Earlier this week it was reported that the Obama White House removed confessed terrorist Faisal Shahzad from the Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list sometime after Barack Obama came into office.

Terrorist Faisal Shahzad had substantial connections to the Taliban, reached out to the Taliban, was influenced by Yemeni terror leader Anwar al Awlaki, made at least a dozen return trips to Pakistan since arriving in the United States in 1999, and he bought a one way ticket with cash to Pakistan.

Now we find out that he was “blogging” and asking for jihad as far back as 2006 but that the Obama Administration took him off the terror watch list anyway.

Terror expert Walid Phares weighed in on the confessed Times Square bomber today in an interview on FOX News:

To be clear, Shahzad was actually commenting on terrorist websites and not actually blogging.

Earlier this week it was discovered that Shahzad was posting on terror websites since 2006.

FOX News reported:

FoxNews.com has uncovered several dozens of postings by a man named Faisal Shahzad on radical Islamist Salafist websites devoted to a variety of different jihadist sects.

Experts suspect this is the same Faisal Shahzad whom authorities have charged with plotting to explode a massive car bomb in New York on Saturday. If so, then he has been educating himself on the Internet for years on the legitimacy of holy war.

Shahzad visited numerous websites devoted to ideological discussion of Islamism and Shariah law. His apparent online posts date back to at least 2006 — three years before the Times Square suspect became a naturalized American citizen.

“If the person on these websites is indeed the suspected bomber, the postings show that he was intellectually thinking about engaging in jihadism for a few years,” said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Knowing that, the ideology of jihadism often has inspired violence and terrorism…

“These can be coined as Islamist Salafist websites where lots of material is posted, including theological, ideological and political texts and blogs,” Phares said, noting that he saw discussions about fatwas, jihad and other Islamist causes on these sites.”

As Walid Phares said in an interview on FOX and Friends earlier in the week, Faisal was no lone wolf:

“When a guy makes a phone call, he’s no longer a lone wolf. A lone wolf is somebody who doesn’t tell anybody else about the issue. He doesn’t share that information. He made phone calls… He may be deployed as a lone wolf. It is much easier to send one terrorist as 10 terrorists. But, he is not alone with conducting terror.”

If the Obama Administration removed a guy like Faisal Shahzad from the terror watch list sometime after 2008, just what does a guy have to do to make Team Obama’s list?

HATTIP: BigGovernment

More Evidence Team Obama Stopped Shahzad Monitoring Begun Under Bush-Clinton

As I posted yesterday, there was a disturbing blurb in a NY Times article that indicated Faisal Shahzad, the now infamous Times Square Bomber, was under surveillance as a potential terrorist during the Bush administration.

George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out.”

JTTF’s typically surveillance an individual – especially a US Citizen – under the FIS Court authorization. These authorizations have to be renewed every 90 days or so by the US Attorney General. As has been noted before (see here, here and here for details) the Obama administration began shutting down Bush-era terrorists investigations last year as they debated how to reduce our nation’s surveillance of terrorists threats. The person who killed 14 people at Ft Hood last fall was one such suspect whose JTTF investigation was suspiciously shut down around this time last year.

There is more evidence which seems to point at changes made by the Obama administration in terms of their monitoring Mr. Shahzad. For example, after being on the terrorist watch list for almost a decade, Shahzad was removed from that list sometime after 2008, according to CBS News:

Sources tell CBS News that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad appeared on a Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list – Traveler Enforcement Compliance System (TECS) – between 1999 and 2008 because he brought approximately $80,000 cash or cash instruments into the United States.

Now there is another damning tidbit out that confirms that Federal Investigators may have been blinded and hamstrung by the lack of FIS Court authorization to fully monitor this threat:

Taking great pains to explain how Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad was able to make it to JFK airport and board an Emirates airliner before being nabbed, authorities today said that they were following Mr. Shahzad, “but only on Twitter.”

A spokesman for the surveillance team following the suspected terrorist said that they were closely monitoring Mr. Shahzad’s tweets, “but he must have figured something out because all of a sudden he blocked us.”

The surveillance team’s revelations come on the heels of the Dept. of Homeland Security’s shocker that it had friended Mr. Shahzad on Facebook weeks ago and had even played the popular online game Farmville with him.

“A few days before the Times Square incident, Mr. Shahzad attempted to blow up one of our sheep,” a Department spokesman said. “In retrospect, that should have been a red flag.”

