This and That Online Blog

Meet the candidates for the upcoming Williams election for Mayor and City Council:

6-8 p.m. Tuesday at the Williams Elementary-Middle School auditorium, 601 N. Seventh St.
For more information, contact chamber staff at (928) 635-0273.

With Valentine’s Day coming soon, just a reminder to protect your pets from hazards that are related to this special day for their human companion.

CHOCOLATE: can cause vomiting, diarrhea, hyperactivity, abnormal heart rhythm, tremors and seizures….it can also be FATAL.

FLOWERS/PLANTS: There are many, many flowers and plants that are dangerous to your pet, however I am listing a few that you may receive/give on Valentines. Amaryllis, Asian Lily, Crocus, Bird of Paradise, Calla Lily, Cyclamen, Daffodil, Daylily, English Ivy, Iris, Sago Palm, Schefflera…….to name a few. For a complete list go to the ASPCA website please, or in an emergency call 1-800-426-4435 (ASPCA Poison Control Center).

When someone bounds on stage before a roomful of conservatives and shouts “I’m so proud to be an American! Happy birthday Ronald Reagan!”, it can mean only one thing: Sarah Palin is running for the presidency. Normal people don’t begin conversations with those two sentences, but presidential candidates do, all the time.

Palin was speaking on Saturday before one of the nascent (and probably evanescent) tea party movement groupings, in Nashville, for a reputed $100,000 fee. And she probably gave her money’s worth.

The first half of Palin’s speech was designed for the television audience – the speech was covered on all news channels – and so was a relative standard campaign speech for a Republican presidential primary candidate. (America’s best days are ahead of it. Ronald Reagan. Smaller government. Peace through strength. And so on.) The second half was the money-maker for the tea party paymasters and had a more markedly populist tone. “How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” Palin asked the crowd.

As usual with a Palin speech it had some sentences that strained the limits of grammar. But it was much improved and underlines that she’s a serious candidate, not matter how quickly Democrats might dismiss her. She has a set of themes she hammers away at, and now she has found a way to sound serious. “We need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lecturn,” she said, speaking from a lecturn. The content still doesn’t bear close examination – one moment she was calling for “carbon free energy” and the next demanding more off-shore drilling – but a Palin speech is more about mood than thinktank source material.

The weirdest part of the evening came not during the speech but during the following Q&A session. Asked what she thought that a Republican-controlled congress’s top three priorities should be, she answered: stop spending, energy policy and … well, here’s the whole quote, judge for yourself:

I think, kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America’s spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we’re not afraid to say especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we’re not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that you know – they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance to our creator.

So, one of the US congress’s top priorities should be … asking for divine intervention from God? “I can think of two words right now that scare liberals: President Palin,” the moderator ended the evening by saying. A brief chant of “Run, Sarah, run,” broke out, although not one shared by the whole room.Proving, perhaps, that you don’t have to be a liberal to be worried by Sarah Palin.

Richard Adams Blog guardian.co.uk
via Freedoms Phoenix

ADMIN NOTE: I have wanted for a long time to see a woman President…..but not at any cost……… Proving you dont have to be a liberal to be afraid of “President Palin”…..OMG I agree. That women is an idiot. If you don’t like Obama and his present course wait till you get her leading you!

Photograph: Douglas Healey/Getty Images
An aerial view of the Kleen Energy Systems plant, where an explosion took place early yesterday.

A large explosion at a Connecticut power station has killed five people and left a dozen injured, while last night police were using dogs to hunt for other potential ­victims among the rubble of a blast felt 30 miles away.

The mayor of Middletown, Sebastian Giuliano, said the accident was caused by a leak during a test of a natural gas plant under construction, and that terrorism had been ruled out. The blast was so large that some people mistook it for an earthquake. Witnesses described a “huge ball of fire” and told the Hartford Courant newspaper that the “main plant building seemed to have been substantially levelled”.

Ambulances and more than 100 firefighters streamed to the scene. Helicopters lifted out some of the injured.

Middletown’s deputy fire marshal, Al Santostefano, said there was “substantial damage” to the buildings, and there were extensive areas which need to be searched for other potential casualties.

