On May 1st, Pakistani Taliban Agent (Yeah, I said it.) Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate a car bomb in the heart of  one of America’s biggest entertaiment meccas, New York City’s Times Square.  The bomb detonated, but failed to produce an explosion. 

America got lucky.

On May 4th, President Barak Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) issued the following proclamation:

This incident is another sobering reminder of the times in which we live. Around the world and here at home, there are those who would attack our citizens and who would slaughter innocent men, women, and children in pursuit of their murderous agenda. They will stop at nothing to kill and disrupt our way of life. But once again, an attempted attack has been—failed.

“has been – failed?”  No, Scooter.  The bomb failed to detonate.  You wanted to take credit for that…but couldn’t.

On Friday, May 7,  the Wall Street Journal reported that General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, had described Shahzad as a “lone wolf.” Adminstration sycophants immediately proclaimed  those comments as proof that the initial views of Obama administration officials regarding Shahzad not having terrorist connections were irrefutably correct..

Thursday morning, May 13th – Federal agents conducted raids in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey in connection with the failed Times Square car bomb and arrested two Pakistani men who allegedly provided money to suspect Faisal Shahzad, per law enforcement officials.

The searches resulted from evidence gathered in the investigation into the May 1 Times Square bomb attempt.  However, according to FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz, there was “no known immediate threat to the public or any active plot against the United States,”   

A top Massachusetts law enforcement official said two Boston-area men had a “direct connection” to Pakistani-American suspect Faisal Shahzad.  They are believed to have been the money men, but investigators weren’t sure whether they were witting accomplices or simply sending him money, a practice common among people from the Middle East and Central Asia who live in the U.S.

Both men were hauled in on the excused of expired visas (the permit, not the credit card).   Hale said a third person was arrested in Maine, though two other law enforcement officials said that arrest was unrelated to the Times Square probe (Yeah, right).

Gee.  I didn’t know lone wolves traveled in packs.

Also Thursday, the ever-vigilant Obama administration cut $53 million from New York City’s terror-fighting budget , a mere dozen days after the botched plot to bomb Times Square.

At the same time, Northwestern University researchers released a study yesterday suggesting New York should get $15 million to $92 million more security money, not less.

The University’s findings were based on how the government allocated homeland security funds to the 10 biggest cities from 2005 through last year – and factored in the likelihood of a terrorist attack.

Being the petulant President he is, President Obama responded to New Yorker’s cries that he shortchanged the city by making an unscheduled stop at 1 Police Plaza, where he vowed to “make sure that you are getting the support you need to protect this great city.” 

Hey, NYC.  If you believe that, I’ve got some beachfront property in Arizona.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was appearing before Congress, making a fool of himself.   In front of our elected officials, Holder proudly announced the arrests made earlier in the day.  However, the United States Attorney General would not say “radical Islam” is a reason Faisal Shahzad tried to blow a hole in Times Square.  According to Holder:

My grandmother came from Russia
A satchel on her knee,
My grandfather had his father’s cap
He brought from Italy.
They’d heard about a country
Where life might let them win,
They paid the fare to America
And there they melted in.Lovely Lady Liberty
With her book of recipes
And the finest one she’s got
Is the great American melting pot.
The great American melting pot.

America was founded by the English,
But also by the Germans, Dutch, and French.
The principle still sticks;
Our heritage is mixed.
So any kid could be the president.

You simply melt right in,
It doesn’t matter what your skin.
It doesn’t matter where you’re from,
Or your religion, you jump right in
To the great American melting pot.
The great American melting pot.
Ooh, what a stew, red, white, and blue.

America was the New World
And Europe was the Old.
America was the land of hope,
Or so the legend told.
On steamboats by the millions,
In search of honest pay,
Those 19th-century immigrants sailed
To reach the U.S.A.

Lovely Lady Liberty
With her book of recipes
And the finest one she’s got
Is the great American melting pot
The great American melting pot.
What good ingredients,
Liberty and immigrants.

They brought the country’s customs,
Their language and their ways.
They filled the factories, tilled the soil,
Helped build the U.S.A.
Go on and ask your grandma,
Hear what she has to tell
How great to be an American
And something else as well.

Lovely Lady Liberty
With her book of recipes
And the finest one she’s got
Is the great American melting pot
The great American melting pot.

The great American melting pot.
The great American melting pot.

In an effort to secure their re-elections, The City Council voted 13-1 to bar Los Angeles from conducting business with Arizona unless the law is repealed. The vote came after a phony angst-ridden council discussion during which many self-righteous council members noted that their ancestors were U.S. immigrants. (We all were, geniuses.  Unless, you’re of pure American Indian ancestry.)

Councilman Ed Reyes (D) said:

Los Angeles is the second-largest city in this country. An immigrant city, an international city needs to have its voice heard .

 I didn’t hear the citizens of Arizona ask your opinion, Skippy. 

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) already has said he would approve the boycott.

