett put lots of money where his mouth was, buying a significant equity position in Goldman Sachs that has already proven extremely lucrative. Of course, if it were easy to make such investment decisions, we would all be as rich as Buffett. Contrarians who made a big bet on Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2008 are now sleeping on friends’ couches. Sometimes the darkest hour is just before dawn, and other times it’s just before death.

Contrarianism is not confined to high finance: newspapers and magazines are desperate to offer perspectives that set them apart from their competitors. Time, for example, has decided to make a contrarian play on California. In recent months, other publications have featured articles with titles like “Who Killed California?,” “Sundown for California,” “End State,” “Death of the California Dream,” and “California: Worst Place in the History of the Universe for Multicelled Organisms.” (Okay, not the last one, but the others are real.) Convinced that every scrap of negative information has already been “priced in” to California’s public profile, Time offers a cover story this week titled “Despite Its Woes, California’s Dream Still Lives.”

The question is whether California is Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers. Does the state, despite its current problems, remain a fundamentally sound enterprise whose residual strengths will secure a bright future? Or has this once proud and prosperous endeavor passed a tipping point after too many bad decisions and practices, with no options left except to prolong and mitigate its own decline?…

[continue reading Voegli’s essay at City Journal]


PENALTIES FOR NO INSURANCE

Will individuals that don’t get health insurance be penalized under any new health care reform, asks the Associated Press (AP)?
- - - - - - - - -
President Barack Obama did not propose penalties for people who don’t get health insurance as a candidate, but he now supports an individual mandate as long as waivers are available for those for whom it would be a hardship. Republicans say the penalties, which are referred to as taxes in congressional documents, would violate Obama’s campaign pledge not to increase taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.

[It violates basic integrity, too. What a prevaricator this President has turned out to be]

All the health care reform plans under consideration would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people because of pre-existing medical conditions. Many Democrats say penalties are needed to prevent people from going without insurance until they get sick:

• The Senate Finance Committee bill would start phasing in fines for individuals who don’t get insurance in 2014, with the fines reaching $750 in 2017.
  
• The House plan would fine individuals 2.5 percent of their modified adjusted gross income, up to the cost of the average national premium for basic coverage.

How would fines be administered?

• The IRS would collect the fines through tax returns; failure to pay federal taxes can result in criminal charges, though it rarely does unless fraud is involved.
  
• However, the Senate Finance Committee bill specifically prohibits criminal penalties.

Suuure they’ll prohibit criminalization. The KGB IRS sends people to jail now. Just wait till they get their bureaucratic paws on this one.


OOPS

White House Modifies Plan to Give Away Part of U.S. H1N1 Vaccine Supply to Foreign Countries; Says Sebelius Committed ‘Slight Miscommunication’

A White House official told CNSNews.com on Tuesday that the Obama administration’s commitment to donate 10 percent of the U.S. supply of H1N1 vaccine to other countries will not necessarily begin after 40 million doses are procured, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNSNews.com and the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week.

On Saturday, three days after Sebelius made her remarks about the U.S. donating some of its vaccine to foreign countries, President Obama declared the H1N1 epidemic a national emergency.

Calling Sebelius’ remarks “a slight miscommunication,” the White House official told CNSNews.com that the 40-million dose figure that Sebelius cited as the trigger-point at which U.S. donations of vaccine to foreign countries would begin refers to the estimate of needed vaccines for the most at-risk population in the United States.

“It’s the minimal requirement for considering when the timing will be right,” to begin international donations, the official said, adding that the most important consideration is the vaccine supply in the United States.

“The first priority is to ensure domestic requirements are met,” the official said.

The official also told CNSNews.com that the Obama administration is in “constant dialogue” with the World Health Organization (WHO), which will distribute the vaccine that the United States and 10 other nations donate.

WHO also has to ensure that countries that receive vaccines are in the position to use them is another factor in determining when international donations are made, the official said.

“Nobody wants to see vaccines being available and not being utilized,” she said.

At a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee last Wednesday, Sebelius said, “The president clearly has made it clear that his priority is safety and security of the American people, and immediately he also adds that we’re a global partner. So we have joined now with 11 nations in terms of 10 percent of the vaccine will be made available to developing countries.”

[…]

According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of Oct. 21 less than 12 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine had been shipped to the 150,000 locations offering the injection and nasal spray immunization around the United States.

Hospitals and health clinics around the country are reporting long lines and running out of the vaccine before demand can be met.

Rahm Emmanuel must be smiling broadly. Another crisis to take advantage of…

From The Patriot Post:

Obama Jokes

Q: What’s the main problem with Barack Obama jokes?
A: His followers don’t think they’re funny and everyone else doesn’t think they’re jokes.

Q: What’s the difference between Rahm Emanuel and a carp?
A: One is a scum sucking bottom feeder and the other is a fish.

Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.

Q: What’s the difference between Obama’s cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One’s full of tax evaders, blackmailers and threats to society. The other is for prisoners.

Q: What’s the difference between a zoo and the White House?
A: A zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.

Q: If Pelosi and Obama were in a boat and it started to sink, who would be saved?
A: America!

Q: What’s the difference between Obama and Hitler?
A: Hitler wrote his own book.

Q: What’s another difference between Obama and Hitler?
A: Hitler got the Olympics to come to his country.

Q: Why doesn’t Obama pray?
A: It’s impossible to read the teleprompter with your eyes closed.

Okay, okay, so you’ve already heard them. I lead a sheltered life, all right??


Snapped Rod Closes Major Bridge, Creating Traffic Nightmare for San Francisco Area

This is from AP:

The closure of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is expected to cause a traffic nightmare Wednesday as engineers evaluate the damage caused when a rod and metal brace fell into westbound lanes.

At least two vehicles -- a car and a small truck -- either were struck by or ran into the fallen rod, said California Highway Patrol Officer Peter Van Eckhardt, but no injuries were reported.

The landmark bridge is crossed each day by about 26,000 vehicles. The California Department of Transportation said Tuesday that it will remain closed indefinitely.

[…]

The rod that fell Tuesday was erected last month during an emergency repair job. It was holding in place a saddle-like cap that had been installed over a cracked link discovered over the Labor Day weekend.

[…]

The bridge was closed last month over the holida weekend while long-planned earthquake safety upgrades were being made to the bridge. When the crack was discovered, state transportation officials initially feared it would prevent them from reopening the 73-year-old span in time for the start of the work week.

But the unexpected work only ended up taking a few extra hours.

California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, officials had nothing to say Tuesday about what might have caused the repair job to fail.

[…]

Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a civil engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley who has spent 20 years studying the Bay Bridge, called the initial crack a “warning sign” of potentially bigger safety issues with the bridge.

“The repair they were doing was really a Band-Aid,” said Astaneh-Asl, who criticized Caltrans at the time for rushing to reopen the bridge. “The Band-Aid broke, in essence.”

Astaneh-Asl said the failure of the repair job demonstrates the need for a longer-term solution. The bridge’s age and design make it susceptible to collapse…

That repair must’ve been one of them stimulus jobs.

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A very tired Baron just came in the door. He had a grand time at the conference in Washington and no doubt will be telling you all about it tomorrow.

He brought home some great freebies: books from Sam Solomon, Brad O’Leary, and others. Mmmm…free books! Almost makes up for those darn mice finishing off the cheese.

Your regularly scheduled sane programming will resume tomorrow.