Giuliano said that rescue services had difficulty assessing if people were missing because the owners of the plant were uncertain how many were at work yesterday. Up to 100 people are employed on construction work at the power station.

“They were purging gas lines all weekend long. When they ran the test, most of the people who work there were evacuated from the building. But they’re trying to work out who was on the job,” he said.

Bernadette Nyland told a local TV station, WTNH, that she was outside her house when she heard the blast. “They were doing the firing of the engines this morning, and so something went wrong and it blew up. Flames came shooting up almost as tall as that stack. Then the smoke came billowing – blew out our windows; it was frightening, very frightening,” she said.

The Courant said that one witness who lived across a river from the plant thought someone had driven a vehicle into his house because the concussion from the explosion was so strong. Others told local TV stations they had thought a plane crashed. “Everyone ran out of their houses. [There was a] huge boom followed by three or four seconds of the house shaking,” wrote one on WTNH’s website.

guardian.co.uk

Obama invites GOP to bipartisan health-care summit on Feb. 25
Sunday, February 7, 2010

President Obama makes a dramatic attempt to jump-start the stalled health care debate, inviting Republicans in Congress to a half-day summit on the subject to be televised live later this month.

For more information, visit washingtonpost.com:

Feb 07, 2010…….Crew on board the Sea Shepherd “Steve Irwin” have denied that a second ramming has taken place between them and the illegal whalers.

February 05, 2010 John McCain Blog

Senator McCain is kicking off his Veterans’ coalition for his 2010 re-election campaign at the American Legion on 7th Avenue and Van Buren on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 9:30 a.m. He will be accompanied by fellow POWs George “Bud” Day and Orson Swindle.

Bud Day is a Congressional Medal of Honor winner and one of the most highly decorated service members since General Douglas MacArthur, having received over seventy decorations. Colonel Day was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent the next five-and-a-half years in captivity.

Orson Swindle is a former U.S. Marine pilot with a very distinguished military career. Mr. Swindle was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966 and spent the next six years in captivity. Mr. Swindle was an Assistant Secretary of Commerce under President Ronald Reagan, and was a Federal Trade Commissioner from 1997 until 2005.

Both Day and Swindle met John McCain while the three were POWs during the Vietnam war.

The Veterans’ coalition kick-off event will include a town hall as well as a reception for an opportunity to meet the Senator and his fellow POWs. Seating is limited, so if you are interested in attending, please RSVP at the link below.

http://www.johnmccain.com/blog/post/veterans-coalition-kick-off-town-hall-and-reception-phoenix/

Photographs are taken from the CNN.

Following was taken from the Tea Party website
Tea Party Patriots Mission Statement and Core Values

Mission Statement
The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.

Core Values

* Fiscal Responsibility
* Constitutionally Limited Government
* Free Markets

Fiscal Responsibility: Fiscal Responsibility by government honors and respects the freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their own labor. A constitutionally limited government, designed to protect the blessings of liberty, must be fiscally responsible or it must subject its citizenry to high levels of taxation that unjustly restrict the liberty our Constitution was designed to protect. Such runaway deficit spending as we now see in Washington D.C. compels us to take action as the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations.

Constitutionally Limited Government: We, the members of The Tea Party Patriots, are inspired by our founding documents and regard the Constitution of the United States to be the supreme law of the land. We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent. Like the founders, we support states’ rights for those powers not expressly stated in the Constitution. As the government is of the people, by the people and for the people, in all other matters we support the personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law.

Free Markets: A free market is the economic consequence of personal liberty. The founders believed that personal and economic freedom were indivisible, as do we. Our current government’s interference distorts the free market and inhibits the pursuit of individual and economic liberty. Therefore, we support a return to the free market principles on which this nation was founded and oppose government intervention into the operations of private business.

