Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party


Hanging of ‘Truck Nuts’ Grows into a Free Speech Debate

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:58 PM PDT

By Elizabeth Robichaux Brown, FOXNews.com

‘Don’t touch my junk,’ is taking on new meaning.

“Truck nuts,” fake bull testicles made of plastic or metal that drivers hang on the back of their pickups to make a truck look more manly, have been around for years. Some find them funny, while others find them offensive, prompting at least three states to try to ban them — unsuccessfully.

But a recent case in South Carolina is fueling debate over whether these ornaments violate a state’s indecency laws and if attempting to regulate them infringes on freedom of speech.

On July 5, Virginia Tice, 65, from Bonneau, S.C. pulled her pickup truck into a local gas station with red, fake testicles dangling from the trailer hitch. The town’s police chief, Franco Fuda, pulled up and asked her to remove the plastic testicles.

When she refused, he wrote her a $445 ticket saying that she violated South Carolina's obscene bumper sticker law.

The South Carolina code of laws reads, "a sticker, decal, emblem, or device is indecent … in a patently offensive way, as determined by contemporary community standards, sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body."

To read more, visit:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/02/hanging-truck-nuts-grows-into-free-speech-debate/

And now, the next show: A game of semantics on taxes

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:53 PM PDT

By Tory Newmyer, CNN Money

FORTUNE — In declaring victory in the debt-ceiling standoff with Democrats, Congressional Republicans have been crowing that the deficit-cutting deal they negotiated won’t raise a dime through higher taxes.

Whether or not that’s true remains an open question. It’s already the subject of renewed partisan sniping even amidst a bipartisan breakthrough, and the likely focus of a debate that will consume Washington into the fall and beyond.

The GOP’s commitment to opposing tax hikes of any size or stripe, hardened in the course of the debt-ceiling fight, is now party orthodoxy. And the right scored a major tactical win in forcing President Obama to abandon demands that new revenues accompany upfront spending cuts prescribed by the package the House approved Monday.

But the agreement the parties reached is complex, setting up a months-long push by a special committee of lawmakers to continue work on deficit reduction measures. Even as the parties were rolling out details on Sunday night to their respective rank-and-file, they began a fresh round of back-and-forth about whether and how deeply the committee can dip into the tax code for new revenue.

The dispute turns on two questions, one technical and the other practical. Technically, the committee will have relative free range to rework the tax code. Practically, it may have its hands tied.

First, the technical case. A PowerPoint presentation Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office used to sell the deal to House Republicans argued the committee’s framework effectively made it impossible for the panel to raise taxes. The reason, the Speaker’s office maintained, is that the panel will be working off of a budget baseline pegged to current law. And under current law, the Bush tax cuts for all income levels are set to expire at the end of 2012.

To read more, visit:  http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/02/and-now-the-next-show-a-game-of-semantics-on-taxes/

After debt deal, economy in deeper peril

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:42 PM PDT

By John W. Schoen, msnbc.msn.com

It’s not over. Not by a long shot.

If the Senate Tuesday approves an 11th-hour budget deal to lift the debt ceiling, as expected, and head off a national default, forget those high-five photo ops and victorious press conferences. The spectacle of partisan bickering by a dysfunctional government will continue to weigh on consumers, investors and business for months to come.

That uncertainty will also further dampen economic growth — the most powerful remedy for the nation's fiscal problems.

"This deal sets us up for acrimony and additional fights all the way until the elections," said Charles Gabriel, a budget analyst at Capital Alpha Partners.

Story: Many questions linger over debt and deficit accord

After multiple failed attempts to agree on a package of spending cuts and increased borrowing authority, the House last night sent to the Senate a two-step plan. In exchange for $917 billion in spending cuts over 10 years, the debt ceiling would be lifted by $900 billion — not enough to fund the government through the 2012 elections.

Additional borrowing authority would require another $1.5 trillion in cuts worked out by a new congressional panel, which must agree to those cuts by late November. If the panel deadlocks or can't come up with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts, the Treasury would only get $1.2 trillion in additional borrowing authority; the defense budget and payments to Medicare providers then would be automatically cut by that amount.

To read more, visit:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43976115/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/

Girl’s lemonade stand shut down

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:38 PM PDT

From: Omaha.com

CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Police closed down a lemonade stand in Coralville last week, telling its 4-year-old operator and her dad that she didn’t have a permit.

An officer told Abigail Krutsinger’s father Friday that she couldn’t run the stand as RAGBRAI bicyclers poured into Coralville.

A city ordinance says food vendors must apply for a permit and get a health inspection.

Abigail’s dad, Dustin Krutsinger, said the ordinance and its enforcers are going too far if they force a 4-year-old to abandon her lemonade stand.

To read more, visit:  http://www.omaha.com/article/20110802/NEWS01/708029866#girl-s-lemonade-stand-shut-down

TSA to debut ‘Israeli-style’ airport screening

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:34 PM PDT

By Natalie Sherman and Joe Dwinell, BostonHerald.com

Boston's TSA screeners — part of a security force whose competency has come under fire nationwide — soon will be carrying out sophisticated behavioral inspections under a first-in-the-nation program that's already raising concerns of racial profiling, harassment of innocent travelers and longer lines.

The training for the Israeli-style screening — a projected $1 billion national program dubbed Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques — kicks off today at Logan International Airport and will be put to use in Terminal A on Aug. 15. It requires screeners to make quick reads of whether passengers pose a danger or a terror threat based on their reactions to a set of routine questions.

But security experts wonder whether Transportation Safety Administration agents are up to the challenge after an embarrassing string of blunders — including patting down a 95-year-old grandmother in Florida and making her remove her adult diaper and frisking a 3-year-old girl who screamed "stop touching me" at a checkpoint in Tennessee.

