2011 May 08 - Headline News

UPDATED UPDATE: Tapper has now said that he was saying that construction workers took the flag down at the end of the day. Certainly not what it sounded like he was saying, but we’ll take his word for it.

NOTE: Is this story correct or not? It appears debatable. Michelle Malkin says it’s not true, but Jake Tapper has not retracted. This leaves us with a very strange situation where a conservative is defending the President and a liberal reporter is dinging him. How about if we straddle the middle by saying take it with a grain of salt until we hear from Tapper.

ABC’s Jake Tapper was so surprised that he tweeted the news that team Obama had the American flag removed from the shot just moments before the TV cameras began rolling at his Osama Bin Laden Victory Tour 2011.

Can you imagine any other president removing an American flag from a site like Ground Zero?

OK, let us reword that. Can you imagine any president other than Jimmy Carter removing an American flag from a site like Ground Zero?

What excuse could there be? The old favorite: We didn’t want to enflame Muslim passions? Or maybe the President didn’t want to find himself in a situation where he’d have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Or maybe …

You tell us.

http://www.ihatethemedia.com/obama-has-american-flag-removed-ground-zero-before-tv-cameras-roll

The same people who say they want to pay higher taxes don't bother to contribute more voluntarily.

wish I had a dollar for every time a wealthy liberal has declared he thinks he should pay more taxes. That list includes Warren Buffett, George Soros, Bill Gates Sr., Mark Zuckerberg and even Barack Obama, who now says that not only should rich people like him pay more taxes, they want to pay more. "I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me," he said of his tax-hike plan. "They want to give back to the country that's done so much for them."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703849204576303040425833126.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384358/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-Al-Qaeda-power-struggle-led-Zawahiri-turn-leader.html#ixzz1LpAC2Iy1

President Barack Obama's promised trip to Pakistan this year, once seen as a reward for a key ally in the fight against terrorism, is now a looming headache for the White House as it tries to determine whether the government in Islamabad was complicit in allowing Osama bin Laden to live for years within the country's borders.

Obama told Pakistani officials in the fall that he planned to travel there in 2011, in part to soothe concerns that the president was favoring Pakistan's neighbor and archrival, India, by visiting there first. White House spokesmen questioned this week by The Associated Press refused to say whether Obama still planned to go.

In the hours after bin Laden's killing by a U.S. special forces team in Pakistan, John Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, left the topic open. "I'm not going to address the president's schedule," he said. "I think there's a commitment that the president has made that he is intending to visit Pakistan. A lot depends on availability, scheduling."

The decision is of enormous strategic and symbolic importance to both countries. A presidential trip would signal a continued U.S. commitment to its complicated, yet necessary, relationship with Pakistan, a country that is not only integral in dealing with terrorism, but will also play a key role in the U.S. troop drawdown in neighboring Afghanistan.

Canceling the visit could be seen as a sign of U.S. mistrust of Pakistan's handling of extremists within its borders -- as underscored by the news that bin Laden lived in what Brennan himself called within "plain sight" in a neighborhood home to many in the Pakistani military.

[continued....]
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/05/07/us_obama_pakistan

When the United States was formed the Congress owned no lands. It is time to establish the right of land ownership for every state in the union.

Heavy handedness by the White House restricting drilling in the Gulf and Alaska, combined with the day-by-day rise in gasoline prices, have focused public attention as never before on the enervation of local economies by federal bureaucrats and the emasculation of the power of states to create opportunity for their citizens.

Add to that the attempt by the National Labor Relations Board to force Boeing to halt assembly of Boeing's Dreamliner in South Carolina and to transfer that 30% of production to union-controlled plants in Washington State. We have now reached the point where individual industries will be run by federal government bureaucrats. Jobs are being lost by the multiplied thousands. And the creation of jobs by even more multiplied thousands is being hindered.

The best and most comprehensive way economic initiative can be returned to the states has to do with control of the land within each state, which bears directly on oil and gas exploration and drilling. Recognition of the sovereign right of each state to control the use of lands within its borders would result in an incredible increase in exploration and drilling, the creation of jobs both within and alongside that activity, and would quickly reduce our dependence on OPEC and non-friendly sources of oil and gas. Just the declared intention to do so would by itself dramatically impact world oil prices.

[snip]
Here are data of federal ownership and control, as a percentage of each state's land area:

Nevada ------------ 84.5
Alaska ------------ 69.1
Utah --------------- 57.4
Oregon ----------- 53.1
Idaho -------------- 50.2
Arizona ---------- 48.1
California -------- 45.3
Wyoming -------- 42.3
New Mexico ---- 41.8
Colorado --------- 36.6
Washington ---- 30.3
Hawaii ------------ 19.4

[continued....]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/free_the_federal_lands_for_sta.html

This DAY in History:

May 8, 1945:
V-E Day is celebrated in American and Britain

On this day in 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine.

The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark--the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.

The main concern of many German soldiers was to elude the grasp of Soviet forces, to keep from being taken prisoner. About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended, but were stopped by the Russians and taken captive. The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender.

Meanwhile, more than 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.

Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: "The age-long struggle of the Slav nations...has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over."

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/v-e-day-is-celebrated-in-american-and-britain