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posty

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Posts posted by posty

  1. Posted

    According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the following are the 5 most prolific earmark users:

     

    Thad Cochran - R-MS

    Christopher - R-MO

    Lisa Murkowski - R-AK

    Mary Landrieu - D-LA

    Robert Byrd - D-WV

     

    So what sorting technique did you use to arrive at this order in their Excel spreadsheet?

  2. Posted

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19663.html

     

    President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.

     

    The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.

     

    Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White House’s stately parlors. They stood next to him on the floor of a manufacturing plant in Indiana as he pitched his economic stimulus plan. They traveled to the Department of Transportation this week and were in the Capitol Rotunda last month when he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln in six-minute prepared remarks.

     

    Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual — not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.

     

    After the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches, reports surfaced that he was training to wean himself off of the device while on vacation in Hawaii. But no such luck.

     

    His use of the teleprompter makes work tricky for the television crews and photographers trying to capture an image of the president announcing a new Cabinet secretary or housing plan without a pane of glass blocking his face. And it is a startling sight to see such sleek, modern technology set against the mahogany doors and Bohemian crystal chandeliers in the East Room or the marble columns of the Grand Foyer.

     

    “It’s just something presidents haven’t done,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. “It’s jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter.”

     

    Just how much of a crutch the teleprompter has become for Obama was on sharp display during his latest commerce secretary announcement. The president spoke from a teleprompter in the ornate Indian Treaty Room for a few minutes. Then Gov. Gary Locke stepped to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper for reference.

     

    The president’s teleprompter also elicited some uncomfortable laughter after he announced Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Health and Human Services secretary. “Kathy,” Obama said, turning the podium over to Sebelius, who waited at the microphone for an awkward few seconds while the teleprompters were lowered to the floor and the television cameras rolled.

     

    Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.

     

    Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for George W. Bush, said while it’s entirely a matter of personal style, using a teleprompter at these smaller events has its drawbacks.

     

    “It removes you from the audience in the room,” Fleischer said. When speaking from notes, Fleischer said, the president can pick up his head and make eye contact with those in the audience, as opposed to focusing on the teleprompter to his left and right.

     

    Bush, Fleischer added, “would use the teleprompter for his major big events, but when he would travel around the country or do events, he would almost always work off of large index cards.”

     

    The White House says Obama’s point of reference is insignificant.

     

    "Whether one uses note cards or a teleprompter, the American people are a lot more concerned about the plans relayed than the method of delivery. This is not always true of the media," said Bill Burton, deputy press secretary.

     

    Obama has never tried to hide his use of a teleprompter. It was a mainstay during the final months of his campaign. He brought it to county fairs and campaign rallies alike — and once had it set up in the ring at a rodeo.

     

    In a break from his routine, Obama did not use a teleprompter during his pre-Inauguration speech at a factory in Bedford Heights, Ohio — and his delivery seemed to suffer. He paused too long at parts. He accentuated the wrong words. And overall he sounded hesitant and halting as he spoke from the prepared remarks on the podium.

     

    As president, the stakes in what he says are higher. Governing is not campaigning, and, as a former first-term senator, Obama has not held a previous elected position where his words carried even close to this level of influence.

     

    “In this kind of environment, you don’t want to make mistakes — on the economy you’re talking about doing things that affect the markets,” Kumar said.

     

    But be it extra precaution, style or a mental crutch, Obama has shown in the past that he needs the teleprompter. And while he still has his prepared remarks placed on the podium in a leather folder, the White House has shown no sign of trying to wean him off of it.

     

    Before Obama entered a room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Wednesday to announce his crackdown on defense contracts, a CNN reporter asked an Obama aide if the teleprompter could be moved further away from the podium or lowered. The answer was an unequivocal ‘no.’

     

    “He uses them to death,” a television crewmember who also covered the White House under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush said of the teleprompter. “The problem is, he never looks at you. He’s looking left, right, left, right — not at the camera. It’s almost like he’s not making eye contact with the American people.”

     

    Wednesday’s event posed another scenario photographers and television crews have to work around. Obama had five others join him at the announcement, including Sen. John McCain. The takeaway shot was of Obama and McCain. But the teleprompter on Obama’s left was almost directly in front of McCain.

     

    “You couldn’t get a good angle on him with McCain,” said a White House photographer who also covered Bush. “So if there’s someone else important in the frame, it’s hard to get a shot without the teleprompter.”

