By Cecelia Hanley. A photo is being shared all through the internet of soldiers guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery through a storm.
While the photo showing three soldiers in front of the tomb is from September of this year, the fact remains that the “Old Guard” is currently standing guard in Hurricane Sandy’s 90 mph winds.
The Old Guard, which is the name for the 3rd Division Infantry Regiment, is the official Army Honor Guard, has escorted presidents since World War II and provides military funeral escorts at Arlington National Cemetery. The unit also provides security for Washington during a national emergency.
The cemetery itself is closed due to the storm, but some funerals were held this morning, according to the regiments Facebook page. The photos attached to this article are from this morning.
The Old Guard has continually guarded the tomb since 1948. Read more from this story HERE.
Although Hurricane Sandy packed 90 mph winds, the weather was calmer at the time this video was taken on Monday:
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-30 04:22:252016-04-11 11:27:32Soldiers Guarding Tomb of Unknown Soldier Even in Hurricane Sandy (+video)
President Obama’s reelection campaign, openly concerned that his supporters will be turned away from the polls, is offering legal help to voters who see problems.
The president today said in an interview that the campaign has enlisted an army of lawyers to clear hurdles away for his supporters, telling American Urban Radio Networks, “If people have problems voting, we can solve those problems. We’ve got lawyers all across the country.”
Urging supporters to vote early, as the president himself did in Chicago last week, he told black radio host April Ryan that voters should contact his campaign if they are prevented from voting. “If you try to vote early and you see that problem, we’ve got time to fix it,” said the president.
Democrats have been worried that new election laws requiring voters to show identification are meant to block minorities and the poor at the polls. In Chicago, the president provided his license as identification before voting.
What’s more, he said that by voting early, the campaign can shift its attention to those who wait until Election Day and help them get to the polls.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-30 01:09:102016-04-11 11:27:33Obama Enlists “Army of Lawyers” to Help Him on Election Day
New York University has sparked outrage after offering a course in which students are asked to ‘plan a terrorist attack’.
The program, which is taught by former Navy criminal investigator Marie-Helen Maras, instructs the students to ‘step into [a terrorist’s] shoes’ and write a 10 to 15 page report on how they would attack the U.S.
‘In your paper, you must describe your hypothetical attack and what will happen in the aftermath of the attack,’ the syllabus, obtained by the New York Post, says.
Having pinpointed their terror group of choice, the students are told to factor in how they would carry out the attack, where they would source funding and how many terrorists they would need.
Should any of the students’ plan fall into the wrong hands, each page contains the words, ‘this is a hypothetical scenario for a university course on transnational terrorism’.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-29 23:42:462016-04-11 11:27:33Fury Over NYU Course Which Asked Students to “Step Into a Terrorist’s Shoes and Plan Terror Attack”
By Alan Rappeport, Hannah Kuchler, Shahien Nasiripour, and Shannon Bond. An epic hurricane is due to hit the eastern United States on Monday night, affecting up to 60m people and forcing the closure of equity market trading on Wall Street. The approach of hurricane Sandy, which has already killed more than 60 people in the Caribbean, has already derailed presidential campaigning plans and caused New York to shut down its public transport system.
The US National Weather Service said that Sandy, packing winds of up to 75mph, was expected to bring “life-threatening storm surge flooding” to the mid-Atlantic states. Hurricane Sandy has brought tropical storm conditions, including rain and strong winds, to North Carolina and Virginia. It is expected to come ashore on the central New Jersey coast on Monday evening, according to the National Weather Service, with effects stretching as far north as New England.
Sandy is forecast to combine with two other storms in the coming days, creating what the weather service has called a “Frankenstorm”.
Thousands of people have been evacuated and power blackouts and damage could affect up to 60m people, said forecasters. The region is expected to be paralysed, as more than 3,000 flights have already been cancelled and Amtrak’s train service will be shut down in the northeast on Monday. Read more from this story HERE.
Grand Central Deserted and Subway CLOSED for Only Second Time in History as New York Goes into Lock Down
By Beth Stebner and Louise Boyle. Frantic passengers sprinted for the last trains pulling out of Grand Central Station in New York City this evening as the transport system shut down for only the second time in history.
New York is on lock down in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy causing trains, the subway and buses to stop at 7pm on Sunday night.
Cavernous Grand Central on 42nd Street was eerily deserted as the NYPD patrolled to make sure every passenger had left.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that those living in low-lying areas must evacuate and that all public schools will be closed tomorrow as the storm barrels towards the city.
