October « 2009 « The Conservative Papers

October 31, 2009

$1.00 Homes and No Buyers!

Filed under: Financial — Tags: Chicago — alpineski @ 3:14 pm

The housing market is so bad you can’t even give away homes these days.

Officials in suburban Barrington put three homes up for a sale at just a dollar a piece – a dollar! – and didn’t get a single bidder.

A dollar!

Let’s review: For less than the price of a CTA ride, a Starbuck’s coffee, or the typical tip slipped under a stripper’s G-string, you could have bought a home in Barrington.

Sure, buying a house means assuming the future costs of upkeep, but a dollar!

“Even if you’re offering a house for a dollar, sometimes all those logistics can make it difficult, especially in this market,” Lisa DiChiera of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois told the Daily Herald.

Though the homes aren’t officially designated landmarks, they are believed to have some historic value; that’s why Barrington officials want to sell the homes – which are located in the suburb’s downtown – rather than just demolish them to make way for development, which is the alternative.

Buyers would be required to relocate the homes, but still. All three could be had for less than the cost of a Subway footlong. And your purchase would last a lot longer.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

Obama uses slain troops for Photo-Op

Filed under: Barack Obama — Tags: Cheney, Dover, Obama, troops — alpineski @ 10:28 am

Jim Hoft

President Obama took the White House Press Pool with him today to Dover Air Force Base for a photo-op with slain troops as their plane arrived. Only one of the fifteen families allowed the president to use the occasion for his photo-op.

Liz Cheney discussed President Obama’s photo-op today at Dover Air Force Base with John Gibson.

There’s lying. There’s a pattern here… This White House needs to understand… every single day you ask them to serve without the resources they ask for without the reinforcements they need they are in more danger. I believe there is dithering going on and there is waffling…

(On the president’s photo-op at Dover) But I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don’t understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures.

That’s really hard for me to get my head around. I think its an honorable and important thing for us to pay tribute. There’s no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this. I’d like to add the most important way for the president to pay tribute to those who sacrifice is to back them

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

October 30, 2009

The Self Portrait- By Obama

Filed under: Barack Obama — Tags: Obama — alpineski @ 9:22 pm

Obama Self Portrait

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

October 29, 2009

US: Iran is Helping Syria Acquire WMDs

Filed under: Israel, Terrorism — Tags: China, Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Obama, Submarines, Syria, Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction — kalel @ 9:00 pm

The US Congressional Research Service reveals that Iran has helped Syria obtain “various forms of weapons of mass destruction” and missiles, as well as buying midget submarines – all from North Korea.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the North Korean miniature subs are capable of dropping small teams of commando forces on enemy shores, damaging large warships and mining the approaches of naval bases and harbors. They are capable of sowing EM-52 “rising mines” originally developed by China, which lurk on deep sea beds until triggered by a passing ship to release a missile which shoots up to strike its hull.

This weapon substantially enhances the Syrian and Iranian navies’ menace, a development Israel will have take into account in the defenses of its Mediterranean naval bases and commercial ports.

The US CRS notes” Iran purportedly has acted as an intermediary with North Korea to supply Syria with missiles and various forms of WNMD, without specifying whether they are nuclear, chemical or biological.

To keep one of its few allies close, Tehran uses Syria as a “transit point for Iranian weapons shipments to Hizballah and both countries see Hizballah as leverage against Israel to achieve their regional and territorial aims.”

The report sees the Obama administration’s engagement with Syria as a bid to draw Damascus to loosen its bonds with Tehran, but sees little chance of this effort succeeding.

On Oct. 20, DEBKAfile’s military sources disclosed that Syria, Iran’s second ally with an Israeli border, has decided to transfer one-third of its missile stockpile to the Hizballah in Lebanon, topping up its arsenal with 250 medium-range surface rockets that can cover central as well as northern Israel, which was heavily blitzed in the 2006 war.

via debka.com

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (1)

Bahrain Moves To Outlaw Contact With Israel

Filed under: Israel — Tags: Bahrain, Freedom, Israel, Terrorism — kalel @ 8:50 pm

Lawmakers in Bahrain passed a bill that would outlaw any contact with Israel, including travel and business relationships.

The lower house of the parliament on Tuesday approved the bill, which includes jail terms of three to seven years and a $27,000 fine for “any contact or relations with Israel” or “the establishment of diplomatic or consular representation,” the French news agency AFP reported.

Israel and Bahrain do not have official diplomatic ties.

The bill still must pass through the upper house of the Parliament, which is appointed by the king.

Bahrain has a close relationship with the United States and has been urging other Arab countries to initiate contact with Israel. In July, Bahrain’s Crown Prince Sheik Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that the Arab world had not done enough to establish contact with Israel.

via jta.org

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

Karzai’s Brother and Washington’s Kept Politicians

Filed under: Terrorism — Tags: Afghanistan, Daniel Pipes, Freedom, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Taliban, Terrorism — kalel @ 12:25 am

by Daniel Pipes

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai (pictured) is reportedly on the American payroll.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan president, “a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban,” and “a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade,” the New York Times informs us, “gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years.”

This unsavory news has many negative implications about Hamid Karzai’s presidency; the one that interests me most is how it confirms his status as a kept politician, a leader who enjoys his present position due to foreign backing.