Even though Arizona’s law has been changed, forbidding police from using race to stop people, Liberals say racial profiling is inevitable.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn opines (D): 

We must say stop… this is a law that we think is wrong. It’s going in the wrong direction.

According to a report from the city’s chief legislative analyst, the proposal could affect investments and contracts worth as much as $52 million, including contracts for airport, harbor and trucking services, . This unbelievably biased report recommends the council consider suspending travel, cutting contracts and refraining from making any new ones with Arizona-based companies.

Hahn, who co-authored the resolution (I’m shocked.) said it would be not be practical to cancel most of those deals and only about $7 million to $8 million in city contracts probably would be affected.

I’ve written about the Arizona Immigration Law in the blog “For Mr. Krentz”.  I’ve written about the situation at Morgan Hill High School in the blog “OUR Flag is Offensive?”.

My opinions are certainly not the only ones out there.

From the Who Asked You? Department:  Six U.N. human rights experts opined Tuesday that Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration could violate international standards that are binding in the United States .

These professional bureaucrats said the basic human rights regulations, signed by the U.S. and many other nations, relate to issues such as discrimination and the terms under which a person can be detained:

These situations have brought a simmering issue to a roiling boil.  These two stories  have galvanized the feelings Americans have about people who are in our country illegally.

Here are some American opinions per RasmussenReports.com:

70% of Arizona Voters Favor New State Measure Cracking Down On Illegal Immigration

67% Say Illegal Immigrants Are Major Strain on U.S. Budget

68% Oppose Cities That Give ‘Sanctuary’ To Illegal Immigrants

68% Say Those Who Employ Illegal Immigrants Should Be Punished 

A while back, the following allegorical story went viral.  You may have seen this already, but it explains illegal immigration as succinctly as anything I’ve come across:

Let’s pretend I broke into your house.  When you discover me there, you insist I leave.  But I say, “I’ve made all the beds, washed the dishes, did the laundry, and cleaned the floors; I’ve done all the work you don’t like to do. I’m hardworking and honest (except for breaking into your house). Not only must you let me stay, you must also add me to your insurance plan, educate my kids, and provide these benefits to my husband, too (he will do your yardwork, he’s honest and hardworking too–except for that breaking in part). If you try to force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house and proclaim my right to be there! It’s only fair, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m trying to better myself. I’m hardworking and honest…except for, well, you know. I will live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness and prejudice.

Oh yeah, I want you to learn my language so you can communicate with me.

Good plan..don’t you think? 

Sources:  rasmussenreports.com, yahoo.com, azcentral.com, cbsnews.com,startribune.com, abclocal.go.com

It is the night of September 13, 1814.  The British fleet are bombarding Fort McHenry in the harbor at Baltimore, Maryland. Francis Scott Key, a 34-year old lawyer-poet, is watching the attack from the deck of a British prisoner-exchange ship. Key had gone seeking the release of a friend. They were told that they had to remain aboard the vessel until the end of the attack. When the battle was over, the following morning, Key had his telescope on the fort and saw the American flag was still waving. The sight of the tattered Stars and Stripes was so moving that he pulled a letter from his pocket and began to write the poem. This poem eventually became the national anthem of the United States – “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight’
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 – On a day celebrating a manufactured Mexican Holiday, designed to increase revenue for beer distilleries and Mexican Restaurants, administrators at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California send five students home after they refuse to remove their American flag T-shirts and bandannas — garments the school officials deemed “incendiary” on the artificial observance called Cinco de Mayo.

The Assistant Principal, Miguel Rodriguez, asked two of them to remove their American flag bandannas.  The boys did as they were told and were then asked to accompany Rodriguez to the principal’s office.

The five students:  Daniel Galli, Austin Carvalho, Matt Dariano, Dominic Maciel and Clayton Howard, were then told to turn their T-shirts inside-out or be sent home, but, it would not be considered a suspension. Rodriguez told them he did not want any fights to break out between Mexican-American students celebrating their heritage and those wearing American flags.

Dariano’s mother, Diana, told FoxNews.com she and parents of the other four students want an apology from officials and are thinking about filing a lawsuit.

We want an apology, Diana Dariano said Thursday. Who in the United States of America would have an issue with that? It’s a sad, sad day.

Who, indeed. 

More than 200 Hispanic students reportedly skipped class on Thursday and marched to school district headquarters while chanting “we want respect” and “si se puede” — “yes we can,” the Morgan Hill Times reported.  You may have seen the video of these brave young people berating and antagonizing a man in a motorized wheelchair.

The noble nature of their protest is underwhelming.

Morgan Hill Police Department Commander Joe Sampson said two officers were stationed at Live Oak High School school midday Friday to give a “visual presence” in order to thwart any potential acts of violence.

Assistant Principal Rodriguez has apologized for telling the young Americans that they couldn’t wear U.S. flag shirts on Cinco de Mayo, the local superintendent said Friday. 