OK, why is this disturbing? Well Twitter, Facebook and other social networks are probably considered to be in the public domain, since individuals freely volunteer to communicate with others openly. It therefore may not require a FIS Court warrant to monitor. The idea someone could block government monitoring on Twitter using one of its privacy settings is another indication this was not a full up surveillance. The government can get past that little barrier.

The fact is someone was trying to keep and eye on Shahzad, but possibly without the full authority of the JTTF and FIS Court. Someone was trying to monitor this guy. Someone who may have disagreed with the decision to pull back from the Bush era level of concern.

HATTIP: THE STRTA-SPHERE

Is Perfect Financial Storm Brewing Overseas?

Investors went running for the exits on Tuesday with some analysts worried that we may be looking at the perfect financial storm.

Storm #1: Europe

As you may know, part of the bearish sentiment stemmed from a market rumor suggesting Spain might soon follow Greece and ask the EU for a massive bailout – to the tune of for 280 billion euros.

Euro / US Dollar FX... (EUR=X) 1.2876 -0.0091 (-0.7%%) Currency Exchange

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero denied the claims calling the chatter "complete madness."

Nonetheless, investors dumped stocks worried that problems in Europe were far from solved; the euro tumbled to a one-year low against the dollar.

Storm #2: China

But, as you may not know, part of the bearish sentiment in the market also stemmed from Beijing’s decision to raise banks' reserve requirements to fend off inflation. It’s the third such increase in China this year.

ISHARES FTSE/XINHUA... (FXI) 39.56 -0.125 (-0.31%%) NASDAQ

“All sectors (in China) are under pressure," says Zheng Weigang, analyst at Shanghai Securities with bank and real estate stocks leading the plunge.

As a result the Shanghai Composite, China's key stock index, fell 1.2% on Tuesday to its lowest close in seven months.

What does it all mean?

If you watch Fast Money regularly, you may remember that Miller Tabak strategist Peter Bookvar has expressed concerns that investors can’t withstand a one, two punch from both China and Europe.

Investors didn’t want to buy umbrellas despite the gathering storm clouds, he says.

A lot of US investors think it’s all about the US and everything else can take care of itself but in a globalized world that’s not the case, Boockvar adds.

Europe is China’s biggest trading partner and internally China is trying to slow down. China’s slower growth impacts Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. They export to China who then exports to Europe. We’re all in this together.

HATTIP: CNBC

I voted today!

It is voter day in Ohio (and Indiana) today! So make sure you go out and vote today! I even got a sticker!!!

As a side note, when I was voting, an elderly lady came in and was trying to vote. She stopped and asked the two or three people over seeing the election if they had any information on the people or issues that she was voting on. She admitted that she did not watch or listen to any local news and therefore did not know anything about the election, except that there was an election. The people overseeing the election said that the did not have any information and that if they did, they could not provide any because they did not want to be seen "pushing for one candidate or issue over another."

The lady walked out without voting.

I can see both sides of the coin on this issue, but what does it say for a citizens if they are not even engaged enough to know what they are voting about in a primary election. On my ballet there were 3 issues to vote for and only 3 different races that had multiple choices for candidates. Apparently she did not think her vote to count enough to even color in one box.

Sad.

GM Math

Hotshot sniper in one-and-a-half mile double kill!

A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than 1 miles away.

Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.

“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.”

The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.

In a remarkable tour of duty, Harrison cheated death a few weeks later when a Taliban bullet pierced his helmet but was deflected away from his skull. He later broke both arms when his army vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

Harrison was sent back to the UK for treatment, but insisted on returning to the front line after making a full recovery.

“I was lucky that my physical fitness levels were very high before my arms were fractured and after six weeks in plaster I was still in pretty good shape,” he said. “It hasn’t affected my ability as a sniper.”

Harrison, from Gloucestershire, was reunited in Britain with his wife Tanya and daughter Dani, 16, last month. Recalling his shooting prowess in Helmand province, he said: “It was just unlucky for the Taliban that conditions were so good and we could see them so clearly.”

Harrison and his colleagues were in open-topped Jackal 4x4 vehicles providing cover for an Afghan national army patrol south of Musa Qala in November last year. When the Afghan soldiers and Harrison’s troop commander came under enemy fire, the sniper, whose vehicle was further back on a ridge, trained his sights on a Taliban compound in the distance. His L115A3 long-range rifle, the army’s most powerful sniper weapon, is designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft and supposedly capable of only “harassing fire” beyond that range.

“We saw two insurgents running through its courtyard, one in a black dishdasha, one in green,” he said. “They came forward carrying a PKM machinegun, set it up and opened fire on the commander’s wagon.