  3. Posted

    Picture - The Happy Couple

     

    http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years...05092park1.html

     

    MARCH 5--Meet Betty Jo Leonardson and John Silvia. The couple was arrested yesterday evening for having sex in a Florida park, not far from a playground. Cops were alerted by a female witness who spotted Leonardson and Silvia trysting in Rossi Park, which the City of Bradenton describes as the "crown jewel" of its park system. When confronted by a cop, the 51-year-old Silvia "appeared to be very startled" and ceased coupling with the 39-year-old Leonardson, according to the below Bradenton Police Department report. Silvia told Officer Mark Roberts that he "just wanted to ######" and did not know that he was "going to get pinched." He added that he did not see any children in the area "due to the fact that his ass was up in the air and he was not looking for any kids." As for why he was having sex in public, Silvia explained, "You do it in a house, I am homeless so I do it out here." Both Silvia and Leonardson were charged with lewd and lascivious behavior and booked into the Manatee County jail, where the mug shots at right were snapped. A third person, Ricky Osborn, was lying on the ground near Leonardson and Silvia, but was "only watching the arrestees have sex." Though not charged, Osborn remains very creepy.

  4. Posted

    Wow 25 DVDs... Gee thanks...

     

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/...ip-25-DVDs.html

     

    Gordon Brown has been given a collection of 25 classic American films on DVD as his official gift from Barack Obama.

     

    The Prime Minister flew home from his successful trip to Washington this morning with the 'special collector's box' of films hidden in his luggage.

     

    No 10 had tried to keep the present a secret, refusing to answer reporters who asked what President Obama had given to mark the reaffirmation of the special relationship.

     

    However, the Evening Standard discovered the truth through White House insiders.

     

    One reason for the secrecy might be that the gift seems markedly less generous and thoughtful than the presents taken to Washington by the Prime Minister.

     

    Mr Brown's gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.

     

    Mr Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute.

     

    Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.

     

    Finally, Mr Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

     

    The White House issued a press briefing today that put on record how much Mr Obama had appreciated the gifts.

     

    The Prime Minister's reaction to getting DVDs is not known. Mr Brown is not noted for his love of cinema, although he once claimed on a trip to India that he was an admirer of Bollywood.

     

    The Browns showered gifts on the Obama children too, using the occasion to promote British exports.

     

    Sarah Brown gave Sasha and Malia Obama an outfit each from Topshop, which has just opened its first American store in New York.

     

    She also picked six children's books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America.

     

    But the British press has already accused the Obamas of gaffing over the gifts they gave in return.

     

    The Obamas gave the Browns two models of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, to take home to sons Fraser and John.

     

    Though Mrs Brown's choice of gifts was praised as thoughtful, Mrs Obama's choice of gifts for Fraser and John was 'solipsistic'.

     

    'Mrs Brown may have two boys but she certainly knows the way to a little girl’s heart,' columnist Sarah Vine wrote in the Times. 'These were gifts chosen in the true spirit of present-giving: to please the recipient, not the giver.'

     

    Giving the Browns' two young boys a helicopter was 'fair enough', she said.

     

    But she added: 'Marine One? It’s not as though anyone needs reminding that Barack Obama is President or that he has his own helicopter.

     

    'Short of giving the boys Action Man models of her own husband smiting the evil forces of neoconservatism, Mrs Obama’s gesture could not have been more solipsistic or more inherently dismissive of Mrs Brown.

     

    'Not only did she demonstrate that she spent approximately three seconds contemplating the needs of the Brown boys (having an aide pop to the White House gift shop for a piece of merchandising does not imply a great deal of thought), she appeared to show a most uncharacteristic lapse of judgement.'

     

    President Obama telephoned Mr Brown on board his plane last night to thank him for a productive visit.

  6. Posted

    Rush is just someone to blame the bad economy on by saying that he wants Obama to fail, though it was taken out of context... As things continue to worsen, the Democrats will just point fingers and say something like "See what someone like Rush is doing when he speaks ill-will of the President"...

  8. Posted

    The NFL players gave up...

     

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,504464,00.html

     

    As the Coast Guard ended its search for three missing football players whose boat tipped over in high Florida seas, the lone survivor said two of those lost gave up after hours in the frigid water and the third tried to swim to safety.

     

    South Florida player Nick Schuyler told investigators that all four of the friends on a fishing excursion were initially wearing life vests and clinging to the 21-foot boat belonging to Oakland Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper.

     

    But two to four hours after the boat capsized, one of the NFL players removed his life jacket and let himself be swept out to sea, the St. Petersburg Times reported. A few hours later, the other one followed suit.

     

    "We were told that Nick said the two NFL players took their life jackets off and drifted out to sea," said Bob Bleakley, whose son Will Bleakley, 25, is also still missing.

     

    After Cooper, 26, and Corey Smith, 29, were carried away, Bleakley and Schuyler hung on until morning — but then Bleakley decided to swim to get help when he thought he saw a distant light, the paper said.