Superintendent Wesley Smith described freedom of expression as “a sacred American value” and said the lesson learned is that it should be celebrated “thoughtfully and fairly.”

I repeat:  OUR country’s flag is offensive?

 Smith said, noting the national media attention on the school:

It is unfortunate that some people want to leverage their personal agendas off of this incident.

Translation:  We got caught being stupid Liberals who care more about another country than we do our own.

Most of the kids on our campus have said, ‘Enough is enough.’ they want to get back to normal.

Translation:   Move along, nothing to see here.  Please, move along.

Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?  

Yes, it  does, Mr. Key, sir.  But, just like that fateful night so long ago, it is under attack.  Only this time, it is under attack from enemies foreign and domestic.

Sources:  usembassy.de, usflag.org, foxnews.com

About 2.40pm on Thursday, the S&P 500 index, the US equity market’s benchmark, fell from 1,120. Within six minutes, it bottomed out at 1,065.79, a Kamikaze-like dive of nearly 5 per cent. By 3.00pm, the index was moving above 1,120, although still down 4 per cent on the day before, settling 3.2 per cent lower by the close.

The immediate explanation circulating through the Main Street Media was that an incorrectly typed sell order – one that confused “billions” for “millions”, for example – was the likely culprit.

However, despite the tedious pushing by the Main Stream Media of this story, officials still could not identify a specific cause.

We still don’t know what was the initiating signal for the trading activity we saw on Thursday, said Jeff Wecker, chief executive officer at Lime Brokerage. The verdict is still out.

Since other people are volunteering theories about this almost-disastrous stock market dive, I would like to throw one out there, too.  At the risk of being accused of wearing a tin foil hat, here it is.  It involves a close friend and benefactor of the President of the United States of America:

George Soros set up the now famous Quantum Fund as one of the world’s first Hedge Funds. It took money from the wealthy and invested in risky but potentially highly profitable international deals.

It did very well out of the collapse of fixed exchange rates in the 1970s and the deregulation of global capital markets. By 1980, George Soros was worth more than £16.5 million and his fund £67 million. The stage was set for his intervention in the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a system established in 1979 for controlling exchange rates within the European Monetary System of the European Union (EU) that was intended to prepare the way for a single currency.

Around spring 1992, Soros had decided that the pound would have to be devalued because it had been pushed into the Exchange Rate Mechanism at too high a rate.

He knew that the Bundesbank was in favor of a devaluation of both sterling and the Italian lira and believed it would have to happen because of the disastrous impact that high British interest rates were having on asset prices.

Soros spent the next few months in preparation to profit from that devaluation. He borrowed sterling heavily, reportedly to the tune of £6.5 billion, and converted that into a mixture of Deutschmarks and French francs.

On Black Wednesday, September 16, 1992, Soros won his bet.  The UK Conservative government was forced to withdraw the Pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) due to pressure by currency speculators, most notably Soros himself. 

In the following days, he took care of business, paying back what he borrowed and ending with a profit of around £1 billion.  At the same time, Soros bought as much as £350 million of British shares, gambling that equities often rise after a currency devalues.

He later admitted that his actions had benefited no one but himself.

There are several culprits in the American Stock Market Crash of 2008 that helped cost John McCain the Presidency, but one key source of the problem escaped almost everyone’s attention:  an economic index that can be easily manipulated by Hedge Funds and whose erratic movements have shaken the foundation of Wall Street: the ABX index, launched in 2007 by the Markit Group, a London-based company that specializes in credit derivative pricing and that administers the index.

The heart of the mortgage mess we are still recovering from was uncertainty regarding the value of subprime securities. The ABX Index is used to determine the value of these securities: it is a benchmark of the market for all the home loans issued to borrowers with weak credit . A collapse of this index led to home loans being marked down in value.

Looking back, it’s pretty clear that the ABX was manipulated by Hedge Funds. As the ABX subprime mortgage index crashed, so did much of our economy.

Some investors made out like bandits. George Soros for one. Soros had become a political powerbroker of unrivaled influence within the Democratic Party (see The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party) and, even now, has an empire of politically active 527 groups, of which he is the number one donor, by far, in America. 

There is a now infamous lunch whispered about between Soros and John Paulson, a Hedge Fund Manager who made millions during the collapse.  Soros invited Paulson for lunch, “asking for details of how he laid his bets, with instruments that didn’t exist a few years ago”.

George Soros was a very early and influential backer of Barack Obama and remains so to this day.

Speaking of the present…

White House press secretary Robert (Baghdad Bob) Gibbs yesterday said Obama’s economic team was jolted by Thursday’s near disaster and met with Obama shortly after the market plunged.

Gibbs said Obama thinks:

the circumstances around this is something that should be watched or should be reviewed and looked at.

No kiddin’, Scooter.  May I suggest someone you should talk to first?

Sources:  ft.com, telegraph.uk.co, farlex.com, american thinker.com, the hill.com