Archive for November, 2009
Roseanne: Fount of Modern Liberal Thought
Posted by: | Commentsis this a comedy or a horror show?
…and she votes!
Climate scientists accused of manipulating global warming data
Posted by: | CommentsACORN Dumps Sensative Documents
Posted by: | CommentsFox News is reporting that, “a private investigator says he found tens of thousands of sensitive documents dumped outside a California ACORN office just days after the state attorney general announced an inquiry into the community organizing group.”
Derrick Roach, a licensed investigator based in San Diego, told FoxNews.com he paid an impromptu visit to the city’s ACORN branch on Oct. 9 and watched from his car as a man tossed bags of files into a Dumpster outside the building.
After ACORN staff left for the day, he says, he searched the trash bin and discovered more than 20,000 documents he believes point to illicit relationships between ACORN and a bank and a labor union — as well as confidential information that could put thousands at risk for identity theft.
“We’re talking people’s driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, tax returns, credit reports” — all tossed in public view in the Dumpster, he said.
In one document shared with FoxNews.com, an ACORN employee’s name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and driver’s license number were revealed, and photocopies of the employee’s license and Social Security card were also included. Another document showed bank account information for a woman paying an ACORN membership fee by check.
“It was just a careless disregard for the people that ACORN claimed to be helping,” Roach told FoxNews.com. “They put these people at risk.”
Roach said that data breach laws bar dumping like the kind he uncovered at ACORN’s office. Tossing the documents into a Dumpster, he said, constitutes a crime in California.
“So if someone wanted to, they could bring legal action against ACORN for doing this,” he said.
A top ACORN official in California apologized for the lapse Monday, saying that some confidential information might have been thrown away during a massive clean-up of their offices last month.
“In early October, when our San Diego staff were doing an office clean-up in preparation for a major 10-station phone bank program being set up in our offices, it appears that included in the piles of garbage being thrown out may have been some documents containing private information,” said Amy Schur, state head organizer for California ACORN, in an e-mailed statement.
Schur implied that “this guy” Roach, a former Republican candidate for statewide office, may have had political motivations for unearthing the documents. She said ACORN would seek the return of the documents “so that we may give proper notice of the compromising of the information as required by law.”
Roach told FoxNews.com he has been going over the trove of ACORN files and has found connections to the California Teachers Association and to Citibank.
“ACORN was acting as an agent” for Citibank, Roach charged. “They had mortgage information for homeowners … who were in foreclosure, who were in default.”
Roach says that the documents suggest that ACORN staffers would go out on “assignments” to take pictures of some residences or even to “go out and actually make contact” with people living in homes financed by Citibank loans.
He said he believes Citibank will have to report to its customers that their information may have been at risk when ACORN threw it away. “They took information and they just dumped it in the garbage,” he said.
Citibank ran an outreach program through ACORN that utilized the group’s local staff to encourage homeowners at risk of defaulting on their mortgages to contact the bank and work on avoiding defaults. That relationship has since been severed, a spokesman for Citigroup told FoxNews.com in an e-mail.
“Over time, Citi has worked with a variety of not-for-profit partners, including ACORN, to provide financial education, meet affordable lending needs, promote stable homeownership for low- to moderate- income consumers and help in foreclosure prevention,” the spokesman said.
“We are deeply concerned about the recent media reports regarding ACORN. We recently suspended our charitable financial support and program relationships with ACORN, and we are waiting for the results of the independent audit of ACORN’s activities now underway.”
Roach also charged that the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, was “funneling information to ACORN for political activity” — a relationship that he said would not be illegal but would require ACORN and the CTA to disclose fully.
“I’ve done some checking into the reports that have been filed for the CTA, for ACORN, and I’m not finding any of this information being disclosed,” he said. He did not provide any documents illustrating the relationship to FoxNews.com.
CTA spokesman Mike Myslinksi said the union had no comment on documents it had not seen. “That’s out of left field,” he said.
Roach’s accusation comes in the wake of a national scandal for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Staffers were caught on tape this summer in six cities offering to help a pair of filmmakers posing as a pimp and prostitute to lie to the IRS and acquire illegal home loans.
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ACORN Dumped Sensitive Documents as Probe Began, Private Investigator Says
Things That Make You Want to Curse. 11-22-2009
Posted by: | CommentsThe Chicago Tribune reports on plans to create an historic site of Billy Carter’s gas station.
In the age of the $787 billion stimulus package, it is, perhaps, a modest question:
Should American taxpayers foot the bill to enshrine the gas station run by the late Billy Carter — the beer-swilling, wisecracking, self-professed redneck brother of the 39th president?
Located in tiny Plains, still the world’s most famous peanut town some 28 years after the Carter presidency, the station was transformed into a museum last year by a civic group that owns the property.
Its claim to historical significance came during Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential run, when reporters mobbed Plains and transformed the station into an unofficial headquarters.
Please read the entire article here:
Billy Carter gas station historic?
Making the Rich Poorer and Uglier
Posted by: | CommentsGotta love Neil Cavuto’s wit.