Karzai is hardly the Middle East’s only kept politician; others that come to mind include Iraq’s Nuri al-Maliki, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri, and the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. Of note: Washington kept no politicians in 2000 but now has four of them.

Some kept politicians eventually do establish their own rule and legitimacy — the Jordanian monarchy has been on its own since Glubb Pasha’s dismissal in 1956. Usually, however, they fail: This was the fate of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the last shah of Iran in 1979, Anwar Sadat in 1981, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1990, and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992.

So too, in all likelihood, will the rule of Hamid Karzai, Maliki, Hariri, and Abbas end in collapse.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

October 28, 2009

Obamopoly

Filed under: Barack Obama — Tags: Freedom, Obama — kalel @ 10:28 pm

Obamopoly

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

U.S. Home Price Rebound Already in ‘Bubble Territory’

Filed under: Financial — Tags: Financial, Home Prices, Unemployment, Yale University — alpineski @ 8:29 pm

Robert Shiller

The gains in U.S. home prices in recent months may not be sustainable and increases in some areas of the country appear to be in “bubble territory,” an economist known for his property market expertise said on Tuesday.

Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and co-developer of Standard and Poor’s S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, told Reuters Television he does not give quantitative forecasts on where home prices are headed but is concerned about the recent pace of increases.

Home prices in certain areas, such as Minneapolis and San Francisco, have risen by double-digits over a mere four months, and if viewed on an annualized basis, they look like they are in “bubble territory,” Shiller said.

“It is a time of great uncertainty,” he said.

U.S. home prices in August rose for the fourth straight month. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas rose 1.2 percent in August from July, topping the estimate of a 0.7 percent rise according to in a Reuters poll.

“The prominent fact that we are seeing with this data is that home prices are just zipping up,” Shiller said.

“It is entirely possible that even with the bad news we are getting, home prices could start a major increase,” he said.

Prices in the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas gained 1.3 percent in August after a 1.7 percent rise the previous month, according to the S&P composite index.

Shiller said he does not agree with analysts who believe that rising unemployment will hurt home prices. The U.S. jobless rate reached a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September.

“It is unlikely that we will have the major, colossal bubble we had a few years ago, but even in the Great Depression real home prices were rising with the unemployment rate above 12 percent,” he said. “Just because we have high unemployment does not mean the stock market cannot boom and the housing market cannot boom.

“What happens from here will depend on people’s animal spirits and speculative impulses,” Shiller said.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

Did Schwarzenegger drop 4-letter bomb?

Filed under: Financial — Tags: Ammiano, Schwarzenegger — alpineski @ 5:46 pm

Letter to Ammiano

Did California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s use a coded veto message to send the f-bomb to Tom Ammiano, soon after the San Francisco assemblyman made news by telling the governor to “kiss my gay ass”?

A straight reading of Schwarzenegger letter laments “the fact that major issues are overlooked while many unnecessary bills come to me for consideration,” and concludes, “I believe it is unnecessary to sign this measure at this time.”

But a vertical read of the far-left-hand letters in each of the missive’s eight lines offers a more blunt explanation: ” f*** you”.

Schwarzenegger’s press secretary, Aaron McLear, insisted Tuesday it was simply a “weird coincidence”.

The message came after Ammiano called the governor a liar and shouted from the audience to “kiss my gay ass” when Schwarzenegger unexpectedly showed up at a Democratic Party dinner in San Francisco on Oct. 7.

Ammiano, a professional comic in addition to being a liberal Democrat, he’s playing it straight on this one: “He probably thinks we are even now,” he said.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (0)

Pro-Life Democrats Say ‘No’ to Abortion Funding in Health-Care Reform

Filed under: Financial, Freedoms — Tags: Abortion, Healthcare — vision @ 2:40 pm

by Kim Trobee

Led by Rep. Bart Stupak, a group of Dems tries to force a vote on the abortion funding issue.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and at least 40 Democrats reportedly will vote against a rule designed to govern debate on health-care reform, unless that rule allows an amendment to insert language similar to the Hyde Amendment.

The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding of abortions within the Health and Human Services appropriations bill.

If the Democrat leadership refuses to allow the pro-life amendment to be offered, those 40 Democrats, along with Republicans, could prevent the health-care bill from coming to the floor for a vote.

Stupak told the Washington Journal the 40 Democrats are resolute in their position.

“We believe, and the majority of American people believe, we should not be using public funds to pay for abortion coverage in health care,” he said. “Somewhere in this process we have to have an opportunity to vote our conscience.”

Stupak said House leadership hasn’t said much in response to his request.

“We talked back and forth trying to find some common language that we could all agree with,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s been no agreement.”

Stupak said many of his fellow Democrats are unhappy with him, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“I’m comfortable where I’m at,” he said. “This is who I am. It’s reflective of my district. If it costs me my seat, so be it.”

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said Democrat leadership is trying to ram the bill through under what’s called the “closed rule.”

“The bill would set up a new federal program that would directly fund abortion on demand,” he said. “Pelosi does not want to allow a vote on an amendment that would remove that pro-abortion provision.”

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Comments (2)

Older Posts »