     

    He, too, took his life vest off, 24-year-old Schuyler told the families.

     

    "I think he was delusional to think he could swim someplace," the Times quoted Bob Bleakley as saying.

     

    Cooper's cousin Ray Sanchez said the Coast Guard recounted a similar story to him, but doesn't know whether it's true. Schuyler suffered from hypothermia and weakness, which could have affected his memory and thinking.

     

    "We're not 100 percent sure where his head was at," Sanchez told the paper. "He'd been through a lot."

     

    The doctor treating Schuyler said he was in good condition on Wednesday and had never been delusional during his ordeal.

     

    "I don’t think he was thinking as well as you and I today," Dr. Mark Rumbak, the attending physician for the rescued boater, told reporters outside Tampa General Hospital. "But I don’t think he was delusional at all."

     

    Rumbak attributed the fitness instructor's survival for 46 hours in 60-degree waters to the good shape he's in physically, his mental stamina, his experience playing college football — and luck.

     

    "This guy is very tough mentally. ... If he didn't have that type of background, I don't think he would have made it," Rumbak said. "Still, I do think it's a miracle."

     

    Also Wednesday, Florida Fish and Wildlife crews went out to retrieve the overturned boat and bring it back to shore — but they were running into snags, according to a spokesman.

     

    "The boat has not been recovered. They’re having trouble out there," Gary Morse told FOXNews.com. "They flipped it over once, but it flipped back over. ... We've had trouble communicating with them that far offshore."

     

    The Coast Guard ended its three-day search for the men Tuesday at sunset, dashing hopes they might be found after rescuers plucked Schuyler from the Gulf of Mexico a day earlier.

     

    Rescuers combed more than 24,000 miles of ocean before calling off their search Tuesday for Cooper, free-agent defensive lineman Smith and former South Florida player Bleakley. The four friends had been missing since Saturday when their boat capsized during a fishing trip.

     

    Coast Guard Capt. Timothy Close said if there were any other survivors, they would have been found.

     

    "I think the families understood that we put in a tremendous effort," Close said. "Any search and rescue case we have to stop is disappointing."

     

    Coast Guard teams spotted no signs of the men except for a cooler and a life jacket 16 miles southeast of the boat. Still, family members of Cooper — the son of Phoenix sportscaster Bruce Cooper — maintained hope at a Tuesday night prayer vigil in Mesa, Ariz., that he might turn up.

     

    "Even if he goes on, he's with the Lord," said Cooper's grandmother, Zelma Davis. "But we have hope we're going to keep him."

     

    Bleakley's father said he thought Coast Guard rescuers did everything they could, adding he had lower expectations after only one survivor was found Monday.

     

    "I think they were not to be found," Robert Bleakley said.

     

    Scott Miller, a friend of the college teammates, said Schuyler told him that a chopper shone a light directly above them the first night. Schuyler also told him he even saw lights beaming from ashore.

     

    It was Bleakley who swam underneath to retrieve three life jackets he could find, along with a cushion, a groggy Schuyler told Miller from a Tampa hospital. Bleakley used the cushion and the other men wore the jackets, Miller said.

     

    But the waves were powerful, and after Cooper and Smith were separated from the boat, the college teammates tried to hang on.

     

    "He said basically that Will helped him keep going," Schuyler told Miller, who said he had known Bleakley since the sixth grade. "The waves were just so much. They never got a break."

     

    Schuyler's doctor said he hasn't seen signs of post traumatic stress yet and doesn't believe that Schuyler has fully grasped the gravity of the situation — which is normal immediately after a crisis. But Schuyler knows his friends are lost, he added.

     

    "I think he is aware of what happened to his friends," Rumbak said. "He said he was fine at this point in time. I don't think it's fully hit him yet." He said he was reunited with his girlfriend and "seemed quite happy."

     

    Family and friends embraced and sobbed outside the Coast Guard station shortly before the announcement that the search had been called off. They left without talking with reporters.

     

    "I'm sure that I'll speak of Will like he's still with us for a long time," Robert Bleakley said later of his son. "He'll be an inspiration for me for a long time. He always has been. I told everybody, I call him my hero."

     

    Lions running back Kevin Smith called Corey Smith "a good, quiet guy, who always put in an honest day's work."

     

    Smith, a Florida native, said he has been fishing as far off the coast as the men were in boats smaller, the same size and larger than the watercraft that capsized.

     

    "The No. 1 thing when you're out there is, you have to respect the water," he said. "I know those guys had safety vests. I'm trying not to even think about it. That's a tough way to go."

     

    Quarterback Jon Kitna, a former teammate with the Lions the past three seasons, said you never expect something like this to happen to someone you know.