“Conditions were perfect, no wind, mild weather, clear visibility. I rested the bipod of my weapon on a compound wall and aimed for the gunner firing the machinegun.

“The driver of my Jackal, Trooper Cliff O’Farrell, spotted for me, providing all the information needed for the shot, which was at the extreme range of the weapon.”

Harrison killed one machinegunner with his first attempt and felled the other with his next shot. He then let off a final round to knock the enemy weapon out of action.

Harrison discovered that he had set a new record only on his return to UK barracks nine days ago. The previous record was held by Corporal Rob Furlong, of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who was using a 12.7mm McMillan TAC-50 rifle.

Tom Irwin, a director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said: “It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”

News of Harrison’s success comes amid concern over a rival insurgent sharpshooter who in a five-month spree has killed up to seven British soldiers, including a sniper, in and around the Taliban stronghold of Sangin.

In a later incident during the tour, Harrison’s patrol vehicle was hit 36 times during a Taliban ambush. “One round hit my helmet behind the right ear and came out of the top,” he said. “Two more rounds went through the strap across my chest. We were all very, very lucky not to get hurt.”

HatTip: TimesOnline

2010: Public Employee of the Year Awards

FIRE AT OUR APARTMENT COMPLEX!

This electrical fire started in the upper unit, shot down the electrical outlets and spread to the lower unit. A Lowe's delivery team was delivering a dryer to the lower unit when "the fire came pouring out all the outlets in the kitchen." One of them ran back to their truck, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and with one long spray put it out. He then ran to the upper unit but it was already filled with smoke and was not able to get in. The lady who lives in the upper unit with her family said that her fire extinguisher would not work. I over heard her say later that her fire alarm kept going off in the past and so she got rid of it. NOT A SMART THING!

Sorry about the quality of the video, we were trying to make sure that we were not going to lose our apartment too and were just trying to keep up with what was going on.

Here is some video:




Update:
The Red Cross is here and they are working to relocate two families and provide for them. The maintenance dept. is working on replacing all the doors that the fire men broken down as they cleared the adjoining apartments. And the fire men have all gone. In a sad development, the lady who bought the dryer and was having it delivered by Lowe's not only had her unit damaged by the fire, but according to the Lowe's driver, "the dry is a total lose, I saw it with my own eyes."

Here are some pictures I took near the end:To top it off, a local newspaper man showed up with his camera in what I think is a 2009 Lotus Elise! Poor BigMedia, have to drive around in their Lotus's being scooped by a local blogger!

Must See! Pictures of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano! Must See!

BOOK GATE - Coming soon

This is a must read. It sure has the tastes of BOOK GATE written all over it.

Barack Obama's Missing Girlfriends

The blogosphere abhors a vacuum. So when the mainstream media (MSM) leave holes in a given narrative -- in this case, the biography of the president -- bloggers individually, incrementally, and indefatigably strive to fill in the blanks -- sometimes successfully, sometimes less so....

As I have argued from textual analysis, and as Andersen has confirmed from his own reporting, Obama had help with the book. As Andersen tells it, after four futile years of trying to finish the contracted book, a "hopelessly blocked" Obama delivered his family's "oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes" to "friend and neighbor" Ayers for a major overhaul.

Ayers appears to have taken Obama's shapeless mass of a manuscript and fitted it into a Homeric framework....

If Obama's friend nicely fills the Circe role, then she is almost surely grounded in the real-life person of Diana Oughton, Ayers' lover who was killed in a 1970 Greenwich Village bomb factory blast...

Physically, the woman of Obama's memory, with her "dark hair, and specks of green in her eyes," evokes images of Oughton. As her FBI files attest, Oughton had brown hair and green eyes. The two women share similar family backgrounds as well. In fact, they seem to have grown up on the very same estate....

Hat Tip: American Thinker

Cincinnati TeaPart Signs

Below are the signs that we as a family took to the Cincinnati TeaParty on 4-15-10

Emma's Sign:

Dad's Sign:

Mom's Sign:

HooverInstitution — March 17, 2010 — Beginning with the assertion that war is inseparable from the human condition, Victor Hanson proceeds to explain the ways in which the American way of war is distinctive.

ABC: Key Iranian nuke scientist defected to U.S. in 2009

[Shahram] Amiri, a nuclear physicist in his early 30s, went missing last June three days after arriving in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage, according to the Iranian government. He worked at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which is closely connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, according to the Associated Press…

According to the people briefed on the intelligence operation, Amiri’s disappearance was part of a long-planned CIA operation to get him to defect.