"I'm not convinced that the TSA has good enough people to make the Israeli approach work on a large scale," said Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who has followed the TSA at his blog, Instapundit.com.

But he noted, "Almost anything would be an improvement over the clown show we've got now."

A leading proponent of Israel's detection techniques agreed the TSA will be severely tested.

To read more, visit:  http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1355725

CDC: Most U.S. Hospitals Don’t Support Breastfeeding

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:30 PM PDT

From: FOXNews.com

Studies have long shown the benefits of breastfeeding, but a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that less than four percent of U.S. hospitals provide the full support that new mothers need to be able to successfully breastfeed.

The report, published in the current issue of the CDC's Vital Signs, examined data from the National Survey of Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care, and found that only 14 percent of hospitals actually have a written model of a breastfeeding policy. The report also found that in nearly 80 percent of hospitals, healthy breastfeeding infants were given formula even when there was no medical reason. Experts say this can make it very difficult to learn how to breastfeed and continue at home.

"Hospitals play a vital role in supporting a mother to be able to breastfeed," said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden in a press release. "Those first few hours and days that a mom and her baby spend learning to breastfeed are critical. Hospitals need to better support breastfeeding, as this is one of the most important things a mother can do for her newborn. Breastfeeding helps babies grow up healthy and reduces health care costs."

U.S. mothers are also not getting the breastfeeding support they need after leaving the hospital, according to the study. Almost 75 percent of hospitals don't schedule a follow-up visit with moms, a phone call, or referrals to lactation consultants.

The CDC survey proves that most U.S. hospitals are not in compliance with the WHO/UNICEF Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, including:

-Not giving healthy, breastfeeding infants food or drink other than breast milk unless there is a medical need for it

To read more, visit:  http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/08/02/cdc-most-us-hospitals-dont-support-breastfeeding/

House GOP Favors Debt Deal; Most GOP Presidential Candidates Oppose It

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 04:24 PM PDT

WRITTEN BY THOMAS R. EDDLEM, TheNewAmerican.com

The Obama-Boehner debt limit increase bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 269-161 vote August 1, principally as a result of Republican votes. But most of the GOP presidential candidates, perhaps smelling the will of the voters, voted against the so-called Budget Control Act of 2011, which would raise the debt limit as much as an additional $2.4 trillion. GOP congressmen overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill with a 174-66 vote. Meanwhile, Democrats were evenly divided, 95-95, meaning that half the Democrats opposed their leadership while most Republicans supported their leadership.

The vote followed a week of tough talk and whip-cracking in the House Republican caucus. "Get your a** in line," House Speaker John Boehner demanded at a private meeting of the entire House Republican conference July 27, according to multiple press accounts. "I can't do this job unless you are behind me."

But two of the three presidential candidates in the House — Ron Paul of Texas and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota — voted against the eventual Boehner-sponsored bill anyway, and only the little-known Presidential candidate, Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, voted in favor of it.

In the GOP presidential field, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is the only other candidate who openly backed the Boehner-Obama deal, saying "it is a positive step toward cutting our nation's crippling debt."

But Representative Paul correctly observed that the bill would actually do the opposite, enhancing ever-increasing debt accumulation into the indefinite future: “We will have a $1.6 trillion deficit after this year alone, meaning those meager cuts will do nothing to solve our unsustainable spending problem. In fact, this bill will never balance the budget. Instead, it will add untold trillions of dollars to our deficit. This also assumes the cuts are real cuts and not the same old Washington smoke and mirrors game of spending less than originally projected so you can claim the difference as a ‘cut.’ ”

“I have never voted to raise the debt ceiling, and I never will,” Paul, a 12-term congressman and medical doctor, said in a press statement before the vote. Speaking from experience, Paul stressed that “for decades, politicians have promised future restraint in exchange for hikes in the debt limit. We are always told that we must act immediately to avoid a crisis. But time and time again, politicians reveal themselves to be untrustworthy, and we soon find ourselves in a crisis being led by the same folks who wish only to maintain the status quo.”

To read more, visit:  http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/8428-house-gop-favors-debt-deal-most-gop-presidential-candidates-oppose-it

Bachmann and Palin outraged at Biden’s Tea Party ‘terrorist’ jab

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 03:18 PM PDT

By Michael O’Brien, TheHill.com

Vice President Biden found himself under fire Tuesday from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who condemned alleged comments he made attacking the Tea Party.

Bachmann, a GOP presidential candidate, and Palin, a potential candidate, each reacted with outrage at a report that Biden, at a closed-door meeting with Democrats yesterday on Capitol Hill, said that Tea Party Republicans had "acted like terrorists" in negotiations over a debt-ceiling compromise.

Of course, that doesn't mean that Biden is particularly hostile toward Bachmann; the two shared an embrace following yesterday's debt-ceiling vote.

"I like Michele Bachmann. For real," Biden said, recounting a moment shortly after seeing Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's (D-Ariz.) return to the Capitol. "We're all standing there around, and Michele walks up to see Gabby, because she cares about her. I mean, look. The thing that sometimes gets lost in this place — maybe I spent too much time here as a senator — there is a basic humanity here, man. It matters between people. I know that sounds corny."

Bachmann, who identifies heavily with the Tea Party, emailed supporters late Monday night to ask them to sign a petition demanding an apology from Biden. She joined Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in asking Biden to apologize.

Only in the bizarro world of Washington is fiscal responsibility sometimes defined as terrorism," Bachmann wrote.

To read more, visit:  http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/174917-palin-bachmann-outraged-at-bidens-terrorist-jab-at-tea-party

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