Al Speaks More Global Warming Crap
Posted by: | CommentsHere is a brand new “Al Fact” from our favorite global warming expert scientist, Al Gore, “the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …”
We don’t want to offend the religion of “Global Warming” but “if the temperature anywhere inside the earth was “several million degrees,” we’d be a star.”
The geothermal gradient is usually quoted as 25–50 degrees Celsius per mile of depth in normal terrain (not, e.g., in the crater of Kilauea). Two kilometers down, therefore, (that’s a mile and a quarter if you’re not as science-y as Al) you’ll have an average gain of 30–60 degrees — exploitable for things like home heating, though not hot enough to make a nice pot of tea. The temperature at the earth’s core, 4,000 miles down, is usually quoted as 5,000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it’s much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9,000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees.
Source: Settled Science
Al Gore: Earth’s Interior ‘Extremely Hot, Several Million Degrees’
Hannity’s America
Posted by: | CommentsJapanese embarrassment at the President’s inappropriate bow. America’s Seniors not happy with reduced benefits. No “warm” greeting for Al Gore at Florida green event. Illinois Obots claim that bringing terrorists to Illinois will help economy.
Black Professor Punches Woman During Discussion of “White Privilege”
Posted by: | CommentsThe New York Post reports that a prominent Columbia architecture professor punched a female university employee in the face at a Harlem bar during a heated argument about race relations.
Police busted Lionel McIntyre, 59, for assault yesterday after his bruised victim, Camille Davis, filed charges.
McIntyre and Davis, who works as a production manager in the school’s theater department, are both regulars at Toast, a popular university bar on Broadway and 125th Street, sources said.
The professor, who is black, had been engaged in a fiery discussion about “white privilege” with Davis, who is white, and another male regular, who is also white, Friday night at 10:30 when fists started flying, patrons said.
McIntyre, who is known as “Mac” at the bar, shoved Davis, and when the other patron and a bar employee tried to break it up, the prof slugged Davis in the face, witnesses said.
“The punch was so loud, the kitchen workers in the back heard it over all the noise,” bar back Richie Velez, 28, told The Post. “I was on my way over when he punched Camille and she fell on top of me.”
The other patron involved in the dispute said McIntyre then took a swing at him after he yelled, “You don’t hit a woman!”
“He knocked the glasses right off my face,” said the man, who would only give his first name as “Shannon.” “The punch came out of nowhere. Mac was talking to us about white privilege and what I was doing about it — apparently I wasn’t doing enough.”
McIntyre had squabbled with Davis several weeks earlier over issues involving race, witnesses said. As soon as the professor threw the punch Friday, server Rob Dalton and another employee tossed him out.
“It was a real sucker punch,” Dalton said. “Camille’s a great lady, always nice to everybody, and doesn’t deserve anything like this.”
Please read the entire article here:
Prof busted in Columbia gal ‘punch’
Ethically-Challenged Spitzer to Give Lecture at Harvard’s Ethic Center
Posted by: | CommentsFox News reports that “former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will give a lecture Thursday afternoon at Harvard University’s ethics center, raising a few questions over what the disgraced, prostitute-visiting ex-official might have to say on the topic.
University officials say the address will stick to fiscal issues. Spitzer is speaking on the topic of conditions that lead to government intervention in the private economy and is not expected to deliver any kind of seminar on morality.
“The lecture series addresses the influences within various institutions that arguably weaken the effectiveness of an institution or the public trust of the institution,” Lawrence Lessig, director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics which invited Spitzer, said in a written statement. “He joins others in this series who each have different views about the subject.”
But the engagement drew an objection from the former madam whose escort service reportedly provided Spitzer with high-end hookers.
According to The New York Post, Kristin Davis, who reportedly supplied Spitzer repeatedly with an escort, wrote a protest letter to the Center for Ethics calling Spitzer a “man without ethics.”
“I am greatly intrigued as to what Mr. Spitzer could contribute to an ethical discussion when as Chief Executive Law Enforcement Officer of NY he broke numerous laws for which he has yet to be punished,” she wrote, according to the newspaper. “As Attorney General he went around arresting and making examples out of the same escort agencies he was frequenting.”
Though Spitzer’s talk is limited to the topic of government intervention, there will be a question-and-answer period, so there’s no guarantee the topic of ethics won’t come up.
“The topic is on the fiscal sector, but it’s an open Q-and-A,” Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn said. There is considerable interest in the talk, as all of the university’s free tickets to the event have been snatched up.
The title of the lecture is: “From Ayn Rand to Ken Feinberg — How Quickly the Paradigm Shifts. What Should Be the Rationale for Government Participation in the Market?” The lecture is not a requirement for students, Wrinn said.
Since resigning in the wake of the prostitution scandal in early 2008, Spitzer has worked as an adjunct professor at City College of New York and at his father’s real estate firm.
Please read the original article here:
Spitzer to Give Lecture at Harvard Ethics Center
President Obama Gives a “Shout-Out” Before Commenting on Fort Hood Massacre
Posted by: | CommentsIn his initial televised remarks since the devastating American tragedy, Barack Obama first addresses White House conference attendees — even giving one a chummy “shout-out” — before finally turning his attention towards the horrific mass killing at the Ft. Hood Army base in Texas.