Police officers went door-to-door tonight, taking the names of those who had ignored the mandatory evacuation order. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-29 04:54:132016-04-11 11:27:34Epic, “Life-Threatening Frankenstorm” to Hit Eastern United States Tonight, NYC Shut Down
By The Des Moines Register. Ten months ago this newspaper endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination for president. An overarching consideration was which of the party’s candidates could we see occupying the White House, and there was no question that Romney was qualified for the job.
Now, in the closing days of the general election campaign, the question is which of the two contenders deserves to be the next president of the United States.
Both President Barack Obama and Governor Romney are superbly qualified. Both are graduates of the Harvard University Law School who have distinguished themselves in government, in public service and in private life. Both are devoted husbands and fathers.
American voters are deeply divided about this race. The Register’s editorial board, as it should, had a vigorous debate over this endorsement. Our discussion repeatedly circled back to the nation’s single most important challenge: pulling the economy out of the doldrums, getting more Americans back in the workforce in meaningful jobs with promising futures, and getting the federal government on a track to balance the budget in a bipartisan manner that the country demands.
Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate. Read more from this story HERE.
Here’s the video of Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager’s response:
Amy Gardner and Scott Clement. President Obama is clinging to a slender four-point lead over Republican Mitt Romney in Virginia as both sides ramp up already aggressive campaigns in the crucial battleground state, according to a new Washington Post poll.
Obama outpolled Romney, 51 to 47 percent, among likely Virginia voters, although he lost the clearer 52-to-44 percent advantage he held in mid-September.
Unlike in the Washington Post-ABC News national tracking poll, Obama still has an edge when Virginia voters are asked who better understands people’s financial problems, and he has not fallen behind a surging Romney on the question of who would better handle the national economy. Nor has Obama lost significant ground among self-identified independents in Virginia, as he has nationally.
The results underscore the importance of swing states like Virginia, with its 13 electoral votes, as both campaigns seek to secure a path to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.
Perhaps the poll’s most striking insight concerns the many voters the two campaigns have contacted in Virginia this fall. A staggering 44 percent of likely voters polled said they had been contacted by the Obama campaign; 41 percent said the same of Romney’s. More than one in four had heard from both campaigns. Read more from this story HERE.
And Obama is Losing Ground in Minnesota, Too
By Rachel Stassen-Berger. As the presidential race tightens across the country, a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found that it is narrowing here as well, with President Obama holding a 3-point lead and Republican Mitt Romney making gains in the state.
The poll shows Obama with support from 47 percent of likely voters and Romney earning backing from 44 percent — a lead within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Last month, Obama had an 8-percentage point advantage in the Minnesota Poll. Romney has apparently cut into the Democrat’s advantage among women since then and picked up support from Minnesotans who were previously undecided or said they would vote for a third-party candidate.
Independents, on the other hand, are leaning more toward Obama. Barely a third supported him last month, but that number has grown to 43 percent. Romney’s support among independents remains virtually unchanged, with 13 percent of that group remaining undecided.
In an indication of how close the race has become, both campaigns have started airing ads in the state targeting Minnesota and western Wisconsin voters. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-29 02:03:112016-04-11 11:27:36Obama Clings to Slim but Shrinking Leads in Virginia, Minnesota
In an extraordinary interview with Bill Moyers, TARP regulator and former federal prosecutor Neil Barofsky made some startling accusations. He not only accused the Obama Administration of attempting to bribe him into silence, but he also stated that he was threatened with harm if he didn’t cooperate.
The heat was on Mr. Barofsky because of his “relentless” criticism of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and other officials. As the top TARP regulator, he attempted to keep the program independent, a struggle that earned him powerful enemies. He is a lifelong Democrat and was an Obama donor in 2008.
His criticism of the Obama Administration has intensified since his resignation last year. During his interview with Moyers, he agreed that the words “incestuous orgy” were not too strong to describe the relationship between Obama Administration officials and the Wall Street figures they were regulating:
BILL MOYERS: I thought, at the time, this was an incestuous orgy going on there, between inside players at Washington and inside players at Wall Street. Is that too strong?