Our Philosophy
Tea Party Patriots, Inc. as an organization believes in the Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. is a non-partisan grassroots organization of individuals united by our core values derived from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, the Bill Of Rights as explained in the Federalist Papers. We recognize and support the strength of grassroots organization powered by activism and civic responsibility at a local level. We hold that the United States is a republic conceived by its architects as a nation whose people were granted “unalienable rights” by our Creator. Chiefly among these are the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The Tea Party Patriots stand with our founders, as heirs to the republic, to claim our rights and duties which preserve their legacy and our own. We hold, as did the founders, that there exists an inherent benefit to our country when private property and prosperity are secured by natural law and the rights of the individual.

ADMIN NOTE: At first I supported their dream but now as it grows it’s becoming more like what they are against. Embracing Palin is a BIG turnoff for me, she is going to ride their coat tails into the White House and that spells disaster for the American people. You’re unhappy with Obama, wait till you get Palin leading you!

CNN: Associate Martina Stewart

Washington (CNN) – The woman who was the face of Democratic efforts to pass a health care reform bill when the last Democratic president was in the White House says she’s happy to share her wisdom on the subject when asked.

In an interview set to air Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighs in on the continuing battle over health care reform on Capitol Hill.

“Are you getting a little déjà vu watching this?,” CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley asked Clinton.

“Well it’s really hard,” said Clinton. “It is a complex issue that touches everybody about which both people and interests have really strong feelings. But I haven’t given up yet, and I know the White House hasn’t given up. And I – I don’t think a lot of the members of Congress have given up. So I’m not sure that this last chapter has been written.”

Asked whether she dispenses any wisdom garnered during her failed efforts to push a health care reform bill through Congress during his husband’s administration, Clinton said she is glad to share what she knows.

“Well when I’m asked I am very happy to respond,” Clinton said. “I mean it’s not anything I have direct responsibility for, but I’ve had a number of conversations. And both in the White House, and on the Hill, and with others who are playing a constructive role. And I – I like I think many Americans hope that there can be a positive outcome.”

During her 2008 White House bid, Clinton’s failed push for health care reform while first lady got her commitment, if elected, to push for universal coverage dubbed “Hillarycare” by many of her conservative and Republican critics.

After beating out Clinton for the Democratic nod and then besting Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, in the general election, President Obama made passing a health care reform one of his top domestic legislative priorities in 2009. National Democrats have thus far been unable to get a bill passed and the party suffered a large blow recently when Republican Scott Brown won a Massachusetts special Senate election last month. Sworn in last week, Brown is now the 41st member of the Senate Republican Caucus and he ran on a pledge to be the 41st vote Senate Republicans need to filibuster a Democrats’ health care reform bill.

CNN Filed under: Health care • Hillary Clinton • State of the Union

By Dan Balz
February 7, 2010
The Washington Post

SACRAMENTO People in the nation’s largest state are in a sour mood. They are unhappy with the economy, unhappy with what has happened to their state, unhappy with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and unhappy with the Democratic-controlled legislature.

The recession here began earlier and went deeper than it did nationally, according to estimates. In December, the unemployment rate stood at 12.4 percent, making California the fifth worst state in the nation. The Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report in November forecasting a turnaround this year but projecting that unemployment would still average more than 10 percent in 2012.

Lawmakers here face a $20 billion state budget deficit, after closing an even bigger deficit last year. “It was monumentally difficult,” Susan Kennedy, Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, said of last year’s effort. “Everything that could be cut was.”

This year, given what it took to pass the budget last year, solutions will be even more difficult. There are no easy options left on the table.

Schwarzenegger is looking to Washington for help. In his State of the State address a month ago, the governor said California gets back just 78 cents for every dollar it sends to Washington. When President Bill Clinton was in office, Schwarzenegger said, California got 94 cents on every dollar sent. “We are not looking for a federal bailout, just federal fairness,” he said.

Schwarzenegger wants permanent relief, not just another temporary injection of money through the stimulus program. He has been working to prod California’s congressional delegation to lobby harder. His advisers say at least $2 billion is in play in negotiations with Washington, perhaps as much as $4 billon to $4.5 billion.

But Uncle Sam is not likely to be California’s savior. The problem is too big. Schwarzenegger called a special session of the legislature to begin to deal with the deficit, but there are low expectations. The real bargaining and decision making will come in the spring and summer.
Read the rest of this entry »