     

    "It's a reminder of how life is fragile," he said. "Corey was a great dude."

     

    The four men left Clearwater Pass early Saturday in calm weather, but heavy winds picked up through the day and the seas strengthened, with waves of 7 feet and higher, peaking at 15 feet on Sunday. The Coast Guard said it did not receive a distress signal.

     

    Close said some family members asked about continuing the search on their own, which he discouraged but said the Coast Guard wouldn't prevent. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission may be heading out Wednesday to recover the boat.

     

    Schuyler told the Coast Guard the boat was anchored when it capsized.

     

    The Coast Guard hadn't had more detailed conversations with Schuyler because of his physical condition, Close said. Schuyler was in fair condition and told hospital officials he didn't want to speak to the media.

     

    Cooper was selected in the third round of the 2004 NFL draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of Washington. He played 26 games for the Bucs in his first two pro seasons, then led a nomadic NFL existence.

     

    Cooper and Smith became friends when they were teammates at Tampa Bay. Smith signed with the Bucs as an undrafted free agent in 2002, and spent last season with Detroit before becoming a free agent. The former North Carolina State standout recorded 42 tackles (28 solo), three sacks and 10 special teams tackles in 2008, his best NFL season.

     

    Bleakley, a 25-year-old former tight end from Crystal River, Fla., was on the USF football team in 2004 and 2005. He had one reception for 13 yards in his career, which also included some time on special teams.

     

    Stuart Schuyler said his son is an instructor at L.A. Fitness and had helped train Smith and Cooper.

  16. Posted

    Look at my above post as it pertains to his stating that Michael J. Fox was exaggerating his tremors in a stem cell initiative commercial. Proof.

     

    Yet on Inside Edition, Fox admits not taking meds before some public appearances...

     

    http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wmv/rushlimb....0/Video/Fox.asx

     

    And then in his book, Lucky Man...

     

    Snippets of my testimony were featured on several of the nightly news broadcasts. One line in particular from my prepared statement got a lot of play: "In my forties, I can expect challenges most people wouldn't face until their seventies and eighties, if ever. But with your help, if we all do everything we can to eradicate this disease, when I'm in my fifties I'll be dancing at my children's weddings." I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling.

  18. Posted

    His calls are screened to mostly accept ditto heads that blindly follow him in lockstep. Do you honestly think his people would allow a caller that could call Rush out on some of the crap he spews. He has the bully pulpit and refuses all offers from the left for honest debates.

     

    Bull... He always asks for liberals to call in and states that they go to the front of the queue... They won't call in because they know that they will get schooled and not many liberals listen to his show...

  19. Posted

    It's a call-in show; why don't some of you fockers call in and disagree?

     

    That's the whole point of talk radio.

     

    Rush appeals to his audience. If his audience were to turn liberal, he'd prolly change his stance.

     

    Limbaugh always states that liberals that call in go to the front of the line, but they won't because Limbaugh would own them...

  20. Posted

    :thumbsup:

     

    Dude, every single great economic mind in teh world has said that this economy is going to get worse before it gets better. They were saying that before they knew who the next President was going to be.

     

    They've all said it isn't likely to level out until the end of 2009. If you (or anyone else) expected Obama to turn it around in his first month of office, you were definitely drinking the kool- Aid. Hell, even Obama didn't make that claim while running.

     

    And they also said that doing nothing would be much better than passing the "stimulus" package that Democrats pushed through...

  22. Posted

    Yeah, I think that's pretty well said. What's scary is that (like you see in Posty's Tax thread) a great many people believe everything the guy says - unquestioningly. That's what so scary about him. Rush doesn't take himself seriously, but THEY do. Can't blame Rush for that, but yeah, there's a ton of people who really shouldn't be allowed to listen to that stuff without some kind of Wonderlic Test. :thumbsup:

     

    How does this differ from people believing everything that Obama said?

  25. Posted

    http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years...1mcnugget1.html

     

    MARCH 3--Angered that her local McDonald's was out of Chicken McNuggets, a Florida woman called 911 three times to report the fast food "emergency." Latreasa Goodman, 27, last Saturday called police to complain that a cashier--citing a McDonald's all sales are final policy--would not give her a refund. [To listen to Goodman's 911 calls, click here, here, and here.] When cops responded to the restaurant, Goodman told them, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one." Goodman noted, "I called 911 because I couldn't get a refund, and I wanted my McNuggets," according to the below Fort Pierce Police Department report. That logic, however, did not keep cops from citing Goodman for misusing the 911 system. Even after being issued a misdemeanor citation, Goodman contended, "this is an emergency, my McNuggets are an emergency." The McDonald's devotee is seen at right in a mug shot snapped after a previous encounter with police.

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