NEIL BAROFSKY: It’s probably not too strong. It’s the fact that their ideology matches up. And look, one of the reasons why their ideology matches up is they all come from the same small handful of institutions. And the people I was dealing with on a daily basis came from the same financial institutions that helped cause the financial crisis and were the most generous recipients of bailouts, Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns, which, of course, had been adopted by J.P. Morgan Chase. Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs, it seemed like every time I turned around, I bumped into someone from Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Barofsky also claimed that he was told to “keep [his] tone down . . . point blank by [the] Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.” He said the conversation continued:
And he said to me, he said, “Neil, you’re a smart guy. You’re a young guy. You’re a talented guy. You got your whole future in front of you. You’ve got a young family that’s starting out. But you’re doing yourself real harm. And the reason why you’re doing yourself real harm is the harsh tone that I had towards the government as well as to Wall Street, based on what I was seeing down in Washington.” And he told me that if I wanted to get a job out on the Street afterwards, it was going to really be hard for me.
Mr. Barofsky responded that
I wasn’t really interested in that. And he said, “Well, maybe a judgeship. Maybe an appointment from the Obama administration for a federal judgeship.” And I said, “Well, again, that would be great. But I don’t really think that’s going to happen with my criticisms.” And he said it didn’t have to be that way. “If all you do is soften your tone, be a little bit more upbeat, all this stuff can happen for you.”
And that’s what I meant by playing ball. I was essentially told, play ball, soften your tone, and all of these good things can happen to you. But if you stay harsh that was going to cause me real harm in those words.
You’ve got to give Bill Moyers credit for where he headed next:
BILL MOYERS: What happens to a political society, to a democracy, when we stifle or bribe or shoot the sheriff?
NEIL BAROFSKY: When I had my incident with the assistant secretary that my deputy, who had come down from– who’s another former federal prosecutor, who did narcotics work, said to me, Kevin Puvalowski. And he said to me, “Neil, you were just offered the bullet or the bribe, the gold or the lead.”
And what he was referring to was a society just like that, which was Colombia, back in the day when Pablo Escobar and the drug kingpins really controlled society. And what he was referring to is that basically to corrupt society Escobar would go to a magistrate or a police officer, police chief, a politician, and say, “You have two choices. You can either take this giant pile of money and do my bidding. Or you can get the lead, a bullet in your head.”
The transcript of the exchange follows. Here’s the video of the interview:
Transcript:
BILL MOYERS: At a conference a week or so ago, here in New York, you said playing ball for Wall Street has become a normal way of life, despite the panic of 2008. What does it mean, “playing ball for Wall Street”?
NEIL BAROFSKY: Well, what I saw when I was in Washington was this real pressure on myself, on other regulators to essentially keep their tone down. And I was told point blank by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury that, this is about in 2010.
And he said to me, he said, “Neil, you’re a smart guy. You’re a young guy. You’re a talented guy. You got your whole future in front of you. You’ve got a young family that’s starting out. But you’re doing yourself real harm.” And the reason why you’re doing yourself real harm is the harsh tone that I had towards the government as well as to Wall Street, based on what I was seeing down in Washington. And he told me that if I wanted to get a job out on the Street afterwards, it was going to really be hard for me.
BILL MOYERS: You mean on Wall Street?
NEIL BAROFSKY: Yes. And I explained to him that I wasn’t really interested in that. And he said, “Well, maybe a judgeship. Maybe an appointment from the Obama administration for a federal judgeship.” And I said, “Well, again, that would be great. But I don’t really think that’s going to happen with my criticisms.” And he said it didn’t have to be that way. “If all you do is soften your tone, be a little bit more upbeat, all this stuff can happen for you.”
And that’s what I meant by playing ball. I was essentially told, play ball, soften your tone, and all of these good things can happen to you. But if you stay harsh that was going to cause me real harm in those words.
BILL MOYERS: What made you able to say no to the temptation?
NEIL BAROFSKY: Well, I think part of it is the only job I ever wanted was to be a federal prosecutor.
BILL MOYERS: Send bad guys to jail?
NEIL BAROFSKY: It doesn’t get much better than that. Really interesting, complicated work, and wear the white hat. So I didn’t have those incentives that I think that were presented. And I think, look, you know, being trained in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, I was trained to be a government employee and to take my oath of office very seriously.
But I wasn’t really interested in their reindeer games. And I felt a real obligation and sense of duty to fulfill the oath that I took in Secretary Paulson’s office on December 15th, 2008 to do the job that I was sent down there to do. But I wasn’t really tempted with a big job on Wall Street. And frankly, if it meant getting a judgeship, compromising the job that I needed to do and was supposed to do, it just wasn’t interesting to me.
