2011 May 19 - Headline News

John McCain says that waterboarding is “indisputably torture.” Looks like several of McCain’s fellow prisoners of war -- guys who also suffered horrible torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese - strongly disagree with the Arizona senator.

Colonel Bud Day received the Medal of Honor for escaping from a North Vietnamese prison. He suffered terrible torture and is considered to be a bit of an expert on the subject.

“I am a supporter of waterboarding,” Day said. “It is not torture. Torture is really hurting someone. Waterboarding is just scaring someone, with no long-term injurious effects. It is a scare tactic that works.”

Colonel Leo Thorsness was also awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War and experienced real torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. His back was broken and his body virtually torn apart.

“To me, waterboarding is intensive interrogation. It is not torture,” Thorsness insisted. “Torture involves extreme, brutal pain - breaking bones, passing out from pain, beatings so severe that blood spatters the walls … when you pop shoulders out of joints .. In my mind, there’s a difference, and in most POWs’ minds there’s a difference … I would not hesitate a second to use ‘enhanced interrogation,’ including waterboarding, if it would save the lives of innocent people.”

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http://www.ihatethemedia.com/rejecting-john-mccain-other-north-vietnamese-pows-dont-think-waterboarding-is-torture

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich wrote.

But Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/boston-herald/2011/05/18/wh-shuts-out-unfriendly-newspaper#ixzz1MnMQocNi

Nuha Mohammed Al-Doaifi, 21, is an engineering student at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, FL. She’s also, apparently, not a fan of white people or America.

Nuha, who’s from Saudi Arabia, is facing hate crime charges after she allegedly spat on several white people at a local Palm Bay Walmart. She said a “higher authority” made her do it and told police it was because “Americans are pushing us around.”

The incident apparently started when Nuha was using her cart to enter the store through the exit door. After repeatedly ramming the door, Terry Rakowski - another shopper - tried to help Nuha out by telling her she was using the wrong door. That’s when the spitting started.

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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/hate-crime-saudi-student-charged-for-spitting-on-white-people-in-fl/

I just learned I'm going to save money! My apartment building in New York will switch from heating oil to cleaner natural gas. Gas is much cheaper than oil now because energy companies found ways to get more of it out of the ground.

Even more astounding is that by using this technique, America won't run out of natural gas for 100 years or more! Time to break out the champagne?

Not so fast, say environmentalists. To get gas out of the ground, companies use pressurized chemicals to blow up rock. It's called hydraulic fracturing - fracking.

An Oscar-nominated movie, "Gasland," says that fracking contaminates our water supply with chemicals. In the movie, some homeowners set their tap water on fire.

That got my attention. I've seen Michael Moore's movies and environmental documentaries, which I thought were nonsense. But "Gasland" is more convincing.

Unfortunately, "Gasland" producer Josh Fox turned down my interview requests, as did representatives of the big national environmental groups that oppose fracking. I think I know why. The movie and the left's arguments against fracking are deceitful.

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http://www.newsmax.com/Stossel/fracking-gas-naturalgas/2011/05/18/id/396877

The Power Line Prize of $100,000 will be awarded to whoever can most effectively and creatively dramatize the significance of the federal debt crisis. Prizes will also be awarded to the runner-up and two third-place finishers. Anyone can enter the contest-individuals, companies (e.g., advertising agencies) or any other entity, as long as the contest rules are followed. Any creative product is eligible: videos, songs, paintings, screenplays, Power Point presentations, essays, performance art, or anything else, as long as the product is unique to the contest and has not previously been published or otherwise entered the public domain. Entries may address the federal debt crisis in its entirety, or a specific aspect of the debt crisis, such as: the impact of the debt crisis on the young; the role played by the "stimulus" (Where did the money go? Why didn't it stimulate?); how entitlements drive the debt crisis; the current federal deficit; how the debt crisis impacts the economy; or any other aspect of the debt crisis. The contest is non-partisan. Its purpose is to inform the public about the federal debt crisis. Entries are due no later than 11:59 p.m. on July 15th. See the official contest rules for more information. In all instances, the contest rules govern..

http://www.powerlineprize.com/

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/18/joseph-farah-says-he-may-sue-esquire-for-parody-story-on-jerome-corsi-book/#ixzz1MmuSSzSk

In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Before that, Immelt was on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

He's also a regular companion when Obama travels abroad to hawk American exports. (Why does business need government to do that?)

"Jeff Immelt is perhaps the CEO who is most cozy with President Obama," says journalist Tim Carney. "General Electric is structuring their business around where government is going . . . high-speed rail, solar, wind. GE is lining up to get what government is handing out."

Businesses love to have government as their partner. There's safety in it. Why take chances in a marketplace full of fickle consumers and investors, when you can get secure money and favors from the taxpayers? It's an old story, and free-market advocates as far back as Adam Smith warned against it.

Unfortunately, too many people think "free market" means pro-business. It doesn't. Free market means laissez-faire - prohibit force and fraud, but otherwise leave the marketplace alone. No subsidies, no privileges, no arbitrary regulations. Competition is the most effective regulator.

Left-wingers criticize corporate welfare until it's for something they like - for example, "green technology."

"The government's going to invest in certain companies to pioneer new technologies. That, I think, is not corporate welfare," says Tamara Draut of the Progressive think-tank Demos.

I asked her if business is too dumb to pioneer without government direction.

"The private sector will only invest if they know for sure that there is a commercial marketplace."

But if everyone wants these products, that should be an incentive for greedy businesses to make them.

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http://www.newsmax.com/Stossel/Obama-GeneralElectric-CorporateWelfare-Immelt/2011/03/23/id/390486

Hillary Clinton hasn’t exactly been the most successful Secretary of State in history. Nevertheless, it’s probably accurate to say that she’s better at her job than Jimmy Carter was/is at his.

Sometimes you almost have to feel sorry for poor Jimmy. He’s worked so hard to rehabilitate his image, but even Hillary now rejects the bumbling old anti-American fool.

Foreign Policy reveals his latest experiment in irrelevancy:

[the rest of the story....]
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/hillary-clinton-rejects-jimmy-carter

Take a long look at Stanley Thornton, Jr., the 30-year-old man who lives his life as an “adult baby:”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/meet-the-adult-baby-sen-coburn-just-asked-the-govt-to-investigate/

The Blaze:
Yesterday we brought you the story of 513 migrants who stuffed themselves into two truck trailers in Mexico and set off for the United States. Now an x-ray picture has surfaced showing how the smuggled group packed themselves into one of those trucks. From the Daily Mail:



The immigration institute says 410 of the migrants were from Guatemala, 47 from El Salvador, 32 from Ecuador, 12 from India, six from Nepal, three from China, and one each from Japan, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras. There were 32 women and four children among them.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/stunning-x-ray-image-shows-how-migrants-packed-into-u-s-bound-trailer/

This DAY in History:

May 19, 1943:
Churchill and FDR plot D-Day

On this day in 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt set a date for the cross-Channel landing that would become D-Day-May 1, 1944. That date will prove a bit premature, as bad weather becomes a factor.

Addressing a joint session of Congress, Churchill warned that the real danger at present was the "dragging-out of the war at enormous expense" because of the risk that the Allies would become "tired or bored or split"-and play into the hands of Germany and Japan. He pushed for an early and massive attack on the "underbelly of the Axis." And so, to "speed" things up, the British prime minister and President Roosevelt set a date for a cross-Channel invasion of Normandy, in northern France, for May 1, 1944, regardless of the problems presented by the invasion of Italy, which was underway. It would be carried out by 29 divisions, including a Free French division, if possible.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/churchill-and-fdr-plot-d-day