HatTip: Hot Air

Enough Said

"Consensus is the absence of Leadership"

The above headline is a Margaret Thatcher quote. Below is more from her ladyship.

"Ah consensus … the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?"

"Consensus is the absence of Leadership"

HatTip: ExtremeWisdom

Good News For All You Men Out There:

Walnuts slow prostate cancer growth - A new study suggests that mice with prostate tumors should say “nuts to cancer.”

Thanks to Science News.

CNN Headline: “Hundreds of People, At Least Dozens” - at TeaParty Rally In Navada

Looks Like Dozens to me:


Update: The Daily Caller

Sarah Palin told thousands of tea party activists assembled in the dusty Nevada desert Saturday that Sen. Harry Reid will have to explain his votes when he comes back to his hometown to campaign.

The wind whipped U.S. flags behind the former Alaska governor as she stood on a makeshift stage, holding a microphone and her notes and speaking to a cheering crowd. She told them Reid, fighting for re-election, is “gambling away our future.”

“Someone needs to tell him, this is not a crapshoot,” Palin said.

At least 9,000 people streamed into tiny Searchlight, a former mining town 60 miles south of Las Vegas, bringing American flags, “Don’t Tread on Me” signs and outspoken anger toward Reid, President Barack Obama, the health care overhaul and other Democrats who supported it.

ATLANTIC OCEAN (Feb. 27, 2010) The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), the Navy's 10th and final Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, keels hard to starboard during high-speed turn drills. George H.W. Bush is underway in the Atlantic Ocean supporting fleet training operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Micah P. Blechner/Released)

Hat Tip: Unto The Breach

Supply fears start to hit Treasuries

The bond vigilantes are finally flexing their muscles. A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of investor appetite for new debt sent the benchmark 10-year yield to its highest level since last June. For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday it was 3.87 per cent.

“The spotlight on Greece only helped to reveal that the US’s kitchen – with Federal and state budget balances – was itself full of cockroaches,” says William O’Donnell, strategist at RBS Securities.
It hasn’t helped that the US announced a big overhaul of its healthcare system this month, adding to worries about the scale of US spending."

Full Story Here.

Stop and Must Read

Today, we find this headline on MSNBC.com and the following article:

Health Care Overhaul Knocks Profits at Major US Firms

Several major U.S. companies said the health care overhaul will cost them millions of dollars this year, but the White House dismissed their complaints, saying it was simply closing a tax loophole. said Friday that it would record a $1 billion non-cash charge for the current quarter related to the bill. The operator, whose annual revenue is expected to be $124.1 billion this year, said the charge is the result of a provision in the law related to the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies.

AT&T also said it will be evaluating prospective changes to the health care benefits it offers.

Diversified manufacturer 3M said it will take a charge of $85 to $90 million in its first quarter as a result of health reform.

These announcements followed statements from manufacturers Deere and Caterpillar , which said on Thursday that they are expecting a combined $250 million in charges this year as a result of changes to the $2.5 trillion U.S. health care system.

They can no longer deduct from their taxes the subsidies paid by the federal government for retiree drug benefits.

We also find this story on MSNBC.com:

Jobless Rate Rose in 27 States in February; Four Hit Records

Unemployment continued to rise several states in February—even breaking records in some states, according to government data released Friday.

And then we read this story in the Boston Globe:

Social Security will pay more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in the current fiscal year, six years earlier than expected, the Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday.Last spring, Social Security trustees reported that expenses would exceed revenue beginning in 2016. Since then, applications for benefits have increased because people are retiring early due to the recession, and that, combined with high unemployment, means fewer workers paying taxes.

Add this story to the mix: CBO: Debt Will Rise to 90% of GDP
That is more than twice all the Presidents before him combined since George Washington!

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.The federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it's headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020, according to CBO's deficit estimates.

That figure would equal 90 percent of the estimated gross domestic product in 2020, up from 40 percent at the end of fiscal 2008. By comparison, America's debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at 109 percent at the end of World War II, while the ratio for economically troubled Greece hit 115 percent last year.

What do you get when you add all of these stories together?

Personal Income Drops Across the Country - WSJ

Interest rates rise after Treasury auction of seven-year notes draws less demand- Yahoo Finance

Half of U.S. Home Loan Modifications Default Again After Nine Months - Business Week

Fed's Warsh warns against inflation risk complacency - Reuters