But look, let me be very clear. I also have the fallback of I was a trial lawyer. I prosecuted a lot of big cases. And I knew that whatever happened, I could always go back and get a good job in New York, working at a law firm or doing legal work. So it gave me a degree of financial freedom even though I basically spent most of my career as a government employee and I didn’t have money. I didn’t necessarily need to please anyone to be able to go back and still be able to feed my family.
BILL MOYERS: What happens to a political society, to a democracy, when we stifle or bribe or shoot the sheriff?
NEIL BAROFSKY: When I had my incident with the assistant secretary that my deputy, who had come down from– who’s another former federal prosecutor, who did narcotics work, said to me, Kevin Puvalowski. And he said to me, “Neil, you were just offered the bullet or the bribe, the gold or the lead.”
And what he was referring to was a society just like that, which was Colombia, back in the day when Pablo Escobar and the drug kingpins really controlled society. And what he was referring to is that basically to corrupt society Escobar would go to a magistrate or a police officer, police chief, a politician, and say, “You have two choices. You can either take this giant pile of money and do my bidding. Or you can get the lead, a bullet in your head.”
And Kevin was joking that I just received the Washington white collar equivalent of the gold or the lead. And it was funny, at the time, but that’s kind of what happens in a society where the rewards and incentives are, again, nobody’s getting shot in the head thank goodness. But it’s a breakdown of the system.
And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they’re not. And what you’re going to see and what we are seeing is it’ll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you’ll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of — and I don’t want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent — to the detriment of everyone else.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-28 05:25:222016-04-11 11:27:37Obama’s TARP Regulator: “Offered the Bullet or the Bribe, the Gold or the Lead” (+video)
Internal Treasury Department emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that in June 2009 a high-ranking Treasury official planned a backroom meeting to discuss the pension plans for 20,000 nonunion Delphi salaried retirees.
Those retirees lost between 30 and 70 percent of their pensions, as well as their healthcare, life insurance and other benefits. Unionized employees working alongside them, however, saw their pensions and benefits made whole.
The Obama administration has blamed this decision on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a federal government agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues. But these internal emails indicate the Treasury Department was involved to a greater degree than the administration has conceded publicly.
“Anything new on the PBGC front regarding Delphi?” General Motors official Walter Borst wrote in an email to Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson on June 9, 2009.
“I am meeting with them tomorrow and will have more to report after the meeting.” Feldman replied to Borst, copying Wilson.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-28 05:16:582016-04-11 11:27:37More Leaks Nail Obama: Despite Denials, White House Involved in Delphi Pension Failure
One of Mr. Clark’s questions involved the controversy over the multiple failed loans to “green” energy industries, such as solar. In response, Obama stated, “And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics.” This statement was consistent with what he and his administration have said before on the subject, that all green funding was based on merits, not political cronyism.
In a series of emails leaked to CompleteColorado.com yesterday, Obama’s claim that politics had “nothing to do” with green energy loans was directly contradicted:
In addition to the foregoing email showing that the White House was pushing to move Abound Solar forward – by applying pressure directly on the Department of Energy – an earlier email, also leaked to CompleteColorado.com, confirmed that the Department of Energy was operating under significant pressure to get the Abound Solar deal done:
Americans should be outraged over this latest White House deception. But, as much as the administration has been lying recently, who knows whether anyone will really even notice.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-28 03:44:012016-04-11 11:27:38Emails Leaked Yesterday Directly Contradict Obama’s Repeated Claim that Solar Funding Had “Nothing To Do With Politics”
Academics, on average, lean to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving even more in that direction.
Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as “far left” or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined. The data come from the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, which surveys faculty members nationwide every three years on a range of attitudes.
Gauging how gradual or abrupt this shift is is complicated because of changes in the UCLA survey’s methodology; before 2007-8, the survey included community college faculty members, who have been excluded since. But for those years, examining only four-year college and university faculty members, the numbers are similar to those of 2007-8. Going back further, one can see an evolution away from the center.
In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left. (Most surveys that have included community college faculty members have found them to inhabit political space to the right of faculty members at four-year institutions.)
The new data differ from some recent studies by groups other than the UCLA center that have found that professors (while more likely to lean left than right) in fact were doing so from more of a centrist position. A major study in 2007, for example, found that professors were more likely to be centrist than liberal, and that many on the left identified themselves as “slightly liberal.” (That study and the new one use different scales, making exact comparisons impossible.)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-27 00:29:262016-04-11 11:27:40University Faculty Lurching to the Left: Now, Less Than 12% Conservative
